SCOFFLAW PREZ STOPPED: Federal Judges Thwart Trump’s Racist Plan To Undermine Census!🗽⚖️

Tara Bahrampour
Tara Bahrampour
Demographics Reporter
Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/trump-census-documents/2020/09/10/6c2bdcce-f3a0-11ea-bc45-e5d48ab44b9f_story.html

By Tara Bahrampour

September 10 at 6:47 PM ET

A federal court on Thursday blocked a memorandum signed by President Trump seeking to exclude undocumented immigrants from being counted in the census for apportionment saying such action would violate the statute governing congressional apportionment.

A special three-judge panel out of New York wrote that the president’s argument that undocumented immigrants should not be counted runs afoul of a statute saying apportionment must be based on everyone who is a resident of the U.S. The judges found that all residents must be counted for apportionment purposes regardless of their legal status.

The ruling came hours after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to produce internal documents connected to its sudden decision to end the 2020 Census count a month earlier than the Census Bureau had planned.

. . . .

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

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

The problem here is a barrage of frivolous, racist, unlawful conduct by the Trump regime. What if the Supremes had consistently stood up against Trump’s illegal White Nationalist agenda starting with the Travel Ban cases?

At least for now, this is a major setback for the regime’s “Dred Scottification” agenda!

PWS

09-10-20

🏴‍☠️☠️👎🏻🤮CONSTITUTION IN RUINS: Egged On By Feckless Supremes, Trump Rolls Out Another Racist Attack On Our Constitution & Our Nation By Declaring Undocumented Residents “Non-Persons!” — The “Dred Scottification” Of People Of Color By Trump & His Supremes Continues To Bear Ugly Fruit! 

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-executive-order-immigrants-redistricting_n_5f1709e0c5b615860bb7f415

The Constitution says the congressional apportionment should be based on the “whole number of persons” in each state. But the president wants to change that.

Reuters, By Alexandra Alper & Nick Brown

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a memorandum that would prevent migrants who are in the United States illegally from being counted when U.S. congressional voting districts are redrawn in the next round of redistricting.

U.S. Census experts and lawyers say the action is legally dubious. In theory, it would benefit Trump’s Republican Party by eliminating the largely non-white population of migrants in the U.S. illegally, creating voting districts that skew more Caucasian.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

The Supremes allowed Trump to rewrite the immigration and refugee laws without benefit of legislation.

They allowed him to abrogate the due process clause of our Constitution for persons of color who had the bad fortune to be asylum seekers or immigrants.

They allowed the GOP to revise the Constitution and abrogate the Voting Rights Act to make it more difficult for minorities to vote and to insure that their votes counted for less than their White counterparts.

Now, empowered by Supreme complicity, Trump is going for yet another “do it yourself” Constitutional rewrite.

We have only ourselves to blame for allowing unqualified Justices like the “JR Five” to gain control of our highest Court — what was supposed to be our “final bastion” against Executive tyranny, but has instead become an enabler of “Dred Scottification” — that is “de-humanization” of large segments of our population — disproportionately people of color. Another term used for the Supremes’ majority’s defective performance in the face of Trump’s lawlessness is “Constitutional Castration” (assuming, arguendo, that the Constitution is “male”). Either way, it’s an ugly process.

It’s worth noting that enslaved Africans Americans, those originally subjected to “Dred Scottification,” and still feeling the adverse effects of the Supremes “renewal” of the concept, were counted for “3/5 of a person” under the original Constitution. Undocumented individuals, according to Trump, count for zero, even though they have consistently been counted in the past.

Of course the difference is that the original “3/5 rule” was designed to benefit the racists of the post-colonial South. The “new zero rule” is intended to benefit GOP racists of today.

The “Census case” actually went to the Supremes once. It’s the one where Wilbur Ross perjured himself. Rather than earning disbarment for the DOJ Attorneys who brought that mess before the Court and sanctions against the Administration, Trump got only a mild rebuke from Roberts. Heck, some Justices actually voted in favor of the regime’s racist inspired fraud!

In the process of soft-peddling the Administration’s gross misconduct and intellectual dishonesty, the Supremes’ majority also engaged in a largely fictional “historical analysis” deemed by commentators from the Brennan Center to be “preposterous.” 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/citizenship-questions-are-not-historically-normal/593014/

That’s strong language. But, actually, it comes to mind frequently with respect to the Roberts’ Court’s various attempts to defeat equal justice and diminish the humanity of non-white -populations under our laws.

This latest Trump memo makes it crystal clear that the original subterfuge for the “citizenship question” — that it was necessary to enforce civil rights laws — utterly laughable — was a complete fraud on the Court. But, don’t expect that exercise of bad faith (“death” to any private party before the Supremes) to make any difference to Trumpian Justices who long ago sold out nation and our Constitution along with their own humanity and integrity.  

This latest systemic failure by all three branches could well leave future Congressional apportionments and elections in chaos. 

A better America for all requires better, more intellectually honest and morally courageous Justices who stand for the Constitution and against racism in all forms, be it promoted by the Executive, Congress, or their fellow judges. Unhappily, we’re a long way from there right now!

Due Process Forever! 

PWS

07-21-20

THE NDPA STRIKES BACK:  ACLU Sues In DC To End The Regime’s Bogus “Safe Third Country” Abuse Of Human Rights & The Rule Of Law! — Regime’s Actions Could Be Characterized As “Crimes Against Humanity!”

Camilo Montoya-Galvez
Camilo Montoya-Galvez
CBS Journalist

https://apple.news/ALbDFozeyQemj7zT-zO0VUA

 

Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports for CBS News:

 

 ACLU files lawsuit to halt Trump policy of sending asylum-seekers to Guatemala

Washington — The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday mounted the first legal challenge against the Trump administration’s policy of sending migrants who seek protection at the U.S.-Mexico border to Guatemala, a country with a skeletal asylum regime that has seen an exodus of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens in the past two years because of extreme poverty and endemic violence.

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks to halt the implementation of a controversial asylum agreement with the Guatemalan government. Under the deal forged last summer, the U.S. has sent more than 150 asylum-seekers from Honduras and El Salvador to Guatemala, denying them access to America’s asylum system and requiring them to choose between seeking refuge in the Central American country or returning home.

The agreement, the ACLU said in its 54-page complaint, amounts to “a deadly game of musical chairs that leaves many desperate asylum-seekers without a safe haven, in violation of U.S. and international law.”

“If this rule remains in effect, it means that the U.S. can completely wash their hands of any responsibility to provide safe haven for people fleeing persecution,” Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s top immigration litigator, told CBS News. “It would end asylum at the southern border, plain and simple.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told CBS News that while it cannot comment on litigation, “the U.S. Government and the Government of Guatemala remain committed to the asylum cooperative agreement and stand behind the integrity of the program.”

For lead plaintiff, returning home isn’t an option

As of last week, 158 Honduran and Salvadoran migrants have been rerouted by the U.S. to Guatemala, including dozens of families and at least 43 children, according to the Guatemalan migration institute. Nine people initially chose to request protection in Guatemala, but five of them have since abandoned their claims, the institute said. The rest have asked for help returning to their home countries.

The lead plaintiff in the ACLU’s lawsuit is a gay man from El Salvador who was sent by the U.S. to Guatemala after asking for asylum at the southern border. The man, identified only by the initials U.T., says he was sexually abused as a child, disowned by his family because of his sexuality and threatened by a gang member who solicited him for sex in El Salvador.

When he arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border, he was told he would be sent to Guatemala. He told Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials, who make the initial determination about whether migrants should be subject to the U.S.-Guatemala deal, that he feared being sent to Guatemala. His concerns fell on deaf ears.

He was then referred for an interview with an asylum officer and again expressed fear of persecution in Guatemala. Nonetheless, he was deported to the country shortly afterward.

During these types of interviews, migrants must affirmatively say they fear being sent to Guatemala. Even if they do, they have to meet a fear of persecution threshold that is much higher than that of the typical “credible fear” interviews most asylum-seekers at the southern border are subject to.

The ACLU says the man applied for asylum once in Guatemala, but officials there advised him to seek protection in Mexico instead, since Guatemala is “unsafe for gay people.” The State Department warns of “societal discrimination” and police abuse against LGBTI people in Guatemala.

Returning to El Salvador is not an option for the asylum-seeker, who is currently in Mexico, since he “fears that he will be attacked or killed for his sexual orientation if he tries to live openly as a gay man,” according to the ACLU.

“A way for the U.S. to simply pass the buck”

There are five other individual plaintiffs in the ACLU’s lawsuit, including a woman and two families who were sent to Guatemala by the U.S. The Tahirih Justice Center and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, two organizations that provide legal services to asylum-seekers, are also named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit — which the National Immigrant Justice Center, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies and Human Rights First joined the ACLU in filing.

The group is asking the court to prohibit officials from enforcing a regulation the administration unveiled in November to implement the Guatemala deal and similar agreements that the U.S. brokered with Honduras and El Salvador which have not yet been implemented. The suit also challenges a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) guidance document for asylum officers carrying out the agreement.

The ACLU alleged that both measures violate U.S. statutes designed to prevent officials from sending asylum-seekers to places where they may face persecution and that provide legal safeguards for migrants the government seeks to deport quickly. The group also said the policy violates administrative law, since the administration did not give the public a chance to comment on it and failed to provide “reasoned explanations” for dramatically changing the asylum system at the southern border.

The administration maintains that its agreements with Guatemala and the other countries in Central America’s Northern Triangle will foster the “distribution” of asylum claims among nations in the region and provide protection to migrants “closer to home.” But the ACLU says the so-called “Asylum Cooperative Agreements” represent a dramatic departure from the “safe third country” provision in U.S. law that the administration is using to defend their legality.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law an act that codified the “safe third country” concept, allowing the U.S. to enter into bilateral or multilateral agreements to send asylum-seekers to third countries, as long as the U.S. government made sure those asylum-seekers would not face persecution based on a protected ground under U.S. asylum law and would have access to a “full and fair” process to request protection in those nations.

Gelernt and his group believe the accords with Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras violate this law because the countries do not have fully functioning asylum regimes, unlike Canada — the only nation which has an official “safe third country” agreement with the U.S.

“There is no way the administration can plausibly claim that Guatemala can provide a safe, fair and full asylum process. This administration has simply thumbed their nose at Congress,” Gelernt said, noting that Canada, a developed country with a robust asylum system, is a safe place for refugees.

“This is not a way to provide people with a fair asylum process but a way for the U.S. to simply pass the buck,” he added.

Guatemala has experienced moderate economic growth since the end of a bloody civil war in the 1990s, but it continues to grapple with high homicides rates, drug trafficking, political instability and widespread poverty, especially among its large indigenous communities in the Western highlands of the country. Only about 262 migrants sought refuge in Guatemala in 2018, according to the United Nations.

The ACLU also noted in its lawsuit that the Trump administration hasn’t publicly revealed any designations certifying that the Northern Triangle countries have the capacity to take in migrants rerouted there by the U.S., despite a requirement that such a certification be included in the government regulation to enforce the asylum agreements.

Sweeping implications for asylum-seekers

All three agreements the U.S. made last year suggest that they could grant the U.S. the power to reroute most asylum-seekers from any country in the world, barring a few exceptions, like unaccompanied children, to Central America. The ACLU underscored the sweeping nature of the deals in its suit, saying that in practice, the U.S. could send asylum-seekers from Afghanistan to one of the Northern Triangle countries, even if they did not travel through there to get to the U.S. southern border.

The administration believes it can include “all populations” in the agreements, and it recently announced it was planning to send Mexican asylum-seekers to Guatemala. The move sparked scathing criticism at home and abroad, with Mexico’s government objecting to the proposal.

Unlike migrants from Honduras and El Salvador, Mexican asylum-seekers do not travel through Guatemalan territory to reach the U.S.-Mexico border. A plan to subject Mexicans to the U.S.-Guatemala accord could, in practice, lead to the U.S. flying a Mexican asylum-seeker from Tijuana, San Diego’s neighboring city, some 1,500 miles away, asking her to seek protection in Guatemala.

How Guatemala continues to implement its “Asylum Cooperative Agreement” with the Trump administration will now be decided by conservative government of President Alejandro Giammattei, who took office on Tuesday.

The asylum agreements with countries in Central America are part of a series of policies the administration rolled out over the past year to restrict asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. These also include a sweeping rule that renders most non-Mexican migrants ineligible for asylum and the Migrant Protection Protocols program, which has required more than 57,000 asylum-seekers from Central America to wait in dangerous Mexican border cities for the duration of their U.S. immigration proceedings.

First published on January 15, 2020 / 4:19 PM

© 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

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

The bogus “Safe Third Country Agreements” with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, clearly unsafe countries without functioning asylum systems, in violation of U.S. and international laws, are daunting acts of malicious fraud. This fraud is undertaken, in the open, by a neo-fascist regime that has contempt for humanity and human rights, believes itself above the law, and has no fear of being held accountable by the Federal Courts or Congress (notwithstanding Trump’s impeachment).

 

The regime’s unlawful fraudulent actions are defended in court by DOJ lawyers who believe the obligation of truthfulness before tribunals and other ethical requirements simply don’t apply to them. And, that’s probably with good reason.

 

The Trump regime has been peddling lies, false narratives, and bad faith legal arguments to the Federal Courts, all the way up to the Supremes, for nearly three years now with no consequences to the lawyers or their political clients. Indeed, Wilbur Ross lied under oath in the “Census Case,” but continues to be the Secretary of Commerce; to my knowledge, the Government lawyers who tried to present, defend, and rationalize. Ross’s census fraud are still on the payroll. A few Supremes even voted to sweep it all under the rug. It took an unusual display of backbone by Chief Justice Roberts to prevent the fraud from being perpetrated on American voters, particularly targeting voters of color.

 

Private lawyers who conducted themselves in a similar manner would likely be facing state disciplinary proceedings. A private executive who lied under oath like Ross probably would have been referred for a perjury prosecution or held in contempt of court.

 

But, Federal Judges, who are used to giving U.S. government lawyers pretty much a “free pass,” don’t seem to “get” that they are now dealing with a willfully corrupt, thoroughly dishonest, neo-fascist regime, not “just another Administration.”

 

When the laws, rules, and our Constitution don‘t apply to our Government, and nobody is held accountable for outrageous official wrongdoing (arguably “crimes against humanity” in the “Safe Third Country Fraud”) we all lose!

 

Due Process Forever! Complicity In The Face Of Tyranny, Never!

 

PWS

 

01-16-20