Cruelty – immigrationcourtside.com

🚂🛤GARLAND’S DEPORTATION RAILROAD KEEPS ROLLIN’ — WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM TWO GOP JUDGES IN 4TH — Mejia-Velasquez v. Garland — After 6 Years, 3 Flawed Tribunals, A Woman Claiming Politically-Motivated Gang Abuse In Honduras Sent Packing Back To Danger & Corruption Without A Merits Hearing!

Train
Dennis Adams, Federal Highway Administration; levels adjustment applied by Hohum
Public domain. — Garland’s Deportation Railway retains most of his predecessors’ engineers, conductors, and crew. It’s often slow, unreliable, erratic, and subject to arbitrary unannounced schedule changes. It continues to bypass “Due Processville” and “Fundamental Fairness City.”

https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201192.P.pdf

Mejia-Velasquez v. Garland, 4th Cir., 02-16-22, published

PANEL: NIEMEYER, MOTZ, and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges.

OPINION BY: Judge Niemeyer

DISSENT: Judge Motz

KEY QUOTE FROM DISSENT:

Under the current immigration statutes, DHS has good reason to require applicants for relief from removal to submit fingerprints and other biometrics. But before DHS does so, it must first comply with specified notice obligations. Where, as here, DHS fails to do so, I would not fault the applicant. As the Supreme Court explained in Niz-Chavez, “[i]f men must turn square corners when they deal with the government, it cannot be too much to expect the government to turn square corners when it deals with them.” 141 S. Ct. at 1486.

I respectfully dissent.

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The IJ and the BIA relied on a wrong BIA precedent. The 4th Circuit majority judges recognized its incorrectness, but took OIL’s invitation to fashion another rationale for denying this asylum applicant a hearing on the merits of her life or death claim. While the respondent was represented by counsel, the disputed “warnings” and dialogue relating to the missing biometrics were not translated into Spanish, the only language she understood.

While this case was pending, USCIS finally delivered the long and inexplicably delayed biometrics appointment letter to the respondent. But, that made no difference to a group of judges anxious to railroad her back to Honduras (one of the most dangerous and thoroughly corrupt countries in the hemisphere) without a meaningful chance to be heard.

With a dose of macabre ☠️ irony, the 4th Circuit’s tone-deaf decision came just as the US was requesting extradition of former Honduran President, and Obama and Trump Administrations’ buddy, Juan Orlando Hernández on drug trafficking charges! https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2022/02/violence-in-honduras-tied-to-ex-president-now-arrested.html

Of all the Federal Judges who looked at this case over the years, only Judge Motz was interested in providing the respondent a due process hearing on her life-determining claim. The rest evidently were more fixated on creating reasons for NOT hearing her case. With the same amount of judicial and litigation effort, likely less, the respondent probably could have received a due process hearing on the merits of her claim. Additionally, there would have been consequences for the BIA’s defective “good enough for government work” precedent.

Of course, like Garland, none of the exalted judges involved in this disgraceful dereliction of duty have actually represented an asylum applicant in Immigration Court and had to deal with the confusing, convoluted, backlogged, and often notoriously screwed up DHS/EOIR biometrics process. See, e.g., “USCIS Biometrics Appointment Backlog,” https://www.stilt.com/blog/2021/02/biometrics-appointment-backlog/.

I suspect that folks contesting a parking ticket get more consideration in our system than this asylum applicant got from Garland’s unfair and dysfunctional Immigration Courts and the OIL lawyers who defend these mis-handled cases. And, in the world of “refugee roulette,” where human lives are treated like lottery tickets, a different Circuit panel of judges might have joined Judge Motz in getting it right.

The problem starts with EOIR — tribunals that receive deference without earning it through expertise, quality scholarship, and prioritizing due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices. It’s aggravated and multiplied by Garland — an Attorney General indifferent to injustice and the trail of broken lives and dashed hopes left in its wake. And, it’s aided, abetted, and enabled by judges like the panel majority here, who can’t be troubled with the hard work of understanding the consequences of their dilatory approach and demanding fair, competent, and reasonable expert judging from EOIR.

