Children – Page 2 – immigrationcourtside.com

⚖️🇺🇸👍🏼🗽DEAN KEVIN JOHNSON’S SUCCINCT RESPONSE TO GREG ABBOTT’S PREDICTABLE SOUTHERN BORDER BS IS WORTH A READ! — PLUS: ARELIS HERNANDEZ OF WASHPOST WITH SOME MUCH-NEEDED TRUTH & PERSPECTIVE FROM THOSE ACTUALLY LIVING ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER: “We need more lawyers and judges, not more troops or technology.”

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/03/texas-governor-abbott-statement-on-unaccompanied-minor-crisis-created-by-biden-administration.html

There, of course, are pressing humanitarian issues to address along the U.S./Mexico border. But to say that this issues are a result of “open border policies” is simply wrong. No major party political leader to my knowledge is calling for “open borders.” Rather, the “open borders” mantra is something that Republican politicians invoke to attack immigration policies that they do not like.

Democrats have another explanation for the current situation at the border. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC News’ “This Week” that the policies of the Trump administration, which radically transformed immigration enforcement from 2017-21, are to blame for the recent increase in unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border,

“This is a humanitarian challenge to all of us,” Pelosi said. “What the administration has inherited is a broken system at the border and they are working to correct that in the children’s interests.”

To address humanitarian concerns, Homeland Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas has directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to support an effort over the next 90 days to safely shelter unaccompanied children who make the dangerous journey to the U.S./Mexico border.

KJ

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

Thanks, Kevin, for adding some reality and perspective to the discussion. You can read Abbott’s statement at the link. Notably, the Republicans have offered no constructive solutions to this humanitarian issue, either in or out of power, other than to engage in child abuse and continually violate the laws, both international and domestic.

The criticism from the likes of Abbott, who as “Governor” of Texas has presided over a power grid disaster that actually killed and threatened the health of Texas residents and who has thumbed his nose at public health recommendations that save lives, is particularly disingenuous. And, naturally, the dangerous and deadly results of Abbott’s and the GOP’s mis-governance of Texas have fallen disproportionately on Latinos and other communities of color. The Abbott/GOP response has been to attempt to disenfranchise citizens of color in Texas!

The same can be said of GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy whose main contribution to America’s safety and security has been to whitewash the deadly assault on our Capitol that his “supreme leader” orchestrated. Again, a person with no credibility.

Those seeking a more nuanced and accurate picture of what’s really happening at the Southern Border should read the lengthy report of Arelis Hernandez in the WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/migrants-are-not-overrunning-us-border-towns-despite-the-political-rhetoric/2021/03/15/b193f3f2-8345-11eb-ac37-4383f7709abe_story.html

Migrants are not overrunning U.S. border towns, despite the political rhetoric

Leaders in Texas border towns say their economies are suffering because of pandemic restrictions on cross-border travel.

. . . .

City officials and nonprofit organizations can’t force families to stay in the hotels but Darling, the McAllen mayor, said so far no one they track has left isolation prematurely.

“We tell them if they want to leave on our buses, they need to follow our rules,” he said. The city has spent nearly $200,000 of taxpayer money it hopes will be reimbursed by the federal government, but Abbott’s rejection of Federal Emergency Management Agency funding from the Biden administration will complicate matters for localities.

Darling said his city is full of compassionate people, and they are doing the rest of the country a favor in taking care of migrant families on the front end of their journeys.

Along the border, faith organizations, local emergency managers and immigration advocates say they have learned from previous surges how best to coordinate. They are preparing to receive flights and buses full of asylum seekers, mostly recently released families with small children, to ease capacity issues that critics say the Department of Homeland Security officials should have anticipated.

Coronavirus restrictions have put capacity limits on shelters run by community organizations on the U.S. side of the border, but so far the numbers are not at 2019 levels, said Pastor Michael Smith of the Holding Institute in Laredo. Shelters and temporary detention facilities operated by the U.S. Health and Human Services’ contractors, however, are over capacity.

But without more orderly intervention, the numbers could overwhelm. The Biden administration plans to deploy FEMA to the border to help with the migration surge as the administration tries to quickly scale up space to temporarily hold and process migrants and unaccompanied children — many between the ages of 13 and 17.

“The failure to have an administrative process is causing a humanitarian crisis,” Smith said during a news conference organized by Laredo activists. “There are solutions to the issues, but they are not solutions that call for militarizing the border.”

“We need robust infrastructure at our ports of entry to handle people seeking asylum,” said Tannya Benavides, of the No Border Wall coalition. “We need more lawyers and judges, not more troops or technology.”

Arelis R. Hernandez
Southern Border Reporter
Washington Post

Great article by Arelis! I highly recommend it. My only caveat is that we need not just more lawyers and judges, certainly correct, but better Immigration Judges who are experts in asylum law, have experience representing asylum seekers, and can fairly, efficiently, and consistently identify those with valid claims to protection under the law before it was perverted by the Trump regime. Also, the Government could use more qualified Asylum Officers who could screen and finally adjudicate the grantable cases, under correct legal criteria set forth by better-qualified Immigration Judges and a completely new due-process-human rights-oriented BIA without even having to send the cases to court.

These are the bold steps necessary to get out of the cycle of “same old, same old” — which inevitably ends with harsh measures directed at asylum seeking families and children that do nothing to address the causes of forced migration. “Enforcement-only deterrent measures” never have solved, and never will solve, the long-term problem in a constructive manner. The cycle of failed, yet expensive and inhumane deterrents, just keeps repeating itself Administration after Administration.

I have already suggested tapping into retired Asylum Officers and other retired USCIS Adjudicators with the necessary asylum expertise. I’m betting that my retired Round Table colleague, and former Asylum Officer and UN Official, Judge Paul Grussendorf would be available to help lead such an effort.

To solve this problem, the Biden Administration must put some experts who understand the practicalities of refugee and asylum situations in place and let them solve the problem. It should come as no shock that the current gangs at DHS and EOIR —largely holdovers who participated in the Trump regime’s cruel, failed, and illegal “enforcement only” policies at the border — are not going to be able to get the job done. At least they can’t without some effective “adult supervision” from those committed to humane, legal, and timely processing of asylees and other migrants in full compliance with due process and best practices.

The Trump regime eschewed any attempt to build a fair, effective, timely asylum adjudication system that complied with domestic and international law as well as due process. Instead, they concentrated on eradicating the entire U.S. refugee and protection system through regulations (many enjoined), Executive Orders (some enjoined), bogus administrative “precedents,” and stacking the Immigration Courts with overtly anti-asylum or “go along to get along” “judges.” Right now, the entire system is in shambles — the most obvious example being the totally dysfunctional mess at EOIR!

To “win the game,” the Biden Administration needs to get the right players on the field. While there has been some notable progress, that hasn’t happened to date. And, with politicos like Abbott and McCarthy stirring the pot daily, time is running to get the “A Team” in place to combat their lies, distortions, and nonsense.

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-16-21

🇺🇸🗽EUGENE ROBINSON @ WASHPOST — Biden Must Do The Right Thing For Kids At The Border — Their Best Interests Are Our Best Interests!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/biden-migrant-surge-stop-child-detention/2021/03/11/99d9a7e4-8295-11eb-9ca6-54e187ee4939_story.html

. . . .

