FRAUD & ABUSE: TRUMP SEEKS DEATH AND DISRUPTION FOR REFUGEES: Claims To Have Duressed Guatemala, One Of The, Poorest, Most Corrupt, Most Dangerous REFUGEE SENDING Countries Into Outrageously Illegal “Safe Third Country” Agreement! — “Big Mac With Lies” Says Guatemala Not Much Different From U.S.!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-he-has-agreement-with-guatemala-to-help-stem-flow-of-migrants-at-the-border/2019/07/26/23bf0cba-afe3-11e9-b071-94a3f4d59021_story.html

Seung Min Kim
White House Reporter
Washington Post

Kevin Sieff
Latin American Correspondent, Washington Post

Abigail Hauslohner
National Immigration Reporter, Washington Post

From the Washington Post:

By Seung Min Kim ,

Kevin Sieff and

Abigail Hauslohner

July 26 at 6:45 PM

President Trump on Friday said he has struck a deal that would designate Guatemala as a safe third country for people seeking asylum in the United States — a plan that is facing significant legal hurdles in the Central American country as the Trump administration continues to struggle with the high number of migrants arriving at the southern U.S. border.

The White House did not immediately release details of the agreement, and it is unclear how it would be implemented considering Guatemala’s constitutional court has ruled any safe third country agreement would require legislative approval and the proposal has been widely criticized there.

Trump announced the arrangement in a previously unscheduled appearance in the Oval Office with Enrique Degenhart, the Guatemalan minister of government, and acting homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan.

“We’ve long been working with Guatemala, and now we can do it the right way,” Trump said Friday. He claimed the agreement will put “coyotes and the smugglers out of business.”

He added: “These are bad people.”

Trump said the agreement will offer safe harbor for asylum applicants deemed legitimate, and that he plans to sign agreements with other countries soon.

The announcement comes just days after Trump threatened retaliation against Guatemala as discussions stalled over designating the Central American nation as a safe third country, which means migrants traveling through the country on their journey to the United States would be directed to first seek protection there.

The Trump administration has been seeking to sign these agreements to cut down on the number of Central American migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, which officials say is overwhelming the U.S. immigration system. The administration has come under heavy criticism from Democrats and immigration advocates who argue asylum seekers and other migrants face inhumane conditions in the U.S. facilities where they are being housed.

On a call with reporters Friday, McAleenan said the agreement with Guatemala would “be up and running in August,” after the two governments had completed several steps to ratify the deal. Under the agreement, Salvadorans and Hondurans would need to seek asylum in Guatemala, McAleenan said.

“If you have, say, a Honduran family coming across through Guatemala to the U.S. border, we want them to feel safe to make an asylum claim at the earliest possible point,” he said. “If they do instead, in the hands of smugglers, make the journey all the way to the U.S. border, [they would] be removable back to Guatemala.”

Guatemala’s only public statement about the agreement did not explicitly say it would serve as a safe third country, but alluded vaguely to “a plan that will be applied to Salvadorans and Hondurans.”

The statement said the United States would allocate temporary agricultural work visas to Guatemalans, adding that country’s president, Jimmy Morales, negotiated the deal “to counter grave economic and social repercussions.”

A proposal to designate Guatemala as a safe third country is already facing significant legal and logistical challenges. For one, the deal would force thousands of Hondurans and Salvadorans to apply for asylum in Guatemala, one of the region’s poorest countries, which has in some cities struggled to defeat transnational gangs, including MS-13.

Last year, Guatemala received 259 asylum applications, a tiny number compared with the United States and even Mexico. Of those, not a single application was approved, in part because the country is still building institutions to review those cases.

“Guatemala’s asylum system isn’t prepared to increase its capacity to 50,000 in less than a year,” said one United Nations official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which currently supports Guatemala’s fledgling asylum system, was not consulted as part of the negotiations, officials said. McAleenan also likened the third party agreement to arrangements between European countries and Turkey to stem the Syrian migrant crisis in 2015. He declined to say whether the U.S. government would be providing any assistance to Guatemala to improve safety and security for Honduran and Salvadoran refugees.

When read the State Department’s description of the security situation in Guatemala, which includes notations that murder is “common,” gang activity is “widespread” and police are ineffective, McAleenan, the Homeland secretary, said one should not “label an entire country as unsafe,” and likened Guatemala to parts of the United States.

The announcement prompted immediate backlash from Democratic lawmakers and human-rights groups who warned that Guatemala did not have the capacity to accept all the migrants who would now be required to apply for asylum there, nor is such an arrangement legal.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who along with Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) toured Border Patrol facilities in El Paso on Friday, noted that Guatemala has one of the world’s highest homicide rates and that they had visited with families earlier in the day who said they had fled the country because of the danger.

“It’s just Kafkaesque to say about that country, ‘Oh, safe third country,’ ” Kaine said. “You can’t just attach a label of safe third country and make it so.”

The Trump administration has taken a variety of unilateral actions to address the challenges at the border, and it has also received an additional $4.6 billion from Congress to deal with the crisis.

In June, Customs and Border Protection apprehended 94,000 migrants at the southern border, a 29 percent drop from the 133,000 who were detained in May. Border crossings tend to drop as the temperature rises in the summer, but administration officials have pointed to the lower figures as a sign that Trump’s border plan is working.

For months, Morales dispatched members of his administration from Guatemala to Washington to negotiate a safe third country agreement with the United States. But earlier this month, shortly before Morales was scheduled to sign the agreement in the White House, Guatemala’s constitutional court ruled he did not have the authority to sign the deal without legislative approval.

The meeting with Trump was canceled. In a statement, Morales then denied he had ever attempted to negotiate such an agreement. He is in the twilight of his scandal-ridden presidency, with elections scheduled for Aug. 11.

But when Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Guatemala and tax remittances, Morales resumed negotiations. Members of the country’s business community urged him on, raising alarm about the impact of tariffs, but most Guatemalans believe the country is wildly unprepared to offer asylum to thousands of Central Americans.

A number of Guatemalan congressmen and human rights officials said they would soon challenge the legality of Friday’s agreement in the country’s courts.

Jordán Rodas, Guatemala’s human rights prosecutor, said the country’s interior minister, who signed the deal on Friday, “does not have the power to sign an agreement of this nature.”

He said he was analyzing the agreement, and if he determined it was illegal, he would demand the constitutional court suspend its implementation.

“We are two weeks from an election,” said Edgar Gutierrez, one of five Guatemalan ex-foreign ministers who had earlier filed a petition in the court to block the signing of the agreement. “The signing of this accord will destabilize the country.”

Some Guatemalan analysts said the timeline for the agreement made it even more unrealistic.

“One month to be a safe country,” said Pedro Pablo Solares, a leading Guatemalan columnist who frequently writes about migration. “It couldn’t be more absurd.”

This year, for the first time in history, more Guatemalans have been apprehended at the U.S. border than citizens of any other country. It remains one of the region’s poorest countries, where migration is seen by many as the only way into a tiny middle class. In 2017, Guatemalans received a total of $8.2 billion in remittances, 11 percent of Guatemalan GDP.

Guatemalan politicians and analysts were taken aback by the agreement, which most discovered through a White House tweet.

“One characteristic of this government is that it does whatever it wants, in spite of what the law says. This is another example,” said Sandra Morán Reyes, a congresswoman from the Convergencia party.

Sieff reported from Mexico City. Mary Beth Sheridan in Mexico City and Bob Moore in El Paso contributed to this report.

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

Wow! Talk about turning the law, logic, and human morality on its head! “Safe Third Country” agreements are supposed to be between countries with fair, due process oriented asylum systems, like the existing agreement between the U.S. and Canada. They are not a gimmick for dishonest officials like Trump and McAleenan to “outsource” legal protection responsibilities to dangerous, poor, REFUGEE SENDING countries like Guatemala that can’t possibly live up to their international obligations under the U.N Convention.

This is nothing short of high level fraud that will result in death, torture, and abuse of asylum seekers! Not to mention that the presence of lots of deported asylum seekers will further destabilize the already unstable country of Guatemala. Trump is about to create an unmitigated international disaster by grossly unlawful conduct. Will we be able to stop him before it’s to late for us and for the rest of humanity?

PWS

07-27-19

ROUNDTABLE NEWS: Judge Jeff Chase & I Quoted By Nicole Narea In Law360 On How Trump’s Latest Assault On Immigrants’ Rights Could Go Belly Up Even With Some Statutory Support!

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog

https://www.law360.com/immigration/articles/1182014/deportation-rule-may-violate-due-process-procedural-law

Deportation Rule May Violate Due Process, Procedural Law

By Nicole Narea

Law360 (July 25, 2019, 8:31 PM EDT) — The Trump administration’s recent expansion of its power to fast-track deportations is likely to invite legal challenges if the new process is seen as a violation of administrative law and the Constitution’s due process guarantees.

Under a rule published Monday, unauthorized noncitizens across the entire U.S. — not just those apprehended within 100 air miles of a land border — who arrived in the last two years via a land border could be subject to expedited removal proceedings and deported without an immigration court hearing. The American Civil Liberties Union has vowed to challenge the rule, which went into effect Tuesday and, by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s estimates, will affect more than 20,000 immigrants a year.

Contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, however, the rule may not qualify for an exception to the Administrative Procedure Act’s public notice requirements that allows the DHS secretary to unilaterally change the scope of the agency’s expedited removal authority. It also raises due process concerns for individuals who may not be able to prove their period of residency in the U.S. and for asylum-seekers who might be erroneously subject to expedited deportation.

“Unleashed expedited removal undermines our immigration system and the rule of law,” said Shoba Wadhia, a professor at Penn State Law in University Park.