As several of my colleagues have said about the broken, dysfunctional, unfair Immigration Court system, the haphazard review by some Circuit Courts, and the disturbing systemic lack of judicial courage when it comes to fairly applying the Due Process Clause of our Constitution to migrants of color: “The cruelty is the point.”

It’s also worthy of note that the failure of all the Federal Judges, save Judge Motz, to make any meaningful inquiry into the respondent’s clearly expressed fear of return to Honduras appears to violate mandatory requirements for withholding of removal under the INA and international conventions. Perhaps that’s not surprising as Federal Judges have allowed Garland, Mayorkas, and their predecessors to use the transparent pretext of “Title 42” to systemically violate the legal and human rights of refugees at our borders — every day!

It’s also worth putting into context the Biden Administration’s continuing pontification about the human rights of Ughyurs, Afghans, women, and other persecuted minorities, as well as their professed commitment to racial justice in the U.S., which has not been matched by actions. Indeed, the Biden Administration’s actual approach to human rights looks much more like “Miller Lite Time” than it does a courageous, competent, and fair reinstitution of the rule of law!

According to recent reports, many of the Ughyurs and Afghans who were fortunate enough to reach the U.S. and avoid arbitrary “turn backs” at our borders, are now mired in the endless, mindless Mayorkas/Garland bureaucracy that masquerades as an “asylum system” — subject to long waits, missing work authorizations, and sometimes arbitrary and secretive “denials” blasted by human rights advocates. In a functional system these would be the “low hanging fruit” that could rapidly be removed from limbo and given the ability to fully function in our society. But, not in the “Amateur Night at the Bijou” atmosphere fostered by Mayorkas and Garland.

The “strict enforcement” of regulatory requirements on the respondent in this case stands in remarkable contrast with the lackadaisical “good enough for government work” approach of Garland’s BIA and DOJ to the Government’s intentional non-compliance with the statutory requirements for a Notice to Appear (“NTA”). See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/02/01/%f0%9f%97%bd%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8fhon-jeffrey-chase-garland-bias-double-standard-strict-compliance-for-respondents-good-enough-for-govern/ Talk about “double standards” at Garland’s DOJ!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-16-22

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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

Bess Levin writes for Vanity Fair:

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

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

BY

BESS LEVIN

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

11-06-19

ECONOMIST PAUL KRUGMAN ON TRUMP’S CRUELTY: Political Strategy & A Way Of Rewarding Corrupt GOP Corporate Cronies Who Profit From Human Misery! — “Oh, and save the fake outrage. Yes, they are atrocities, and yes, the detention centers meet the historical definition of concentration camps.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/08/opinion/trump-migrants-detention-centers.html

Paul Krugman writes in The NY Times:

Is it cruelty, or is it corruption? That’s a question that comes up whenever we learn about some new, extraordinary abuse by the Trump administration — something that seems to happen just about every week. And the answer, usually, is “both.”

For example, why is the administration providing cover for Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, who almost surely ordered the murder of The Washington Post’s Jamal Khashoggi? Part of the answer, probably, is that Donald Trump basically approves of the idea of killing critical journalists. But the money the Saudi monarchy spends at Trump properties is relevant, too.

And the same goes for the atrocities the U.S. is committing against migrants from Central America. Oh, and save the fake outrage. Yes, they are atrocities, and yes, the detention centers meet the historical definition of concentration camps.

One reason for these atrocities is that the Trump administration sees cruelty both as a policy tool and as a political strategy: Vicious treatment of refugees might deter future asylum-seekers, and in any case it helps rev up the racist base. But there’s also money to be made, because a majority of detained migrants are being held in camps run by corporations with close ties to the Republican Party.

And when I say close ties, we’re talking about personal rewards as well as campaign contributions. A couple of months ago John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, joined the board of Caliburn International, which runs the infamous Homestead detention center for migrant children.

Which brings us to the issue of private prisons, and privatization in general.

Privatization of public services — having them delivered by contractors rather than government employees — took off during the 1980s. It has often been justified using the rhetoric of free markets, the supposed superiority of private enterprise to government bureaucracy.

This was always, however, a case of bait-and-switch. Free markets, in which private businesses compete for customers, can accomplish great things, and are indeed the best way to organize most of the economy. But the case for free markets isn’t a case for private business where there is no market: There’s no reason to presume that private firms will do a better job when there isn’t any competition, because the government itself is the sole customer. In fact, studies of privatization often find that it ends up costing more than having government employees do the work.

Nor is that an accident. Between campaign contributions and the revolving door, plus more outright bribery than we’d like to think, private contractors can engineer overpayment on a scale beyond the wildest dreams of public-sector unions.

And what about the quality of the work? In some cases that’s easy to monitor: If a town hires a private company to provide garbage collection, voters can tell whether the trash is, in fact, being picked up. But if you hire a private company to provide services in a situation where the public can’t see what it’s doing, crony capitalism can lead to poor performance as well as high costs.

Many people have, I think, forgotten about the disastrous Bush administration occupation of Iraq, but the incompetence and abuses of politically connected private contractors, like Erik Prince’s security company Blackwater, played a major role in the debacle. Did I mention that Betsy DeVos, Trump’s secretary of education and a key defender of for-profit education, is Prince’s sister?

And running a prison, which is literally walled off from public view, is almost a perfect example of the kind of government function that should not be privatized. After all, if a private prison operator bulks up its bottom line by underpaying personnel and failing to train them adequately, if it stints on food and medical care, who in the outside world will notice? Sure enough, privately run prisons have a far worse security record than public prisons.

Yet the number of inmates in private prisons has grown by leaps and bounds — especially in the area of immigrant detention. The Obama administration finally tried to begin a phaseout of federal use of private prisons, and a number of Democratic presidential candidates have called for an end to their use. (Prison operator stocks fell sharply last month, when Elizabeth Warren laid out a plan to eliminate the industry.)

But Trump, of course, reversed the Obama moves. And the surge in immigrant detention has been a major new source of private-prison-industry profits.

How much of a role has this played in policy? It would, I think, be going too far to claim that the private-prison industry — merchants of detention? — has been a driving force behind the viciousness of Trump’s border policy. But the fact that crony capitalists close to the administration profit from the viciousness surely greases the path.

And this fits the general pattern. As I suggested at the beginning, cruelty and corruption are intertwined in Trump administration policy. Every betrayal of American principles also seems, somehow, to produce financial benefits for Trump and his friends.

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Cruelty and corruption are staples of the Trump Administration. And those who helped empower and continue to prop up this corrupt mess can’t escape accountability for what they have done and continue to do.

PWS

07-12-19

WASHPOST: PROFESSOR LINDSAY MUIR HARRIS OF UDC LAW & JOAN HODGES WU OF THE ASYLUM SEEKERS ASSISTANCE PROJECT (“ASAP”) SPEAK OUT AGAINST TRUMP’S LATEST CRUEL & COUNTERPRODUCTIVE ATTACK ON VULNERABLE ASYLUM SEEKERS!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/01/asylum-seekers-leave-everything-behind-theres-no-way-they-can-pay-trumps-fee/?utm_term=.f48b5ca8c238

Lindsay & Joan write:

On Monday evening, President Trump issued a memointended to make life more difficult for those seeking asylum in the United States. The memo calls for regulations that, among other things, require asylum seekers to pay a fee to apply for asylum and their first work permit, and denies work permits to immigrants who entered the United States without inspection, or “illegally.”

Since the creation of our asylum system, after the United States signed the Protocol to the Refugee Convention in 1968 and enacted its own Refugee Act in 1980, there has never been a fee to apply for asylum. Filing for asylum is free for a reason under U.S. law and in the vast majority of other countries: Seeking asylum is a human right.

There are already plenty of obstacles and limits to that right in our existing immigration system. For instance, asylum seekers have to wait to receive permission to legally work in the United States. Congress codified a waiting period for work permits for asylum seekers in 1996. Asylum seekers can apply for a work permit 150 days after they have submitted an application for asylum. The work permit is issued sometime after 180 days.

In reality, given the time needed to find and complete the 12-page English-only asylum application and often to find legal assistance to do so, asylum seekers are already waiting nine to 12 months to receive lawful permission to work. That first work permit is currently free to asylum seekers and valid for two years. Requiring a filing fee for the initial work permit and denying work permits to those who enter the United States without inspection adds another significant impediment to lawful authorization, which asylum seekers need to support themselves and their families and contribute to our national economy.