So the Biden administration needs to do two things. First, it needs to create more shelter space, at least in the short term. Reopening a mothballed, 700-bed Trump-era shelter for migrant teens in Carrizo Springs, Tex. — a step the Department of Health and Human Services took last month — was probably necessary, but it’s not a good look for an administration trying to turn the page. New shelters are needed, and they must be put into service with the same urgency the administration summons for coronavirus vaccination centers.

The other thing the administration must do is move children out of the shelters into family or sponsor custody faster. This is mostly a matter of bureaucratic efficiency. Many of these “unaccompanied” minors actually were accompanied when they crossed the border, but by their grandparents, aunts, uncles or older siblings — not their parents. Biden needs to flood the zone with enough investigators, lawyers and other personnel to speedily determine that these relatives are in fact relatives, not traffickers, so these families can be promptly reunited.

Just as Biden and his aides decided to err on the side of doing too much rather than too little on covid-19 relief, they should go big on the border. When the pandemic does end, existing shelter space should be enough to handle the kind of surge we’re seeing now — but that day could be many months away. The system is overloaded this minute.

As a matter of politics, it is unwise for Biden to give Republicans fodder for demagoguery about a supposed border “crisis.” It is equally unwise to give progressive Democrats any reason to complain that his border policy is less than a complete departure from Trump’s.

And as a matter of policy, Biden must keep his eye on one guiding star: We are talking about the lives and well-being of children. It is nothing less than our duty to love and care for them as if they were our own.

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

Read Eugene’s full op-ed at the link.

In addition to asking for DHS volunteers, another idea is to quickly rehire retired Asylum Officers, Refugee Officers, and Immigration Inspectors to help out on a temporary basis.

Eugene’s article reminds me of one of my first essays that I published on Courtside in 2016, set forth in full here (originally published by Dan Kowalski in LexisNexis Immigration Community) :

SAVING CHILD MIGRANTS WHILE SAVING OURSELVES

SAVING CHILD MIGRANTS WHILE SAVING OURSELVES

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

They cross deserts, rivers, and territories controlled by corrupt governments, violent gangs, and drug cartels. They pass through borders, foreign countries, different languages and dialects, and changing cultures.

I meet them on the final leg of their trip where we ride the elevator together. Wide-eyed toddlers in their best clothes, elementary school students with backpacks and shy smiles, worried parents or sponsors trying to look brave and confident. Sometimes I find them wandering the parking garage or looking confused in the sterile concourse. I tell them to follow me to the second floor, the home of the United States Immigration Court at Arlington, Virginia. “Don’t worry,” I say, “our court clerks and judges love children.”

Many will find justice in Arlington, particularly if they have a lawyer. Notwithstanding the expedited scheduling ordered by the Department of Justice, which controls the Immigration Courts, in Arlington the judges and staff reset cases as many times as necessary until lawyers are obtained. In my experience, retaining a pro bono lawyer in Immigration Court can be a lengthy process, taking at least six months under the best of circumstances. With legal aid organizations now overwhelmed, merely setting up intake screening interviews with needy individuals can take many months. Under such conditions, forcing already overworked court staff to drop everything to schedule initial court hearings for women and children within 90 days from the receipt of charging papers makes little, if any, sense.

Instead of scheduling the cases at a realistic rate that would promote representation at the initial hearing, the expedited scheduling forces otherwise avoidable resetting of cases until lawyers can be located, meet with their clients (often having to work through language and cultural barriers), and prepare their cases. While the judges in Arlington value representation over “haste makes waste” attempts to force unrepresented individuals through the system, not all Immigration Courts are like Arlington.

For example, according to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse at Syracuse University (“TRAC”), only 1% of represented juveniles and 11% of all juveniles in Arlington whose cases began in 2014, the height of the so-called “Southern Border Surge,” have received final orders of removal. By contrast, for the same group of juveniles in the Georgia Immigration Courts, 43% were ordered removed, and 52% of those were unrepresented.

Having a lawyer isn’t just important – it’s everything in Immigration Court. Generally, individuals who are represented by lawyers in their asylum cases succeed in remaining in the United States at an astounding rate of five times more than those who are unrepresented. For recently arrived women with children, the representation differential is simply off the charts: at least fourteen times higher for those who are represented, according to TRAC. Contrary to the well-publicized recent opinion of a supervisory Immigration Judge who does not preside over an active docket, most Immigration Judges who deal face-to-face with minor children agree that such children categorically are incompetent to represent themselves. Yet, indigent individuals, even children of tender years, have no right to an appointed lawyer in Immigration Court.

To date, most removal orders on the expedited docket are “in absentia,” meaning that the women and children were not actually present in court. In Immigration Court, hearing notices usually are served by regular U.S. Mail, rather than by certified mail or personal delivery. Given heavily overcrowded dockets and chronic understaffing, errors by the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) in providing addresses and mistakes by the Immigration Court in mailing these notices are common.

Consequently, claims by the Department of Justice and the DHS that women and children with removal orders being rounded up for deportation have received full due process ring hollow. Indeed a recent analysis by the American Immigration Council using the Immigration Court’s own data shows that children who are represented appear in court more than 95% of the time while those who are not represented appear approximately 33% of the time. Thus, concentrating on insuring representation for vulnerable individuals, instead of expediting their cases, would largely eliminate in absentia orders while promoting real, as opposed to cosmetic, due process. Moreover, as recently pointed out by an article in the New York Times, neither the DHS nor the Department of Justice can provide a rational explanation of why otherwise identically situated individuals have their cases “prioritized” or “deprioritized.”

Rather than working with overloaded charitable organizations and exhausted pro bono attorneys to schedule initial hearings at a reasonable pace, the Department of Justice orders that initial hearings in these cases be expedited. Then it spends countless hours and squanders taxpayer dollars in Federal Court defending its “right” to aggressively pursue removal of vulnerable unrepresented children to perhaps the most dangerous, corrupt, and lawless countries outside the Middle East: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”), the institution responsible for enforcing fairness and due process for all who come before our Immigration Courts, could issue precedent decisions to stop this legal travesty of accelerated priority scheduling for unrepresented children who need pro bono lawyers to proceed and succeed. But, it has failed to act.

The misguided prioritization of cases of recently arrived women, children, and families further compromises due process for others seeking justice in our Immigration Courts. Cases that have been awaiting final hearings for years are “orbited” to slots in the next decade. Families often are spread over several dockets, causing confusion and generating unnecessary paperwork. Unaccompanied

2

children whose cases should initially be processed in a non-adversarial system are instead immediately thrust into court.

Euphemistically named “residential centers” — actually jails — wear down and discourage those, particularly women and children, seeking to exercise their rights under U.S. and international law to seek refuge from death and torture. Regardless of the arcane nuances of our asylum laws, most of the recent arrivals need and deserve protection from potential death, torture, rape, or other abuse at the hands of gangs, drug cartels, and corrupt government officials resulting from the breakdown of civil society in their home countries.

Not surprisingly, these “deterrent policies” have failed. Individuals fleeing so-called “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have continued to arrive at a steady pace, while dockets in Immigration Court, including “priority cases,” have mushroomed, reaching an astonishing 500,000 plus according to recent TRAC reports (notwithstanding efforts to hire additional Immigration Judges). As reported recently by the Washington Post, private detention companies, operating under highly questionable government contracts, appear to be the only real beneficiaries of the current policies.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We could save lives and short-circuit both the inconsistencies and expenses of the current case-by-case protection system, while allowing a “return to normalcy” for most already overcrowded Immigration Court dockets by using statutory Temporary Protected Status (known as “TPS”) for natives of the Northern Triangle countries. Indeed, more than 270 organizations with broad based expertise in immigration matters, as well as many members of Congress, have requested that the Administration institute such a program.

