Convention Against Torture – Page 11 – immigrationcourtside.com

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🦸🏻 AMERICAN HERO: Round Table 🛡⚔️ Judge (Ret.) Ilyce Shugall Reflects On Two Decades Of Promoting Justice & Resisting Evil: “While United States detention policies and conditions were cruel when I worked at ProBAR, they are exponentially worse today.”

Published by the ABA:

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/immigration/generating_justice_blog/probar-then-and-now/

I started my post-law school immigration law career at ProBAR in Harlingen, Texas, as an Equal Justice Works Fellow from September 1999 to September 2001. In May, 2023, I had the privilege of returning to ProBAR as a volunteer with the ABA Commission on Immigration (COI) to engage in a week of pro bono service. I have been a Commission member for almost three years. My return, over twenty years after I left the Rio Grande Valley, provided me perspective, and caused me to reflect on the many changes as well as the constants in the South Texas border region, where I learned how to be a fierce immigration advocate. I was privileged to spend the week with welcoming ProBAR staff, COI colleagues, and the COI director, Meredith Linsky, who was my boss and mentor at ProBAR, a hero to the immigrants’ rights movement, and is someone I am proud to call a colleague and friend.

Our first day of our pro bono week began at the new ProBAR office. When I walked into the office, I felt like I was in a different world! ProBAR’s new office space is large, spacious, beautiful, and inviting. It is clear that much thought went into the design and structure of the office, considering the need for private office space, open collaborative space, large quiet spaces, conference rooms, outdoor space, and a gym and yoga room to ensure staff can decompress and energize before, during, or after long, challenging, and emotionally draining days. The office is a sharp contrast to the ProBAR office where I worked—two rooms on the second floor of an old, pest-infested house. The new office is equipped with state-of-the-art technology, another contrast from my experience, where we used dial up internet and unplugged the fax machine before we could access the internet. We learned that ProBAR now has a staff of 270 people. In 1999 when I started, we were a staff of three—the ProBAR director, the volunteer paralegal, and me. I am thrilled to see the investment in the staff through hiring and creating a livable workspace. Comfortable, functional, supportive workspace is crucial to the sustainability of the demanding work.

Our schedule for the week included meeting with partner organizations in Brownsville and Matamoros, meeting with individuals detained at the Port Isabel Detention Center (PIDC), touring children’s shelters, and visiting La Posada Providencia, a welcoming shelter for many immigrants and refugees. I was impressed by the resiliency and responsiveness of organizations in the region. The increase in resources for noncitizens in the Rio Grande Valley was striking and is unquestionably due to necessity. The humanitarian crisis at the border is unlike anything I saw between 1999 and 2001 and the need has increased exponentially. I was impressed by the partnerships established by the ProBAR team. The increased staffing has allowed ProBAR to form and maintain crucial partnerships throughout the Rio Grande Valley. During my time at ProBAR, we relied on trusted partnerships; however, due to our limited staffing, we were unable to engage in outreach or foster relationships with many organizations. The current partnerships with shelters and other social services organizations are crucial to ProBAR’s ability to meet the needs to the community they serve.

ProBAR’s presence in Brownsville is remarkable. We utilized ProBAR’s small office close to the border. This space was crucial when the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program was still in place, as ProBAR staff served clients facing removal proceedings in the tent courts. The office space on the border continues to provide essential access to clients and the social services agencies that serve them. It allows the ProBAR staff to do outreach, education, and intake at the non-legal organizations that serve mutual clients. For example, while in Brownsville, we provided legal consultations to numerous individuals staying at a Brownsville shelter. We also visited one of the unaccompanied children’s shelters in Brownsville, where ProBAR staff provide services.

During our pro bono week, we had the opportunity to travel to PIDC twice to provide consultations to recently arrived asylum seekers. It was bittersweet to return to the detention center I frequented from 1999 to 2001, when I traveled daily to what was then called Port Isabel Service Processing Center (PISPC) – PIDC is a more appropriate name. PIDC has not changed much. The entrance, lobby, attorney visitation area, and court space have been remodeled. I recall a dingy dirty lobby with a pay phone I used regularly to call the ProBAR office after long afternoons of presentations and consultations. The lobby is now clean, spacious, and the pay phone is gone. However, the interior of the detention center remains the same- a jail with razor wire, barbed wire, and no freedom of movement. Also similar was ProBAR’s access to the facility due to the reputation the agency has built over the years. When I went to PISPC daily, I felt respected by guards and government officials. I learned the importance of building those relationships to ensure access to those who needed the services. ProBAR’s reputation endures, and the relationships remain strong. ProBAR’s continued ability to provide Know Your Rights presentations and consultations in the facility is crucial to serving the needs of thousands of individuals every year.

In the two days I conducted consultations with noncitizens at PIDC, I met men from Venezuela, Honduras, and Guatemala. The nationalities of individuals detained have shifted over the years, but the reasons they have fled their homes remains constant. They are fleeing political violence and oppression, gang violence, cartel violence, and government instability. The men detained at PIDC endured exceptional hardship, danger, and suffering to arrive at the United States border to seek refuge. While United States detention policies and conditions were cruel when I worked at ProBAR, they are exponentially worse today. Currently, noncitizens are forced to stay in unsanitary and unsafe refugee camps in Matamoros often for months while trying to request protection in the United States. They face disease, kidnapping, rape, and torture in Matamoros while the United States and Mexican governments turn a blind eye and collaborate to keep them from crossing the bridge into Brownsville. When those lucky enough to find a way into the United States arrive, many are forced to remain detained in Customs and Border Protection custody for weeks, sleeping on the floor with limited to no access to showers and in freezing rooms or cells. They then must navigate the new confusing and complex asylum rule without counsel. While we were unable to provide representation, the men we met with were grateful for our explanation of the legal process, as well as the pro bono legal consultations we provided.

As part of our trip, we also had the opportunity to go to Matamoros and meet with partners at the Sidewalk School. The plan to walk over the bridge, meet with Sidewalk School staff, and tour one of the refugee shelters took much time and coordination on the part of ProBAR and ABA staff. Unlike when I lived and worked in Harlingen, when going to Matamoros was often a spur of the moment decision to have dinner or go shopping, today, numerous considerations must be assessed. Matamoros was a safe city when I crossed regularly. However, today, due to the United States’ and Mexico’s war on drugs, Matamoros is often dangerous, particularly for refugees hoping to reach the United States. I appreciate the care, planning, and coordination that went into our day in Matamoros. Witnessing the situation at the base of the bridge as well as the refugee camp was crucial to gaining a true understanding of the consequences of United States immigration law and policy changes over the last several years. Photos of the bridge and the camp provide a glimpse into the reality that refugees are living. However, the photos did not prepare me for what I saw and experienced. Walking into and around the shelter full of makeshift tents, no sanitation, no services, in 90+ degree temperatures with soaring humidity was horrifying. People approached us for information and help, desperate to access medical care and safety. I fought back tears the entire time we were in the camp. No one should live in these conditions, and no one who lives in the camps is there by choice. Refugees tolerate the dangerous, unsanitary conditions that are making them sick because they were forced to leave their homes. Their flight was not voluntary. Seeing the camp provided me even greater perspective on the situations they fled. I left feeling sad, horrified, and angry at the United States government policies that created the humanitarian crisis in Matamoros. It is avoidable. It can be changed for the better. Instead, the United States government recently finalized a rule to make it harder for those seeking protection to access the United States asylum system. This rule will exacerbate the problems in Matamoros and has caused and will continue to cause greater human suffering on both sides of the border.

I am thankful for my week with ProBAR. I appreciated starting my days as I started many days when I lived in Harlingen decades ago, running on the path along the Arroyo Colorado in the heat and humidity, among the beautiful lush green plants, chirping birds, and adorable bunnies. I found peace and energy running on the path, which carried me through the days of the harsh realities of human suffering and unfair laws and policies. My time at ProBAR reminded me why I continue to work as an immigration attorney, why I work at another amazing nonprofit, Immigrant Legal Defense, to provide free legal services to underserved communities, including noncitizens in ICE detention.

Author

Ilyce Shugall

Managing Attorney at Immigrant Legal Defense

Ilyce is currently a Managing Attorney at ILD and Senior Counsel in the Immigration Program at Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto (CLSEPA). She was an adjunct professor in the Villanova Interdisciplinary Immigration Studies Training for Advocates from January 2021 to December 2021. She was previously the Director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the Justice and Diversity Center of the Bar Association of San Francisco. Prior to joining JDC, Ilyce served for 18 months as an immigration judge in the San Francisco Immigration Court. Prior to serving as an immigration judge, Ilyce was the Directing Attorney of the Immigration Program at CLSEPA from 2012-2017. Under Ilyce’s leadership, CLSEPA’s immigration staff grew from four to twenty. Ilyce also served temporarily as the first legal director for the San Francisco Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative at the Bar Association of San Francisco in 2015. For 10 years, Ilyce was an attorney at Van Der Hout, LLP. Three of those years she spent as a partner. Before joining the private sector, she worked at the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR) as a National Association of Public Interest Law/Equal Justice Fellow. Ilyce received the 2016 National Pro Bono Services Award from the American Immigration Lawyers Association; and was a 2015 Silicon Valley Business Journal’s “Women of Influence” awardee. Ilyce is a commissioner on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration and previously served as a commissioner on the State Bar of California Commission on Immigration and Nationality Law. She was NIPNLG’s update editor for Immigration Law and the Family from 2012-2017, and has published numerous articles on immigration law. Ilyce is an active member of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges. Ilyce holds a JD from DePaul University College of Law, and a BA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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Talk about a professional career spent on the “front lines” of fighting for due process and humanity! Thanks for all you do and for being such an inspiring role model, my friend (and fellow Badger). It’s an honor to be your colleague on the Round Table and the VIISTA Villanova Program!

