Child Abuse By Federal Judges – Page 2 – immigrationcourtside.com

HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE BLOG PRESENTS “THE FLORES EXHIBITS” – Truth, No Matter How Terrible & Disturbing, Is The Best Antidote To Notorious Human Rights Abuser “Big Mac With Lies” & His Truly Despicable Knowingly False Narratives & Immoral Actions! – “At this time when our nation is led by scoundrels, we are in need of heroes.”

Elora Mukherjee
“American Hero”
Clinical Professor of Law & Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic
Columbia Law School

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2019/9/22/vjwdefjb62lfre600ktwsfj8q1dsab

The Flores Exhibits

“I’m held with my son in a cage. There are about 60 people in my cages, and more in some of the other cages. There are six cages in my area. They are all very, very full.”

The above words are part of “Exhibit 29,” which is read by my friend Lenni Benson, a professor at New York Law School and founder of the school’s Safe Passage Project, which provides representation to unaccompanied children in immigration court. The words are the sworn declaration of a 17-year-old girl, identified by the initial “L.”

There are 65 such declarations, each the actual statement of a child detained at border detention facilities in this country in June 2019. Recently, Waterwell, the wonderful civic-minded theater and film production company responsible for the immigration court based play The Courtroom filmed a number of actors, lawyers, clinical professors, advocates, and other interested individuals in a dark studio in the East Village in New York City. I was honored to be one of those filmed. We each sat at a simple table with the written exhibit and a glass of water, and under the direction of Waterwell’s Artistic Director, Lee Sunday Evans, each read a single declaration.

Article 37(b) of the Convention of the Rights of the Child states that “No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.” A 1997 settlement agreement, known as the Flores Settlement, legally binds our government in limiting the length of time it can detain immigrant children, and holding the government to a standard of humane treatment under prescribed conditions of health, hygiene, education, and privacy. From the contents of the declarations, the Trump Administration has made a mockery of these rules.

Exhibit 3, read by David Gomez, the president of Hostos Community College, memorializes the words of a five year old from Honduras separated from his father upon arrival at the border, as he states “I have not been told how long I have to stay here. I am frightened, scared, and sad.” My fellow former immigration judge, Betty Lamb, read the statement of a 14 year old girl, who was taking care of two younger parentless girls (one of them 4 years old and sick), who said that she was holding the two in her lap as she spoke trying to comfort them. She then added “I need comfort, too. I’m bigger than they are, but I am a child, too.” (Exhibit 54).

At this time when our nation is led by scoundrels, we are in need of heroes. Towards this end, please take a moment to write down the name of Elora Mukherjee, a true hero. She is a clinical professor of law and Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. She has devoted her career to aiding immigrant children, whom she began visiting in detention facilities in 2007, and litigating violations of the Flores Settlement. Watching her read her own 22 minute statement gave me nightmares. She described the overwhelming stench of the hundreds of detained children, who were very hungry and seriously traumatized. One six year old she tried to question ended up sitting in her lap crying inconsolably, until a guard eventually gave him a lollipop “as an incentive to bring him back to his cell.” (Exhibit 63). Many of the children were seriously in fear of the guards. A number of the children were sick.

I am a native-born American citizen. I have lived here my entire life. Yet I never felt more foreign than while watching these videos. I hope that readers of these words feel the same way. No government of a country that is truly ours, that reflects the morals and values that we possess and believe in, could ever treat children this way. And no decent, moral people, regardless of their political affiliation or their views on immigration, could ever support or approve of the government responsible for such treatment. These children will never get over this. It is one thing for children to arrive here already traumatized and be granted safe haven under our laws. It is entirely another matter for the government of this country to deliberately cause children to suffer in a way that will scar them for life.

Please visit the site of these powerful videos through this link. You can also view the one-minute trailer here. And then please, please help amplify by sharing through social media and email.

Thanks for this project go to Columbia Law School’s Center for Institutional and Social Change and Immigrants’ Rights Clinic; to Waterwell, the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, and Project Amplify; and to all those who participated as readers in the videos.

Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

(Below: iPhone photo of me filming my segment, taken by Elizabeth Lamb).

Go to Jeff’s blog at the link for the picture of him presenting.

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What kind of country tortures and torments vulnerable children in search of legal protection while actually employing their corrupt, cowardly, and totally dishonest abusers, like Kevin “Big Mac With Lies” McAleenan, on the public payroll? Big Mac was at it again today, presenting a fictionalized defense of the Administration’s policy of promoting and encouraging human rights abuses, lying about the Flores settlement, and endangering the lives of refugee families!

McAleenan and his fellow immoral sycophants are a disgrace to America!

And, as I have said before, both Congress and the Federal Judges who have enabled these crimes against humanity by failing to take strong action to stop the Trump Administration’s abuse and to hold perpetrators like McAleenan legally accountable also share a major part of the responsibility!

PWS

09-23-19

RUTH ELLEN WASEM @ THE HILL: When Child Abuse Becomes Our Nation’s Official Policy, We All Share The Shame!

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/460349-report-on-migrant-children-documents-the-painfully-obvious

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG)’s new report found the Trump administration’s policy changes in 2018 exacerbated the mental health needs of “unaccompanied alien children” in their custody. The unaccompanied alien children in this study are overwhelmingly asylum seekers from Central America. No one should be surprised that the OIG found two particular policies — separating children from their parents and prolonging the time children are in custody — are especially harmful to the children’s mental health.