The casualty toll from the uncontrolled armed violence plaguing the Northern Triangle trails only those from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. TPS is a well- established humanitarian response to a country in crisis. Its recipients, after registration, are permitted to live and work here, but without any specific avenue for obtaining permanent residency or achieving citizenship. TPS has been extended among others to citizens of Syria and remains in effect for citizens of both Honduras who needed refuge from Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and El Salvador who needed refuge following earthquakes in 2001. Certainly, the disruption caused by a hurricane and earthquakes more than a decade ago pales in comparison with the very real and gruesome reality of rampant violence today in the Northern Triangle.

Regardless, we desperately need due-process reforms to allow the Immigration Court system to operate more fairly, efficiently, and effectively. Here are a few suggestions: place control of dockets in the local Immigration Judges, rather than bureaucrats in Washington, as is the case with most other court systems; work cooperatively with the private sector and the Government counsel to docket cases at a rate designed to maximize representation at the initial hearings; process unaccompanied children through the non-adversarial system before rather

3

than after the institution of Immigration Court proceedings; end harmful and unnecessary detention of vulnerable families; settle ongoing litigation and redirect the talent and resources to developing an effective representation program for all vulnerable individuals; and make the BIA an effective appellate court that insures due process, fairness, uniformity and protection for all who come before our Immigration Courts.

Children are the future of our world. History deals harshly with societies that mistreat and fail to protect children and other vulnerable individuals. Sadly, our great country is betraying its values in its rush to “stem the tide.” It is time to demand an immigrant justice system that lives up to its vision of “guaranteeing due process and fairness for all.” Anything less is a continuing disgrace that will haunt us forever.

The children and families riding the elevator with me are willing to put their hopes and trust in the belief that they will be treated with justice, fairness, and decency by our country. The sole mission and promise of our Immigration Courts is due process for these vulnerable individuals. We are not delivering on that promise.

The author is a recently retired U.S. Immigration Judge who served at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington Virginia, and previously was Chairman and Member of the Board of Immigration Appeals. He also has served as Deputy General Counsel and Acting General Counsel of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, a partner at two major law firms, and an adjunct professor at two law schools. His career in the field of immigration and refugee law spans 43 years. He has been a member of the Senior Executive Service in Administrations of both parties.

4

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

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-13-21

🖕ICE CONTINUES TO GIVE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, HUMANITY THE BIG MIDDLE FINGER! — Racism Also On Display As Haitian Kids & Babies Deported To “Burning House!”

https://apple.news/ATjEjX2Z_QnKYbl01eYMHNA

Ed Pilkington reports for The Guardian:

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) deported at least 72 people to Haiti on Monday, including a two-month-old baby and 21 other children, in an apparent flagrant breach of the Biden administration’s orders only to remove suspected terrorists and potentially dangerous convicted felons.

The children were deported to Haiti on Monday on two flights chartered by Ice from Laredo, Texas to the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. The removals sent vulnerable infants back to Haiti as it is being roiled by major political unrest.

New claims of migrant abuse as Ice defies Biden to continue deportations

Read more

Ice is facing a rising chorus of denunciation as a “rogue agency” for its apparent refusal to abide by the new guidelines laid down by Biden and his homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. The incoming administration ordered a 100-day moratorium on all deportations, which was temporarily blocked by a judge in Texas.

However, the judge’s restraining order left in place the new guidelines stipulating that only the most serious immigration cases should be subject to deportation.

Last Friday, the administration appeared to gain the upper hand in its attempt to rein in Ice when deportation flights to Haiti were suspended. But on Monday the immigration agency reasserted itself again with the renewed flights to Port-au-Prince, children and infants on board.

Human rights activists are dismayed by the deportations, which bear a close resemblance to the hardline course set by Donald Trump. “It is unconscionable for us as a country to continue with the same draconian, cruel policies that were pursued by the Trump administration,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the immigration support group the Haitian Bridge Alliance.

She added: “I don’t know what’s going on between Ice and the Biden administration, but we know what needs to be done: the deportations must stop.”

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the the link.

Unfortunately, as I have pointed out, ICE is totally of control. It’s going to take more than policy memos to change that!

PWS

02-08-21

☠️🤮🦹🏿‍♂️ CHILD ABUSERS IN ROBES! —- Three Trump Appointees On DC Circuit OK Child Abuse @ Border!

Trump Dumping Asylum Seekers in Hondiras — Dumping Asylum Seekers in Honduras
Artist: Monte Wolverton
Reproduced under license

“Floaters” — “Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

Here’s the opinion, with no discernible rationale for this unprincipled and irrational action:

DC CIRCUIT APPROVES CHILD ABUSE

Here’s the “death to children” ☠️⚰️ panel: Katsas, Rao, and Walker, Circuit Judges. As long as it’s not THEIR children . . . .

Bad things happen to countries that make child abuse an “official policy” and reward child abusers with lifetime judicial appointments!

The Biden Administration needs to move quickly to get a handle on what’s happening in their name at the border. Also, might want to take a look at the Government lawyers who defend the indefensible in Federal Court.

Better Judges For a Better America! No more child abusers on the Federal Bench!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Child Abusing Circuit Judges🤮, Never!

PWS

01-30-21

🏴‍☠️🤮👎🏻⚰️”PERP NATION” — Cowardly Regime Uses COVID-19 As Pretext For Grotesque Abuses Of Migrant Children, As Congress, Federal Courts Spinelessly Allow It To Happen! — “Crimes Against Humanity” Have Consequences For “Perp Nations!”

Lomi Kriel
Immigration Reporter
Texas Tribune & Pro Publica

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/08/04/border-migrant-children-hotels/

Federal agents are expelling asylum seekers as young as 8 months from the border, citing COVID-19 risks

Thousands of migrant children have been expelled by the Trump administration since March. Some have been held in hotels without access to lawyers or family. Advocates say many are now “virtually impossible” to find.

BY LOMI KRIEL, THE TEXAS TRIBUNE AND PROPUBLICA AUG. 4, 20208 HOURS AGO

A teenage girl carrying her baby arrived at the U.S. border this summer and begged for help. She told federal agents that she feared returning to Guatemala. The man who raped her she said had threatened to make her “disappear.”

Then, advocates say, the child briefly vanished — into the custody of the U.S. government, which held her and her baby for days in a hotel with almost no outside contact before federal officers summarily expelled them from the country.

Similar actions have played out along the border for months under an emergency health order the Trump administration issued in March. Citing the threat of COVID-19, it granted federal agents sweeping powers to almost immediately return anyone at the border, including infants as young as 8 months. Children are typically entitled to special protections under the law, including the right to have their asylum claims adjudicated by a judge.

Under this new policy, the administration is not deporting children — a proceeding based on years of established law that requires a formal hearing in immigration court.

It is instead expelling them — without a judge’s ruling and after only a cursory government screening and no access to social workers or lawyers, sometimes not even their family, while in U.S. custody. The children are not even granted the primary registration number by which the Department of Homeland Security tracks all immigrants in its care, making it “virtually impossible” to find them, Efrén C. Olivares, a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights Project, wrote in a court declaration arguing that the practice is illegal.

Little is known about how the process works, but published government figures suggest almost all children arriving at the border are being rapidly returned.

. . . .

A sense of deja vu

Thirty-five years ago, a 15-year-old Salvadoran girl fleeing a civil war in her homeland was also imprisoned in an American hotel under the care of unlicensed private security guards. Jenny Flores’ case forced the most significant overhaul yet of how U.S. authorities can detain migrant children. In fact, the 1997 federal settlement is named for her.

Carlos Holguín, who began litigating that case in 1985, said there is now a sense of “deja vu … but the degree of lawlessness is even beyond what was going on then.”

Since taking office, the Trump administration has tried to end the Flores Settlement, arguing that it and a 2008 trafficking law work as “loopholes” encouraging families to send children here alone. The government has attempted to undo the settlement through regulations and requested Congress curtail the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which requires certain safeguards for children arriving alone at the border.

So far, both efforts have failed.

The administration tried separating parents and children at the border, but a federal judge largely ruled against the practice in 2018, allowing it only in narrow circumstances such as if the adult poses a danger.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee, who is in charge of the Flores Settlement, has determined the administration must quickly release children locked up with their parents in immigrant detention centers, most recently citing the risk of coronavirus spreading.

“The family residential centers are on fire and there is no more time for half measures,” she wrote in a June 26 order.

The government is now arguing it can force detained parents to choose between freeing their children or staying indefinitely imprisoned with them.

But none of the administration’s attempts to undo either the settlement or the law have been as effective as the expulsion order, which is “eviscerating every single protection mechanism outlined by Congress and the courts with one sweeping gesture,” said Podkul of KIND.

Late last month, the ACLU sued to allow its lawyers access to children detained in the McAllen Hampton Inn after a video went viral showing a Texas Civil Rights Project lawyer forcibly pushed away.

“The children are in imminent danger of unlawful removal,” the attorneys wrote.

Facing a public relations scandal, Hilton quickly announced that all three hotels had canceled reservations with MVM.

“We expect all Hilton properties to reject business that would use a hotel in this way,” a Hilton spokesperson said.

Government attorneys agreed to pause the expulsion of the migrants who they said remained in the McAllen hotel on the date of the lawsuit — once again, ACLU attorneys said, mooting litigation on the broader policy. A separate suit involving a 13-year-old Salvadoran girl who was expelled this summer is still pending in a Washington, D.C., federal court.

By the time the administration stopped the removal of the migrants detained at the Hampton Inn, most who had been held there had already been expelled or transferred elsewhere — some, advocates said, just before the ACLU filed its lawsuit. Only 17 family members, including one unaccompanied child, remained in that hotel.

What happened to the rest? No one would say.

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

It might be “below the radar screen” during COVID-19. After all, that’s what criminals like the Trump kakistocracy and their DHS accomplices count on — a diversion so that they can abuse children and violate human rights and human dignity to the content of their evil, White Nationalist hearts.

But, eventually, the truth about the “crimes against humanity” by the regime’s cowards as well as the complicity of legislators, the Roberts Court, and a host of others will come out.

How will we explain to future generations what we have done to our fellow humans, particularly the most vulnerable who have sought our legal protection and found only cruelty, racism, and lawlessness? How will we justify racist-driven institutionalized child abuse and “Dred Scottification” of “the other” on our watch? We have become “Perp Nation!”

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-05-20

🏴‍☠️”FAMILY SEPARATION 2.0″ — NEW REPORT FROM AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: 200+ Years of American Democracy No Match For Trump Regime’s Blackshirts! — “One officer told several mothers that “‘it doesn’t matter what you sign because we will do what we want.’”

Amnesty International USA-Family Separation 2.0_May 21, 2020

Family Separation 2.0: “You aren’t going to separate me from my only child.”

On April 7, 2020, Amnesty International issued a report, ‘We are adrift, about to sink’: The looming COVID-19 disaster in US immigration detention facilities, documenting how the Trump administration was failing to adequately protect tens of thousands of immigrants and asylum- seekers whom the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (“DHS”) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) agency was detaining in over 200 detention centers across the United States.1

Three of these facilities detain families, including infants as young as 1-year-old who are still breast-feeding. Deceptively named “family residential centers” (FRC), these detention facilities are: the Berks County Residential Center (“Berks”) in Leesport, Pennsylvania; the South Texas Family Residential Center (“Dilley”) in Dilley, Texas; and the Karnes County Residential Center (“Karnes”) in Karnes City, Texas.

While the dangerous conditions in immigration detention remain little changed since Amnesty International published its April report, ICE has now introduced a new element of harm: family separation. Once again, this administration is weaponizing its public health response to COVID- 19 to punish and deter people seeking safety.

. . . .

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

Read the complete report at the above link.

The regime’s “Dred Scottification” — dehumanization of “the other” before the law — continues unabated as those institutions charged with preventing such abuses tank.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

O5-22-20

WASHPOST EDITORIAL: Trump’s War On Children Is Cruel & Unconstitutional: “Singling out children for punishment arising from their parents’ immigration status is a senseless act of vengeance.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-withholding-relief-from-us-children–just-to-spite-their-undocumented-parents/2020/05/08/85168648-8fec-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html

PRESIDENT TRUMP promised that the $2 trillion economic stimulus bill he signed in March, providing direct payments to tens of millions of Americans, would “deliver urgently needed relief to our nation’s families, workers and businesses.” But more out of spite than in the furtherance of any rational policy goal, several million Americans were specifically excluded from the relief plan: U.S. citizens who are children or spouses of undocumented immigrants.

In the midst of a pandemic ravaging the nation, lawmakers and the administration saw fit to insert and enact that provision of the law, for no apparent reason beyond its punitive effect. The vast majority of the nation’s babies, toddlers, middle-schoolers and teenagers younger than 17 are eligible for $500 payments — generally rendered to their parents — but not if either their mother or father is an unauthorized immigrant.

Nor can U.S. citizen parents receive the $1,200 payment to which they would otherwise be entitled if they file taxes jointly with an undocumented spouse. A household consisting of a married couple with two U.S. citizen children, which would otherwise qualify for $3,400 in benefits, would receive nothing if the undocumented mother filed a joint return with her citizen husband.

[[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]]

Singling out children for punishment arising from their parents’ immigration status is a senseless act of vengeance. The Trump administration’s attitudes toward legal and illegal immigrants are morally odious and pragmatically misguided, yet this policy stands out as uniquely cruel given that the immigration status of parents does not exclude their U.S. citizen children from receiving a host of other federal benefits, including welfare, food stamps and housing assistance.

What’s particularly senseless is that the administration’s policy of impoverishing households that include undocumented immigrants coincides with a moment in which the nation’s food supply — heavily dependent on those very immigrants — is in peril. By the government’s own estimate, half of all field hands in the country, more than 1 million workers, are illegal immigrants whose labor has been deemed “essential” to keeping grocery shelves stocked with meat and produce. Other such immigrants may have lost jobs this spring in restaurants or as custodians and child-care workers, and are already struggling to care for their children.

A lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Maryland by advocates at Georgetown University Law Center on behalf of the citizen children of unauthorized immigrants. The plaintiffs include a 7-month-old girl, a 9-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy. The punitive policy will make it more difficult for the children to be adequately fed, housed and clothed at a time of economic duress.

[[The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.]]

The effect of the measure is to make second-class citizens of several million American children, nearly all born in this country, and to intensify their family’s suffering even as unemployment tightens its grip. The unconstitutionality of such a discriminatory policy, which flies in the face of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process, is rivaled only by its mean-spiritedness.

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

It’s what happens when Congress and the Courts fail to stand up to irrationality and tyranny.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

05-12-20

RISKING LIVES TO KEEP THE DEPORTATION RAILWAY RUNNING — FOR UNACCOMPANIED KIDS! — “It is inexplicable and dangerous that the Trump administration has insisted that detained unaccompanied children are still required to go to court,” said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense.” — Julia Preston Reports For The Marshall Project

Julia Preston
American Journalist
The Marshall Project

Wendy Young
President, Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”)

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/04/10/migrant-children-still-face-speedy-deportation-hearings-in-covid19-hotspots

Julia writes:

They are children who were caught crossing the southwest border without papers and sent to migrant shelters in New York when the coronavirus was silently spreading. Now the city is a pandemic epicenter in lockdown, but the Trump administration is pressing ahead with their deportation cases, forcing the children to fight in immigration court to stay.

In two courthouses in the center of the besieged city, hearings for unaccompanied children—migrants who were apprehended without a parent—are speeding forward. The U.S. Department of Justice, which controls the immigration courts, has said it has no plan to suspend them.

This week an 8-year-old, a 5-year-old, and a teenage single mother with an infant were preparing for imminent court dates and deadlines in New York, lawyers representing them said. With children trapped indoors in shelters and foster-care homes, many young migrants who don’t have lawyers may not even be aware of ongoing court cases that could quickly end with orders for them to be deported.

Hearings for unaccompanied children are also proceeding in courts in other COVID-19 hotspots, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Boston.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency in charge of the immigration courts, has rejected calls from judges, prosecutors and immigration lawyers to shut down courts nationwide. Although hearings for immigrants who are not detained have been suspended through May 1, cases of people in detention are going forward at the same accelerated pace as before the pandemic.

That includes many unaccompanied children. Since last year, Trump administration officials have instructed the courts to treat those children as detained if they are in shelters or foster care under the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, a federal agency. Immigration judges are under pressure to complete detained cases within 60 days—warp speed in immigration court—with no exception for children.

Across the country, about 3,100 unaccompanied children are currently in the custody of the refugee agency. Many have run from deadly violence and abuse at home and hope to find safety with family members in the United States. The demands for them to meet fast-moving court requirements are causing alarm among lawyers, caregivers and families.

“It is inexplicable and dangerous that the Trump administration has insisted that detained unaccompanied children are still required to go to court,” said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND, which helps provide lawyers for unaccompanied children. Unlike in criminal courts, in immigration court children have no right to a lawyer paid by the government if they cannot afford one.

On April 8, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the immigration bar, and other legal groups asked a federal court for a temporary restraining order to force the Justice Department to suspend in-person hearings of detained immigrants during the pandemic.

Justice Department officials say they are holding hearings for immigrants in detention, including for children, so they can get their cases decided and perhaps be freed quickly.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Julia’s report at the link.

The idea, as DOJ claims, that this is being done to facilitate the “freeing” of kids is preposterous on its face.

First, there is nothing stopping them from arranging placements for children without the Immigration Court hearings being completed. It used to be done all the time.

Second, the DOJ has intentionally and unethically rewritten asylum laws through “precedents” aimed primarily at making it harder to qualify for asylum. This abuse of process particularly targets those fleeing persecution resulting from various types of systematic government and societal violence in Central America. The approval rates for these types of cases have fallen to minuscule levels under Trump.

Third, no child has any chance of succeeding in Immigration Court without a lawyer. Almost all lawyers who represent children in Immigration Court serve “pro bono” — or work for NGOs who can only provide minimal salaries.

Yet, the Administration is making these lawyers risk their health and safety, while artificially accelerating the process, all of which actively and aggressively discourages representation.

Added to that is the constant “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” with Immigration Courts closing, reopening, and re-closing on a moment’s notice and dockets constantly being rearranged as judges, court support staff, interpreters, and DHS lawyers fall ill.

The Administration could work with groups like KIND and other NGOs to arrange placements, and schedule hearings in a manner that promotes health and safety for everyone while maximizing due process. But, the Administration refuses to do this.

Instead, those seeking to inject sanity, common sense, best practices, and human decency into the process are forced to sue the Administration in Federal Court. This further dissipates and diverts already scarce legal resources that could have been used to actually represent children in Immigration Court and arrange safe placements for them.

Finally, as I have noted previously, the Administration has simply suspended the operation of the Constitution and the rule of law at the borders. This means that thousands, including unaccompanied children, are “orbited into the void” without any process whatsoever or any effort to ascertain their situations or best interests.

All of this gives lie to the Administration’s bogus claim that this is about looking out for the best interests of these kids. No, it’s about maximizing cruelty, destroying lives (considered an effective and acceptable “deterrent” in nativist circles), and carrying out a noxious racist White Nationalist restrictionist immigration agenda.

And, to date, Congress and the Federal Courts, both of which have the power to put an end to this disgraceful, unlawful, and unconstitutional conduct have been largely “MIA.”

Nevertheless, thanks to courageous and dedicated journalists like Julia and organizations like KIND, a public record is being made. While those responsible for implementing and enabling these abuses directed at the “most vulnerable of the vulnerable” among us are likely to escape legal accountability, they will eventually be tried and found wanting in the “court of history.”

Due Process Forever! Trump’s Child Abuse Never!

PWS

04-10-20

SCOFFLAW NATION: Regime Uses Coronavirus Chaos To Ramp Up Attacks On Migrant Kids!

Trump Abuses Children — Trump & Children Cartoon
Joel Pett
Tribune Content Agency

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-deport-migrant-children-coronavirus-bill_n_5e8d8e46c5b6e1d10a6c30dc

Reuters reports:

Nearly 400 migrant children intercepted at the U.S.-Mexico border have been deported in the past two weeks under new border restrictions.

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) ― U.S. immigration officials have rapidly deported nearly 400 migrant children intercepted at the U.S.-Mexico border in the past two weeks under new rules billed as seeking to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus in the United States, according to government data seen by Reuters.

President Donald Trump’s administration implemented new border rules on March 21 that scrapped decades-long practices under laws meant to protect children from human trafficking and offer them a chance to seek asylum in a U.S. immigration court. Under the new rules, U.S. officials can quickly remove people without standard immigration proceedings.

Overall, U.S. border officials have expelled nearly 7,000 migrants to Mexico since the new procedures took effect, according to the data and a Mexican government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Of those, 377 were minors, the data showed.

The overall number of 7,000 was first published by ProPublica, but the figure for children deported has not previously been reported.

Around 120 of the minors, who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or legal guardian, were quickly sent on planes back to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to data from March 27 to April 2. It was not clear whether the remainder of the children intercepted at the border were pushed back to Mexico or returned to their home countries during the preceding week.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) declined to comment. The agency in the past has said that all people caught crossing illegally, including minors, could be subjected to the new restrictions, which aim to cut the time migrants arrested at the border are held in U.S. custody.

Before the pandemic of COVID-19, the potentially lethal respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, unaccompanied minors caught at the border were placed in shelters run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Children traveling with adults other than parents or legal guardians would also be classified as “unaccompanied” and put into HHS care, even if the adults they were traveling with were family members. Under the new rules, however, they are now called “single minors” and can be sent back to Mexico, according to a CBP official.

. . . .

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

Read the full story at the link.

Basically, Trump has repealed U.S. asylum and protection laws by unilateral action, with almost no “pushback” from Congress or the courts.

PWS

04-08-17

A LITTLE LIGHT IN A TIME OF DARKNESS, AS JUDGE DOLLY GEE ORDERS REGIME TO RELEASE DETAINED KIDS — Four In “America’s Kiddie Gulag” Have Already Tested Positive For COVID-19!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/us/coronavirus-migrant-children-detention-flores.html?referringSource=articleShare

Miriam Jordan reports for The NY Times:

By Miriam Jordan

March 29, 2020
Updated 4:02 a.m. ET

LOS ANGELES — Concerned that thousands of migrant children in federal detention facilities could be in danger of contracting the coronavirus, a federal judge in Los Angeles late on Saturday ordered the government to “make continuous efforts” to release them from custody.

The order from Judge Dolly M. Gee of the United States District Court came after plaintiffs in a long-running case over the detention of migrant children cited reports that four children being held at a federally licensed shelter in New York had tested positive for the virus.

“The threat of irreparable injury to their health and safety is palpable,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers said in their petition, which called for migrant children across the country to be released to outside sponsors within seven days, unless they represent a flight risk.

There are currently about 3,600 children in shelters around the United States operated under license by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, and about 3,300 more at three detention facilities for migrant children held in custody with their parents, operated by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Advocates for immigrants have tried for decades to limit the government’s ability to detain children apprehended after crossing the border, arguing that it is psychologically harmful, violates their rights and undermines their long-term health.

Now, some say, the coronavirus represents an even more immediate threat.

In addition to the four children who tested positive in New York, at least one child is in quarantine and awaiting results of a test for the virus at a detention facility operated by ICE, according to documents filed with the court.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Miriam’s report at the above link.

Wow! Dateline 4:02 AM! Miriam is always on the job to make sure we get the latest news! Thanks to her and many other dedicated journalists for shedding some light on the way our regime treats the most vulnerable among us in the time of need!

Pretty shabby that judges under prodding from dedicated members of the New Due Process Army have to order the kakistocracy to “do the right thing.”

Some states and localities are actually doing the right (and smart) things on their own initiative. But, that wouldn’t be DHS or EOIR under the Trump regime.

PWS

03-29-20

“BABY JAILS” — Georgetown Law Professor Phil Schrag Releases New Book Taking You Inside America’s “Kiddie Gulags” & The Continuing Fight To End The U.S. Government’s Official Policies of Inflicting Child Abuse On The Most Vulnerable Among Us!

Professor Philip G. Schrag
Georgetown Law
Co-Director, CALS Asylum Clinic

Here’s a great “mini review” of Phil’s new book from Professor Kit Johnson on ImmigrationProf Blog:

Thursday, February 20, 2020

Thoughts on Baby Jails by Philip G. Schrag

By Immigration Prof

Kevin has already posted about Baby Jails, the new book from immprof Philip G. Schrag (Georgetown) that explores the detention of migrant children.

I write today as someone who recently devoured this book. Let me start by telling you two things about myself: I hate flying and I am not much of a fan of nonfiction books. Combining these two things, I tend to read a riveting YA novel while flying in an effort to distract myself from how many feet I am unnaturally suspended above the earth’s surface. Yet I recently read Schrag’s book over the course of 3 flights. It was utterly engrossing.

The book is jam-packed with law and yet manages to read like a narrative. You get a feel for characters (Jenny Flores, certain attorneys and judges) and find yourself rooting from the sidelines even as you know victories will frequently fail to live up to their promise.

The book included numerous vignettes and insights that were entirely new to me. For example, did you know Ed Asner was responsible for Flores’ legal representation? Yes, the grumpy old man from Pixar’s Up set out to help his housekeeper’s daughter who was housed with Flores and connected the young women with Peter Schey, founder of the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights (now the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law).

Here’s another one: Leon Fresco represented the government in a 2015 lawsuit brought by Schey to enforce the Flores settlement — arguing that the settlement didn’t apply to children traveling with parents and that the agreement was “no longer equitable.” Leon Fresco! I wrote about him a few years back — he was a key player in the failed 2013 comprehensive immigration reform led by the Gang of Eight.

I’m also impressed by how comprehensive the book is. I recently spoke to a friend who is on the cusp of publishing a book and we talked about how, at some point in the writing process, the publisher will charge by the word for additions of any kind. Yet Schrag’s book must have been edited and added upon right up until the last moment of publication. There is nothing of current import that is left behind (remain in Mexico, asylum cooperation agreements, third country transit).

This book is marvelous. A tour de force. I recommend it to everyone — even terrified flyers. Instead of gasping at every bump in the jet stream you’ll be scribbling away in the margins, furious at what our nation has done to children in the name of immigration enforcement.

-KitJ

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

Thanks, Phil & KitJ, my friends and colleagues. Both of you are amazing inspirations to all of us in the “New Due Process Army.”

The Trump regime seeks to take child abuse many steps further to effectively “repeal by administrative fiat” all asylum protection laws, to insure that as many families and children as possible suffer, die. or are forced to remain in life-threatening conditions outside the U.S., and to abandon any effective cooperative efforts to improve conditions in “refugee sending” countries.

Meanwhile, many complicit Article III Judges (U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee being a notable exception) simply “look the other way” — not THIER kids and families being tortured and killed, so who cares what happens to them — and a depressing segment of the U.S. public just doesn’t care that the Trump regime is putting America among the most notable international human rights abusers. After all, THEY have jobs, THEIR kids aren’t the Trump regime’s targets (yet), and the stock market is going up. So, who cares what dehumanization, intentional human rights abuses, and violations of legal norms are taking place in their name?

Still, I think that Phil, Kit, the Round Table, and many other members of our “New Due Process Army” are clearly “on the right side of history” here. It’s just tragic that so many innocent folks, many of them children, will have to die or be irreparably harmed before America finally comes to its senses and restores morality and human values to our government.

We’ve got a chance to “right the ship” this November. Don’t blow it!

Due Process Forever; Government Child Abusers & Their Enablers Never!

PWS

02-25 -20

STATUE OF LIBERTY DENIER “COOCH COOCH,” “WOLFMAN,” & OTHER DHS SCOFFLAWS HELD IN CONTEMPT BY U.S. JUDGE – Regime Actually Deported Kids Found Eligible For Relief, In Violation Of Court Order!

https://apple.news/AR_Xf6D4ER7qUHL9_TRSjBA

Reported by AP:

Judge finds US in contempt after immigrants in suit deported

A federal judge has found the U.S. government in contempt after authorities deported five young immigrants who were seeking to remain in the country under a program for abused and neglected immigrant children.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins issued the civil order Friday after finding the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services violated a 2018 preliminary injunction that required them to notify lawyers of any enforcement action against the young immigrants in a class-action lawsuit in California.