I was detailed to the Port Isabel Detention Center shortly before my retirement. I remember it pretty much as Ilyce describes it today.

The facility and court personnel were nice and helpful. But, there was an aura of grimness, despair, and wastefulness hanging over everything that just couldn’t be dispelled. Leaving the facility every night have me a sense of relief.

I think that all so-called policy makers in the Biden Administration should be required to experience a week in one of their immigration prisons as a prerequisite for obtaining or retaining their jobs. Sadly, and inexcusably, we now have folks making life or death decisions about immigration and human rights policy and the future of our nation who know less and have less perspective than Ilyce and others had after completing their one-year EJW Fellowships! The lack of expertise, compassion, creativity, and common sense in the Biden Administration’s immigration hierarchy/bureaucracy shows!

To quote Ilyce, about the largely self-created “humanitarian crisis” at the border: “It is avoidable. It can be changed for the better.” My question is why isn’t a Democratic Administration that many voted for to solve problems and make things better at the border getting the job done?

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-03-23

☠️🤮 THE TRUTH ABOUT BIDEN’S CURRENT BORDER POLICIES IS DISGUSTING, PERPLEXING, & BEYOND UGLY! — It’s Also Totally Unrelated To Scurrilous, Racist Border Myths Being Pedaled By GOP Govs Like Virginia’s Glenn “The Junkman” Youngkin! — Lindsay Toczylowski in The San Diego Union Tribune!

Lindsay Toczylowski
Executive Director, Immigrant Defenders
“ I always tell the new immigration attorneys at Immigrant Defenders Law Center to never forget just how stacked against our clients the odds are in immigration court.“

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/story/2023-05-24/opinion-joe-bidens-migrants-title-42-failure-broken-immigration-system-asylum-seekers

Toczylowski is executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a nonprofit legal organization working along the U.S.-Mexico border and throughout Southern California, and lives in Los Angeles.

The lifting of Title 42 — the policy that shut down the U.S. asylum system for three years — should have been an inflection point leading to a more humane and orderly system for processing asylum seekers. Instead, the Biden administration doubled down on the politics of exclusion, introducing new restrictive measures, including an asylum ban, that keep asylum out of reach for those who need protection the most.

. . . .

When asylum seekers are finally able to ask for protection, they are often met not with compassion but with cruelty. Just days ago in San Ysidro, I saw mothers with children sleeping on dirt while in Customs and Border Protection custody, sharing one port-a-potty for more than 500 people. Good Samaritans handed out supplies because CBP did not provide sufficient food, water or medicine.

. . . .

President Biden has perpetuated these failed deterrence policies despite his campaign promises to restore humanity at our border. The administration has turned its back on asylum seekers. These are real people. They deserve our protection. They deserve to be safe.

. . . .

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Read Lindsay’s complete op-ed at the link.

These cruel, unnecessary, cowardly, and illegal policies are a disgrace to America and an embarrassment to the Democratic Party!

Meanwhile, dangerous lies are being promoted by Gov. Glenn “Junkman” Youngkin (R-VA) and other GOP Governors responding to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s racist/nativist call for further National Guard infusions to militarize the border. See, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/05/31/virginia-youngkin-national-guard-border/.

You don’t have to be either an immigration expert or very smart to recognize that desperate individuals trying to turn themselves in to CBP agents at or near the border, to exercise their legal rights to seek protection, are NOT going to be a meaningful source of fentanyl smuggling. That trade is controlled by cartels who basically smuggle product through ports of entry in large quantities disguised as or mingled with legitimate commercial commerce.

Indeed, the preoccupation of CBP with improperly “deterring,” “discouraging,” and “punishing” legal asylum seekers not only empowers cartels, but significantly detracts from actual law enforcement against drug smugglers. And, the millions of dollars being misappropriated and wasted by Junkman and others on bogus National Guard deployments could much better and more appropriately be spent on humanitarian aid, coordinated, orderly resettlement programs for asylum seekers and asylees, and securing them legal representation to aid in the fair and timely processing of asylum claims.

However, the repetition of bogus and deliberately fabricated narratives like the “Junkman’s” latest wasteful stunt creates a “guilt by repetition” syndrome that feeds and enables the racist agenda of today’s GOP as well as the spineless “rollover” response of the Biden Administration, and, sadly, some other so-called Democrats.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-02-23

⚖️ EMILY GARCIA @ BLOOMBERG: TORTURED LAW: Official Negativity, Captive Courts, Unduly Restrictive Criteria, Subjective Standards Combine To Deny Mandatory Protection In A World Where Torture Is Widespread ☠️— “It’s sort of in the mind of the beholder,” Say I!

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/immigration/more-review-of-torture-claims-good-but-not-enough-advocates-say

The Supreme Court recently removed one procedural hurdle for noncitizens seeking humanitarian relief but the high court’s ruling clears up no substantial issues about a law they’ll make their claims under, immigration attorneys say—allowing some relief seekers to be sent back to torturous conditions.

Estrella Santos-Zacaria, a Guatemalan transgender woman, asked for federal review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’s decision denying her protection under the Convention Against Torture. In a unanimous decision, the justices said federal judges can weigh in on BIA’s decisions before discretionary administrative remedies are exhausted. In Santos-Zacaria’s case, her petition may be sent back to BIA for further review but that doesn’t guarantee relief.

While lawyers are hopeful that earlier review by a federal court will facilitate a smoother process for their clients, they express concerns that immigration judges and the BIA too readily dismiss the risk of torture, and say it shouldn’t be so difficult to get humanitarian relief.

CAT protections, including deferral and withholding of removal, allow noncitizens who aren’t eligible for asylum to remain in the US. To receive protection, a noncitizen must show an immigration judge that if they are deported, it’s more likely than not that they will be tortured with government acquiescence or participation. Unlike asylum, protections under the Convention are mandatory and serious criminal convictions can’t disqualify a noncitizen. But protections are especially difficult to win, said Eleni Bakst, a lawyer at the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition.

. . . .

Paul Schmidt, a former immigration judge and chairman of the BIA between and 2001, said the process for evaluating claims under the Convention isn’t scientific. There’s no formula to plug in that will tell the odds of someone being tortured. “It’s sort of in the mind of the beholder,” Schmidt said.

. . . .

As an immigration judge, Schmidt said he and other immigration judges relied heavily on country conditions reports published by the US Department of State. Asked if he believed the reports were an adequate representation of a country, Schmidt said “certainly not.”

Bakst said statistics provided by other countries can also be inaccurate. In El Salvador, the government doesn’t allow monitoring bodies into its prisons so data on inmate torture is incomplete.

Pushing back against questionable reports and statistics, immigration advocates are aware that immigration judges and the BIA may dismiss their client’s risk of torture, and their client may be tortured anyway.

Such was the case for Patrick Julney, a client of CAIR Coalition who was denied deferral under the Convention for failure to show that the likelihood of torture was more than 50% and deported to Haiti. Bakst said that “immediately upon his arrival in Haiti, he was imprisoned and tortured.” Julney was denied access to food, water, and medicine.

Estelle McKee, a clinical immigration law professor at Cornell Law School, represented a schizophrenic man from El Salvador who was denied CAT relief. After his deportation, McKee hired a Salvadorean attorney to track down her client.

She said the attorney couldn’t even enter her client’s village because it was gang-controlled.

“I don’t have much hope that he survived,” McKee said.

McKee and other immigration attorneys agree that the Supreme Court’s decision will speed up the humanitarian claims process, though results may vary. Julney’s case was reviewed by the Third Circuit, but his outcome was unchanged.

. . . .

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Reads Emily’s full, well-written article at the above link.

A Government colleague once remarked to me that “the U.S. should never have signed the CAT.” Obviously, that private view has permeated and driven USG policy on implementing the CAT, particularly at the DOJ where it was immediately treated as “PNG” because of its lack of exclusionary clauses. Even “bad guys” aren’t supposed to be returned to torture (in terms of legal theory, if not reality).

There is no objective evidence that torture is on the decline worldwide. See, e.g., https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/torture/. Yet the mandatory protection required by the CAT remains elusive and quite arbitrary within the U.S. legal system.

One of the best examples of how Government officials who should be insuring that the legal protections under CAT are fairly and reasonably applied to achieve the Convention’s purposes are instead promoting an “any reason to deny” culture is former AG John Ashcroft’s precedent decision in Matter of J-F-F-, 23 I&N Dec. 912 (A.G. 2006). There, Ashcroft reversed a CAT grant by the IJ and the BIA to an unrepresented respondent. In the process, Ashcroft established the “enhanced test” that to gain CAT protection, the respondent must “establish that each step in the hypothetical chain of events is more likely than not to happen.”

In other words, this is an official invitation, some might say directive, to IJs to “lengthen the chain of causation until it breaks” (which it inevitably will, in most cases) and protection can be denied.

Moreover, many CAT claims, like this one, involve unrepresented respondents. The chances of an unrepresented respondent understanding the “chain of causation” or what it means to prove “each step is more likely than not to occur” are very slim.

Additionally, even if they did understand, since many of the unrepresented respondents are in detention, they would have little or no realistic chance of obtaining the type of detailed, timely expert testimony and comprehensive documentation, far beyond the DOS Country Reports (which, by the way are only available in English), necessary to overcome Ashcroft’s “de facto presumption of denial” and prove that every step of the “hypothetical chain” is “more likely than not” to happen.

