Tag: Democrats

⚖️ THE GIBSON REPORT — 11-07-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — HEADLINERS: Analysts Agree: Immigrants Are “Political Toast” Regardless of Midterms’ Outcome — Neither Party Sees Legal Immigration, Human Rights, Rule of Law, Racial Justice As “Electoral Winners!” — Garland’s DOJ “On A Roll” In Courts Of Appeal, Snuffing Asylum Claims in 2d (2x), 3rd, 8th, & 9th Circuits!

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

pastedGraphic.png

 

Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • NEWS
  • LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • RESOURCES
  • EVENTS

NEWS

 

Analysts Don’t Expect Significant Changes in Immigration Policy After the Midterms

VOA: The three analysts said that no one is willing to form a framework to write immigration legislation because they do not see an electoral advantage. See also Democrats Twist and Turn on Immigration as Republicans Attack in Waves; Canada plans record immigration targets amid labour crunch.

 

Attention Travelers: New Rules Will Require More Caution When Entering USA

Forbes: Evidently, USCBP is eliminating the passport entry stamp to streamline the entry process. So now, foreign nationals will only have access to the Form I-94 website as proof of their lawful immigration status.

 

Abrupt New Border Expulsions Split Venezuelan Families

NYT: The decision to expel Venezuelans under a pandemic-era policy that allows swift expulsions, previously applied mainly to Mexicans and Central Americans, has had the unintended effect of trapping many Venezuelan families on opposite sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. See also Tougher US Asylum Laws Trigger Drop in Venezuelan Migrants Traveling Through Panama; Migrants Encounter ‘Chaos and Confusion’ in New York Immigration Courts; Nearly 500 Venezuelans admitted to U.S., thousands approved via new plan.

Accounts of migrants’ documents being confiscated by border officials prompt federal review

CBS: The department confirmed the review when asked to respond to accounts from migrants who told “60 Minutes” that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials along the U.S.-Mexico border kept their documents, despite agency policy instructing agents to return migrants’ personal property unless they are fraudulent.

 

130+ Civil Rights Groups Call On President Biden To Include Immigrants In Pardon Process

NIJC: More than 130 immigration, criminal justice, and civil rights organizations released a letter today urging the Biden administration to include immigrants in the pardon process.

 

Over 100 Orgs Want Visits For Detained Immigrants Restored

Law360: More than 100 immigrant rights organizations are urging the Biden administration to fully reinstate visitation at immigration detention facilities, saying in a Thursday letter that visitation is crucial for detainees’ mental health and monitoring human rights violations.

 

ACLU condemns Texas Border Patrol agents’ use of pepper balls against protesting migrants

SA Current: The ACLU is condemning the actions of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents allegedly caught on video firing pepper balls at a group of Venezuelan migrants protesting along the banks of the Rio Grande River near El Paso.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

2nd Circ. Won’t Review Honduran Man, Son’s Asylum Request

Law360: The Second Circuit on Wednesday declined to review a decision denying an asylum application from a Honduran man and his son who claim they will be killed by gang members if they return home, finding the Board of Immigration Appeals properly reviewed the immigration judge’s decision.

 

2nd Circ. Won’t Revive Ecuadorian’s Asylum Bid

Law360: The Second Circuit on Tuesday backed the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeal’s decision to apply a persecution motive standard used in asylum requests to an Ecuadorian’s withholding of removal request, saying it was reasonable for the agency to do so.

 

3rd Circ. Nixes Asylum Over Evangelical Christianity Link

Law360: The Third Circuit on Tuesday knocked down a Guatemalan man’s asylum bid after concluding he failed to back up his fears of violence in the Central American nation based on gang recruitment efforts and his rejection of gangs due to his evangelical Christian faith.

 

8th Circ. Denies Family’s Asylum Bid Over Gang Fears

Law360: The Eighth Circuit has upheld a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling that denied a family asylum based on alleged gang threats for lack of evidence that the government of El Salvador could not or would not protect them.

 

9th Circ. Upholds Ruling Denying Bisexual Man Asylum

Law360: A Mexican citizen who said police and criminal gangs would torture him for being bisexual and suffering from mental illness if he is deported a third time

 

9th Circ. Backs Juvenile Immigrant Adjudication Deadline

Law360: The Ninth Circuit on Thursday backed an order requiring U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to adjudicate Special Immigrant Juvenile petitions within 180 days, rejecting the government’s argument that a lower court relied on “stale evidence” and disregarded hardship considerations.

 

States Cry Foul Over Steep Drop In Title 42 Haitian Expulsions

Law360: Republican state attorneys general accused the Biden administration of violating an injunction requiring it to repel migrants from the border under pandemic-era restrictions, saying a sharp drop in Haitian expulsions indicated the administration was selectively lifting the so-called Title 42 border block.

 

DHS Begins Limited Implementation of DACA Final Rule

AILA: On 10/31/22, DHS began limited implementation of the DACA final rule. USCIS will continue to accept and process applications for deferred action, work authorization, and advance parole for current DACA recipients. Due to litigation, USCIS will accept but cannot process initial DACA requests.

 

EOIR 30-Day Notice and Request for Comments on Proposed Revisions to Forms EOIR-42A and EOIR-42B

AILA: EOIR 30-day notice and request for comments on proposed revisions to Form EOIR-42A and Form EOIR-42B. Comments are due 12/5/22. (87 FR 66326, 11/3/22)

 

EOIR 30-Day Notice and Request for Comments on Proposed Revisions to Form EOIR-31A

AILA: EOIR 30-day notice-and-comment period for proposed revisions to Form EOIR-31A, which allows an organization to seek accreditation or renewal of accreditation of a non-attorney representative to appear before EOIR and/or DHS. Comments are due by 12/5/22.

 

CIS Ombudsman Introduces Revised Form for Requesting Case Assistance

AILA: The CIS Ombudsman’s Office updated the DHS Form 7001, Request for Case Assistance, used for requesting case assistance.

 

RESOURCES

 

EVENTS

 

 

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

 

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.

 

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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

Supposedly, the main political issues right now are the economy and inflation. But, the economy and inflation are largely determined by the Fed, markets, global conditions, weather, and a certain amount of pure luck — all things beyond the direct control of the political branches of the USG.  

As mentioned by Chuck Todd on last Sunday’s NBC “Meet the Press,” many experts say that the most effective tool that the Administration and Congress have to improve the economy without triggering a recession is to increase legal immigration — sooner rather than later. But, neither party is interested. The GOP sees an anti-immigrant stance as a key to political success. And, the Dems are “actively disinterested” in the issue. So, the opportunity passes.

But, the reality is that, in the long run, no amount of shipping containers, walls, prisons, family separations, deportations, exclusions to death or despair, hate rhetoric, or restrictive legal roadblocks will halt the future flow of human migration, and not incidentally, the internal relocation in America as certain areas become “unlivable.” 

According to a government report published in today’s Washington Post:

 The U.S. can expect more forced migration and displacement

Already, the authors of Monday’s report said, major storms such as Hurricane Maria, as well as extended droughts that strained lives and livelihoods, have led people to leave their homes in search of more-stable places.

In the hotter world that lies ahead, they write, additional climate impacts — along with other factors such as the housing market, job trends and pandemics — are expected to increasingly influence migration patterns.

“More severe wildfires in California, sea level rise in Florida, and more frequent flooding in Texas are expected to displace millions of people, while climate-driven economic changes abroad continue to increase the rate of emigration to the United States,” the report finds.

Such shifts are inherently complicated and fraught.

Several Indigenous tribes in coastal regions, facing fast-rising seas, have already sought government help to relocate, but have struggled to do so without significant hurdles.

“Forced migrations and displacements disrupt social networks, decrease housing security, and exacerbate grief, anxiety and mental health outcomes,” the authors write.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/cop27-climate-change-report-us/

Neither political party appears serious about addressing these migration realities — already underway. The ideas that we can wall ourselves off, invest in “sending countries,” detain, and deport our way out of migration are not  “solutions.”  

Failure to act boldly and expansively on legal immigration will create a huge class of exploitable, disenfranchised, extralegal residents and plenty of work for border agents, internal police, righty judges, and jailers. It will also be a huge boon to smugglers and cartels who basically will “own” the American migration franchise. But, in the long run, building a large “underground humanity” won’t be enough to offset the “downside” of lacking a robust, realistic, orderly, legal immigration process.

Eventually, those nation-states that figure out how to harness, welcome, and distribute the power of human migration will rule the future. Right now, America’s leaders, of both parties, seem wedded to a “sure to fail” approach of either opposing or ignoring the realities and unlimited potential of human migration. Too bad — for all of us!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-08-22

Related posts:

  1. THE GIBSON REPORT— 01-02-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Garland’s Aimless Docket Reshuffling (“ADR”) Squeezes Refugees On Both Ends Of His Ludicrous Backlog, As Those Patiently Waiting Given Court Dates Nearly A Decade In The Future, While Recent Arrivals Mindlessly Rocketed To The “Front Of The Line” Struggle To Find Lawyers & Prepare Cases — Plus Other New Year News From The Dystopian World Of U.S. Immigration!
  2. 🤯👎🏽MORE CIRCUIT REJECTS FOR GARLAND & PRELOGAR — 1st & 3rd Cirs “Just Say No” To DOJ’s Ill-Advised Positions On “Theft Offense” & Derivative Citizenship!  — It’s Part Of A Larger Leadership Failure @ Garland’s Broken DOJ!
  3. ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”
  4. ⚖️ THE GIBSON REPORT — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC: Stephen Miller Was Even More Of A Disreputable Scofflaw! — 9th Halts BIA’s “Rote Formula” For Improperly Denying CAT W/O Meaningful Analysis — EOIR In Louisiana Continues To Be “Death Valley” ☠️⚰️  For Asylum Seekers:  “‘I feel that the big problem we face today is that there is a real dehumanization of the entire process,’ said Mich Gonzalez, Associate Director of Advocacy at the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

THE GIBSON REPORT — 10-24-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — Human Rights Advocates, Immigrants, Abandoned By Biden Administration! — Garland’s “Unforced Errors” @ EOIR Haunt Dems!  — Where Do Operating “America’s Worst Courts” & “Dissing Equal Justice” Fit Into Dem’s Vision Of Democracy?🤯

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

pastedGraphic.png

 

Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • NEWS
  • LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • RESOURCES
  • EVENTS

 

FEATURED EVENT

 

2022 Convening on Advancing Universal Representation on 10/27

This gathering will bring together existing universal representation projects as well as groups considering starting/supporting new programs to reflect on best practices, adapting models while seeking to end detention, and ways to expand universal representation. The deadline to register for virtual attendance is tomorrow, October 25, 2022.

 

NEWS

 

US border encounters top 2 million in fiscal year 2022

CNN: There were 227,547 migrant encounters along the US-Mexico border in September, up 12 percent from the previous month. The sharp increase in migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua contributed to the uptick.

 

Illegal Border Crossings by Venezuelans Plunge in the Face of New Policies

NYT: The number of Venezuelans entering the United States illegally dropped from about 1,200 a day to 150 in the first days after the Biden administration rolled out the new policies.

 

U.S. grants Temporary Protected Status to Ethiopians fleeing conflict

Reuters: The Ethiopian military and allies including troops from neighboring Eritrea have been battling forces from the northern region of Tigray on and off for two years. The conflict has killed thousands, displaced millions and left hundreds of thousands on the brink of famine.

 

Coast Guard returns more than 300 migrants to Cuba over weekend

The Hill: The Coast Guard stopped 185 Cubans on Friday, 94 on Saturday and 40 on Sunday. In total, the service says it has intercepted 921 Cubans since Oct. 1.

 

US Border Patrol sending migrants to offices with no notice

AP: Molina was among 13 migrants who recently arrived in the U.S. who agreed to share documents with The Associated Press that they received when they were released from U.S. custody while they seek asylum after crossing the border with Mexico. The AP found that most had no idea where they were going — nor did the people at the addresses listed on their paperwork.

 

‘Hail Mary after Hail Mary’: Biden administration struggles with border policy, fueling frustration

CNN: It has been an endless cycle since President Joe Biden took office, according to multiple administration officials and sources close to the White House. Agency officials dream up a plan but then struggle to get White House approval, even as the problem compounds and Republicans step up their criticism. See also Immigrant advocates feel abandoned as they stare at Biden’s first-term checklist.

 

Nearly 500,000 Immigrants Go Through ICE’s Alternatives to Detention System in Two Years

TRAC: According to new data obtained by TRAC through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, 480,301 people have been enrolled in ICE’s electronic monitoring program known as Alternatives to Detention (ATD) between August 2020 and June 2022. Many of these individuals, about 196,000, were previously active in ATD but have since ceased to be monitored under ATD, while 284,000 immigrants were still in ATD as of the end of June.

 

Over 63,000 DHS Cases Thrown Out of Immigration Court This Year Because No NTA Was Filed

TRAC:  As of the end of September 2022, Immigration Court judges dismissed a total of 63,586 cases because Department of Homeland Security officials, chiefly Border Patrol agents, are not filing the actual “Notice to Appear” (NTA) with the Immigration Court. Without a filed NTA, the Court has no jurisdiction to hear the case.

 

Arrests for unlicensed driving plunge in New York following unauthorized immigrant license law like Mass.’s

GBH: Police in New York arrested about 57,000 unlicensed drivers a year before state lawmakers narrowly approved the Green Light Law in 2019, making most immigrants eligible for licenses regardless of their legal status. In 2021, those arrests declined to about 30,000 and are on a similar pace for this year, according to records obtained by GBH News from the New York State Unified Court System.

 

An Overwhelmed Immigration System Is Facing A Shortage Of Attorneys Amid A Growing Backlog Of Cases

Block Club: As a major city that attracts immigrants, Chicago specifically has been struggling to support the recent influx of asylum seekers. After dealing with cuts under the Trump administration and then the COVID-19 pandemic, immigrant serving organizations’ resources were already strained before the war in Ukraine and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and subsequent Taliban takeover sent thousands of refugees and asylum seekers to Chicago. The recent arrival of migrants from Texas has only added to the strain on organizations’ resources, including legal services and representation.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

CA1 on Honduras, MS-13, CAT: H.H. v. Garland

LexisNexis: He argues that the immigration judge (“IJ”) applied the incorrect legal standard in assessing whether he would more likely than not be tortured with the “consent or acquiescence” of the Honduran government, and that the BIA erred in its review of the IJ’s decision. He also argues that the BIA failed to consider whether the Honduran government would likely torture him and whether the MS-13 gang is a de facto government actor. We agree that the agency erred in these respects, and we therefore grant his petition for review, vacate the order of the BIA to the extent it denied him CAT relief as to Honduras, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

 

CA1 on El Salvador, CAT, MS-13: Chavez v. Garland

CA1: We  thus  remand  for  the  BIA  to  consider  in  the  first instance  whether  Chavez’s  proposed  social  group  satisfies  the requirements for constituting a particular social group under the INA to which he belongs.  We express no opinion as to the merits of that issue other than to emphasize that the BIA cannot reject such a group based solely on its determination that current or former gang members cannot form a particular social group.

 

Unpub. CA3 CIMT Victory: King v. Atty. Gen.

LexisNexis: The plain language of the statute, coupled with the reasoning of Mahn and Ramirez-Contreras, persuades us that the Pennsylvania felony fleeing statute does not qualify as turpitudinous. While the failing to stop for a police officer while crossing a state line is conduct that may put another in danger, it does not necessarily do so. The agency therefore erred in its conclusion that King was convicted of a CIMT.

CA9 on CAT, Guatemala: De Leon Lopez v. Garland

LexisNexis: We conclude: (1) the record in this case compels the conclusion that two of De Leon’s attackers were police officers during a July 2011 incident; (2) De Leon showed acquiescence on the part of the Guatemalan government with respect to that incident because government officials— namely, the two police officers—directly participated in the incident; and (3) the record indicates that the IJ and BIA’s conclusion that De Leon is not likely to be subjected to torture with government acquiescence if returned to Guatemala disregards several important circumstances pertinent to evaluating the likelihood of future torture. In light of these errors, we grant the petition and remand for the agency to reconsider De Leon’s application for relief.

 

Texas Drops Challenge To Biden’s Title 42 Child Migrant Policy

Law360: The state of Texas on Wednesday agreed to drop its challenge to a provision of the pandemic-era Title 42 policy which exempted unaccompanied minor migrants from being expelled from the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Ill. Professor, Students Can’t Halt Chinese Student Visa Ban

Law360: An Illinois university professor and students can’t stop the Biden administration from enforcing a Trump-era policy barring student visas to Chinese nationals who are connected to any entity in China that supports its “military-civil fusion strategy,” a federal judge has ruled, denying the plaintiffs’ bid for a temporary restraining order.

 

Soldiers Forgo $10M Citizenship Dispute Fee For $2.75M

Law360: A class of foreign-born military recruits who sought $10 million in attorney fees after winning back their expedited path to naturalization two years ago have settled for $2.75 million in the interest of conserving resources and avoiding further litigation risks.

 

Legal Organizations Sue ICE for Illegally Preventing Attorneys from Communicating with Detained Immigrants in Four States

AIC: Several legal services organizations filed a lawsuit today against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for unlawfully preventing attorneys from communicating with immigrants detained in four detention facilities in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and Arizona.

 

USCIS Implements New Process for Venezuelans

USCIS: On Oct. 12, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a new process for Venezuelans.

 

DHS Designates Ethiopia for Temporary Protected Status for 18 Months

USCIS: Only individuals who are already residing in the United States as of October 20, 2022 will be eligible for TPS.

 

USCIS Extends COVID-19-related Flexibilities

USCIS: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is extending certain COVID-19-related flexibilities through Jan. 24, 2023, to assist applicants, petitioners, and requestors.

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

 

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.

 

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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

From Politico:

. . . .

But immigrant advocates note that some of their demands aren’t contingent on Congress or the courts, which makes it all the more exasperating as to why the administration has failed to deliver.

Some told POLITICO they simply wanted to see the administration remedy the harm caused by the Trump administration’s family separation policies. Others want to see follow-up on early proposals to protect immigrant workers in labor disputes.

The administration further angered the community last week when it announced plans to use the Trump-era pandemic policy, Title 42, to expel Venezuelan migrants crossing the border illegally as part of its new humanitarian parole program for them. Advocates decried the expansion of Title 42, which the Justice Department is fighting in court, as a continuation of the Trump “playbook.”

. . . .

The biggest, most significant “unforced error” by the Biden Administration has been the failure to “clean house” at EOIR and to reform the Immigration Courts to be a model of great, scholarly, humane judging, and a bastion of due process, fundamental fairness, and best judicial practices. 

The Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation set forth a successful “blueprint” for a far-right takeover of not only the Immigration Courts, but the entire Article III Judiciary. The Trump Administration adopted and successfully followed it!

By stark contrast, the Dems have failed to act timely and decisively on the one all-important Federal court system that they completely control! EOIR is a system that probably has more impact on the future of America — or whether there will even be a future America — than any court short of the Supremes!

Garland’s dismissive treatment of the informed views of immigration, human rights, and racial justice experts — who have had “hands on” experience with “America’s most dysfunctional courts” (the Immigration Courts) — has undermined our legal system and hamstrung almost every other progressive social justice initiative — from voting rights to abortion! 

Garland’s failure to bring in experienced, dynamic, inspirational, respected, “Tier One” progressive practical scholar/leaders — folks like, for example, Dean Kevin Johnson, Professor Karen Musalo, Marielena Hincapie, Professor Phil Schrag, Margaret Stock, Professor Michele Pistone, and Judge Dana Leigh Marks — to clean up EOIR, kick some tail, and create “the best, fairest, most efficient courts in America” — is beyond inexcusable!

Dems are a self-inflicted mess when it comes to immigration — apparently because those “calling the shots” are more “Stephen Miller Lite” than they are Julian Castro and other Democrats who understand the essential importance of immigrants and of standing up for their rights — starting with the “retail level” of American justice. 

As one frustrated experienced practitioner recently told me: “Biden’s entire immigration policies are a train wreck. He didn’t take the action he said he would. The practice of immigration law is soul crushing.”

“Soul crushing!” Those words should be a “wake up call” to the “tone deaf” policy honchos in the Administration. It shouldn’t be this way in a Dem Administration that was elected because they promised to do better and to stand up to the lies, myths, and false narratives of the nativist right! Once in power, Dems don’t seem to be able to distinguish between their friends and their adversaries. That’s proven NOT to be a “formula for success!”

For every immigrant/racial justice advocate that the Biden Administration wears down and demoralizes, two “new recruits” for the NDPA will arise, fully energized to keep litigating, winning, and raising hell until due process, human rights, fundamental fairness, and racial justice get some long overdue ACTION. Based on results to date, that means continuing to “beat Garland’s brains out” in court! The talent and creativity is obviously “out here,” not in Garland’s “Halls of (In)Justice!” Given that the “Stephen Miller Group” is also challenging the Administration in court, Garland will eventually find himself doing nothing but litigating immigration issues and getting walloped by both sides!

Meanwhile, as the Administration daily fails on immigration, human rights, and racial justice within the Executive Branch, my mailbox and message box are overflowing with desperate requests from Dem politicos, from Joe, Kamala, Nancy, and Chuck on down, for more donations of money and time. But, once the election cycle is over, our views are ignored, and we are treated as “PNGs.” Meanwhile, those who actively undermined immigrants’ rights and diminished due process are rewarded or retained in key positions where they continue to heap damage on the most vulnerable among us and frustrate their supporters.

Doesn’t seem like a sustainable future for the Democratic Party or for American democracy! But, hey, I’m just a retired Immigration Judge. Maybe my friends in the social justice movement enjoy being treated as “chopped liver” — frozen out and ignored — once they have helped elect Dems.

Republicans boldly “run on the big lie.” Meanwhile, Dems “run from the truth” about immigrants and their all-important role in America’s future! Go figure!

A quote from a recent NY Times article struck me as aptly summarizing the failure of leaders of both political parties to take an honest, creative, and practical approach to the opportunity presented by continuing human migration:

Immigration in the United States is broken, but one side of the fence wants to study the root causes of the problem, and don’t want to see what’s happening right here,” Mr. [John] Martin [deputy director of the Opportunity Center for the Homeless in El Paso] said, squinting beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. “And the other side wants to build a wall which would become a dam and eventually burst.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/20/opinion/el-paso-migrant-buses-republicans.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions went to the border to preach his “gospel” of anti-immigrant hate, lies, nativist myths, and to “fire up” officials for one of the biggest unconstitutional abuses of prosecutorial authority in modern American history.  Indeed, that is when one reporter coined the term “Gonzo Apocalypto” to describe the absolute nonsense spewing from Sessions’s mouth.

Sessions orchestrated a vile “strategy” of family separation from which the victims haven’t yet, and may never, fully recover. Interestingly, he has also escaped accountability.

By contrast, Garland, to my knowledge, has never bothered to visit the border and engage first-hand with the human carnage his failed “courts” and abuse of both the Constitution and asylum law inflict on others. He interacts neither with those outside government trying to uphold the rule of law nor the enforcement officials given “mission impossible.” He absolves himself from observing the effect that his failure to carry out orderly, humane, legally compliant refugee and asylum processing — using existing law rather than extralegal “gimmicks” — has on communities on the border and in the interior.

Sessions was a vile, intellectually dishonest, and immoral leader; Garland is simply a failed and disengaged one. But, the difference might not be readily apparent to most practitioners laboring in the foul trenches of Garland’s dysfunctional “court” system.

From my observation, there are folks out here interested in, and capable of, addressing the opportunities, potential benefits, and challenges presented by the inevitability of human migration in the 21st Century. Most of them, unlike “pontificating politicos,” have, at some point, “walked the walk” with those humans caught up in the migration dilemma, on both sides of the border.

But, leaders of neither party are interested in the constructive ideas and solutions developed within the rule of law that these unusually talented and dedicated individuals can offer. As long as that is the case, the realities of human migration, false promises, racially driven bias, and wildly inconsistent application of justice in America will continue to vex both politicians and the voters who put such “non-problem-solvers” in office!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-25-22

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽NY TIMES EDITORIAL MAKES THE CASE FOR ARTICLE I — “It’s hard to imagine a more glaring conflict of interest than the nation’s top law-enforcement agency running a court system in which it regularly appears as a party.” — Garland’s Abject Failure To Fix EOIR, Bring In Experts Highlighted, As Constitutional Due Process, Ethical, Human Rights, Racial Justice, Gender Equity, Diversity, & Management Farce @ EOIR Continues Under His Disgraceful Lack Of Awareness & Failure Of Courageous, Progressive Leadership!  — Progressives Can’t Remain Silent, Must “Raise Hell” 👹With Biden Administration About Garland’s Lousy Performance @ EOIR, As He Continues To Stack Immigration “Judiciary” With “Miller Lite Holdovers” 🤮 To The Exclusion of Progressive Experts Who Helped Put Biden Administration In Office!
  2. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️CAMILLE J.  MACKLER @ JUST SECURITY “GETS IT!” — How Come Judge Garland & The Biden Administration Don’t? — “If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts.” — Get Involved! Get Angry! Say No To Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, & Dehumanization (“Dred Scottification”) @ EOIR! Force Judge Garland To Pay Attention! Demand Change, Now!
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🆘NO JUSTICE @ JUSTICE! — OUTRAGE OF PROGRESSIVE EXPERTS CONTINUES TO GROW AS GARLAND FAILS TO VACATE SESSIONS/BARR RACIST, MISOGYNIST, ANTI-IMMIGRANT, UNETHICAL, BIASED PRECEDENTS — “Garland’s Star Chambers” Careen Further Out Of Control As AG Dithers While Lives Of Vulnerable Refugee Women Hang in Balance & Pro Bono Advocates Are Forced To Exhaust Resources Fighting Trump DOJ’s Misdeeds That Biden Has Failed To Fix, Despite Promises — “Unforced Errors,” Lack Of Competent Progressive Leadership Continue To Plague Flawed Immigration Agenda @ Justice, Offend Dem Supporters! — Expert Professors Karen Musalo & Stephen Legomsky Call For Immediate Vacating Of Repulsive Matter of A-B- Abomination Before More Lives Of Women Of Color Are Lost!

🇺🇸🗽POLITICS/COMMUNICATION: Anand Giridharadas Has A Plan For Defeating Fascism!

https://twitter.com/intelligence2/status/1583053222495031297?s=20&t=0qtnWoCtSNnhf3i6nq3hVA

We’re not going to defeat fascism by talking about policy. Nor by issuing grave warnings. Nor by praying for the rain of indictments. Nor by despair.

We are going to defeat it by outcompeting it. Here is a proposal for how we can do that right now.

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

Watch the compelling “spot on” video at the above link. Many thanks to my friend Charles Kuck for passing this on!

The Dems once were the “party of practical problem solvers” — particularly at the local level with great organizations that effectively addressed issues on the minds of the local populace. After all, it was Dem House Speaker, the late Tip O’Neill, who famously said that “All politics is local” (although, perhaps contrary to popular notions, he did not “coin” that phrase.)

It’s not that today’s GOP solves problems. Far from it! Indeed they specialize in division, destruction (“the wrecking crew”), and making things worse. (How would you like to go to GOP Rep. MTG or Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin to get help with mistreatment of your trans kid in school? Good luck with the one!)

Yet the GOP does excel in one area. That is channeling and fanning the rage, bitterness, and anger of folks in the community who feel left out or that “the system” has betrayed them. They are also great at using that collective anger and resentment for their own political ends — usually anti-democracy actions or picking on, demonizing, and falsely blaming vulnerable groups in society for all their ills.

Anand says it’s time for Dems to get back to communicating and problem solving: “outcompeting” and “outperforming,” if you will! That’s certainly true on a larger scale. But, it’s also true at Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR. There, bureaucratic nonsense, “built to fail gimmicks,” and false “deterrence rationale” have replaced scholarship, timeliness, and practical problem solving directed at the achievable, yet inexplicably elusive, “common good.” Time for a difference approach at the critical, yet often ignored, “retail level” of democracy!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-20-22

Related posts:

  1. 🏴‍☠️NO ACCOUNTABILITY: ONE YEAR AFTER PUBLICLY INSTIGATING A FAILED COUP, TRUMP CONTINUES TO OPENLY PLOT TO OVERTHROW DEMOCRACY, AS NEO-FASCIST GOP & ITS TOADY POLITICOS LINE UP BEHIND THE “BIG LIE!” — THE GOP, & THOSE WHO SUPPORT & ENABLE IT, HAS ACTUALLY BECOME THE BIGGEST THREAT TO THE FUTURE OF OUR REPUBLIC!🤮👎🏽🏴‍☠️
  2. 😒LOOKING THE OTHER WAY @ GARLAND’S DOJ:  ☠️ Deadly Civil & Human Rights Violations Inflicted On Individuals Of Color By DHS/DOJ’s “New American Gulag!”
  3. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  4. POLITICS: KURT BARDELLA @ LA TIMES: WHAT “DEMS DON’T GET” THREATENS AMERICAN DEMOCRACY☠️: “They should do what the Republicans would do given a chance: Refuse to compromise and go on the attack. This difference, of course, is that the Democrats are going after the insurrectionist machine and defending democracy while the GOP is tearing it down.”

🤯 POLITICS: WITH THE ECONOMY THE #1 ISSUE, WHY WOULD VOTERS TRUST AN EXTREME RIGHT GOP PLEDGED TO DESTROY IT, INCREASE INFLATION, & PROVOKE A WORLDWIDE ECONOMIC CRISIS? — Tax Cuts, Slashing The Safety Net For The Most Vulnerable, Increasing Income Equality, & “Playing Chicken” With The Debt Ceiling Are A Recipe For Disaster! — C. Rampell @ WashPost

Catherine Rampell
Catherine Rampell
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/18/gop-debt-ceiling-plan-financial-crisis-recession/

. . . .

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and other Republicans have recently backed proposals to make the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent, as well as to extend or expand several other corporate tax breaks.

Never mind that Americans think corporations already pay too little in taxes, according to many polls. Cutting taxes further is also likely to make inflation worse, for the same reason that Republicans argue that increased government spending can also make inflation worse: Giving people more cash to spend when there’s limited stuff to buy drives prices up.

The scariest part of the recently disclosed GOP economic agenda, however, has largely gone under the radar. It’s the plan to hold the debt ceiling hostage next year, which could easily precipitate a global financial catastrophe.

Republicans have withheld their support from raising the debt limit before, usually framing their hostage-taking as a commitment to fiscal restraint. But the debt ceiling has nothing to do with new spending; rather, it’s a somewhat arbitrary statutory cap on how much the government can borrow to pay off bills that it has already incurred, through tax and spending decisions that Congress has already made. Refusing to raise the debt limit is like going to a restaurant, ordering the lobster and a $500 bottle of wine, and then declaring yourself financially responsible because you skipped out on the check.

Actually, it’s worse than that.

. . . .

Forcing a debt limit crisis, as the world teeters on the verge of recession, is the opposite of what you would pursue if you cared about strengthening the economy. But no matter: Just look at the context-free polls! Surely, under GOP stewardship, the economy will be in good hands.

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

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

Democrats try hard, if imperfectly, to solve problems for the general good. The GOP, not so much! Their focus is on lining the pockets of their “fat cat” funders, replacing “good government” with chaos,  and “beggar thy neighbor” policies. 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-19-22

Related posts:

  1. CATHERINE @ WASHPOST “GETS IT!” — Why Are The Biden Administration & Some Dem Pols “Running Scared” From What Should Be A Big Win? — Many Of The Legal,Workers We Need Are Patiently Waiting @ The Border For Processing & Legal Admission — Dems Need To Stop “Shaking In Their Boots” & Start “Shaking Their Tails” To “Pre-Process” Refugees For An Orderly Restoration Of The Rule Of Law On May 23!
  2. 🇺🇸🗽👍🏼😎MAKING AMERICA BETTER, FINALLY: “Mr. Biden has laid out an immigration program that would genuinely put America first.” (WashPost) — No Wonder GOP Anti-American White Nationalists Like Tom Cotton Are Apoplectic & Spouting Their Racist, White Elitist Nonsense!
  3. @WASHPOST: CATHERINE RAMPELL SAYS IT WELL! — “Contrary to Trumpers’ claims, keeping our word to Afghan allies in trouble is wholly consistent with a philosophy that puts ‘America First.’ Indeed, it’s central to the entire operation.”  — Getting Beyond Bogus Racist Nativism To A Robust, Honest, Expanded Legal Immigration System That Treats Refugees & Asylees Fairly, Humanely, & Generously — As Assets, Not “Threats” — Is Putting America First!
  4. WASHPOST: Catherine Rampell Takes The Measure Of Stephen Miller’s Neo-Nazi View Of American Immigration History – Exposing A Lifelong Hater’s Knowingly False, Misleading & Existentially Dangerous Narrative!

🔫WELL, ACTUALLY, TOTALLY CONTRARY TO THE GOP BS, GUN CONTROL LAWS DO SAVE LIVES! — “The states with America’s lowest rates of gun-related deaths all have strict gun laws; in states that allow easy availability of guns, more people die from them.”

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=e8e45d47-c3b3-4b69-862f-6cc848e9bb43

David Lauter in the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — Time was — not that long ago — that after a mass shooting, gun rights advocates would nod to the possibility of compromise before waiting for memories to fade and opposing any new legislation to regulate firearms.

This time, they skipped the preliminaries and jumped directly to opposition.

“The most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus,” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said to MSNBC a few hours after a shooter killed at least 21 people in Uvalde, Texas. “Inevitably, when there’s a murder of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it. You see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. That doesn’t work.”

The speed of that negative reaction provides the latest example of how, on one issue after another, the gap between blue America and red America has widened so much that even the idea of national agreement appears far-fetched. Many political figures no longer bother pretending to look for it.

Broad agreement

on some measures

And yet, significant agreement does exist.

Poll after poll has shown for years that large majorities of the public agree on at least some limited steps to further regulate firearms.

A survey last year by the Pew Research Center, for example, showed that, by 87% to 12%, Americans supported “preventing people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns.” By 81% to 18% they backed “making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks.” And by a smaller but still healthy 64% to 36% they favored “banning high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.”

The gunman in Uvalde appears to have carried seven 30-round magazines, authorities in Texas have said.

So why, in the face of such large majorities, does Congress repeatedly do nothing?

One powerful factor is the belief among many Americans that nothing lawmakers do will help the problem.

Asked in that same Pew survey whether mass shootings would decline if guns were harder to obtain, about half of Americans said they would go down, but 42% said it would make no difference. Other surveys have found much the same feeling among a large swath of Americans.

The argument about futility is one that opponents of change quickly turn to after a catastrophe. It’s a powerful rhetorical weapon against action.

“It wouldn’t prevent these shootings,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on CNN on Wednesday when asked about banning the sort of semiautomatic weapons used by the killer in Uvalde and by a gunman who killed 10 at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket 10 days earlier. “The truth of the matter is these people are going to commit these horrifying crimes — whether they have to use another weapon to do it, they’re going to figure out a way to do it.”

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made a similar claim at his news conference on Wednesday: “People who think that, ‘well, maybe we can just implement tougher gun laws, it’s gonna solve it’ — Chicago and L.A. and New York disprove that thesis.”

The facts powerfully suggest that’s not true.

Go back 15 years: In 2005, California had almost the same rate of deaths from guns as Florida or Texas. California had 9.5 firearms deaths per 100,000 people that year, Florida had 10 and Texas 11, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Since then, California repeatedly has tightened its gun laws, while Florida and Texas have moved in the opposite direction.

California’s rate of gun deaths has declined by 10% since 2005, even as the national rate has climbed in recent years. And Texas and Florida? Their rates of gun deaths have climbed 28% and 37% respectively. California now has one of the 10 lowest rates of gun deaths in the nation. Texas and Florida are headed in the wrong direction.

Obviously, factors beyond a state’s laws can affect the rate of firearms deaths. The national health statistics take into account differences in the age distribution of state populations, but they don’t control for every factor that might affect gun deaths.

Equally clearly, no law stops all shootings.

California’s strict laws didn’t stop the shooting at a Taiwanese church in Laguna Woods this month, and there’s no question that Chicago suffers from a large number of gun-related homicides despite strict gun control laws in Illinois. A large percentage of the guns used in those crimes come across the border from neighboring states with loose gun laws, research has shown.

The overall pattern is clear, and it reinforces the lesson from other countries, including Canada, Britain and Australia, which have tightened gun laws after horrific mass shootings: The states with America’s lowest rates of gun-related deaths all have strict gun laws; in states that allow easy availability of guns, more people die from them.

Fear of futility isn’t the only barrier to passage of national gun legislation.

Gun law opponents harden positions

Hard-core opponents of gun regulation have become more entrenched in their positions over the last decade.

Mostly conservative and Republican and especially prevalent in rural parts of the U.S., staunch opponents of any new legislation restricting firearms generally don’t see gun violence as a major problem but do see the weapons as a major part of their identity. In the Pew survey last year, just 18% of Republicans rated gun violence as one of the top problems facing the country, compared with 73% of Democrats. Other surveys have found much the same.

Strong opponents of gun control turn out in large numbers in Republican primaries, and they make any vote in favor of new restrictions politically toxic for Republican officeholders. In American politics today, where most congressional districts are gerrymandered to be safe for one party and only a few states swing back and forth politically, primaries matter far more to most lawmakers than do general elections.

Even in general elections, gun issues aren’t the top priority for most voters. Background checks and similar measures have wide support, but not necessarily urgent support.

. . . .

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

Read David’s complete article at the link.

Unfortunately, the much ballyhooed polls on this issue turn out to be highly misleading. The polls showing widespread support for gun control suggest that there should be a heavy political price to pay for GOP gun zealots who mock the need for rational measures to protect kids, worshippers, shoppers, and others from mass firearms’ assaults.

However, the exact opposite is true. As Chuck Todd recently pointed out on NBC News, even in the “post-Sandy-Hook” era, no incumbent politician has lost his or her position for opposing reasonable firearms controls. The converse is not true. 

Todd also pointed out that we now have more guns than people in the U.S., a situation that didn’t exist a decade ago. The irrational response to more gun deaths, lead by the NRA and GOP politicos, has been more guns — NOT common sense, concern for the common good, or courageous bipartisan problem solving.

That perhaps explains how sleazy immoral characters like Gov. Greg Abbott, Sen. Ted Cruz, VA Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears and a host of other corrupt “guns are the answer to all problems” GOP politicos remain in office as innocent kids and others die and the problem gets worse.

As the article suggests, lack of urgency and priority also might be a reason why the polls are so completely misleading on this issue. For the “guns trump human lives crowd,” adhering to positions promoting irresponsible “absolutist” firearms agendas are a “litmus test.” Apparently, for too many of those in the “majority,” saving some kids and other human lives is in the “nice to have, but not essential” category. 

So, despite their immoral and irrational stand on guns, the GOP controls a majority of state and local Governments. Nationally, thanks to the electoral college, gerrymandering, and local control of national voting, the GOP appears poised to sweep back into power on the national level and impose their anti-individual-liberty, anti-democracy, anti-humanity, pro-guns and big corporations agenda on all until the last shadow of American liberal democracy is wiped out.

It’s clear from the “in your face” reactions of Cruz and other GOP pols that they expect no fallout from their latest, deadly policy failures. Indeed, I think they fully anticipate a political boost from their ridiculous and widely-panned suggestions and their ever more outrageous fact-free “shoot ‘em up — ignore the real problem” proposals. Kid deaths and grieving parents who can be fobbed off or ignored have become a “gold mine” for valueless GOP politicos to exploit and demean.

Sadly, they probably are correct. Despite the perhaps “over coverage” by the media obsessed with public demonstrations, the GOP has little to fear politically from outraged parents of dead kids, students walking out of classes, newspaper editorials, or demonstrators outside the NRA Convention. 

Unless and until gun control proponents can find a way to make arrogant GOP pols on all levels “pay a price” for their immoral actions and horrible positions, the latest “surge in public sentiment” will be just as meaningless as the polls they engender. That means reaching out to the rural Americans who drive the GOP’s pro-gun agenda and changing at least some minds with facts. That’s something that Dems as a whole have failed to do over decades, as the GOP developed a stranglehold over rural America. 

While GOP politicos like Abbott and Cruz (who, let’s remember, fled with his family to a resort in Mexico while ordinary Texans suffered through Abbott’s mismanagement of the power grid) babble nonsense, parents who have lost children understand exactly who is to blame for preventable mass murders:

“There’s no reason for just an average citizen to have these types of weapons,” she said. Adding, “What for? What do you need them for? Is it worth my kid? These kids?”

https://apple.news/ABvfx3I_pRjubQAjtOz4c-A

Of course, as the article acknowledges, gun control won’t solve all problems or prevent all mass shootings. But, contrary to widely promoted GOP myths, such laws would be a major step in the right direction that demonstrably would preserve some human lives.

The GOP gun lobby’s outrageous “expand the universe of gun ownership and military-style firepower” agenda clearly results in more unnecessary deaths. Even more significantly, there is no case for the proposition that reasonable firearms restrictions and limitations on military assault-type weapons place any unreasonable burden on sportsmen, target shooters, or other types of legitimate gun owners. 

No private citizen in America needs an assault weapon for self defense or sporting purposes! Pro-gun commercials suggesting that assault weapons are necessary for self-defense at home or to “protect America” are the pure BS! But, they apparently are much more effective than angry demonstrations, school walkouts, or tearful testimonials from those deprived of their loved ones and colleagues by preventable mass gun violence.

Tougher laws might, however, stop at least a few kids or angry folks from getting their hands on military-grade weapons of mass destruction and murder. 

Significantly, it now appears that about the only folks who “did the right thing at the right time” during the Uvalde mass murder were the unarmed kids who, risking their lives, called, sometimes repeatedly, those authorized to use deadly force and assault-style weapons for public protection. But, it was largely to no avail, as the so-called “good guys with guns” stood around as kids died — they were afraid they might get shot by an 18-year-old kid armed like a combat soldier. Their teachers, not the “good guys with guns” were the ones willing to sacrifice their lives in an attempt to save others.

Also, while Texas seems to revel in “anti-Federalism,” it’s worth noting that the slaughter only stopped when Federal Border Patrol Officers ignored local police leaders and confronted the shooter.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-29-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. 🇺🇸🗽👍🏼😎MAKING AMERICA BETTER, FINALLY: “Mr. Biden has laid out an immigration program that would genuinely put America first.” (WashPost) — No Wonder GOP Anti-American White Nationalists Like Tom Cotton Are Apoplectic & Spouting Their Racist, White Elitist Nonsense!
  4. FINALLY, LEADING DEMS IN CONGRESS DEMAND END TO BIDEN’S TITLE 42 CHARADE! — NDPA  All-Star 🌟🦸🏻‍♀️ Blaine Bookey Speaks Out For Ukrainians & Other Legal Asylum Seekers Being Abused 🤮  By Biden Administration @ The Southern Border!

🤮 UGLY HISTORY OF RACISM & BIAS INFECTS U.S. REFUGEE RESPONSES!

Laura Alexander
Dr. Laura Alexander
Goldstein Family Chair in Human Rights
Assistant Professor
U. of Nebraska-Omaha
PHOTO: UNO

https://theconversation.com/how-race-and-religion-have-always-played-a-role-in-who-gets-refuge-in-the-us-181700?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2028%202022%20-%202276322632&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2028%202022%20-%202276322632+Version+B+CID_a6f7cc645a264986686de82dd759a5c6&utm_source=campaign_monitor_us&utm_term=How%20race%20and%20religion%20have%20always%20played%20a%20role%20in%20who%20gets%20refuge%20in%20the%20US

From The Conversation:

How race and religion have always played a role in who gets refuge in the US

Laura E. Alexander Published: April 28, 2022 8.21am EDT

pastedGraphic.png

Ukrainian refugees wait near the U.S. border in Tijuana, Mexico. AP Photo/Gregory Bull

In the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, millions of Ukrainians have fled the country as refugees. Hundreds of those refugees have now arrived at the southern border of the United States seeking asylum, after flying to Mexico on tourist visas.

At the border, Ukrainians, alongside thousands of other asylum seekers, must navigate two policies meant to keep people out. The first is the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” a U.S. government action initiated by the Trump administration in December 2018 and known informally as “Remain in Mexico.” The second is Title 42, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention directive crafted in 2020, ostensibly to protect public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. The directive expels all irregular immigrants (those without permanent residency or a visa in hand) and asylum seekers who try to enter the U.S. by land.

On March 11, 2022, however, the Biden administration provided guidance allowing Customs and Border Protection officers to exempt Ukrainians from Title 42 on a case-by-case basis, which has allowed many families to enter. However, this exception has not been granted to other asylum seekers, no matter what danger they are in. It is possible that the administration may lift Title 42 at the end of May 2022, but that plan has encountered fierce debates.

The different treatment of Ukrainian versus Central American, African, Haitian and other asylum seekers has prompted criticism that the administration is enforcing immigration policies in racist ways, favoring white, European, mostly Christian refugees over other groups.

This issue is not new. As scholars of religion, race, immigration, and racial and religious politics in the United States, we study both historical and current immigration policy. We argue that U.S. refugee and asylum policy has long been racially and religiously discriminatory in practice.

Chinese asylum seekers

Race played a major role in who counted as a refugee during the early years of the Cold War. The displacement of millions fleeing communist regimes in Eastern Europe and East Asia created humanitarian crises in both places.

Under significant international pressure, Congress passed the 1953 Refugee Relief Act. According to historian Carl Bon Tempo, in the minds of President Dwight Eisenhower and most lawmakers, “refugee” meant “anticommunist European.” The text and implementation of the act reflected this. Of the 214,000 visas set aside for refugees, the law designated a quota of only 5,000 spots for Asians (2,000 for Chinese and 3,000 for “Far Eastern” refugees). Ultimately, approximately 9,000 Chinese (including 6,862 Chinese wives of U.S. citizens who came as nonquota migrants) were admitted under the 1953 refugee law, compared with nearly 200,000 southern and eastern Europeans, over the next three years.

Racial prejudice impacted the international response to refugees as well. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, United Nations officials had declared the displaced population in Europe a humanitarian crisis and appealed to the international community to relieve these pressures by accepting refugees. Over the next decade, Western nations including the U.S., France and Great Britain received millions of displaced Europeans as part of a larger Cold War public relations strategy to contain the Soviet Union and demonstrate the superiority of Western capitalist societies to life behind the Iron Curtain.

Millions of ethnic Chinese displaced by the 1949 Communist Revolution were not greeted so kindly. In the early 1950s, Hong Kong’s population tripled due to mainland Chinese fleeing civil war and communist rule, triggering a crisis. Most Western countries, however, continued to exclude Chinese and other Asians from immigrating and made few exceptions for refugees.

In the United States, exclusionary provisions that barred Asians from immigrating as “aliens ineligible to citizenship” would not be removed from immigration law until the 1965 Immigration Act.