Introducing a fee to apply for asylum and to apply for the first work permit not only is cruel but also goes against common sense and U.S. economic interests. Asylum seekers typically cannot afford to pay even a nominal fee. Trump’s memo does not specify the fee amount, only that it would “cover the cost of adjudication.” But even the rumored $50 fee would be too high for any of our clients. All individuals present in the United States have a legal right to apply for asylum, and that legal right should not depend on ability to pay. Many asylum seekers flee their countries with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and the cash in their pockets. Other asylum seekers come with their life savings, which are often quickly depleted as they pay for living expenses awaiting adjudication of their asylum claims.

Years ago, one of us worked with one client who was homeless and lived in her car while she waited for her day in court. One of our current clients lives in a public storage locker because he cannot afford to pay rent. We have asylum-seeking clients who go hungry so that their children can eat, or who drink water to “feel full.” Other clients go without medication to treat chronic illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure because they lack health insurance and money to pay out of pocket for their medications. Asylum seekers are not a population with an ability to pay extraneous fees.

[Trump’s attack on asylum is based entirely on false claims]

This new fee would also put asylum seekers further at risk of being exploited, or even physically harmed, abused or trafficked within the United States. Asylum seekers are already vulnerable to such predatory behavior. For example, years ago, one of us worked with a young woman from Niger who fled a forced marriage and female genital mutilation. As an asylum seeker in the United States, she had no way to provide for herself and found herself passed from one abusive situation to another. By the time she filed her asylum application, she had been repeatedly raped, held captive and forced to work in various homes. She was providing free child-care in exchange for lodging but forbidden from leaving the house.

And contrary to some misconceptions among the public (and the Trump administration), asylum seekers are generally ineligible for any form of federal or state aid. Indeed, even after they are granted asylum, they do not receive significant support from the government. Between paying for rent, food and other living expenses, and not being able to work for a significant period of time, how will asylum seekers pay the fee?

Banning asylum seekers from work will deprive the U.S. government of the taxes that asylum seekers, just like other immigrants, pay on the wages they receive. Asylum seekers do make real contributions to our communities. Among the asylum seekers we have worked with over the years are doctors, engineers, lawyers, nurses, computer scientists, teachers, professors and more. Also among those asylum seekers are cleaners, taxi drivers, factory workers, gardeners, child-care providers and elder-care specialists. All of them are generating tax revenue for the government, usually far more per year than whatever nominal fee Trump wants them to pay for their asylum application.

[Trump isn’t trying to solve border problems. He’s trying to make them look worse.]

Asylum seekers, who have lost everything and been forced to leave their countries and start over in ours, have a tremendous amount to give to our communities if given the chance. Take Constance, for example, one of our West African clients. In 2015, while she was seeking asylum, she commuted two hours by bus each way to a factory to cut fruit during a 12-hour overnight shift. She now works as a French language newscaster for a major news and radio outlet. Another client is a microbiologist who worked waiting tables until he found a job directing a lab at a hospital. As one of our clients said: “I know I’ve lost my country, but I haven’t lost my skills. I can still contribute.” Requiring these individuals to remain idle while jobs go unfilled and immigration court and asylum office backlogs persist could mean years in limbo and is a waste of talent, expertise and the hard work asylum seekers contribute.

Like so many of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, these new requirements will do nothing to actually modernize our immigration system or make life better for Americans. Instead, the proposal would waste valuable human capital and talent that can be harnessed to truly make America great, and preys on those who have already lost everything and came to seek safety in the United States.

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My good friends Lindsay and Joan are certainly two of the “good guys” — true role models for the “New Due Process Army.”

They have devoted their professional lives to making America a fairer and better place and helping the most vulnerable among us to have a fair shot at asylum and to contribute their full talents to our society. A terrific “win-win” for us and for asylum seekers. And they both work on “shoestring budgets” — giving much and asking little — just like the refugees they are helping!

What if we had a Government that recognized, honored, and worked with such talented folks to solve problems? Imagine what we could achieve with cooperation and positive efforts, involving real expertise from those who actually know and work with asylum seekers, and who therefore recognize asylum seekers as fellow human beings and great potential assets to our country?

PWS

05-03-19

INSIDE THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG:” Conditions Are Cruel, Inhuman, Degrading, & Life-Threatening — Why Are We Funding The Perpetrators, Rather Holding Them Accountable & Demanding An End To Human Rights Abuses In America?

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-saadi-immigration-health-care-detention-facilities-2019025-story.html

Altaf Saadi, M.D., writes in the LA Times:

This week, a 45-year-old immigrant in the U.S. illegally died in Border Patrol custody. His death follows the December deaths of 7-year-old Jakelin Caal and 8-year-old Felipe Alonzo-Gomez in United States immigration custody, both of which prompted demands for improving healthcare for immigrants in detention.

As a physician who has evaluated dozens of individuals in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention for legal groups and human rights organizations, I know that high-profile deaths are only one small piece of the story of severely substandard healthcare in America’s immigration detention system.

For example, in one detention center I met and reviewed the medical records of a man who had been thriving and holding steady employment for years while on schizophrenia medications. Then he was picked up and detained by ICE. In detention, he told me, ICE personnel abruptly stopped his medications. After a nearly two-week delay, an alternative medication was prescribed, but it was not as effective. His mental health deteriorated, and he experienced worsening auditory hallucinations and suicidal thoughts. He attempted suicide four times.

Media reports of high-profile deaths capture only a sliver of the human rights violations occurring in detention.

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Another individual I met with and whose medical records I reviewed had longstanding hypothyroidism, but ICE failed to provide her with thyroid medication in detention. When she was first hospitalized for worsening mental health, her thyroid hormone level was 60 times higher than normal. Despite the hospital medical team’s explicit instructions, ICE still failed to provide her thyroid medication when she returned to detention. It was not until a second hospitalization, again with a critically abnormal thyroid hormone level, that she finally received her medication.

I also met with a man who had developed a stomach ulcer and vomited blood after ICE medical personnel gave him ibuprofen repeatedly for back pain — even though he had reported symptoms of severe heartburn. Any physician applying the proper standard of care would know to minimize prescribing ibuprofen to an individual with severe heartburn.

The kinds of problems I saw are in keeping with the type repeatedly documented by immigrant advocates, filed in litigation and contained in the government’s own reports. According to Freedom for Immigrants, a national advocacy group seeking to end immigration detention, the top complaint they hear from detained immigrants is medical neglect.

In addition, multiple Department of Homeland Security inspector general reports have concluded that detention facilities repeatedly fail to comply with federal standards, including those requiring adequate healthcare. In 2017, a report noted delays in the provision of healthcare and a lack of adequate documentation. And the problems extend beyond healthcare. A report in January 2019 cited more than 14,000 deficiencies found during inspections of 106 immigrant detention facilities nationwide between October 2015 and June 30, 2018.

Substandard conditions can significantly harm an individual’s health. Many of the individuals I met with said they experienced sleep deprivation from lights being kept on 24 hours a day. Some said they had to wear dirty prison uniforms that caused urinary and vaginal infections. Others complained of being served rotten or inadequate food, a violation of standards that has been repeatedly documented in inspection reports.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute »

Some detainees also reported verbal and physical abuse by guards, which can significantly worsen the mental health of immigrant detainees. For example, during one of his acute mental health crises, the schizophrenic man I interviewed recalled banging his body against a wall as he wrestled with voices telling him to kill himself. He said a guard referred to his distress as a “tantrum” and told him to “get over it.”

Other detainees told me that staff used frequent racial epithets and also referred to them as “crazies,” or “Loony Tunes,” or “trash.” As one detainee put it: “They see us not like human but as animals here.”

Media reports of high-profile deaths capture only a sliver of the human rights violations occurring in detention. None of the patients I interviewed died from the dangerous neglect they experienced, and so their experiences didn’t garner headlines. But their experiences were dangerous — and not uncommon. We need to hold the U.S. government accountable not just for the deaths that occur of immigrants in their custody, but also for the neglect and abuse that can lead to or exacerbate serious health problems.

Altaf Saadi is a neurologist, clinical instructor of medicine, and fellow at the National Clinician Scholars Program at UCLA. She has performed numerous evaluations for the Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network.

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I continue to think that the bipartisan Goverment funding bill was not the right place to deal with the “New American Gulag.” But, Democrats should “keep hammering” on this important “below the radar screen” issue. Making an oversight record of the many abuses, false narratives, cover-ups, and lies underlying the Gulag should be a high priority.

What meaningful civil immigration detention reform could look like:

A “hard cap” probably in the area of 10,000 to 15,000 detention slots;
An end to private detention;
Enactment of strict standards governing the conditions of civil immigration detention;
A specific requirement for proper health and psychiatric care for those detained;
A bar on detention being used for “deterrence” or “punishment;”
Change in the law to permit all individuals in civil immigration detention to seek release on bond in U.S. Immigration Court (obviously, the Immigration Judges would retain the discretion to deny bond on the merits where warranted by the facts) with review by an Article III Court;
Periodic bond hearings every six months for those in “long-term detention;”
A requirement that access to counsel be a primary consideration in establishing immigration detention sites, and that pro bono groups and NGOs be consulted and given an opportunity to comment before any new immigration detention centers are established;
An end to the regulatory practice of allowing ICE Counsel to unilaterally block the order of a U.S. Immigration Judge pending appeal of a decision to release on bond (the Immigration Judge and the BIA would retain discretion to grant stays pending appeal, where appropriate, on application by ICE);
A statutory presumption in favor of ankle monitoring and other “alternatives to detention,” with physical detention being a disfavored, “last resort:”
Accountability for how detention dollars are spent and consequences for those in DHS and DOJ, including political officials, who violate or evade the law, including intentional falsification or misrepresentation of statistics, or who fail to implement the mandated reforms in a timely and reasonable manner.

Remember folks, these aren’t “beds,” or other “pieces of furniture;” these are fellow human beings, most of whose “offenses” consist largely of seeking to exercise their legal rights to fair treatment and Due Process under our laws and our Constitution!

PWS

02-25-19

TRUMP’S CRUEL, RACIST, ILLEGAL, COWARDLY, & INHUMANE TREATMENT OF MIGRANTS SHOULD HAVE ALL DECENT AMERICANS HANGING THEIR HEADS IN SHAME! — “Our responses need to be couched in compassion for our fellow human beings, rather than in political calculations based on the presumed intentions of a racist voting bloc.”

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/trumps-tear-gassing-of-migrants-is-the-next-step-in-a-cruel-dehumanization-campaign/

Sonali Kolhatkar reports for TRUTHdig:

The Trump administration’s use of tear gas at the U.S. border with Mexico over the weekend has rightfully generated outrage. Just as the photo of a 2-year-old Honduran girl crying at the border this summer became a symbol for Donald Trump’s family separation policy, a photo of a terrified mother dragging her screaming twin daughters away from tear gas fired by the U.S. Border Patrol last weekend embodies the latest Trumpian act of cruelty toward desperate refugees. Maria Lila Meza Castro and her five children had made the long and arduous journey from Honduras to the U.S. border with the refugee caravan only to find herself shut out by Trump’s troops and fleeing toxic fumes.

But where many of us see desperate refugees, Trump and his backers see invading hordes. The optics of the violence inflicted on people across the border has had a different effect, depending upon one’s politics. Liberal-minded Americans felt horror and rage at seeing parents and their children choke from the tear gas, while rabid nativists like Fox News’ Tomi Lahren reveled in the severity of Trump’s actions. Lahren tweeted, “Watching the USA FINALLY defend our borders was the HIGHLIGHT of my Thanksgiving weekend.”

The media attention at the border is part of Trump’s plan to highlight to his base just how well he is protecting the U.S. from an invasion of brown people determined to enter the nation. His goal is to dehumanize and demonize.

But thanks to his repeated focus on the border, we are now seeing in graphic detail the dynamics of our immigration enforcement machinery through the camera lenses of journalists and the social media feeds of activists. The photographer who captured the images of Castro and her children running away from tear-gas fumes would likely not have been present at the scene had Trump simply ignored the refugee crisis on his Twitter feed and at his political rallies. Most of us are not aware that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency has routinely used tear gas at the U.S.-Mexico border, including under President Barack Obama. CBP responded to Newsweek’s request for information with details about how “its personnel have been using tear gas, or 2-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile (CS), since 2010, deploying the substance a total of 126 times since fiscal year 2012.” The rate of tear-gas use has spiked under Trump, however. CBP also told the media outlet that it “routinely uses” pepper spray. Trump’s strategy to focus on the refugees as a midterm election campaign issue has backfired and inadvertently exposed the federal government’s cruelty toward immigrants.

Trump has tried hard to spin the weekend incident in his favor. On three occasions on Monday alone, the president dug in his heels about news from the border. During a rally in Mississippi for Republican Senate candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith, Trump read a statement that said, “We will not tolerate any form of assault or attack upon our border agents … or any attempt to destroy federal property … or bring chaos and violence to American soil.” Later, speaking to reporters, Trump defended the use of tear gas, saying that Border Patrol forces “were being rushed by some very tough people,” repeating the claim that agents were acting in self-defense against violent invaders. At a roundtable the same day, Trump went as far as accusing people of being “grabbers,” saying people “grab a child because they think they’re going to have a certain status.” The claim is so ludicrous that had it come out of the mouth of any other president before Trump, it would have caused tremendous controversy.

Whether Trump’s base is buying his spin is arguable. After the president hammered on the “migrant caravan” issue for weeks before the midterm elections, going as far as deploying thousands of military troops and barbed wire along the border, Democrats won a large number of seats in the House and flipped an embarrassingly large number of red seats to blue. It might be that the anti-immigrant fearmongering has hit a wall.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party is doing its usual job of casting itself as Republican-lite on immigration. Instead of distancing himself from Trump’s widely denounced cruelty, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has decided his party will indeed support the president’s xenophobic plan for a border wall—just not to the extent Trump wants. Rather than the $5 billion in funding that Trump is demanding, Schumer has offered to support a $1.6 billion appropriation—not exactly the type of bold thinking demanded by a blue-wave mandate. Schumer appears to be channeling the same sort of centrist appeasement of right-wing values that makes his party so unpopular.

Perhaps the Democratic leader was taking the advice of New York Times opinion writer Thomas Friedman, who penned a sanctimonious screed calling on Democrats “to be the adults” and assure the public “that they’re committed to securing our borders.” Friedman also flippantly referred to undocumented immigrants by using the favored right-wing slur of “illegals.” Conservative outlets loved his proposal to build a “high wall with a big gate.”

Schumer and Friedman’s thinking reflects what former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said to The Guardian a week ago when she suggested that in order for European leaders to curb the right-wing populist wave across their continent, they must show that they are “not going to be able to continue to provide refuge and support.” She added, “I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration, because that is what lit the flame.” Nesrine Malik, a columnist for the paper, responded to the interview, saying aptly, “[T]he former presidential candidate illustrated how a certain brand of centrist politician has no rebuke or response to the far right other than to mimic their tactics.”

Politicians are presenting the public with a set of opposing ideas that they say characterizes the current debate on immigration: “open borders” versus “zero tolerance.” But that is a red herring. It does not address the fact that Central Americans who are fleeing violence in countries like Honduras (which the U.S. has had a hand in destabilizing) are seeking asylum. Asylum seekers have clear and tangible rights under both U.S. and international law. The Trump administration’s year-long effort to change existing asylum laws is a testament to this hard fact. Trump and his colleagues are trying to change the rules of the game because as the rules currently stand, refugees have a right to make a case for asylum within the U.S. (not Mexico).

The thousands of human beings currently camped out in Tijuana in desperate conditions, at the end of a long and arduous journey, are real people. Period. Their humanity should be the starting point of our conversations about immigration and asylum. As this journalist writing for Teen Vogue has done in her profile of seven young people traveling in the caravan, we need to see the faces and hear the stories of migrants’ lives before taking the word of our political leaders. Our responses need to be couched in compassion for our fellow human beings, rather than in political calculations based on the presumed intentions of a racist voting bloc.

