"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
GW Law Immigration Clinic Director Professor Alberto Benítez & Co-Director Paulina Vera
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Thanks to Professors Benitezand Vera for the great work for the NDPA that they are doing and the values they are instilling in their students. Just think what due process could look like in the Immigration Courts if all judges, trial and appellate, reflected those same values!
The concepts are actually very straightforward.
The Attorney General is a litigant before the Immigration Court. He or she can insert themselves in the process if they choose, to represent the Government as a litigant. But, the Attorney General should be treated as any other litigant — at arm’s length.
Individuals appearing before the Immigration Court are entitled to a fair and impartial independent adjudicator. As long as the Attorney General exercises control over the selection of judges, evaluates their performance, and can review and arbitrarily change their decisions, on his or her own whim, the system will remain unconstitutional and fundamentally unfair.
Interesting that law students see so clearly, recognize, and can articulate what Federal Judges, all the way up to the Supremes, legislators, and our Attorney General all fail to acknowledge and act upon. Hope for the future! But without better-qualified legislators, judges, and Executive Branch officials, will our justice system survive long enough to get to the future? Not without some very fundamental changes!
Every day, individuals have their constitutional, statutory, and human rights stomped upon, mocked, and abused by the broken Immigration Courts. Sometimes, Circuit Courts intervene to provide some semblance of justice in individual cases; other times they turn a blind eye to injustice and fundamentally unfair decision-making in the totally dysfunctional Immgration Courts.
But, nobody, but nobody, except members of the NDPA appears to be willing to recognize and act on the overall glaring constitutional and operational defects in the current Immigration “Courts” — that don’t resemble “courts” at all. That’s something that should concern and outrage every American committed to racial justice, equal justice for all, fundamental fairness, and constitutional due process!
EOIR and the U.S. Immigration Courts are an ongoing national disgrace — a festering sore upon democracy!🤮 Every day, they inflict unnecessary pain and suffering on those humans being abused by their fundamental unfairness and institutionalized chaos.!
How many ruined human lives ⚰️ and futures ☠️is it going to take for someone in the “power structure” to wake up and take notice!
A few “takeaways” from one of America’s leading “practical scholars:”
Think about a new start with a “clean slate;”
Deportation is “state violence;”
Immigration Courts are constructed to provide Gov. with an unfair advantage;
No rules, no due process, no justice;
Kudos to the NDPA & the Round Table;
Trump Administration spent inordinate effort improperly skewing the law to insure everything is denied and remove equible discretion from IJs;
Good provisions that provided discretion in the past to alleviate hardship and injustice have been eliminated by Congress: suspension of deportation, JRAD, 212(c), 245(i), registry (not repealed but now virtually useless b/c of 1972 cutoff date).
With the U.S. “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,” as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement March 16, immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border has emerged as one of the toughest challenges facing the Biden Administration. Last week, President Biden put Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of “stemming” the flow of migrants, Biden was questioned about the immigration situation at his first official press conference, immigrant detention centers began to fill up once again, and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle made trips to the border to publicize the issue and propose solutions.
Biden’s attempts to address immigration may be new, but the issue is one that has dogged his predecessors for decades. Since the 1970s, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to address undocumented immigration by constructing ever more draconian policies of border control, deportation and detention—border theater that grabs headlines and sometimes leads to short-term change, but never actually solves the problem.
There’s a reason why the U.S. government has failed for so many years to “control” the border: none of these policies have addressed the real reasons for migration itself. In migration studies, these are known as “push” and “pull” factors, the causes that drive migrants from one country to another.
Today, the countries sending the most migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border–especially the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador–are experiencing a combination of push factors that include poverty and inequality, political instability, and violence. And while the current situation may be unique, it is also deeply rooted in history.
Many countries in Central America have struggled with poverty since the time of independence from Spain in the early 19th century. While they are beautiful countries that are rich in culture and history, that colonial past has meant they have historically been home to large, landless, poor, rural populations, including many indigenous people of Mayan descent. In the years after Spanish control, they were typically ruled by small oligarchies that disproportionately held wealth, land and power, and their economies were primary export-dependent, which brought great riches to landowners but also exacerbated and perpetuated inequality and the poverty of the majority. Those dynamics have carried forward to today. More recently, climate change–in particular, drought and massivestorms–has forced the vulnerable rural poor out of the countryside.
. . . .
And while many Central Americans could indeed qualify for asylum based on their experiences of persecution, the previous administration made every effort to limit their ability to obtain it. Now the Biden Administration must decide whether to restore the asylum framework, which has become the only possible path to legal migration (as well as safety and security) for Central Americans and other migrants who—due to these combined push and pull factors—are desperate to come to the United States.
Given the complicated and deep-rooted reasons behind migration, lawmakers cannot control or “solve” the ongoing crisis at the border by simply pouring money and resources into ever more militaristic border theater. It’s no wonder that decades of such policies have done little to change the underlying dynamics.
Instead, if Americans are serious about changing the situation at the border, we need to address the push and pull factors behind Central American migration. We need to acknowledge the reality of the U.S. economy (in particular, that it demands immigrant labor to work low-wage jobs) and work to construct new legal frameworks that reflect that reality. We need to target financial and logistical support to encourage Central American countries to address the poverty and inequality that fuel migration, rather than cutting foreign aid, as the Trump Administration did. We need to do all we can to end the pervasive gang violence that pushes so many migrants out of their homelands. And of course, we must continue to evaluate our own historical and contemporary role in creating the longstanding problems that are pushing Central Americans to migrate.
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Read the rest of Julia’s article at the link. One key truth: many more Central American migrants would qualify for asylum and be legally admitted to our society under a fair application of our asylum laws directed and supervised by real expert judges who scrupulously enforce due process and best practices on a now biased, unfair, and dysfunctional system!
“Stemming the tide” might be neither realistic nor possible at this time. But, controlling it, managing it humanely and legally, and regularizing it, while lessening the “push” factors should be achievable.
It would, however, require bold actions:
Recognizing the primacy of humanitarian protection laws and insisting on due process in implementing them;
Putting experts in humanitarian situations, due process advocates, diplomats, labor economists, and demographers in leadership positions; and
Embracing much larger levels of legal immigration, particularly from Latin America.
Vice President Kamala D. Harris Vice President of the United States (Official Senate Photo)
Unfortunately for Vice President Harris and the rest of us who want humane, realistic immigration policies, there are reasons for our half-century of overall failure on the border.
Bloated government bureaucracies, powerful corporate interests, nativist politicians, and even foreign leaders are heavily invested in expensive and guaranteed to fail “uber enforcement” gimmicks. Failure basically creates a never-ending demand for more: more enforcement agents, “civil prisons,” jailers, deporters, cars, trucks, guns, boats, ammo, walls, fences, technology, courts, judges, prosecutors, lobbyists, “baby jails,” processing centers, foreign aid that goes largely into the pockets of corrupt leaders and their cronies, and a never-ending supply of underground, low-wage, politically neutered workers.
Additionally, we now have an entire political party with an agenda of overt institutionalized racism, dehumanization of the other, and fear-mongering White Nationalist myths driving its bogus populist narrative.
None of these “architects and enablers of border failure and institutionalized racism” are going “quietly into the night.” They will fight tooth and nail to defend their sinecures, profitable empires, and politically useful White Nationalist myths.
The politician who finally breaks the deadly cycle of failure and human misery at our border, while harnessing and realizing the positive power of human migration, will become a hero for future historians and undoubtedly merit a chapter in a new edition of Profiles in Courage.
Sadly, such recognition and adulation is likely to come long after she is gone from the scene. Long term vision and moral courage are not necessarily rewarded with short-term political popularity. Just ask the few Republicans who voted in accordance with the overwhelming, basically uncontested, evidence of Trump’s “high crimes and misdemeanors!”
That’s why it’s a tough challenge even for someone of Vice President Harris’s undoubted intelligence and abilities. It’s up to those of us who believe in a better America to keep her from getting sidetracked and co-opted by the vested interests of failure and White Nationalist myth-makers and purveyors.
BIA Asylum Panel In Action Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsWoman Being “Tried By Ordeal” 17th Century Woodcut Public Realm Source: Ancient Origins Website https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal” 17th Century Woodcut Public Realm Source: Ancient Origins Website https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160Filipe De La Hoz Investigative Journalist — Immigration PHOTO: Twitter
Filipe De La Hoz in The Baffler:
This has been a bizarre conversation on a number of levels, not least because many interlocutors proceed from the assumption that permitting humanitarian migration is even a choice that the president gets to make. It is not: U.S. law lays out that any “alien . . . who arrives in the United States . . . irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum.” The statute enumerates certain exceptions, such as adults applying more than one year after entry and the existence of specific “safe third country” agreements (which formed another front in Trump’s efforts to gut asylum).
There are no exceptions, however, pertaining to considerations of the domestic political climate, or whether accommodating asylum seekers is deemed just too hard or, god forbid, conducive to others subsequently seeking help. Internationally, the principle of “non-refoulement” (literally non-return) holds that a state cannot “expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his [or her] life or freedom would be threatened,” as obligated by the United Nations’ 1967 protocol on refugees, of which the United States is a signatory. While the refugee definition itself is woefully outdated, the requirement to verify whether people fit the rubric before sending them away is absolute. These aren’t open questions, no matter how assertively they’re raised by political strategy hucksters and TV news hosts.
Read the complete article, which makes many other valid points and corrects the daily errors and myths about asylum spewed forth by politicos and the “mainstream” media at the link.
Filipe gets it! But, Judge Garland apparently doesn’t! What’s wrong with this picture? Pretty much everything!
Is this how the DC Circuit Court of Appeals functioned when Judge Garland was on the bench. Is this what “due process” means in America? If not, why is Garland looking the other way as injustice rolls off his “judicial assembly line” in Falls Church?
For Judge Garland to be credible on any racial justice issue, and for EOIR to provide due process, we need radical, not incremental, change! It’s interesting that Biden is getting well-deserved kudos for nominating a very diverse progressive slate of Article III judicial nominees.