Researchers, mental health professionals and policymakers have known for years that refugee children are likely to have experienced traumas that challenge their mental health. Studies in the United States and in Europe have established that asylum-seeking children and adolescents are likely to have post-traumatic stress symptoms, anxiety, depression and externalizing behaviors. Given that the escape of many of these Central American children was prompted by violence and deprivation in their home countries, they certainly are at high risk of developing mental disorders.

Last year I wrote that the Trump administration “knew it would cause lasting harm, and still took children from parents.” In July 2018, Jonathan White, the former deputy director of children’s programs in the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), testified to Congress that he had warned administration officials, early in the discussions to ramp up the zero tolerance toward asylum seekers, about the harm such policies pose to children. White argued that the separation of children from parents entails “significant risk of harm to children” as well as “psychological injury.” But administration officials overruled White.

The policy of family separation happens less frequently now; the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported that 911 children were taken from their asylum-seeking parents in the year after the June 26, 2018, court order to stop the practice. About 30 children whom DHS took from their parents during the peak of the policy in 2018 still remain separated from their parents. The new OIG report documents the deleterious effects this policy has had on the mental health of these children.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform in July released a report of their investigation of the child-separation policy. The committee’s set of findings on how long children were held in custody is among the deeply troubling results — and not just because they found evidence the administration violated federal law on how long DHS can hold a child in detention. After DHS transferred custody to ORR, the committee reports that “records show that children of all ages were held in ORR custody for extensive periods of time.” The average was 90 days, with some children in ORR custody for more than 18 months.

When the committee’s findings are overlaid on the OIG study, the picture of the extensive damage to children’s mental health becomes even sharper. More precisely, the other policy the OIG found that was especially damaging to asylum-seeking children is the practice of prolonging the time children are in custody. “Facilities reported that children with longer stays experienced more stress, anxiety, and behavioral issues, which staff had to manage. Some children who did not initially exhibit mental health or behavioral issues began reacting negatively as their stays grew longer.”

If you are thinking that these compelling, thorough reports are prompting an end to this human tragedy — enter stage right the new DHS rule for the “Apprehension, Processing, Care and Custody of Alien Minors and Unaccompanied Alien Children.” This regulation takes aim at the 1997 court-ordered consent decree, known as the Flores settlement, that limits the detention of children and set standards for their care. Among other things, the new rule would allow DHS to indefinitely detain migrant families, including those arriving to seek asylum. Administration officials assured that they would provide high standards for the care of children. The official press release stated “all children in the Government’s care will be universally treated with dignity, respect and special concern, in concert with American values and faithful to the intent of the settlement.”

However, the new rule eliminates the requirement that facilities holding families with children be state-licensed facilities. DHS would be responsible for licensing the family detention centers. Given the reports this summer of squalid conditions at facilities overseen by DHS, including a scathing “management alert” report by DHS’s Office of Inspector General, a new policy of prolonged detention of families and children seeking asylum is frightful. Attorneys general representing 20 states have sued to stop the policy change.

Two wrongs don’t make a right — but they do make a place in this administration’s immigration policies.

Ruth Ellen Wasem is a professor of policy practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas in Austin. She has testified before Congress about asylum policy, legal immigration trends, human rights and the push-pull forces on unauthorized migration. Follow her on Twitter @rewasem.

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Yup!

And, it’s only going to get worse, Ruth, as the Federal Courts have now joined in furthering and justifying the abuses of children, women, gays, and all migrants.

Astoundingly, we’re seeing an institutional failure of our democratic republic that took more than two centuries to build in a little more than two years of Trump’s lawless authoritarian rule.

Trump might not be the brightest bulb in the pack, but he has proved to have amazing talent for exploiting democracy’s weaknesses and co-opting and “weaponizing” supposedly democratic institutions to further his plan of destroying them completely. Lots of supposedly smart guys out there these days sucking up and doing his bidding.

PWS

09-12-19

IMMIGRATION JUDGE V. STUART CROUCH SYMBOLIZES AMERICA’S GROSS DISREGARD OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS & WELFARE!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/opinion/child-poverty-democratic-debate.html

Nicholas Kristof writes in The NY Times:

When a 2-year-old Guatemalan boy had trouble staying silent in an immigration courtroom, the judge pointed his finger at him.

“I have a very big dog in my office, and if you don’t be quiet, he will come out and bite you,” the judge, V. Stuart Couch, a former Marine, yelled at the toddler in a 2016 hearing, according to a formal complaint shared by the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy and first reported this week by Mother Jones.

“Do you want him to bite you?” Couch asked.

The boy, his mom and their advocate were all soon sobbing. Couch later acknowledged that he “did not handle the situation properly,” according to the judge who investigated the complaint, Deepali Nadkarni.

Clearly, Couch didn’t have a child’s well-being in mind on that day. But ignoring the welfare of our young is a day-to-day problem in America, where our children are falling behind those in other wealthy countries.

On Thursday, 10 Democratic presidential candidates will debate. It would be a natural opportunity to provoke a national conversation on the subject. But a question about child poverty hasn’t been asked at a presidential debate in 20 years, not since a Republican primary debate in 1999, according to the Children’s Defense Fund.

Presidential candidates have been asked about the World Series, about cursing in movies, even about flag lapel pins more recently than they have been questioned about child poverty. We’ve had 147 presidential debates in a row without a single question on the topic (here’s a petition calling for more questions on the issue). I hope Thursday’s debate won’t be the 148th.