Sonali Kolhatkar

Columnist

Sonali Kolhatkar is a columnist for Truthdig. She also is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV (Dish Network,

IN THIS ARTICLE:

border patrol build the wall caravan cindy hyde-smith donald trump immigration mexico migrant sonali kolhatkar tear gas tomi lahren trump presidency

COMMENTS

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Immigration is about humanity, human rights, the rule of law (asylum applicants are exercising rights guaranteed by our statutes and international law as well as a fair determination process guaranteed by our Constitution) and whether we really believe in our Constitution’s guarantee of Due Process for everyone in the U.S.

PWS

11-30-18

What Are The Five Most Cruel Provisions Of The Senate GOP’s “Trumpcare” Bill? — The GOP Tried To Bury Them, But The LA Times Exposed Them For You!

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-senate-hidden-20170623-story.html

Michael Hiltzik reports for the LA Times:

“The Affordable Care Act repeal bill unveiled Thursday by Senate Republicanshas aptly drawn universal scorn from healthcare experts, hospital and physician groups and advocates for patients and the needy. That’s because the bill is a poorly-disguised massive tax cut for the wealthy, paid for by cutting Medicaid — which serves the middle class and the poor — to the bone.

Yet some of the measure’s most egregious, harshest provisions are well-disguised. They’re hidden deep in its underbrush or in the maze of legislative verbiage. We’ve ferreted out some of them and present them here in all their malevolent glory. In this effort we’ve built on ace detective work by Adrianna McIntyre, Nicholas Bagley of the University of Michigan, David Anderson of Duke University and balloon-juice.com, Andy Slavitt, the former head of Medicare and Medicaid in the Obama administration, and

Some of these provisions match those in the House Republicans’ repeal bill passed May 4, and some are even harsher — more “mean,” to use a term President Trump himself applied to the House bill. That bill, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would cost some 23 million Americans their health coverage by 2026. The Senate bill wouldn’t do much better, and might do worse.”

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Wow, how can members of the “national community” support doing in not only themselves (in many cases) but millions of their fellow citizens? I admit to “not getting it.”

I think it’s likely to pass. Why? Because if you forget the Dem & media “spin,” N/W/S “historic unpopularity,” Trump is still the most popular “active” politician in the US today. The Dems have failed to make any inroads whatsoever into the “Trump base.” And, the GOP is scared that failure to line up behind the Trump agenda will lead to their being punished by “the base.” So, in simple terms, the 60% of Americans who question or oppose the Trump Agenda are being “led around by the nose” by the 35-40% who love him (why is a total mystery). Trump is benefitting from the “leadership void” in American politics, particularly on the Democrats’ side.

PWS

06-23-17

Tag: Cruelty

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.”

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

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

ECONOMIST PAUL KRUGMAN ON TRUMP’S CRUELTY: Political Strategy & A Way Of Rewarding Corrupt GOP Corporate Cronies Who Profit From Human Misery! — “Oh, and save the fake outrage. Yes, they are atrocities, and yes, the detention centers meet the historical definition of concentration camps.”

WASHPOST: PROFESSOR LINDSAY MUIR HARRIS OF UDC LAW & JOAN HODGES WU OF THE ASYLUM SEEKERS ASSISTANCE PROJECT (“ASAP”) SPEAK OUT AGAINST TRUMP’S LATEST CRUEL & COUNTERPRODUCTIVE ATTACK ON VULNERABLE ASYLUM SEEKERS!

INSIDE THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG:” Conditions Are Cruel, Inhuman, Degrading, & Life-Threatening — Why Are We Funding The Perpetrators, Rather Holding Them Accountable & Demanding An End To Human Rights Abuses In America?

Sonali Kolhatkar reports for TRUTHdig:

Sonali Kolhatkar

IN THIS ARTICLE:

What Are The Five Most Cruel Provisions Of The Senate GOP’s “Trumpcare” Bill? — The GOP Tried To Bury Them, But The LA Times Exposed Them For You!

Mejia-Velasquez v. Garland, 4th Cir., 02-16-22, published

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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