Administrative Procedure Act

To justify the rule, acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan invoked his authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act to have “sole and unreviewable discretion” to alter the scope of expedited removal proceedings. The rule is therefore exempt from the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirement to give the public an opportunity to comment on it before it goes into effect, DHS said in its announcement.

But Paul Schmidt, former chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals during the Clinton administration, said there “does not appear to be any legitimate reason” for noncompliance with the APA’s notice-and-comment requirements, especially given that the rule had such a long gestation period. Trump has been considering such a rule since the first days of his administration.

Wadhia said opponents of the rule could argue that the government failed to show “good cause” that invoking notice and comment is in fact “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest” as the APA requires.

“The government’s position that there is a ‘good cause’ lacks integrity,” she said.

Most lawsuits that have succeeded in challenging Trump immigration policies have brought claims under the APA, including the recent challenge to a question about citizenship status on the 2020 census. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately found that the decision to include the question on the census did not abide by the APA’s requirement that agencies provide a reasoned explanation for their actions.

Due Process Issues

Ken Johnson, dean of University of California, Davis School of Law, said the new rule could also be subject to due process challenges in light of the Supreme Court’s 1982 case Landon v. Plasencia, in which the justices applied a balancing test of interests in deciding the constitutionality of immigration admission procedures. That decision established that the interests of a noncitizen who has lived in the country for two years are much weightier than the interest at stake for a noncitizen who has been in the country for only two weeks because they have stronger ties to their community, he said.

Since the new rule expands expedited removal to apply to individuals who have lived in the U.S. for up to two years, they may be entitled to a higher standard of due process. Trump’s expansion of expedited removal also appears to exceed the limits provided by the Immigration and Nationality Act, resulting in further due process concerns.

Jeff Chase, a former legal adviser to the BIA and immigration judge, said the original intent of expedited removal was to stem an increase of inadmissible noncitizens arriving at airports in the 1990s who were paroled into the U.S. after announcing they were seeking asylum. The new rule, however, far surpasses that purpose.

“The present rule extends the application well beyond the purpose of controlling entry to the country, and now threatens to deprive those already here of their rights to apply for relief,” he said.

He said he also anticipates that expedited removal will be mistakenly applied to those beyond the scope of the rule, impacting those with a period of residence longer than two years, whose “attempts to stay under the government’s radar will create difficulty meeting their burden of establishing their period of residence in the U.S.”

Wadhia said that genuine refugees may also be erroneously denied due process, turned away as opposed to referred to an asylum officer to determine whether they have fear of persecution in their home countries, as required by law. Even if they have a credible fear interview, they are unlikely to pass in light of reports that asylum officers have been pressured to significantly lower their credible fear approval rates, Chase said.

Even U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, unaccompanied children and others who are exempt from expedited removal by statute could be unfairly and unlawfully targeted by the DHS, Wadhia said.

“The opportunity for profiling and violations of due process by DHS is rampant,” she said.

–Editing by Breda Lund and Kelly Duncan.

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

The Government’s case for an “emergency” exemption to the APA is laughable. This bogus “immigration emergency” is actually a human rights tragedy that has been unfolding in “super slow motion” before us since before last Thanksgiving. Virtually every part of it is a predictable result of Trump’s “maliciously incompetent” racist-driven approach to migration situations. To say that it now requires an “emergency” exemption, when Trump announced the proposed policy change in an Executive Order over two years ago, and his incompetent agencies have been fiddling around with it ever since, is simply absurd.

The Constitutional problem raised by Dean Johnson and others is very real.

And, there is no question that Trump’s DHS will misuse this authority to detain and deport lawful permanent residents and even U.S. citizens. Indeed, it’s already happening even without the regulatory change. See, e.g., “Texas-Born Student Held In Immigration Custody For Weeks Released,” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-student-immigration-custody-detention_n_5d36f637e4b020cd99498588.

Yes, some Federal Judges can be tone deaf to the plight of ordinary individuals, particularly when they wrongly think that they are “above the fray.”

Perhaps we need to hope that the DHS wrongfully detains a Federal Judge, a Federal Judge’s spouse, or the child of a Federal Judge so that the message about how Trump’s misguided policies affect ALL of us gets through to the “Judicial Ivory Tower” sooner, rather than later.

PWS

07-26-19

SUPREMES’ CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY DELIVERS BRUTAL HIT TO CONSTITUTION: Uses Bogus “Cop Out” Standing Ground To OK Trump’s Fake “Emergency” Misappropriation Of Funds To Build Wall That Congress Pointedly Refused To Fund!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-says-trump-can-proceed-with-plan-to-spend-military-funds-for-border-wall-construction/2019/07/26/f2a63d48-aa55-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html

Robert Barnes reports for the Washington Post:

The Supreme Court Friday night on a 5 to 4 vote revived the Trump administration’s plan to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds to build part of the wall project along the southern border.

The court’s conservatives set aside a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruling for the Sierra Club and a coalition of border communities that said a reallocation of the Defense Department money would violate federal law.

The unsigned ruling by the Supreme Court said the government “made a sufficient showing at this stage” the groups did not have proper standing to challenge transfer of money.

In a 2-to-1 decision earlier this month, the 9th Circuit majority noted that a stalemate between Congress and President Trump over the issue prompted the longest government shutdown in history. The judges reasoned that Congress made its intentions clear by allocating only about $1.4 billion for enhanced border protection.

The lower court said the public interest was “best served by respecting the Constitution’s assignment of the power of the purse to Congress, and by deferring to Congress’s understanding of the public interest as reflected in its repeated denial of more funding for border barrier construction.

After Congress’s decision earlier this year, Trump announced plans to use more than $6 billion allocated for other purposes to fund the wall, which was the signature promise of his presidential campaign

Environmentalists and the Southern Border Communities Coalition immediately filed suit to block the transfer of funds. Democrats in the House of Representatives filed a brief supporting them.

U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the Supreme Court that the 9th Circuit ruling was wrong. “The sole basis for the injunction — that the Acting Secretary exceeded his statutory authority in transferring the funds — rests on a misreading of the statutory text,” Francisco wrote. He was referring to Patrick M. Shanahan, who was acting secretary at the time.

Francisco said that the challengers did not have proper legal standing to challenge the transfer of funds. He added that even if they did, their “interests in hiking, birdwatching, and fishing in designated drug-smuggling corridors do not outweigh the harm to the public from halting the government’s efforts to construct barriers to stanch the flow of illegal narcotics across the southern border.”

The money was transferred from DOD personnel funds in response to a request from the Department of Homeland Security. Federal law allows such transfers for “unforeseen” reasons and for expenditures not previously “denied by the Congress.”

The administration contends that Congress did not reject the specific expenditures at issue, which would fund projects in California, New Mexico and Arizona.

The challengers said Congress was clear.

“Congress recently considered, and rejected, the same argument defendants [the government] make here: that a border wall is urgently needed to combat drugs,” said the brief from lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the groups.

“If defendants were nonetheless permitted to obligate taxpayer funds and commence construction, the status quo would be radically and irrevocably altered.”

The brief from the U.S. House of Representatives agreed.

“The administration refuses to accept this limitation on its authority, as clearly demonstrated by Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s statement that President Trump’s border wall ‘is going to get built with or without Congress,’ ” House General Counsel Douglas N. Letter wrote. “Under our constitutional scheme, an immense wall along our border simply cannot be constructed without funds appropriated by Congress for that purpose.”

And Letter said that the administration’s view of who is within the “zone of interest” to have standing to sue is “in reality, an argument that no one can challenge the conduct at issue here.”

Francisco moved quickly after the 9th Circuit’s July 3 ruling to ask the Supreme Court to dissolve the lower court’s injunction. It asked the justices to rule before July 26, so the Defense Department would have time to finalize construction contracts before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

Otherwise, he said, “the remaining unobligated funds will become unavailable.”

The challengers said the money already was unavailable.

The brief filed by the House said the money would not be lost, but would simply go back into the treasury, where the administration would again be free to make its request to Congress.

It noted there was no rush. “The administration has apparently completed only 1.7 of the 95 miles of border fencing Congress approved and appropriated funds for in fiscal year 2018,” it said.

The case is Trump v. Sierra Club, et al.

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

For those outside the legal community, “lack of standing” is often a legalistic ruse used by spineless judges who want to reach a particular result without explaining any real rationale on the actual merits of the case.

I just read another article by Andrew Sullivan about how our system is failing to hold Trump accountable for his lawless actions. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/andrew-sullivan-the-american-system-is-already-failing.html.

I don’t agree with everything Sullivan says. In particular, his criticism of Democrats seems over the top. While the party has its failings, they only control 1/6 of the Government. Trying to leverage that into a strategy that preserves the American Republic by defeating Trump in 2020 is an essential endeavor, not an exercise in tilting at windmills.

But, Sullivan’s “bottom line” might be disturbingly “on point:”

The awful truth is that the American constitutional system is failing on almost every level. The system, it turns out, is not even strong enough to withstand one Trump term, let alone two. Trump intuited this in 2016, and if he wins reelection, as he now has a good chance of doing, what’s left of liberal democracy will be under acute duress.

The “extinction-level event” that I feared in the spring of 2016 is already here. Look around you. And it wasn’t even a fight.

The Supremes’ majority’s failure to call out Trump both for his contempt for Constitutional separation of powers and his constant use of the S

upremes themselves to “short circuit” the lower Federal Courts in an unprecedented manner contributes mightily to the demise of the rule of law.

Chief Justice Roberts might self-righteously and self-servingly proclaim that there are no “Democratic Judges” or “Republican Judges.” But, actions speak louder than words, Chiefie!

The pathetic performance of Roberts and his fellow GOP appointees in this case gives lie to his claim. And Trump, for all his failings, sees and is willing to use the sad truth that Roberts denies in a never ending attack on our country and our supposedly governing principles.