UNICEF says America ranks No. 37 among countries in well-being of children, and Save the Children puts the United States at No. 36. European countries dominate the top places.

American infants at last count were 76 percent more likely to die in their first year than children in other advanced countries, according to an article last year in the journal Health Affairs. We would save the lives of 20,000 American children each year if we could just achieve the same child mortality rates as the rest of the rich world.

. . . .

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Read Kristof’s complete op-ed at the link.

Couch is one of America’s worst judges. One might therefore fairly ask why he recently was “rewarded” for his bias, unprofessionalism, and documented poor performance when Trump Sycophant Barr “elevated” him to the appellate bench? Perhaps, so he can abuse more women and children across the country?

But, as the Supremes and the GOP have decided to endorse and encourage child abuse, the question is whether the Dems can get it together to end the abuse before it’s too late for America and the world.

Child abusers like Trump, Couch, Barr, and the gang over at DHS are used to getting away with it. They are encouraged by a do nothing Congress, complicit Federal Judges, and a Trump base that has declared war on traditional American values and human decency. But, the consequences of their misconduct, and the unwillingness of the US political and legal system to stand up for children, won’t end well in the long run.

In the meantime, remember the names of the abusers and their enablers, some of them serving in our highest court and as GOP Senators and Representatives.

Child abuse is wrong!

PWS

09-12-19

18 YEARS AFTER 09-11, THE “BAD GUYS” ARE WINNING THE BATTLE TO DESTROY AMERICAN JUSTICE & SPLIT THE COUNTRY! — Here’s The Disturbing Proof Of What Passes For “Justice” In America Today!

https://apple.news/ATepJTbYUSAaVGl8T7Cqh6Q

Marina Pitofsky reports in The Hill:

Immigration judge told 2-year-old to be quiet or a dog would ‘bite you’: report

An immigration judge reportedly threatened a Guatemalan child who was making some noise that a “very big dog” would “come out and bite you” if the undocumented immigrant did not quiet down, according to a report by Mother Jones.

The boy was in the courtroom with his mother for an immigration hearing in March 2016 when the threat happened, Mother Jones reported, citing testimony from an independent observer present at the court.

“I have a very big dog in my office, and if you don’t be quiet, he will come out and bite you,” Judge V. Stuart Couch reportedly told the child, according to an affidavit signed by Kathryn Coiner-Collier.

Coiner-Collier was a coordinator for a Charlotte, N.C.-area legal advocacy group that assisted migrants who could not afford attorneys.

“Want me to go get the dog? If you don’t stop talking, I will bring the dog out. Do you want him to bite you?” the judge continued to tell the boy during the hearing, according to Mother Jones.

Couch later asked Coiner-Collier to carry the boy out of the courtroom and sit with him, she told Mother Jones.

The judge reportedly told Coiner-Collier that he had threatened other children but that it appeared not to be working with this particular child.

Coiner-Collier said she immediately wrote the affidavit after the case, and in a message to the mother’s attorney in 2017, she wrote “I have never lost my composure like I did that day. … I was … red in the face sobbing along with [the boy’s mother.]”

Coiner-Collier also accused Couch of turning off the courtroom’s recording device as he threatened the child, whom she described as being 2 years old even though the judge said he was 5.

The child and her mother appeared again in front of Couch in August 2017, but the case was eventually reassigned. The new judge denied their asylum claim, according to Mother Jones. They are appealing the case.

Couch and five other judges were promoted in August to the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals.

The Hill has reached out to the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review for comment.

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https://apple.news/AnmnbegntRTqguvX-bYCn8g

EYORE — “Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, NBC News/AP Reports:

Rollout of ‘soul crushing’ Trump immigration policy has ‘broken the courts’

On the day she was set to see a U.S. immigration judge in San Diego last month, Katia took every precaution.

After waiting two months in Mexico to press her case for U.S. asylum, the 20-year-old student from Nicaragua arrived at the border near Tijuana three hours before the critical hearing was scheduled to start at 7:30 a.m.

But border agents didn’t even escort her into the U.S. port of entry until after 9 a.m., she said, and then she was left stranded there with a group of more than a dozen other migrants who also missed their hearings.

“We kept asking what was going on, but they wouldn’t tell us anything,” said Katia, who asked to be identified by her first name only for fear of jeopardizing her immigration case.

Bashir Ghazialam, a lawyer paid for by Katia’s aunt in the United States, convinced the judge to reschedule her case because of the transportation snafu. Later, staff at the lawyer’s office learned that at least two families in the group were ordered deported for not showing up to court.

Since it started in January, the rollout of one of the most dramatic changes to U.S. immigration policy under the Trump administration has been marked by unpredictability and created chaos in immigration courts, according to dozens of interviews with judges and attorneys, former federal officials and migrants.

The program – known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP) – has forced tens of thousands of people to wait in Mexico for U.S. court dates, swamping the dockets and leading to delays and confusion as judges and staff struggle to handle the influx of cases.

In June, a U.S. immigration official told a group of congressional staffers that the program had “broken the courts,” according to two participants and contemporaneous notes taken by one of them. The official said that the court in El Paso at that point was close to running out of space for paper files, according to the attendees, who requested anonymity because the meeting was confidential.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former Department of Homeland Security official under presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, said the problems are “symptomatic of a system that’s not coordinating well.”

“It’s a volume problem, it’s a planning problem, it’s a systems problem and it’s an operational problem on the ground,” said Brown, now a director at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank. “They’re figuring everything out on the fly.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) estimated that 42,000 migrants had been sent to wait in Mexico through early September. That agency and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which runs the nation’s immigration courts, referred questions about the program’s implementation to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which did not respond to requests for comment.

Huge surge, few courts

The disarray is the result of a surge in migrants, most of them Central Americans, at the U.S. southern border, combined with the need for intricate legal and logistical arrangements for MPP proceedings in a limited number of courts – only in San Diego and El Paso, initially. Rather than being released into the United States to coordinate their own transportation and legal appearances, migrants in MPP must come and go across the border strictly under U.S. custody.

Some migrants have turned up in court only to find that their cases are not the system or that the information on them is wrong, several attorneys told Reuters. Others, like Katia, have received conflicting instructions.

According to court documents seen by Reuters, Katia’s notice to appear stated that her hearing was at 7:30 a.m., while another paper she received said she should arrive at the border at 9 a.m., well after her hearing was set to start. She decided to show up at the border before dawn, according to staff in her lawyer’s office. Still, she wasn’t allowed into the border facility until hours later. Ultimately she was never bussed to the San Diego court and was told her case was closed – a fate she was able to avoid only after frantically summoning her lawyer, Ghazialam, to the border.

Most migrants in MPP – including the two families who were deported from her group at the port of entry – do not have lawyers.

In open court, judges have raised concerns that migrants in Mexico – often with no permanent address – cannot be properly notified of their hearings. On many documents, the address listed is simply the city and state in Mexico to which the migrant has been returned.

Lawyers say they fear for the safety of their clients in high-crime border cities.

A Guatemalan father and daughter were being held by kidnappers in Ciudad Juarez at the time of their U.S. hearings in early July but were ordered deported because they didn’t show up to court, according to court documents filed by their lawyer, Bridget Cambria, who said she was able to get their case reopened.

Adding to uncertainty surrounding the program, the legality of MPP is being challenged by migrant advocates. An appellate court ruled here in May that the policy could continue during the legal battle, but if it is found ultimately to be unlawful, the fate of the thousands of migrants waiting in Mexico is unclear. A hearing on the merits of the case is set for next month.

‘Unrealistic’ numbers

When the MPP program was announced on December 20, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said one of its “anticipated benefits” would be cutting backlogs in immigration courts.

In the announcement, the agency said sending migrants to wait in Mexico would dissuade “fraudsters” from seeking asylum since they would no longer be released into the United States “where they often disappear” before their hearing dates.

But the immediate impact has been to further strain the immigration courts.

A Reuters analysis of immigration court data through Aug. 1 found judges hearing MPP cases in El Paso and San Diego were scheduled for an average of 32 cases per day between January and July this year. One judge was booked for 174 cases in one day.

“These numbers are unrealistic, and they are not sustainable on a long-term basis,” said Ashley Tabaddor, head of the national immigration judge’s union.

To reduce the backlog, DHS estimates the government would need to reassign more than 100 immigration judges from around the country to hear MPP cases via video conferencing systems, according to the attendees of the June meeting with congressional staff.

Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman for EOIR, said that the rescheduling was necessary to deal with the substantial volume of recent cases.

All told, the courts are now struggling with more than 930,000 pending cases of all types, according to EOIR.

As of August 1, 39% of the backlog in the San Diego court and 44% of the backlog in the El Paso court was due to MPP case loads, Reuters analysis of immigration court data showed.

Despite concerns over the system’s capacity, the government is doubling down on the program.

In a July 26 notification to Congress, DHS said it would shift $155 million from disaster relief to expand facilities for MPP hearings, and would need $4.8 million more for transportation costs. DHS said that without the funding “MPP court docket backlogs will continue to grow.”

Tent courts are set to open this month in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, and so far more than 4,600 cases have been scheduled there to be heard by 20 judges, according to court data.

In Laredo, 20 to 27 tent courtrooms will provide video conferencing equipment so judges not based at the border can hear cases remotely, said city spokesman Rafael Benavides.

Brownsville’s mayor Trey Mendez said last month that about 60 such courtrooms were likely to be opened, though he had few details. City manager Noel Bernal told Reuters that communication with the federal government about the plans has been “less than ideal.”

‘Desperate people’

At her next hearing in San Diego in mid-September, Katia hopes to tell a judge how her participation in student demonstrations made her a target of government supporters.

Meanwhile, she said, she is living with her parents and 10-year-old brother in a fly-infested apartment with broken plumbing outside Tijuana.

The whole group is seeking asylum because of their support for the protests, according to Katia, her mother Simona, her lawyers, as well as court documents.

Recently, family members said they witnessed a shootout on their corner and Katia’s brother is now waking up with night terrors.

“They are playing games with the needs of desperate people,” said Simona, 46, who like Katia requested the family’s last names be withheld to avoid harming their case. “It’s soul crushing.”

Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

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Of course, Judge Couch is already well-known for his bias and hostility toward asylum seekers, particularly abused women. Why else would he have been “promoted” to the position of “Appellate Immigration Judge” by “Billy the Sycophant” Barr? Obviously, the idea is to promote bias and “worst practices” as the “nationwide norm.”

And we never should forget the spineless ineptness and complicity of Congress and the Article III Courts who are watching this travesty unfold every day while essentially looking the other way. Guess that as long as it’s somebody else “in the woodshed” these dudes can “tune out” the screams of the dehumanized. But, chances are when it’s finally their rights (or the rights of someone they “care about”) at stake, there will be nothing left of our legal and Constitutional system to protect them.

Indeed, the lawless and unconstitutional “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico Program” described here is largely the responsibility of the “above the fray” Judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who have permitted this intentionally abusive and dehumanizing program to torment refugees and their representatives with impunity.

Disgustingly, these life-tenured judges and elected representatives are lining themselves up squarely with the forces of White Nationalism and overt racism, folks like Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller.

The judicial and Congressional complicity in the abuse and torment of the most vulnerable among us and their wanton disregard for the Constitution they swore to uphold will not go unnoticed by history. This, indeed, is how democracies die and the “bad guys of the world” win.

PWS

09-11-19

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: Trump & His GOP’s Cowardly “War On Children” Should Outrage Every American! — Join The “New Due Process Army” & Fight To Save Humanity!

Catherine writes in the Washington Post:

You’ve heard of the Wars on Drugs, Terror, Poverty, even Women. Well, welcome to the War on Children.

It’s being waged by the Trump administration and other right-wing public officials, regardless of any claimed “family values.”

For evidence, look no further than the report released Wednesday by the Department of Health and Human Services’s own inspector general. It details the trauma suffered by immigrant children separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s evil “zero tolerance” policy.

Thousands of children were placed in overcrowded centers ill-equipped to provide care for them physically or psychologically. Visits to 45 centers around the country resulted in accounts of children who cried inconsolably; who were drugged; who were promised family reunifications that never came; whose severe emotional distress manifested in phantom chest pains, with complaints that “every heartbeat hurts”; who thought their parents had abandoned them or had been murdered.

Such state-sanctioned child abuse was designed to serve as a “deterrent” for asylum-seeking families, as then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and other administration officials made clear.

Of course, they failed to recognize just how horrific are the conditions these asylum-seeking children are fleeing — conditions that further decreased HHS’s ability to adequately care for them.

“Staff in multiple facilities reported cases of children who had been kidnapped or raped” back in their home countries, the IG report states. Other children witnessed family members raped or murdered.

But hey, Trump believes these kiddos must be punished further for the crime of seeking refuge — a.k.a., the “invasion” of America.

Despite this and other abundant evidence that government facilities are not able to care for children for extended periods, last month, the administration also announced a new policy that would allow it to keep children (along with their families) in jail-like conditions for longer periods of time.

This is hardly the only way the administration has knowingly enacted policies that harm children.

In August, it finalized a rule that would make it more difficult for immigrants to receive green cards if they have used certain safety-net services they’re legally entitled to — or if government officials suspect they might ever use such services. Confusion and fear about the policy and whom it affects abound. This has already created a “chilling effect” for usage of social services, with immigrant parents disenrolling even their U.S.-citizen children just to be safe.

Last fall, for instance, I interviewed a green-card-holding mother who decided not to enroll her underweight newborn in a program that would have provided free formula (even though the program in question was not mentioned in the rule, and the baby is a U.S. citizen). Huge recent declines in children’s Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollment are also believed to be at least partly a result of fears about this policy change.

If Your Dog Does This, It Could Be Them Signaling A Warning

And lest you think only immigrant or brown children are being targeted in this war: U.S. servicemembers’ children, of all sorts of backgrounds, are being hurt, too.

The Trump administration is siphoning billions from various defense projects to fund border wall construction, despite promises that Mexico would pay for it. This might sound unlikely to affect kids, but somehow the Trump administration found a way. Among the projects losing funds are schools for the children of U.S. servicemembers based in Kentucky, Germany and Japan, and a child-care center at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

Trump’s proposed federal budgets have likewise axed funding for other programs that serve children, such as subsidized school meals and Medicaid. Indeed, both federal and state GOP officials more broadly are still working to kill the Medicaid expansion, as well as other Affordable Care Act provisions that benefit kids.

The GOP has likewise ignored the pleas of children who want their lives protected from gun violence, or who want their futures protected from a warming planet.

A year ago, I offered a suggestion : that Democrats make children the theme of their midterm campaign. They mostly ignored me and still did okay. Nonetheless, I’m re-upping it.

Because even without Trump’s baby jails and proposed Medicaid cuts, our country’s emphasis on children’s well- being is seriously deficient.

Last year, for the first time on record, we spent a greater share of the federal budget servicing the national debt than we did on children, according to an analysis out next week from First Focus on Children. Spending on children as a share of the federal budget is also expected to shrink over the coming decade, crowded out by both debt service and spending on the elderly.

This is despite the fact that spending on children (especially low-income children) has among the highest returns on investment of any form of government spending.

Whatever the opposite of Trump’s War on Children is, that’s what Democrats should be running on.

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Thanks, Catherine, for speaking out so clearly and articulately about what has become our #1 National Disgrace: Trump’s War On Human Decency & Future Generations and its sleazy cast of supporting characters like Pence, Kelly, Miller, Nielsen, “Big Mac With Lies,” Homan, Albence, Morgan, “Cooch Cooch,” “Gonzo Apocalypto,” Barr, Cotton, Graham, and others with their glib immorality and disregard for truth, our Constitution, the rule of law, and basic human values.

Who thought the U.S. would ever stoop so low — to use our government’s power and might to abuse defenseless, already traumatized, and highly vulnerable children. (Catherine’s article does’t even get into how, with the help of scofflaw Attorneys General Sessions and Barr and some complacent Article III Judges, the Administration has manipulated asylum law and Immigration “Court” procedures to deny children and other asylum seekers the legal protection to which they are entitled under U.S. and international laws.)

There are many groups out there in the “New Due Process Army” fighting every day against this kind of outrageous behavior by our elected leaders, their corrupt cronies, and their many “go along to get along” enablers in the bureaucracy. Join or donate to one today!

The war to save America and humanity from Trump’s vile and cowardly agenda is one that we can’t afford to lose: For the sake of future generations!

PWS

09-06-19

AS COURTS & CONGRESS DITHER, FAILING TO STOP CLEARLY ILLEGAL & INHUMAN CONDUCT, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO PUNISH INNOCENT KIDS AT THE BORDER WITH ARROGANT IMPUNITY — Whatever Happened To The Institutions That Were Supposed To Protect Us From Abuses By An Authoritarian, Scofflaw Executive? — Kate Linthicum Reports For The LA Times!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=f4f6873a-7ae7-4cc2-bbe2-9fc685d2ea1b

Kate Lithicum reports for the LA Times:

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — For the two dozen migrant children living inside a small church on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, most days go like this: breakfast at 8 a.m., dinner at 6 p.m. and hours of nothing in between.

There is no school, and except for a handful of worn Bibles, there are no books. Dangers abound in the surrounding hills, so most haven’t left the razor-wire-ringed compound in weeks or even months.

“I feel imprisoned,” said 16-year-old Alison Mendoza.

She left Nicaragua with her parents and two younger sisters in March after her father received death threats for demonstrating against President Daniel Ortega, whose government has jailed and killed thousands of dissenters.

The family has been waiting here in Juarez for nearly two months for their chance to request political asylum in the United States. A Trump administration policy allows only a handful of asylum seekers to pass through ports of entry at the U.S. border each day.

Mendoza and her sisters, Sol, 6, and Michele, 11, are among the thousands of migrant children languishing along the border as a result of changing migration trends and White House policies that seek to deter asylum seekers.

They left friends and relatives behind and endured the trials of the migrant trail only to end up stuck in camps, cheap hotels and shelters such as Buen Pastor, which is now home to children and their families from as far away as Ghana and Congo. Pawns in an adult’s dispute, their future is entirely uncertain.

Two recent Trump administration mandates are almost certain to result in even larger numbers of migrant children being stranded here.

One calls for asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are adjudicated. About 3,000 migrant children and their families have been returned to Juarez under that program since April, according to Chihuahua state officials.

A mandate announced this week calls for asylum to be denied to migrants who did not apply for protection in at least one country they passed through while trying to reach the United States.

The rules mean that there is a very strong likelihood that if the Mendozas finally do cross the border to plead their case, they will be sent right back to Juarez.

“What will we do?” said Donald Mendoza, 37, who left behind a good job at a Managua university that would have allowed him to pay for all three girls’ college educations.

The Mexican government has committed to providing schooling to migrants who are returned from the U.S., but Mendoza doesn’t want to raise his girls in notoriously dangerous Juarez, where 10 people were slain on Sunday alone.

“This is not the life I planned for my children,” he said.

Buen Pastor opened its doors about 20 years ago to migrants — back then almost always single men — who passed through Juarez before seeking to sneak across the border.

“They would come, rest for a night or two, and then cross,” said Pastor Juan Fierro Garcia.

But over the last two years, entire families began trudging up the dirt road that leads to the church.

Many had heard that U.S. authorities were releasing migrants as long as they requested asylum and were traveling with children.

“We didn’t know much about the situation, just that families were passing,” said Joseph Venegas, 26, who left Honduras last month with his wife and their two sons.

After crossing into the U.S. illegally last week, and turning themselves in to border authorities, Venegas and his family were held for two days and then released back into Juarez with an order to appear at an asylum hearing in October. A Mexican official told them how to get to Buen Pastor.

Ten-year-old Jose sobbed on the way there. “I want to go back to Honduras,” he wailed.

“We had bad luck,” his father explained. “The law is the law and we have to respect it.”

“We are doing all of this for you,” Venegas added.

Venegas said the family decided to leave because a teachers’ strike meant Jose hadn’t been able to go to school for months.

But now, as he watched Jose sit morosely in one corner of the shelter and his wife nurse their coughing 4-month-old baby on a nearby bench, he wondered whether leaving had been in the best interest of his kids.

“What kind of childhood is this?” he asked.

The experience is a little easier on the younger children, many of whom don’t understand exactly what is happening, and who run around the shelter in a tight pack. The youngsters from Africa speak only a small amount of Spanish, but they still manage to make friends.

The lack of toys means the children entertain themselves around a big table, beating it like a drum until their parents complain or turning it into a fort under which they hide and whisper.

There are several small buildings clustered around the compound — a men’s dormitory, a women’s dormitory and the church sanctuary where families camp out each night on mattresses squeezed between the pews.

The crowded conditions and a constant stream of visitors — nongovernmental organization workers, pro bono lawyers and journalists all asking the same tired questions — mean there is zero privacy. Young women groom themselves and change clothes under the cover of blankets.

A psychologist from the state comes once a week. On a recent morning, she gathered the children around a big round table and led them in breathing exercises.

She asked them to go one by one, saying their names and where they were from.

“I’m Natalia from Honduras,” one girl said.

“I’m Akasia from Congo,” said another.

A thin child from Guatemala declined to speak, burying her head in her arms.

“She is sad,” the 7-year-old boy next to her explained.

“It’s OK,” the psychologist said. “It’s okay to be sad.”

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

This kind of preventable harm inflicted by an Administration that has declared war on humanity and the rule of law is directly at the feet of three irresponsible Federal Judges of the Ninth Circuit who tanked by vacating the injunction against such gross abuses properly put in place by the U.S. District Judge in Innovation Law Labs v. McAleenan, ostensibly so that their colleagues could “deliberate” (actually “dither”) over a decision that would take responsible judges about 60 minutes to reach! How do guys like this sleep at night?

The issue in Innovation Law Labs involves the bogus “Migrant Protection Protocols,” more accurately described as “Remain in Mexico” or “Die in Mexico” that intentionally violates both Fifth Amendment Due Process and numerous provisions of the INA, including the rights to access to counsel of one’s own choosing, fair notice of hearings, adequate time to prepare and present a case, and the right to assert withholding of removal to a country where one fears persecution or torture.

Failure of privileged Article III Judges to protect the most vulnerable among us from Executive overreach and abuse, in this case clearly racially motivated, has real life adverse consequences, beyond the “judicial ivory tower,” that in many cases are irreversible.

All of us who believe in justice should be outraged by the Ninth Circuit’s dilatory performance in this case! It’s nothing short of child abuse sanctioned by the Federal Judiciary. It must stop!

PWS

07-19-19

AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!

Professor Kate Cronin-Furman writes in the NY Times:

The debate over whether “concentration camps” is the right term for migrant detention centers on the southern border has drawn long-overdue attention to the American government’s dehumanizing treatment of defenseless children. A pediatrician who visited in June said the centers could be compared to “torture facilities.” Having studied mass atrocities for over a decade, I agree.

At least seven migrant children have died in United States custody since last year. The details reported by lawyers who visited a Customs and Border Protection facility in Clint, Tex., in June were shocking: children who had not bathed in weeks, toddlers without diapers, sick babies being cared for by other children. As a human rights lawyer and then as a political scientist, I have spoken to the victims of some of the worst things that human beings have ever done to each other, in places ranging from Cambodia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Sri Lanka. What’s happening at the border doesn’t match the scale of these horrors, but if, as appears to be the case, these harsh conditions have been intentionally inflicted on children as part a broader plan to deter others from migrating, then it meets the definition of a mass atrocity: a deliberate, systematic attack on civilians. And like past atrocities, it is being committed by a complex organizational structure made up of people at all different levels of involvement.

Thinking of what’s happening in this way gives us a repertoire of tools with which to fight the abuses, beyond the usual exhortations to call our representatives and donate to border charities.

Those of us who want to stop what’s happening need to think about all the different individuals playing a role in the systematic mistreatment of migrant children and how we can get them to stop participating. We should focus most on those who have less of a personal commitment to the abusive policies that are being carried out.

Testimony from trials and truth commissions has revealed that many atrocity perpetrators think of what they’re doing as they would think of any other day job. While the leaders who order atrocities may be acting out of strongly held ideological beliefs or political survival concerns, the so-called “foot soldiers” and the middle men and women are often just there for the paycheck.

This lack of personal investment means that these participants in atrocities can be much more susceptible to pressure than national leaders. Specifically, they are sensitive to social pressure, which has been shown to have played a huge role in atrocity commission and desistance in the Holocaust, Rwanda and elsewhere. The campaign to stop the abuses at the border should exploit this sensitivity and put social pressure on those involved in enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Here is what that might look like:

The identities of the individual Customs and Border Protection agents who are physically separating children from their families and staffing the detention centers are not undiscoverable. Immigration lawyers have agent names; journalists reporting at the border have names, photos and even videos. These agents’ actions should be publicized, particularly in their home communities.

This is not an argument for doxxing — it’s about exposure of their participation in atrocities to audiences whose opinion they care about. The knowledge, for instance, that when you go to church on Sunday, your entire congregation will have seen you on TV ripping a child out of her father’s arms is a serious social cost to bear. The desire to avoid this kind of social shame may be enough to persuade some agents to quit and may hinder the recruitment of replacements. For those who won’t (or can’t) quit, it may induce them to treat the vulnerable individuals under their control more humanely. In Denmark during World War II, for instance, strong social pressure, including from the churches, contributed to the refusal of the country to comply with Nazi orders to deport its Jewish citizens.

The midlevel functionaries who make the system run are not as visibly involved in the “dirty work,” but there are still clear potential reputational consequences that could change their incentives. The lawyer who stood up in court to try to parse the meaning of “safe and sanitary” conditions — suggesting that this requirement might not include toothbrushes and soap for the children in border patrol custody if they were there for a “shorter term” stay — passed an ethics exam to be admitted to the bar. Similar to the way the American Medical Association has made it clear that its members must not participate in torture, the American Bar Association should signal that anyone who defends the border patrol’s mistreatment of children will not be considered a member in good standing of the legal profession. This will deter the participation of some, if only out of concern over their future career prospects.