Effectively, every problem mentioned by Emily and expert practitioners in this article is essentially (intentionally) magnified by J-F-F- and other anti-CAT administrative precedents.

CAT relief is mandatory, thus suggesting a high obligation on the part of IJs and other Government officials to insure non-return to torture. Yet, Ashcroft chastises the IJ involved in J-F-F- for essentially insuring that the respondent exercised his legal right to apply for CAT and helping him develop the record. Ashcroft even took the extraordinary step of disqualifying this IJ from any “hypothetical” future proceedings involving this respondent.

At the beginning of the BIA’s quest to interpret CAT (ironically at the same time Bush Administration lawyers at DOJ were secretly searching for legal pretexts to justify torture), I dissented from an unduly restrictive BIA precedent Matter of J-E-, 23 I&N Dec. 291, 304 (BIA 2002), Paul Wickham Schmidt, Board Member, dissenting, joined by Board Members John W. Guendelsberger, Noel Ann Brennan, Cecelia M. Espenoza, and Juan P. Osuna.

There, I stated:

The majority concludes that the extreme mistreatment likely to befall this respondent in Haiti is not “torture,” but merely “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” The majority further concludes that conduct defined as “torture” occurs in the Haitian detention system, but is not “likely” for this respondent. In short, the majority goes to great lengths to avoid applying the Convention Against Torture to this respondent.

We are in the early stages of the very difficult and thankless task of construing the Convention. Only time will tell whether the majority’s narrow reading of the torture definition and its highly technical approach to the standard of proof will be the long-term benchmarks for our country’s implementation of this international treaty.

Although I am certainly bound to follow and apply the majority’s constructions in all future cases, I do not believe that the majority adequately carries out the language or the purposes of the Convention and the implementing regulations. Therefore, I fear that we are failing to comply with our international obligations.

I conclude that the respondent is more likely than not to face officially sanctioned torture if returned to Haiti. Therefore, I would grant his application for deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture and the implementing regulations. Consequently, I respectfully dissent.

More than two decades after J-E-, my fears and predictions of officially-sanctioned non-compliance with CAT unfortunately continue to be proved correct.

I also note with pride that our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges ⚔️🛡 filed an amicus brief before the Supremes in Santos-Zacaria supporting the interpretation that eventually prevailed.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-01-23

⚖️🗽 ATTENTION GEORGETOWN LAW STUDENTS: There’s Still Time To Register For “Immigration Law & Policy,” A “Compressed Semester 2-Credit Course” May 30 – June 1! — Learn About The Law & Reality Behind The Most Important, Most Misunderstood & Mis-portrayed Issue In American Law & Society Today — “The Fastest & Most Action-Packed 2 Credits In Legal Education!” — Your ONLY chance in 2023!

This class will cover the constitutional and political framework for the U.S. Immigration System, enforcement and adjudication agencies, immigrants, nonimmigrants, removals and deportations, detention and bond, immigration hearings, judicial review, grounds for removal and inadmissibility, “crimmigration,” immigration reform, “Chevron” deference, refugee and asylum status and other international protections. It will also include analyzing major immigration cases like INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421 (1987) (well-founded fear) and Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1996) (female genital mutilation).

Immigration Law and Policy

Meets:

TTh 2:00-5:05p

Instructor:

P. Schmidt

Meets:

TTh 2:00-5:05p

Instructor:

P. Schmidt

Search Criteria

Search course, faculty, or keyword: law 037 v02
Term: Summer 2023

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-25-23

⚖️🗽🇺🇸 REP. HILLARY SCHOLTEN (D-MI) AMONG THE SPONSORS OF BIPARTISAN IMMIGRATION REFORM BILL — But, GOP Leadership Isn’t Interested In Problem-Solving!😎

Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI)
Credit: Ike Hayman
SOURCE: Wikipedia

By Marianna Sotomayor and Theodoric Meyer for WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/23/congress-immigration-legislation/

A bipartisan duo of Hispanic women Tuesday introduced the most robust immigration proposal to date this Congress, a significant collaboration as a new generation of lawmakers pushes for meaningful reform of the nation’s immigration system after decades of failed attempts.

For six months, Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) and Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.) have been quietly negotiating on key issues where Republican and Democrats have previously sought changes, while leaning on their lived experiences as lawmakers representing border districts with majority Hispanic constituencies.

The result is a roughly 500-page bill called the Dignity Act that, among other things, would provide billions of dollars for border security measures, create pathways to citizenship for some undocumented migrants already in the United States, update the legal immigration process, and establish “humanitarian campuses” on the U.S. border that would process asylum claims in 60 days.. . . . .

Salazar and Escobar were joined at a news conference Tuesday by four original co-sponsors who are all women: Reps. Hillary J. Scholten (D-Mich.), Kathy E. Manning (D-N.C.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) and Del. Jenniffer González-Colón (R-Puerto Rico.). Rep. Michael Lawler (N.Y.), a vulnerable Republican representing a Democratic-leaning district, signed onto the measure late Monday and also attended. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) also signed on Tuesday.

. . . .

The bill’s introduction comes after House Republicans passed a border security bill this month along party lines; House Republican leaders have said since last year that consideration of a large-scale immigration overhaul would not happen until a border security plan had passed the chamber.

Asked whether broad immigration legislation could be considered this year, Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) appeared to suggest last week that it would not happen until a border security plan is signed into law.

“We’ve got to first start with border security,” he said, before adding that it would mean getting such a bill to the president’s desk. “If we get that done, then you can start talking about the interior problems that exist.”

. . . .

“Nothing is off the table,” Salazar said when asked about the prospects of a discharge petition, a procedural effort that would allow them to bypass the regular pathway for a bill to reach the floor.

Escobar then responded, “All it takes to make this happen is 218 people in the House of Representatives saying that they’re ready for a real solution.”

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Read the complete article at the above link.

The myth that “border security” is unrelated to taking a more practical, humane, and realistic approach to migration generally shows how determined GOP leadership is NOT to address immigration problems in a fair and constructive manner and to “tune out” those interested in a potential bipartisan solution.

For those who don’t already know her, Rep. Hillary Scholten is, to my knowledge, the only EOIR attorney ever elected to Congress and has, therefore, seen how broken and in need of reform our system is at the “grass roots level.” So, her support of this measure is very significant.

Here’s a summary of the bill, known as “The Dignity Act of 2023:”

https://escobar.house.gov/UploadedFiles/The_Dignity_Act_of_2023_One_Pager.pdf

I haven’t seen the full text of the bill. But, from my perspective, the most disappointing aspect of this effort is the apparent failure to deal with the #1 most “solvable” and long, long overdue aspect of due process and fundamental fairness affecting immigration and the overall U.S. legal system: Creation of an independent, Article I U.S. Immigration Court focused solely on due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-24-23

😎⚖️🗽 REAL LEADERSHIP SPEAKS: “[T]he promises that nations made after World War II to respect the dignity and rights of those who are fleeing have been eroded and now, on a practical level, forgotten,” says Anna M. Gallagher, Executive Director of Catholic Legal Immigraton Network (“CLINIC”)!

Anna Marie Gallagher, Esquire
Executive Director
CLINIC
PHOTO: CLINIC website

Executive Director Opening Plenary Remarks CLINIC Convening 2023
May 17, 2023

Good afternoon, dear friends. My name is Anna Gallagher and I have the honor of leading CLINIC as executive director. It is such a pleasure to be here with you all as we officially begin our first in-person Convening since 2019.

Looking out at the sea of faces in front of me, I am filled with gratitude to finally be able to come together to engage with one another, to listen, learn and gather strength for the work ahead in support of our immigrant brothers and sisters.

Even just being in your presence I feel a sense of renewed hope and energy. I am so looking forward to the next few days, and I am certain that you will be reignited to take on the important work ahead.

In a moment I will welcome our wonderful panel of Affiliate experts, but right now I want to take a moment to recognize this moment we’re facing and my hopes for this year’s CLINIC Convening.

You all, of all people, know that immigrant communities are facing truly unprecedented challenges – and I do not use that word, unprecedented, lightly.

With the lifting of Title 42, and the camps of men, women and children along the border desperate to find welcome on the other side; the proposed USCIS fee increases which threaten to put immigration benefits out of reach for many; the newly announced delays for foreign-born religious workers and special immigrant juveniles; and, perhaps above all, our warming planet and the outbreaks of violence which force many more people to migrate around the world – these are extremely challenging times for migrants in our country and around the world.

Several months ago, the New York Times featured an op-ed that has stuck with me, entitled, “The Rich World Has a Shockingly High Tolerance for Cruelty.”

It was about how rich nations are more willing than ever to let migrants languish at their borders in sub-human conditions rather than create safe pathways for migration or address the conditions causing people to flee.

It was about how the promises that nations made after World War II to respect the dignity and rights of those who are fleeing have been eroded and now, on a practical level, forgotten.

When I read this article, in my mind I was transported back to the time I spent in North Africa several years ago, working with migrants as a representative of Jesuit Refugee Services.

1

I interviewed migrants who had traveled for 18 months or more to try and find safety in these countries bordering Europe. I got to know some of the migrants, who called me “grandma” – a term of endearment, as my hair was grey.

While I was talking to some of them, they showed me their hands, which were scarred with wounds. When I asked them what happened, they said their hands were repeatedly pierced while climbing barbed wire to get through to safety.

