"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
Caged Badger PHOTO: Miss Shari Creative Commons License
🏀MARCH MADNESS:Bucky Game, But Bears Got Game — Baylor Knocks Badgers Off Dance Floor! ☹️
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
March 21, 2021
The Wisconsin Badgers (18-13) made it respectable. But, the #1-seed Baylor Bears seized control early in the first halfof the South Second Round Game from West Lafayette, IN on their way to a convincing 76-63 victory. The Bears thus move on to the Sweet 16, while the Badgers’ season ends.
The three-point shot, which was the Badgers “best friend” in their round one victory over the North Carolina Tar Heels on Friday night, abandoned the Badgers and went over to the Bears. Baylor drained 8 of 17 threes for 47.1%, while Wisconsin shot only 37% from behind the arc, missing 13 of 21 attempts. Turnovers, often a Badgers strength, were their achilles heel this afternoon, with the Badgers committing 13 to the Bears’ four.
Baylor led 42-29 at the half. To their credit, the Badgers hung in and cut the lead to seven points several times in the second half. But, they couldn’t get any closer. After playing consistently against North Carolina, the Badgers reverted to their regular season form with several long “dry spells” that helped seal their fate. Overall, however, Baylor was just too good.
The Badgers were led by seniors D’Mitrik Trice (12 pts.), Nate Reuters (11 pts.), and freshman guard Jonathan Davis (10 pts.). The victorious Bears were paced by junior guard Matthew Mayer, who came off the bench to score 17, eight above his season average.
Although the Badgers were not expected to make the “Sweet 16,” they joined a growing list of Big-10 failures in this year’s NCAA Men’s tournament. Just before the start of the Wisconsin-Baylor game, the #8 Loyola Ramblers (led in spirit by their #1 fan, the famous “Sister Jean”) dominated #1-seed Illinois 71-58, in another “nobody saw this coming” upset. Of the nineBig-10 teams invited to the dance, only Rutgers, Michigan, Iowa, and Maryland remain alive, all with second round games coming up.
Congratulations to Coach Greg Gard and his team on another winning season and NCAA Tournament birth.
Not all news was bad for Wisconsin sports over the weekend. The Badger Women’s hockey team beat Northeastern on Saturday to win the “Frozen Four” and the NCAA Championship!
Bucky Came Out Hungry & Ferocious With A Tar Heel Meal On The Menu, Creative Commons Licenses
🏀MARCH MADNESS: BADGERS COME OUT SNARLING, DEVOUR TAR HEELS IN DANCE OPENER, 85-62!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
March 20,2021
After staggering into the NCAA Tournament, losers of five of their last six, the senior-laden Wisconsin Badgers (18-12) looked for at least one night like they belong in the BigDance.
The 9-seed Badgers finally put together a full 40-minute game, eviscerating the 8-seed North Carolina Tar Heels (18-11) in every facet on their way to a very convincing 85-62 win in the first round of the of the NCAA South Regional before a COVID-protocol-limited crowd on Purdue’s home court in West Lafayette, Indiana. The were some Badger fans in the stands, andthey experienced a rare Badger blowout inflicted on a credible opponent.
Senior guards Brad Davison (29 points) and D’Mitrik Trice (21 points) led the #25 Badgers, who drilled 13 of 27 three-pointers. No other Badger was in double figures, although seniors Micah Potter and Aleem Ford chipped in nine apiece.
The Tar Heels’ front line was supposed to dominate. But, the Badgers controlled the boards 37-34, including 28 defensive rebounds to keep the Tar Heels reeling all night. For North Carolina’s Hall of Fame coach, the legendary Roy Williams, this was his initial first round failure after 29 consecutive W’s.
Of course, this year’s mediocre Tar Heel squad, from the middle of an underwhelming ACC pack, yet not without some young talent, bore little resemblance to Williams’s championship-caliber teams of yesterday year. Bucky came into the season with great promise, ranked in the top ten, primarily on the strength of the senior core coming off a Big-10 co-championship in the COVID-halted 2020 season.
But, the Badgers struggled through the Big-10 season, finishing with a lackluster 10-10 record (17-12 overall), good for only a 6th place finish in conference. Mostly significantly, they were 0-8 against the conference’s premier teams: Illinois, Michigan, Ohio State, and Iowa. They clawed their way into the Big Dance largely by beating up on non-conference foes and Big-10 bottom feeders.
The Badgers led wire-to-wire on Friday night, coming out strong and energetic and keeping up the pressure, leading 40-24 at the half. Nevertheless, Badger fans couldn’t relax because, unlike past Wisconsin squads, this team throughout the season blew some sizable leads with long dry spells that let their opponents seize control.
Last night was, however, totally different. Although the Tar Heels came out with a much improved offensive showing in the second half, particularly from their “bigs,” the Badgers basically matched or exceeded them basket for basket to maintain, and even expand their halftime lead. The Tar Heels never got closer than 12 points, and the Badgers settled at a comfortable 14-18 lead for most of the stanza.
Most pundits had given Coach Greg Gard’s Badgers a chance against Williams’s slightly favored, yet highly inconsistent, Carolina squad. But, few, if any, saw this complete and convincing blowout coming.
So, at least for one night, the Badgers looked like a team that belongs in March Madness, rather than an imposter whose invitation suggested a past reputation for consistent excellence rather than the current less-than-inspiring group who limped into the NCAAs, after losing to Iowa for the third straight time in the conference tournament.
It’s probably a good thing for the Big-10. Although generally considered the “premier conference” in America during this COVID-infected season, two of the conference’s highly seeded teams, Ohio State (#2) and Purdue (#5), suffered shocking upsets on the first day. Another perennial power, Michigan State, blew a big lead and lost to a lightly regarded UCLA squad in the tournament “play-in” game.
The Badgers should savor this moment of redemption. Because, their dance is going to get much more challenging tomorrow afternoon when they face the #1 seed Baylor Bears (23-2) at 2:40 PM from West Lafayette. The game will be on CBS and the Bears are an early six point favorite.
