COURTSIDE EXCLUSIVE! — A FIRST, DISTURBING LOOK INSIDE “JUDGE GARLAND’S FAILED EOIR” – SOURCES CLAIM JUDGE’S APPROACH TO DUE PROCESS @ EOIR TIMID, INEFFECTIVE 🤮☠️ — HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE 🍇 – Judge Apparently Dissing Calls By Experts, Advocates For Bold, Common Sense Actions To Restore Due Process, & Promote Judicial Independence @ EOIR — Appears Ready To Allow Miller‘s White Nationalist “Plants,” Go Along To Get Along Judges, To Continue Mocking Due Process @ Dysfunctional Courts – Will Ex-Federal Judge Become Latest In Line Of Failed Dem AGs To Allow Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Attitudes, Mistreatment Of Migrants, & Administrative Chaos To Flourish In America’s Worst “Courts?”

EYORE — “Oh no! Is Judge Garland really going to leave me in this position for the next four years?”

COURTSIDE EXCLUSIVE! — A FIRST, DISTURBING LOOK INSIDE “JUDGE GARLAND’S FAILED EOIR” – SOURCES CLAIM JUDGE’S APPROACH TO DUE PROCESS @ EOIR TIMID, INEFFECTIVE 🤮☠️ — HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE 🍇 – Judge Apparently Dissing Calls By Experts, Advocates For Bold, Common Sense Actions To Restore Due Process, & Promote Judicial Independence @ EOIR — Appears Ready To Allow Miller‘s White Nationalist “Plants,” Go Along To Get Along Judges, To Continue Mocking Due Process @ Dysfunctional Courts – Will Ex-Federal Judge Become Latest In Line Of Failed Dem AGs To Allow Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Attitudes, Mistreatment Of Migrants, & Administrative Chaos To Flourish In America’s Worst “Courts?”

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

April 9, 2021

Although the information is unverified, and the sources anonymous, Courtside has pieced together an emerging disturbing picture of Judge Garland’s “master plan” to make only cosmetic changes and allow the continued mistreatment of asylum seekers and unprofessional performance of many so-called “judges” in his Immigration Courts, generally known as America’s worst and most dysfunctional tribunals where life threatening institutionalized White Nationalism, sloppy work product, and lack of human rights expertise have become the order of the day.

As we know, DOJ quickly reassigned the former EOIR Director, James McHenry, notorious for “leading” the courts into total failure in pursuit of a White Nationalist political agenda. Apparently, the head of Administration and the “IT honcho” were also forced out at “The Tower.” Presumably, this has to do with EOIR’s remarkable two-decade failure to implement anything approaching a functional nationwide e-filing system.

That’s the “good news.” But, reportedly Judge Garland has little intention of removing the BIA Chairman or the Deputy Director. Sources say that unqualified (never served as a judge) Chief Immigration Judge Tracy Short, who was sent over from DHS Enforcement by the Trump folks, could be on thin ice. But, some in the know point out that he has the least authority to influence anything because he doesn’t actually adjudicate cases and must get approval from “on high” for any further policy changes.

The Deputy Director, Carl C. Risch, whom I’ve reported on before, was a Trump political appointee who “burrowed in” right at the end. According to sources Risch, a “bureaucratic refugee” from the State Department (the only kind of “refugee” recognized by the Trump regime) was mostly interested in finding a “soft landing on the public dole,” and not many people have paid attention to him.

The BIA Chair, David Wetmore, was a confidante of neo-Nazi White Nationalist Stephen Miller at the White House before he became an advisor to the Deputy A.G. and then the Chair. Reportedly, his appointment was driven by Miller and other senior Trump people.

Potentially, in a competent system, the BIA Chair (Chief Appellate Judge) would be one of the most powerful and influential Federal Judges in America, short of the Supremes. Wetmore has supposedly politicized everything. Some say that with his “probationary period” expiring next month, he’s just trying to “hang on.”

DOJ leadership, therefore, could and certainly should remove him in his probationary period with no repercussions. However, Dem incompetence at EOIR and elsewhere in DOJ is legendary when it comes to making such bold personnel moves that, by contrast, are the “bread and butter” of the process by which GOP Administrations seize control of the bureaucracy for their political aims. Dem Administrations all to often appear more than happy to leave GOP “plants, burrowers, and holdovers” in key positions while leaving human rights experts and their own supporters “out in the cold.”

There are also rumors that DOJ has prepared a “100-page plan” for EOIR. That, in of itself, is both interesting and disturbing in light of the glaring absence of any known immigration/human rights expert with intimate knowledge of the dysfunction at the Immigration Courts and how to fix it at DOJ Headquarters downtown. As I’ve mentioned before, the few “DOJ insiders” qualified to lead such a project are some field Immigration Judges, most associated with the NAIJ.

Reportedly, “the plan” has some “good stuff” including free counsel for unaccompanied children. But it doesn’t call for what’s really needed — independent courts!

Nor is it apparent that the Garland team intends to treat the Immigration Courts as “real courts” and to appoint the qualified, diverse, expert judiciary necessary to end institutionalized racism and “Dred Scottification” in the American justice system.

This is likely to leave many of those talented and dedicated lawyers who led the defense against the degradation and dehumanization of women and people of color in the Immigration Courts over the past four years fuming! I’ve said it before, it’s a strange way for a supposedly progressive Administration to treat those who should be their staunchest allies with the potential to solve problems others can’t!

Judge Garland appears determined to repeat the deadly mistakes of past Dem Administrations by leaving the best, most powerful, and most achievable opportunity for reforming the Federal Judiciary on the table yet again. He will also neuter and discredit his plans for equal justice and racial justice before even getting them out of the box.

Some report that advocacy groups might temper their calls for judicial independence and a better qualified judiciary at EOIR to avoid criticizing the new Administration. Sadly, that would also be a huge mistake, repeating past catastrophic failures!

I’ve seldom heard or witnessed a bigger “crock” than “revolution by evolution.” Revolution comes from kicking tail, taking names, and bold aggressive due process enhancing actions. For Pete’s sake, Miller and Sessions understood the power of decisive action! Are they really that much smarter and more motivated than the Dems? Sadly, it appears so!

Last time, I watched from the “inside” as the Obama Administration left the immigration advocacy/human rights community “standing at the station” while the train pulled out, with mostly the wrong engineers at the controls. It was painful. It might be even more painful watching it happen again, despite all the warnings from those of us in the NDPA!

If an independent EOIR is ever going to happen it must be now! By the end of this year, it likely will be too late. The cost in human lives, frustration, and squandered potential for a better America and a better world will be incalculable.

Unhappily, those of us who had hoped to litigate and criticize less and help more appear destined for another four years of fighting an intransigent and tone-deaf Administration from the outside.

My three recommendations:

1) Those working on Article I better “get cracking,” because Judge Garland doesn’t appear to be interested in meaningful fixes at EOIR.

2) The human rights community had better reload and redeploy the “litigation artillery.” Because it looks to me like the only way of getting the Garland DOJ to address the festering problems undermining justice in America will be by beating them in court, over and over, until their “star chambers” finally collapse in total chaos.

3) Keep documenting the “lack of justice at Justice” — make sure that Judge Garland and his team “own” their failure to take seriously immigrant justice in the Immigration Courts and their disrespect for human rights experts who should be running and staffing our Immigration Courts!

Sure, it’s all anonymous and unverifiable. But, it sounds eerily similar to the arrogant incompetence with which the Obama Administration failed to institute achievable reforms in the Immigration Court system. So, I give it credence.

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

Grim Reaper — “Oh, goody! I hear Judge Garland is going to keep me at EOIR! I can’t wait to tell my buddy Gauleiter Miller that the slaughter of innocents will continue!”
Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License

PWS

04-10-21

⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️CAMILLE J. MACKLER @ JUST SECURITY “GETS IT!” — How Come Judge Garland & The Biden Administration Don’t? — “If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts.” — Get Involved! Get Angry! Say No To Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, & Dehumanization (“Dred Scottification”) @ EOIR! Force Judge Garland To Pay Attention! Demand Change, Now!

https://www.justsecurity.org/75675/to-fix-the-immigration-system-we-need-to-start-with-immigration-courts/

Merrick Garland was recently confirmed as attorney general, bringing back a much-needed sense of impartiality and integrity to the Justice Department and the immigration court system it oversees. In this sense, his appointment is critical because, less than two months into his presidency, Joe Biden is already confronting the reality that meaningful immigration policies don’t always match up with wishful campaign promises. As thousands of migrants, especially unaccompanied minors, continue to seek safety and opportunity in the United States; as changes to interior enforcement and immigration prosecutions are slow to implement; and as advocates apprehensively watch detention facilities expand and COVID-related border closures continue, immigration remains the most divisive of all political conversations.

But rather than be overwhelmed by the challenge, perhaps there is another place to start, one that has only been alluded to in Biden’s plans and never taken up by Congress: If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts. In a Just Security piece published in November, Gregory Chen eloquently laid out the devastating harm caused by the Trump administration’s politicization of the immigration judiciary, pointedly describing the courts as “strained to the breaking point under a massive backlog of cases and a systemic inability to render consistent, fair decisions.”

Courts are the backstop of every legal system. Their most basic function is to ensure that applications of the law are fair, not arbitrary and capricious. In the U.S. immigration system, however, most of the oversight has fallen on administrative courts housed within the Department of Justice. As Chen argues, the courts “operate under the jurisdiction of a prosecutorial agency, the Department of Justice, whose aims and political interests often conflict with the fundamental mission of delivering impartial and fair decisions.” Further exacerbating the tension, beginning in 1996 Congress expanded the executive branch’s already far-reaching power on immigration by starting a 30-year trend of limiting the federal courts’ jurisdiction over immigration issues; efforts that were only reinforced by the 2002 Homeland Security Act and 2005 REAL ID Act. The recently introduced, White House-backed, U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 only slightly restores judicial oversight, allowing district courts to review allegations of violations of certain portions of the Act. For the foreseeable future, immigration courts remain under the direction of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), a small and chronically under-funded sub-agency of the Justice Department, operating out of an office building in Falls Church, Virginia, removed from DOJ leadership in Washington, D.C.

While they by no means caused the issues that plague the EOIR today, the Trump administration’s policies put the proverbial final nail in the coffin of a quasi-functioning system, decimating the daily functions of immigration courts and showing how they can be used as political tools. The overwhelming backlog of cases –nearly 1.3 million at last count across all courts– exacerbated by the enforcement-first agenda, means that immigration judges have enormous caseloads with few support staff to help them manage the work. In addition, policies by the Trump administration removed judicial discretion from judges, prevented them from using simple control tools to manage their dockets, tied performance reviews to how many cases they closed out within a year while making it harder to avoid entering deportation orders, and created new administrative law to further restrict benefits a judge can grant. When the immigration bench pushed back, leadership dismantled the union that represented them. Hiring and rewards practices have politicized the bench even more. As Chen noted in his piece, the Trump administration “stacked the courts with appointees who are biased toward enforcement, have histories of poor judicial conduct, hold anti-immigrant views, or are affiliated with organizations espousing such views.”

This is not the hallmark of a functional legal system, and its ripple effects undermine our immigration system as a whole.

. . . .

Otherwise, we will prolong a situation that would be comical were the implications not so devastating. Returning to the individuals stranded in Mexico due to the MPP, for example – as of the time of this writing, they are being registered into a database and given COVID tests by various international organizations. Once cleared to enter the United States, they will fill out a form, by hand, which is handed to the Customs and Border Protection official. The CBP officer, overwhelmed and under-resourced as they are at the border, will then transmit this paper form to the immigration court officials, who will enter it into their systems and change the case to the appropriate court. In New York, these courts do not even have sufficient staff to assign one clerk, who also doubles as an administrative assistant, to each judge. As a result, calls to the court frequently go unanswered and are rarely returned. Furthermore, increasingly, understaffing has led to misplaced evidence submissions for pending cases. The responsibility to ensure that all of these obstacles are overcome will lie on the individual who just, finally, entered the United States.

An independent immigration judiciary, with its own resources and free from political oversight, is the only long-lasting remedy to this dysfunction. In the meantime, the agency, much like the DOJ it depends on, is in desperate need of thoughtful, measured leadership that values due process and impartiality and supports existing staff as it continues to navigate the complex problems posed by our immigration laws. There must be trained, dedicated staff ensuring efficient management of the court’s dockets and administrative systems so that the individuals whose cases are going through the courts understand what is required of them. Only then will the immigration system reflect American notions of justice, and only then can we begin to rebuild a strong, sustainable immigration system that meets our goals for foreign policy, national security, and domestic prosperity.

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

Read Camille’s full article at the link.

Not rocket science! Just following the due process clause of the Constitution; implementing asylum laws in the fair, generous, and practical way they were intended; replacing today’s failed EOIR administrators, the entire BIA, and many Immigration Judges responsible for “asylum free zones” with competent, expert professionals; and treating migrants, regardless of race, color, creed, or gender, as human beings!

If you wonder why Judge Garland is continuing to run “star chambers” masquerading as “courts” @ DOJ, join the club!

Star Chamber Justice — “Justice”
Star Chamber
Style

As cogently described by my friend and fellow panelist at the Hispanic National Bar Association last night, Claudia Cubas, Litigation Director at the CAIR Coalition, in what other “court” system in America are you not entitled to a timely copy of your client’s file to prepare for litigation and file applications (often with artificially truncated “filing dates” to promote “summary denials”)? Making the Immgration Courts functional is neither impossible nor that complicated. All it takes is competent leadership with the guts to “clean house” at EOIR and “kick some tail” at an intransigent, contemptuous, and out of control DHS.

So why is Judge Garland investing in the continuing, deadly “Clown Show,”🤡🦹🏿‍♂️☠️⚰️ rather than getting going on bringing “his” courts into compliance with due process? It’s not even that hard to get the right experts who could do the job in place, at least on a temporary basis.

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

If Judge Garland won’t do his job, what can we do to force change and rationality into this totally dysfunctional, stunningly unfair, scofflaw system? Here are some ideas from last night’s panel at the Hispanic National Bar Association (“HNBA”):

Apply for jobs at EOIR (sure, they are hidden away on “USA Jobs,” there is no effort whatsoever on Judge Garland’s part to diversify or recruit real experts, and the selection process is opaque). But, better judges, with actual experience representing migrants (particularly asylum seekers) in court, and some compassion and human understanding along with expertise, are the key to fixing the system. It’s particularly critical for minority attorneys (now a relative rarity in the “Immigration Judiciary”) to apply in overwhelming numbers and get into the system to start forcing change from within (“bore from within,” as Dan Kowalski says). Can’t complain about who’s selected if you don’t apply and compete!
Raise hell with your legislative representatives! As long as Immigration Court reform is #27 on their radar screens, the problem won’t get addressed.
Get involved with educating the public about the ungodly, un-American disaster in the Immigration “Courts” that don’t fit any normal definition of “courts” (except “kangaroo courts”). Join and support advocacy and social service groups; write op-eds; write for blogs; speak at community and church meetings; run for political office!
Sue, sue, sue, sue! Make sure that the systemic mistreatment of migrants and people of color in Judge Garland’s Immigration Courts are front and center in the Article III Courts and that we are making an historical record of where Federal Judges and public officials stand on the most critical racial and social justice issue in America today. Argue the very obvious Constitutional violations present in a system run by prosecutors, where judges can be neither fair nor impartial, and where many lack even minimal competence and qualifications for their “judicial” positions. Take the fight to the broken and dysfunctional DOJ in the only way they understand, by whacking them down in court! Make Judge Garland face and “own” his disgracefully failed, unprofessional “courts” by making it the #1 issue occupying his time. Make how he deals with the Immigration Courts his overriding “legacy” for better or worse!
Remember, GOP politicos like to use immigration as a “prop” to spread their message of racial vilification and dehumanization of the “other” because it “fires up” their White Nationalist base! By contrast, Dem politicos want to make immigration go away and pretend like the mess in the Immigration Courts doesn’t exist, can’t be fixed, isn’t that important (as in lives of migrants and asylum seekers, mainly of color, don’t count), and isn’t killing people! Don’t let either party get away with their respective dishonest, “designed for failure,” approaches!

Humanity and the future of American democracy are at stake here! They might be “Clown Courts” 🤡 but the damage they daily inflict on human lives ☠️⚰️ and values 🤮 is no laughing matter!

EOIR Clown Show Must Go T-Shirt — “EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! Put an end to deadly “Clown Courts” 🤡 now!

PWS

04-08-21

🏴‍☠️NEW ADMINISTRATION, SAME OLD TONE-DEAF, INCOMPETENT🤡 EOIR! — Latest Attempt To Unilaterally “Micromanage” Dockets From “Falls Church Tower” Arrogantly Disses Meaningful Public Input, Compounds Problems, Ignores Best Practices, Attempts To Shift Blame For Grotesquely Mismanaged 1.3 Million Case Backlog, Mocks Due Process! — This Is NOT Justice — This Is NOT A Court!

Please see EOIR’s invitation to an information session regarding revised Case Flow Processing.

_________________________________________

Executive Office for Immigration Review

Office of Policy

Communications and Legislative Affairs Division

PAO.EOIR@usdoj.gov

703-305-0289

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

Just a few “off the top of my head” observations:

1) The process would work much better if EOIR consulted the stakeholders for their ideas before issuing any memo.

2) In the absence of a real e-filing system, the assignment of trial dates without consulting counsel as to their availability is likely to generate lots of motions for different dates.

3) In a system with 1.3 million cases, why not ask how much time counsel needs for prep and filing rather than setting arbitrary dates? “Live (or even TV) Masters” give the IJ and the parties an opportunity to “negotiate” mutually agreeable, realistic hearing dates. That, in turn, minimizes the number of motions to continue or reset and maximizes the chance of actually getting the case heard on the first scheduled Individual (Merits) Hearing date (barring more Aimless Docket Reshuffling from EOIR “management,” which is a continuing problem).

4) Given how messed up the EOIR dockets are, what’s the point of pushing for 30 day filings when the merits hearing might not be for years?

5) How do you encourage stipulations with precedents that make them worthless when the AG or BIA or IJ can choose to ignore them to deny? Stipulations seem to bind only one party: the respondent. Can’t imagine a much clearer indication of systemic bias or lack of due process and impartiality.

6) To me, this looks like just another gimmick to allow EOIR to “deny and deport” for failure to meet arbitrary filing deadlines, without EOIR committing to any reasonable limits on its own scheduling of merits hearings. The R has to “race or lose;” but, EOIR can (and does) take forever with no accountability.

7) What’s the empirical basis for all EOIR’s assumptions as to what best and most efficient practices are? How would an agency renowned for “malicious incompetence” know? Best and most efficient for whom? Falls Church bureaucrats? Politicos on the 5th Floor of the DOJ?

8) I completed lots of cases at Master, besides in absentias. In some situations, I suggested areas for stipulation or agreement, or invited joint motions to transfer to my “short calendar” if certain conditions were met. I’m not convinced that “interactive” Masters serve no purpose. I’d be interested in whether the private bar sees these procedures as an improvement. Amazing what you can actually accomplish when you have the parties and counsel in your actual presence as an IJ. Amazing what an IJ can actually teach and communicate from the bench during a “live” master.

9) To some degree, this ham-handed attempt at micromanagement “from afar and on high” looks like a restoration of the paper heavy and labor intensive chaos that existed in the system before EOIR was created in 1983 and the late Chief Judge William R. Robie “invented” Master Calendar as an essential scheduling tool that brought order from that chaos. If EOIR ever got competent court administration and created a functioning e-filing system (like almost every other tribunal in the U.S.), the private bar and actual sitting IJs could undoubtedly suggest some helpful “tune-ups” to the Master Calendar process to take advantage of efficiencies made possible through e-filling.

10) This memo also violates one of the key principles of effective judicial administration — that docket management and scheduling of cases should be left to local judges in conjunction with the private bar and the local DHS Chief Counsel. They, not bureaucrats in Falls Church or DOJ policies, are in the best position to develop the most reasonable and efficient docketing and scheduling procedures coordinator that particular court. The major contribution that “EOIR Headquarters” could make would be a functioning e-filing system — an area where they have an inexcusable two decade history of abject failure, wasted effort, and squandered public resources.

10) To me, this looks like another “designed to fail” edict from the purveyors of disaster, disorder, and injustice!

11) Other than that, it’s great!

Those wanting to contribute to an organized response to this latest “gut punch” might want to contact Michelle Mendez, Director of Defending Vulnerable Populations at CLINIC, or retired Judge Sue Roy (NJ Bar, AILA, Round Table).

On April 7, after you have attended the EOIR session, you might want to “tune in” to our panel for the Hispanic National Bar Association entitled “Who’s Judge Is It Anyway?” We’ll discuss ideas on how attorneys, particularly those from under-represented groups, can go about forcing change to the institutionalized racism, grotesque disorder, and systemic abuses of due processes, best practices, and human dignity still going on in our Immigration Courts even as the Biden Administration claims to be focusing on racial justice in America!

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/03/29/%f0%9f%a7%91%f0%9f%8f%bd%e2%80%8d%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%97%bd%f0%9f%87%ba%f0%9f%87%b8whos-judge-is-it-anyway-the-crisis-of-independence-in-our-immigration-court/

Let’s find ways to force Judge Garland out of his “ivory tower funk” and to make him start paying attention to the Constitutional mockery, amateurish jurisprudence, defiance of common sense, and racist dehumanization of “the other” going on in “his” wholly owned and beyond incompetently operated “courts!”

🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04–05-21

⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️🗽COURT REFORM: GW IMMIGRATION CLINIC STUDENTS WEIGH IN ON ARTICLE I — Emphasize Critical Due Process Need To Entirely Remove AG From Decision-Making Process!

Here’s the letter to Chair Zoe Lofgren of the House Subcommittee on Immigration:

FIJC

GW Law Immigration Clinic Director Professor Alberto Benítez & Co-Director Paulina Vera

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

Thanks to Professors Benitez and Vera for the great work for the NDPA that they are doing and the values they are instilling in their students. Just think what due process could look like in the Immigration Courts if all judges, trial and appellate, reflected those same values!

The concepts are actually very straightforward.

The Attorney General is a litigant before the Immigration Court. He or she can insert themselves in the process if they choose, to represent the Government as a litigant. But, the Attorney General should be treated as any other litigant — at arm’s length.
Individuals appearing before the Immigration Court are entitled to a fair and impartial independent adjudicator. As long as the Attorney General exercises control over the selection of judges, evaluates their performance, and can review and arbitrarily change their decisions, on his or her own whim, the system will remain unconstitutional and fundamentally unfair.

Interesting that law students see so clearly, recognize, and can articulate what Federal Judges, all the way up to the Supremes, legislators, and our Attorney General all fail to acknowledge and act upon. Hope for the future! But without better-qualified legislators, judges, and Executive Branch officials, will our justice system survive long enough to get to the future? Not without some very fundamental changes!

Every day, individuals have their constitutional, statutory, and human rights stomped upon, mocked, and abused by the broken Immigration Courts. Sometimes, Circuit Courts intervene to provide some semblance of justice in individual cases; other times they turn a blind eye to injustice and fundamentally unfair decision-making in the totally dysfunctional Immgration Courts.

But, nobody, but nobody, except members of the NDPA appears to be willing to recognize and act on the overall glaring constitutional and operational defects in the current Immigration “Courts” — that don’t resemble “courts” at all. That’s something that should concern and outrage every American committed to racial justice, equal justice for all, fundamental fairness, and constitutional due process!

EOIR and the U.S. Immigration Courts are an ongoing national disgrace — a festering sore upon democracy!🤮 Every day, they inflict unnecessary pain and suffering on those humans being abused by their fundamental unfairness and institutionalized chaos.!

How many ruined human lives ⚰️ and futures ☠️is it going to take for someone in the “power structure” to wake up and take notice!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-05-21

👩🏻‍🎓HISTORY WE SHOULD HEED: Professor Julia G. Young On Why Politicos & Their Wrong-Headed Unilateral Cruel Enforcement Programs Have Failed At The Border — “Since the 1970s, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to address undocumented immigration by constructing ever more draconian policies of border control, deportation and detention—border theater that grabs headlines and sometimes leads to short-term change, but never actually solves the problem.” — Vice President Kamala Harris Isn’t The First Political Figure To “Take On The Border” — Could She Be The First To Get It Right?

https://apple.news/AgbanNxVvSxGEHNVvJ1hFaw

Professor Julia Young in Time Magazine:

With the U.S. “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,” as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement March 16, immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border has emerged as one of the toughest challenges facing the Biden Administration. Last week, President Biden put Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of “stemming” the flow of migrants, Biden was questioned about the immigration situation at his first official press conference, immigrant detention centers began to fill up once again, and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle made trips to the border to publicize the issue and propose solutions.

Biden’s attempts to address immigration may be new, but the issue is one that has dogged his predecessors for decades. Since the 1970s, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to address undocumented immigration by constructing ever more draconian policies of border control, deportation and detention—border theater that grabs headlines and sometimes leads to short-term change, but never actually solves the problem.

There’s a reason why the U.S. government has failed for so many years to “control” the border: none of these policies have addressed the real reasons for migration itself. In migration studies, these are known as “push” and “pull” factors, the causes that drive migrants from one country to another.

Today, the countries sending the most migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border–especially the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador–are experiencing a combination of push factors that include poverty and inequality, political instability, and violence. And while the current situation may be unique, it is also deeply rooted in history.

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

Many countries in Central America have struggled with poverty since the time of independence from Spain in the early 19th century. While they are beautiful countries that are rich in culture and history, that colonial past has meant they have historically been home to large, landless, poor, rural populations, including many indigenous people of Mayan descent. In the years after Spanish control, they were typically ruled by small oligarchies that disproportionately held wealth, land and power, and their economies were primary export-dependent, which brought great riches to landowners but also exacerbated and perpetuated inequality and the poverty of the majority. Those dynamics have carried forward to today. More recently, climate change–in particular, drought and massive storms–has forced the vulnerable rural poor out of the countryside.

. . . .

And while many Central Americans could indeed qualify for asylum based on their experiences of persecution, the previous administration made every effort to limit their ability to obtain it. Now the Biden Administration must decide whether to restore the asylum framework, which has become the only possible path to legal migration (as well as safety and security) for Central Americans and other migrants who—due to these combined push and pull factors—are desperate to come to the United States.

Given the complicated and deep-rooted reasons behind migration, lawmakers cannot control or “solve” the ongoing crisis at the border by simply pouring money and resources into ever more militaristic border theater. It’s no wonder that decades of such policies have done little to change the underlying dynamics.

Instead, if Americans are serious about changing the situation at the border, we need to address the push and pull factors behind Central American migration. We need to acknowledge the reality of the U.S. economy (in particular, that it demands immigrant labor to work low-wage jobs) and work to construct new legal frameworks that reflect that reality. We need to target financial and logistical support to encourage Central American countries to address the poverty and inequality that fuel migration, rather than cutting foreign aid, as the Trump Administration did. We need to do all we can to end the pervasive gang violence that pushes so many migrants out of their homelands. And of course, we must continue to evaluate our own historical and contemporary role in creating the longstanding problems that are pushing Central Americans to migrate.

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

Read the rest of Julia’s article at the link. One key truth: many more Central American migrants would qualify for asylum and be legally admitted to our society under a fair application of our asylum laws directed and supervised by real expert judges who scrupulously enforce due process and best practices on a now biased, unfair, and dysfunctional system!

“Stemming the tide” might be neither realistic nor possible at this time. But, controlling it, managing it humanely and legally, and regularizing it, while lessening the “push” factors should be achievable.

It would, however, require bold actions:

Recognizing the primacy of humanitarian protection laws and insisting on due process in implementing them;
Putting experts in humanitarian situations, due process advocates, diplomats, labor economists, and demographers in leadership positions; and
Embracing much larger levels of legal immigration, particularly from Latin America.

Vice President Kamala Harris — Vice President Kamala D. Harris
Vice President of the United States
(Official Senate Photo)

Unfortunately for Vice President Harris and the rest of us who want humane, realistic immigration policies, there are reasons for our half-century of overall failure on the border.

Bloated government bureaucracies, powerful corporate interests, nativist politicians, and even foreign leaders are heavily invested in expensive and guaranteed to fail “uber enforcement” gimmicks. Failure basically creates a never-ending demand for more: more enforcement agents, “civil prisons,” jailers, deporters, cars, trucks, guns, boats, ammo, walls, fences, technology, courts, judges, prosecutors, lobbyists, “baby jails,” processing centers, foreign aid that goes largely into the pockets of corrupt leaders and their cronies, and a never-ending supply of underground, low-wage, politically neutered workers.

Additionally, we now have an entire political party with an agenda of overt institutionalized racism, dehumanization of the other, and fear-mongering White Nationalist myths driving its bogus populist narrative.

None of these “architects and enablers of border failure and institutionalized racism” are going “quietly into the night.” They will fight tooth and nail to defend their sinecures, profitable empires, and politically useful White Nationalist myths.

The politician who finally breaks the deadly cycle of failure and human misery at our border, while harnessing and realizing the positive power of human migration, will become a hero for future historians and undoubtedly merit a chapter in a new edition of Profiles in Courage.

Sadly, such recognition and adulation is likely to come long after she is gone from the scene. Long term vision and moral courage are not necessarily rewarded with short-term political popularity. Just ask the few Republicans who voted in accordance with the overwhelming, basically uncontested, evidence of Trump’s “high crimes and misdemeanors!”

That’s why it’s a tough challenge even for someone of Vice President Harris’s undoubted intelligence and abilities. It’s up to those of us who believe in a better America to keep her from getting sidetracked and co-opted by the vested interests of failure and White Nationalist myth-makers and purveyors.

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-04-21

🇺🇸⚖️ASYLUM IS THE LAW, NOT AN “OPTION” OR A “LOOPHOLE!” — Judge Garland’s Disturbing Failure To Publicly Stand Up For Rights & Humanity Of Asylum Seekers, & His Failure To End The Rabid Anti-Asylum Bias Of EOIR Stokes Humanitarian Misery, Scofflaw Behavior, & Moral Abdication @ Southern Border!🏴‍☠️ — Whatever Happened To The Scholarly, Humble Jurist Who Was Grateful That His Ancestors Were Rescued From Doom? ☠️— Are Refugee Women, Children, & Those Of Color Less Worthy Than His Family?🤮 — Why?

Four Horsemen — BIA Asylum Panel In Action
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Trial By Ordeal — Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal”
17th Century Woodcut
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160

Felipe De La Hoz — Filipe De La Hoz
Investigative Journalist — Immigration
PHOTO: Twitter

Filipe De La Hoz in The Baffler:

This has been a bizarre conversation on a number of levels, not least because many interlocutors proceed from the assumption that permitting humanitarian migration is even a choice that the president gets to make. It is not: U.S. law lays out that any “alien . . . who arrives in the United States . . . irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum.” The statute enumerates certain exceptions, such as adults applying more than one year after entry and the existence of specific “safe third country” agreements (which formed another front in Trump’s efforts to gut asylum).

There are no exceptions, however, pertaining to considerations of the domestic political climate, or whether accommodating asylum seekers is deemed just too hard or, god forbid, conducive to others subsequently seeking help. Internationally, the principle of “non-refoulement” (literally non-return) holds that a state cannot “expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his [or her] life or freedom would be threatened,” as obligated by the United Nations’ 1967 protocol on refugees, of which the United States is a signatory. While the refugee definition itself is woefully outdated, the requirement to verify whether people fit the rubric before sending them away is absolute. These aren’t open questions, no matter how assertively they’re raised by political strategy hucksters and TV news hosts.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/asylum-is-not-an-open-question-de-la-hoz

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

Read the complete article, which makes many other valid points and corrects the daily errors and myths about asylum spewed forth by politicos and the “mainstream” media at the link.

Filipe gets it! But, Judge Garland apparently doesn’t! What’s wrong with this picture? Pretty much everything!

Is this how the DC Circuit Court of Appeals functioned when Judge Garland was on the bench. Is this what “due process” means in America? If not, why is Garland looking the other way as injustice rolls off his “judicial assembly line” in Falls Church?

For Judge Garland to be credible on any racial justice issue, and for EOIR to provide due process, we need radical, not incremental, change! It’s interesting that Biden is getting well-deserved kudos for nominating a very diverse progressive slate of Article III judicial nominees.

Yet, to date, EOIR, with more judges than Biden could appoint in four years, remains staffed and operating as if Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller were still in charge. And, non-diverse, anti-progressive would be an understatement for today’s Immigration “Courts.” For heaven’s sake, we still have an anti-due-process BIA churning out nativist precedents!

There is nary a “win” for an individual in the last four years of BIA/AG precedents. The BIA and the AG inevitably reject reasonable constructions of statutes presented by respondents in favor of inferior — even nonsensical — ones presented by DHS.

Sometimes, the BIA runs over clear statutory language, circuit precedents, regulatory requirements, or their own past precedents in the “race to remove.” Yet, in the “real” Federal Courts, even with a much more aggressively conservative composition, and their own often dismissive approach to immigrants’ rights, individuals prevail in published decisions almost every day! How outrageous is that!

I’ll believe that Judge Garland is serious about racial justice in America on the day that he 1) vacates every Trump-era AG precedent, and 2) removes the entire BIA and replaces them with a diverse group of progressive judges with human rights expertise and an unswerving commitment to due process. Appoint the “best and the brightest” as President Biden says!

Until then, I remain a skeptic and a strong critic of the just plain dumb, biased, and ill-informed approach to EOIR that has plagued past Dem Administrations.

It won’t be long until, predictably, the fallout from the so-called “border crisis” — unnecessarily hyped by the press and the GOP, but also stoked by the Biden Administration’s lack of expertise, preparation, and “Amateur Night @ the Bijou PR” — hits EOIR.

As of now, Judge Garland appears to be completely unprepared to handle it. So, here we go with another entirely preventable disaster brewing on top of the current grotesque dysfunction, institutionalized bias, and “worst practices” crippling democracy at the “retail level.” Judge Dana Marks said as much in an NPR interview recently. But, I nobody in charge appears to be paying attention! https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2F2021%2F03%2F26%2F981486753%2Fjudge-dana-marks-on-how-the-biden-administration-can-address-immigration-backlog&data=04%7C01%7Cegibson%40nylag.org%7C84cb037942e941a9fdf208d8f2ee428c%7C7a949b265bb44b6197ceb192e674d669%7C0%7C0%7C637526452442537480%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=4es4QSrVKwNB2WfgalWsQMYZppBI5nn985FaOvynr84%3D&reserved=0

It’s not rocket science! But, it does require a much much much more courageous and informed approach, along with common sense and some human decency. And, the “next gen” folks who could make it happen, are still “on the outside looking in.”

Meanwhile, the idiocy continues from the Garland SG’s Office. Handed a golden opportunity to abandon a totally boneheaded position on adjustment of status for TPS holders who qualify to immigrate legally, the Garland DOJ continues to press an irrational and illegal Trump interpretation; one that not only defies the plain language of the statute, but reaches a beyond stupid policy result that keeps hard-working folks who meet the qualifications for green card status in perpetual limbo — for no legal or rational reason whatsoever!

They could have taken the advice of renowned immigration expert and former Senior Executive at both the “Legacy INS” and DHS, Professor David A. Martin. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/03/14/⚖%EF%B8%8F🗽professor-david-a-martin-explains-how-biden-administration-could-advance-its-immigration-agenda-by-abandoning-their-wrong-headed-position-before-the-supremes/

Instead, they have followed their morally vacant, “bad government,” and legally challenged predecessors in the Trump regime by taking a totally avoidable yet cruel and counterproductive stance that will actually increase EOIR backlogs while accomplishing nothing whatsoever of any value. Sounds like a lose, lose lose to me! https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.law360.com%2Fimmigration%2Farticles%2F1368637%2Ffeds-back-green-card-limits-for-tps-holders-at-high-court&data=04%7C01%7Cegibson%40nylag.org%7C84cb037942e941a9fdf208d8f2ee428c%7C7a949b265bb44b6197ceb192e674d669%7C0%7C0%7C637526452442776422%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=6ZxLxyEb%2BKkjyGkfpSzAzj4e1QFmKWAB2Gn0%2BEzOwKc%3D&reserved=0

Sure, the tone-deaf Supremes’ GOP majority might buy it, since it furthers a culture of bias and de-humanization. But, that’s no excuse for what was supposed to be a smarter, more ethical, more humane Administration.

The case is Sanchez v. Mayorkas, and the lack of insight, common sense, and humanity with which Judge Garland has approached the most important topics in current American law — immigration/human rights/racial justice/social justice to date — remains appalling! There will be no racial justice in America until our leaders “connect the dots” between racist immigration policies, a racist-enabling Immigration Court, and degradation of people of color in all areas of the law!

Judge Garland could cut through all the BS by putting the right folks in charge of EOIR and turning them loose. We need a lot less talk and a lot more action!

Many of us out here have long supported social and racial justice, through good times and bad. But, we’re likely to remain unconvinced about the good faith and competence of the Biden Administration until we see radical due process and racial justice reforms at EOIR and the DOJ.

There are many folks who could solve America’s immigration problems in a humane, progressive, and efficient manner that advances and enhances due process. But, to date, Judge Garland short-sightedly refuses to put them in the game or even to publicly acknowledge the debilitating problems in his wholly-owned and incompetently operated courts! And, every minute of delay costs lives and credibility.

Here’s a very recent letter from Senator Gillibrand and other Senators requesting that Judge Garland turn his attention to the EOIR disaster/travesty.

https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Let.ImmigrationCourtReform.AGGarland.3.23.21.pdf

It’s a terrific letter. But, there is a major problem! All of this was well known long before the election! A number of us made the same points to the Biden Transition Team! Among other things, we emphasized the critical importance off “seizing the moment and hitting the ground running with a complete new approach at EOIR led by a team of available experts.”

The election was over in early November. Yet, here we are with the “same old, same old” failed anti-due process EOIR daily inflicting unnecessary pain, suffering, and abuse on migrants and their lawyers. Most of the same old DOJ unethical, legally questionable, defenses of the indefensible are still the order of the day. Some of the worst and most incompetent jurisprudence in modern American legal history, rendered in Garland’s name, is still being “outed” every week. There is no known plan for correction or even simple statement of awareness from Judge G.

Totally unacceptable! And the lack of preparation and basic competence is reflected in the problems the Administration has had at the border. A functional EOIR could and should have been part of reestablishing the rule of law at the border.

Instead, Judge Garland is making himself part of the latest chapter in America’s disgraceful and unnecessary failure to establish an asylum system that complies with due process and domestic and international laws. One that fulfills international treaty obligations, implements the generous protection objectives of the Refugee Act of 1980, rejects institutionalized racism, reflects the reality of forced migration, incorporates basic human values, and furthers the national interest.

It’s not rocket science; but it requires historical knowledge, recognition of the realities of human migration, legal competence, moral courage, and radical action that Judge Garland has yet to hint is within his capabilities. And, that’s bad news for American justice and humanity!

Inexcusable! But neither the issues of human migration nor the efforts of the NDPA to make the historically false, yet clear, promise of “due process and equal justice under law” a reality will go away, no matter how much Judge Garland and other “head in the sanders” in the Administration might want to believe and act otherwise!

Oh, yeah, don’t forget the heavy dose of overt misogyny that drove the Trump/Miller/Sessions/Barr/BIA “immigration jurisprudence” over the past four years. Yet, no repudiation from Judge Garland!

As I previously said, on “day one” Judge Garland would either repudiate or “own” the despicable treatment inflicted on female refugees and other migrants of color by the Trump kakistocracy. Until we see radical remedial action, Judge Garland now “owns” all the ugliness of the last four years. Our job becomes to let him escape neither responsibility nor the judgement of history for his failure of humanity and good judgement!

🇺🇸🗽🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-03-21

☠️⚰️POLITICOS, MEDIA CONTINUE TO GET THE BORDER WRONG — By Mary Giovagnoli In MS — “For the present, we must stop pretending that the U.S. can pick and choose when people will leave their countries and ask for asylum at our border.”👎🏻

Mary Giovagnoli · Senior Legal Counsel, Strategy and Special Programs at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND)
PHOTO: Medium.com

The Misery Trump Left at the Border Is Finally Being Revealed – Ms. Magazine
. . . .

Trump supporters and hangers-on boast the “success” of Trump’s immigration policies, demonstrated by the supposed drop in illegal entries. But this is merely an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to managing a very real problem. It was a giant sleight of hand which hid the actual number of people seeking entry into the U.S. Biden’s policies have pulled back the curtain and like so many other aspects of Trump’s administration, it is clear that the claims of success are nothing more than fantasies.

And yet the Biden administration is not off the hook. While it did agree to permit unaccompanied children to enter the U.S. despite the Title 42 ban, it did so following a preliminary injunction issued by a federal court last November. DHS continues to expel families, as well as single men and women, under the existing Title 42 order.

. . . .

Despite the clear moral and legal imperatives to stop Title 42 expulsions, the Biden administration is clearly worried that returning to pre-pandemic processing of asylum seekers will overwhelm the system. It is also clear that they fear a political backlash if critics are able to characterize the border as out of control.

Taking these final steps takes courage and political will. Those of us who support the rights of asylum seekers have to let the administration know that doing the right thing will not tarnish its reputation and that we will work even harder to ensure that making good on humane immigration policy is not political suicide.

Protecting asylum seekers is a woman’s issue of the first order. We must encourage and challenge both the administration and Congress to live up to U.S. obligations. We must turn out at the voting booth to support candidates and elected officials who act on behalf of asylum seekers. And we must push back, every way we can, against those who hope to weaponize the border in a callous effort to turn following the law into a political liability.

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

Read Mary’s complete article at the link. Many thanks to Judge Alex Manuel of the ABA’s National Conference of the Administrative Law Judiciary for passing this along.

Surprisingly, “forced migration,” is exactly what it says it is: “FORCED migration” — not optional! As I have pointed out before: “We can diminish ourselves as nation (and are doing so), but it won’t stop human migration.”

Refugees come, because that’s what refugees do. They often come when the world is in crisis, because that’s one of the primary reasons why refugees flee. They seldom come in an orderly manner because flight to save your life doesn’t lend itself to “regularity.” How many Jews perished in Nazi-controlled areas before and during WWII waiting for visas that were never going to come?

And, what brings refugees to our borders actually has little to do with inane statements of politicos, bureaucrats, border cops, and the media. One of the main consequences of illegally “closing the border to asylum seekers” is that large numbers simply enter between ports of entry. Those who used to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol are encouraged by our short-sighted policies and unwillingness to follow our own laws just to keep on going.

We’d certainly do much better if we “canned” all the Trump-era illegal, racist nonsense, reopened border ports to asylum seekers, and encouraged them to apply there or in locations abroad. But, to make that happen we would also have to review their claims in a timely, fair, and humane manner — not “rocket science,” yet something that largely has eluded our nation, particularly since 2014.

It’s achievable. But not without much better leadership coming from experts who actually know how to deal with refugee situations in a humane and effective manner. Failed bureaucrats and grandstanding politicos, those who usually “drive the train heading for a wreck,” can’t do the job! That’s been proved time and again! Why do we insist on repeating all our mistakes? Cruelty and threats simply aren’t effective.

To emphasize Mary’s concluding point about women’s concerns, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller made misogyny a focus of their vicious attack on people of color seeking asylum. It started with Sessions’s atrocious decision ignorantly and unlawfully targeting women refugees in Matter of A-B- and continued through Miller’s now-enjoined effort to unlawfully eradicate gender-based asylum grants. Never mind that women form the largest group of clearly identifiable refugees in the world and that femicide and violence against them driven by sexual antipathy and issues of control are rampant worldwide, particularly in the Northern Triangle.

But, a large problem here is that more than two months into the Biden Administration, Attorney General Merrick Garland has yet to repudiate Matter of A-B- and the other debilitating racist and misogynist “precedents” and grotesquely illegal anti-asylum policies of Sessions and Barr. Worse yet, he has neither stood up for the reinstatement of asylum laws and compliance with Constitutionally-required due process at the border, nor has he removed and replaced “his” Board of Immigration Appeals and taken steps to curb those of “his” Immigration “Judges” who are still engaged in furthering the Sessions/Barr White Nationalist, misogynist, anti-asylum agenda!

Interesting lack of action from a distinguished former Federal Judge who several months ago claimed great gratitude that his ancestors were given refuge from harm by the U.S. Is there some reason that those people of color and others now arriving at our borders and claiming legal protections under our laws are less deserving of fair, generous, and humane treatment?

Woman Tortured — Judge Garland’s View Of Proper Treatment of Women Seeking Asylum?
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-03-21

BIDEN PLAN TO REFORM ASYLUM SYSTEM @ THE BORDER MAKES SENSE, BUT ONLY IF CORRECTLY IMPLEMENTED WITH THE RIGHT PERSONNEL — The Devil 👿 Is In The Details & Major Progressive Judicial Reforms @ EOIR ⚖️ Are A Prerequisite! — “Early Returns” On Actually Solving Immigration/Human Rights/Due Process Problems From “Team Biden” Not Encouraging!☹️

Frranco Ordonez — Franco Ordonez
White House Correspondent
NPR
PHOTO: Twitter

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/01/982795844/biden-administration-considers-overhaul-of-asylum-system-at-southern-border

Franco Ordonez reports for NPR:

President Biden’s top advisers promise “long-needed systemic reforms” to address a backlog of more than 1 million asylum cases in the immigration court system, which often keeps people applying for asylum waiting years to resolve their cases. That could mean some big changes to how asylum cases are processed at the southern border.

The plan the Biden administration is considering to speed up the process would take some asylum cases from the southern border out of the hands of the overloaded immigration courts under the Department of Justice and instead handle them under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, where asylum officers already process tens of thousands of cases a year, two people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to speak about administration plans told NPR exclusively.

Those familiar with the discussions say one outcome could be discouraging unauthorized migration. That’s because those who can argue for a certain fear of persecution are able to gain temporary residence and often a work permit as they wait out their cases.

. . . .

Advocates say they welcome a more efficient system, provided changes are not used as a way to expedite removals as the Trump administration did.

Eleanor Acer of Human Rights First says there are a host of reasons to allow asylum officers to conduct the first set of interviews and reduce the numbers, but she says it’s important that applicants have a chance to appeal to the court before being removed.

“The massive backlog must be dealt with,” she said. “But the answer to that problem is not to deprive asylum seekers of due process and a fair hearing, or to weaponize the asylum process to try to deter other people from seeking U.S. protection.”

The Biden administration has already ended two of the Trump administration’s programs, the Prompt Asylum Case Review and the Humanitarian Asylum Review Program, that were designed to quickly return Mexican and Central American asylum seekers suspected of having invalid claims.

POLITICS

House Passes 2 Bills Aimed At Overhauling The Immigration System

Department of Homeland Security officials declined to discuss plans to shift border cases to the asylum division.

But an administration official said last week they are now working on a number of policies and regulations to create “a better functioning asylum system.”

That includes establishing refugee processing in the region and strengthening other countries’ asylum systems.

Biden also resurrected the Central American Minors program that reunited children with parents who are in the United States legally.

The Biden administration is now seeking to “pick up the pieces” after the Trump administration, with a different set of policies that abide by U.S. law but also international obligations, Meissner said.

“We need to have access to asylum,” Meissner said, “but it needs to be done in a way that can be prompt and fair, not in a way that leads to waits of years and years and court backlogs.

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Why it could work:

Granting relief at the lowest level of the system is cost effective;
It’s easier to hire, train, and assign Asylum Officers than Immigration Judges;
Immigration Court time should be reserved for those cases where there is a real issue as to whether relief can be granted.

Why it probably won’t work:

Leadership is critical. Right now, there are only a few experts in government with the knowledge, proven leadership ability, organizational skills, and courage to lead this program.
- Two obvious names that come to mind are Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, currently USCIS Chief Counsel, and Judge Dana Leigh Marks, one of the “founding mothers” of U.S. asylum law and pioneer of the well-founded fear standard. Both are past Presidents of the NAIJ. Neither has yet been tapped for this assignment.
- By contrast, there are a number of experts in the private/NGO sector who could lead this effort. Obvious choices would be Judge Paul Grussendorf, former Immigration Judge, Asylum Officer, UN Representative, and professor; Professor Karen Musalo, Director, Center for Refugee & Gender Studies, UC Hastings Law; Eleanor Acer, Senior Director, Refugee Protection, Human Rights First (quoted in this article); Professor Michele Pistone, Creator and Founder of the VIISTA asylum training program at Villanova Law; Professor Phil Schrag, Co-Director of the CALS Asylum Clinic at Georgetown Law and author of Baby Jails and the upcoming release The End of Asylum; Michelle Mendez, Director, Defending Vulnerable Populations at CLINIC; or Judge Ilyce Shugall of our Round Table. But, nobody of that caliber has been tapped either.
- Without creative, dynamic, expert leadership, and a different approach to personnel, the program will be yet another bureaucratic failure. In case nobody has noticed, after four years of never ending abuse, gross mismanagement, and intentional misdirection by the Trump kakistocracy, the USCIS Asylum & Refugee program is also in shambles — demoralized, disorganized, leaderless, incredibly backlogged. An obvious untapped source is retired Asylum Officers and Adjudicators who could be brought back on a limited-term basis, intensively trained by experts from a “Better EOIR,” and who often are in a position to travel frequently and on short notice.

It’s not about deterrence. Already, this article speaks of “possible deterrent effect.” WRONG! The purpose of an asylum adjudication system is to provide fair, timely, generous adjudications of asylum eligibility in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Refugee Act of 1980, the U.N. Convention and Protocol on which it is based, and the due process clause of our Constitution. We have never had such a system, which inevitably would be more orderly and efficient, but also result in many more grants.
- The main reason why we don’t currently have a functioning asylum system, and never have had the system that asylum seekers need and deserve, is that the system is at the mercy of a bogus Executive-controlled “court” system that time and time again has been compromised by politicos seeking who use it as an enforcement tool rather than an independent court of justice.
  - In 2014, the last year that I taught Refugee Law & Policy at Georgetown Law I “graded” the U.S. Asylum system at “B-.” Not as good as it should be, but not as bad as it could be.
  - Now I’d give it an “F.” Completely dysfunctional, highly arbitrary, and a tool of institutionalized racism and White Nationalism.
- The system is ineffective as a deterrent. There is no known basis to believe that quick and often arbitrary and wrongful “rejections” are an effective deterrent. That’s particularly true because rejections are seldom explained in a reasonable, understandable manner. So, to the extent that there is a “message” it’s that you got the wrong officer or the wrong judge on the wrong day or that the U.S. legal system is inherently unfair and should be avoided by hiring a smuggler to get you to the interior of the U.S. where, as a practical matter, you have a better chance of obtaining “de facto refuge.”
- The only “efficiency and leverage” that comes from the Asylum Officer system is in quickly identifying and consistently granting a substantial number of applications. That, and only that, does actually relieve the Immigration Court system of unnecessary cases. Otherwise, “non-grants” still have to go to the Immigration Courts for de novo review. I probably granted the majority of asylum cases “referred” from the Asylum Office. That leaves plenty of room to believe that a better trained and operated system with some positive guidance and effective supervision by better Immigration Judges and a truly expert BIA would achieve substantially higher grant rates and higher efficiency at the Asylum Office, thereby keeping many cases out of court and speeding the process for asylees to obtain permanent residence and eventually U.S. citizenship!

Some assumptions appear invalid. This article also repeats the unproven assumption that a fair, just, and efficient asylum system would result in rejection of the majority of cases. I doubt that.
- Prior to the Trump disaster, approximately 75-80% of asylum applicants at the Southern Border passed “credible fear.” That the majority of them never achieved asylum was due less to the lack of merit in their claims than to factors such as: 1) lack of a system to match asylum seekers with qualified counsel; 2) wrong-headed anti-asylum precedents from the BIA that were specifically directed against asylum seekers from Latin America — basically institutionalized racism in the guise of “enforcement;” 3) poor selection, training, and motivation of Immigration Judges some of whom simply did not treat asylum seekers fairly, nor were they given any incentive to do so.
- I granted asylum or other protection to many refugees from the Northern Triangle. I probably could have granted twice that number had the BIA precedents actually fairly and reasonably interpreted asylum law to specifically cover gender-based claims and claims arising from persecution by gangs basically operating “in lieu of government authorities” in most of the Northern Triangle.
- Additionally, an honest interpretation of the CAT by the BIA would have allowed life-saving protection to be extended to many others who lacked nexus but had a high probability of torture with Government acquiescence upon return. I believe that a return to the original Acosta-Kasinga line of asylum analysis and adoption of proper CAT interpretations along the lines set forth by the (exiled) dissenting judges in Matter of J-E- would result in grants of some type of protection (asylum, withholding, or CAT) in the majority of Southern Border cases coming from the Northern Triangle that passed credible fear or reasonable fear.
- Asylum, along with refugee status, is a key form of legal immigration to the U.S. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s NOT a “loophole.” It’s the law! Studies by groups of experts such as CMS have shown the huge benefits that refugees confer on the U.S. I have no reason to believe that asylum seekers as a group are any different.
- As long as we keep treating the reality of human migration and the strengths and humanity of asylum seekers as a negative rather than a positive, we will continue to fail, as we have for decades, to fully comply with either our own laws or international conventions.

A broken, dysfunctional, unfair EOIR will continue to drag American justice down. There must be de novo review of denials by EOIR and far, far more competent review and direction in the review of credible fear denials by EOIR. A better BIA could actually set binding precedents on “credible fear” and “reasonable fear.”
- Currently, EOIR is incapable of producing either consistently fair results (particularly for asylum seekers) or the inspired legal scholarship and leadership for the asylum system to be functional and held accountable. It’s going to require all new leadership, an all new BIA, elimination of all of the Trump-era precedents that impede fairness for asylum seekers, new merit-based selection criteria for Immigration Judges, professional administration from judicial experts, and an immediate slashing of the largely self-created “backlog” of 1.3 million cases by closing and removing from the docket every case more than a year old that doesn’t relate to a priority (most are folks who would be covered by Biden’s legalization program anyway; many are eligible for relief that USCIS could grant) to get EOIR in a position to provide the necessary legal guidance and system accountability for the Asylum Office. The absurdist notion that we could or would want to remove every one of the 10-11 million undocumented residents (many performing essential services that propped us up through the pandemic) is one of the “big lies” that has prevented rational reforms of our immigration system.
- In plain terms, EOIR needs an immediate “rebuild” with a new progressive, humanitarian judiciary of experts. There is no early indication that Judge Garland either understands that “mission-critical” need or has a plan for achieving it.

As we say in the business the “devil is in the details.” Right now, I can see neither the details nor the leadership in place or “in the pipeline” to solve the debilitating problems in our asylum system that actually are undermining the entire U.S. justice system.

Biden could fix it. But, I wouldn’t count on it. That means that the only real fix in the offing will be for the NDPA to force the Administration to “get it right” through aggressive, never-ending litigation as well as continuing to seek better legislators. Highly inefficient. Yet, sometimes it’s the only way to get the attention of those in power.

If nothing else, we’ll continue to make an important historic record of the cruelty and stupidity with which the current asylum system is being administered. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can always choose to follow our “better angels.” It just takes the courage and the good judgement to get the right folks in the right jobs to make it happen.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-01-21

⚖️🗽THE GIBSON REPORT — March 29, 2021 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

COVID-19 & Closures

Note: Policies are rapidly changing, so please verify information with the government and colleagues.

EOIR Status Overview & EOIR Court Status Map/List: Hearings in non-detained cases at courts without an announced date are postponed through, and including, May 14, 2021. (It is unclear when the next announcement will be. EOIR announced 5/14 on 3/29, 4/16 on Fri. 3/5, 3/19 on Wed. 2/10, 2/19 on Mon. 1/25, 2/5 on Mon. 1/11, and 1/22 on Mon. 12/28.) There is no announced date for reopening NYC non-detained at this time.

USCIS Office Closings and Visitor Policy

TOP NEWS

The migrant ‘surge’ at the U.S. southern border is actually a predictable pattern.

WaPo: We analyzed monthly U.S. Customs and Border Protection data from 2012 through February and found no clear evidence that the overall increase in border crossings in 2021 can be attributed to Biden administration policies. Rather, the current increase fits a pattern of seasonal changes in undocumented immigration combined with a backlog of demand because of 2020s coronavirus border closure. See also Majority of Migrants at the Border Are Being Turned Away, Biden Says; 9 questions about the humanitarian crisis on the border, answered; Photos Reveal The Crowded Conditions Unaccompanied Immigrant Kids Are Held In At The Border.

Harris steps into new immigration mission with Central American leader calls this week

WaPo: Vice President Harris this week will place her first telephone calls to Latin American leaders as she steps up efforts to fulfill her new mission of tackling the root causes of the migrant surge to the United States. See also What Kamala Harris Has Said About Immigration Before Leading White House Border Response.

Biden administration fires most Homeland Security Advisory Council members

WaPo: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas fired most members of the department’s independent advisory council on Friday, a purge that included several allies of former president Donald Trump and veteran officials who served under both parties.

Judge Dana Marks On How The Biden Administration Can Address Immigration Backlogs

NPR: NPR’s Steve Inskeep talks to Judge Dana Marks of the National Association of Immigration Judges about the massive backlog facing immigration judges.

Dem, GOP Lawmakers Suggest Expelling Migrant Children

Law360: Congress members on both sides of the aisle proposed rapidly expelling unaccompanied migrants at the southern border this week as federal agencies scrambled to accommodate ballooning numbers of minors in their care.

Rejected By 1 Mexican Port Of Entry, Migrants Are Flown By U.S. To Another

NPR: Some areas on the border in Mexico are refusing to take the migrants back, so U.S. authorities are flying them to where Mexican officials will accept them.

9-Year-Old Migrant Girl Dies Trying to Cross Rio Grande Into U.S.

NYT: Austin L. Skero II, the chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector in South Texas, said that his agents had rescued more than 500 migrants attempting to illegally enter the country since the start of the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. A total of 82 migrants have died in that period, according to C.B.P. data.

Border Patrol holds migrant families for days under a south Texas bridge

LA Times: Up to 600 families were assembled in recent days at the site under the Anzalduas International Bridge in Mission, Texas, sleeping in the dirt, exposed to the elements, without much food or access to medical care, according to several people who said they were released this week by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Stephen Miller to launch a new legal group to give Biden fits

Politico: The group, which will be known as America First Legal, will help organize Republican attorneys general against perceived executive branch abuses in addition to filing lawsuits of its own, according to six people familiar with the planning.

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Form I-589 NTA Policy

USCIS: If DHS previously issued you an NTA that has not been filed and docketed with EOIR, [USCIS] will accept your Form I-589, issue you an NTA, file your NTA with EOIR, send your Form I-589 to the EOIR immigration court where we file your NTA, and notify you by mail. EOIR will adjudicate your Form I-589. The date USCIS receipted your Form I-589 will serve as the filing date for the purpose of the asylum one-year filing deadline. [Note: This site is dated 1/26/21, but it seems that at least some affirmative I-589s with unfiled NTAs have recently begun being forwarded directly to EOIR and docketed.] See also Final Settlement Agreement in Lawsuit Challenging DHS’s One-Year Filing Deadline for Asylum Applications.

Feds Back Green Card Limits For TPS Holders At High Court

Law360: The Biden administration told the U.S. Supreme Court that immigrants who crossed the border illegally, but are temporarily shielded from deportation, should not be eligible for permanent residence, tracking similar arguments made by the Trump administration.

Matter of AL SABSABI, 28 I&N Dec. 269 (BIA 2021)

BIA: (1) The “offense clause” of the Federal conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371 (2012), is divisible and the underlying substantive crime is an element of the offense. (2) Because the substantive offense underlying the respondent’s Federal conspiracy conviction—namely, selling counterfeit currency in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 473 (2012)—is a crime involving moral turpitude, his conviction for conspiring to commit this offense is likewise one for a crime involving moral turpitude.

CA1 Says BIA Did Not Err in Finding That Asylum Applicant Failed to Prove His Chinese Citizenship

The court held that the BIA and IJ properly found that the petitioner had failed to prove his Chinese citizenship on the basis of a lack of corroborating evidence, and thus found that he could not base his asylum application on a fear of returning to China. (Thile v. Garland, 3/19/21) AILA Doc. No. 21032435

CA5 Says Categorical Approach Applies to Texas Conviction for Possession of Controlled Substance in Penalty Group 2-A

Where petitioner had been convicted in Texas of possessing a controlled substance listed in Penalty Group 2-A, the court held that the government had failed to show that Penalty Group 2-A was divisible, and thus that the categorical approach should apply. (Alejos-Perez v. Garland, 3/22/21) AILA Doc. No. 21032436

5th Circ. Upholds Asylum Denial Over Missing Paperwork

Law360: The Fifth Circuit on Wednesday denied a Cameroonian asylum seeker’s attempt to revive his case over missing paperwork, finding that his attorney failed to conduct a thorough enough search before attesting that the paperwork was not actually received.

CA8 Finds That Petitioner’s 2006 Federal Conviction for Illegal Reentry Under INA §276 Is Not an Aggravated Felony

The court held that because petitioner’s 2003 Missouri marijuana conviction was not a categorical match to the corresponding federal offense in INA §101(a)(43)(B), his 2006 conviction for illegal reentry was not an aggravated felony under INA §101(a)(43)(O). (Lopez-Chavez v. Garland, 3/22/21) AILA Doc. No. 21032438

CA8 Says There Is No “Miscarriage of Justice” Exception to Statutory Prohibition on Reopening a Reinstated Removal Order

The court held that there is no “gross miscarriage of justice” exception to the statutory prohibition on reopening a reinstated removal order, and concluded that the immigration court lacked jurisdiction to reopen the petitioner’s 1998 proceeding. (Gutierrez-Gutierrez v. Garland, 3/22/21) AILA Doc. No. 21032437

9th Circ. Judges Spar Over Failed Bid To Rehear Asylum Rule

Law360: The full Ninth Circuit refused Wednesday to review a panel order blocking a Trump-era policy that stripped asylum eligibility from migrants who cross the Southern border outside a port of entry, though six judges dissented, declaring they’re not “Platonic Guardians” of public policy.

9th Circ. Clarifies ‘Intellectual Disability’ For Asylum Claims

Law360: The Ninth Circuit on Wednesday sided with a Salvadoran asylum-seeker, finding that the immigration court misconstrued the nature of his intellectual disability by applying layman’s reasoning to a medical question.

CA10 Holds That INA §237(a)(1)(C)(i) Does Not Require Failure to Maintain Visa Status to Be Fault of Visa Holder

Denying the petition for review, the court held that the plain meaning of INA §237(a)(1)(C)(i) does not require a failure to maintain nonimmigrant status to be the fault of the nonimmigrant or the result of some affirmative action taken by the nonimmigrant. (Awuku-Asare v. Garland, 3/16/21) AILA Doc. No. 21032439

District Court Grants Class Certification and Amends Preliminary Injunction in Unaccompanied Children Litigation

USCIS issued a notice following class certification and entry of an amended preliminary injunction in a lawsuit challenging USCIS policy limiting asylum jurisdiction over UAC applicants. (J.O.P. et al., v. DHS, et al., 12/21/20) AILA Doc. No. 20122321

Fla. Court Orders ICE To Release Social Distancing Data

Law360: A Florida federal judge on Thursday backed a special master’s call to further review U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s social distancing measures at three detention centers and ordered the agency to brief the court on how it has cohorted detainees and enforced social distancing.

Gillibrand Introduces Bill To Guarantee Access To Counsel For Children During Immigration Removal Proceedings

Gillibrand’s Office: Following the introduction of the FAIR Proceedings Act, Gillibrand also led her Senate colleagues in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. In the letter, the Senators urge the Department of Justice (DOJ) to review and address the needs of the Immigration Court system to ensure that proceedings are fair, the most vulnerable are protected, and that the independence and authority of immigration judges is fully restored.

Dems Eye Yearly 125K Refugee Minimum After Historic Lows

Law360: Democratic members of Congress reintroduced legislation that would bar the White House from setting the annual refugee cap below 125,000, a proposal that comes as current U.S. refugee admissions are set at record-breaking lows.

USCIS Extends Flexibility for Responding to Certain Agency Requests

On March 24, 2021, USCIS extended the flexibilities it announced on March 30, 2020, for responding to certain agency requests. This flexibility applies if the issuance date listed on the request, notice, or decision is between March 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, inclusive. AILA Doc. No. 20050133

DOS Provides Update on Public Charge

DOS announced that it has updated its guidance to consular officers on how to proceed while DOS’s 10/19 IFR and 1/18 FAM guidance are enjoined. Under this guidance, consular officials will apply the public charge standard that had been in effect prior to these changes when adjudicating applications. AILA Doc. No. 20080700

EOIR Announces New Privacy Waiver and Records Release Form

EOIR announced the release of Form EOIR-59, Certification and Release of Records, which enables current and former respondents who have or had business before EOIR to request or authorize the disclosure of their information. EOIR will continue to accept Form DOJ-361, Certification of Identity. AILA Doc. No. 21032635

Correction to USCIS Notice Designating Venezuela for TPS

USCIS published a correction to its notice designating Venezuela for TPS, which was published at 86 FR 13574 on 3/9/21. USCIS is correcting typographical errors in the Table 1— Mailing Addresses and Table 2— Mailing Addresses sections of the notice. (86 FR 15694, 3/24/21) AILA Doc. No. 21032431

RESOURCES

AILA: Practice Pointer: Your Client’s Case Has Been Rejected: Now What?

AILA: Practice Alert: Affirmative Asylum Filing and Receipt Issues

AILA: Client Flyer: Statutes vs. Regulations vs. Memos vs. Tweets in Immigration Law

AILA: Lozada Motions: How to File One and How to Respond If One Is Filed Against You

AILA Announces New Monthly Podcast Series on Ethics

AILA: Takeaways from the Department of State’s March 2021 Chats with Charlie Oppenheim

AILA: Practice Alert: EOIR Final Rule Making Major Changes to BIA Procedures Enjoined by District Court

AILA: Client Flyer: the Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Program

ASISTA/SF: Practice Update: ICE Agrees Not to Remove, Deny Requests for Stay of Removal, or Oppose Continuances for U Visa Petitioners for 90

CGRS: Technical Assistance Library

CGRS: Introduction to Litigating Asylum, Withholding of Removal, and Convention Against Torture Claims Before the Courts of Appeals

CLINIC: Naturalization Civics Test Back to 2008 Version

CLINIC Practice Pointer on TPS: Navigating Removal Proceedings, Dual Nationality, and Asylum

CLINIC: Current Delays in Issuing Receipt Notices by USCIS

CLINIC: Pulling Back the Curtain-Analysis of New Government Data on Temporary Protected Status

CRS: Legal Sidebar on Recent White House Actions on Immigration

CRS: Asylum Processing at the Border: Legal Basics

EOIR: EOIR Policy Manual Search Function

HIAS: Roadmap to Recovery: A Path Forward after the Remain in Mexico Program

ILRC: Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act Extended to December 20, 2021

ILRC: Quick Guide: EAD Eligibility for Asylum Applicants

ILRC: Requesting Advance Parole and Traveling Outside the United States Under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

LAS: What You Need to Know About the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (English and Spanish)

MPI: A Year of Pandemic: The State of Global Human Mobility & What Is on the Horizon

NIP/IDP/ILRC: Practice Advisory for Immigration Advocates: The Biden Administration’s Interim Enforcement Priorities

NIP/IDP/ILRC: Practice Advisory for Criminal Defense Attorneys: The Biden Administration’s Interim Enforcement Priorities (March 24, 2021)

NIP/AILA/NILA: Requesting Attorneys’ Fees Under the Equal Access to Justice Act (March 23, 2021)

NIRP: Mendez-Rojas Lawsuit Links

UndocuBlack: The Invisible Wall: Title 42 and its Impact on Haitian Migrants

EVENTS

3/30/21 Public Charge and the Affidavit of Support

3/30/21-5/14/21 Comprehensive Overview of Immigration Law (COIL)

3/31/21 CIS Ombudsman’s Office Invitation to Webinar on USCIS’s Online Filing and Customer Service Tools

3/31/21 J.O.P. v. DHS: Updates and Implications for Practitioners Representing Unaccompanied Children Seeking Asylum

4/1/21 Eyes on ICE: Deportations & Expulsions Under Biden, A National Truth & Accountability Forum

4/5/21 Overview of Immigration Law Training

4/5/21-4/26/21 Webinar Series: Selected Issues in U Nonimmigrant Status

4/7/21 WHOSE JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts

4/15/21 DACA

4/15/21 All About EADs

4/20/21 Motions to Reopen in Immigration Court: Part II – U and T MTR

4/20/21 Hot Topics in Naturalization Adjudications

4/21/21 Working with Domestic Violence Immigrant Survivors: The Intersection of Basic Family Law, Immigration, Benefits, and Housing Issues in California 2021

4/22/21 Dissecting a BIA Decision for a Successful Circuit Court Appeal

4/28/21 Community Defense: Legal Service Partnerships with Organizers

5/4/21 Public Charge: Current State of Play

5/5/21 100 Days: Accountability on Immigration

5/6/21 Hot Topics in Asylum Law

5/10/21 All About DOJ Recognition and Accreditation

5/13/21 Marijuana and Immigrants

5/17/21-5/20/21 CLINIC Convening 2021

5/18/21 Ethics in Representing Family Members in U Visa, U AOS/929, and VAWA Cases

5/26/21 Hot Topics in Removal Defense

6/1/21 VAWA Adjustment of Status Fundamentals

6/9/21 Hot topics: Adjudication and Enforcement Trends

6/10/21 Public Charge and Hot Topics in Consular Processing

6/14/21 Taxes at the Border: Understanding the Tax Consequences of Immigration Status

6/15/21 U Visa Hot Topics

6/15/21 Motions to Reopen in Immigration Court: Part III – VAWA Self-petitioners

6/22/21 Defending Immigration Removal Proceedings 2021

6/30/21 Immigration Update – June 2021

7/22/21 Defending Immigration Removal Proceedings 2021

9/23/21 Representing Children in Immigration Matters 2021: Effective Advocacy and Best Practices

ImmProf

Monday, March 29, 2021

The Legacy of Racism within the U.S. Border Patrol by Katy Murdza and Walter Ewing

Center for American Progress: The Extremist Campaign to Blame Immigrants for U.S. Environmental Problems

International Organization for Migration: It Takes a Community Campaign

Immigration Articles of the Day: Empathy for the Vulnerable? The Fourth Circuit’s Internal Struggle to Grapple With the Trump Administration’s Immigration Policies: Parts I and II

Sunday, March 28, 2021

Hot Takes on Ted Cruz’s Trip to the Border

Doug Massey: In 2019, the US Undocumented Population Continued a Decade-Long Decline and the Foreign-Born Population Neared Zero Growth

Immigration Article of the Day: Practical Abolition: Universal Representation as an Alternative to Immigration Detention by Matthew Boaz

Saturday, March 27, 2021

How Many ICE-Related COVID-19 Deaths Have Gone Unreported?

The Human Impacts of No Immigration Reform: Immigrant Families in Limbo

There’s an Immigration Crisis, But It’s Not the One You Think

Immigration Article of the Day: The Discriminatory Executive & the Rule of Law by Maryam Jamshidi

Friday, March 26, 2021

Celebrating Cesar Chavez Day, A New Photo Exhibit at UC Merced

President Biden Talks Immigration at First Press Conference

Immigration Article of the Day: Paper Terrorists: Independence Movements and the Terrorism Bar by Pooja Dadhania

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Job Announcement: Immigration Law Staff Attorney @ Albany Law School

Sesame Street: The ABCs of Racial Literacy

An Asylum Primer: “Nothing any U.S. president says is going to stop people from fleeing violence.”

Art of Power Podcast features Gaby Pacheco

A breakthrough? Some Senators actually talking immigration

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Another Refugee Camp Ravaged By Fire, This One in Bangladesh

President Biden Names VP Harris to Head Border Response Team

Racial Justice Speaker Series: Jack Chin, The Legal History of Discrimination Against Asians: A Perspective on the Atlanta Murders, March 31

Why it’s important for California that DACA recipients be provided permanent resident status

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

CFP — YLJ Special Issue on Law of the Territories

Florida: Only LPRs Qualify for Bankrupcty’s Homestead Exemption

There’s no migrant ‘surge’ at the U.S. southern border. Here’s the data.

Farmworker Unionization Issues Before the Supreme Court

Monday, March 22, 2021

Key facts about U.S. immigration policies and Biden’s proposed changes

Will Unaccompanied Minors/Border Crisis Kill Comprehensive Immigration Reform?

Biden immigration overhaul would reunite families split up by deportation

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) Shares Photographs of Child Detention Center

Job Announcement: Clinical Teaching Fellowship at U Baltimore

Supreme Court to Review Boston Marathon Bomber Case

After Atlanta shootings, children of Asian immigrants speak up for those who no longer can

Sunday, March 21, 2021

DHS Secretary Mayorkas on the Treatment of Migrants at the US/Mexico Border

The New Editor in-Chief of the Georgetown Law Journal is a DACA Recipient

Fox Debate over the Causes of the “Border Crisis”

From Rural Nigeria to the NCAA Tournament

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

Thanks Liz! And don’t forget that Liz and I will be appearing on a panel on the due process disaster in the U.S. Immigration Courts on April 7, 2021, sponsored by the Hispanic National Bar Association (“HNBA”). We’ll be joining NDPA All-Stars Claudia Cubas (CAIR Coalition), Professor Jill Family (Widener Law), and Ramon Guerra (Law Firm of Ramon S. Guerra) on this panel. Don’t miss it!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-30-21

🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸WHO’S JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts! — Coming April 7, 2021! — Sponsored By The HNBA! — Don’t Miss It!

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

The answer to the question posed is actually simple. As of today, DHS Enforcement and politicos at the DOJ “own” the so called Immigration “Courts” lock, stock, and barrel!

That’s an overt violation of the clear Fifth Amendment requirement that those whose lives and property are at stake be judged by a fair and impartial adjudicator — by definition one who is an expert in asylum law, human rights, and has demonstrated the ability to conduct fair hearings.

That’s also bad news for the Hispanic Community, because for the last four years those wholly owned “courts” have been operating with a clear bias against the civil and human rights of people of color, with Hispanic migrants and asylum seekers being a particular target — one that has adversely affected, even terrorized, Hispanic communities throughout the U.S. Hispanics are also grossly underrepresented among the “Immigration Judiciary” at both the trial and appellate levels, as well as on the Article III Bench — despite there being scores of Hispanic and other lawyers of color out here who would be head and shoulders above many of those currently holding these critical “life or death” judgeships!

The real questions are:

1) What can we do about it, and

2) How can we get Judge Garland and others in the Administration to listen, put an end to “Dred Scottification,” and get started on the task of bringing due process and fundamental fairness to a totally dysfunctional and dangerously biased system?

Tune in on April 7 to join the dialogue on how we can finally force the U.S. Government to make good on its unfulfilled, even mocked, Constitutional promise of due process for all persons!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-29-21

🛥🤮🤡CRUZIN’ WITH THE CANCUN COWBOY — Texas Insurrectionist Sen. Bravely Faces Down Unarmed Asylum-Seeking Women & Children From CBP Gunboat! — Man & His Party — Devoid Of Constructive Ideas — Audition For Comedy Documentary, As Real Threats To America From Their “Magamoron” Comrades Multiply & Folks Who, Unlike Cruz, Seek To Contribute To Our Society Are Left In Danger!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/27/ted-cruz-us-mexico-border-immigration?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Erum Salam reports for The Guardian:

The Republican senator Ted Cruz has drawn criticism for taking a trip to America’s southern border as the conservative Texan politician once again became the butt of internet jokes and memes.

In the style of a wildlife documentary, Cruz captured his experience with the help of professional photographers and shared his recent journey to the US-Mexico border Thursday night on social media, where he aimed to shed light on what Republicans have dubbed a crisis.

Ted Cruz

@tedcruz

Live footage from the banks of the Rio Grande.

#BidenBorderCrisis

2:15 AM · Mar 26, 2021

20.8K

17.7K

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Sporting a dark green fishing shirt and matching baseball cap with the Texas flag, Cruz spoke at a press conference where he sought to paint a dramatic picture of his experience: “On the other side of the river we have been listening to and seeing cartel members – human traffickers – right on the other side of the river waving flashlights, yelling and taunting Americans, taunting the border patrol.”

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Despite his claims that the border situation is a direct result of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, residents in the Rio Grande Valley have said no such crisis exists. In fact, the number of border crossings under the Biden administration largely mirror those under the former Trump administration. Cruz was accompanied by 18 other Republican senators including John Cornyn, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham.

After claiming he ran into heckling cartel members and saw a dead body floating in the Rio Grande, Cruz was derided by many, including the former congressman Beto O’Rourke who said: “You’re in a border patrol boat armed with machine guns. The only threat you face is unarmed children and families who are seeking asylum (as well as the occasional heckler).”

. . . .

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

Read more at the link about the GOP’s complete farce — while much more courageous individuals, asylum seekers, are forced to risk their lives because the U.S. is incapable of administering our own asylum laws in a fair, responsible, and competent manner. Cruz & co apparently view this as a “photo op.” Actually, it’s a human tragedy for which history will hold Cruz and his racist party largely responsible, even if the voters fail to do so.

The best solution is to hire experts from the private/NGO/academic sectors; build a functioning asylum and refugee system that will process applicants fairly, generously, predictably, and efficiently; reopen legal ports of entry; establish a robust “on site” refugee program for the Northern Triangle; and work with the international community to alleviate the causes of forced migration. Figure out how new arrivals who qualify for legal status can help rebuild our economy moving forward. Develop a humane program for returning those who don’t qualify without endangering their lives, health, and safety.

An absolutely essential part of the solution is a new, “reimagined” EOIR, staffed with real judges who are experts in asylum, human rights, and due process. An EOIR that will “through teamwork and innovation, be the world’s best courts, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Judge Garland, where are you in American justice’s hour of dire need?

Imperfect as our current laws may be, they cover all of the foregoing. What we really need to do is follow our own laws with common sense, humanity, and a sense of urgency!

What we don’t need is more inane walls, more border enforcement directed against asylum seekers, and more cruel and illegal schemes to return refugees to back to danger without any due process. And, we certainly don’t need any more photo ops from Cruz and his GOP cronies.

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-29-21

🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️⚖️BIDEN & WARREN BELIEVE IN A DIVERSE, PROGRESSIVE FEDERAL JUDICIARY — JUDGE GARLAND CONTROLS PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT FEDERAL JUDICIARY NEXT TO THE SUPREMES — So, What’s He Waiting For? — Will He Reverse The Dems’ Maddening Failure To Grasp & Act On The Cosmic Importance & Game Changing Potential Of A Progressive Immigration Court, That Gets Beyond The Often White, Male, Enforcement, “Go Along To Get Along” Stereotypes & Showcases Diverse, Progressive “Practical Scholars,” Many Of Them Women & People Of Color?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-professional-diversity-federal-judges_n_605cbde5c5b67ad3871d9095o

Jennifer Bendery in HuffPost:

The Democratic senator has spent years calling for more public defenders and fewer corporate attorneys getting federal judgeships. Now Joe Biden agrees.

For years, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been a lonely voice in the Senate on the need to put people with all kinds of different legal backgrounds into lifetime federal judgeships.

“We face a federal bench that has a striking lack of diversity,” she said at a 2014 event on this topic, hosted by Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group. “President Obama has supported some notable exceptions but … the president’s nominees have thus far been largely in line with the prior statistics.”

Warren wasn’t talking about diversity in terms of demographics like race or gender; Obama made history on those fronts with his judicial nominees. She was talking about the problem with presidents and senators ― in both parties ― routinely picking corporate attorneys and prosecutors who went to Ivy League schools to be federal judges.

If you want the nation’s courts to reflect the people they serve, Warren has argued, we need judges who have been public defenders and civil rights attorneys, people familiar with the legal needs of everyday Americans who may be living on low incomes or otherwise marginalized. A diversity of legal professionals on the federal bench means more informed decisions on issues related to economic justice and civil rights.

At last, the times are catching up with Warren.

President Joe Biden is signaling he’s ready to make professional diversity central to his judicial selection process. He hasn’t nominated anyone yet, but White House counsel Dana Remus wrote to Democratic senators in December urging them to recommend court picks to the White House as soon as possible, and said that Biden is “particularly focused on nominating individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench, including those who are public defenders, civil rights and legal aid attorneys, and those who represent Americans in every walk of life.”

Top Democrats in the House are putting a spotlight on the issue too, even though they don’t have a say in confirming federal judges.

“Unfortunately, we have a lot of work to do when it comes to judicial diversity,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in a Thursday subcommittee hearing on this subject. “There are ways in which the federal judiciary of 2021 looks uncomfortably similar to the federal judiciary of 1921 … Somehow, despite all our progress, today’s federal judges remain, for instance, overwhelmingly male, white, former prosecutors or corporate lawyers who went to a handful of law schools.”

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Biden is “particularly focused on nominating individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench, including those who are public defenders, civil rights and legal aid attorneys, and those who represent Americans in every walk of life.”

That’s basically a description of scores of immigration/human rights experts out here in the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”). Yes, they should be a primary source of appointees to the Article III Judiciary! Absolutely! But, they should also be appointed to the BIA and the Immigration Courts — now!

At present, the Immigration Courts are “administrative courts,” not part of the Article III Judiciary; therefore, Senate confirmation isn’t necessary. They are “administered” by a now “evil-clown-like” 🤡🦹🏿‍♂️ DOJ bureaucracy called “EOIR.” We need to get the right progressive scholars and “disciples of due process” on the Immigration Bench — immediately, without further delay!

Immigration Courts are one of most powerful tools in American law. Also, Constitution be damned, until we get a long overdue Article I independent Immigration Court, they are completely controlled by the AG — Judge Merrick B. Garland. This is a big, big deal — nearly 600 judgeships, almost the size of the entire U.S. District Court system, are at stake!

Sessions and Barr quickly figured: Why not aggressively weaponize EOIR to undermine American democracy, institutionalize racism and misogyny, and promote White Nationalist authoritarianism? And, that’s exactly what they did — to the max. Using EOIR judgeships to reward some of their unqualified, white, nativist buddies in the process was an “added bennie.”

Even the totally incomprehensible incompetence with which they administered EOIR fulfilled their “negative dream.” Dysfunctional Immigration Courts became an important tool for debilitating the entire U.S. justice system and “Dred Scottifying” (dehumanizing) persons of color before the law.

Those with compelling cases for relief, many pending for years, were shuffled off to the end of the docket. Or, if they did get a hearing, incompetent or compromised “judges” at the trial and appellate levels often arbitrarily denied their claims for bogus reasons. This disgraceful mess of a “court” actually penalized those with strong cases for relief — many who should have been done and joined our society years ago instead linger in the largely self-created EOIR “backlog” of 1.3 million cases. Or, they are condemned to endless litigation to vindicate their rights in a system intentionally rigged against them.

Looking for the underpinning for the idea that people of color have reduced rights to vote, political participation, and that their lives don’t really matter? Look no further than the ongoing “Dred Scottification” of asylum applicants and other people of color in Immigration Court, now enshrined in a number of bogus “precedents” issued by White Nationalist AGs and their wholly-owned BIA!

And, their job was “easy as pie” following the indolent stewardship of their Dem predecessors. When the latter finally got around to filling judicial vacancies at EOIR, every couple of years, they handed them out almost exclusively to government “insiders” — like they were “length of service” pins! Better-qualified progressive, due-process-oriented, experts, scholars, advocates, and others in the private/NGO/academic sector — folks who actually could have brought badly needed professionalism, excellence, and order to a system careening out of control — were basically “shut out” by the Dems. Interesting way to reward your potential allies!

The Dems’ “diverse recruiting program” for the Immigration Judiciary was to advertise the positions for about 10 minutes on the “insider online bulletin board” known as “USA Jobs.” Then, after an average two-year long, excruciatingly wasteful and mindless “Rube Goldberg-designed evaluation” by layer after layer of bureaucrats — few, if any of them actual sitting Immigration Judges — participating, in most cases they basically just selected “the next ICE prosecutor, EOIR staffer, or OIL litigator up.” But, the “beauty” of this system is that with so many layers of bureaucracy involved, nobody could be held accountable for the actual selections! Talk about a “finger-pointers’ dream.”

Oh yeah, and of course there was no room for public input and/or participation in this process. Some of the newly anointed judges actually had rather less-than-stellar reputations in the immigration community at large. Many would have drawn blank stares if mentioned to a panel of acknowledged immigration and human rights experts. Few were “household names,” except perhaps in a negative sense. No matter to the Obama folks!

During the Obama Administration, I attended a so-called “training-session” at an Immigration Judge Conference — this was “in person,” although for a number of years we got “home-video grade” training CDs. There, curiously, one of these “newbies” was selected to “educate” a group of us, many of us with decades of experience in the field and some with actual teaching credentials under their belts. Our “instructor” referred to the Government as “us,” to the respondent and counsel as “them,” and bragged that “our big wins from OIL” would make it easier to deny asylum.

Other “instructors” parroted cringingly mind boggling mis-statements of asylum law — apparently designed to fit into OIL’s preferred litigation positions. And, incredibly, this was with the “founding mother” of U.S. Asylum Law, Judge Dana Leigh Marks, who had argued and won the landmark “well-founded-fear” case INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca before the Supremes, effectively muzzled and holding her head in the audience.

In 21 years on the bench, during “EOIR training,” I was lectured to by a variety of BIA Attorney Advisors, OIL Attorneys, politicos, DHS Officials, State Department Officials, Ethics Officers, stress managers, and an occasional NGO advocate. Never, did I get to hear my colleague Judge Marks’s views on the development of asylum law since Cardoza. Sure, that didn’t stop us from carrying on a dialogue elsewhere, as we did. But, we were pretty much “on the same page.” The folks who needed to hear what Judge Marks had to say didn’t.

Hon. Diana Leigh Marks — Hon. Dana Leigh Marks
U.S. Immigration Judge
San Francisco Immigration Court
Past President, National Association of Immigration Judges

And, we wonder why Dems inevitably screw up immigration law, and end up defending highly regressive actions and “designed to fail” policies — try “baby jails,” indefinite detention, and non-English-speaking toddlers “representing themselves” in Immigration Court. I kid you not! Each of the foregoing were things that the Obama DOJ vigorously advanced and defended before Federal Courts!🤮

Will Judge Garland figure it out before it’s too late? Or, as his Obama predecessors did, will he fritter away his time with “more sexy,” but actually far less important initiatives and lofty ideals that will be effectively undermined by failing to create a progressive, expert, well functioning, professional Immigration Judiciary.

Racial justice, equal justice, and due process for all persons in America start in the Immigration Court. And, right now they are dying there! If Judge Garland doesn’t pay attention, grasp the moment, aggressively clean house, and take the long overdue, radical, courageous actions to build a better Immigration Judiciary, the whole U.S. justice system might well come crashing down upon him! And, he will have only himself to blame!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! A Better EOIR for A Better Federal Judiciary! A Better Federal Judiciary For A Better America! Not rocket science! But, it does require vision, recognition of the problem, and the courage to solve it!

PWS

3-28-21

🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/24/border-crisis-migrants-media-biden/

Leon Krauze in the WashPost tells us what’s really happening at the border. WARNING: It has little to do with the myths and false narratives being peddled by the GOP, the Administration, and the media.

The current emergency at the border has found the U. S. media at its most solipsistic. Coverage seems more focused on whether the emergency should be called “a crisis” (it should) and what the political fallout for the Biden administration will be. With few exceptions — like the remarkable work of MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff or Politico’s Sabrina Rodriguez — many news outlets seem utterly uninterested in the stories of the migrants themselves.

This is wrong because it fails to provide one crucial piece of the puzzle: the very concrete context of human suffering.

. . . .

This by no means excuses the stories of anguish and confinement that have emerged over the last few weeks from within the facilities set up by the Biden administration to deal with the number of young migrants crossing the border, nor does it absolve the president himself from delivering on his promise of a humane immigration system, diametrically opposed to Trump’s cruel policies, designed in collaboration with unapologetic racist xenophobes like Stephen Miller.

The Biden administration can and should do better. But the current debate cannot ignore the very concrete despair facing thousands of immigrant families who, under the direct threat of violence or abuse, chose to push their young children to the United States, in search of safety.

If the alternative was famine, gang violence, kidnapping, rape or sexual slavery, wouldn’t you bet it all on the journey north? If more people understood this, the political debate and the coverage surrounding the crisis would be much more empathetic and we would get closer at delivering concrete, humane solutions.

Now, let’s hear more “simple truth” from Suzanne Gamboa over at NBC News:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/americas-immigration-impasse-self-inflicted-doesnt-rcna485

America’s immigration impasse — an endless loop across different administrations — is largely self-inflicted, because Congress has repeatedly failed to acknowledge one simple thing: Immigration happens.

Accordingly, immigration laws must be continually adjusted, reformed and revised, experts say.

“People will always want to come to the U.S., and the U.S. will always need people,” said former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who was a top immigration adviser to President George W. Bush.

Until there is a system that allows enough legal immigration to meet the economy’s needs, there will be illegal immigration, Gutierrez said.

“That’s just part of how our economy is set up. It’s part of demographics,” Gutierrez said. “Our birthrate is not high enough to be able to fill the needs of our economy.”

The coronavirus pandemic reinforced the importance of immigrant labor to the American economy, including labor by the undocumented.

It opened many Americans’ eyes to the precariousness of the U.S. food supply, which depends on immigrant and undocumented farmworkers and meat plant workers, as well as to other immigrants’ roles as essential workers, such as home health care aides, nurses and paramedics.

All of those people and many other immigrants, including young immigrants — often called “Dreamers” based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act — will play a key role in helping the economy recover from its pandemic bust.

But immigration requires periodic calibration, and the economics and the changing patterns are lost in the politics.

“People are going to move — as they are all around the world — where they think they can find places to better feed their children. That’s the bottom line, and that’s the history of migration to the United States,” said Luis Fraga, director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

. . . .

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

Everyone should read the rest of the stories at the above link.

Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration

By Judge (Ret) Paul Wickham Schmidt

“Courtside” Exclusive

March 26, 2021

Notwithstanding the endlessly disingenuous and self-centered alarmist rhetoric coming from all directions on the border mess, often mindlessly regurgitated by the press (not just Fox News), the real “crisis” involves the human lives at stake and the unnecessary human misery we are causing by failing to establish, professionally staff, and fairly and competently operate the legal refugee and particularly asylum systems required by law. This “due process crisis” actually has devastating and debilitating practical effects, starting with the dysfunctional immigration, refugee, and asylum system and the beyond dysfunctional Immigration Courts.

Heck, we don’t even pretend to comply with Constitutionally-required due process of law for asylum seekers who present themselves to us seeking life-saving refuge. Most of those who show up at legally-established border ports are told that the border is “closed” and that there is no way for them to apply. OK, so they attempt to cross between ports and immediately present themselves to the Border Patrol. But, they also are told there is no way to apply and are orbited back to some of the most dangerous countries in the world without any process whatsoever, let alone due process of law. Who are we kidding with all our dishonest pontificating about “the rule of law?”

It’s a strange way to implement the statutory command that any foreign national “irrespective of . . . status, may apply for asylum,” along with a constitutional guarantee that “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Gee, you don’t even need one of those fancy Ivy League law degrees to understand that language. You just have to be able to read, comprehend, and act.

What you do have to do to get where we are today is to view asylum seekers and other migrants (predominantly people of color) as less than human — “non-persons” in a constitutional sense. It’s what some of us call “Dred Scottification of the other” and it has accelerated over the past four years — not just in immigration.

The whole idea of a “court system” being run by the Executive who also is the chief of enforcement is beyond constitutionally preposterous. It’s a “negative tribute” to the Supremes and other Article III life-tenured judges who have grown so distant from their own humanity and immigration stories as to become willfully blind to the ongoing farce that constitutes “justice” and “due process of law” for asylum seekers and other immigrants in the U.S.

Today’s nearly non-existent “asylum system” is a deadly and illegal “catch 22,” with the Supremes sitting in their marble palace refusing to do the primary task that justifies their continued existence: enforce the Constitution against Government misbehavior and in favor of the “little guys” and the “vulnerable.” No thanks, not up to the job!

The real tragedy is that there are plenty of folks out here with the knowledge, integrity, courage, and ability to establish a legal system that would actually comply with out laws, our Constitution, and further offer the hope of constructively addressing some problems before refugees arrive at our borders. But, they remain “benched,” even by the Biden Team. So the “good guys”are going to keep attacking the corrupt and broken system in court and at the polls for as long as it takes to get some course correction — years, decades, centuries — ask most African Americans how long it takes to achieve the true justice that America promises to all, but historically has only delivered to some.

In the long run, a fair system would undoubtedly accept many more legal refugees and asylum seekers. That’s what happens in refugee situations — it’s the core of what we call “forced migration” — when you sign on to international conventions intended to prevent the “next holocaust,” and you fairly and humanely apply the rules meant to protect refugees and those who face torture. And, as they have in the past, the overwhelming number of refugees and asylees, like the overwhelming majority of immigrants (essentially all of us, except Native Americans) will adapt, fit in, and contribute to the health, wealth, and future of our nation. They will change, but so will we — ultimately for the better!

Sure, America wouldn’t be as white, “Christian” (to the extent that adherence to a nominal Christian denomination, rather than actually performing Christ’s extremely difficult, self-sacrificing, risky, compassionate mission, defines Christianity), and nominally heterosexual as it was when White Nationalist myths and whitewashed history ruled the roost. But, it would be a better nation — one that actually has a chance of prospering, realizing the full potential of all its residents, and leading the world in the 21st century. A nation that could devote more human, natural, and monetary resources to building and exporting greatness, rather than to an endless stream of cruel, inhuman, stupid, and wasteful enforcement and deterrence gimmicks.

Bottom line, folks are going to come to America, as they have throughout history. Some will stay, some won’t. But, come they will, unless and until those like Trump and the GOP create such a mess that our own people start fleeing to foreign shores. Immigration, regardless of status, is a sign of strength. Xenophobia a sign of fatal weakness.

Our real choice isn’t whether we want to “close” borders, bar refugees, and abuse children as the Cottons, Cruzes, Millers, and Hawleys advocate. It’s whether we create a robust, orderly, rational legal system to screen, regulate, and distribute the inevitable flow or whether, as we have for the past decades, we force millions to reside and work underground — part of an “extralegal” or “black market” system that pols of both parties and those who profit from that underground system have created.

Sprawling mismanaged enforcement bureaucracies, dysfunctional “courts,” armies of publicly-paid lawyers defending the indefensible, for-profit civil prisons, big agriculture, hospitality giants, loads of upwardly mobile professionals who need child care to pursue careers, communities that live off of marketing ethnic culture, meat packing conglomerates, architects and construction firms who are “building America,” even news media fixated on hyping the problem rather than fixing it (see, e.g., yesterday’s Biden press conference), the list of those who profit from a talented, hard working, reliable, loyal, yet politically and socially disenfranchised, workforce is endless.

Even the GOP’s “Cotton-Cruz crowd” benefits from having an imaginary enemy to rant and rail and gin up hate against — safe in the knowledge that the tanking of our economy, upheaval of society, and possible threat to their privilege that would result from realizing their disingenuous call to boot the entire undocumented population will never happen. Their kids and grandkids can continue to reap the privilege that comes from exploiting an essential, yet politically neutered, workforce. It’s really more about institutionalizing racism to maintain economic and political power over the eventual non-white majority that drives their bogus and ugly narratives.

We can degrade ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! It’s a vision based on a written promise, not a “pipe dream!”

PWS

03-26-21

ROTTEN TOMATO 🍅🤮 THURSDAY: 9th, 5th, 8th Circuits Reject BIA’s Flawed Analyses!

Courtesy of Dan Kowalski @ LexisNexis Immigration Community:

9th Cir. Says BIA Screwed Up PSG Analysis

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-on-asylum-el-salvador-social-group-acevedo-granados-v-garland

CA9 on Asylum, El Salvador, Social Group: Acevedo Granados v. Garland

Acevedo Granados v. Garland

“Petitioner Wilber Agustin Acevedo Granados (“Acevedo”), a native of El Salvador, petitions for review of the decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) affirming an order of removal and the denial by the Immigration Judge (“IJ”) of Acevedo’s application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). Acevedo’s petition is based on his fear that, if returned to El Salvador, he would face persecution or torture on account of his membership in a particular social group, defined based on his intellectual disability. The BIA rejected Acevedo’s claims on the ground that the proposed group definition was not cognizable. The BIA held that Acevedo’s proposed social group was not sufficiently particular, finding that the terms “intellectual disability” and “erratic behavior” rendered the proposed group “amorphous, overbroad, diffuse,[and]subjective.” The BIA further determined that the group was not a “meaningful social unit, distinct from the larger population of mentally ill individuals” in El Salvador. We conclude that the agency misunderstood Acevedo’s proposed social group, and thus grant the petition for review with respect to the claims for asylum and withholding of removal. The BIA and IJ treated the term “intellectual disability” as if it were applied by a layperson. Instead, that term as used in Acevedo’s application referred to an explicit medical diagnosis with several specific characteristics. Recognized that way, the clinical term “intellectual disability” may satisfy the “particularity” and “social distinction” requirements necessary to qualify for asylum and withholding of removal. However, because the IJ did not recognize the proposed social group before her, we remand to the agency for fact-finding on an open record to determine if the group is cognizable.”

[Hats off to Prof. Evangeline Abriel and her Certified Law Students Keuren A. Parra Moreno (argued) and Jared Renteria (argued)!]

2) 8th Cir. — BIA Goofs On “Aggravated Felony” Analysis

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca8-on-aggravated-felony-lopez-chavez-v-garland

CA8 on Aggravated Felony: h

Lopez-Chavez v. Garland

“In May 2017, an Immigration Judge (IJ) determined that Lopez-Chavez is ineligible for cancellation of removal because his 2006 federal conviction for illegal reentry in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326 qualifies as an aggravated felony. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed the IJ’s ruling and dismissed Lopez-Chavez’s administrative appeal the following year. The question now before the court is whether Lopez-Chavez’s 2006 conviction qualifies as an aggravated felony under the INA, thus making Lopez-Chavez statutorily ineligible for cancellation of removal. We hold that it does not. … Because Lopez-Chavez’s 2003 Missouri marijuana conviction is not a categorical match for the corresponding federal offense in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(B), the 2006 conviction for illegal reentry under § 1326 does not qualify as an aggravated felony under § 1101(a)(43)(O). Accordingly, Lopez-Chavez is not statutorily ineligible for cancellation of removal. See 8 U.S.C. § 1229b. We grant the petition for review, vacate the BIA’s order, and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

[Hats off to Andrew K. Nietor!]

3) 5th Cir. — BIA Blew “Categorical Approach”

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca5-on-categorical-approach-alejos-perez-v-garland

CA5 on Categorical Approach: Alejos-Perez v. Garland

Alejos-Perez v. Garland

“[T]o decide whether his 2018 conviction renders him removable, we need to determine whether we can parse MMB-Fubinaca from those other drugs; we decide that by determining whether Penalty Group 2-A is divisible. The government says it’s divisible, Alejos-Perez says not. … Because the government has not shown that the modified categorical approach is called for, we apply the categorical approach. … Because Penalty Group 2-A is not a categorical match, we must identify the appropriate result. … Once it’s clear that Penalty Group 2-A is not a categorical match to its federal counterpart, AlejosPerez “must also show a realistic probability . . . that the State would apply its statute to conduct that falls outside the generic definition of the crime” under federal law. We are unable to resolve that issue, because the BIA didn’t address it, and we can “only affirm the BIA on the basis of its stated rationale for ordering an alien removed from the United States.” … We thus remand for consideration of whether Alejos-Perez has shown a realistic probability that Texas would prosecute conduct that falls outside the relevant federal statute.”

[Hats off to Manoj Govindaiah and Maria Osornio of Raices Texas!]

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

Significantly, the 5th Circuit’s rejection of the BIA’s analysis was written by very conservative Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee. Judge Smith wrote the majority opinion upholding the legally questionable injunction against President Obama’s “DAPA Program” — something many scholars believe to have been a entirely legitimate exercise of prosecutorial discretion. (The case later was lamely affirmed w/o opinion by an evenly divided Supremes.)

Even conservative Federal Judges not known for sympathy to immigrants and their legal rights appear to have grown weary of the BIA’s consistently sloppy attempts to rule against foreign nationals, regardless of the merits. This is the second rejection by the normally reliably pro-Government 5th Circuit in the last several weeks!

Ironically, one (former) Federal Judge who appears not bothered by the BIA’s defective jurisprudence is the current Attorney General, Judge Garland. He’d better get himself a “tomato resistant”🍅 raincoat to wear at work. This is just the beginning. His reputation and credibility will diminish every day that he fails to replace the BIA with competent jurists who will give migrants the fair and impartial treatment that our Constitution demands, but the DOJ’s “captive court” constantly fails to deliver!

And, leaving aside the legal ineptitude, there can be no excuse for the stunning level of dysfunction and incompetence in how one of the nation’s largest so-called “court” systems is administered by EOIR under DOJ. No tribunal in America issues more potential “death sentences” with less due process! Not exactly what Mies Van Der Rohe had in mind when he famously said “the less is more.”

Poor “Belly-Up Eyore.” He was forlornly, and apparently vainly, hoping to be “put out to pasture” after Judge Garland took over the helm at DOJ. Such high expectations!

But, he is already exhausted again by all the continuing “calls to duty on Courtside” after just 22 days of Judge Garland’s “where’s Falls Church” approach to the ongoing EOIR disaster/travesty! Judge, here’s the key; just think like it were your children or grandchildren, actual human beings, being orbited into the abyss without much attention to the law, our Constitution, common sense, or human decency! Maybe starting each day with a briefing on each Article III case that was wrongly decided in your name by the BIA and a live reading of each outrageous media story about disorder in your Immigration Courts would help raise your consciousness? Maybe you should speak with a few of the “customers” of your “courts” that put public service last. Men, women, children, and their lawyers are being abused out there every day by EOIR and you are legally and morally responsible.

You can’t lead the fight for racial justice in America while running a bogus court system that denies and mocks it on a daily basis!

🇺🇸👍🏼🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-24-21

⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 03-22-21 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Georgetown Law Journal Makes History, Of The Best Kind! — My Invitation To Current Georgetown Law Students To Get Involved!

COVID-19 & Closures

Note: Policies are rapidly changing, so please verify information with the government and colleagues.

EOIR Status Overview & EOIR Court Status Map/List: Hearings in non-detained cases at courts without an announced date are postponed through, and including, April 16, 2021. (It is unclear when the next announcement will be. EOIR announced 4/16 on Fri. 3/5, 3/19 on Wed. 2/10, 2/19 on Mon. 1/25, 2/5 on Mon. 1/11, and 1/22 on Mon. 12/28.) There is no announced date for reopening NYC non-detained at this time.

USCIS Office Closings and Visitor Policy

TOP NEWS

Mayorkas says ‘the border is closed,’ defends Biden’s immigration strategy

WaPo: Mayorkas, who appeared on almost all of the major political shows Sunday morning, sought to push a consistent message as the Biden administration is being pressed about conditions in overcrowded detention centers for unaccompanied immigrant children. See also Images of Confusion, Then Anguish: Migrant Families Deported by Surprise; ‘The crisis is in Washington’: Overwhelmed border officials urge D.C. to act; Senators see dire conditions in packed border stations, as officials consider flying migrants north.

Key facts about U.S. immigration policies and Biden’s proposed changes

Pew: To better understand the existing U.S. immigration system, we analyzed the most recent data available on federal immigration programs. This includes admission categories for green card recipients and the types of temporary employment visas available to immigrant workers. We also examined temporary permissions granted to some immigrants to live and work in the country through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status programs.

Immigrant Detention Numbers Fall Under Biden, But Border Book-Ins Rise

TRAC: As of the end of President Biden’s first full month in office, the number of individuals arrested by ICE and booked into civil immigrant detention fell sharply from 5,119 ICE book-in arrests during January 2021 to just 1,970 during February 2021. According to the latest ICE figures, this was a drop of 62 percent just in a single month.

Young Migrants Held By Border Patrol Far Longer Than Allowed, Document Shows

NPR: The U.S. government had 4,276 unaccompanied migrant children in custody as of Sunday, according to a Department of Homeland Security document obtained by NPR. The children are spending an average of 117 hours in detention facilities, far longer than the 72 hours allowed by law.

Biden administration limits what Border Patrol can share with media about migrant surge at border

NBC: Restrictions on what border agents can share with the media were passed down verbally, say officials. Some have released videos of the border surge anyway. See also How Border Patrol Manipulates Media.

Durbin: ‘I think I’m close’ to getting Senate votes needed to advance DREAM Act

CNN: Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said Sunday that he thinks he is “close” to securing the Republican votes needed to overcome a Senate filibuster to advance a key immigration measure that would provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.

The new top editor of Georgetown’s flagship law journal is ‘undocumented and unafraid’

WaPo: Lee, 26, is believed to be the first openly undocumented student elected editor in chief of the flagship journal at a top U.S. law school.

Advocating for asylum-seeking children is traumatic, new research finds

WaPo: These health conditions stem from pressures to meet the needs of vulnerable child migrants targeted by restrictive immigration policies.

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds Final Rule: Litigation

USCIS: USCIS stopped applying the Public Charge Final Rule to all pending applications and petitions on March 9, 2021. USCIS removed content related to the vacated 2019 Public Charge Final Rule from the affected USCIS forms and has posted updated versions of affected forms. See also Withdrawal of USCIS Proposed Rule on Affidavit of Support Requirements.

Citizenship Paths For ‘Dreamers,’ Farmworkers Pass House (Headed to Senate)

Law360: The House on Thursday approved two major immigration proposals that would provide a path to lawful status and eventual citizenship for several million “Dreamers” brought to the country as children and farmworkers working without authorization in American agriculture.

CA1 Remands Asylum Claim of Cuban Petitioner Who Claimed He Was Targeted for His Anti-Castro Political Beliefs

The court vacated and remanded the BIA’s decision affirming the IJ’s adverse credibility determination, finding that alleged discrepancies between the petitioner’s interview account and his hearing account failed to support the adverse credibility finding. (Cuesta-Rojas v. Garland, 3/15/21) AILA Doc. No. 21031737

CA1 Finds BIA Erred in Failing to Assess Whether Conditions for Members of Democratic Party in Albania Have Deteriorated Since 2006

Where the petitioner cited two post-2006 events as evidence of changed country conditions, the court held that the BIA’s failure to assess whether those changes were sufficient was arbitrary and capricious, and reversed the BIA’s denial of his motion to reopen. (Lucaj v. Wilkinson, 3/10/21) AILA Doc. No. 21031732

1st Circ. Rejects ICE Detainees’ COVID-19 Bail Requests

Law360: The First Circuit on Wednesday refused to disturb a Massachusetts federal court’s decision denying bail to several immigration detainees convicted of violent crimes, finding that it was reasonable to decide the detainees still belonged behind bars in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

CA6 Says BIA Did Not Abuse Its Discretion in Denying Motion to Reopen Where NTA Was Not in Petitioner’s Native Language

Where the Guatemalan petitioner’s Notice to Appear (NTA) was delivered in English, the court rejected her argument that the NTA violated her due process rights because it did not detail in her native language the consequences of failing to attend her proceeding. (Lopez v. Garland, 3/12/21) AILA Doc. No. 21031733

7th Circ. Denies Texas’ Bid To Revive Public Charge Rule

Law360: The Seventh Circuit on Monday squashed an attempt by 14 states led by Texas to revive the Trump administration’s public charge policy, which penalizes immigrants for using certain public benefits, after the Biden administration decided not to defend it.

CA8 Says Petitioner Seeking Cancellation Was Required Only to Show That State Offense Was Broader Than Generic Federal Offense

The court held that the categorical approach does not require a petitioner seeking cancellation of removal to show that there is a realistic probability the state prosecutes people for the conduct that makes the state offense broader than the federal offense. (Gonzalez v. Wilkinson, 3/9/21) AILA Doc. No. 21031738

CA8 Concludes That Petitioner’s Conviction for Second-Degree Felony Assault in Minnesota Was a Particularly Serious Crime

The court held that the BIA did not err in determining that the petitioner’s conviction for second-degree felony assault in Minnesota was a particularly serious crime barring statutory withholding of removal and Convention Against Torture (CAT) relief. (Jama v. Wilkinson, 3/11/21) AILA Doc. No. 21031739

CA9 Remands CAT Claim of Honduran Petitioner Based on Evidentiary Issue Related to DOS Country Report

The court remanded petitioner’s Convention Against Torture (CAT) claim to the BIA for reconsideration in light of the fact that the IJ took judicial notice of, and relied upon, DOS’s Country Report, yet the BIA’s decision did not take it into account. (Aguilar-Osorio v. Garland, 3/15/21) AILA Doc. No. 21031744

CA9 Holds That Petitioner Failed to Show Changed Country Conditions in Mexico Since His 2003 Removal Order

The court held that the BIA did not abuse its discretion in denying the petitioner’s motion to reopen after determining that the petitioner had failed to present evidence demonstrating that country conditions in Mexico had changed since his 2003 removal order. (Rodriguez v. Garland, 3/15/21) AILA Doc. No. 21031741

CA9 Finds Proposed Social Group of “Salvadoran Women Who Refuse to Be Girlfriends of MS Gang Members” Is Not Cognizable

The court held that substantial evidence supported the BIA’s determination that the Salvadoran petitioner had failed to establish past harm rising to the level of persecution, and concluded that her proposed social groups were not cognizable. (Villegas Sanchez v. Garland, 3/11/21) AILA Doc. No. 21031740

CA10 Finds That Matter of G-G-S- Was Not Arbitrary or Capricious and Is Entitled to Chevron Deference

The court held that Matter of G-G-S- was not arbitrary or capricious, and that BIA applied the correct legal standard in determining that petitioner’s convictions were for particularly serious crimes rendering him ineligible for withholding of removal. (Birhanu v. Wilkinson, 3/9/21) AILA Doc. No. 21031745

ICE Ordered To Transport NY Detainees To Get Vaccines

Law360: A federal judge on Thursday ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to facilitate vaccinations of immigrants detained at the agency’s Buffalo Service Processing Center in upstate New York.

Nonprofits Sue To End Trump-Era Immigration Deal With Ariz.

Law360: Three nonprofit organizations have sued Arizona’s attorney general in federal court seeking the cancellation of an agreement requiring the state’s input in federal immigration policies, saying the Trump administration official who made the arrangement lacked the authority to do so.

Safe Horizon and ASISTA File Lawsuit Against USCIS and DHS

ASISTA: Safe Horizon and ASISTA File Lawsuit Against USCIS and DHS, Seeking Information on Policy Change Making it More Difficult for Victims of Serious Crime to Obtain Relief Under the U-Visa Program.

DHS and HHS Sign Memorandum of Agreement Regarding Consultation and Information Sharing in UAC Matters

On March 11, 2021, HHS ORR and ICE and CBP signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) regarding consultation and information sharing in matters relating to unaccompanied children. The April 13, 2018, MOA among the agencies dealing with UAC matters has been terminated. AILA Doc. No. 21031235

USCIS Shifts Policy On Minors With Alleged ‘Gang Affiliations’

Law360: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will no longer rule out petitions for special status from mistreated youth based on state courts’ failure to assess whether they have ties to gangs, a policy change stemming from a class settlement last year.

EOIR Rescinds Policy Memorandum on Case Processing at the BIA

EOIR issued a policy memo (PM 21-16) rescinding and cancelling PM 20-01, Case Processing at the Board of Immigration Appeals. Upon this rescission, the BIA returns to the case management system established by regulation that was effective on 9/25/02 to manage the Board’s caseload. AILA Doc. No. 21031748

Further Delay of Effective Date of Final Rule on Pandemic-Related Security Bars to Asylum and Withholding of Removal

Advance copy of USCIS and EOIR interim final rule further delaying until 12/31/21 the effective date of the final rule “Security Bars and Processing” (85 FR 84160) which had been scheduled to become effective on 3/22/21. Public comment is also sought on whether the rule should be revised or revoked. AILA Doc. No. 21031930

USCIS Extends Effective Date of Temporary Final Rule on Interpreters at Asylum Interviews

Advance copy of USCIS final rule extending the expiration date of the temporary final rule on interpreters at asylum interviews published at 85 FR 59655, which was originally scheduled to expire on 3/22/21, for 180 days. The final rule will be published in the Federal Register on 3/22/21. AILA Doc. No. 21031932

CBP Notification of Temporary Travel Restrictions Applicable to Land Ports of Entry and Ferries Service Between the United States and Mexico

CBP issued a notification of the continuation of temporary travel restrictions limiting travel of individuals from Mexico into the United States at land ports of entry along the United States-Mexico border through 4/21/21 due to COVID-19. (86 FR 14813, 3/19/21) AILA Doc. No. 21031934

USCIS Notice Extending and Redesignating Syria for TPS

USCIS notice extending the designation of Syria for TPS for 18 months, from 3/31/21 through 9/30/22, and redesignating Syria for TPS for 18 months, effective 3/31/21 through 9/30/22. (86 FR 14946, 3/19/21) AILA Doc. No. 21012930

RESOURCES

AILA Submits Amicus Brief Arguing That a NY Conviction for Cocaine Is Not a Controlled Substance Offense

AILA: Practice Pointer: USCIS Interviews During the COVID-19 Pandemic

AILA: Practice Pointer: Admissions Issues for LPRs Who Were Unable to Timely Return Due to COVID-19

AILA: Practice Alert: Venezuela TPS Filing Clarifications and Special Considerations

AILA: Ethical Issues in Representing Children in Immigration Proceedings

AILA: Fact Sheet: The Department of State’s 45-Day Review Following the Revocation of Proclamations 9645 and 9983 (“Muslim and African Bans”)

AILA: Update on Southern Border Issues – Recording

AILA: Client Flyer: Temporary Protected Status Questions

AILA: Client Flyer: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)

CGRS: Introduction to Litigating Asylum, Withholding of Removal, and Convention Against Torture Claims Before the Courts of Appeals

CLINIC: Board of Immigration Appeals and Circuit Court Case Law Chart: Assault-Related CIMTs

CLINIC: CLINIC Finds Shift in Tone of Department of State Human Rights Reports for Northern

CLINIC: For Current Syrian TPS Holders: How To Deal With Issues or Problems With Your TPS at Work, the Department of Motor Vehicles and Elsewhere

CMS: Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account for the Situation at US-Mexico Border

CRS: Do Warrantless Searches of Electronic Devices at the Border Violate the Fourth Amendment?

Deaths at Adult Detention Centers

ICYMI: Update on Southern Border Issues

ILRC: TPS for Venezuela: An Overview

LAS: FAQs: The Third Round of Stimulus Money: Recovery Rebates beginning in March 2021

Think Immigration: Employment Without Authorization — ‘Cause I Don’t Need It

EVENTS

3/23/21 Complex Naturalization: How to Get Your Clients to Citizenship

3/23/21 Understanding the Conditional Permanent Residence Petition (Form I-751)

3/23/21 DACA Screening and Application Prep Regional Training Workshops

3/24/21 Privacy at Risk: Searches of Electronic Devices at Ports of Entry and Beyond

3/24/21 Contesting criminal grounds of removability

3/29/21 Dissecting an Immigration Judge Decision for a Successful BIA Appeal

3/30/21 Public Charge and the Affidavit of Support

3/30/21-5/14/21 Comprehensive Overview of Immigration Law (COIL)

3/31/21 J.O.P. v. DHS: Updates and Implications for Practitioners Representing Unaccompanied Children Seeking Asylum

4/5/21 Overview of Immigration Law Training

4/5/21-4/26/21 Webinar Series: Selected Issues in U Nonimmigrant Status

4/15/21 DACA

4/15/21 All About EADs

4/20/21 Motions to Reopen in Immigration Court: Part II – U and T MTR

4/20/21 Hot Topics in Naturalization Adjudications

4/21/21 Working with Domestic Violence Immigrant Survivors: The Intersection of Basic Family Law, Immigration, Benefits, and Housing Issues in California 2021

4/22/21 Dissecting a BIA Decision for a Successful Circuit Court Appeal

4/28/21 Community Defense: Legal Service Partnerships with Organizers

5/4/21 Public Charge: Current State of Play

5/5/21 100 Days: Accountability on Immigration

5/6/21 Hot Topics in Asylum Law

5/10/21 All About DOJ Recognition and Accreditation

5/13/21 Marijuana and Immigrants

5/17/21-5/20/21 CLINIC Convening 2021

5/18/21 Ethics in Representing Family Members in U Visa, U AOS/929, and VAWA Cases

5/26/21 Hot Topics in Removal Defense

6/1/21 VAWA Adjustment of Status Fundamentals

6/9/21 Hot topics: Adjudication and Enforcement Trends

6/10/21 Public Charge and Hot Topics in Consular Processing

6/14/21 Taxes at the Border: Understanding the Tax Consequences of Immigration Status

6/15/21 U Visa Hot Topics

6/15/21 Motions to Reopen in Immigration Court: Part III – VAWA Self-petitioners

6/22/21 Defending Immigration Removal Proceedings 2021

6/30/21 Immigration Update – June 2021

7/22/21 Defending Immigration Removal Proceedings 2021

9/23/21 Representing Children in Immigration Matters 2021: Effective Advocacy and Best Practices

ImmProf

Monday, March 22, 2021

Supreme Court to Review Boston Marathon Bomber Case

After Atlanta shootings, children of Asian immigrants speak up for those who no longer can

Sunday, March 21, 2021

DHS Secretary Mayorkas on the Treatment of Migrants at the US/Mexico Border

The New Editor in-Chief of the Georgetown Law Journal is a DACA Recipient

Fox Debate over the Causes of the “Border Crisis”

From Rural Nigeria to the NCAA Tournament

Saturday, March 20, 2021

Your Playlist: Pitbull

Anti-Asian hate crimes, intersectionality, and implicit bias

Memories and History: The Vietnamese War

Friday, March 19, 2021

The Haitian American Dream Matters

Dallas Mavericks provide basketballs and goals for migrant teens housed at Dallas convention center

Advocating for asylum-seeking children is traumatic, new research finds

Thursday, March 18, 2021

Breaking News: House Passes Immigration Bills

Living Under a Different (Oppressive) Set of Rules

Court: Incarcerated immigrant student may be deported for failing to attend courses

Worrying Reports that Biden Administration Limiting Reporters’ Access to Info about Border

No Time For Compromise

Reclaiming the Border Narrative

The American Dream and Promise Act of 2021

House Judiciary Committee on Discrimination and Violence Against Asian Americans

From the Bookshelves: Driving While Brown Sheriff Joe Arpaio versus the Latino Resistance by Terry Greene Sterling & Jude Joffe-Block

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Senate centrists weigh brokering deals on immigration, minimum wage

The U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 and Where it Stands in its Promise to Immigrant Children

The Real “Crisis” at the U.S./Mexico Border; Ensuring the Humanitarian Treatment of People

Webinar: U.S. Border Patrol’s Legacy of Racism: Alternative Visions for Border Management

President Biden to migrants: “Don’t come over”

Killing of 8, including 6 Asians, in Atlanta

Statement by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas Regarding the Situation at the Southwest Border

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Immigrants in COVID America: “The Great Pause” Fueling the Rise in Anti-Asian Attacks

Podcast: Lawful Assembly

At the Movies: Coming 2 America (2021)

A Raid, Deportation and Massacre Hit Two Communities Thousands of Miles Apart

From the Bookshelves: Of Women and Salt: A Novel by Gabriela Garcia (Available March 30, 2021)

Films on Immigrants Nominated for Oscars

Texas “Governor Abbott Statement On Unaccompanied Minor Crisis Created By Biden Administration”

7th Circuit Denies Texas’ Bid To Revive Public Charge Rule

Monday, March 15, 2021

Guest Post — A Response to Professor Musalo: Naming What Matters – Recognition of Gender as a Protected Classification for Refugee Law by M. Isabel Medina

Jean v. Nelson: A Civil Rights Revolution in Immigration by Irwin P. Stotsky

The Fourth Amendment: A Shield Cast Aside

The Next Step for Sanctuary States

Consequences of Jail Time and Convictions to Noncitizens in America

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

Check out item #7 under “Top News,” the story from the WashPost of Agnes Lee, the new Editor-in-Chief of the Georgetown Law Journal. In addition to being a brilliant and accomplished student, she happens to be an undocumented resident of the U.S. Congrats to Agnes, the Law Journal, and the entire Georgetown Law community!

⚖️Shout Out for Georgetown Law Students:

Of course, never missing an opportunity to “self-promote,” I heartily encourage current Georgetown Law students who wish to learn and engage in active dialogue about immigration, social justice, and racial justice in America today, as well as to pick up pointers on how to actually practice law, to register for my “compressed semester, 2-credit course Immigration Law & Policy” to be given this June (in person, and virtual options).

Thanks to the great group of students, it’s always a lively, engaged, and diverse group researching, presenting, and discussing perhaps the most important (and misunderstood) current topic for America’s and the word’s future — one on which, sad to say, the myths, false narratives and misinformation are rampant, spreading even as I write this.

While I provide an outstanding “practice oriented” text, the class topics, abundant study questions, a challenging but very “doable” final exam, along with the inevitable anecdotes and “war stories” from my nearly 50-year career, the students actually control the substance though their own research on current and historical events and sharing of personal experiences with the immigration system (everybody has some, whether they realize it or not). It’s also a chance to “network and bond” with a group of wonderful colleagues who can “be there for you” throughout your careers.

Indeed, I hope to put together a panel of “young superstars”🌟 of the New Due Process Army,🌟 including former students/and or court interns, who can share their career experiences on “why they chose to make a difference in human lives and how they have accomplished it.” Additionally, one of the best “up and coming” minds in the business, my friend Professor Cori Alonso Yoder, currently a Visiting Professor at Georgetown Law, has offered to meet with the class to share some of her knowledge and real life experiences with “Life-saving 101.” So, it should be a vibrant an exciting month. Don’t miss it!

Also, despite the seriousness of the topic, we always have some fun doing it!

Also, remember, NDPA superstar🌟 Liz Gibson, of “The Gibson Report,” is one of my former Georgetown Law students, a CALS Asylum Clinic veteran, a former Arlington Immigration Court intern, a former Judicial Law Clerk at the NY Immigration Court, and an alum of the prestigious Immigrant Justice Corps! In a relatively short time, Liz has used her skills, knowledge, and training to make a lifetime’s worth of “real life positive impact” on the lives and futures of our fellow humans!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-23-21

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

April 9, 2021

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! Put an end to deadly “Clown Courts” 🤡 now!

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🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸🗽🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

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Why it could work:

Why it probably won’t work:

Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

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Tune in on April 7 to join the dialogue on how we can finally force the U.S. Government to make good on its unfulfilled, even mocked, Constitutional promise of due process for all persons!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! A Better EOIR for A Better Federal Judiciary! A Better Federal Judiciary For A Better America! Not rocket science! But, it does require vision, recognition of the problem, and the courage to solve it!

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Now, let’s hear more “simple truth” from Suzanne Gamboa over at NBC News:

Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration

By Judge (Ret) Paul Wickham Schmidt

“Courtside” Exclusive

March 26, 2021

Related posts:

9th Cir. Says BIA Screwed Up PSG Analysis

2) 8th Cir. — BIA Goofs On “Aggravated Felony” Analysis

3) 5th Cir. — BIA Blew “Categorical Approach”

You can’t lead the fight for racial justice in America while running a bogus court system that denies and mocks it on a daily basis!

🇺🇸👍🏼🗽Due Process Forever!

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⚖️Shout Out for Georgetown Law Students:

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼Due Process Forever!

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