Hearing this, my heart broke – as it has many times over the years.

The idea that we are using barbed wire to keep out our fellow human beings is inconceivable, yet true. Our immigrant brothers and sisters stand at our gates, begging for our aid, and we build barbed wire fences that pierce their hands.

Many wealthy nations are founded on a concept of all human beings being equal in dignity, but we do not act like it.

As we gather in Arizona, I know we are all mindful that these kinds of camps that the op-ed author is speaking of are just several hours away on the border. We also know that immigrant communities’ dignity is denied not only in these camps, but all over the country in the various places we’ve come from.

We must be clear, this is not an “other side of the world problem,” it is our problem. It affects all of us, in our integrity as people of faith and conscience, and as a reflection of our society.

And yet today, as I recall that New York Times op-ed, and the sense of frustration and despair I felt while reading it, I feel a surge of hope.

I want you to look around the room. Look at your neighbor to your left and right. YOU are the hope that fills my heart, and YOU are the hope that reignites me in our work.

As we gather here today, I am in a room full of people who DO act like all human beings are equal. Those who spend their precious time – often too much of their time, working long hours – trying to advance the truth that every person is precious, valuable, and deserving of a safe and dignified life.

That’s why being in your presence gives me such hope. I am reminded that the CLINIC network is full of holy people.

That is why our gathering here together, and throughout this week, is so powerful: we are, to borrow the words of Bishop Seitz of El Paso, working to be a “creative counterexample” to the culture of fear and hostility, to be a network that is slowly creating a new culture of solidarity and hospitality.

At CLINIC, we also are bolstered by our faith that we do not do this hard work alone. The spirit of God is inspiring us and pushing us forward, giving us strength and magnifying our efforts, especially when we are overwhelmed by the need in front of us.

2

Our faith also acts as a mirror for us, forcing us to keep evaluating whether we are truly reflecting the gospel truth of God’s concern for all people.

To maintain this faith, and to maintain the energy to be this creative counterexample, we need one another. Our network is sustained through the support, advice, and solidarity we demonstrate to one another.

Throughout the next few days, we will take the time to step back, to reflect on our work and learn and share new strategies, information, and tips for the very practical day-to-day work of supporting immigrant clients and communities.

We know that this practical work – the forms, the bureaucracy, the nitty-gritty details – changes and saves lives. So how well we can do it matters, which is why we gather to learn and grow.

We also gather to enjoy one another – to laugh, share stories, and reconnect with beloved colleagues and friends.

So I also hope that over the next few days you will have some fun!

Thank you for coming here to CLINIC Convening and for your dedication to this work. I am so honored to be alongside all of you this week, and all days.

Now, I am pleased to introduce our panelists for our opening plenary, Preparing for the Lifting of Title 42: Key Insights from our Network. When we decided on “reunited and reignited” for our theme this year, we knew we wanted to do something different for our opening conversation.

This “Network Fireside Chat” will be an opportunity to highlight the work done by our network throughout the United States. During this conversation, you’ll hear how Affiliates in three distinct geographical regions are rising to meet the needs of our immigrant and refugee brothers and sisters – especially during this increased time of uncertainty.

From the Border region, Joel Enriquez-Cazarez will share about the work of Jewish Family Service of San Diego.

As a transit city, Carolina Rivera will share how Catholic Charities of Dallas assists our immigrant brothers and sisters.

And Yer Vang from Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Dubuque will give an interior city perspective of welcome.

Now please join me in welcoming our keynote panelists to the stage…

3

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Thanks, my friend, for a lifetime of service to due process, fundamental fairness, and social justice, and for speaking out as the “powers that be” and the “powers that wannabe” go into cowardly retreat and hide in fear from the needs and rights of humanity!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-24-23

🏴‍☠️ DON’T BELIEVE THE ADMINISTRATION’S & MEDIA’S BS ABOUT “SUCCESS” AT THE BORDER: “People want to avail themselves of a safe, fair and orderly system. This is currently impossible.” — Lindsay Toczylowski, Executive Director at Immigrant Defenders Law Center

Lindsay writes on Linkedin:

Barometer of whether an asylum system is functioning is not “keeping the numbers low” at the border. We expected as T42 ended to see a temporary uptick due to pent up demand, but seeing the opposite indicates new deterrence measures are making asylum inaccessible to those who need protection the most.

It is obvious to those of us on-the-ground that despite no “lines” at the ports of entry there are many people here in Tijuana desperate to seek protection in the US, as evidenced by crowd at our Immigrant Defenders Law Center legal clinic today. People want to avail themselves of a safe, fair and orderly system.

This is currently impossible.

There were more than 200 people at the shelter, mostly families with small kids. When we asked whether or not people had been able to register with CBPone, most raised their hands that they had. When we asked whether they had an appt, only four had successfully made one. 4 out of 200.

We encountered excruciating cases like this asylum seeking mom & her daughter w/ severe autism. She asked if there is a special process for ppl like her, given her daughter needs medical attn, but we have to tell her to just keep trying the app. She has been waiting for months.

We continue to encounter cases where asylum seekers are unable to register with CBPone app at all. We finally registered a mom traveling alone w/ 2 babies via one of our atty’s phones, and now she can try for an appt. She has family in Los Angeles area who are waiting for her.

For people suffering from PTSD & other mental health conditions related to the horrors they fled, the constant state of anxiety waiting for an appointment is hell. One of the moms told me that every night she & her daughter cry and pray that it will be the day they can finally get help.

I am immensely proud of our San Diego based cross border team for continuing to show up and keep fighting despite the odds.

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

Well said, Lindsay! Thanks for all you and your colleagues do for due process in America!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-20-23

⚖️🧑‍⚖️ IMMIGRATION COURTS IN CRISIS = DENIAL OF DUE PROCESS FOR INDIVIDUALS — NY Times Article Quoting Round Table’s Judge Eiza Klein & Charles Honeyman, Also NDPA Officials, Judge Mimi Tsankov and Judge Samuel Cole! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: My Latest “Mini Essay” — “EOIR ABUSES ASYLUM SEEKERS”

Hon. Eliza Klein — Eliza C. Klein, a retired immigration judge, said the asylum case backlog “creates a second class of citizens.”Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/us/politics/immigration-courts-delays-migrants-title-42.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reports for the NYT:

. . . .

Eliza C. Klein, who left her position as an immigration judge in Chicago in April, said the latest increase in illegal border crossings will strain the understaffed work force as they prioritize migrants who crossed recently.

That will leave some older cases to languish even longer, she said.

“This is a great tragedy because it creates a second class of citizens,” Ms. Klein, who started working as an immigration judge in the Clinton administration, said of those immigrants who have been waiting years for an answer to their case. The oldest case Ms. Klein ever adjudicated had been pending in the court for 35 years, she said.

“It’s a disgrace,” Ms. Klein said. “My perspective, my thought, is that we’re not committed in this country to having a just system.”

While crowds of migrants continued to seek refuge in the United States after the lifting of Title 42, U.S. officials said the border remained relatively orderly. About 10,000 people crossed the border on Thursday, a historically large number, but that dropped significantly to about 6,200 on Friday.

Tens of thousands of migrants continued to wait in makeshift camps on both sides of the border for a chance to request sanctuary in the United States. The administration remained concerned about overcrowding; Border Patrol held more than 24,000 migrants in custody on Friday, well over the agency’s maximum capacity of roughly 20,000 in its detention facilities.

. . . .

Mimi Tsankov, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said that to truly address the backlog, the Biden administration would need to do more than simply hire more judges. She said that the government should increase funding for better technology and bigger legal teams, and that Congress should reform the nation’s immigration laws.

“The immigration courts are failing,” said Samuel B. Cole, the judge association’s executive vice president. “There needs to be broad systemic change.”

. . . . .

Judge Charles Honeyman, who spent 24 years as an immigration judge and retired in 2020, said he came away from his job believing the United States would need to do a better job of deterring fraud while protecting those who would be harmed in their home country.

When handling an asylum case, Mr. Honeyman said he would assess the person’s application and examine the state of their home country by reading reports from the State Department and nonprofits. Many of the applicants lacked attorneys; he believes some cases that he denied might have turned out differently if the migrants had had legal representation.

In trying to root out fraud, he would compare a person’s testimony with the answers they had given to an asylum officer or Border Patrol agent.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

EOIR ABUSES ASYLUM SEEKERS — The Problem Goes Deeper Than The Number Of Judges: Quality & Culture Matter!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

U.S. Immigration Judge (Retired)

Courtside Exclusive

May 16, 2023

While the NYT article notes that the majority of asylum cases are eventually denied on the merits, this data is often presented in a misleading way by the Government, and unfortunately, sometimes the media. According to TRAC Immigration, during the period Oct 2000 to April 2023, approximately 43% of asylum seekers who received a merits decision were granted asylum or some other type of relief. Approximately 57% were denied. https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/

Even in an overall hostile system, where individuals are often required to proceed without lawyers, and grant/denial rates among Immigration Judges vary by astounding levels (so great as to present prima facie due process issues), asylum seekers succeed on the merits of their claims at a very respectable rate. In a properly staffed and administered system where the focus was on due process and fundamental fairness for individuals, that number would almost certainly be substantially higher.

Moreover, the data suggests that toward the end of the Obama Administration and during the entire Trump Administration, the asylum system was improperly manipulated to increase denials.

