🗽⚖️HUMAN RIGHTS: IMMIGRATION JUDGES SPEAK OUT FOR AFGHAN WOMEN JUDGES — National Association For Women Judges Call To Protect Courageous Afghan Women Featured in WashPost Lead Editorial!

Judge Joan Churchill — Honorable Joan Churchill
Retired U.S. Immigration Judge
Member Round Table of Retired Judges

Honorable Mimi Tsankov
U.S. Immigration Judge
President, National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)

From WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/18/no-deadline-should-stand-way-evacuating-us-citizens-afghan-partners/

. . . .

In an interview with ABC News, Mr. Biden himself for the first time hinted at flexibility on the deadline, “if there are American citizens left.” That won’t be enough: This country’s moral responsibilities begin, but do not end, with U.S. citizens. On Tuesday, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) received and forwarded to Secretary of State Antony Blinken an appeal from the National Association of Women Judges on behalf of 250 Afghan women judges, trained by Americans and other Western countries, some of whom sentenced Taliban fighters to prison for murder or other crimes. These criminals have just been released by the Taliban. The judges have thus joined the ranks of the fearful. This country must make time for all of them.

Here’s the NAWJ’s full statement:

https://www.nawj.org/blog/newsroom/news/nawj-statement-on-afghanistan

NAWJ Statement on Afghanistan

Written by National Association of Women Judges|August 15, 2021|News

NAWJ is the U.S. Chapter of the International Association of Women Judges, an organization which NAWJ founded, developed and helped grow. NAWJ joins the IAWJ in expressing our grave fears for the basic human rights of women and girls in Afghanistan as the Taliban advance and take control of large parts of the country. In particular, the women judges have disclosed that because they have followed their country’s laws, conducted trials, and administered sentences to the guilty, many of whom are members of the Taliban, they will soon be targeted for assassination. The AWJA judges have served in criminal, anti-corruption and narcotics courts, developed in conjunction with the United States over many years. Through their efforts, they have implemented rule of law and anti-corruption principles which are central to the mission statements of NAWJ and IAWJ.

At a virtual meeting of the AWJA last month, at which a number of NAWJ members were present, the Afghan judges spoke about the dangerous and difficult conditions in which they live and work. Some judges have lost their lives in terrorist attacks and several of the judges present had received death threats. Some have already been forced to flee their posts in the provinces with their families because it was too dangerous to remain. Their fears are not theoretical. In January, two women judges traveling to their jobs at the Supreme Court of Afghanistan, were murdered in the street. Now, the prisons housing convicted terrorists have been opened, and sentenced prisoners are contacting their judges threatening reprisals and revenge.

As a chapter of the IAWJ, an organization comprised of over 6500 women judges from more than 100 countries and territories worldwide, NAWJ wants to draw particular attention to the situation of Afghan women judges, given the special role they have played in upholding the rule of law and human rights for all, and the particular dangers they face as a result. We honor their commitment and their courage. Today, some 250 women serve as judges there.

Today, it is reported that the Afghan government has collapsed. The President of Afghanistan has fled the country. The United States Department of State is currently prioritizing visas for employees of the United States, including interpreters, as the United States reaches its date for final withdrawal from Afghanistan. NAWJ urges the Department of State to include the Afghan women judges and their families, who are in such a desperate and precarious position, in facilitating travel and processing visas in the same manner that special measures are being extended to interpreters, journalists and other personnel who provided essential service to the foreign military forces in Afghanistan. NAWJ urges our government to consider the fate of the women judges. By serving as judges and helping develop the Afghan judicial branch, women judges have helped establish the rule of law in their country, an essential pillar of a democratic state. Allowing them to be at the mercy of the Taliban and insurgent groups, given what they have sacrificed and contributed working side by side with the United States would be tragic indeed.

Hon. Karen Donohue

President, NAWJ

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Thanks to my friends and long-time colleagues Judge Churchill and Judge Tsankov for standing up and speaking out. I understand from them that Senior DC Court of Appeals Judge Vanessa Ruiz (also a past President of the NAWJ) was also instrumental in this effort.

Hon. Vanessa Ruiz — Honorable Vanessa Ruiz
Senior Judge, DC Court of Appeals
PHOTO: Wikipedia

Also, many thanks to Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) for sending this to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken who hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory or shown much moral or intellectual courage in standing up for the rights and lives of refugees and energizing the bureaucracy to save lives.

Compare this with the conspicuous lack of moral, intellectual, and legal leadership and effective action from the Biden USDOJ on refugee and asylum issues.

Sadly, as many of us tried, in vain, to tell the incoming Biden Administration, failure to make immediate, bold, progressive, humanitarian, due process reforms at EOIR and to take a strong, courageous stand against the continuing misuse of bogus legal rationales to suspend refugee and asylum processing (and ignore our legal and moral obligations to refugees and other migrants) at the border will likely cripple the US response to arising human rights catastrophes and cost more innocent human lives.

Human rights and immigrant justice are not “back burner” issues! Nor are they “rocket science!” Delay costs lives and undermines democracy and our international leadership.

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Lack of expertise and moral courage has consequences!

PWS

08-19-21

👎🏽🤮EOIR DENIES DUE PROCESS, AGAIN! — Proper Notice Is “Of Signal Importance” For Due Process In Our Justice System — Except For Those In Immigration Court Where You Have To Litigate To The Circuit To Get Basic Rights Guaranteed To All! — This Is What “Dred Scottification” & “Systematic De-Personification” In A Totally Dysfunctional Outlaw Tribunal Looks Like! — Meet NDPA “Rising Star” Karen S. Monrreal, Esq., Who “Bested” Garland’s DOJ In Flores-Rodriguez v. Garland (9th Cir.)!

Dan Kowalski reports in LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-on-due-process-flores-rodriguez-v-garland

CA9 on Due Process: Flores-Rodriguez v. Garland

Flores-Rodriguez v. Garland

“The IJ’s failure to put Flores-Rodriguez on notice of this central issue in his case denied him “a full and fair hearing” by preventing him from submitting significant testimony and other evidence. Colmenar, 210 F.3d at 971. Because the IJ’s conduct potentially affected the outcome of the proceedings, Flores-Rodriguez has also suffered prejudice. Id. For these reasons, a due process violation warranting reversal has occurred. We express no opinion whether, if Flores-Rodriguez had received notice and defended against the claim that he had made false claims of citizenship, he would have likely prevailed or to the contrary been held inadmissible. But what is of signal importance in our system of justice is that when a person is charged with a crime or charged with allegations warranting removal from the country, that person is fairly entitled to notice of the claims against him and an opportunity to be heard in opposition. Because that opportunity was not given here, we grant the petition and remand to the BIA with instructions that it hold whatever future proceedings are necessary to ensure due process is given to Flores-Rodriguez before decision is made. PETITION FOR REVIEW GRANTED.”

[Hats off to Karen S. Monrreal!]

Karen S. Monrreal, Esquire
Reno, NV

******************
Many, many congrats Karen! You are quickly establishing yourself as a “fearless warrior queen” of the NDPA. 🛡⚔️ Looking forward to a time when you and others like you will take your places on the Immigration Court and other Federal Benches. That will bring some much needed, and obviously now missing, expertise, courage, humanity, practicality, and diversity to our Federal Judicial system that is stale, out of step, non-representative of our diverse nation, and floundering from top to bottom, even as the future of our democracy remains in peril.

Here’s an inspiring video about Karen and how and why she became an immigration attorney:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjisfnSorjyAhXMneAKHVkYAqMQwqsBegQIFxAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D8CMfnvxMaKk&usg=AOvVaw3jOePmv5PGtnWvd2TeEB3M

Thanks for being such a great role model, Karen, for the “new generation” of the NDPA! And believe me, those of us in the “Over the Hill Brigade” of the NDPA are out there recruiting all the time!

Wow! Providing due process before making a final decision! What a radical concept! Clearly at odds with the Sessions/Barr emphasis on prejudging cases in favor of ICE enforcement and against individuals and their “dirty lawyers” out to “game” the system. That’s what the “rote form denial orders” that Sessions and Barr encouraged to generate more removals are all about! No need to know much about the law or the facts of the case. Just fill in the blanks and check “denied” and “removed!”

It’s telling, however, that even with a massive increase in judges, these “corner cutting restrictionist gimmicks” astronomically increased an already out of control backlog of cases, even while denying fair hearings to thousands! Seven months into the Biden Administration (which has the remarkable benefit of numerous “expert action plans” for reducing backlog without denying due process), that backlog continues to grow with no apparent plan for controlling it.

🔌 How many “Team Garland” Senior Officials does it take to pull this at EOIR?

Will Garland ever “pull the plug” on this parody of a “court” that keeps “blowing the basics” with human lives and futures at stake? Not very surprising when expertise is “optional” and due process takes a back seat to “cranking out removal orders” and meeting clearly unethical, due-process-denying “quotas.” Also, it’s one where a bureaucratic judicial selection process designed by the last Administration to “dumb down” and “bias out” the Immigration Courts in favor of DHS Enforcement is still in use!

One can imagine a court system where repeated significant due process violations, questionable ethics, continuing substandard legal performance, disturbing lack of subject matter expertise, grotesque inconsistencies, and statistically inexplicable patterns of anti-individual decision-making would raise some “red flags” among peers and those charged with maintaining professional standards. These days, however, it appears that only failure to meet “production quotas” or actually taking extra time to get decisions right can get an EOIR judge in hot water.

Gotta wonder what Judge Garland would have thought if one of his Article III colleagues produced “garbage work” like this on, say, a routine Federal Tort Claims case? He probably would have been pretty upset and acted accordingly.

But, where it’s only people’s lives and futures at stake — “the loss of everything that makes life worth living” as famously stated by the Supremes of yore — anything seems “good enough for government work” in Garland’s malfunctioning, yet deadly and inefficient, “clown courts.” 🤡 (NOTE: With a sense of false optimism, I had hoped to put the poor “EOIR Clown Emoji” — forced to work extreme overtime during the Trump Kakistocracy — out to rest. But, alas, Garland’s failure to take the lives and rights of migrants, not to mention the health, welfare, and sanity of my litigating colleagues, seriously, and his inability to connect the dots between officially-sanctioned injustice @ EOIR and injustice throughout our society, has forced him back into duty!)

I must admit that I don’t “get it” as to why Garland thinks this is acceptable performance by a public agency and fails to take the obvious steps to end to this ongoing disgrace that ruins human lives, frustrates hard-working private lawyers trying to do their jobs (actually the only folks, in addition to some in the NAIJ, keeping this sinking boat afloat right now), and undermines our entire justice system! It also diminishes his own reputation, stature, and legacy.

Many of us understand that the Biden Administration can never attain racial justice in America as long as racially charged injustice, lack of due process, and bad judging prevails in our Immigration Courts. Tragic that those in charge haven’t achieved that same level of enlightenment, understanding, and urgency! Delay in making long overdue progressive reforms and personnel changes costs lives, squanders resources, and further undermines our democracy!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-17-21

☠️⚰️🏴‍☠️🤮OUTRAGE GROWS IN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMUNITY OVER TRUMPIST RIGHT-WING EXTREMIST JUDGE’S ASSAULT ON TRUTH, HUMANITY, & THE RULE OF LAW —“Jesus said, ‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Judge Kacsmaryk’s decision is contrary to man’s law and God’s law and must be overturned.”

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

Here’s a statement from CLINIC condemning this Judge’s decision to reinstate the misnamed “Migrant Protection Protocols,” better known as “Remain in Mexico,” or more accurately as “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico:”

Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.

Press Release

Aug. 14, 2021

Lynn Tramonte

Communications Consultant

ltramonte@cliniclegal.org | 202-255-0551

A Statement From the ED: CLINIC Condemns Federal Ruling to Resume Migrant Protection Protocols

SILVER SPRING, Maryland — The following is a statement from CLINIC Executive Director Anna Gallagher:

“CLINIC staff and volunteers have accompanied and provided legal counsel to thousands of men, women and children who sought safety at our doors, only to be stranded in Mexico in inhumane conditions through MPP. They desperately waited for protection and admission to one of the richest countries in the world, in increasing danger, by design of the U.S. government.

MPP is a national shame.

Jesus said, ‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Judge Kacsmaryk’s decision is contrary to man’s law and God’s law and must be overturned. We now call on President Biden to act on his faith and once again, end this policy that is so contrary to our values and who we aspire to be.”

CLINIC advocates for humane and just immigration policy. Its network of nonprofit immigration programs — 400 organizations in 48 states and the District of Columbia — is the largest in the nation.

Donate to CLINIC

Add CLINIC to your AmazonSmile account:

Copyright © 2021 Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., All rights reserved.

unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences

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In case you miss the irony, think of this: At the very moment we are pleading with the international community to help extricate us from the humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan, we are illegally and arbitrarily turning away legal asylum applicants at our border, many of them women and children with claims just as compelling as those from Afghani women and girls, and returning them to dangerous areas with NO PROCESS AT ALL!

And, Judge K would like to support his GOP White Nationalist buddies in Texas and Missouri by unlawfully reimplementing “Remain in Mexico” — a much-studied, vigorously and rightfully criticized program deemed a practical, human rights, legal, and humanitarian disaster by every credible human rights organization.

CLINIC is right: “Shame!”

The above statement is, of course, not the only cogent criticism I have received at Courtside about this decision. It just happens to be the one that appeared first in my Courtside inbox, courtesy of my good friend and NDPA stalwart Anna Marie Gallagher, Executive Director of CLINIC!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-16-21

🗽OVER 100 CIVIL & HUMAN RIGHTS NGOS PROTEST BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S FAILURE TO RESTORE RULE OF LAW FOR REFUGEES @ BORDER! — Continued Use Of Title 42 To Suspend Asylum Blasted By Experts: “The administration’s recent actions highlighted above are in direct contravention of the goal to repair the broken immigration system you inherited.”

Biden Border Message — “Border Message”
By Steve Sack
Reproduced under license

Here is the letter:

Joint-Letter-to-President-Biden-on-Expulsion-Flights-to-Southern-Mexico-and-Forthcoming-Changes-to-Asylum-Processing_8132021

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

Confirms and amplifies they absurdity and wrongness of US District Judge Kacsmaryk’s recent decision to “restore” the unlawful, cruel, inhumane, and unnecessary MPP (“Let ‘Em Die In Mexico”) https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/08/14/%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%e2%9a%b0%ef%b8%8falternate-universe-where-human-rights-human-dignity-due-process-dont-matter-trumpist-usdj-shafts-asylum-seekers-of-color-by-reinstating/;
As the human rights situations in Afghanistan, Haiti, and the Northern Triangle continue to unravel, the lack of a coherent, operational, legally sound, properly generous refugee and asylum program will continue to haunt the Administration;
In particular, the disgraceful failure to establish a strong, consistent, humane, and protection-oriented interpretation of gender-based asylum to protect women, who are disproportionately targeted for persecution, torture, and other violence, will cost lives of the most vulnerable and be a lasting stain on our nation. (I just listened to Peter Baker, NBC WH Correspondent, on Meet the Press, characterize Afghanistan under the Taliban as a “nation of spouse beaters!”)

The need to fix our our refugee and asylum systems immediately was obvious on January 20, 2021. Why, after 7 months it still is nowhere close to being accomplished is less obvious!

The turmoil in Afghanistan and Haiti and the ongoing human rights disasters in Latin America, all reasonably predictable, are going to increase the human and political problems flowing from a failure to take human rights seriously and to bring the practical human rights experts necessary to solve these issues constructively into the Government power structure! In the end, human rights are everyone’s rights! We ignore that at our peril!

Ironically, while protecting women from persecution and improving their lives was used as a justification by Administrations of both parties for our continuing military presence in Afghanistan, now, as the “end game” plays out in real time, it appears to have been largely reduced to a “talking point” (or a “news feature”) without any discernible plan for protecting or saving Afghan female refugees. Sadly politicos and officials from both parties seem more interested in using women’s lives as “cover” for two decades of ultimately futile presence there than with actually saving any lives now. Indeed, if we treat Afghan women refugees with the inhumane indifference we have continued to heap on female refugees seeking legal asylum at our Southern Border, their outlook is beyond grim.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-15-21

🇺🇸🗽👍🏼IMMIGRATION EXPERT UR MENDOZA JADDOU IS NEW USCIS DIRECTOR, FINALLY PUTTING AN END TO THE WHITE NATIONALIST CLOWN SHOW OF “TRUMP’S ILLEGAL” KEN “COOCH COOCH” CUCCINELLI!

Ur Mendoza Jaddoul — Ur Mendoza Jaddou
Director, USCIS
PHOTO: PotomacLaw.com

This just in from Dean Kevin Johnson over at ImmigrationProf Blog:

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/07/senate-confirms-new-director-of-citizenship-and-immigration-services.html

The Biden administration looks very different from Trump’s. That much is clear.

In that vein, Hamed Aleaziz for BuzzFeed reports that

“Ur Jaddou will become the first woman and first person of Arab and Mexican descent to be sworn in as director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services after the Senate confirmed her nomination on Friday.

The agency has not had a Senate-confirmed leader in more than two years . . . . ”

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas released this statement on Jaddou’s confirmation:

“It is my honor to congratulate Ur Mendoza Jaddou on her confirmation as Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Ur has two decades of experience in immigration law, policy, and administration. She will administer our Nation’s immigration system fairly and justly. As the daughter of hard-working immigrants, Ur understands how immigrant families enrich our country and the challenges they face. I want to thank the United States Senate for confirming Ur. I look forward to working closely with her to rebuild and restore trust in our immigration system.”

In announcing Jaddou’s nomination, President Biden offered the following biography:

“Ur Mendoza Jaddou has two decades of experience in immigration law, policy, and administration. Most recently, she was the Director of DHS Watch, a project of America’s Voice, where she shined a light on immigration policies and administration that failed to adhere to basic principles of good governance, transparency, and accountability. She is an adjunct professor of law at American University, Washington College of Law and counsel at Potomac Law Group, PLLC. Previously, Jaddou was the Chief Counsel for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) . . . from June 2014 to January 2017. Jaddou’s experience on immigration policy began as counsel to U.S. House of Representative Zoe Lofgren (2002-2007) and later as Chief Counsel to the House Immigration Subcommittee chaired by Rep. Lofgren (2007-2011). Jaddou has also served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regional, Global and Functional Affairs in the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the U.S. Department of State (2012-2014). Jaddou is a daughter of immigrants – a mother from Mexico and a father from Iraq – born and raised in Chula Vista, California. She received a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Stanford University and a law degree from UCLA School of Law. ” (bold added).

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

Great choice, and congrats to Ur!

USCIS was one of the “major victims” of the Trump immigration kakistocracy! Overt xenophobia and malicious incompetence literally “bankrupted” what was once one of the USG’s few self-supporting and “money making” operations. Think about that the next time some GOP “magamoron” babbles on about “fiscal responsibility!”

Wonderful as this news is, Ur would have been even better as Director of EOIR or BIA Chair. THAT’S where the real “progressive leadership gap” and absence of “practical scholarship and experience in understanding and respecting the rights of migrants” is so glaring and debilitating. Also, I think that without better qualified, enlightened, progressive leadership at EOIR (or Article 1) many “reforms” at USCIS will be ineffective or not achieve their full potential.

For example, the Asylum Offices are a key component of USCIS. But the lousy guidance and precedent setting from past AGs and the BIA has severely limited the ability of the Asylum Office to achieve its full potential.

Hon. A. Ashlley Tabaddor — Hon. A. Ashley Tabaddor, Chief Counsel, USCIS
Former President, National
Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)

Ur does have some much needed help from experienced USCIS Chief Counsel Judge Ashley Tabaddor, former President of the NAIJ. Perhaps, working together, they can get the attention of Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke and successfully urge some long overdue progressive, due-process-oriented changes and better judicial appointments at EOIR.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-02-21

⚖️TAL @ SF CHRON GETS ACTION ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT @ EOIR & REST OF DOJ! — Report on Problems In Immigration Courts Finally Spurs Positive Response! — But Biden Continues To Flail Around Unnecessarily On Restoring Asylum & The Rule Of Law At Our Borders! — Where Is The Enlightened Progressive Leadership We Need?

Tal Kopan
Washington Reporter, SF Chronicle

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Justice-Department-to-overhaul-its-sexual-16352255.php

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice will examine its sexual harassment policies for potential reform, a move that comes after The Chronicle’s reporting on inappropriate behavior in the immigration courts, according to an announcement obtained by the newspaper.

The announcement went out to all department staff Thursday in an email seen by The Chronicle. In it, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco wrote it was “critical to our duty as principled defenders of the law to combat sexual harassment and misconduct in our own workplace and hold offenders accountable for their actions.”

Monaco said she is forming a committee to review all sexual harassment policies of the many sub-agencies of the Justice Department and assess where they may need to be changed, as well as evaluate current training and education. Two senior officials from her office will chair the effort and include members from across the department, and she said she wanted results of the review in six months.

. . . .

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

Thanks, and congrats, Tal! Those with access can read the rest of Tal’s report at the link.

How very timely! I just got done posting an article about the need for better Immigration Judges. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/07/30/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%a7%91%f0%9f%8f%bd%e2%80%8d%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-why-better-immigration-judges-matter-new-study-shows-that-who-your-judge-is-where-he-or-she-is-located-what-administ/

Not surprisingly, according to the research, the fairest Immigration Judges for asylum applicants and other migrants “profile” as female, with immigration experience, in the 9th Circuit, in a Dem Administration. Not exactly the Sessions, Barr, Garland (to date) judicial profile. That could have something to do with these festering problems at EOIR that haven’t been dealt with despite numerous warning signs and “alerts.”

Also, the Garland DOJ would do well to investigate and correct the effects of the virulent misogyny directed at female refugees of color by Sessions, Barr, and their toadies and furthered by EOIR policies, procedures, and precedents over the past four years. Endemic problems don’t happen by chance!

According to the Ryo-Peacock study I posted, the “difference” that better Immigration Judges could make is over 200,000 lives potentially saved or altered for the better. That’s not exactly “chump change,” particularly when the interests of family members, employers, communities, our larger justice system, and our overall society are considered.

It also calls into question the apparent lack of seriousness with which “Team Garland” has taken Immigration Judge appointments to date. Throwing dozens of “not the best qualified available” IJs — without any concerted recruitment or diversification efforts — into an already broken, biased, and reeling system that deals with human lives in a cavalier manner is NOT GOOD POLICY! Particularly when the chronic problems of bad judging at EOIR had been clearly and articulately identified and many viable action plans and reform programs had been set forth by private sector experts even before the 2020 election.

EOIR needs new progressive leadership, a new progressive expert BIA that will truly be the “Supreme Court” of immigration and human rights, and better qualified and more diverse Immigration Judges who finally will implement the noble and correct vision of “through teamwork and innovation, being the world’s best tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all!” That would include treating all individuals coming before the courts, staff, and colleagues with dignity, respect, and fairness.

Sadly, the Biden Administration’s immigration policies, whatever they are on any particular day and place, seem to be mired in confusion, questionable competence, and a barrage of largely meaningless and confusing bureaucratic doublespeak. Meanwhile, in reality, it appears that Central Americans, Haitians, and others are being returned to danger zones without any process in place to insure fair treatment. Certainly, “Title 42” is the equivalent of no process whatsoever. While “expedited removal” might have the potential to be used fairly, there is little reason to believe that it is now being fairly and professionally administered by anyone committed to fundamental fairness over expedient enforcement.

Yes, Garland has sued racist moron Gov. Greg Abbott on his illegal Trumpist grandstanding (like Texas doesn’t have real problems to solve?). Stunts like Abbott’s were entirely predictable. However, if the Biden Administration had “hit the ground running” on asylum, the issue might well have been put to bed by now, and Abbott might have to focus instead on his normal job of mis-governing Texas, rather than focusing attention elsewhere.

The Administration could and should have had a robust refugee system up and running in the Northern Triangle that would reduce border pressure, a functioning asylum system that would encourage asylum applicants to apply at ports of entry rather than seeking irregular entry, a professional screening program in place at DHS, and a relatively “backlog free” Immigration Court, led by a progressive BIA, providing positive guidance on cases that could be granted. They would also have resettlement agreements and programs in place with NGOs and legal service groups to appropriately represent and resettle those granted asylum and those in the process to the locations where they could best reside.

Fair, expert, courageous leadership, leadership with a humane, positive, practical vision of immigration and an unswerving commitment to fairly granting asylum, is critical to success on immigration, human rights, and racial justice issues. So far, nobody in the Biden Administration appears to fit the bill! That’s probably why the Administration’s confused and ever-vacillating policies are being blasted by both progressives and reactionaries — the worst of all political worlds, as I have observed before!

There are experts out here in the private sector with the vision and leadership ability to solve these problems while putting White Nationalist restrictionists like Abbott in their place. Even though it’s late, the Biden Administration still needs to get a better team in place and let them solve the problems with knowledge, competence, and compassion, not more “knee-jerk reactions” and continuations of the cruel, inhumane, counterproductive, and often illegal policies and practices of the Trump regime.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-31-21

😎👍YES! IN A HUGE WIN FOR DUE PROCESS, EFFICIENCY, JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE, & SANE GOVERNMENT, AG GARLAND OVERRULES SESSIONS’S IDIOTIC MATTER OF CASTRO-TUM PRECEDENT & RESTORES IJs’ AUTHORITY TO ADMINISTRATIVELY CLOSE CASES — Matter of Cruz-Valdez, 28 I&N Dec. 326 (A.G. 2021)

Judge Merrick Garland — Atorney General Merrick B. Garland
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

The Attorney General has issued a decision in Matter of Cruz-Valdez, 28 I&N Dec. 326 (A.G. 2021).

(1) Matter of Castro‑Tum, 27 I&N Dec. 271 (A.G. 2018), is overruled in its entirety.

(2) While rulemaking proceeds and except when a court of appeals has held otherwise, immigration judges and the Board should apply the standard for administrative closure set out in Matter of Avetisyan, 25 I&N Dec. 688 (BIA 2012), and Matter of W‑Y‑U‑, 27 I&N Dec. 17 (BIA 2017).

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

Sessions’s Castro-Tum abomination had to be one of the stupidest and most maliciously incompetent aspects of his White Nationalist, anti-asylum, anti-due-process agenda! Not surprisingly, that decision and the illegal attempt to convert it into a regulation have mostly been losers in the Article III Courts.

Hats 🎩 off to Judge Garland for doing the right thing (even if it did take longer than some of us thought it should)! This also ties in perfectly with the recent common sense restoration of enforcement priorities and prosecutorial discretion at ICE by OPLA head John Trasvina! https://immigrationcourtside.com/category/department-of-homeland-security/immigration-customs-enforcement-ice/office-of-principal-legal-adviser-opla/john-d-trasvina/

After four years of virtually unrelenting illegality, mismanagement, and outright idiocy at DHS and DOJ, that has caused “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and generated ever-mushrooming court backlogs, finally some much-needed and long overdue teamwork and reasonability in restoring to Immigration Judges and the parties the necessary tools for rational, cooperative docket management. Presumably, the hundreds of thousands of cases “waiting in the wings” to be “re-docketed” pursuant to “Sessions’s folly” can now remain administratively closed or be “re-closed” and removed from the EOIR docket!

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

Along those same lines, “Sir Jeffrey” Chase reports some more good news:

More Good News!

Ms. A-B- (i.e. the respondent in Matter of A-B-) was granted asylum yesterday.The BIA granted pursuant to a joint motion from DHS and respondent’s counsel to grant asylum.

It took far too long, but justice prevailed.

Best, Jeff

That’s the type of cooperative action among the parties and EOIR that, if repeated on a larger scale, could restore functionality and some semblance of justice to our broken Immigration Courts!

Also, many congrats to my friend Karen Musalo and her team at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings Law for their outstanding, persistent, and ultimately successful defense of Ms. A-B- against Sessions’s misogynistic “war on asylum seekers of color.”

It’s a telling commentary that finally getting the law back to where it was in 2016, “pre-Sessions,” now seems like a major victory! Just think of what might have been accomplished if all the effort expended on combatting the Trump immigration kakistocracy’s illegality, nonsense, and wasteful gimmicks had instead been devoted to advancing and promoting due process and fundamental fairness for all persons in America!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-15-21

🤮🏴‍☠️👎🏽RACE-BASED CHILD ABUSE & SEXUAL ABUSE OF KIDS MUST STOP — Demand An End To Scofflaw Behavior By Our Government!

Crimes Against Humanity — Thomas Cizauskas Crimes against humanity
Creative Commons License — The Biden Administration promised to stop these crimes committed by our Government, but hasn’t.

https://www.newsweek.com/we-fled-honduras-fearing-our-lives-immigration-officers-abused-my-child-opinion-1605760p

Daniel Paz writes in Newsweek:

“Welcome to hell.”

Those were the words I heard from an immigration officer not long after I entered the United States near El Paso, Texas in May 2018. I thought I had just reached safety with Angie, my 7-year-old daughter. I was wrong.

Once we arrived at the border, immigration officers processed me and my daughter at a detention facility, and led us to a crowded cell packed with 50 to 60 other families. It smelled terrible—like urine—and everything was gray. We were so cold. They didn’t even offer us one of the cellophane blankets you see on TV. I had to take my shirt off to wrap it around Angie and keep her warm. I was shivering.

The journey to this point had been excruciatingly painful. Fearing for our lives, we had to make the decision to flee. I had a good life in Honduras. I was a businessman and I owned my own home. I knew it would be hard to leave everything I worked so hard to build behind. Starting a new life in a new country with a different culture wouldn’t be easy. But desperate circumstances called for desperate measures. Hope of reaching a safe place for my family kept me going.

At the detention center, many fathers began hearing rumors that immigration officials were going to take our children away from us. Take them where? Take my daughter? To another cell? A new facility? On the inside I was panicking, but I knew I needed to show strength for my daughter. I needed to be brave and prepare her if the rumors were true. You will contact your grandparents in Ohio, I told Angie.

In the cell, we practiced memorizing their phone numbers, repeating them over and over. To be extra safe, I then wrote the numbers with a ball-point pen on my daughter’s arm, her belly, her foot and on the inside of her jeans hoping she’d have the chance to make a phone call before immigration officials washed off the ink.

Then my nightmare happened. They came to take our children. I witnessed pain, agonizing cries and a deep sense of helplessness. Some of the immigration officers joked as they handcuffed the parents. Others expressed a cruelty I never would have expected. Rather than trying to ease our pain, they were somehow enjoying their power. As if they believed their actions were the right thing to do. I don’t know how anyone believes separating a child from a parent is right.

. . . .

While being transferred to a detention facility for children, an immigration officer sexually abused her. When she fought back, the officer threatened her, saying if she told anyone she would never see her parents again. Then Angie witnessed the same officer sexually abuse two girls who were even younger than her. Angie stayed quiet about the experience even months after we were reunited.

We were reunited after several weeks, though the separation felt eternal. The Angie the U.S. government returned to me is not the same girl they took out of my arms in that detention center. She cannot forget what happened to her. And she wants me to share what happened to her because she is worried the officer who abused her is still an immigration official. We do not know the officer’s name—let alone whether the officer is still working in government.

“What if that officer is still hurting other kids?” Angie asked me.

As a father I want to tell Angie not to worry. That is why I am asking President Joe Biden to act. Reuniting families and making sure they have immigration status in the U.S. is critical—but it is not enough. The government can make a huge difference in the lives of thousands of asylum seekers who are being turned away at the border right now. All asylum seekers should be allowed to seek protection and refuge in the U.S. without fear.

The government must also investigate every allegation of sexual abuse and mistreatment by immigration officers. Those officers must immediately be identified and removed from their positions so they cannot hurt anyone else. President Biden, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice together have the ability to ensure that families like mine can begin to heal.

It is hell to leave your home and risk everything so your child can be safe. It shouldn’t be hell once you have reached what you thought would be a safe haven.

After entering the United States to seek safety, Daniel Paz and his daughter were separated for several weeks. Paz and his family were reunited in 2018 and have since won asylum. He is a committed advocate for other families who have faced similar trauma.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

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

Who would have thought that nearly six months into the Biden Administration our Government would still be abusing asylum seekers and ignoring the Constitution, mocking the rule of law, and degrading humanity?

So, how is it that Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke intend to combat racism and unequal justice in America when they have failed to re-establish the rule of law for asylum seekers at the border and continue to run an unjust and grossly mismanaged “court system” @ EOIR filled with too many “Miller Lite” judges?

Tell the Biden Administration and Judge Garland that we need progressive reforms, now! EOIR would be a great starting place!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-06-21

⚠️🚸V.P. HARRIS IS GOING TO THE BORDER: SHE SHOULD TALK WITH THE REAL VICTIMS OF HER GOVERNMENT’S, ILLEGAL, WRONG-HEADED, IMMORAL, AND INEFFECTIVE BORDER DETERRENCE POLICIES — Avoid The CBP “Dog & Pony Show,” & The GOP’s Cowardly “Gunboat Cruz” — Cross Over The Border, View The Human Rights Catastrophe We Have Created, Understand People Have A Right To Seek Legal Refuge, & Fix The Legal Asylum System At Ports Of Entry & Immigration Courts With Humane, Practical Experts! — “The vice president seems to have bought into the… I can’t use another word, but the nativist party line, that somehow these immigrants are the cause of the problem when, in fact, they’re the victims of multiple problems in many cases.” — Stop Blaming, Shaming, & Dehumanizing The Victims & Start Fixing Our Asylum System & Solving The Problems That Force Them To Migrate!

“Floaters” — “Sadly, over the last two decades the US has been unable to get beyond this vision of ‘deterrence’ of legal asylum seekers.“ — Floaters — “How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/06/17/vice-president-kamala-harris-us-mexico-border-immigration-unaccompanied

J.D. Long-Garcia writes in America Magazine:

Last week, Ms. Harris traveled to Guatemala to meet with President Alejandro Giammattei and expressed the Biden administration’s goal to “help Guatelmalans find hope at home.” During a press conference on June 7, she told Guatemalans thinking of making the journey north to the United States: “Do not come. Do not come.”

“O.K., that’s like saying, ‘Stay home and die,’” according to the Rev. Pat Murphy, a Scalabrini priest who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in Tijuana, Baja California. “That message is falling on deaf ears.”

If Ms. Harris does travel to the border, Father Murphy said, she should be sure to make a visit to the Mexican side. “If she just stays on her side, she’s not going to find much,” he said.

In Tijuana, Ms. Harris would see a camp of 2,000 asylum seekers near the port of entry, Father Murphy said. “If she looked a little further, she would see the people who are victims of violence in Tijuana and Mexicali and other places,” he said. Migrants may be eager to escape bad situations in their home countries, Father Murphy said, but they often do not understand how difficult conditions at the border are “until they’re stuck in the middle of [a border city] with no place to go.”

“You can’t understand [border realities] by talking to government officials. You have to talk to the people who are working with migrants and hear about the suffering.”

At diminished capacity because of the pandemic, migrant shelters are full. The United States has started to accept some vulnerable people, like families with children with an illness or those being persecuted because of their sexual orientation, Father Murphy said. But there are also hundreds deported every day.

He believes if the vice president did decide to visit the border, it would be worth her while. “You can’t understand [border realities] by talking to government officials,” Father Murphy said. “You have to talk to the people who are working with migrants and hear about the suffering.”

. . . .

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

Donald Kerwin, the executive director of the Center for Migration Studies in New York, also noted that people have a right not to migrate—to stay in their home country. He sees immigration policy as an arena for a fruitful convergence of Catholic social teaching, international law and contemporary human rights principles.

The Biden administration’s recognition of the forces that drive migration should be applauded, but it can address root causes while re-establishing humane asylum policies at the border.

“States are responsible for ensuring that people can flourish at home,” he said. “But it’s an empty right at this point in many communities in the Northern Triangle countries. They’re facing impossible conditions, caused by natural disasters, climate change, gang violence and extraordinary poverty. So people have a right to flee those impossible conditions and seek lives that are worthy of human dignity. In some cases, that means leaving their countries.”

When they do leave their home countries, people have the right to seek protection wherever they can find it, Mr. Kerwin said. “The vice president seems to have bought into the… I can’t use another word, but the nativist party line, that somehow these immigrants are the cause of the problem when, in fact, they’re the victims of multiple problems in many cases.”

The United States needs a functioning refugee resettlement system, an asylum system and robust humanitarian programs to address the conditions in Central America that are driving people to migrate, he said. “They’re not in place right now,” Mr. Kerwin said, “and until they are in place, people will reluctantly, at a terrible cost…continue to migrate.”

If Ms. Harris visits the border, Mr. Kerwin suggested she speak with migrants that have entered the United States, starting with the children. “Find out why they’ve come, what drove them to the United States and also see what their situation is currently, in often overcrowded facilities,” he said. “At that point, it would be clear as day that these folks are not a problem. These folks fled terrible problems, but they themselves are not the problem.”

Earlier this month, more than 20 bishops, Vatican representatives and leaders of Catholic organizations met for an emergency immigration meeting at Mundelein Seminary, outside of Chicago. Mr. Kerwin, who attended the meeting, said organizers displayed notes written by immigrant children, often addressed to God.

“It’s clear from reading these notes that these are lovely children, who miss their parents and worry about them and are in difficult situations that are not of their own making. And that the United States should do right by them,” he said. “And the right thing is to protect them and reunify them with family members.”

Chloe Gunther, America intern, contributed to this story.

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

Read the full article at the link.

Politicians of both parties are averse to the truth. They don’t have the courage and backbone for it! But the truth is quite simple, if somewhat “inconvenient.”

Unless and until we can solve the problems driving refugees to flee the Northern Triangle, we will have to take more of them. We should welcome them through an orderly legal system, including a robust, properly staffed, and honestly administered legal refugee and asylum system.

Alternatively, we could continue our current policies of immorally and illegally killing some on the journey, “snuffing” some in the desert (where their bodies might never be found and “counted”), and enriching smugglers and cartels who will eventually get many determined survivors into the interior.

There, they will join our highly exploitable, yet politically expedient for both parties (for differing reasons), “extralegal population.” A limited number will be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” and be arbitrarily removed by ICE, usually at costs that far exceed any demonstrable benefits. Even fewer will commit misconduct leading to their arrest and removal.

But the bulk of them will blend in somehow and do what’s necessary for themselves and their families to survive, as has been happening for decades and generations. They will also enrich and improve our nation in ways both predictable and unpredictable. Some will eventually find it possible and advantageous to return to their nations of origin, most won’t.

It would be far better for both the migrants and our nation, not to mention humanity as a whole, if we included the bulk of those forced to come here in our legal immigration system. But, whether we are enlightened enough “to do it the right way” or not, they will come as long as the alternatives are starvation, death, unspeakable abuse, and unending despair.

