SENATORS DEMAND IG INVESTIGATE BIAS, CORRUPTION, GROSS MISMANAGEMENT @ EOIR!

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

Laura Lynch @ AILA reports:

FYI – On Friday, August 21st, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the GAO requesting an investigation into the politicization of the immigration courts and EOIR’s mismanagement of the immigration courts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Laura A. Lynch, Esq.

Senior Policy Counsel

Direct: 202.507.7627 I Email: llynch@aila.org

American Immigration Lawyers Association

Main: 202.507.7600 I Fax: 202.783.7853 I www.aila.org

1331 G Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005

From: Davidson, Richard (Whitehouse) <Richard_Davidson@whitehouse.senate.gov>
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2020 3:24 PM
To: Davidson, Richard (Whitehouse) <Richard_Davidson@whitehouse.senate.gov>
Subject: Senators Call for GAO Investigation of Trump Politicization of Immigration Courts as COVID-19 Crisis Rages

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 21, 2020
Contact: Rich Davidson

(202) 228-6291 (press office)

Senators Call for GAO Investigation of Trump Politicization of Immigration Courts as COVID-19 Crisis Rages

Trump attacks on immigration system raise serious concerns about safety during pandemic

More than 1,000 people in immigration detention have tested positive for COVID-19, and five have died

Washington, DC – Today, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) led a Senate request to the top congressional watchdog to investigate the practices of the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) under President Trump, including its management of immigration courts during the current COVID-19 pandemic. In a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the senators raise concerns first voiced to the Justice Department in February about mismanagement of the EOIR under Attorney General William Barr, as well as the Trump administration’s regulatory and procedural changes at the Justice Department that have curtailed the independence of immigration courts. The administration’s mismanagement of and meddling with the immigration courts – done in the name of “efficiency” – are particularly troubling during the COVID-19 pandemic, when an overburdened system can lead to unsafe practices that place individuals at grave risk and jeopardize due process, the senators write to the GAO.

“While the Trump administration has justified its incursions into the independence of immigration courts as efficiency measures, legal service providers have explained that EOIR’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates how the agency can use seemingly neutral measures to tip the scales of justice against noncitizens,” the senators write. “In order to defend themselves in immigration court, noncitizens must file motions and other papers in person at physical court locations; obtain counsel; meet with their attorneys; present testimony from family members, employers, and/or expert witnesses; and provide medical records, tax records, and other supporting documents. Yet COVID-19 makes these actions potentially dangerous.”

Joining Whitehouse, Durbin, and Hirono in the request to the GAO are Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chris Coons (D-DE), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Kamala Harris (D-CA).

The senators continue in their letter to GAO, “Immigration courts are now reopening around the country, including in areas that are seeing increases in the number of COVID-19 cases. Because EOIR does not have consistent policies for when attorneys, let alone translators or witnesses, may appear telephonically or by video, participants often must appear in person or not at all. Immigration courts have continued to issue in absentia orders of removal for noncitizens who do not appear, even when the likely cause is COVID-19. Nor has EOIR uniformly extended deadlines or continued cases, despite the difficulty noncitizens face in finding and consulting with counsel, obtaining and filing necessary documents and evidence, or securing the appearance of witnesses. These difficulties are particularly acute for detained clients, who have limited access to phone calls and attorney visits. As a result, noncitizens cannot obtain counsel or litigate their cases, and attorneys cannot effectively represent their clients.”

The Trump administration’s management of the immigration system has come under close scrutiny during the COVID-19 crisis. Reports suggest immigrants face a range of unsafe conditions and practices as a result of Trump administration management decisions, including the detention of children using unaccountable private contractors. More than 1,000 people in immigration detention have tested positive for COVID-19, and five people have died.

Full text of the senators’ request is below. A PDF copy is available here.

August 21, 2020

The Honorable Gene Dodaro

Comptroller General of the United States

United States Government Accountability Office

441 G Street, NW

Washington, DC 20548

Dear Mr. Dodaro:

We are writing to request that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) analyze and audit the Executive Office of Immigration Review’s (EOIR) practices with respect to the hiring, training, and evaluation of immigration judges and staffing of immigration courts, as well as their management of these courts during the current COVID-19 pandemic. GAO’s insight will help Congress determine if additional legislation is necessary to address these issues, as well as inform appropriations decisions.

In February, we wrote to Attorney General William Barr to express our concern that the Trump administration is undermining the independence of immigration courts. As outlined in that letter, attached, we are concerned about the mismanagement of EOIR and troubled by regulatory and procedural changes within the Department of Justice (DOJ) that have curtailed the independence of immigration courts. Although more than six months have passed, we have not received a response from DOJ or EOIR. Instead, in that time, EOIR has continued to use its administrative powers to put its thumb on the scale of justice. Most recently, EOIR attempted to buy out all nine career Board of Immigration Appeals judges who had been hired in prior administrations.[1] When the judges refused, they were reassigned to new roles.[2]

While the Trump administration has justified its incursions into the independence of immigration courts as efficiency measures,[3] legal service providers have explained that EOIR’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates how the agency can use seemingly neutral measures to tip the scales of justice against noncitizens. In order to defend themselves in immigration court, noncitizens must file motions and other papers in person at physical court locations; obtain counsel; meet with their attorneys; present testimony from family members, employers, and/or expert witnesses; and provide medical records, tax records, and other supporting documents. Yet COVID-19 makes these actions potentially dangerous. While EOIR initially postponed all hearings for non-detained individuals, proceedings for detained noncitizens continued to move forward unabated.[4] Immigration courts are now reopening around the country,[5] including in areas that are seeing increases in the number of COVID-19 cases. Because EOIR does not have consistent policies for when attorneys, let alone translators or witnesses, may appear telephonically or by video,[6] participants often must appear in person or not at all.[7] Immigration courts have continued to issue in absentia orders of removal for noncitizens who do not appear, even when the likely cause is COVID-19.[8] Nor has EOIR uniformly extended deadlines or continued cases, despite the difficulty noncitizens face in finding and consulting with counsel, obtaining and filing necessary documents and evidence, or securing the appearance of witnesses. These difficulties are particularly acute for detained clients, who have limited access to phone calls and attorney visits.[9] As a result, noncitizens cannot obtain counsel or litigate their cases, and attorneys cannot effectively represent their clients.[10]

EOIR’s facially-neutral policies during the COVID-19 pandemic have raised systemic due process concerns.[11] Immigration judges, staff, and litigators have also expressed concerns about the health risks to them and the litigants who appear in immigration courts.[12] Given GAO’s prior work on immigration courts,[13] it is uniquely suited to conduct an audit and analysis of EOIR. We ask GAO to look into the following questions:

What criteria does EOIR use to hire immigration judges and Board of Immigration Appeals judges? What criteria does EOIR use to determine the number of deputy chief and other management positions for judges, and what criteria does EOIR use to hire for these positions? To what extent does EOIR assess its immigration judge and Board of Immigration Appeals judge hiring efforts? What, if any, challenges has EOIR encountered in recruiting and retaining immigration judges and Board of Immigration Appeals judges? How, if at all, has it addressed them?

How does EOIR determine targets for immigration court and Board of Immigration Appeals case completion time frames and caseloads?

To what extent has EOIR assessed its immigration court and Board of Immigration Appeals staffing needs? What have any such assessments shown? How do current immigration court staffing levels compare to staffing needs EOIR has identified?

How does EOIR assess immigration and Board of Immigration Appeals judge performance?

To what extent has EOIR assessed immigration judge and Board of Immigration Appeals judge training needs? What have any such assessments shown?

How has EOIR’s use of video teleconferencing changed since GAO last reported on it in 2017? What, if any, data is EOIR collecting on hearings using video teleconferencing and the effects of that technology on hearing outcomes?

How do EOIR’s practices compare to other administrative courts?

How, if at all, is EOIR addressing the backlog of cases that were postponed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic?

How, if at all, has EOIR’s response to COVID-19 affected noncitizens’ ability to locate and meet with counsel, obtain and present evidence in their cases, and appear in court? To what extent have the challenges of COVID-19 impacted the number of in absentia orders issued by immigration courts?

