"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
BY DEVLIN BARRETT AND MATT ZAPOTOSKY report for WashPost:
Attorney General William P. Barr delivered a scathing critique of his own Justice Department Wednesday night, insisting on his absolute authority to overrule career staff, whom he said too often injected themselves into politics and went “headhunting” for high profile targets.
Speaking at an event hosted by Hillsdale College, a school with deep ties to conservative politics, Barr directly addressed the criticism that has been building for months inside the department toward his heavy hand in politically sensitive cases, particularly those involving associates of President Trump.
“What exactly am I interfering with?” he asked. “Under the law, all prosecutorial power is invested in the attorney general.”
Barr’s comments were remarkable, in that the head of the Justice Department catalogued all of the ways in which he thought his agency had gone astray over the years, and in its current formulation harms the body politic. Barr has drawn considerable criticism for intervening in criminal cases in ways that help benefit the president’s friends.
Barr said it was he, not career officials, who have the ultimate authority to decide how cases should be handled, and derided less-experienced, less-senior bureaucrats who current and former prosecutors have long insisted should be left to handle their cases free from interference from political appointees.
Barr said that argument, in essence, means “the will of the most junior member of the organization” would make decisions, but he insisted he would not “blindly” defer to “whatever those subordinates want to do.”
“Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it is no way to run a federal agency,” Barr said.
The attorney general, the nation’s top law enforcement official, spent much of the speech eviscerating the idea of the Justice Department as a place where nonpolitical career prosecutors should be left to decide how sensitive cases are resolved.
. . . .
*****************
Read the rest of the article at the link.
I’m sure this does wonders for morale at the DOJ! But, demoralizing all the career lawyers and pushing them out the door appears to be part of the program. After all, the regime initially tried to “buy out” the holdover members of the BIA. Morale at the Immigration “Courts” is already at an all-time low!
Career civil servants at the DOJ and elsewhere actually work for the people of the U.S., not personally for Billy, other political appointees, or the President. Government employees take an oath to uphold the Constitution, not of loyalty to the President, the AG, or any other political official.
Billy clearly has been running the Immigration “Courts” as a politically weaponized part of the regime’s White Nationalist, authoritarian, race-driven immigration enforcement agenda. Funny how long it has taken the overall legal community to see that Barr basically considers the entire legal system, including the Article III Courts, as just as subservient as the Immigration “Courts.” And, to date, the Supremes have done little to discourage that view.
He is carrying out a personal agenda of replacing representative democracy with an authoritarian state where everybody and everything is subservient to an all-powerful totally unconstitutional “Unitary Executive” (actually a bogus right-wing “invented concept” with no actual legitimate basis in American political history, as cogently “debunked” by Ayer in his podcast). That certainly makes him one of the two most dangerous men in America!
Billy did say one thing I agree with. Politicos, particularly hacks like Billy and Trump, can be held accountable at the ballot box. Indeed, given the feckless performance of the GOP Senate and the overall failure of the Federal Courts to stand up to tyranny, that appears to be the very last hope for our democracy.
Had enough of the Liar in Chief, Billy the Bigot, Moscow Mitch, & Co? Vote the GOP out of every public office at every level this Fall, while there is still a chance to save our democracy!
This Fall, vote like your life and the continued existence of American democracy depend on it! Because they do!
This is merely the latest example of Trump’s leveraging of the powers of the presidency to avoid legal accountability. Over the past four years, he has deployed the Justice Department to try to stop a New York grand jury from conducting a criminal investigation into the president’s businesses; Congress from investigating his financial entanglements; and several litigants from requiring the president to divest his financial stake in hotels and businesses that create conflicts of interest — investments that may even violate the Constitution. Now, Trump is using a federal agency to try to ensure that he faces no consequences for — if Carroll’s account is true — lying about an incident that she describes as rape.
The legal theory that the Justice Department is pursuing now is also at odds with another theory that the department has advanced to help the president avoid accountability, in a case involving whether Trump can block critics on Twitter. In that instance, the department has argued that the president can block people on the social media site because his Twitter feed amounts to purely private speech, not official actions. That’s a bold claim — made bolder when the department insists that Trump’s comments about a private citizen, about an episode from the 1990s, constitute actions within the scope of his duties as president.
The goal is the same, though the methods vary: Protect Trump at all costs. It’s one thing for lawyers in private practice to pursue contradictory and outlandish tactics like these. It’s quite another for the Justice Department to do so, at taxpayers’ expense.
Leah Litman is an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School and host of the podcast “Strict Scrutiny,” about the Supreme Court.
***********
Read the rest of Leah’s article at the link.
The DOJ’s position is nonsense. But, with a corrupt and complicit DOJ led by Billy the Bigot, a feckless Congress, and listless Federal Courts, who’s going to stop Barr and Trump from destroying American justice?
So, defending misogyny is an essential part of the “religiously woke” America that theocrat, autocrat, anti-democracy activist Billy the Bigot envisions with his perverted view of a right-wing, intolerant, shove it down your throat Christianity that Jesus would never recognize? What a crock!
Under the maliciously incompetent, illegal “leadership” of “Wolfman,” ICE continues to make a strong case for its dissolution and reassignment of those duties that are actually necessary (excludes much of what they have done as Trump’s “Not So Secret Police”) to other entities that will operate professionally and within the law.
Also, a thorough review of how and why some ICE agents have failed to operate ethically and within the law would be in order, along with recommendations on how to create a more professional workforce that will resist illegal schemes.
Yes, there are some good folks at ICE. I knew many of them in “prior incarnations.” But, ICE’s participation in Trump’s racist, often illegal, and highly counterproductive policies and actions certainly raises some “red flags” that I previously had not seen.
No, ICE isn’t “just enforcing the law.” That idea is preposterous in light of what is undoubtedly the most lawless Administration in U.S. history. One that actively seeks the destruction and ruin of our democratic republic and has nothing but contempt for the actual rule of law.
A federal court on Thursday blocked a memorandum signed by President Trump seeking to exclude undocumented immigrants from being counted in the census for apportionment saying such action would violate the statute governing congressional apportionment.
A special three-judge panel out of New York wrote that the president’s argument that undocumented immigrants should not be counted runs afoul of a statute saying apportionment must be based on everyone who is a resident of the U.S. The judges found that all residents must be counted for apportionment purposes regardless of their legal status.
The ruling came hours after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to produce internal documents connected to its sudden decision to end the 2020 Census count a month earlier than the Census Bureau had planned.