Yet, to date, EOIR, with more judges than Biden could appoint in four years, remains staffed and operating as if Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller were still in charge. And, non-diverse, anti-progressive would be an understatement for today’s Immigration “Courts.” For heaven’s sake, we still have an anti-due-process BIA churning out nativist precedents!
There is nary a “win” for an individual in the last four years of BIA/AG precedents. The BIA and the AG inevitably reject reasonable constructions of statutes presented by respondents in favor of inferior — even nonsensical — ones presented by DHS.
Sometimes, the BIA runs over clear statutory language, circuit precedents, regulatory requirements, or their own past precedents in the “race to remove.” Yet, in the “real” Federal Courts, even with a much more aggressively conservative composition, and their own often dismissive approach to immigrants’ rights, individuals prevail in published decisions almost every day! How outrageous is that!
I’ll believe that Judge Garland is serious about racial justice in America on the day that he 1) vacates every Trump-era AG precedent, and 2) removes the entire BIA and replaces them with a diverse group of progressive judges with human rights expertise and an unswerving commitment to due process. Appoint the “best and the brightest” as President Biden says!
Until then, I remain a skeptic and a strong critic of the just plain dumb, biased, and ill-informed approach to EOIR that has plagued past Dem Administrations.
It won’t be long until, predictably, the fallout from the so-called “border crisis” — unnecessarily hyped by the press and the GOP, but also stoked by the Biden Administration’s lack of expertise, preparation, and “Amateur Night @ the Bijou PR” — hits EOIR.
It’s not rocket science! But, it does require a much much much more courageous and informed approach, along with common sense and some human decency. And, the “next gen” folks who could make it happen, are still “on the outside looking in.”
Meanwhile, the idiocy continues from the Garland SG’s Office. Handed a golden opportunity to abandon a totally boneheaded position on adjustment of status for TPS holders who qualify to immigrate legally, the Garland DOJ continues to press an irrational and illegal Trump interpretation; one that not only defies the plain language of the statute, but reaches a beyond stupid policy result that keeps hard-working folks who meet the qualifications for green card status in perpetual limbo — for no legal or rational reason whatsoever!
Sure, the tone-deaf Supremes’ GOP majority might buy it, since it furthers a culture of bias and de-humanization. But, that’s no excuse for what was supposed to be a smarter, more ethical, more humane Administration.
The case is Sanchez v. Mayorkas, and the lack of insight, common sense, and humanity with which Judge Garland has approached the most important topics in current American law — immigration/human rights/racial justice/social justice to date — remains appalling! There will be no racial justice in America until our leaders “connect the dots” between racist immigration policies, a racist-enabling Immigration Court, and degradation of people of color in all areas of the law!
Judge Garland could cut through all the BS by putting the right folks in charge of EOIR and turning them loose. We needa lot less talk and a lot more action!
Many of us out here have long supported social and racial justice, through good times and bad. But, we’re likely to remain unconvinced about the good faith and competence of the Biden Administration until we see radical due process and racial justice reforms at EOIR and the DOJ.
There are many folks who could solve America’s immigration problems in a humane, progressive, and efficient manner that advances and enhances due process. But, to date, Judge Garland short-sightedly refuses to put them in the game or even to publicly acknowledge the debilitating problems in his wholly-owned and incompetently operated courts! And, every minute of delay costs lives and credibility.
Here’s a very recent letter from Senator Gillibrand and other Senators requesting that Judge Garland turn his attention to the EOIR disaster/travesty.
It’s a terrific letter. But, there is a major problem! All of this was well known long before the election! A number of us made the same points to the Biden Transition Team! Among other things, we emphasized the critical importance off “seizing the moment and hitting the ground running with a complete new approach at EOIR led by a team of available experts.”
The election was over in early November. Yet, here we are with the “same old, same old” failed anti-due process EOIR daily inflicting unnecessary pain, suffering, and abuse on migrants and their lawyers. Most of the same old DOJ unethical, legally questionable, defenses of the indefensible are still the order of the day. Some of the worst and most incompetent jurisprudence in modern American legal history, rendered in Garland’s name, is still being “outed” every week. There is no known plan for correction or even simple statement of awareness from Judge G.
Totally unacceptable! And the lack of preparation and basic competence is reflected in the problems the Administration has had at the border. A functional EOIR could and should have been part of reestablishing the rule of law at the border.
Instead, Judge Garland is making himself part of the latest chapter in America’s disgraceful and unnecessary failure to establish an asylum system that complies with due process and domestic and international laws. One that fulfills international treaty obligations, implements the generous protection objectives of the Refugee Act of 1980, rejects institutionalized racism, reflects the reality of forced migration, incorporates basic human values, and furthers the national interest.
It’s not rocket science; but it requires historical knowledge, recognition of the realities of human migration, legal competence, moral courage, and radical action that Judge Garland has yet to hint is within his capabilities. And, that’s bad news for American justice and humanity!
Inexcusable! But neither the issues of human migration nor the efforts of the NDPA to make the historically false, yet clear, promise of “due process and equal justice under law” a reality will go away, no matter how much Judge Garland and other “head in the sanders” in the Administration might want to believe and act otherwise!
Oh, yeah, don’t forget the heavy dose of overt misogyny that drove the Trump/Miller/Sessions/Barr/BIA “immigration jurisprudence” over the past four years. Yet, no repudiation from Judge Garland!
As I previously said, on “day one” Judge Garland would either repudiate or “own” the despicable treatment inflicted on female refugees and other migrants of color by the Trump kakistocracy. Until we see radical remedial action, Judge Garland now “owns” all the ugliness of the last four years. Our job becomes to let him escape neither responsibility nor the judgement of history for his failure of humanity and good judgement!
Trump supporters and hangers-on boast the “success” of Trump’s immigration policies, demonstrated by the supposed drop in illegal entries. But this is merely an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to managing a very real problem. It was a giant sleight of hand which hid the actual number of people seeking entry into the U.S. Biden’s policies have pulled back the curtain and like so many other aspects of Trump’s administration, it is clear that the claims of success are nothing more than fantasies.
And yet the Biden administration is not off the hook. While it did agree to permit unaccompanied children to enter the U.S. despite the Title 42 ban, it did so following a preliminary injunction issued by a federal court last November. DHS continues to expel families, as well as single men and women, under the existing Title 42 order.
. . . .
Despite the clear moral and legal imperatives to stop Title 42 expulsions, the Biden administration is clearly worried that returning to pre-pandemic processing of asylum seekers will overwhelm the system. It is also clear that they fear a political backlash if critics are able to characterize the border as out of control.
Taking these final steps takes courage and political will. Those of us who support the rights of asylum seekers have to let the administration know that doing the right thing will not tarnish its reputation and that we will work even harder to ensure that making good on humane immigration policy is not political suicide.
Protecting asylum seekers is a woman’s issue of the first order. We must encourage and challenge both the administration and Congress to live up to U.S. obligations. We must turn out at the voting booth to support candidates and elected officials who act on behalf of asylum seekers. And we must push back, every way we can, against those who hope to weaponize the border in a callous effort to turn following the law into a political liability.
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Read Mary’s complete article at the link. Many thanks to Judge Alex Manuel of the ABA’s National Conference of the Administrative Law Judiciary for passing this along.
Surprisingly, “forced migration,” is exactly what it says it is: “FORCED migration” — not optional! As I have pointed out before: “We can diminish ourselves as nation (and are doing so), but it won’t stop human migration.”
Refugees come, because that’s what refugees do. They often come when the world is in crisis, because that’s one of the primary reasons why refugees flee. They seldom come in an orderly manner because flight to save your life doesn’t lend itself to “regularity.” How many Jews perished in Nazi-controlled areas before and during WWII waiting for visas that were never going to come?
And, what brings refugees to our borders actually has little to do with inane statements of politicos, bureaucrats, border cops, and the media. One of the main consequences of illegally “closing the border to asylum seekers” is that large numbers simply enter between ports of entry. Those who used to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol are encouraged by our short-sighted policies and unwillingness to follow our own laws just to keep on going.
We’d certainly do much better if we “canned” all the Trump-era illegal, racist nonsense, reopened border ports to asylum seekers, and encouraged them to apply there or in locations abroad. But, to make that happen we would also have to review their claims in a timely, fair, and humane manner — not “rocket science,” yet something that largely has eluded our nation, particularly since 2014.
It’s achievable. But not without much better leadership coming from experts who actually know how to deal with refugee situations in a humane and effective manner. Failed bureaucrats and grandstanding politicos, those who usually “drive the train heading for a wreck,” can’t do the job! That’s been proved time and again! Why do we insist on repeating all our mistakes? Cruelty and threats simply aren’t effective.
To emphasize Mary’s concluding point about women’s concerns, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller made misogyny a focus of their vicious attack on people of color seeking asylum. It started with Sessions’s atrocious decision ignorantly and unlawfully targeting women refugees in Matter of A-B- and continued through Miller’s now-enjoined effort to unlawfully eradicate gender-based asylum grants. Never mind that women form the largest group of clearly identifiable refugees in the world and that femicide and violence against them driven by sexual antipathy and issues of control are rampant worldwide, particularly in the Northern Triangle.
But, a large problem here is that more than two months into the Biden Administration, Attorney General Merrick Garland has yet to repudiate Matter of A-B- and the other debilitating racist and misogynist “precedents” and grotesquely illegal anti-asylum policies of Sessions and Barr. Worse yet, he has neither stood up for the reinstatement of asylum laws and compliance with Constitutionally-required due process at the border, nor has he removed and replaced “his” Board of Immigration Appeals and taken steps to curb those of “his” Immigration “Judges” who are still engaged in furthering the Sessions/Barr White Nationalist, misogynist, anti-asylum agenda!
Interesting lack of action from a distinguished former Federal Judge who several months ago claimed great gratitude that his ancestors were given refuge from harm by the U.S. Is there some reason that those people of color and others now arriving at our borders and claiming legal protections under our laws are less deserving of fair, generous, and humane treatment?