Please keep our offices apprised of your review. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

###

[1] Tanvi Misra, DOJ ‘reassigned’ career members of Board of Immigration Appeals, CQ Roll Call, June 9, 2020, available at https://www.rollcall.com/2020/06/09/doj-reassigned-career-members-of-board-of-immigration-appeals/.

[2] Id.

[3] Jeff Sessions, Attorney General, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Remarks to the Executive Office for Immigration Review Legal Training Program (Jun. 11, 2018), available at https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-sessions-delivers-remarks-executive-office-immigration-review-legal.

[4] Executive Office for Immigration Review, EOIR Operational Status During Coronavirus Pandemic, https://www.justice.gov/eoir/eoir-operational-status-during-coronavirus-pandemic (last updated Aug. 19, 2020); American Immigration Lawyers Association, “AILA Tracks EOIR’s Historical Operational Status During Coronavirus Pandemic,” https://www.aila.org/eoir-operational-status (last visited Aug. 19, 2020).

[5] American Immigration Lawyers Association, supra note 4.

[6] Id.

[7] Emergency Mot. for a Temporary Restraining Order, Nat’l Imm. Project of the Nat’l Lawyers Guild v. Exec. Office of Imm. Review, No. 1:20-cv-00852-CJN, at 12-18 (D.D.C. Apr. 8, 2020), available at https://www.aila.org/advo-media/press-releases/2020/temporary-restraining-order-requested-to-stop.

[8] Id. at 15-16.

[9] Monique O. Madan, Despite national shortage, immigration lawyers required to bring their own medical gear, Miami Herald, Mar. 22, 2020, https://miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/artcile241414486.html.

[10] Id. 12-15, 25-26.

[11] Betsy Woodruff Swan, Union: DOJ deportation appeals workers fear overcrowding, Politico, Apr. 23, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/doj-union-immigration-deportation-coronavirus-202075 (“That is the feeling the [EOIR] employees have, that [EOIR’s COVID response is] definitely connected to this administration and their desperation to be able to boast about how great they’re doing on their deportation numbers.”).

[12] Nat’l Assoc. of Immigration Judges, Am. Assoc. of Immigration Lawyers, & Am. Fed. Of Gov’t Employees Local 511, Position on the Health and Safety of Immigration Courts During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Mar. 15, 2020, available at https://naij-usa.org/images/uploads/newsroom/2020.03.15.00.pdf.

[13] See, e.g., Gov’t Accountability Office, Immigration Courts: Actions Needed to Reduce Case Backlog and Address Long-Standing Management and Operational Challenges (June 2017).

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

Basically, confirms what AILA, NAIJ, our Round Table, NGOs, and much of the media have been saying for a long time now! Obviously, the Dems lack the power in the Senate to take effective action to eliminate EOIR and replace it with an independent Article I Court, at present. Hopefully, that will be remedied in November.

In the meantime, what’s the excuse of the Article IIIs for continuing to allow this mockery of our Constitution and parody of justice to continue to daily inflict abuse on their fellow humans?

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-25-20

POLITICS: Q: WHAT’S A SMART REPUBLICAN? — A: A FORMER REPUBLICAN!

https://apple.news/ATZFy4dGqRjur6j7a03l5yQ

The North Carolina Republicans Who Are Defecting from Trump

By Peter Slevin

Mike Hawkins, the Republican chairman of the Transylvania County Board of Commissioners, in North Carolina, was on vacation last summer when he saw clips from Donald Trump’s speech to cheering supporters at East Carolina University, in Greenville. Earlier that week, Trump had aimed tweets at four prominent Democratic members of Congress, all women of color, suggesting that they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Never mind that three . . . .

*********

Read the complete article at the link.

The GOP: A fundamentally anti-American party without values or policies that has become a cult of a maliciously incompetent racist.

PWS

08-24-20

BEWARE! — BS BONANZA ON THE WAY — Don’t Be Fooled By The Trump/GOP Liefest About The “Greatest Economy Ever!” — Time To Fire The Maliciously Incompetent Exec!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/23/opinion/trump-convention-economy.html

Steven Rattner in The NY Times:

. . . .

Job growth in July was less than half the pace of the June increase, and August figures may well show a still smaller increase or — amazingly — no job growth at all. And that’s with only 42 percent of the lost jobs having been recovered so far.

There is evidence that a second wave of layoffs and furloughs is already underway — roughly three out of five workers who had reportedly returned to work have either been let go again or been told they are at risk of being sidelined again.

Much of the damage threatens to become irreversible. According to data collected by Yelp, more than half of business closures that were temporary when the virus outbreak began are now considered permanent. More retailers have gone bankrupt in the first eight months of 2020 than in all of 2008, during the Great Recession. Across all industries, Chapter 11 filings in July surged 52 percent over the same month last year, with no end in sight.

And our economy is in even greater jeopardy because Donald Trump, who proclaims himself the greatest dealmaker in history, can’t make a deal with the Democrats on a much-needed next rescue package.

While the proposals he has tried to bring about by executive action may well be illegal, they are indisputably ludicrous in their construct: A “payroll tax cut” that isn’t a tax cut at all — and even if it were, it would be the wrong way to provide help to the average American. Special unemployment benefits of $300 per week, half the amount lawmakers provided in the first round, the CARES Act. Nothing for schools, nothing for virus testing, nothing for state and local governments.

In the business world, when an employee doesn’t perform, we fire him (although not quite the way Mr. Trump did on “The Apprentice.”)

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

Read the rest of the article at the link!

This November, vote like your life and our nation’s future depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

08-24-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️🆘AMERICA’S SHAME — NATIONAL DISGRACE – SYSTEMIC INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE: From Supremes Who Abandoned Their Key Precedent In Cardoza-Fonseca, To A 5th Cir. Court Of Appeals That Shirked Its Duty To Protect Refugees, To A “Don’t Rock The Boat” BIA That Failed To Enforce Uniformity, To Unqualified & Biased Immigration “Judges” Who Created Illegal, “Asylum-Free Zones,” The U.S. Asylum System Was In Deep Trouble Even Before Trump – Under Trump, It Has Become A “Killing Floor” Programmed To Intentionally Deny & Deport Deserving Refugees To Death, Torture, Or Grotesque Mistreatment, As Indolent, Cloistered Article IIIs, Unwilling To Dig In & Stop The Slaughter Look On!

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2020-08-23/who-gets-asylum-even-before-trump-system-was-riddled-with-bias-and-disparities

An asylum seeker’s chances at protection hinge on numerous factors that often seem arbitrary — from location to nationality to individual judge assigned — according to a Union-Tribune analysis of immigration court records
By KATE MORRISSEY,
LAURYN SCHROEDER
AUG. 23, 2020
5 AM
For the world’s most vulnerable, protection in the United States has all but disappeared.
Wait times for asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border that already seemed indefinite now seem impossible. Families struggle to find food and shelter to outlast a pandemic order with no end date.
Those who cross north are sent back to Mexico in a matter of hours — or even put onto planes back to the countries from which they fled — without any opportunity to explain why they came.
In its response to COVID-19, the Trump administration achieved what it long sought, a shutdown of the U.S. asylum system. And with new regulations introduced this summer, the administration has moved to squeeze out any real chance at refuge in case the pandemic order is lifted.
But even before the current president began his campaign against asylum in the United States, people often struggled to win protection — no matter how strong their cases appeared to be.
In its 40-year history, the system has chronically fallen short of its promise of safety.
RETURNED: PART II
The second in an occasional series in which the Union-Tribune explores the asylum system through the eyes of people who experience it firsthand, with drastically different outcomes.
The Trump administration has used statistics about grant rates to justify closing off access to asylum, saying that those who lose their cases are illegitimate asylum seekers.
The facts show a different story: Thousands of people turned away based not on the merits of their cases, but on the capriciousness of a system so riven with inequity that many outcomes seem little more than arbitrary.
A San Diego Union-Tribune analysis of 10 years of court outcomes uncovered many symptoms of the system’s biases — shortcomings that date to the system’s creation.
. . . .