. . . .
************
Read the rest of Tara’s article at the link.
The problem here is a barrage of frivolous, racist, unlawful conduct by the Trump regime. What if the Supremes had consistently stood up against Trump’s illegal White Nationalist agenda starting with the Travel Ban cases?
At least for now, this is a major setback for the regime’s “Dred Scottification” agenda!
It is entirely fitting that Donald Trump — the least law-abiding president in our history — was renominated at a convention that was itself a seeming cavalcade of crime. Every night featured apparent violations of the 1939 Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities “in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by an individual employed or holding office in the Government of the United States.”
The White House certainly qualifies as such a facility. Yet Trump used it as a convention prop, even going so far as to televise a naturalization ceremony for immigrants — some of whom did not realize they would be shown at the Republican convention — as part of the nightly show. Trump not only flouted the law but also reveled in doing so. During his acceptance speech, he boasted, “We’re here — they’re not,” and the New York Times reported that Trump “relished the fact that no one could do anything to stop him.”
While the president is exempt from the civil provisions of the Hatch Act, he could be subject, once he leaves office, to criminal penalties if he should “intimidate, threaten, command, or coerce … any employee of the Federal Government … to engage in … any political activity.” That is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.
This is, of course, barely scratching the surface of an administration that should more accurately be described as an ongoing criminal conspiracy. While many of Trump’s awful acts — e.g., confining children in cages or unleashing riot police on peaceful protesters — are merely violations of democratic norms, there is also plentiful evidence of lawbreaking on his part.
The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York has identified Trump as “Individual-1” in a conspiracy with his attorney Michael Cohen to violate campaign finance laws by secretly paying off two women with whom Trump allegedly had affairs. Cohen went to prison; Trump, who as president claims immunity from prosecution, wasn’t indicted.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III uncovered a great deal more potential illegality. He found 10 instances when Trump might have obstructed justice, and in at least four of those cases he found evidence that Trump’s conduct met all three elements of the obstruction-of-justice statute. Each violation carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The recent report from the Senate Intelligence Committee suggests that Trump also lied to Mueller when, in written testimony, he claimed not to remember speaking to Roger Stone about WikiLeaks. If he committed perjury, that would subject him to up to five years’ imprisonment.
. . . .
Trump could try to short-circuit justice by seeking to pardon himself before he leaves office — or even by resigning a few hours early and having Vice President Pence sworn in to issue a pardon (as President Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon). In that case, the special counsel would be limited to investigating Trump’s accomplices (unless they are also pardoned) and helping state prosecutors. But the special counsel should still issue a comprehensive report on Trump’s lawbreaking. We must expose and root out this ethical rot before it eats away at the foundations of our democracy.
**********
Read the rest of Boot’s article at the link. Actually, Max understates the case. Trump long ago ate the ethical underpinnings of American democracy for lunch, with the “JR Five” providing “table service.”
Under “normal” circumstances, the scenario outlined by Boot in his final paragraph would be beyond preposterous! But, in the failed state of American democracy under Trump, it’s perfectly plausible. Whose going to stop him from the “final abuse and mockery of our republic?” Feckless Congress? The Supremely and Serenely Complicit ones? No way. Trump will exploit the moral cowardice and spinelessness of the other failed two branches of Government until the end!
It started about the time that Roberts and his colleagues threw Muslims, refugees, and migrants under the bus in their ridiculously wrong and intellectually dishonest “Travel Ban Fiasco.” The “Dred Scottification” of migrants and people of color and open corruption, aided and abetted by Roberts and his gang, have continued largely unabated since then.
Max’s use of the term “rot” brings to mind the refugees from many nations, most people of color, rotting in Mexico, futilely waiting for “asylum hearings” that might never come and where denial without due process has been predetermined. This is what “American Justice” has become under Trump, Billy the Bigot, Wolfman the Illegal, and Roberts the Complicit!
Actually, separating families, misrepresenting the policy to Federal Courts, and long-term “civil” detention of families in life-threatening conditions as a “deterrent” to exercising important, fundamental legal and human rights might well be criminal violations in a functioning justice system. Sadly, America basically lacks the latter these days because of the Supremes’ coddling of the “crimes against humanity” committed by Trump, Miller, Barr, Wolf, Cooch, and their co-conspirators.
As those of us with experience adjudicating asylum cases know, lack of accountability before the courts and failure of the judiciary to exercise independent judgment to control a corrupt and tyrannical executive are hallmarks of failed states and banana republics.
Let’s see! America’s founders created an independent judiciary to insure the right of the “King” to use the Government as his personal servants to violate the Bill of Rights, exploit the nation for his own gain, and create “alternate Kings’ Courts” where the “judges” are his employees, he makes the rules, the results are largely preordained by the King’s personal biases and the interests of his royal cronies, and the penalty can be “death without due process.” Not likely!
But, that’s what happens when judges’ fealty to ideology, party, or personality often exceeds their loyalty to the Constitution and to the human rights and human dignity of their fellow men, women, and children. It happens when we create an elitist, right-leaning judiciary, out of step with and non-representative of the majority of Americans, where actual knowledge and experience defending the human rights of individuals against Government overreach, courage to speak truth to power, and demonstrated unswerving commitment to equal justice under law is far, far undervalued, even intentionally ignored. Where practical problem-solving skills and human empathy, perhaps the two most important qualities for fair and honest judging, are all too often disrespected and even demeaned.
Better Federal Judges for a better, fairer, functional America! One where the humanity of all persons is honored and respected, rather than being mocked by those in positions of power and privilege. One where the highest Court finally stands up for and enforces the hard-fought Constitutional right to vote, regardless of skin color or ethnicity, rather than aiding and abetting the blatant schemes of the GOP to suppress voting and deny deserved political power to Americans of color. One where an honest Court enforces to the maximum degree the Voting Rights Act rather than intentionally and disingenuously gutting it at the demand of some in the White power structure.
These travesties have unfolded right in front of us. Yet, even so called “liberal-progressive” commentators largely shrug them off as somehow “normal” or “just the way the system functions.” That’s BS! It’s “judicial malpractice.” It’s a major reason why two centuries after our founding we have not yet achieved racial justice and why our nation is coming apart at the seams under grotesque misgovernance and judicial complicity.
The current Federal Judiciary has facilitated the takeover of our Government by an ongoing criminal conspiracy, as described by Boot. We need change! Sooner rather than later! And, it can’t and won’t happen with the current cast of characters in the Executive, the Senate majority, and the Article III Judiciary.