For instance, in FY 2012, approximately 55% of asylum claims decided by EOIR on the merits were granted. https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/306/. While there was no discernible worldwide improvement in human rights conditions in the following years, IJ asylum grant rates cratered during the Trump years, reaching a low of 29% in FY 2020, barely half the FY 2012 level. https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/668/#:~:text=While%20asylum%20grant%20rates%20declined,after%20President%20Biden%20assumed%20office.%20That%E2%80%99s%20a%20decline%20of%20nearly%2050%%20since%20the%20FY%202012%20high.

I think there are three reasons for the precipitous decline in asylum grant rates, largely unrelated to the merits of the claims. First, Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr overruled some of the leading administrative precedents supporting grants of asylum. In the process, they made it crystal clear that they considered Immigration Judges to be their subordinate employees within the political branch of Government and that denial, deportation, and assistance to their “partners” at DHS Enforcement (actually DHS is a party before EOIR, not a “partner”) were the preferred results at EOIR.

Second, in greatly expanding the number of Immigration Judges, Sessions and Barr appointed almost exclusively from the ranks of prosecutors and government attorneys, even elevating an inordinate number of individuals with no immigration and human rights experience whatsoever. Not only were well-qualified individuals with experience representing individuals in Immigration Court largely passed over and discouraged from applying, but some of the best Immigration Judges quit or retired prematurely as a matter of conscience because of the nakedly anti-immigrant pro enforcement “culture” promoted at EOIR.

Additionally, the nationwide appellate court and precedent setter, the BIA, was expanded and “packed” with some Immigration Judges who denied virtually all of the asylum cases coming before them and had reputations of hostility to the private bar and asylum seekers. Remarkably, Attorney General Garland has done little to address this debilitating situation at the BIA.

Third, since the latter years of the Obama Administration, when a vastly overhyped “border surge” took place, political officials of both parties have improperly “weaponized” EOIR as a “deterrent” to asylum seekers, focusing on expeditious denials of asylum rather than the due process and expert tribunal functions the agency was supposed to serve. The result has been a “culture of denial and deportation” with particular emphasis on finding ways to “say no” to women and individuals of color seeking asylum.

The NYT Article also mentions that asylum merits decisions require a higher standard of proof than “credible fear determinations.” That’s true. But the suggestion that the standards are much higher is misleading. In fact, the standards governing merits grants of asylum before the Asylum Office and EOIR are supposed to be extremely generous.

In the seminal case, INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, the Court said that “well-founded fear” is a generous standard, one that could be satisfied by a 10% chance of persecution. In implementing this holding, the BIA found in Matter of Mogharrabi that asylum could be granted even where the chances of persecution were substantially less than probable.

There is as also a regulation, 8 C.F.R. 208.13, issued under the Bush I Administration, that creates a rebuttable presumption of future persecution based on past persecution.

The problem is that none of these generous and remedial provisions relating to asylum has ever been properly, consistently, and uniformly applied within EOIR. As someone who during my time on the bench took these standards to heart, I found that a substantial majority of merits asylum cases coming before me could and should be granted under a proper application of asylum law.

Consequently, I am skeptical of judges who deny virtually all asylum claims. Likewise, I question the claims by political officials of both parties who pretend, without actual knowledge, that almost all asylum applicants at the border are “mere economic migrants” who deserve to be quickly and summarily removed.

Actually, under some circumstances, severe economic hardships can amount to persecution. Moreover, under the legally required “mixed motive” analysis for asylum, an economic aspect does not automatically obviate other qualifying grounds.

So, at its root, “credible fear” is actually an even more generous application of what is already supposed to be (but often isn’t in reality) a very generous standard for asylum. The alleged “disconnect” between the number of individuals found to have credible fear and the number actually granted asylum on the merits appears to be more a function of defective and overly restrictive decision-making at EOIR than it is of unjustified generosity of Asylum Officers screening for credible fear. It’s also important to remember that at the credible fear stage, individuals haven’t had time to marshal the substantial corroborating evidence eventually required (some would say unrealistically and unreasonably) in formal merits asylum hearings before EOIR.

Finally, just aimlessly increasing the number of Immigration Judges, without solving the systemic legal, logistical, management, quality control, training, and “cultural” problems infecting EOIR creates its own set of new problems.

Recently, a veteran practitioner before EOIR wrote the following:

In about eleven years, our local DMV went from twelve (12) judges in Baltimore and Arlington in 2012 to a hundred (100) judges in 2023 (8 BAL, 18 HYA, 30 WAS, 9 FCIAC, 14 RIAC, 21 STE). That’s an increase of 733.33%. This seismic expansion has resulted in many attorneys being overscheduled for individual hearings, which has an adverse effect on our clients, our ethical obligations, due process, and mental health.

Well-prepared attorneys, many serving pro bono or “low bono,” are absolutely essential to due process and fundamental fairness in Immigration Court, particularly in cases involving asylum and other forms of protection. For EOIR to schedule cases in a manner that does not take into consideration the legitimate needs and capacities of those practicing before their courts is nothing short of malpractice on the part of DOJ leadership.

There is a silver lining here. The EOIR judicial hiring program gives NDPA stars a chance to get on the bench at the retail level level, bring much needed balance and perspective, and to develop the credentials for future Article III judicial appointments. Since change isn’t coming “from the top,” we need to make it happen at the “grass roots level!” Keep those applications coming!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-16-23

⚖️ SPLIT 6th CR. WHACKS BIA ON LANDOWNERS AS PSG! — Turcios-Flores v. Garland

Four Horsemen — BIA Asylum Panel In Action. Garland’s largely “holdover” BIA continues to align itself with Trump’s extreme right, nativist judges, as the progressives and advocates who actually supported Dems in the last two elections are left to stew, along with their dehumanized asylum seeking clients.
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

CA6 on PSG: Turcios-Flores v. Garland (2-1)

https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/23a0094p-06.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca6-on-psg-turcios-flores-v-garland-2-1#

“Under the correct analysis, the record here compels a conclusion that Honduran rural landownership in this case is a common fundamental characteristic because Turcios-Flores should not be required to change this aspect of her identity to avoid persecution given the demonstrated importance of landownership to her. Therefore, we remand to the Board for further explanation of whether this group meets the social distinction and particularity requirements as well as the remaining asylum considerations.”

[Hats off to Justin S. Fowles and Samuel W. Wardle!]

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

To reach their wrong conclusion that “rural landowners” are not a “particular social group,” the BIA ignored its own precedent. See, e.g., Matter of Acosta, 19 I&N Dec. 211, 233 (BIA 1985), modified on other grounds.

The BIA also took an (all too typical) “ahistorical” approach. They ignored the powerful connection between various types of land and property ownership in society and classic historical examples of extermination and persecution. Indeed, millions of dead kulaks persecuted and liquidated by Stalin would be astounded by the BIA’s horribly flawed, “any reason to deny,” analysis. See, e.g., https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiTv6qnsun-AhWARzABHW3rACUQFnoECC4QAQ&url=https://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm&usg=AOvVaw0xlIU36bw6-wmabscwSXT5.

Class warfare and persecution of property owners was at the heart of most Marxist-Leninist Communist dictatorships.

Remarkably, under Garland, the BIA continues to parrot the same biased, restrictionist nonsense spouted by the Trumpist dissenter in this case, Judge Chad A. Readler. He was roundly criticized as unqualified by Democrats and advocates at the time of his nomination. This opposition had lots to do with his biased, anti-immigrant views flowing from his then “boss,” nativist/racist former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions!

For example, it’s worth reviewing the comments of the Alliance for Justice on Reacher’s nomination:

On June 7, 2018, President Trump announced his intention to nominate a Justice Department official, Chad Readler, to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. This announcement was particularly striking for one notable reason: on that very day, Readler had become a leader in the Trump Administration’s fight to destroy the Affordable Care Act and the protections it offers to millions of Americans. Readler, as acting head of the Civil Division, filed a brief to strike down the ACA, including its protections for people with preexisting conditions. If Readler and the Trump Justice Department are successful, the ACA’s protections for tens of millions of people, including cancer patients, people with diabetes, pregnant women, and many other Americans, would be removed.

As the acting head of the Department of Justice Civil Division under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Readler defended the Trump Administration’s most odious policies, including separating immigrant children from their parents at the border, while claiming that “[e]verything that the Attorney General does that I’ve been involved with he’s . . . being very respectful of precedent and the text of the statute and proper role of agencies.”

His track record is equally atrocious in other respects. He has tried to undermine public education in Ohio; supported the efforts of Betsy DeVos to protect fraudulent for-profit schools; fought to make it harder for persons of color to vote; advanced the Trump Administration’s anti-LGBTQ and anti-reproductive rights agenda; fought to allow tobacco companies to advertise to children, including outside day care centers; sought to undermine the independence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and advocated for executing minors.

Chad Readler’s record of diehard advocacy for right-wing causes suggests he will be anything but an independent, fair-minded jurist. Alliance for Justice strongly opposes Readler’s confirmation.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjp353GtOn-AhWnjLAFHRjxAKYQFnoECCMQAQ&url=https://www.afj.org/nominee/chad-readler/&usg=AOvVaw1vd0ZxlEMALaM-lfJNn6bq

It’s remarkable and infuriating that once in office, Democrats in the Biden Administration have aligned themselves with the toxic views of extreme, nativist right wing judges whose xenophobic, atrocious views they campaigned against! They have done this in a huge “life or death” Federal Court system that they completely control and have authority to reform without legislation!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-10-23

🇺🇸⚖️🗽😎👍🏼 SPEAKING OUT FOR TODAY’S IMMIGRANTS: “[T]he ‘us’ we see used to be one of ‘them.’ We were a gift to this country and they will be too,” says Francesco Isgro, President & CEO of Casa Italiana Sociocultural Center, Inc., & Editor-in-Chief of Voce Italia! 😎

Francesco Isgro, Esquire
President & CEO of Casa Italiana Sociocultural Center, Inc.
Editor-in-Chief,
Voce Italiana
PHOTO: Linkedin

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Thanks for speaking out so forcefully and articulately for some of the most vulnerable among us, Francesco, my long-time friend and former DOJ colleague! Your own continuing distinguished career in both the public and now private/NGO sectors is a testament to the irreplaceable contributions of generations of immigrants to our great nation!