Despite the preliminary injunction, five immigrants who were seeking to stay in the United States under a federal government program for abused immigrant children were deported, and one of them was reportedly assaulted.

Mary Tanagho Ross, appellate staff attorney at Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said she learned of the deportations months after one of the immigrants was back in Guatemala, where he was attacked by gang members.

“It is shocking the defendants didn’t do their part to make sure ICE complied with a federal court order and they literally sent kids back to the lion’s den,” she said Wednesday.

A Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment on the case.

The lawsuit was settled last year between the U.S. government and lawyers for immigrants who sought to be covered by the program after they turned 18. Applications are allowed until age 21.

Tanagho Ross said she would never have learned of the deportations but for another lawyer who mentioned one of his clients had applied for the program, which leads to a green card, but got deported after losing a case for asylum.

The court ordered the agencies to return the five immigrants to the United States by Feb. 29 so long as they want to come back, and pay $500 for each day after that each one remains out of the country.

One of them has already been returned and is in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which plans to send him back to Guatemala in another two weeks now that the lawyers have been notified, the U.S. government said in a court filing.

His application to the program for abused children has been approved but he will likely have to wait more than two years for a green card due to a cap on the number allowed to be issued each year, the government said.

Tanagho Ross said attorneys will seek to block his deportation.

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

From the Judge’s order:

Defendants’ violation of the preliminary injunction is especially concerning. Beyond Defendants’ basic failure to comply with a Court’s order, Defendants removed class members that had been abused, neglected, or abandoned in their countries of origin. And instead of notifying Plaintiffs’ counsel of those removals as ordered by the Court, Defendants remained silent until Plaintiffs’ counsel discovered those violations themselves six months after the first removal.

Accordingly, the Court now holds all Defendants—Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, Chad F. Wolf, Robert M. Cowan, United States Department of Homeland Security, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services—in civil contempt.

Here’s a copy of the complete court order:

ImmigrationOrder Granting contemptagainstgovtofficials

So, just why would we be spending taxpayer money to remove abused children who had already been found eligible for relief to the countries where they would again be abused, just because “no number was available” at the moment? Are “numbers” really more important than human lives? Why would the Government spend taxpayer money “defending the indefensible” rather than just confessing error and apologizing to the plaintiffs and to the judge? Why aren’t DOJ lawyers working for Barr and defending regime scofflaws held to the same ethical standards as lawyers in private practice?

Prior to this regime, DHS counsel routinely stipulated to stays or “administrative closing” of cases like this. If they hadn’t, most Immigration Judges would have ordered the cases closed, terminated “without prejudice,” or continued. Why have sensible legal practices that promoted docket efficiency, reasonableness, and humanity been intentionally abandoned? Obviously it’s “malicious incompetence” as practiced by DHS & DOJ management in this regime that has ballooned the Immigration Court backlog to over 1.3 million cases and still growing. Whatever happened to responsible Government in the public interest?

One of those most responsible for this breakdown in legal ethics and fundamental fairness is former Attorney General Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions who illegally and unethically did away with “administrative closing.” Yet “Gonzo” walks the streets, even having the audacity to run for the Senate again, while his victims and our legal system suffer. (Sessions was the “mastermind” of the unconstitutional “family separation” fiasco that even years later is still traumatizing innocent families for the “crime” of seeking legal protection under our laws.) What’s wrong with a system that lets corrupt, immoral individuals like Sessions escape accountability and publicly tout, even seek to benefit from, their “crimes against humanity?”

This is the second time recently that Article III Federal Judges have found Trump regime employees to be basically in contempt of their orders. When are Federal Judges going to start sending some of these folks to jail and referring Barr, “Cooch Cooch,” and the DOJ lawyers who continue to obfuscate and frivolously defend the indefensible to the appropriate bar (not Barr) authorities for license revocation?

PWS

02-20-20

PROTECTING KIDS FROM THE REGIME: Legal Scholars & NGOs File Brief Supporting Children’s Rights Under International Law To Be Saved From The “Trump Kiddie Gulag” — Flores v. Barr

Here’s a summary from New Due Process Army stalwart and Georgetown Law graduate Ian M. Kysel, Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School:

As the amicus briefs in the 9^th circuit appeal in Flores rolled in last night, I wanted to flag one in particular on which I am co-counsel: anamicus brief by more than 125 legal scholars and non-governmental organizations. It is attached. In it, we argue that a decision by the 9^th circuit allowing the government’s regulations to enter into force would violate U.S. international law obligations. The amici on this brief include several current or former senior UN human rights experts from around the world (including members of the UN Human Rights Committee and the Committee on the Rights of the Child) as well as the former Deans of both Harvard Law School and Yale Law School (the latter, Harold Hongju Koh, also formerly served in government as both Legal Adviser and Assistant Secretary of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State). It is unusual to have so many senior experts on an amicus brief at the court of appeals level. The experts make clear to the 9^th circuit that the government’s effort to permit indefinite detention of migrant children, including asylum seekers, in secure or more secure facilities with limited ability to challenge aspects of their detention, would violate core human rights protections (including children’s right to be free from unlawful detention and their rights to special measures of protection and to consideration of the best interests of the child) and that the regulations should remain enjoined, as continued enforcement of the settlement remains in the public interest.

Here’s a link to the brief, a “mini-treatise” on the rights of child migrants under international law:

2020 01 28 Flores Amicus Draft 4842-1836-6386 v.12[6]

KEY QUOTE FROM BRIEF:

INTRODUCTION

Under Article VI of the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent, U.S. courts have an obligation to enforce customary international law binding on the United States, as well as to construe federal law consistently with the United States’ obligations under customary international law and treaties ratified by the United States. The Government’s enjoined regulations,2 which repudiate the terms of the Stipulated Settlement Agreement in Flores v. Barr (“Flores Settlement”), would violate international law, including the United States’ treaty obligations and customary international law. This Court should decide the appeal in a manner consistent with U.S. obligations under international law. The policy changes the Government asks this Court to approve would violate the United States’ obligations to safeguard the rights of children to be free from unlawful detention. Under international law, the United States must provide children with special measures of protection and ensure children’s best interests are always a primary consideration. This Court should therefore affirm the District Court.

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

Thanks to Ian and all of his wonderful colleagues for speaking up for the legal (and human) rights of some of the world’s most vulnerable children to be protected against further intentional abuses by the Trump regime and its corrupt intellectually and morally bankrupt bureaucratic toadies (past, present, and, unfortunately, future).

I had the great pleasure of working with Ian and some of his colleagues, including some of my own students and former students, on the International Migrants’ Bill of Rights Initiative at Georgetown Law now continuing at Cornell Law under the leadership of Ian and my long time friend and colleague Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr.

The original International Migrants’ Bill of Rights Initiative at Georgetown Law was the “brainchild” of my good friends, renowned public international law expert Professor David Stewart, former Georgetown Law Dean and U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Alex Aleinikoff, CALS Asylum Clinic Director Professor Andy Schoenholtz, and many others.

It’s hard to describe how satisfying it is to see younger folks that I have taught and/or mentored during my career go on to become leaders of the New Due Process Army and to continue the generational battle to make Due Process for migrants a reality, rather than the cruel and lawless charade and parody of justice that it has some under this regime.

Thanks again to Ian and all the others like him for taking up up the fight. And, of course, many thanks to Steve and other scholars and teachers like him for “keeping the fires of Due Process burning bright even during one of American Democracy’s darkest nights!”

Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-30-20

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CLYDE W. FORD @ LA TIMES: “Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’”

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-01-07/great-race-passing-trump

Ford writes:

OPINION

Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’

By CLYDE W. FORD

JAN. 7, 2020

3:01 AM

The images horrify.

On the banks of the Rio Grande, a child floats lifelessly, her arm around her father, both drowned while trying to cross from Mexico into the United States. Refugees crossing the Mediterranean from Africa into Europe regularly drown. A Honduran mother dragging children flees from tear gas at the U.S. border. Children in cages.

The policies terrify. A border wall. Family separation. The purgatory of waiting for asylum in a third country.

In December, the Washington Post reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to use migrant children in detention as bait. Adults who show up to claim them would be targeted for arrest and deportation.

The words incite fear. “Bad hombres.” “Rapists.” “Criminals.” “Shithole countries.” When uttered by a U.S. president, they carry even greater weight.

Britain, Poland, Italy, the United States. Around the world, countries once proud of welcoming immigrants seem determined to find ever more devious ways to keep them out. Are these signs of a newly ascendant nationalism? Or the last gasps of existential fear?

The worldwide immigration crisis — and the racism apparently driving it — can trace its roots in part to a century-old book, Madison Grant’s “The Passing of the Great Race.”

In publishing a centenary edition of the 1916 work, white nationalist Ostara Press praised the book as a “call to American whites to counter the dangers both from non-white and non-north Western European immigration.” Grant proposed a “Nordic race,” loosely centered in Scandinavia, as principally responsible for human social and cultural development. He feared immigration and intermarriage would dilute this race, dooming it to extinction.

Grant’s fears of his “great race” passing are very much alive today.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s ongoing study of emails sent by Stephen Miller to Breitbart News in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election document his affinity for white nationalism. Miller, an architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, lauds former President Calvin Coolidge for signing the Immigration Act of 1924, which hardened non-white immigration and eased white immigration from Western Europe. It also established the U.S. Border Patrol, the predecessor of Customs and Border Protection and ICE.

Grant’s writing is credited as part of the inspiration for the creation and passage of that 1924 Act. Hitler called Grant’s book, “my bible.” Grant’s ideas defined apartheid. His book fueled the U.S. eugenics movement.

Eugenics is a pseudoscience of race that seeks to breed and maintain a “Nordic stock” of human beings, while culling undesirables — blacks, Jews, Asians, South Americans, homosexuals, the physically and mentally ill, and others — through measures ranging from forced sterilization to death.

In Grant’s day, eugenics attracted the rich and famous — Carnegies, Rockefellers, and the Kelloggs of Corn Flakes fame. Eugenicist Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, saw birth control work as eliminating “human weeds” and Alexander Graham Bell presided over the scientific directors of the Eugenics Records Office, a research institute in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.

Eugenics is very much in vogue among white nationalists and far-right groups worldwide, though refashioned now into broader conspiracies like “replacement theory,” which originated in France with the writings of Renaud Camus and proposes that U.S. and European whites are being intentionally “replaced” through low birth rates and liberal immigration policies.

“We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) in 2017. A gunman in Norway who murdered 80 people in 2011 portrayed the act as a defense of the Nordic race from the scourge of Islamic immigration. Similar “replacement theory” fears influenced mass shooters in Christchurch, Pittsburgh, El Paso and Charleston.

Surprisingly, Grant was as an early conservationist who saw in the fate of endangered species — the moose, the buffalo, the redwood tree — a similar fate awaiting his “Nordics.” He helped establish the U.S. National Park system. Modern-day environmental and climate movements have roots in Grant’s work, leading to a convoluted, bizarre specter:

The U.S. and European countries that Grant lauded manufacture the “greenhouse gases” threatening the environment that Grant sought to protect. Meanwhile, the climate crisis produces refugees from countries that Grant abhorred, seeking shelter in countries with draconian immigration policies that Grant helped to create.

Yet Grant was right. His “great race” is passing. Studies cite 2050 as the tipping point, when U.S. whites will become a statistical minority, and most Americans will be people of color. Whether crafted in overtly racist language or couched in covertly racist immigration policies, fear of the “great race” passing is used to win elections, cling to power, manipulate public opinion and grow organizational membership.

Immigrants built America. This new wave is no different. They are the face of the future, deserving new lives in a country that helps them succeed.

Yes, the “great race” is passing. Good riddance. And we should turn to finding ways to help everyone accept this inevitability — and thrive from it.

Clyde W. Ford is the author of “Think Black,” a memoir about his father, the first black software engineer in America.

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

Like those who were behind or “went along to go along” with horrible parts of our history like Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Chinese Exclusion Laws, or Jim Crow, Trump’s supporters and enablers eventually will have much to answer for in the “court of history.”

“Fake news.” “alternative facts,” false narratives, and internet myths might be gospel to Breitbart, Fox News, GOP sycophants, and Trump voters, but eventually, particularly in an age of information and documentation, “truth will out.” And, it won’t be pretty for the “Modern Day Jim Crows” any more than it was for the segregationists and other racists who preceded them.

PWS

01-10-20

HUMANITY REVILED: THE HUMAN COSTS OF TRUMP’S INTENTIONALLY CRUEL & INHUMAN POLICIES CARRIED OUT BY DHS – Mica Rosenberg @ Reuters & Friends With Three Timely Reports!

I wanted to share our latest exclusive reporting that found some 16,000 children, nearly 500 of them infants under 1 year old, have been sent back to Mexico under the “Migrant Protection Protocols” to wait out their U.S. court hearings in often precarious living conditions. The government would not share a demographic breakdown of who was being sent back under the program so we sought the answers ourselves:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-babies-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-migrant-policy-sends-thousands-of-babies-and-toddlers-back-to-mexico-idUSKBN1WQ1H1

Separately, we just completed a multimedia project that took months of work and lots of cross-border collaboration to follow the diverging fates of several migrants who travelled with the caravans last year:

https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-IMMIGRATION-PROFILE/0100B2FK1NP/index.html

I am also following the developments in the U.S. refugee resettlement program:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-refugees/all-i-can-do-is-pray-a-family-in-limbo-as-us-slows-refugee-admissions-idUSKBN1WI0XV

Please read and share and stay in touch with more story ideas!

All the best,

Mica

………………………………………………….

Mica Rosenberg

Reuters News

National Immigration Reporter

www.reuters.com

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Thanks Mica & team for the great in-depth reporting highlighting the human costs of the Trump Administration’s scofflaw policies.

It’s also what “Big Mac With Lies” actually stood for and went along with during his tenure at DHS. Things to remember when, somewhere down the line, Big Mac inevitably tries to “reinvent himself” as “the voice of reason” or an “internal resistor” to Trump’s grotesque anti-human rights campaign and his “political weaponization” of DHS.

DHS actually has a duty to insure that refugee laws are fairly and generously applied, as intended, to protect those fleeing persecution and torture. Not only did Big Mac fail to carry out that responsibility, but he actively undermined, mocked, and further endangered those needing protection under our laws. And, it was all part of a blatantly racist, White Nationalist, restrictionist Trump agenda that Big Mac fully understood and willfully advanced. He presided over a highly corrupt, unprofessional, politicized, weaponization of DHS. By this time, the damage appears to be irreparable.

PWS

10-13-19

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