But Democrats all but ignored the Supreme Court in their four-day convention earlier this month, even after the party spent Trump’s first term reckoning with the consequences of Republicans confirming two justices, including a reliably conservative justice who replaced the court’s swing vote.
The contrast worries liberal activists who see it as further evidence that the Democratic Party isn’t paying enough attention to an area where conservatives have made big inroads in recent years: control of the courts.
“The fact that Democrats spent so little to no time discussing the federal bench failed to take into account that their critically important goals for the future will be challenged in the courts,” said Nan Aron, the president of the liberal judicial advocacy group Alliance for Justice.
She added: “It’s a major misstep, given the fact that these 200 judges will make it very difficult, if not impossible in many cases, for the Democrats to accomplish their worthy goals going forward.”
. . . .
************************
Read the full article at the link,
Thanks, Nan, for speaking out! I’ve always been astounded by the Dems’ failure to recognize the importance of getting demonstrated advocates for due process, fundamental fairness, human rights, equal justice under law, and best practices on the Federal Bench.
Heck, look at the Dems beyond disastrous and just plain incompetent approach to the Immigration Bench in the Obama Administration — an administrative court controlled entirely by the Attorney General. Can’t blame Mitch and the GOP for:
Ridiculously convoluted and entirely unnecessary 2-year hiring process (under former Director Anthony C. Moscato, the Clinton Administration could sometimes do it in a fraction of that time with better, or at least no worse, results);
Eschewing progressive judicial candidates, including well-qualified underrepresented groups, with scholarly credentials and practical expertise in immigration, asylum, human rights, and due process in favor of an endless stream of largely “insider only, don’t rock the boat” picks;
Leaving numerous positions unfilled at the end of the Administration for White Nationalist xenophobe Jeff Sessions to fill;
Ignoring obvious, achievable management reforms like e-filing!
The Trump Administration is teeming with malicious incompetents, particularly in the Immigration-related agencies. Notwithstanding that, they immediately figured out how to expedite Immigration Judge hiring and to load the bench with some of the worst, most unqualified, and biased so-called “judges” in modern American legal history!
In other words, Sessions, Whitaker, and Barr shamelessly and rapidly weaponized the Immigration Courts and made them subservient shills and zealots for DHS enforcement and Stephen Miller’s White Supremacist agenda. And feckless Article III Courts, now also stuffed with Trump judges, have, with a few notable exceptions, looked the other way as the slaughter of Constitutional due process and vulnerable humans (including kids) unfolds. You couldn’t write a worse script for the rule of law and future of humanity!
Democrats pretended that the Immigration Courts existed merely to “go along to get along with the policy flavor of the day.” They did not reinforce due process, fundamental fairness, or view the Immigration Bench as a source of expertise, creativity, progressive legal thinking, or creative legal problem solving. The backlogs grew, morale slid (although admittedly not at the breakneck pace under the Trump regime), and the bodies of those who should have been saved but weren’t started to pile up. Simple reforms — try e-filing, for example — were left unaccomplished!
It wasn’t “malicious incompetence” — just good old fashioned “administrative incompetence.” But the latter paved the way for the former to “go on steroids” during the Trump regime. This isn’t just political malpractice and academic debate! Real people have lost their lives, families, or futures because of the Dems’ diddling approach to justice — including America’s largest and perhaps most significant court system over which they had total control!
It’s actually pretty simple: Better judges (from the Supremes to the Immigration Courts) for a better America! And, time for the immigration/human rights community to wake up, join the NDPA, and demand that the Dems do better next time around!
Due Process Forever! Repeating past mistakes, never!
She was one of the most recognizable activists in Nicaragua, protesting a government that has jailed and killed its opponents. Her photo ran in national newspapers; one called her the “face of the rebellion.” Her video of police firing at student protesters went viral. Her confrontations with the government were cited by the U.S. State Department.
Valeska Alemán, 22, paid a price for that notoriety. She was detained twice. Interrogators pried off her toenails. When she decided to leave the country, the United States seemed a natural destination: The Trump administration has been vocal in its opposition to Nicaragua’s crackdown — and its support of the country’s young protesters.
But by the time Alemán arrived at the U.S. border in July, the administration had launched a pandemic-era policy that sends Nicaraguans directly back to their country without letting them apply for asylum. Seventeen days after crossing into Texas, she was put on a plane back to Managua with more than 100 other Nicaraguans, almost all of them opponents of President Daniel Ortega.
Her backpack was full of documents to show U.S. immigration officials that the government appeared ready to kill her. The officials wouldn’t look at them. When she landed back in Nicaragua, it felt as if she was carrying a ticking bomb, proof that she was trying to flee and accuse the government of abuse.
“I thought, ‘Okay, so they’re going to throw me straight back in jail,’ ” Alemán said. “ ‘I’m going to be tortured all over again.’ ”
Another expelled asylum seeker, Moises Alberto Ortega Valdivia, 38, swallowed five pages of his asylum paperwork, panicked that Nicaraguan police would find it.
Since taking control in 2017, the Trump administration has narrowed the pool of people who qualify for asylum and sent tens of thousands of applicants back to Mexico to await their hearings from squalid tent camps and shelters.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the administration has gone further, effectively shutting the asylum system down. Most Central American applicants are simply escorted back to Mexico. But Nicaraguans — including political protesters to whom the United States has given rhetorical support — are flown back to the country they tried to escape.
The administration is using a public health order known as 42 U.S.C. that cites “the danger to the public health” of migrants to justify the asylum system’s closure. Mexico has agreed to accept Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans. Other nations, such as Cuba and Venezuela, have refused to accept chartered U.S. deportation flights of their own citizens.
In the case of Nicaragua, the United States is sending asylum seekers back to a country the State Department describes as violently repressive.
“Throughout Nicaragua, armed and violent uniformed police or civilians in plain clothes acting as police (‘para-police’) continue to target anyone considered to be in opposition to the rule of President Ortega,” the department says in a travel warning. “The government and its affiliated armed groups have been reported to arbitrarily detain pro-democracy protestors, with credible claims of torture and disappearances.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In a statement, the State Department said it “condemns all forms of political oppression, especially that orchestrated by the corrupt Ortega regime.” But it would not comment on the expulsion of Nicaraguan asylum seekers.
Alemán traveled with a family of Nicaraguan asylum seekers to the Texas border. All were university graduates and students of international affairs. Before they left, they reviewed the asylum laws on a U.S. government website.
. . . .
*****************
Read the rest of Kevin’s article at the link.
Section 208 of the Immigration & Nationality Act says:
Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, section 1225(b) of this title.
Very clear. What happened to refugee Valeska Alemán and other asylum seekers at the hands of the Trump regime was totally illegal (not to mention immoral); essentially a “crime against humanity” for which Trump, Miller, Wolfman, and the other “perps” should be held accountable.
But, this is Trump’s America where a majority of the Roberts’ Court favors White Supremacy, racism, and crimes against humanity over the Constitutional, statutory, and human rights of people of color. It’s called “Dred Scottification.”It’s a national and international disgrace that will stain our nation forever!
Think racial justice and equal justice in America will be achieved without a better Executive, throwing the GOP out of legislative power, and better Federal Judges? Guess again!
If Joe Biden is elected president, he promises to overturn President Trump’s aggression against federal employee unions, support regular pay raises for federal employees and protect their workplace rights.
Biden, the Democratic nominee, has pledged to upend Trump’s actions concerning federal labor organizations on Inauguration Day in January. Trump’s assaults were codified in three executive orders he issued in 2018. They systematically undermined the ability of unions to represent not only their members, but all employees in agency collective-bargaining units.
Saying Trump “has loosed a direct attack on our members’ union rights and dignity on the job,” the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) questionnaire to Biden outlines policies the largest federal union wants reversed.
“This includes purging lawful representational activity from government worksites and equipment, weaponizing the bargaining process to propose, and in some cases impose, one-sided contracts, attacking our statutory right to collect voluntary dues, crippling our ability to mediate disputes on duty time, and more,” says the questionnaire’s introduction. “Taken together, these attacks constitute more than just a threat to our members’ livelihoods, they threaten the survival of the merit-based civil service system on which our government is built.”
AFGE endorsed Biden last month. In two internal polls, AFGE said its members supported Biden over Trump by more than 30 points.
The first question asked Biden to commit to overturning the executive orders and other directives that weaken employee due process and collective bargaining rights “on your first day in office.” Biden agreed and said “the federal government should serve as a role model for employers to treat their workers fairly.”
“On my first day in office,” he added, “I will restore federal employees’ rights to organize and bargain collectively, restore their right to official time, and direct agencies to bargain with federal employee unions.” Official time allows union leaders to represent employees, including those who are not union members, in grievance procedures and matters involving issues such as workplace safety and productivity, while being paid by the government.
[If he gets a presidential Day 1, Biden has a nearly endless list of ways to spend it]
In addition to Biden’s answers, the Democratic Party Platform promises to “strengthen labor rights for the more than 20 million public-sector employees” at all levels by supporting legislation that would “provide a federal guarantee for public-sector employees to bargain for better pay and benefits and the working conditions they deserve.”
While Trump has been relentless in his federal union offensive, all was not copacetic when Biden served as Barack Obama’s vice president. Government workers vehemently opposed three federal pay freezes imposed under Obama, with congressional approval, during an era of budget tightening.
But the Obama-Biden administration did not seek to fundamentally undermine unions as Trump has done or diminish federal workers. Obama’s stated effort to “make government cool again” contrasts sharply with Trump’s “drain the swamp” attitude toward government. Trump did not respond to AFGE’s questionnaire.
. . . .
*****************************
Read the complete article at the link.
Just another instance where Biden is going to have to separate himself from some misguided, occasionally weak-kneed and shortsighted, Obama-era policies and establish himself as his own man, with a decidedly more practical, aware, and progressive approach. And, as a long-time public servant himself (albeit an elected one) — whose career has in many ways been built and furthered by the skills, expertise, and contributions of civil servants in all branches of Government — I believe he is up to the task. Indeed, he might well be the best-qualified candidate in my lifetime to save and enhance our now reeling and crumbling civil service — one of the “crown jewels” of American democracy now under unrelenting assault from a thoroughly corrupt Trump and his GOP nihilist “wrecking crew.”
For example, look at how the cowardly and totally unethical “Billy the Bigot” Barr tried to “punish” Judge Ashley Tabaddor and the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)(disclosure: I am a proud retired member) for speaking “truth to power.” As the only ones authorized to speak out on behalf of Immigration Judges (regardless of membership in the NAIJ), Judge Tabaddor and other NAIJ officials exposed the massive corruption, gross mismanagement, improper politicization, and medically dangerous working conditions at EOIR! As a result, Billy tried to silence her and the NAIJ by filing a frivolous action to “decertify” the NAIJ based on bogus reasons, many rejected by the FLRA in the past. This abuse of Government resources and process by Billy has since been dismissed after hearing by a FLRA official, as previously reported in “Courtside.”
As a civil servant for more than 35 years, serving in Administrations of both parties, at levels from “worker bee” to “Senior Exec,” and a veteran of 21 years on both levels of the Immigration Bench (when it actually more resembled a “real court” than the ridiculous parody engineered by Gonzo Apocalypto and Billy the Bigot), I know what I’m speaking about.
Incidentally, I was one of the “founding brothers and sisters” of the BIA employees’ union in the 1970s, and then went on to battle that same union before the FLRA during my tenure as BIA Chair in the late 1990s. So, like many issues in immigration during my career, I understand both sides.
But, I never questioned the BIA union’s authority to speak for the staff. In most ways, it was a good “focal point” for getting important issues out in the open and resolving them, even if the process was occasionally contentious and frustrating. And, I’d have to admit to getting some good ideas on management improvements from union officials. So good, in fact, that I actually hired some of them to become staff managers at the BIA.
Over my career, I was involved in thousands of asylum and refugee cases, many of them successful. Many were fleeing countries with great progressive “paper constitutions” and sometimes even very “facially reasonable” statutory law. A number of these countries had even signed the U.N. Refugee Convention. What often made these countries “persecutors” as opposed to “protectors” was in the “execution” rather than the “black letter law.”
Two characteristics that many of these persecutors had in common were: 1) an authoritarian executive who controlled a corrupt civil service usually “on the take,” staffed with family members, tribe members, or “party regulars,” and personally loyal to the leader rather than the constitution and statutes; and 2) “courts” that were either instruments of the leader and his tribe or party or too feckless to stand up against executive tyranny.
Under Trump and his corrupt GOP cronies, the US is well on its way to this type of “banana republic” public service in all three branches. And, don’t thank that a healthy economy or a robust stock market are “proof” against tyranny. Today’s China, as well as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, are prime examples of how “economic success and power” do not necessarily equate with good government, equality, or lack of repression.
This November, vote like your life and the future of our democracy depend on it! Because they do!
So where does Trump’s administration stand as he is nominated for a second term? He earned 47 of a possible 76 Benitos, or 62 percent. He remains the greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War, but his exercise of power only partly resembles that of real fascists. He still faces checks and balances in Washington. He hasn’t shut down rival parties or uncompliant media.
He has not directed the armed might of the state against citizens on anything like the scale used by Mussolini, let alone Hitler. He does not have his own obedient “squadristi” eager to beat up foes, even if plenty of his followers advocate (and sometimes indulge in) violence against minorities and Trump’s opponents. He has not arranged the murder of prominent political opponents. The cult of violence is integral to fascism but far less central to Trump. He is not ruling like a genuine fascist.
But he has shown pronounced fascistic leanings. In the right circumstances — a crisis he could manage triumphantly, a more sympathetic military — perhaps he would try to extend his rule beyond whatever the voters allow him and convert the United States into a repressive, racist dictatorship. Or perhaps stage phony elections that hand the reins to Ivanka and Jared. At least a few members of Congress would probably support him, just as many parliamentarians voted to give Mussolini and Hitler emergency powers. Those lawmakers did not know at the time just where fascism might lead. We have a clearer idea.
John McNeill is a professor of history at Georgetown University.
***************
Read the complete op-ed at the above link.
I get that Trump’s maliciousness is somewhat tempered by his overall incompetence.
But, with due respect to Professor McNeill, I think he presents a “upper class intellectual” view of Trump’s vileness and danger on the “fascism scale.” His pre-existing privilege have largely shielded him, and likely his family and most of his associates, from the true effects of Trump’s White Nationalist fascism.
However, I think that African Americans who have had family members and friends killed or seriously harmed by police, only to be mocked, threatened, and disenfranchised by the Prez; children and families separated forever; kids and asylum applicants jailed in life-threatening conditions; refugees and other family members stranded forever abroad; lawyers and advocates who risk their health and safety every day to defend the most vulnerable among us; the ghosts of those who have died of COVID-19 in detention; those with family members needlessly lost to COVID-19; ethnic communities who have been terrorized by DHS and who have seen a sharply diminished ability to seek protection from crimes; Asian Americans who have victimized by hate crimes; those who have lost health insurance coverage, jobs, and shelter; Muslims scapegoated for others’ crimes; transgender youth driven to depression and suicide by government endorsed harassment and denial of basic human rights; and a host of others living below McNeill’s radar screen might disagree with his “failed” analysis.
Also, like many academics and intellectuals shielded by the Ivory Tower, McNeill vastly overestimates the effect of “checks and balances.” In fact, Trump has been able to rule lawlessly, if incompetently, without meaningful participation of Congress and with little effective pushback from the Federal Courts.
He’s made mincemeat of the few in the Executive Branch with the guts and integrity to oppose him, without engendering meaningful and anything approaching effective reactions from the other two Branches. His own party has publicly and fully turned against American democracy and the rights, well being, and humanity of the rest (e.g., the majority) of us. That’s pretty effective fascism in my book, even considering the less than competent implementation.
It’s a mark of just how ineffectual our system of “checks and balances” has been that we are, as a nation, without a functioning immigration system; without functioning Immigration Courts; without a national plan or rational response to a dangerous pandemic; without a plan to protect our precious franchise or to insure safe, free, and fair elections this fall; with a failing postal system that has been politicized; without a plan to address the threat of global warning and, indeed, doing everything in our power to make it worse!
This is not “failed fascism!” Rather it is a fascist state run by malicious incompetents and headed by aleader without the attention span, intellectual capacity, or ability to fully develop any intellectual doctrine and implement its full range of destruction. But, that only slightly diminishes his danger to our body politic!
That Trump dares to put forth outrageous ideas like not leaving office following defeat, barring U.S. citizens from re-entering their country, sending police to polling stations, and questioning the citizenship ofKamala Harris shows just how feckless our democratic institutions have been in the face of tyranny and how misguided it is to understate Trump’s fascism.
With his overtly outrageous program of “Dred Scottification” of “the other” — largely and embarrassingly embraced by a Supremes’ majority — Trump has moved our nation as far away from “equal justice for all” as we have been in the supposed “post-Jim-Crow” era!
To rely on the “beneficial effects” of incompetence on malicious would-be fascism is a fool’s errand that could cost us dearly. Indeed, until it was too late, the leaders of Western Democracies rather consistently overplayed the cartoonish characteristics of Hitler’s and Mussolini’s “pseudo-super-macho” personalities and underplayed the potential destructive capacity of their fascism, whether “failed” or not. The threat is real and this is likely to be our last clear chance as a nation to save our democracy!
This November, vote like your life and the future of the world depend on it! Because they do!
With presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s veep picked, convention concluded and campaign cruising ahead of his opponent’s, he might be tempted to start measuring the White House drapes. So to curb that temptation, the Ranking Committee members are doing it for him for Round 69 — starting with whom he should pick for his Cabinet.
. . . .
Attorney General Sally Yates
A courageous civil servant who has demonstrated her commitment to upholding the law even under personally and politically difficult conditions.
— Catherine Rampell
. . . .
*************************
Hell No! Sorry, Catherine, Yates would be a “Nightmare on Elm Street” ☠️!
Sally Yates presided over families in immigration prison, civil detention abuses, the disintegration of the Immigration Courts through “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” dilatory hiring practices for Immigration Judges, unrepresented toddlers in Immigration Court, misuse of the justice system as a “deterrent” for immigration, and the steady diminution of both Due Process and judicial independence at the BIA and the Immigration Courts.
She was totally gone deaf on the immigration, human rights, and human decency issues (except for her last act when she was heading out the door), and helped set the table for the gross abuses of human rights inflicted on asylum seekers and immigrants, particularly targeting those of color, by the Trump regime.
She would be a horrible Attorney General and an insult to Hispanics, people of color, immigrants, and ethnic communities that have stood up against Trump’s abuses while many Dems folded their tents and hid.
Either Former HUD Secretary and Presidential candidate Julian Castro or his brother Rep. Joaquin Castro would be far superior choices. They both understand that justice for migrants and asylum seekers, and humane sensible immigration policies are prerequisites for finally attaining equal justice under law, fundamental fairness, and eliminating the institutionalized racism in which Yates played a role.
Immigration advocates must make their opposition to this and other unacceptable choices clear to the Biden campaign in advance of the election and should pledge to testify en masse against any such nomination.
No more Dem AGs who fail to make human rights and equal justice for all, including asylum seekers, immigrants, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and all people of color “job number one!” The next Dem AG must also be 100% committed to an independent, Article I Immigration Court to replace the current dysfunctional and insanely unfair mess at EOIR!
Catherine Rampell is generally “spot on.” But, hey, anyone can have a bad day!
There is lots of new talent out there that demands a chance to lead! No excuse for “retreads!”
Due Process Forever! Sally Yates & Other Dem Retreads With Disgraceful Records Of Failure On Human Rights & Immigration, Never!
Lawrence S. Robbins is an appellate and trial lawyer at Robbins Russell. George T. Conway III is a lawyer and an adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump super PAC. The writers both submittedfriend-of-the-court briefsopposing the government’s motion in the Flynn case.
If there’s one thing you can say about President Trump and his administration, it’s that nothing is regular except the irregular, which has had myriad damaging consequences for the nation. And it’s had particularly adverse consequences for the federal government’s ability to defend itself in court.
The latest example comes in the criminal case against Trump’s first, short-tenured national security adviser, Michael Flynn. He pleaded guilty — not once but twice — to charges that he had lied to FBI agents during an interview about his conversations with senior Russian officials during the presidential transition. Despite Flynn’s admissions of guilt, Attorney General William P. Barr filed a motion asking that the case be dismissed — and supporting Flynn’s effort to have that done without even a hearing before the district judge.
Flynn won before an appeals court panel. But when the full court of appeals heard arguments on Flynn’s petition, the judges couldn’t have seemed more bewildered at the Trump administration’s position. The government argued that the district judge couldn’t inquire into the government’s reasons for seeking dismissal even if he’d seen the prosecutor take a bribe, in open court, in exchange for dismissing the case.
The Trump administration has been saying things like that a lot lately — trying to stretch the law in ways that undermine its remaining credibility. It argued that a sitting president’s accountants and bankers can’t be subpoenaed for his personal records during his term in office by either a state grand jury or, without meeting an impossibly high burden, by Congress. It argued that the president’s close aides can’t be called to testify before a congressional committee investigating presidential misconduct. The least trustworthy administration in decades, if not ever, keeps arguing: “You’ve just got to trust us.”
Lawyers have a phrase for the government’s saying “Trust us.” It’s called the “presumption of regularity.” The presumption of regularity means that courts should presume that government officials acted through a “regular” process: that it carefully vetted its policy and scrupulously examined relevant legal precedents.
But, as its name suggests, the presumption of regularity rests on the premise that the government is functioning in a regular way. And the Trump administration is anything but regular. Following the cues of a chief executive who despises what he calls the “deep state,” administration officials have cut corners, displaced career professionals, exiled dissenters and abandoned institutional norms — in short, circumvented the very processes that justify the presumption of regularity in the first place.
The chickens have now come home to roost. Whether they say so explicitly or not, courts have been dispensing with the presumption of regularity. The best example: In the litigation over the 2020 Census, the Supreme Court held that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision to add a citizenship question to the census form was arbitrary and capricious. The reason? “Altogether,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote, “the evidence does not match the explanation the secretary gave for his decision.” That’s just a polite lawyer’s way of saying Ross lied.
Examples of the administration’s disrespect for regularity are legion, and not just confined to litigated matters. Barr has acted as a virtual one-man band of irregularity: He forced the U.S. attorney in Washington, Jessie K. Liu, out of her job, thereby enabling him to countermand former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone. And Barr gave a transparently false account of the Mueller report in the week before it was released to the public.
. . . .
***********************************
Read the rest of the op-ed at the above link.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing is that Billy the Bigot actually “runs” a so-called “court system” — the U.S. Immigration Court — that has life or death authority over some of the most vulnerable individuals in our society, indeed in the world! How this stunning violation of both the Fifth Amendment and fundamental human decency (not to mention basic principles of competent management and good governance) continues to grind humanity into a grisly mess 🤮 of human misery ☠️ in plain sight every day is beyond me!
Almost everything in this “spot on” op-ed echoes “Courtside.” I have consistently criticized the irresponsibility and the gross dereliction of Constitutional duty by a Supremes majority that all too often treats Trump’s patently false, racist, xenophobic, and invidious immigration, refugee, and asylum policies as the actions of a “normal Executive” when Trump is nothing of the sort.
Nor does he even claim to be! He ran on overtly racist and hate-driven policies and has promoted racist tropes and lies about immigrants at every turn. Yet, the Supremes often pretend that there is some “legitimate basis” for clearly illegitimate policies and abrogation of important laws without the involvement of Congress and of Constitutional protections without any reasonable, fact-based justification.
If the “chickens have come home to roost” for the corrupt Trump DOJ, so will they eventually come home to roost for Supremes who have disingenuously and intentionally looked the other way and have enabled, or in some cases even encouraged, Trump’s racist and lie-driven dismantling of American democracy and “Dred Scottification” of “the other.” Life tenure protects the jobs of derelict Federal Judges. But, it won’t protect their reputations from the truth of history.
This November, vote like your life and the future of America depend on it! Because they do!
Sam Bernsen 1919 – 2020 Immigration Official, Law Partner, Educator, Mentor
A LEGAL GIANT PASSES: SAM BERNSEN (1919 – 2020) — Public Servant, Law Partner, Teacher, Scholar, Mentor, Humanitarian, Advocate For Due Process — He Helped Change The Face Of America For The Better!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
July 30, 2020.I’d seen his name on briefs and old court cases (See, e.g., Vaccaro v. Bernsen, 267 F.2d 265 (5th Cir. 1959)). But, the first time I met Sam Bernsen was in January 1976, when I reported for work at the “Legacy” Immigration & Naturalization (“INS”) Office of General Counsel at the Chester Arthur Building in a rather run-down neighborhood within walking distance of the U.S. Capitol.
That building was perhaps a suitably shabby tribute to the “stepchild” status of INS within the hierarchy of the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”). The carpet was shopworn, elevators slow, and the corridors dim as a result of the Ford Administration’s “Whip Inflation Now” (“WIN”) austerity program that had removed every other fluorescent lightbulb from the fixtures.
The office was a far cry from today’s Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) massive legal operations: Just Sam, then the General Counsel, his Deputy, Ralph Farb, and two other “General Attorneys,” Stuart Shelby and Janice Podolny. Stu, Janice, and I actually shared an office with three desks (but only two telephones).