Haitian asylum seekers

The first Haitian asylum seekers, who are overwhelmingly Black, attempted to reach the U.S. in boats in 1963 during the dictatorship of Francois Duvalier. It was a period of great economic inequality and severe violent repression of political opposition in Haiti.

pastedGraphic_1.png

Haitian refugees who were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard returning to Port-au-Prince after being repatriated in 1992. AP Photo/Daniel Morel

Between 1973 and 1991, more than 80,000 Haitians tried to seek asylum in the U.S. The U.S., however, consistently attempted to intercept and turn back boats carrying Haitian asylum seekers to avoid having to hear their cases.

In the 1980s and 1990s, nearly every single Haitian who tried to request asylum was either denied or turned away. Some disparities between asylum rates could be explained by political factors, particularly the U.S. government’s interest in prioritizing refugees from communist countries.

However, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and the 11th Circuit Court both found, in Haitian Refugee Center v. Civiletti and Jean v. Nelson respectively, that racial discrimination could be the only reason for such strikingly different outcomes for Haitians. In Jean v. Nelson, the 11th Circuit heard evidence from plaintiffs that there was a less than two-in-1 billion chance that Haitians would be denied parole so consistently if immigration policies were applied in racially neutral ways. Both courts also noted the differences in outcomes of asylum claims between Cuban refugees, who were predominantly white, and Haitian refugees.

In the same time period, even while Black Haitian asylum seekers were being turned away, European immigrants, who were primarily white, received preference in the Diversity Visa system created by the Immigration Act of 1990. Northern Ireland, for example, was designated as a separate country from the United Kingdom, and 40% of “diversity transition” visas allocated during 1992 to 1994 were earmarked for Irish immigrants.

Similar accusations of racism and discriminatory treatment have surfaced over the last several months as Haitian asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border have been forced onto flights to Haiti and have faced degrading treatment.

Syrian refugees and the Muslim ban

Beginning in January 2017, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders described by many refugee advocates as the “Muslim Ban.” The ban suspended the entry of people from majority-Muslim countries, including Syrians, and limited the number of refugee admissions of several majority-Muslim countries.

pastedGraphic_2.png

Few Syrian refugees were allowed into the U.S. In this photo, Syrian refugees wait to be approved to get into Jordan. AP Photo/Raad Adayleh, File

Syrian refugees, most of whom fled the Syrian civil war that began in 2011 and violence by the Islamic State, were specifically targeted in the Muslim Ban.

A February 2017 version of the Muslim Ban claimed that Syrian refugees were “detrimental to the interests of the United States and thus suspend[ed]” from admission, with few exceptions. This contributed to a significant decrease in the number of Syrian refugees – from 12,587 to 76 between financial year 2016 to 2018.

Research shows that religion, particularly Islam, is used to create symbolic boundaries of racial distinction in order to promote immigration enforcement goals. Specifically, the government attempted to justify an exclusionary refugee policy based on race and religion by implicating Muslims and refugees in terrorism, as Trump did in speeches, even calling Syrians the “trojan horse” for terrorism.

International agreements for refugees and asylum seekers clearly state that admissions should be based on need. In principle, U.S. law says this as well. But these key moments in United States history show how race, religion and other factors play a role in determining who is in, and who is out.

While refugees from the war in Ukraine deserve support from the United States and other countries, the contrast between the treatment of different groups of refugees shows that the process of gaining refuge in the United States is still far from equitable.

[Explore the intersection of faith, politics, arts and culture. Sign up for This Week in Religion.]

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

Yup!

And, the ongoing grotesque abuses of Title 42 to target refugees of color is Exhibit A! So, why are some “tone deaf” Democrats advocating this racist action?

  • Because the polls tell them is “politically expedient” to favor racism?
  • Because racism at the border and in the immigration system are thought to be “below the radar screen?” 
  • Because dead refugees of color “don’t matter?”
  • Or, put another way, because the lives of refugees of color don’t matter? 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-02-22

Related posts:

  1. 👹🎃HALLOWEEN HORROR 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻REICHSREPORT: GRUPPENFUHRER MILLER REVEALS “REICHSPLAN” FOR EXTERMINATION OF IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM, REFUGE BY EXECUTIVE DECREE!  — “The Final Solution??”  — Parents, Protect Your Kids, Families, & Your Country From This Grotesque Un-American Monster!
  2. ☠️⚰️🏴‍☠️HAITI IS NOT “SAFE,” & THE PERVASIVE GANG VIOLENCE APPEARS TO BE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED! — “They raped women, burned homes and killed dozens of people, including children, chopping up their bodies with machetes and throwing their remains to pigs. . . . It was organized by senior Haitian officials, who provided weapons and vehicles to gang members to punish people in a poor area protesting government corruption!” — So, Why Are Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, & Garland Illegally Returning Refugees There Without Hearing Their Asylum Claims?  👎🏽🤮
  3. LAW YOU CAN UNDERSTAND: Forget The 55 Pages of Butt-Covering BS & Turgid Legal Gobbledegook 🤮 From 7 Supremes Who Don’t Believe in Constitutional Due Process or Racial Equality in America 🏴‍☠️☠️  — Nicole Narea @ Vox Explains in A Few Cogent Paragraphs How 7 Tone-Deaf & Complicit Justices Have Put All Americans of Color Directly in The Crosshairs of Trump’s DHS Enforcement👎🏻!
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️👎🏽GROUPS EXPOSE RACISM, MYTHS IN BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S ABUSE OF HAITIAN ASYLUM SEEKERS! — “Each day that the Title 42 policy remains in effect, it places Haitians directly in harm’s way.”

🗽⚖️👍🏼GW CLINIC SAVES ANOTHER REFUGEE LIFE — But, It’s A Sobering Example Of The Type of Person Who Will Be Left To Die At Our Borders If Feckless, “Miller Lite” (Or, “Miller Genuine?”) Dems Are Able To Persuade Biden To Kill Asylum For Good  & Join GOP’s Racist Abrogation Of Rule Of Law! — Progressives Need To “Push Back Hard” On Latest Dem Cowardice & Nonsense — Insist On Restoration Of Rule Of Law For ALL Asylum Seekers @ Border!

GW Law Immigration Clinic Director Professor Alberto Benítez & Co-Director Paulina Vera

“I really do not find enough words to let you know how grateful I am to all of you for your wise and timely guidance at all times and for the dedication and commitment that you assumed from the first moment towards our asylum case.”

Please join me in congratulating Immigration Clinic client T-G and her son F-P, from Venezuela, and their student-attorneys Karoline Núñez, Samuel Thomas, Alexandra Chen, and Jeremy Patton. The clients’ asylum application was filed April 28, 2017, their interview at the Asylum Office was on November 1, 2021, and the grant was issued March 21, 2022. T-G received the grant yesterday.

T-G is a survivor of domestic violence at the hands of her husband. He’d punch T-G, force her to have sexual relations, infected her with a STD, and he blamed her for their daughter’s neurological issues. Their daughter contracted Zika but was unable to receive the appropriate treatment because T-G was not a supporter of the Maduro government. Their daughter died at age 14.

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

Alberto Manuel Benitez

Professor of Clinical Law

Director, Immigration Clinic

The George Washington University Law School

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

Many congrats to the GW Immigration Clinic and all the GW All-Stars! 🤮⚖️

Let’s get behind the intentional dehumanization and the chronically misleading “numbers” being thrown around by nativists, some so-called “moderate” Dems, and the DHS. Put a “human face” on our nation’s dereliction of legal duty and abandonment of values at out Southern border.

Suffering at the Border
The Faces Of Human Suffering @ Our Border
PHOTO: The Guardian

This case is a compelling example of the types of refugees, many women and children and most people of color, who are stuck at our Southern Border as illegal suspension of asylum laws, based on racially- motivated bogus “public health” grounds grinds on. With some legal assistance and a fair and orderly system in place, many of those waiting could qualify for asylum if given a fair chance under the law. 

Access to the asylum system, representation, and fair and impartial adjudication are essential to success. Right now, the Biden Administration is denying all three.

Now, more amoral and weak-kneed Dems are urging Biden to kill asylum and refugees of color along with it by “delaying” the long overdue resumption of legal asylum processing at the border for another “60 days.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2022/04/18/more-democrats-criticize-biden-for-plan-to-end-trump-era-border-restrictions/?sh=68b608c251d8  

Make no mistake, this disingenuous action would kill asylum for good! These guys don’t even have the guts to admit that they are now carrying out Stephen Miller’s xenophobic war on immigrants and refugees of color.

  • Biden ran on an elimination of Title 42 and restoration of the legal asylum process. If 18 months after the election they lack a “plan,” there is no reason to believe that 60 more days would make a difference. It’s now or never!
  • 60 days would bring us even closer to the mid-terms. If Dems are scared to follow the law now, that’s not going to improve as the midterms get even closer. 
  • You can be sure that once the midterms are past, particularly if Dems get “blown out” as they fear, they will claim that the time “isn’t right” for any immigration “reform” (although, following the law is hardly a real “reform”) in advance of the 2024 election. If the GOP wins in ’24, the effective elimination of legal immigration — with or without legislation — will be finalized.
  • This has nothing to do with COVID at this point. It never really did. It was always about finding a pretext to close the border and keep it closed — at least to non-White refugees. But, since COVID constantly mutates, there will always be some sort of “COVID emergency” out there for the foreseeable future. 
  • Asylum applicants have NOT been a significant source of COVID. They are far less of a threat to our health, safety, and security than GOP “magamorons” who eschew vaccination and basic public safety precautions. The Biden Administration should have a plan in place to insure that asylum seekers are tested and if necessary vaccinated before admission.
  • If we have no legal asylum system at the border, no functional refugee system abroad, and no hope for the future, the only way for individuals to seek protection will be by using smugglers to enter illegally and then hoping to “lose themselves” in a burgeoning “extralegal population” throughout out America. Once we abandon any pretext of a legal system for asylum seekers, the border will get further and further out of control. That will add to the GOP’s claims that more and more cruel, draconian, and punitive measures are necessary. But, they won’t stop desperate people from attempting entry until they either succeed or die in the process.
  • Contrary to the misguided blather of some Dems, there will never be a better time for Dems to support asylum seekers. They are concentrated in border areas, and eager to have their claims heard. Orderly processing and admitting as many as qualify, in a period of artificially reduced migration, would help the economy, raise tax revenues, and address supply chain issues. If not now, when?
  • Restoring asylum law is a legal requirement, not a “strategy,” “policy,” or “political choice.” If Dems turn their backs on the rule of law, what makes them different from the GOP?

If this divisive nonsense and backsliding on basic constitutional, racial justice, and social justice issues continues, progressive Dems are going to be faced with having to make a decision about the party’s future.

Progressive Dems make up a key part of the party’s core base and a disproportionate amount of the “boots on the ground, grass roots enthusiasm.” Republicans aren’t going to vote for Dems, no matter how xenophobic, hateful, and racist Dems are toward migrants. So-called “independents,” are neither going to fill the Dems coffers nor pound the pavement and work the phone lines to “get out the vote.”

So, arrogant “Title 42 Dems” are assuming that they can “spit on” immigrant justice, racial justice, economic justice, and social justice and that their “core support” among progressives won’t diminish because they will always be preferable to “Trump Republicans.”  

All in all, it’s a “big middle finger” to progressives and their social justice agenda. That’s an agenda that Biden actually successfully ran on. 

If progressives really believe in a pro immigrant, pro rule of law, racial justice agenda, then they need to stand up to the backsliders and let them know that there will be real consequences of yet another “sellout of immigrants’ rights.” We’ll see whether progressive Dems have more backbone and courage than their “Title 42/Miller Lite wing.”

This morning, a WashPost editorial correctly pointed out that Ukrainian refugees “couldn’t afford to wait” for the Biden Administration to get its act together. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/19/united-states-ukraine-refugee-effort-slow-start/

But, the Post badly missed the larger point — NO refugee can afford to wait, be they White Ukrainians, Black Haitians, Cameroonians, and Congolese, or Latinos from the Northern Triangle, Venezuela, and Nicaragua! Our obligations to asylees are not supposed to be “race-based!”

The U.S. has had a legal refugee and asylum system for more than four decades. During that time, Congress has made several amendments of the law to allow DHS to rapidly process and summarily remove those appearing at the border who, after prompt expert screening by Asylum Officers, cannot establish a “credible fear” of persecution. 

Restrictionists and shamefully some so-called moderate Democrats, and sometimes CBP, seem to have conveniently “forgotten” that the law was designed to deal fairly and promptly with so-called “mass migrations” long before the advent of the bogus Title 42 charade.

For some periods during the 40 years since the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980, the U.S. has run functional refugee and asylum programs. Not “perfect” or perhaps even “optimal,” but “functional.”

They have done this by employing experts, cooperating with NGOs (domestic and international), and building resettlement and support systems spearheaded by NGOs, using Government grants, and promoting teamwork and coordination with states and localities.

It has only been when Administrations of both parties have mindlessly turned away from human rights experts and followed the misguided and tone-deaf gimmicks advocated by nativists and apostles of “enforcement only deterrence” that the legal systems for refugees and asylees, and efficient, humane border enforcement, have fallen into disorder.

While refugee and asylum laws could undoubtedly be improved, contrary to the media blather and nativist grandstanding, we have the basic legal framework to deal with the current refugee and asylum situations at our borders and beyond. The question is whether the Biden Administration and Dems have the will, vision, competence, and willingness to cooperate with human rights experts to fix the mess intentionally created by Trump and return human decency, competence, and the rule of law to our borders! If not now, when?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-19-22

 

Related posts:

  1. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  2. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  3. ☹️”TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE” — Asylum Seekers Stranded In Mexico See Promise To Lift Title 42 Blockade With Mixture Of Hope, Skepticism, & Confusion! — Under Trump, & Now Biden, U.S. Human Rights Laws & Our Constitution Have Become “Game Of Whack A Mole!” — Human Lives & The Rule Of Law A “Joke” To Border Patrol Agents!
  4. 🤯PROGRAMMED TO FAIL:  LACK OF LEADERSHIP, EXPERTISE, COURAGE, COMMITMENT TO RULE OF LAW, RACIAL AWARENESS, & AN ATTORNEY GENERAL “ON VACATION” PLAGUES BIDEN’S BUNGLED BORDER POLICY! — Is Appeasing GOP White Nationalists With Racist Policies While Scorning The Rule of Law & Dissing Progressive Supporters REALLY A Great “Strategy” For Biden & Harris?  🤮 — NY Times Reports

CATHERINE @ WASHPOST “GETS IT!” — Why Are The Biden Administration & Some Dem Pols “Running Scared” From What Should Be A Big Win? — Many Of The Legal,Workers We Need Are Patiently Waiting @ The Border For Processing & Legal Admission — Dems Need To Stop “Shaking In Their Boots” & Start “Shaking Their Tails” To “Pre-Process” Refugees For An Orderly Restoration Of The Rule Of Law On May 23!

Catherine Rampell
Catherine Rampell
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/11/democrats-missing-real-immigration-threat-workers-economy/

Opinion: Democrats are missing the bigger immigration issue

By Catherine Rampell

Democrats are terrified that a coming border surge might tank their midterm chances.

But they have largely ignored a much more serious immigration-related political risk. The problem in the months ahead isn’t that the United States will allow in too many immigrants; it’s that we’ll admit too few, particularly the kinds of workers who can fill critical labor-market shortages.

The Biden administration recently announced it would soon end Title 42, a Trump-era border-control policy. Citing the public health emergency when it invoked the policy in March 2020, the Trump team used the pandemic as a pretext to expel all arriving migrants without first allowing them to apply for asylum, as they have a legal right to do. Public health experts and immigration advocates — and many elected Democrats — have long condemned the policy, which has been used to carry out more than 1.7 million migrant expulsions.

President Biden’s own appointees have called the policy illegal and inhumane, with multiple high-level officials blasting it when they resigned. But Biden delayed reversing Title 42, fearing bad optics and attacks from Fox News. (Which arguably was going to attack him as an “open borders” president regardless.)

As expected, right-wingers are now catastrophizing about the looming “Armageddon” that will follow Title 42′s unwinding.

As a result, some worried Democrats are demanding that Biden keep this (likely illegal) policy in place. They have been so fixated on bad-faith right-wing attacks that they have missed the bigger, and much more serious, immigration-related liability: the millions of immigrants whose absence from the U.S. workforce is putting upward pressure on inflation.

Which Democrats are being blamed for, and which voters appear to care much more about.

The United States is experiencing inflationary levels not seen in four decades. Americans are unhappy, and they are more than five times as likely to cite “inflation,” “cost of living” or the economy in general than immigration as the nation’s biggest problem. These economic concerns are, however, rooted at least partly in immigration policy.

Worker shortages are pervasive, with vacancies hovering around record highs. The resulting disruptions to supply chains and normal business operations have raised costs for companies and consumers. Some of these “missing” workers retired; some dropped out of the labor force because of care issues or illness. But a huge chunk were foreign-born workers who either never arrived in the United States in recent years or who were already here but have been forced out of their jobs because of government incompetence.

There are about 1.8 million fewer working-age immigrants in the United States today than would be the case if pre-2020 immigration trends had continued unchanged, economic researchers Giovanni Peri and Reem Zaiour estimate. Unsurprisingly, they also find that industries that had a higher percentage of foreign workers in 2019 — such as hospitality and food services — tend to have higher rates of unfilled jobs now.

pastedGraphic.png

These immigrants, legal and otherwise, are “missing” because of a combination of Trump policies, covid-19 (which the Trump administration cited to justify imposing even more immigration restrictions) and Biden’s foot-dragging.

Although Biden pledged more humane and efficient immigration policies when he ran for president, he has been slow to reverse many of President Donald Trump’s onerous paperwork requirements and other policies designed to reduce legal immigration. Biden’s sluggishness owes partly to the magnitude of the challenge of rebuilding the U.S. immigration infrastructure — and partly to that deep Democratic fear of how Fox News et al. might portray any efforts to help immigrants.

As a result, last year, the United States experienced the lowest levels of new international migration in decades, census data shows.

. . . .

A border surge is infinitely more telegenic and attack-ad-friendly than backlogged paperwork. But the missing immigrant workforce is what more directly affects voters’ pocketbooks — and, by extension, Democrats’ political fortunes.

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

Read Catherine’s complete article at the link!

There is no need for a self-created “border surge” on May 23! We have a potentially quite efficient asylum screening and adjudication process in our existing law. If it were properly staffed and run, with competent legal and judicial  oversight, asylum seekers would use it — even if “success” is far from guaranteed. 

Experience has shown that asylum seekers in the U.S. who are represented, and therefore understand the system and their obligations, faithfully appear for hearings nearly 100% of the time, even when they appear likely to lose. Just because we as a nation have lost faith in our ability to operate under the the rule of law doesn’t mean that asylum seekers have! Obviously folks who have “hung around” in Mexico, in life-threatening conditions, for months or years, believing in a false promise of future fair and humane treatment by the U.S. aren’t as easily persuaded that our legal system is a sham as are our own politicos, bureaucrats, and pundits.

Sure, folks without asylum claims and those who don’t trust the system will continue to attempt unauthorized entry — particularly if the legal system lacks credibility, thus allowing smugglers to convince migrants to evade it.

But, with a robust asylum system functioning at ports of entry, CBP won’t be diverted by squandering resources “apprehending” (a serious misnomer) individuals who want nothing more than a fair and timely chance to present their asylum claims. CBP can concentrate their resources on those who truly intend to evade the legal system.

Even without the bogus Title 42, the law provides more than adequate tools for dealing with unauthorized entry. Those without documents are subject to “summary removal” by CBP Agents. Those subject to summary removal who claim asylum can be promptly screened for “credible fear” by trained USCIS Asylum Officers. Those who “flunk” credible fear are summarily removed under the existing order. Those who “pass” can be funneled into the legal asylum system and processed accordingly.

If you are a believer in “deterrence theory” for migrants who don’t have credible asylum claims, then the “expedited summary removal process” provides just that. No need to illegally invoke Title 42!

If the Obama, Trump, and now Biden Administrations had spent time and resources training Asylum Officers and reforming the Immigration Courts, instead of screwing around with futile (sometimes illegal) “enforcement only” gimmicks, idiotic walls, inhumane, expensive detention, inane messaging, and deterrence, there wouldn’t be largely manufactured “border emergencies.” Just a variety of fairly predictable “humanitarian situations” and opportunities to show how the rule of law works in a functioning democracy.

For example, the much feared and ballyhooed “caravan” that had Trump scared out of his (already limited) wits moved in “slow motion” to the border. A competent Administration could have processed them fairly, humanely, and timely upon arrival or shortly thereafter. Indeed, a competent Administration probably would have worked with the Mexican authorities and the UNHCR to have processed members of  those “caravans” for refugee status, in an orderly manner, at a point in Mexico well-removed from our border!

If, after truly fair, humane, and timely processing at ports of entry few qualified (I deem this unlikely under a truly fair and  competent system, but perhaps possible, who really knows, since we have been “chicken” to fairly adjudicate asylum claims from Latin American and the Caribbean for many years), then there’s your “legal deterrent” (for those who believe in deterrents) to those who might seek to come in the future.

“Caravans” don’t cross the border irregularly unless legal ports or entry are closed or de facto unvailable to them. Even then, most asylum seekers in caravans would prefer to wait for legal processing if it were available in a predictable, orderly, humane, fair, and timely manner. The Trump kakistocracy’s decision NOT to follow asylum laws and procedures at ports of entry actually caused unnecessary chaos, created danger, and provoked and encouraged unauthorized entries. The Biden Administration has, unfathomably, followed in Trump’s footsteps!

The “missing piece” for decades, across Administrations of both parties, has been a robust, realistic, well-staffed “outside the US” refugee processing system for Latin America and the Caribbean. If we REALLY don’t want folks “trying their luck” on asylum at the border, then give them honest and prompt answers to their refugee claims in or nearer to the countries in conflict they are fleeing.

The current law is by no means perfect. But, it’s a whole lot better than the politicos and bureaucrats who, for most of the past four decades, have failed to take straightforward, achievable steps to “make it work.” Refugee admissions overseas, and asylum admissions in the U.S. and at our borders, are a key element of our legal immigration system. It’s time to stop pretending otherwise!

And, as Catherine cogently points out, rapidly approving work authorizations and all types of applications for legal immigration under existing law also should have been “low hanging fruit” for the Biden Administration. A group of summer college students could have been trained in short order to wipe out the backlog of Employment Authorization Documents (“EADs”) during the summer of 2021. 

Even now, with just a little initiative, creativity, and energy, USCIS could hire and train summer employees to handle many routine and repetitive “adjudications.” All “adjudications” are NOT equal! EAD backlogs, intentionally created by the Trump kakistocracy, are totally unnecessary and inexcusable under Biden. 

How many retired Asylum Officers, USCIS Adjudicators with asylum experience, retired Immigration Judges, retired BIA staff attorneys, and retired Congressional immigration staffers has USCIS “rehired” during the past year to prepare for the reopening of the border?  If they haven’t, why not? It’s not too late to get more qualified individuals on board temporarily and give them to tools they need to fairly and timely process credible fear cases. 

How many agreements has USCIS entered with NGOs to prescreen, organize into orderly lists, and, where necessary, represent individuals now waiting at or near the Southern Border. If not, why not get some of those agreements into effect on an “expedited” basis by next Monday?

In Government, everything seems to be a candidate for bogus “expedited treatment” EXCEPT common sense, readily available measures that actually solve problems! Why is that? What’s an Administration that got elected by claiming “Government can work” going to do to prove that before May 23! Stop “making excuses for failure” and start solving problems!

It’s not rocket science! Dems must stop “hand wringing” about what they didn’t do in the last year and start making the system work under current conditions. That’s what “good government” is supposed to do! 

Poland, a country of fewer than 40 million about the size of a large U.S. state, was able to handle 4-5 million Ukrainian refugees in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile the US is “paralyzed” by the idea that 60,000 might apply with more than a month of lead time to prepare, and an established, if now suspended, legal framework to use. Not to mention that Biden had more than a year’s “advance notice” that the asylum system would need rebuilding and rejuvenation at the Souther border. Gimmie a break! The Biden Administration was put in office largely to “make Government work” — not to mindlessly repeat GOP White Nationalist “woe is me” talking points!

On a smaller scale, religious organizations and voluntary agencies mobilized and organized almost overnight to assist the U.S. Government in processing Ukrainian refugees at the border. Why couldn’t those efforts be expanded and replicated for the largely non-White refugee hopefuls currently waiting? Why create an “emergency” that needn’t be? Why not put more time, effort, and creativity into ACHIEVING success, rather than thinking of excuses for anticipated failure or shifting blame to the “victims?”

Honestly, as the late, great political pundit
Casey Stengel would have said, “can’t anyone here play this game?”

Casey Stengel
“Time and time again, the Biden Administration’s inept and unprincipled approach to immigration and human rights leaves this guy scratching his head.”
PHOTO: Rudi Reit
Creative Commons

Also, Catherine Rampell understands the complex issues of immigration better than any “top level” official in the Biden Administration that I’m aware of. If they aren’t going to hire her, they should at least heed her advice. It’s free, accessible, clearly and succinctly written, and almost always “spot on!”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-14-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🇺🇸👍🏼🗽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.”
  2. ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”
  3. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  4. 🤯PROGRAMMED TO FAIL:  LACK OF LEADERSHIP, EXPERTISE, COURAGE, COMMITMENT TO RULE OF LAW, RACIAL AWARENESS, & AN ATTORNEY GENERAL “ON VACATION” PLAGUES BIDEN’S BUNGLED BORDER POLICY! — Is Appeasing GOP White Nationalists With Racist Policies While Scorning The Rule of Law & Dissing Progressive Supporters REALLY A Great “Strategy” For Biden & Harris?  🤮 — NY Times Reports

DAN RATHER & ELLIOTT KIRSCHNER: 🇺🇸⚖️🗽👩🏾‍⚖️CELEBRATING JUSTICE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: “As much as the Republicans tried to undermine Justice Jackson with epithets of being an extremist, it is they who I believe history will judge as out of touch with the heart of this nation, and especially its future.” YUP!

Justice Katenji Brown Jackson
Judge (now Justice) Ketanji Brown Jackson, honoree at the Third Annual Judge James B. Parsons Legacy Dinner, February 24, 2020, University of Chicago Law School. Photographer Lloyd DeGrane.
Creative Commons License

A New Justice

Welcome Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court

Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner
Apr 7 pastedGraphic.png pastedGraphic_1.png pastedGraphic_2.png

It is official. There is a new justice on the United States Supreme Court, and a justice unlike any in our nation’s history.Despite all the problems this nation faces, despite the sordidness of the confirmation process, despite the rank hypocrisy, bombast, and lies Republican senators and their media echo chambers employed, let us not allow any of this to distract from a celebration of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and her moment.

Justice Jackson is not only a symbol, she is a person. And like so many trailblazers before her, she has had to weather attacks on her character, her values, her intelligence, her right to be part of a society still plagued by the legacy of centuries of oppression and injustice.

If ever there were a live demonstration of judicial temperament, it was Justice Jackson’s testimony in her confirmation hearings. She was in a position known all too well to marginalized segments of American society, particularly Black women. She had to be better, do better, be more poised, absorb more outrage, and bite her tongue while those with privilege are given benefits of doubt she will never be offered and allowed to act in ways that never would have been tolerated from her. Indeed, we have seen exactly this double standard in recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Justice Jackson persevered. And she did so in a way that should give us confidence as to what kind of justice she will be. In a court that has been highly politicized by the actions of Republicans in the Senate and the White House, her voice will represent a very different perspective: an America of diversity, of obstacles and opportunity, of the rule of law, of humility, and of justice broadly defined.

Every Supreme Court justice represents to some extent a leap into the unknown. But recently, we have seen the entire judicial system increasingly become a competition between teams of judges whose actions are highly predictable. This is regrettable. The act of judgment should be one of listening, reading, and weighing the arguments. Everything we saw from Justice Jackson suggests she will embrace this role.

Even with the addition of Justice Jackson, we will still have a Supreme Court out of balance. It tilts heavily toward a far-right worldview that, if the polling is to be believed, is out of step with the majority of the American public.

As much as the Republicans tried to undermine Justice Jackson with epithets of being an extremist, it is they who I believe history will judge as out of touch with the heart of this nation, and especially its future.

Now, going forward, Justice Jackson will bring a new voice to those marbled halls, one who can bear witness to what this nation is, and where it is going.

Her presence itself will not fix the myriad problems we face; our challenges defy easy answers or simple remedies. But Justice Jackson personifies the hope that change is possible, that progress can be our path going forward. We celebrate her today as a unique legal mind and as someone whose service to this nation and its best traditions can give us a reason for new flickers of optimism. If she hasn’t given up on what America can be, then neither should we.

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Many, many congrats to Justice Jackson, one of our greatest living jurists, whose career exemplifies that to which the Federal Judiciary should aspire!

Justice Jackson is exactly the type of judge we need not only on the Supremes and the lower Article III Courts, but also on the Board of Immigration Appeals and on the nation’s Immigration Courts!

But, in this case, the obstacle isn’t Republicans! No, it’s the Dems — the Biden Administration and AG Garland! They stubbornly refuse to treat the U.S. Immigration Courts, which they control 100%, as if THEIR lives and futures depended upon it! 

I fear that in the Biden Administration’s rather half-hearted effort to restore asylum law at the border, we will see the consequences of not having acted timely to appoint a BIA of “real judges.” That is, asylum experts with the credibility, courage, independence, scholarly credentials, and practical experience in Immigration Court to establish fair, practical precedents to guide both Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers in the fair, consistent, and timely adjudication of claims for protection at the border and in the interior. They are also necessary to bring due process and best practices to a system that for years has openly mocked both — and largely gotten away with it, at the expense of the rule of law and the good of humanity.    

You can be sure that the next GOP AG won’t new so hesitant and stumbling about finishing the job of “weaponizing” the Immigration Courts as a tool to be used to “Dred Scottify the other” in American society!

I have no doubt that in the future, Justice Jackson will speak out against “Dred Scottification” when it comes before her on the Court — albeit likely in dissent, given the Supremes’ far right swing. Ironically, however, the appointment of “more Justice Jacksons” to the U.S. Immigration Courts would have a much greater substantive effect than her appointment to the Supremes! Not only would such “real judges” upgrade the practice of law — throughout the nation and in all Federal Courts — but they would stop the practice of “Dred Scottification” at the retail level — where it literally affects millions of lives. It would be “outcome determinative” in thousands of cases now being incorrectly decided — or not decided at all.

That Garland is too blind and/or disinterested to understand the cosmic importance of the Immigration Courts to American justice and the need to act boldly and rapidly to reform his dysfunctional and flagrantly unfair “courts” is nothing short of a national tragedy — one for which the most vulnerable and those fearlessly assisting them continue to pay a high price! 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-07-22

Related posts:

  1. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  4. 🤮👎🏽ULTIMATE HIPOCRACY: EVEN AS AMERICA FINALLY CELEBRATES JUNETEENTH HOLIDAY, DRED SCOTT & INSTITUTIONALIZED RACIST DEHUMANIZATION REMAIN REALITIES FOR BLACKS & OTHER MIGRANTS OF COLOR AT EOIR & DHS — Imprisonment Without Trial, Bogus Bonds, Mistreatment In The New American Gulag, Jim Crow “Courts,” No Rule Of Law,  Still Realities For Those Of Color Exercising Legal Rights In Broken System!

NDPA/POLITICS — SHE’S OFF & RUNNING, AGAIN!😎 NDPA SUPERSTAR 🌟 & FORMER EOIR ATTORNEY HILLARY SCHOLTEN IS THROWING HER HAT 🧢 IN THE RING IN MICHIGAN’S REDRAWN 3RD DISTRICT — “Tireless Fighter For The Common Good & American Families” Made A Strong Showing In 2020, Helping Biden Win The State!

 
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I have exciting news –

I’m running to represent Michigan’s newly redrawn, Democratic leaning, 3rd District in the United States Congress!

If you were on my team in 2020, it’s good to see you again. But if you’re just joining us, welcome, and I can’t wait to tell you more about myself in a moment.

First, I’ve got some good news: Redistricting made 2022 our best shot to flip MI-03 blue in decades. It went from a district Donald Trump won by 3 points, to one President Biden won by 8 points. We need a surge of momentum to put our campaign on the map starting on Day One! Can I count on you to be one of the first 5,000 grassroots supporters to chip in to my Democratic campaign?

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My story is a West Michigan story.

I was born and raised in West Michigan – my mother was a public school teacher and my father was a local reporter. Through their work, we were introduced to people, families, and students facing difficult times, who didn’t have their voices heard or their stories told by the decision-makers in their lives. My parents sought to change that.

My parents’ work and the stories of the families we met inspired my own career in public service – first as a social worker helping individuals facing homelessness, and then as an attorney, where I served our country in the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama Administration.

This work also led me back home to West Michigan, where I’ve continued to serve my community as an attorney, a deacon in my church, and an engaged neighbor and community volunteer. My husband Jesse, a local college professor, and I are raising our two rambunctious boys, right around the corner from where my grandfather grew up.

I’m running for Congress to be a voice at the table for all West Michiganders. The most important issues facing our nation – health care, voting rights, critical infrastructure issues, and boosting the bottom line for hard-working families in need – are all on the line.

My campaign in 2020 broke records for how close we came, how much money we raised, and how many volunteers we engaged. It was powerful and inspiring. My resolve and desire to serve West Michigan hasn’t changed one bit from my 2020 campaign, but something has changed: Michigan’s 3rd District.

An independent commission redrew the district, and it’s now rated as a PURE toss-up according to The Cook Political Report – meaning we can and will flip this seat to expand our Democratic House majority.

 

Paul, don’t get me wrong – this will still be a battleground race. But, with hard work and a strong grassroots team, I know we’ll be able to win this thing!

I can’t do this alone. That’s why I’m counting on you, Paul. Will you pitch in and become one of the first 5,000 Founding Donors who help our campaign make a big splash right from the start?

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Hillary

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Paid for by Hillary Scholten for Congress
Hillary Scholten for Congress

PO Box 6233

Grand Rapids, MI 49516

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Hillary is brilliant, energetic, dynamic, courageous, incorruptible, and exactly the voice of reason, humanity, practicality, and working for the common good that we need in Congress today. 

Along with my friends Deb Sanders and Kathleen Sullivan, I was honored to be part of “Team Hillary” for the 2020 run. Looking forward to welcoming Representative Scholten in Jan. 2023!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-03-22

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸🗽POLITICS: RISING SUPERSTAR,🌟FORMER BIA ATTORNEY HILLARY SCHOLTEN IN HIGH-PROFILE RACE TO “FLIP” MICH 3RD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT TO DEMS — Listen To My Friend Hillary Share Her Vision For A Better America On “Morning Joe!”
  2. WANT A GOVERNMENT THAT IS FAIR, FACT BASED, ENERGETIC, COMPASSIONATE, RESPECTFUL, AND COMMITTED TO THE COMMON GOOD? — WANT A REPRESENTATIVE WHO WILL SOLVE LOCAL PROBLEMS IN A “BIG-PICTURE” CONTEXT? WANT A LEGISLATOR WHO WILL DISCUSS IMMIGRATION FROM PRACTICAL, HUMAN, COMMUNITY-BASED EXPERIENCE, NOT BIAS & FEARFUL FALSE NARRATIVES? — Hillary Scholten, Michigan 3rd District, Democrat, is YOUR Candidate!  — Meet Hillary & “Get On Her Bandwagon” For Good Government That Will Work For YOU & for ALL-AMERICAN VALUES Every Day, on March 6, 2020, @ Noon in D.C.!
  3. THE GIBSON REPORT— 01-02-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Garland’s Aimless Docket Reshuffling (“ADR”) Squeezes Refugees On Both Ends Of His Ludicrous Backlog, As Those Patiently Waiting Given Court Dates Nearly A Decade In The Future, While Recent Arrivals Mindlessly Rocketed To The “Front Of The Line” Struggle To Find Lawyers & Prepare Cases — Plus Other New Year News From The Dystopian World Of U.S. Immigration!
  4. 🇺🇸🗽👍🏼😎MAKING AMERICA BETTER, FINALLY: “Mr. Biden has laid out an immigration program that would genuinely put America first.” (WashPost) — No Wonder GOP Anti-American White Nationalists Like Tom Cotton Are Apoplectic & Spouting Their Racist, White Elitist Nonsense!

🏴‍☠️🤮👎🏽INJUSTICE IN AMERICA: TIME MAGGIE SPOTLIGHTS GARLAND’S BROKEN “COURTS,” BURGEONING BACKLOGS!

Jasmine Aguilera
Jasmine Aguilera
Staff Writer
Time Magazine
PHOTO: Twitter

Jasmine Aguilera reports for Time: 

https://time.com/6140280/immigration-court-backlog/

Roughly 1.6 million people are caught up in an ever-expanding backlog in United States immigration court, according to new data tracking cases through December 2021. Those with open immigration cases must now wait for a decision determining their legal status for an average of 58 months—nearly five years.

Though the immigration court backlog has been getting longer for more than a decade, a deluge of new cases added between October and December 2021 significantly worsened wait times, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research institution at Syracuse University that obtained the figures through Freedom of Information Act requests. The backlog increased by nearly 140,000 during that period, the fastest growth on record and the direct result of an uptick in arrests by agencies housed under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

. . . .

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

Read Jasmine’s complete article at the link!

1.6 million is just the “trip of the iceberg.” Each of those human beings potentially has family, friends, co-workers, teachers, fellow students, relatives, employers, employees, neighbors, sponsors, fellow parishioners, students, investors, etc. tied up in the trauma of their wait and the often arbitrary and capricious results once they get a final hearing. Virtually every community in America has a stake in Garland’s tragically broken “court” system.

Just applying TRAC’s math from recent studies, even in a time of inculturated anti-immigrant, anti-asylum bias and bad, skewed interpretations at EOIR, more than half of those in backlog would earn the right to stay  in America if they could get an individual hearting. But, in Garland’s broken and mis-prioritized system, “getting a merits hearing” is a “big if.” Many of those in the backlog are already doing “essential work” or have the job skills we need if their only be normalized. Garland’s failure is America’s trauma, and wasted human capital, and squandered Government resources.

 

A few other “lowlights:”

  • “Fewer than 1% of those new cases brought by ICE and CBP beginning in October 2021 involved alleged criminal activity.” So much for “new priorities.”
  • “A spokesperson for the Department of Justice’s Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees the immigration court system, said courts have been relying on technology to continue operations, but blamed the on-going pandemic for the worsening backlog.” An absurdist “cop-out,” as those familiar with EOIR’s chronically bad technology and failure to adequately prepare and deal with COVID know. Poor and imperious communication with the public has also been a feature of EOIR (mis)management during the pandemic!
  • “One reason is an ever-increasing number of new immigration cases swamping the system, as both the Obama and Trump Administrations issued millions of deportation orders.” Truth is that despite DHS and EOIR attempts to shift blame to the victims, the backlog is largely self-created.
  • “But the problem cannot be solved by asking the existing immigration judges to work harder or faster, Long says.” Nor, with due respect to TRAC’s Susan Long, will it be solved by throwing more judges and resources into a biased, unfair, totally dysfunctional, anti-due-process, broken system. Fix the system first with common-sense progressive reforms, replace bad judges, hire new judges on a merit basis, with outside expert input, focusing on hiring judges with records of commitment to due process and fundamental fairness and established immigration/human rights expertise! Then, once fairness, expertise, quality, and efficiency have been established and institutionalized, decide whether the system should be expanded and, if so, how to do it. (Hint: Many experts believe that 500 completions annually is the most reasonable expectation for well-functioning, expert Immigration Judges complying with due process and “best practices.” That means the current system of approximately 560 IJ’s has a maximum capacity of 250,000 to 300,000 completions annually. DHS Enforcement must be required to work within those realistic limits in bringing new cases before the court.)
  • “While the dedicated docket was designed to address the backlog for recently-arrived families, it failed to take into account the staggering systemic failures at work, according to immigration lawyers, advocacy organizations and elected officials.” It was a “proven failure enforcement gimmick” as experts told Garland from the “git go.” A competent AG committed to due process, fundamental fairness, and the rule of law would have rejected this bad idea out of hand.
  • “There’s a long, long laundry list of things that have been tried in the past,” Long says. “It’s not going to be a quick fix.” I respectfully dissent! This isn’t rocket science! It’s a combination of cleaning out the deadwood, bringing in competence and progressive expertise in judging and administration, common sense, long overdue progressive reforms, creative thinking, appointing a BIA of expert appellate judges to issue sound legal precedents, require best practices, and hold judges, DOJ officials, and DHS personnel accountable for their often intentional undermining of justice in Immigration Court. As alluded to by Long, Garland had the incredible advantage of a laundry list of “enforcement and just pedal faster gimmicks” that are proven failures! Garland knew in advance what NOT to do and what NOT to try. He also had access to an impressive array of practical scholarship and that produced sound, straightforward recommendations on how to fix the system. He had a golden opportunity to shake up the system on “Day One,” “clean house,” and bring in the new progressive experts and dynamic leaders to fix the system. Yes, I recognize that as Long suggests, the system won’t be fixed “overnight.” But, had Garland acted promptly and timely, the system could already be showing dramatic improvements on all levels. You have to start the process of reform and improvement somewhere. Garland’s dilatory approach to EOIR has greatly increased the difficulty. But, fixing EOIR is still “low hanging fruit” for the Administration if they only had the backbone and vision to “blow up” the current failed and flailing EOIR  and bring in and empower experts to start taking names, kicking tail, and implementing due process and best practices reforms.
  • Garland apparently has operated on the false premise that fixing “Immigration Courts” isn’t a priority and that advice and assistance of progressive experts can just be “blown off” in favor of the type of politically-driven, bogus-enforcement-oriented, bureaucratic nonsense that is endemic at DOJ and DHS. Not happening! And continued aggressive litigation by the NDPA is an essential element of stopping the injustice and holding Garland and his flunkies accountable. That litigation is not going to stop either unless, and until, one way or another, Garland is forced to take notice and make the obvious progressive reforms and improvements.
Alfred E. Neumann
Garland’s management “style” and unwillingness to bring in the progressive experts necessary to radically reform EOIR has become a huge part of the problem, propelling an already broken system to new heights of dysfunction, disorder, and injustice! 
PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

I’m no fan of Virginia’s new GOP neo-fascist Attorney General Jason Miyares. But, before the end of Inauguration Day, the heads were rolling, and his message was very clear: liberalism, environmental protection, racial justice, good government, and public health are out — far-right neo-fascism is in!  Get  with the program or get out! Republicans loved it, Dems hated it. But it happened!

By sharp contrast, Garland is still running EOIR with much of the same personnel and many of the same broken and bad policies of his predecessors, Trump, and Stephen Miller. That’s a good illustration of why “Democrats can’t govern” while Republicans constantly outflank them and dismantle the system in short order. What’s the future of a party that doesn’t recognize its own self-interest, the common good, and act and govern accordingly?   

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-24-22

Related posts:

  1. DUH OF DA DAY: White Nationalist Agenda, Anti-Asylum Gimmicks, Grotesque Mal-Administration Leads To Longer Waiting Times @ Disastrously Dysfunctional EOIR 🤮 — Biden-Harris Administration Must End America’s Disgraceful Star Chambers ⚰️!
  2. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🆘NO JUSTICE @ JUSTICE! — OUTRAGE OF PROGRESSIVE EXPERTS CONTINUES TO GROW AS GARLAND FAILS TO VACATE SESSIONS/BARR RACIST, MISOGYNIST, ANTI-IMMIGRANT, UNETHICAL, BIASED PRECEDENTS — “Garland’s Star Chambers” Careen Further Out Of Control As AG Dithers While Lives Of Vulnerable Refugee Women Hang in Balance & Pro Bono Advocates Are Forced To Exhaust Resources Fighting Trump DOJ’s Misdeeds That Biden Has Failed To Fix, Despite Promises — “Unforced Errors,” Lack Of Competent Progressive Leadership Continue To Plague Flawed Immigration Agenda @ Justice, Offend Dem Supporters! — Expert Professors Karen Musalo & Stephen Legomsky Call For Immediate Vacating Of Repulsive Matter of A-B- Abomination Before More Lives Of Women Of Color Are Lost!
  3. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  4. ⚖️FINALLY, HOUSE TO EXAMINE GARLAND’S DYSFUNCTIONAL, MISMANAGED, LEADERLESS IMMIGRATION “COURTS” & NEED FOR DUE-PROCESS-FOCUSED REFORMS! — Tal Kopan Reports For SF Chron!

TAL KOPAN @ SF CHRON: NO DUE PROCESS HERE☹️: GARLAND’S DESPICABLE “STAR CHAMBERS” CHEERED “ENGINEERED IN ABSENTIA” DEPORTATION ORDERS — Garland Fails To Provide Justice @ The Border Or In Biased “Courts,” But Inflicts Outrageous “Miller Lite” Anti-Due-Process “Gimmicks” On Vulnerable Migrants!🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽

Tal Kopan
Tal Kopan
Washington Reporter, SF Chronicle

Immigration court officials cheered results of fast-tracked deportation orders, emails reveal

WASHINGTON — Last June, the San Francisco Immigration Court quietly tested a new idea: Fast-track the cases of immigrants whose mail wasn’t reaching them. In the trial run, 80% of the immigrants scheduled were ordered deported for not showing up.

Top officials were effusive with praise over the results, emails obtained by The Chronicle show, and rushed to set up more hearings: “Very positive!” emailed one of the top supervising immigration judges overseeing the nation’s hundreds of courts.

The newly uncovered emails reveal that the fast-track docket for immigrants with returned mail, which was first reported by The San Francisco Chronicle last fall, was cheered at the highest levels of the courts and pursued with full awareness that scores of immigrants would likely be ordered deported as a result.

Advocates and attorneys for immigrants raised concerns about the practice as a sort of deportation conveyor belt last year, as many of the lawyer-less immigrants may have no idea they missed a court hearing, much less that they were ordered deported during it, because they didn’t know how to update their address with the court or thought that Immigration and Customs Enforcement would do so on their behalf. The immigration courts are run by the Justice Department, with judges hired and ultimately overseen by the attorney general.

The emails were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by a nonprofit watchdog group, American Oversight, prompted by The Chronicle’s reporting. The group shared the records with The Chronicle.

The Department of Justice declined to comment specifically on the emails, noting that removal orders for failing to appear in court are legally valid and that issuing notices with new hearing dates gives unreachable immigrants an opportunity to appear in court and avoid a deportation order.

Chronicle analysis of available data last year found that the practice significantly increased the number of immigrants who were ordered deported for not being present in court, called an “in absentia” removal order. As many as 173 people were given deportation orders because of such proceedings in August and September — a nearly ninefold increase from the 20 similar orders given the previous seven months combined.

More here:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Immigration-court-officials-cheered-results-of-16791798.php

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

Star Chamber Justice
This guy doesn’t realize that he could have avoided “justice” in Garland’s Star Chambers by not appearing for his hearing!

For Garland’s “judiciary,” the object appears to be avoiding fair hearings rather than conducting them! Perhaps, that’s understandable (not justifiable) considering how poorly many of his courts’ decisions fare upon judicial review in the Article IIIs. 

For his cowardly attacks on migrants and backlog-building mismanagement and misdirection of EOIR, Garland gets “Courtside’s” coveted “Five Puke-Five Thumbs Down Award!” 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽 

While Garland is failing in his job, his concerted efforts to break apart and “alienate” key segments the Dem coalition that elected Biden is succeeding and should pay great dividends (for the GOP and Trump) in the Fall Midterms! No wonder Garland’s running the system into the ground using “Trump/Miller holdovers.”

Garland and his equally poorly performing lieutenants (Monaco, Gupta, Clarke, Prelogar) are giving us a “Master Class” in “Why Dems Can’t Govern and Blow Elections 101.” 

A party that lacks the courage to act on the values it espoused to get elected doesn’t stand for anything at all!🤮👎🏽

Maybe lots of Dems pulled the lever because they wanted more of Gauleiter Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist policies. But, I haven’t heard of any!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!  

PWS

01-20-21

Related posts:

  1. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  2. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  3. 🏴‍☠️🤮👎🏻⚰️☠️BIDEN, HARRIS, GARLAND, MAYORKAS CONTINUE THE ILLEGAL, RACIST TRUMP/MILLER ANTI-ASLUM POLICIES @ THE BORDER — It Must Stop, Say Advocates! —  “The policy has disproportionately affected Black migrants, who are often Haitian.”
  4. ⚖️🤯🤮GARLAND’S OHIO JUDICIAL MELTDOWN — “High-Asylum-Denying” Immigration Judges Appointed By Barr & Sessions Remain On Garland’s Bench In Cleveland Despite Referring To Migrants As “Illegals” & “Pretty Virgins!” — EOIR Disciplinary System Remains As Opaque As Ever Under Garland!🏴‍☠️ Yulin Cheng Reports @ Columbus Dispatch!

⚖️🤯🤮GARLAND’S OHIO JUDICIAL MELTDOWN — “High-Asylum-Denying” Immigration Judges Appointed By Barr & Sessions Remain On Garland’s Bench In Cleveland Despite Referring To Migrants As “Illegals” & “Pretty Virgins!” — EOIR Disciplinary System Remains As Opaque As Ever Under Garland!🏴‍☠️ Yulin Cheng Reports @ Columbus Dispatch!

Yilun Cheng
Yilun Cheng
Immigration Reporter, Columbus Dispatch
PHOTO: Twitter
Woman Tortured
Attorneys who complain about misbehaving judges in Merrick Garland’s dysfunctional Immigration “Courts” might well find themselves in uncomfortable positions!
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/01/15/discipline-system-immigration-judges-lacks-transparency/9157927002/

In the fall of 2020, “Juan” had trouble falling asleep whenever he thought about his upcoming court appearance in Cleveland, where the only immigration court in Ohio is located.

The 43-year-old father of three from Mexico, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, had already gone through three hours-long hearings for his application to obtain permanent residency. He said he was nervous and exhausted when he stepped into the court on Oct. 16, 2020, for his fourth hearing.

Juan expected from experience that he would once again face a series of aggressive questions from Judge Teresa Riley, whose intimidating style almost made him give up on his case altogether, he said.

But it still astounded him when Riley called Mexican immigrants “illegals” while cross-examining his wife about the subcontractors that Juan employed at his construction business.

Juan is not alone in his grievances. In May 2021, the Ohio chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association submitted a group complaint against Riley to the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), an agency within the Department of Justice that oversees immigration courts.

Citing the experience of six anonymous immigrants, including Juan, the complaint accuses Riley of biases against Latino immigrants, bullying and hostile questioning, a lack of professional competence and other alleged misconducts. 

But complainants like complainants like Juan and their attorneys said they have been disappointed that their efforts did not lead to any lasting changes or that there was little transparency in the investigation process.

Riley stopped hearing cases for a few weeks in July and August, but returned shortly after, according to hearing schedules shared with the Dispatch. It is unclear why the judge was absent.

. . . .

Because these complaints rarely generate substantial disciplinary actions and there is a fear of retaliation from the judges, immigration attorneys and their clients often hesitate to report misconducts, said Austin Kocher, a research associate professor at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research institute at Syracuse University.

“Immigration attorneys don’t file these complaints often enough because they still have to practice in front of these judges,” said Kocher, whose research focuses on immigration policies. “You can’t file a complaint one day against a judge and the next day come in with your client and expect the judge to treat them well. There’s just a real lack of systematic accountability.”

. . . .

Emmanuel Olawale, a Westerville-based immigration attorney, said he has faced this dilemma firsthand. In October 2020, when he received a notice from the Cleveland Immigration Court that the asylum case of one of his clients was denied, he was disturbed by the language that Judge Jonathan Owens used in the decision.

In the asylum application, Olawale’s client, a 22-year-old asylum seeker from Cameroon, said armed officers from that country sexually assaulted her when she was a minor while they were searching for English-speaking dissidents like her family.

In an attempt to establish that the abuse did not happen due to the client’s identity, Owen stated that it is likely that officers raped the teenage girl not because she was a member of the English-speaking minority but because “they wanted to do so and thought that the respondent was a pretty virgin,” according to court documents shared with The Dispatch.

“If someone’s a ‘pretty virgin,’ is that a good reason for them to rape her in any context?” Olawale said. “That statement is misogynistic and very shocking to me.”

Instead of submitting a complaint against Owen, however, the immigration attorney opted to voice his concerns in an appeal, which is currently pending.

“Filing a complaint against the judge is something on the table,” Olawale said. “But it won’t really change anything in my client’s case. There’s also an imbalance of power in the courtroom and the fear of retaliation. I’ll have to weigh my options and consider how bad it is before I stick my neck out there.”

. . . .

Judges are not always made aware of the existence of a complaint in a timely fashion, and there is no transparency or consistency when it comes to sanctions imposed in a particular case, according to Dana Marks, president emerita at the National Association of Immigration Judges who spent 35 years on the bench in San Francisco, California, before retiring in December.

“It’s not consistent because a complaint usually starts out with the person’s immediate supervisor being told,” Marks said. “Some of the supervisors discuss the complaint with the judge immediately and others don’t. There’s a wide spectrum of when judges are notified, how much information they are provided, and whether they are allowed to give their side of the story before decisions are made.”

There is a fine line between judges’ taking a harsh stance on immigration and their exhibiting unprofessional behaviors, said Paul Schmidt, a former immigration judge based in Arlington, Virginia, who retired in 2016. While judges should not be punished for making a good-faith legal decision, using terms like “illegals” seems to be a clear violation of professionalism, he said.

“There are complaints that were made because someone is not happy that they lost a case, and those claims need to be taken with a grain of salt,” Schmidt said. “But at the point where judges are using racially charged terms or demeaning people, then that seems to me that it goes beyond what they should be allowed to do.”

. . . .

The Cleveland Immigration Court, much like the rest of the country, saw dramatic personnel changes during Donald Trump’s presidency.

The court used to have only three judges, all of whom have since left their posts. The Trump administration filled the openings and expanded the size of the bench, appointing 10 judges who currently make up the court. Most of them are former government attorneys, and five used to prosecute immigration cases on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security.

The lack of a transparent complaint process is especially concerning given an influx of new judges, who tend to come from enforcement backgrounds and lack experience on the bench, [Attorney Julie] Nemecek said.

“I think about the hundreds of thousands of immigrants across the country who have been wronged by the misconducts of Trump-appointed judges,” she said. “There are still good judges out there. But we have to address these bad judges.”

. . . .

Yilun Cheng is a Report for America corps member and covers immigration issues for the Dispatch. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation at https://bit.ly/3fNsGaZ.

ycheng@dispatch.com

@ChengYilun

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

Read Yulin’s full article at the link.

First, congrats to Yulin Cheng! Last time I published her work, she was an aspiring student journalist. 

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/01/18/⚖%EF%B8%8F🗽🇺🇸slavin-benitez-kowalski-schmidt-speak-out-on-broken-courts-yilun-cheng-reports-for-borderless-magazine/

Now, she’s a Report for America member carrying out her dream and commitment to report truth and hold immigration officials, regardless of party affiliation, accountable for their mockery of the rule of law and shunning of best practices!

So, why might a private practitioner hesitate to file a complaint against an Immigration Judge in Garland’s system still “packed” with a majority of judges hand-selected by White Nationalist nativists Sessions and Barr?

The complaint would go not to an independent, objective panel containing public representation. No, it would be treated as a “supervisory matter” in an agency (not a real “court”) where the ranks of supervisors are still stacked with Barr & Sessions appointees that Garland hasn’t replaced.

Stunningly, the “top judge” in this bizarre, abusive, and dysfunctional system is Chief Immigration Judge Tracy Short — a hard line DHS prosecutor with no prior judicial experience elevated by Barr because of his commitment to the Stephen Miller White Nationalist, anti-asylum, anti-attorney agenda! Remarkably, Garland hasn’t replaced Short with a competent, expert, due-process-oriented “real judge,” notwithstanding unanimous urging from immigration experts that he do so!

Pursue as an alternative a legal appeal to Garland’s BIA? Well, amazingly, that body also remains “packed” with 23 of 24 appellate judges who are holdovers from the Trump Administration. Several of these judges were themselves members of the “90% asylum deniers club” and some were renowned for their disrespect for immigrants (particularly asylum seekers) and their lawyers while on the trial bench.

Look for some binding BIA precedents on improper IJ conduct? Won’t find those either, save for a mild, pre-Trump rebuke of an Atlanta IJ (without identifying the judge) for abusing a juvenile in court.

Then, there’s Garland himself. For heaven’s sake, even Bush crony former AG Alberto Gonzales (“Gonzo I”) finally got so embarrassed by the misbehavior of his IJs that he had to publicly “call off the dogs.” But, from Garland, not a peep or decisive action demanding that his “wholly-owned judges” put due process and fundamental fairness first and treat the individuals coming before them and their lawyers with professionalism, dignity, and respect!

Judge Riley, appointed by Barr in May 2019, without any significant immigration or human rights background, has a TRAC asylum denial rate of 87.7%.

Judge Owens, appointed by Sessions in August 2018, also without any significant immigration or human rights background, has a TRAC asylum denial rate of 94.5%. That’s 58th highest out of 558 Immigration Judges!

The TRAC “national average” for asylum denials by IJs during this period was 67.6%.

So, even in the virulent, officially-sanctioned “anti-asylum era” @ EOIR during the late Obama Administration and the entire Trump Administration, these two judges are “outliers.” 

As someone familiar with the Ohio Immigration Bar, there are dozens of much better qualified judicial candidates out there in the private sector. Some of them even applied in the past and were rejected in favor of these judges who, whatever else you might think, no expert would find to be among “best and brightest minds in immigration and human rights,” deserving of elevation to the bench.

All Immigration Judges are “DOJ attorneys,” serving “at the pleasure of the Attorney General” and therefore subject to replacement and/or reassignment at his discretion. Judge Riley was “in probation” until May 20121, so Garland could have terminated her, essentially for any reason, or at least “re-competed” her position under a fair process that would have been open, welcoming to immigration experts in the private sector, and involved private sector input. 

Owens and the other Trump-era appointees should also have been required to re-compete for their positions under revised procedures. It’s unlikely either Owens or Riley would have been selected in such a merit-based process. 

Of course, Garland has not actively recruited from among better-qualified diverse expert immigration practitioners, established transparent merit-based procedures, or re-competed the disgracefully inadequate selections of his White Nationalist, anti-immigrant predecessors!

Additionally, Garland has failed to address, in any manner whatsoever, the quality control, bad attitude, lack of professionalism, and anti-immigrant bias problems in his dysfunctional Immigration Courts. Poor precedents continue to be issued by his BIA, and sloppy work by his judges at all levels continues to be “outed” by the Article IIIs notwithstanding the substantial (undue) deference given to EOIR decisions by the Article IIIs. Backlog building “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and “mindless gimmicks” continue to proliferate under Garland’s disconnected leadership.  

The disciplinary system remains opaque and highly ineffective. Illegal retaliation by IJs against those filing complaints remains a realistic possibility that actually deters and improperly discourages reporting of misconduct. An ineffective, “rubber-stamp” appellate review process of removal orders by the BIA almost never holds IJs accountable, even for the most egregious legal errors and the grossest misconduct on the bench. 

While Circuit Courts point out the deficient performance of EOIR judges on a remarkably frequent basis, one will search in vain for any recent BIA precedent “calling out” inappropriate and biased treatment of respondents and their lawyers in Immigration Court. Likewise, while Jeff Sessions was outspoken in encouraging anti-asylum and anti-lawyer bias among “his judges,” I’m not aware that Garland, in word or deed, has ever insisted that Immigration Judges at all levels give primacy to due process, fundamental fairness, and treat all coming before them with dignity and respect. In other words, Garland has failed to use his “bully pulpit” to demand an end to bullying of the most vulnerable among us in his Immigration Courts.

He also has failed to repudiate the “DHS Enforcement is our partner” statements by Sessions. (Perhaps not surprisingly, since, as noted earlier, Garland employs a DHS prosecutor, Tracy Short, as his “top judge” notwithstanding Short’s glaring unsuitability for the position. And, Garland continues to defend many “Miller Lite” policies in Federal Court.)  

Pro-DHS biases, mistreatment of migrants and their attorneys, lack of basic scholarship, and failure of impartial judging continue to run rampant in Garland’s broken system!

Indeed, a full year the SF Chron’s Tal Kopan exposed the misconduct by Immigration Judges throughout the nation, the DOJ has taken no known actions despite Deputy AG Lisa Monaco’s “promise to investigate.” 

From top to bottom, this broken, unfair, and out of control system needs reform, redirection, integrity, a focus on due process, and decisional excellence. It certainly isn’t coming from Garland and his senior political team at DOJ. So where IS it going to come from?

Chair Lofgren and her Subcommittee need to find out why Garland has failed to address the ongoing disaster in his courts, and what needs to be done to bring due process, fundamental fairness, equal justice, and respect for humanity to the forefront at EOIR, the DOJ, and the rest of our legal system!  And, if anyone in the Administration stubbornly claims that the “primary answer” is to randomly throw more judges into this toxic mess, Lofgren should laugh in their face(s)! We need to replace bad judges and reform the existing system into something fair and functional before seeking to expand it, even assuming that expansion is warranted somewhere “down the line.”

As being run by Garland right now, EOIR is an affront to American democracy! That needs to stop!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-15-22

UPDATE:

The news isn’t all bad from Cleveland. Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis reports that Cleveland Judge Jennifer Riedthaler-Williams (also a “high asylum denier — 94%) terminated without prejudice a removal case based on a defective Notice to Appear. https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/cleveland-ij-terminates-proceedings-defective-nta

Sadly, a couple of correct decisions, no matter how welcome, aren’t going to solve the systemic due process deficiencies in Ohio or elsewhere in Garland’s dysfunctional nationwide “Clown Courts.” 🤡

There are some pressing problems in America that Dems and the Biden Administration can’t solve on their own. Garland’s dysfunctional Immigration Courts are NOT one of those!

The Immigration Courts are the biggest most consequential national problem that is totally within the Administration’s power to fix. That Garland has failed to do so should be of existential concern and a cause for unrelenting outrage from all who believe in the future of American democracy!

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮
  2. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  4. ⚖️FINALLY, HOUSE TO EXAMINE GARLAND’S DYSFUNCTIONAL, MISMANAGED, LEADERLESS IMMIGRATION “COURTS” & NEED FOR DUE-PROCESS-FOCUSED REFORMS! — Tal Kopan Reports For SF Chron!

THE GIBSON REPORT— 01-02-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Garland’s Aimless Docket Reshuffling (“ADR”) Squeezes Refugees On Both Ends Of His Ludicrous Backlog, As Those Patiently Waiting Given Court Dates Nearly A Decade In The Future, While Recent Arrivals Mindlessly Rocketed To The “Front Of The Line” Struggle To Find Lawyers & Prepare Cases — Plus Other New Year News From The Dystopian World Of U.S. Immigration!

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Attorney, NY Legal Assistance Group
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

NEWS

 

President Biden promised to reform immigration policy. How has that been going?

NPR: President Biden had an ambitious agenda to overhaul the nation’s border policies. But as the end of the year approaches, many of those proposals have been blocked, reversed or simply abandoned.

 

Biden asks U.S. Supreme Court to hear ‘Remain in Mexico’ case

Reuters: The Biden administration on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court whether it needed to continue to implement a Trump-era policy that has forced tens of thousands of migrants to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their U.S. asylum cases. See also ‘Remain In Mexico’ Renewal May Bring More Solo Migrant Kids

 

Hundreds of Afghans denied humanitarian entry into US

AP: Since the U.S. withdrawal, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has received more than 35,000 applications for humanitarian parole, of which it has denied about 470 and conditionally approved more than 140, Victoria Palmer, an agency spokesperson, said this week. See also Months later, Afghan evacuees abroad and at US bases still wait to be resettled.

 

Mexico Is Detaining More US-Bound Migrants Than Ever

Vice: Authorities in Mexico detained more than a quarter of a million migrants this year, and most of them were from Honduras. See also Mexico disbands makeshift camp with thousands of migrants

 

“I Hope a Lawyer Will Answer”: Asylum Seekers Risk Deportation in Expedited Process

KQED: Advocates say the current system has more safeguards for migrant families and isn’t placing them in detention facilities, but the accelerated pace still makes it tough for asylum seekers like López to find legal representation.

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

 

Top Immigration Litigation To Watch In 2022

Law360: Federal courts in 2022 will grapple with immigration law questions ranging from the extent of the president’s authority to set immigration enforcement priorities to federal courts’ ability to review immigration decisions made by the executive branch. Here, Law360 breaks down the cases to watch.

 

Biden Administration Petitions the High Court, Seeking to End Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” Program

ImmProf: The petition, which asks to review a decision of the Fifth Circuit court of appeals, addresses issues relating to the Migrant Protection Protocols, commonly known as the “Remain in Mexico” program.

 

Oral Argument and Other Court Operations at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

CA2: In light of the recent surge in Covid-19 infections, beginning January 4, 2022 oral arguments will be conducted remotely, by Zoom or teleconference.

 

Unpub. CA5 Niz-Chavez Remand: Lima-Gonzalez V. Garland

LexisNexis: Lima-Gonzalez v. Garland “Lima-Gonzalez’s NTA did not contain the information required to trigger the stop-time rule. See Niz-Chavez, 141 S. Ct. at 1478-79, 1485; see also § 1229(a)(1)(A)–(G). Neither did any of the subsequent notices of hearing. As a result, the Government has not furnished Lima-Gonzalez with the “single compliant document” required by statute. Niz-Chavez, 141 S. Ct…

 

Illinois’ law ending immigration detention in 2022 hits snag

WaPo: Three Illinois counties with such federal agreements faced a Jan. 1 deadline to end contracts. While one in downstate Illinois complied last year, two others are involved in a federal lawsuit challenging the law. The case was dismissed last month, but a federal judge on Thursday granted an extension while an appeal is considered. Authorities in McHenry and Kankakee counties now have until Jan. 13.

 

DOS Proposed Rule to Raise Several Consular Service Fees

AILA: DOS proposed rule which would raise several nonimmigrant visa application processing fees, the fee for the Border Crossing Card for Mexican citizens age 15 and over, and the waiver of the two-year residency requirement fee. Comments are due 2/28/22. (86 FR 74018, 12/29/21)

 

Third Delay of Effective Date of Final Rule on Pandemic-Related Security Bars to Asylum and Withholding of Removal

AILA: USCIS and EOIR interim final rule further delaying until 12/31/22 the effective date of the final rule “Security Bars and Processing” (85 FR 84160, 12/23/20). Comments on the extension of the effective date as well as the possibility of a further extension are due 2/28/22. (86 FR 73615, 12/28/21)

 

President Revokes Proclamation Suspending Entry of Certain People Who Pose a Risk of Transmitting Omicron Variant

AILA: Effective December 31, 2021, 12:01 am (ET), Presidential Proclamation 10315 was revoked, thus rescinding travel restrictions on Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Vaccine requirements remain in effect.

 

USCIS Extends Flexibility for Responding to Agency Requests

USCIS: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is extending the flexibilities it announced on March 30, 2020.

 

USCIS Provides Guidance on Expedited EADs for Healthcare Workers

AILA: USCIS stated that healthcare workers with a pending EAD renewal application, Form I-765, and whose EAD expires in 30 days or less or has already expired, can request expedited processing of their EAD applications. Proof of employment will be required.

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

ImmProf

 

Monday, January 3, 2022

Sunday, January 2, 2022

Saturday, January 1, 2022

Friday, December 31, 2021

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Monday, December 27, 2021

 

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

Thanks, Elizabeth!

The problem with “ADR” @ EOIR is chronic! It’s one that Garland seems determined to repeat, despite ample advice to the contrary.

Also, he’s ignored the availability of many “practical experts” on the outside who, if appointed to key EOIR positions, could have helped him solve this without stomping on due process (although, I admit the solution would have been easier in March 2021, when Garland was sworn in as AG, than it is after 9 months of his making it worse — not to mention that his “defiant tone-deafness” has probably “turned off” some of the top-flight talent he needed to “reach out” to). As the KQED article points out:

  • “But there’s a lot of room for improvement, and I don’t know if the people that are being named to supervise this actually know what’s happening in the trenches.”
    • Duh! That’s what all of us have been saying. Truth is, they aren’t the right people, and they don’t know what’s happening. Not by a long shot!
    • I also understand why Torres, who’s trying to maintain a relationship with Garland’s “Clueless Crew” is trying to be charitable.
    • But, as someone not currently “out there in the trenches,” I don’t have to be so reticent. So, I’ll say what she can’t. This is a totally unacceptable and inexcusable performance from Garland! 
  • Another reason why this program is a massive failure is that, like their ADR-promoting, backlog-building predecessors, Garland & Mayorkas started this misguided and mishandled program without seeking the advice, counsel, and support of the pro bono lawyers who have to staff it to make it work!
    • Think of the total absurdity of what Garland is doing here! While a pro bono (or low bono) lawyer is having already prepared cases “orbited” years out on the docket (a process that usually requires re-preparation of the entire case), the phone is ringing off the hook with desperate, perspective new clients given unrealistically expedited hearing dates that should have been used for the cases “orbited” to the end of the docket.
  • Also, having not practiced privately for many years, Garland appears to have forgotten the Code of Ethics.
    • Attorneys are obligated not to take on work (even pro bono work) that they can’t professionally and timely handle.
    • Yet, Garland is pushing them to do exactly that! The choice is let folks try to prepare their own cases (literally tantamount to a “death sentence” in many cases); or 
    • Take on work you can’t handle (a clear ethical violation that could have the same unfavorable result for the client).
  • There actually are ways of working with outside experts to increase pro bono representation. One of the most promising is the the amazing VIISTA Program created and run by Professor Michele Pistone at Villanova Law to train non-attorney “Accredited Representatives” to handle pro bono asylum cases.
    • I have no knowledge that Garland or anyone at EOJ/EOIR has ever reached out to Professor Pistone, despite recommendations that Garland do so.
    • Worse yet, Garland has allowed his “EOIR Clown Show” to also create a “new backlog” in the approval process for Accredited Representatives! Talk about clueless, counterproductive mismanagement!
  • Garland’s mis-handling of EOIR and his new round of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” raises serious issues about his own performance.
    • Whatever happened to Democratic oversight of EOIR in Congress? Why is Garland getting a “free pass” on mismanagement of EOIR, his further undermining of Due Process in Immigration Court, and his disrespectful treatment of the immigration pro bono and low bono bar?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-04-22

Related posts:

  1. 🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸WHO’S JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts! — Coming April 7, 2021! — Sponsored By The HNBA! — Don’t Miss It!
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  4. ⚖️🇺🇸👍🏼🗽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.”

⚖️👨‍⚖️🤮 JUDICIAL SOPHISTRY AT ITS BEST! — 1ST CIRCUIT REAFFIRMS THAT GARLAND IS RUNNING AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL BOND SYSTEM @ EOIR THAT INFRINGES ON INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS, BUT MANAGES TO “TALK ITSELF OUT OF” GRANTING EFFECTIVE INJUNCTIVE RELIEF!  — Garland’s “Anti-Due Process” Stance “Makes My Point” Once Again!

http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/20-1037P-01A.pdf

Brito v. Garland, 1st Cir., 12-29-21, published

KAYATTA, Circuit Judge. This class action presents a due process challenge to the bond procedures used to detain noncitizens during the pendency of removal proceedings under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a), the discretionary immigration detention provision. In light of our recent decision in Hernandez-Lara v. Lyons, 10 F.4th 19 (1st Cir. 2021), we affirm the district court’s declaration that noncitizens “detained pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a) are entitled to receive a bond hearing at which the Government must prove the alien is either dangerous by clear and convincing evidence or a risk of flight by a preponderance of the evidence.” Brito v. Barr, 415 F. Supp. 3d 258, 271 (D. Mass. 2019). We conclude, however, that the district court lacked jurisdiction to issue injunctive relief in favor of the class, and we otherwise vacate the district court’s declaration as advisory. Our reasoning follows.

. . . .

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

I can usually count on Garland to “punctuate” my points! See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/12/29/%f0%9f%97%bd%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-courtside-in-the-news-both-nolan-the-hill-kevin-immigrationprof-blog-highlight-my-blistering-analysis-of-bidens-first-year-immigration/

And, he didn’t disappoint, at least on that score!

No sooner was the ink dry on my last post, than Ol’ Merrick gave me a classic example of why come “panic time” next Fall, when the Dem bigwigs come knocking on the door asking their “old reliable” progressive base to open their pocketbooks and get out the vote, they might find that the windows are dark and nobody’s home! If you don’t exist for the first 19 months of a Dem Administration, it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t be “on vacation” for the next three! 

If Dems want to continue as a viable force in American politics, at some point they will need leaders who recognize the difference between “political strategies” and “values.” Standing up for the human and due process rights immigrants and all other “persons” in the U.S. is the latter, not the former!

To reiterate Garland’s position in this and related cases: 

  • No due process for immigrants;
  • Keep the “New American Gulag” full of non-dangerous individuals;
  • Promote wasteful litigation, inconsistency, and chaos in my wholly-owed Immigration Courts that continue to operate as if “Gauleiter Stephen” were still calling the shots, and clutter the Article IIIs with my poor work product.

Nice touch! (Although, to be fair, it’s the same regressive, anti-due process, racially tinged position taken by both the Obama Administration and the Trump regime.)

Seems like an Administration that claims to be litigating, to date not very successfully (surprised?), to vindicate the voting rights and civil rights of African-Americans, Latinos, and other minorities might want to rethink arguing for the “Dred Scottification” of migrants, primarily persons of color. Maybe, some right-wing Federal Judge will start citing Garland back to Garland to say that “all persons aren’t really persons.” Sounds like something Rudy would say on a Sunday talk show (except that nobody invites him any more).

Alfred E. Neumann
“Let’s  see, if ‘humans’ are ‘persons,’ and ‘all persons’ have Constitutional rights to due process, then immigrants must not be ‘humans!’ Or, maybe we should argue that they are only 3/5 of a ‘person’ with half the rights! Chief Justice Taney would be. proud of me!”
PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

And, if you are wondering what the 34 pages of opaque legal gobbledygook and all out assault on logic and the English language in the majority opinion means, I’ll simplify it. 

“We think it’s reasonable and appropriate that you plaintiffs who admittedly have had your Constitutional rights systematically violated by your litigation opponent should be required to seek redress on a case-by-case basis before a dysfunctional ‘court’ wholly-owned, staffed, and operated by your opponent located within a Government bureaucracy that has been litigating against your Constitutional rights over three Administrations!”

There, you have it! 34 pages of intentionally impenetrable “judgespeak,” legalese, and doublespeak condensed to one sentence of fewer than 65 words! 

Anybody (besides me) think that maybe, just maybe, there could be a Constitutional problem with “courts” owned and operated by a litigating party? Certainly seems above Garland’s pay grade to trifle with such trivialities, even when human lives and freedom are on the line.

Nope, better to just regurgitate the “Miller Lite” positions from the “restrictionists’ playbook” left behind by your Trumpy predecessors. And, for a good measure, why not even use some of their lawyers to argue them? But, strangely, those folks don’t seem to be very convincing when, on rare occasions, they are sent out to argue for more humane and reasonable treatment of immigrants! Perhaps their hearts, and heads, just aren’t in it.

My congrats to Circuit Judge Lipez (concurring and dissenting), the only one to actually get this one right and be able to explain it in understandable terms. When you have the right answer, you don’t have to obfuscate as much to cover up your fuzzy thinking (or lack thereof).

Gotta love it! Garland runs an unconstitutional bond system that infringes on individuals’ right to freedom, while improperly shoving those not accused of crimes into his “New American Gulag.” Yet, the panel manages to talk itself out of granting effective relief! Truly remarkable!

If the judges in the majority had actually practiced before the Immigration Courts they might know:

1) Bond cases are hard to appeal because the IJ isn’t required to provide a final rationale for his or her decision until after an appeal has been taken;

2) By regulation, bond hearings aren’t even required to be “on the record” (although many of us chose to nevertheless put them on the record for the convenience and protection all concerned);

3) The BIA has a “general practice” of not adjudicating bond appeals by respondents until after the detained merits hearing has taken place, whereupon the BIA finds the bond appeal to be “moot;”

4) OIL often encourages DHS to release individuals who sue in District Court to moot the case.

I’m sure that Garland’s BIA which has, on occasion, blown off the Supremes and declined to follow Circuit Court orders on remand, will promptly fashion a very well-reasoned progressive precedent vindicating respondents’ rights.  

Then again, maybe they will just take whatever position that their “boss” Garland wants to litigate in behalf of his “partners” at DHS Enforcement.

What do you think Garland’s personally owned and operated courts will do?

Better Judges for a Better America —  starting with the BIA! And, while you’re at it, how about throwing in an Attorney General committed to vindicating the legal and human rights of all persons!

So, NDPA, take up, the cudgel of justice and flood Garland’s courts and the Article IIIs with as many individual “exhaustion of remedies” cases as it takes to obtain justice or grind Garland’s corrupt system to a halt! 

Garland would “rather fight than get it right.” So, take advantage of his limited litigation skills, tunnel vision, and the mediocre talent he employs to do his bidding. Take the fight to him, as he wishes! 

Continually pummeling him in court is apparently the only way to get Garland to pay attention to progressives!

Additionally, you should, of course, keep applying for Immigration Judgeships, BIA Judgeships, Asylum Officer positions, and other key jobs where you can make a difference and save some lives.

Garland’s tone-deaf system must be attacked from all angles until it collapses under its own weight. An Attorney General who obviously would like to put migrants, their humanity, their rights, and YOU, their advocates, “out of sight, out of mind” so he can think great thoughts about the “really important things in life,” is eventually going to find that those he ignores and condemns without fair trial will be the ONLY thing on his plate and occupying his time!

When leadership lacks the vision, courage, and skills necessary to promote change, it falls to those at all levels of society and our justice system to assert the pressure and impetus for that essential change to take place! Keep pushing and pressing until “the powers that be” can’t ignore and marginalize you any more!

Vanita Gupta, Lucas Guttentag, and Kristin Clarke, what on earth do you do with yourselves all day long, now that you have removed yourselves from the battle for civil rights, equal justice, and racial justice in America? I guess there are lots of papers to push and meaningless meetings to attend in Garland’s broken DOJ bureaucracy. 

I’d say things haven’t changed much. But, I actually think they have gotten measurably worse since “my days” at the DOJ. And, that’s saying a lot!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever, and Happy New Year!🥂

P 😎  

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