JULIA AINSLEY & JACOB SOBOROFF @ NBC NEWS REPORT ON WHITE NATIONALIST WHITE HOUSE: Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller & Cabinet Racists Voted To Abuse Brown Children: “If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” Said The New American Gruppenfuhrer!” — “Any moral argument regarding immigration ‘fell on deaf ears’ inside the White House, said one of the officials.”

Julia Edwards Ainsley
Julia Edwards Ainsley
NBC News Correspondent
Jacob Soboroff
Jacob Soboroff
Correspondent
NBC News

https://apple.news/AZFgY4X7BQsaKSITqteCbIg

Trump cabinet officials voted in 2018 White House meeting to separate migrant children, say officials

“If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” said Trump adviser Stephen Miller, say officials present at a White House meeting.

by Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff | NBC NEWS

WASHINGTON — In early May 2018, after weeks of phone calls and private meetings, 11 of the president’s most senior advisers were called to the White House Situation Room where they were asked, by a show-of-hands vote, to decide the fate of thousands of migrant parents and their children, according to two officials who were there.

Trump’s senior adviser, Stephen Miller, led the meeting and, according to the two officials, he was angry at what he saw as defiance by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

It had been nearly a month since then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had launched the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, announcing that every immigrant who crossed the U.S. border illegally would be prosecuted, including parents with small children. But so far, U.S. border agents had not begun separating parents from their children to put the plan into action, and Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, was furious about the delay.

Those invited included Sessions, Nielsen, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and newly installed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to documents obtained by NBC News.

Nielsen told those at the meeting that there were simply not enough resources at DHS, nor at the other agencies that would be involved, to be able to separate parents, prosecute them for crossing the border and return them to their children in a timely manner, according to the two officials who were present. Without a swift process, the children would enter into the custody of Health and Human Services, which was already operating at near capacity.

Two officials involved in the planning of zero tolerance said the Justice Department acknowledged on multiple occasions that U.S. attorneys would not be able to prosecute all parents expeditiously, so sending children to HHS was the most likely outcome.

As Nielsen had said repeatedly to other officials in the weeks leading up to the meeting, according to two former officials, the process could get messy and children could get lost in an already clogged system.

Miller saw the separation of families not as an unfortunate byproduct, but as a tool to deter more immigration. According to three former officials, he had devised plans that would have separated even more children. Miller, with the support of Sessions, advocated for separating all immigrant families, even those going through civil court proceedings, the former officials said.

While “zero tolerance” ultimately separated nearly 3,000 children from their parents, what Miller proposed would have separated an additional 25,000, including those who legally presented themselves at a port of entry seeking asylum, according to Customs and Border Protection data from May and June 2018.

That plan never came to fruition, in large part because DHS officials had argued it would grind the immigration process to a halt. But after Sessions’ announcement that all families entering illegally would be prosecuted, the onus had fallen on DHS to act.

At the meeting, Miller accused anyone opposing zero tolerance of being a lawbreaker and un-American, according to the two officials present.

“If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” said Miller, according to the two officials. It was not unusual for Miller to make claims like this, but this time he was adamant that the policy move forward, regardless of arguments about resources and logistics.

No one in the meeting made the case that separating families would be inhumane or immoral, the officials said. Any moral argument regarding immigration “fell on deaf ears” inside the White House, said one of the officials.

“Miller was tired of hearing about logistical problems,” said one of the officials. “It was just, ‘Let’s move forward and staff will figure this out.'”

Frustrated, Miller accused Nielsen of stalling and then demanded a show of hands. Who was in favor of moving forward, he asked?

A sea of hands went up. Nielsen kept hers down. It was clear she had been outvoted, according to the officials.

In the days immediately following the meeting, Nielsen had a conversation with then-CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan inside her office at the Ronald Reagan Building, and then signed a memo instructing DHS personnel to prosecute all migrants crossing the border illegally, including parents arriving with their children.

. . . .

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Read the rest of the report, detailing the full extent of this outrageous, illegal, and immoral conduct by corrupt high-level officials of our Government, at the link. This is what your tax dollars have been used for, while legitimate needs like coronavirus testing, disaster relief (see, Iowa), mail delivery, naturalization services, unemployment relief, etc., go unmet!

So, separated families and children continue to suffer, much of the harm and trauma irreparable and life-defining. This “policy” was so clearly illegal and unconstitutional that DOJ attorneys conceded its unconstitutionality in Federal Court. 

However, in an ethics-free DOJ, those same lawyers falsely claimed that there was no such policy. Rudimentary “due diligence” on their part, required by professional ethics, would have revealed that their representations on behalf of corrupt institutional “clients” were false.

The article also confirms the complicity of Kevin “Big Mac  With Lies” McAleenan in gross, intentional human rights violations. Courtside exposed “Big Mac” long ago! 

While the victims continue to suffer, Miller, Sessions, Nielsen, Big Mac, and other cowards who planned and carried out these “crimes against humanity,” directed at some of the most vulnerable humans in the world, remain at large. Some, like Miller, actually remain on the “public dole.” Likely, so do the DOJ lawyers who unprofessionally defended and helped obscure this misconduct in Federal Court.

It’s also worth examining the role of U.S. Magistrate Judges and U.S. District Judges along the southern border, most of whom turned a blind eye to the transparent racial and political motives, not to mention the grotesque misallocation of public resources, driving Sessions’s “zero tolerance” misdirection of scarce prosecutorial resources from serious felonies to minor immigration prosecutions. 

As I’ve been saying, “Better Federal Judges for a better America!” And, better Federal Judges start with removal of the Trump regime as well as the ousting of “Moscow Mitch” and the GOP from Senate control. 

Will there ever be accountability? Our national soul and future might depend on the answer!

Had enough wanton cruelty, neo-Nazism, corruption, illegality, immorality, cowardice, lies, false narratives, racism, stupidity, and squandering of tax dollars on nativist schemes and gimmicks? Get motivated and take action to get our nation back on track to being that “City upon a Hill” that the rest of the world used to admire and respect!

This November, vote like your life and the very future of humanity depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

08-21-20

AMERICA’S HOMEGROWN TORTURERS: Physicians For Human Rights Confirms What Many of Us Have Been Saying For Years: Trump Regime Tortures Families With Children With Impunity!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/25/trump-family-separations-children-torture-psychology?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Amanda Holpuch
Amanda Holpuc
Reporter
The Guardian

Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

The trauma Donald Trump’s administration caused to young children and parents separated at the US-Mexico border constitutes torture, according to evaluations of 26 children and adults by the group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).

The not-for-profit group’s report provides the first in-depth look at the psychological impact of family separation, which the US government continued despite warnings from the nation’s top medical bodies.

“As a clinician, nobody was prepared for this to happen on our soil,” the report co-author Dr Ranit Mishori, senior medical adviser at PHR, told the Guardian. “It is beyond shocking that this could happen in the United States, by Americans, at the instruction and direct intention of US government officials.”

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Legal experts have argued family separation constituted torture, but this is the first time a medical group has reached the determination.

PHR volunteer psychiatrists evaluated 17 adults and nine children who had been separated between 30 to 90 days. Most met the criteria for at least one mental health condition, including post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder or generalized anxiety disorder “consistent with, and likely linked to, the trauma of family separation”, according to the report.

Not only did the brutal family separation policy create trauma, it was intensified by the families’ previous exposure to violence on their journey to the US and in their home countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

All but two of the adults evaluated by PHR said they had received death threats in their home countries and 14 out of the 17 adults said they were targeted by drug cartels. All were fearful their child would be harmed or killed if they remained at home.

Almost all the children had been drugged, kidnapped, poisoned or threatened by gangs before they left. One mother told investigators she moved her daughter to different schools in El Salvador several times so gang members couldn’t find her and kill her.

In the face of these threats, parents tried to move within the country, change their phone numbers, meet extortion demands and go silent on social media. Ultimately, however, the report said: “Parents were confident that the journey to the United States would result in protection for their children.”

This is not what happened at the border.

The Trump administration instituted a policy in April 2018 that formally enabled the mass separation of children and parents at the US-Mexico border. Trump ended the policy in June 2018, but it has since been revealed that the administration separated thousands of families before and after the policy was in place.

There was also no system to reunite the families, according to an internal government watchdog. The Trump administration also ignored warnings from the nation’s leading medical organizations that family separation would traumatize children and adults.

How Trump’s immigration policies hurt people’s lives – in pictures

People who experience trauma, especially as children, have higher rates of medical conditions such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. They also have an increased risk of psychiatric disorders and detrimental coping behaviors such as alcohol and drug abuse.

“Something like that does not just resolve once you’re reunified with your parents, it’s something you carry with you possibly forever,” Mishori said.

One Honduran father described how badly his son reacted the four times a psychologist came to their apartment for treatment in the report: “Each time the son would refuse to cooperate and would throw things at the therapist … It appears his son was afraid of strangers, afraid they will take him away from his father.”

Kathryn Hampton, a senior officer in PHR’s asylum program, said the group PHR had assessed was small but represented separated families from different detention centers and foster homes across the country over a two-year period.

“This is a really disparate group of people and yet their stories are practically identical,” said Hampton. “So that’s very disturbing, to see that level of consistency.”

Amid the despair, PHR has seen an outpouring of support in money and volunteers. Hampton said since the beginning of 2018, its Asylum Network had more than doubled to 1,700 clinicians who provide free medical and psychological evaluations to asylum seekers. There were also three times as many medical school clinics partnering with the organization in that period.

Dr Stuart Lustig, a California-based psychiatrist and longtime volunteer, evaluated a seven-year-old girl from Guatemala. He said when he and the girl did a common evaluation tool called the Squiggle Test, she had one of the more inhibited reactions he had seen in 20 years.

“These kinds of separations were filled with uncertainty, there was no information about where people are going, so it is not surprising at all that these separations ended up being extremely traumatizing for kids and parents,” Lustig said.

In November, a federal court ordered the US to compensate for the trauma separated families faced at the hands of the government. Lustig said there were many treatment options for children who experienced this deep level of trauma in the US, but he and PHR were concerned about how these families would have access to them.

Lustig said: “Part of the work is simply building trust in humanity again.”

 

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We are diminishing ourselves as a nation; but, in the end, it won’t stop human migration. While the purpose of torture is dehumanization and degradation of the “other,” torture actually increases the humanity of its victims while dehumanizing the torturers and their enablers.

It’s also worthy remembering the next time “Big Mac With Lies,” Nielsen, Kelly, ”Gonzo” Sessions and other noted torturers want to “clean up their images” and capitalize on their misdeeds by speaking to an organization to which you belong or attend. Remember who they REALLY are beneath their facades: unpunished perpetrators of “Crimes Against Humanity.”

PWS

02-26-20

EUGENE ROBINSON @ WASHPOST: KID KILLERS ON THE LOOSE: “Sixteen-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez died horribly and needlessly. The Trump administration’s policy of deliberate, punishing cruelty toward Latin American migrants killed him.”

Eugene Robinson
Eugene Robinson
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administration-is-to-blame-for-a-teen-migrants-death/2019/12/09/569ae0e8-1ac6-11ea-8d58-5ac3600967a1_story.html

Sixteen-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez died horribly and needlessly. The Trump administration’s policy of deliberate, punishing cruelty toward Latin American migrants killed him.

That is the only conclusion to be drawn from a shocking report by the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica about Hernandez’s death in May at a U.S. Border Patrol station in Texas. I assume the agents and health-care workers who should have given Hernandez lifesaving attention are decent human beings, not monsters. But they work within an intentionally monstrous system that assigned no value to a young Guatemalan boy’s life.

President Trump’s racist and xenophobic immigration policies are not grounds for impeachment; rather, they are an urgent reason to defeat him in the coming election. But at least six migrant children, including Hernandez, have died in federal custody on Trump’s watch. Somebody should be held accountable. Somebody should go to jail.

Hernandez died of influenza and neglect.

He had crossed the Rio Grande without documents with a group of migrants who were almost immediately apprehended by the Border Patrol. In keeping with administration policy, he was separated from his adult sister and processed at a notoriously overcrowded holding facility in McAllen, Tex., where a nurse practitioner found he had a temperature of 103. She diagnosed him with the flu and said he should be taken to a hospital if his condition worsened.

Instead, worried he might infect others at the McAllen center, officials moved him to a Border Patrol station in nearby Weslaco and locked him in a cell. That was on the afternoon of May 19. By the following morning, Hernandez was dead.

Border Patrol logs show that agents checked on Hernandez several times that night. But ProPublica obtained cellblock video showing that “the only way . . . officials could have missed Carlos’ crisis is that they weren’t looking.”

The video “shows Carlos writhing for at least 25 minutes on the floor and a concrete bench,” ProPublica reported. “It shows him staggering to the toilet and collapsing on the floor, where he remained in the same position for the next four and a half hours.”

Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, claimed that Hernandez’s lifeless body was discovered by agents doing a morning check. But the video shows, according to ProPublica, that it was Hernandez’s cellmate who sent up the alarm.

“On the video, the cellmate can be seen waking up and groggily walking to the toilet, where Carlos was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. He [the roommate] gestures for help at the cell door. Only then do agents enter the cell and discover that Carlos had died during the night.”

Let that sink in for a moment. A 16-year-old boy has obviously fallen ill and has a soaring fever. Instead of seeking medical care for him, agents of the United States government — acting in your name and mine — leave him to die on the cold concrete floor of a detention cell.

Hernandez’s death implies more than the apparent negligence of a few overworked Border Patrol agents. It indicts a whole system designed by the Trump administration to deter would-be migrants and asylum seekers by punishing those who do make the journey.

In Hernandez’s case, the fatal punishment was meted out illegally. He had been in custody for six days when he died, but the Border Patrol is only supposed to hold children for 72 hours, at most, before transferring them to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Trump administration instituted a shockingly inhumane policy of separating migrant parents from their children, who in many cases were sent hundreds of miles away. Thousands of children were warehoused in cages, like animals. Toddlers and infants were absurdly expected to represent themselves at immigration hearings whose nature they could not begin to understand.

It is true that officials have had to deal with a flood of migrants who overwhelmed border facilities and personnel. But the Trump administration responded to the surge not with compassion but with purposeful callousness. It is horrific that six migrant children are known to have died in Customs and Border Protection custody since September 2018. It is even worse when you realize there were no such deaths, not a single one, during the eight years of the Obama administration.

According to ProPublica’s report, Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez was a bright and engaging boy who captained his school’s soccer team in the village of San Jose del Rodeo. The Border Patrol assigned him the alien identification number A203665141. His body was shipped home for burial.

Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

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

So why are racist White Nationalist policies that kill kids and then cover up “OK?” Why are Kelly, Nielsen, “Big Mac With Lies,” “Gonzo Apocalypto,” and others responsible for human rights violations running around making big bucks off their misconduct, giving speeches as if they were “normal” former senior executives, and even running for public office rather than facing charges for their misconduct? Others like Chief Toady Billy Barr and “Cooch Cooch” remain in office while spreading their authoritarian lies and attacking our democratic institutions.

And what about complicit Federal Appellate Judges and Supreme Court Justices who have let Due Process, fundamental fairness, and human decency die while looking the other way?

Human rights criminals like Trump & Miller need plenty of “go along to get along” accomplices to carry out their abuse.

Thanks, Eugene, for speaking out when so many others in privileged positions of supposed responsibility have been so cowardly and complicit in the face of tyranny that intends to destroy our democracy and that has already undermined our humanity.

Where’s the outrage!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-11-19

BENEATH THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S LIES: LET’S SEE WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING IN EL SALVADOR: “We don’t hear that what’s happening at the border is a symptom of the real crisis in El Salvador and other countries in the Northern Triangle of Central America.”

Meghan E. Lopez
Meghan E. Lopez
Head of Mission
International Rescue Committee
El Salvador

Yesterday my colleague Frank Mc Manus updated you on the escalating crisis in Yemen. Today, I wanted to share what’s happening in El Salvador — and why your help is needed now.

The threat to women and girls is real. It is frightening. And it must not go unnoticed any longer.

Our teams at the IRC supports women and girls around the world, including in El Salvador. Donate now to help us provide women and girls and entire families in need with lifesaving support.

In the States, we often don’t hear much about El Salvador aside from it being the country of origin for many asylum seekers at the border. We don’t hear that what’s happening at the border is a symptom of the real crisis in El Salvador and other countries in the Northern Triangle of Central America.

El Salvador is one of the world’s most violent and deadly places, similar to those of active war zones. The high level of violence is largely due to organized crime and rampant gang activity — and it’s what drives people to flee for their lives. Here are some startling facts:

 

  • In 2018, one woman was murdered every 20 hours.
  • There were more than 9.2 homicides per day.
  • Approximately 10 people each day disappear.

 

My teams on the ground are seeing that it’s teenage girls who are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence from state, civilian and criminal entities. They are also being forced into becoming “gang girlfriends,” which is essentially sex slavery so they can protect their families.

We are helping women and girls and their families in El Salvador in many ways. We run an online platform called CuentaNos.org which has become a lifeline. It provides information for people during moments of crisis or while on the move in El Salvador, and soon in Honduras and Guatemala as well. We provide emergency cash assistance to help people find shelter and safety when they most need it and a crisis referral service to help people connect directly with the support they need, all the while working to improve those services that our partners provide.

The IRC provides support in many places facing emergencies around the world. You can help women and girls in the places where we work, including in El Salvador, by making a lifesaving gift today.

Thank you so much for giving your attention to this often forgotten crisis.

My very best,

Meghan Lopez
Head of Mission
IRC El Salvador

 

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

So why are we not only returning vulnerable women, children, and families to El Salvador, but, outrageously, also trying to send asylum applicants from other countries there, even though the Administration knows full well:

 

  • It isn’t “safe,” by any definition;
  • It’s a hellhole where gangs, narcos, and corrupt government officials aligned with them are in control of much of the country;
  • It doesn’t even have a functioning asylum system; and
  • It can’t protect and support its own population, let alone tens of thousands of refugees from other countries that the U.S. intends to “outsource” there.

These outrageous shams are some of the “proud legacy” that folks like “Big Mac With Lies” leave behind. And the new DHS honchos, Wolf and “Cooch Cooch,” have promised to be even more cruel, racist, and scofflaw.

Remember the truth and the facts the next time you hear a dishonest Trump official falsely claim that the only reason folks are fleeing for their lives is to take advantage of “loopholes” in US. law.

 

PWS

11-13-19

 

 

CHILD ABUSE: A TRUMP ADMINISTRATION “STRATEGY” – “[T]he backup also was a result of policy decisions that officials knew would ensnare unaccompanied minors in bureaucratic tangles and leave them in squalid conditions.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/a-trump-administration-strategy-led-to-the-child-migrant-backup-crisis-at-the-border/2019/11/12/85d4f18c-c9ae-11e9-a1fe-ca46e8d573c0_story.html

Neena Satija
Neena Satija
Investigative Reporter
Washington Post
Karoun Demirjian
Karoun Demirjian
Congressional/
National Security Reporter
Washington Post
Abigail Hauslohner
Abigail Hauslohner
National Immigration Reporter, Washington Post
Josh Dawsey
Josh Dawsey
White House Reporter
Washington Post

From the WashPost:

By

Neena Satija,

Karoun Demirjian,

Abigail Hauslohner and

Josh Dawsey

November 12, 2019 at 12:13 p.m. EST

When thousands of migrant children ended up stranded in U.S. Border Patrol stations last spring, President Trump’s administration characterized the crisis as a spontaneous result of the record crush of migrants overwhelming the U.S. immigration system. But the backup also was a result of policy decisions that officials knew would ensnare unaccompanied minors in bureaucratic tangles and leave them in squalid conditions, according to dozens of interviews and internal documents viewed by The Washington Post.The policies, which administration officials began pursuing soon after Trump took office in January 2017, made it harder for adult relatives of unaccompanied minors to secure the children’s release from U.S. custody. Enhanced vetting of sponsors — including fingerprints and other paperwork — and the sharing of that information between child welfare and immigration authorities slowed down the release of children and exposed the sponsors to deportation.

The government knew the moves would strain child shelters, according to documents and current and former officials, but it was aimed at sending a message to Central American migrants: Coming to the United States illegally has consequences.

Administration officials said the policy was designed to protect children from potential abusers or criminals, but they also wanted to create a broad deterrent effect; they reasoned that undocumented migrants might hesitate to claim their children for fear of being deported. Authorities weighed deterrence — a central aspect of U.S. immigration policy under both President Barack Obama and Trump — against the possibility of children crowding into border stations. And they chose to push forward, knowing what would result.

“This will strain bed capacity,” authorities wrote in a discussion paper in February 2018.

The approach caused thousands of unaccompanied minors to be stranded in U.S. custody and exacerbated the appearance of a crisis on the southern border — a major element underlying the administration’s public request for billions of dollars in additional funding from Congress.

A boy sits in the U.S. Border Patrol Central Processing Center in McAllen, Tex., in August. Border facilities were overwhelmed this year as a record number of Central American migrant families crossed the southern border. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Lawyers were allowed to visit children in the border stations, and Democratic lawmakers were invited to tour the facilities when they were at their worst. They witnessed — and shared with the public — scenes of desperate children held in crowded cells without basic necessities.

According to current and former government officials, and emails and memos detailing the Trump administration’s strategy, it is clear they knew that without enough beds in government shelters, children would languish in Border Patrol stations not equipped to care for them, making the government a target of lawsuits and public criticism — both of which occurred.

One of the key figures in that strategizing, Chad Wolf, is set to take the helm at the Department of Homeland Security. Senators on Tuesday are expected to first vote on Wolf’s confirmation to his current job as undersecretary for strategy, policy and plans. Wolf is Trump’s favored pick to then take over as acting head of the agency, just as officials brace for what could be another increase in migrant crossings.

Top DHS officials have warned that the reprieve from the record influx of migrants in recent months is probably temporary. Acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner Mark Morgan said last month that the number of people crossing the border is still higher than at the same time last year and remains a “crisis.” Migration also typically increases in the spring, and the U.S. government is preparing for another surge of families and unaccompanied minors.

Such a potential wave of children is what inspired the early discussions about policy changes within the Trump administration in 2017 — along with debate about the policy’s effects.

The Trump administration’s wildly contradictory statements on family separation

The Trump administration changed its story on immigrant family separation no fewer than 14 times in one week. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)

‘Safety’ vs. ‘anguish’

Staff at the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is in charge of caring for unaccompanied migrant children, argued against the policy in weekly memos during the summer of 2017. Jonathan White, then deputy director of the ORR’s children’s program, warned in a July 2017 memo that the administration’s plan to separate children from their families and to alter the process of handing children over to sponsors would “result in significant increases” in how long children would be held.

White wrote that children would spend an average of 95 days in federal custody and that the department would need at least 6,500 additional beds in just three months. White declined to comment for this story.

Documents reviewed by The Post show that officials also estimated that HHS would need an additional $686 million in funding — more than 50 percent above its planned budget — to accommodate the policy and create additional bed space.

But the administration did not formally request extra money for that purpose at the time, according to senior Democratic and Republican congressional aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.

Mark Weber, an HHS spokesman, did not dispute those details but maintained that the border backups resulted from a historic influx of unaccompanied children. In May alone, 9,000 children were referred to the government’s care, he said.

Migrants are gathered behind a fence at a makeshift detention center in El Paso on March 27, when U.S. authorities said the immigration system was at a breaking point. (Sergio Flores/For The Washington Post)

Administration officials also thought the backlog would be short-lived.

“At some point in FY19, the deterrent effect of the new policy should stop families and unscrupulous adult aliens from using the reunification process, normalizing and reversing the volume trend” of unaccompanied minors arriving at the border, authorities wrote in a discussion paper that the National Security Council shared with senior administration officials. The paper was shared with an interagency group that met regularly in the White House Situation Room to discuss immigration and border security.

Some senior officials acknowledged in interviews that they expected some children to remain in custody for longer periods of time, but they said the policy was developed with child safety in mind; they did not want children to be released to smugglers or criminals.

“My number one concern on this was making sure that kids were safe,” Tom Homan, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an interview. “I know it’s a tough decision. It was never easy. You have to weigh the operational concerns, and the humanitarian concerns, and how long they’re going to stay in detention. . . . Yeah, it was going to increase the bed stay, but it wouldn’t be like twofold, threefold, fourfold. We thought it was worth a try, and it if doesn’t work, we can always pedal back and change gears.”

Acting ICE director Matthew Albence said the policy was part of the “deterrent effect” the government was seeking: “The goal was to prevent these children from coming on this dangerous journey.”

Almairis Guillen and her son, Miguel de Jesus Oseguera, 4, sweep with a homemade broom where they and other members of a migrant caravan were resting in Juchitan, Mexico, in October 2018. Thousands of people were part of their caravan, which was heading north to the U.S. border. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)The shadows of minors awaiting processing darken the floor of the U.S. Border Patrol center in McAllen on Aug. 12. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Albence, Homan and other Trump administration officials say the backlog arose because of Washington politics, blaming Democrats in Congress for being too slow to authorize funding for more shelter beds at facilities designed to care for children.

“No one who values child welfare and safety would argue smuggled, exploited and unaccompanied children at the southern border should be handed over to illegal alien ‘sponsors’ without reliable identity confirmation and background checks,” said deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley. “The only ones responsible for crowded shelters are Democrats who want to preserve and expand loopholes used by child smugglers for purely political purposes.”

A few months after the policy was implemented, HHS officials determined that it was not improving child safety. They concluded that the added vetting was redundant and needlessly extended the time children remained in custody, according to internal documents that ORR Deputy Director Jallyn Sualog presented to Congress, and to testimony on Capitol Hill.

Advocates saw a darker motive in policies that they say were “intentionally developed to inflict maximum anguish on children,” said Heidi Altman, of the National Immigrant Justice Center. She said officials knew that their plans “would trigger a chain of events that left children hungry, abused and sick in overcrowded CBP facilities.”

Democrats likewise have argued that the White House set up the crisis. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), presiding over a House Oversight subcommittee hearing last month, noted that it had always been possible for the government to ease conditions but that officials chose not to.

“We did not have to have a backlog. We did not,” DeLauro said. “That was created.”

Wrapped in foil blankets, migrants try to stay warm while waiting to be processed and transported by the Border Patrol in El Paso in February. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Tightening the rules

The Department of Homeland Security did a test run of the policy in the summer of 2017, instructing border agents to interview young migrants about the relatives they wanted to live with in the United States. They then created “target folders” for those adults that could be used to take action against them, according to internal emails that the American Immigration Council obtained via the Freedom of Information Act and made available online.

 

At the ORR, then-director Scott Lloyd was thinking about the administration’s “moral imperative” to protect children from smugglers and to ensure that gangs were not exploiting the child shelter system to enter the country.

“Our legal responsibilities are child welfare,” Lloyd said in an interview. “But even from a child welfare perspective, it’s desirable to deter people from taking that risk, putting their kids in that type of harm.”

Lloyd said he and his staff agreed that better communication between his agency and DHS was the best way to address those concerns.

“We needed to know if a kid had any gang ties or gang ties in their family — we needed to make sure that DHS had that information and that we had that information,” Lloyd said.

The partnership was formalized in an agreement that mandated significantly stricter fingerprinting and screening requirements for all adults who hoped to sponsor a migrant child or who lived in a house where a migrant child might stay.

“If this could get finalized and implemented soon, it would have a tremendous deterrent effect,” Gene Hamilton, counsel to then-attorney general Jeff Sessions, wrote in notes he sent by email in December 2017 to Wolf, the senior DHS official who is now in line to take over as acting secretary. The existence of the notes — but not the identity of the authors or the recipients — was first reported by NBC News.

Wolf declined to comment.

Alexei Woltornist, a Justice Department spokesman, said the agreement was just one of “numerous steps” to prevent the victimization of children: “Ending the trauma these children can face requires taking action against all parties who entrust criminals and cartels to transport their children across the border.”

HHS Secretary Alex Azar and then-DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen — the two department heads tasked with carrying out the policy — voiced serious concerns, according to two officials familiar with the discussions. They worried that the agreement would be impossible to implement, could lead to longer detention times for children and would be viewed publicly as unnecessarily harsh, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy deliberations.

Caitlin Oakley, an HHS spokeswoman, did not dispute that account, but she said in a statement that Azar “supports the Trump administration’s goal of enforcing immigration laws and securing the border.”

“The backup at the border of minors witnessed this summer was the consequence of a broken immigration system,” Oakley added.

Nielsen declined to comment.

One HHS employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters recalled Lloyd telling staffers that the White House wanted them “to do everything you can to prevent backups into border stations. But it is better that there be a backup in a border station than that we not enforce immigration laws and that we not deter migration.”

Lloyd denied that account.

“I don’t ever recall holding, even temporarily, the idea that backups at border stations was a remotely acceptable scenario,” Lloyd said.

Migrants wait inside the fence of a makeshift detention center in El Paso in March. (Sergio Flores/For The Washington Post)

Internal memos show that for months before implementing the policy, government lawyers worried about lawsuits and discussed ways to claim that the policy would make children safer. In a January 2018 draft memo, viewed by The Post, Justice Department lawyers proposed defending the plan to conduct enhanced background checks and share them with enforcement agents as a means of protecting migrant children from witnessing the eventual deportation of their parents or relatives.

“We can argue that whether a proposed sponsor is subject to removal is a key factor in determining suitability, given the impact that immigration enforcement against, or detention of, a sponsor would have on the circumstances faced by” unaccompanied minors living with the sponsor, Justice Department lawyers wrote in January 2018 correspondence with DHS and HHS officials as part of an “analysis of litigation risk” associated with the agreement.

Federal judge blocks Trump administration from detaining migrant children for indefinite periods

The administration also developed and rolled out its family separation policy in the spring of 2018, part of its “zero tolerance” approach at the border. The months-long initiative, which separated thousands of children from their parents, compounded the need for shelter space. After a public outcry, the administration ended the policy.

By the fall of 2018, most of the families had been reunited, and the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border had fallen, but the population of children in the shelters continued to grow, according to HHS data. By October 2018, migrant children were spending an average of more than 90 days in federal custody — exactly as White had predicted — more than twice the length of stays two years earlier.

While some adult migrants were afraid to come forward to claim their children, the contractors tasked with carrying out the background checks and fingerprinting were overwhelmed, according to current and former HHS officials. The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocates filed lawsuits challenging the policy, arguing that parents waited months for fingerprinting results.

Migrant teens walk through a camp in Tornillo, Tex., in December 2018. The Trump administration announced in June 2018 that it would open a temporary shelter for up to 360 migrant children in this remote corner of the Texas desert. Six months later, the facility had expanded into a camp holding thousands of teenagers. (Andres Leighton/AP)

Time in custody grows

Kevin Dinnin, the head of the nonprofit that operated a shelter for migrant children in Tornillo, Tex., said the crush of minors became increasingly severe through late 2018, and he told the agency he could not continue. Images of teenagers behind chain-link fences shuffling single-file from tent to tent had drawn public outrage, and Dinnin could not understand why children continued arriving at the shelter even though migrant crossings had slowed and family separations had ended.

“The problem was, kids were coming and not being discharged,” Dinnin said. “The average length of stay just kept increasing.”

An HHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive policy decisions said the agency would never have opened the Tornillo shelter had it not been for the agreement with DHS.

“It was the increase in average length of care that created a need for thousands of beds,” the official said.

U.S. returns 100 migrant children to overcrowded border facility as HHS says it is out of space

HHS career staff members decided that the agency had no choice but to eliminate some aspects of the background checks to relieve the pressure on the system. To avoid roiling the White House, they slowly rolled back the policy through several “operational directives” over a period of months, according to current and former HHS officials.

The agency announced that it would stop fingerprinting all adult members of a sponsor’s household in December 2018, and the government then quickly released thousands of children from custody. The Tornillo shelter closed a few weeks later.

But with the agency still fingerprinting sponsors, some children continued to languish in custody for months, especially when migrant crossings surged again in the spring. Children apprehended at the border were left in Border Patrol stations as a result.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) addresses the media July 1 after touring the Clint, Tex., Border Patrol facility. Reports of inhumane conditions plagued the facility, where migrant children were being held. (Christ Chavez/Getty Images)Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), center, departs after a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on family separation and detention centers on July 12. She gave an impassioned speech, shedding tears while describing the conditions she witnessed along the border. (Al Drago/Bloomberg News)

Democratic lawmakers, lawyers and advocates toured Border Patrol stations in late spring and early summer and delivered scathing descriptions of the suffering they witnessed. DHS and HHS officials pleaded with Congress for more money, saying they had been blindsided by the numbers. HHS canceled English classes, soccer and legal aid for migrant children, citing inadequate funds.

In June, Congress approved a $4.6 billion emergency border spending package, shortly after hearing the government’s pleas about what they described as a humanitarian crisis at the border.

Officials credited the subsequent release of hundreds more children to the aid package. But in court documents and congressional testimony, they acknowledged that moves to scale back the enhanced background checks had made the difference. Those included a final directive in June to stop fingerprinting aunts, uncles and grandparents seeking custody of migrant children, speeding up the release of more than 1,000 children in a matter of weeks and allowing the emergency shelter in Homestead, Fla., to close.

“I do support the four operational directives in order to expedite the release of children to properly vetted sponsors,” ORR Director Jonathan Hayes said at a congressional hearing in July. “I want to see the children back with their families.”

Officials have argued that shortening the time that children are held in federal custody will boost the incentive for migrant families to seek entry into the United States.

“The shorter the stay, the more likely they’re willing to take it on,” Homan said. “If I think I’ll be detained for a year, I might not come. But if I’ll be detained for a week and be released, that may convince me to make that trip.”

Nick Miroff, Maria Sacchetti, Paul Kane and Yasmeen Abutaleb contributed to this report.

 

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The Trump Administration continues to intentionally misrepresent the conditions in the Northern Triangle that are sending families and children in flight to the U.S., notwithstanding their knowledge of the dangers and the overt cruelty and racism of the Trump Administration directed against them.

While the Trump Administration keeps on putting forth the knowingly false narrative that this “crisis” is caused by “loopholes” in U.S. law, that’s demonstrably untrue. Over 50% off the nearly 26 million refugees worldwide are children under the age of 18.  https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html.   

Obviously, the increasing number of child refugees is part of a tragic worldwide phenomenon having no causal relationship to U.S. laws or court decisions. It’s a result of conditions in the sending countries and won’t be stopped or prevented by unilateral actions on the part of receiving countries, even extreme cruelty.  The phenomenon might, however, be increased by the overtly anti-refugee policies and statements of the Trump Administration and the actions of the Trump Administration in coddling dictators and tyrants, which actually produces more child refugees.

Also, what about the criminals over at HHS who have abandoned their Congressionally-assigned duty to protect and look out for the best interests of children for a White Nationalist, racist, nativist enforcement policy that targets kids. When folks like Alex Azar & company are sent packing from Government some day, remember for what they really stand!

We’re allowing shameless thugs to run our national immigration policies. There will be consequences!

 

PWS

11-13-19

ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO PILE UNPRECEDENTED CRUELTY ON ASYLUM SEEKERS!  — Latest Target Is Work Authorization!

Bess Levin
Bess Levin
Politics & Finance Writer
Vanity Fair

 

Bess Levin writes for Vanity Fair:

 

TRUMP ADMIN HAS A CRUEL NEW PLAN TO HURT ASYLUM-SEEKERS

Just when you thought it couldn’t get more evil, it rose to the occasion!

BY

BESS LEVIN

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

One of the regular themes of the Trump administration is the idea that there’s no way it will be able to continue outdoing itself when it comes to wildly evil policies. And yet, on a near-daily basis, it rises to the occasion! While its evilness does not discriminate—women, Democrats, the LGBTQ+ community, Muslims, pro athletes, the poor, and the media all get a taste—very often it relates to immigrants, with Team Trump finding new and inventive ways to demonize them and make their lives miserable. Recently that‘s involved deporting kids with cancer, and now it extends to refusing to allow asylum-seekers who work when they come to the U.S.

NBC News reports that the administration is working on a proposal to prevent asylum-seekers from applying for work permits for at least a year after they enter the country. Yes, the same administration under which visa denials for poor Mexicans have “skyrocketed”, and which announced in August that new factors that will count against green card applicants will include not having the money to cover “any reasonably foreseeable medical costs” related to a medical condition, having been approved to receive a public benefit, “financial liabilities,” and a low credit score, among other things. Obviously not being allowed to work for at least a year will no doubt contribute to the likelihood that people will be forced to turn to welfare, or force them to work in the shadow economy. It also doesn’t make a lot of sense for an administration that clearly prefers upwardly mobile immigrants, unless, of course, the point of the policy was to put such individuals between a rock and a group of assholes, and simply discourage them from coming to the country altogether.

The policy is expected to be discussed at a meeting Monday afternoon between Kevin McAleenan, the outgoing acting Homeland Security secretary, and heads of agencies for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to two of the officials. And it is meant to target Mexican families seeking asylum, a demographic that has recently risen while the number of Central Americans has decreased since May.

One of the DHS officials said proponents of the policy believe prolonging the period when Mexicans are not allowed to work while they wait for their claim will deter them from coming to the U.S. in the first place…DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

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

Of course, the intent here is to discourage individuals from making the asylum applications that U.S. law entitles them to, but that Trump, with help from complicit courts, has all but extinguished without any legislative changes from Congress.

So, first the Trump Administration artificially and intentionally inflates the Immigration Court backlog through “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” so that applications take much longer than they should in a fair and professionally administered system. Then they penalize the victims.

 

Meanwhile, the Article III Courts, who should have put an end to this unconstitutional nonsense long before now, continue to compound the problem by allowing a biased, xenophobic Administration to run a major court system as a branch of DHS enforcement.

 

Also, it’s important to remember that these outrages are happening on the watch of “Big Mac With Lies.” Those who care about honest public service and American justice should make a point not to allow “Big Mac” to “reinvent” himself to profit from his wrongdoing and the pain and suffering he has unnecessarily inflicted on asylum seekers and others entitled to justice in America but finding none during “Big Mac’s” tenure as “Trump’s Acting Toady.”

 

Of course, things are going to continue to get worse for humanity when Trump’s new “Acting Toady of Homeland Security,” Chad Wolf takes over.

 

PWS

 

11-06-19

 

 

 

 

HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!

Tanvi Misra
Tanvi Misra
Immigration Reporter
Roll Call

 

https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/doj-changed-hiring-promote-restrictive-immigration-judges?fbclid=IwAR2VfI3AKcttNoXlc_MX0sa-6X94bsOWF4btxb7tWDBz7Es4bvqB63oZA-0

 

Tanvi Misra reports for Roll Call:

 

DOJ changed hiring to promote restrictive immigration judges

New practice permanently placed judges on powerful appellate board, documents show

Posted Oct 29, 2019 2:51 PM

Tanvi Misra

@Tanvim

More non-Spanish speaking migrants are crossing the borderDHS advances plan to get DNA samples from immigrant detaineesWhite House plans to cut refugee admittance to all-time low

 

Error! Filename not specified.

James McHenry, director of the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, testifies before a Senate panel in 2018. Memos from McHenry detail changes in hiring practices for six restrictive judges placed permanently on the Board of Immigration Appeals. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Department of Justice has quietly changed hiring procedures to permanently place immigration judges repeatedly accused of bias to a powerful appellate board, adding to growing worries about the politicization of the immigration court system.

Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests describe how an already opaque hiring procedure was tweaked for the six newest hires to the 21-member Board of Immigration Appeals. All six board members, added in August, were immigration judges with some of the highest asylum denial rates. Some also had the highest number of decisions in 2017 that the same appellate body sent back to them for reconsideration. All six members were immediately appointed to the board without a yearslong probationary period.

[More non-Spanish speaking migrants are crossing the border]

“They’re high-level deniers who’ve done some pretty outrageous things [in the courtroom] that would make you believe they’re anti-immigrant,” said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and past senior legal adviser at the board. “It’s a terrifying prospect … They have power over thousands of lives.”

Among the hiring documents are four recommendation memos to the Attorney General’s office from James McHenry, director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the nation’s immigration court system.

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The memos, dated July 18, recommend immigration judges William A. Cassidy, V. Stuart Couch, Earle B. Wilson, and Keith E. Hunsucker to positions on the appellate board. McHenry’s memos note new hiring procedures had been established on March 8, to vet “multiple candidates” expressing interest in the open board positions.

A footnote in the memos states that applicants who are immigration judges would be hired through a special procedure: Instead of going through the typical two-year probationary period, they would be appointed to the board on a permanent basis, immediately. This was because a position on the appellate board “requires the same or similar skills” as that of an immigration judge, according to the memo.

Appellate board members, traditionally hired from a variety of professional backgrounds, are tasked with reviewing judicial decisions appealed by the government or plaintiff. Their decisions, made as part of a three-member panel, can set binding precedents that adjudicators and immigration judges rely on for future cases related to asylum, stays of deportation, protections for unaccompanied minors and other areas.

McHenry, appointed in 2018 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, concludes his recommendation memos by noting that the judge’s “current federal service was vetted and no negative information that would preclude his appointment” was reported. He does not mention any past or pending grievances, although public complaints have been filed against at least three of the judges.

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These documents, obtained through FOIA via Muckrock, a nonprofit, collaborative that pushes for government transparency, and shared with CQ Roll Call, reflect “the secrecy with which these rules are changing,” said Matthew Hoppock, a Kansas City-based immigration attorney. “It’s very hard to remove or discipline a judge that’s permanent than when it’s probationary, so this has long term implications.”

‘If I had known, I wouldn’t have left’: Migrant laments ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy

Volume 90%

 

The Department of Justice declined to answer a series of questions asked by CQ Roll Call regarding the new hiring practices, why exemptions were made in the case of these immigration judges and whether complaints against any of the judges were considered.

“Board members, like immigration judges, are selected through an open, competitive, and merit-based process involving an initial review by the Office of Personnel Management and subsequent, multiple levels of review by the Department of Justice,” a DOJ official wrote via email. “This process includes review by several career officials. The elevation of trial judges to appellate bodies is common in almost every judicial system, and EOIR is no different.”

Homestead: On the front lines of the migrant children debate

Volume 90%

 

Opaque hiring process

When the department posted the six board vacancies in March, the openings reflected the first time that board members would be allowed to serve from immigration courts throughout the country. Previously, the entire appellate board worked out of its suburban Virginia headquarters.

In addition, the job posts suggested that new hires would be acting in a dual capacity: They may be asked to adjudicate cases at the trial court level and then also review the court decisions appealed to the board. Previously, board members stuck to reviewing appeals cases, a process that could take more than a year.

Ultimately, all six hires were immigration judges, although past board candidates have come from government service, private sector, academia and nonprofits.

“This was stunning,” MaryBeth Keller, chief immigration judge until she stepped down this summer, said in a recent interview with The Asylumist, a blog about asylum issues. “I can’t imagine that the pool of applicants was such that only [immigration judges] would be hired, including two from the same city.”

Keller said immigration judges are “generally eminently qualified to be board members, but to bring in all six from the immigration court? I’d like to think that the pool of applicants was more diverse than that.”

Paul Wickham Schmidt, a retired immigration judge who headed the board under President Bill Clinton, said the panel always had arbitrary hiring procedures that changed with each administration and suffered from “quality control” issues. But the Trump administration has “pushed the envelope the furthest,” he said.

“This administration has weaponized the process,” he told CQ Roll Call. “They have taken a system that has some notable weaknesses in it and exploited those weaknesses for their own ends.”

The reputation and track record of the newest immigration judges has also raised eyebrows.

According to an analysis of EOIR data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, each of these newest six judges had an asylum denial rate over 80 percent, with Couch, Cassidy, and Wilson at 92, 96, and 98 percent, respectively. Nationally, the denial rate for asylum cases is around 57 percent. Previous to their work as immigration judges, all six had worked on behalf of government entities, including the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and the military.

“It mirrors a lot of the concerns at the trial level,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). She said several new hires at the trial level have been Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys.

“Every day across the country, people’s lives hang in the balance waiting for immigration judges to decide their fate,” she said. “Asylum grant rates for immigration court cases vary widely depending on the judge, suggesting that outcomes may turn on which judge is deciding the case rather than established principles and rules of law.”

Immigration experts note that denial rates depend on a variety of factors, including the number and types of cases that appear on a judge’s docket. Perhaps a better measure of an immigration judge’s decision-making may be the rate that rulings get returned by the appeals board.

For 2017, the last full year for which data is available, Couch and Wilson had the third and fourth highest number of board-remanded cases — at 50 and 47 respectively, according to federal documents obtained by Bryan Johnson, a New York-based immigration lawyer. The total number of cases on their dockets that year were 176 and 416, respectively.

Some of the behavior by the newer judges also have earned them a reputation. In 2018, AILA obtained 11 complaints against Cassidy that alleged prejudice against immigrant respondents. In a public letter the Southern Poverty Law Center sent last year to McHenry, the group complained that Cassidy bullied migrants in his court. He also asked questions that “exceeded his judicial authority,” Center lawyers wrote.

Another letter, sent in 2017 by SPLC lawyers and an Emory University law professor whose students observed Cassidy’s court proceedings, noted the judge “analogized an immigrant to ‘a person coming to your home in a Halloween mask, waving a knife dripping with blood’ and asked the attorney if he would let that person in.”

SPLC also has documented issues with Wilson, noting how he “routinely leaned back in his chair, placed his head in his hands and closed his eyes” during one hearing. “He held this position for more than 20 minutes as a woman seeking asylum described the murders of her parents and siblings.”

Couch’s behavior and his cases have made news. According to Mother Jones, he once lost his temper with a 2-year-old Guatemalan child, threatening to unleash a dog on the boy if he didn’t stop making noise. But he is perhaps better known as the judge who denied asylum to “Ms. A.B.,” a Salvadoran domestic violence survivor, even after the appellate board asked him to reconsider. Sessions, the attorney general at the time, ultimately intervened and made the final precedent-setting ruling in the case.

Couch has a pattern of denying asylum to women who have fled domestic violence, “despite clear instructions to the contrary” from the appellate board, according to Johnson, the immigration lawyer who said Couch “has been prejudging all claims that have a history of domestic violence, and quite literally copying and pasting language he used to deny other domestic violence victims asylum.”

Jeremy McKinney, a Charlotte-based immigration lawyer and second vice president at AILA, went to law school with Couch and called him “complex.” While he was reluctant to characterize the judge as “anti-immigrant,” he acknowledged “concerning” stories about the Couch’s court demeanor.

“In our conversations, he’s held the view that asylum is not the right vehicle for some individuals to immigrate to the U.S. — it’s one I disagree with,” McKinney said. “But I feel quite certain that that’s exactly why he was hired.”

Politicizing court system

Increasingly, political appointees are “micromanaging” the dockets of immigration judges, said Ashley Tabaddor, head of the union National Association of Immigration Judges. Appointees also are making moves that jeopardize their judicial independence, she said. Among them: requiring judges to meet a quota of 700 completed cases per year; referring cases even if they are still in the midst of adjudication to political leadership, including the Attorney General, for the final decision; and seeking to decertify the immigration judges’ union.

These are “symptoms of a bigger problem,” said Tabaddor. “If you have a court that’s situated in the law enforcement agency … that is the fundamental flaw that needs to be corrected.”

In March, the American Bar Association echoed calls by congressional Democrats to investigate DOJ hiring practices in a report that warned the department’s “current approach will elevate speed over substance, exacerbate the lack of diversity on the bench, and eliminate safeguards that could lead to a resurgence of politicized hiring.”

“Moreover, until the allegations of politically motivated hiring can be resolved, doubt will remain about the perceived and perhaps actual fairness of immigration proceedings,” the organization wrote. “The most direct route to resolving these reasonable and important concerns would be for DOJ to publicize its hiring criteria, and for the inspector general to conduct an investigation into recent hiring practices.”

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One of the most disgusting developments, that the media sometimes misses, is that having skewed and biased the system specifically against Central American asylum seekers, particularly women and children, the Administration uses their “cooked” and “bogus” statistics to make a totally disingenuous case that the high denial rates show the system is being abused by asylum seekers and their lawyers. That, along with the “fiction of the asylum no show” been one of “Big Mac’s” most egregious and oft repeated lies! There certainly is systemic abuse taking place here — but it is by the Trump Administration, not asylum seekers and their courageous lawyers.

 

This system is a national disgrace operating under the auspices of a feckless Congress and complicit Article III courts whose life-tenured judges are failing in their collective duty to put an end to this blatantly unconstitutional system: one that  also violates statutory provisions intended to give migrants access to counsel, an opportunity to fully present and document their cases to an unbiased decision maker, and a fair opportunity to seek asylum regardless of status or manner of entry. Basically, judges at all levels who are complicit in this mockery of justice are “robed killers.”

 

Just a few years ago, asylum seekers were winning the majority of individual rulings on asylum in Immigration Court. Others were getting lesser forms of protection, so that more than 60 percent of asylum applicants who got final decisions in Immigration Court were receiving much-needed, life-saving protection. That’s exactly what one would expect given the Supreme Court’s pronouncements in 1987 about the generous standards applicable to asylum seekers in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca.

 

Today, conditions have not improved materially in most “refugee sending countries.” Indeed, this Administration’s bogus designation of the Northern Triangle “failed states” as “Safe Third Countries” is absurd and shows their outright contempt for the system and their steadfast belief that the Federal Judiciary will “tank” on their responsibility to hold this Executive accountable.

 

As a result of this reprehensible conduct, the favorable trend in asylum adjudication has been sharply reversed. Now, approximately two-thirds of asylum cases are being denied, many based on specious “adverse credibility” findings, illegal “nexus” findings that intentionally violate the doctrine of “mixed motives”enshrined in the statute, absurdly unethical and illegal rewriting of asylum precedents by Sessions and Barr, intentional denial of the statutory right to counsel, and overt coercion through misuse of DHS detention authority to improperly “punish” and “deter” legal asylum seekers.

 

Right under the noses of complicit Article III Judges and Congress, the Trump Administration has “weaponized” the Immigration “Courts” and made them an intentionally hostile environment for asylum seekers and their, often pro bono or low bono, lawyers. How is this acceptable in 21st Century America?

 

That’s why it’s important for members of the “New Due Process Army” to remember my “5 Cs Formula” – Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change. Make these folks with “no skin the game” feel the pain and be morally accountable for those human lives they are destroying by inaction in the face of Executive illegality and tyranny from their “ivory tower perches.”  

We’re in a war for the survival of our democracy and the future of humanity.  There is only one “right side” in this battle. History will remember who stood tall and who went small when individual rights, particularly the rights to Due Process and fair treatment for the most vulnerable among us, were under attack by the lawless forces of White Nationalism and their enablers!

 

PWS

 

10-31-19

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Trump Looking For Ways To Skirt Constitution, Appointments Statute To Make Ineligible White Nationalist Racist “Cooch Cooch” Acting Head Of DHS!

Dominique Mosbergen
Domonique Mosbergen
Senior Reporter
HuffPost

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dhs-secretary-job-loophole-trump_n_5db91056e4b066da5528c76a

Dominique Mosbergen reports for HuffPost:

The White House is reportedly exploring a legal loophole that would allow President Donald Trump to pick “whomever he wants” to fill the top job at the Department of Homeland Security, potentially paving the way for a hardliner who’s vigorously defended Trump’s immigration agenda to lead the department.

The president has been searching for someone to take the reins at DHS since the department’s Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan announced his resignation earlier this month after just six months on the job.

Though McAleenan — the fourth DHS chief since Trump took office — implemented some of the president’s more extreme immigration policies and saw a drop in border crossings during his tenure, the official’s relationship with the White House was reportedly rocky from the get-go.

An “isolated” McAleenan admitted to The Washington Post in a recent interview that he’d struggled to control the department, which he viewed as a neutral law enforcement agency, and prevent it from being used as a partisan tool.

With McAleenan out, Trump was expected to tap a replacement whose views were more aligned with his own. The New York Times first reported on Tuesday that the White House was mulling a legal loophole so the president could potentially do just that. The Wall Street Journal corroborated the news.

Trump’s two favored picks for the top DHS job are reportedly Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Both officials, who were nominated to their roles by Trump earlier this year, have publicly defended and championed the president’s hardline immigration agenda.

But according to earlier reports by the Wall Street Journal and Politico, Trump was recently informed by his staff that neither Cuccinelli nor Morgan would be eligible for the role under a federal statute that dictates who can fill cabinet-level positions.

Under the federal Vacancies Act, acting officials taking on cabinet-level jobs must either be next in the line of succession, be confirmed by the Senate or have served for at least 90 days in the past year under the last Senate-confirmed homeland security chief, who in this case is Kirstjen Nielsen.

Nielsen resigned in April.

Neither Cuccinelli, who Politico reported was a favorite of immigration hawks inside the administration, nor Morgan would fulfill the requirements of the statute, Sean Doocey, head of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, reportedly told Trump.

It’s believed that both men would face a difficult path to Senate confirmation. Cuccinelli, for one, has made many enemies in the Senate, having repeatedly clashed with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other incumbent Republicans as president of the anti-establishment Senate Conservatives Fund.

McConnell has previously expressed his “lack of enthusiasm” at the prospect of Cuccinelli’s elevation to head the DHS.

According to the Times, however, the White House is considering a loophole that would allow Trump to bypass the Vacancies Act and potentially pick Cuccinelli or Morgan for the job anyway.

“Under this route, the White House would tap someone to be the assistant secretary of the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, which is vacant, and then elevate that person to be the acting secretary of homeland security,” the Times said, citing an administration official familiar with the deliberations.

“The chief of that office is known as an ‘inferior officer,’ and under an exception in the laws governing appointments, such officials can be appointed to acting positions with the sole approval of the president,” the paper continued.

The Journal elaborated on how this plan would work.

Under a 2017 law, the DHS secretary has the authority to change the department’s line of succession beyond its top three positions, which all require Senate confirmation, the paper said. Those top three posts, however, have been vacant for months.

The White House has therefore considered asking McAleenan to change the line of succession by elevating the assistant secretary of the obscure CWMD office to the number four position, the Journal reported. Since Trump can appoint anyone to the CWMD role without the need of Senate approval, whoever is tapped for the job could then be next in the line of succession for the top DHS role.

“And then the Asst Sec for CWMD can serve … indefinitely as acting DHS Sec,” said Anne Joseph O’Connell, a Stanford law professor who specializes in administrative law and federal bureaucracy, in a Tuesday night Twitter thread.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Dominique’s story of massive Administration corruption, dishonesty, and clear abuse of public funds (we’re paying  Trump and his gang of scofflaw thugs to look for ways around our Constitution and the statutes enacted by Congress!) at the link.

    • Remember, folks, these are the are the same corrupt officials who keep falsely referring to legitimate asylum and refugee laws as “loopholes.”
    • So, given that Trump is thumbing his nose at Mitch McConnell, why doesn’t Congress step in and put an end to this illegal nonsense once and for all?
    • Note that “Big Mac With Lies” is being asked to perform yet one final act of sleazy subservience to knowingly undermine the rule of law on his way out. Will he go down for Trump one final time? He claims he has “no plans to do so.” But, remember, “Big Mac” lies! 
    • The real problem here actually is the Supremes, who in the “Travel Ban Case” signaled that at they had no intention of requiring Trump to operate within the Constitution. Trump has taken this statement of judicial task avoidance to heart and used it to run over the rights of all Americans (not just migrants and asylum seekers).
    • Think how things might be different if right off the bat the Supremes had unanimously applied the Constitution to stop Trump’s misdeeds and had also “just said no” to GOP gerrymandering which threatens our democracy. That’s what “profiles in judicial courage” might have looked like.

PWS

10-31-19

FRESH CLAIMS OF CHILD ABUSE BY DHS IN YOUR “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” – Ever Wonder Why YOUR Tax Dollars Are Being Used To Fund What Medical Professionals Say Is An Inherently Abusive & Potentially Permanently Damaging “Kiddie Gulag?” – And, In Cases Like This, The Alleged Abuse Is Actually Individualized & Beyond the “Regular Damage” Intentionally Inflicted By The Trump DHS, Abetted By Complicit Courts!

Amanda Holpuch
Amanda Holpuch
Reporter
The Guardian

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/25/texas-immigration-detention-guard-assault-child-claims?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

 

A private prison guard physically assaulted a five-year-old boy at an immigration detention center in Texas, according to a complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

She raised her niece like a daughter. Then the US government separated them at the border

 

Read more

Advocates for the boy and his mother expect the family to be deported on Friday and asked the US government to halt the deportation to investigate the alleged assault. The advocates also said the family, who are anonymous for safety reasons, face imminent harm or death in their home country of Honduras.

The alleged assault occurred in late September, when the boy was playing with a guard employed by the private prison company CoreCivic who had played with the boy before.

The five-year-old tried to give the guard a high-five, but accidentally hit him instead, angering the guard, according to a complaint seen by the Guardian. The guard then allegedly grabbed the boy’s wrist “very hard” and would not let go.

“The boy’s mother told the guard to let go and tried to pull her son’s hand away, but the guard kept holding on,” according to the complaint. “He finally released the boy and threatened to punish him if he hit him again.”

The complaint said the boy’s hand was swollen and bruised and he was treated with pain medication and ice at the South Texas family residential center in Dilley, in a remote part of the state about 100 miles from the US-Mexico border.

The Dilley detention center has been controversial since it opened in 2014. Dilley can hold 2,400 people, the most of any family detention center in the country, and in March 2019 held at least 15 babies under one year old.

“Since the assault, the boy is afraid of male officials at the jail, goes to the bathroom in his pants, bites his nails until they bleed, and does not want to play, sleep, eat, or bathe,” the complaint said.

The Guardian contacted US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the homeland security agency which oversees immigration detention, and CoreCivic for comment, but they had not provided a response at the time of publication.

Katy Murdza, advocacy manager for the Dilley Pro Bono Project, which sends volunteers into the Dilley detention center to help families, met with the mother on Wednesday.

Murdza said the mother is fearful of her imminent deportation and is upset about what happened to her son because she had little power to protect him.

“She was unable to prevent someone from hurting her child and while she has tried to report it, she hasn’t received any information on what the results are, so she still does not have control of whether the detention center let that staff member back in,” Murdza said.

“When people are detained and it’s hidden from the public, these sorts of things happen and there are probably many other cases that we have never learned about that could be similar to this,” Murdza added.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said in March 2017 that no migrant child in the custody of their parent should ever be detained because the conditions could harm or retraumatize them.

The US government can release asylum-seeking families in the US while they wait for their cases to be heard in court, but Donald Trump’s administration favors expanding detention and has tried to extend how long children can be held in detention centers.

Katie Shepherd, national advocacy counsel with the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign, filed the complaint on Thursday with the DHS watchdog, the office of the inspector general, and with its office for civil rights and civil liberties.

“The government has a long history demonstrating it’s not capable of holding people in their custody responsibly and certainly not children who require special protections and safeguards,” Shepherd said. “They require a different environment, not one where guards are going to be physically abusing them.”

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

Ever wonder how things might be different if Article III Judges’ children and grandchildren were being treated this way?

 

Please think about situations like this the next time you hear sleazy folks like Kelly, Nielsen, or “Big Mac With Lies,”and other former “Trump toadies” tout their “high-level executive experience” and how “proud” they were of their law enforcement initiatives at DHS and other parts of the Trump kakistocracy! What’s the relationship between abusing children and real law enforcement or protecting our national security? None!

 

Outrageously, these former Trump human rights abusers not only have escaped legal and moral accountability for their knowing and intentional human rights abuses, but they have the audacity to publicly attempt to “leverage” their experience as abusers into “big bucks gigs” in the private sector. How disgusting can it get.

 

Here’s Professor (and ImmigrationProf Blog guru) Bill O. Hing’s “spot on” description of the “despicable John Kelly:”

 

 

Despicable John Kelly – Profits from Detention of Children

By Immigration Prof

 Share

I was recently reminded of how John Kelly, former DHS Secretary and former White House Chief of Staff, is now on the board of Caliburn International: the conglomerate that runs detention facilities for migrant children. He is despicable. This was reported in May:

Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly can now count on a second line of income.

In addition to his attempt at scoring paid speaking gigs, Kelly has now joined the board of Caliburn International, the company has confirmed to CBS News. Caliburn is the parent company of Comprehensive Health Services, which operates four massive for-profit shelters that have government contracts to house unaccompanied migrant children.

Kelly’s new job first became apparent when protesters gathered outside Comprehensive Health Services’ Homestead, Florida facility last month — it’s the biggest unaccompanied migrant child detention center in the country. They, along with a local TV station, spotted Kelly enter the facility, and CBS News later confirmed his affiliation. Read more..

When Kelly was DHS secretary, he began the implementation of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda in the early stages of the administration. Julianne Hing reported on Kelly’s record at DHS on the eve of becoming chief of staff for Trump.

Read here…

bh

October 20, 2019

 

Apparently, Kelly’s USG pension as a retired 4-star General wasn’t enough to support him in the style to which he aspired (perhaps after rubbing shoulders with the Trump family and its circle of grifters). So, he found it necessary to supplement his income off the misery of families and children in the “New American Gulag” he helped establish.

I had accurately predicted that Kelly wouldn’t leave his “service” to Trump with his reputation intact. Nobody does, except those with no reputation to start with.

 

Trump runs a kakistocracy. The private sector should treat the steady stream of spineless senior officials fleeing the Trump Circus accordingly.

Or compare the “achievements” of horrible frauds like these guys, who abused their time in the service of Trump by betraying our country’s most fundamental values, with that of a real American hero like the late Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) who was eulogized today. As President Obama said, “he was ‘honorable’ long before he was elected!”

 

PWS

10-25-19

 

 

 

 

“BIG MAC” SAYS EL SALVADOR IS A “SAFE” COUNTRY – HE LIES! — Mounting “Disappearances” & Government Acquiescence Show Why “Big Mac,” Pompeo, Pence, Trump & Other Corrupt Architects Of Unlawful Policies Designed To Kill Asylum Seekers (For “Deterrence”) Should Be Charged With “Crimes Against Humanity!” – “The legacy of fear in El Salvador is profound. Three decades after the war, there are people who are only now revealing the disappearance of a relative in that conflict. Back then the scourge was death squads. Now it’s gangs and rogue police.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/disappeared-in-el-salvador-amid-a-cold-war-nightmares-return-a-tale-of-one-body-and-three-grieving-families/2019/10/19/d806d19a-e09d-11e9-be7f-4cc85017c36f_story.html

Mary Beth Sheridan
Mary Beth Sheridan
Central America Reporter
Washington Post
Anna-Catherine Brigida
Anna-Catherine Brigida
Freelance Reporter

 

 

Mary Beth Sheridan and

report for the WashPost:

 

 

By

Mary Beth Sheridan and

Anna-Catherine Brigida

Oct. 19, 2019 at 2:58 p.m. EDT

LAS ANIMAS, El Salvador — For Daisy Flores, Day 135 began like so many others. She soaked corn in a bucket on the dirt floor for tortillas. She washed the kids’ clothes in a blue plastic bin. And she thought, again, about that afternoon in May when her 18-year-old son Edwin rode off on his brother’s motorcycle.He still hasn’t come home.

Twenty miles away, in a working-class neighborhood in San Salvador, Karen was plodding through Day 297. She coped by writing notes to her absent husband and taping them to the bedroom wall.

“I send you a little kiss,” she’d scrawled to the man who had disappeared last year while delivering electricity bills. And: “I can’t take it anymore.”

Not far from her, a third family endured another Monday without their loved one. The middle-aged man had gone missing on his way home from his plumbing job. Was it already Day 192? They’d searched everywhere. Nothing.

AD

Three decades after a brutal civil war characterized by never-explained, never-resolved disappearances, Salvadorans are again vanishing.

The phenomenon is resurrecting one of the most chilling elements of Cold War Latin America. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands of people disappeared as right-wing governments — many supported by the United States — fought to extinguish leftist insurgencies.

These days, countries such as Mexico, Brazil and El Salvador are battered by criminal wars. The governments aren’t fighting Marxist guerrillas, but gangs and drug cartels instead.

In Mexico, more than 3,000 clandestine gravesites have been unearthed as families search for the 40,000 missing. In El Salvador, few of the burial sites have been found.

Which is why, when the government discovered one outside the capital last month, TV reporters rushed to the scene — and dozens of families began to wonder if their mystery would finally end.

AD

“I know he’s here,” said the mother of a 14-year-old.

“I am always hoping,” Karen said.

“They haven’t told me anything,” Flores said.

But for one family, things were about to change.

Mexican government says more than 3,000 hidden graves found in the search for the disappeared

A soldier guards a farm in El Limon, where investigators found a clandestine grave with human remains. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)

Disappearances bring back a Cold War nightmare

No one knows exactly how many people in El Salvador have gone missing. National police say at least 2,457 people were reported disappeared in 2018, the most in a dozen years. The attorney general’s office puts the figure at 3,437 — more than the total of homicides. Both numbers are widely seen as undercounts.

For Flores, her son’s disappearance was a new version of an old nightmare. Her two uncles were among the at least 8,000 people who vanished during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war.

That was another era — of death squads, the Reagan Doctrine against communism, guerrillas wielding red banners and AK-47s. El Salvador today is a democracy, with free elections and onetime Marxists in congress.

AD

So why are disappearances back?

One reason is they make it easier for killers to avoid investigation. That goes both for gang members killing their rivals and for cops secretly executing suspects.

“If there is no body, there’s no evidence,” said Marvin Reyes, who spent 20 years in the national police.

But the disappearances also reflect a political strategy. That became evident when El Salvador’s top two gangs reached a government-backed truce in 2012. The homicide rate — among the highest in the hemisphere — plunged. But disappearances rose.

“If violence needed to be carried out [by gangs], it needed to be invisible, to avoid attention from state authorities,” said Angélica Durán Martínez, who studies Latin American violence at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

Analysts suspect the gangs and the government hide corpses to keep the homicide rate down.

AD

It’s so dangerous to police MS-13 in El Salvador that officers are fleeing the country

Karen looks through the window of her bedroom. Her husband went missing in San Salvador last November. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)

Trump administration reaches deal to send asylum seekers to El Salvador in an effort to deter migrants from entering the United States

For victims’ families, the uncertainty is cruel: There’s no resolution, no body to bury, no hope of closure. “We have so much stress,” said Karen, a 39-year-old mother of three.

She and her kids try to keep their minds on work and school, but their bodies betray them: Karen’s insomnia, her son’s overeating, her daughter’s wildly oscillating periods.

She believes her husband was abducted because he refused to hide a gang’s weapons in the family’s home. She is so frightened of retaliation that she spoke on the condition that her last name not be used.

Daisy Flores, 47, also suspects her son was hauled away by gang members.

Edwin was perhaps the most affectionate of her seven kids. The kind of boy who would sneak up behind her at the stove and grab her in a bear hug. Who wasn’t embarrassed to accompany his mama to the market.

AD

She doesn’t think he was a gang member. But: “I can’t tell you what kind of friends he had.” Everyone knew that MS-13 dominated their hamlet, a woodsy patch of small, concrete homes surrounded by fields where campesinos grew corn and raised cows and chickens. Nearby villages were ruled by the rival gang Barrio 18 .

Edwin’s absence is a constant torment. One of his brothers was so terrified that he considered migrating to the United States, like tens of thousands of Salvadorans in recent years.

Whenever Daisy thought of her missing son, she’d lose her appetite.

“I can’t live like this, learning nothing,” she said.

But in recent months, there was a new reason for hope.

Nayib Bukele, the charismatic young mayor of San Salvador, was elected president in February on promises of change.

“They say the president, now, he’s helping people,” Daisy said. “And that if you go to the attorney general, he’s helping to find the disappeared.”

A crusading attorney general promises answers

El Salvador Attorney General Raúl Melara and investigators arrive at the clandestine gravesite, under heavy guard, in Barrio 18 territory. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)

U.S. officials said aid to El Salvador helped slow migration. Now Trump is canceling it.

Attorney General Raúl Melara hopped out of an SUV and strode toward the yellow police tape.

“Is it up here?” he asked.

At 47, Melara was part of El Salvador’s tiny business elite, with a doctorate in law and years of leading the National Association of Private Enterprise. He had swept-back dark hair and wire-framed glasses and favored starched white shirts. But on this afternoon, he had donned jeans, a gray polo shirt and a windbreaker to visit the village outside San Salvador known as El Limon — notorious territory of Barrio 18.

Melara scrambled up a nearly vertical dirt path alongside a dying cornfield, trampling vines and brushing through shoulder-high grass. A quarter-mile up lay a clearing, with mounds of freshly dug dirt and a body.

It had been a man in jeans and work boots.

More bodies would probably be dug up in the coming weeks, Melara told journalists. The new government, he said, was committed to finding the disappeared and punishing the culprits.

AD

“This is a phenomenon that, in past years, was hidden. They didn’t want it to be visible,” he told the TV cameras. “But we’re all seeing it.”

In just a few months, Melara had made some aggressive moves. He’d formed a team of prosecutors to focus on the disappeared. He’d promoted tougher penalties for those involved in the crime. He was working with the police to produce more accurate numbers.

Reform and revival: Gang members find Christianity in El Salvador prisons

Some were skeptical. It wasn’t until 2017 — a quarter-century after the civil war’s end — that the government finally created a commission to search for the disappeared from that conflict. And locating the more recent victims could be politically unpalatable in a country obsessed with the murder rate.

“Finding and identifying these bodies will inevitably imply a rise in the homicide index,” said Celia Medrano of the human-rights group Cristosal .

AD

Arnau Baulenas, legal coordinator of the Human Rights Institute at the José Simeón Cañas University of Central America, said Melara’s initiatives were positive but insufficient.

“The attorney general has a very small team,” he noted. There are so few forensic criminologists that one of them — Israel Ticas — has become a celebrity for helping mothers find the remains of their children.

Melara knows he lacks money, equipment and expertise. It sometimes seems the only thing that’s not in short supply is fear.

“In Mexico, the families of the victims are visible,” he told The Washington Post. “They’ve generated social pressure.”

El Salvador is different. Indeed, at El Limon, as the investigators shoveled dirt, a mother in blue flip-flops approached. Her son vanished a year ago, at age 14.

“I’m going to find him,” she said, weeping, in a TV interview. “Even if he’s not alive, and it’s just to bury him.”

But she begged the cameraman not to identify her. He filmed her feet.

There was no sign of her son. On Day 2 of the dig, though, investigators discovered a tantalizing clue near the body.

It was a wallet. Inside was an ID card.

During Pompeo’s visit, El Salvador’s new president says migrant problem ‘starts with us’

The site where investigators found the remains of a man. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)This pick belongs to Israel Ticas, El Salvador’s most prominent forensic criminologist. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)As does this shovel. Ticas uses both implements to dig up clandestine graves. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)

A discovery brings new hope, and fear

The call came that day. It had been six months since the middle-aged plumbing worker vanished. Now his family was being summoned to the Justice Ministry.

Maybe, at last, they’d have an answer. But they couldn’t even grieve in peace. They begged reporters not to release his identity.

“We don’t want to make a lot of noise,” said one of the man’s relatives. “The neighborhood is really dangerous.”

Another relative was more blunt: “Saying the wrong thing could get you killed.”

The legacy of fear in El Salvador is profound. Three decades after the war, there are people who are only now revealing the disappearance of a relative in that conflict. Back then the scourge was death squads. Now it’s gangs and rogue police.

“There’s silence — exactly like during the armed conflict,” said Eduardo García, who heads Pro-Búsqueda, a group searching for war victims.

Ten days after the discovery at El Limon, investigators still were trying to match the corpse with the DNA submitted by the plumbing worker’s relatives.

The families waited.

For Karen, the news had generated a brief flicker of possibility. Then authorities told her the corpse wasn’t her husband. “I am not going to stop calling the attorney general’s office,” she said. Maybe they’d discover some sign of him, somewhere.

Daisy hasn’t given up, either. In her son’s bedroom, she unlatched a suitcase stuffed with neatly folded shirts and slacks.

“Here are his clothes,” she said. “I’m keeping them here so they don’t get all dusty.”

She has vivid dreams of her son. In one, he was trapped in a room. “I couldn’t get him out,” she said. One day she heard her 3-year-old grandson shouting outside the house. “Edwin is coming,” he yelled, pointing at the dirt path. No one was there.

By Day 145, Daisy was thinking of paying another visit to the attorney general’s office.

“God willing, they’ll have some news soon.”

Daisy Flores touches a favorite shirt of her son, Edwin, at her home. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)

Fred Ramos in San Salvador and Gabriela Martínez in Mexico City contributed to this report.

 

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

Through their lies about conditions in the Northern Triangle and extralegal programs directed against legitimate asylum seekers, folks like “Big Mac with Lies,” “Cooch Cooch,” Pompeo, Miller, and Trump are literally “getting away with murder.” Why?

It’s critically important not to let guys like “Big Mac” attempt to “rehabilitate” their images in the private sector by touting their “management experience” and claiming the “Nazi defense” of “just carrying out my duties” or the totally disingenuous “just carrying out the law.” No other Administration, GOP or Democrat, has even hinted that the dangerous and corrupt countries of the Northern Triangle without functioning asylum systems would be considered “Safe Third Countries” or that our overseas refugee program would essentially be ended at the time of the world’s greatest need (even as we are complicit in genocide and creating more refugees in Syria).

In this respect, it is heartening to see the “pushback” against the disingenuous attempt of former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to “repackage” herself as a “leading female executive.” No, she was a Trump sycophant and a major human rights violator who is lucky not to be in jail. And, the same goes for many of the other current and former “Senior Executives” at DHS.

 

PWS

10-20-19

 

 

“BIG MAC’S” LEGACY IS A PREVIEW OF “COOCH COOCH’S” PLANS FOR FURTHER “WEAPONIZING” DHS AGAINST HUMANITY — Child Abuse, Illegal Actions, Contempt For Court Decrees Likely To Ramp Up Under Spectacularly Unqualified White Nationalist “Statue Of Liberty Denier!”

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2019-10-14/cbp-holds-migrants-longer-than-it-is-supposed-to-lawyer-claims?utm_source=SDUT+Essential+California&utm_campaign=516be9d215-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_15_12_56&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1cebf1c149-516be9d215-84889485

Gustavo Solis
Gustavo Solis
South Bay Reporter
San Diego Union-Tribune

Gustavo Solis reports for the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Customs and Border Protection may be violating the law by holding asylum-seeking children longer than the agency is allowed to, according to lawyers who represent migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

By GUSTAVO SOLIS

OCT. 14, 2019

 

6:29 PM

Lawyers are accusing Customs and Border Protection in San Diego of breaking their own policies and potentially the law by holding migrant children in custody longer than the agency is allowed to.

Under the Flores Settlement Agreement, the federal government generally cannot detain migrant children and their parents together for more than brief periods. The agreement states CBP should not hold children for more than 72 hours and Immigration and Customs Enforcement should not detain them for more than 20 days.

However, asylum-seeking children are routinely held for more than 72 hours in San Diego, according to Erika Pinheiro, a staff attorney with the nonprofit Al Otro Lado.

“We are seeing cases of prolonged detention every day,” she said. “There is no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes they are released the same day, sometimes it’s a week later. We’ve had cases of people in CBP custody for three weeks.”

Many of the people being held in CBP custody are part of the Remain in Mexico program, which forced asylum seekers to live in Mexico while waiting for their cases to be decided in immigration courts.

The latest example involves a 9-year-old asylum seeker and her mother who have been in CBP custody since Oct. 4, as first reported by KPBS.

The mother and family were released from CBP custody Monday afternoon, Pinheiro said.

That case is particularly disturbing because both the child and mother are reportedly sick — suffering from stomach pain and diarrhea — which could be a separate violation of the Flores Settlement Agreement, the lawyer added.

Apart from limiting the amount of time children can be in federal custody, the Flores Settlement Agreement also establishes basic standards of care that include access to medical care.

A CBP spokesman declined to answer specific questions about the 9-year-old’s case or more general questions about Pinheiro’s claims that the agency is violating the law.

The spokesman said that the agency treats those in its custody with, “dignity and respect,” while striving to, “process individuals as expeditiously as possible,” and noted that, “most individuals are in our facilities for 72 hours or less.”

President Trump has called the Flores Settlement Agreement a “loophole,” that allows immigrants to be released from immigration detention centers. In August, the Trump administration unveiled proposed regulations that would replace Flores.

Specifically, the new policies would abolish ICE’s 20-day limit on detaining families and establish new minimum standards of care for people held in detention centers.

According to CBP’s own policies, “detainees should generally not be held for longer than 72 hours in CBP facility and every effort must be made to hold detainees for the least amount of time required for their processing, transfer, release, or repatriation as appropriate and as operationally feasible.”

Immigration attorney Rose Thompson has seen multiple asylum seekers spend more than 72 hours in CBP custody, including a case of a mother and her adult daughter spending 12 days in CBP custody.

Another asylum seeker said the conditions inside CBP custody were so poor that she asked to be sent back to Mexico, Thompson said.

“It’s horrible,” she said. “It’s not an area that’s intended to detain people for longer than 48 or 72 hours because it’s not comfortable. I don’t know even if there are beds.”

An August 2019 report of conditions inside federal custody noted that the average length of detention for asylum seekers here in San Diego was 3.4 days and more than eight percent of migrants surveyed in the report were held in custody for five days or more.

That report, published by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center, noted that more than 10 percent of asylum seekers in custody reported experiencing medical issues in detention.

The Flores Settlement Agreement also requires the federal government to provide basic care for children in custody. It stipulates that minors most be treated with, “dignity, respect, and special concern for their particular vulnerability.”

Similarly, CBP guidelines regarding medical treatment state that officers are required to report illnesses to a supervisor and document them in an electronic system of record while also seeking or providing medical care in a timely manner.

However, Pinheiro claims that CBP is also violating this aspect of both the Flores Agreement and the agency’s internal policies.

She points to the mother and daughter released from detention on Monday as just the latest example of migrants not receiving adequate care while in custody.

“I have never had a client say they saw a doctor while in CBP custody,” she said.

Conditions of migrants in CBP custody made headlines in June, when a group of lawyers in Texas asked a judge to issue a temporary restraining order and a contempt order calling for CBP to “immediately start processing children for release to parents or relatives,” and provide children with, “basic necessities including adequate food, clean water, medical care, and access to sleep.”

 

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

There is a fairly simple solution for the problem of a Government that disobeys the law. Federal Judges should start throwing “Cooch Cooch,” his subordinates, Barr, and the DOJ lawyers advancing untrue and unethical arguments in support of their “clients’” indefensible positions in jail for contempt of court. In the case of lawyers, like “Cooch Cooch,” Barr, and his subordinates they should also be referred to their respective state bars for disbarment proceedings.

Until these thugs are held accountable, the child abuse and other human rights outrages will continue.

 

PWS

10-15-19

 

 

 

 

 

“BIG MAC WITH LIES” OUT AT DHS — Implementing White Nationalist Agenda & Parroting Anti-Immigrant False Narratives Failed To Win Him Favor With Trump, Miller, & Other Neo-Nazi Extremists Running Administration’s All-Out Attack On Due Process & Human Rights!

“BIG MAC WITH LIES” OUT AT DHS — Implementing White Nationalist Agenda & Parroting Anti-Immigrant False Narratives Failed To Win Him Favor With Trump, Miller, & Other Neo-Nazi Extremists Running Administration’s All-Out Attack On Due Process & Human Rights!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

immigrationcourtside.com 

Oct. 11, 2019. Acting Homeland Secretary Kevin McAleenan’s resignation was announced by Trump this evening. It contained the minimal “faint praise” for his efforts and the standard disingenuous bureaucratic BS about wanting to spend more time with the family and pursuing interests in the private sector. At least Big Mac has a family left, unlike those asylum seekers who died seeking legal protection, illegally separated children, abused asylum applicants living on streets in Mexico, and mindlessly deported long-time residents who suffered under his corrupt, yet inept, leadership at DHS. 

Some news reports claim it was Big Mac’s decision. But, that seems unlikely, since he never was on the “Trump/Miller A Team.” It’s more likely that Big Mac actually was forced out by the White Nationalist Cabal lead by neo-Nazi Miller.

While cruel, corrupt, and complicit, Big Mac didn’t appear sufficiently ideologically committed to Miller’s racist restrictionist hate agenda. He certainly willingly abused human rights, but he didn’t do it with the obscene glee and delight in unnecessary human suffering consistently exhibited by Trump, Miller, and “Cooch Cooch.”

The DHS Secretary position has been a parade of horrors for the American Constitution, the Rule of Law, human rights, and human decency. McAleenan, like his predecessors General John Kelly and Kristjen Nielsen, came to the job with an undeserved reputation for professionalism and bipartisanship. In practice, he followed in the footsteps of his predecessors by performing like a typical political hack and Trump sycophant.

Illegal child separations, deaths in substandard detention conditions, misappropriation of funding for the Wall, totally absurd and dishonest “Safe Third Country” agreements with some of the most dangerous and “asylum free” countries in the world, abuse of legal asylum seekers under the “Let ‘em Die In Mexico” program, disrespect for and hindrance of attorney representation, bogus claims about failures to appear, expansion of the “New American Gulag,” illegal regulations aimed at indefinite detention of families and children, trashing the U.S. Refugee Program, illegal attempts to impose discriminatory “public change” requirements, illegal use of unreliable information to apprehend individuals, false imprisonment of U.S. citizens, mindless deportation of long-term residents who were actually benefitting America, tremendous backlogs of applications for legal stratus, overloading the Immigration Courts with improvidently commenced cases, schemes to discourage legal immigrants, insults to Federal Judges, lack of candor in dealing with Congress, and disrespect for Congressional Representatives are just some of the abominations that took place on Big Mac’s watch.

Indeed, in the past month lower Federal Courts have slammed as illegal at least five of the racist gimmicks that Big Mac and the DHS have tried to foist on the migrant community at the urging of Miller, “Cooch Cooch,” and the other White Nationalists. Some of Big Mac’s most egregious actions came in connection with the “in your face” regulations that DHS & DOJ presented to Judge Dolly Gee in the Flores litigation. Those regulations proposed unlimited abuses to be inflicted on detained children in unregulated facilities during indefinite detention, which was just the opposite of what Judge Gee had ordered. The DOJ’s unethical arguments in support of Big Mac’s indefensible position left Judge Gee incredulous.

Undoubtedly, he will be replaced by someone with a more overt ideology of racism and hate. Neo-Nazis like Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli, now illegally serving as head of USCIS, or some of the DHS underlings who have been competing for Miller’s attention with public statements of cruelty, anti-immigrant sentiment, and disrespect for the law are strong possibilities. Trump has a penchant for finding and selecting the worst that humanity has to offer to serve him. 

Indeed, it’s quite likely that Trump’s next choice will be so spectacularly unqualified and unpalatable, even to some in the GOP (see, “Cooch Cooch”), that “Moscow Mitch” might balk at pushing the nomination through. But, since Trump prefers to flaunt the Constitution and to operate with “acting toadies” anyway, that probably won’t make any difference. 

The Trump Administration is a kakistocracy. So, expect the worst, but be prepared for something far more grotesque and absurd. In the meantime, Big Mac should be remembered for the laws he broke, his attacks on human rights and human decency, his intellectual dishonesty, his immorality, his cowardice in the face of tyranny, the cruel and unnecessary pain he inflicted on legal asylum seekers invoking our laws, and the many lives that he needlessly ruined in service to the worst and most unqualified President in U.S. history.

PWS

10-11-19

DIALOGUE? – Shot In The Head In Guatemala, He Sought Legal Refuge In the U.S. – What He Found At DHS Was Something Quite Different — “Some days, Rolando would bleed out of his eyes, ears and nose. Other days, he’d lie on the floor, dizzy or barely conscious.”

Sam Levin
Sam Levin
L.A. Reporter
The Guardianj

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/08/us-immigration-ice-asylum-seeker-detention-rolando?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

Sam Levin reports for The Guardian:

 

This asylum seeker was shot in the head. Ice jailed him and gave him ibuprofen

US immigration

Rolando, an indigenous man who survived a shooting and torture in Guatemala, was suffering blinding headaches when he arrived in the US

Sam Levin in San Diego

 @SamTLevin

 

 Email

Wed 9 Oct 2019 01.00 EDT

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Some days, Rolando would bleed out of his eyes, ears and nose. Other days, he’d lie on the floor, dizzy or barely conscious.

But every time the jailed Guatemalan asylum seeker sought help from a doctor, staff at his US immigration detention center offered the same treatment: ibuprofen.

The 27-year-old migrant survived a gunshot wound to the head in Guatemala and was suffering from excruciating headaches and possible brain hemorrhaging when he presented himself at the San Ysidro port of entry earlier this year. US authorities responded by isolating him in solitary confinement and jailing him for months at the Otay Mesa detention center in San Diego, giving him sporadic access to medical staff and medicine, his records show.

“I feared I was going to die,” Rolando, who asked not to use his full name due to threats against his life, told the Guardian. “I thought in this country, there is really good medical care … but I wasn’t getting any treatment.”

Rolando made it out of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention alive, but his battle isn’t over. He’s still fighting to get asylum, based on the physical torture and persecution he fled as an indigenous Guatemalan. Every step of his journey has collided with the Trump administration’s aggressive attacks and expanding restrictions on migrants and refugees.

Now, the White House is moving to block Central Americans like Rolando from presenting their cases at the border, a move that experts agree will have devastating and fatal consequences.

“I came to the United States because I’d like to at least make it to 30,” Rolando said.

An orphan who escaped death: ‘I don’t have anyone left’

When he met the Guardian on a recent morning, Rolando carried the charger for his ankle monitor, which asylum seekers awaiting hearings are frequently forced to wear. He’s often worried about it running out of battery.

Seated inside the small legal services office of Al Otro Lado, above a pizza shop in San Diego, Rolando looked down and wove a bracelet with his hands as he talked, a practice he developed inside detention to pass the time and distract from his health problems. His native Mayan language is Qʼeqchiʼ, but he talks to his attorney in Spanish, which he was forced to speak in jail.

Rolando was born into chaos in 1992 in the Petén region of northern Guatemala. His father had been a member of the armed forces but resigned and became a supporter of the pro-indigenous movement. He was killed as a result, just after Rolando’s birth, and his mother died soon after “from the trauma”, he said.

He was an orphan at age one: “My brothers and sisters couldn’t take care of me … and they gave me to neighbors.”

Rolando became homeless and later a frequent target of violence by the people who he believes killed his father. Police tortured him when he sought help. According to his asylum application, that included placing nails in his hand and foot and burning his arms with hot knives.

In 2016, while at a soccer game, assailants shot Rolando in the head and left him with a written death threat that referenced his father’s murder. He survived, was forced into hiding and was unable to get medical attention. He said he had to remove the bullet himself. Police later refused to help and assaulted him, according to his file.

“I don’t have anyone left,” he said, adding that fleeing to the US was his only option: “Giving me an opportunity to be here is giving me an opportunity to stay alive.”

He escaped to Mexico and joined a caravan last year, eventually making it to Tijuana. Then the waiting began.

As part of a vast crackdown on migration, border patrol under Trump has instituted a policy known as “metering”, which limits the number of people who can apply for asylum each day. In Tijuana, this has led to a waitlist that has more than 10,000 people, with a few dozen allowed to cross daily, creating a wait time of roughly six to nine months, lawyers estimate.

Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy has also resulted in nearly 50,000 migrants from Central America being returned to Mexico while their cases move forward. That has translated to overcrowded shelters, tent encampments and a struggle to access medical and legal services.

It also leaves migrants like Rolando vulnerable to the same violence they were escaping in their home countries. Rolando said he was beaten in Tijuana, suffering injuries to both his arms and forcing him to wear a cast.

In February, he was finally able to enter the US through the San Ysidro port of entry. In his initial processing, authorities took his injured arms – and placed him in handcuffs.

In detention, in agony and without treatment

The latest major Trump resignations and firings

 

Read more

Once he was in custody, Rolando’s health problems worsened. More than 150 pages of Ice’s medical records paint a picture of repeated health crises and his persistent struggle to get help.

Rolando regularly was bleeding from his eyes, ears and nose – the cause of which was unclear to doctors but might have been related to his gunshot wound. Rolando said he was bleeding soon after he was taken into custody and that as a result, he was placed in isolation: “They said, ‘We don’t know what’s wrong with you.’”

It’s unclear how many days he spent in solitary, but he said he had difficulty getting any treatment while isolated, and that he would spend all day in a small cell with no window to the outside. Staff would pass him meals through a small slat.

“I didn’t even know what was night and what was day,” he recalled. “I was sick already, but I was starting to get worse … Nobody was coming to see me.”

Once in the general population of Otay Mesa, Rolando continued to suffer periodic bleeding, and at times his head pain was so severe, he would lose consciousness, or he would lie on the ground so that he would not injure himself if he passed out.

Rolando would frequently sign up for “sick call” to visit medical staff, but he said the appointments did little to help. Records show that on one visit, a nurse told him to drink more water and “wash hair/head thoroughly”.

Eating the facility’s meats also started to make him sick, but he often struggled to get alternative food options, even though the medical staff said he needed to change his diet. Sometimes he made bracelets and sold them to other detainees so he could buy instant soup, he recalled.

The records show that the main form of treatment Rolando received was prescriptions for ibuprofen – in increasingly high doses as his pain worsened. Sometimes, he said, he ran out of ibuprofen and had difficulty getting a refill. He also received an ointment for his eyes.

Anne Rios, his attorney with Al Otro Lado, said she was stunned when she was finally able to get a copy of his medical records: “It seems unbelievable, almost too absurd to be true, but it’s not only documented, it’s the government’s own records.”

By August, Ice had twice refused to release him while his asylum case was pending even after dozens of medical visits, including multiple to the emergency room. One ER doctor had written that he was a “serious patient that presents with significant complexity of risk”, adding that he might have some kind of brain hemorrhage.

He had no criminal history or immigration violations.

Rolando grew increasingly desperate. At one point, he considered giving up and deporting himself back to Guatemala – a certain death, Rios said, recalling him telling her on one visit: “‘I’m gonna die here or in Guatemala, so I would at least rather go to my home country … I just can’t take it any more.’”

After a third request by Rolando’s attorneys, a judge ruled that he could be released – but only if he paid a $5,000 bond.

“For many, $5,000 might as well be $5m,” said Rios. “They come here with nothing, no resources, no family members, absolutely no way to pay for that.”

Rolando was only able to get out when Al Otro Lado found a way to cover the amount through its bond fund.

Ice declined to comment on Rolando’s case, citing his privacy. A spokeswoman said “everyone in our custody receives timely access to medical services and treatment”, including a full health assessment with two weeks of custody, daily sick calls and 24-hour emergency care. A dietician ensures detainees’ “unique health (included allergies), dietary, and religious needs are met” for each meal, and all food “must be visually appealing, palatable, and taste good”.

A final plea: ‘I followed the rules and I am telling the truth’

Rolando struggles to understand why the US has treated him like a criminal: “I followed all the rules and I asked for admission.”

Trump, however, is working to make the asylum process much more restrictive than what Rolando has experienced. His administration passed a policy in July banning migrants from seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border if they came from another country, saying they must first seek protections elsewhere.

 

Rolando was released in September and is awaiting an asylum hearing scheduled for next week. He said he wanted to speak out because he was particularly upset about the treatment he saw other detainees face at Otay Mesa. Some were disabled and unable to walk to the cafeteria to get food, he said, noting that he got reprimanded when he tried to bring them food.

“They abuse their power with us,” he said.

Otay Mesa has repeatedly faced accusations of severe medical neglect. Last week, a detainee died in custody.

Rolando said he wanted the government to understand that people seek asylum because they have no other option – and that officials should believe him: “When you’re asking for asylum, you’re swearing to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I am telling the truth.”

 

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

Following the rules and telling the truth seems to make little difference these days in an America where the Administration pointedly does neither, and the institutions that are supposed to enforce the rule of law and insure at least a modicum of accountability from the Executive Branch have largely gone “belly cup.”

A prerequisite to any true “dialogue” would be an end to MPP (“Let ‘Em Die in Mexico”), cancellation of the bogus “first country” regs and the illegal “Safe Third Country Agreements” with the failed states of the Northern Triangle, and an end to inhumane and intentionally coercive detention. At that point, there could be at least the beginnings a “true dialogue” on how to work within existing law to solve Southern Border issues, rather than intentionally aggravating them! And that could eventually lead to the necessary legislative changes to make our immigration laws more sensible, generous, due-process-oriented, and in the real national interest (rather than the exclusive interests of a White Nationalist minority).

 

PWS

 

10-09-19

 

BIG MAC SHOULD HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO PRESENT HIS LITANY OF LIES & TOTALLY DISINGENUOUS INVITATION TO “DIALOGUE” (ABOUT THE ENFORCEMENT PROGRAMS IMPLEMENTED BY DHS WITHOUT ANY PUBLIC “DIALOGUE” WHATSOEVER & AGAINST THE OVERWHELMING ADVICE OF PROFESSIONALS & EXPERTS, EVEN AT DHS)  — Then, He Should Have Been Questioned About His Knowingly False Restrictionist Narratives & Human Rights Abuses! – Here’s What He REALLY Stands For, & It’s Got Nothing To Do with “Dialogue!” — “This president has helped create a humanitarian crisis,”. . . . People are living in squalor.”

Molly Hennessy Fiske
Molly Hennessy Fiske
Staff Writer
LA Times

 

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=d5727889-43e3-4481-bedb-dd0055e280af&v=sdk

 

Molly Hennessy-Fiske reports for the LA Times from the Southern Border:

 

. . . .

 

In addition to the asylum seekers returned to Mexico to await their hearings, more than 26,000 are on waiting lists to enter U.S. border crossings and claim asylum, according to Human Rights Watch. Many on the lists are from Central America, but in recent weeks, large groups have been arriving from rural areas of Mexico’s interior, fleeing drug cartel violence.

The camp at the foot of the bridge in Matamoros has grown to hold more than a thousand migrants, most camped in scores of tents. Many have children and babies, and meals and water are sporadic, provided by volunteers.

“This Remain in Mexico program is a complete disaster,” Castro said after touring the camp next to the Rio Grande, where he saw migrants bathing near half a dozen crosses honoring those who drowned this summer while trying to make the dangerous crossing. “People should not be living like this.”

As Castro left the river, migrants standing in the reeds called to him in Spanish:

“Our children are sick!” said one man.

“We’ve been here for months!” said another.

“Our next court date isn’t until January!” said a woman.

“I’m sorry,” Castro replied in Spanish. “I know you’re suffering.”

Castro, who served as Housing and Urban Development secretary and San Antonio mayor, isn’t the first candidate to join asylum seekers at the border. In late June, former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas met with migrants returned to Mexico at a shelter in Juarez. Days later, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker accompanied five pregnant women in the Remain in Mexico program across the bridge from Juarez to El Paso.

Castro called on the Trump administration to end the Remain in Mexico policy, noting that he had met several vulnerable migrants who should not have been returned, including a woman who was seven months pregnant.

“This president has helped create a humanitarian crisis,” he said. “People are living in squalor.”

By 5 p.m., all 12 asylum seekers who had crossed with Castro had been returned to Mexico.

“I feel so defeated,” said Rey, a 35-year-old Cuban who had joined the group only to find himself back in Matamoros by evening.

Dany was upset when she was returned to the camp at dusk. As migrants gathered, she told them that the U.S. official who had interviewed her by phone had been unsympathetic.

“I told him I was in danger in Matamoros. That didn’t matter to him,” she said. “There’s no asylum for anyone … the system is designed to end with us leaving.

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

Read Molly’s complete report at the link.

 

LGBTQ, sick, disabled, pregnant, the cruelty of the “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico” program touted by Big Mac and his flunkies knows no bounds.

 

One can only hope that someday, somewhere, in this world or the next, “Big Mac” and his fellow toadies carrying out the Trump/Miller unprecedented program of intentional human right abuses against the most vulnerable individuals (and actions directed against the pro bono lawyers and NGOs courageously trying to help them) will have to answer for their “crimes against humanity.”

 

How do you have a “dialogue” with someone like “Big Mac” whose insulting, condescending, false, and “in your face” prepared remarks, that he never got to give at Georgetown, in fact invited no such thing.

 

You can read Big Mac’s prepared compendium of lies that he never got to deliver here:

 

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2019/10/07/statement-department-homeland-security-following-acting-secretary-s-appearance

 

Here was my immediate reaction:

 

He falsely minimizes the powerful push factors, maximizes the pull factors (which his “maliciously incompetent” enforcement has contributed to), blames the legal system (the Constitution and refugee protection statutes that implement international treaties) and Congress (that is, Democrats, who have stood up for human rights), lies about failures to appear (this should be particularly galling to the many members of the Georgetown Community who have taken part in pro bono activities and know that pro bono representation actually solves that problem), ignores all reasonable solutions, and engages in mindless (and expensive) enforcement that maximizes the ability of oppressors while dehumanizing and killing some of the victims and virtually guaranteeing that there never will be a humane outcome. Seems like the “All-American solution” to me.

 

That being said, I wish folks had heard him out and asked him questions about his misstatements and lies during the Q&A. I actually would have liked to hear his answer when confronted by the studies that show that almost everyone who has a chance to be represented shows up for the hearings and why he is blocking, rather than facilitating, one of the key solutions — pro bono representation?  Why it’s OK to negotiate Safe Third Country agreements with countries that essentially are war zones and have no functioning asylum systems? Why he claimed that detention conditions were improving and more detention was necessary when his own Inspector General said just the opposite? Why he took a contemptuous position before Judge Dolly Gee that indefinite detention of families addressed her requirements, when it clearly didn’t? Why he blamed Judges and laws for problems he has either caused or aggravated? There wouldn’t have been enough time, I suppose.

 

Talking about free speech, it’s not like the Trump Administration engages in any type of dialogue with the public or professional experts before unilaterally changing policies. And, it’s not like they provide any forum for opposing views. Indeed, even U.S. Legislators, Judges, State Officials, and their own Asylum Officers who speak out against the Administration’s biased and wrong-headed views are routinely attacked, threatened, slandered, mocked, and denigrated.

 

Yesterday, I did a Skype training session for D.C. Affordable Law. There, I actually had a “dialogue” with those attorneys courageously and selflessly trying to help asylum applicants through the unnecessarily complicated and intentionally hostile environment in Immigration Court and at the BIA that Big Mac and his propaganda machine along with scofflaws Sessions, Barr, and McHenry have created. There are many “winnable” asylum cases out there, even after the law has intentionally been misconstrued and manipulated by the Trump Administration in a racist attempt to disqualify all asylum seekers from Central America.

One thing we all agreed upon was that nobody, and I mean nobody, without competent representation and a chance to gather necessary documentation would have any chance of getting asylum under the current hostile environment.  That means that when “Big Mac” and others tout “immediate decisions at the border” (sometimes by untrained Border Patrol Agents, no less, rather than professional Asylum Officers) what they REALLY are doing is insuring that few individuals have access to the necessary pro bono counsel and legal resources necessary to actually win an asylum case under today’s conditions. That’s an intentional denial of Constitutional, statutory, and human rights by Big Mac!

Then, Big Mac has the audacity and intellectual dishonesty to use bogus statistics generated by a system he and others have intentionally manipulated so as to reject or not even hear very legitimate asylum claims as “proof” that most of those claims are “without merit.” While I’m afraid it’s too late for those killed, tortured, or suffering because of Big Mac’s wrongdoing, I certainly hope that someday, someone does an assessment of all the improperly rejected, denied, and blocked asylum, withholding, CAT, SIJS, T,  and U claims that should have been granted under an honest interpretation of asylum law and a fair adjudication and hearing process.

A real dialogue on solving the Southern Border would start with how we can get the necessary professional adjudicators and universal representation of asylum seekers working to make the system function fairly and efficiently. And that probably would mean at least 20% to 25% “quick grants” of strong cases that would keep them out of the Immigration Court and Courts of Appeals systems without stomping on anyone’s rights. It would also enable asylees to quickly obtain work authorization and start making progress toward eventual citizenship and full integration so that they could maximize their great potential contributions to our society.

For the money we are now wasting on cruel, inhuman, and ultimately ineffective enforcement gimmicks being promoted by “Big Mac,” we could actually get a decent universal representation program for asylum seekers up and running. Under a fair system, rejections would also be fair and as expeditious as due process allows, making for quicker and more certain returns of those who are not qualified and perhaps even sending a more understandable and acceptable “message” as to who actually qualifies under our refugee and asylum systems.

It’s highly unlikely that there will ever be any real dialogue on immigration and human rights as long as Trump and neo-Nazi Stephen Miller are “driving the train” and “Big Mac with Lies” and other like him are serving as their “conductors” on the “Death Express.” Trump and his policies have intentionally “poisoned the well” so that debate and constructive solutions are impossible. As long as we start, as Big Mac does, with a litany of lies and fabrications, and reject all truth and knowledge, there is no starting point for a debate.

 

PWS

10-08-19

 

 

 

 

EVEN AS “BIG MAC WITH LIES” SPEAKS @ GEORGETOWN LAW, SAN DIEGO RALLY EXPOSES WHAT HE REALLY STANDS FOR – Human Rights Abuses Targeting Women, Children, & Other Vulnerable Individuals Who Dare To Assert Their Human Rights Against A White Nationalist, Scofflaw Administration Seeking To Overturn American Democracy!

David Garrick
David Garrick
City Hall Reporter
San Diego Union-Tribune

David Garrick reports in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/san-diego/story/2019-10-06/san-ysidro-rally-focuses-on-treatment-of-immigrant-women-girls-at-border?utm_source=SDUT+Essential+California&utm_campaign=f19a0dcb9b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_07_01_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1cebf1c149-f19a0dcb9b-84889485

San Ysidro rally focuses on treatment of immigrant women, girls at border

Critics say detention centers deny proper health care, feminine hygiene products

Activists from across the county held a rally Sunday in San Ysidro to highlight the inhumane treatment of immigrant women and girls held at detention centers across the nation’s southern border.

Waving signs saying “stop racism now” and “respect women of color,” the activists chanted “classrooms not cages” and “when immigrant rights are under attack, what do we do — stand up and fight back.”

Gathered on a baseball field near the international border and the Otay Mesa Detention Center, the roughly 60 activists listened to a series of speakers describe reports of poor treatment that women and girls are receiving in detention centers.

“The punishing conditions imposed by the Department of Homeland Security, ICE and Customs and Border Protection on immigrants at the southern border continue to threaten the lives of tens of thousands of vulnerable persons,” said Toni Van Pelt, president of the National Organization for Women, which organized the rally.

Van Pelt said there are an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 immigrants in detention centers along the border and that many are experiencing intolerable conditions.

Women and girls, she said, have experienced sexual assaults, harassment and limited access to feminine hygiene products. In addition, she said they are often not provided interpreters, reproductive health care or mental health care.

Van Pelt drew angry shouts of support from the crowd when she described women and girls being forced to continue wearing soiled undergarments because they aren’t provided proper hygiene products.

Government officials have acknowledged overcrowding and other problems at the detention centers.

President Donald Trump has said conditions are better than they were under the Obama administration. But many reports from immigrant and human rights groups dispute that.

Dolores Huerta, an 89-year-old icon in the feminist and labor movement, was the featured speaker at the rally.

Huerta, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, led the crowd in a chant of “Who’s got the power, we’ve got the power — feminist power.”

She also said it’s crucial for activists and others concerned about racism and poor treatment of immigrants to become as politically active as possible.

“There is only one way to change the situation,” she said. “We’ve got to get active out there in these next elections. We are the only ones who can make it happen — we can’t rely on anyone else.”

Among those at the rally were two first-year students at Cal State San Marcos.

“We want people to know that everyone deserves rights, not just one specific group,” said Vanessa Span, a Latina who grew up in Redding.

Kimi Herrera, also Latina, said our country was founded on immigration so it’s important to continue to respect the process.

“Coming from a background of immigrants, I think this is something really important to bring attention to,” said Herrera, who grew up in Glendora.

The rally took place at the Cesar Chavez Recreation Center in San Ysidro.

 

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

The true “national emergency” at our Southern Border is the Trump Administration’s attack, led by “Big Mac With Lies,” on our legal asylum system, Due Process, and human dignity. Nowhere is that more evident than within the deadly “New American Gulag” administered by Big Mac for Trump & Stephen Miller. How many more innocent women and girls will be abused by Trump &  “Big Mac With Lies” before they are rightfully removed from office?

PWS

10-07-19