The individuals running detention centers are arguably directly responsible for torture, which could trigger a number of consequences at the international level. Activists should partner with human rights organizations to bring these abuses before international bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Council. They should lobby for human rights investigations, for other governments to deny entry visas to those involved in the abuses, or even for the initiation of torture prosecutions in foreign courts. For someone who is “just following orders,” the prospect of being internationally shamed as a rights abuser and being unable to travel freely may be significant enough to persuade them to stop participating.

When those directly involved in atrocities can’t be swayed, their enablers are often more responsive. For-profit companies are supplying food and other material goods to the detention centers. Boycotts against them and their parent entities may persuade them to stop doing so. Employees of these companies can follow the example of Wayfair workers, who organized a walkout on Wednesday in protest of their company’s sale of furniture to the contractor outfitting the detention centers. Finally, anyone can support existing divestment campaigns to pressure financial institutions to end their support of immigration abuses.

Many Americans have been asking each other “But what can we DO?” The answer is that we call these abuses mass atrocities and use the tool kit this label offers us to fight them. So far, mobilization against what’s happening on the border has mostly followed standard political activism scripts: raising public awareness, organizing protests, phoning our congressional representatives. These efforts are critical, but they aren’t enough. Children are suffering and dying. The fastest way to stop it is to make sure everyone who is responsible faces consequences.

Dr. Cronin-Furman is an assistant professor of human rights.

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

“The fastest way to stop it is to make sure everyone who is responsible faces consequences.”

That includes attorneys who defend indefensible policies in Federal Court as well as Federal Judges all the way up to the Supremes who fail to stand up for Due Process for individuals, and who insist on treating Trump’s overt attacks on our Constitution, democracy, and human dignity as within the scope of “normal” Executive actions rather than intentional and dishonest abuses requiring censure and strong, courageous, unconditional disapproval.

PWS

06-30-19

CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!

https://apple.news/Au_bQMKN3QxmsBKokkqyP3w

Sarah Ruiz’s-Grossman reports for HuffPost:

U.S. NEWS

06/12/2019 05:25 PM EDT

Cages With ‘Kids’ Pop Up Around NYC To Protest Immigrant Detention

The art installations were meant to bring awareness to the horrific conditions children and other migrants face at the southern U.S. border.

Some people in New York City were confronted with an alarming image as they walked down the street on Wednesday morning: a chain-link cage on the sidewalk containing a child-size mannequin wrapped in a foil blanket, with audio playing of migrant children crying.

More than 20 cages were placed around Manhattan and Brooklyn ― from Union Square to the Barclays Center sports arena ― as part of a campaign called #NoKidsInCages by immigration nonprofit RAICES and ad agency Badger & Winters.

It was meant to draw Americans’ attention to the children and other migrants being held in alarming conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Speakers in the cages played the viral recording released by ProPublica last summer of kids wailing for their “mamá” and “papá” after having been separated from them at the border as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.

“We want to bring this back to the consciousness of the American people,” RAICES CEO Jonathan Ryan told HuffPost. “One of the many unfortunate consequences of the repeated traumatic stories coming from the border is that, as horrified and angry as people have been, we also become desensitized. It’s important for people … to be confronted with the reality that this is about children, human beings, whose lives are forever affected.”

“This is being done in our name by people who we elected,” he added. “And if we don’t do something to stop this, this will become who we are.”

About two dozen cages were dropped around the city from about 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., Ryan said. By midafternoon most of them had been taken down by police or city employees, with three remaining around 2 p.m., per Ryan. The New York Police Department confirmed to HuffPost that more than half a dozen cages had been removed around Manhattan, but did not respond to questions as to why.

The online campaign associated with the installations recalls the family separations under President Donald Trump’s hard-line zero-tolerance policy, which led to the separation of thousands of children from their parents last year. The policy sparked protests nationwide and was reversed by executive order in late June. But a January report from the Department of Health and Human Services found the administration may have separated thousands more kids from their families than was previously known, and it did not know how many or whether they were reunited.

RAICES also wants people to become aware of other issues migrants face, Ryan said.

He noted undocumented immigrant families are still separated “routinely” at the border, including when migrant kids are split from other guardians like uncles and aunts or older siblings. Separations occur inside the country too, he said, when a child’s undocumented mom or dad is arrested by immigration agents, for instance in a workplace raid.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended over 109,000 people at the border in April ― more than double the number of migrants detained during that month last year. A majority of the migrants apprehended were either families traveling together or unaccompanied kids.

A Department of Homeland Security watchdog, reporting on Border Patrol facilities in El Paso, Texas, found last month that detained migrants were kept in dirty and extremely crowded conditions, forcing some people to stand on toilets to get some breathing room.

Last week, Trump said he reached an agreement with Mexico that includes “rapidly” returning to Mexico anyone who crosses the border seeking asylum in the U.S. Advocates are concerned about the dangerous conditions in cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, where more migrants will now be forced to wait as their claims are processed.

“When the American people hear stories of this problem being fixed by the ‘remain in Mexico’ policy, it hasn’t been fixed, it’s just further from their view,” Ryan said. “The suffering will only increase.”

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

Ah, life in the ivory tower of the Article III Federal Judiciary, where you seldom are confronted with the human faces or ugly reality of your abuses and failures to protect the human rights of others.

The “Remain in Mexico” Program is an ongoing affront to our Constitution, the rule of law, and simple human decency for which the judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who are enabling this ongoing humanitarian outrage and giving it “legal cover” should be held fully morally and historically accountable!

PWS

06-13-19

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