And it was always “Sam” not “Samuel.” Sam was his legal name, and he was very proud of it. Perhaps he connected it with “Uncle Sam.”
In any event, one of his “pet peeves” was when unknowing folks addressed him as “Samuel” in memos or on legal documents. I remember him vigorously “blacking out” the offending “uel” with his pen. His other pet peeve was when the server put parmesan cheese on his daily lunchtime bowl of minestrone soup at theGAO cafeteria!
Remarkably, I had gotten the job without personal interview by Sam. I attributed this to recommendations by Sam’s good friend and my first mentor Maury Roberts, then Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”), and another friend of Sam’s, Leon Ullman, then Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel.
Working for Sam was like having a personal daily seminar in American immigration law from a really great professor. Sam had done it all. And, he took the time to explain everything to those working with him.
During his teens, Sam started at the very bottom of the Civil Service system as an “assistant messenger” with the U.S. Attorney in New York and then the INS on Ellis Island. According to Sam, he never he never made “full messenger.” But, he did rise to the top of the ranks of Civil Servants as General Counsel.
In between, Sam was an immigration inspector, chair of a board of special inquiry (the predecessor to today’s Immigration Courts), chief adjudicator, Assistant Commissioner for Adjudications, and District Director in New Orleans as well as serving in the Army during World War II and later as a Major in the Air Force Reserve. He knew the policies and the stories behind every regulation and operating instruction, as well as the history of all the immigration statutes from the 1924 Act on.
America’s immigrant heritage that Sam observed at Ellis Island and in his childhood neighborhood in Brooklyn greatly influenced his life. The 1975 movie “Hester Street,” about Jewish immigrants in New York in the early 20th century, was one Sam’s and his wife Betty’s favorites.
Sam loved providing clear, concise, practical, understandable legal advice to the INS Commissioner (then General Leonard Chapman, Jr., former Commandant of the Marine Corps) andvarious “operating divisions” of the INS in what was then known as the Central Office (“CO”). It likely came from his experience as a field officer who had to make decisions based on what came out of the CO. Gen. Chapman had Sam on “constant call” for legal advice.
Although Sam’s background was “old school up through the ranks,” he had a “new school” attitude and vision about the future of immigration law. Like his friend Maury Roberts at the BIA, Sam pioneered the use of the “Attorney General’s Honors Program” (of which I was a product) to bring a “new generation” of younger attorneys into the INS. That was later expanded by his immediate successors as General Counsel, David Crosland (Carter Administration) and Maurice C. “Mike” Inman, Jr. (Reagan Administration).
Sam had progressive views on using court decisions and common sense to make the immigration laws function better and easier to administer for everyone, at least in some small ways. One of the things we worked on was the “INS Efficiency Act,” originally introduced by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) in 1979 and eventually incorporated into the “Immigration & Nationality Act Amendments of 1981,” enacted into law by P.L. 97-116 (Dec. 29, 1981).
This made a number of “common sense” fixes that Sam had noted over the years both by studying appellate court decisions and from answering recurring questions from INS operating divisions and DOJ litigation divisions handling our cases. It harkens back to a bygone time when public service in immigration was about “doing the right thing” and “promoting the common good” rather than advancing restrictionist ideological agendas.
My all-time favorite project with Sam was the July 1976 legal opinion approving and recommending the use of “prosecutorial discretion” by INS enforcement officials. This provided a sound legal basis for the INS’s “deferred action” program. Later, it formed part of the basis for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) program that has so greatly benefitted both America and deserving young people while, at least for a short time, helping to bring some badly needed rationality, humanity, uniformity, and proper prioritization of resources to an all too often scattershot and out of control DHS enforcement program.
Although written by me, that opinion reflects the “essence of Sam” — enforcement with rationality, humanity, prudence, fairness, attention to the views of courts, and standards to prevent arbitrariness. A full copy of that 1976 memorandum is linked below. My initials are at the bottom of the last page.
In light of all the nonsense making the rounds today, our conclusion is worth keeping in mind:
The power of various officers of the Executive Branch to exercise prosecutorial discretion is inherent and does not depend on express statutory authorization. . . . [T]he Service’s attempts to set forth some standards for the exercise of prosecutorial discretion are particularly appropriate.
My time in the General Counsel’s Office with Sam was all too short. He retired in 1977. At the time, he had 38 years of Federal service, but was only 57-years-old, with several more distinguished careers in front of him.
Sam went on to become one of the “founding partners” and managing partner of the Washington, D.C. Office of the powerhouse national immigration firm Fragomen, Del Rey, & Bernsen, now the international law firm known as “Fragomen.” He also became a noted educator in the field, lecturing and writing for the American Immigration Lawyers Association (“AILA”) and serving as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Catholic University and American University. I hired some of his former students in various capacities in some of my “future incarnations.”
Along the way, Sam tried to “recruit” me for his firm. But, I wasn’t quite ready to make the jump. Later, however, we did “reunite” for a short “transition period” when I succeeded him as the managing partner of Fragomen DC in 1993.
What I remember most about Sam from our stint in private practice was how loyal his clients were and how much they trusted him with their fate and future. One of his greatest joys was working with students, young professionals, and student advisors on issues relating to F-1, J-1, and H-1 non-immigrant visas. We also did some projects relating to the interpretation of statutes and regulations that we had a role in drafting and enacting back in the General Counsel days. His clients and the Government officials he dealt with regarded Sam with reverence, as both the “ultimate authority” and the “total straight shooter,” a somewhat unusual combination for a lawyer in private practice.
Sam and I kept in touch for many years at AILA Conferences and other educational events, even after I rejoined Government in 1995 as Chair of the BIA. Sam was an avid tennis player, and from time to time I would run into folks who had met him in courts of both the tennis and legal variety. Indeed, Sam kindly served as the “featured speaker,” at my investiture as an Immigration Judge at the Arlington Immigration Court in June 2003.
Along with folks like Maury Roberts, Ralph Farb, Charlie Gordon, Irv Applemen, and Louisa Wilson, Sam was one of my mentors and one of the all-time greats of American law. He represented a constructive, scholarly, and humane view of public service that has all but disappeared from the scene. Yet, he also saw into the future and was able to “reinvent himself” in new and dynamic ways after leaving public service. I had to do some of the sameand always looked to Sam as a role model.
Sam’s decisions, opinions, scholarship, and humanity helped shape generations of American immigration law. His work both in and out of Government changed the lives of thousands of immigrants for the better and helped build our nation into the diverse country it is today. His many students and those he mentored over the years, like me, continued his legacy and formed the forerunner of the “New Due Process Army.”
America and the world are richer and better because of Sam’s life and contributions. Sam knew the law, perhaps better than any other, and he used it to further humane goals whenever possible. Would that we had more role models like Sam in positions of responsibility and authority today! Sam, thanks for everything, and may you rest in peace after a “life very well lived!”
Here is a link to our 1976 legal opinion on prosecutorial discretion:
NOT SO long ago, asylum seekers turned to the United States, seeking refuge from repressive states. Now the United States is one of those repressive states.
That’s the gist of a Canadian federal court ruling, which would scrap a 16-year-old bilateral treaty called the Safe Third Country Agreement, under which Canada and the United States each recognize the other as a safe place to seek refuge. Justice Ann Marie McDonald ruled that Canada’s practice of turning back third-country refugees who try to cross at official points of entry along the U.S.-Canada frontier — on the theory that they have already reached a safe harbor in the United States — no longer makes sense given the atrocious treatment to which they are subjected south of the border. Canada, she wrote, can no longer turn a blind eye to the reality that the United States denies decent and dignified treatment to asylum seekers.
Justice McDonald based her ruling partly on testimony from asylum seekers who described harrowing conditions of confinement in U.S. detention, to which they are automatically taken when turned back by Canada. One of them, a refugee from Ethiopia named Nedira Jemal Mustefa, recounted what she called a “terrifying, isolating and psychologically traumatic” experience at a “freezing” facility where she was held in upstate New York. Other testimony in the Canadian court provided evidence that detainees in U.S. facilities were denied access to counsel, phone calls and translators, and some were subjected to solitary confinement.
The judge found that the “accounts of the detainees demonstrate both physical and psychological suffering because of detention, and a real risk that they will not be able to assert asylum claims” in the United States.
None of this is surprising to advocates and others who have monitored the travails of asylum seekers, especially since President Trump took office. In the past two years, his anti-immigration policies have prompted more than 50,000 asylum seekers to cross into Canada outside official ports of entry, thereby skirting the treaty’s automatic-return provision — until the pandemic forced the border’s closing this spring. After arriving in Canada and undergoing security and medical screening, they have been allowed to work and receive basic benefits such as medical care as they await adjudication of their asylum claims.
Canada is among the United States’s closest allies; gratuitous America-bashing is not the norm there. That a Canadian judge would give a failing grade to this country’s commitment to human rights where they concern refugees is a damning rebuke.
Before her ruling takes effect, the judge gave the Canadian government six months to appeal, should it choose to do so. Until now, the treaty’s supporters have justified it on the grounds that it bars “asylum shopping” by refugees. The question facing the administration of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is whether its neighbor to the south still adheres to what Western democracies regard as the basic standards of dignity and decency on which the original treaty was based. The evidence suggests it does not.
***************************
Actually, this is a “Duh” for those of us who have been speaking out for the last three years about the Trump regime’s racist White Nationalist hate inspired anti-asylum, anti-immigrant, anti-human rights agenda. The only “shocker” is that neither the Congress nor the Article III Courts have put up meaningful resistance to these clearly illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral actions.
Basically, “Brown Lives Don’t Matter” to this gang of nativist thugs and their legislative and judicial enablers. Perhaps most disgustingly, the Supremes’ majority has been an eager participant in this “Dred Scottification” of “the other” based largely on race and covered by only the most transparent pretexts of “national emergency” and the like.
America needs not only a qualified, non-racist Executive, but also better qualified legislators and judges who reject institutionalized racism and hate masquerading as “emergency justifications” for suspending the rule of law and the Constitution as it applies to human rights, human lives, and human dignity. To state the obvious, our nation is disintegrating because far too many of those we have entrusted to govern reject the basic concept that equal justice for all, ending racism, and due process for all persons in the U.S. are both Constitutional requirements and moral imperatives.
This November, vote like your life and the future of America depend on it! Because they do!
“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.
“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.
“It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”
******************
That about sums it up!
Or, you could just say: “A kakistocracy led by a maliciously incompetent racist moron!”
This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
Trump administration officials said during a federal court hearing Friday that they have not “granted nor rejected” any applications for a program designed to protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation, but rather have put them “on hold” as the government discusses the future of the program.
The virtual hearing in the U.S. District Court in Maryland was the first time the administration addressed reports that the Department of Homeland Security was not accepting applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — despite a recent Supreme Court ruling and a federal judge’s order requiring the government to resume accepting applications.
“Although the applications will be received by the department, they will be neither granted nor rejected, and instead will be held, placed into a bucket pending a policy consideration that takes place and that now I can tell you is still ongoing at the department,” said Stephen Pezzi, a lawyer with the Justice Department.
Pezzi also said that “some or all” of the applications from DACA beneficiaries looking to leave the country and return lawfully had been wrongly rejected when they should have been held.
“Going forward, in just the last few hours, it has been straightened out at least prospectively such that any request for DACA-based advance parole will also be held in the pending bucket,” Pezzi said.
[[Supreme Court blocks Trump’s bid to end DACA, a win for undocumented ‘dreamers’]]
U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm, who ordered last week that the government comply with court directives to restore the DACA program, ruled Friday that the Trump administration must clarify the program’s status to the public within 30 days. He instructed Pezzi to confirm by next Friday whether the government could commit to updating its U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website and sending receipts to DACA applicants who are confused about whether their applications have been processed.
Grimm also instructed the plaintiffs and defendants to propose a schedule for a briefing on whether the government should be held in contempt.
. . . .
********************
Read the rest of Emily’s article at the link.
Emily, a former Post intern, is a relatively new addition to the reporting staff, but already showing “superstar potential.” She has shared in a Pulitzer Prize as part of a Team for Breaking News Reporting. Let’s hope that she keeps reporting on immigration issues as part of her local news beat!
Time to start taking names and throwing the criminals on the DHS payroll in jail! Their overall performance on DACA — a highly beneficial program favored by the vast majority of Americans that is actually helping us get through the pandemic — would have been a “no brainer” for a competent Administration. Instead, the “malicious incompetents” at DHS are showing why under their rancid leadership USCIS has become morally as well as fiscally bankrupt.
“Humanity in a bucket” is a very accurate description of the Trump regime’s racist, xenophobic, intentionally cruel, and, perhaps most of all, dehumanizing immigration polices. They diminish the humanity of every American every day they remain in office.