In an absolutely stunning statement, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) admitted in a radio interview that he wasn’t frightened by white insurrectionists’ attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 — but said he would have been “concerned” had they been Black.
Johnson accurately predicted that his racist statement to conservative radio host Joe Pags on Thursday would get him “into trouble.”
The senator noted that he has been criticized for previous remarks that he “never felt threatened” by the attack.
He added: “Now, had the tables been turned, Joe, and this’ll get me in trouble — had the tables been turned, and President Trump won the election, and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”
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Read the full article at the link.
Oh Wisconsin, how far you have fallen to inflict this racist idiot on our nation!
Henry “Hammerin Hank” Aaron Hall of Famer 1934-2021 Creative Commons License
Home Run King grew up in the racist Jim Crow South, liked playing minor league ball in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, thought “Milwaukee was the best thing that ever happened to him,” needed bodyguards to open his mail, and felt it unsafe for his kids to go to the ballpark in Atlanta!
Henry Aaron, who rose up from the depths of Southern poverty to become one of the towering figures in baseball history as well as a bittersweet symbol of both American racial intolerance and triumph, has died.He was 86.
When he retired in 1976 after a 23-year major league career with the National League Braves (spending 1954 to 1965 in Milwaukee, 1966-74 in Atlanta) before playing his final two seasons with the American LeagueMilwaukee Brewers, Aaron had amassed staggering offensive numbers, holding the career records for most home runs (755), RBIs (2,297), total bases (6,856), games played (3,298), at-bats (12,364) and plate appearances (13,941). He was second behind Ty Cobb in hits (3,771), though he held the NL record.
He is still the career leader in total bases and RBIs and is third in hits behind Pete Rose and Cobb. He was the first player in baseball history to amass 500 career home runs and 3,000 hits and the last player in history to be promoted from the Negro Leagues to the major leagues. Aaron appeared in a record 24 All-Star Games, won batting titles in 1956 and 1959, led the league in home runs four times, was named National League MVP in 1957, and twice appeared in the World Series, winning the title in 1957 when the Braves beat theNew York Yankeesin seven games.
Aaron was a magnificent player whose career paralleled more charismatic, spectacular players such as Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, whose brilliance often overshadowed his prolific but workmanlike style, but it was his three-year pursuit of Babe Ruth’s career record of 714 home runs that elevated him into an enduring national figure. The record-breaking home run, which came in the fourth inning offLos Angeles Dodgersleft-hander Al Downing on April 8, 1974, at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, provided one of the most lasting images in the sport and alsoone of its most poignant moments.
For years, Aaron had received thousands of letters, many of them racist, and many of which contained death threats against him and his family. The image of him rounding second base escorted by two jubilant white fans who had leaped onto the field became one of the most iconic in sports. Less known was that, as Aaron rounded the bases, his bodyguard, Calvin Wardlaw, sat in the stands, his hand secretly on his revolver, deciding in an instant whether the two young fans were hostile in their intent and whether he would shoot them.
Over the years, Aaron would be praised for his quiet resolve and dignity in the face of the threats. He would dine with international heads of state and every sitting president from Gerald Ford to Barack Obama, but the negative response from so many of his countrymen was a scar he would carry for the rest of his life.
“It was supposed to be the greatest triumph of my life, but I was never allowed to enjoy it. I couldn’t wait for it to be over,” he once said. “The only reason that some people didn’t want me to succeed was because I was a Black man.”
Aaron held the record for 33 years until Barry Bonds passed him on Aug. 7, 2007, and although he is currently second on the career home runs list, behind Bonds’ 762, the taint of the steroid era leaves Aaron in many people’s minds as baseball’s last legitimate home run champion
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Read the rest of Howard’s tribute at the link.
I can remember listening at night to the Milwaukee Braves broadcasts on my very own AM radio, tubes glowing brightly through the plastic cover, to Blaine Walsh and Earl Gillespie with the play-by-play on WTMJ (“Miller, Kent, and Clark take you out to the park”). Every time “Hammerin’ Hank” came to bat, particularly with runners on base, I held my breath for something great to happen. And, often, it did! I even saw Hank play in person with the Braves a number of times at the old Milwaukee County Stadium!
Went out into the back yard, donned my prized Braves’ jacket, and red and blue “M” hat, and slammed a few whiffle balls into the neighbor’s yard, imagining I was #44 hitting a game winner and rounding the basis in triumph. A far cry from my lack of real-life skills at the game! Never could hit a fastball, or any other kind of pitch for that matter. And, I was very slow.
During the 1957 World Series vs. the mighty Yankees (Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, et al) we were even allowed to listen over the school loud speaker system. I never forgave the Braves for pulling up stakes and leaving for Atlanta in 1966 (after a prolonged court battle). Didn’t follow baseball much for many years after that!
Of course, at that time the “whitewashed, sanitized history and reporting” in Milwaukee didn’t give a hint about the vile racism going on behind the scenes, even disgracefully on the club that Hank was propelling toward its sole World Series Championship. Joe Adcock — what a total racist jerk — I take back every time I cheered for you!
Thanks for all the great moments, Hank! Sorry for what you had to endure.
🏈ON TO THE NFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: PACK OVERPOWERS RAMS 32-18 @ LAMBEAU!— “O Line” Shines In Mauling “#1 Defense”
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
Jan. 17, 2021. The Green Bay Packers left no doubt in the perhaps overhyped “battle” between the #1 offense and the #1 defense. Likely NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers threw for two touchdowns and ran for another, laying an impressive “juke” in a hapless L.A. Rams’ defender in the process, as the Pack rolled.
Led by running backs Aaron Jones, Jamaal Williams, and AJ Dillon, the Pack gashed the Rams’ D for 188 yards on the ground, on the way to 488 yards of total offense. The defense sacked Rams’ QB Jared Goff four times and generally held the Rams’ offense in check when it counted.
The Rams basically were playing without their defensive leader and superstar Aaron Donald, ineffective in limited action (obviously should not have played at all) because of a previous injury. His only notable play was a really dumb 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that helped keep a Packer drive going in the first half. But, even a healthy Donald couldn’t have turned the tide on Saturday evening.