***************************
Read the rest of this eye-opening (for those not familiar with this broken, biased, and beyond dysfunctional system) article at the above link.

There can be no excuse for the “horror chamber” that this already broken, battered, and unfair system has devolved into. It will take genuine changes in expertise, attitude, courage, and intellectual integrity across all three branches of Government to get this system functioning in a fair, legal, and constitutional manner consistent with due process and our international obligations.
It also will require much better, more educated, more courageous, more practical, and more intellectually honest judges from the Immigration Courts (which must become independent from the Executive) all the way up to and including the Supremes.

Better judges for a better America! Life tenure means it won’t happen overnight. But, the process needs to begin now for our nation to survive and prosper!

We can’t achieve equal justice for all with so many judges who don’t believe in it, don’t have expertise in and a commitment to human rights, and don’t have the guts to stand up for the legal, constitutional, and human rights of all individuals coming before our justice system. That specifically includes the “most vulnerable among us” – asylum seekers and other of our fellow humans whose humanity and right to live seem to fall below the “radar screen” of the current Supremes’ majority!

Due Process Forever! “Dred Scottification” and complicity, never!

PWS
08-24-20

🖕 BIRDLAND: Wolfman, USCIS “Flip Off” Supremes, Federal Courts, With A “Dumbed Down” Version Of DACA Resumption!

Here’s the USCIS Directive:

From: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [mailto:uscis@public.govdelivery.com]
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2020 8:19 AM
To: Dan Kowalski
Subject: USCIS Implements DHS Guidance on DACA

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services today provided guidance on how it will implement Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf’s July 28 memorandum regarding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.

Under USCIS’ implementing guidance, we will reject all initial DACA requests from aliens who have never previously received DACA and return all fees. The rejections will be without prejudice, meaning aliens will be able to reapply should USCIS begin accepting new requests in the future from aliens who never before received DACA. USCIS will continue to accept requests from aliens who had been granted DACA at any time in the past and will also accept requests for advance parole that are properly submitted to the address specified on the Direct Filing Addresses for Form I-131 webpage.

For approvable DACA renewal requests, USCIS will limit grants of deferred action and employment authorization under DACA to no more than one year, but will not rescind any currently valid two-year grants of DACA or associated employment authorization documents (EADs), unless USCIS terminates an alien’s DACA for failure to continue to meet the DACA criteria (see 2012 Memorandum), including failure to warrant a favorable exercise of prosecutorial discretion. USCIS will replace two-year EADs that are lost, stolen or damaged with the same facial two-year validity period assuming the EAD replacement application is otherwise approvable.

USCIS will generally reject requests received more than 150 days before the current grant of DACA expires. DACA recipients should file their renewal request between 150 and 120 days before their current grant of DACA expires.

USCIS will only grant advance parole for travel outside the United States to DACA recipients pursuant to the new guidance, which provides for a determination that parole of the alien is for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit in keeping with the governing statute. The agency will not rescind any previously granted advance parole documents unless there is another legal reason to do so. However, as has always been the case, parole into the United States is not guaranteed. In all cases, aliens are still subject to immigration inspection at a port-of-entry to determine whether they are eligible to come into the United States.

The determination whether to grant advance parole to an alien is entirely within the discretion of USCIS and must be made on a case-by-case basis. USCIS will review all the factors presented in individual cases before determining whether to approve advance parole for a DACA recipient based on the new guidance. Some examples of circumstances that may warrant approval include, but are not limited to, situations such as:

Travel to support the national security interests of the United States;

Travel to support U.S. federal law enforcement interests;

Travel to obtain life-sustaining medical treatment that is not otherwise available to the alien in the United States; or

Travel needed to support the immediate safety, wellbeing or care of an immediate relative, particularly minor children of the alien.

Even if a requestor establishes that their situation meets one of the examples above, USCIS may still deny the request for advance parole in discretion under the totality of the circumstances.

CAUTION: If you travel outside the United States on or after Aug. 15, 2012, without first receiving advance parole, your departure automatically terminates your deferred action under DACA.

Please do not reply to this message. See our Contact Us page for phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Notably, the plaintiffs have already filed a contempt motion in the DACA litigation: https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/outsidenews/posts/daca-advocates-file-contempt-motion-against-dhs

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

The actions of Wolfman, his cronies, and the Government lawyers who carry their water are obviously those of lawless individuals who neither fear nor expect accountability. And, why should they?

After more than three years of unrelenting corruption, bad faith, lies, misrepresentations, and overt illegal and unconstitutional actions motivated by racism and xenophobia, just what “consequences” have Administration officials carrying out the Trump/Miller program of “nullification” and “institutionalized racism” suffered? Not many, that I can see, beyond an inordinate number of lower Federal Court defeats that they ignore or avoid in bad faith. Occasionally, certainly nowhere close to as often as they deserve, the regime receives a relatively mild rebuke from the Supremes. But, for the most part, the resulting orders are largely toothless and merely suggest ways in which they can be avoided or “worked around” without consequences.

We’ll see if this time is different. But, I wouldn’t count on it!

PWS

08-24-20

🏴‍☠️DONALD TRUMP: FAILED FASCIST! — But, Fascism Doesn’t Doesn’t Have To Be “Successful” On Some “Academic Scale” To Threaten The Downfall Of Our Democracy! — We Ignore Trump’s Fascism At Our Peril!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/how-fascist-is-president-trump-theres-still-a-formula-for-that/2020/08/21/aa023aca-e2fc-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html

By John McNeill in WashPost Outlook:

. . . .

So where does Trump’s administration stand as he is nominated for a second term? He earned 47 of a possible 76 Benitos, or 62 percent. He remains the greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War, but his exercise of power only partly resembles that of real fascists. He still faces checks and balances in Washington. He hasn’t shut down rival parties or uncompliant media.

He has not directed the armed might of the state against citizens on anything like the scale used by Mussolini, let alone Hitler. He does not have his own obedient “squadristi” eager to beat up foes, even if plenty of his followers advocate (and sometimes indulge in) violence against minorities and Trump’s opponents. He has not arranged the murder of prominent political opponents. The cult of violence is integral to fascism but far less central to Trump. He is not ruling like a genuine fascist.

But he has shown pronounced fascistic leanings. In the right circumstances — a crisis he could manage triumphantly, a more sympathetic military — perhaps he would try to extend his rule beyond whatever the voters allow him and convert the United States into a repressive, racist dictatorship. Or perhaps stage phony elections that hand the reins to Ivanka and Jared. At least a few members of Congress would probably support him, just as many parliamentarians voted to give Mussolini and Hitler emergency powers. Those lawmakers did not know at the time just where fascism might lead. We have a clearer idea.

John McNeill is a professor of history at Georgetown University.

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

Read the complete op-ed at the above link.

I get that Trump’s maliciousness is somewhat tempered by his overall incompetence.

But, with due respect to Professor McNeill, I think he presents a “upper class intellectual” view of Trump’s vileness and danger on the “fascism scale.” His pre-existing privilege have largely shielded him, and likely his family and most of his associates, from the true effects of Trump’s White Nationalist fascism.

However, I think that African Americans who have had family members and friends killed or seriously harmed by police, only to be mocked, threatened, and disenfranchised by the Prez; children and families separated forever; kids and asylum applicants jailed in life-threatening conditions; refugees and other family members stranded forever abroad; lawyers and advocates who risk their health and safety every day to defend the most vulnerable among us; the ghosts of those who have died of COVID-19 in detention; those with family members needlessly lost to COVID-19; ethnic communities who have been terrorized by DHS and who have seen a sharply diminished ability to seek protection from crimes; Asian Americans who have victimized by hate crimes; those who have lost health insurance coverage, jobs, and shelter; Muslims scapegoated for others’ crimes; transgender youth driven to depression and suicide by government endorsed harassment and denial of basic human rights; and a host of others living below McNeill’s radar screen might disagree with his “failed” analysis.

