Executive Order – Page 46 – immigrationcourtside.com

“LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO” — U.S. ASYLUM OFFICER EXPOSES TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S INTENTIONAL RACIST VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS, ENABLED BY A COMPLICIT 9th CIRCUIT! — “The MPP both discriminates and penalizes. Implementation of the MPP is clearly designed to further this administration’s racist agenda of keeping Hispanic and Latino populations from entering the United States. This is evident in the arbitrary nature of the order, in that it only applies to the southern border. It is also clear from the half-hazard implementation that appears to target populations from specific Central American countries even though a much broader range of international migrants cross the southern border.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/12/scathing-manifesto-an-asylum-officer-blasts-trumps-cruelty-migrants/

Greg Sargent writes in the WashPost:

November 12, 2019 at 3:47 p.m. EST

President Trump’s requirement that asylum seekers remain in Mexico while they await hearings in the United States is creating a new humanitarian crisis. Yet it isn’t generating nearly the outrage and media scrutiny that his horrific family separations did.

But now a deeply dismayed asylum officer has authored a remarkable manifesto that was obtained by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), as part of an investigation Merkley is conducting of Trump’s asylum policies.

The manifesto indicts the “Remain in Mexico” program from the inside in sweeping and scalding terms, describing it as illegal under U.S. law, a violation of the United States’ international human rights obligations and arbitrarily implemented to deliberately punish people for seeking asylum here.

The policy is “clearly designed to further this administration’s racist agenda of keeping Hispanic and Latino populations from entering the United States,” the asylum officer writes in the manifesto.

The asylum officer recently left their job, and in the missive, the officer says he or she could not continue to implement it “after careful consideration and moral contemplation.”

The officer’s condemnations of the policy are among the key revelations in a forthcoming assessment of Trump’s asylum policies by Merkley’s office.

Those policies include everything from ongoing efforts to send asylum seekers back to Honduras, which is “one of the most violent and unstable nations in the world,” to a new proposal to charge asylum applicants a $50 fee.

Merkley’s report, portions of which I’ve seen, will conclude that the administration has undertaken “systemic efforts” to “effectively rewrite U.S. asylum laws, rules and procedures,” with the overarching goal of “gutting the asylum system” but “without congressional approval or involvement.”

Merkley’s report will also conclude that Trump’s policies have “intentionally inflicted trauma” on asylum seeking families.

The Remain in Mexico policy — which is also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) — requires migrants seeking asylum to wait in Mexico pending hearings in the United States, with the ostensible goal of preventing them from disappearing into the interior during that waiting period. About 50,000 migrants have been relocated there.

Numerous critics have said it’s deeply cruel to knowingly force migrants to wait in places where they’ll be subjected to serious risk, and journalistic exposés and studies alike have documented that the MPPs do does just that.

The officer, who has repeatedly been in touch with Merkley’s office as part of its investigation, will remain anonymous.

But the officer’s lawyer — Dana Gold, senior counsel at the Government Accountability Project — confirmed to me the authenticity of the manifesto and confirmed that it accurately depicts the person’s circumstances.

“In addition to this whistleblower, we are representing several other Department of Homeland Security whistleblowers who have raised serious concerns about immigration-related abuses,” Gold said. “That Congress is taking these issues seriously is essential to promoting accountability and protecting ethical civil servants committed to upholding their oaths of office.”

Tensions have been rising between asylum officers and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees the asylum system. And the union for asylum officers has already issued a legal brief condemning MPP amid litigation over the program.

But this asylum officer’s personal indictment of the policy goes much further.

For one thing, he or she accuses the administration of implementing the policy in an “arbitrary” manner:

The MPP both discriminates and penalizes. Implementation of the MPP is clearly designed to further this administration’s racist agenda of keeping Hispanic and Latino populations from entering the United States. This is evident in the arbitrary nature of the order, in that it only applies to the southern border. It is also clear from the half-hazard implementation that appears to target populations from specific Central American countries even though a much broader range of international migrants cross the southern border.

For another, he or she alleges that internal processes are breaking down. Under MPP, if asylum seekers in U.S. territory declare in their initial interview a fear of being returned to Mexico, they’re supposed to get a second screening, conducted by a trained asylum officer who is supposed to determine whether that fear is credible.

But the asylum officer charges that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — which didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment — is mismanaging the system in a way that’s deliberately designed to be punitive and to make it harder for applicants to succeed:

The implementation is calculated to prevent individuals from receiving any type of protection or immigration benefits in the future. As such, it is a punitive measure intended to punish individuals who attempt to request protection in the United States. There is no clearly established policy and system for notifying applicants of changes to hearing dates and times, or for the applicants to provide change of addresses to the courts and Border Patrol. Without a highly functional notice system, the administration has ensured that a high number of applicants will miss their court dates.

And the asylum officer blasts the program as “ad hoc” and rigged against applicants:

The current process places on the applicants the highest burden of proof in civil proceedings in the lowest quality hearing available. This is a legal standard not previously implemented by the Asylum Office and reserved for an Immigration Judge in a full hearing. However, we are conducting the interviews telephonically, often with poor telephone connections, while at the same time denying applicants any time to rest, gather evidence, present witnesses, and, most egregious of all, denying them access to legal representation.

In a statement sent my way, Merkley vowed more revelations to come.

“This whistleblower reveals that in multiple ways, the Trump administration has asked them and other American asylum officers to take actions they believe break their oath of office and violate the law,” Merkley told me. “In the coming days, I will be releasing a report that details the full scope of this administration’s efforts to gut our legal asylum system.”

What this will confirm again is that for Trump, the goal is to make it as hard as possible for people to apply for asylum who actually would likely qualify for it — further eroding our commitment to the principle that desperate people have the right to appeal for refuge here and get a fair hearing without fear of being returned to face catastrophe.

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

So, why are those supposedly sworn to uphold the law, given the privilege of life-tenure, participating in overtly transparent human rights, legal, and constitutional violations?

Why do “ordinary civil servants” have more legal understanding and courage than the “robed ones in the ivory tower?”

Why are Federal Judges permitting a corrupt, biased, and racist Administration to cut off access to courts and punish individuals for exercising their legal rights under our laws?

Why is it OK to use the legal system as a “deterrent” to those seeking legal refuge under our laws?

Assuming that our republic survives, the question for the future is what can we do to insure appointment of Federal Judges, at all levels, with integrity who possess the courage to stand up for the most vulnerable among us in the face of unconstitutional racism and White Nationalism.

PWS

11-13-19

NIGHTMARE ON 1st ST., NE: AS SUPREMES APPEAR SEARCHING FOR WAY TO “STICK IT TO” DREAMERS, TRUMP’S OBSESSION WITH REMOVING LONG-TIME UNDOCUMENTED INDIVIDUALS REMAINS HIGHLY UNPOPULAR!

https://apple.news/AVLJN2Lt1SD-o5h81B1pQqw

Chantal Da Silva reports for Newsweek:

Most Americans Want Undocumented Immigrants To Be Able To Stay Legally

November 12, 2019

The majority of Americans believe it is important for the U.S. to establish a way for most undocumented immigrants in the country to remain here legally, a new study has found.

The revelation from the Pew Research Center’s findings, which were published on Tuesday, comes as the Supreme Court deliberates over whether the Trump administration can legally end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Under the DACA program, nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. by their parents have been allowed to live and work in the country.

Related Stories

• Will Donald Trump Be Able to End DACA? Decision Heads to Supreme Court

However, the Trump administration has sought to bring the program to an end, a bid which was temporarily blocked by courts and which will now be brought before the Supreme Court this week.

According to the Pew Research Center’s findings, two-thirds of Americans (67 percent) said it was “very or somewhat important” for the U.S. to establish a way for “most immigrants in the country illegally to remain her legally.”

While support for a pathway for undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. fell largely along party lines, nearly half (48 percent) of Republican and Republican-leaning participants said they were in favor of the idea.

Meanwhile, 82 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they felt it was an important goal.

In addition to establishing a route for most undocumented immigrants to be able to remain in the U.S., Americans also expressed support for taking in refugees fleeing war and violence.

Seventy-three percent of the 9,895 respondents who were surveyed between September 3 and 15 said they felt it was important for the U.S. to take in refugees, with Republicans showing greater support for that goal than in previous years.

In 2016, Pew said, just 40 percent of Republicans identified admitting refugees as an important initiative. This year, however, a majority of Republicans (58 percent) said they supported that goal.

While the majority of Americans were in favor of both of the above initiatives, they also expressed support for strengthening security along the U.S.-Mexico border, with 68 percent of participants in favor of that goal.

Around 9 in 10 Republicans (91 percent) said they were in favor of increasing security at the border, while about half of Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents (49 percent) said they believed it was an important bid.

The apparent divide between Republicans and Democrats is also significant when it comes to increasing deportations of immigrants unauthorized to be in the U.S.

Roughly eight-in-ten Republicans (83 percent) said they were in favor of increasing deportations, including 51 percent who identified that initiative as “very important.”

Meanwhile, among Democrats, support for that bid was much lower, with around just three-in-10 (31 percent) in favor of boosting deportations and only 10 percent calling it a “very important” goal.”

Despite what the American public thinks, the decision on whether DACA is allowed to move forward currently sits in the Supreme Court’s hands.

Justices will be deliberating on whether federal courts should have been able to block the Trump administration’s decision to end the program—and whether Trump had the legal right to end it in the first place.

If the program does come to an end, the thousands of people who benefit the program, as well as the many who might have applied for DACA protections in the future could face deportation from the U.S.

In an interview with Newsweek on Monday, Carolina Fung Feng, a DACA recipient and plaintiff in one of the cases before the Supreme Court, said that if the Supreme Court rules in the Trump administration’s favor, she could lose her job and be deported back to a country that she left when she was 12-years-old.

“I’d be separated from my family here in New York and, also, I would lose the ability to be independent,” Feng said. “Right now, I live on my own with my younger brother, so if they were to eliminate the DACA program permanently I wouldn’t be able to help my brother pay for the house.”

Feng, who is now 30 and works in the U.S. helping adult learners earn their high school equivalency diplomas, said she cannot understand why the U.S. government would want to see the country lose a population that has contributed to the country’s economy and strengthened its local communities.

“We contribute to this economy. We haven’t done anything wrong,” she said. “We’re just human beings who want to live a better life and we want to protect our families and do the best we can so they can have a better life.”

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

A majority of the Supremes appear ready to “go along to get along” with the latest move by the Trump Administration to screw, demean, and dehumanize undocumented American young people who are continuing to contribute to our society.

A Court that not so long ago had little trouble treating inanimate and amoral large corporate interests as “persons” under the Constitution appeared to have no such concerns for the rights and dignity of a large class of human beings actually living, working, and studying in America.

By either agreeing with the bogus legal argument half-heartedly presented by the Solicitor General or saying Trump could act for no particular reason other than his White Nationalist political agenda, the Supremes appeared willing to allow young people to be held hostage for an extreme nativist anti-immigrant legislative program.

Trump gave his usual “off-the-wall tweet.” First, he smeared so-called “Dreamers” as containing among their ranks “tough, hardened criminals” (even though such individuals were specifically excluded from the program by the Obama Administration). At the same time, he said that if his Supremes gave him what he demanded he would cut a “deal” with the Dems for Dreamer relief. We’ve heard that before.

That’s highly unlikely to happen without regime change in the Executive and the Senate. Similar to the last failed exercise, the Trump Administration would almost certainly demand an end to refugee and asylum programs, sharp cuts to legal immigration, massive new funding for the New American Gulag, and a free hand to summarily deport almost anyone without due process in return for even limited Dreamer relief. That’s a “deal” the Dems aren’t going to make.

Therefore, most Dreamers likely will continue to “twist in the wind” for another election cycle and perhaps longer. With Immigration Court backlogs at an astounding 1.3 million and growing, they won’t be forcibly removed any time in the near future, even if Trump wins re-election.

On the other hand, deprived of work authorization and “color of law” status, most will face obstacles to legal employment or study in the U.S. This will leave them with the “choice” of “going underground” or “self-deportation.” Either way, America will be deprived of the full potential of some of our most talented and dedicated younger generation.

Of course, I hope that my gloomy analysis is wrong. But, things are sure looking like another avoidable judicially-enabled nightmare in a nation that has empowered a White Nationalist minority to run roughshod over individual rights with judicial complicity.

I would expect the Supreme majority’s decision to be loaded with some disingenuous and self-serving references as to how disputes like the fate of the Dreamers should be determined by the “political system.” Then, it will be good to remember that this is a Court that has chosen to take a “pass” on partisan gerrymandering and other gimmicks used by the GOP and the Trump Administration to disenfranchise racial minorities, suppress the vote, and circumvent true democratic rule. In other words, the Supremes know full well that the “political system” is broken to a large extent because they have helped enable its demise.

That’s why it’s important for the New Due Process Army and others who believe in the Constitution, the rule of law, and basic human decency to get out the vote, remove the GOP across the board, and pave the way for better, more intellectually honest judges, who will uphold individual rights and true Constitutional values rather than siding with the tyranny of an unrestrained, unprincipled Executive and inanimate corporate interests in derogation of human rights.

Obviously, there are lots of folks out there, even among the GOP, who don’t “buy in” to Trump’s unrelenting cruelty toward migrants (except, I guess, those migrants he marries and their foreign-born families). The Dems shouldn’t be afraid to run on a program of Dreamer relief combined with other practical, common sense reforms that would allow us to “rationalize” the inevitable and largely positive forces of human migration. We could actually be “beefing up” our revenue collections with a sane immigration policy, rather than hemorrhaging billions on cruel, inhumane, and ultimately futile “enforcement only” schemes and gimmicks. And, yes, with a more rational and realistic system in place, including for the processing of legitimate refugees and asylees, removal of those who evade it would become more efficient, effective, and uniform than it is under our current broken system, at least as administered by the Trump Administration.

Finally, here’s a link to a great article from Zachary Pleat at Mediamatters “calling out” NBC, CBS, and other so-called “mainstream media” for uncritical repetition and re-publication of Trump’s smears and racist-inspired lies about “Dreamers.” https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/daca-goes-supreme-court-cbs-and-nbc-push-trumps-lie-about-dreamers.

PWS

11-12-19

NIKKI HALEY: How Ambitious Daughter Of Immigrants Became A Shill For White Nationalist, Xenophobic, Misogynistic Regime & Its Corrupt Leader — “All she had to do was to ignore her conscience, betray her colleagues and injure her country. A small price to pay for such a brilliant political future.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/if-officials-believe-trump-is-a-danger-to-the-country-they-have-a-duty-to-say-so/2019/11/11/0541dc64-04bf-11ea-ac12-3325d49eacaa_story.html

Michael Gerson writes in the WashPost:

Nikki Haley used to be known as the other member of President Trump’s Cabinet who left with an intact reputation (in addition to former defense secretary Jim Mattis). In an administration more influenced by Recep Tayyip Erdogan than Ronald Reagan, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations often provided a more traditional rhetorical take on American foreign policy. Haley seemed genuinely to care about human rights and democracy, and to somehow get away with displaying such caring in public. Her confidence in national principles marked her as such a freakish exception that some speculated she might be the rogue, anti-Trump Trump official who wrote an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times.

But Trump’s corruption still pulls at a distance. Clearly convinced that Trumpism is here to stay, Haley has publicly turned against other officials in the administration who saw the president as a dangerous fool. She recounts an hour-long meeting with then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who “confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country.” The conspirators (in Haley’s telling) considered it a life-and-death matter. “This was how high the stakes were, he and Kelly told me. We are doing the best we can do to save the country, they said. We need you to work with us and help us do it.”

Haley, by her own account, refused to help. “Instead of saying that to me, they should’ve been saying that to the president, not asking me to join them on their sidebar plan,” she now explains. “It should’ve been, ‘Go tell the president what your differences are, and quit if you don’t like what he’s doing.’ But to undermine a president is really a very dangerous thing.”

Here Haley is confusing two categories. If a Cabinet member has a policy objection of sufficient seriousness, he or she should take that concern to the president. If the president then chooses against their position — and if implementing the decision would amount to a violation of conscience — an official should resign. Staying in office to undermine, say, a law or war you disapprove of would be a disturbing arrogation of presidential authority.

But there is an equally important moral priority to consider: If you are a national security official working for a malignant, infantile, impulsive, authoritarian wannabe, you need to stay in your job as long as you can to mitigate whatever damage you can — before the mad king tires of your sanity and fires you.

This paradox is one tragic outcome of Trumpism. It is generally a bad and dangerous idea for appointed officials to put their judgment above an elected official’s. And yet it would have been irresponsible for Mattis, Kelly, Tillerson and others not to follow their own judgments in cases where an incompetent, delusional or corrupt president was threatening the national interest.

Consider the case of former White House counsel Donald McGahn. According to the Mueller report, McGahn complained to then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus that Trump was trying to get him to “do crazy s–t.” McGahn (thankfully) told investigators he ignored presidential orders he took to be illegal.

Or consider a negative illustration. When it came to pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, the only morally mature adults in the room (and on the phone) were quite junior in rank. They expressed their concerns upward. But those above them — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — had learned the lesson about officials fired for an excess of conscience. They apparently looked the other way as a friendly country was squeezed for political reasons.

On the whole, I’m glad that responsible officials such as Kelly and Mattis stayed as long as they did to prevent damage to the country. But I also think they have a moral obligation to come out before the 2020 election and say what they know about Trump’s unfitness. If Biden is the nominee, they might even get together and endorse him. But, in any case, if they believe Trump is a danger to the national interest, they eventually have a duty to say something. Saving the country requires no less.

As for Haley, she has now signaled to Trump Republicans that she was not a part of the “deep state,” thus clearing away a barrier to ambition. All she had to do was to ignore her conscience, betray her colleagues and injure her country. A small price to pay for such a brilliant political future.

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

Haley’s ridiculously disingenuous performance on Today when grilled by Savannah Guthrie about the facts was worthy of her new role model, “Don the Con.”

Although you wouldn’t know it from the sycophantic Haley, political appointees, including Cabinet Members, actually take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the U.S., not the President. They are also first and foremost public servants paid by the People, not personal retainers of Trump as Haley, Barr, Pompeo, and others have functioned. I’d actually put Kelly and Tillerson in that category too; they certainly made a mess out of things at DHS and State, respectively, by putting the President’s xenophobic political policies before the law and the public interest.

And, if they in fact thought the President was endangering the U.S., they have kept it a secret after leaving. Compare these tawdry performances with those of the career public servants who have spoken out about Trump’s misdeeds even at the likely cost of their careers. And, unlike the stream of political appointees who have left in various stages of disgrace, they probably don’t have lucrative private sector jobs and/or fat book contracts awaiting them.

Expect Haley to “repackage herself” as a “powerful woman” and eventually as a Presidential candidate. She should be met with the same contempt as Kirstjen Nielsen and the few other GOP women who penetrated the Trump GOP’s “White Men Only Club” only to choose pandering to its corrupt leader over the welfare of our nation and advancement of humanity.

PWS

11-12-19

HISPANICS HELPED RESCUE AMERICA’S CITIES: Their Reward: Donald Trump & His White Nationalist Mafia!

A.K. Sandoval-Strausz
Director of Latinx Studies
Penn State

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/11/08/how-latinos-saved-american-cities/?arc404=true

How Latinos saved American cities

After whites fled and before the ‘creative class’ moved in, immigrants kept urban neighborhoods alive.

A.K. Sandoval-Strausz

November 8, 2019

Chicago’s South Lawndale was just like countless other neighborhoods that bottomed out during the urban crisis of the mid-20th century. Settled after the fire of 1871 and built up in the early 1900s, it had prospered as an industrial district offering steady factory work and affordable housing to immigrants from Germany, Poland and Bohemia. But by the 1960s, its white residents were leaving en masse, moving to the suburbs for newer housing and to avoid sharing the neighborhood with black families who were moving in. The writer Stuart Dybek remembered South Lawndale in those years as a place where people “walked past block-length gutted factories [and] . . . half-boarded storefronts of groceries that had shut down when they were kids, dusty cans still stacked on the shelves.”

But some locals saw a solution to the neighborhood’s decline. Among them was Richard Dolejs, a real estate agent and community leader. Instead of moving out, he recalls, “we said: ‘Well, what about the Mexican community? We should apply to that group and try to bring ’em in.’ ” In the early ’60s, he persuaded lenders to write mortgages for the newcomers and hired Spanish-speaking staff to help them with the paperwork. This was not just altruism: Dolejs’s neighbors wanted to sell or rent their houses to somebody, and since a nearby barrio was being destroyed in the name of “urban renewal,” Hispanic Chicagoans needed somewhere new to live.

They found it.

Depopulation, job loss, fiscal distress and soaring crime in America’s cities were among the nation’s most intractable problems from the 1950s to the early 1990s. When that crisis abated, many experts credited the recovery largely to the “creative class,” urban professionals and other people with money. But it owed more to Latino immigrant families who had begun to revitalize inner-city neighborhoods decades earlier, laying essential foundations for the well-heeled to return. As Latin American migrants are today demonized and scapegoated, their indispensable role in solving one of the greatest crises of the 20th century shouldn’t be overlooked.

[Trump has spread more hatred of immigrants than any American in history]

Like South Lawndale, many other city neighborhoods deteriorated steadily during the urban crisis. Dallas’s Oak Cliff area had thrived starting in the 1940s thanks to military spending on a nearby aircraft and missile factory. The prospect of racial integration, however, led a few whites to launch racist attacks and many more to flee to homogeneous neighborhoods in north Dallas or the suburbs. Oak Cliff’s Mexican American population grew beginning in the late 1950s and 1960s, when Dallas officials ran new highways through another area, disrupting the city’s main barrio and displacing its residents; they were joined by Mexican immigrants beginning in the 1970s.

Latino migrants saved neighborhoods like these from the abandonment and decay that afflicted so much of urban America. While virtually every other demographic group in most cities shrunk, Latin American newcomers replenished neighborhoods. In 1960, my research in census data found that South Lawndale and Oak Cliff were each about 1 to 2 percent Hispanic; four decades later, 91 percent of South Lawndale’s 81,000 residents and 76 percent of Oak Cliff’s 116,000 denizens were Latinos. They were a community lifeline at a time when many landlords, unable to sell or rent their properties but still responsible for mortgages and taxes, hired “torches” to burn them down so they could collect insurance money. Between 1950 and 1980, the North Lawndale neighborhood lost a shocking 10,000 housing units, nearly a third of its previous total. But in adjacent South Lawndale, the number of dwellings held steady as Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants became homeowners.

This was a nationwide phenomenon. New York City lost 820,000 residents between 1950 and 1980, and it would have shrunk more if not for gains of over 1 million new Latinos after 1980. Boston lost 238,000 residents in those decades but gained 100,000 new Latinos since 1980. Cities like Milwaukee and Philadelphia also depended on arriving Latinos — about 85,000 in Milwaukee and 160,000 in Philadelphia — to help stabilize their populations. The clearest example was Chicago, which shed more than 600,000 residents between 1950 and 1980. Nearly 370,000 new Hispanic residents after 1980 saved the Windy City, which is now 29 percent Latino, from losing population as quickly as urban-crisis bellwethers like Detroit and Cleveland.

[Family-based immigration has ‘merit,’ too]

Three decades of population decline in most urban areas nationwide gave way to a new era, beginning around 1980, when more than two-thirds of the 25 biggest cities gained residents. Much of this increase owed to Latinos. In most big cities, Hispanic populations expanded in the 1970s and reached peak growth rates by the 1990s; meanwhile, the non-Hispanic white populations shrank continuously, with the predominantly white “creative class” stabilizing this demographic only in the past 20 years. As a result, of those 25 biggest cities, 12 have populations that are more than one-quarter Hispanic, including eight that are more than one-third Hispanic and two, San Antonio and El Paso, that are majority Latino. By the same token, research on more than 3,000 U.S. counties and 150 big cities has demonstrated that Latinos were the largest immigrant group contributing to economic growth, as an influx of immigrants generated jobs and propelled revitalization through the housing sector.

This is not just a question of numbers. It is difficult to imagine how many neighborhoods — from the North Corona section of Queens to Detroit’s Mexicantown to Minneapolis’s Lake Street to everything west of Interstate 25 in Denver — could have sustained themselves without the arrival of 25 million new Latino urbanites over the past half-century. Equally important, however, are the ways these migrants imported everyday customs from Latin America and adapted them for their new homes.

The most significant of these habits was a preference for walking over driving. In countries such as Mexico, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, few people owned cars, especially in the rural areas from which most immigrants came. This made the newcomers the ideal inheritors of the American urban core, a landscape created before the automobile. While Anglo Americans were leaving in droves for car-dependent suburbia, Latinos repopulated neighborhoods built around pedestrians and public transportation.

This in turn revitalized the inner-city commercial landscape. Urban small businesses had been declining for decades, pressured since the mid-1950s by suburban malls and since the 1970s by predatory big-box retailers. But new Latino residents energized neighborhood commerce. They shopped locally, at stores they could walk to, where shopkeepers spoke Spanish. Businesses like these enjoyed a protected market with a growing clientele: The Kauffman Index, which measures entrepreneurial activity, showed that in almost every year from 1996 through 2018, Latinos were more likely than any other demographic group to open their own businesses.

They also brought life back to city streets. While two generations of American thinkers fretted over the loss of public life, from Richard Sennett’s “The Fall of Public Man” in 1977 to Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone” in 2000, Latino neighborhoods experienced a revival of streetside socializing. Once-empty sidewalks, play areas and parks echoed with the sounds of música norteña, salsa and cumbia and the cheers of spectators at neighborhood soccer leagues — and eventually, Anglo Americans learned to shout “¡Goooooooool!” when a team scored.

In Oak Cliff, Latino immigrants helped reverse two decades of falling property values, and by the 1980s, local homes were appreciating faster than in Dallas as a whole. As the city’s share of Latinos jumped from the 1990s into the 2010s, Dallas’s crime rate began a decline that saw homicides drop by 69 percent between 1991 and 2018. Similarly, in South Lawndale, home values more than doubled between 1990 and 2000, and by 2018 the number of homicides citywide had dropped by 40 percent from its peak in 1991. Neighborhood business activity soared; soon journalists, business groups, social scientists and public officials were lauding South Lawndale — now known as Little Village — as an example of a new and revitalized Chicago. Like other barrios, it still had problems with poverty, underfunded schools and delinquent youth, but things had improved dramatically.

Leaders of cities nationwide soon recognized the positive effects of immigration. They organized to welcome newcomers, especially after the 2010 Census showed how many urban areas depended on immigrants to sustain their populations and workforces. Detroit, for example, launched a development initiative called Global Detroit, observing that “immigration has proven, by far, to be the best American strategy to combat population loss.” A few years later, Detroit’s leaders joined with municipal officials from across the industrial heartland to establish the Welcoming Economies Global Network — its motto is “Leading Rust Belt Immigrant Innovation” — with more than two dozen affiliates.

Latin American immigrants have filled essential roles in metropolitan economies, making up a large proportion of home builders, child-care workers, building maintenance staff, and restaurant cooks, servers and busboys. Sociologists and economists have shown that the urban professionals cities covet today need child care and other household help, and that they are attracted to cities by cafes, clubs and restaurants. Without the hands that have built and renovated homes, looked after children, kept office buildings running, and prepared meals, white-collar families wouldn’t live in urban America.

[Yes, you can gentrify a neighborhood without pushing out poor people]

These urban professionals increasingly require not just Latino labor but Latino space, as they seek out neighborhoods with “character” and “authenticity.” In numerous barrios — from San Francisco’s Mission District to Los Angeles’s Boyle Heights to New York’s Washington Heights — urban professionals have paid barrios their highest compliment by gentrifying them. A few years ago, Chicago immigrant José Luis Arroyo recalled a young white man who walked up and asked to purchase his house, saying he had lived there before his family moved away. “These Americans left because they thought we were going to destroy their neighborhood,” Arroyo told researchers for the Chicago Mexican Migrant Oral History Project. “These young peoples’ parents got scared and moved away, and they took their children with them. And then these children grew up and became professionals and came to visit the barrio. And now they want to move back!”

The revitalizing influence of Latinos and other immigrants now extends far beyond cities. Many of the pathologies of the urban crisis are today afflicting rural America, where a lack of economic opportunity and a catastrophic opioid epidemic have emptied out small towns and left vast numbers of workers disabled. Once again, Latin American newcomers have led the way in addressing the rural crisis by providing much-needed labor on Pennsylvania farms, in Iowa meatpacking plants and at Wyoming nature resorts and repopulating the surrounding small towns. Of the nearly 2,300 rural counties in the United States, 94 percent saw increases in Hispanic residents between 1990 and 2000, and from 2000 to 2010, Latinos made up 58 percent of all population growth in nonmetropolitan counties.

A nation of immigrants is what we have been, and it is what we shall remain. The newest Americans trust us to be the nation we said we were for all those years: a city upon a hill, the North Star, the last best hope of Earth, Mother of Exiles. Perhaps they can help us recognize ourselves; for they are just the latest in a proud lineage of migrants seeking their promised land.

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

Trump’s racist White Nationalism basically targets all who “differ” from his absurd “nativist vision” of America and his disdain for truth and values.

PWS

11-11-19

“BIG MAC” LEAVES A LEGACY OF LIES, “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” @ DHS — Employee Quits Over Un-American White Nationalist Agenda That Has Swallowed Agency’s Mission — He Could “no longer be party to an intimidating, mismanaged and unwelcoming administration that is openly rebellious to the values our government has espoused for centuries.”

https://apple.news/ABGwuGCUoQJKM6uzXamQGDQ

Chantal Da Silva reports for Newsweek:

A Homeland Security worker says he has resigned from his role after years of service because he can no longer align himself with President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

In a scathing account published by The Houston Chronicle Travis Olsen explains what led him to the decision that he could “no longer be party to an intimidating, mismanaged and unwelcoming administration that is openly rebellious to the values our government has espoused for centuries.”

“For nearly a decade I have been a frontline civilian with the Department of Homeland Security, never seeing my work as political or driven by partisanship. I have served with purpose, with duty and gratitude to the values of our country,” Olsen said, adding: “I agree with President George W. Bush’s definition of our nation, ‘America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time.'”

Olsen said that while the U.S. has “always been a refuge for those fleeing persecution oppression and dictatorships,” under the Trump administration, “these ideals which have governed our country for centuries have been crushed under the weight of intolerance and public irresponsibility.”

Related Stories

• Bernie Sanders Vows To ‘Break Up’ ICE, CBP In Immigration Plan

An example of that, he said, was the Trump administration’s recent decision to transfer Border Patrol agents from their already “unprecedented law enforcement workloads” to “conduct non-adversarial interviews of asylum seekers.”

“This is a clear attempt to replace the humanitarian mission of our protection laws with an enforcement objective,” Olsen said.

And, he added, “it is part of a string of unnecessary and counter-productive policies such as sending children across the country from their parents and leaving asylum-seekers in Mexico in the hands of the cartels,” striking out at the Trump administration’s widely-condemned “Remain in Mexico” policy.

“Seeking greater security and vetting procedures does not require abandoning basic human rights or putting vulnerable people at even greater risk,” the resigned DHS worker said.

While Olsen did say that he believes the U.S. does need to modernize its “outdated immigration system,” the Trump administration has so far failed to do that.

In fact, he said, the current leadership has only succeeded in creating “more problems by pulling resources further from their purpose and thereby clogging an already overflowing system. This has not been to enforce our laws but simply to unilaterally implement the administration’s version of the law.”

“We need rational, sensible and thoughtful solutions. We can support our allies by raising refugee admissions back to standard numbers. We can eliminate push factors by reinstating targeted aid to neighboring countries. We can utilize effective alternatives to detention and not create humanitarian crises within our borders,” the resigned DHS worker said. “But none of this can happen when our government deliberately targets children, families and other vulnerable people. Basic humanity and decency must be restored.”

Hitting out at Congress members who have defended the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies, Olsen wrote: “Some in Congress have either defended the false choice between security and humanity or simply sat silently as this Administration has trampled our national history.”

“We need leaders who will stand for American values in the face of political convenience. We need moral courage in our government. We are America. We can do better, be better,” he said.

It is unclear what Olsen’s role within the DHS was or how many years he worked with the department.

However, he said he has worked as an attorney, advocate and government officer representing and working with vulnerable populations.

Newsweek has contacted the DHS for comment for this article.

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

Yes, under “Trump Toadies” Kelly, Nielsen, and most recently “Big Mac With Lies,” the DHS has essentially abandoned it’s “national security” and “service to the public” functions in favor of a racist, White Nationalist restrictionist political agenda directed at immigrants and ultimately Americans of color, the overwhelming majority of whom pose no threat whatsoever to our national security. To the contrary, most of the misguided “civil enforcement” activities that DHS touts actually hurt our country and squander incredible amounts of public money, not to mention the public trust and confidence necessary to engage in real law enforcement.

A rational, professional immigration agency would concentrate its civil efforts on: 1) processing recent arrivals with an eye toward quickly identifying those eligible for asylum or other protection and approving their cases so that they can be integrated into our society; 2) humane removal of those who don’t qualify, perhaps working with other countries to find safe resettlement opportunities where necessary; 3) increasing overseas refugee processing to make it unnecessary for refugees to make the dangerous journey to our borders to apply; 4) removing individuals with serious criminal records or who are engaged in fraud, trafficking, etc., 5) facilitating some type of legal status and work authorization under our existing laws for as many long term, law-abiding undocumented residents as possible; 6) making the case to Congress for bipartisan reform that would legalize long-term undocumented residents while significantly increasing legal immigration opportunities, both temporary and permanent, across the board; 7) working with the Department of Labor on wage, hour, and working conditions enforcement to prevent exploitation of all workers, including migrants.

Making the legal immigration and adjudication systems work better would reduce the pressure for extralegal entries at the border and allow DHS to concentrate its enforcement on real threats to our national security like terrorists, human and drug smugglers, and fraudsters.

Given the fraud, waste, and abuse of the public treasury by the current DHS, rationalizing the system likely would cost no more than we are wasting on “designed to fail max enforcement gimmicks” (like Trump’s “stunt wall”) now. And the long term benefits to our country in assisting refugees and other migrants to integrate into our society, fully contribute, and pay taxes would be great.

PWS

11-09-19

9TH CIRCUIT’S CONTINUING SHAME: “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico” Program Was Ruled “Illegal From The Git Go” By Courageous U.S. District Judge – Then, 9th Intervened To “Open The Killing Fields” – Empowered By Appellate Judicial Complicity, DHS Agents Now Simply Commit Fraud On Asylum Applicants & Their Lawyers By Returning Them To Mexico With Fake Hearing Dates!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=1e0901c7-ba27-4d78-a71a-823c2481d392

Gustavo Solis reports for the San Diego Union-Tribune:

By Gustavo Solis

Asylum seekers who have finished their court cases are being sent back to Mexico with documents that contain fraudulent future court dates, keeping some migrants south of the border indefinitely, records show.

Under the Migrant Protection Protocols policy, asylum seekers with cases in the United States have to wait in Mexico until those cases are resolved. The Mexican government agreed to accept only migrants with future court dates scheduled.

Normally, when migrants conclude their immigration court cases, they are either paroled into the United States or kept in federal custody depending on the outcome of the case.

However, records obtained by the San Diego Union-Tribune show that on at least 14 occasions, Customs and Border Protection agents in California and Texas gave migrants who had already concluded their court cases documents with fraudulent future court dates written on them and sent the migrants back to Mexico anyway.

Those documents, unofficially known as tear sheets, are given to every migrant in the Migrant Protection Protocols program who is sent back to Mexico. The document tells the migrants where and when to appear at the border so that they can be transported to immigration court. What is different about the tear sheets that migrants with closed cases receive is that the future court date is not legitimate, according to multiple immigration lawyers whose clients have received these documents.

This has happened both to migrants who have been granted asylum and those who had their cases terminated — meaning a judge closed the case without making a formal decision, usually on procedural grounds. Additionally, at least one migrant was physically assaulted after being sent back to Mexico this way, according to her lawyer.

Bashir Ghazialam, a San Diego immigration lawyer who represents six people who received these fake future court dates, said he was shocked by the developments.

“This is fraud,” he said. “I don’t call everything fraud. This is the first time I’ve used the words, ‘U.S. government’ and ‘fraud’ in the same sentence. No one should be OK with this.”

The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection did not respond to multiple requests to comment about why they had engaged in the practice.

Ghazialam first noticed this in September, when three of his clients were sent back to Mexico after their cases were terminated on Sept. 17. After the judge made his decision, the family spent 10 days in Customs and Border Protection custody.

On Sept. 27, the family was given a document that read, in part, “At your last court appearance, an immigration judge ordered you to return to court for another hearing.” That piece of paper told them to return to court on Nov. 28.

However, the immigration judge ordered no further hearing. Ghazialam’s clients do not have a hearing scheduled on that or any other day.

To confirm Ghazialam’s claims, a reporter called a Department of Justice hotline that people with immigration court cases use to check their status and dates of future hearings. That hotline confirmed that the family’s case had been terminated on Sept. 17 and that “the system does not contain any information regarding a future hearing date on your case.”

“That date is completely made up and the Mexican authorities are not trained enough to know this is a fake court date,” Ghazialam said.

After being returned to Mexico, the mother was stabbed in the forearm while protecting her children from an attempted kidnapping. She still has stitches from the wound, Ghazialam said.

The mother presented herself at the border shortly after the stabbing. She told Customs and Border Protection agents that she was afraid to stay in Mexico. The agents gave her a fear of return interview and tried to send her back to Mexico.

But this time, Mexican immigration officials refused to let her and her children back into Mexico because they did not have a court date, Ghazialam said. She is currently with relatives in New York, waiting to figure out the future of her legal status in the United States while wearing an ankle monitor.

In most of these cases, immigration attorneys aren’t aware that their clients were sent back to Mexico until it’s too late.

In one case, a Cuban asylum seeker was returned to Mexico after an immigration judge in Brownsville, Texas, granted her asylum.

The woman’s lawyer, Jodi Goodwin, remembers hugging her client after the decision and arranging a place to meet after authorities released her later that day following processing.

Goodwin expected the process to take 45 minutes, so she went to a nearby Whataburger and ordered a chocolate milkshake. About 40 minutes later, she got a phone call from her client.

“She was hysterical and crying,” Goodwin said. “I’m like, ‘What happened?’ and she says, ‘I’m in Mexico.’ ”

Goodwin called U.S. and Mexican immigration authorities to try to find out what happened. She spent five hours at the border until 9 p.m. and then went home to draft a lawsuit. It wasn’t until she threatened to sue CBP that her client was paroled into the United States.

“It was total chaos for 24 hours to try to figure it out,” Goodwin said. “It shouldn’t be like that, especially when CBP is blatantly lying. They are creating documents that have false information.”

The American Immigration Lawyers Assn. said it was worried about the practice.

“The idea that even though these vulnerable individuals are able to obtain an asylum grant from an immigration judge and CBP is sending them back to harm’s way in Mexico is really disturbing, especially under the guise that there’s a future hearing date,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel for the organization.

Mexico’s National Institute of Migration did not immediately respond to questions about this practice.

Although Ghazialam and Goodwin were able to eventually get their clients back into the United States, some people are still in Mexico.

That’s what happened to a Guatemalan woman and her two children after a judge terminated their case on Oct. 18. The same day the judge closed their case, a U.S. immigration official gave her a piece of paper with the false hearing date of Jan. 16.

“But this appointment does not exist,” said the woman’s New York City attorney, Rebecca Press. “If you check with the immigration court system, there is no January hearing date and the case has already been terminated.”

It’s unclear how widespread this practice is. Lawyers in San Diego; Laredo, Texas; and Brownsville confirmed they have seen it firsthand.

However, only about 1% of asylum seekers in the Migrant Protection Protocols program have lawyers. Therefore it’s difficult to track what happens to the overwhelming majority of the people in the program.

Lawyers said asylum seekers without legal representation who have been sent back in this manner probably have no way of advocating for themselves. It took Goodwin hours of calls to high-level officials in both U.S. and Mexican immigration agencies plus the threat of a lawsuit to get her client back into the United States.

“If you don’t have someone who’s willing to sit around and spend five hours on the phone and stay up all night drafting litigation to force their hand, you’re going to be stuck,” she said.

As news of these false hearing dates spread among the immigration attorney community, some lawyers are taking proactive steps to protect their clients from being returned to Mexico after their court cases are closed.

Siobhan Waldron, a Los Angeles lawyer, wrote a letter to Mexican immigration officials explaining that her client had no future hearing date and outlined a step-by-step process Mexican officials could take to verify that her client’s case had been closed by using the Department of Justice hotline.

The letter worked at first.

When CBP officers tried to return Waldron’s client to Mexico on Nov. 1 with a false January hearing date, her client showed the note to Mexican officials, who refused to take her in. However, the next day, CBP officers sent Waldron’s client back to Mexico with another false court date and this time did not allow her to show Mexican officials her lawyer’s letter that she kept in a special folder, Waldron said.

“They didn’t let her take it out,” Waldron said. “They said, ‘You can’t present anything from that folder.’ ”

The lawyer plans to file “any complaint you can imagine” to CBP, the Department of Homeland Security and other regulatory agencies because “these agents need to be held accountable.”

Her client is still in Mexico, too afraid to walk outside because she has already been kidnapped and assaulted, Waldron said.

Solis writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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As my friend Laura Lynch points out, the individuals affected by this judicially-enabled outrage are not just “asylum applicants” – they include those who have been GRANTED ASYLUM as well as those whose removal proceedings were terminated because a U.S. Immigration Judge found that DHS ILLEGALLY SUBJECTED THEM to the “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico Program.”

The 9^th Circuit’s horrible and incompetent handling of Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan will live in infamy as a monumental judicial abdication of duty that has actually harmed or killed innocent asylum seekers while inspiring DHS to new heights of illegal behavior and contempt for our entire legal system.

Why have a “Judicial Branch” that won’t stand up for individual legal rights in the face of Executive tyranny, overreach, and downright fraud? What are these robed folks doing to earn their lifetime paychecks? And, given the quality and philosophy of many of Trump”s judicial appointments, rammed through a corrupt GOP Senate by “Moscow Mitch,” these are questions the majority of Americans might be asking for decades to come!

PWS

11-08-19

“ANONYMOUS” NEW BOOK PAINTS TRUMP AS “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENT,” MISOGYNIST, RACIST!

Who knows about the merits of an “anonymous” exposé. But, in Philip Rucker’s report for the WashPost, the excerpts about Trump’s intentionally cruel, ignorant, misogynistic, racist, White Nationalist approach certainly ring true:

The book depicts Trump as making misogynistic and racist comments behind the scenes.

“I’ve sat and listened in uncomfortable silence as he talks about a woman’s appearance or performance,” the author writes. “He comments on makeup. He makes jokes about weight. He critiques clothing. He questions the toughness of women in and around his orbit. He uses words like ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey’ to address accomplished professionals. This is precisely the way a boss shouldn’t act in the work environment.”

The author alleges that Trump attempted a Hispanic accent during an Oval Office meeting to complain about migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We get these women coming in with like seven children,” Trump said, according to the book. “They are saying, ‘Oh, please help! My husband left me!’ They are useless. They don’t do anything for our country. At least if they came in with a husband we could put him in the fields to pick corn or something.”

The author argues that Trump is incapable of leading the United States through a monumental international crisis, describing how he tunes out intelligence and national security briefings and theorizing that foreign adversaries see him as “a simplistic pushover” who is susceptible to flattery and easily manipulated.

Here’s link to Rucker’s complete article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/book-by-anonymous-describes-trump-as-cruel-inept-and-a-danger-to-the-nation/2019/11/07/b6b6c6f2-0150-11ea-8bab-0fc209e065a8_story.html

Phillip Rucker
White House Bureau Chief
Washington Post

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My observation: While the book claims that senior officials decided not to “resign en masse” because it would have further destabilized the Government, how could things be much worse than they are now? We could still have a national emergency at any moment that Trump will screw up, not to mention that Trump is busy undermining our democracy, dividing our country, and selling out our national security. If the account is true, then I think that “anonymous & co.” did our country a huge, perhaps fatal, disservice by not going through with the en masse resignation and publicly sharing all that they knew about Trump’s glaring unsuitability for office.

Yeah, I suppose a recession would make things “even worse.” That we haven’t had one yet probably just shows that the economy operates to a large extent beyond Presidential control. And, it’s a sure bet that if we do have a downturn, Trump and his band of incompetents won’t have any idea how to handle it, beyond the “strategy” of blaming someone else.

It’s also remarkable that an Administration known for its paranoia can’t find “the leaker in their midst.”

Overall, by not coming forward and publicly revealing him or herself, “Anonymous” reduces his or her credibility and undermines the message of dire warning.

On the other hand, it’s hardly “breaking news” that Trump is a malicious incompetent and those around him are his “toady enablers.”

PWS

11-08-19

BERNIE SANDERS RELEASES IMMIGRATION PLANS: Calls For Independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court!

https://apple.news/AkDo21ef1RY-a-4hdbxQExA

Ian Kullgren reports for Politico:

Elections

How Bernie Sanders would change immigration

Sanders’ plan reflects a fundamental distrust in border enforcement, at least in the traditional sense.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) released an immigration plan Thursday that would dismantle President Donald Trump’s agenda — and fundamentally change how we decide who gets to be an American.

What would it do?

Sanders’ plan proposes a wholesale rewrite of the U.S. immigration system — everything from border security to legal status.

Sanders would seek to expand two Obama-era programs — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents — with the goal of allowing 85 percent of undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years to stay without the threat of deportation. Sanders says he would “push Congress, immediately” to pass legislation outlining a five-year pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, with priority status for young people; any bill Sanders signs would not reduce “traditional, family-based visas.”

Sanders says he would decriminalize border crossings. “Punitive policies have been justified as a deterrent to migration, but in addition to being morally wrong, there is no evidence that these policies have served this purpose,” Sanders says in the plan. “The criminalization of immigrants has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, dehumanized vulnerable migrants, and swelled already-overcrowded jails and prisons.”

Sanders says he would end detention for essentially every migrant without a violent criminal conviction. The Vermont senator would fund “community-based alternatives to detention” that would give migrants access to legal resources and health care.

Sanders says he would break apart the Homeland Security Department entirely — including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — and distribute the responsibilities among the Justice, Treasury and State departments. He says he would extend DOJ anti-profiling guidance to border areas and eliminate the use of DNA testing and facial recognition for enforcement.

Sanders would redirect government resources toward inspecting workplaces for wage and safety violations, with a focus on immigrant-heavy industries.

And, no, he would not finish Trump’s border wall.

How would it work?

Sanders’ plan reflects a fundamental distrust in border enforcement, at least in the traditional sense. It would dismantle most of the mechanisms that previous presidents — not just Trump — have used to deter people from coming here illegally.

By itself, Sanders’ plan to eliminate criminal penalties for migrants would not stop people from being deported; many border crossings are both a civil and criminal offense, but the criminal piece was rarely used prior to President George W. Bush. Sanders takes a great leap further by eliminating detention for the vast majority of undocumented immigrants. While he proposes integrating migrants in communities, Sanders does little to explain how he would help cities shoulder the burden and provide housing (beyond saying that temporary housing would “meet humane, 21st century living standards”).

Nor does Sanders explain how he would background-check migrants as levels rise. The expansion of DACA and DAPA, for example, would require the U.S. to screen entrants’ criminal backgrounds — the programs require a clean record — but Sanders does not say how he would do that once ICE and CBP are dismantled. Sanders would likely run into the same problem trying to sift out violent criminals crossing at the border for detention.

Sanders calls for the repeal of Section 1325 of Title 8 of the U.S. Code, which makes crossing the border without undergoing an inspection by an immigration officer a misdemeanor offense. The Trump administration used the statute to justify separating families under its zero-tolerance border strategy, which split apart thousands of families in the spring of 2018. Under the policy, adults were charged with illegal entry and detained for prosecution. They were separated from their children, who were then labeled “unaccompanied.”

What do other candidates support?

The majority of Democratic contenders align with Sanders on supporting DACA and a pathway to citizenship.

Many of the other top-tier candidates, including Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), also support decriminalizing border crossings. Former Vice President Joe Biden is the exception, saying it should be a crime.

Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get top news and scoops, every morning — in your inbox.

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Although not mentioned in Ian’s summary, a key part of the “Sanders Plan” establishes an independent U.S. Immigration Court:

Establish immigration courts as independent Article I courts, free from influence and interference.

More than double funding for immigration adjudication to fully fund and staff immigration courts and eliminate the case backlog.

Frankly, without an independent U.S. Immigration Court to insure fairness, due process, and accountability, all other immigration reforms are essentially meaningless.

PWS

11-08-19

PROFILES IN WHITE NATIONALIST COWARDICE: At Time Of World’s Greatest Need, Trump Administration Resettled Zero (0) Refugees In October – “There couldn’t be a worse time for it. The UN estimates there are around 26 million refugees worldwide, many of whom are victims of torture or women and girls fleeing persecution or violence.”

https://apple.news/A9iGP0BvrTqCp47JtaKz2Wg

Natasha Frost reports for Quartz:

ACCESS DENIED

Not a single refugee was resettled in the US last month

The nosedive is the result of a State Department freeze on admissions, according to a World Relief press release, resulting in hundreds of canceled flights and yet more uncertainty for the thousands of refugees hoping to resettle in the US. The department has issued an admissions ceiling of 18,000 for the financial year 2020—the lowest in almost 30 years, and well below the number of displaced people already in the pipeline to be resettled in the US. (Ceilings for 2018 and 2019 were 45,000 and 30,000, respectively.)

There couldn’t be a worse time for it. The UN estimates there are around 26 million refugees worldwide, many of whom are victims of torture or women and girls fleeing persecution or violence. Others may be victims of the war in Syria, where the withdrawal of US troops has generated chaos and further devastation. Barely half a percent of the 26 million will be resettled at all, and even then only after a process of intensive screening from admitting states, noted Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in a statement released yesterday. “At a time of record forced displacement in the world, lower admissions constrain UNHCR’s ability to deliver on its refugee protection mandate and diminish our humanitarian negotiating power at the global level,” he added.

While states are barred from expelling asylum seekers or returning them “to any country in which they would face persecution,” they are under no legal obligation to accept any number of refugees. In the mid-1960s, the early years of modern refugee programs, according to the Center for Migration Studies, the US representative to the UN described the proper, legal treatment of refugees and asylum seekers as a “credit” to the US, rather than “a burden.” In recent years, however, the US government has come to see these obligations as a humanitarian headache—one that places an undue toll on US taxpayers.

In 1980, when records began, the US admitted more than 200,000 refugees to a country of around 270 million people. Nearly 30 years on, the US population has risen more than 40%, while the number of refugees resettled is down by more than 80%.

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There is simply no end to the Trump Administration’s sleazy, selfish, cowardly, cruelty. Under Trump, the U.S. has gone from a humanitarian beacon to the leader of the “race to the bottom.”

PWS

11-05-19

CORRUPTED “COURTS” – No Stranger To Improper Politicized Hiring Directed Against Migrants Seeking Justice, DOJ Under Barr Doubles Down On Biased Ideological Hiring & Promoting “Worst Practices”– “The idea that six judges with asylum denial rates astronomically above the national average of 57.1% were the ‘best qualified’ for these appellate jobs is simply absurd… It seems that a Congressional investigation into the selection process would be well warranted . . . .”

https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/trump-officials-appoint-miami-immigration-judge-deborah-goodwin-to-top-appeals-court-11310052

Manuel Madrid reports for the Miami New Times:

Trump Officials Give Permanent Promotion to Asylum-Denying Miami Immigration Judge

MANUEL MADRID | NOVEMBER 1, 2019 | 11:00AM

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A Miami immigration judge with less than two years of experience on the bench was fast-tracked for a permanent position on the nation’s highest immigration court. The move has raised concerns about politicized hiring at the Justice Department.

Deborah Goodwin was one of six judges handpicked by Justice Department officials to fill vacancies on the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), a 21-member appellate court that sets binding legal precedents for more than 400 immigration judges serving in the nation’s 57 immigration courts. These six judges, who have little in common other than their markedly high rates of asylum denial, were permanently added to the board in August without undergoing any probationary period, according to documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the investigative website Muckrock.

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Memos sent to the office of Attorney General William Barr in July reveal that the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees the nation’s immigration courts, adopted new hiring procedures in March to evaluate candidates. It was “EOIR practice” to appoint a board member temporarily and require that person to complete a two-year probationary period, but the agency now believes that a sitting immigration judge has “the same or similar skills” as an appellate judge and should therefore be immediately installed permanently. The memos, obtained by Muckrock and shared with CQ Roll Call, were written by EOIR Director James McHenry.

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“This is clearly a political move. There’s no question about it,” says Jason Dzubow, a D.C.-based immigration lawyer who runs the blog the Asylumist. “And there’s no way someone looking at the appearance of this can consider the hirings good for fairness in the immigration court system.”

Goodwin has a strong background in immigration enforcement: She worked as an associate legal adviser and assistant chief counsel for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The judge, who presides over the court in Miami-Dade’s Krome migrant detention center, began hearing cases in 2017. As of the end of last year, she had an asylum denial rate of 89 percent, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. That’s far above the national average of 57 percent during the same period and almost 10 percentage points higher than the average for the Miami immigration court as a whole.

Of the six judges, Goodwin — who was appointed by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch — has received relatively little attention due to her limited time on the bench. Other appointees, such as Atlanta’s William Cassidy and Charlotte’s Stuart Couch, have been far more controversial. Cassidy, who had an asylum denial rate of 95 percent between 2013 and 2018, has been the subject of various complaints from immigration attorneys over the years. Couch, who had a rejection rate of 92 percent, issued ten rulings in 2017 that were found “clearly erroneous” by the Board of Immigration of Appeals. All ten of those of rulings involved the rejection of asylum claims by women who had been victims of domestic violence.

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In a recent interview with Dzubow, former U.S. Chief Immigration Judge MaryBeth Keller said the recent BIA hirings were “stunning.”

“I think [immigration judges] are generally eminently qualified to be board members, but to bring in all six from the immigration court? I’d like to think that the pool of applicants was more diverse than that,” Keller told Dzubow. “I find these recent hires to be very unusual.”

Immigration judges, and appellate judges in particular, can come from a wide range of legal and professional backgrounds, although scandals of politicized hiring have cropped up in the past. In 2008, a report by the Office of the Inspector General revealed the George W. Bush administration had engaged in illegal hiring practices for years by selecting immigration judges based on their political views. Perhaps unsurprisingly, immigration judges selected during that time were found to have disproportionately denied asylum claims.

Paul Wickham Schmidt, a former immigration judge and former head of the Board of Immigration Appeals, responded to the new appellate court appointments on his blog, immigrationcourtside.com: “The idea that six judges with asylum denial rates astronomically above the national average of 57.1% were the ‘best qualified’ for these appellate jobs is simply absurd… It seems that a Congressional investigation into the selection process would be well warranted, including a look at the qaualifications [sic] of candidates who were passed over.”

Manuel Madrid is a staff writer for Miami New Times. The child of Venezuelan immigrants, he grew up in Pompano Beach. He studied finance at Virginia Commonwealth University and worked as a writing fellow for the magazine The American Prospect in Washington, D.C., before moving back to South Florida.

CONTACT:

Manuel Madrid

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Twitter:@manueljmadrid

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OK, so I can’t spell or proofread. That’s why I’m a “gonzo journalist.” (I actually went back and corrected the spelling after seeing Manuel’s article. But, it definitely was in the original posting.)

Every time a Court of Appeals signs off on a “removal order” generated by these blatantly unconstitutional (not to mention unqualified) “courts” that violate Due Process every day in numerous ways, those Article III Judges are betraying their duties to uphold the Constitution.

Manuel’s article also sheds some light on the opaque hiring practices of the Obama Administration under AG Loretta Lynch. Not only did Lynch incompetently administer the mechanics of Immigration Judge hiring — approximately two years to fill an average IJ vacancy (ridiculous) & dozens of open positions negligently left “on the table” for Sessions — she consistently filled the courts with “go along to get along government insiders” to the exclusion of many better qualified candidates from the private bar who could have added to the dialogue much-needed scholarship (particularly in the asylum and Due Process areas) and a more practical understanding of the predicament of asylum seekers.

Of course, some Government attorneys make outstanding, fair, scholarly Immigration Judges. I recommended numerous well-qualified INS and DHS attorneys for such appointments over the years, along with many from private practice and academia. But, along the lines of what former Chief Judge Keller said, Government attorneys can’t essentially be the “sole source” of judicial appointments.

To a large extent, Sessions and Barr have “weaponized” and accelerated Lynch’s already one-sided exclusionary hiring practices. While Lynch apparently didn’t want to “rock the boat” with any possible “pushback” while she promoted some of the Obama Administration’s worst anti-asylum policies and practices, including family detention, “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” and forcing toddlers to “litigate” in court, Sessions and Barr intend to “sink the boat” with all migrants on board!

Toxic as the GOP’s hiring practices and manipulation of the process have been under Bush and Trump, they at least understand the potential impact of who sits on the Immigration Courts and the BIA, and act accordingly. By contrast, the Democrats have been lackadaisical, at best, and inept at worst, in appointments to the Immigration Judiciary.

Under Obama, the Democrats. loved to complain that Mitch McConnell stood in the way of judicial appointments. But, given a chance to positively reshape an entire court system, perhaps the most important if least respected and appreciated courts in America, without any Congressional interference or roadblocks, they dropped the ball. And that explains lots of today’s atrocious dysfunction in the immigration justice system.

Assuming that we someday get much needed “regime change,” an independent U.S. Immigration Court must be the number one priority. The Dems could have gotten the job done in 2008. Their failure to do so has caused untold human suffering, including needless deaths, and a potentially fatal degradation of our entire justice system. Never again!

PWS

11-01-19

TRUMP’S ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR REBUKED: The 9th Joins Other Circuits Finding That Trump Administration Lacked Legal Authority To “Punish” Jurisdictions Choosing Not To Assist ICE!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=a28c0bb6-7496-4bde-a4f5-5fa4a50a4a12

Maura Dolan reports for the LA Times:

Court rules against Trump

9th Circuit panel says White House can’t force L.A. to help deport immigrants in order to receive funds.

By Maura Dolan

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court decided unanimously Thursday that the Trump administration may not force Los Angeles to help the government deport immigrants as a condition of receiving a federal police grant.

A panel of two Republican appointees and one Democrat of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said federal law did not permit the Trump administration to impose the conditions.

The decision involved the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, the primary provider of federal aid to local and state law enforcement agencies.

Congress authorized the program in 2005 to help law enforcement pay for personnel, supplies and other services. It is administered by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In 2017, the Trump administration imposed two new requirements on the grant. One required recipients to notify immigration authorities before releasing immigrants from jail. The other said recipients had to give federal agents access to correctional facilities to meet with immigrants who might be in the country without authorization.

The city of Los Angeles sued, saying it did not cooperate with immigration agents because doing so would discourage immigrants from helping police in fighting crime.

A district judge blocked the requirements, and the Trump administration appealed to the 9th Circuit.

Judge Sandra S. Ikuta, writing for the panel, said the 9th Circuit agreed with two other circuit courts that the law authorizing the grants does not give the Justice Department “broad authority to impose any condition it chooses.”

Ikuta, appointed by President George W. Bush, was joined by Judge Jay S. Bybee, also appointed by Bush, and Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, a Clinton appointee.

Wardlaw wrote separately, saying she agreed the conditions were unlawful but criticizing the majority’s analysis as “contrary to every other court to have addressed the issue in a reasoned opinion.”

Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer called Thursday’s decision “a victory for public safety on our streets and for the Constitution.”

“We will continue to fight the Trump administration’s unlawful overreach and to stand up for the best interests of L.A. residents,” he said.

Los Angeles uses the federal grant to support local criminal law enforcement and drug treatment and enforcement programs.

The immigration conditions would have denied the grant to hundreds of sanctuary cities.

Last year, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction preventing the federal government from applying the immigration conditions. That ruling stemmed from a lawsuit by the city of Chicago.

In another decision this year, the 3rd Circuit also decided the conditions were not authorized by law. That case was brought by the city of Philadelphia.

The grants can be used for technical assistance, strategic planning, research and evaluation, data collection, training, personnel, equipment, forensic laboratories, supplies, contractual support and criminal justice information systems.

The law authorizes $1.1 billion in grants, but funding is generally significantly lower.

According to the National Criminal Justice Assn., Congress appropriated $830 million for fiscal year 2002, but in later years funding for the grants was about $500 million.

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A wiser, more professional, and less ideological future Administration likely could work out agreements with states and localities for mutually beneficial cooperation in the immigration area.

But, the Trump Administration’s intentionally toxic and inflammatory White Nationalist rhetoric and actions overtly intended to terrorize local ethnic communities have “poisoned the well.” They have also been bad for legitimate law enforcement; reporting of serious crimes, particularly domestic violence, as well as cooperation in anti-gang efforts, has gone down in localities mindlessly targeted by Trump’s totally politicized DHS.

It’s also significant that conservative Bush-appointed Judge Jay S. Bybee, often the target of liberals because of his involvement in Bush-era attempts to legally rationalize torture, has stood up against the Trump Administration’s lawlessness on several important occasions.

PWS

11-01-19

HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!

https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/doj-changed-hiring-promote-restrictive-immigration-judges?fbclid=IwAR2VfI3AKcttNoXlc_MX0sa-6X94bsOWF4btxb7tWDBz7Es4bvqB63oZA-0

Tanvi Misra reports for Roll Call:

DOJ changed hiring to promote restrictive immigration judges

New practice permanently placed judges on powerful appellate board, documents show

Posted Oct 29, 2019 2:51 PM

Tanvi Misra

@Tanvim

More non-Spanish speaking migrants are crossing the border DHS advances plan to get DNA samples from immigrant detainees White House plans to cut refugee admittance to all-time low

Error! Filename not specified.

James McHenry, director of the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, testifies before a Senate panel in 2018. Memos from McHenry detail changes in hiring practices for six restrictive judges placed permanently on the Board of Immigration Appeals. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Department of Justice has quietly changed hiring procedures to permanently place immigration judges repeatedly accused of bias to a powerful appellate board, adding to growing worries about the politicization of the immigration court system.

Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests describe how an already opaque hiring procedure was tweaked for the six newest hires to the 21-member Board of Immigration Appeals. All six board members, added in August, were immigration judges with some of the highest asylum denial rates. Some also had the highest number of decisions in 2017 that the same appellate body sent back to them for reconsideration. All six members were immediately appointed to the board without a yearslong probationary period.

[More non-Spanish speaking migrants are crossing the border]

“They’re high-level deniers who’ve done some pretty outrageous things [in the courtroom] that would make you believe they’re anti-immigrant,” said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and past senior legal adviser at the board. “It’s a terrifying prospect … They have power over thousands of lives.”

Among the hiring documents are four recommendation memos to the Attorney General’s office from James McHenry, director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the nation’s immigration court system.

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The memos, dated July 18, recommend immigration judges William A. Cassidy, V. Stuart Couch, Earle B. Wilson, and Keith E. Hunsucker to positions on the appellate board. McHenry’s memos note new hiring procedures had been established on March 8, to vet “multiple candidates” expressing interest in the open board positions.

A footnote in the memos states that applicants who are immigration judges would be hired through a special procedure: Instead of going through the typical two-year probationary period, they would be appointed to the board on a permanent basis, immediately. This was because a position on the appellate board “requires the same or similar skills” as that of an immigration judge, according to the memo.

Appellate board members, traditionally hired from a variety of professional backgrounds, are tasked with reviewing judicial decisions appealed by the government or plaintiff. Their decisions, made as part of a three-member panel, can set binding precedents that adjudicators and immigration judges rely on for future cases related to asylum, stays of deportation, protections for unaccompanied minors and other areas.

McHenry, appointed in 2018 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, concludes his recommendation memos by noting that the judge’s “current federal service was vetted and no negative information that would preclude his appointment” was reported. He does not mention any past or pending grievances, although public complaints have been filed against at least three of the judges.

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These documents, obtained through FOIA via Muckrock, a nonprofit, collaborative that pushes for government transparency, and shared with CQ Roll Call, reflect “the secrecy with which these rules are changing,” said Matthew Hoppock, a Kansas City-based immigration attorney. “It’s very hard to remove or discipline a judge that’s permanent than when it’s probationary, so this has long term implications.”

‘If I had known, I wouldn’t have left’: Migrant laments ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy

Volume 90%

The Department of Justice declined to answer a series of questions asked by CQ Roll Call regarding the new hiring practices, why exemptions were made in the case of these immigration judges and whether complaints against any of the judges were considered.

“Board members, like immigration judges, are selected through an open, competitive, and merit-based process involving an initial review by the Office of Personnel Management and subsequent, multiple levels of review by the Department of Justice,” a DOJ official wrote via email. “This process includes review by several career officials. The elevation of trial judges to appellate bodies is common in almost every judicial system, and EOIR is no different.”

Homestead: On the front lines of the migrant children debate

Volume 90%

Opaque hiring process

When the department posted the six board vacancies in March, the openings reflected the first time that board members would be allowed to serve from immigration courts throughout the country. Previously, the entire appellate board worked out of its suburban Virginia headquarters.

In addition, the job posts suggested that new hires would be acting in a dual capacity: They may be asked to adjudicate cases at the trial court level and then also review the court decisions appealed to the board. Previously, board members stuck to reviewing appeals cases, a process that could take more than a year.

Ultimately, all six hires were immigration judges, although past board candidates have come from government service, private sector, academia and nonprofits.

“This was stunning,” MaryBeth Keller, chief immigration judge until she stepped down this summer, said in a recent interview with The Asylumist, a blog about asylum issues. “I can’t imagine that the pool of applicants was such that only [immigration judges] would be hired, including two from the same city.”

Keller said immigration judges are “generally eminently qualified to be board members, but to bring in all six from the immigration court? I’d like to think that the pool of applicants was more diverse than that.”

Paul Wickham Schmidt, a retired immigration judge who headed the board under President Bill Clinton, said the panel always had arbitrary hiring procedures that changed with each administration and suffered from “quality control” issues. But the Trump administration has “pushed the envelope the furthest,” he said.

“This administration has weaponized the process,” he told CQ Roll Call. “They have taken a system that has some notable weaknesses in it and exploited those weaknesses for their own ends.”

The reputation and track record of the newest immigration judges has also raised eyebrows.

According to an analysis of EOIR data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, each of these newest six judges had an asylum denial rate over 80 percent, with Couch, Cassidy, and Wilson at 92, 96, and 98 percent, respectively. Nationally, the denial rate for asylum cases is around 57 percent. Previous to their work as immigration judges, all six had worked on behalf of government entities, including the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and the military.

“It mirrors a lot of the concerns at the trial level,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). She said several new hires at the trial level have been Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys.

“Every day across the country, people’s lives hang in the balance waiting for immigration judges to decide their fate,” she said. “Asylum grant rates for immigration court cases vary widely depending on the judge, suggesting that outcomes may turn on which judge is deciding the case rather than established principles and rules of law.”

Immigration experts note that denial rates depend on a variety of factors, including the number and types of cases that appear on a judge’s docket. Perhaps a better measure of an immigration judge’s decision-making may be the rate that rulings get returned by the appeals board.

For 2017, the last full year for which data is available, Couch and Wilson had the third and fourth highest number of board-remanded cases — at 50 and 47 respectively, according to federal documents obtained by Bryan Johnson, a New York-based immigration lawyer. The total number of cases on their dockets that year were 176 and 416, respectively.

Some of the behavior by the newer judges also have earned them a reputation. In 2018, AILA obtained 11 complaints against Cassidy that alleged prejudice against immigrant respondents. In a public letter the Southern Poverty Law Center sent last year to McHenry, the group complained that Cassidy bullied migrants in his court. He also asked questions that “exceeded his judicial authority,” Center lawyers wrote.

Another letter, sent in 2017 by SPLC lawyers and an Emory University law professor whose students observed Cassidy’s court proceedings, noted the judge “analogized an immigrant to ‘a person coming to your home in a Halloween mask, waving a knife dripping with blood’ and asked the attorney if he would let that person in.”

SPLC also has documented issues with Wilson, noting how he “routinely leaned back in his chair, placed his head in his hands and closed his eyes” during one hearing. “He held this position for more than 20 minutes as a woman seeking asylum described the murders of her parents and siblings.”

Couch’s behavior and his cases have made news. According to Mother Jones, he once lost his temper with a 2-year-old Guatemalan child, threatening to unleash a dog on the boy if he didn’t stop making noise. But he is perhaps better known as the judge who denied asylum to “Ms. A.B.,” a Salvadoran domestic violence survivor, even after the appellate board asked him to reconsider. Sessions, the attorney general at the time, ultimately intervened and made the final precedent-setting ruling in the case.

Couch has a pattern of denying asylum to women who have fled domestic violence, “despite clear instructions to the contrary” from the appellate board, according to Johnson, the immigration lawyer who said Couch “has been prejudging all claims that have a history of domestic violence, and quite literally copying and pasting language he used to deny other domestic violence victims asylum.”

Jeremy McKinney, a Charlotte-based immigration lawyer and second vice president at AILA, went to law school with Couch and called him “complex.” While he was reluctant to characterize the judge as “anti-immigrant,” he acknowledged “concerning” stories about the Couch’s court demeanor.

“In our conversations, he’s held the view that asylum is not the right vehicle for some individuals to immigrate to the U.S. — it’s one I disagree with,” McKinney said. “But I feel quite certain that that’s exactly why he was hired.”

Politicizing court system

Increasingly, political appointees are “micromanaging” the dockets of immigration judges, said Ashley Tabaddor, head of the union National Association of Immigration Judges. Appointees also are making moves that jeopardize their judicial independence, she said. Among them: requiring judges to meet a quota of 700 completed cases per year; referring cases even if they are still in the midst of adjudication to political leadership, including the Attorney General, for the final decision; and seeking to decertify the immigration judges’ union.

These are “symptoms of a bigger problem,” said Tabaddor. “If you have a court that’s situated in the law enforcement agency … that is the fundamental flaw that needs to be corrected.”

In March, the American Bar Association echoed calls by congressional Democrats to investigate DOJ hiring practices in a report that warned the department’s “current approach will elevate speed over substance, exacerbate the lack of diversity on the bench, and eliminate safeguards that could lead to a resurgence of politicized hiring.”

“Moreover, until the allegations of politically motivated hiring can be resolved, doubt will remain about the perceived and perhaps actual fairness of immigration proceedings,” the organization wrote. “The most direct route to resolving these reasonable and important concerns would be for DOJ to publicize its hiring criteria, and for the inspector general to conduct an investigation into recent hiring practices.”

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One of the most disgusting developments, that the media sometimes misses, is that having skewed and biased the system specifically against Central American asylum seekers, particularly women and children, the Administration uses their “cooked” and “bogus” statistics to make a totally disingenuous case that the high denial rates show the system is being abused by asylum seekers and their lawyers. That, along with the “fiction of the asylum no show” been one of “Big Mac’s” most egregious and oft repeated lies! There certainly is systemic abuse taking place here — but it is by the Trump Administration, not asylum seekers and their courageous lawyers.

This system is a national disgrace operating under the auspices of a feckless Congress and complicit Article III courts whose life-tenured judges are failing in their collective duty to put an end to this blatantly unconstitutional system: one that also violates statutory provisions intended to give migrants access to counsel, an opportunity to fully present and document their cases to an unbiased decision maker, and a fair opportunity to seek asylum regardless of status or manner of entry. Basically, judges at all levels who are complicit in this mockery of justice are “robed killers.”

Just a few years ago, asylum seekers were winning the majority of individual rulings on asylum in Immigration Court. Others were getting lesser forms of protection, so that more than 60 percent of asylum applicants who got final decisions in Immigration Court were receiving much-needed, life-saving protection. That’s exactly what one would expect given the Supreme Court’s pronouncements in 1987 about the generous standards applicable to asylum seekers in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca.

Today, conditions have not improved materially in most “refugee sending countries.” Indeed, this Administration’s bogus designation of the Northern Triangle “failed states” as “Safe Third Countries” is absurd and shows their outright contempt for the system and their steadfast belief that the Federal Judiciary will “tank” on their responsibility to hold this Executive accountable.

As a result of this reprehensible conduct, the favorable trend in asylum adjudication has been sharply reversed. Now, approximately two-thirds of asylum cases are being denied, many based on specious “adverse credibility” findings, illegal “nexus” findings that intentionally violate the doctrine of “mixed motives”enshrined in the statute, absurdly unethical and illegal rewriting of asylum precedents by Sessions and Barr, intentional denial of the statutory right to counsel, and overt coercion through misuse of DHS detention authority to improperly “punish” and “deter” legal asylum seekers.

Right under the noses of complicit Article III Judges and Congress, the Trump Administration has “weaponized” the Immigration “Courts” and made them an intentionally hostile environment for asylum seekers and their, often pro bono or low bono, lawyers. How is this acceptable in 21^st Century America?

That’s why it’s important for members of the “New Due Process Army” to remember my “5 Cs Formula” – Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change. Make these folks with “no skin the game” feel the pain and be morally accountable for those human lives they are destroying by inaction in the face of Executive illegality and tyranny from their “ivory tower perches.”

We’re in a war for the survival of our democracy and the future of humanity. There is only one “right side” in this battle. History will remember who stood tall and who went small when individual rights, particularly the rights to Due Process and fair treatment for the most vulnerable among us, were under attack by the lawless forces of White Nationalism and their enablers!

PWS

10-31-19

HOW TRUMP, COMPLICIT COURTS, FECKLESS CONGRESS, AND DHS ARE KILLING MORE CHILDREN AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER WHILE HELPING HUMAN SMUGGLERS STRIKE IT RICH – “Malicious Incompetence” Fueled By Judicial Dereliction Of Duty & Congressional Malpractice Is A Boon to The Bad Guys! – “Most of all, he sees no end to the ways he can make profits off the border crackdown. He makes a joke out of it.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-19/a-smuggler-describes-how-children-die-and-he-gets-rich-on-border

Nacha Cattan reports for Bloomberg News:

Children Die at Record Speed on U.S. Border While Coyotes Get Rich

Deaths of women and children trying to cross into U.S. set record in first nine months of the year, UN research project finds

By

Nacha Cattan

October 19, 2019, 8:00 AM EDT

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Roberto the coyote can see a stretch of border fence from his ranch in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, about a mile south of El Paso. Smuggling drugs and people to “el otro lado,” the other side, has been his life’s work.

There’s always a way, he says, no matter how hard U.S. President Donald Trump tries to stop the flow. But this year’s crackdown has made it a tougher proposition. A deadlier one, too—especially for women and children, who are increasingly dying in the attempt.

Not much surprises Roberto, who asks not to be identified by his surname because he engages in illegal activity. Sitting on a creaky metal chair, shaded by quince trees and speaking above the din from a gaggle of fighting roosters, the 65-year-old grabs a twig and scratches lines in the sand to show how he stays a step ahead of U.S. and Mexican security forces.

Here’s a gap in the fence that migrants can dash through—onto land owned by American ranchers in his pay. There’s a spot U.S. patrols often pass, so he’s hiring more people to keep watch and cover any footprints with leaf-blowers.

Coyote Roberto, on Aug. 28.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

Roberto says he was taken aback in July this year, when he was approached for the first time by parents with young children. For coyotes, as the people-smugglers are known in Mexico, that wasn’t the typical customer profile. Roberto asked around among his peers. “They were also receiving a lot of families,” he says. “Many, many families are crossing over.”

That helps explain one of the grimmer statistics to emerge from all the turmoil on the U.S.-Mexican border.

Even more than usual, the 2,000-mile frontier has turned into a kind of tectonic fault line this year. Poverty and violence—and the pull of the world’s richest economy—are driving people north. At the border, they’re met by a new regime of tightened security and laws, imposed by Trump in tandem with his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, also known as AMLO.

Some give up and go home; some wait and hope—and some try evermore dangerous ways to get through.

Nineteen children died during attempted crossings in the first nine months of 2019, by drowning, dehydration or illness, according to the UN’s “Missing Migrants” research project. That’s up from four reported through September 2018 and by far the most since the project began gathering data in 2014, when two died that entire year. Women are dying in greater numbers, too—44 in the year through September, versus 14 last year.

A 9 month-old baby sleeps inside El Buen Pastor migrant shelter, on Aug. 29. The baby had been in and out of hospitals due to respiratory illnesses during his shelter stay.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

Many of those families are fleeing crime epidemics in Central America, as well as economic shocks. Prices of coffee—a key export—in the region plunged this year to the lowest in more than a decade, crushing farmers.

Making matters worse, climate change will produce more frequent crop failures for those growers that will, in turn, drive more migration, said Eleanor Paynter, a fellow at Ohio State University. “Asylum law does not currently recognize climate refugees,” she said, “but in the coming years we will see more and more.”

The demand side is equally fluid. When the Great Recession hit in 2007, a slumping U.S. economy led to a sharp drop in arrivals from Mexico and Central America. Today, the reverse is true: Record-low unemployment in the U.S. is attracting huge numbers from Central America.

Recession Factor

The U.S. economy’s slump a decade ago coincided with a sharp drop in migrant arrivals from Central America

Source: Estimates by Stephanie Leutert, director of Mexico Security Institute at University of Texas, based on model created for Lawfare blog

But none of those factors fully explains why so many families are now willing to take such great risks. To understand that, it’s necessary to go back to the birth of the “Remain in Mexico” policy in January, when new U.S. rules made it much harder to seek asylum on arrival—and its escalation in June, when Trump threatened to slap tariffs on Mexican goods, and AMLO agreed to deploy 26,000 National Guard troops to the border.

The crackdown was aimed at Central Americans—mostly from such poor, violent countries as El Salvador and Honduras—who’d been entering the U.S. through Mexico in growing numbers. Many would cross the border, turn themselves in and apply for asylum, then wait in the U.S. for a court hearing. That route was especially favored by migrants with young children, who were likely to be released from detention faster.

Under the new policy, they were sent back to Mexico by the tens of thousands and required to wait in dangerous border towns for a court date. They might wait in shelters for months for their number to be called, with only 10 or 20 families being interviewed each day. Word was getting back that applications weren’t being approved, anyway.

A white cross marks the death of a person near the border between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

That pushed thousands of families into making a tough decision. Juan Fierro, who runs the El Buen Pastor shelter for migrants in Ciudad Juarez, reckons that about 10% of the Central Americans who’ve stayed with him ended up going back home. In Tijuana, a border town hundreds of miles west, Jose Maria Garcia Lara—who also runs a shelter—says some 30% of families instead headed for the mountains outside the city on their way to the U.S. “They’re trying to cross,” he says, “in order to disappear.”

The family that approached Roberto in Ciudad Juarez wanted to take a less physically dangerous route: across the bridge into El Paso.

Roberto has infrastructure in place for both options. He says his people can run a pole across the Rio Grande when the river’s too high, and they have cameras on the bridge to spot when a guard’s back is turned. He has a sliding price scale, charging $7,500 for children and an extra $1,000 for Central Americans—fresh proof of studies that have shown smugglers’ prices rise with tighter border controls. “They pay a bundle to get their kids across,” he says. “Why don’t they just open a small grocery with that money?”

Typically, migrants don’t come from the very poorest communities in their home countries, where people struggle to cover such coyote costs, or from the middle class. Rather, they represent a range from $5,000 to $10,000 per capita in 2009 dollars, according to Michael Clemens, an economist at the Center for Global Development in Washington. This happens to be the level that the economies of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have reached.

A mother and her 5-month-old baby has lived in a migrant shelter since July, waiting for their November court date, on Aug. 29.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez

For the family going across the bridge into El Paso, Roberto wanted to send the parents and children separately, to attract less attention. Ideally, the kids would be asleep, making the guards less likely to stop the car and ask questions. But that raised another problem. He resolved it by arranging for a woman on his team to visit the family and spend three days playing with the children. That way, they’d be used to her and wouldn’t cry out if they woke up while she was taking them across.

Roberto says the family made it safely into the U.S. with their false IDs, a claim that couldn’t be confirmed. He earned about $35,000 from the family, and soon after had another three children with their parents seek passage. “They want to cross, no matter what,” he says. “I don’t know where the idea comes from that you can stop this.”

But people are being stopped and turned back, and the number of migrants caught crossing the U.S. border has plunged from its peak in May. That has allowed Trump to portray the new policy as a success. (Mexican officials tend to agree, though the Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.) Yet it’s not that simple. Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, said the flow northward initially surged because Trump threatened to close the border, setting off a wave of migrant caravans and smuggling activity. Arrests rose 90% through September from a year earlier, but they’re now at the same levels they were before the surge.

Enrique Garcia was one of those arrested. A 36-year-old from Suchitepequez in Guatemala, he was struggling to feed his three children on the $150 a month he earned as a janitor. So he pawned a $17,000 plot of land to a coyote in exchange for passage to the U.S. for him and his son.

They slipped into Mexico in August on a boarded-up cattle truck, with eight other adults and children, and drove the length of the country, to Juarez. The coyotes dropped them by car at the nearby crossing point called Palomas, where they literally ran for it.

After 45 minutes in the summer heat, Garcia was getting worried about his son, who was falling behind and calling out for water. But they made it past the Mexican National Guard and gave themselves up to a U.S. border patrol, pleading to be allowed to stay. Instead, they were sent back to Mexico and given a January court date.

Children play outside a migrant shelter while a women hand washes clothing in a sink.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

Garcia, who recounted the story from a bunk bed in a Juarez shelter, said he was devastated. He couldn’t figure out what to do for five months in Mexico, with no prospect of work. His coyotes had managed to reestablish contact with the group, and most of them—with children in tow—had decided to try again. This time, they wouldn’t be relying on the asylum process. They’d try to make it past the border patrols and vanish into the U.S.

But Garcia decided he’d already put his son’s life at risk once, and wouldn’t do it again. He scrounged $250 to take the boy home to Guatemala. Then, he said, he’d head back up to the border alone. He wouldn’t need to pay the coyotes again. They’d given him a special offer when he signed away his land rights—two crossing attempts for the price of one.

Researchers say there’s a more effective deterrent to such schemes: opening more lawful channels. Clemens, at the Center for Global Development, noted that illegal immigration from Mexico dropped in recent years after U.S. authorities increased the supply of H-2 visas for temporary work, almost all of them going to Mexicans—a trend that’s continued under Trump.

The current debate in Washington assumes that “hardcore enforcement and security assistance in Central America will be enough, without any kind of expansion of lawful channels,” Clemens said. “That flies in the face of the lessons of history.”

The Legal Route

Illegal crossings by Mexicans have plunged. They’re now much more likely to enter the U.S. with temporary H-2 work visas

Source: Calculations by Cato Institute’s David Bier based on DHS, State Dept data

A hard-security-only approach deters some migrants, while channeling others into riskier routes where they’re more likely to die. That’s what happened after Europe’s crackdown on migration from across the Mediterranean, according to Paynter at Ohio State, who’s studied data from the UN’s “Missing Migrants” project. In 2019, “even though the total number of attempted crossings is lower, the rate of death is three times what it was,” she said.

A child plays outside a migrant shelter in Ciudad Juarez.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

As for Roberto, he expresses sadness at the children who’ve died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. He claims he would’ve tried to help them, even if they couldn’t pay.

Most of all, he sees no end to the ways he can make profits off the border crackdown. He makes a joke out of it.

“I’m hearing Trump wants to throw crocodiles in the river,” he says. “Guess what will happen? We’ll eat them.” And then: “Their skin is expensive. We’ll start a whole new business. It’ll bring in money, because we’ll make boots, belts and wallets. We’ll look real handsome.”

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

The “Trump Immigration Kakistocracy” is as evil and immoral as it is stupid and incompetent.

But, that shouldn’t lessen the responsibility of complicit Article III Appellate Judges (including the Supremes) and a sleazy and immoral GOP Senate who are failing to stand up for our Constitution, the rule of law, and human rights. They should not be allowed to escape accountability for their gross derelictions of duty which are killing kids with regularity and unconscionably abusing vulnerable asylum seekers on a daily basis.

America can’t afford to be governed by idiots abetted by the spineless. Join the “New Due Process Army” and fight to save our country, our Constitution, and humanity from evil, incompetence, and disgusting complicity.

PWS

10-31-19

THE RETAINER: How Billy Barr Betrays America To Protect Trump!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/26/opinion/william-barr-trump.html

By Emily Bazelon in the NYT:

William Barr had returned to private life after his first stint as attorney general when he sat down to write an article for The Catholic Lawyer. It was 1995, and Mr. Barr saw an urgent threat to religion generally and to Catholicism, his faith, specifically. The danger came from the rise of “moral relativism,” in Mr. Barr’s view. “There are no objective standards of right and wrong,” he wrote. “Everyone writes their own rule book.”

And so, at first, it seemed surprising that Mr. Barr, now 69, would return after 26 years to the job of attorney general, to serve Donald Trump, the moral relativist in chief, who writes and rewrites the rule book at whim.

But a close reading of his speeches and writings shows that, for decades, he has taken a maximalist, Trumpian view of presidential power that critics have called the “imperial executive.” He was a match, all along, for a president under siege. “He alone is the executive branch,” Mr. Barr wrote of whoever occupies the Oval Office, in a memo to the Justice Department in 2018, before he returned.

William Barr in Senator Mitch McConnell’s office in January before hearings on his nomination to be attorney general.

Erin Schaff for The New York Times

Now, with news reports that his review into the origins of the Russian investigation that so enraged Mr. Trump has turned into a full-blown criminal investigation, Mr. Barr is arousing fears that he is using the enormous power of the Justice Department to help the president politically, subverting the independence of the nation’s top law enforcement agency in the process.

Why is he giving the benefit of his reputation, earned over many years in Washington, to this president? His Catholic Lawyer article suggests an answer to that question. The threat of moral relativism he saw then came when “secularists used law as a weapon.” Mr. Barr cited rules that compel landlords to rent to unmarried couples or require universities to treat “homosexual activist groups like any other student group.” He reprised the theme in a speech at Notre Dame this month.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Emily’s article at the link.

Like most bigoted theocrats, including his nominally Methodist predecessor Sessions, Barr “cherry picks” religious teachings. Barr’s White Nationalist cruelty and intolerance, particularly against migrants, the most vulnerable among us, flies directly in the face of Catholic social justice teachings.

Sessions planned to turn the DOJ into a “White Nationalist Law Firm,” targeting migrants, the LGBTQ community, African Americans, women, and lawyers, among others. Sure, he refused to violate ethics by quashing the investigation of Trump. But, that’s more a case of protecting himself than it is a courageous stand against Trump.

Barr has continued the assault on Due Process and the American justice system, while also adding the dimension of misrepresenting the Mueller investigation and ignoring ethics to protect Trump.

PWS

10-30-19

IN SUDDEN REVERSAL, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION WILL NOW EXTEND TPS FOR SALVADORANS — Likely A “Payoff” For Corrupt “Safe Third Country” Agreement With El Salvador!

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-28/trump-administration-extends-tps-for-salvadorans-allowing-thousands-to-stay-in-u-s

Molly O’Toole & Tracy Wilkinson report for the LA Times:

The Trump administration on Monday extended Temporary Protected Status for thousands of Salvadorans in the United States, granting them reprieve from removal to El Salvador.

Administration officials had insisted for weeks that the continuance of TPS was not on the table in exchange for the resumption of aid to the small Central American country, or the signing of a recent agreement on asylum seekers. An estimated 200,000 Salvadorans in the U.S. have TPS, making them the largest single group under the program. Many live in Los Angeles.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, a millionaire millennial who has had warm words for President Trump and his officials, touted the move in a Twitter announcement on Monday morning as a victory for his newly elected administration.

“They said it was impossible,” Bukele said. “That the Salvadoran government couldn’t do anything. … But we knew that our allies would not abandon us.”

A U.S. District Court in Northern California last October blocked the Department of Homeland Security from terminating TPS for El Salvador and a handful of other countries. Administration officials have sought to dismantle the program as part of their wider efforts to reduce immigration. TPS offers recipients protection from removal and the right to work legally in the U.S.

The announcement also puts the U.S. in the difficult position of extending a program intended for people fleeing natural disasters or civil unrest, while at the same time effectively designating El Salvador a safe country for asylum seekers. The State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Officials have offered little detail of the U.S. asylum agreement with El Salvador, which has yet to take effect. The deal was among several extensively negotiated with so-called Northern Triangle countries by outgoing acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, who is due to step down this week.

Central America’s Northern Triangle is an impoverished and violence-ridden region that accounts for the majority of migrants now fleeing to the United States.

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

In addition to helping the 200,000 mostly productive long-term Salvadoran TPS residents of the U.S. who lack formal immigration status, the extension benefits both countries. The TPS Salvadorans and their families have been living in fear and uncertainty ever since the Trump Administration announced an intent to terminate Salvadoran TPS (which, naturally, irrationally contravened the advice of its own professional staff and almost all outside experts and appeared to be against the wishes fo the Salvadoran Government).

El Salvador avoids the potential problem of having to resettle several hundred thousand individuals whose homes, family ties, and futures are in the U.S. They also will be able to continue to benefit from the “remissions” that many of these individuals send to family in El Salvador, a significant factor in the Salvadoran economy.

At the same time, the “deal” costs Trump nothing, except for probably some “pushback” from his most ardent White Nationalist supporters.

First, the Administration already was enjoined from terminating the Salvadoran TPS program. Second, with a 1.3 million case largely self-created backlog in the Immigration Courts, the Administration wouldn’t have been able to remove most of the 200,000 individuals at any time in the near future. Third, TPS renewals will likely generate a profit for USCIS for the fees charged for extending work authorizations.

Fourth, and rather ironically, the Salvadorans, along with most of the other 10-11 million so-called undocumented residents of the U.S., are among the “drivers” of U.S. economic prosperity, which is about the only thing propping Trump up these days. Despite the Trump Administration’s string of shamelessly false narratives about the “damage” caused by undocumented workers, their mass removal would undoubtedly “tank” the U.S. economy, at least in the short run.

Of course the “losers” in this are the refugees who continue to pour out of El Salvador and the other essentially “failed states” of the Northern Triangle. They face not only truncation of their legal right to apply for asylum in the United States, but also potential death or mayhem upon forced return or deportation to El Salvador as the result of the bogus “Safe Third Agreement” and equally bogus new requirements that asylum seekers apply in the first country they reach. (El Salvador doesn’t even have a functioning asylum system and is anything but “safe.”)

Perhaps we’ll eventually find out that El Salvador also had to agree to investigate the Biden family as a price for the extension.

PWS

10-29-19

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