An under-touted aspect of the Pack’s dominating performance was the offensive line. They actually were without their best player, All-Pro left tackle David Bakhtairi. No matter! His replacement Billy Turner, Elgton Jenkins, one of the most versatile and underrated players in the league, and his buddies Corey Lindsey, Lucas Patrick, Rick Wagner, Mercedes Lewis, and Robert Tonyan dominated the Rams’ supposedly fearsome defense. Not only did they open big holes at the line of scrimmage for the running game, but also gave Rodgers spectacular protection.
AR has one of the “quickest releases” in football history. But, on Saturday he didn’t really need it. He had all day on most drop-backs. Indeed, except for a failed and flailing “jersey grab,” he was barely touched all night. And, when Rodgers has time, he almost never loses.
The Pack now needs to put this one behind them and concentrate on next week: The NFC Championship Game, one step from Rodgers’s second Super Bowl. Although the Pack also reached the championship game last season, they laid a big egg in getting literally run out of the stadium by San Francisco.
Interestingly, many, including me, thought at that point the Pack would have to do a major offseason “rebuild” to remain competitive with the 49ers and the other NFC “up and comers.” But, much to everyone’s surprise and consternation, the was no such “rebuild” during the offseason. Instead, in a highly controversial and much criticized move, the Pack drafted QB Jordan Love, in what was (wrongly) thought to be the “beginning of the end” for Rodgers in Green Bay.
What did happen, however, was that two of the “best minds in football” — Coach Matt LeFleur (28-7) and AR— sat down with the coaching staff over the winter and designed what is now the best and most feared offense in football — nearly unstoppable! (And we can’t forget wide receiver Devante Adams, whose amazing talent and unfailingly great instincts have madehim and and Rodgers the most effective combination in football.)
Seems like the “pieces were there” all the time — it was the “melding of minds” between Rodgers and the coaching staff that was the “missing link.” Even the Pack defense, with most of the same players who too often came up short last year, is holding teams to under 20 points average over the last seven games — no mean feat an an offensive-minded league.
No matter who wins between the Saints and the Bucs this evening, the Pack will be facing a formidable challenge and a future Hall of Fame QB next week in Drew Brees (Saints) or Tom Brady (Bucs).
For the record, the Brady and the Bucs dominated the Pack earlier in the season in what was undoubtedly Green Bay’s worst outing. On the other hand, Rogers and the Pack narrowly out-dueled Brees and the Saints in a classic late-September showdown where both threw for three TDS.
But, this is January, where previous results don’t necessarily predict the future. It should be a great one at Lambeau next Sunday afternoon (projected 17-26 degrees with snow flurries).
Jacob Soboroff NBC Correspondent Jacob Soboroff at the ABC News Democratic Debate National Constitution Center. Philadelphia, PA. Creative Commons License
Jacob Soboroff reports for NBC News:
Inside the effort to provide mental health care to migrant families
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Seneca Family of Agencies provides mental health care to migrant families separated by the Trump administration. NBC News’ Jacob Soboroff reports on the obstacles faced by the nonprofit in locating families.
Jacob and his terrific NBC News colleague Julia Edwards Ainsley have been at the forefront of exposing the irreparable human carnage and lasting trauma caused by the regime’s unlawful, racist, White Nationalist immigration policies (some of which were unconscionably “greenlighted” by an immoral and irresponsible Supremes GOP majority that views themselves and their rotten to the core, inhumane, right-wing ideology as above the needless human suffering they further and encourage).
The “perps” like,”Gonzo” Sessions, Grauleiter Miller, Kirstjen Nielsen, “Big Mac With Lies” McAleenan, Noel Francisco, Rod Rosenstein, et al, walk free while the victims continue to suffer and others, like the Christ-like folks at Seneca Family of Agencies, are left to pick up the pieces! How is this “justice?”
Our national policies have truly abandoned Christ’s values of self-sacrifice, mercy, generosity in spirit and deed, courage in the face of oppression, human compassion, justice, and assistance for the most vulnerable among us under the perverted and immoral “leadership” of a man and his party without humane values or respect for truth who stand for absolutely nothing that is decent in the world.
As Americans suffer and die from the pandemic he mocked, downplayed, and mishandled; unemployed Americans are dissed and shortchanged by his party of underachieving, out of touch fat cats, liars, cowards, and truth deniers; asylum seekers needlessly suffer in squalid camps in Mexico; refugees scorned, unlawfully and immorally abandoned and abused by the world’s richest country face persecution, torture, despair, and death; and non-criminals rot in DHS’s “New American Gulag,” the immoral Grifter-in-Chief lives it up at taxpayer expense for one last Christmas at his Florida resort; fumes about a fair and square election that he lost big time; savors a rash of holiday executions; delays bipartisan COVID relief; ferments treason against our republic; and pardons a wide range of scumbags, felons, war criminals, family members, cronies, fraudsters, and other totally undeserving characters.
But, there is hope for our world at Christmas: 27 days and counting to the end of the kakistocracy, expulsion of the unqualified con-man and his motley crew of criminals and cronies, and the ascension of a real President and Vice President, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, to lead us, and perhaps our world, out of the current mess to a kinder, brighter future. That might be the best present of all this Christmas.
Patrick Marley reports for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
MADISON — Shirley Abrahamson, the first woman to serve on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and its long-time chief justice, died Saturday after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, her son said Sunday. She was 87.
During her four decades on the court, Abrahamson developed a national reputation as a leader in liberal judicial thought.
“Among jurists I have encountered in the United States and abroad, Shirley Abrahamson is the very best,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in a 2019 video message played at a ceremony for Abrahamson.
“As lawyer, law teacher and judge, she has inspired legions to follow in her way, to strive constantly to make the legal system genuinely equal and accessible to all who dwell in our fair land,” said Ginsburg, who died this September, just three months before Abrahamson.
Democratic Gov. Patrick Lucey appointed Abrahamson to the state Supreme Court in 1976 after Chief Justice Horace Wilkie died. Abrahamson stayed on the court for 43 years, longer than anyone else in state history.
“When I joined the court, I was given a voice — a voice that I have not hesitated to use,” Abrahamson said in a 2018 statement announcing she would not seek another term the following year. “The best expression of appreciation I can give the people who have elected and repeatedly re-elected me is to continue to speak with the clarity, forthrightness and compassion that come from a life I have tried to devote to service and to justice for all.”
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Read the rest of the compelling story of Chief Justice Abrahamson at the link.
I had then Professor Abrahamson for Tax Law at Wisconsin Law back around 1972.While she didn’t inspire me to become a tax lawyer, I remember her as a brilliant intellect and a formidable presence in class. A Professor whose every word you wanted to record. She also made a very complex subject understandable. That’s something I’ve always tried to do in the field of immigration.
I last saw her at a UW Law Reunion a few years ago. She was reminiscing to our group on her career and related to us how although she graduated at the top of her law school class, she had no job offers because of her gender. While I found her rise to the very top of our profession inspirational, I also felt outraged by the bias and stupidity of those who passed over such a brilliant intellect, who also had great leadership qualities, based solely on her gender.
R.I.P. ChiefJustice. You inspired generations of us to continue the fight for social justice and equal justice for all.
I feel privileged to have had you for a teacher and role model.
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”“Justice” Star Chamber StyleMe
Friends, you know, and I know, what is the biggest crisis facing the American justice system today. One that undermines and threatens racial justice, social justice, equality before the law, voting rights, American values, and indeed the very foundations of our democratic institutions and our justice system.
It’s imperative that our incoming Administration and its leaders fully recognize the overwhelming importance and extreme urgency of immediately ending the ongoing, deadly, and dangerous “Clown Show” at EOIR – the Executive Office for Immigration Review.
Under the defeated but not yet departed regime, EOIR has been weaponized by White Nationalist nativists to function as America’s Star Chambers. Once envisioned by its founders, including me, as a potential “jewel in the crown” of American justice, EOIR now has become an ungodly nightmare of anti-due process, anti-immigrant propaganda, bad judges, bogus stats, uncontrollable backlogs, malicious incompetence, stupid regulations, daily doses of irrationality, abuse of private attorneys, and institution of “worst practices.” But, it doesn’t have to be that way! No, not at all!
With courage, bold action, and, most important, the right people in place in leadership and key judicial positions, EOIR can be fixed: sooner, not later. The Immigration Courts can, indeed, through teamwork and innovation become the world’s best courts guaranteeing fairness and due process for all, promoting a model of best practices for the Federal Judiciary as a whole, and providing a trained and ready source of due-process oriented judges with strong immigration, human rights, and equal justice backgrounds for the Article III Judiciary and public policy positions.
EOIR will then be positioned for the essential transition to an Article I independent U.S. Immigration Court when we have the votes.
But, it will require a far more progressive, visionary, and aggressive approach than past Democratic Administrations. We must immediately (and legally) clear out the deadwood and get the problem solvers from the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”) — mostly now in the NGO, clinical, and private sectors, folks like you and your colleagues — in place to fix this horribly broken system.
Pete Dougherty writes in the Green Bay Press Gazette:
Paul Hornung was a Vince Lombardi favorite and maybe the most important player on the famed coach’s early championship teams with the Green Bay Packers.
Lombardi loved Hornung for his versatile skill set and clutch play as the featured left halfback in the Packers’ offense, as well as for his fun-loving off-field persona that helped get Hornung the nickname “Golden Boy.”
Hornung, who also won the 1956 Heisman Trophy, died Friday in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky at age 84 after a long battle with dementia, the Louisville Sports Commission announced.
“The Green Bay Packers Family today is mourning the loss of Paul Hornung,” Packers President/CEO Mark Murphy said in a statement. “Paul was one of our special alumni whose mere presence in Lambeau Field electrified the crowd during his returns. His performances in big games were unparalleled and over time were appreciated by generations of Packers fans. He played a key role in four of Vince Lombardi’s championship teams of the 1960s.
“With Paul’s passing, we are deeply saddened that we continue to lose our greats from the Lombardi era, a run of unprecedented success in the National Football League.
“We extend our deepest condolences to Paul’s wife, Angela, and his family and friends.”
Though Hornung never put up big rushing numbers in the NFL – his single-season high for rushing was only 681 yards – he filled the key position in Lombardi’s offense as a runner in the famed Lombardi sweep and option passer. He was a big back (6-feet-2 and 215 pounds) with a nose for the goal line and for much of his career also was the Packers’ kicker.
His 176 points in the 12-game 1960 season was an NFL record that stood until 2006, 29 years after the league had moved to a 16-game schedule. He was voted the NFL’s most-valuable player that season.
Hornung also was voted a member of the NFL’s all-decade team of the 1960s and into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1986 after a nine-year career that ended in 1966. But perhaps the greatest tribute to him came from Lombardi himself in his two-volume book, “Vince Lombardi on Football,” which was published in 1973.
“Paul may have been the best all-around back ever to play football,” Lombardi wrote.
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Read the full obit at the link. More pictures of Paul’s career are also available on the link.
The man could run, catch, pass, and kick! Along with quarterback Bart Starr and running back Jim Taylor, Paul was part of probably the greatest Hall of Fame backfield ever!
His colorful off-field exploits included a one year suspension (along with the Lions’ Alex Karras) for betting on games; a stint as a “Marlboro Man” (obviously before such ads were banned); service in the U.S. Army (he got leave to play in the 1961 NFL Championship game — he scored a then-record 19 points); and numerous curfew violations.
I remember watching on B&W TV when Hornung broke the NFL scoring record on his way setting a new mark that stood for decades in a 1960 rout (41-13) of George Halas’s hated Chicago Bears in Chicago. One reason why the record stood so long, even when NFL seasons were expanded from 12 to 14 and then 16 games, was that Hornung was perhaps the last player to score touchdowns by running and catching passes while also kicking field goals and extra points that season. Hard to imagine in this age of specialization! And, I might add that the Packers scored lots of points that season!
Here’s a video clip from that famous game. The Pack are in dressed in their white away uniforms and Hornung is #5:
Herb Adderley, a Hall of Fame cornerback who was a part of a record six championship teams with the Green Packers and Dallas Cowboys, has died. He was 81.
His death was confirmed by the Packers, but details on the date, place and cause of death were not disclosed.
Mr. Adderley played in four of the first six Super Bowls and won five NFL championships with Green Bay and one with Dallas during his 12-year career. But he was always a Packer at heart.
“I’m the only man with a Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl ring who doesn’t wear it. I’m a Green Bay Packer,” he said in the book “Distant Replay,” a memoir by former Packers teammate Jerry Kramer.
Along with former Packer teammates Fuzzy Thurston and Forrest Gregg, Mr. Adderley was one of four players in pro football history to play on six championship teams. Former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is the other. Mr. Adderley was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1980.
Bart Starr, the Hall of Fame quarterback and a former Packers teammate, once called Mr. Adderley the “greatest cornerback to ever play the game.”
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Read the full obit at the link.
What a graceful, thrilling, clutch player! And, he could return kicks!
Like many of the Packers from the “Lombardi Era” he went on to do other worthwhile things after retirement.
Here’s an array of reports on how America under the Trump regime has joined the ranks of dictatorships, torturers, child abusers, persecutors, and human rights criminals!
Eugene Robinson Opinion Columnist Washington Post Source: WashPost Website
Eugene Robinson @ WashPost:
What kind of people are we? As a society, are we so decadent and insecure that we show “toughness” by deliberately being cruel to innocent children? Is this what our nation has come to? Or are we better than that?
This election demands we answer those questions. The choice between President Trump and Joe Biden is not just political. It is also moral. And perhaps nothing more starkly illustrates the moral dimension of that decision than the Trump administration’s policy of kidnapping children at the southern U.S. border, ripping them away from their families — and doing so for no reason other than to demonstrate Trump’s warped vision of American strength.
We learned this week that some of those separations will probably be permanent. As NBC News first reported, 545 boys and girls taken as many as three years ago — the children of would-be immigrants and asylum seekers, mostly from Central America — have not been reunited with their parents and may never see their families again.
These are not among the nearly 3,000 families separated at the border in 2018, when children were kept in cages like animals or shipped away to facilities across the country, hundreds or thousands of miles from the border. We now know, thanks to the American Civil Liberties Union and other pro bono lawyers, that an additional 1,500 children were torn away from their families beginning in 2017, when the Trump administration conducted a trial run of the separation policy.
Please think about that. The shocking scenes we saw two years ago did not result from a sudden spasm of presidential anger. They didn’t stem from a Fox News segment Trump might have seen one evening. Rather, the administration rehearsed this form of cruelty.
What the administration did not plan for was how to reunite the children taken in 2017 with their families. Many of the parents were deported, and their children were placed in shelters around the country, then ostensibly released to parents or guardians, placements that the ACLU is still trying to confirm.
[Our Democracy in Peril: A series on the damage Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term]
The ACLU and other organizations have sent investigators to towns and villages in Central America in an attempt to find the kidnapped children’s families — an effort complicated not just by time and distance, but also by the covid-19 pandemic. Parents of 545 children have not been found, the ACLU reported this week.
Disturbingly, the Department of Homeland Security suggested that some of the parents declined to get their children back so they could remain in the United States. Keep in mind that most of these families were seeking asylum from deadly violence in their home countries. The Trump administration changed immigration guidelines to make it unlikely that the families would ultimately be allowed to stay in the United States, but federal law gives them the right to apply for asylum and to have their cases heard. They did nothing wrong. They should never have been asked to choose between parenting their children and getting them to safety — not by their home countries, and not by the United States.
Trump’s racism and xenophobia have been hallmarks of his presidency from the beginning, so perhaps it should be no surprise that he would preside over such an outrage. But he didn’t do this by himself. He had plenty of help.
Former attorney general Jeff Sessions seized an opportunity to make his rabid antipathy toward Hispanic immigration into policy. White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, a former Sessions aide in the Senate, was the architect of Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. Then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly said in 2018 that the children taken would be “taken care of — put into foster care or whatever.” Former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said last year that she regretted that “information flow and coordination to quickly reunite the families was clearly not in place” — but not the separations themselves.
President Donald Trump’s administration started and carried out a policy that took more than 4,000 children from their parents, at least 545 of whom are still split apart years later. But at Thursday’s debate, the president insisted that he did nothing wrong at all ― blaming his Democratic predecessors and even insisting the kids are doing fine.
“They are so well taken care of,” Trump said of the children taken from their parents by his administration. “They’re in facilities that were so clean.”
Trump’s first term was marked by a full-out assault on immigration, both legal and unauthorized. The most dramatic was his “zero tolerance” policy on unauthorized border-crossing, used in a 2017 pilot program and expanded more broadly in 2018, that led to criminal prosecution of parents and locking up their kids separately. Splitting up families was intentional and calculated, according to multiple reports.
Thanks to mass public outrage and a court order, Trump was forced to stop his family separation policy. Most families were reunited, but the American Civil Liberties Union, which was part of the lawsuit against the government that stopped the policy, said this week that at least 545 kids are still away from their parents.
“Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated,” Democratic nominee Joe Biden said during the debate. “And now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. It’s criminal.”
Washington Post Columnist Ruth Marcus, moderates a panel discussion about chronic poverty with Education Secretary John B. King and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, during the National Association of Counties at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park, in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016. U.S. Department of Agriculture photo by Lance Cheung.
Ruth Marcus @ WashPost:
545.
That is the number of children still separated from their families by the Trump administration — separated deliberately, cruelly and recklessly. They might never be reunited with their parents again. Even if they are, the damage is unimaginable and irreparable.
545.
Even one would be too many. Each one represents a unique tragedy. Imagine being ripped from your parents, or having your child taken from you. Imagine the desperation that the parents feel, the trauma inflicted on their children.
545.
That number represents an indelible stain on President Trump and every individual in his administration who implemented this policy, flawed at the conception and typically, gruesomely incompetent in the execution. It is, perhaps in the technical sense but surely in the broader one, a crime against humanity. It is torture.
545.
That number — I will stop repeating it, yet it cannot be repeated enough — represents a moral challenge and responsibility for the next administration. If Joe Biden is elected president, he must devote the maximum resources of the federal government to fixing this disaster. The United States broke these families; it must do whatever it takes to help them heal.
Nothing like that would happen in a second Trump term, because Trump himself doesn’t care. He doesn’t grasp the horror that he oversaw. He doesn’t comprehend the policy, and he is incapable of feeling the pain it inflicted.
Those truths could not have been clearer cut than during Thursday night’s debate.
Moderator Kristen Welker of NBC News asked the president a simple question: “How will these families ever be reunited?”
First, Trump misstated the situation: “Their children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they’re brought here, and they used to use them to get into our country.”
No. These are children separated from their families, not separated from smugglers. They are children brought by their parents in desperate search of a better life, desperate enough that they would take the risk of the dangerous journey.
Then Trump pivoted to the irrelevant: “We now have as strong a border as we’ve ever had. We’re over 400 miles of brand new wall. You see the numbers. And we let people in, but they have to come in legally.”
Welker persisted: “But how will you reunite these kids with their families, Mr. President?”
Trump responded by pointing his finger at his predecessor: “Let me just tell you, they built cages. You know, they used to say I built the cages, and then they had a picture in a certain newspaper and it was a picture of these horrible cages and they said look at these cages, President Trump built them, and then it was determined they were built in 2014. That was him.”
This is typical Trumpian deflection, bluster undergirded by ignorance. The “cages” are ugly but irrelevant to the topic at hand: the deliberately cruel plan to deter border-crossing by separating children from parents. That was a Trump administration special, implemented with callous sloppiness and so extreme that even the Trump administration abandoned it.
Welker, for the third time: “Do you have a plan to reunite the kids with their families?”
At which point Trump made clear that he did not: “We’re trying very hard, but a lot of these kids come out without the parents, they come over through cartels and through coyotes and through gangs.” The children, he added later, “are so well taken care of, they’re in facilities that were so clean.”
The third and final presidential debate gave Donald Trump and Joe Biden the opportunity to make their final pitch to the American people before the 2020 election. For the Democratic nominee, that meant driving home the point that he believes in science, that he’ll take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously, that climate change is real, and that systemic racism must be dealt with. For Trump, it meant making it clear that in addition to being a science-denying, QAnon-promoting dimwit, he’s also an actual monster who thinks separating small children from their parents, in some cases permanently, is absolutely fine.
Asked by moderated Kristen Welker about the news that parents of 545 children separated at the border—60 of whom are under the age of five—cannot be located, Trump defended the policy and gave no explanation for how the government plans to find these people and reunite their families. “Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they’re brought here and they used to use them to get into our country,” Trump said, which is objectively false, as they are brought here by their parents, which is why it’s called the family separation policy. “We now have as strong a border as we’ve ever had. We’re over 400 miles of brand new wall. You see the numbers and we let people in but they have to come in legally.”
Noting that Trump hadn’t answered the question, Welker pressed: “But how will you unite these kids with their families?”
“They built cages, they used to say I built cages…that was him,” Trump said, pointing to Biden and referring to the fact that the Obama administration did build temporary enclosures but failing, naturally, to mention that his predecessor did not separate families.
“Do you have a plan to reunite the kids with their parents?” Welker asked a third time. Again, Trump responded by claiming that the children “come without the parents, they come over through cartels and through coyotes and through gangs.”
At this point, Joe Biden was given a chance to weigh in and used his time to describe the policy implemented by Trump as the horror show all non-sociopaths know it to be. “Parents, their kids were ripped from their arms and they were separated and now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone, nowhere to go. It’s criminal.”
Then Trump interjected with what he apparently believed was an important point that would cast his administration in a much more favorable light and perhaps might even win it some awards or sainthood by the Catholic church. “Kristen, I will say this,” he told the moderator, of the children stolen from their parents. “They’re so well taken care of. They’re in facilities that are so clean.
With regard to that claim, NBC News reporter Jacob Soboroff weighed in on that after the debate, telling Rachel Maddow: “I was one of the reporters I guess the president mentioned, they invited me to go to the epicenter of this policy…what I saw was little children sitting on concrete floors, covered by mylar blankets, supervised by security contractors in a watchtower, it makes me sick every time I recall it. And Physicians for Human Rights…called this torture…the American Academy of Pediatrics called this state-sanctioned child abuse, and the president of the United States I guess interprets that as children being well taken care of.”
Jacob Soboroff NBC Correspondent Jacob Soboroff at the ABC News Democratic Debate National Constitution Center. Philadelphia, PA. Creative Commons License
Here’s a video from NBC New’sJacob Soboroff, who has actually been inside “Trump’s Kiddie Gulag.” Surprise spoiler: It’s not “nice.” More like “torture” and “child abuse.”
There is neither moral nor legal justification for what the Trump regime has done to asylum seekers and other migrants over the past four years as part of their racist, White Nationalist, nativist agenda. But, we can show that we’re a better country than his horrible vision by voting him and all of his enablers out of office! Vote ‘Em out, vote ‘Em out!
In more than three decades of coaching, I’ve come to learn one thing: You cannot be afraid to take a player off the field if it will help the team.
Donald Trump said he alone could fix the challenges facing our country. But as we’ve seen during these past four years, he’s in over his head — and we’re all paying the price for that. It’s time to take President Trump off the field.
Months into this pandemic, coronavirus cases are continuing to skyrocket in Wisconsin. More than 1,500 Wisconsinites have lost their lives to the pandemic. Green Bay, a city I love dearly, is seeing some of the highest infection rates in the country. Hospitals are overflowing, people are hurting, and families are needlessly suffering. More than 4,000 fewer people in Green Bay are employed now, compared to when President Trump took office. Far too many small businesses have had to close their doors for good. And the heart and soul of Green Bay — our game days with thousands of fans at Lambeau Field — are no more.
President Trump’s failure to mount a forceful response to the coronavirus pandemic will go down as one of the most consequential failures of government in American history. In Green Bay alone, the indefinite hold on fans at Lambeau Field — yet another consequence of President Trump’s failed leadership — is proving devastating to Green Bay’s small businesses. Each Packers home game provides $15 million in economic impacts to the city of Green Bay — but not this year.
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Read the rest of Mike’s op-ed at the link.
Trump is the biggest loser in US presidential history! Even now, he has no coherent plan for anything — just inane and largely fabricated personal grievances, insults, and childish, moronic chants and slogans! What kind of nation puts someone like this “on the field” with survival in the balance?
By contrast, Biden and Harris care about America and have intelligent plans for solving problems like health care, getting America back to work, addressing the pandemic in a scientifically credible way, protecting our environment, treating all persons equally before the law, ending racism and misogyny, and re-establishing our world leadership.
Vote like your life and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do! Get the maliciously incompetent loser off the field and put proven winners and decent human beings in charge!
Last month, a nurse at a federal immigration detention center in Irwin, Georgia, filed a whistleblower complaint detailing the abhorrent treatment of people detained there. She charged that women in detention were subjected to hysterectomies and invasive gynecological exams without their knowledge or consent, and often without assistance from interpreters.
The complaint is heartbreaking, but far from surprising. These atrocities are consistent with practices employed at U.S. detention centers for decades, and they are sadly consistent with our tragic history of forced sterilization of minority women. The implications of the complaint are perfectly clear: we must end the civil detention of immigrants, so fraught with systemic racism that undervalues the lives of Black, Indigenous and other people of color. There is no other option.
With over 200 detention centers, the United States has the largest immigration detention system in the world. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has over the past two years detained an average of 40,000 daily, an astonishing number that surpasses the population of Wisconsin cities like Brookfield and Wausau. Yet the detention of immigrants is just a microcosm of the inhumanity that characterizes our immigration system today. Many immigrants come to the U.S. to seek refuge and a better life for themselves and for their families. But when they arrive in this country, they are forced into conditions that violate human rights principles under both international and domestic standards, and that, frankly, violate our moral obligations to each other as human beings.
ICE has the authority to release most people from detention through monetary bonds or parole, and ICE policy requires that people seeking asylum are released from detention when they can establish their identity and demonstrate they are neither a danger nor a or flight risk. Instead of using these tools, though, ICE almost always chooses detention, ostensibly to deter others from coming into the country. But far from showing detention to be an effective deterrent, statistics reveal the opposite: harsher penalties have not reduced the numbers of undocumented migrants crossing U.S. borders. What the data does show is how immigrant detention has become a big business, with taxpayer dollars helping to subsidize a billion-dollar private prison industry that profits from human trauma.
Often located in remote places, immigrant detention facilities are ripe for the abuse of detained migrants. There is no community oversight and little — often no — access to legal representation. People in detention will only have an attorney if they can afford one or are lucky enough to find pro bono representation.
. . . .
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Read the rest of Erin’s article at the link! Erin reinforces points that I make often here on Courtside: the real objectives of unnecessary and highly cost-ineffective “civil detention” are to deprive migrants of access to counsel, coerce them into abandoning potentially successful claims, punish them for exercising legal rights, and deter others from asserting legal rights.
All of these are clear violations of Constitutional due process and equal protection! The conditions under which these non-criminals are held to “punish” them for their audacity to assert their legal rights also violate the Eighth Amendment, as some lower Federal Court Judges have found.
Unfortunately, too many Article III Judges have abdicated their oaths to uphold the Constitutional rights of the most vulnerable persons among us in the face of improper political pressure and a regime overtly out to undo American democracy and institute a far-right reactionary, white nationalist kakistocracy.
And, here’s info on a great “virtual event” that Erin helped organize to raise awareness of the existence and devastating effects of “Baby Jails” in the U.S. Allowing such cruel and inhuman abominations to flourish in our nation is beyond disgraceful! (See also the recent book Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America, by my good friend and Georgetown Law colleague Professor Phil Schrag).
The Flores Exhibit: Stories of Children Held in Immigrant Detention Facilities
WHEN
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
7:30 pm to 8:30 pm
WHERE
Virtual
EVENT DESCRIPTION
Artists, lawyers, advocates and immigrants read the sworn testimonies of young people under the age of 18, who were held in two detention facilities near the U.S./Mexico border in June 2019. Followed by a discussion with panelists.
Organized by the Immigrant Justice Clinic, Latinx Law Student Association, and American Constitution Society at UW Law School.
Zoom link will be sent to via email to those who register.
I proudly note that my good friend Judge (Ret.) Jeffrey S. Chase and other distinguished members of our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges are “readers” in “The Flores Exhibit.”
I am also inspired by all that Erin has accomplished and the lives she and her students have saved through the Immigrant Justice Clinic at my alma mater, UW Law!
Erin and others like her are exactly the type of progressive, practical, scholar-problem solvers that we need as Federal Judges and in key Government policy-making positions. We need to replace the reactionary kakistocracy with a progressive, equal justice oriented, practical, problem-solving humanitarian meritocracy.
“Equal Justice For All” isn’t just a “throwaway slogan.” It’s a vision of a better, more efficient, more effective, more tolerant, more inclusive, more diverse, more representative Government that will work with people of good faith everywhere to maximize opportunities for all and promote a brighter future for everyone in America! It’s in our power to make it happen,and the necessary change starts this Fall.
Unemployment is in double-digits, renters are scared of eviction notices, aid is stuck, and economic recovery seems to have slowed.
By Tara Golshan
For HuffPost
Republicans want Americans to believe that Joe Biden would “demolish” the American dream.
“This election will decide whether we save the American dream,” Trump said while accepting the Republican nomination for president on the final night of the Republican National Convention. “Or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny.”
Speaker after speaker repeated the same message: Trump is the only candidate who can save the American dream, Democrats’ insistence on expanding the social safety net will stymie individuals’ opportunities, and Republicans are the party of dreaming big.
“Let me assure you, socialism doesn’t offer opportunity. Socialism deprives,” Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez said on the second night of the convention. “We can go down a dark road of chaos and government control, or we can choose the path of freedom and opportunity that was paved by those who sacrificed everything to preserve the American dream for future generations.”
But for many working Americans, policies under the Trump administration and Trump’s response to the pandemic have put the American dream further out of reach.
Trump’s message that he’s the savior of the American dream comes as the nation is in the middle of a widespread coronavirus outbreak, which public health experts and a vast majority of Americans say was worsened by Trump’s slow response. Unemployment sits at 10 percent, and the economy’s recovery has slowed over the summer months. Federal aid, which economists say kept upwards of 10 million people out of poverty, has been slashed or cut completely, as Republicans remain reluctant to continue unemployment benefits at the same levels.
Even before the pandemic hit and the economy appeared to be doing fine, Americans were dubious that there was an equality of opportunity afforded to everyone under Trump’s leadership.
In a January Pew Research Center survey, 70% of Americans said the economy was rigged in favor of the wealthy. There are partisan divides in the poll, with Republicans generally seeing the economy under Trump as fairer than Democrats do. But notably, 79% of lower-income Republicans said the wealthy had too much power today, and Democrats and Republicans agreed that small businesses were being overtaken by major corporations.
. . . .
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Thanks, Tara! Read Tara’s complete article at the link. Tara is a UW-Madison grad!
IMMIGRANTS & THEIR ADVOCATES NEED TO MAKE THEIR VOICES HEARD, NOW!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
Aug. 29, 2020
Truth is, Trump has no plan for reviving the American economy and is firmly opposed to equality. He hopes that the virus will go away or that he can shift the blame for his abject failure to deal with it to someone else (a false narrative already well underway). He has no clue on how to deal with businesses that will never reopen, jobs that no longer exist, industries (e.g., travel, hospitality, education) whose “traditional models” no longer will be economically viable, and workers whose ability to return to former jobs is limited by the long-term effects of COVID.
What’s the regime’s plan to deal with mental health issues arising from unemployment or loss of loved ones? Beyond berating them for being sick or out of work, Trump and the GOP have no plan! Cut their unemployment, take away their health insurance, promote unsafe and exploitative working conditions, and immunize careless or negligent employers from liability — that’s the Trump/Moscow Mitch plan.
While I’m not a labor economist, I see evidence that the Trump regime’s gross mishandling of the pandemic, it’s glorification of myth over science, its open disdain for workers and their health and safety, and its nativist immigration restrictions will eventually cause a long term shortage of healthcare workers and teachers — essential workers whose lives and expertise are almost daily demeaned and devalued by the Trump regime and the GOP.
What’s Trump’s plan for African-American, Latino, and low-income communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID and its collateral effects? More police brutality? Terrorism by DHS agents? Forced labor? Starvation? Disenfranchisement? Public assistance cuts? Lousy education? Slash Social Security? Tax cuts for the rich? Dirty air? Polluted water? How will folks living “paycheck to paycheck” (at best) save for retirement? Work till they drop dead to support the Trumps and McConnells of the world and finance more tax breaks for the rich and powerful?
Biden and Harris have an established record of concern for all workers and all communities. They are certainly American worker’s best chance for a better life and a better future!
My observation is that the immigrant and particularly refugee and asylee communities have a disproportionate number of entrepreneurs, businesspeople, innovators, risk takers, and practical problem solvers who have been able to reinvent and often retrain themselves under the most difficult circumstances imaginable with minimal outside assistance. This community, their colleagues, and immigration and human rights advocates need to be working at the highest levels with the Biden/Harris campaign on a plan to reestablish legal immigration (including refugee and asylum programs) as an essential part of the overall plan to create jobs, develop new or improved industries and businesses, and get all Americans back to work in jobs that will be both satisfying and economically viable.
This plan that would include rebuilding, strengthening, and creating new opportunities within our healthcare, safety net, educational, and vocational programs rather than destroying and looting them as Trump and his cronies have done. It’s called “teamwork, innovation, and best practices,” and it’s an anathema to Trump and the GOP —the party that promotes systemic economic inequality and despises and ridicules expertise and cooperative efforts.
Immigrants of all types and statuses have helped all of us get through the pandemic, notwithstanding the racist abuse heaped on them by Trump, Miller, Wolf, and the GOP. Robust legal immigration is, as it always has been, part of the solution, not (as the Trump/Miller false narrative would have it) part of the problem.
And, to state the obvious, most of the so-called “undocumented population” in the US, residing (many with families including U.S. citizens or green card holders) working, paying taxes, and otherwise contributing to our society, mindlessly targeted by Trump and GOP nativists, could and should long ago have been integrated into our legal immigration system at some level.
But, it’s up to the immigration and human rights experts to get into the “inner circles” of the Biden/Harris campaign now, and to place immigration in its rightful place as one of the keys to American equality and prosperity, rather than that being “left on the sidelines” as happened with Obama.
In many ways, Trump and his fundamentally anti-America policies, as masterminded by neo-Nazi Stephen Miller, are the price we have paid for the Obama Administration’s negligent failure to harness the positive power of immigration and of the notable absence of true immigration/human rights policy experts and advocates from the key positions in his Administration.
Immigrants and their advocates can’t let history repeat itself! Policy, legislation, administration, and indeed judging are just variants of “advocacy.” In this case “advocacy” of due process, fundamental fairness, human rights, practical problem-solving, and human dignity. That’s something that the GOP right wrecking crew “gets” but to which Dems and liberals sometimes seem willfully oblivious!
We can’t afford to get it wrong again. And, neither can the Biden/Harris campaign or the American people! The stakes are simply too high!
This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
Also, immigration and human rights advocates need to make their voices heard by Biden/Harris campaign! Now!