Also, like many academics and intellectuals shielded by the Ivory Tower, McNeill vastly overestimates the effect of “checks and balances.” In fact, Trump has been able to rule lawlessly, if incompetently, without meaningful participation of Congress and with little effective pushback from the Federal Courts.

He’s made mincemeat of the few in the Executive Branch with the guts and integrity to oppose him, without engendering meaningful and anything approaching effective reactions from the other two Branches. His own party has publicly and fully turned against American democracy and the rights, well being, and humanity of the rest (e.g., the majority) of us. That’s pretty effective fascism in my book, even considering the less than competent implementation.

It’s a mark of just how ineffectual our system of “checks and balances” has been that we are, as a nation, without a functioning immigration system; without functioning Immigration Courts; without a national plan or rational response to a dangerous pandemic; without a plan to protect our precious franchise or to insure safe, free, and fair elections this fall; with a failing postal system that has been politicized; without a plan to address the threat of global warning and, indeed, doing everything in our power to make it worse!

This is not “failed fascism!” Rather it is a fascist state run by malicious incompetents and headed by a leader without the attention span, intellectual capacity, or ability to fully develop any intellectual doctrine and implement its full range of destruction. But, that only slightly diminishes his danger to our body politic!

That Trump dares to put forth outrageous ideas like not leaving office following defeat, barring U.S. citizens from re-entering their country, sending police to polling stations, and questioning the citizenship of Kamala Harris shows just how feckless our democratic institutions have been in the face of tyranny and how misguided it is to understate Trump’s fascism.

With his overtly outrageous program of “Dred Scottification” of “the other” — largely and embarrassingly embraced by a Supremes’ majority — Trump has moved our nation as far away from “equal justice for all” as we have been in the supposed “post-Jim-Crow” era!

To rely on the “beneficial effects” of incompetence on malicious would-be fascism is a fool’s errand that could cost us dearly. Indeed, until it was too late, the leaders of Western Democracies rather consistently overplayed the cartoonish characteristics of Hitler’s and Mussolini’s “pseudo-super-macho” personalities and underplayed the potential destructive capacity of their fascism, whether “failed” or not. The threat is real and this is likely to be our last clear chance as a nation to save our democracy!

This November, vote like your life and the future of the world depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

08-24-20

🆘 NDPA ALERT: Immigration Advocates & African Americans Have Been At The Forefront Of The Resistance To The Trump Regime — Immigration Advocates Can’t Be “Stiffed” Like They Were By Obama — Let Joe Know That Appointment Of Child Abuser & Family Imprisonment Advocate Sally Yates, Or Any “Retread” Like Her, As AG Will Be A Breach Of Faith! — No More “Go Along To Get Along” Appointments — Only Someone With Demonstrated Human Rights & Immigrants’ Rights Commitment Can Be AG or DHS Sec. Under Next Dem. Administration!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/21/biden-picked-his-vp-now-we-pick-his-dream-cabinet/

Opinions

Here’s who Biden should pick for a dream Cabinet

(Tom Toles/The Washington Post)

Opinion by The Ranking Committee

August 21, 2020 at 9:04 a.m. EDT

Add to listAdd to list

With presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s veep picked, convention concluded and campaign cruising ahead of his opponent’s, he might be tempted to start measuring the White House drapes. So to curb that temptation, the Ranking Committee members are doing it for him for Round 69 — starting with whom he should pick for his Cabinet.

. . . .

Attorney General Sally Yates

A courageous civil servant who has demonstrated her commitment to upholding the law even under personally and politically difficult conditions.

— Catherine Rampell

. . . .

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

Hell No! Sorry, Catherine, Yates would be a “Nightmare on Elm Street” ☠️!

Sally Yates presided over families in immigration prison, civil detention abuses, the disintegration of the Immigration Courts through “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” dilatory hiring practices for Immigration Judges, unrepresented toddlers in Immigration Court, misuse of the justice system as a “deterrent” for immigration, and the steady diminution of both Due Process and judicial independence at the BIA and the Immigration Courts.

She was totally gone deaf on the immigration, human rights, and human decency issues (except for her last act when she was heading out the door), and helped set the table for the gross abuses of human rights inflicted on asylum seekers and immigrants, particularly targeting those of color, by the Trump regime.

She would be a horrible Attorney General and an insult to Hispanics, people of color, immigrants, and ethnic communities that have stood up against Trump’s abuses while many Dems folded their tents and hid.

Either Former HUD Secretary and Presidential candidate Julian Castro or his brother Rep. Joaquin Castro would be far superior choices. They both understand that justice for migrants and asylum seekers, and humane sensible immigration policies are prerequisites for finally attaining equal justice under law, fundamental fairness, and eliminating the institutionalized racism in which Yates played a role.

Immigration advocates must make their opposition to this and other unacceptable choices clear to the Biden campaign in advance of the election and should pledge to testify en masse against any such nomination.

No more Dem AGs who fail to make human rights and equal justice for all, including asylum seekers, immigrants, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and all people of color “job number one!” The next Dem AG must also be 100% committed to an independent, Article I Immigration Court to replace the current dysfunctional and insanely unfair mess at EOIR!

Catherine Rampell is generally “spot on.” But, hey, anyone can have a bad day!

There is lots of new talent out there that demands a chance to lead! No excuse for “retreads!”

Due Process Forever! Sally Yates & Other Dem Retreads With Disgraceful Records Of Failure On Human Rights & Immigration, Never!

PWS

08-22-20

JULIA AINSLEY & JACOB SOBOROFF @ NBC NEWS REPORT ON WHITE NATIONALIST WHITE HOUSE: Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller & Cabinet Racists Voted To Abuse Brown Children: “If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” Said The New American Gruppenfuhrer!” — “Any moral argument regarding immigration ‘fell on deaf ears’ inside the White House, said one of the officials.”

Julia Edwards Ainsley
NBC News Correspondent

https://apple.news/AZFgY4X7BQsaKSITqteCbIg

Trump cabinet officials voted in 2018 White House meeting to separate migrant children, say officials

“If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” said Trump adviser Stephen Miller, say officials present at a White House meeting.

by Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff | NBC NEWS

WASHINGTON — In early May 2018, after weeks of phone calls and private meetings, 11 of the president’s most senior advisers were called to the White House Situation Room where they were asked, by a show-of-hands vote, to decide the fate of thousands of migrant parents and their children, according to two officials who were there.

Trump’s senior adviser, Stephen Miller, led the meeting and, according to the two officials, he was angry at what he saw as defiance by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

It had been nearly a month since then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had launched the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, announcing that every immigrant who crossed the U.S. border illegally would be prosecuted, including parents with small children. But so far, U.S. border agents had not begun separating parents from their children to put the plan into action, and Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, was furious about the delay.

Those invited included Sessions, Nielsen, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and newly installed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to documents obtained by NBC News.

Nielsen told those at the meeting that there were simply not enough resources at DHS, nor at the other agencies that would be involved, to be able to separate parents, prosecute them for crossing the border and return them to their children in a timely manner, according to the two officials who were present. Without a swift process, the children would enter into the custody of Health and Human Services, which was already operating at near capacity.

Two officials involved in the planning of zero tolerance said the Justice Department acknowledged on multiple occasions that U.S. attorneys would not be able to prosecute all parents expeditiously, so sending children to HHS was the most likely outcome.

As Nielsen had said repeatedly to other officials in the weeks leading up to the meeting, according to two former officials, the process could get messy and children could get lost in an already clogged system.

Miller saw the separation of families not as an unfortunate byproduct, but as a tool to deter more immigration. According to three former officials, he had devised plans that would have separated even more children. Miller, with the support of Sessions, advocated for separating all immigrant families, even those going through civil court proceedings, the former officials said.

While “zero tolerance” ultimately separated nearly 3,000 children from their parents, what Miller proposed would have separated an additional 25,000, including those who legally presented themselves at a port of entry seeking asylum, according to Customs and Border Protection data from May and June 2018.

That plan never came to fruition, in large part because DHS officials had argued it would grind the immigration process to a halt. But after Sessions’ announcement that all families entering illegally would be prosecuted, the onus had fallen on DHS to act.

At the meeting, Miller accused anyone opposing zero tolerance of being a lawbreaker and un-American, according to the two officials present.

“If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” said Miller, according to the two officials. It was not unusual for Miller to make claims like this, but this time he was adamant that the policy move forward, regardless of arguments about resources and logistics.

No one in the meeting made the case that separating families would be inhumane or immoral, the officials said. Any moral argument regarding immigration “fell on deaf ears” inside the White House, said one of the officials.

“Miller was tired of hearing about logistical problems,” said one of the officials. “It was just, ‘Let’s move forward and staff will figure this out.'”

Frustrated, Miller accused Nielsen of stalling and then demanded a show of hands. Who was in favor of moving forward, he asked?

A sea of hands went up. Nielsen kept hers down. It was clear she had been outvoted, according to the officials.

In the days immediately following the meeting, Nielsen had a conversation with then-CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan inside her office at the Ronald Reagan Building, and then signed a memo instructing DHS personnel to prosecute all migrants crossing the border illegally, including parents arriving with their children.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the report, detailing the full extent of this outrageous, illegal, and immoral conduct by corrupt high-level officials of our Government, at the link. This is what your tax dollars have been used for, while legitimate needs like coronavirus testing, disaster relief (see, Iowa), mail delivery, naturalization services, unemployment relief, etc., go unmet!

So, separated families and children continue to suffer, much of the harm and trauma irreparable and life-defining. This “policy” was so clearly illegal and unconstitutional that DOJ attorneys conceded its unconstitutionality in Federal Court.

However, in an ethics-free DOJ, those same lawyers falsely claimed that there was no such policy. Rudimentary “due diligence” on their part, required by professional ethics, would have revealed that their representations on behalf of corrupt institutional “clients” were false.

The article also confirms the complicity of Kevin “Big Mac With Lies” McAleenan in gross, intentional human rights violations. Courtside exposed “Big Mac” long ago!

While the victims continue to suffer, Miller, Sessions, Nielsen, Big Mac, and other cowards who planned and carried out these “crimes against humanity,” directed at some of the most vulnerable humans in the world, remain at large. Some, like Miller, actually remain on the “public dole.” Likely, so do the DOJ lawyers who unprofessionally defended and helped obscure this misconduct in Federal Court.

It’s also worth examining the role of U.S. Magistrate Judges and U.S. District Judges along the southern border, most of whom turned a blind eye to the transparent racial and political motives, not to mention the grotesque misallocation of public resources, driving Sessions’s “zero tolerance” misdirection of scarce prosecutorial resources from serious felonies to minor immigration prosecutions.

As I’ve been saying, “Better Federal Judges for a better America!” And, better Federal Judges start with removal of the Trump regime as well as the ousting of “Moscow Mitch” and the GOP from Senate control.

Will there ever be accountability? Our national soul and future might depend on the answer!

Had enough wanton cruelty, neo-Nazism, corruption, illegality, immorality, cowardice, lies, false narratives, racism, stupidity, and squandering of tax dollars on nativist schemes and gimmicks? Get motivated and take action to get our nation back on track to being that “City upon a Hill” that the rest of the world used to admire and respect!

This November, vote like your life and the very future of humanity depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

08-21-20

😎⚖️👍 COULD THERE BE JUSTICE IN THE WORLD? – White Nationalist Stevie “Scumsack” Bannon Indicted For Allegedly Defrauding Fellow Racists On Border Wall Crowdfunding Scam!

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-indicted-trump-campaign_n_5f3e7c8ac5b609f4f675a933

POLITICS

50 minutes ago

Former Trump Strategist Steve Bannon Indicted In ‘Build The Wall’ Scheme

The former Trump campaign executive was arrested Thursday morning. A grand jury said he used donated funds to cover personal expenses.

By Hayley Miller and Ryan J. Reilly

Steve Bannon, a former chief strategist in President Donald Trump’s White House, was arrested on Thursday after a grand jury indicted him on federal charges for allegedly using hundreds of thousands of dollars from an online “We Build The Wall” fundraiser to cover his personal expenses.

Bannon and three others ― Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea ― were charged in connection with their roles in “defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign known as ‘We Build the Wall’ that raised more than $25 million,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced Thursday morning.

The four defendants are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Kolfage, the founder of “We Build the Wall,” had assured donors that all the money would go toward construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Audrey Strauss said in a statement. But the defendants “secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle,” she said.

Bannon, 66, received over $1 million from the crowdfunding campaign, which he funneled through a nonprofit that he operates, according to prosecutors. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of that money reportedly went toward his personal expenses.

. . . .

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

Couldn’t happen to more deserving folks! Although, I’ll have to admit to feeling little sympathy for the alleged “victims” who contributed to Bannon & co’s vile, racist symbolism. Maybe it just illustrates the old saying “no honor among thieves!” No honor among White Nationalists either!

The irony: Immigrants, of all types and statuses, are generally law-abiding, despite the false claims and bogus contrary narratives spread by Trump and his followers. Tump’s White Nationalist buddies: not so much!

This November, vote like your life and our nation’s future depend on it. Because they do!

PWS

08-20-20

CHANNELING COURTSIDE: Billy The Bigot’s Bias, Lies, & Absurdist “Legal Arguments” Have Tanked The DOJ’s Credibility With U.S. Courts – “The problem with bypassing professionals and norms is that the decisions you make instead are often transparently foolish, or appear rigged to achieve an unprincipled or corrupt result,” says WashPost Op-Ed – So, Why Does Billy B Still Have A Law License?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/18/justice-departments-extreme-legal-arguments-are-costing-it-court/

Opinion by

George T. Conway III and

Lawrence S. Robbins

August 18, 2020 at 5:12 p.m. EDT

Lawrence S. Robbins is an appellate and trial lawyer at Robbins Russell. George T. Conway III is a lawyer and an adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump super PAC. The writers both submitted friend-of-the-court briefs opposing the government’s motion in the Flynn case.

If there’s one thing you can say about President Trump and his administration, it’s that nothing is regular except the irregular, which has had myriad damaging consequences for the nation. And it’s had particularly adverse consequences for the federal government’s ability to defend itself in court.

The latest example comes in the criminal case against Trump’s first, short-tenured national security adviser, Michael Flynn. He pleaded guilty — not once but twice — to charges that he had lied to FBI agents during an interview about his conversations with senior Russian officials during the presidential transition. Despite Flynn’s admissions of guilt, Attorney General William P. Barr filed a motion asking that the case be dismissed — and supporting Flynn’s effort to have that done without even a hearing before the district judge.

Flynn won before an appeals court panel. But when the full court of appeals heard arguments on Flynn’s petition, the judges couldn’t have seemed more bewildered at the Trump administration’s position. The government argued that the district judge couldn’t inquire into the government’s reasons for seeking dismissal even if he’d seen the prosecutor take a bribe, in open court, in exchange for dismissing the case.

The Trump administration has been saying things like that a lot lately — trying to stretch the law in ways that undermine its remaining credibility. It argued that a sitting president’s accountants and bankers can’t be subpoenaed for his personal records during his term in office by either a state grand jury or, without meeting an impossibly high burden, by Congress. It argued that the president’s close aides can’t be called to testify before a congressional committee investigating presidential misconduct. The least trustworthy administration in decades, if not ever, keeps arguing: “You’ve just got to trust us.”

Lawyers have a phrase for the government’s saying “Trust us.” It’s called the “presumption of regularity.” The presumption of regularity means that courts should presume that government officials acted through a “regular” process: that it carefully vetted its policy and scrupulously examined relevant legal precedents.

But, as its name suggests, the presumption of regularity rests on the premise that the government is functioning in a regular way. And the Trump administration is anything but regular. Following the cues of a chief executive who despises what he calls the “deep state,” administration officials have cut corners, displaced career professionals, exiled dissenters and abandoned institutional norms — in short, circumvented the very processes that justify the presumption of regularity in the first place.

The chickens have now come home to roost. Whether they say so explicitly or not, courts have been dispensing with the presumption of regularity. The best example: In the litigation over the 2020 Census, the Supreme Court held that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision to add a citizenship question to the census form was arbitrary and capricious. The reason? “Altogether,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote, “the evidence does not match the explanation the secretary gave for his decision.” That’s just a polite lawyer’s way of saying Ross lied.

Examples of the administration’s disrespect for regularity are legion, and not just confined to litigated matters. Barr has acted as a virtual one-man band of irregularity: He forced the U.S. attorney in Washington, Jessie K. Liu, out of her job, thereby enabling him to countermand former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone. And Barr gave a transparently false account of the Mueller report in the week before it was released to the public.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the op-ed at the above link.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing is that Billy the Bigot actually “runs” a so-called “court system” — the U.S. Immigration Court — that has life or death authority over some of the most vulnerable individuals in our society, indeed in the world! How this stunning violation of both the Fifth Amendment and fundamental human decency (not to mention basic principles of competent management and good governance) continues to grind humanity into a grisly mess 🤮 of human misery ☠️ in plain sight every day is beyond me!

Almost everything in this “spot on” op-ed echoes “Courtside.” I have consistently criticized the irresponsibility and the gross dereliction of Constitutional duty by a Supremes majority that all too often treats Trump’s patently false, racist, xenophobic, and invidious immigration, refugee, and asylum policies as the actions of a “normal Executive” when Trump is nothing of the sort.

Nor does he even claim to be! He ran on overtly racist and hate-driven policies and has promoted racist tropes and lies about immigrants at every turn. Yet, the Supremes often pretend that there is some “legitimate basis” for clearly illegitimate policies and abrogation of important laws without the involvement of Congress and of Constitutional protections without any reasonable, fact-based justification.

If the “chickens have come home to roost” for the corrupt Trump DOJ, so will they eventually come home to roost for Supremes who have disingenuously and intentionally looked the other way and have enabled, or in some cases even encouraged, Trump’s racist and lie-driven dismantling of American democracy and “Dred Scottification” of “the other.” Life tenure protects the jobs of derelict Federal Judges. But, it won’t protect their reputations from the truth of history.

This November, vote like your life and the future of America depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

08-19-20

🛡⚔️🗽👍🏼🇺🇸ROUND TABLE SLAMS LATEST BOGUS “KILL ASYLUM” PROPOSED REGS IN COMMENTS TO REGIME!

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

Comments – Security Bar (COVID) Asylum Reg (PDF)

The Round Table of Former Immigration Judges is composed of 46 former Immigration Judges and Appellate Immigration Judges of the Board of Immigration Appeals. We were appointed and served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. We have centuries of combined experience adjudicating asylum applications and appeals. Our members include nationally- respected experts on asylum law; many regularly lecture at law schools and conferences and author articles on the topic.

We view the proposed rule as an improper attempt to legislate through rule making. The proposed rule is inconsistent with Congressional intent and with our nation’s obligations under international law. The rule is also overly broad, and as worded, could be applied to virtually anyone. It requires determinations to be made based on pure speculation by officials lacking any required expertise in the subject. And the rule fails to consider much lesser, more humane approaches to address the issue.

. . . .

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

Read our complete comment at the above link.

Gimmicks, cruelty, illegally, gimmicks, cruelty, illegality. Over and over the regime targets asylum seekers with “crimes against humanity.”

Although all DHS statistics should be regarded as suspect, the recent assertions that the regime”s killer tactics are protecting America against COVID appear particularly bogus — especially given the Trump regime’s gross failure to protect Americans from the pandemic and the frequent myths and false claims blabbered by Trump in a pathetic attempt to downplay the disaster caused by his stupidity and malicious incompetence.

The net result of all these “Miller-hatched” cruel gimmicks to eliminate legal immigration (without legislative authority) appears to be steadily increasing levels of extralegal immigration. And that’s just the folks who get caught. Who knows how many get through and simply get lost in the interior? So, instead of a rational legal immigration and refugee system that encourages screening, testing where necessary, taxpaying, and data collection, thanks to the stupidity and cruelty of Trump and Miller, the fecklessness of Congress, and the complicity of the Supremes, we have created a larger than ever extralegal immigration system.

Diminishing ourselves as a nation,🤮 won’t stop human migration🗽!

PWS

08|10-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️👎🏻🤮END OF REFUGEE PROGRAMS SIGNALS DEMISE OF AMERICA! — “Our nation has an ethical and legal responsibility to protect those who seek refuge here. Instead, we have expended vast resources on preventing people from entering the country and deporting people who are already here!”

🏴‍☠️☠️🏴‍☠️☠️🏴‍☠️☠️🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/refugees-united-states-abandon/2020/08/07/6085e81c-d751-11ea-aff6-220dd3a14741_story.html

U.S. Asylum Officer Jason Marks writes in the WashPost Outlook Section:

. . . .

Collectively, we were told to implement restrictive new policies, expressly designed to deter people from seeking refuge. The Migrant Protection Protocols, for example, resulted in more than 60,000 asylum seekers being sent to Mexico in 2019, after fleeing the extreme brutality of MS-13 and the 18th Street gang in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Left to live in squalor without any protection, they are preyed upon by cartels and gangs as they wait, sometimes months, for an elusive court date before an immigration judge.

[I became an asylum officer to help people. Now I put them back in harm’s way.]

The pandemic put refugees and asylum seekers in even more desperate straits, as the United States paused refugee resettlement. Many already interviewed and accepted for resettlement in the U.S. now live stateless at the margins of cities, towns and villages where they have no rights or legal status, or in overcrowded refugee camps. Around the world, in places including Jordan, Kenya and Bangladesh, refugee camps are bursting at the seams. People there are unable to practice social distancing, and soap and water are limited.

Meanwhile, at our borders, Customs and Border Protection has turned away thousands of vulnerable people since March, without due process. Some applicants showing symptoms of the coronavirus were deported with no regard for safety measures (such as testing), causing outbreaks in the countries from which they had fled. Others languish in crowded detention facilities, even though many of them pose no security threat and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has the discretion to release them. By law, children must be let out after 20 days of incarceration. But rather than release them with their parents, our government has presented these families with an agonizing choice: Either have their children released, indefinitely separated from their parents — or remain locked up together in these facilities, many of which have already witnessed coronavirus outbreaks.

Amid all this, in June, the administration proposed 161 pages of sweeping regulations that would gut asylum and refugee law. Certain provisions, for example, drastically narrow the definitions of persecution and torture; others raise certain burdens of proof to nearly unreachable standards and redefine what constitutes the protected grounds of political opinion and membership in a particular social group. Still others could disqualify applicants if they made a mistake on their tax filings, or took two or more layover flights on their way here. In July, the administration proposed yet another new policy, allowing the United States to deny asylum to applicants if they come from any country with an outbreak of a highly contagious disease. (Public health experts have said this would serve no legitimate public health purpose.) It’s difficult to see how anyone could qualify for protection under this tangle of new rules, once they’re implemented.

Years of tightening restrictions have made it harder to obtain a wide range of legal immigration benefits, causing applications to plummet and, with them, the user fees that fund U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services operations. Now, the pandemic has placed our agency on the brink of bankruptcy, and 70 percent of our workforce faces an indefinite furlough unless Congress intervenes. Without emergency funding, only a skeleton crew will remain to administer America’s immigration services system — resulting in even greater backlogs in the processing of applications for benefits including asylum, green cards, work permits and citizenship.

Our nation has an ethical and legal responsibility to protect those who seek refuge here. Instead, we have expended vast resources on preventing people from entering the country and deporting people who are already here. If the current administration’s policies continue unchecked, there will no longer be a pathway for refugees to have a new beginning in the United States. Even if a different presidential administration tried to change course, I fear that it would take many years to reverse the damage and rebuild our capacity to protect refugees. Many people will lose their lives before then.

In the closing words of his farewell address, President Ronald Reagan described our country as a “shining city upon a hill”: “If there had to be city walls,” he said in 1989, “the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” That is still something most Americans believe in.