Judge Garland’s View Of Proper Treatment of Women Seeking Asylum? Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The answer to the question posed is actually simple. As of today, DHS Enforcement and politicos at the DOJ “own” the so called Immigration “Courts” lock, stock, and barrel!
That’s an overt violation of the clear Fifth Amendment requirement that those whose lives and property are at stake be judged by a fair and impartial adjudicator — by definition one who is an expert in asylum law, human rights, and has demonstrated the ability to conduct fair hearings.
That’s also bad news for the Hispanic Community, because for the last four years those wholly owned “courts” have been operating with a clear bias against the civil and human rights of people of color, with Hispanic migrants and asylum seekers being a particular target — one that has adversely affected, even terrorized, Hispanic communities throughout the U.S. Hispanics are also grossly underrepresented among the “Immigration Judiciary” at both the trial and appellate levels, as well as on the Article III Bench — despite there being scores of Hispanic and other lawyers of color out here who would be head and shoulders above many of those currently holding these critical “life or death” judgeships!
The real questions are:
1) What can we do about it, and
2) How can we get Judge Garland and others in the Administration to listen, put an end to “Dred Scottification,” and get started on the task of bringing due process and fundamental fairness to a totally dysfunctional and dangerously biased system?
Tune in on April 7 to join the dialogue on how we can finally force the U.S. Government to make good on its unfulfilled, even mocked, Constitutional promise of due process for all persons!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽⚖️Due Process Forever!
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
The Republican senator Ted Cruz has drawn criticism for taking a trip to America’s southern border as the conservative Texan politician once again became the butt of internet jokes and memes.
In the style of a wildlife documentary, Cruz captured his experience with the help of professional photographers and shared his recent journey to the US-Mexico border Thursday night on social media, where he aimed to shed light on what Republicans have dubbed a crisis.
Sporting a dark green fishing shirt and matching baseball cap with the Texas flag, Cruz spoke at a press conference where he sought to paint a dramatic picture of his experience: “On the other side of the river we have been listening to and seeing cartel members – human traffickers – right on the other side of the river waving flashlights, yelling and taunting Americans, taunting the border patrol.”
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Despite his claims that the border situation is a direct result of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, residents in the Rio Grande Valley have said no such crisis exists. In fact, the number of border crossings under the Biden administration largely mirror those under the former Trump administration. Cruz was accompanied by 18 other Republican senators including John Cornyn, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham.
After claiming he ran into heckling cartel members and saw a dead body floating in the Rio Grande, Cruz was derided by many, including the former congressman Beto O’Rourke who said:“You’re in a border patrol boat armed with machine guns. The only threat you face is unarmed children and families who are seeking asylum (as well as the occasional heckler).”
. . . .
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Read more at the link about the GOP’s complete farce — while much more courageous individuals, asylum seekers, are forced to risk their lives because the U.S. is incapable of administering our own asylum laws in a fair, responsible, and competent manner. Cruz & co apparently view this as a “photo op.” Actually, it’s a human tragedy for which history will hold Cruz and his racist party largely responsible, even if the voters fail to do so.
The best solution is to hire experts from the private/NGO/academic sectors; build a functioning asylum and refugee system that will process applicants fairly, generously, predictably, and efficiently; reopen legal ports of entry; establish a robust “on site” refugee program for the Northern Triangle; and work with the international community to alleviate the causes of forced migration. Figure out how new arrivals who qualify for legal status can help rebuild our economy moving forward. Develop a humane program for returning those who don’t qualify without endangering their lives, health, and safety.
An absolutely essential part of the solution is a new, “reimagined” EOIR, staffed with real judges who are experts in asylum, human rights, and due process. An EOIR that will “through teamwork and innovation, be the world’s best courts, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Judge Garland, where are you in American justice’s hour of dire need?
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Imperfect as our current laws may be, they cover all of the foregoing. What we really need to do is follow our own laws with common sense, humanity, and a sense of urgency!
What we don’t need is more inane walls, more border enforcement directed against asylum seekers, and more cruel and illegal schemes to return refugees to back to danger without any due process. And, we certainly don’t need any more photo ops from Cruz and his GOP cronies.
CELEBRATING WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH WITH THE BOYS FROM THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT!
Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal” 17th Century Woodcut Public Realm Source: Ancient Origins Website https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal” 17th Century Woodcut Public Realm Source: Ancient Origins Website https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160
PANEL: SMITH, Chief Judge, ARNOLD and STRAS, Circuit Judges.
OPINION BY: Judge Arnold
Because you have to “see it to believe it” that these three guys actually graduated from law school and got promoted to the Federal Judiciary, the opinion is set forth in full here:
United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________
No. 20-2248 ___________________________
Yeemy Guatemala-Pineda
lllllllllllllllllllllPetitioner
v.
Merrick B. Garland, Attorney General of the United States1
lllllllllllllllllllllRespondent ____________
Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals ____________
Submitted: February 17, 2021 Filed: March 26, 2021 ____________
Before SMITH, Chief Judge, ARNOLD and STRAS, Circuit Judges. ____________
ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.
After Yeemy Guatemala-Pineda entered the United States unlawfully, she applied for asylum so she wouldn’t have to return to her home country of El Salvador.
1Merrick B. Garland is serving as Attorney General of the United States, and is substituted as respondent pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 43(c).
She feared that if she returned there gangs would persecute her because of her religious activities. After a winding course of immigration proceedings that began more than ten years ago, the Board of Immigration Appeals ultimately denied her request for asylum. We deny the petition for review since we think substantial evidence supports the BIA’s decision.
Guatemala-Pineda, whom we will call Pineda as her real name is Yeemy Michael Pineda, attempted to enter the United States in 2010 at age 22 but was apprehended by immigration authorities and charged with being inadmissible as an alien without proper documentation. See U.S.C. § 1182(a)(7)(A)(i)(I). She conceded that the charge was true but applied for asylum, which protects, among others, refugees present in the United States who are unable or unwilling to return to their home country because they have a well-founded fear that others will persecute them on account of their religion. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1101(a)(42)(A), 1158(b)(1)(A). Pineda testified before an immigration judge that she was a practicing Christian who had participated in a church project of door-to-door evangelization that specifically targeted gang members. She related that a handful of gang members had at one time “cornered” and “grabbed” her during a church function and tried to recruit her to their gang, explicitly telling her that they did not want to see her working with the church. Though they also threatened to “take [her] by force” and find her wherever she went, they did not otherwise physically harm her.
After that incident Pineda stopped attending church, opting instead to participate in religious services at other people’s homes. During one of these home services, Pineda testified, gang members appeared outside and demanded that the group stop singing. She believed they were the same gang members who had threatened her before; they specifically called her by name and said they were “coming for” her. Two weeks later, at another home gathering, gang members again appeared outside, announced they were armed, and demanded that she come outside
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or “they were going to get” her. The people inside threw themselves on the ground and waited about two hours until the gang members departed.
At that point, Pineda testified, she obtained a job selling clothes in San Salvador, which was about ninety minutes from her home. She explained that gang members did not bother or threaten her while at work, though one time she had to crouch down when she heard gunshots directed toward another person.
The immigration judge concluded that, even though Pineda had not demonstrated past persecution, she did have a well-founded fear of future persecution, and so granted her application for asylum. When the government appealed to the BIA, the BIA remanded the case to the immigration judge to consider, among other things, whether Pineda could reasonably relocate within El Salvador to avoid future persecution. On remand, Pineda testified that, if forced to return to El Salvador, she would return to her mother’s house because she had no other place to go. She noted that her entire family lives in the same city and that she could not relocate to another city as a single Christian woman. She also elaborated on her time working in San Salvador, explaining that she commuted alone and worked three to five days a week for a few months before leaving for the United States. Pineda also testified that, though she did not experience difficulties from gang members in San Salvador or while commuting, thieves did steal her paycheck three or four times and her cell phone twice, often while she was riding on a bus.
Pineda also presented testimony from an expert on Central American gangs. He testified that El Salvador is “the most violent country in the world for women” and that four things put Pineda “at not only high but very predictable risk” of harm should she return to El Salvador: her religious practices and activities, her past refusal to comply with gang demands, her flight from El Salvador to escape gang threats, and the ability of gangs to learn of her return. Further, he opined, Pineda would be at high risk anywhere in El Salvador because she is a young, single woman with no
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protective family network, making “internal relocation a very, very difficult proposition.”
The immigration judge again granted Pineda’s request for asylum, concluding that she had carried her burden to show that internal relocation was unreasonable, as “[s]he is a young single woman returning to a country the size of Massachusetts where abuse and violence against women is one of the principal human rights problems.” The judge acknowledged that Pineda had worked in San Salvador for three months without interference from gangs but pointed out that during that time she had been robbed of her paycheck or cell phone at least five times and “did not proselytize in the streets.” In sum, there were simply no other parts of the country “that are any better than the area that gave rise to [Pineda’s] original claim.” On appeal, however, the BIA pointed out that Pineda was able to avoid gang persecution while working in San Salvador. It also noted that, even though Pineda was the victim of crimes during her commute, it was unclear whether she could have avoided these and similar crimes by moving to San Salvador instead of commuting from her hometown. The BIA therefore remanded for the immigration judge “to reconsider the overall reasonableness of any relocation by the respondent throughout El Salvador.”
On remand, Pineda’s case was assigned to a different immigration judge. The new judge concluded, after receiving additional arguments from the parties and what he termed “extensive country condition evidence,” that Pineda had failed to shoulder her burden to show that she could not relocate elsewhere in El Salvador since she was able to avoid gang persecution while working in San Salvador. The BIA upheld that determination.
In her petition for review from that holding, Pineda challenges the determination that she failed to show she could not safely relocate to another part of El Salvador. We review both the BIA’s decision and the immigration judge’s decision to the extent the BIA adopted the findings or reasoning of the immigration judge. See
-4-
Degbe v. Sessions, 899 F.3d 651, 655 (8th Cir. 2018). We will uphold the decision so long as substantial evidence supports it. See Cinto-Velasquez v. Lynch, 817 F.3d 602, 607 (8th Cir. 2016). When applying that “extremely deferential” standard, we will not reverse “unless, after having reviewed the record as a whole, we determine that it would not be possible for a reasonable fact-finder to adopt the BIA’s position.” See Eusebio v. Ashcroft, 361 F.3d 1088, 1091 (8th Cir. 2004).