I’m proud to say that Francesco started as a legal intern in the “Legacy INS” Office of General Counsel during my tenure as Deputy General Counsel. He was then selected to become a INS Trial Attorney (now known as ICE Assistant Chief Counsel) under the Attorney General’s Honors Program. He eventually went on to a stellar career as a Senior Litigator, editor, and “hands on” educator at the Office of Immigration Litigation (“OIL”) in the DOJ’s Civil Division.

I specifically remember two of Francesco’s innovative contributions while in the INS OGC: collecting, indexing, and publishing the legal opinions of the General Counsel (and Deputy General Counsel); and creating a Law Bulletin that our office could use to inform the scores of field attorneys nationwide under our supervision and direction. This later led to vastly improved attorney training programs developed by OGC Counsel Craig Raynsford, assisted by Fran Mooney (who later went on to become the Public Information Officer for EOIR while I was BIA Chair).

I remember being a guest lecturer in Francesco’s immigration class while he was teaching at Georgetown Law. He also went on to found and become Editor-in-Chief of OIL’s Immigration Litigation Bulletin, a highly-respected internal source of information and guidance for USG attorneys involved in immigration.

My experiences on the bench during 13 years at the (now “legacy’) Arlington Immigration Court mirrored Francesco’s observations. Those whom we were able to help regularize their status under the law were overwhelmingly hard-working individuals making important contributions got our nation and our economy. Many had been doing it for years, sometimes even decades, and had USC children and even grandchildren who were “living proof” of the contributions of families who are given a chance to succeed.

Often, the “next generations” were present in court. I both congratulated them and asked them never to forget and appreciate the risks and hardships their parents had undertaken so that they could fulfill their complete promise in a free society! “Building America, one case at a time,” as I used to quip to the attorneys involved on both sides.

Francesco’s “Christian social justice message,” and his references to Pope Francis and the history of U.S. immigration also harken to a message I heard recently from Villanova University President Rev. Peter Donohue and Professor Michele Pistone during a recent educational event at Villanova Law. In his remarks, Rev. Donahue traced the founding of Villanova University to the response of Augustinian Friars to the burning of St. Augustine’s Church in downtown Philly during the Nativist Riots of 1844!

Professor Pistone credited Christian social justice teaching and the inspiration of Pope Francis for contributing to her success at the Villanova Immigration Clinic as well as the founding of the VIISTA Villanova Program to provide more well-qualified non-attorney accredited representatives to serve those in immigration proceedings. The VIISTA graduates whom I met and worked with on litigation skills over the two day seminar/celebration were totally impressive and dedicated.

Thanks again Francesco, for writing this inspiring piece setting forth fundamental truth about American immigration! That some in America shamefully and stubbornly refuse to recognize this truth doesn’t make it any less true, nor does it lessen the necessity to act upon it in moving our nation and our world forward toward a better future.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-10-23

⚖️🗽🇺🇸 TRUTH: YOU’VE HEARD THE ALARMIST NATIVIST MYTHS ABOUT ASYLUM FROM THE GOP & (IRONICALLY) THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION & SOME DEMS: NOW, GET THE FACTS ABOUT ASYLUM & THE BORDER FROM ALIANZA AMERICAS!

“Fear & Loathing”
Inept, disingenuous performances on asylum by the White House, DHS, & DOJ have left the Biden Administration grasping at straws and spreading vile nativist myths about asylum seekers at the border.
PHOTO: Creative Commons

Deterrence and increased enforcement have proven to be failed approaches that do not change the multiple factors that force so many people to flee their countries and only result in pushing people into more dangerous routes that allow criminal organizations to thrive, resulting in the smuggling, trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping of migrants and others.

Download the AA Fact Sheet here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eihlegCrk1Lf-08aDhL8p-fvj_GQGxZ7PYgm-MUcF1s/edit

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After more than two years of bumbling around, in the process squandering their access to the ideas and problem-solving skills of an un-precedented “brain trust” of immigration experts, the Biden Administration appears to be in “full panic mode” as the inevitable lifting of the Title 42 charade slowly approaches. Notably, a Federal Court ordered the Administration to make good on its (already delayed) promise to end Title 42 back in November 2022. But, the Supremes unethically blocked that order — granting a stay that NO ACTUAL PARTY to the litigation requested, in a simply mind-boggling exercise of politicized, unconstitutional interference with the Executive.

Instead of using the time to 1) work with NGOs, 2) hire and train more expert asylum officers, 3) replace the BIA and anti-asylum Immigration Judges with qualified human rights/due process experts, and 4) drastically ramp up the refugee admission system outside the U.S. (not substituting an inadequate and “jury rigged” numerically limited “parole” program for legal refugee and asylum admissions), the Administration frittered away the opportunity with obstructionist/restrictionist nonsense. Now, they are “running scared” from desperate refugees merely seeking to exercise their legal rights that have been illegally and immorally denied to them for years — by successive Administrations.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-03-23

🤯 JUSTICE ON THE ROCKS! ☠️ THE GOP HAS CORRUPTED THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY, WHILE THE DEMS CAN’T BRING DUE PROCESS AND QUALITY TO THE LARGE JUDICIARY THEY “OWN!” — Latest Rebuke By 5th Shows EOIR’s Sloppiness, Misrepresentations, Misconstructions, DOJ’s “Defense Of the Indefensible” In Quest To Deny Asylum To Refugees! — Recent Reports On “Management” & “Leadership” Deficiencies Show “The Wheels Are Coming Off The EOIR Circus Wagon!” 🤡

injustice — Injustice
Public Realm
Dems spend lots of time whining about the destruction of the Federal Judiciary by GOP right-wing extremists. However, after two years in charge, they have done little to bring due process, fundamental fairness, and judicial expertise to America’s worst courts — the Immigration Courts — which they totally control!

The 5th Circuit didn’t mince any words in its latest (inexplicably) unpublished, 24-page takedown of EOIR’s ridiculous “judicial” failure with lives at stake!

https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/20/20-60133.0.pdf

. . . .

Based on all of the evidence as a whole, and in light of the applicable caselaw, Reyes-Hoyes has made a compelling case of persecution. Nevertheless, we find a remand is necessary because the BIA did not make a determination as to Reyes-Hoyes’s credibility. The BIA did not mention credibility in its decision or express any doubts about the truth of Reyes- Hoyes’s testimony. The IJ did express some doubts about Reyes-Hoyes’s credibility, although he did not explicitly find her uncredible and ultimately stated he was not denying relief “based on a lack of sufficiency of proof.” However, the BIA did not adopt the IJ’s decision and thus did not incorporate any of the doubts the IJ had. “Generally speaking, a court of appeals should remand a case to an agency for decision of a matter that statutes place primarily in agency hands.” I.N.S. v. Orlando Ventura, 537 U.S. 12, 16 (2002). If Reyes-Hoyes is credible, she has shown persecution, but the credibility determination must be made by the factfinder, not by this court on appeal. See 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(iii); Avelar-Olivia v. Barr, 954 F.3d 757, 767 (5th Cir. 2020). Accordingly, the decision of the BIA is vacated in part, and we remand to the BIA for a determination on credibility.

. . . .

In sum, we conclude that, if Reyes-Hoyes is credible, the record compels the conclusion that Reyes-Hoyes suffered harm rising to the level of past persecution, but we remand for the BIA to consider her credibility in the first instance. We also conclude that the record compels the conclusion that safe internal relocation to parts of Guatemala—Mesata and Raul—was not possible. Additionally, we hold that the BIA procedurally erred in the remainder of its analysis concerning whether internal location was reasonable and whether Reyes-Hoyes had shown state action by not meaningfully considering the relevant substantial evidence.

. . . .

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

Here is my immediate reaction when Dan Kowalski at LexisNexis sent me the decison:

Wow! This is an EOIR/OIL error fest — replete with misrepresentations and mischaracterizations! Totally sloppy work! Why won’t they publish this? It’s a perfect example of how Garland has failed to get the job done!

And, here’s the reaction from my friend and Round Table Colleague “Sir Jeffrey Eagle Eyes” Chase:

24 pages; very detailed analysis of recurring asylum issues. Should certainly have been published.

BTW, please note footnote 9, an example of the ongoing problem with the government’s online regs continuing to list the enjoined “death to asylum” regs that the previous administration tried to push through. The Fifth Circuit continues to believe that the internal relocation reg was amended effective January 19, 2021. Have cases been decided based on this erroneous belief?

