WHAT DOESN’T HE UNDERSTAND ABOUT “ILLEGAL?” —“Cooch Cooch” Found To Have “Illegally Entered” USCIS Position! — Some Illegal White Nationalist, Anti-Asylum Directives Cancelled!

Judge Randy Moss — Hon. Randy Moss
U.S. District Judge
Washington, DC

Randy Moss
NFL Hall of Fame Wide Receiver (Todd Buchanan / Pioneer Press)

"Cooch Cooch" — “Cooch Cooch” Rewrites America’s Welcoming Message for White Nationalist Nation

L.L.-M. V. Cuccinelli, D. D.C. (Judge Moss), 03-01-20

U.S. District Judge Randy Moss (not to be confused with the NFL hall of fame receiver, one-time “bad boy,” and now commentator of the same name) ruled that Cooch Cooch was illegally appointed to his position of Acting Director of USCIS, thereby invalidating some of his written anti-asylum directives aimed at denying fair processing during the credible fear process and perhaps killing brown-skinned asylum seekers.

KEY QUOTE FROM JUDGE MOSS’S OPINION:

The Court concludes that it has jurisdiction over Plaintiffs’ challenges to the reduced-time-to-consult and prohibition-on- extensions directives and that it lacks jurisdiction over Plaintiffs’ challenge relating to the in- person-orientation directive. The Court also concludes that Cuccinelli was not lawfully appointed to serve as the acting Director of USCIS and that, accordingly, the reduced-time-to- consult and prohibition-on-extensions directives must be set aside as ultra vires under both the FVRA, 5 U.S.C. § 3348(d)(1), and the APA, 5 U.S.C. §706(2)(A). Finally, the Court sets aside the individual Plaintiffs’ negative credible-fear determinations and expedited removal orders and remands to USCIS for further proceedings consistent with this decision.

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Although only tangental to the actual result reached by Judge Moss, his detailed description of how the regime has unconstitutionally and immorally skewed the credible fear process to screw asylum seekers, largely based on their race, as opposed to acting in good faith to insure that needed protection is granted under U.S. law without regard to political pandering or racial bias, should outrage every American. It also points out how, even though this has been going on since June 2019, and thousands of individuals’ lives have been endangered by this illegal and immoral action, Federal Courts are only now beginning to “scratch the surface” of the regime’s invidious assault on asylum seekers from south of our border.

Indeed, in a move likely to warm the hearts (if, in fact, they have such organs) of Trumpist Judges like Gorsuch and Thomas, Judge Moss limited his order to the five individual named plaintiffs rather than entering the highly controversial, yet totally justified in cases like this, “nationwide injunction.” That means that thousands of similarly situated individuals who were screwed by Cooch Cooch’s scofflaw behavior will have to sue individually to get the law properly applied to them. That assumes that they are still alive and able to sue.

While the decision correctly points to numerous serious defects in the regime’s operation of USCIS, the practical effects might remain small. The regime can always seek to have it undone by the D.C. Circuit or the compliant “J.R. Five” on the Supremes. They also should be able to find some Senate-confirmed politico who was on duty on June 1, 2019 and simply have Trump appoint him or her “acting” and order them to re-issue Cooch’s “Miller-approved” White Nationalist directives on pain of dismissal. Surely, there is never a shortage of toadies among Trump’s gang of sycophants.

Clearly, the only real way to save our democracy and save the lives we should be saving is to vote for regime change, at all levels, this November. Otherwise, we might all find ourselves “Cooched” at some point in the future!

For now, maybe “Cooch Cooch” should be required to join his fellow “illegals” fighting for their existence in squalor and cruel and inhumane conditions under bridges and on street corners on the Mexican side of the border! Or, perhaps he should be “orbited” to Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras to pursue his claims from there! One truly scary thing: “Cooch Cooch” was actually once the top “legal” officer of the Commonwealth of Virginia, serving a purely awful term as Attorney General. Thankfully, we Virginia voters had the good sense to send him packing when he ran for Governor!

PWS

03-01-20

FINALLY: SPLIT 9TH CIR PANEL ENTERS NATIONWIDE INJUNCTION AGAINST “LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO” A/K/A “MIGRANT ‘PROTECTION’ PROTOCOLS” — Innovation Law Lab v. Wolf

9thMPPInjunction

Innovation Law Lab v. Wolf, 9th Cir., 02-28-20, published

PANEL: Ferdinand F. Fernandez, William A. Fletcher, and Richard A. Paez, Circuit Judges.

OPINION BY: Judge William A. Fletcher

DISSENTING OPINION: Judge Ferdinand F. Fernandez

KEY QUOTE FROM MAJORITY:

In addition to likelihood of success on the merits, a court must consider the likelihood that the requesting party will

INNOVATION LAW LAB V. WOLF 49

suffer irreparable harm, the balance of the equities, and the public interest in determining whether a preliminary injunction is justified. Winter, 555 U.S. at 20. “When the government is a party, these last two factors merge.” Drakes Bay Oyster Co. v. Jewell, 747 F.3d 1073, 1092 (9th Cir. 2014) (citing Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 435 (2009)).

There is a significant likelihood that the individual plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm if the MPP is not enjoined. Uncontested evidence in the record establishes that non-Mexicans returned to Mexico under the MPP risk substantial harm, even death, while they await adjudication of their applications for asylum.

The balance of equities favors plaintiffs. On one side is the interest of the Government in continuing to follow the directives of the MPP. However, the strength of that interest is diminished by the likelihood, established above, that the MPP is inconsistent with 8 U.S.C. §§ 1225(b) and 1231(b). On the other side is the interest of the plaintiffs. The individual plaintiffs risk substantial harm, even death, so long as the directives of the MPP are followed, and the organizational plaintiffs are hindered in their ability to carry out their missions.

The public interest similarly favors the plaintiffs. We agree with East Bay Sanctuary Covenant:

On the one hand, the public has a “weighty” interest “in efficient administration of the immigration laws at the border.” Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U.S. 21, 34 (1982). But the public also has an interest in ensuring that “statutes enacted by [their] representatives”

50 INNOVATION LAW LAB V. WOLF

are not imperiled by executive fiat. Maryland v. King, 567 U.S. 1301, 1301 (2012) (Roberts, C.J., in chambers).

932 F.3d at 779 (alteration in original).

VII. Scope of the Injunction

The district court issued a preliminary injunction setting aside the MPP—that is, enjoining the Government “from continuing to implement or expand the ‘Migrant Protection Protocols’ as announced in the January 25, 2018 DHS policy memorandum and as explicated in further agency memoranda.” Innovation Law Lab, 366 F. Supp. 3d at 1130. Accepting for purposes of argument that some injunction should issue, the Government objects to its scope.

We recognize that nationwide injunctions have become increasingly controversial, but we begin by noting that it is something of a misnomer to call the district court’s order in this case a “nationwide injunction.” The MPP operates only at our southern border and directs the actions of government officials only in the four States along that border. Two of those states (California and Arizona) are in the Ninth Circuit. One of those states (New Mexico) is in the Tenth Circuit. One of those states (Texas) is in the Fifth Circuit. In practical effect, the district court’s injunction, while setting aside the MPP in its entirety, does not operate nationwide.

For two mutually reinforcing reasons, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in setting aside the MPP.

INNOVATION LAW LAB V. WOLF 51

First, plaintiffs have challenged the MPP under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”). Section 706(2)(A) of the APA provides that a “reviewing court shall . . . hold unlawful and set aside agency action . . . not in accordance with law.” We held, above, that the MPP is “not in accordance with” 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b). Section 706(2)(A) directs that in a case where, as here, a reviewing court has found the agency action “unlawful,” the court “shall . . . set aside [the] agency action.” That is, in a case where § 706(2)(A) applies, there is a statutory directive—above and beyond the underlying statutory obligation asserted in the litigation—telling a reviewing court that its obligation is to “set aside” any unlawful agency action.

There is a presumption (often unstated) in APA cases that the offending agency action should be set aside in its entirety rather than only in limited geographical areas. “[W]hen a reviewing court determines that agency regulations are unlawful, the ordinary result is that rules are vacated—not that their application to the individual petitioners is proscribed.” Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 908 F3d 476, 511 (9th Cir. 2018) (internal quotation marks omitted). “When a court determines that an agency’s action failed to follow Congress’s clear mandate the appropriate remedy is to vacate that action.” Cal. Wilderness Coalition v. U.S. Dep’t of Energy, 631 F.3d 1072, 1095 (9th Cir. 2011); see also United Steel v. Mine Safety & Health Admin., 925 F.3d 1279, 1287 (D.C. Cir. 2019) (“The ordinary practice is to vacate unlawful agency action.”); Gen. Chem. Corp. v. United States, 817 F.2d 844, 848 (D.C. Cir. 1987) (“The APA requires us to vacate the agency’s decision if it is ‘arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law . . . .”).

52 INNOVATION LAW LAB V. WOLF

Second, cases implicating immigration policy have a particularly strong claim for uniform relief. Federal law contemplates a “comprehensive and unified” immigration policy. Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 401 (2012). “In immigration matters, we have consistently recognized the authority of district courts to enjoin unlawful policies on a universal basis.” E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant, 932 F.3d at 779. We wrote in Regents of the University of California, 908 F.3d at 511, “A final principle is also relevant: the need for uniformity in immigration policy. . . . Allowing uneven application of nationwide immigration policy flies in the face of these requirements.” We wrote to the same effect in Hawaii v. Trump, 878 F.3d 662, 701 (9th Cir. 2017), rev’d on other grounds, 138 S. Ct. 2392 (2018): “Because this case implicates immigration policy, a nationwide injunction was necessary to give Plaintiffs a full expression of their rights.” The Fifth Circuit, one of only two other federal circuits with states along our southern border, has held that nationwide injunctions are appropriate in immigration cases. In sustaining a nationwide injunction in an immigration case, the Fifth Circuit wrote, “[T]he Constitution requires ‘an uniform Rule of Naturalization’; Congress has instructed that ‘the immigration laws of the United States should be enforced vigorously and uniformly’; and the Supreme Court has described immigration policy as ‘a comprehensive and unified system.’” Texas v. United States, 809 F.3d 134, 187–88 (5th Cir. 2015) (emphasis in original; citations omitted). In Washington v. Trump, 847 F.3d 1151 (9th Cir. 2017), we relied on the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Texas to sustain the nationwide scope of a temporary restraining order in an immigration case. We wrote, “[W]e decline to limit the geographic scope of the TRO. The Fifth Circuit has held that such a fragmented immigration policy would run afoul of the

INNOVATION LAW LAB V. WOLF 53 constitutional and statutory requirement for uniform

immigration law and policy.” Id. at 1166–67. Conclusion

We conclude that the MPP is inconsistent with 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b), and that it is inconsistent in part with 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b). Because the MPP is invalid in its entirety due to its inconsistency with § 1225(b), it should be enjoined in its entirety. Because plaintiffs have successfully challenged the MPP under § 706(2)(A) of the APA, and because the MPP directly affects immigration into this country along our southern border, the issuance of a temporary injunction setting aside the MPP was not an abuse of discretion.

We lift the emergency stay imposed by the motions panel, and we firm the decision of the district court.

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At last, a breath of justice in halting, at least temporarily, an outrageously illegal program that is also a grotesque violation of our national values and humanity. Unfortunately, it has already resulted in thousands of injustices and damaged many lives beyond repair. That’s something that a clueless shill for authoritarianism, wanton cruelty, and abrogation of the rule of law like dissenting Judge Fernandez might want to think about.

But, hold the “victory dance.” The regime will likely seek “rehearing en banc,” appealing to other enablers of human rights atrocities like Fernandez. And, if the regime fails there, they always can “short circuit” the legal system applicable to everyone else by having Solicitor General Francisco ask his GOP buddies on the Supremes, “The JR Five,” to give the regime a free pass. As Justice Sotomayor pointed out, that type of “tilt” has already become more or less “business as usual” as the regime carries out its nativist, White Nationalist immigration agenda. Indeed, Justices Gorsuch and Thomas have already announced their eagerness to carry the regime’s water for them by doing away with nationwide injunctions, even though they are the sole way for doing justice in immigration cases like this.

But, at least for today, we can all celebrate a battle won by the New Due Process Army in the ongoing war to restore our Constitution, the rule of law, and human dignity.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-29-20

2D CIR. TO NY & SIX OTHER SO-CALLED “SANCTUARY STATES:” Tough Noogies, Trump Rules!

https://apple.news/A3IAKzyGETMeEwekcWLIIkA

Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN:

Court says Trump administration can withhold money from NYC, 7 states in ‘sanctuary cities’ fight

Updated 1:07 PM EST February 26, 2020

The Trump administration can withhold federal money from seven states, as well as New York City, over their cooperation on immigration enforcement, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The decision by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling that blocked the Justice Department from withholding a key law enforcement grant the department said was available only to cities that complied with specific immigration enforcement measures.

The federal appeals court ruling comes amid an ongoing feud between the Trump administration and so-called “sanctuary cities,” which limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. Over recent weeks, the administration has stepped up its fight against sanctuary jurisdictions and taken measures like barring New York residents from enrolling in certain Trusted Traveler programs, such as Global Entry.

Judge Reena Raggi, writing on behalf of the unanimous 3-judge panel, acknowledged the divisive nature of the issue at hand, writing: “The case implicates several of the most divisive issues confronting our country and, consequently, filling daily news headlines: national immigration policy, the enforcement of immigration laws, the status of illegal aliens in this country, and the ability of States and localities to adopt policies on such matters contrary to, or at odds with, those of the federal government.”

The city of New York is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, along with New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Virginia and Rhode Island.

In July 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that applicants for Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants would have to comply with federal immigration enforcement. States pushed back and sued over the move.

. . . .

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Read the complete article at the above link. Thanks for keeping us up to date, Priscilla! Love your timely and accessible reporting!

My “Quick Takes:”

This one is headed to the Supremes, as there is now a “Circuit split.”
Don’t expect this to have much effect on actual immigration enforcement.
- Coercing states and localities is unlikely to foster much meaningful cooperation.
- It’s more likely to simply channel resistance to the regime elsewhere.
- The affected jurisdictions always have the option of just taking a “pass” on “Byrne Grants.”
In any event, interior apprehensions are a minuscule part of the DHS civil enforcement program.
- They accounted for fewer than 100,000 removals during the last fiscal year.
- At that rate, it would take more than a century for DHS to remove the estimated 10+ million undocumented U.S residents.
On the other hand, this is a major “propaganda victory” for the regime. And, make no mistake, this was always about anti-immigrant propaganda not legitimate law enforcement.
- The Administration will be able to tout that Second Circuit Judge Reena Raggi bought their disingenuous “enforcement policy” argument “hook line and sinker.” (The DHS “Community Terrorism” program has actually been shown to inhibit legitimate law enforcement by making it much less likely that victims of domestic violence and gang crimes will report them to local law enforcement.)
- However, more thoughtful judges in the 7th Circuit and elsewhere have exposed the weaknesses of Judge Raggi’s reasoning.
It’s unlikely that the Supremes will resolve this before the November election.
- If Trump wins, the “Roberts Five” have already demonstrated their obsequiousness in the face of Trump’s war on immigrants.
- On the other hand, a Democratic Administration would be likely to withdraw this “punishment initiative” completely and try to reach a more harmonious working relationship with state and local law enforcement on immigration issues, thus “mooting” this litigation.

PWS

02-28-20

GREAT KATE: Morrissey’s Moving Journalism Shows Human Side Of Why We Have Asylum Laws & How Trump Regime’s White Nationalist Abuses Are Diminishing All of Us!

https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sandiegouniontribune.com%2Fnews%2Fimmigration%2Fstory%2F2020-02-24%2Fprotecting-the-worlds-most-vulnerable-what-it-takes-to-make-a-case-under-us-asylum-system&data=02%7C01%7Ckate.morrissey%40sduniontribune.com%7C14739620142c413da57508d7b98c07dd%7Ca42080b34dd948b4bf44d70d3bbaf5d2%7C0%7C0%7C637181883385100274&sdata=IXPR1Yk3ojZwhVRaUvfE%2BjWfBIpJ1pf2If9RNril0Ao%3D&reserved=0

Kate Morrissey writes in the first of a multi-part series in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Nicaraguan government attacks on pro-democracy protests left hundreds dead and tens of thousands living in exile. Bárbara is one of them.

By KATE MORRISSEY

FEB. 24, 2020 5:01 AM

Managua, NICARAGUA —

Bárbara never thought she would leave Nicaragua.

But early one morning, she kissed her sleeping son goodbye. She had spent the night watching him in his bed. It was almost his 10th birthday.

“Fue el peor momento de mi vida,” Bárbara said. It was the worst moment of my life.

It had been nearly a year since Bárbara had been left for dead outside her clothing store, a victim of the Nicaraguan government’s bloody campaign to silence pro-democracy protests that rose up in 2018.

She knew she had to flee, but she didn’t think she could protect her son on the notorious migrant trail. She wasn’t willing to risk him.

So the 29-year-old entrepreneur escaped north alone, putting herself at the mercy of the U.S. asylum system — a system meant to protect the world’s most vulnerable.

RETURNED: PART I

The first 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.

Para leer este reportaje en español, haga click aquí.

The San Diego Union-Tribune is not fully identifying Bárbara or many of the witnesses interviewed in Nicaragua because of the danger that the government might retaliate against them or their families.

Bárbara is in Tijuana, one of tens of thousands of people waiting for a chance to argue for protection in the United States, part of a changing wave of migration that the Trump administration has labeled a crisis.

She exists in a constant state of uncertainty, and she realizes now just how much she underestimated the challenges that still lie ahead.

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For Kate’s full article including the “original formatting” and all of the great pictures and graphics accompanying it, click on the above link that will take you to the original article on the San Diego Union-Tribune website!

Thanks, Kate, for so beautifully capturing the “heart and soul” of the refugee experience and why the Trump regime’s intentionally cruel, illegal, immoral, and dehumanizing policies are undermining our humanity as a nation and everything we should stand for. These are human lives at stake, not “numbers,” “beds,” or “apprehensions.” Success is measured in lives saved, and fair treatment of all, not “numbers turned back” or how we can “discourage” or “deter” others from seeking refuge. Our legal system should be fair and impartial, not a “weaponized tool” for nativist immigration enforcement policies. Indeed, it supposedly is there too protect all of us against such political overreach and abuses.

Interestingly, there was a time in the past when the GOP and the Reagan Administration went out of its way to help and give refuge to those Nicaraguans fleeing the Sandinistas and Daniel Ortega. The Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (“NACARA”), one of the best, most effective, and most efficient pieces of immigration legislation ever passed, was a result of bipartisan support for providing permanent relief to Nicaraguans, El Salvadorans, and Guatemalans fleeing the mess in Central American that our Government played a significant role in creating. Some off those fleeing Cuba and Eastern Europe also were covered. Now, under the influence of Trump, neo-fascist Stephen Miller, and the rest of the White Nationalist nativist gang, this GOP-led regime simply turns its back on vulnerable refugees like Barbara, the human carnage resulting from Ortega’s misrule of Nicaragua.

Perhaps in the future, Kate will put it all together in a book. Hope so!

PWS

02-27-20

AMERICA’S HOMEGROWN TORTURERS: Physicians For Human Rights Confirms What Many of Us Have Been Saying For Years: Trump Regime Tortures Families With Children With Impunity!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/25/trump-family-separations-children-torture-psychology?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

The trauma Donald Trump’s administration caused to young children and parents separated at the US-Mexico border constitutes torture, according to evaluations of 26 children and adults by the group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).

The not-for-profit group’s report provides the first in-depth look at the psychological impact of family separation, which the US government continued despite warnings from the nation’s top medical bodies.

“As a clinician, nobody was prepared for this to happen on our soil,” the report co-author Dr Ranit Mishori, senior medical adviser at PHR, told the Guardian. “It is beyond shocking that this could happen in the United States, by Americans, at the instruction and direct intention of US government officials.”

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Legal experts have argued family separation constituted torture, but this is the first time a medical group has reached the determination.

PHR volunteer psychiatrists evaluated 17 adults and nine children who had been separated between 30 to 90 days. Most met the criteria for at least one mental health condition, including post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder or generalized anxiety disorder “consistent with, and likely linked to, the trauma of family separation”, according to the report.

Not only did the brutal family separation policy create trauma, it was intensified by the families’ previous exposure to violence on their journey to the US and in their home countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

All but two of the adults evaluated by PHR said they had received death threats in their home countries and 14 out of the 17 adults said they were targeted by drug cartels. All were fearful their child would be harmed or killed if they remained at home.

Almost all the children had been drugged, kidnapped, poisoned or threatened by gangs before they left. One mother told investigators she moved her daughter to different schools in El Salvador several times so gang members couldn’t find her and kill her.

In the face of these threats, parents tried to move within the country, change their phone numbers, meet extortion demands and go silent on social media. Ultimately, however, the report said: “Parents were confident that the journey to the United States would result in protection for their children.”

This is not what happened at the border.

The Trump administration instituted a policy in April 2018 that formally enabled the mass separation of children and parents at the US-Mexico border. Trump ended the policy in June 2018, but it has since been revealed that the administration separated thousands of families before and after the policy was in place.

There was also no system to reunite the families, according to an internal government watchdog. The Trump administration also ignored warnings from the nation’s leading medical organizations that family separation would traumatize children and adults.

How Trump’s immigration policies hurt people’s lives – in pictures

People who experience trauma, especially as children, have higher rates of medical conditions such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. They also have an increased risk of psychiatric disorders and detrimental coping behaviors such as alcohol and drug abuse.

“Something like that does not just resolve once you’re reunified with your parents, it’s something you carry with you possibly forever,” Mishori said.

One Honduran father described how badly his son reacted the four times a psychologist came to their apartment for treatment in the report: “Each time the son would refuse to cooperate and would throw things at the therapist … It appears his son was afraid of strangers, afraid they will take him away from his father.”

Kathryn Hampton, a senior officer in PHR’s asylum program, said the group PHR had assessed was small but represented separated families from different detention centers and foster homes across the country over a two-year period.

“This is a really disparate group of people and yet their stories are practically identical,” said Hampton. “So that’s very disturbing, to see that level of consistency.”

Amid the despair, PHR has seen an outpouring of support in money and volunteers. Hampton said since the beginning of 2018, its Asylum Network had more than doubled to 1,700 clinicians who provide free medical and psychological evaluations to asylum seekers. There were also three times as many medical school clinics partnering with the organization in that period.

Dr Stuart Lustig, a California-based psychiatrist and longtime volunteer, evaluated a seven-year-old girl from Guatemala. He said when he and the girl did a common evaluation tool called the Squiggle Test, she had one of the more inhibited reactions he had seen in 20 years.

“These kinds of separations were filled with uncertainty, there was no information about where people are going, so it is not surprising at all that these separations ended up being extremely traumatizing for kids and parents,” Lustig said.

In November, a federal court ordered the US to compensate for the trauma separated families faced at the hands of the government. Lustig said there were many treatment options for children who experienced this deep level of trauma in the US, but he and PHR were concerned about how these families would have access to them.

Lustig said: “Part of the work is simply building trust in humanity again.”

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We are diminishing ourselves as a nation; but, in the end, it won’t stop human migration. While the purpose of torture is dehumanization and degradation of the “other,” torture actually increases the humanity of its victims while dehumanizing the torturers and their enablers.

It’s also worthy remembering the next time “Big Mac With Lies,” Nielsen, Kelly, ”Gonzo” Sessions and other noted torturers want to “clean up their images” and capitalize on their misdeeds by speaking to an organization to which you belong or attend. Remember who they REALLY are beneath their facades: unpunished perpetrators of “Crimes Against Humanity.”

PWS

02-26-20

“KILLER ON THE ROAD” – EMBOLDENED BY THE COMPLICITY OF THE “ROBERTS’ COURT,” GOP ABDICATION OF LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT, & BREAKDOWN OF DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS AND VALUES, REGIME APPARENTLY PLANNING EXTRALEGAL MOVE TO KILL MORE OF THE MOST VULNERABLE REFUGEES – Refugee Women, Children, LGBTQ Community, Victims Of Government-Enabled Gangs Said To Among Targets of Miller/Trump White Nationalist “American Death Squads!”

Dead Refugee Child Washes Ashore in Turkey — Stephen Miller Hopes To Kill More Refugees in The Americas

Stephen Miller & Wife — Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Miller Look Forward to Planning Together for More “Crimes Against Humanity” Targeting World’s Most Vulnerable Refugees

“KILLER ON THE ROAD” – EMBOLDENED BY THE COMPLICITY OF THE “ROBERTS’ COURT,” GOP ABDICATION OF LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT, & BREAKDOWN OF DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS AND VALUES, REGIME APPARENTLY PLANNING EXTRALEGAL MOVE TO KILL MORE OF THE MOST VULNERABLE REFUGEES – Refugee Women, Children, LGBTQ Community, Victims Of Government-Enabled Gangs Said To Among Targets of Miller/Trump White Nationalist “American Death Squads!”

“There’s a killer on the road
His brain is squirmin’ like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If ya give this man a ride
Sweet memory will die
Killer on the road, yeah”

— From “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors (1971)

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

Feb. 24, 2019

I have been getting “unverified hearsay” reports from Courtside readers and others across the country that an emboldened and now totally unrestrained Trump regime actively is planning an all-out extralegal, extrajudicial onslaught against established asylum laws. It’s likely to claim the lives of many of the most vulnerable and deserving asylum seekers in the United States.

Predictably, this atrocious attack on humanity and human dignity is the “brainchild” of newly married neo-fascist White Nationalist hate monger Stephen Miller. Although unconfirmed, these reports have come from diverse enough sources and sound so consistent with the regime’s nativist, xenophobic approach to asylum that I, for one, give them credence. It’s time to start sounding the alarm for the regime’s latest vile assault on the rule of law and our common humanity!

I have gleaned that there is a 200-page anti-asylum screed floating around the bowels of the regime’s immigration bureaucracy representing more or less the nativist version of the “final solution” for asylum seekers. The gist of this monumental effort boils down along these lines:

[W]ould ban the grant of asylum claims involving PSGs defined solely by criminal activity, terrorist activity, persecutory actions, presence in country with generally high crime rates, attempted recruitment by criminal, terrorist, persecutors, perception of wealth, interpersonal disputes which government were not aware of or involved in and do not extend countrywide; private criminal acts which government was not aware of and do not extend countrywide; status as returned from U.S. and gender. Note the inclusion of “gender” at the end.

Thus, in one “foul swoop” the regime would illegally: 1) strip women and the LGBTQ community of their decades-long, hard-won rights to protection under asylum laws; 2) eliminate the current rebuttable regulatory “presumption of countrywide future persecution” for those who have suffered past persecution; 3) reverse decades of well-established U.S. and international rulings that third party actions that the government was unwilling or unable to protect against constitute persecution; and 4) encourage adjudicators to ignore the legal requirement to consider “mixed motivation” in deciding asylum cases.

There is neither legal nor moral justification for this intentional distortion and rewriting of established human rights principles. Indeed, in my experience of more than two decades as a judge at both the appellate and trial levels, a substantial number, perhaps a majority, of the successful asylum and/or withholding of removal claims in Immigration Court involved non-governmental parties and/or gender-based “particular social groups.” They were some of the clearest, most deserving, and easiest to grant asylum cases coming before the Immigration Courts.

At the “pre-Trump” Arlington Immigration Court, many of these cases were so well-documented and clearly “grantable” that they were “pre-tried” by the parties and moved up on my docket by “joint motion” for “short hearing” grants. This, in turn, encouraged and rewarded multiparty cooperation and judicial efficiency. It was “due process with efficiency, in action.”

Consequently, in addition to its inherent lawlessness, cruelty, and intentional inhumanity, the regime’s proposed actions will stymie professional cooperation between parties and inhibit judicial efficiency. This is just one of many ways in which the regime has used a combination of wanton cruelty and “malicious incompetence” to artificially “jack up” the Immigration Court backlog to over 1.3 million pending and “waiting” cases, even with the hiring of hundreds of additional Immigration Judges.

In a functioning democracy, with an independent judiciary, staffed by judges with knowledge, integrity, and courage, you might expect a timely judicial intervention to block this impending legal travesty and humanitarian disaster as soon as it becomes effective. But, as Justice Sotomayor recently pointed out in a blistering dissent, Chief Justice Roberts and his four GOP colleagues appear to have “tilted” in favor of the regime.

They can’t roll over and bend the laws fast enough to “greenlight” each new immigrant-bashing gimmick instituted by the regime. Moreover, as I’m sure is intended, once these new anti-asylum regulations are railroaded into force, the USCIS Asylum Offices will deny “credible fear” in nearly all cases, thus preventing most asylum applicants from even getting a day in court to properly challenge the regulations. All this will happen while the life-tenured Article III Courts look the other way.

For Stephen Miller, the coming Armageddon for defenseless asylum seekers must represent the ultimate triumph of fascism over democracy, hate over reason, and racism over tolerance. Miller was recently quoted in a New Yorker article about how screwing asylum applicants, and presumably knowing that they and their families would suffer and die, be tortured, or be otherwise harmed by his unlawful acts, was, in effect, his “life’s dream.” “It’s just that this is all I care about. I don’t have a family. I don’t have anything else. This is my life,” said Miller after a meeting in which he had promoted a fraudulent “Safe Third Country Agreement” with El Salvador, a country he acknowledged was without a functioning asylum system.” https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/stephen-miller-immigration-this-is-my-life.html.

It appears that even Miller’s forlorn “love life” has taken an upturn. Although the Trump Administration has been a “coming out party” for racists, White Nationalists, and White Supremacists of all stripes, the “hater dater circuit” has remained somewhat “restricted.” Evidently, not everyone “gets off” on the chance to get “up close and personal” with “wannabe war criminals.”

Nevertheless, in the middle of all the suffering he has caused, Miller finally found somebody who apparently hates and despises humanity just as much as he does, in Vice Presidential Press Secretary Katie Waldman. They were recently married at the Trump Hotel in D.C. with the “Hater-in-Chief” himself attending the festivities. How can America “get any greater,” particularly if you have the good fortune not to be a refugee condemned to rape, torture, abuse, family separation, beatings, disfiguration, burning, cutting, extortion or other horribles by this cruel, scofflaw, and “maliciously incompetent” regime?

COMPLICITY WATCH: Justice Sonia Sotomayor Calls Out “Men In Black” For Perverting Rules To Advance Trump/Miller White Nationalist Nativist Immigration Agenda!

Mark Joseph Stern
Reporter, Slate

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/sotomayor-trump-wealth-test-bias-dissent.html

Mark Joseph Stern reports for Slate:

. . . .

Put simply: When some of the most despised and powerless among us ask the Supreme Court to spare their lives, the conservative justices turn a cold shoulder. When the Trump administration demands permission to implement some cruel, nativist, and potentially unlawful immigration restrictions, the conservatives bend over backward to give it everything it wants. There is nothing “fair and balanced” about the court’s double standard that favors the government over everyone else. And, as Sotomayor implies, this flagrant bias creates the disturbing impression that the Trump administration has a majority of the court in its pocket.

Read the full article at the above link.

Here’s a link to Justice Sotomayor’s full dissent in Wolf v. Cook County:

SotomayorPublicChargeDissetn19a905_7m48

Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Here’s a “key quote” from Justice Sotomayor’s dissent:

These facts—all of which undermine the Government’s assertion of irreparable harm—show two things, one about the Government’s conduct and one about this Court’s own. First, the Government has come to treat “th[e] exceptional mechanism” of stay relief “as a new normal.” Barr v. East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting from grant of stay) (slip op., at 5). Claiming one emergency after another, the Government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases, demanding immediate attention and consuming lim- ited Court resources in each. And with each successive ap- plication, of course, its cries of urgency ring increasingly hollow. Indeed, its behavior relating to the public-charge

6 WOLF v. COOK COUNTY SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

rule in particular shows how much its own definition of ir- reparable harm has shifted. Having first sought a stay in the New York cases based, in large part, on the purported harm created by a nationwide injunction, it now disclaims that rationale and insists that the harm is its temporary inability to enforce its goals in one State.

Second, this Court is partly to blame for the breakdown in the appellate process. That is because the Court—in this case, the New York cases, and many others—has been all too quick to grant the Government’s “reflexiv[e]” requests. Ibid. But make no mistake: Such a shift in the Court’s own behavior comes at a cost.

Stay applications force the Court to consider important statutory and constitutional questions that have not been ventilated fully in the lower courts, on abbreviated timeta- bles and without oral argument. They upend the normal appellate process, putting a thumb on the scale in favor of the party that won a stay. (Here, the Government touts that in granting a stay in the New York cases, this Court “necessarily concluded that if the court of appeals were to uphold the preliminary injunctio[n], the Court likely would grant a petition for a writ of certiorari” and that “there was a fair prospect the Court would rule in favor of the govern- ment.” Application 3.) They demand extensive time and resources when the Court’s intervention may well be unnec- essary—particularly when, as here, a court of appeals is poised to decide the issue for itself.

Perhaps most troublingly, the Court’s recent behavior on stay applications has benefited one litigant over all others. This Court often permits executions—where the risk of ir- reparable harm is the loss of life—to proceed, justifying many of those decisions on purported failures “to raise any potentially meritorious claims in a timely manner.” Mur- phy v. Collier, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (second statement of KAVANAUGH, J.) (slip op., at 4); see also id., at ___ (ALITO, J., joined by THOMAS and GORSUCH, JJ., dissenting from grant of stay) (slip op., at 6) (“When courts do not have ad- equate time to consider a claim, the decisionmaking process may be compromised”); cf. Dunn v. Ray, 586 U. S. ___ (2019) (overturning the grant of a stay of execution). Yet the Court’s concerns over quick decisions wither when prodded by the Government in far less compelling circumstances— where the Government itself chose to wait to seek relief, and where its claimed harm is continuation of a 20-year status quo in one State. I fear that this disparity in treatment erodes the fair and balanced decision making process that this Court must strive to protect.

I respectfully dissent.

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

Of course, the regime’s use of manufactured and clearly bogus “national emergencies” or fake appeals to “national security” is a perversion of both fact and law, as well as a mocking of Constitutional separation of powers. This obscenely transparent legal ruse essentially was invited by the Roberts and his GOP brethren. Roberts somewhat disingenuously claims to be a “student of history.” But, whether he takes responsibility for it or not, he has basically invited Trump & Miller to start a new “Reichstag Fire” almost every week with migrants, asylum seekers, Latinos, and the less affluent as the “designated usual suspects.”

Powerful as her dissent is, Justice Sotomayor actually understates the case against her GOP colleagues. Every racist, White Nationalist, nativist, and/or authoritarian movement in American history has been enabled, advanced, and protected by morally corrupt and intellectually dishonest jurists who have intentionally provided “legal cover” for those official misdeeds. How about “states rights,” “separate but equal,” “plenary power,” and a host of other now discredited legal doctrines used to justify everything from slavery to denying voting, and other Constitutional rights including life itself to African Americans? They were all used to “cover” for actions that might more properly have been considered “crimes against humanity.”

Who knows what legal blather Roberts and his four fellow rightist toadies will come up with to further promote the destruction of humanity and the disintegration of American democracy at the hands of Trump, Miller, Barr, Putin, and the rest of the gang?

But, courageous “outings” like those by Justice Sotomayor will help insure that history will be able to trace the bloody path of needless deaths, ruined lives, wasted human potential, official hate mongering, and unspeakable human misery they are unleashing directly to their doors and hold them accountable in a way that our current system has disgracefully failed to do.

Trump was right about at least one thing: There are indeed “GOP Justices” on the Supremes wholly owned by him and his party. They consistently put GOP rightist ideology and and authoritarianism above the Constitution, human rights, the rule of law, intellectual honesty, and simple human decency. Other than that, they’re a “great bunch of guys!”

Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

02-22-20

U.S. JUDGE IN ARIZONA FINDS THAT REGIME’S BORDER PATROL VIOLATES CONSTITUTION WITH GROSS CONDITIONS IN DETENTION FACILITIES! – Putting Humans In “Iceboxes” Is “Punitive” – Duh!

Raphael Carranza
Mexican Border Reporter
Arizona Republic

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2020/02/19/us-mexico-border-patrol-judge-sides-migrants-holding-cells-arizona/4812296002/

Rafael Carranza, The Republic | azcentral.com

TUCSON — A federal judge in Tucson ruled that the temporary U.S. Border Patrol holding facilities for migrants detained in southeastern Arizona, sometimes known as hieleras or iceboxes,”are presumptively punitive and violate the Constitution.”

U.S. District Judge David Bury issued his ruling on Wednesday granting plaintiffs a permanent injunction with additional requirements for Border Patrol.

The ruling follows a seven-day trial last month detailing overcrowding, inadequate food and medical care, as well as prolonged detention for migrants arrested in the Tucson Sector, which covers Cochise, Santa Cruz and Pima counties.

“The Plaintiffs, who are civil detainees in (Customs and Border Protection) holding cells, face conditions of confinement after 12 hours which are substantially worse than detainees face upon commitment to either a civil immigration detention facility or even a criminal detention facility, like a jail or prison,” the judge’s ruling said.

Follow Arizona politics? Our reporters stay on top of it all. Subscribe now to azcentral.com.

Bury said the “undisputed” evidence showed criminal inmates in jails and even migrants in longer-term civil detention are kept in better conditions than migrants in Border Patrol custody, including “an opportunity for uninterrupted sleep,” a second layer of clothing to keep warm, and a greater variety of food beyond frozen burritos, juice and crackers.

As part of the permanent injunction, the court ordered the Border Patrol to not hold migrants who have already been processed for more than 48 hours after they were initially booked.

The only circumstances under which Border Patrol can hold migrants for an extra 24 hours is “unless and until CBP can provide conditions of confinement that meet detainees’ basic human needs for sleeping in a bed with a blanket, a shower, food that meets acceptable dietary standards, potable water, and medical assessment performed by a medical professional,” Bury said.

By law, the Border Patrol is allowed to hold migrants for up to 72 hours at its holding facilities before transferring them to another federal agency, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

During the trial, Border Patrol officials testified about the challenges they face in meeting that legal standard.

The average time in custody for migrants in 2019 was nearly 54 hours, according to the agency. But of the nearly 63,000 migrants processed in the Tucson Sector that year, more than 12,000 were held longer than the 72 hours allowed.

In 2016, Bury issued an injunction requiring Border Patrol officials in Tucson to provide clean sleeping mats and Mylar blankets to migrants held for longer than 12 hours.

The court added requirements forbidding migrants from sleeping around toilet areas of holding cells, noting that “being forced to sleep in a toilet area due to overcrowding offends the notions of common decency; it is unsanitary and degrading for all detainees who either have to sleep in the toilet area or try to use the toilet when others are sleeping there,” the ruling stated.

One of the witnesses during the trial, a 20-year-old woman from Honduras, described her experience in Border Patrol detention in April 2019. Identified as Witness B, the woman was pregnant at the time and talked about how she was nauseous and vomiting while in detention.

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During the time she was in custody, she slept in a holding room so crowded that the only space to lay down was next to the toilet, she described on Wednesday during a conference call where she was joined by the attorneys who represented her in the case.

“That whole night I was vomiting, I felt really sick. I was very worried because I didn’t know how my baby was doing,” the woman said. “Then they took me to the hospital, there they treated me and they told me that my baby was doing OK.”

After she was released from the hospital, agents returned her to a holding cell, where she said she continued feeling sick. Agents didn’t give her the medication doctors had prescribed until the morning she left the Border Patrol facility, she said.

Bury’s ruling notably found no evidence that Border Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, had purposely created the punitive conditions. Instead, he pointed out that the agency has stretched resources to “provide the best conditions” under current circumstances.

“A presumption, however, exists that the challenged conditions of confinement are punitive because, in the context of CBP operations, there is no legitimate governmental interest for the extended detentions currently occurring at CBP facilities,” the ruling said.

The judge further defined what type of showers Border Patrol needs to allow migrants to take. “A shower is a bath in which water is showered (as in to wet with a spray, fine stream, or drops) on the body,” the ruling said. “A ‘paper-shower’ or ‘shower-wipe,’ by definition, is not a shower.”

Border Patrol officials from the Tucson Sector did not respond to a request for comment.

The legal advocacy groups and private law firms that filed the lawsuit in 2015 celebrated Bury’s decision Wednesday, pointing to potential implications beyond the Tucson Sector.

Ruling BP Conditions Lawsuit by Joshua Ling on Scribd

“What the Constitution requires for individuals who are held in a pre-trial capacity, that has a much broader implication,” said Caroline Walters of the American Immigration Council, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit. “What the judge’s decision did today is sort of lay the groundwork for what these minimum standards should be.”

Walters said the group expects to hear more detail from Bury about implementing his permanent injunction.

“After several years we’re seeing that CBP has not changed the way that it treats people in confinement unless a court orders it,” said Alvaro Huerta, a staff attorney with the National Immigration Law Center. “And so we’re ecstatic that the court has finally recognized and made CBP change the way that it’s going to do its work.”

The Honduran woman who testified in court said she felt good knowing her testimony helped convince the judge to require the U.S. government to improve conditions for migrants like her.

“A lot of people from my country are still coming here because of the situation we are going through in my country,” she said. “So I feel really happy knowing that they will have better conditions.”

Vice President Mike Pence toured a Border Patrol facility in Texas after reports that migrants detained are being held in dangerous conditions. USA TODAY

Have any news tips or story ideas about the U.S.-Mexico border? Reach the reporter at rafael.carranza@arizonarepublic.com, or follow him on Twitter at @RafaelCarranza.

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

Here’s Judge Bury’s order:

https://www.scribd.com/document/447870402/Ruling-BP-Conditions-Lawsuit#from_embed

So, under Trump we treat asylum seekers worse than convicted criminals. But, don’t worry. Enabled by the Article III Courts, the regime is reducing the Gulag population and shrinking “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico” by simply abrogating asylum laws and the Constitution and sending folks to Guatemala, a dangerous country with no functioning asylum system, where they won’t get a fair chance to apply for asylum and will either be forced back to the countries they fled or forced to fend for themselves in a failed state. https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/remain-in-mexico-deportation-asylum-guatemala/2020/02/20/9c29f53e-4eb7-11ea-9b5c-eac5b16dafaa_story.html

Some might survive, some won’t. But, we don’t really care because it’s “out of sight, out of mind.”

I actually think that Judge Bury got part of this case wrong by incorrectly absolving the Border Patrol of intentionally abusing these individuals. Wrong! Essentially, this is the old “Good enough for Government work” cop out.

There are always alternatives to unconstitutional and punitive detention. The most obvious being releasing folks on bond if there is no constitutionally compliant alternative. Like other Government employees, Border Patrol Officers take an oath to uphold the Constitution. When tasked by the regime with carrying out Constitutional abuses, they actually have a duty to “just say no” even if that means resigning their jobs.

And, on a larger scale, it’s clear that the regime has chosen to waste money on unneeded and unauthorized walls, unneeded detention, frivolous legal actions, and details of Border Patrol personnel to punish cities that won’t go along with some of their unlawful behavior. That money could and should have been used to improve detention conditions to meet constitutional minimums. In simple terms, the regime made a conscious choice to violate the Constitution as part of its illegal and immoral “deterrence” program. It’s time for Article III Courts to stop enabling and papering over false, illegal “choices” by a scofflaw Administration.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-21-20

HERE’S A SEPARATE LETTER ON THE URGENT NEED FOR AN ARTICLE I U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT THAT I SENT TO MY SENATORS AND CONGRESSMAN TODAY!

Sent to Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), and Representative Don Beyer (D-VA) and a few others today:

Dear

RE: Independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court

As an American, human being, taxpayer, and retired career civil servant, I am outraged at the totally unconstitutional and maliciously incompetent destruction of due process and the rule of law, not to mention simple human decency, in our U.S. Immigration Courts by the Department of Justice and the Trump Administration. They have created unprecedented dysfunction and grotesque unfairness.

The current mess, with already record low and plummeting morale and an out of control, largely self-created backlog of more than 1.3 million cases, serves neither the human beings condemned to its daily injustices and intentional degradations of humanity nor the legitimate needs of DHS enforcement. The latter should not be confused with the many outright lies and intentionally false narratives about the need for massive, counterproductive, fiscally wasteful, and intentionally cruel immigration enforcement spread by this Administration. I call on you to join your colleagues in supporting bipartisan legislation to create an independent, Article I U.S. Immigration Court as one of our highest and most pressing national priorities.

I have been involved in the field of immigration, law enforcement, refugees, and human rights for 47 years. More than 35 of those years were spent at the U.S. Department of Justice, where I worked under both Republican and Democratic Administrations. Indeed, as a career Senior Executive under the Reagan Administration, I helped create the Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”) to house the Immigration Courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”).

Our aim then was to increase judicial independence, due process, fundamental fairness, and professionalism. The Department that I loyally served bears no resemblance whatsoever to the unbelievable ethical and legal morass that now exists under Bill Barr, one of the three most totally unmqualified individuals to hold that post during my lifetime (the others being convicted felon John Mitchell and notorious White Nationalist enforcement zealot Jeff Sessions, who was primarily responsible for the Administration’s cruel and unconstitutional “child separation” program).

Prior to my retirement on June 30, 2019, I spent 13 years as an Immigration Judge at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia. Before that, I was a Board Member and Appellate Immigration Judge at the BIA, for eight years, the first six as BIA Chair. I also spent more than a decade at the “Legacy Immigration & Naturalization Service,” (“INS”) where as Deputy General Counsel, and Acting General Counsel during portions of the Carter and Reagan Administrations, I was responsible for the overall operation of the nationwide legal program, including all representation before the Immigration Courts and the BIA. I have also practiced immigration law as a partner at the D.C. Office of Jones Day and as managing partner of the D.C. Office of Fragomen.

I currently teach Immigration Law & Policy as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law, as well as making numerous speeches and other public appearances, and publishing my own blog, immigrationcourtside.com. I am a proud member of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, a voluntary organization, with more than 40 former judges as members, committed to filing amicus briefs, public statements, and taking part in educational efforts intended to increase public and judicial understanding of the Immigration Courts and to promote an essential restoration of due process and fundamental fairness as its focus.

I know of few, if any, other participants in the current “immigration dialogue,” who have personally been involved in more cases either helping deserving individuals achieve legal status under our laws or, conversely, ordering the removal of individuals found not to qualify to remain here under our laws. In other words, I know what I’m talking about, much of it from face to face encounters with individuals on all sides of the issue in Immigration Court, as well as years of experience in shaping national immigration policy and legislation in both the public and private sectors.

I have had to personally deliver to individuals and their families the “bad news” that I was required by the law to return them to countries where I had little doubt that they would suffer torture, rape, dehumanization, or even death. It’s a sobering experience not shared by most of those clueless demagogues now bragging about how “success” should be measured by our ability to inflict more unnecessary cruelty and inhumanity on some of the most vulnerable individuals in the world and how “court efficiency” means nothing other than assembly line removals with neither due process nor fundamental fairness.

What’s happening now in our Immigration Courts is a travesty and a national catastrophe. It is wrong, from a Constitutional, legal, and moral standpoint. It eventually will join Jim Crow as one of the most heinous abuses of legal authority and human rights in modern American legal history. Surely, we all want to be on “the right side of history” on this fundamental issue.

Today, many NGOs involved in justice, immigration, and human rights launched a “twitter storm” to raise awareness of the tragic abuses of the legal system going on at the Administration’s instigation daily in our failed and unconscionably “weaponized” Immigration Courts. Innocent lives are literally being lost and families and futures ruined while we stand by and watch. America’s future as a great nation and “beacon of hope” for the rest of the world is literally being dissolved and washed down the drain.

Please take time to read the detailed letter that our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges signed, along with the American Immigration Lawyers Association and 53 other distinguished non-governmental organizations, demanding an end to the abusive Immigration Courts under DOJ control and the establishment of a constitutionally required independent Immigration Court that will insure due process and fundamental fairness as required by our Constitution.

That letter may be found at this link: https://www.aila.org/advo-media/aila-correspondence/2020/advocates-call-on-congress-establish-independent

Also, if you have not already done so, I urge you to read the letter signed by me and more than 2,500 other former DOJ officials deploring the corruption and unethical behavior that Bill Barr has “normalized” at the DOJ and demanding his resignation.

That letter may be found at this link: https://medium.com/@dojalumni/doj-alumni-statement-on-the-events-surrounding-the-sentencing-of-roger-stone-c2cb75ae4937

American justice is facing an existential crisis resulting from this Administration’s weaponization and maliciously incompetent management of what is perhaps our biggest, and certainly most important in terms of human lives and American’s future in the world, court systems: The Immigration Courts. When these courts finally implode under the Trump Administration’s continued abuses, they will take with them a large portion of our American justice system and that which makes America different from the rest of the world.

I should know – I dealt with the human wreckage caused by the failure of courts and justice systems in other countries nearly every working day for more than four decades. This Administration has turned our once-proud Immigration Courts into a “parody of justice” usually found in third-world dictatorships or authoritarian states where due process is but a mirage.

Therefore, I respectfully ask for your support in creating an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court. Due Process Forever!

With my thanks and very best wishes,

Paul Wickham Schmidt

U.S. Immigration Judge (Retired)

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

PWS

02-19-20

COMPLICITY HAS COSTS: Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/18/judges-meeting-trump/

Fred Barbash
Legal Reporter
Washington Post

Fred Barbash reports for the WashPost:

By

Fred Barbash

Feb. 18, 2020 at 3:16 a.m. EST

The head of the Federal Judges Association is taking the extraordinary step of calling an emergency meeting to address the intervention in politically sensitive cases by President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe, the Philadelphia-based judge who heads the voluntary association of around 1,100 life-term federal judges, told USA Today that the issue “could not wait.” The association, founded in 1982, ordinarily concerns itself with matters of judicial compensation and legislation affecting the federal judiciary.

Republicans defend Barr as Klobuchar looks forward to testimony

Lawmakers and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway commented Feb. 16 on President Trump’s tweets and the conduct of Attorney General William P. Barr. (The Washington Post)

On Sunday, more than 1,100 former Justice Department employees released a public letter calling on Barr to resign over the Stone case.

More than 1,100 ex-Justice Department officials call for Barr’s resignation

A search of news articles since the group’s creation revealed nothing like a meeting to deal with the conduct of a president or attorney general.

Rufe, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, could not be reached for comment late Monday.

The action follows a week of turmoil that included the president tweeting his outrage over the length of sentence recommended by career federal prosecutors for his friend Roger Stone and the decision by Barr to withdraw that recommendation.

In between, Trump singled out the judge in the Stone case, Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court in Washington, for personal attacks, accusing her of bias and spreading a falsehood about her record.

“There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about,” Rufe said to USA Today. “We’ll talk all this through.”

Trump began disparaging federal judges who have ruled against his interests before he took office, starting with U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel. After Curiel ruled against Trump in 2016 in a pair of lawsuits detailing predatory marketing practices at Trump University in San Diego, Trump described him as “a hater of Donald Trump,” adding that he believed the Indiana-born judge was “Mexican.”

Trump keeps lashing out at judges

President Trump has a history of denouncing judges over rulings that have negatively affected him personally as well as his administration’s policies. (Drea Cornejo/The Washington Post)

Faced with more than 100 adverse rulings in the federal courts, Trump has continued verbal attacks on judges.

Rufe’s comments gave no hint of what the association could or would do in response.

Some individual judges have already spoken out critically about Trump’s attacks generally, among them U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, a colleague of Jackson’s in Washington, and most recently, the chief judge of the court in Washington, Beryl A. Howell.

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

In reality, judges were among those inside Germany who might have effectively challenged Hitler’s authority, the legitimacy of the Nazi regime, and the hundreds of laws that restricted political freedoms, civil rights, and guarantees of property and security. And yet, the overwhelming majority did not. Instead, over the 12 years of Nazi rule, during which time judges heard countless cases, most not only upheld the law but interpreted it in broad and far-reaching ways that facilitated, rather than hindered, the Nazis ability to carry out their agenda.

— United States Holocaust Museum, Law, Justice, and the Holocaust, at 8 (July 2018)

How soon we forget!

Will Trump & Barr eventually separate Article III Judges’ families or send them to danger zones in Mexico or the Northern Triangle to “deter” rulings against the regime? Will Mark Morgan and Chad Wolf then declare “victory?” Will their families be scattered to various parts of the “New American Gulag” with no plans to reunite them? Will they be put on trial for their lives without access to lawyers? Are there costs for failing to take a “united stand” for the rule of law, Constitutional Due Process, human rights, and the human dignity of the most vulnerable among us?

Why does it take the case of a lifetime sleaze-ball like Roger Stone to get the “life-tenured ones” to “wake up” to the attacks on humanity and the rule of law going on under noses for the past three years?

Complicity has costs!

Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

02-18-20

FORMER BUSH I DEPUTY AG DON AYER CALLS FOR BARR’S RESIGNATION OR REMOVAL — “The attorney general is working to destroy the integrity and independence of the Justice Department, in order to make Donald Trump a president who can operate above the law.”

https://apple.news/AxUGOQnj8TbqfGGihMbzmng

Don Ayer writes in The Atlantic:

When Donald Trump chose Bill Barr to serve as attorney general in December 2018, even some moderates and liberals greeted the choice with optimism. One exuberant Democrat described him as “an excellent choice,” who could be counted on to “stand up for the department’s institutional prerogatives and … push back on any improper attempt to inject politics into its work.”

At the end of his first year of service, Barr’s conduct has shown that such expectations were misplaced. Beginning in March with his public whitewashing of Robert Mueller’s report, which included powerful evidence of repeated obstruction of justice by the president, Barr has appeared to function much more as the president’s personal advocate than as an attorney general serving the people and government of the United States. Among the most widely reported and disturbing events have been Barr’s statements that a judicially authorized FBI investigation amounted to “spying” on the Trump campaign, and his public rejection in December of the inspector general’s considered conclusion that the Russia probe was properly initiated and overseen in an unbiased manner. Also quite unsettling was Trump’s explicit mention of Barr and Rudy Giuliani in the same breath in his July 25 phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, as individuals the Ukrainian president should speak with regarding the phony investigation that Ukraine was expected to publicly announce.

Still more troubling has been Barr’s intrusion, apparently for political reasons, into the area of Justice Department action that most demands scrupulous integrity and strict separation from politics and other bias—invocation of the criminal sanction. When Barr initiated a second, largely redundant investigation of the FBI Russia probe in May, denominated it criminal, and made clear that he is personally involved in carrying it out, many eyebrows were raised.

But worst of all have been the events of the past week. The evenhanded conduct of the prosecutions of Roger Stone and Michael Flynn by experienced Department of Justice attorneys have been disrupted at the 11th hour by the attorney general’s efforts to soften the consequences for the president’s associates. More generally, it appears that Barr has recently identified a group of lawyers whom he trusts and put them in place to oversee and second-guess the work of the department’s career attorneys on a broader range of cases. And there is no comfort from any of this in Barr’s recent protests about the president’s tweeting. He in no way suggested he was changing course, only that it is hard to appear independent when the president is publicly calling for him to follow the path he is on.

Bad as they are, these examples are more symptoms than causes of Barr’s unfitness for office. The fundamental problem is that he does not believe in the central tenet of our system of government—that no person is above the law. In chilling terms, Barr’s own words make clear his long-held belief in the need for a virtually autocratic executive who is not constrained by countervailing powers within our government under the constitutional system of checks and balances.

Indeed, given our national faith and trust in a rule of law no one can subvert, it is not too strong to say that Bill Barr is un-American. And now, from his perch as attorney general, he is in the midst of a root-and-branch attack on the core principles that have guided our justice system, and especially our Department of Justice, since the 1970s.

. . . .

The benefit of the doubt that many were ready to extend to Barr a year ago—as among the best of a bad lot of nominees who had previously served in high office without disgrace—has now run out. He has told us in great detail who he is, what he believes, and where he would like to take us. For whatever twisted reasons, he believes that the president should be above the law, and he has as his foil in pursuit of that goal a president who, uniquely in our history, actually aspires to that status. And Barr has acted repeatedly on those beliefs in ways that are more damaging at every turn. Presently he is moving forward with active misuse of the criminal sanction, as one more tool of the president’s personal interests.

Bill Barr’s America is not a place that anyone, including Trump voters, should want to go. It is a banana republic where all are subject to the whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen. To prevent that, we need a public uprising demanding that Bill Barr resign immediately, or failing that, be impeached.

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Read Don’s full article at the link.

I always liked and respected Don Ayer. We worked together on a few projects at the DOJ and were partners together at Jones Day in the 1990s.

I’m sure that, like others, I was a guilty of giving Billy Barr “the benefit of the doubt,” as I did with his totally unfit predecessor Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions. I actually hoped they would function as they claimed under oath they would during their Senate confirmations. Obviously, both these dudes gave blatantly false testimony. But, it’s hardly surprising considering the litany of lies about migrants, lawyers, political opponents, and the law, not to mention loyal DOJ employees, that have come out of their mouths since they were confirmed.

The legal profession is basically back to the “bad place” we were at the time of Watergate. This time it’s probably even worse because of the lack of integrity among GOP legislators and too many Article III Judges who seem to have bought into Trump’s “I could shoot somebody in Times Square at noon and my toadies and enablers would still support me” rationale. After all, it was the loss of support among the Senate GOP that eventually led Nixon to resign.

Obviously, for today’s “Trump owned and operated” GOP rank and file, no crime Trump could commit would ever rise to the level of an impeachable offense. And beyond a mild “slap on the wrist” to Wilbur Ross for giving intentionally false testimony, J.R. and his “Gang of 5” at the Supremes have been perfectly happy to dehumanize migrants and asylum seekers, many of them Hispanic or Muslims, in ways that would never be acceptable if applied to others in society. In other words, “Dred Scottification” of the “other” is OK, just so long as only the desperate, vulnerable, or people of color are at risk.

What Trump has done to refugees, asylum, seekers, other migrants, and their families is actually far worse than the “Stone fiasco” in human and legal terms. Billy Barr actually unconstitutionally acts as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner in their Immigration “Court” cases — that is, if they are even fortunate to get to any type of hearing at all.

This is completely and outrageously unfair and unconstitutional. Yet judges and others who haven’t taken the time to figure out what’s really happening or who have just abandoned their humanity routinely overlook these grotesque miscarriages of justice, clear violations of basic judicial ethics prohibiting conflicts of interest, and blatant disregard for Constitutional guarantees for fair and impartial adjudication, particularly in matters affecting life and/or freedom.

Someday, I think that history will accurately characterize the immigration and refuge policies of the Trump regime as “crimes against humanity” and will detail the culpability of all of those, be they government employees, judges, legislators, or voters, who assisted and enabled Trump’s cruel, illegal, immoral, and abhorrent conduct.

Until then, many will suffer unnecessarily and unconstitutionally. And, no, despite all of Don’s cogent arguments, Billy Barr isn’t going anywhere unless and until “His Don” finds him no longer useful in corrupting justice in America.

PWS

02-17-20

JOIN MORE THAN 1,100 FORMER DOJ OFFICIALS, INCLUDING MANY MEMBERS OF THE ROUND TABLE OF RETIRED JUDGES, IN SPEAKING OUT AGAINST BARR’S UNETHICAL ACTIONS AT DOJ & CALLING FOR HIS RESIGNATION — It’s Not Too Late To Get On Board For Protecting America’s Democratic Institutions From Corruption & Undue Political Influence!

Katie Benner reports for The NY Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/16/us/politics/barr-trump-justice-department.html

WASHINGTON — More than 1,100 former federal prosecutors and Justice Department officials called on Attorney General William P. Barr on Sunday to step down after he intervened last week to lower the Justice Department’s sentencing recommendation for President Trump’s longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr.

They also urged current government employees to report any signs of unethical behavior at the Justice Department to the agency’s inspector general and to Congress.

“Each of us strongly condemns President Trump’s and Attorney General Barr’s interference in the fair administration of justice,” the former Justice Department lawyers, who came from across the political spectrum, wrote in an open letter on Sunday. Those actions, they said, “require Mr. Barr to resign.”

The sharp denunciation of Mr. Barr underlined the extent of the fallout over the case of Mr. Stone, capping a week that strained the attorney general’s relationship with his rank and file, and with the president himself.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

After prosecutors on Monday recommended a prison sentence of up to nine years for Mr. Stone, who was convicted of obstructing a congressional inquiry, Mr. Trump lashed out at federal law enforcement. Senior officials at the department, including Mr. Barr, overrode the recommendation the next day with a more lenient one, immediately prompting accusations of political interference, and the four lawyers on the Stone case abruptly withdrew in protest.

The Justice Department said the case had not been discussed with anyone at the White House, but that Mr. Trump congratulated Mr. Barr on his decision did little to dispel the perception of political influence. And as the president widened his attacks on law enforcement, Mr. Barr publicly reproached the president, saying that Mr. Trump’s statements undermined him, as well the department.

“I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me,” Mr. Barr said during a televised interview on Thursday with ABC News.

In the days after the interview, Mr. Trump has been relatively muted. He said on Twitter that he had not asked Mr. Barr to “do anything in a criminal case.” As president, he added, he had “the legal right to do so” but had “so far chosen not to!”

But lawyers across the Justice Department continue to worry about political interference from the president despite public pushback by Mr. Barr, long considered a close ally of Mr. Trump’s.

Protect Democracy, a nonprofit legal group, gathered the signatures from Justice Department alumni and said it would collect more.

In May, Protect Democracy gathered signatures for a letter that said the Mueller report presented enough evidence to charge Mr. Trump with obstruction of justice were that an option. At the close of his investigation, the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III declined to indicate whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed justice, citing a decades-old department opinion that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime. That letter was also critical of Mr. Barr.

Even as the lawyers condemned Mr. Barr on Sunday, they said they welcomed his rebuke of Mr. Trump and his assertions that law enforcement must be independent of politics.

But Mr. Barr’s “actions in doing the president’s personal bidding unfortunately speak louder than his words,” they said.

The letter comes days after some Democratic senators pressed for Mr. Barr to resign, and after the New York City Bar Association said that it had formally reported the attorney general’s behavior to the Justice Department’s inspector general.

Strikingly, the lawyers called upon current department employees to be on the lookout for future abuses and to be willing to bring oversight to the department.

“Be prepared to report future abuses to the inspector general, the Office of Professional Responsibility, and Congress,” they wrote, and “to refuse to carry out directives that are inconsistent with their oaths of office.”

Prosecutors who currently work at the department should withdraw from cases that involve abuses or political interference, the lawyers said.

As a last resort, they asked Justice Department employees “to resign and report publicly — in a manner consistent with professional ethics — to the American people the reasons for their resignation.”

Katie Benner covers the Justice Department. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. @ktbenner

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Here’s the statement:

DOJ Alumni Statement on the Events Surrounding the Sentencing of Roger Stone

DOJ Alumni Statement

Feb 16 · 4 min read

We, the undersigned, are alumni of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) who have collectively served both Republican and Democratic administrations. Each of us strongly condemns President Trump’s and Attorney General Barr’s interference in the fair administration of justice.

As former DOJ officials, we each proudly took an oath to support and defend our Constitution and faithfully execute the duties of our offices. The very first of these duties is to apply the law equally to all Americans. This obligation flows directly from the Constitution, and it is embedded in countless rules and laws governing the conduct of DOJ lawyers. The Justice Manual — the DOJ’s rulebook for its lawyers — states that “the rule of law depends on the evenhanded administration of justice”; that the Department’s legal decisions “must be impartial and insulated from political influence”; and that the Department’s prosecutorial powers, in particular, must be “exercised free from partisan consideration.”

All DOJ lawyers are well-versed in these rules, regulations, and constitutional commands. They stand for the proposition that political interference in the conduct of a criminal prosecution is anathema to the Department’s core mission and to its sacred obligation to ensure equal justice under the law.

And yet, President Trump and Attorney General Barr have openly and repeatedly flouted this fundamental principle, most recently in connection with the sentencing of President Trump’s close associate, Roger Stone, who was convicted of serious crimes. The Department has a long-standing practice in which political appointees set broad policies that line prosecutors apply to individual cases. That practice exists to animate the constitutional principles regarding the even-handed application of the law. Although there are times when political leadership appropriately weighs in on individual prosecutions, it is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case. It is even more outrageous for the Attorney General to intervene as he did here — after the President publicly condemned the sentencing recommendation that line prosecutors had already filed in court.

Such behavior is a grave threat to the fair administration of justice. In this nation, we are all equal before the law. A person should not be given special treatment in a criminal prosecution because they are a close political ally of the President. Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.

We welcome Attorney General Barr’s belated acknowledgment that the DOJ’s law enforcement decisions must be independent of politics; that it is wrong for the President to interfere in specific enforcement matters, either to punish his opponents or to help his friends; and that the President’s public comments on DOJ matters have gravely damaged the Department’s credibility. But Mr. Barr’s actions in doing the President’s personal bidding unfortunately speak louder than his words. Those actions, and the damage they have done to the Department of Justice’s reputation for integrity and the rule of law, require Mr. Barr to resign. But because we have little expectation he will do so, it falls to the Department’s career officials to take appropriate action to uphold their oaths of office and defend nonpartisan, apolitical justice.

For these reasons, we support and commend the four career prosecutors who upheld their oaths and stood up for the Department’s independence by withdrawing from the Stone case and/or resigning from the Department. Our simple message to them is that we — and millions of other Americans — stand with them. And we call on every DOJ employee to follow their heroic example and be prepared to report future abuses to the Inspector General, the Office of Professional Responsibility, and Congress; to refuse to carry out directives that are inconsistent with their oaths of office; to withdraw from cases that involve such directives or other misconduct; and, if necessary, to resign and report publicly — in a manner consistent with professional ethics — to the American people the reasons for their resignation. We likewise call on the other branches of government to protect from retaliation those employees who uphold their oaths in the face of unlawful directives. The rule of law and the survival of our Republic demand nothing less.

If you are a former DOJ employee and would like to add your name below, click here. Protect Democracy will update this list daily with new signatories.

Dianne

LAST NAME

(Kelly) Sanford

HIGHEST DOJ TITLE

Assistant United States Attorney (D.C.); Assistant Section Chief, Environment and Natural Resources Division

# YEARS DOJ SERVICE

13

ADMINS SERVED UNDER

Bush I, Reagan, Carter

Stephanie

LAST NAME

(Lachman) Golden

HIGHEST DOJ TITLE

Trial Attorney

# YEARS DOJ SERVICE

10

ADMINS SERVED UNDER

Reagan, Carter, Ford

Jonathan

LAST NAME

Abernethy

HIGHEST DOJ TITLE

Assistant United States Attorney, SDNY

# YEARS DOJ SERVICE

7

ADMINS SERVED UNDER

Bush II

Elkan

LAST NAME

Abramowitz

HIGHEST DOJ TITLE

Chief of the Criminal Division, SDNY

# YEARS DOJ SERVICE

6

ADMINS SERVED UNDER

Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson

View larger version

Signatories have been vetted to the best of our ability.

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It’s NOT Too Late! Let YOUR Voice Be Heard For Justice In America!

Here’s how more former DOJ employees can sign on:

I’m honored to join 1100+ of my fellow DOJ alumni in standing up for the rule of law. I encourage my former colleagues to add their names—>https://medium.com/@dojalumni/doj-alumni-statement-on-the-events-surrounding-the-sentencing-of-roger-stone-c2cb75ae4937
”Each of us strongly condemns President Trump’s and Attorney General Barr’s interference in the fair administration of justice.” The Department of Justice and the American public deserve better, the rule of law demands it. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/16/us/politics/barr-trump-justice-department.html

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Due Process Forever! Corruption & Unethical Behavior At The USDOJ Never!

PWS

02-16-20

FINALLY, 3D CIR. BLASTS THROUGH JURISDICTIONAL BS & TELLS U.S. DISTRICT COURT TO GIVE SOME MEANINGFUL JUDICIAL REVIEW TO SOME OF THOSE CAUGHT UP IN “LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO!” – But, Is It Too Little, Too Late For Most Of The 60,000 Poor Souls Illegally Condemned By The Regime To Deadly Misery On The Mexican Side of the Border? — E.O.H.C.; M.S.H.S. v. Sec. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Security

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/192927p.pdf

E.O.H.C.; M.S.H.S. v. Sec. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Security, 3d Cir., 02-13-20, published

PANEL: AMBRO, KRAUSE, and BIBAS, Circuit Judges

OPINION BY: Judge Bibas

KEY QUOTE:

This case raises the age-old question: “If not now, when?” Mishnah, Pirkei Avot 1:14. For aliens who are challenging their removal from the United States, the answer is usually “later.” But not always. And not here.

. . . .

Immigration claims ordinarily proceed from an immigra- tion judge through the Board of Immigration Appeals to the court of appeals by petition for review of a final removal order. Review by district courts is not the norm. But neither is this case. Most of the claims here cannot await a petition for re- view. By the time appellants are ordered removed to Guatemala (if ever), it will be too late to review their claims about their return to Mexico in the meantime. Only their statutory right-to-counsel claim will still be redressable. So the INA does not bar review of the remaining claims. And there is federal-question jurisdiction over the Flores claim. Because the United States is a party to the Flores Settlement Agreement, the contract claim is governed by federal common law and so arises under federal law. In short, the District Court has juris- diction over most of the claims. We will thus affirm the dis- missal of the statutory right-to-counsel claim and otherwise re- verse and remand for the District Court to address the merits.

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

The court actually makes one highly questionable assumption: That folks returned to Mexico will survive long enough to challenge the inevitable denial of their asylum claims in Barr’s biased “kangaroo courts.” The court fails to recognize/articulate the real driving force behind “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico:” Kill off the asylum applicants, make it impossible for them to raise their claims in the U.S. legal system by denying reasonable access, and/or demoralize individuals so that they will give up and accept their fate, even where it likely means death or torture. That’s what our “justice system” has become under the regime.

Perhaps, Article III Courts are starting to take notice of what Let ‘Em Die in Mexico is really about. The dead can’t get judicial review, at least in this world. We can only hope!

Too bad the awareness hasn’t extended to the 9th Circuit and their truly abominable, not to mention cowardly, decision in Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan.

Article III Courts twiddle and fiddle, hem and haw, while real people die!

Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

09-14-20

DEM SENS BLAST REGIME’S CONTINUING DUE PROCESS FARCE IN IMMIGRATION COURTS! – Round Table Member Hon. Charles Honeyman Takes to Airwaves to Call For Independent U.S Immigration Court!

https://www.wabe.org/senate-democrats-accuse-justice-department-of-politicizing-immigration-courts/

Joel Rose reports for NPR:

Senate Democrats Accuse Justice Department Of Politicizing Immigration Courts

JOEL ROSE • FEB 13, 2020

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.(left), and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter accusing the Trump administration of politicizing the immigration courts.

CREDIT J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE / AP

Top Senate Democrats warn that the Trump administration is deliberately undermining the independence of immigration courts.

In a bluntly-worded letter to the Justice Department, which oversees the immigration courts, the senators accuse the administration of waging an “ongoing campaign to erode the independence of immigration courts,” including changing court rules to allow more political influence over decisions, and promoting partisan judges to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

“The administration’s gross mismanagement of these courts,” they write, threatens to do “lasting damage to public confidence in the immigration court system.”

The letter was sent Thursday to Attorney General William Barr. It was signed by nine Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. They are requesting extensive information about the department’s hiring practices for trial-level and appellate judges, among other documents.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

The senators’ concerns echo those voiced by former and current immigration judges, including the head of the union representing those judges. Ashley Tabaddor, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing last month that immigration courts should no longer be overseen by the Justice Department.

“The only real and lasting solution is the establishment of an independent Immigration Court,” Tabaddor wrote in her testimony. “It must be free from the constantly changing (often diametrically opposed) politicized policy directives of the Department of Justice.”

The judge’s union has pushed back against productivity quotas for immigration judges, which were announced in 2018. The union also opposed new Trump administration rules that gave more power to the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a political appointee.

The Trump administration, for its part, has moved to decertify the judges’ union.

Immigration courts face a massive backlog of more than a million cases. And there’s wide agreement that the court system needs reform. But not everyone believes that removing immigration courts from the Justice Department is the right approach.

“The attorney general and his subordinates are actively working to remedy this problem, by providing the needed resources to the immigration courts,” wrote Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge who is now a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last month. “Restructuring the immigration courts … will almost certainly not address the core problems that are facing those courts,” Arthur added.

At a time when caseloads are surging, some immigration judges are quitting, citing frustration and exhaustion. Judge Charles Honeyman retired from the Philadelphia Immigration Court in January after 24 years on the job.

“I would want future administrations and the Congress to think of immigration judges as judges, literally, and give them the autonomy and the independence and the confidence to make decisions without political interference or overreach,” he said in an interview with NPR’s Noel King.

“The only way to do that is to create an independent court where the judge makes a decision and the judge isn’t afraid of how many cases he has to complete for the year or whether some political actor is going to be looking over his shoulder and say, I don’t agree with that decision; we’re going to find a way to put pressure on you,” Honeyman said.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

WABE brings you the local stories and national news that you value and trust. Please make a gift today.

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

Here’s the letter:

https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2020-02-13%20Ltr%20to%20AJ%20Barr%20re%20independence%20of%20immigration%20courts%20(004).pdf

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Thanks, Charlie, my friend, for speaking out so forcefully for Due Process and justice in our Immigration Courts!

After seeing how Trump attacked an Article III life-tenured U.S. District Judge this week, does anyone seriously think that an Immigration Judge, a mere civil servant, who ruled against the Trump/Miller White Nationalist agenda in a case that came to Trump’s attention would retain their job under Billy Barr? After seeing how Trump treated some career civil servants and military officers after they “spoke truth to power” does anyone seriously think that Billy Barr of any other regime sycophant would defend fair and impartial decision making that Trump didn’t like?

No way! So how can ANY foreign national get a fair hearing before a “fake court system” where the prosecution authorities retain the right to change any result that goes against them and to remove subordinates who are supposed to be exercising independent judgement from their jobs if they don’t like the result.

The entire Immigraton Court system is and has been for some time now a cruel, unconstitutional hoax. Why haven’t the Article III Courts, whose judges are protected by life tenure, done their duty by stepping in and putting an end to this unconstitutional dysfunctional mess that is destroying innocent lives and ruining futures?

PWS

02-13-20

AS MARK MORGAN AND OTHER REGIME HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSERS CELEBRATE THEIR “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY,” & THE SUPREMES, THE 9TH CIRCUIT, & OTHER ARTICLE III COURTS CONTINUE THEIR IMMORAL COMPLICITY, NEW HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH REPORT DOCUMENTS HARM TO CHILDREN FROM “LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO” CHARADE – “A United States government program exposes children, as well as their parents, seeking asylum to serious risk of assault, mistreatment, and trauma while waiting for their cases to be heard, Human Rights Watch said today in a joint investigation report.”

Remain in Mexico — A girl peers out from an encampment at the U.S.-Mexico border where she and several hundred people waited to present themselves to U.S. immigration to seek asylum. / Photo by David Maung

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/02/12/us-remain-mexico-program-harming-children#

(Washington, DC) – A United States government program exposes children, as well as their parents, seeking asylum to serious risk of assault, mistreatment, and trauma while waiting for their cases to be heard, Human Rights Watch said today in a joint investigation report.

Human Rights Watch, working with Stanford University’s Human Rights in Trauma Mental Health Program and Willamette University’s Child and Family Advocacy Clinic, found that the US Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program, commonly known as “Remain in Mexico,” compelled families with children to wait in unsafe environments in Mexico for many months. Parents said that prolonged immigration court proceedings, fear of being incarcerated, and uncertainty about the future took a toll on their family’s health, safety, and well-being. Many described changes in their children’s behavior, saying they became more anxious or depressed after US authorities sent them to Mexico to await their hearings.

“The conditions, threats to safety, and sense of uncertainty asylum seekers face while waiting in Mexico creates chronic and severe psychological stress for children and families,” said Dr. Ryan Matlow, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “We know that these forms of pervasive, unresolved complex trauma can lead to significant long-term negative consequences for child development and family functioning.”

Human Rights Watch and other investigators interviewed parents and children from 60 families seeking asylum between November 2019 and January 2020. Most families were from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, with a few from Cuba, Ecuador, and Peru. The investigators also spoke with lawyers, doctors, shelter providers, faith leaders, and Mexican officials.

Under the Migrant Protection Protocols, US immigration officials have required most Spanish-speaking asylum seekers who arrive in the US through Mexico to go to Mexico while their cases are heard. Parents said that while waiting in Mexico, they or their children were beaten, harassed, sexually assaulted, or abducted. Some said Mexican police had harassed or extorted money from them. Most said they were constantly fearful and easily identified as targets for violence.

US Department of Homeland Security guidance suggests that certain particularly vulnerable groups should not be placed in the program, but the guidance is vague and immigration agents interpret it variably. US Customs and Border Protection officials regularly return to Mexico families with infants and toddlers; indigenous families and Brazilians whose first language is not Spanish; and children and adults with serious health conditions.

Asylum hearings under the Migrant Protection Protocols raise various due process concerns, Human Rights Watch said. To get to court hearings in the United States, families must report to a designated border crossing point, which sometimes requires them to arrive as early as 3 a.m. in unsafe locations. Those sent to Mexicali or Piedras Negras must make journeys of 160 to 550 kilometers (100 to 340 miles) to reach their designated border crossing point.

All family members, including young children, must appear, and sit quietly for each court hearing. Families interviewed said that they were frequently required to wait for hours for a brief hearing, and agents have told parents they risked being sent back to Mexico without seeing a judge if their children made noise or could not sit still.

Families said that after each hearing, they were locked up in very cold, often overcrowded immigration holding cells, with men and teenage boys held separately, sometimes overnight or longer, before US officials returned them to Mexico. Some said they were considering abandoning their asylum cases because their children were afraid of being detained again.

A 27-year-old woman from Honduras described being detained in an El Paso holding cell with her daughter. “I asked for a blanket for the girl. They said no,” she said, saying that the guard did not give a reason.

Guards separate older boys under age 18 from their mothers and younger siblings, placing them with unrelated adults. A woman from Cuba said her 13-year-old son’s separation “had a traumatic effect on him.” Another described the effect of family separation on the boys he saw in his cell after his hearing: “It’s very inhumane. The guards don’t treat these boys like children, they treat them like adults. It’s illogical.”

“Locking families up in frigid, overcrowded cells and separating boys from their mothers is traumatizing,” said Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior children’s rights counsel at Human Rights Watch. “The US government should never inflict cruelty on children, especially not as the price of getting their day in court.”

All governments are obligated to respect the customary international law principle of nonrefoulement – the prohibition on returning a person to a country where they are at risk of persecution, torture, or other cruel or inhuman treatment. Governments are also obligated to extend specific protections to children, whether traveling alone or with families, including by giving primary consideration to their best interests.

The US government should immediately terminate the MPP program and cease all returns of non-Mexican asylum seekers to Mexico. Instead, it should revert to the global norm of allowing asylum seekers to remain in the country where their claims are heard. The government should safeguard asylum seekers’ right to a fair and timely hearing by establishing an adequately resourced, independent immigration court system with court-appointed legal representation for asylum seekers who are members of particularly vulnerable groups.

“‘Remain in Mexico’ is putting at risk families who are already facing desperate situations,” said Dr. Nancy Wang, professor of emergency medicine at Stanford University Medical Center. “It’s inexcusable for the US government to subject children and families to crowded, unsanitary, insecure conditions with inadequate protection from infectious diseases – whether in US immigration detention or in overstretched shelters in Mexico.”

For additional information on the findings, please see below.

Migrant Protection Protocols Program

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began implementing the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as “Remain in Mexico,” on January 29, 2019. Under the program, US immigration officers send most people seeking asylum who have entered the United States by land from Mexico to Mexican border towns while their cases are pending before US immigration courts. As of December, US officials sent more than 59,000 people to Mexico under the program, including at least 16,000 children.

Under the program, families with children are sent to Mexico regardless of the children’s ages. DHS has stated that people “in special circumstances,” including those with “[k]nown physical/mental health issues,” will not be placed in the program, but US immigration officials apply the DHS guidance inconsistently, with reports that people who are critically ill, pregnant, or living with disabilities have been sent to Mexico to await their asylum hearings. According to DHS guidelines, unaccompanied children should not be placed in the program. The program applied only to asylum seekers from Spanish-speaking countries other than Mexico, but DHS announced that beginning January 29, 2020, it had begun requiring Portuguese-speaking Brazilians who are seeking asylum to remain in Mexico.

In the year since the program began, US officials have sent children in families seeking asylum to Ciudad Juárez, Matamoros, Mexicali, Nuevo Laredo, Piedras Negras, and Tijuana, and, as of January 2, to Nogales.

Sent to Danger

Asylum seekers interviewed said they or their children had been violently attacked, robbed at knifepoint, or extorted in Ciudad Juárez, Matamoros, Mexicali, Nuevo Laredo, and Tijuana while transiting through these cities before they sought asylum, or after US officials sent them to those cities. Three families said they had been abducted for ransom, in Nuevo Laredo; one family for eight days. Four families said their children had been sexually assaulted after US officials sent them to Mexico.

Two women said they were raped after being sent to Mexico, including one who was abducted and raped the day US officials sent her to Mexico. Two families said they were abducted and held for ransom almost immediately after arriving. Another woman described being robbed by armed men as she crossed into Mexico from the United States.

These accounts are in addition to 29 reports of harm to asylum seekers in Ciudad Juárezdocumented by Human Rights Watch in a July 2019 report.

An October 2019 study by the US Immigration Policy Center of the University of California San Diego found that one-quarter of more than 600 asylum seekers returned to Mexicali and Tijuana were threatened with physical violence while they waited in Mexico for their immigration court hearings.

Human Rights First has tracked more than 800 violent attacks on people seeking asylum, including cases of murder, rape, and abduction for ransom, in the year since the program began. That figure includes at least 200 cases of alleged kidnapping or attempted kidnapping of children.

In the current investigation, some families described extortion and other harassment by Mexican police. Edwin F. (all names are pseudonyms), a 28-year-old from Honduras staying in a shelter in Ciudad Juárez with his wife and 5-year-old son, said in January 2020: “Yesterday the police stopped a group of us. They asked all of us where we were from. They searched through our phone history as if we were coming to do harm to the country. They held us close to half an hour while they searched us, even our son. They asked for money. I didn’t have any.” His wife, Marisela, 21, said that when the police officers searched her: “I had some sanitary pads in a shopping bag. They dumped them out on the ground. Everything I had, they dumped out on the ground.” The encounter traumatized their 5-year-old. “He became really anxious,” his father said. “He started to cry uncontrollably.”

Under DHS policy, people seeking asylum should receive an interview with an asylum officer, known as a “credible fear” interview, if they tell immigration agents they fear harm in Mexico. DHS guidance states that “a third-country national should not be involuntarily returned to Mexico . . . if the alien would more likely than not be persecuted. . . or tortured.”

Many families said these interviews were by telephone and not face-to-face. Assessing these interviews, a former asylum officer wrote: “[The MPP] process places on the applicants the highest burden of proof in civil proceedings in the lowest quality hearing available.”

“If you say you’re afraid of going back to Mexico, they put you in a cell in the hielera [the “freezer,” referring to an immigration holding cell],” said Nelly O., a 27-year-old Honduran woman. “You wait for a call. They call this a ‘credible fear’ interview. When the call comes, it could be nighttime. You spend the entire night in the hielera.”

The families who spoke to the investigation team said they received an interview, but organizations working in Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana told Human Rights Watch that many asylum seekers had not. “People are now being denied interviews, with no reason given and no documentation of denial,” said Tania Guerrero, an attorney with the Estamos Unidos Asylum Project of CLINIC. She said she had heard of more than 10 such cases in El Paso in a single week in January.

Every family we interviewed said immigration officials did not actively ask them if they feared being sent to Mexico, and DHS guidance does not require them to. “They didn’t really ask us what our case was or why we left our countries,” said Maria Q., a 41-year-old from Honduras, of her hearing in San Diego in October. “They said they couldn’t do anything. They just handed us some papers. They didn’t pay attention to what we needed or what we said.”

Marisela F., a 21-year-old from Honduras, said that at her hearing in El Paso in December with her husband and their 5-year-old son: “The officials didn’t ask about Mexico.” While one of the papers they received before they were sent to Ciudad Juárez stated, “Attached is a credible fear worksheet,” they had no memory of ever receiving such a worksheet and had no copy of one among the papers from their legal proceedings.

Similarly, the US Immigration Policy Center found that more than one-third of people seeking asylum were not asked by US immigration officials if they feared being sent to Mexico. Of those who were asked, nearly 9 out of 10 told immigration agents they feared harm if returned to Mexico; nearly 60 percent of them were not given a secondary interview to explain their fears.

Families returned to Mexico despite their expressed fears of harm said they were afraid to request interviews during subsequent court hearings. They said their initial experience suggested that they would not be believed and that requesting an interview would only mean more time detained. Julián M., a 28-year-old Honduran man, said that the second time he and his family went for their court hearing, they decided not to ask for a call to explain their fear of returning to Mexico. “If we did, we would have to wait another night in the cell,” he said.

Ordeal Getting to Immigration Court

Asylum seekers sent to Mexicali must find transportation to Tijuana, 180 kilometers (110 miles) west, to report at the border for immigration court hearings in San Diego. Families sent to Piedras Negras must travel an equivalent distance to Laredo for hearings.

“From Mexicali, we had to make our way here [to Tijuana],” Maria Q. said. “The immigration agents didn’t give us any directions. They didn’t tell us where there were shelters.”

Children and families sent to Nogales will have to make their way to Ciudad Juárez, a 550-kilometer (340-mile), seven-and-a-half-hour journey by the most direct route through Mexico, for hearings.

If children and families cannot or do not make the long, potentially dangerous journey, an immigration judge can reject their asylum claim and in their absence order them deported.

Families said that immigration agents told them they had to arrive at the border crossings between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. for hearings beginning at 8 a.m.

Families in Tijuana said that because of the difficulty and danger of traveling from their shelters in the middle of the night, especially with children, they stayed in hotel rooms if they could afford to. Many, including young women with toddlers, said they did not have the money and spent the night on the street outside the border crossing. Some families described concerns about being stalked or profiled while looking for hotels or waiting in the street and feared that they could be extorted or kidnapped.

Once allowed to enter US territory, families undergo health screenings, including lice checks, then are transported to the immigration court. If all family members do not pass the health screening, including the lice checks, the family is rescheduled for another hearing, often a month or more later.

“We wait in a hallway, seated in chairs,” said Nuria J. “The kids are right there with us. There’s nowhere else for them. They can’t play. The guards don’t permit them to move around. They reprimand you if the kids get out of the chairs. You sit all day. It’s a long time.” Another woman said: “If you have a baby and you need to change your baby’s diapers, they’ll give you a diaper. But there’s no place to go. You have to change your baby on the floor, right there in the hallway.”

Blanca M., 31, attended her first immigration court hearing in August with her husband and their three daughters, all under age 5. “We had nothing to eat from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.,” she said. “The officials wanted us to keep the kids quiet. Really I was at the point of giving up.” Her husband added: “One guard kept saying, ‘Those of you with children, control them. If your children are fucking around, I can take away your court hearing.’ It’s almost impossible to get a 1-year-old to stay seated in a chair.” They said the same thing happened inside the courtroom.

Some families said they were thinking of abandoning their asylum claims because the process was so traumatic for their children.

A Bewildering Process and Little Access to Counsel

Families interviewed in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana described a chaotic, confusing process once they saw an immigration judge.

Most expected that they would be able to explain their situation to a judge immediately, but the first hearing, a “master calendar” hearing, is a brief session to handle preliminary matters and set a date for a longer individual hearing. Asylum seekers who need more time to prepare or to seek legal representation are often rescheduled for an additional master calendar hearing. Some families said they had three brief master calendar hearings. Most we spoke to said they were sent to Mexico after each hearing with very little understanding of what had happened and what they needed to do to pursue their claims.

Most papers they received were in English. They must submit their asylum applications in English, with all supporting documentation translated into English.

Associated Press reporters who visited immigration courts in 11 cities, including El Paso and San Diego, described what they saw as “nonstop chaos” – overcrowded courtrooms, evidence misplaced in stacks of paper files, and hearings without interpreters, among other shortcomings.

People seeking asylum in the United States are not guaranteed legal representation. Instead, US law states that they have the “privilege of being represented (at no expense to the government).” Pro bono or low-cost legal representation is difficult to find even for those inside the country. For the tens of thousands of families sent to Mexico, obtaining counsel is nearly impossible – with nowhere near enough pro bono lawyers to meet the need. Only 14 of the 1,155 cases decided in the program’s first five months, 1.2 percent, had legal representation.

Immigration officials provided a woman who attended a hearing in Laredo a list of legal service providers – showing lawyers in Dallas, 700 kilometers (430 miles) away.

Some asylum seekers alleged that abuses by US immigration agents directly affected their ability to present their claims. Nicola A. said a uniformed US border agent tore up the documents corroborating her account of persecution in her home country. She now fears that she will not have sufficient proof to support her asylum claim.

Detention in Frigid US Immigration Holding Cells

Most of the families interviewed said that they spent at least one night and sometimes more after their court hearing in the immigration holding cells known as the hieleras.

These holding cells are notoriously cold, with temperatures reaching as low as 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit). People detained in these cell have frequently been subjected to substandard conditions and abusive treatment, as Human Rights Watch and other groups have consistently reported.

“When we entered, the guards turned the air conditioning up,” said Maria Q. “They took away our sweaters and said they would wash them, but they never returned them.”

Wendy G., 32, from Honduras, was held in the hielera with her 12-year-old daughter and 10 and 8-year-old sons in August and again in September after each of her court hearings. “It was really cold both times,” she said. “Some of the guards shouted at us…They would give us food that was still frozen. They told us we risked being locked up more days if we misbehaved.”

Families said immigration holding cells could be very overcrowded, consistent with reports in June by lawyers and the DHS Office of Inspector General. Edwin F. said that after his family’s court hearing in December, “We were held in the [border station] cells…My wife was held with our son, I was in another cell. There were 17 of us in a small space. It was hard to lie down.” Because their court date was on December 23, they stayed in the holding cells for four days, returning to Ciudad Juárez on December 27.

Julián M. said that after he and his family had a court hearing in October, they were held in an El Paso immigration holding cell:

The cell I was in had a capacity of 38. There was a sign. It was in English, but I understood the word “capacity,” and right next to it was the number 38. We all counted ourselves. There were 112 of us in that cell. At first there were 99. Then the guards brought 13 more. The 13 didn’t fit. We were all sleeping on the floor. An official told us to get up so everyone could fit in the cell. He had a stun gun. He threatened us with it, saying, “If you don’t get up, I’ll shoot you with the stun gun.” Of course everyone immediately got up. Nobody slept that night.

Most of the families interviewed said they were detained for one or two days after their hearings, but some families described periods lasting three or four days or longer. Nuria J. said that when she was in the hielera with her son and daughter: “[t]here was one guy, maybe 35 years old, who said he had spent seven days locked up after his court hearing.”

Families in immigration holding cells have no opportunity to bathe. Many described the cells as “dirty” and “filthy.”

Some described significant health concerns in the holding cells. Nicola A., who has public health training, said that while she and her family were in immigration holding cells, “I noticed that there were numerous people carrying lice, as well as people showing signs and symptoms of varicella [chicken pox]. Nonetheless, we were all kept together in the same rooms – these conditions were extremely unsanitary.

Previous reports and inspections of immigration holding cells by government inspectors, Human Rights Watch, and others have also found unsanitary and otherwise substandard conditions, including flu, lice, scabies, shingles, and chicken poxtransmission, overcrowding, and inadequate food. A San Antonio-based group of volunteer doctors, nurses, and social workers, Sueños Sin Fronteras, found that new medical conditions arose while in immigration holding cells, including “a lot of boils and skin rashes, attributable to the lack of hygiene, and severe constipation, attributable to the dehydration and poor food intake” and near-universal “complaints of flu symptoms or respiratory problems or both.”

Adverse Consequences for Mental Well-Being

The combined trauma of families’ flights from persecution, and the dangers they faced on their journeys to the United States, and now face in Mexico, have had serious negative effects on their mental well-being.

“The children and families we saw showed incredible strength and resilience,” Dr. Ryan Matlow said. “At the same time, the conditions they face while waiting for their asylum hearings continuously erode the resources and protective influences that would help them maintain their physical and psychological health. Trauma and adversity have a cumulative impact on health, meaning that chronic stress over time, along with repeated exposure to threats increase the prevalence and severity of possibly long-lasting negative physical and mental health outcomes.”

The families interviewed described their despair, hopelessness, anxiety, and deteriorating family relationships. “Families are doing their best to survive and adapt to the circumstances they are placed in, but the sense that they are under chronic threat and danger leads to long-term experiences of anxiety, mistrust, hypervigilance, behavioral reactivity, withdrawal, and fatigue,” Matlow said. He said that children were especially susceptible to trauma, which is associated with learning difficulties, behavior problems, health impairment, and shortened life expectancy.

“It’s hardest on our son,” said Edwin F., choking up as he described the changes in his 5-year-old son during the three months they had been in Mexico. “He isn’t prepared mentally for these things. We’ve seen a change in him… Before he was more easygoing. Now he’s easily bothered, more irritable, gets angry easily. He’s anxious and impulsive now, he doesn’t control himself. He was more well-behaved in Honduras. Now he misbehaves. We’ve seen a complete change in the boy. We didn’t want this life for our son.”

Tania Guerrero, the CLINIC project attorney, said: “The women I speak to tell me, ‘Nobody understands what we’re going through here [in Ciudad Juárez].’ They have been here eight months. They’re exhausted, alone, miserable. They want to get on with their lives. The level of disillusionment and despair they feel is profound.”

Nicola A. said:

We are constantly under stress by our inability to request asylum and find shelter in a safe place. We are afraid and anxious in Mexico, given that our kidnappers are still pursuing us. We are afraid of being separated and detained again in the horrendous conditions in immigration detention… We experience these fears every day. We have ongoing health concerns and we are running out of money to pay for medication and treatment… This entire experience has had a negative impact on our family.

Our son appears traumatized and is more quiet, depressed, and withdrawn than I have ever seen him before. My husband and I are constantly anxious and irritable due to the constant stress. We are desperate, and we are losing hope that we will be able to find safety and refuge from the persecution and victimization that we have experienced. We are starting to believe that there is no safe place where we can go and be accepted.

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

The stain of America’s widespread, intentional, illegal abuse of vulnerable refugees, the arrogance of human rights abusers like Trump, Miller, Morgan, Barr, Pompeo, Sessions and their accomplices, and the cowardly failure of the Supremes and too many other Article III Judges to defend the Constitution and protect humanity in the face of tyranny will be indelible.

The truth is out there. While it might not set us free or save the lives of those being targeted by our Government, it will not go away and they will not escape moral accountability for their betrayal of human decency.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-12-20

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Due Process Forever! Corruption & Unethical Behavior At The USDOJ Never!

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