Since Pineda does not contend that she has shown past persecution, she must show she has a well-founded fear of future persecution to prevail. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A); see also 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b). But “[a]n applicant does not have a well-founded fear of persecution if the applicant could avoid persecution by relocating to another part of the applicant’s country of nationality.” 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(2)(ii). Because Pineda has not demonstrated past persecution, and the gangs she fears are not government or government sponsored, she bears the burden to show that relocation would not be reasonable. See id. § 1208.13(b)(3)(i). In these circumstances relocation is presumed to be reasonable. See id. § 1208.13(b)(3)(iii).
We hold that substantial evidence supports the BIA’s determination that Pineda could relocate to another part of El Salvador if forced to return. We believe that a reasonable factfinder could give substantial weight to the lack of gang harassment Pineda suffered while working in San Salvador for a number of months. Even if gangs generally have significant reach throughout the country and are able to locate people like her quickly, as Pineda maintains, the fact that they did nothing to her for months as she worked in San Salvador is hard to overlook. And even though the first immigration judge to preside over Pineda’s proceedings found that internal relocation would not be reasonable, that does not necessarily mean that substantial evidence did not support the second immigration judge’s decision. It might just go to show that the reasonableness of relocation in this case is one on which reasonable people could disagree.
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To bolster her case, Pineda emphasizes that she suffered other serious harm in San Salvador when she had paychecks and cell phones stolen from her. Pineda is right that, to prevail, she need not show that she suffered other serious harm on account of a protected ground, such as religion. See Hagi-Salad v. Ashcroft, 359 F.3d 1044, 1048 n.5 (8th Cir. 2004). But that other harm must rise to “the severity of persecution” for her to carry the day. Id. “Persecution is an extreme concept,” involving things like death or the threat of death, torture, or injury to one’s person or freedom. See De Castro-Gutierrez v. Holder, 713 F.3d 375, 380 (8th Cir. 2013). Pineda did not describe anything that occurred to her during her commutes to and from San Salvador or her employment there that approaches this high standard.
We therefore conclude that substantial evidence supports the BIA’s determination, considering that Pineda worked for months in San Salvador without trouble from gangs. Though we recognize that Pineda’s expert opined that she was at risk, we think the BIA did not unreasonably focus on there being no evidence that she was persecuted during the months she worked in San Salvador. We have upheld a decision on this kind of question based on less, as, for instance, where an asylum seeker had stayed in another part of a country without being harmed for five weeks. See Molina-Cabrera v. Sessions, 905 F.3d 1103, 1106 (8th Cir. 2018).
Though we sympathize with Pineda’s subjective fear of returning alone to a different part of El Salvador, we cannot say that the BIA’s relocation determination is unsupported by substantial evidence. Because we uphold this portion of the BIA’s decision, we do not consider whether substantial evidence supported the BIA’s conclusion that the government of El Salvador was unwilling or unable to control the gangs that Pineda feared.
Petition denied.
______________________________
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No, it’s not, as Judge Arnold disingenuously claims “something on which reasonable people could disagree.” No reasonable adjudicator qualified in asylum law and due process could reach this ridiculously wrong result!
Naturally, not understanding asylum law (why would that be a requirement for an Article III Judge, just because it’s probably the #1 and certainly most hotly contested topic in Federal Civil Litigation these days), Judge Arnold and his “boys club” out on the Great Plains fail to give this credible respondent “the benefit of the doubt” to which she is entitled under UNHCR guidance.
Indeed, as I used to tell my former BIA colleagues, usually to little avail before launching another dissent, “if reasonable people could differ, the result should be clear — the respondent wins because she gets ‘the benefit of the doubt.’” Sadly, even at a time when the BIA functioned at a much much higher level than it does today, it was the Immigration Judge and immigration enforcement who often in practice got the “benefit of the doubt” from many of my former colleagues, not the asylum applicant.
As my friend Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis Legal Community summed up: “Proves the point that ‘the only true refugee is a dead refugee.’” Unlike the various BIA Judges and Circuit Judges involved in this deadly travesty, Dan actually understands asylum law, due process, and human values.
One might fairly ask the question of why “practical scholars” like Dan are on the “outside” and lesser talents are on the Federal Bench at all levels? The answer has much to do with why there is an “institutionalized racism crisis” in today’s American justice system. “Trial By Ordeal,” really isn’t that great a “look” for 21st Century American Justice! (Any more than is institutionalized racism and “The New Jim Crow”).
Dan Kowalski Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)
Conveniently, this “gang of three” CJs showed little real understanding of 8 C.F.R. 208.13 as it existed at the time of the BIA’s second decision, which states:
adjudicators should consider, but are not limited to considering, whether the applicant would face other serious harm in the place of suggested relocation; any ongoing civil strife within the country; administrative, economic, or judicial infrastructure; geographical limitations; and social and cultural constraints, such as age, gender, health, and social and familial ties. Those factors may, or may not, be relevant, depending on all the circumstances of the case, and are not necessarily determinative of whether it would be reasonable for the applicant to relocate.
Just on the information regurgitated in their opinion, Ms. Guatemala-Pineda showed by expert witness testimony and by her own credible testimony and experiences that there is no “reasonably available relocation alternative” in El Salvador. There clearly is “ongoing civil strife” in El Salvador. And, anyone with even minimal knowledge of the country would know that (to put it charitably) the “administrative, economic, and judicial infrastructures” are somewhere in the zone between dysfunctional to non-existent. She also credibly pointed out why it would not be reasonable under the circumstances to require her to leave her mother’s home and move to San Salvador.
Forcing someone to commute to a job 90 minutes away, for 3-5 days per week work, in what is perhaps the most dangerous city in the country, during which she already suffered “three or four paycheck robberies and a cell phone robbery” in about three months — that’s a total of five robberies” in a relatively short span — is by no means a “reasonable internal relocation alternative” based on all relevant factors!
Additionally, that she felt unable to proselytize in accordance with her religious beliefs in San Salvador also indicates that relocation there is unreasonable. Freedom to carry out reasonable religious commitments without fear of harm is a fundamental human right.
Very interesting to compare how GOP Circuit Judges treated very clear interference with Ms. Guatemala-Pineda’s ability to fulfill her religious beliefs in this case with how many GOP judges in the U.S. swoon over every minor interference with right wing religious beliefs — even those grounded in obvious bigotry — in the U.S. Here, by contrast, the GOP Circuit Judges fobbed off the interference with Ms. Guatemala-Pineda’s evangelical activities — at one point she felt unable to worship publicly at her church — as of no particular concern.
Not to mention that Ms. Guatemala-Pineda’s expert confirmed that:
El Salvador is “the most violent country in the world for women” and that four things put Pineda “at not only high but very predictable risk” of harm should she return to El Salvador: her religious practices and activities, her past refusal to comply with gang demands, her flight from El Salvador to escape gang threats, and the ability of gangs to learn of her return. Further, he opined, Pineda would be at high risk anywhere in El Salvador because she is a young, single woman with no protective family network, making “internal relocation a very, very difficult proposition.”
In plain terms, it’s only a matter of time before Ms. Guatemala-Pineda is persecuted, seriously harmed, or killed if returned to El Salvador. But, her life, as a woman of color, is obviously of little concern to the “gang of three.”
Let’s look at it another her way. Suppose we were tell Judges Smith, Arnold, and Staus that they had to relocate in a way that meant every third or fourth paycheck would be stolen and that they would be robbed of their cellphone every three months, with no recourse to a functioning police system. (Note that these dudes would be much better able to absorb such losses of income and expensive property than Ms. Guatemala-Pineda.) Or, that we were going to relocate their cushy ivory tower jobs to a place where they would be required to commute 90 minutes by public transportation every day. Or, that they might occasionally have to get down behind the bench to avoid rampant gunfire. Or, that they no longer could worship at their church of choice or openly engage in religious activities in their communities, but must limit themselves to “in-home worship” — not just during the pandemic, but permanently. Or, they had to live in a place where “GOP-Judiciacide” was at the highest level in the world and the police offered little or no protection, indeed were often involved themselves in abuse and killings of judges or turned a blind eye to the perpetrators.
Think our “tone-deaf group of guys in robes” would take a different view of “reasonable” if they put themselves in Ms. Guatemala-Pineda’s place and it were happening to them? You betcha!
A few other things to note about this gross miscarriage of justice:
Two panel members were appointed by Bush II, one by Trump;
Ms. Guatemala-Pineda originally won her case before the Immigration Judge, who after hearing all the evidence and carefully considering relocation found that Ms. Pineda has shown that there was no “reasonably available relocation alternative” in El Salvador;
The BIA baselessly remanded the case on ICE’s appeal to a new IJ to get the “preferred result” — a denial of relief and potential death sentence for a woman of color (See, e.g., Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions & Matter of A-B-);
In a functioning system staffed by asylum experts, this case could easily have been granted at the Asylum Office rather than kicking around the dysfunctional EOIR system for a decade — two merits hearings before the IJ — two appeals to the BIA — and Circuit Court review — all to REACH A CLEARLY INCORRECT AND UNJUST RESULT THAT NO TRUE ASYLUM EXPERT I KNOW WOULD AGREE WITH!
And, we wonder why EOIR has more than doubled the number of IJs yet still almost tripled their uncontrolled backlog to a mind-boggling 1.3 million cases! Ten years to turn an easy asylum grant into a denial (yet other cases are rushed through to denial on an assembly line without any real deli]beration or analysis) might give us a hint of why the system is totally dysfunctional and completely unfair (not to mention patently unconstitutional)!
Since EOIR is known for its incompetent record keeping, I’m willing to bet that there are thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of additional “lost in space” files, warehoused somewhere that are simply “off docket” and unaccounted for.
Cases like this aren’t “academic exercises” — the judicial attitude that “screams off the pages” of this gross miscarriage of justice. They have real life, potentially deadly consequences for real humans beings, the most vulnerable of human beings, like Ms. Guatemala-Pineda. She has the same right to live as do the Circuit Judges, the BIA Judges, and the second Immigration Judge who got her case wrong!
After a decade, this monstrosity is the best our “justice system” can offer? Gimme a break! I think I could choose any three students over at the CALS Asylum Clinic at Georgetown Law who would run circles around the cavalier analysis of these three supposedly “senior jurists” in this case! Cases like this basically are indictments of our Article III system, not to mention the ongoing mockery of justice at EOIR.
The anti-asylum, anti-immigrant bias, incompetent adjudication, and systemic mis-management at EOIR are of monumental proportions! The gross inconsistencies, lack of overall immigration, human rights, sensitivity to racial justice, and “practical due process” expertise at the appellate level of the U.S. Courts and particularly at the Supremes is very disturbing and threatens the very existence and legitimacy of our legal system.
Judge Garland has the power to start fixing this, today! He must vacate all the bogus Trump-era anti-immigrant precedents; toss the entire BIA, and replace them with real judges who possess the required subject matter expertise and overriding commitment to due process and fundamental fairness; establish merit-selection criteria for Immigration Judges honoring experience representing asylum applicants in court, immigration knowledge, human rights expertise, commitment to due process for individuals under law, sensitivity to racial justice, and demonstrated practical problem solving experience.
Then, apply those criteria to new Immigration Judge selections as well as to retention decisions for all current Immigration Judges. And, for Pete’s sake, “can” the incompetent bureaucracy and get some real professionals in there who can run an independent court system — starting with a functioning nationwide e-filing system and some competent judicial training as well as assisting IJs in managing their own dockets rather than constantly interfering and trying to “micromanage” from Falls Church and the 5th Floor of the DOJ (a process known as “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” honed by the Trump kakistocracy @ DOJ).
When you’re done, Judge Garland, you’ll have: 1) many fewer bad decisions heading off the the Courts of Appeals; 2) a functioning Immigration Judiciary of experts who can help keep order and provide helpful expert guidance to the rest of the now out of control system; and 3) a great source of “battle trained and proven” well-qualified, progressive judicial talent who can change the trajectory of the now often moribund (yeah, even some of the younger Trump appointees are basically “brain dead,” so the term fits) and dilatory Article III Judiciary and who are also available to fill other high-level policy positions with competence, common sense, and humanity.
You’d also go down in history as a judge who got out of the ivory tower and actually solved pressing problems, implemented our Constitution, and built a better, fairer court system that made a difference in human lives and the future of our nation. Perhaps, even something like “thorough teamwork and innovation, built the world’s best courts guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” That’s quite a legacy for future generations.
I can only hope Judge Garland finally pays attention to what’s happening across the river in Falls Church and takes immediate action to end the deadly and debilitating clown show 🤡🦹🏿♂️ @ EOIR. Otherwise, I fear he will find himself buried in immigration litigation and his tenure mired in the muck of responsibility for grotesque racial injustice and “running” the worst, most incompetent, unfair, and blatantly unconstitutional “court” system in America!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽⚖️Due Process Forever! Hey Hey, Ho Ho, The Deadly EOIR Clown Show ☠️🤡 Has Got to Go!
“EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept
Hey, maybe next year, we could all celebrate Women’s History Month with some decisions incorporating serious scholarship by progressive women judges that actually recognize, honor, and institutionalize relief from the unfair struggles faced by refugee women and people of color.
Leon Krauze in the WashPost tells us what’s really happening at the border. WARNING: It has little to do with the myths and false narratives being peddled by the GOP, the Administration, and the media.
The current emergency at the border has found the U. S. media at its most solipsistic. Coverage seems more focused on whether the emergency should be called “a crisis” (it should) and what the political fallout for the Biden administration will be. With few exceptions — like the remarkable work of MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff or Politico’s Sabrina Rodriguez — many news outlets seem utterly uninterested in the stories of the migrants themselves.
This is wrong because it fails to provide one crucial piece of the puzzle: the very concrete context of human suffering.
. . . .
This by no means excuses the stories of anguish and confinement that have emerged over the last few weeks from within the facilities set up by the Biden administration to deal with the number of young migrants crossing the border, nor does it absolve the president himself from delivering on his promise of a humane immigration system, diametrically opposed to Trump’s cruel policies, designed in collaboration with unapologetic racist xenophobes like Stephen Miller.
The Biden administration can and should do better. But the current debate cannot ignore the very concrete despair facing thousands of immigrant families who, under the direct threat of violence or abuse, chose to push their young children to the United States, in search of safety.
If the alternative was famine, gang violence, kidnapping, rape or sexual slavery, wouldn’t you bet it all on the journey north? If more people understood this, the political debate and the coverage surrounding the crisis would be much more empathetic and we would get closer at delivering concrete, humane solutions.
Now, let’s hear more “simple truth” from Suzanne Gamboa over at NBC News:
Suzanne Gamboa, Political Editor, NBCLatino, NBC NewsDate: October 21, 2013 Place: Washington, DC Credit: Maria Patricia Leiva/OAS Creative Commons License
America’s immigration impasse — an endless loop across different administrations — is largely self-inflicted, because Congress has repeatedly failed to acknowledge one simple thing: Immigration happens.
Accordingly, immigration laws must be continually adjusted, reformed and revised, experts say.
“People will always want to come to the U.S., and the U.S. will always need people,” said former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who was a top immigration adviser to President George W. Bush.
Until there is a system that allows enough legal immigration to meet the economy’s needs, there will be illegal immigration, Gutierrez said.
“That’s just part of how our economy is set up. It’s part of demographics,” Gutierrez said. “Our birthrate is not high enough to be able to fill the needs of our economy.”
The coronavirus pandemic reinforced the importance of immigrant labor to the American economy, including labor by the undocumented.
All of those people and many other immigrants, including young immigrants — often called “Dreamers” based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act — will play a key role in helping the economy recover from its pandemic bust.
But immigration requires periodic calibration, and the economics and the changing patterns are lost in the politics.
“People are going to move — as they are all around the world — where they think they can find places to better feed their children. That’s the bottom line, and that’s the history of migration to the United States,” said Luis Fraga, director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
. . . .
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Everyone should read the rest of the stories at the above link.
Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration
By Judge (Ret) Paul Wickham Schmidt
“Courtside” Exclusive
March 26, 2021
Notwithstanding the endlessly disingenuous and self-centered alarmist rhetoric coming from all directions on the border mess, often mindlessly regurgitated by the press (not just Fox News), the real “crisis” involves the human lives at stake and the unnecessary human misery we are causing by failing to establish, professionally staff, and fairly and competently operate the legal refugee and particularly asylum systems required by law. This “due process crisis” actually has devastating and debilitating practical effects, starting with the dysfunctional immigration, refugee, and asylum system and the beyond dysfunctional Immigration Courts.
Heck, we don’t even pretend to comply with Constitutionally-required due process of law for asylum seekers who present themselves to us seeking life-saving refuge. Most of those who show up at legally-established border ports are told that the border is “closed” and that there is no way for them to apply. OK, so they attempt to cross between ports and immediately present themselves to the Border Patrol. But, they also are told there is no way to apply and are orbited back to some of the most dangerous countries in the world without any process whatsoever, let alone due process of law. Who are we kidding with all our dishonest pontificating about “the rule of law?”
It’s a strange way to implement the statutory command that any foreign national “irrespective of . . . status, may apply for asylum,” along with a constitutional guarantee that “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Gee, you don’t even need one of those fancy Ivy League law degrees to understand that language. You just have to be able to read, comprehend, and act.
What you do have to do to get where we are today is to view asylum seekers and other migrants (predominantly people of color) as less than human — “non-persons” in a constitutional sense. It’s what some of us call “Dred Scottification of the other” and it has accelerated over the past four years — not just in immigration.
The whole idea of a “court system” being run by the Executive who also is the chief of enforcement is beyond constitutionally preposterous. It’s a “negative tribute” to the Supremes and other Article III life-tenured judges who have grown so distant from their own humanity and immigration stories as to become willfully blind to the ongoing farce that constitutes “justice” and “due process of law” for asylum seekers and other immigrants in the U.S.
Today’s nearly non-existent “asylum system” is a deadly and illegal “catch 22,” with the Supremes sitting in their marble palace refusing to do the primary task that justifies their continued existence: enforce the Constitution against Government misbehavior and in favor of the “little guys” and the “vulnerable.” No thanks, not up to the job!
The real tragedy is that there are plenty of folks out here with the knowledge, integrity, courage, and ability to establish a legal system that would actually comply with out laws, our Constitution, and further offer the hope of constructively addressing some problems before refugees arrive at our borders. But, they remain “benched,” even by the Biden Team. So the “good guys”are going to keep attacking the corrupt and broken system in court and at the polls for as long as it takes to get some course correction — years, decades, centuries — ask most African Americans how long it takes to achieve the true justice that America promises to all, but historically has only delivered to some.
In the long run, a fair system would undoubtedly accept many more legal refugees and asylum seekers. That’s what happens in refugee situations — it’s the core of what we call “forced migration” — when you sign on to international conventions intended to prevent the “next holocaust,” and you fairly and humanely apply the rules meant to protect refugees and those who face torture. And, as they have in the past, the overwhelming number of refugees and asylees, like the overwhelming majority of immigrants (essentially all of us, except Native Americans) will adapt, fit in, and contribute to the health, wealth, and future of our nation. They will change, but so will we — ultimately for the better!
Sure, America wouldn’t be as white, “Christian” (to the extent that adherence to a nominal Christian denomination, rather than actually performing Christ’s extremely difficult, self-sacrificing, risky, compassionate mission, defines Christianity), and nominally heterosexual as it was when White Nationalist myths and whitewashed history ruled the roost. But, it would be a better nation — one that actually has a chance of prospering, realizing the full potential of all its residents, and leading the world in the 21st century. A nation that could devote more human, natural, and monetary resources to building and exporting greatness, rather than to an endless stream of cruel, inhuman, stupid, and wasteful enforcement and deterrence gimmicks.
Bottom line, folks are going to come to America, as they have throughout history. Some will stay, some won’t. But, come they will, unless and until those like Trump and the GOP create such a mess that our own people start fleeing to foreign shores. Immigration, regardless of status, is a sign of strength. Xenophobia a sign of fatal weakness.
Our real choice isn’t whether we want to “close” borders, bar refugees, and abuse children as the Cottons, Cruzes, Millers, and Hawleys advocate. It’s whether we create a robust, orderly, rational legal system to screen, regulate, and distribute the inevitable flow or whether, as we have for the past decades, we force millions to reside and work underground — part of an “extralegal” or “black market” system that pols of both parties and those who profit from that underground system have created.
Sprawling mismanaged enforcement bureaucracies, dysfunctional “courts,” armies of publicly-paid lawyers defending the indefensible, for-profit civil prisons, big agriculture, hospitality giants, loads of upwardly mobile professionals who need child care to pursue careers, communities that live off of marketing ethnic culture, meat packing conglomerates, architects and construction firms who are “building America,” even news media fixated on hyping the problem rather than fixing it (see, e.g., yesterday’s Biden press conference), the list of those who profit from a talented, hard working, reliable, loyal, yet politically and socially disenfranchised, workforce is endless.
Even the GOP’s “Cotton-Cruz crowd” benefits from having an imaginary enemy to rant and rail and gin up hate against — safe in the knowledge that the tanking of our economy, upheaval of society, and possible threat to their privilege that would result from realizing their disingenuous call to boot the entire undocumented population will never happen. Their kids and grandkids can continue to reap the privilege that comes from exploiting an essential, yet politically neutered, workforce. It’s really more about institutionalizing racism to maintain economic and political power over the eventual non-white majority that drives their bogus and ugly narratives.
We can degrade ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽⚖️Due Process Forever! It’s a vision based on a written promise, not a “pipe dream!”
Vivian Ho Journalist The Guardian PHOTO: Wikipedia
Vivian Ho in The Guardian:
. . . .
The number of people seeking to enter the US has risen in recent months. Joe Biden has kept in place a restrictive Trump-era public health order that barred entry to migrants arriving at the border without prior authorization, essentially ensuring that no new asylum claims have been processed at points of entry for more than a year. But the pandemic, cartels and extreme climate events have created conditions so desperate that many migrants are willing to take grave risks.
“Our border policy is set to create really dangerous situations for people to deter people from migrating,” said Erika Pinheiro, the litigation and policy director at the immigrant legal aid organization Al Otro Lado. “But it doesn’t deter migration, it just leads to more deaths, whether it’s an overheated tractor trailer or an SUV crash.”
. . . .
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Read the complete article at the above link.
What if rather than recycling and mindlessly doubling down on proven to fail “enforcement only” policies (that also happen to be expensive), we ran an honest legal system that fairly, timely, and orderly granted refuge to those who qualify under correct, generousinterpretations of protection laws and dealt in a fair and humane manner with those who don’t qualify?
I’m not saying we don’t need more comprehensive immigration reform. In particular, we need the legalization program, a much larger and more rational legal immigration system, and an independent, Article I Immigration Court, staffed by real, expert judges, for starters.
But, in the meantime, since the GOP has shown no interest whatsoever in reasonable legislative changes, we could do a much, much better job of administering the current laws in an efficient, reasonable, and humane way that would further the national interest, rather than undermining it.
It won’t happen, however, without bringing in a better team from outside the existing bureaucracy. The longer the Biden Administration waits to replace the dysfunctional bureaucracy with experts who can solve problems and rationalize this system, the more difficult the task becomes.
For example, there are only a handful of folks in the current bureaucracy who understand the problems and the potential solutions as well as Erika Pinheiro. As long as folks like Erika are on the “outside” fighting to block misguided policies and get the attention of those in charge, our border and immigration policies generally will remain a mess as they been for decades before launching into “free fall” under the malicious incompetence of the past four years!
Erika Pinheiro, Litigation & Policy Director, Al Otro Lado, speaks at TEDSalon: Border Stories, September 10, 2019 at the TED World Theater, New York, NY Photo: Ryan Lash / TED
It’s possible to view today’s announcement that Vice President Kamala Harris has been put in charge of the Biden Administration’s “border strategy” as a bright spot. But, unfortunately, not necessarily.
Vice President Kamala Harris Official Senate Photo Public Realm
Talk about a “strategic alliance” with sending countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, even Mexico, all with exceptionally poor human rights records and huge official corruption problems, sounds like it could be more “Trump Lite,” inhumane and ultimately ineffective enforcement, rather than an innovative, enlightened humanitarian response.
In other words, Harris and Biden could well repeat, in some manner, the Trump“policy” of trying to insure that asylum seekers die in their home countries, die on the way, or get held in cages somewhere south of the border outside the “normal interest zone” of the American media and grandstanding US politicos.Disturbingly, there was no initial recognition that “wooden cliches” like “enforcing the law” actually means recognizing the legal right of individuals to leave their countries and seek asylum elsewhere, as well as a fair, humane, timely, and competent system for processing asylum claims that respects human dignity.
We don’t meet any of those criteria right now (nor do any of the “partner countries” listed above). Worse yet, the folks who understand and have ideas on how we might get to where we need to be are consigned to the “outside” — trying to correct errors through litigation and the media — rather than being actively engaged in solving problems. Not a good approach for an Administration that claims to believe, as I do, that good government can and should serve the public interest by relying on experts and the “best and brightest” to solve problems.
So, anyone in the NDFPA who has connections to the Harris camp had better use them in attempting to insert some truth and enlightened thinking into what is typically a grim, tone deaf, and ineffective USG response. Otherwise, we’re likely to see a variation of “same old, same old,” which is why we continue to fail to deal with a pressing, recurring human issue in a legal, humane, informed, and courageous way. I/O/W, “business as usual” in a bankrupt system, just with a different “spin.”
Anna Marie Gallagher, Esquire Executive Director CLINIC PHOTO: CLINIC website
I wake every morning to follow news of our sisters and brothers, thinking especially of the children, who have set out from places like El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti–even as far as Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo–to seek protection at our doorstep. My heart aches for them and I pray for their safety.
Today’s readings remind us of our obligation, as followers of Christ, to speak the truth and follow the light. The truth is that people are suffering, both young and old, and desperately seeking safety and welcome in our country. Yet U.S. authorities and policies are often hostile to receiving them. Their arrival at our doors is deemed a “crisis.” As followers of Christ, we must and we will stand up, act bravely and generously, to speak the truth and welcome them.
The real crisis is not at the border, but within the families forced to make the difficult decision to leave, and in the hearts of those who refuse to follow Jesus’ light. We, as Christians, must walk in the path of light as Jesus instructs, and do the right thing. We must make room at our table and remember that we all belong to each other. We must take Jesus’ words to heart and remember to love the mother, the father and the child at the border as if they were our own.
This is not a crisis for us, although it certainly is for the men, women, and children who are fleeing. For us it is an opportunity to act out our faith precisely as Jesus taught.
As these sojourners leave their homes in search of safety, they may repeat a prayer similar to this: “Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side.” The rhythm of the words and their meaning must comfort them, knowing that God is their companion. What happens when they arrive here is up to us. We could look to God and ask what He would do, but we already know the answer.
Anna Gallagher is Executive Director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC).
**************
Unfortunately, too many folks promote a bogus picture of what’s at stake at our border. The “alternatives” they trumpet are basically increasing family separation and suffering in Mexico or somewhere else as pointed out in this Politico article by Jack Herrera:
The result is a new form of family separation — but instead of happening at the hands of federal agents in American government facilities, it’s taking place, family by family, in camps like the one Janiana lives in. The fact that minors won’t be expelled like everyone else has rapidly spread by word of mouth across the length of the border. And while many families choose to stick together, the pressure to separate weighs heaviest on the most vulnerable — families who fear death, whether from persecutors who have followed them to the border, or from extreme hunger.
For Janiana, the possibility of being sent back to Honduras reads as a death sentence. She shows me the scars from her torture at the hands of a powerful gang back home that her family got on the wrong side of. Fearing further reprisals, Janiana fled with her sister’s children, a teenage nephew and teenage niece as well as the niece’s several-month-old son. The children haven’t been reconnected with their mother yet, who successfully entered the U.S. to begin the process of claiming asylum in 2019, before the pandemic. Staying in Mexico, Janiana says, was never an adequate long-term solution and increasingly feels intolerable. She says the family already tried to make a new life in the southern state of Oaxaca, but danger pursued them there, where her nephew was murdered.
Today, Janiana says her only hope is that the U.S. will begin to accept asylum seekers again, especially as the country gets a better hold over the pandemic. At the moment, she says with resignation, “all we can do is wait.” Though there is one painful exception on her mind: If she were somehow able send the baby across alone, he might be allowed to stay.
“It breaks my heart to even think about it,” she says.
Why not get the trained Refugee Officers, Asylum Officers, Immigration Judges, ORR child services officers, and pro bono lawyers in place to comply with our legal obligations in a robust, timely, fair, and efficient manner?
Why not put experts, like Wendy Young of Kids in Needs of Defense, who understand how our system should work in charge of the welfare of the children? Why not put someone who understands the practical and legal needs at the border, like former Immigration Judge Ilyce Shugall, in charge of the Immigration Court response? Why not put someone like retired Judge Paul Grussendorf, who has also been an Asylum Officer and a UNHCR representative, in charge of the Asylum Office response? Why not put retired Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Robert Weisel, who worked with the UNHCR after retirement, in charge of coordinating the response with NGOs and the private sector?
Yes, the Trump regime definitely left a dismantled and dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and structure behind. But, just repeating that time after time sounds more like an excuse than a plan or a solution.
Sure, it won’t happen overnight. But, it won’t happen at all without different folks in charge at the “retail level.” I see little evidence of any progress on a real long-term plan and the short-term response is also an unnecessary mess, given that the Biden Team has had more than four months since the election to get a new structure and new personnel in place.
While there are a few “bright spots,” like Michelle Brané and Katie Tobin, I sincerely doubt that the group in charge right now is capable of solving the practical problems in rebuilding and improving our asylum and immigration systems. Nowhere is that more obvious than at EOIR, where the dysfunctional “clown show” 🤡 stumbles on, for no apparent reason.
Many of us keep trying, to no avail, to warn Judge Garland that he literally is sitting on a powder keg with the fuse lit and burning.💣 I guarantee that the next “manufactured crisis” will be when the current group of asylum cases coming from the border hit the broken, dysfunctional, ridiculously and unnecessarily backlogged, grotesquely mismanaged, ill-prepared, and anti-asylum-biased “Immigration Courts.” Waiting for the inevitable disaster, rather than bringing in a new “A Team” from the NDPA to start solving the problems now, is a monumental mistake by Judge G.
Why not fix the system to run the way it should, rather than spreading myths, throwing spitballs, and ignoring the unfolding human tragedy that can’t be solved with draconian enforcement and lame “don’t come” messages directed at forced migrants fleeing for their lives?
“Justice” Star Chamber StyleBIA Asylum Panel In Action Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Morales Lopez v. Garland, 5th Cir., 03-19-21, unpublished
PANEL: Southwick, Graves, and Engelhardt, Circuit Judges
OPINION BY: James E. Graves, Jr., Circuit Judge
KEY QUOTE:
Morales Lopez argues that the IJ improperly determined that she did not make a sufficient showing of past persecution and a well-founded fear of future persecution. Regarding past persecution, Morales Lopez argues that the IJ erroneously (1) required each incident of harm to rise to the level of persecution, (2) failed to consider all relevant incidents of harm, (3) required a showing of physical harm, and (4) failed to consider significant liberty deprivations suffered by Morales Lopez and her children. Morales Lopez further argues that (5) the substantial evidence compels a finding of past
10
Case: 18-60251 Document: 00515788451 Page: 11 Date Filed: 03/19/2021
No. 18-60251
persecution and (6) the IJ erred by failing to consider Morales Lopez’s psychological harm.
Regarding a well-founded fear of future persecution, Morales Lopez argues that the IJ erroneously (1) applied a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard instead of a reasonable-possibility standard; (2) failed to evaluate Morales Lopez’s fear of future persecution using the four-part test set forth in In re Mogharrabi; (3) conflated the past-persecution and well-founded-fear- of-future persecution analyses, (4) required Morales Lopez to offer direct proof of her persecutors’ motives, and (5) mischaracterized Ungar’s testimony. Morales Lopez further argues that (6) the substantial evidence compels a finding of a well-founded fear of future persecution.
Although we neither agree with nor reach all of Morales Lopez’s arguments, we agree with her overarching point: the IJ and the BIA improperly determined that Morales Lopez did not make a sufficient showing of past persecution and a well-founded fear of future persecution. We address Morales Lopez’s arguments in turn.
**************
Hon. James E. Graves, Jr. U.S. Circuit Judge Fifth Circuit PHOTO: Wikipedia
Too bad this is unpublished. Once again, a Circuit Court has to provide the detailed analysis required by due process after the supposedly “expert” BIA commits error after error!
When they get below the “caption line” in an opinion, things go south fast for EOIR judges. I’d attribute that to a deadly combination of poor judicial selection, defective training, a “culture of prejudgement and denial,” large-scale overuse and misuse of the woefully inadequate and outdated “contemporaneous oral decision” format (not used by any other “court” for decisions of this importance and complexity), “haste makes waste” gimmicks, absurd “quotas,” inane “performance ratings,” constant political interference with decision-making, disastrously incompetent unprofessional docket management, and maliciously incompetent “leadership” from the DOJ. It’s an ungodly and inexcusable mess.
Sadly, my grim description doesn’t begin to capture just how embarrassingly unjust, unfair, dysfunctional, and just plain terrible EOIR’s “killer clown show” 🦹🏿♂️🤡 is. Not to mention that it is clearly unconstitutional, and a “livingrepudiation of due process” as currently constituted and operated. Put this pathetic imitation of a “court system”out of its misery before it causes any more destruction of human lives and irreparable damage to our justice system!
Judge Garland, where, oh where, are you in American justice’s hour of need? Stop this disgraceful mockery of justice, humanity, and common sense! Now!
In the meantime, as I had warned, Judge Garland’s previously sterling record as a jurist 👨🏻⚖️ is being tarnished daily by association with some of the worst jurisprudence out there, courtesy of America’s Star Chambers,🏴☠️ a/k/a “Clown Courts,” 🤡🦹🏿♂️ now wholly owned by HIM, and “operated” in HIS name!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Clown Courts🤡🦹🏿♂️ & Star Chambers☠️🏴☠️⚰️, Never!
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers” EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)Gabe Gutierrez NBC News Correspondent Atlanta, GA
Reminds me of the essay I recently posted from my friend, Don Kerwin at CMS:
The number of unaccompanied children and asylum-seekers crossing the US-Mexico border in search of protection has increased in recent weeks. The former president, his acolytes, and both extremist and mainstream media have characterized this situation as a “border crisis,” a self-inflicted wound by the Biden administration, and even a failure of US asylum policy. It is none of these things. Rather, it is a response to compounding pressures, most prominently the previous administration’s evisceration of US asylum and anti-trafficking policies and procedures, and the failure to address the conditions that are displacing residents of the Northern Triangle states of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras), as well as Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and other countries…
The real immigration crisis is not at the border, but in the failure to respond effectively to the conditions driving forced migration, to establish orderly and viable legal immigration policies, to legalize the increasingly long-tenured undocumented population, and to reform and invest sufficiently in the US asylum and immigration court systems.
Donald M. Kerwin Executive Director Center for Migration Studies
It also echoes the words of veteran journalist Marc Cooper, posted by my friend Dan Kowalski over on LexisNexis Immigration Community:
When I was in Mexico reporting on the exodus, I would talk with dozens of migrants who were just a an hour or two away from starting their trek and, to a person, not one of them said they paid any attention to new US laws and regs as they were determined to cross no matter what. And no matter the sacrifices.
Dan Kowalski Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)
Even the WashPost editorial page writers “get” the reality of human migration in a way the nativist fear-mongers never will:
Yet despite fearmongering by Republicans, the current influx is neither a public health emergency nor a national security threat. The vast majority of those allowed to enter the country will join relatives here while their asylum claims plod along. That wait is too long — it can stretch to three years or more — and the administration insists it will shrink the backlog. It has also earmarked $4 billion in aid from the pandemic relief bill for Central America — with strings attached to prevent its misuse — to attack the conditions that make life miserable there and drive migrants to seek refuge in this country.
Dumping Asylum Seekers in Honduras Artist: Monte Wolverton Reproduced under license
Still, sadly, facts and reality seem largely irrelevant here.
Despite denials from Secretary Mayorkas, the Biden Administration appears to be believing Kevin McCarthy’s BS on some level.
Thursday, the Administration basically negotiated a “lite version” of Trump’s “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico” — essentially trading AstroZenica vaccine (which wasn’t approved for use in the U.S. anyway) for Mexico’s agreement to step up harsh enforcement measures against migrants crossing their Southern Border and to warehouse families arbitrarily rejected without due process by the U.S. under our bogus CDC directive. We already have seen how well that works out!
A girl peers out from an encampment at the U.S.-Mexico border where she and several hundred people waited to present themselves to U.S. immigration to seek asylum. / Photo by David Maung
Any way you cut it, the realities of human migration, the lives of the desperate individuals involved, the views of human rights experts and advocates, and our supposed commitment to international conventions, the rule of law, and Constitutional Due Process take a back seat when the “bogus border debate” shifts into high gear.
There is actually a very simple truth here: “Forced migration” is not “optional!” In fact, a number of forced migrants prefer “death in the attempt” to “death in place.”
Therefore, all the “deterrents,” “border militarization,” “Baby Jails,” and “stay home statements” won’t ultimately stop the inexorable flow (although they might temporarily divert, modulate, or vary it— usually just enough for the “powers that be” to declare “victory at sea” as a result of their failed policies while ignoring the human carnage and lost opportunities they leave behind).
Professor Philip G. Schrag Georgetown Law Co-Director, CALS Asylum Clinic, Author of “Baby Jails”
Sure, there is a timing factor. Weather, the “business plans” and propaganda of smugglers (Trump’s “enforcement only” policies have been a boon for them in more ways than one, not only boosting their fees, but diverting enforcement resources away from the “real” law enforcement problems at the border involving drugs and human exploitation), and Biden’s pledge to restore humanity and the rule of law to America all factor into the equation in some way.
But, they are not the the primary causes of forced migration, except to the extent that climatechange (ignored and worsened by Trump and the GOP) has aggravated the poverty and economic disorder in the Northern Triangle by destroying the livelihoods of many farmers and making their land essentially worthless.
Tone-deaf GOP politicos like McCarthy and Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) apparently think the solution is to continue to mock the rule of law, violate the Constitution, and simply declare the Southern Border closed forever, al a Stephen Miller. Let families and children “die in place” in their home countries, die on the journey at the hands of other governments, or rot forever in Mexico — “Out of sight, out of mind.” As long as it isn’t happening in our country and being covered by our news outlets, who cares about human lives? That was certainly the Trump approach!
That’s hardly a “solution,” except in neo-Nazi or Soviet-era terms. The harshest and most inhuman approaches will, as they have in the past and continue to do, fail to stop desperate humans who want to survive from doing what’s necessary to save their lives and preserve their families’ futures, even when that interferes with the GOP’s “whitewashed” version of “American greatness.”
The solution involves following Constitutional due process, re-establishing the rule of law (including a radical “reform and replace” of our dysfunctional Immigration Courts), and adhering to our international obligations, both in letter and spirit. It also requires an expanded, much more robust, legal immigration system that reflects the demands of our economy, the needs of migrants, and the realities of human migration, particularly from Latin America. Like it or not, there will be more immigration.
As I have said before: “There are many ways in which we can diminish our own humanity, but none of them will stop human migration.”
Will G. Reaper Become The Lasting Image of America’s 21st Century Human Rights & Racial Justice Failures In The Eyes Of The Rest Of Humanity & Future Generations? Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License
Contrary to the GOP blather, immigration, voluntary, forced, coerced, legal, extra-legal, white, non-white, Christian, non-Christian, is what the real America is all about, for better or worse. Overall, immigration is a positive force for America.
Here’s a great essay on the positive nature of immigration by Pedro Gerson on Slate. Pedro isthe director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the Louisiana State University Law Center, and a former immigration staff attorney at the Bronx Defenders. The latter organization has been home to a number of notable members of the NDPA.
Pedro Gerson Director, Immigration Law Clinic LSU Law Center SOURCE: Twitter
As Pedro says, human migration to America will continue notwithstanding GOP xenophobes. The only question is whether we will have the wisdom and courage to work with and take advantage of its power in constructive, creative, forward looking ways, rather than trying to “recreate Jim Crow!”
Or, will we continue, as GOP restrictionists urge, to squander resources, goodwill, and human potential on futile efforts to eradicate what is perhaps the oldest and most fundamental phenomenon of human existence?
🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! Restore the rule of law! Fix The Disgraceful, Dysfunctional Immigration Courts, Judge Garland! End White Nationalist racism!
Donald M. Kerwin Executive Director Center for Migration Studies
In a new essay for the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS), CMS’s Executive Director Donald Kerwin writes:
The number of unaccompanied children and asylum-seekers crossing the US-Mexico border in search of protection has increased in recent weeks. The former president, his acolytes, and both extremist and mainstream media have characterized this situation as a “border crisis,” a self-inflicted wound by the Biden administration, and even a failure of US asylum policy. It is none of these things. Rather, it is a response to compounding pressures, most prominently the previous administration’s evisceration of US asylum and anti-trafficking policies and procedures, and the failure to address the conditions that are displacing residents of the Northern Triangle states of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras), as well as Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and other countries…
The real immigration crisis is not at the border, but in the failure to respond effectively to the conditions driving forced migration, to establish orderly and viable legal immigration policies, to legalize the increasingly long-tenured undocumented population, and to reform and invest sufficiently in the US asylum and immigration court systems.
Thanks Don for speaking out against the scandalous GOP complete “border BS,” all too often parroted by the so-called “mainstream press.” Read the rest of Don’s essay at the link.
Don has spent his entire career solving migration and human rights problems. The Biden Administration and everyone who believes in American democracy should listen to “practical experts” like Don, rather than ignorant, racially-motivated GOP politicos and White Nationalist nativists spouting the “same old, same old” myths, fear-mongering, and unhelpful “non-solutions.”
If xenophobic rhetoric, cruelty, officially-sanctioned child abuse, evading our own legal and humanitarian responsibilities, and “enforcement only” were the “solutions,” the “problem at the Southern Border” — which has existed in one form or another for over a half century, would long ago have been solved. We can’t solve humanitarian situations that create forced migration with unilateral law enforcement gimmicks and cruelty toward the humans fighting for their lives. Human migration long pre-existed the formation of nation states and establishment of national boundaries.
Administration after administration, of both parties, have squandered time and taxpayer money on unsuccessful efforts to “enforce their way” out of forced migration situations. Contrary to GOP blather, Democratic Administrations have been almost as fixated as the GOP with unsuccessfully “detaining, deterring, and enforcing” their way out of human problems that demand more thoughtful human solutions.
All Administrations at some point prematurely claim that their efforts have “succeeded.” None actually have succeeded in addressing the causes of the migration. Therefore, none of these “false solutions” proves “durable.”
Significantly, Don is one of the few commentators to fully grasp the integral connection between the Trump regime’s complete destruction of the integrity of the Immigration Courts and its lawless, yet highly ineffective, border policies.
Real solutions don’t kill, harm, and maim refugees and forced migrants, encourage criminal cartels and corrupt foreign officials to prey on them, and stack up desperate humans in dangerous conditions just across the border because US Government officials were too biased and incompetent to operate under any semblance of the rule of law.
We can abide by our own laws, international norms, our Constitution, human decency, and common sense. It isn’t rocket science.
But, it does require a combination of expertise, courage, humanity, and practical problem solving that has been conspicuously absent from our governing structure since 2017, and severely undervalued before that.
Also, it’s certainly not that the Biden Administration has suddenly re-established due process and the rule of law at the border. Far from it!
The vast majority of those arriving at the border, even those who are applying at legal ports of entry, are unceremoniously and summarily removed without any process at all, let alone due process of law. This is all based on a largely bogus Trump-initiated exercise of authority by the CDC to use COVID-19 as a pretext to suspend the rule of law and constitutional due process at the border.
Moreover, we shouldn’t forget that even with the Biden Administration’s gradual efforts to re-establish a legal process for asylum seekers, unaccompanied children are still being held in Government detention for far longer than the 72-hours permitted under law. This problem won’t be solved, as some GOP nativists incredibly suggest, by dumping kids back across the Mexican Border, returning them to danger in their home countries without regard to their individual situations, or forcing them to turn to smugglers to make their way to relative safety in the interior of the U.S.
Nor will it be solved by long-term detention in disgraceful and inhumane “Baby Jails!” Ask my Georgetown Law colleague and author Professor Phil Schrag of the CALS Asylum Clinic about that!
Interestingly, some of the biggest complainers spreading the “open borders myth” are Greg Abbott and other Texas GOP politicos who have prematurely “reopened their state” in the middle of a pandemic in blatant contravention of best medical and public health advice. So, you can summarily dismiss their “crocodile tears” and bogus “hand wringing” about public health and safety.
That’s particularly true since the GOP is just coming off a massive example of how their incompetent mis-governance of Texascaused unnecessary misery and loss of life among Texas residents as a result of a highly predictable and long-foreseen “weather emergency.” Why does the mainstream media often continue to treat these “political hacks,” who couldn’t “govern” their way out of a paper bag, as credible spokespersons on anything, let alone human rights situations of which they have no expertise whatsoever?
🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! Re-Establish The Rule Of Law, Including Full, Robust Humanitarian Protections At The Border& In Our Disgracefully Dysfunctional Immigration “Courts.”
Republicans are convinced that attacking President Biden’s border policies will win them the midterms. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has gleefully labeled the situation there “Biden’s border crisis.”
In this, Republicans are benefiting from a media debate that has gone off the rails.
There’s a huge hole in this GOP attack, but it’s rarely described clearly in news reports and commentary. You can read endless headlines warning of a “crisis.” But even if that’s so, a crisis relative to what, exactly ?
What’s missing is a serious comparison with the pre-Biden status quo. It’s as if the current situation exists in a vacuum: Before there was no crisis, and now there’s a crisis .
That’s absurd. The situation under former president Donald Trump was substantially worse from a humanitarian and a pragmatic governing perspective: worse for the migrants, worse for the rule of law and worse for our country.
Biden is cleaning up Trump’s mess
It’s true that child and teenage migrants are overwhelming our facilities.
Because they can’t get released alone, they must be held at Border Patrol facilities for 72 hours before getting transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which places them with relatives or guardians. The ORR facilities are jammed, backlogging border facilities.
This is a terrible situation. But it’s happening in large part because Biden is undoing a Trump policy that should be undone.
Due to covid-19, the previous administration turned away most asylum seekers — without hearings — under a legal provision allowing a temporary block on noncitizens from entering to protect public health.
Biden is no longer applying this provision to unaccompanied children and teenagers (while keeping it for adults), helping fuel child backlogs. But that’s a move in the right direction, both from a humanitarian and rule-of-law perspective.
Coronavirus will be tamed before long, and we have a legal obligation to allow migrants to exercise their right to seek asylum. And as David Bier notes, that provision is not for controlling migrant flows outside a genuine public health rationale. If anything, expelling adults abuses it.
So continuing to use this tool is not a tenable long-term solution to the humanitarian problem, and it’s not in keeping with the rule of law. That requires letting in the kids, and we will have to allow more adults to apply for asylum. The question is how we manage it.
. . . .
******************
Read Greg’s full op-ed at the link.
I understand why Fox News, Breitbart, and the rest of the “truth averse” right wing media shills promote the GOP’s racist, xenophobic “border crisis” myths.
What I don’t get is why the so-called “mainstream media” doesn’t do its homework on the real situation on the border and the Trump-created mess facing Biden in restoring some sense of order and lawful behavior to an intentionally broken and dysfunctional system.
A few journalists like Greg, his WashPost colleague Arelis Hernandez, Cindy Carcamo (LA Times), Nicole Narea (Vox News), and Priscilla Alvarez (CNN), to name some, have taken the time to get it right (or close to right). But, far too many reporters who should know better just repeat the Abbott, McCarthy, GOP disingenuous nonsense without critical analysis or pushback.
And, what’s sorely missing is the perspective of those at the heart of this situation: the kids and families faced with such a desperate situation in their home countries that they are willing to seek mercy and refuge in a country that proudly advertises its lack of respect for their humanity, our own laws, and international norms that are supposed to insure fair and humane treatment.
They aren’t numbers, stats, bar graphs, and trend lines — they are human beings. They assert rights to apply for refuge under international norms that the U.S. has written into laws –laws we have unilaterally decided not to follow.
The overwhelming majority seek not to “evade” authorities, but to turn themselves in to our legal system: A system that functionally no longer exists at our Southern Border thanks to Trump and, to some extent, the Supremes. This is neither a “law enforcement” nor a “national security” crisis — it’s a fundamental breakdown in our legal system and a betrayal of humane values.
That’s the real problem here. It originated long before the Biden Administration. To date, no GOP politico has offered any type of constructive solution. And, too few journalists have held the GOP nativists accountable for their racist-inspired lies, misrepresentations, myths, and lack of any semblance of constructive proposals for rational, lawful, governance — real solutions for problems aggravated by their own toxic, inhumane, and often illegal policies!