Lest you doubt the “complete FUBARness” of EOIR, check these out:

EOIR ranked 420 out of 432 in list of USG “Best Places to Work” (97th percentile) https://naij-usa.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fb6095c093c4ba52c1a1f5cec&id=e8849a6c94&e=a00508cc44;
Second worst component of DOJ;
Worst of all the small and mid-sized agencies ranked;
While the “curve” for “subagencies” has gone up since 2007, EOIR’s score has cratered, plunging dramatically during the Trump years;
EOIR ranked at or near the bottom on key metrics, including, significantly, “leadership style” (some of the “credit” for this abysmal score should go to DOJ, which has failed to provide dynamic, due-process-oriented leadership over the last six years);
GAO study just cited EOIR for a number of management deficiencies including “blowing off” “our [GAO’s] 2017 recommendation to develop a strategic workforce plan to address current and future staffing needs, EOIR hasn’t done so—even though it had a significant and growing backlog of 1.8 million pending cases at the start of FY 2023, more than triple the number that it had in FY 2017.”
The NAIJ continues to raise technology and health and safety defects with EOIR “management;”
Notably, during this period of abject failure, EOIR has found time and resources to waste (and potential “goodwill” to squander) on unneeded nonsense like “IJ Dashboards,” “production quotas,” “expedited dockets,” more layers of bloated headquarters bureaucracy, and, perhaps the biggest boondoggle of all, a totally absurd and duplicative “Office of Policy” for an agency that has demonstrated a disturbing inability to carry out its “core function:” Providing Due Process for all through fair, timely, expert, correct adjudications!

EYORE — “Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up” — As Dems founder in their commitment to restore justice, could new Immigration Judges from the NDPA — unswervingly committed to due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices — get this poor little fella back on his feet and improve the culture and atmosphere at the “retail level” of EOIR, even in the face of indifference and incompetence from those in charge? Lives and futures — perhaps the future of our democracy — are at stake!

What we really need is a “lean, not mean, due process machine” @ EOIR. Why can’t the Dems deliver? That’s the age-old question among human rights experts!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-30-23

🤯 THEY JUST CAN’T GET IT RIGHT! — Biden Administration Combines Some Improvements In Refugee Processing Abroad With Cruelty & Mockery Of Asylum Law At The Border — “People seeking asylum at United States borders will be subjected to fast-track credible fear interviews while in Border Patrol custody and barred under the asylum ban, fueling wrongful deportations to persecution and torture.”

Eleanor Acer
Senior Director for Refugee Protection, Human Rights First

https://humanrightsfirst.org/library/human-rights-first-welcomes-resettlement-condemns-bars-to-asylum-seekers/

Human Rights First Welcomes Resettlement, Condemns Bars to Asylum Seekers

WASHINGTON – Human Rights First welcomes today’s announcement of the Biden administration’s plans to expand refugee resettlement and family reunification parole in the Americas while reiterating the organization’s call for the administration to abandon its planned asylum ban and the conduct of fast-track credible fear interviews in Border Patrol custody.

“The Biden administration is rightly expanding refugee resettlement from the Americas, an overdue step towards addressing a long-standing gap for people in need of international protection,” said Senior Director of Refugee Protection Eleanor Acer. “This initiative should swiftly bring refugees to safety and not be used to reduce the resettlement of refugees from other regions. The Biden administration should focus on measures like increasing refugee resettlement and regular pathways and abandon its plan to impose an asylum ban that would be a legal, moral, and political mistake.”

In today’s announcement, the Biden administration confirmed its plans to implement its proposed ban on asylum, which would violate U.S. and international refugee law and has sparked widespread opposition from faith leaders, civil rights organizations, unions, and many Members of Congress. People seeking asylum at United States borders will be subjected to fast-track credible fear interviews while in Border Patrol custody and barred under the asylum ban, fueling wrongful deportations to persecution and torture.

“The Biden administration rightly ended and should not resurrect Trump-era policies that conduct credible fear interviews in Border Patrol custody where access to legal counsel is restricted,” Acer said. “This due process disaster, along with the imposition of the planned asylum ban, will be a sham process for deporting refugees who qualify for asylum. Instead of implementing policies that punish people seeking asylum, the United States should lead in upholding refugee protections and human rights.”

Human Rights First and other groups have long urged the U.S. government to step up refugee resettlement from the Americas and offer safe pathways for migration. We recommend the Biden administration focus on transformational steps like increasing refugee resettlement and regular pathways and maximizing asylum capacity at ports of entry rather than pursuing its misguided plan to impose a new bar on asylum.

Today’s announcements are part of the Biden administration’s plans to address regional migration and initiate punitive policies as the use of the Title 42 public health order ends on May 11. Human Rights First has repeatedly documented human rights abuses inflicted by the Title 42 policy, including over 13,000 attacks against migrants and asylum seekers blocked in or expelled to Mexico under Title 42 during the Biden administration. The organization has also repeatedly detailed the harms and violations of law that would be caused by the Biden administration’s proposed ban on asylum.

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

The “official” DHS statement can be found here: https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/dhs-dos-announces-sweeping-new-actions-to-manage-regional-migration.

To me, the DHS/DOS statement (referenced by HRF) sounds like folks who expect to fail, want to “tamp down” expectations, and intend to blame the victims (asylum seekers and their advocates) and Congress for their (likely) failure.

Almost everybody agrees that reforms in our immigration system are overdue. But, there is no agreement whatsoever in Congress on what those reforms should be, as shown by the absolutely insanely “bonkers” proposal from the House GOP which seeks to make everything infinitely worse!

So, we’re not going to get the needed expansions and simplification of our legal immigration system, including more generous treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, in the foreseeable future. That’s not a surprise! After two plus years in office, the Biden Administration should have foreseen the obvious and come up with ways to make the current law work.

As almost any expert will tell you, our existing legal asylum system can be made to work in a fair, timely, and reasonable manner at the borders. But, that’s not going to happen with the current personal, poor leadership, bad attitudes, lousy precedents, and a badly failed Immigration Court system.

A fair, functional, properly run asylum system, in conjunction with a robust realistic overseas refugee program, will result in more individuals being admitted into the U.S. as legal immigrants through the refugee and asylum processes. That’s how they are supposed to work (but generally have not) as key components of our legal immigration system.

It’s also a fulfillment of our important international obligations that we intentionally took on after our questionable performance on Jews fleeing Europe just prior to, and even during, WWII. While we can absorb, even need, more legal immigrants, Administrations don’t want to admit and deal with the obvious. Forced refugee migrations aren’t going to disappear any time in the foreseeable future, much as politicos of both parties might want them to!

Yes, these are legacies of the Trump Administration, and, to a lesser extent, the Obama Administration. But, one of the reasons why the Biden Administration is in office is to make things work, not just to whine and wring their hands.

Sure, the Trump Administration undermined the rule of law (and, I might add, largely got away with it). But, that’s no excuse for Biden and Harris not to have listened to experts (like, for example, Eleanor Acer), replaced personnel at DHS and DOJ with “practical experts” who can get the job done, and established at least a working operational framework for a successful, orderly, refugee and asylum admission system. Over-relying on coercive and inhumane detention, denial-oriented decision-making, bogus bars to asylum, criminal prosecutions, threats, and a dysfunctional Immigration Court system are NOT that framework.

Of course the Administration’s proposals to increase refugee admissions, reprogram resources, and develop a better resettlement program for refugees and asylees in the U.S. are good ideas. But, they are basically “no brainers” that HRF and other experts urged even before “day one” of this Administration. They should be in place and operating by now! We’ll see how much due process and fairness this Administration can actually deliver, or whether their proposed solutions devolve into yet another “uber-enforcement fueled” fiasco with the most vulnerable humans as the victims!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-28-23

POLITICS: RICE TO LEAVE WHITE HOUSE IN MAY — Tanden Possible Replacement!

From Politico:

https://apple.news/Au9UkPR0bSiqaMkC5yrBHQA

Susan Rice to step down as domestic policy adviser

Rice, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, helped the Biden administration with expanding the Affordable Care Act.

By KIERRA FRAZIER, ADAM CANCRYN and MYAH WARD
04/24/2023 09:26 AM EDT
Updated: 04/24/2023 11:32 AM EDT

Domestic policy adviser Susan Rice is stepping down from her post.

Rice, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, helped the Biden administration with expanding the Affordable Care Act, getting his Inflation Reduction Act into law, and passing gun control legislation. The move comes as the White House is facing controversy over its handling of migrant children who crossed the Southern border.

“As the only person to serve as both National Security Advisor and Domestic Policy Advisor, Susan’s record of public service makes history,” said President Joe Biden in a statement announcing the departure. “But what sets her apart as a leader and colleague is the seriousness with which she takes her role and the urgency and tenacity she brings, her bias towards action and results, and the integrity, humility and humor with which she does this work.”

Rice’s departure leaves a major hole within the top ranks of the White House right as it gears up for a likely re-election campaign and as it faces a stare down with congressional Republicans over raising the debt limit. Among those being eyed as a replacement for her include Neera Tanden, Biden’s staff secretary and a senior adviser, four people with knowledge of the deliberations told POLITICO. Separately, a top White House official said no replacement had been identified yet.

One former administration official said White House aides were talking openly about Tanden’s consideration for Rice’s job over the weekend, calling her potential appointment “pretty damn firm.”

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

Say what you will, Rice never got a handle on the need to restore the rule of law for asylum seekers at the border. Nor did she ever “get” the simple fact that you can’t solve a humanitarian situation through law enforcement focused largely on deterrence and punishment.

Although reviled by the GOP, Rice appeared to uncritically adopt many of Stephen Miller’s most xenophobic border myths and showed little interest in listening to experts who actually are working with asylum seekers and kids at the border.

In theory, Neera Tanden, whose nomination to be OMB Director was “torpedoed” by the GOP and Sen. Joe Manchin, could be better for human rights. But, 1) she doesn’t actually have the job yet; and 2) we’ve been here before with folks who look good from a distance but can’t perform in practice.

Among the apparent reasons for Tanden’s OMB rejection was that she had sent nasty e-mails and tweets about some Senators.

That was a case of the GOP having mass amnesia about the intemperate statements, personal insults, and incoherent rage that were a staple of their former election-denying President whom most blindly supported, and continue to cover for, through all transgressions against decorum and the law.

I suspect that most due process and human rights advocates aren’t shedding any tears about Rice’s impending departure. We’ll see what happens next.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-24-23

🤯 ASYLUM SEEKERS @ THE BORDER NEED DUE PROCESS & COMPASSION — BIDEN ADMINISTRATION PLANS TO DELIVER DETERRENCE, DETENTION, DEPORTATION, DUMBNESS! — “The right to seek asylum, even though it is recognized in international law, is not being upheld.”

Marisa Limón Garza, Executive Director of Las Americas
PHOTO: The Border Chronicle

Melissa Del Bosque in The Border Chronicle:

https://open.substack.com/pub/theborderchronicle/p/the-right-to-seek-asylum-in-el-paso?r=330z7&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

The Right to Seek Asylum in El Paso: A Q&A with Marisa Limón Garza, Executive Director of Las Americas

Marisa Limón Garza is executive director of the nonprofit Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, Texas. Founded in 1987 to aid refugees from the civil wars in Central America, Las Americas has provided legal representation to thousands of refugees and asylum seekers. Today, the staff of 19 is adapting to the growing, complex needs at the second-busiest port of entry for asylum seekers, after San Diego. Limón Garza, a native El Pasoan, talks about the challenges the organization faces as the United States rejects asylum law. “We’re seeing more expressions of xenophobia towards migrants on both sides of the border,” she said.

Las Americas has been serving migrants and asylum seekers since the 1980s. How has the population you serve changed since then?

The population that we started off serving was mostly Central American people seeking asylum. That population was our main focus. Over time, it’s shifted. For a long time, we’ve had a focus on women who were impacted by domestic violence or gender-based violence. We continue to have a community program specifically for crime victims. And so that has been something that we’ve persisted with. And then now we’re also working with people in the detention center setting. So, it’s evolved over time to meet the needs of immigrants and migrants.

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Are you seeing more people than ever? Or the same?

Right now, there are limitations on how many services we can provide, because of the number of attorneys that we have on staff, which is four. Attracting talent at the nonprofit level can be hard. It’s also a challenge in a community like ours that doesn’t have a law school. But we are seeing many people come for services. Especially due to the policies from the Trump administration and now the Biden administration. The need continues to grow. We are contacted by people all the time seeking assistance. And it’s more than we can actually serve.

What are the challenges you’re seeing with the populations you’re helping?

The challenges are related to the ways that the policies are being implemented. The people in our detained program have been focusing on a strategy of getting people out of detention on bond, because they’ll have a much higher chance of getting asylum when they have access to representation outside the detention center setting. But that’s become a lot more challenging in the past three months. There’s been a shift. Judges are not allowing people to be released on bond. And so that’s something that we are monitoring. We’re now taking on more cases for full representation through the asylum process with some people. So that’s a shift for us.

Governor Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star was extended to El Paso. How has it affected your community?

Operation Lone Star has been in our community since the city declared an emergency in December. It certainly has changed the dynamic with the more militarized presence and more enforcement. Visually, there’s more razor wire, more physical barriers, more obstacles. And the DPS squad cars everywhere.

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Can you talk about the CBP One app? I was in Reynosa, Mexico, recently. There were a lot of complaints about the app from asylum seekers, saying it doesn’t work. What are you experiencing in Ciudad Juárez with CBP One?

Our team has been helping folks get connected to the app and working with the Chihuahua state government in their COESPO office. Through that, we’ve been able to support over 662 people trying to access the app. It is challenging, even with the great Wi-Fi that’s available at COESPO. And it’s certainly been difficult as different versions of the app come out. There’s new glitches or glitches that didn’t happen before. Recently, there was a glitch where people were being notified on their screen that they needed to be north of the center of the country to secure an appointment. And of course, these people were applying from Ciudad Juárez, so it should have automatically included them, but they were being bumped out. Things like that continue to be challenges for people.

Are you having success with the app? Are some people getting through?

A minimal number. It’s not to the extent that we would like, but some people have secured appointments for themselves and their families.

Does frustration with the app lead asylum seekers to gather at ports of entry?

I think it’s the combination of rumors being shared about when people can access the port along with a level of frustration with the app. Combined, it creates a situation where people have this growing frustration, and they’re wanting to move forward but can’t. So it’s certainly part of the dynamic. I wouldn’t say it’s the sole factor. But it certainly contributes to that feeling that people are facing.

. . . .

Have conditions become more precarious for migrants arriving in Ciudad Juárez?

I think this has fomented because so many migrants have been coming towards the ports of entry. And when they go to the ports, some of those ports decide to close. That’s caused more of a challenge between community members and the migrants themselves. We’re seeing more expressions of xenophobia towards migrants on both sides of the border. And so that’s something that may have always existed but wasn’t as spoken out loud. Now it seems to be ratcheting up, although there’s still the presence of people who want to welcome and support migrants.

What future problems or issues do you see coming down the road?

I foresee challenges if we continue with the CBP One app. If that’s the only way people can access protection, then it really limits asylum. We would prefer that people be able to access a port of entry, claim their credible fear, and seek protection. We’re also mindful of the transit ban that is likely to go into place and will cause a lot of difficulty. People are supposed to seek asylum in the first country they cross through before seeking asylum here, but many of those countries have overrun asylum systems already. Adding to that challenge are the geopolitics as many different countries seem to be working with the United States to wall off access. This means that vulnerable people have far fewer places to turn to. The right to seek asylum, even though it is recognized in international law, is not being upheld.

What are solutions that you wish would be enacted right now by the U.S. and Mexican governments to fix things at the border?

We’d like there to be more transparency with border communities, at all levels, to ensure that plans are incorporated into the community, and there’s clear understanding of how they will work. Right now, there’s no clear information on what’s going to happen on May 11 [when Title 42 ends], and it’s less than a month away. We’d also like to see attention to the backlog of asylum claims within the courts, because there are many years that pass before someone can get access. Also reduce the time it takes to get a work permit. Right now, it takes at least six months to a year. That makes it riskier for people who must take more dangerous jobs and do things off the record. It’s important for people to earn a living and support their loved ones in a dignified way.

. . . .

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

Read the full interview at the link.

Think the Biden Administration is paying attention and has used their 2+ years in office to work with experts to be ready to welcome legal asylum seekers excercising their rights upon the inevitable end of the Title 42 charade? Not a chance!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/20/homeland-security-border-mayorkas/

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday that the Biden administration plans to announce preparations across the U.S.-Mexico border next week in anticipation of an influx of migrants after the White House lifts pandemic-related restrictions on May 11.

Mayorkas declined to provide details about the government’s efforts but said immigration detention facilities would have additional beds available to hold migrants facing possible deportation.

“I think next week we’ll have more to say about our preparation and some of the things we are going to be doing,” Mayorkas told reporters at DHS headquarters in Washington.

. . . .

Since March 2020, DHS has leaned on the Title 42 policy as its primary enforcement tool, expelling more than 2 million migrants back to Mexico or their home countries. But Biden officials face pressure from immigrant advocates and some Democrats calling for an end to the policy they view as a carry-over from the Trump administration’s harsher approach.

DHS officials further blame the Title 42 policy for encouraging repeat illegal crossing attempts because migrants don’t face the threat of federal prosecution and jail time that they would under standard immigration rules. Lifting Title 42, Biden officials say, is key to restoring the legal consequences they need to deter illegal entries.

. . . .

Miller, the acting CBP commissioner, said officials will attempt to tamp down the surge with “enhanced expedited removal” — a fast-track deportation process for those who don’t qualify for humanitarian refuge.

But, he cautioned, “it will take time” for deportations to have a deterrent effect.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/20/homeland-security-border-mayorkas/

Deterrence, deterrence, deterrence = failure, failure, failure! It’s been failing for decades and is guaranteed to do so in the future! Governments can’t deter, detain, and deport their way out of humanitarian situations.

But, the the Biden Administration is happy to waste billions and unnecessarily endanger human lives making the same old mistakes over and over.

Not a mention of what REALLY would work: Honoring our legal obligations and enforcing the law by inviting asylum seekers to apply at ports of entry; making the system efficient and user friendly; providing wide access to representation; and timely and robustly granting asylum to qualified applicants under generous standards enunciated by the Supremes and the BIA decades ago but widely ignored, often mocked, in practice!

If, contrary to the Administration’s predictions of doom, gloom, and “planned failure,” the legal system works at the border, it will be due to folks like Marisa Limón Garza and NGOs forcing the law to work as it should — no thanks to out of touch politicos and bureaucrats in the Biden Administration and to GOP nativists like Abbott.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-21-23

Published by the ABA:

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By Marianna Sotomayor and Theodoric Meyer for WashPost:

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Lindsay writes on Linkedin:

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Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

CA6 on PSG: Turcios-Flores v. Garland (2-1)

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Download the AA Fact Sheet here:

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The 5th Circuit didn’t mince any words in its latest (inexplicably) unpublished, 24-page takedown of EOIR’s ridiculous “judicial” failure with lives at stake!

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From Politico:

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Melissa Del Bosque in The Border Chronicle:

The Right to Seek Asylum in El Paso: A Q&A with Marisa Limón Garza, Executive Director of Las Americas

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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