[Read more from Outlook:]

[Coronavirus can’t be an excuse to continue President Trump’s assault on asylum seekers]

[Americans are the dangerous, disease-carrying foreigners now]

[During the covid-19 pandemic, immigrant farmworkers are heroes]

[Follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.]

Jason Marks, an asylum training officer with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), writes here as a shop steward for Local 1924, American Federation of Government Employees, which represents employees of the USCIS Asylum and Refugee Officer Corps.

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

Read the rest of Jason’s article at the above link.

It’s not rocket science! Misusing, misinterpreting, and misapplying refugee and asylum laws to “reject not protect” is clearly illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral to boot! It’s also, not surprisingly, toxic public policy because it squanders and misdirects resources on efforts to that actually hurt our economy, society, and reputation. In other words, fraud, waste, and abuse on a grand and deadly scale!

So, a career Asylum Officer has more legal knowledge, guts, and human decency than the life-tenured, yet removed from both reality and humanity, Supremes’ majority! What’s wrong with this picture!

75 years after the end of World War II, America has installed a racist, neo-Nazi White Supremacist Government. Go figure!

To make this happen, Trump and his cronies needed both a feckless Congress and Supremes committed to empowering authoritarian racism in the name of Executive authority. He got both!

We have an opportunity, perhaps our last as a nation, to return to a nobler vision of America. But it will require ousting not only the morally corrupt and maliciously incompetent Trump regime but also the equally immoral GOP Senators who have enabled and enthusiastically hastened our national demise. That will give us a start on the longer-term project of better Justices and Federal Judges for a better America.

There is no excuse whatsoever for the cowardly, disingenuous, and immoral failure of the Roberts Court to stand against Trump. Instead, they have embraced the “Dred Scottification” — that is, dehumanization — of refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, and persons of color. Why is this judicially-enabled retrogression to the “Hay-day of Jim Crow” acceptable in 21st Century America?

This November, vote like your life and the future of our nation and the world depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

08-09-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️👎🏻DEATH IN THE GULAG: DHS Racks Up 17th Detainee Kill Of Fiscal Year — Doubling Previous Year’s Body Count ⚰️ With Months To Go As “DUD” Program Hits High Gear! — Death Either Here Or Upon Return To Danger Without Fair Hearings Is The “Ultimate Deterrent” For America’s White Nationalist Regime!

DUD = “Detain Until Dead”

https://apple.news/AEJpCWSaJQMyWS9vMdp33bQ

Danielle Silva reports for NBC News:

More than twice as many immigrants have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs and Enforcement this fiscal year than last after two detainees died this week. That brought this year’s total to 17, compared with eight deaths last year.

A 72-year-old Canadian man who had tested positive for the coronavirus died in ICE custody on Wednesday night at a Virginia hospital, the agency said Friday in a statement.

James Thomas Hill reported feeling shortness of breath to staff at an ICE detention facility in Farmville, Virginia, on July 10 and was admitted to Centra Southside Community Hospital before being transferred to Lynchburg General Hospital the following day, ICE said.

A COVID-19 test administered by hospital staff came back positive on July 11, the agency said.

Hill entered ICE custody on April 11 following his release from the Rivers Federal Correctional Institute in North Carolina after serving 13 years of a 26-year prison sentence for health care fraud and distributing a controlled substance, according to ICE. An immigration judge had ordered his removal on May 12, ICE said. At the time of his death, Hill was in ICE custody pending his removal to Canada, the agency said.

The agency said it had notified the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility, the Canadian consulate and Hill’s next of kin. His death was first reported by BuzzFeed News.

A 51-year-old Taiwanese man died Wednesday afternoon at a Florida hospital after being a diagnosed with a “massive intercranial hemorrhage,” ICE said in a separate statement Thursday.

Kuan Hui Lee was found unresponsive at the Krome Service Processing Center in Florida on July 31 and taken to the Kendall Regional Medical Center.

. . . .

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

I think this is just the beginning of the true carnage that advocates have been predicting for months. And that doesn’t even count those killed after being “orbited” by DHS in violation of the statute and due process as a complicit Supremes majority egged them on.

The shame of our nation’s intentional dehumanization and mistreatment of asylum seekers and other migrants under the Trump regime won’t be eradicated. What kind of “democracy” runs a “Gulag” for non-criminals where all “sentences” are arbitrary and indefinite and the there is no readily available impartial review of detention by a neutral and detached magistrate? Where Supreme Court Justices worry more about the impact of “nationwide injunctions” and “bogus emergencies” declared by an patently unqualified and invidiously biased Executive than they do about the lives, health, and freedom of individuals whose “crime” is to assert their legal and Constitutional rights?

While the problem starts with a White Nationalist, racist regime and a feckless GOP-controlled Senate under Moscow Mitch, those Federal Judges at all levels who could have put an end to these “crimes against humanity,” but failed to do so, also bear responsibility for the death and destruction of human lives by the regime.

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts, Never (Again). Better Justices & Judges For A Better America!

PWS

08-08-20

🛡⚔️⚖️🗽😎GOOD NEWS, AS ROUND TABLE BESTS BIA AGAIN: 9th Cir. Zaps BIA’s Denial Of Guatemalan Woman’s Asylum & CAT Cases Involving Matter of A-B-! — Diaz-Reynoso v. Barr

Sontos, 9th 18-72833_Documents

Diaz-Reynoso v. Barr, 9^th Cir., 08-07-20, published

SYNOPSIS BY COURT STAFF:

Immigration

Granting Sontos Diaz-Reynoso’s petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision affirming the denial of her application for withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture, and remanding, the panel held that the Board misapplied Matter of A-B-, 27 I. & N. Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018), as well as Board and circuit precedent, in concluding that Diaz-Reynoso’s proposed social group comprised of “indigenous women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” was not cognizable, and that she failed to establish that the government of Guatemala would acquiesce in any possible torture.

The panel rejected Diaz-Reynoso’s contention that Matter of A-B- was arbitrary and capricious and therefore not entitled to Chevron deference. The panel concluded that, despite the general and descriptive observations set forth in the opinion, Matter of A-B- did not announce a new categorical exception to withholding of removal for victims of domestic violence or other private criminal activity, but rather it reaffirmed the Board’s existing framework for analyzing the cognizability of particular social groups, requiring that such determinations be individualized and conducted on a case-by-case basis.

The panel observed that the Board rejected Diaz- Reynoso’s proposed social group, with almost no analysis,

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

Case: 18-72833, 08/07/2020, ID: 11780830, DktEntry: 100-1, Page 3 of 76

DIAZ-REYNOSO V. BARR 3

because it “suffered from the same circularity problem articulated by the Attorney General in Matter of A-B-.” The panel explained that in doing so, the Board appeared to misapprehend the scope of Matter of A-B- as forbidding any mention of feared harm within the delineation of a proposed social group. The panel concluded that this was error, explaining that Matter of A-B- did not announce a new rule concerning circularity, but instead merely reiterated the well- established principle that a particular social group must exist independently of the harm asserted. The panel recognized that a proposed social group may be deemed impermissibly circular if, after conducting the proper case-by-case analysis, the Board determines that the group is defined exclusively by the fact that its members have been subjected to harm. The panel explained, however, that a proposed social group is not impermissibly circular merely because the proposed group mentions harm.

The panel concluded that the Board also erred in assuming that domestic violence was the only reason Diaz- Reynoso was unable to leave her relationship, and in failing to conduct the rigorous case-by-case analysis required by Matter of A-B-. The panel therefore remanded Diaz- Reynoso’s withholding of removal claim for the Board to undertake the required analysis applying the correct framework.

Because the Board failed to discuss evidence that Diaz- Reynoso reported her husband’s abuse to authority figures in her village community, and the government conceded remand was warranted, the panel also remanded Diaz-Reynoso’s CAT claim for further consideration.

4 DIAZ-REYNOSO V. BARR

Concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part, Judge Bress agreed with remand of the CAT claim in light of the government’s concession, but disagreed with the majority’s conclusion that the Board misread Matter of A-B- in rejecting Diaz-Reynoso’s proposed social group. In Judge Bress’s view, Matter of A-B- held that a proposed group that incorporates harm within its definition is not a group that exists independently of the harm asserted in an application for asylum or statutory withholding of removal. Judge Bress wrote that substantial evidence supported the Board’s assessment that Diaz-Reynoso’s social group was defined exclusively by the harm suffered, and that the Board correctly applied Matter of A-B-, and the circularity rule, in rejecting Diaz-Reynoso’s proposed social group.

COUNSEL:

Gary A. Watt, Stephen Tollafield, and Tiffany J. Gates, Supervising Counsel; Shandyn H. Pierce and Hilda Kajbaf, Certified Law Students; Hastings Appellate Project, San Francisco, California; for Petitioner.

Joseph H. Hunt, Assistant Attorney General; John S. Hogan and Linda S. Wernery, Assistant Directors; Susan Bennett Green, Senior Litigation Counsel; Ashley Martin, Trial Attorney; Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.; for Respondent.

Blaine Bookey, Karen Musalo, Neela Chakravartula, and Anne Peterson, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, U.S. Hastings College of Law, San Francisco, California, for Amicus Curiae Center for Gender & Refugee Studies.

Richard W. Mark, Amer S. Ahmed, Grace E. Hart, and Cassarah M. Chu, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, New York New York, for Amici Curiae Thirty-Nine Former Immigration Judges and Members of the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Sabrineh Ardalan, Nancy Kelly, John Willshire Carrera, Deborah Anker, and Zachary A. Albun, Attorneys; Rosa Baum, Caya Simonsen, and Ana Sewell, Supervised Law Students; Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, Cambridge, Massachusetts; for Amicus Curiae Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program.

Ana C. Reyes and Alexander J. Kasner, Williams & Connolly LLP, Washington, D.C.; Alice Farmer, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Washington, D.C.; for Amicus Curiae United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

PANEL: Ronald M. Gould, Morgan Christen, and Daniel A. Bress, Circuit Judges.

OPINION BY: Judge Cristen

CONCURRING/DISSENTING OPINION: Judge Bress

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

Just another example of how under this regime, EOIR’s perverted efforts to deny and deport, especially targeting female asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle for mistreatment and potential deportation to death, waste time and effort that could, in a wiser more just Administration, be used to reduce dockets and waiting times by ensuring that well-documented, deserving cases like this one are rapidly granted. EOIR’s biased performance also reeks of both anti-Latino racism and misogyny. Here we are, two decades into the 21^st Century with our immigration “justice” system still being driven by invidious factors.

The Supremes’ majority may feign ignorance and or indifference to Trump’s and Miller’s overtly racist immigration agenda. But, those of us working in the field of immigration had it figured out long ago. It’s not rocket science! The Trumpsters make little or no real attempt to hide their scofflaw intent and invidious motives. It has, disgustingly, taken a concerted and disingenuous effort by the Supremes’ majority to sweep these unconstitutional attacks on humanity under the carpet.

That’s why we need “regime change” in both the Executive and the Senate which will lead to the appointment of better judges for a better America. Justices and judges who will ditch the institutionalized racism and misogyny and who will make equal justice for all under our Constitution a reality rather than the cruel hoax and “throwaway line” that it is today under GOP mis-governance.

Many thanks to our good friends and pro bono counsel at Gibson Dunn for the help in drafting our Amicus Brief!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-07-20

🏴‍☠️🤮👎🏻RACISM IN AMERICA: With Racially Tone-Deaf Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson & His Righty Buddy Judge Paul Niemeyer Leading the Way, Split 4th Circuit Panel, Says “Yes” To Trump/Miller White Nationalist Attack On Public Benefits For Immigrants of Color!

Dean Kevin Johnson @ ImmigrationProf Blog reports:

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2020/08/fourth-circuit-vacates-injunction-against-public-charge-immigration-rule.html

Thursday, August 6, 2020

Fourth Circuit Vacates Injunction Against Public Charge Immigration Rule

By Immigration Prof

Share

Courthouse News Service reports that the Fourth Circuit yesterday ruled 2-1 (opinion by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, with Judge Robert B. King dissenting) in favor of a Trump administration policy that makes it more difficult for noncitizens to become lawful permanent residents if they have received public benefits.

The ruling does not, however, change an injunction issued last week by a federal judge in New York barring enforcement of the so-called public charge rule.

The Second Circuit affirmed the injunction but limited its scope to New York, Connecticut and Vermont. The appeals court found the government’s justification for the rule is “unmoored from the nuanced views of Congress.”

KJ

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

Judge Wilkinson’s racially insensitive judging recently was publicly “called out” by Fourth Circuit Chief Judge Roger Gregory in a remarkably honest and incisive opinion. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/07/16/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8fcalling-out-white-nationalist-judging-in-a-remarkable-opinion-4th-cir-chief-judge-roger-gregory-blasts-colleagues-retrograde-views-on-race-judging-policing-communiti/

Perhaps, dissenting Judge Robert B. King best sums up his colleagues’ willingness to distort the law and pervert rationality in support of the regime’s racist-driven, White Nationalist Immigration agenda:

In the face of the extensive history accompanying the term “public charge,” to conclude that the DHS Rule’s definition of “public charge” is reasonable makes a mockery of the term “public charge,” “does violence to the English language and the statutory context,” and disrespects the choice — made consistently by Congress over the last century and a quarter — to retain the term in our immigration laws. See Cook Cty., 962 F.3d at 229. For those reasons, the Rule’s “public charge” definition ventures far beyond any ambiguity inherent in the meaning of the term “public charge,” as used in the Public Charge Statute, and thus fails at Chevron’s second step. In light of the foregoing, the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the Rule is unlawful, and the majority is wrong to conclude otherwise.

Equal justice for all, due process, reasonableness, and non-racist judging aren’t “rocket science.” That’s why Wilkinson had to cloak his anti-immigrant bias with 71 pages of irrational nonsense and legal gobbledygook.

Just another example of the U.S. District Judge “getting it right” only to be undermined by bad judging from higher Federal Courts. Unwillingness of the Federal Judiciary to take a unified strand for equal justice and against institutionalized racism and the White Nationalist agenda of the Trump regime is literally ripping our nation apart as well as showing the fatal weakness of the Federal Judiciary as a protector of our democracy and our individual rights.

Folks like Wilkinson and Niemeyer are what they are. But, we have the power to elect a President and a Senate who will appoint judges who actually believe in Constitutional due process and equal justice for all, regardless of color or status. Judges who will “tell it like it is,” “just say no” to “Dred Scottification” of “the other,” and courageously stand up for an unbiased interpretation the law and for simple human decency, rather than pretzeling themselves to defend an indefensible Executive agenda of unbridled White Nationalism and racism.

This November vote like your life and the future of our nation depend on it. Because they do.

PWS

08-06-20

Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Related posts:

This November, vote like your life and our nation’s future depend on it! Because they do!

Related posts:

Due Process Forever! “Dred Scottification” and complicity, never!

Related posts:

Related posts:

This November, vote like your life and the future of the world depend on it! Because they do!

Related posts:

Hell No! Sorry, Catherine, Yates would be a “Nightmare on Elm Street” ☠️!

Due Process Forever! Sally Yates & Other Dem Retreads With Disgraceful Records Of Failure On Human Rights & Immigration, Never!

Related posts:

This November, vote like your life and the very future of humanity depend on it! Because they do!

Related posts:

Former Trump Strategist Steve Bannon Indicted In ‘Build The Wall’ Scheme

This November, vote like your life and our nation’s future depend on it. Because they do!

Related posts:

This November, vote like your life and the future of America depend on it! Because they do!

Related posts:

Diminishing ourselves as a nation,🤮 won’t stop human migration🗽!

Related posts:

This November, vote like your life and the future of our nation and the world depend on it! Because they do!

Related posts:

DUD = “Detain Until Dead”

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts, Never (Again). Better Justices & Judges For A Better America!

Related posts:

Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

This November vote like your life and the future of our nation depend on it. Because they do.

Related posts: