immigrationcourtside.com

“Don’t know much about history, Don’t know much biology, Don’t know much about science book, Don’t know much about the French I took . . . .” — Decades Of Anti-Science, Education Bashing, Dissing The Arts, And Anti-Intellectualism By The GOP Have Left Us With The Wasteland Of Donald Trump!

Quote from “Don’t Know Much About History,” Music & Lyrics By Sam Cooke http://www.songlyrics.com/sam-cooke/don-t-know-much-about-history-lyrics/

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/04/14/daily-202-trump-doesn-t-know-much-about-history-it-s-making-his-on-the-job-training-harder/58f06ba2e9b69b3a72331e84/?utm_term=.19018fb0f4f4

James Hohmann writes in the Washington Post:

“THE BIG IDEA: Donald Trump believed he could convince China to pressure North Korea to stop its nuclear activities. Then President Xi Jinping tutored him on the history of the region.

“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized that it’s not so easy,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, recounting the session at Mar-a-Lago. “You know, I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power over North Korea. But it’s not what you would think.”

This comment is funny because, in 2011, Trump claimed that he has read “hundreds of books about China over the decades,” including works by Henry Kissinger, American journalists and Chinese novelists. Looking to do more business with Beijing, he provided a list of 20 books about China to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, that he said had helped him understand the country, its politics and its people. “I know the Chinese. I’ve made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind,” Trump said six years ago. His list had some surprising titles on it, including “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.”

Color me skeptical that Trump has read anything by Amy Chua.

— Even if he has, the fact our president needed an introductory tutorial on Sino-Korean relations to understand how hard it is to contain Pyongyang is just the latest illustration of one of his blind spots: He and his inner-circle have very little sense of history.

— It is a cliché, but there is truth to it: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

— Trump has committed several small but memorable faux pas since the inauguration:

He mentioned Abraham Lincoln during a fundraising dinner for the National Republican Congressional Committee last month. “Most people don’t even know he was a Republican,” Trump said. “Does anyone know? Lot of people don’t know that!” (Most likely, every person in the ballroom knew and has attended at least one Lincoln Day dinner.)

On Lincoln’s birthday in February, Trump tweeted out an obviously fake quote from the 16th president: “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.” He later deleted it.

“Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice,” he said at a Black History Month event. (Douglass died in 1895.)

“Have you heard of Susan B. Anthony?” he asked at a Women’s History Month reception in March.

In January, Trump said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) – who is best known for almost getting beaten to death as he marched on Bloody Sunday in Selma – is “all talk, talk, talk – no action or results.” There are things Lewis could be fairly criticized for, but no one who knows anything about the civil rights movement would agree that being “all talk” is one of them.

— Those four gaffes were tailormade to go viral on social media, but the president has made other comments that perhaps better underscore his lack of depth on U.S. history. Only someone who doesn’t understand the ugly history of the 1930s, for example, could have so wholeheartedly embraced “America First” as a mantra, let alone made it a rallying cry in his inaugural address. The slogan was first popularized by Nazi sympathizers.

— Trump has embraced Andrew Jackson as his political idol, hanging his portrait in the Oval Office and even flying to Nashville on his 250th birthday to lay a wreath on his tomb. In a speech there, he identified with the seventh president because he took on the “arrogant elite.” “Does that sound familiar?” Trump said with a sly smile.

Yet the very next week, in Louisville, the president claimed the mantle of Henry Clay. “Henry Clay believed in what he called the ‘American system,’ and proposed tariffs to protect American industry and finance American infrastructure,” the president said in a long riff. “Like Henry Clay, we want to put our own people to work. … Clay was a fierce advocate for American manufacturing. … He knew all the way back, (in the) early 1800s, Clay said that trade must be fair, equal, and reciprocal. Boom!”

Anyone who has a passing familiarity with 19th century history knows how goofy it is to embrace both Jackson and Clay. “They were absolutely feral enemies,” Fergus Bordewich, a Clay biographer, told Time after Trump’s speech. “They absolutely hated each other. They shared almost no views in common.”

— Sean Spicer’s cringe-worthy comments this week that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s actions were worse than Adolf Hitler’s suggested a more endemic problem of historical illiteracy in the White House. The press secretary has since apologized for saying that Hitler “was not using the gas on his own people in the same way that Assad is doing.” He also referred to concentration camps as “the Holocaust centers.”

Because Spicer made his comment on the first day of Passover, the observant staff members at the Anti-Defamation League had their phones and televisions off. So they didn’t find out until Wednesday night what had happened. Leaders of the group reached out to the White House yesterday to offer a training session on the Holocaust. “The organization has taught classes on Hitler’s murderous campaign — which exterminated 6 million Jews and millions more LGBT people, Poles, socialists and others — to more than 130,000 law enforcement professionals and 35,000 teachers,” Julie Zauzmer reports. ADL is willing to offer a free session to Spicer or “anyone at the White House who may need to learn more about the Holocaust.” Spicer didn’t respond to an email about whether he’d do it.

— Trump has admitted that he is not intellectually curious. In a moment of candor, he told The Post’s Marc Fisher last summer that he has not read any biographies of presidents. He said he would like to someday but never has time. Then he explained that he does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense.” Trump told Marc he is skeptical of experts because they can’t see the forest through the trees and lack his good instincts.

— This is a break with many of his predecessors. Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton all invited elite historians for private dinners at the White House. Each thought deeply about his place in history as he mulled weighty decisions. Bush, who majored in history at Yale, heavily employed historical analogies in his speeches. John F. Kennedy even hired Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to be his in-house historian.

— Trump’s very dark world view is one of the ways his lack of historical perspective manifests itself. David Nakamura contrasts how Obama and Trump see the world in a piece for today’s paper:

“Addressing the United Nations last fall, Obama took a moment to highlight for fellow world leaders what he called ‘the most important fact’ about the state of global affairs: Human existence on planet Earth is good — and getting better. War is down, he said, while life expectancy is up. Democracy is on the march, and science has beaten back infectious diseases. A girl in a remote village can download the ‘entirety of human knowledge’ on a smartphone. A person born today, Obama concluded, is more likely to be safer, healthier, wealthier and better-educated — and to see a path to prosperity — than at ‘any time in human history.’”

President Trump does not inhabit this world: “To Trump, the world is ‘a mess,’ as he said during a White House news conference this week. ‘It’s crazy what’s going on,’ Trump said. ‘Whether it’s the Middle East or you look at — no matter where — Ukraine — whatever you look at, it’s got problems, so many problems. Right now, it’s nasty.’”

“President Obama constantly reminded us that our own times are not uniquely oppressive,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian and author at Rice University. “There’s a feeling due to the 24-7 news cycle that everything is a crisis mode, when the fact of the matter is, Americans have it better now than ever before.”

During a town hall-style event with young people in Malaysia in September, Obama blamed the flow of information bombarding news consumers on televisions, computers and smartphones for making it appear “as if the world is falling apart.”“Everybody is shouting and everybody hates each other,” Obama said. “And you get kind of depressed. You think, ‘Goodness, what’s happening?’”

Trump, of course, consumes most of his news from cable television and Twitter.

President Trump is changing his tune on NATO, China’s currency, Syria and many other policies he campaigned on. The Post’s Jenna Johnson looks at why his stances have shifted now that he’s in the White House. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

— Bigger picture: One important reason the new president has flip-flopped so much in recent daysis because he has never grappled deeply or seriously with most issues. Trump has typically staked out whatever position was most politically expedient at that moment and then confidently argued for it, untethered by core convictions beyond a desire to make money, build his brand and win elections.”

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Read Hohmann’s entire piece at the above link. Trump is the logical culmination of years of “know-nothingism” by the GOP.

PWS

04-16-17

HISTORY: Lest We Forget, The U.S. Justice System & The Supreme Court Have Sometimes Been On The Wrong Side Of History & Justice! — Remembering The Easter Sunday Massacre In Colfax, LA & The Racist Supremes’ Intentional Perversion Of The Constitution!

http://m.dailykos.com/stories/2017/4/16/1650660/-The-Easter-Sunday-massacre-in-Colfax-Louisiana-and-the-awful-Supreme-Court-decision-that-followed?detail=facebook

Denise Oliver Velez writes in the Daily Kos:

“When Christians think of the meaning of Easter Sunday, it symbolizes resurrection and hope. When I think of Easter Sunday in the black community, I think of all the ladies in their wonderful hats heading off to church. However, I don’t ever forget that Easter Sunday also marked one of the most horrible massacres of black citizens in U.S. history. It’s hard to erase the images in my mind of black bodies riddled with bullets, blown apart by cannon fire. They died at the hands of white supremacists who lost the Civil War but who won the years ahead, because they were able to destroy Reconstruction. I take a moment of silence and say a prayer for the dead, many of whose names we will never know.

This story from The Root on the Colfax Massacre, written by Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., gives the details. It’s worth reading in its entirety.

In Colfax, La., on Easter Sunday 1873, a mob of white insurgents, including ex-Confederate and Union soldiers, led an assault on the Grant Parish Courthouse, the center of civic life in the community, which was occupied and surrounded — and defended — by black citizens determined to safeguard the results of the state’s most recent election. They, too, were armed, but they did not have the ammunition to outlast their foes, who, outflanking them, proceeded to mow down dozens of the courthouse’s black defenders, even when they surrendered their weapons. The legal ramifications were as horrifying as the violence — and certainly more enduring; in an altogether different kind of massacre, United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the U.S. Supreme Court tossed prosecutors’ charges against the killers in favor of severely limiting the federal government’s role in protecting the emancipated from racial targeting, especially at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.

Historians know this tragedy as the Colfax Massacre, though in the aftermath, even today, some whites refer to it as the Colfax Riot in order to lay blame at the feet of those who, lifeless, could not tell their tale. In his canonical history of the period, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, Eric Foner has called the Colfax Massacre “[t]he bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era.”

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What kind of folks would still have a racist historical marker like this in their community? What kind of state would permit it?

Interesting questions, because we now have an Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, who wants to turn civil rights enforcement and local police monitoring back over to the very states and localities with appalling records of racism, exclusion, and brutality directed at African Americans and other minority communities. In other words, Sessions actively seeks a return to U.S. Government inaction in the face of white supremacy, discrimination, and violation of minority rights.

While planning to turn his back on the legitimate responsibilities of the Federal Government to protect its citizens rights from overreaching by states and localities, Sessions disingenuously plans to force those states and localities which are trying to protect the rights of those in their communities to assist in Federal immigration enforcement.

PWS

04-16-17

BIG ISSUE: Right To Counsel In Expedited Removal!

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2017/04/right-to-counsel-in-expedited-removal-amicus-brief-sign-on-request-for-attorneys-law-profs.html

ImmigratonProf Blog reports:

“Posted at the request of Kari Hong and Stephen Manning:

“We are authoring an amicus brief supporting access to private counsel in expedited removal. In United States v. Peralta-Sanchez, 8 47 F.3d 1124 (9th Cir. 2017),the Ninth Circuit (2-1) held that there is no statutory or constitutional right for non-citizens to have access to counsel in expedited removal proceedings. The brilliant federal defender Kara Hartzler argued the case and filed an en banc petition.

This amicus brief filed by law professors, practitioners, and clinicians supports the request of Mr. Peralta-Sanchez for a recognized right to access to counsel.

The amicus brief makes three points (1) There is a significant private interest at stake given that expedited removal extends to those with claims to potential remedies (including asylum seekers and long-term residents), to those whom are mistakenly found not to have status when they are citizens or lawful permanent residents, and to those who live within 100 miles of the border, which reaches 66% of the U.S. population; (2) The right to counsel will improve accuracy of the determinations made in expedited removal proceedings to correct these recent and documented errors. A 2016 study documented a substantial rate of success for immigrants with representation compared to those without in other immigration proceedings. All reasonable inferences then support that the presence of counsel will ensure that those entitled to protections due in expedited removal proceedings will receive then; (3) The costs to the Government if non-citizens are permitted to hire private counsel are minimal. Any delay arising from the adjudication of expedited removal proceedings form the presence of counsel arises as individuals entitled to protections simply receive them. There is no compulsion for the Government to incur the costs of detention when alternatives to detention are available, less costly, more humane, and as effective. There is no compulsion for the Government to hire a new corps of attorneys to contest these adjudications. The USCIS routinely processes claims by non-citizens, including those with private counsel. No disadvantage to the Government has occurred not to contest these proceedings, which include affirmative asylum claims, adjudication applications, and naturalization applications.

The amicus will be filed on Monday, April 17. The final draft will be completed over the weekend and circulated when finished. For those who wish to sign onto the brief, please sign here.

https://docs.google.com/a/bc.edu/forms/d/1Krxd1f5eGcOr7G8wvAv6WWPzdO3ezBNXdfTW1-E24pQ/edit

The deadline for signing will be 10:00 am ET on Monday, April 17.”

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This issue is huge. DHS is considering expanding “expedited removal” to include all individuals who can’t prove that they have been in the U.S. continuously for two years. Without the assistance of counsel, many individuals who have been here for a substantial period of time but do not have any “proof” readily available will be arrested, detained, and railroaded out of the country without being given a reasonable chance to establish that they should be entitled to a full due process hearing before a U.S. Immigration Judge at which they could apply for relief.

PWS

04-16-17

DHS “Jacks Up” Noncriminal Arrests!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration-arrests-of-noncriminals-double-under-trump/2017/04/16/98a2f1e2-2096-11e7-be2a-3a1fb24d4671_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports in the Washington Post:

“Immigration arrests rose 32.6 percent in the first weeks of the Trump administration, with newly empowered federal agents intensifying their pursuit of not just undocumented immigrants with criminal records, but also thousands of illegal immigrants who have been otherwise law-abiding.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 21,362 immigrants, mostly convicted criminals, from January through mid-March, compared to 16,104 during the same period last year, according to statistics requested by The Washington Post.

Arrests of immigrants with no criminal records more than doubled to 5,441, the clearest sign yet that President Trump has ditched his predecessor’s protective stance toward most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Advocates for immigrants say the unbridled enforcement has led to a sharp drop in reports from Latinos of sexual assaults and other crimes in Houston and Los Angeles, and terrified immigrant communities across the United States. A prosecutor said the presence of immigration agents in state and local courthouses, which advocates say has increased under the Trump administration, makes it harder to prosecute crime.

“My sense is that ICE is emboldened in a way that I have never seen,” Dan Satterberg, the top prosecutor in Washington state’s King County, which includes Seattle, said Thursday. “The federal government, in really just a couple of months, has undone decades of work that we have done to build this trust.”

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Unfocused enforcement pouring cases into an already “saturated” U.S. Immigration Court system is a prescription for disaster. Moreover, because it would be impossible to remove all of the approximately 11 million individuals here without authorization, just arresting anyone an agent might encounter who is potentially removable will be highly arbitrary.

PWS

04-16-17

PRECEDENT: BIA Finds “Assault with a deadly weapon or force likely to produce great bodily injury under California law is categorically a crime involving moral turpitude.” — Matter of Wu, 27 I&N Dec. 8 (BIA 2017)

Here’s the link to the full opinion:

https://www.justice.gov/file/957431/download

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BIA PANEL: Appellate Immigration Judges Malphrus, Mullane, & Creppy

OPINION BY: Judge Malphrus

PWS

04-14-17

JEFF SESSIONS’S DREAM OF AN “AMERICAN GULAG:” Despite Mounting Evidence Of Substandard Conditions, Lack Of Accountability, & Hinky Contracting, Sessions Plans For “American Gulag” Using Private Prisons — Creating Corporate Profits From Human Misery While Ripping Off U.S. Taxpayers!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/prisons-and-profits_us_58ef9886e4b04cae050dc533?t0r

Christopher Brauchli reports in HuffPost:

“It turns out that the immigration crackdown that Donald Trump’s ICE is pursuing, though hard on illegals and their families by producing terrible uncertainty for them, is not without its “bright side.” The light that provides a bright side is shining on the shares of stock in the Geo Group and CoreCivic, and on jails in a number of Texas counties.

Geo Group and CoreCivic operate private, for-profit prisons. Before Trump became president, they were on hard times, and for good reason. In August 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General issued a report that was highly critical of the way those companies treated prisoners entrusted with their care. The report found that inmates in facilities run by those corporations “were nine times more likely to be placed on lockdown than inmates at other federal prisons and were frequently subjected to arbitrary solitary confinement simply because there was not space for them among the general population.”

Although placing them in solitary confinement so they would not add to overcrowding in the general prison population had the desired effect, solitary confinement is generally acknowledged to be equivalent to torture and has been repeatedly criticized for its excessive use in United States prisons. According to the report, the Bureau of Prisons was using the private prisons on a large scale to “confine federal inmates who are primarily low security, criminal alien adult males with 90 months or less remaining to serve on their sentences.” The report stated that “in a majority of the categories we examined, contract prisons incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable Bureau of Prisons institutions.” It said that the contract prisons “do not provide comparable services [to those operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons], do not save substantially on costs, and do not maintain ‘the same level of safety and security.’”

At almost the same time that that report was issued, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, issued instructions to federal officials to reduce the use of private prisons because of the falling prison population throughout the country. The result was that stock in CoreCivic and GEO, the two largest private prison companies in the United States, fell precipitously. The election of Donald J. Trump reversed their fortunes.

The day after the election shares in CoreCivic rose 43 percent and share in GEO rose 21 percent. The investors’ optimism was rewarded when on February 21st, 2017, Attorney General Sessions, rescinded the order that the private prisons be phased out. Following the announcement, the prison companies enjoyed another jump in share prices. The order should not have been a surprise. Notwithstanding the Justice Department report that was highly critical of the private prisons, Trump―for whom facts are notoriously unimportant―said: “I do think we can do a lot of privatizations and private prisons. It seems to work a lot better.” Of course, private prisons are not the only ones rejoicing in the prospect of more inmates, thanks to the increased attention being paid to illegal immigrants and their incarceration. Jailers in small Texas counties are also excited.

. . . .

. . . . Now many of the counties that eagerly built new jails find themselves trying to pay off the cost of construction without adequate occupants to pay the debt that was incurred to build them. The good news for them is that since Trump has encouraged ICE to round up and jail illegal immigrants, the glut of jail space may soon vanish and cells that were empty and non-income producing, will once again be fully occupied with illegal immigrants and their families.

In a speech delivered to Police Chiefs Association on April 11, 2017, Attorney General Sessions announced a number of increased enforcement policies including a provision that those who get married to avoid immigration laws, will be charged with offenses that carry a two-year mandatory minimum prison sentence. If, notwithstanding the prospect of new occupants, counties no longer want to maintain their facilities, they may be able to sell them to private prison companies that will use the space for housing illegal immigrants. It’s a win-win situation for private prisons and Texas counties. The only loser is the pre-Trump United States we knew and loved.”

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Hey, the only “losers” here are humanity, values, taxpayers, and our self-respect. What’s not to like about that Sessions-Trump initiative?

And “Gulag” is definitely the right term to describe contemporary immigration detention. Just ask families whose loved ones, and lawyers whose clients are moved from facility to facility, and sometimes removed from the United States, without notice. Even U.S. Immigration Courts sometimes have a hard time locating the “respondents” on their detained dockets in the DHS detention maze. Not to mention that sometimes detainees with cases pending before one Immigration Court are more or less arbitrarily moved to another detention center in another jurisdiction (perhaps to save a few bucks on “bed rates”).

PWS

04-14-17

“GONZO-APOCALYPTO:” The Ominous Cloud Hanging Over American Justice — In Good Friday Editorials, Both NYT & WashPost Blast Sessions’s Dark, Distorted, “Gonzo-Apocalypto” Vision Of America!

First, the Washington Post ripped Sessions’s “embarrassing” withdrawal of support from African Americans and other minorities challenging the State of Texas’s scheme to disenfranchise them. A Federal Judge has twice found in favor of the plaintiffs — once with the DOJ’s support and once without!

“BLASTING “A PATTERN of conduct unexplainable on nonracial grounds, to suppress minority voting,” U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos on Monday repudiated Texas’s voter-ID law, the strictest in the country. Asked by appeals court judges to reconsider her expansive 2014 ruling against the law using slightly different evidence, Ms. Ramos reaffirmed her previous determination that “the law places a substantial burden on the right to vote, which is hardly offset by Texas’s claimed benefits to voting integrity.” She found that racial discrimination was at least a partial motivation for the law, a step toward reestablishing federal supervision over Texas’s voting procedures, per the Voting Rights Act.

Given the ruling and the mountain of evidence, it is embarrassing that the Trump Justice Department dropped its support for the contention that the Texas voter law is purposely discriminatory.

The legal question is not close. “There has been a clear and disturbing pattern of discrimination in the name of combating voter fraud,” Ms. Ramos wrote in 2014. The only type of fraud the law could combat — voter impersonation — hardly ever happens. Meanwhile, the law’s backers knew it would disproportionately impact minority voters; in fact, they designed it so. “The Texas Legislature accepted amendments that would broaden Anglo voting and rejected amendments that would broaden minority voting,” Ms. Ramos found in her 2014 examination. Texas accepts relatively few forms of identification at the polls, and those it does accept, such as gun licenses, are those white Texans tend to hold. Unlike many voter-ID states, Texas does not relax ID rules much for the elderly or the indigent, though obtaining an accepted ID can be surprisingly time-consuming and expensive.”

Read the complete editorial here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-time-for-the-justice-department-to-disown-texass-discriminatory-voting-law/2017/04/13/ee63a0e0-1ef7-11e7-ad74-3a742a6e93a7_story.html

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Meanwhile, A NY Times editorial slammed Session’s disingenuous plan to make immigrants the “#1 target” of law enforcement in the “Trump era.” The emphasis is mine.

Here’s the full editorial:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions went to the border in Arizona on Tuesday and declared it a hellscape, a “ground zero” of death and violence where Americans must “take our stand” against a tide of evil flooding up from Mexico.

It was familiar Sessions-speak, about drug cartels and “transnational gangs” poisoning and raping and chopping off heads, things he said for years on the Senate floor as the gentleman from Alabama. But with a big difference: Now he controls the machinery of federal law enforcement, and his gonzo-apocalypto vision of immigration suddenly has force and weight behind it, from the officers and prosecutors and judges who answer to him.

When Mr. Sessions got to the part about the “criminal aliens and the coyotes and the document forgers” overthrowing our immigration system, the American flag behind him had clearly heard enough — it leaned back and fell over as if in a stupor. An agent rushed to rescue it, and stood there for the rest of the speech: a human flag stand and metaphor. A guy with a uniform and gun, wrapped in Old Glory, helping to give the Trump administration’s nativist policies a patriotic sheen.

It was in the details of Mr. Sessions’s oratory that his game was exposed. He talked of cities and suburbs as immigrant-afflicted “war zones,” but the crackdown he seeks focuses overwhelmingly on nonviolent offenses, the document fraud and unauthorized entry and other misdeeds that implicate many people who fit no sane definition of brutal criminal or threat to the homeland.

The problem with Mr. Sessions’s turbocharging of the Justice Department’s efforts against what he paints as machete-wielding “depravity” is how grossly it distorts the bigger picture. It reflects his long fixation — shared by his boss, President Trump — on immigration not as an often unruly, essentially salutary force in American history, but as a dire threat. It denies the existence of millions of people who are a force for good, economic mainstays and community assets, less prone to crime than the native-born — workers, parents, children, neighbors and, above all, human beings deserving of dignity and fair treatment under the law.

Mr. Sessions is ordering his prosecutors to make immigration a priority, to consider prosecution in any case involving “transportation and harboring of aliens” and to consider felony charges for an extended menu of offenses, like trying to re-enter after deportation, “aggravated identity theft” and fraudulent marriage.

He said the government was now detaining every adult stopped at the border, and vowed to “surge” the supply of immigration judges, to increase the flow of unauthorized immigrants through the courts and out of the country. He has ordered all 94 United States attorney’s offices to designate “border security coordinators,” no matter how far from “ground zero” they are.

Mr. Sessions and the administration are being led by their bleak vision to the dark side of the law. The pieces are falling into place for the indiscriminate “deportation force” that the president promised. Mr. Sessions and the homeland security secretary, John Kelly, have attacked cities and states that decline to participate in the crackdown. Mr. Sessions has threatened these “sanctuary” locales with loss of criminal-justice funding, on the false assertion that they are defying the law. (In fact, “sanctuary” cities are upholding law and order. They recognize that enlisting state and local law enforcement for deportation undermines community trust, local policing and public safety.)

Mr. Kelly recently told a Senate committee that all unauthorized immigrants are now potential targets for arrest and deportation. And so an administration that talks about machete-waving narco killers is also busily trying to deport people like Maribel Trujillo-Diaz, of Fairfield, Ohio, the mother of four citizen children, who has no criminal record.

“Be forewarned,” Mr. Sessions said in Arizona. “This is a new era. This is the Trump era.”

Let’s talk about this era. It’s an era when the illegal border flow, particularly from Mexico, has been falling for 20 years. When many of those arriving from Central America immediately surrender to border agents — having fled to the United States to find safety, not to do it harm. When American border cities enjoy safety and vitality, thanks to immigrants. When a large portion of the unauthorized population has lived here for years, if not decades, with clean records and strong roots. When polls show that Americans back reasonable and humane immigration policies giving millions a chance to get right with the law.

President Trump has shown his mind to be a place where ideas and principles can morph without warning or explanation. It is a vacuum that allows ideologues like Mr. Sessions — who know their minds — to do their worst. On immigration, that is a frightening thing to contemplate.

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“Gonzo-Apocalypto” has to be the “word of the day.” What a perfect term to describe Jeff Sessions.

In a grotesque display of disingenuous hypocrisy, Sessions referred to “drug cartels and ‘transnational gangs’ poisoning and raping and chopping off heads.” These are exactly the things causing scared, defenseless women and children to flee for their lives from the Northern Triangle and seek refuge in the U.S. But, instead of refuge they find: well, Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Gen. John Kelly and others anxious to stomp out their humanity in the false name of “law enforcement.”

Turning to civil rights, I watched on the TV news last night two clips of brutal beatings and stompings of African Americans by white police officers. One victim was accused of “jaywalking” — that’s right, “jaywalking.” The other was “driving without a license plate.” I was wondering how, after all the recent publicity, those officers could have engaged in such conduct, “on camera” no less.

Unfortunately, the answer is pretty simple “Black Lives Don’t Matter,” an attitude that obviously has just become instinctive for too many U.S. police officers. I couldn’t imagine a white pedestrian or a white motorist being treated that way in our multi-racial but predominantly white neighborhood.

Yes, the officers involved were disciplined. I believe that most or all of them were either fired, prosecuted, or both. But, that’s not the point!

The object is to prevent misuse of force by police, not to fire, prosecute, or otherwise discipline more policemen. And, prevention without compromising effectiveness of policing is exactly what the carefully crafted “consent decrees” with some problematic cities developed by the Civil Rights Division under AGs Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder achieved.

Those are the very decrees that Sessions immediately announced an intent to “review” with an obvious eye toward withdrawing or undermining them. Look at the childish behavior in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore, MD, when DOJ attorneys, acting on Sessions’s behalf, withdrew their support from the consent decree and basically refused to participate in a long-scheduled public hearing. Fortunately, the judge has the good sense to go ahead and approve and finalize the consent decree without any participation by DOJ, leading to even more childish whining from Sessions about the horrors of infringing on local law enforcement in the name of African American citizen’s constitutional rights.

The very public “green light” that Sessions has given to law enforcement to run over citizen’s rights as they please, without any fear of DOJ intervention, so long as they are “enforcing the law” — like busting jaywalkers, license plate violators, and presumably undocumented aliens — no doubt plays a role in the continuing anti-minority policing being conducted by some law enforcement agencies.

Sessions “bristles” when anyone uses the term “racist” to describe him. Sessions was given a chance to make good on his (obviously false) promise during his confirmation hearings to turn over a new leaf and look at the responsibilities of being Attorney General for all Americans differently from representing Alabama in the U.S. Senate.

Unfortunately, his actions have proved that all of the charges his detractors made against him are as true now as they were when he was, quite properly, denied a U.S. judgeship many decades ago. If the shoe fits, wear it. And, sadly, this “shoe” fits Sessions “like a glove.” Liz was “right on.”

Finally, DHS Secretary John Kelly will see his distinguished career in public service end in ignomany if he continues “toadying up” to the ethno-nationalist views of the Sessions-Bannon-Miller crowd on immigration enforcement. Most of the arrests, deportations, detentions, denials of asylum, and removals Sessions is touting in his haste to become the new “Immigration Czar,” actually are within the jurisdiction of DHS. But, these days, you’d hardly know that Sessions isn’t in charge of DHS enforcement as well as Justice. If Kelly isn’t careful, he’s going to develop a neck injury from constantly nodding his head to every absurd “gonzo-apocalypto” immigration enforcement initiative announced by Sessions.

PWS

04-14-17

U.S. Kids Rally At White House Against Trump’s Deportation Agenda — “Don’t make us orphans in our own country!”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/immigrant-kids-white-house-protest_us_58f0069ee4b0da2ff85f9183?r9b&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Michael McAuliffe reports in HuffPost:

“WASHINGTON — American children whose parents are undocumented immigrants brought a heartrending plea to the White House and President Donald Trump on Thursday: Don’t make us orphans in our own country.

The kids, among dozens who were organized by the group We Belong Together, fear that Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration could deport their parents, even if they haven’t run afoul of the law in any other way.

Deportations dramatically increased during the Obama administration, but the focus was on immigrants who had committed serious crimes. The Trump administration’s orders stepping up enforcement include just about anyone.

Those undocumented immigrants often have American children. And they are afraid.

“I live with the fear of being separated from my mother every day,” said Leah, an 11-year-old from Miami whose mother is a domestic worker facing a deportation order.

“It is like when somebody you care about can die at any moment,” she added, standing outside the White House, accompanied by activists and other kids. “Why can’t I just enjoy being a kid? I cannot sleep or do my homework. All I can think about is my mother being taken away from me. I am so worried about my life.”

A mom of two children who is in hiding narrowly avoided likely deportation in February, when she sought sanctuary in a Denver chuch. Jeanette Vizguerra, who has reported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement regularly for 20 years while she sought a visa to escape violence in Mexico, fled a hearing on her case when her advocates noticed a squad of police apparently ready to arrest her.

“My mom has been going through the struggle of getting threatened and us getting scared by ICE,” said her son, Roberto, 10.

“I think it’s not fair for children to be living in fear or for parents not to be able to be with their children,” said her daughter, Luna, 12.

While those children and others all spoke of the worry they have of their own government, they also declared they would not relent in their bids to keep their families and other kids’ families whole.

“I want to tell Mr. Trump that he is a bully, and no matter how mean he is, and no matter how hard he tries, he will never break out spirit,” Leah said. “We are not afraid of you.”

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What kind of country makes “orphans of their own children?” What kind of national values do these “instill fear” programs represent? Whatever happened to the positive national values set forth by FDR and JFK?

Way back before there were Presidents, an inspirational leader once said:

“Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”

Luke 18:16

Not a bad thing to think about on Good Friday and over Easter weekend.

Sadly, some of today’s leaders seem to have shifted the message to “let me make the little children suffer.” Wonder what He would have thought about that?

PWS

04-14-17

Former State Department Visa Guru Jeff Gorsky Says Travel Ban Exceeds President’s Statutory Authority — “No Precedent” For This Type Of Overly Inclusive Use!

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/outsidenews/archive/2017/04/11/jeffrey-gorsky-an-alternative-legal-argument-against-trump-39-s-travel-ban.aspx?Redirected=true

From Lexis NexIs:

There is, however, another legal argument against the travel ban that does not require looking at evidence outside of the judicial record: The scope of the ban on its face is overly broad and exceeds the president’s legal authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Although the plaintiffs in the Hawaii case posed this argument, at this point none of the courts that have ruled on the legality of the executive order have analyzed this issue. The statutory authority for the travel ban derives from INA Section 212(f), 8 USC 1182(f), which authorizes the president by proclamation to suspend the entry or impose restrictions on the entry of any aliens or class of aliens to the United States. This is not a plenary grant of authority, but requires a finding that the entry of such aliens is “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” A ban that covers an entire nationality based on a concern that a few of those nationals pose a security or criminal threat to U.S. interest exceeds the statutory authority because there is no evidence or reasonable basis to believe that the entry of some or most of the nationals in the ban would be detrimental to U.S. interests.

During my 30-year career at the U.S. Department of State, I was involved in numerous 212(f) determinations. All were supported by carefully drafted memos and cited specific evidence of detriment to U.S. interests. The Trump travel bans do not. There is no dispute that the president has longstanding authority to deny or restrict the admission of certain aliens by proclamation; it is one of the oldest immigration provisions in U.S. law. The first law to authorize the president to limit immigration based on proclamation was the Alien Enemies Acts of 1798, one of the Alien and Sedition Acts enacted in the John Adams administration. That act empowered the president by public proclamation during a state of war to exclude enemy aliens as “necessary for public safety”.

This authority was not invoked until the 20th century, with the advent of World War I. An act of May 22, 1918, provided for the president to establish by proclamation immigration restrictions during a time of war for the purpose of public safety. Based on the Alien Enemies Act and the 1918 act, President Woodrow Wilson made a number of proclamations involving enemy aliens. While not a total ban on admission of aliens with Austrian-Hungarian nationality, these proclamations significantly restricted the admission of these enemy aliens.

This authority was revived during World War II, following the declaration of a national emergency on May 27, 1941. An amendment to the act provided that the president might, upon finding that the interests of the United States required it, impose additional restrictions and prohibitions on the entry into and departure of persons from the United States during the national emergency. This provision was upheld by the Supreme Court in the case United States ex rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 338 U.S. 537.

The 1950 “Report of the Senate Judiciary Committee,” the primary background document on the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, discussed the history of the enemy aliens provisions at length, and concluded that this was a necessary authority. This authority was carried over into Section 212(e) (now f) and Section 215 of the INA.

In the past 35 years, this authority has been used 43 times but never as broad as with Trump’s executive orders. Most actions were limited to officials of foreign governments who engaged in specified policies considered detrimental to U.S. foreign policy or other U.S. interests — not blanket bans based solely on nationality.

The current travel ban, therefore, is unprecedented in its scope. Even if it is accepted that the specified countries pose a threat to the United States, the inclusion in the ban of all nationals from those countries is not reasonable, since there is no evidence that the admission of many or most such aliens would be detrimental to U.S. interests. For example, the ban includes babies and minor children, although they have neither the physical or legal capacity to commit acts of terrorism or criminality that would be detrimental to U.S. interests. While the executive order allows for a case-by-case discretionary waiver for minors, the availability of a discretionary waiver requiring a finding that the admission of such alien “would be in the national interest” does not cure the underlying lack of legal authority under 212(f) to bar persons such as young children who do not pose a credible threat to U.S. interests.

If the president can bar all nationals of a country based on speculative and vague concerns, absent any evidence relating to the specific individual who is barred admission, the president would have virtually absolute authority to bar all aliens from admission to the U.S. Every country in the world, including countries that would not normally be considered to pose a security threat to the U.S., like Japan and the United Kingdom, have some nationals who could theoretically pose a terrorist or criminal threat that could be used as a pretext to ban all nationals from that country. Such sweeping plenary authority does not exist in any other portion of the INA. In the over 200 years in which the president has had authority to limit the admission of aliens by proclamation, no president has ever before claimed this broad an authority.”

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In prior lives, I had the pleasure of working with Jeff on a number of issues. Smart guy, nice guy, always very helpful. Doesn’t mean he’s right or wrong on this, but his point makes sense to me.

PWS

04-13-17

HUFFPOST POLITICS: Despite Bannon’s Apparently Waning Influence, “Turbocharged” Sessions Will Keep “Ethno-Nationalist Agenda” Rolling At Full Speed At DOJ! Bad News For Immigrants, African-Americans, Refugees, Muslims, LBGT Individuals, Forensic Science, Innocent Defendants, Minor Offenders, Taxpayers, The U.S. Constitution, Many Women, & Social Justice In America!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-steve-bannon_us_58efb376e4b0bb9638e23542

Paul Blumenthal writes:

“No matter what Bannon’s fate, however, his strand of ethno-nationalism will live on in the Trump Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The 70-year-old former Alabama senator has already set the Justice Department on a new path by targeting immigrants, reining in police department reform efforts and curtailing efforts to protect voting rights.

“While many are focused on how Bannon is losing influence in the White House, those concerned with immigrant justice ― and I suspect those concerned with racial justice, police reform and voting rights, too ― are focused on the rise of a turbocharged Sessions,” Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigration reform group America’s Voice, said in an email to HuffPost.

Bannon and Sessions share a long history of mutual support and policy agreement. They spent months together with Stephen Miller, a former Sessions aide who now works in the White House, plotting strategy on how to enact their shared agenda of limiting immigration to the U.S. in order to maintain a European and Christian identity. In 2016, Bannon declared Sessions “one of the intellectual, moral leaders of this populist, nationalist movement in this country.” After both moved to Trump’s administration, Bannon called Sessions the White House “clearinghouse for policy and philosophy.” Like Bannon, Sessions declares his policy objective as defeating “soulless globalism.”

. . . .

In another appearance on Bannon’s radio show, Sessions endorsed the Immigration Act of 1924, which specifically limited immigration based on race and religion, in the context of current immigration trends. “In seven years, we’ll have the highest percentage of Americans, non-native born, since the founding of the Republic,” Sessions said, while praising the 1924 law that was used to prevent Jewish immigration before and during the Holocaust.

Like Bannon, Sessions believes immigration from Middle Eastern countries poses a national security risk. He agrees that Western leaders have failed to protect their Judeo-Christian heritage by opening the door to refugees.

In one radio interview, after Bannon compared the migration of Syrian refugees to an infamous racist French book, he asked Sessions.: “Do you believe the elites in this country have the backbone, have the belief in the underlying principles of the Judeo-Christian West to actually win this war?”

“I’m worried about that,” Sessions replied.

The two nationalist Trump supporters share more than immigration policy preferences. The reversal of police reform efforts and reinvigoration of the War on Drugs pushed by Sessions as attorney general fits with Bannon’s efforts at Breitbart to label Black Lives Matter protesters as racists, while perpetuating racist stereotypes of African Americans through the site’s Black Crime section.”

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For those who hoped that President Trump’s sudden shift to more “centrist” positions on trade and foreign policy might carry over into immigration policy, dream on! Bannon might be “on the ropes,” but Sessions and Stephen Miller still have the President’s ear on their restrictionist, nationalist positions on immigration.

While badly needed, reasonable bipartisan immigration reform would be within Trump’s reach, that’s not going to happen. Buoyed by the immediate decrease in Southern Border apprehensions, Trump, Sessions, and MIller (Gen. Kelly appears to gone AWOL on immigration policy — he just parrots what Sessions and the nationalist restrictionists tell him — his stature as former General with integrity shrinks every day) intend to arrest, detain, deport, and threaten unless and until the Article III Courts stop them. And whether that will happen is still an open question.

Liz was right!

PWS

04-13-17

REUTERS: Has Trump Won The Border War Without Firing A Shot? — Is Discouraging Women & Children Threatened In The Northern Triangle From Seeking Refuge In The U.S. Something Of Which We Should be Proud?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-mothers-insight-idUSKBN17F23M?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social

Julia Edwards Ainsley reports:

“President Donald Trump has won the first major battle in his war on illegal immigration, and he did it without building his wall.

The victory was announced last week by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which released figures showing a 93 percent drop since December of parents and children caught trying to cross the Mexico border illegally.

In December, 16,000 parents and children were apprehended; in March, a month in which immigration typically increases because of temperate weather, the number was just over 1,100.

It was a remarkable decline – steeper than the 72 percent drop in overall apprehensions – but for eight DHS officials interviewed by Reuters it was not surprising.

Trump has spoken about the need to crack down broadly on all illegal immigrants. But, internally, according to the DHS officials familiar with the department’s strategy, his administration has focused on one immigrant group more than others: women with children, the fastest growing demographic of illegal immigrants. This planning has not been previously reported.

In the months since Trump’s inauguration, DHS has rolled out a range of policies aimed at discouraging women from attempting to cross the border, including tougher initial hurdles for asylum claims and the threat of prosecuting parents if they hire smugglers to get their families across the border.

The department has also floated proposals such as separating women and children at the border.

DHS Secretary John Kelly told a Senate hearing on April 5 that the sharp drop in illegal immigration, especially among women and children, was due to Trump’s tough policies.

To date, it has been the threat of new policies rather than their implementation that has suppressed family migration.

Mothers and children aren’t being separated – and DHS has shelved the plan; parents haven’t been prosecuted, and there is no wall along most of the border. Yet the number of migrants trying to cross – especially women and children – has dropped drastically.

Asked to comment on the policy of targeting women with children, DHS spokesman Jonathan Hoffman referenced the March drop, saying, “Those were 15,000 women and children who did not put themselves at risk of death and assault from smugglers to make the trip north.”

The White House declined to comment and referred Reuters to DHS.

For months, Central Americans had heard about Trump’s get-tough policies. And public service announcements on radio and television presented bleak pictures of what awaited those who traveled north. Some of the ads were funded by the United States, others by United Nations agencies and regional governments.

One radio ad in Honduras featured a mother, saying, “It’s been a year and I don’t know if she is alive or dead. I’d do anything to have her here with me. Curse the day I sent her north.”

The possibility that mothers and children might be separated at the border caused particular alarm, Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister Maria Andrea Matamoros told Reuters

“That worries any mother that wants to go to the United States with their kid, and being separated drastically changes their plans,” she said.

. . . .

After Kelly’s confirmation as Homeland Security chief in late January, several members of the original working group stepped into key roles at DHS. Gene Hamilton, who had worked for then Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, became senior counselor to Kelly, and Dimple Shah, who had been staff director of the House National Security Subcommittee, became deputy general counsel.

Kathy Nuebel-Kovarik, formerly a staffer for Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, became policy chief at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Julie Kirchner left her position as executive director of the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform to become a top policy adviser at U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

None of the group’s members agreed to be interviewed by Reuters. Several DHS officials said that in their new roles they continued to focus on the issue of women and child migrants. Soon, they had the bare bones of a plan: Since the court ruling on children was an obstacle to prolonged detention, why not separate them from their mothers, sending children into foster care or protective federal custody while their mothers remained in detention centers, the two DHS officials and congressional aide said.

The group also advocated two other policies directly affecting mothers and children: raising the bar for asylum and prosecuting parents as human traffickers if they hired human smugglers.

The thinking was that “if they can just implement tough policies for eight weeks – or even threaten to do that – they would see the numbers of families crossing just plummet,” said one DHS official familiar with the planning.

. . . .

When Kelly and his advisers saw the numbers dropping, they announced they were shelving the idea of separating women and children – at least for now.

Asked whether it may be revived, DHS spokeswoman Jenny Burke said, “Families caught crossing the border illegally, generally will not be separated unless the situation at the time requires it.”

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

Time will tell if this really solves the “Southern Border Problem.” It would be interesting to see a study of the fate of the individuals who stayed in the Northern Triangle after hearing the “stay home, we don’t want you” message.

This “gang of eight” working group sounds like they have the “right stuff” to go far in the Trump-Sessions regime. And, their solution was probably cheaper than the “high seas interdiction” program developed and used by prior Administrations to prevent asylum seekers from reaching the United States and asserting their legal rights under U.S. and international law.

I wake up every morning thankful that 1) I woke up, and 2) I’m not a refugee. Wonder if any of the “gang of eight” have ever thought of what it would be like to be a refugee in the world they are creating? But, I suppose that at a certain level of intellectual arrogance, folks don’t think that they will ever have to rely on the the humanity and decency of others to survive. The bad news: that’s not always a correct assumption, and sometimes folks reap what they sow.

PWS

04-13-17

IT’S TRUE! — DOJ Eliminates U.S. Immigration Judges’ Only Annual Training! — Quality & Professionalism “De-Prioritized” In Trump Era — Billions For Enforcement & Incarceration — Crumbs For Due Process — When Is Congress Going To “Just Say No?”

Reliable sources have now confirmed what I reported in this blog earlier this week (http://wp.me/p8eeJm-Ge): the DOJ has eliminated the U.S. Immigration Court’s only formal annual training. U.S. Immigration Judges have been ordered to schedule cases during the week normally reserved for advanced training, continuing judicial education, and professional development.

This news couldn’t come at a worse time for the beleaguered U.S. Immigration Courts. Dozens of new U.S. Immigration Judges have been appointed in the last year, most of whom have never met their judicial colleagues across the nation.

Moreover, this would be their only opportunity beyond some brief “basic training” to pursue continuing judicial education in this complex, controversial, and ever-changing field. It’s also an opportunity to “catch jump” on what all the Circuit Courts of Appeals are doing, as well as to hear from BIA Appellate Immigration Judges about developments at the Board. Additionally, it is a key opportunity to address the disturbing, continuing problem of inexplicable discrepancies in asylum adjudication (84% grant rate in one Immigration Court; 2% grant rate in another) within the Immigration Court system.

Some of the training at the Annual Conference is statutorily required, such as updates under the International Religious Freedom Act, which, perhaps ironically, often highlights the persecution faced by Christian groups in China and the Middle East, a subject on which the Administration has expressed concern. Other sessions cover ethics training required by DOJ regulations.

In addition, the DOJ considers U.S. Immigration Judges to be “DOJ attorneys.” As a consequence, judges are required to maintain “active” status in at least one state bar, even though they perform only quasi-judicial duties and therefore would be eligible for “active judicial status” in many states.

The Annual Conference usually meets the “mandatory CLE” requirements of various state bars. But, when there is no Annual Conference, individual judges must take leave from the bench to complete the coursework required by their respective state bars. Therefore, Immigration Judges are off the bench learning about state real estate transactions and changes in tort law, when they could instead be advancing their knowledge in immigration and refugee law as well as “best judicial practices” in Federal Courts.

I get frequent reports of cratering morale among Immigration Judges and court staff, increases in the already extraordinary levels of stress, and impending retirements of some of the best and most experienced judges. Some Immigration Judges returning from details to hastily thrown together so-called “Immigration Courts” in DHS detention centers were shocked, upset, and angered to see with their own eyes that individuals with viable claims for relief, most of them asylum or related protection, were being “duressed” by the coercive conditions and atmosphere in DHS detention to abandon their claims and take “final orders of removal,” just to be out of detention. And, the Administration is just getting started on its plans for “Incarceration Nation.”

Lawyers report that they show up at Immigration Court with clients and witness in tow prepared for merits cases which have been pending for years, only to find out that the cases have been rescheduled to a dates several more years in the future, without advance notice, so that the Immigration Judges can be detailed to a detention centers in other parts of the country.

When is Congress finally going to step in and provide some meaningful oversight of the unfolding due process disaster in U.S. Immigration Courts? Regardless of where one stands on the philosophical issues surrounding immigration enforcement, providing due process and complying with constitutional, statutory, and international treaty obligations, including reasonable access to counsel (which is not available in most DHS detention center locations), should be a bipartisan priority.

Isn’t it time for a bipartisan group of GOP legislators concerned about the billions of dollars being mindlessly poured into immigration enforcement and Democrats who are concerned about due process getting together and holding the Trump Administration accountable for what’s really happening in our Immigration Courts?

PWS

04-13-17

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Malala Urges Trump To Visit Refugee Camps!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/malala-yousafzai-donald-trump-refugee-camps_us_58ecde9fe4b0c89f91217965

Hayley Miller reports in HuffPost:

“Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai has an urgent message for President Donald Trump: Visit refugee camps.

“President Trump needs to go and see refugee children,” Yousafzai said in an interview with “CBS This Morning” scheduled to air Wednesday. “He needs to go and visit the refugee camps. He needs to know what the real life is like in a refugee camp.”

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

Sounds like a good plan. Perhaps he could at least send Jared!

PWS

04/13/17

DUE PROCESS CRISIS IN THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS: New Report Finds That Detained Migrants In The Arlington & Baltimore Courts Face Severe Access To Counsel Problems Which Can Be “Outcome Determinative!”

This report (see link) was prepared and issued by the Center For Popular Democracy. Here are some key findings:

Every year, nearly 4,000 people in Washington, D.C. metropolitan area courts, Arlington, Virginia, and Baltimore, Maryland, face deportation in civil immigration court without the assistance of a lawyer. Based on original data analysis of Department of Justice records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, seven out of ten detained individuals in immigration court removal proceedings in Arlington, VA and eight out of ten in Baltimore, MD did not have any legal representation.
- ■ People without lawyers faced enormous odds in fighting their deportation cases. Among detained immigrants without lawyers, people in Arlington were only successful in their cases 11 percent of the time and unrepresented people in Baltimore only successful 7 percent of the time.
- ■ Having a lawyer in Arlington more than doubled a person’s chances of being able to remain in the U.S. and quadrupled a person’s chance of obtaining relief in Baltimore.
■ Between 2010 and 2015, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained nearly 15,000 people in local and county jails2 throughout the states of Maryland and Virginia. In both regions, people who did not have lawyers were more than twice as likely to remain detained during the entirety of their immigration case, even if they may have been eligible for release on bond.
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Read the entire report which has some case histories in addition to charts and graphs.

The findings are disturbing because the Arlington and Baltimore Immigration Courts generally are considered among the best in the nation in striving to provide due process. The judges in each court are committed to representation and often go out of their way to encourage and facilitate the appearance of counsel. The ICE Chief Counsel’s Offices also appreciate and support pro bono representation.

Additionally, as noted in the report, the DC-Baltimore metropolitan area has a number of great organizations dedicated to providing pro bono lawyers, as well as local practitioners, “big law” firms, and numerous outstanding law school clinics, all of which support the pro bono program.

Yet even under these generally favorable conditions, the overwhelming majority of individuals on the detained dockets in both courts appear pro se, without a lawyer. And, the results with a lawyer are very significantly better than for those forced to represent themselves.

I fear that the new program of expanded immigration detention being planned by DHS, with courts operating in obscure, out of the way locations along the Southern Border, will further impede already limited access to counsel and therefore further degrade due process in our U.S. Immigration Courts.

Frankly, I have not seen any mention of the importance of due process or facilitating access to counsel in any of the many Trump Administration pronouncements on immigration. It’s all about enforcement, detention, removals, and prosecutions. Fairness and due process, which should always be paramount concerns, appear to be ignored.

In the end, it likely will be up to the already overworked and stressed pro bono bar, human rights groups, and community-based NGOs to enforce immigrants’ rights to counsel and to full due process. And, ultimately, that’s probably going to require litigation and intervention by the Article III Courts.

Thanks to Adina Appelbaum, who worked on this report, for bringing it to my attention.

PWS

04/13/17

POLITICO: Immigration Advocates Find Area Of Agreement With AG Sessions: Plan To Boost Troubled Immigration Courts — But, Concerns Remain That Judicial Hiring Could Again Be Politicized — Those Who Care About Due Process Should Carefully Watch The Results Of The “Streamlined” Judicial Vetting System!

http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/04/the-one-area-jeff-sessions-and-immigration-advocates-agree-000411

Danny Vinik reports:

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed attorneys from the Department of Justice on Tuesday to increase the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, including laws against unlawful entry, human smuggling and identity fraud. It was yet another escalation of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, and immigrant-rights groups blasted the policy changes as ineffective and potentially illegal.

For all their opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, though, advocates actually back one of the new policies: the increased support for the immigration courts.

Sessions announced that DOJ will seek to add 75 immigration judges to the courts over the next year and will implement reforms to speed up the hiring process. These changes address a real problem with the immigration system—a nearly 600,000-case backlog at the immigration courts—and the move was a rare occasion in which advocates applauded the administration, though they were concerned how Sessions would implement the changes.

“We are very happy at the notion of increasing the amount of immigration judges and being able to address the backlog,” said Jennifer Quigley, an immigration expert at Human Rights First. “But as a senator and now as AG, we’ve always had concerns that Sessions’ motivation is to increase the number of deportations.”

. . . .

Experts largely blame Congress for the backlog, since lawmakers significantly increased resources for immigration enforcement without a commensurate increase in funding for the immigration courts. But in recent years, Congress has increased the number of authorized immigration judges, most recently in 2016 when it provide funding for an additional 55 judges, raising the authorized number from 319 to 374. However, even with enough money, EOIR has struggled to quickly hire judges, as the hiring process can take more than a year and retirements have created additional openings. Currently, there are 312 immigration judges nationwide, a significant increase over a year ago but still far below authorized levels. Trump’s budget blueprint proposed funding 449 judges in fiscal 2018, a significant increase that could find bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.

More important than the request for additional judges, however, may be the hiring reforms. EOIR and DOJ both declined to comment on how the Justice Department was reforming the hiring process for immigration judges. Speaking to border patrol personnel at the U.S.-Mexico border Tuesday, Sessions provided few details. “Today, I have implemented a new, streamlined hiring plan,” he said. “It requires just as much vetting as before, but reduces the timeline, reflecting the dire need to reduce the backlogs in our immigration courts.”

Advocates worry that the hiring process could become politicized, with judges brought on who want to implement specific policies instead of fairly enforcing the law. “The idea of onboarding judges quicker and having more judges is a great thing,” said Joshua Breisblatt, a policy analyst at the American Immigration Council. “But we need to see what it looks like, that it won’t be political.” The language in the budget blueprint was particularly concerning, advocates said, because it seemed to indicate that the courts are a tool for increasing deportations rather than a neutral arbiter of immigration claims.

“We were not happy with the way it was framed,” said Quigley.

It’s not an unrealistic concern. Immigration judges are technically employees of the Department of Justice, a structure that inherently creates a conflict of interest, since their job is to rule on immigration cases that are pushed by DOJ prosecutors, whereas most of the judiciary is independent. Advocates and the immigration judges union have long pushed to remove the immigration courts from the DOJ. And during the Bush administration, a DOJ investigation found that several immigration judges received their jobs due to their political connections, a scandal that serves as a warning today.

Despite those concerns, experts hope that Sessions and EOIR will undertake the hiring process in a timely and impartial manner, filling the bench with qualified judges who have enough time to understand the cases before them. As Sandweg said, “It’s something that’s long overdue.” In such a world, the additional judges could reduce the backlog, increasing the number of deportations, while spending more time on complicated asylum cases, giving asylum seekers more time to fairly present their cases and receive careful consideration.

In such a world, it’s possible that both the Trump administration and advocates could come out happy—a scenario almost impossible to imagine today.”

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Sessions is certainly right to address the ridiculous 18-24 month hiring cycle for U.S. Immigration Judges, and should get credit for making reform one of his top priorities. He also should be credited with focusing attention on the 542,000 case backlog, something that the Obama Administration seemed to have preferred to ignore as it mushroomed in front of their eyes. (As I said in this blog yesterday, I’m not convinced that even the 125 additional Immigration Judges proposed by Sessions over the next two years will effectively address a pending docket of that magnitude: http://wp.me/p8eeJm-FQ. But, it’s a start.)

However, the devil is in the details. And, the details of Session’s “streamlined judicial hiring” have not been made public, although the Attorney General said they were “implemented” on April 11.

Remarkably, I have learned that as of today, April 12, both EOIR Management and the union representing U.S. Immigration Judges (of which I am a retired member) were “totally in the dark” about the contents of the plan. That means it was “hatched’ at the DOJ without any meaningful input from those in the U.S. Immigration Court system or the court’s “stakeholders” — those representing the interests of the hundred of thousands of individuals with cases currently before the court or who might come before the court in the future. That’s troubling. It also appears that members of Congress had not been briefed on the hiring changes.

What’s even more troubling is that it’s not just about the inexcusably slow and bureaucratic hiring practices of the DOJ and EOIR. It’s also about results. During the Obama Administration, although officials claimed that the system was “merit-based” the results suggest that it was anything but.

According to informed sources who have done the math, an amazing 88% of those selected were from government backgrounds and 64% were from ICE, which prosecutes cases before the Immigration Court. I have had reports of numerous superbly qualified individuals from the private sector whose applications were rejected or put on indefinite hold without any explanation.

So, it looks like the many-layered, glacially slow, inefficient, overly bureaucratized process used by the DOJ and EOIR was actually an elaborate “smokescreen” for a system that was heavily weighted toward selecting “government insiders” and against selecting those who had gained experience by representing immigrants or advocating for their rights. The “Appellate Division” of the U.S. Immigration Court, the BIA — which is supposed to be the “top administrative court” in immigration — hasn’t had a judge appointed from outside the Government since 2000, more than 16 years and two full administrations ago!

Based on performance to date, I’m not particularly optimistic that AG Jeff Sessions is going to make the changes necessary to establish a true merit-based system for Immigration Judge hiring that, in turn, will create an immigration judiciary representing more diverse backgrounds and experiences. But, hope springs eternal, and I’d be happy if he proves my skepticism to be wrong.

Only time will tell. But, the quality and composition of the “Sessions era” immigration judiciary is something that everyone who cares about due process and justice in America should watch closely.

PWS

04/12/17

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