It started with the “conservative” Justices’ outrageous abdication of duty in the “Travel Ban Case.” Rather than standing up to a President who spewed obvious lies, racism, and anti-Muslim venom in support of a political agenda that clearly violated Constitutional norms, the majority signaled that as long as Trump gave them “cover” by asserting clearly contrived and fabricated “national security” grounds, they would give him a free hand to destroy the nation. These “cowardly false conservatives” now find themselves presiding over the demise of our legal system.

And, while they might feel that they are above paying attention to the human carnage caused by the their intransigence and dereliction of duty, that misbegotten “Travel Ban” majority opinion has caused, and continues to cause, trauma and probably death to innocent refugees caught up in Trump’s unconstitutional racist onslaught.

Trump has a history of turning against those who have served him, but outlive their usefulness. Who will the “GOP Gang of Five Justices” look to for protection when the screw turns again and they become the “aliens,” stripped of their rights and humanity in Trump’s (Not So) “Brave New World?”

Those who fail to stand up to tyranny and protect the rights of others might find themselves unprotected in their hour of need!

PWS

07-27-19

TAL @ SF CHRON: 9TH CIR. STICKS A FORK IN CORE OF “GONZO APOCALYPTO” SESSIONS’S CHILD ABUSE PROGRAM — Many Of DOJ’s Wasteful “Criminal” Prosecutions Of Harmless Asylum Seekers Were Illegal — Conservative Icon Judge Jay Bybee Becoming A Key Judicial Voice For The Rule Of Law Against Trump & Co’s Executive Abuses!

Tal Kopan
Washington Reporter, SF Chronicle

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Ninth-Circuit-ruling-could-wipe-out-hundreds-of-14152171.php

Ninth Circuit ruling could wipe out hundreds of family separations convictions

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in California substantially narrowed the government’s ability to charge people for crossing the border illegally — a case that could invalidate hundreds of prosecutions that were at the core of the Trump administration’s separations of migrant families last year.

The ruling comes as the federal law in the case, which makes it a crime to cross the border without authorization, is under scrutiny in the Democratic presidential campaign, with several candidates arguing it should be done away with altogether.

Wednesday’s ruling by a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena could bolster the Democrats’ argument that the Trump administration is misusing the law to criminalize well-intentioned immigrants seeking asylum. It also adds further questions to the administration’s widely criticized prosecutions that resulted in thousands of family separations last year.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The 2-1 decision overturning a lower court ruling concerned the provision of U.S. law that makes improper entry to the country a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail. The law has three parts: entering the U.S. at an improper time or place, eluding immigration officers or entering the U.S. using false pretenses.

In an opinion written by Judge Jay Bybee, a George W. Bush-appointee, the court decided that the second part — eluding officers — could only apply to immigrants who are at a valid border crossing but who try to enter by evading detection, not immigrants picked up on the U.S. side having crossed somewhere else. That was the case with Oracio Corrales-Vazquez, a Mexican national whom officers found hiding in bushes miles from the border, whose conviction the court overturned.

Because part one of the statute already covers immigrants who surreptitiously enter where there is no legal crossing, the court held, the second part must exist to cover some separate activity. Otherwise, the court said, it would be redundant.

Circuit has already held that part one of the illegal-entry crime — entering at an improper time or place — does not apply to people who cross the border where officials can see them, in person or over cameras, and then seek out an officer and claim asylum. Those migrants are clearly not trying to avoid detection, court rulings have held.

It has become standard practice for federal authorities in Southern California to charge border crossers only using part two to avoid the defense to part one, said Kara Hartzler, an attorney with the nonprofit San Diego Federal Defenders who brought the case. Now, federal attorneys will not have part two as a back door to charge asylum seekers with illegal entry.

The court ruling means thousands of similar convictions could be thrown out, including hundreds that were the basis for family separations the Trump administration carried out last summer in the name of prosecuting a crime.

“All of the criminal cases that led to being separated from their families, … at least in San Diego, are at least convictions where the person was actually innocent because of this ruling,” Hartzler said.

David Leopold, a former president and general counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, recalled then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen telling Congress the family separations were justified because the adults taken into custody had been charged with illegal-entry crimes.

“Well, here they weren’t even prosecuting those cases correctly,” Leopold said. “It puts a question mark next to every one of those convictions, which led to separation of children and in some cases the permanent separation of child from parent.”

The Trump administration separated thousands of families in the two months the program was in effect, before the president stopped it and a federal judge in San Diego ruled the practice was unconstitutional. In hundreds of those cases, parents were deported without their children, many of whom will not be reunited as the youths pursue a right to stay in the U.S.

The Justice Department does not make prosecution data public that would identify how many separated families could be affected by Wednesday’s ruling, but there could be hundreds of such cases. Nearly 4,000 immigration-related offenses were brought in the Southern District of California in 2018, according to court data, of which the most common charge is illegal entry.

The ruling also comes as some Democrats are attacking the notion that crossing the border should be a criminal rather than civil offense. Former Housing Secretary Julián Castro has made repealing the law a central focus of his presidential campaign, pointing to the Trump administration’s use of the law as a justification for separating the families last year. Twelve Democratic candidates have embraced the idea, according to a Politico tracker.

Castro and other critics of the law say it criminalizes asylum seeking. Other parts of the law make clear that an immigrant can file an asylum claim regardless of whether they entered the country legally.

Bill Hing, professor of law and migration studies at University of San Francisco, supports Castro’s arguments to remove the criminal part of the law, saying deportation is “already a pretty severe penalty” for anyone found not to have a valid asylum claim.

“Especially now, the vast majority of people gathered at the border are coming to seek protection — why criminalize that activity?” Hing said. “The statute should require something much more criminal in intent, and when it’s just simply to cross the border to seek protection, I think there’s a good argument that we should decriminalize that activity.”

The ruling applies only to the nine states covered by the Ninth Circuit, including California and Arizona along the Mexican border. But Hing says lawyers could seek similar rulings in other border states.

“Conceptually it actually makes sense,” Hing said. “It doesn’t make sense to have two parts of a law where the same act could qualify for the violation of both.”

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

Appointed by President George W. Bush, Judge Jay Bybee has been a controversial figure. His confirmation was strongly opposed by many Human Rights and Civil Rights groups because of his role in justifying torture while serving in the Bush DOJ.

Nevertheless, in this case, and in the earlier case of East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Trump, blocking an illegal attempt by Trump to bar Central American asylum seekers, Judge Bybee has been a strong and courageous voice for the rule of law, reason, and Constitutional separation of powers in the face of Trump’s intentional overreach in the area of immigration. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2018/12/10/mark-joseph-stern-slate-on-why-judge-bybees-65-page-evisceration-of-trumps-lawless-asylum-order-is-so-important-the-next-time-trump-floats-a-flagrantly-lawless-idea-then/.

Indeed, many observers believe that Judge Bybee’s scholarly opinion in East Bay Sanctuary was key to Chief Justice Roberts voting with the Supremes’ so-called “liberal wing” to reject the Administration’s bogus attempt to “end run” the system in that case by going directly to the Supremes without allowing the lower court proceedings to be completed. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2018/12/21/i-was-right-barely-chief-justice-roberts-saves-asylum-rule-of-law-administrations-request-to-implement-order-truncating-asylum-law-turned-down-5-4/.

Unfortunately, this much needed decision comes too late for many families who have been irreparably damaged by “Gonzo Apolcalypto’s” vile illegal and immoral abuse of Government prosecutorial authority. It’s too bad that there does not appear to be any way of holding “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions personally liable for his abuse of office, unconscionable distortion of our justice system, and the lifetime damage he inflicted on so many innocent children and families.

The case is US v. Oracio Corrales-Vazquez, and here’s a link to the full opinion: https://www.courtlistener.com/pdf/2019/07/24/united_states_v._oracio_corrales-Vazquez.pdf

And, of course, thanks to Tal for her continued incisive reporting on the most important issues facing America!

PWS

07-26-19

DUE PROCESS & RULE OF LAW PREVAIL ANYWAY — USD JUDGE TIGAR STOPS TRUMP’S ASYLUM TRAVESTY FOR NOW! — Conflicting Decisions On Same Day!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/us/asylum-ruling-tro.html

Miriam Jordan & Zolan Kanno-Youngs report for The NY Times:

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to continue accepting asylum claims from all eligible migrants arriving in the United States, temporarily thwarting the president’s latest attempt to stanch the flow of migrants crossing the southern border.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction against a new rule that would have effectively banned asylum claims in the United States for most Central American migrants, who have been arriving in record numbers this year. It would have also affected many migrants from Africa, Asia and other regions.

The decision came on the same day that a federal judge in Washington, hearing a separate challenge, let the new rule stand, briefly delivering the administration a win. But Judge Tigar’s order prevents the rule from being carried out until the legal issues can be debated more fully.

The rule, which has been applied on a limited basis in Texas, requires migrants to apply for and be denied asylum in the first safe country they arrive in on their way to the United States — in many of the current cases, Mexico — before applying for protections here. Because migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala make up the vast majority of asylum seekers arriving at the southern border, the policy would virtually terminate asylum there.

“This new rule is likely invalid because it is inconsistent with the existing asylum laws,” Judge Tigar wrote in his ruling on Wednesday, adding that the government’s decision to put it in place was “arbitrary and capricious.”

The government, which is expected to appeal the decision, has said that the rule intends to prevent exploitation of the asylum system by those who unlawfully immigrate to the United States. By clogging the immigration courts with meritless claims, the government argues, these applicants harm asylum seekers with legitimate cases who must wait longer to secure the protection they deserve.

Under the policy, which the administration announced on July 15, only immigrants who have officially lost their bids for asylum in another country or who have been victims of “severe” human trafficking are permitted to apply in the United States.

Hondurans and Salvadorans have to apply for asylum and be denied in Guatemala or Mexico before they become eligible to apply in the United States, and Guatemalans have to apply and be denied in Mexico.

The policy reversed longstanding asylum laws that ensure people can seek safe haven no matter how they got to the United States. On July 16, the day the new rule went into effect — initially in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas — the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the policy in court in San Francisco. The case in Washington was filed separately by two advocacy organizations, the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or Raices.

“The court recognized, as it did with the first asylum ban, that the Trump administration was attempting an unlawful end run around asylum protections enacted by Congress,” said Lee Gelernt, the A.C.L.U. lawyer who argued the case in San Francisco.

The groups challenging the rule argued that immigration laws enacted by Congress expressly state that a person is ineligible for asylum only if the applicant is “firmly resettled” in another country before arriving in the United States. The laws also require an asylum seeker to request protection elsewhere only if the United States has entered into an agreement with that country and the applicant was guaranteed a “full and fair procedure” there, they said.

Judge Tigar agreed. “The rule provides none of these protections,” he said in his ruling.

During a hearing in the case on Wednesday, a lawyer for the Justice Department, Scott Stewart, said that a large influx of migrant families had spawned a “crisis” that had become “particularly stark” and created a “strain” on the asylum system.

“Migrants understand the basics of the incentives and are informed about how changes in law and policy can affect their options,” Mr. Stewart told the judge.

Judge Tigar voiced concern about forcing asylum seekers to apply for protection in Mexico or Guatemala. “We don’t see how anyone could read this record and think those are safe countries,” he said, referring to the rule’s language that migrants must apply to the first safe country.

The judge also said that the government did not address the “adequacy of the asylum system in Guatemala,” which is not equipped to handle a surge in applications.

Charanya Krishnaswami, advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International, said it was inhumane and cruel to force people fleeing violence to seek safety in places that are as dangerous as the homes they fled. “Everyone seeking protection has the right to humane treatment and a fair asylum process under U.S. and international law,” she said.

In federal court in Washington, two advocacy groups made similar arguments against the new policy.

But that judge, Timothy J. Kelly, found that the groups did not sufficiently support their claim that “irreparable harm” would be done to the plaintiffs in the case if the policy were not blocked. While the rule would affect migrants seeking asylum, the judge said, “the plaintiffs before me here are not asylum seekers.”

“They are only two organizations, one of which operates in the D.C. area, far from the southern border,” he added.

In recent years, the number of migrants petitioning for asylum has skyrocketed.

Migrant families and unaccompanied children have been turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents and then requesting asylum, which typically enables them to remain in the United States for years as their cases wind through the backlogged immigration courts. Only about 20 percent of them ultimately win asylum, according to the government, and many of those whose applications are rejected remain in the country unlawfully.

The administration announced the new asylum policy despite the fact that Guatemala and Mexico had not agreed to the plan, which means those countries have made no assurances that they would grant asylum to migrants intending to go to the United States. Talks with Guatemala broke down and the country’s president, Jimmy Morales, backed out of a meeting that had been scheduled for July 15 at the White House. On Wednesday, President Trump said that his administration was considering imposing tariffs on Guatemalan exports or taxing money sent home by migrants.

The new asylum rule is just one of many efforts by the Trump administration to curb the entry of migrants.

At ports of entry, Customs and Border Protection agents have significantly slowed the processing of applicants through metering — limiting how many migrants are processed to as few as a dozen per day.

And some 16,000 migrants are waiting in Mexican border towns like Tijuana under a policy commonly referred to as “Remain in Mexico,” which forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until the day of their court hearing. The policy makes it more difficult for the migrants to secure a lawyer to represent them in the United States, undermining their chances of winning protections.

In November, President Trump unveiled a separate policy that banned migrants from applying for asylum if they failed to make the request at a legal checkpoint. Judge Tigar, who was also hearing that case, issued a temporary restraining order blocking that rule. The case is currently on appeal in the Ninth Circuit.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported from Washington, and Miriam Jordan from Los Angeles.

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

It’s a much more reasonable order than that issued by Judge Kelly in DC earlier in the day which declared “open season” on asylum seekers. Judge Tigar has been on the front lines of Trump’s war on Due Process and the rule of law. Significantly, he pointed out the absurdity of the Trump Administration’s outrageous scofflaw attempt to classify Guatemala, one of the most dangerous countries in the world, without a functioning asylum system, as a bogus “safe third country.”

It’s on to the appellate courts!

PWS

07-24-19

THEIR LIVES & RIGHTS DON’T MATTER: US District Judge Timothy Kelly OK’s Trump’s Plan To Shaft Asylum Seekers Pending Further Litigation!

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/24/744860482/trump-administrations-new-asylum-rule-clears-first-legal-hurdle

Vanessa Romo reports for NPR News:

Updated at 12:40 p.m. ET

A federal judge on Wednesday let stand a new Trump administration rule requiring most asylum-seekers to ask for protection in another country before reaching the U.S.-Mexico border.

“It’s in the greater public interest to allow the administration to carry out its immigration policy,” U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly of Washington, D.C., said from the bench.

Immigrant Advocates Plan To Challenge New Trump Administration Asylum Rule July 15, 2019

Two immigrant rights groups — the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and RAICES, or Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services — had sued to try to block the new rule, arguing it would strip asylum eligibility from migrants fleeing dangerous situations.

But Kelly ruled that the administration’s interest outweighs the damages that might be experienced by the organizations helping migrants. And he expressed “strong doubts” that plaintiffs can show the government overstepped its authority by issuing the rule.

“I’m not saying it would cause no irreparable harm” to migrants seeking asylum in the U.S., Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, said before the ruling. But, he stated the immigrant rights organizations had failed to show how many clients they would be unable to reach as a result of the new rule, how many people would be turned away and how many migrants would ultimately qualify for asylum. He added that both CAIR Coalition and RAICES had failed to demonstrate that the new rule would “greatly increase” the amount of time it takes to prepare for migrants’ imminent danger interviews.

NATIONAL

Federal Court Blocks Trump Administration’s Asylum Ban

“We are disappointed in the court’s decision today, but we will continue to fight to ensure that this harmful rule does not unjustly impact children and adults who apply for asylum as well as immigration legal service providers’ ability to help asylum seekers,” Claudia Cubas, CAIR Coalition’s litigation director, said in a statement.

“This new rule is contrary to our laws and we will continue to challenge this attempt to remove asylum [eligibility] from those who are fleeing violence and persecution around the world,” Cubas added.

Another federal court in California is hearing a separate challenge to the new rule. Judge Jon Tigar of San Francisco will hold a hearing in that case Wednesday.

NATIONAL

Federal Court Blocks Trump Administration’s Asylum Ban

In November, Tigar issued a nationwide restraining order against a Trump administration policy seeking to limit asylum eligibility to only those who cross at legal points of entry.

The Trump administration has been taking steps to slow the flow of migrants, mostly from Central America, across the southern border.

On Monday, the administration announced another rule change to expand the number of undocumented immigrants who can be put into fast-track deportation proceedings. Immigrant advocates also plan to challenge that policy in court.

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

Obviously, Judge Kelly neither understands what is at risk for asylum seekers nor appreciates the difficulty in representing asylum seekers under constant attack by the Trump Administration.

While Trump has had his problems in Federal Court, ultimately he counts on the complicity of Federal Judges like Judge Kelly in his scheme to destroy the asylum system and endanger the lives of asylum seekers.

PWS

07-24-19

2 1/2 YEARS AFTER ANNOUNCING IT, TRUMP FINALLY GETS HIS EXPANSION OF EXPEDITED REMOVAL!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/trump-administration-to-expand-its-power-to-deport-undocumented-immigrants/2019/07/22/76d09bc4-ac8e-11e9-bc5c-e73b603e7f38_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports for the Washington Post:

The Trump administration on Tuesday will significantly expand its power to quickly deport undocumented immigrants who have illegally entered the United States within the past two years, using a fast-track deportation process that bypasses immigration judges.

Officials are calling the new strategy, which will take effect immediately, a “necessary response” to the influx of Central Americans and others at the southern border. It will allow immigration authorities to quickly remove immigrants from anywhere they encounter them across the United States, and they expect the approach will help alleviate the nation’s immigration-court backlog and free up space in Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails.

The stated targets of the change are people who sneaked into the United States and do not have an asylum case or immigration-court date pending. Previously, the administration’s policy for “expedited removal” had been limited to migrants caught within 100 miles of the U.S. border who had been in the country for less than two weeks. The new rule would apply to immigrants anywhere in the United States who have been in the country for less than two years — adhering to a time limit included in the 1996 federal law that authorized the expedited process.

“AI will embed intelligence in daily operations to augment our employees, reshape our business practices, and even help create new products and services.” -Michele Goetz, principal analyst, Forrester

Immigrants apprehended in Iowa, Nebraska or other inland states would have to prove to immigration officials that they have been in the United States continuously for the past two years, or they could end up in an immigration jail facing quick deportation. And it could be relatively low-level immigration officers — not officers of a court — making the decisions.

President Trump has promised to deport millions of immigrants and has threatened enforcement raids targeting those in as many as 10 major cities.

Schumer again calls for ‘comprehensive immigration reform’

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on July 9 outlined Democratic proposals for curbing the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. (The Washington Post)

Nearly 300,000 of the approximately 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States could be subject to expedited removal, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. The typical undocumented immigrant has lived in the United States for 15 years, according to the Pew Research Center.

Though border apprehensions have fallen in June and July as the Trump administration and Mexico have intensified their crackdown on the southern border, acting Department of Homeland Security chief Kevin McAleenan said in a draft notice Monday that “the implementation of additional measures is a necessary response to the ongoing immigration crisis.” He said the new rule would take effect immediately upon publication in the Federal Register, which is scheduled for Tuesday.

[Trump administration weighs expanding expedited deportation]

“DHS has determined that the volume of illegal entries, and the attendant risks to national security and public safety presented by these illegal entries, warrants this immediate implementation of DHS’s full statutory authority over expedited removal,” McAleenan said in the notice. “DHS expects that the full use of expedited removal statutory authority will strengthen national security, diminish the number of illegal entries, and otherwise ensure the prompt removal of aliens apprehended in the United States.”

Immigration lawyers said that the expansion is unprecedented and effectively gives U.S. agents the power to issue deportation orders without bringing immigrants before a judge or allowing them to speak with a lawyer.

“Under this unlawful plan, immigrants who have lived here for years would be deported with less due process than people get in traffic court,” Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “We will sue to end this policy quickly.”

Royce Bernstein Murray of the American Immigration Council also vowed to challenge the policy in court, arguing that the broadened authority allows DHS “to essentially be both prosecutor and judge.”

Guatemalan men deported from the United States board a bus after arriving at an air-force base in Guatemala City last week. (Moises Castillo/AP)

Immigrants’ advocates warned that the policy could ensnare longtime legal residents or even U.S. citizens who have been deported in error before. Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said she fears the rule will lead to increased racial profiling and turn ICE into a “show-me-your-papers militia.”

“This new directive flows directly from the racist rhetoric that the president has been using for the last week and indeed months, but this new rule is going to terrorize communities of color,” said Gupta, who was head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama. “It really reads as a send-them-all-back policy,” she added, referring to the audience’s “Send her back!” chants at a Trump rally last week in response to the president’s attacks on a Somali-born Muslim congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

[Momentary border reprieve rests on a rickety foundation]

David Leopold, a Cleveland immigration lawyer and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said expanding the expedited-removal program shifts the decision-making to immigration officers who might not have much experience with such a policy and means that many immigrants who might have the right to remain in the country will not be given the opportunity to show it.

“That is going to apply to a huge swath of people,” he said, noting that the rule requires migrants to prove that they have been in the United States for years — a particularly difficult onus when they, by definition, lack legal-immigration documents. “My view is: How are they going to prove it? The burden is on them to prove it. If I can’t prove it, I’m done.”

ICE, which enforces immigration law and makes arrests across the United States, estimates that “a significant number” of undocumented immigrants would be eligible for expedited removal, including at least 20,500 migrants the agency apprehended last fiscal year and more than 6,400 it arrested this year, as of March 30.

McAleenan, in the federal notice, made reference to the Trump administration’s recent efforts to deter migration to the United States on many fronts, an approach that has included pushing asylum claimants back into Mexico to await court hearings, stepped up Mexican enforcement against migrants as they head north, and the threat of ICE raids on families who have final removal orders. McAleenan wrote that the new rule “will reduce incentives” for migrants to enter the United States and swiftly move away from the border to avoid the faster deportation process.

Deported migrants coming from Texas prepare to leave La Aurora Airport Repatriation Center in September in Guatemala City. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

DHS said it has anecdotal evidence that many immigrants smuggled into the United States hide in “safe houses” far from the southern border to avoid the threat of expedited removal. This year officials said 67 undocumented immigrants were found in a safe house in Roswell, N.M. — just beyond 100 miles from the Mexican border — and the year before they found three others, held for ransom, at a house in San Antonio, about 150 miles from the border.

Federal officials said they could make exceptions for people with serious medical conditions or “substantial connections” to the United States, and they said deportation is not necessarily immediate. Officials said they have safeguards in place for migrants who might be U.S. citizens or legal residents.

Asylum officers will interview immigrants who fear returning to their home countries, to determine whether they qualify for asylum or another form of protection, and they potentially could refer them to full deportation proceedings. Unaccompanied minors from non-neighboring countries are not eligible for speedy deportations under federal law.

Expedited removals stem from a 1996 law, signed by President Bill Clinton, that authorized the use of expedited deportations for undocumented immigrants apprehended anywhere in the country who could not prove they had been physically present in the country two years before their apprehension.

In practice, enforcement was far more limited, at first applying to migrants arriving at a port of entry or by sea. In 2004, President George W. Bush expanded expedited removals along the U.S.-Mexico border, allowing for the swift expulsion of immigrants caught within 100 miles of the border who had lived in the country fewer than 14 days. The Bush administration said issuing removal orders bars migrants from reentering the United States and makes it easier to pursue criminal charges against them if they try.

Expedited deportations soared from about 50,000 immigrants in 2004 to 193,000 in 2013, about 44 percent of the total number of people deported that year, according to the American Immigration Council.

Trump sought to expand expedited deportations days after he took office as one of multiple strategies to crack down on illegal immigration at a time when the immigration-court backlog hovered at about 600,000 cases. The plan never materialized, and illegal border crossings sank in the months after he assumed the presidency.

But apprehensions soared during the past year as migrant families from Central America sought refuge in the United States; they often are quickly released to await court hearings because of limits on how long the United States can detain children.

Since then, the immigration-court caseload has spiked to more than 900,000 cases, and ICE has more than 50,000 migrants in custody each day, a record.

In the notice, McAleenan said expedited removal will relieve pressure on detention centers and the courts. He said the courts had fewer than 168,000 cases at the end of fiscal 2004, when DHS expanded expedited removal along the southern border.

Migrants in expedited proceedings spend an average of just more than 11 days in immigration jails, while detainees awaiting “time-consuming” court hearings spend almost 52 days in jail, McAleenan said.

“DHS expects that the New Designation will help mitigate additional backlogs in the immigration courts and will reduce the significant costs to the government associated with full removal proceedings before an immigration judge, including the costs of a longer detention period and government representation in those proceedings,” McAleenan said in the notice.

The Trump administration says the notice is exempt from the Administrative Procedure Act’s public comment requirements, but DHS is seeking comments on the change even though it is slated to take effect immediately upon posting.

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

Well, Trump has the statute on his side here. But, because he is driven by malicious incompetence and racism, that hasn’t always carried the day for him.

Problems with this rollout:

There does not appear to be any legitimate reason for waiving the Administrative Procedures Act’s requirement for advance notice and comment for the regulatory change, particularly given its absurdly long gestation period;
The statute might well be unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause as applied to those whose connection to the border is quite attenuated (likely why prior Administrations chose a much more cautious and limited implementation);
The Trump Administration is likely to engage in overreach in implementation by going after long term residents who are outside the scope of the provision.

Only time will tell whether the Trump Administration’s latest “get tough” action will work, or just add to the Administration’s already remarkable record of litigation incompetence in the Federal Courts.

PWS

07-22-19

DON KERWIN @ CMS: REFUGEES HELPED MAKE AMERICA GREAT — NOW UNPATRIOTIC TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PLANS TO COMPLETELY ABANDON WORLD’S REFUGEES AT THEIR TIME OF GREATEST NEED — Richest, Most Diverse, Most Resettlement-Able Country In The World Intends To Shirk Humanitarian Duties — Undoubtedly Some Will Die & Many Will Be Traumatized By This Cowardly Attack On On International Obligations To World’S Most Vulnerable!

https://cmsny.org/whats-less-patriotic-than-abandonment-of-the-us-refugee-protection-program/

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

Don writes:

What’s less patriotic than abandonment of the US refugee protection program?

Donald Kerwin

Director

Center for Migration Studies

(Raúl Nájera/Unsplash)

SEARCH OUR POSTS

This week, the Trump administration has descended to a new level of contempt for the US refugee protection system. From its very first days in office when it evoked specious national security concerns to suspend the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for 120 days and indefinitely bar the admission of Syrian refugees, the administration has sought to discredit and diminish the US refugee resettlement, asylum, temporary protection, and other humanitarian programs.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump regularly decried the ways in which President Barack Obama exercised Executive authority, including by offering status, work authorization and protection from deportation to undocumented residents brought to the United States as children. As president, however, he has far exceeded Obama in unilaterally exercising his immigration authorities, albeit in favor of indiscriminate enforcement and evisceration of humanitarian programs. Many of these measures – although often justified on rule of law grounds – have not survived legal challenge.

To provide just a sampling of the Trump administration’s misguided policies, it has cut refugee admissions to historically low levels at a time of unprecedented need; has sought to rescind Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 95 percent of the program’s beneficiaries; ended the Central American Minors (CAM) program which allowed El Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran children to undergo refugee screening in their own countries and join their legally present parents in the United States; cut aid to the Northern Triangle states, which have produced in recent years the lion’s share of migrants and asylum-seekers to the United States, and; denied access to the US asylum system through interception, border enforcement, and cruel deterrence strategies, such as separating children from parents and forcing asylum seekers to wait for months in dangerous Mexican border cities while their US claims are pending.

The president habitually impugns the patriotism of his critics, but has systematically attempted to dismantle quintessentially American programs, which have long reflected and projected US values. Some of the most shameful episodes in the US history – as when it turned away the Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany on the S.S. St. Louis – involve the United States’ failure to protect refugees. By contrast, its leadership in responding to the refugees generated by World War II, the Vietnam conflict, the Cuban revolution, and the Balkans war in the former Yugoslavia – earned it the respect, gratitude and good will of many states and countless persons. They made it a beacon of freedom.

How do these programs serve US interests? They save lives (a core value). They promote regional and global stability. They reduce irregular migration. They promote US foreign policy goals. They encourage developing nations to continue to offer haven and integration opportunities to the bulk of the world’s refugees. They promote cooperation with US diplomatic, military and counterterror strategies. They link communities, including diverse faith communities, that work together to welcome and resettle refugees. As President Ronald Reagan put it in 1981, they continue “America’s tradition as a land that welcomes peoples from other countries” and shares the “responsibility of welcoming and resettling those who flee oppression.”

On July 18, Politico reported that the administration has been trying to make the case for admitting no refugees in FY 2020 – not those already approved for admission, not the family members of refugees in the United States, not those who assisted the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not survivors of religious persecution, although the administration regularly touts its commitment to religious liberty. It has reportedly been weighing a farcical rationale for this extraordinary step; that is, the United States cannot both process asylum claims and resettle refugees, although it has been doing both for decades.

On July 15, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOD) issued final interim regulations – which became effective the following day – that seek to deny access to the US asylum system to virtually every asylum-seeker at the southern border. With narrow exceptions, the rule would bar asylum claims by those “who did not apply for protection from persecution or torture where it was available in at least one third country” outside his or her “country of citizenship, nationality, or last lawful habitual residence through which he or she transited en route to the United States.”

Yet the Immigration and Nationality Act allows any non-citizen physically present in the United States to apply for asylum. Removal is permitted only “pursuant to a bilateral or multilateral agreement” to a third country where “the alien’s life or freedom would not be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and where the alien is eligible to receive asylum or equivalent temporary protection.” In short, this exception applies to “safe third country” agreements with other nations. The United States has only one such agreement – with Canada – which does not apply to asylum-seekers with family members in the other country, as the DHS and DOD regulation would. The pre-conditions for such an agreement are that an agreement actually exists, the state parties to the agreement are “safe,” and they have “full and fair” asylum policies and procedures. The DHS/DOJ rule flouts all of these statutory requirements.

Ironically, the Trump administration claims that it needs to take this step based on the numbers of people seeking protection from countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Yet great demand and need argue for a robust, well-resourced asylum system, not the shell of a program.

Some percentage of asylum-seekers from these countries will ultimately be found to be ineligible for asylum, although a very high percentage have been forced to leave their violence-torn homelands and will at least present credible claims. For its part, the Trump administration has not effectively addressed the causes driving the flight of these migrants, has not offered legal migration opportunities to those in great need, and has failed to take any of steps necessary to address a human crisis of this magnitude. These steps would certainly reduce irregular migration and the high numbers of asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. Instead, it has resorted to deterrence, interception and border enforcement policies – a recipe for failure on humanitarian, legal, and enforcement grounds, and a boon only to human smuggling networks and for-profit prisons.

The administration is dismantling the US refugee resettlement program and the asylum system – at immense human cost, to the nation’s detriment, and with disastrous consequences for the international system of refugee protection which it once led. This isn’t patriotism. It’s an act of sabotage of a defining set of American value and a once proud program. One day – perhaps soon – it will be looked upon as a shameful episode in US history.

July 19, 2019

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

Wow! Just when you might have thought Trump couldn’t be any more cowardly or unpatriotic, he sinks us even lower!

Trump’s claims that the U.S. is “full” or that we don’t have room for more refugees is pure racist restrictionist BS! According to Amnesty International, one-third of the world’s refugees, 6.7 million people, are hosted by the world’s poorest countries. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/refugees-asylum-seekers-and-migrants/global-refugee-crisis-statistics-and-facts/

Under Trump, the U.S. has become a leading shirker of refugee resettlement responsibilities, encouraging other prosperous Western Nations to follow our cowardly and selfish example.

Lebanon (GNP approx. $52 billion) hosted 1.4 million refugees, or 156 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants; Jordan (GNP approx. $41 billion) hosted 2.5 million refugees, or 72 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants. Meanwhile, the U.S., GNP approx. $20 trillion+, has reduced its refugee resettlement commitment to less than 30,000 and now outrageously proposes to “zero it out.”

Cowardly, inhumane, irresponsible, selfish, racist leaders reflect on all of us, not just on the disturbing lack of values of the minority of Americans who installed them in office and keep them propped up.

The U.S. is now officially leading the “race to the bottom.” Will those of us who believe in a confident, generous, courageous, patriotic America, reestablishing ourselves as a human rights leader be able to get it together to “right the ship” in 2020. Or, will the Ship of State continue to sink with Trump and his unpatriotic White Nationalist racists at the helm?

PWS

WORDS FROM AMERICA’S KIDDIE GULAGS: As Dishonest Administration Pols Like McAleenan, “Cooch Cooch,” Morgan, Provost, & A Bevy Of Border Patrol Officials Lie To Congress, The Press, & The American People About What Is Happening In DHS Detention, Here’s The Truth About The Human Rights Abuses Being Committed Daily By Our Nation In Our Name, In The Words Of The Abused Kids Themselves, Read By Children In NY — Watch The Video!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/opinion/migrant-children-detention-border.html

New York children read the words of their peers held in U.S. Border Patrol facilities.

The New York Times

By The Editors

Video by Leah Varjacques and Taige Jensen

In the video Op-Ed above, children read testimonies given by young migrants detained in Customs and Border Protection facilities. They reveal harrowing stories of children living in cages, going hungry and tending to infants without their parents.

Border Patrol has been detaining thousands of children, sometimes for weeks, in conditions no child anywhere should suffer. At a June hearing before a federal appeals court, judges were stunned by the administration’s arguments that these children were kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities, as required by the Flores Settlement.

The overcrowding, long stays and inhumane, possibly illegal living conditions are a result of the Trump administration’s cruel immigration policies and mismanagement of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the border agency.

Barring exceptional circumstances, the legal limit for Border Patrol to detain children is 72 hours. The agency is then supposed to transfer children to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement for a maximum of 20 days. But the resettlement office has been keeping children far longer, creating a backlog across the entire system. As a result, Border Patrol centers have not been quickly processing unaccompanied children and migrant families, who have recently been crossing the border in record-breaking numbers.

Detained children provided the testimonies read in this video last month to lawyers who visited Border Patrol centers as part of an ongoing investigation of detention facilities.

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

Go to the above link for the video showing how we intentionally abuse children who seek our protection. Do we really want to be known and remembered as a “Cowardly Nation of Child Abusers.” That’s what Trump and his “New GOP,” the party of unapologetic White Nationalist racism, is turning us into.

Just yesterday, McAleenan was lying and covering up before Congress, trying to deny the abuses taking place on his watch every day. He also had the gall to blame this entirely avoidable situation on not enough money from Congress, bad laws (which the Administration doesn’t follow anyway), and the very vulnerable individuals seeking legal protection under our laws, many of them kids.

Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD) finally had enough and rightfully blew up at him. But, that’s not going to stop the daily abuse and the stream of lies, false narratives, and cover-ups being promoted by McAleenan and his cohorts.

How does McAleenan claim that they are doing the best they can when the DHS’s own Inspector General says exactly the opposite? How does he claim that reports have been exaggerated when Inspector General reports confirming the horrible treatment were in his own hands some time ago? How do Republicans in Congress justify the racist-driven human rights abuses that they are promoting?

America’s future depends on “regime change.” The only question is whether it will come soon enough to save our country and our souls. For Trump’s racism and the abuse he, his followers, and his apologists (like the ever toxic and irresponsible Sen. Mitch McConnell and Sen. Lindsey Graham) are heaping on children, asylum seekers, and other migrants truly diminishes the humanity of all of us!

PWS

07-19-19

AS COURTS & CONGRESS DITHER, FAILING TO STOP CLEARLY ILLEGAL & INHUMAN CONDUCT, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO PUNISH INNOCENT KIDS AT THE BORDER WITH ARROGANT IMPUNITY — Whatever Happened To The Institutions That Were Supposed To Protect Us From Abuses By An Authoritarian, Scofflaw Executive? — Kate Linthicum Reports For The LA Times!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=f4f6873a-7ae7-4cc2-bbe2-9fc685d2ea1b

Kate Lithicum reports for the LA Times:

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — For the two dozen migrant children living inside a small church on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, most days go like this: breakfast at 8 a.m., dinner at 6 p.m. and hours of nothing in between.

There is no school, and except for a handful of worn Bibles, there are no books. Dangers abound in the surrounding hills, so most haven’t left the razor-wire-ringed compound in weeks or even months.

“I feel imprisoned,” said 16-year-old Alison Mendoza.

She left Nicaragua with her parents and two younger sisters in March after her father received death threats for demonstrating against President Daniel Ortega, whose government has jailed and killed thousands of dissenters.

The family has been waiting here in Juarez for nearly two months for their chance to request political asylum in the United States. A Trump administration policy allows only a handful of asylum seekers to pass through ports of entry at the U.S. border each day.

Mendoza and her sisters, Sol, 6, and Michele, 11, are among the thousands of migrant children languishing along the border as a result of changing migration trends and White House policies that seek to deter asylum seekers.

They left friends and relatives behind and endured the trials of the migrant trail only to end up stuck in camps, cheap hotels and shelters such as Buen Pastor, which is now home to children and their families from as far away as Ghana and Congo. Pawns in an adult’s dispute, their future is entirely uncertain.

Two recent Trump administration mandates are almost certain to result in even larger numbers of migrant children being stranded here.

One calls for asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are adjudicated. About 3,000 migrant children and their families have been returned to Juarez under that program since April, according to Chihuahua state officials.

A mandate announced this week calls for asylum to be denied to migrants who did not apply for protection in at least one country they passed through while trying to reach the United States.

The rules mean that there is a very strong likelihood that if the Mendozas finally do cross the border to plead their case, they will be sent right back to Juarez.

“What will we do?” said Donald Mendoza, 37, who left behind a good job at a Managua university that would have allowed him to pay for all three girls’ college educations.

The Mexican government has committed to providing schooling to migrants who are returned from the U.S., but Mendoza doesn’t want to raise his girls in notoriously dangerous Juarez, where 10 people were slain on Sunday alone.

“This is not the life I planned for my children,” he said.

Buen Pastor opened its doors about 20 years ago to migrants — back then almost always single men — who passed through Juarez before seeking to sneak across the border.

“They would come, rest for a night or two, and then cross,” said Pastor Juan Fierro Garcia.

But over the last two years, entire families began trudging up the dirt road that leads to the church.

Many had heard that U.S. authorities were releasing migrants as long as they requested asylum and were traveling with children.

“We didn’t know much about the situation, just that families were passing,” said Joseph Venegas, 26, who left Honduras last month with his wife and their two sons.

After crossing into the U.S. illegally last week, and turning themselves in to border authorities, Venegas and his family were held for two days and then released back into Juarez with an order to appear at an asylum hearing in October. A Mexican official told them how to get to Buen Pastor.

Ten-year-old Jose sobbed on the way there. “I want to go back to Honduras,” he wailed.

“We had bad luck,” his father explained. “The law is the law and we have to respect it.”

“We are doing all of this for you,” Venegas added.

Venegas said the family decided to leave because a teachers’ strike meant Jose hadn’t been able to go to school for months.

But now, as he watched Jose sit morosely in one corner of the shelter and his wife nurse their coughing 4-month-old baby on a nearby bench, he wondered whether leaving had been in the best interest of his kids.

“What kind of childhood is this?” he asked.

The experience is a little easier on the younger children, many of whom don’t understand exactly what is happening, and who run around the shelter in a tight pack. The youngsters from Africa speak only a small amount of Spanish, but they still manage to make friends.

The lack of toys means the children entertain themselves around a big table, beating it like a drum until their parents complain or turning it into a fort under which they hide and whisper.

There are several small buildings clustered around the compound — a men’s dormitory, a women’s dormitory and the church sanctuary where families camp out each night on mattresses squeezed between the pews.

The crowded conditions and a constant stream of visitors — nongovernmental organization workers, pro bono lawyers and journalists all asking the same tired questions — mean there is zero privacy. Young women groom themselves and change clothes under the cover of blankets.

A psychologist from the state comes once a week. On a recent morning, she gathered the children around a big round table and led them in breathing exercises.

She asked them to go one by one, saying their names and where they were from.

“I’m Natalia from Honduras,” one girl said.

“I’m Akasia from Congo,” said another.

A thin child from Guatemala declined to speak, burying her head in her arms.

“She is sad,” the 7-year-old boy next to her explained.

“It’s OK,” the psychologist said. “It’s okay to be sad.”

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This kind of preventable harm inflicted by an Administration that has declared war on humanity and the rule of law is directly at the feet of three irresponsible Federal Judges of the Ninth Circuit who tanked by vacating the injunction against such gross abuses properly put in place by the U.S. District Judge in Innovation Law Labs v. McAleenan, ostensibly so that their colleagues could “deliberate” (actually “dither”) over a decision that would take responsible judges about 60 minutes to reach! How do guys like this sleep at night?

The issue in Innovation Law Labs involves the bogus “Migrant Protection Protocols,” more accurately described as “Remain in Mexico” or “Die in Mexico” that intentionally violates both Fifth Amendment Due Process and numerous provisions of the INA, including the rights to access to counsel of one’s own choosing, fair notice of hearings, adequate time to prepare and present a case, and the right to assert withholding of removal to a country where one fears persecution or torture.

Failure of privileged Article III Judges to protect the most vulnerable among us from Executive overreach and abuse, in this case clearly racially motivated, has real life adverse consequences, beyond the “judicial ivory tower,” that in many cases are irreversible.

All of us who believe in justice should be outraged by the Ninth Circuit’s dilatory performance in this case! It’s nothing short of child abuse sanctioned by the Federal Judiciary. It must stop!

PWS

07-19-19

LIKE A BAD MOVIE: VIDEO SUB FOR REAL INTERPRETERS PANNED AS EOIR CONTINUES TO PLUMB THE DEPTHS IN COMING UP WITH WAYS TO DENY DUE PROCESS — Tal @ SF Chron Reports!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Videos-start-replacing-interpreters-at-14103649.php

Videos start replacing interpreters at immigration court hearings

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration began the process of eliminating in-person interpreters at immigrants’ initial court hearings Wednesday, replacing them with a video advising people of their rights.

Advocates who observed court proceedings said the video was confusing and difficult to understand, and said they feared the new system would not give immigrants a fair shot in cases that decide whether they will be deported.

The new system went into place at immigration courts in New York and Miami, according to multiple sources. Details were sketchy, as the policy was applied only to immigrants who were not represented by lawyers, meaning that in some instances there were no observers in the courtroom.

The immigration court in San Francisco is not among those where the videos are being used in a pilot program, but eventually interpreters are expected to be replaced there as well.

The Chronicle was first to report the new policy, shortly after immigration judges were told about it in June. Some judges have since raised concerns, and their union hopes to negotiate changes with the Justice Department, which runs the courts.

The department says replacing interpreters with videos at initial court appearances will save money. The main purpose of such initial hearings is to inform immigrants of their rights and schedule further proceedings.

After the video is shown, immigrants who want to ask questions of the judge will have no way of doing so unless they have a bilingual attorney on hand. If they don’t, judges will have to try to track down an interpreter who happens to be free or use a telephone interpreting service.

Advocates say the new system is likely to lead to confusion among some immigrants, who might miss their next hearing as a result. Missing a hearing can be grounds for deportation.

Witnesses who were in court in New York on Wednesday said the video was roughly 20 minutes long and featured Christopher Santoro, the principal deputy chief immigration judge of the immigration courts. As he spoke in English, the video was dubbed in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. After the video, immigrants received an 11-page FAQ handout in Spanish.

Joan Racho-Jansen, an organizer with New Sanctuary Coalition, which provides non-attorney volunteers to immigrants, said the video was slickly produced but difficult to understand even for Spanish speakers with whom she watched. She also said it spent considerable time on the immigrants’ right to accept “voluntary departure” from the U.S.

Immigrants in the courtroom “were either asleep or very, very frightened because they were saying things (in the video) that were scary,” Racho-Jansen said. “We had (experienced) volunteers who spoke Spanish and they just kept shaking their heads and felt disturbed by language that was far too confusing for them to understand.”

She said the video was full of “legalese” that would go over the heads of even fluent Spanish speakers — and many Central American immigrants speak indigenous languages and little or no Spanish.

The handout, viewed by The Chronicle, was clear but technical, with a volume of information that could challenge people from rural foreign countries who have no familiarity with courts.

“I asked the interpreters what they thought (of the video), and they said it was very confusing, that the person who was dubbing occasionally couldn’t pronounce or didn’t understand the word they were saying so they said it incorrectly,” Racho-Jansen said.

She said interpreters were present in the New York courtrooms and that judges used them after the video. It’s not clear if the Justice Department scheduled them to be there or if they were in court for other reasons.

The department declined to comment and refused The Chronicle’s request to view the video.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Alexei Koseff contributed to this report.

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan

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The continuing denigration of Due Process by EOIR is appalling. This time, in addition to the real victims, the migrants who are forced to use this rancid system, EOIR is taking a “cheap shot” at the professional interpreters who have helped the foundering agency keep its head above water for years.

Sorry to see Principal Deputy Chief Judge Chris Santoro participating in this scam. Chris is someone I always admired and who was always very helpful and supportive to me during my career.

Where is Congress on this ugly and unnecesasry mess? Certainly, requiring EOIR to conform to Due Process by providing live interpretation ought to be a “bipartisan no-brainer.”

PWS

07-18-19

NDPA COUNTERATTACKS: ACLU, Immigrants’ Rights Groups Challenge Trump’s Scofflaw Attempt To Repeal Asylum Statute By Regulation That Failed To Comply With Legal Requirements For Advance Notice & Comment!

hhttps://www.wsj.com/articles/civil-rights-and-immigration-groups-file-lawsuit-challenging-new-trump-limits-on-asylum-claims-11563310786

Brent Kendall reports for the WSJ:

Civil-rights and immigration groups filed a lawsuit challenging new Trump administration rules that could dramatically limit asylum claims by Central American migrants seeking entry to the U.S.

The suit, filed in a northern California federal court on Tuesday, alleges the new asylum policy is “an unlawful effort to significantly undermine, if not virtually repeal, the U.S. asylum system at the southern border.

It “cruelly closes our doors to refugees fleeing persecution,” the suit added.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of several groups that assist migrants and refugees.

. . . .

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

Go New Due Process Army, Beat Scofflaws!

PWS

07-16-19

STEFF W. KIGHT @ AXIOS: How Mindlessly Expanded Detention & “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” Contributes To Skyrocketing Backlogs In Immigration Court!

https://www.axios.com/immigration-legal-courts-judges-backlog-border-crisis-92525141-66f5-41c1-a9e1-a60edba4ee74.html

Steph W. Kight — Steff W. Kight
Reporter
AXIOS

Steff W. Kight reports for AXIOS:

It’s taking longer and longer to become a legal immigrant

The number of immigrants waiting on a judge to decide whether they can stay in the U.S. keeps climbing, according to Justice Department data.

Why it matters: Immigration-court backlogs “are basically crippling the whole system,” Georgetown Law professor and former immigration judge Paul Schmidt told Axios.

By the numbers: On average, immigrants are waiting 727 days for decisions on their court cases — roughly twice as long as immigrants had to wait two decades ago, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) which gathered millions of court records.

The big picture: The long waits have resulted in many Central American families being released after crossing the border illegally, because it is nearly impossible for their cases to be decided on within the 20 day detention limit for children.

The backlog also incentivizes migration. Migrants can expect at least a few months in the U.S. before they have to show up to court, immigration experts said.

The Trump administration cited the growing backlog as a reason for new rules all but cutting off Central Americans from gaining asylum.

Migrants who are disqualified for asylum under the new rule will still have the chance to fight deportation in front of an immigration judge.

And many of the administration’s actions — such as increasing ICE arrests and limiting judges’ ability to dismiss low-priority cases — have made the problem worse, according to Schmidt.

How it works: There are 431 DOJ-appointed judges handling immigration cases, up from 289 in FY 2016, according to Justice Department data. The Trump administration has ramped up hiring for immigration judges and put pressure on them to work faster.

While they wait for their court date, asylum seekers, green-card applicants, immigrants arrested by ICE and others are either held in an ICE detention center, asked to pay bail or released, sometimes with an ankle bracelet or other monitoring device.

IMMIGRATION

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Go to Steff’s original article at the above link for the accompanying graph.

Here’s how it works (or in this case, doesn’t). As ICE steps up the amount of detention and Immigration Judges are pushed by the DHS and the Department of Justice to set higher bonds (or stripped altogether of their bond setting authority, as AG Bill Barr has tried to do in a large class of asylum cases, only to be thwarted for the time being by the “real” Federal Courts) the number of detained individuals awaiting immigration hearings grows.

That, in turn, causes a largely self-inflicted “emergency” on the Immigration Courts’ detained docket. To deal with this very predictable, self-created “emergency,” Immigration Judges are detailed from already totally saturated “non-detained dockets” to the detained docket.

That results in regularly scheduled non-detained cases, many of which have been pending for years and have already been reset several times to accommodate the Government’s ever-shifting “priorities,” being reset yet again, often without advance notice to the respondents and their attorneys. Because most dockets are already full for years, these “reset” cases normally go to the “end of the line,” as far out as 2023 in some courts.

Also, the non-detained cases are usually represented by counsel and “ready to try.” By contrast, many cases on the detained docket do not have lawyers or are not yet prepared because of the Government-caused difficulties of preparing and documenting a complex asylum case from a detention center in the middle of nowhere (don’t worry, these days the “detailed judges” mostly appear by TV, from far away locations, so they don’t have to experience the same discomforts and dislocation of the detention centers as inflicted by the Government on respondents and their lawyers — if any).

I call the above process “Aimless Docket Reshuffling.” Cases are “churned,” causing huge amounts of additional work for respondents’ attorneys and court staff, and generating workload statistics, without ever being completed. Then, confronted with its own incompetence and intentional mismanagement, the Government tries to shift the blame to the victims, the respondents and their lawyers, by making it harder to get legitimate continuances and stripping respondents of what few rights they have.

So the next time you hear Trump, Barr, McAleenan, or some other unqualified GOP politico complaining about Immigration Court backlogs remember the truth — while Immigration Court backlogs are the product of years of negligence and mismanagement by the Department of Justice, today’s “totally out of control backlogs” are largely caused, and certainly aggravated, by the Trump Administration’s own “malicious incompetence.”

PWS

07-16-19

JULIA PRESTON & ANDREW R. CALDERON @ POLITICO: DISORDER IN THE COURTS! — How The Trump Administration’s Cruel, Biased, Yet Fundamentally Stupid, Policies Are Creating Endless Backlogs And Destroying A Key Part Of The U.S. Justice System! — “Malicious Incompetence” Generates “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” & Creates An Existential Crisis While The Two Branches That Could Put An End To This Nonsense — Congress & The Article III Courts — Sit By & Twiddle Their Collective Thumbs!

How Trump Broke the Immigration Courts

Julia Preston

Questions are still swirling around the immigration raids that President Donald Trump said he launched over the weekend, but one thing is certain: Many immigrants caught in their net will be sent into a court system already crippled by a vast backlog of ca…

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This is a national disaster of gargantuan proportions unfolding in plain sight every day. Yet, somehow it remains largely “below the radar screen.” Nobody except those of us (and a few conscientious reporters, like Julia) who truly understand the relationship of the intentionally broken and thoroughly trashed U.S. Immigration Courts to our overall justice system seems motivated to fix this disgraceful mockery of fundamental fairness and impartial decision-making.

This definitely has the real potential to “crash” the entire U.S. justice system. Under Trump, Barr, and the rest of the sycophants, the backlogs will keep growing exponentially until the Immigration Court system collapses, spewing forth one to two million backlogged cases into the laps of those same smug Article IIIs who are closing their eyes to the miscarriages of justice befalling others on their watch. I guess you can’t hear the tormented screams of the abused way up in the “ivory tower.”

Obviously, as proved over and over again during the past two years, the Trump Administration is without shame, incompetent, and beyond accountability.

However, Members of Congress and the Article III Judges could act tomorrow (yes, there are bills already drafted that nobody is seriously considering, and the multiple Due Process violations of our Constitution infecting every part of this corrupt system are patently obvious, even to my Georgetown Law students, let alone so-called “real” judges) to put an end to this nonsense that is literally killing folks and destroying innocent lives. They should be held fully accountable for their gross dereliction of duty and their mass failure to uphold their oaths of office.

On a cheerier note, here’s my favorite comment about Julia’s article from my good friend, colleage, and fellow blogger, retired Judge Jeffrey S. Chase:

[Retired Judge] Bob Vinikoor and I are quoted.The author, Julia Preston, actually first asked me “Is this Jeffrey Chase, the actor?”She had seen me perform in the play [Waterwell’s NY production of ‘The Courtroom’], and said I had sworn her in as a US citizen in the last scene, which, since she was born in Illinois, was something she had not previously experienced.

Hope your Actor’s Equity Card is in good standing, my friend!

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PWS

07-16-19

DHS OFFICIAL ON TRUMP’S LATEST RACIST ATTACK ON ASYLUM: “IT’S F***ED Up!”— Racists Are Running Our Country With “Malicious Incompetence” — That’s a BIG Problem For Everyone, Not Just Those Targeted By Their Outrageous White Nationalist Attacks!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/trump-asylum-central-americans

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

The US will end asylum protections for Central Americans and others who cross through Mexico to reach the southern border, the Trump administration announced Monday, a sweeping, unprecedented move that will quickly be challenged in court.

The new move, which bars asylum for any individual who crosses through a third country but does not apply there for protection before reaching the US southern border, takes effect Tuesday in the form of a regulatory change.

It becomes the latest in a series of attempts by the Trump administration to actively deter asylum seekers from reaching the border. The details of the plan and efforts to implement it were first reported by BuzzFeed News in May, and experts say it would keep hundreds of thousands of people fleeing violence from entering the US.

“With one regulation the US is nearly entirely turning its back on this asylum flow,” Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told BuzzFeed News.

Multiple Department of Homeland Security officials who spoke with BuzzFeed News voiced concerns about the administration’s move.

“It’s fucked up,” one official said. “There’s a reason people apply for asylum in the US — we have a robust asylum system. Other countries on the route to the southern border don’t.”

Rodrigo Abd / AP

Another said it would be blocked in court.

“Flatly inconsistent with our treaty obligations. Flies in the face of decades of case law. Destined to be enjoined and or struck down immediately,” the official said.

Another DHS official said the move was not only mistaken, but it would backfire on the administration.

“This administration continues to pervert the 1980 Refugee Act and its later amendments by passing regulations that burden its own employees with overly cumbersome, ill-conceived new ‘standards,'” the official said. “This rule will effect all those who reach our southern land border but may have fled from anywhere in the world. It does nothing to fix our broken immigration system, which is at its breaking point because the administration’s mismanagement.”

Administration officials have been working on the plan for weeks, considering it a potential solution to the high rate of families crossing the border.

“Until Congress can act, this interim rule will help reduce a major ‘pull’ factor driving irregular migration to the United States and enable DHS and [the Department of Justice] to more quickly and efficiently process cases originating from the southern border, leading to fewer individuals transiting through Mexico on a dangerous journey,” said acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan.

Advocates said they would move to sue immediately.

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the group would immediately sue.

“The Trump administration is trying to unilaterally reverse our country’s legal and moral commitment to protect those fleeing danger. This new rule is patently unlawful and we will sue swiftly,” he said.

The ACLU previously filed a lawsuit over the administration’s attempt to ban asylum for those who crossed the border without authorization. The policy was later blocked in federal court and has since not been implemented.

Oliver De Ros / AP

The new regulation would make anyone traveling through Mexico by land to the southern border ineligible for asylum if they did not first seek protection before reaching the US. Immigrants could attempt to receive protection through a process that would be much more difficult.

The ban would apply not just to Central Americans but other non-Mexican nationalities, including Cubans, Haitians, and Venezuelans who in recent months have applied for asylum at the southern border in higher numbers.

The new rule allows for a few exceptions, including if an immigrant was a victim of severe human trafficking or if they traveled through a third country that did not have adequate asylum protections. The person could also avoid the new ban if they can prove that they applied for protection in a third country and later were ordered a final denial. It’s unclear how many people could fit these categories.

“This latest regulation is an attempt to close down one of the few remaining avenues for people in need of protection,” said Ur Jaddou, former chief counsel for the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. “The only ray of light for those seeking safety is that Congress was clear when it enacted the asylum law and this attempt to circumvent it by regulation will likely see the same fate of other Trump administration attacks on the law and result in a federal court injunction.”

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Only the Article III Courts can stop this continuing outrage. But, will they do their job before the country descends into total chaos and the race wars that Trump and the GOP are openly promoting?

PWS

07-16-19

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New York children read the words of their peers held in U.S. Border Patrol facilities.

The New York Times

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Go New Due Process Army, Beat Scofflaws!

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