Migration is both our oldest and most persistent human phenomenon and an essential survival skill for humanity. It’s going to take more than inane walls, cruel and illegal imprisonment in American Gulags, unworkable laws, mindless, yet expensive, enforcement, nativist rhetoric, bad judges, and cowardly politicians sending “don’t come” messages to make them “die in place.” Our politicians might be not be bright or brave enough to face reality — but, I guarantee that the forced migrants we like to dehumanize and look down upon are much smarter, braver, more aware, and far more creative, adaptable, and capable than we think!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-24-21

‘SIR JEFFREY” CHASE: Garland’s “First Steps” To Eradicate Misogyny & Anti-Asylum Bias @ EOIR Are Totally Insufficient Without Progressive Personnel Changes — Regulations Will Only Be Effective If Drafted By Progressive Human Rights Experts Of Which There Currently Are NONE @ DOJ Save For Some Immigration Judges In The Field Whose Expertise, Intellectual Integrity, & Moral Courage Has Been Ignored By Team Garland! — There Will Be No Gender, Racial, Or Immigrant Justice @ Justice As Long As Garland Mindlessly Lets “Miller’s Club Denial” Operate @ BIA! — Progressives Must Turn Up The Heat On Garland To Reform & Remake EOIR With Qualified Expert Judges & Dynamic, Independent, Progressive Leaders!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2021/6/21/first-steps

The latest from the Hon. “Sir Jeffrey:”

JEFFREY S. CHASE | OPINIONS/ANALYSIS ON IMMIGRATION LAW

Blog Archive Press and Interviews Calendar Contact

First Steps

On June 16, Attorney General Merrick Garland finally, mercifully vacated three decisions that formed a key part of the Trump administration’s unrelenting attack on the law of asylum.1 Matter of A-B-, issued by Jeff Sessions in June 2018, took aim in particular at victims of domestic violence.2 Matter of L-E-A-, issued the following year by William Barr, sought to undermine protection for those targeted by gangs due to their familial ties.3 And on January 14, 2021, six days from the end of the Trump Administration, acting A.G. Jeffrey Rosen issued a second decision in A-B-, gratuitously criticizing the method for determining nexus in asylum claims employed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, while conveniently evading that court’s review of the original decision in the case through remand.4

Garland’s action restores the law to where it stood prior to June 11, 2018, but only for the time being. Proposed rules on the subject (which Garland referenced) are due by October 30, when they will first be subjected to a period of public comment. If final rules are eventually published, it will occur well into next year.

As we sigh in collective relief and celebrate the first steps towards correcting our asylum laws, let’s also take note of the imperfect place in which the case law stands at present.

As to domestic violence claims, the BIA’s 2014 decision in Matter of A-R-C-G- (which Matter of A-B- had vacated) has been restored as binding precedent.5 That decision was issued at a time when (as now) regulations addressing particular social groups were being contemplated by DHS and EOIR.6 While A-R-C-G- was an extremely welcome development, the Board used it to recognize a rather narrowly-defined group: “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship.” In a footnote to the decision, the Board declined to address the argument of several amici (including UNHCR) that a particular social group may be defined by gender alone. Although A-R-C-G- led to many grants of asylum, some immigration judges relied on the limited scope of the group’s definition to deny claims involving slightly broader variations, in particular, where the victim was not legally married, but nevertheless in a domestic relationship that she was unable to leave. While the BIA reversed some of those denials in unpublished decisions, it declined to speak to the issue through binding precedent.

As to Matter of L-E-A-, Garland’s recent action returns us to the BIA’s original opinion in that case.7 While the decision acknowledged that families constitute particular social groups (a point that was not in dispute, having been universally recognized for some 35 years and stipulated to by DHS), the BIA still denied asylum by invoking a legally incorrect standard for establishing nexus that it has continued to apply in all family-based asylum claims.

For these reasons, the content of the forthcoming regulations will be extremely important in determining the future of asylum in this country. While a return to the test for social group cognizability expressed in the BIA’s 1985 precedent in Matter of Acosta tops most regulation wish lists, I will focus the discussion here on a couple of more specific items necessary to correct the shortcomings of Matter of A-R-C-G- and Matter of L-E-A-.

First, the regulations need to explicitly recognize that a particular social group may be defined by gender alone. In its 2002 Gender Guidelines, UNHCR identified women “as a clear example of a social subset defined by innate and immutable characteristics, and who are frequently treated differently than men,” and whose “characteristics also identify them as a group in society, subjecting them to different treatment and standards in some countries.”8 However, over the nineteen years since those guidelines were issued, the BIA has consistently avoided considering the issue.

The peril of defining gender-based groups in the more narrow manner employed by the BIA has been addressed by two distinguished commentators, who explain that such practice results in “constant re-litigating of such claims,” sometimes creating “an obstacle course in which the postulated group undergoes constant redefinition.”9 And of course, that is exactly what has happened here, as A-R-C-G- gave way to A-B-, which led to differing interpretations among different courts until Garland’s recent reset. The above-mentioned commentators further decried the “nitpicking around the margins of the definition” resulting from the narrow approach when the true reason for the risk of persecution to the applicant “is simply her membership in the social group of ‘women.’”10 Regulations recognizing gender alone as a particular social group would thus provide clarity to judges and asylum officers, eliminate the wastefulness of drawn out litigation involving “nitpicking around the margins,” and bring our laws into line with international standards.

But as L-E-A- demonstrates, recognition of a group alone does not guarantee asylum protection. In order for a group’s recognition to be meaningful, the regs must also address an ongoing problem with the BIA’s method for determining nexus, or whether persecution is “on account of” the group membership.

The BIA is accorded deference by Article III courts when it reasonably interprets immigration laws, provided that the meaning of the language in question is ambiguous. However, the “on account of” standard included by Congress in defining the term “refugee” is quite clear; its meaning is long established, and in fact, is not particular to immigration law.

The Supreme Court referenced this standard last year in a non-immigration case, Bostock v. Clayton County. The Court explained that the test

incorporates the “‘simple’” and “traditional” standard of but-for causation…. That form of causation is established whenever a particular outcome would not have happened “but for” the purported cause….In other words, a but-for test directs us to change one thing at a time and see if the outcome changes. If it does, we have found a but-for cause.11

In a 2015 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit applied this exact test in the asylum context to conclude that persecution was on account of family, determining that the petitioner’s “relationship to her son is why she, and not another person, was threatened with death if she did not allow him to join Mara 18.”12 But for some reason, the BIA has felt entitled to reject this established standard outside of the Fourth Circuit in favor of its own excessively restrictive one.

Had the proper test for nexus been employed in L-E-A-, asylum would have been granted. Under the facts of that case, once the familial relationship is removed from the equation, the asylum-seeker’s risk ceases to exist. However, the BIA instead imposed an incorrect test for nexus requiring evidence of an “animus against the family or the respondent based on their biological ties, historical status, or other features unique to that family unit.”13

As a former circuit court judge, Garland is particularly qualified to recognize the error in the Board’s approach, as well as the need to correct its course. The problem is compounded by the particular composition of the BIA at present. For example, of the ten immigration judges who were promoted to the BIA during the Trump administration, nine denied asylum more than 90 percent of the time (with the tenth denying 85 percent of such claims). Three had an asylum denial rate in excess of 98 percent.14

This matters, as those high denial rates were achieved in part by using faulty nexus determinations to deny asylum in domestic violence claims, even before the issuance of Matter of A-B-. This was often accomplished by mischaracterizing the abuse as merely personal in nature, referencing only the persecutor’s generally violent nature or inebriated state. The analysis in those decisions did not further examine whether gender might also have been one central reason that the asylum seeker, and not someone else, was targeted.

One BIA Member appointed under Trump recently found no nexus in a domestic violence claim by concluding that the persecutor had not targeted the asylum seeker because of her membership in the group consisting of “women,” but rather because she was his woman. There is no indication in the decision that the Board Member considered why the persecutor might view another human being as belonging to him and lacking the same rights he seems to enjoy. Might it have been because of her gender?

Without a correction through published regulations, there is little reason to expect different treatment of these claims moving forward. Let’s hope that the Attorney General views his recent action as only the first steps on a longer path to a correct application of the law.

Copyright 2021, Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Notes:

Matter of A-B-, 28 I&N Dec. 307 (A.G. 2021) (“A-B- III”); Matter of L-E-A-, 28 I&N Dec. 304 (A.G. 2021) (“L-E-A- III”).

27 I&N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018) (“A-B- I”).

27 I&N Dec. 581 (A.G. 2019) (“L-E-A- II”).

28 I&N Dec. 199 (A.G. 2021) (“A-B- II”).

26 I&N Dec. 388 (BIA 2014).

The regulations under consideration at that time were never issued.

27 I&N Dec. 40 (BIA 2017) (“L-E-A- I”).

UNHCR, Guidelines on International Protection: Gender-Related Persecution within the context of Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (May 2002) at para. 30.

James C. Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Status, Second Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2014) at 442.

Hathaway and Foster, supra.

Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S.Ct. 1731, 1739 (2020).

Hernandez-Avalos v. Lynch, 784 F.3d 944, 950 (4th Cir. 2015).

L-E-A- I, supra at 47.

See TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse) Immigration Judge Reports https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/judgereports/.Republished with permission.

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

Without progressive intervention, this is still headed for failure @ EOIR! A few things to keep in mind.

- Former Attorney General, the late Janet Reno, ordered the same regulations on gender-based asylum to be promulgated more than two decades ago — never happened!
- The proposed regulations that did finally emerge along the way (long after Reno’s departure) were horrible — basically an ignorant mishmash of various OIL litigation positions that would have actually made it easier for IJs to arbitrarily deny asylum (as if they needed any invitation) and easier for OIL to defend such bogus denials.
- There is nobody currently at “Main Justice” or EOIR HQ qualified to draft these regulations! Without long overdue progressive personnel changes the project is almost “guaranteed to fail” – again!
- Any regulations entrusted to the current “Miller Lite Denial Club” @ the BIA ☠️ will almost certainly be twisted out of proportion to deny asylum and punish women refugees, as well as deny due process and mock fundamental fairness. It’s going to take more than regulations to change the “culture of denial” and the “institutionalized anti-due-process corner cutting” @ the BIA and in many Immigration Courts.
- Garland currently is mindlessly operating the “worst of all courts” — a so-called “specialized (not) court” where the expertise, independence, and decisional courage is almost all “on the outside” and sum total of the subject matter expertise and relevant experience of those advocating before his bogus “courts” far exceeds that of the “courts” themselves and of Garland’s own senior team! That’s why the deadly, embarrassing, sophomoric mistakes keep flowing into the Courts of Appeals on a regular basis.
- No regulation can bring decisional integrity and expertise to a body that lacks both!
- Any progressive who thinks Garland is going to solve the problem @ EOIR without “outside intervention” should keep this nifty “five month snapshot of EOIR under Biden” in mind:
  - Progressive judges appointed to BIA: 0
  - Progressive judges appointed to Immigration Court: 0
  - Progressives installed in leadership positions @ EOIR permanently or temporarily: 0
  - Billy Barr Selected Immigration Judges Appointed: 17
  - “Miller Lite” holdover individuals still holding key positions @ EOIR: many (only two removed to date)
  - Number of BIA precedents decided in favor of respondent: 2
  - Number of BIA precedents decided in favor of DHS: 9

That’s right, folks: Billy Barr and Stephen Miller have had more influence and gotten more deference from Garland at EOIR than have the progressive experts and advocates who fought tirelessly to preserve due process and to get the Biden Administration into office. How does that a make sense?

“Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color — Finally vacating two grotesquely wrong anti-female, anti-asylum precedents hasn’t ended the “Miller Lite Unhappy Hour” for migrants and their advocates at Garland’s foundering DOJ!

Progressives, advocates, and NGOs must keep raising hell until we finally get the “no-brainer,” long overdue, obvious, personnel, legal, structural, institutional, and cultural changes at EOIR that America needs! Waiting for Judge Garland to get around to it is like “Waiting for Godot!” Perhaps worse — I don’t recollect that anyone died waiting for Godot!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! The BIA Denial Club, Never!🏴‍☠️

PWS

06-22-21

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎IT JUST KEEPS GETTING WORSE @ GARLAND’S BIA — Plethora of Errors, Mischaracterizations, Misogyny, and Abuses Emanate From Garland’s Deadly, Out Of Control Star Chambers In Falls Church — How Many Deaths & Embarrassments Is It Going To Take For Judge G. To Finally Pull The Plug 🔌 On This Dangerous, Incompetent Band Of Scofflaws? — Issue = Asylum For Rape Victim/Abused Widow In India!

Woman Tortured — “When will it end, Judge G? When will it ever end?” –“She struggled madly in the torturing Ray”
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/06/21/18-72786.pdf

Kaur v. Garland, 9th Cir., 06-21-21, published

PANEL:Mary M. Schroeder and Marsha S. Berzon, Circuit Judges, and Salvador Mendoza, Jr.,* District Judge.

OPINION BY: Judge Mendoza

STAFF SUMMARY:

Granting Ravinder Kaur’s petition for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals, and remanding, the panel held that the Board erred in concluding that Kaur failed to establish material changed circumstances to warrant an exception to the time limitation on her motion to reopen, and in concluding that she failed to establish prima facie eligibility for asylum, withholding of removal, or protection under the Convention Against Torture.

Kaur sought to reopen her removal proceedings based on a combination of changed personal circumstances – the death of her abusive husband and his family’s threats that they would kill her if she returned to India because she was responsible for his death, and changed country conditions – including worsening conditions in India for women and widows.

The panel held that the Board mischaracterized the record and erred in concluding that Kaur presented evidence of only changed personal circumstances in support of reopening. The panel explained that while a self-induced change in personal circumstances does not qualify for the changed circumstances exception, that principle cannot apply rigidly when changed circumstances in the country of origin, while personal to the petitioner, are entirely outside her control, as was the case here. The panel further

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

KAUR V. GARLAND 3

explained that even where any change in personal circumstances is voluntary and did not originate in the country of nationality, the changed circumstances exception applies where changes in personal circumstances are made relevant due to changes in country conditions. The panel wrote that Kaur’s husband’s death, and his family’s death threats, were made relevant by increased violence in India against women, and in particular against widows. The panel further wrote that, contrary to the Board’s determination that Kaur provided evidence of only generalized conditions, Kaur presented evidence demonstrating that the prevalence and severity of human rights violations against women and widows had materially worsened in many respects.

The panel held that the Board also erred in concluding that Kaur failed to establish prima facie eligibility for asylum and withholding of removal relief. First, the panel concluded that the Board erred in determining that Kaur failed to establish that a protected ground, including her membership in a family social group, would be one central reason, or a reason, for the harm she fears. The panel wrote that a person may share an identity with a persecutor, and if a member of a particular social group is persecuted by other members of that same group because those members perceive the applicant as being “insufficiently loyal or authentic” to that group, she has been persecuted on account of a protected ground. Second, the panel concluded that the Board erred by requiring Kaur to show that her similarly situated family members had been mistreated. The panel explained that the safety of similarly situated members of the family who remained in the country of origin may be pertinent to a claim of future persecution, but does not itself disprove it, and in this case, the Board relied on the safety of Kaur’s daughter, who was not similarly situated. Third, the

4 KAUR V. GARLAND

panel concluded that the cultural context and Kaur’s evidence established more than a mere personal vendetta.

The panel held that the Board erred in concluding that Kaur failed to establish prima facie eligibility for CAT protection. First, the panel held that the Board erred in applying a “more likely than not” standard, rather than requiring Kaur to show a “reasonable likelihood” of meeting the statutory requirements for CAT protection. Moreover, the panel concluded that the Board abused its discretion in determining that Kaur did not meet the government consent or acquiescence requirement. The panel pointed out that Kaur presented evidence that her husband’s family is wealthy and has the means of carrying out their threats, that India suffers from widespread corruption, and that officials respond ineffectively to crimes, especially those against women. Based on that evidence, the panel concluded that the Board did not have substantial evidence to dismiss Kaur’s fears as speculation.

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

This is outrageous! In addition to raising issues about Garland’s failure to replace the “Killer BIA” with real progressive judges who are experts in human rights, due process, and immigration law, as almost every expert recommended, it raises serious concerns about Associate AG Vanita Gupta’s inexplicable failure to bring in litigation competence at OIL. Presenting and defending this mess as acceptable performance by DOJ quasi-judicial officials raises very serious ethical questions about both the “judges” and the attorneys defending their obviously defective, bias-based, anti-asylum, anti-female work product.

As many of us have been saying ever since the election, the “thorough housecleaning” at DOJ can’t wait! There is plenty of evidence to get the government lawyers participating in this mockery of justice out of leadership and decision-making positions, at a minimum! The fact that this case was argued under the Trump regime does not change the unethical performance at OIL or the incompetence of the BIA. Folks who “go along to get along” with violations of law and ethics, particularly in support of a White Nationalist agenda, should not be holding responsible Government legal positions. PERIOD!

Every individual and group who believes in due process, equal justice, gender fairness, good government, humanity, racial justice, and legal ethical norms should be demanding that Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke change leadership at EOIR, immediately relieve and replace (even if on a temporary basis) the BIA, and bring ethics, expertise, and competence to OIL.

Kristen Clarke, some the most outrageous “civil rights abuses” in America here taking place right at the DOJ — at EOIR and OIL! Others are “hidden in plain sight” at DHS, particularly in their “New American Gulag.” You’re NOT going to solve voting rights, police misconduct, or any other civil rights problem in America without first getting the DOJ’s house in order. And, that means standing up to your dawdling and, to date, remarkably ineffective “political bosses” and demanding immediate change!

It’s YOUR REPUTATION, along with the lives of refugee women like Ms. Kaur, that are on the line here!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-21-21

🤮👎🏽ULTIMATE HIPOCRACY: EVEN AS AMERICA FINALLY CELEBRATES JUNETEENTH HOLIDAY, DRED SCOTT & INSTITUTIONALIZED RACIST DEHUMANIZATION REMAIN REALITIES FOR BLACKS & OTHER MIGRANTS OF COLOR AT EOIR & DHS — Imprisonment Without Trial, Bogus Bonds, Mistreatment In The New American Gulag, Jim Crow “Courts,” No Rule Of Law, Still Realities For Those Of Color Exercising Legal Rights In Broken System!

“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”

Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice, Supreme Court, March 1857, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857)

“Congress is entitled to set the conditions for an alien’s lawful entry into this country and that, as a result, an alien at the threshold of initial entry cannot claim any greater rights under the due process clause.”

Justice Samuel Alito, Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. ___ (2020)

Dred Scott (circa 1857)
Public Realm — Black asylum seekers and other migrants aren’t celebrating the continuing disgraceful “Dred Scottification of the other” in Mayorkas’s “New American Gulag” and Garland’s “Miller Lite” Immigration “Courts” that aren’t “courts” at all!

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/institutional-racism-immigration-system_n_60cbc554e4b0b50d622b66d7

By Rowaida Abdelaziz in HuffPost:

Yacouba, a political activist in Ivory Coast, knew if he didn’t immediately flee his home country, he wouldn’t survive.

After being threatened, attacked and tortured by people sympathetic to those in power, Yacouba fled his country in 2018. He went to Brazil for a few years, then made a perilous trek through Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras and Mexico before finally arriving in the United States.

The journey was one of the two most challenging periods of his life. The second was being detained as a Black immigrant in the U.S.

As the nation celebrates Juneteenth — a day commemorating the emancipation of African Americans who had been enslaved in the United States — as a federal holiday for the first time, Black Americans and immigrants are fighting to dismantle institutional racism, including within the immigration system. Black immigrants are disproportionately detained, receive higher bond costs, and say they face racist treatment within detention centers.

Recognizing and celebrating the emancipation of slaves is vital, activists say ― but continuing to take down systemic racism needs to come with it.

“From an immigration perspective, Black immigrants face disproportionate levels of detention and exclusion,” Diana Konate, policy director at the advocacy group African Communities Together, said Thursday on a press call. “These can be life-threatening, as Black immigrants often get deported back to unsafe and dangerous conditions. While we celebrate the victories, we keep in mind that a lot of work remains.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Rowaida’s article at the link.

Every day that Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke drag their collective feet on ending “Dred Scottification,” racial bias, and xenophobia at EOIR diminishes their credibility on all racial and social justice issues. To date, Garland has appointed zero (O) progressive judges at EOIR, has only scratched the surface of the White Nationalist bias in decision-making in the Immigration Courts, and has failed to re-establish due process and the rule of law for Blacks and other migrants of color at the border.

Justice Alito and his colleagues in the majority disgracefully basically “dressed up” the core of Dred Scott dehumanization and bias in “21st century faux constitutional gobbledygook and intentional, disingenuous fictionalization!” Make no mistake: asylum seekers applying at our borders with their lives and humanity at stake are “persons” subject to our jurisdiction and are entitled to full Constitutional due process and statutory rights that are being denied to them every day, currently by the Biden Administration.

While Alito & Co. are wrong, DEAD WRONG in all too many cases, nothing in their dishonest and misguided “jurisprudence” prevents Garland from providing due process to individuals, regardless of status, in Immigration Court and to ending the racism and dehumanization underneath both the mess at EOIR and the cowardly abdication of duty by the Supremes’ majority in Thuraissigiam! In human rights, you either solve the problem or become part of it. And, experts, journalists, and historians are making a permanent record of the actions of the Supremes and the Biden Administration when democracy and racial justice are under stress!

You don’t have to look very far to “connect the dots” between Alito’s dismissive attitude toward the human rights of Asians and other asylum seekers of color and the increase in hate crimes directed against Asian Americans and unfair policing of African Americans. Once courts and government officials endorse “dehumanization of the other based largely on ethnicity” the “protections” and “distinctions” of citizenship tend to also vanish. If the lives of migrants of color can be declared worthless, what difference does citizenship mean for those of the same ethnic heritage that Alito deems below humanity? Obviously, the Trump kakistocracy’s attack on migrants of color was just a “place holder” for their attack on the rights of all persons of color in America!

How can Garland’s DOJ demand racial justice in state law enforcement while operating America’s most notorious “Jim Crow Court System?”

James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism — He still “rules the roost” at Garland’s EOIR!

It’s time for all civil rights and civil liberties organizations to join forces in demanding an end to bias and “Dred Scottification of the other” in Garland’s disgracefully dysfunctional Immigration “Courts.” Not rocket science!🚀 Just human decency, common sense, available (yet ignored) progressive expertise, and Con Law 101!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-21-21

NDPA STALWART JASON “THE ASYLUMIST” DZUBOW 🌟 QUOTED IN AP ARTICLE ABOUT REPEAL OF A-B- & L-E-A-!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=a9dc6320-82bc-4db8-bb6b-cfba11a536cb

AP reports:

The U.S. government on Wednesday ended two Trump administration policies that made it harder for immigrants fleeing violence to qualify for asylum, especially Central Americans.

Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland issued a new policy saying immigration judges should cease following the Trump-era rules that made it tough for immigrants who faced domestic or gang violence to win asylum in the United States. The move could make it easier for them to win their cases for humanitarian protection and was widely celebrated by immigrant advocates.

“The significance of this cannot be overstated,” said Kate Melloy Goettel, legal director of litigation at the American Immigration Council. “This was one of the worst anti-asylum decisions under the Trump era, and this is a really important first step in undoing that.”

Garland said he was making the changes after President Biden ordered his office and the Department of Homeland Security to draft rules addressing complex issues in immigration law about groups of people who should qualify for asylum.

Gene Hamilton, a key architect of many of then-President Trump’s immigration policies who served in the Justice Department, said in a statement that he believed the change would lead to more immigrants filing asylum claims based on crime and that it should not be a reason for the humanitarian protection.

. . . .

In the current fiscal year, people from countries such as Russia and Cameroon have seen higher asylum grant rates in the immigration courts than those from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the data show.

One of the Trump administration policies was aimed at migrants who were fleeing violence from nonstate actors, such as gangs, while the other affected those who felt they were being targeted in their countries because of their family ties, said Jason Dzubow, an immigration attorney in Washington who focuses on asylum.

Dzubow said he recently represented a Salvadoran family in which the husband was killed and gang members started coming after his children. While Dzubow argued they were in danger because of their family ties, he said the immigration judge rejected the case, citing the Trump-era decision among the reasons.

Dzubow welcomed the change but said he doesn’t expect to suddenly see large numbers of Central Americans winning their asylum cases, which remain difficult under U.S. law.

“I don’t expect it is going to open the floodgates, and all of a sudden everyone from Central America can win their cases. Those cases are very burdensome and difficult,” he said. “We need to make a decision: Do we want to protect these people?”

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

Read the full article at the link.

You know for sure you’re doing the right thing when anti-asylum shill and Stephen Miller crony Gene Hamilton criticizes it!

I tend to agree with my friend Jason that under present conditions, asylum cases for women refugees from Central America are likely to continue to be a “tough slog” at EOIR. The intentionally-created anti-asylum, misogynist, anti-Latino, anti-scholarship, anti-quality, anti-due-process culture at EOIR that emerged under Sessions and Barr isn’t going to disappear overnight, particularly the way Judge Garland is approaching it. He needs to “get out the broom,🧹 sweep out the current BIA and the bad, anti-asylum judges, get rid of ineffective administration, and bring in human rights and due process professionals to get this system operating again!

Jason, for one, would be an outstanding judicial choice for building a functioning, fair, efficient Immigration Court; one that would fulfill the long-abandoned vision of “through teamwork and innovation, being the world’s best tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Under the Trump regime, EOIR was the antithesis of that noble vision!

Cases such as that described by Jason (incorrectly decided by the Immigration Judge) utilizing A-R-C-G- and “family friendly” precedents from the Fourth Circuit were usually well-represented and well-prepared by attorneys like Jason, Clinics, and NGOs like CLINIC, CAIR Coalition, Human Rights First, and Law School Clinics. After review by ICE Counsel, many were candidates for my “short docket” in Arlington where asylum could easily be granted based on the documentation and short confirming testimony.

To their credit, even before the BIA finally issued A-R-C-G-, the Arlington Chief Counsel’s Office was not opposing well-documented asylum grants based on domestic violence under what was known as the “Martin Brief” after former DHS/INS Senior Official, renowned immigration scholar, and internationally recognized asylum expert, now emeritus Professor David A. Martin of UVA Law. I remember telling David after one such case that his brief was still “saving lives” even after his departure from DHS and return to academia.

David Martin — Professor (Emeritus) David A. Martin
UVA Law
PHOTO: UVA Law

Rather than building on that real potential for efficiency, cooperation, quality, and due process, under Sessions those things that were working at EOIR and represented hope and potential for future progress were maliciously and idiotically dismantled. From the outside, throughout the country, I saw DV cases that once would have been “easy short docket grants” in Arlington require lengthy hearings and often be incorrectly decided in Immigration Court and the BIA. Sometimes the Circuits corrected the errors, sometimes not.

At best, what had been a growing census around recognizing asylum claims based on DV became a “crap shoot” with the result almost totally dependent on what judges were assigned, what Circuit the hearing was held in, and even the composition of the Circuit panel! And, of course, unrepresented claimants were DOA regardless of the merits of their cases. What a way to run a system where torture or death could be the result of a wrong decision!

But, it doesn’t have to be that away! Experts like Jason and others could get this system functioning fairly and efficiently in less time than it took Sessions and Barr to destroy it.

However, it can’t be done with the personnel now at DOJ and EOIR Headquarters. If Judge Garland wants this to function like a real court system (not always clear to me that he does), he needs to recruit and bring in the outside progressive experts absolutely necessary to make it happen. At long last, it’s time for “Amateur Night at the Bijou” to end its long, disgraceful, debilitating “run” @ EOIR!

Time for this long-running show at DOJ/EOIR to end! PHOTO: Thomas Hawk
Creative Commons
Amateur Night

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-18-21

👍🏼UNHCR welcomes US decision to restore protections from gang and domestic violence

UNHCR welcomes US decision to restore protections from gang and domestic violence

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, welcomes the U.S. government’s decision announced 16 June to reverse legal rulings introduced several years ago that effectively made people forced to flee life-threatening domestic and gang violence in their home countries ineligible from being able to seek safety in the United States.

“These rulings have put the lives of vulnerable people at risk,” said Matthew Reynolds, UNHCR Representative to the United States and the Caribbean, after the U.S. Justice Department announced that the legal rulings known as Matter of A-B- and Matter of L-E-A- had been vacated in their entirety.

“Today’s decisions will give survivors fleeing these types of violence a better chance of finding safety in the United States and being treated with the basic compassion and dignity that every single person deserves. UNHCR welcomes this important humanitarian step,” Reynolds said.

UNHCR, he added, also welcomes the U.S. administration’s commitment to bringing its asylum system into line with international standards and specifically to writing new rules on determining membership of a “particular social group,” one of five grounds spelled out in the 1951 Refugee Convention defining who is entitled to international protection as a refugee.

“In keeping with international standards, a simple and broad definition of ‘particular social group’ is an essential part of a fair and efficient asylum system,” Reynolds said, adding that UNHCR stands ready and willing to support the asylum review and rulemaking process in any way requested by the U.S. government.

ENDS

This Press Release is available here.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency: 70 years protecting people forced to flee.

—

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

The unethical and illegal “bogus precedents” issued by Sessions and Barr have cost lives! Much of the damage done to date is irreparable. So is the continuing damage resulting from the Biden Administration’s failure to reopen ports of entry to legal asylum seekers.

🆘A functioning asylum system at ports of entry, establishing a viable refugee program in or in the region of the Northern Triangle, and a wholly reformed, due process oriented EOIR with real judges who understand how to fairly and efficiently evaluate and grant asylum under the very generous standard enunciated by the BIA in Matter of Mogharrabi but never in fact uniformly applied in practice will reduce the number of individuals crossing the border between ports of entry to seek refuge. We also need the help of NGOs in providing representation to those arriving and resettlement assistance for those “screened in” for hearings.

Right now, we have no legal asylum system at our border despite very clear statutory language commanding it. That’s a BIG problem that must be addressed immediately! Clearly, the Biden Administration must cooperate with and seek help from human rights experts now outside Government including the UNHCR.

As I’ve said before many times, expert human rights leadership needs to be brought into their Biden Administration to “kick some tail,” eradicate incompetence and bias, and fix EOIR and the asylum system.

The NDPA needs to keep the pressure building for more immediate, common sense reforms to our asylum system and a legitimate EOIR of experts who function independently from DHS enforcement and politicos.

🇺🇸⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-17-21

🗽⚖️LEADING GENDER JUSTICE NGO RIPS HARRIS’S TONE-DEAF “DIE WHERE YOU ARE, WE DON’T CARE” MESSAGE TO NORTHERN TRIANGLE REFUGEES! — Whatever Happened To Biden Administration’s Promise To Restore The Rule of Law @ The Border? — US Is The Problem — USG Lawlessness, Dishonest, Wasteful Policies Go Unchecked By Biden, Harris, Garland, Mayorkas!

Dear colleagues,

Please find below and online CGRS’s bilingual statement in response to Vice President Harris’ remarks in Guatemala earlier this week.

—

*en español abajo*

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: Brianna Krong, (415) 581-8835, krongbrianna@uchastings.edu

CGRS Urges V.P. Harris to Reject Short-Sighted Policies that Endanger Central Americans

San Francisco, CA (June 10, 2021) – This week Vice President Kamala Harris visited Guatemala and Mexico, meeting with government and civil society leaders to discuss issues of corruption, violence, and poverty. During a Monday press conference with Guatemalan president Alejandro Giammattei, Harris offered a callous and woefully misguided message to Central Americans. “I want to be clear to folks in the region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border,” Harris said. “Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws … If you come to our border, you will be turned back.” These remarks reflect a deep misunderstanding of our laws and of the conditions forcing people to seek asylum at our border. The Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS) urges the vice president and the Biden-Harris administration to do better.

For people fleeing Central America it is no secret that the voyage north is dangerous, and that they will likely face hostility at the U.S. border. Yet thousands continue to make the treacherous journey because widespread violence, poverty, and disasters in their home countries leave them no other option. Vice President Harris and the Biden-Harris administration should understand this: People flee home because their lives, and the lives of their children, depend on it. The administration’s advice that Central Americans, Haitians, and others escaping grave dangers simply “not come” – as if they have any choice in the matter – is cruel and wildly out of touch. Moreover “enforcing our laws” should mean upholding the right to seek asylum, which is enshrined in both U.S. and international law. Turning people away without the slightest concern for the dangers they’ll face, as the Biden-Harris administration has continued to do under the illegal Title 42 policy, is a blatant violation of our laws.

“Our country has played a direct role in the dangerous conditions that plague Central America by bolstering oppressive regimes and contributing to the violence and instability driving refugee flight from the region,” CGRS Manager of Regional Initiatives Felipe Navarro Lux said today. “Instead of taking responsibility and addressing the harm we have caused, the United States time and time again has doubled down on ineffective and draconian policies that punish Central Americans and other refugees for seeking U.S. protection. We have a legal and moral obligation to do better.”

Our immigration and foreign policies should seek not to suppress migration, but to expand safe and orderly pathways to refugee protection and, in the long term, to make the region safer, so that migration is increasingly an option, rather than a necessity, for Central Americans. We can do so by:

Encouraging transparent and accountable governments that uphold the rights of their residents: The United States should stand with Central American civil society organizations (CSOs) working for change – not abusive or authoritarian governments – to combat corruption, advance the rule of law, and promote respect for human rights, particularly for vulnerable groups including youth, women, Indigenous, Black, and LGBTQ+ people.

Prioritizing humanitarian protection over deterrence. Pressuring countries in the region to increase migration enforcement and militarize their borders only forces people seeking protection to make more dangerous journeys, exposing them to increased human rights violations.

Expanding and developing new pathways for migrants and asylum seekers: We should expand protections those fleeing persecution, increase opportunities for family reunification, and address the needs of those displaced by climate change.

Designating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Guatemala, and re-designating TPS for Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua: TPS allows immigrant communities in the United States to live and work without fear of deportation, and to send remittances to family members in their home countries still recovering from the effects of back-to-back hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Click here to read CGRS’s recommendations for expanding access to protections for refugees and migrants in Central America and Mexico, with Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc., Church World Service, Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración, AC (IMUMI), Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), Latin America Working Group Education Fund (LAWGEF), Washington Office on Latin America, and Women’s Refugee Commission.

—

CGRS urge a la vicepresidente Harris rechazar políticas miopes que ponen en peligro a los centroamericanos

San Francisco, CA (10 de junio de 2021) – Esta semana la vicepresidente Kamala Harris visitó Guatemala y México, reuniéndose con líderes de los gobiernos y la sociedad civil para discutir asuntos de corrupción, violencia, y pobreza. Durante una rueda de prensa junto con el presidente guatemalteco Alejandro Giammattei, Harris leofreció un mensaje cruel y tristemente equivocado a los centroamericanos. “Quiero ser clara con las personas en la región que están pensando en hacer el peligroso viaje a la frontera de Estados Unidos-México”, dijo Harris. “No vengan. Estados Unidos hará cumplir sus leyes… Si vienen a nuestra frontera, serán regresados”. Estas palabras relejan un profundo desconocimiento de nuestra legislación y de las condiciones que obligan a las personas a pedir asilo en nuestra frontera. El Centro de Estudios de Género y Refugiados (CGRS por sus siglas en inglés) urge a la vicepresidenta y al gobierno Biden-Harris a realizar un mejor trabajo.

Para las personas que huyen de Centroamérica no es un secreto que el viaje al norte es peligroso, y que muy seguramente serán recibidos con hostilidad en la frontera de EE. UU. Aun así, miles continúan migrando porque la violencia, pobreza, y desastres en sus países de origen no les dejan otra opción. La vicepresidente Harris y el gobierno Biden-Harris deben entender esto: Las personas huyen de sus hogares porque sus vidas, y las vidas de sus hijos, dependen de ello. El consejo que este gobierno le da a los centroamericanos, haitianos, y otros que escapan de graves peligros cuando les dice que “no vengan” – como si fuera una opción – es cruel y se aleja de la realidad. Mas aún, “hacer cumplir nuestras leyes” debería significar proteger el derecho a solicitar asilo, el cual se encuentra consagrado en la ley nacional e internacional. Retornar a personas en la frontera sin la menor preocupación por los peligros que puedan enfrentar, como el gobierno Biden-Harris continúa haciendo bajo la ilegal política del “Título 42”, es una violación descarada de nuestras leyes.

“Al apoyar gobiernos opresivos y contribuir a la violencia e inestabilidad en Centroamérica, nuestro país ha jugado un papel directo en la creación de los peligros que obligan a miles a huir”, dijo Felipe Navarro-Lux, Gerente de Iniciativas Regionales de CGRS. “En vez de asumir nuestra responsabilidad y aminorar el daño que hemos causado, una y otra vez Estados Unidos ha implementado políticas ineficientes y draconianas que castigan a los centroamericanos y otros refugiados por buscar protección en este país. Es hora de cumplir nuestras obligaciones legales y morales.”

En vez de buscar suprimir la migración, nuestras políticas exteriores y migratorias se deben enfocar en crear y ampliar opciones seguras y ordenadas de acceso a protección para refugiados y, a largo plazo, mejorar las condiciones en la región para que la migración sea cada vez más una opción, y no una necesidad, para los centroamericanos. Podemos hacer esto al:

Promover gobiernos que respeten los derechos de todos sus residentes, urgiendo transparencia y rendición de cuentas: Estados Unidos debe apoyar a las organizaciones de la sociedad civil que trabajan para efectuar cambios – y no a gobiernos corruptos y autoritarios – para combatir la corrupción, reforzar el estado de derecho, y promover el respeto por los derechos humanos, particularmente para la juventud, mujeres, personas indígenas, negras y LGBTQ+.

Priorizar la protección humanitaria sobre la disuasión migratoria. Presionar a los países de la región a aumentar sus controles migratorios y militarizar sus fronteras solo obliga a las personas que buscan protección a tomar caminos más peligrosos, exponiéndolas a mayores violaciones de derechos humanos.

Ampliar y desarrollar nuevas oportunidades para migrantes y solicitantes de asilo: Debemos ofrecer más opciones para aquellos que huyen de la persecución, aumentar las oportunidades de reunificación familiar, y atender las necesidades de aquellos desplazados por el cambio climático.

Designar Estatus de Protección Temporal (TPS, por sus siglas en inglés) para Guatemala, y re-designar TPS para Honduras, El Salvador, y Nicaragua: Con TPS, las comunidades inmigrantes en Estados Unidos pueden vivir y trabajar sin temor a ser deportadas, y enviar remesas a sus familias en sus países de origen, los cuales aún están sintiendo los devastadores efectos de huracanes y la pandemia COVID-19.

Haga click aquí para leer recomendaciones para ampliar el acceso a protección para refugiados y migrantes en Centro América y México, desarrolladas por CGRS, Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc., Church World Service, Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración, AC (IMUMI), Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), Latin America Working Group Education Fund (LAWGEF), Washington Office on Latin America, y Women’s Refugee Commission.

Brianna Krong | Communications and Advocacy Coordinator

Center for Gender and Refugee Studies

200 McAllister Street | San Francisco, CA 94102

(415) 581-8835 (Phone) | (415) 581-8824 (Fax)

krongbrianna@uchastings.edu

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Twitter | Facebook | Donate

Request Assistance or Report an Outcome in Your Asylum Case

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

Casey might ask:

Casey Stengel — “Can’t anyone here play this game?”
PHOTO: Rudi Reit
Creative Commons

When it comes to the Biden Administration on human rights, racial justice, gender justice, due process, immigration, border strategy, and cleaning up corruption, unhappily the answer is “No!”

🇺🇸🗽Due ProcessForever!

PWS

06-10-21

From WashPost:

Here’s the NAWJ’s full statement:

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Lack of expertise and moral courage has consequences!

Related posts:

Dan Kowalski reports in LexisNexis Immigration Community:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

CLINIC is right: “Shame!”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Here is the letter:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

This just in from Dean Kevin Johnson over at ImmigrationProf Blog:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Daniel Paz writes in Newsweek:

Tell the Biden Administration and Judge Garland that we need progressive reforms, now! EOIR would be a great starting place!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

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The latest from the Hon. “Sir Jeffrey:”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! The BIA Denial Club, Never!🏴‍☠️

Related posts:

Kaur v. Garland, 9th Cir., 06-21-21, published

It’s YOUR REPUTATION, along with the lives of refugee women like Ms. Kaur, that are on the line here!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

“Congress is entitled to set the conditions for an alien’s lawful entry into this country and that, as a result, an alien at the threshold of initial entry cannot claim any greater rights under the due process clause.”

By Rowaida Abdelaziz in HuffPost:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

AP reports:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

🇺🇸⚖️Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Casey might ask:

🇺🇸🗽Due ProcessForever!

Related posts: