“MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” MORPHS INTO CONTEMPT FOR COURT AS ADMINISTRATION TELLS COURT & SEPARATED FAMILIES “GO POUND SAND” — They Just Don’t Care About Humanity!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/report-trump-admin-does-not-plan-to-reunite-families-separated-before-zero-tolerance_us_5c55c3c4e4b087104753e468

Angelina Chaplin reports for HuffPost:

On Friday, officials from the Trump administration said it would require too much effort to reunite the thousands of families it separated before implementing its “zero-tolerance” policy in April, according to a declaration filed as part of an ongoing lawsuit between the American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Last month, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services released a report stating that “thousands” more immigrant families had been separated than the government had previously disclosed. In the declaration submitted Friday, HHS officials said they don’t know the exact number of children who were taken from their parents before “zero tolerance” and that finding them would be too much of a “burden” since there was no formal tracking system in place.

“The Trump administration’s response is a shocking concession that it can’t easily find thousands of children it ripped from parents and doesn’t even think it’s worth the time to locate each of them,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer in the ACLU’s ongoing lawsuit against ICE, in a statement. “The administration also doesn’t dispute that separations are ongoing in significant numbers.”

HHS did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

The deputy director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Jallyn Sualog, said that 100 ORR analysts would have to work eight hours each day for between seven and 15 months to “even begin reconciling” data on separated families. “In my judgment, ORR does not have the requisite staff for such a project,” Sualog wrote in the declaration.

Immigration advocates are appalled by the fact that the government didn’t bother to properly track separated families and that it is now shirking its responsibility to reunite parents and children.

“They are saying they just don’t care,” said Michelle Brané, the director of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “It’s shocking frivolous om a human rights perspective for a government to behave this way.”

“I think the policy of taking the children away in the first place was cruel,” said Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer, “but to not even have a system to return the parents to the children just increases the magnitude of the cruelty.”

The government also failed to properly track the roughly 2,800 children that it separated from their parents under the “zero-tolerance” policy between April and June. The administration was required to reunite families as part of an ACLU lawsuit, an ongoing process that has at times required immigration advocates to search for deported parents on foot in remote, crime-ridden areas of Central America.

According to the inspector general’s report, 159 children who were separated under “zero tolerance” are still in ORR care, most of whose parents were deported and decided to keep their kids in the U.S. due to dangerous situations back home. If the government doesn’t allow those parents to re-apply for asylum in the U.S., families may remain permanently separated. Gelernt worries that before “zero tolerance” the government could have deported hundreds more parents who might not have had a say in their children’s futures.

In the declaration, Jonathan White, a commander with the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, said that most unaccompanied children are released to family sponsors and that in addition to logistical challenges, trying to reunite separated kids with their parents could be destabilizing and “would present grave child welfare concerns.”

But Gelernt says the government should not be making decisions on behalf of mothers and fathers. “[The administration] had no right to just give these kids away unless the parent was making an informed decision,” he said. “This is not a situation where the parents put the child up for adoption. This is a situation where the child was forcibly taken from the parents.”

On Feb. 21, Gelernt will argue in front of a federal judge in California that all families separated before “zero tolerance” should be part of the ACLU’s ongoing lawsuit and that the government has a responsibility to reunify these parents with their children. He is disappointed that the administration failed to act humanely towards immigrant families in its declaration.

“The [government] is saying it’s not legally required for them to [reunite families] and therefore they won’t do it,” he said. “But why not do it because it’s the right thing to do?”

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Isn’t it time for the U.S. District Judge to start holding ICE and ORR officials in contempt of court? What about former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions who “masterminded” this cruel fiasco?

Can there be justice without any morality or accountability?

PWS

02-02-19

WILLA FREJ @ HUFFPOST: Trump’s Blatant Lies About Family Separation Just Keep Flowing!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-child-separation-obama_us_5bfbb980e4b0eb6d93105dd6

President Donald Trump falsely claimed that his policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern U.S. border was the “exact same” as the one implemented during the Obama administration.

In complaining about a “60 Minutes” segment that aired Sunday, Trump tried to deflect criticism of his “zero tolerance” immigration policy by arguing that former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush also separated immigrant families.

“I tried to keep them together but the problem is, when you do that, vast numbers of additional people storm the Border,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “So with Obama seperation [sic] is fine, but with Trump it’s not.”

. . . .

Obama deported a record number of immigrants during his time in office which earned him the nickname of “deporter-in-chief.” Prioritizing the removal of people with criminal histories, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported more than 2.7 million people between fiscal years 2009 and 2016.

The administration worked to quickly detain and deport migrants for several months in 2014, in response to a surge in migrant arrivals. Yet children who had come into the country with their parents didn’t get separated from them, and if families got deported, they were deported together.

The Ninth Circuit ruled that the Flores agreement ― a 1997 federal court decision requiring children to remain in custody for as little time as possible ― also applied to both accompanied and unaccompanied children. They could only be held in detention for a maximum of 20 days.

But Trump administration has gone far beyond his predecessor, separating almost 2,000 immigrant children from their parents in the spring. Many were held in caged detention centers and exposed to severe health consequences. Trump has also tried to withdraw from the Flores settlement and put forth new rules to replace it, which could lead to children being detained indefinitely.

As for deportations, the Trump administration opted to prosecute every single migrant who crossed the border illegally, expanding the Obama-era strategy of focusing on criminals.

The notion that Trump is merely carrying out Obama’s legacy is “preposterous,” Denise Gilman, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School, told NBC News. “There were occasionally instances where you would find a separated family — maybe like one every six months to a year — and that was usually because there had been some actual individualized concern that there was a trafficking situation or that the parent wasn’t actually the parent.”

“The agencies were surfacing every possible idea,” a top Obama domestic policy advisor, Cecilia Muñoz, told The New York Times. “I do remember looking at each other like, ‘We’re not going to do this, are we?’ We spent five minutes thinking it through and concluded that it was a bad idea. The morality of it was clear — that’s not who we are.”

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Read Willa’s full article, including Trump’s revolting tweets, at the link.

Separate ‘em, jail ‘em, abuse ‘em, gas ‘em! What’s not to like about an unhinged authoritarian with a neo-Fascist program, a propaganda machine masquerading as “news,” and a bunch of mindless supporters who cheer as he and his band of cowards pick on kids and the downtrodden?

Every day is a new “Reichstag Fire” – a fake, manufactured “crisis” and a call to blame and eradicate the “usual suspects.” Some day there will be hell to pay for America’s abandoning human values and allowing Trump to represent our Government! We should all be ashamed of what our country is doing in the name of fake “border security.”

We are diminishing ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!

PWS

11-26-18

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema Lays Groundwork For Holding Trump’s Child Abusers & Family Separators Accountable!

https://www.justice4all.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/JECM-Motion-to-Dismiss-Ruling.pdf

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts: Rebecca Wolozin, (571) 373-0518
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, (434) 218-9376

FEDERAL COURT ALLOWS CHALLENGE TO GOVERNMENT POLICY

USING DETAINED CHILDREN AS BAIT TO ARREST FAMILIES

ALEXANDRIA, VA (November 16, 2018) — Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied the U.S. government’s motion to dismiss Legal Aid Justice Center’s lawsuit on behalf of detained immigrant children and their families, striking a blow to a new immigration policy that has kept thousands of children unnecessarily detained for months. The Court’s decision is a victory for immigrant children and their families in Virginia and across the country.

This case is particularly significant, not only in Virginia, but nationally. Over 13,000 children are held by Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) under the policies challenged in this suit, hundreds of whom are in Virginia. Because the policies are federal policies implemented across the country, the outcome of this case will have a nationwide impact.

Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC), together with the intellectual property law firm of Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein, and Fox, brought this first-of-its-kind class action lawsuit challenging the government’s recent policy of sharing sponsor information and information about sponsors’ household members with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That policy has resulted in ICE arrests of family and friends that came forward to bring their children home.

“The Trump administration has been carrying out a backdoor family separation agenda, keeping immigrant children apart from their families and using children as bait to break up the very families they have traveled so far and risked so much to join,” said Becky Wolozin, lead counsel and attorney with LAJC’s Immigrant Advocacy Program. “This decision is a victory for immigrant children and families. The Court has said clearly that the government cannot run roughshod over the rights of these children and their loved ones.”

The lawsuit stemmed from the experience of four children in ORR custody on Virginia who were held by the government for over five months while their relatives tried to bring them home. Three of the four children were finally reunified with their families – one just weeks before the Court’s order came down. The three children who have been reunified with their families have been dismissed from the case. One child remains in government custody, where he has been held apart from his adult sister for six months, after fleeing violence and neglect in his home country.

“For years, ORR has neglected its obligations under the Administrative Procedure Act,” said Sterne Kessler Director Salvador Bezos, lead of the firm’s immigration-focused pro bono matters. “The Administrative Procedure Act provides essential protections against this kind of agency overreach. I am proud of my colleagues’ and LAJC’s efforts to force the government to meet its obligations to the children in its custody.”

“ORR is supposed to protect vulnerable immigrant children. Instead it is placing them in harm’s way under the guise of child welfare,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Legal Director of LAJC’s Immigrant Advocacy Program. “Their policy and its enforcement undermine successfully placing children with their families and the vast surveillance actions are destabilizing immigrant communities.”

In the November 15th ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema firmly upheld children’s right to liberty and the right to family unity for immigrant families. Judge Brinkema found that the children and their sponsors provided sufficient reason to suggest that their constitutional rights were violated, and that the government violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it enacted its ICE sharing policy earlier this year. The case will now move forward as LAJC works to certify the class and the parties work to complete discovery.

Read the legal ruling here.

# # #

Legal Aid Justice Center is a statewide Virginia nonprofit organization whose mission is to strengthen the voices of low-income communities and root out the inequities that keep people in poverty. We provide legal support to immigrant communities facing legal crises and use advocacy and impact litigation to fight back against ICE enforcement and detention abuses. More information is available at http://www.justice4all.org/current-initiatives/fighting-family-separation/

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Congrats to Rebecca, Simon, and the wonderful crew over at Legal Aid Justice in Virginia! True fighters and leaders of the New Due Process Army!

Hopefully this will pave the way not only for the end of these despicable and illegal behaviors, but also holding the Trump Administration scofflaws and their career employee accomplices who plan and execute these violations of law fully accountable for their intentionally unlawful and unconstitutional actions.

PWS

11-18-18

TRUMPED: Nielsen Is A Sycophant Who Lied To Cover Her Boss’s Stupid, Cruel, & Often Illegal Antics On Immigration – Reportedly, She’s About To Learn That There’s No “Graceful Exit” From The Kakistocracy – “Trump puts people like Nielsen in the position of accounting for his whims and his counterfactual claims. His expectations for how much someone like Nielsen could accomplish when it comes to securing the border were almost definitely unreasonable. She tried to compensate for those shortcomings by saying things she couldn’t possibly have believed to boost Trump.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/13/kirstjen-nielsen-repeatedly-did-trumps-bidding-her-reward-an-unceremonious-impending-exit/?utm_term=.2e8283f31a2a

Aaron Blake reports for WashPost:

We may not be there yet, but there may come a point at which it’s very difficult to find well-qualified people willing to serve in President Trump’s Cabinet. And if we do, we’ll look back on Kirstjen Nielsen’s tenure as an early indicator.

The homeland security secretary appears set for an unceremonious exit less than one year after taking over the nation’s third-largest agency, report The Post’s Nick Miroff, Josh Dawsey and Philip Rucker. The writing has been on the wall for months — and her departure could ostensibly be delayed further — but Trump’s long-standing frustration with Nielsen and the freedom he now has with the 2018 elections behind him seem to be bringing this situation to a head. Trump has previewed a potential shake-up in recent weeks, and Nielsen was always among the most endangered top officials.

The looming decision is about Nielsen’s failure to meet Trump’s expectations when it comes to curtailing illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. An uptick in border apprehensions in recent months and the caravan of migrants coming up from Honduras have probably sealed Nielsen’s fate.

But she seems to be a victim of irrational expectations more than anything. And she has spent much of her tenure tolerating Trump’s whims and even putting her reputation on the line in the name to keeping her job. No amount of public fealty, it seems, has been enough.

Nielsen has repeatedly fed Trump’s narrative about the Russia investigation with misleading or incorrect comments. Like Trump, she declined to directly blame Vladimir Putin for Russia’s 2016 election interference, even though the U.S. intelligence community does. Months earlier, she was asked about that same conclusion and said: “I do not believe that I’ve seen that conclusion. . . . That the specific intent was to help President Trump win? I’m not aware of that.”

She also suggested that Russia’s attacks an American election infrastructure weren’t necessarily aimed at helping Trump, even though the intel community says the broader effort was — a bizarre delineation clearly aimed at appeasing the boss, who has asserted that Russia actually favored Hillary Clinton.

During testimony in January, Nielsen declined to confirm Trump’s closed-door remarks describing African nations, Haiti and El Salvador as “shithole countries” — even though she was present. Then, in an exchange that followed, she was asked to account for Trump saying the United States needed more immigrants from Norway, an overwhelmingly white country. She even tried to pretend that she wasn’t sure Norway was an overwhelmingly white country and that Trump was referring to work ethic:

LEAHY: What does he mean when he says he wants more immigrants from Norway?

NIELSEN: I don’t believe he said that specifically. . . . What he was specifically referring to is, the prime minister telling him that the people of Norway work very hard. And so, what he was referencing is, from a merit-based perspective, we’d like to have those with skills who can assimilate and contribute to the United States, moving away from country quotas and to an individual merit-based system.

LEAHY: Norway is a predominantly white country, isn’t it?

NIELSEN: I actually do not know that, sir, but I imagine that is the case.

By far the most controversial chapter of Nielsen’s tenure, though, has been the separation of migrant families at the border — a policy that led to the detention of children in large cages and the government’s failure to promptly reunite them with their families. Nielsen reportedly resisted the policy behind the scenes. But publicly, she boosted it and even made implausible arguments in favor of it. She even went so far as to argue that it wasn’t an actual policy.

“We do not have a policy of separating families at the border, period,” she said, laughably. A DHS inspector general’s report last month contradicted this and other claims Nielsen made about the policy’s implementation.

And that’s the thread that runs through all of this. Trump puts people like Nielsen in the position of accounting for his whims and his counterfactual claims. His expectations for how much someone like Nielsen could accomplish when it comes to securing the border were almost definitely unreasonable. She tried to compensate for those shortcomings by saying things she couldn’t possibly have believed to boost Trump.

If and when she is finally ousted, it should serve as notice to anybody who would succeed her, or anyone else in the administration, that fealty is a necessary but not sufficient part of the job. And there’s no guarantee that sacrificing your own reputation for Trump will be rewarded.

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As I said in connection with the recent Sessions firing, nobody should be surprised by these totally irrational moves against his own loyal toadies. Trump and his policies are failures; so, he obviously needs someone else to blame because he isn’t man enough to take accountability for his own mistakes. It might be hard to find such complete lackeys for these key jobs, but maybe not in today’s GOP.

(I note that Sessions only recused himself from the Russia probe because failure to do so could have been a clear ethical breach that could well have cost him his law license. While Sessions is definitely a sleazy character, for the top law enforcement official in the country to willingly ignore advice of his own ethics officials would take sleaze to an even higher and much more publicly obvious level.)

As I have said before, while public humiliation of loyal toadies is never a pretty sight, nobody should shed tears for either Sessions or Nielsen. They weren’t required to take these jobs and Trump’s lack of character and willingness to bully and publicly humiliate those who had loyally worked for him were well-known long before he became President. He might value sycophantic loyalty (see Mike Pence), but he has none to give. It’s the victims for whom we should feel sorry — families, immigrants, communities, and others who have been hurt by Nielsen’s willingness to ignore the law, human decency, and rational policies in a vain effort to hold onto her job.

PWS

11-13-18

SCOFFLAW KAKSITOCRACY: Trump Politicos Were Advised That “Zero Tolerance” & Family Separation Likely Illegal & Unconstitutional – They Went Ahead Anyway!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/10/25/feature/civil-servants-said-separating-families-was-illegal-the-administration-ignored-us/

Scott Shuchart writes in the Washington Post:

The meeting was way overdue, and it wasn’t going well.

It was May 21. The Department of Homeland Security, where I worked as a senior adviser in the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, had been making a show of prosecuting undocumented immigrant parents for weeks, cleaving them from their children without paying much attention to where the family members went or setting up any procedure for tracking and reuniting them later.

My office had played a central role, for years, in Homeland Security’s treatment of families and children. But when a cadre of Trump administration political appointees put the family separation plan into motion, neither they nor the career staff in the immigration enforcement agencies under DHS consulted with the civil servants in my office. When media reports throughout April and May led us to understand what was going on, we had urgent questions: What exactly was the policy? What had DHS’s front-line agents in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) been told to do? How had the department assessed the risk that litigation would interfere with the policy? How was this justified in light of our treaty obligations toward refugees? And why was the department pushing out transparently misleading — or simply false — statistics to justify these steps? We were obliged, under the law that created our office, to register our objections that the administration was knowingly violating people’s rights.

But the top political appointee at the May meeting — John Mitnick, the experienced, Senate-confirmed general counsel — and his deputy seemed confused that the civil rights office would see any cause for concern. The administration was claiming in public that a policy of prosecuting all border crossers didn’t target families as such, so it could not present any legal issues. And if there were any issues, they hadn’t been raised ahead of time.

That was false. The next day, I called around to colleagues who confirmed that there had been multiple interagency phone calls and documents, involving the State and Justice departments as well as DHS, making clear that lawyers throughout the government worried that deliberately separating families could violate migrants’ rights under humanitarian treaties or U.S. law. But the political appointees simply didn’t listen. And a few weeks later, I came across an April 24 memo — signed by the very officials I had met with a month later — acknowledging, but dismissing, the legal risks. Even worse, it encouraged indicting immigrants specifically because doing so would justify separating families, arguing that the government’s “legal position” on “separating adults and children through the immigration process . . . is likely strongest [when] separation occurs in connection with a referral of an adult family member for criminal prosecution.”

Mitnick, through a DHS spokeswoman contacted by The Washington Post, declined to comment for this story. That spokeswoman, Katie Waldman, said: “The Department of Homeland Security does not disclose or comment on privileged legal advice provided by our attorneys to the Secretary or other officials, and therefore, unfortunately, we are not in a position to refute false narratives put forward by a former employee. We note, however, that in order to address the crisis at the border, the Trump Administration made a decision to enforce long-standing U.S. law and refer for prosecution under 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a) adults who crossed into the United States illegally. As we have repeatedly stated, the policy was to enforce the law, not to separate families.”

She also sent a statement from Cameron Quinn, the Trump appointee who runs the office I worked in: “I participated in the meeting in question. It was a brief, general discussion, and Mr. Mitnick made it clear that he desired to work collegially with our office.”

By law, our job in that office was to ensure that “the civil rights and civil liberties of persons are not diminished” by DHS’s programs. When it became clear that the department would be tearing families apart and — thanks to incompetence, dishonesty and sheer disinterest — had no reasonable plan to put them back together, I realized I could not do that. A few weeks after that meeting, I quit my job and left public service, carrying a profound sense of failure.

Children and parents from Central America, part of a caravan trying to reach the United States, wait to apply for asylum in Mexico at a checkpoint in Ciudad Hidalgo on Oct. 20. (Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)

The government formally announced the family separation policy in April. The point was clear, as several officials later admitted: By threatening to separate their children, the administration hoped to deter Central American asylum seekers from coming here in search of humanitarian protection. Then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly had suggested the practice during a CNN interview in March 2017, and it had been gaining support in the White House since then.

Many senior civil servants at DHS believed that the policy violated the civil and human rights of migrants. (Many of them, like me, were trained and licensed attorneys, though our role was to give policy advice, not legal advice.) Crossing the border to surrender immediately to authorities and claim asylum is protected by the United Nations refugee protocol signed by the United States. Even for families outside that protection, the substantive due process principle in the Constitution suggests that it is illegitimate to threaten to harm or abscond with someone’s children to deter the commission of a misdemeanor. (First-time unlawful entry is the lowest level of federal crime.)

During past surges in border crossings, such as in 2005, 2006 and 2007 under George W. Bush and 2014 under Barack Obama, the civil rights office was central to planning humane and effective protections for migrants as they were arrested, detained, screened and, if they passed initial “credible fear” screenings, placed into immigration court proceedings. But Trump appointees such as White House adviser Stephen Miller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director L. Francis Cissna — along with many deputies, assistants and enablers inside ICE and CBP who dreamed up the “zero tolerance” policy — didn’t consult career experts like me: not when it was being considered last year, not when it was unveiled and not for the critical weeks afterward, even as we begged to share our legal and policy analyses.

My job was to ensure that the government did not violate clearly established individual rights, and the Trump administration was pushing a policy whose principal aim was to do just that. My colleagues and I identified a number of constitutional provisions and related case law holding that parents had rights to due process that could limit the ability of the government to separate them from their children for civil immigration violations. That meant that once parents served their typically short criminal sentences for crossing the border illegally, they should have been reunited with their children. Our research also suggested that threatening to detain children separately, and threatening civil detention generally to deter future conduct, was probably unconstitutional.

In our capacity as a gateway for public complaints about DHS, my office was analyzing hundreds of incidents of family separation, including dozens sent over by career staff at the Department of Health and Human Services, which was taking custody of children who had been separated from their parents. We noticed early that CBP and ICE weren’t providing HHS with proper records to allow families to be reunited or pursue their immigration cases jointly. We recommended that officials tell parents promptly and clearly where their children were going, how they could be reached and how family members could get them out of government custody while the parents were detained. Perhaps most urgently, we tried to ensure that children with serious disabilities were not thrown into a system unprepared to care for them. As allegations emerged of chaotic separations and deliberate lies — parents being told that their children were headed to a shower when they were instead placed in another agency’s custody — we started drafting guidelines and training for the Border Patrol agents on the ground. Above all, we tried to ring the alarm that the legal, strategic and human dimensions of the policy hadn’t been thought through, needed fast improvement and posed a massive liability for the government.

My colleagues and I learned while reviewing internal DHS documents through April and May that CBP had, the previous fall, undertaken a pilot project of prosecuting parents with small children who crossed the border illegally near El Paso, leading to a wave of separated families. But when we asked the acting second-ranking CBP official about it, he denied having any information.

That was also false. The formal memo to Nielsen from CBP, ICE and USCIS recommending the family separation policy had justified it on the basis of this same El Paso project, including misleading statistics that had already been debunked by Vox when DHS tried to pass them off to reporters.

Every attempt to raise civil rights concerns led nowhere: a lengthy staff memo to my boss, the top civil rights official; efforts to explain in meetings the toll on our staff from investigating complaints of children and parents who had been separated, without any communication to get back together; multiple efforts to schedule, and reschedule, a briefing that James McCament, the head of the DHS Office of Policy, had promised near the start of the crisis but never convened. Civil servants advanced recommendations for mitigating the worst of the harm; we suggested improving record-keeping, giving separated parents and children better information, and permitting more regular phone calls among families.

After hundreds of complaints filed by migrant children, parents and advocates on their behalf, my office finally managed to arrange a meeting in June with CBP managers to understand how they were separating families and to present ideas about how to do it in a more humane way, if they insisted on doing it. My notes from the meeting record my boiling frustration with the absurd answers we received. Border Patrol agents dismissed our offer to train them on how to speak to children after ripping them from their families. “No,” we were told, “many of our agents are parents themselves. They are very empathetic to the child’s needs and will know what to do.” Had officials in Washington directed agents to record family members’ names and information, so they could later be reunited? “I think we sent an email.” Can we see the email so we know what agents were directed to do? “Um, I’d have to find it.” (The official never did.) Is there a written policy on how to determine whether children have suffered trauma or have some other condition that would mean separating them from their parents would do too much harm? “No, we have no need for written policy. It’s simply ingrained in law enforcement culture.”

The culture ingrained at CBP, though, is one where the Border Patrol’s union opened its podcast (“The Green Line”) with the oath of the Night’s Watch from “Game of Thrones” — the pledge of a band of warrior monks to protect a magical kingdom from an army of ice zombies. If federal law enforcement agents see Central American children as the moral equivalent of the frozen undead, we can’t expect them to understand intuitively how to detain and process them humanely without training, guidance and leadership. That’s why my colleagues and I were pushing for record-keeping, communication and other policies that Trump appointees ignored. (Representatives of the Border Patrol union did not immediately return requests for comment from The Post.)

A U.S. Border Patrol agent acknowledges a family that had illegally crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico in Fronton, Tex., on Oct. 18. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)

It would be easy to see all this as part of the federal sausage-making, the usual intentional delays and risk-managing memos that bureaucrats deploy. But this level of dishonesty and subterfuge was unusual. This month, the DHS inspector general released a report making clear that the incompetence in managing family separation was pervasive, from a lack of planning, to “information provided to alien parents [that] resulted in some parents not understanding that their children would be separated from them,” to false public claims of having a “central database” of parents and children.

The Department of Homeland Security is filled with excellent, dedicated public servants. But it also has enormous authority and the power to enforce thousands of laws well or badly. Its leaders have a responsibility to give their people orders that they can competently and ethically execute, and the tools and guidance to do so. The family separation crisis represented a new frontier in weaponizing DHS’s authority, and its borderline competence, to disastrous effect. Front-line officers weren’t given enough guidance, and their managers in the field didn’t do enough to help them figure it out. Only the administration’s naivete in failing to predict the bipartisan public outrage kept it from being worse.

But most culpable were the high-level appointees, unwilling to take ownership of what they’d decided to do; lying to their staffs in the expectation that nobody really cared what happened to poor Central American kids; cynical about the notion that most of us who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution actually mean it. I cast about for more to do, but within a month of that June meeting, I realized there was no way to keep my oath and my job.

I quit.

Outlook • Perspective

Scott Shuchart was a senior adviser at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties from 2010 to 2018. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Follow @scottshuchart

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Seems like these are precisely the type of knowingly lawless, extra-legal actions that personal liability under the “Bivens doctrine” is supposed to discourage and prevent. It remains to be seen whether the Federal Courts, particularly the Supremes, will have the backbone to hold scofflaw Government officials like Sessions, Nielsen, Miller, & co. personally accountable for their intentional perversions of the rule of law. Recently, the Supremes have indicated that a majority would like to narrowly limit or even abolish Bivens liability. Just when the country needs it most to rein in an out of control Administration!

PWS

10-29-18

TAL @ SF CHRONICLE: Administration “Discovers” More Separated Children — Have Others “Slipped Through The Cracks?”

New questions raised on Trump’s family separations as 14 children discovered

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration failed to recognize that 14 children in its care for months had been separated from their families at the Mexican border, officials conceded in a court filing late Thursday.

The disclosure raises fresh questions about whether the administration neglected to account for additional children after separating them from their parents under its “zero tolerance” immigration policy this spring. Two recent government reports faulted the administration’s tracking efforts, and one said officials feel no obligation to find children who were released to other homes before a judge ordered an accounting of the youths, suggesting the total separated under the policy may never be known.

Seven of the 14 children’s parents have criminal histories that disqualify them from reunification, officials with the Health and Human Services Department told a federal judge in San Diego. The judge demanded in June that the administration account for every child separated under the enforcement strategy ordered by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

All of the newly discovered children are 5 years old or older.

More:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/New-questions-raised-on-Trump-s-family-13338722.php

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While still picking up the pieces of their last border enforcement fiasco, the Administration is off and running on new policies that potentially will be found to be in violation of law.

PWS

10-26-18

MILLER & TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HATCHING ANOTHER ILLEGAL CHILD SEPARATION PROGRAM AS THEIR CRUEL & COUNTERPRODUCTIVE WHITE NATIONALIST ENFORCEMENT CONTINUES TO FAIL!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/trump-administration-weighs-new-family-separation-effort-at-border/2018/10/12/45895cce-cd7b-11e8-920f-dd52e1ae4570_story.html?utm_term=.e82d531c008e

Nick Miroff, Josh Dawsey, & Maria Sacchetti report for WashPost:

The White House is actively considering plans that could again separate parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, hoping to reverse soaring numbers of families attempting to cross illegally into the United States, according to several administration officials with direct knowledge of the effort.

One option under consideration is for the government to detain asylum-seeking families together for up to 20 days, then give parents a choice — stay in family detention with their child for months or years as their immigration case proceeds, or allow children to be taken to a government shelter so other relatives or guardians can seek custody.

That option — called “binary choice” — is one of several under consideration amid the president’s frustration over border security. Trump has been unable to fulfill key promises to build a border wall and end what he calls “catch and release,” a process that began under past administrations in which most detained families are quickly freed to await immigration hearings. The number of migrant family members arrested and charged with illegally crossing the border jumped 38 percent in August and is now at a record level, according to Department of Homeland Security officials.

Senior administration officials say they are not planning to revive the chaotic forced separations carried out by the Trump administration in May and June that spawned an enormous political backlash and led to a court order to reunite families.

But they feel compelled to do something, and officials say senior White House adviser Stephen Miller is advocating for tougher measures because he believes the springtime separations worked as an effective deterrent to illegal crossings.

At least 2,500 children were taken from their parents over a period of six weeks. Crossings by families declined slightly in May, June and July before surging again in August. September numbers are expected to be even higher.

While some migrants worried about separations, others felt seeking asylum was worth the risk

For some seeking asylum, family separations were worth the risk: ‘Whatever it took, we had to get to this country’ (Zoeann Murphy, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

While some inside the White House and DHS are concerned about the “optics” and political blowback of renewed separations, Miller and others are determined to act, according to officials briefed on the deliberations. There have been several high-level meetings in the White House in recent weeks about the issue. The “binary choice” option is seen as one that could be tried out fairly quickly.

“Career law enforcement professionals in the U.S. government are working to analyze and evaluate options that would protect the American people, prevent the horrific actions of child smuggling, and stop drug cartels from pouring into our communities,” deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said in an emailed statement.

Any effort to expand family detentions and resume separations would face multiple logistical and legal hurdles.

It would require overcoming the communication and data management failures that plagued the first effort, when Border Patrol agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and Department of Health and Human Services caseworkers struggled to keep track of separated parents and children.

The Trump administration believes it is on solid legal ground, according to two officials, in part because U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, who ordered the government to reunite separated families in June, approved the binary-choice approach in one of his rulings. But a Congressional Research Service report last month said “practical and legal barriers” remain to using that approach in the future and said releasing families together in the United States is “the only clearly viable option under current law.”

‘Administration officials said the CRS report cited earlier legal rulings. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which launched the separations lawsuit, disputed that interpretation and said it would oppose any attempt at expanded family detentions or separations.

“The government need not, and legally may not, indiscriminately detain families who present no flight risk or danger,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said in an email. “It is deeply troubling that this Administration continues to look for ways to cause harm to small children.”

Another hurdle is that the government does not have detention space for a large number of additional families. ICE has three “family residential centers” with a combined capacity of roughly 3,000 parents and children. With more than four times that many arriving each month, it is unclear where the government would hold all the parents who would opt to remain with their children.

But Trump said in his June 20 executive order halting family separations that the administration’s policy is to keep parents and children together, “including by detaining” them. In recent weeks, federal officials have taken steps to expand their ability to do that.

In addition to considering “binary choice” and other options, officials have proposed new rules that would allow them to withdraw from a 1997 federal court agreement that bars ICE from keeping children in custody for more than 20 days.

The rules would give ICE greater flexibility to expand family detention centers and potentially hold parents and children longer, though lawyers say this would be likely to end up in court.

Officials have also imposed production quotas on immigration judges and are searching for more ways to speed up the calendar in its courts to adjudicate cases more quickly.

Federal officials arguing for the tougher measures say the rising number of family crossings is a sign of asylum fraud. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has blasted smugglers for charging migrants thousands of dollars to ferry them into the United States, knowing that “legal loopholes” will force the administration to release them pending a court hearing. Federal officials say released families are rarely deported.

Advocates for immigrants counter that asylum seekers are fleeing violence and acute poverty, mainly in Central America, and deserve to have a full hearing before an immigration judge.

“There is currently a crisis at our southern border,” DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman said in a statement, adding, “DHS will continue to enforce the law humanely, and will continue to examine a range of options to secure our nation’s borders.”

In southern Arizona, so many families have crossed in the past 10 days that the government has been releasing them en masse to shelters and charities. A lack of available bus tickets has stranded hundreds of parents and children in Tucson, where they sleep on Red Cross cots in a church gymnasium.

At a Senate hearing Wednesday, Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) told Nielsen that migrants were “flooding into the community” and that authorities there had “no ability to do anything about it.”

Nielsen said lawmakers needs to give DHS more latitude to hold families with children in detention until their cases can be fully adjudicated — a process that can take months or years because of huge court backlogs.

DHS officials have seen the biggest increase this year in families arriving from Guatemala, where smugglers called “coyotes” tell migrants they can avoid detention and deportation by bringing a child, according to some community leaders in that country.

On Friday, Nielsen called for a regional effort to combat smuggling and violence in the region and to “heighten our penalties for traffickers.”

“I think there’s more that we can do to hold them responsible, particularly those who traffic in children,” she said in a speech in Washington at the second Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America.

More than 90,000 adults with children were caught at the southwest border in the first 11 months of fiscal 2018. The previous high for a single year was 77,600 in 2016

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My recollection is that 1) the DOJ conceded in court that a policy of intentionally separating families is unconstitutional; and 2) Federal Courts have held that detention of individuals who are neither security risks nor likely to abscond for the primary purpose of “deterrence” is illegal.

So, if this facially illegal program is put into action, why shouldn’t Stephen Miller go to jail and be held personally liable for all the damages he causes with his scofflaw racist policies? Why shouldn’t Nielsen, Sessions, and others who are part of the Miller White Nationalist scheme also be held personally liable?

More cruelty, more wasting of taxpayer resources, more abuse of the judicial process by the Trump Administration.

Oh, and by the way. although today’s out of control U.S. Immigration Court backlogs began with “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” during the Bush II and Obama Administrations, Sessions and the Trump Administration have pushed them to astounding new levels with their incompetence and anti-asylum bias. Don’t blame the victims for the Government’s irresponsible actions!

If folks who believe in human decency and the rule of law don’t get out and vote, these abuses and degradations of our national values will continue.

PWS

10-12-18

SURPRISE: NIELSEN SIGNED OFF ON FAMILY SEPARATION POLICY THAT SHE DENIED WAS DHS POLICY! — What Else Is She Hiding?

uhhttps://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.openthegovernment.org_node_5713&d=DwMGaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=5P7-gWBTtD9g2EDR8U0pyQ5iVCpXWh5b63SXxj7pZPM&m=unT_1oNELS6RLAvG9nD3R77o2os6sYCenMRq-R_-2rM&s=JD8fUd4fq0fv1ffIr52beFm1wXvxZTyYd5Z8tkgmYR0&e=

Newly released memo reveals secretary of homeland security signed off on family separation policy

Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen previously denied existence of policy

Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight have obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requestthat provides new insights into internal decision-making behind the separation of thousands of parents from their children at the border earlier this year.

The biggest revelation in the documents is a memo dated April 23, in which top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials urged criminal prosecution of parents crossing the border with children—the policy that led to the crisis that continues today. The memo, first reported on by the Washington Post on April 26, but never previously published, provides evidence that Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen signed off on a policy of family separation despite her repeated claims denying that there was such a policy. The Post appears to have obtained a copy of the memo prior to its signature.

The memo states that DHS could “permissibly direct the separation of parents or legal guardians and minors held in immigration detention so that the parent or legal guardian can be prosecuted.” It outlines three options for implementing “zero tolerance,” the policy of increased prosecution of immigration violations. Of these, it recommends “Option 3,” referring for prosecution all adults crossing the border without authorization, “including those presenting with a family unit,” as the “most effective.”

The last page of the memo contains a signature approving Option 3, but the signature—almost certainly Nielsen’s, given that the memo is addressed to her—was blacked out by FOIA officers on privacy grounds. FOIA officials also appear to have redacted the date of the signature indicating approval.

Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight intend to appeal the redaction of the memo. The Secretary of Homeland Security is a high-level public official; using privacy exemptions to hide her role in major policy decisions is unacceptable.

Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight did obtain an unsigned, unredacted copy of the same memo, but are unable to post the full document for reasons of source protection. The full memo recommends prosecuting and separating parents because:

…it is very difficult to complete immigration proceedings and remove adults who are present as part of FMUAs [family units] at the border. In fact, only 10 percent of non-Mexican FMUA apprehended during the Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 surge have been repatriated in the nearly four years since their illegal crossing. Of these options, prosecuting all amenable adults will increase the consequences for illegally entering the United States by enforcing existing law, protect children being smuggled by adults through transnational criminal organizations, and have the greatest impact on current flows.

The memo references a pilot of the zero tolerance/family separation policies in the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, which the Project On Government Oversight has previously investigated. The memo does not discuss any plan for reuniting separated families, or the harmful effects of separation on children, nor does it reflect any input from the government agencies who would be responsible for caring for the separated children.

The records released in response to the FOIA also include internal DHS directives sent in June and July following court orders to stop separating families, and internal emails discussing failed efforts to bring families back together. One troubling email explains that in July, DHS leadership instructed employees to deport families as quickly as possible, as a way of clearing out space for new families. The email raises questions on whether those deportations violated due-process protections.

At least 182 children remain separated from their parents months after a court-imposed deadline requiring the administration to reunite all of the separated families, according to a court filing dated September 20. The government has not taken all necessary measures to reunify families, according to immigration rights lawyers and non-profit groups.

Katherine Hawkins, an investigator at POGO, said of the DHS documents, “This is a small part of what must be an extensive paper trail on family separation, which needs to be made public so that the officials responsible can be held to account.”

“The newly disclosed documents provide a window into the internal policymaking behind the crisis that continues to haunt thousands of children,” said Lisa Rosenberg, Executive Director of Open the Government. “The administration needs to make available records that are still secret in order to fully understand why decisions were made to separate children from their families, and who made them.”

Read the newly released documents:

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3
CBP response letter

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I’ve raised this point several times before. There is obviously a “paper trail” here, and some agency lawyers knew the truth about the policy that Nielsen was denying publicly and in court.

So, where is the “due diligence” from the DOJ lawyers representing Nielsen, Sessions, the DHS, and DOJ in court? Did the DHS attorneys who knew what the true policy was call the DOJ attorneys and tell them to retract their court denials? Did the DOJ lawyers check with their DHS/ICE colleagues before telling a court that a policy they conceded was unconstitutional wasn’t in effect?

Who is lying here and what has happened to the code of ethics (formerly?) applicable to Government lawyers? And why aren’t more Federal Judges “pushing back” on DOJ attorneys for their sometimes obviously untrue and other times thinly reasoned and meagerly supported positions in court?

While Trump is the undisputed “King of Liars,” Sessions and Nielsen also have well-established reputations for intentional lack of candor and twisting and misrepresenting facts, particularly on immigration policies. So why isn’t there some higher duty on Government lawyers to do “due diligence” when dealing with these known liars?

Thanks to the fabulous Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis for passing this item along.

PWS

09-26-18

Continue reading SURPRISE: NIELSEN SIGNED OFF ON FAMILY SEPARATION POLICY THAT SHE DENIED WAS DHS POLICY! — What Else Is She Hiding?

MMM v. SESSIONS – JUDGE SABRAW ISSUES NEW RESTRAINING ORDER AGAINST THE ADMINISTRATION IN THE “CHILD SEPARATION” CASE

Here’s a link to the order:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/btfdy0gdbopasfg/55%20-%202018-08-16%20Order%20Granting%20TRO%20in%20S.D.%20Cal..pdf?dl=0

My “Takeaways:”

Due Process protections extend to everyone present in the United States regardless of status;
“Expedited Removal” neither automatically trumps Due Process nor automatically complies with Due Process;
Even after weeks of litigation, only the courage and determination of Judge Sabraw and the plaintiffs stand between these vulnerable individuals and massive violations of their Constitutional rights to Due Process that the Administration, left to its own devices, would inflict;
All in all, it’s a pretty strong indictment of how this Administration is handling the overall situation surrounding Expedited Removal;
It also shows why meaningful review by the Article III Courts of the Constitutional issues involved in Expedited Removal is absolutely essential.

PWS

08-17-18

NPR: FRONTLINE TAKES YOU INSIDE THE POLICY DECISIONS THAT LED TO FAMILY SEPARATION — Featuring Michelle Brane Of The Women’s Refugee Commission

Dear Paul,I hope you saw the new “Frontline” episode, Separated: Children at the Border, last night on PBS. The episode provides an in-depth, factual look at the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy and the treatment of families seeking safety at the border.

I was interviewed about the work of the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) on behalf of women and children seeking asylum and what I witnessed on a recent monitoring visit to a processing center at the border.

We want you to know that WRC is unyielding in our commitment to hold the Trump administration accountable for its cruel policies — we will not stop until families seeking safety at the U.S. border are treated humanely and have their human rights respected.

Thank you for standing with us.

Warm regards,

Michelle Brané,

Director of Migrant Rights and Justice

WATCH IT HERE

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The Trump Administration specializes in avoiding accountability. The masters of the lie always blame the courts, the victims, the Democrats, the press, lawyers, everybody but them. That was on display this week during Senate oversight hearings where nobody took responsibility for the child separation policy that everyone agreed was a bad idea. Of course, missing from the hearing lineup was the unapologetic and disingenuous “mastermind” of the “zero tolerance policy” Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions.

The video also shows how badly the Obama Administration screwed up the treatment of arriving asylum applicants with counterproductive policies like the abominable “family detention.” Not much acceptance of responsibility there either. Indeed, this is when the policy of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” by the DOJ and White House politicos went into high gear sending the Immigration Court backlog careening out of control.

PWS

08-02-18

SCOFFLAWS ON ICE – ICE Attorneys Continue To Push In Immigration Court For Unconstitutional Separation Of Children!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5966555/ICE-trying-deport-immigrant-children-despite-Trumps-promises-reunify-families.html

Valerie Bauman reports for The Daily Mail:

EXCLUSIVE: ICE attorneys STILL trying to deport immigrant children WITHOUT their parents despite Trump’s promises to reunify families

ICE attorneys are still trying to deport immigrant children without their parents

This is despite Trump saying the government is doing all it can to reunify families

Immigration judges will decide if children are deported alone to home countries

ICE officials say attorneys must represent the agency’s position on a case-by-case basis and efforts to deport children don’t necessarily preclude reunification

By VALERIE BAUMAN SOCIAL AFFAIRS REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 13:45 EDT, 18 July 2018 | UPDATED: 17:11 EDT, 18 July 2018

Attorneys for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are still attempting to deport immigrant children – alone – despite Trump administration claims that it is doing all it can to reunite them with their parents, DailyMail.com has learned.

ICE attorneys in immigration courts ‘have never, not for a second said, “We’re going to do something to reunite these kids,” in court,’ Anthony Enriquez, an attorney and director of the Unaccompanied Minors Program for Catholic Charities Community Services, told DailyMail.com. The group represents separated immigrant children inNew York City.

‘They have always taken the position that these kids need to be deported and that’s that: It doesn’t matter how old they are, get them out of here,’ Enriquez added.

A spokeswoman for ICE told DailyMail.com that it is the job of ICE attorneys to represent the agency’s position before immigration judges on a case-by-case basis, and that efforts to deport the children don’t necessarily preclude reunification after a removal order has been issued.

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Young migrant boys, whose faces can not be shown, are seen at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Facility in Tucson, Arizona on June 28, 2018

Between April and June, the Trump administration separated more than 2,300 children from their parents after the families came into the country – legally and illegally – across the southern U.S. border as part of a ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy. The move sparked massive public outrage, leading to Trump ending it through an executive order on June 20.

A court has ordered the government to reunite all children with their parents by July 26.

Anthony Enriquez is the director of the Unaccompanied Minor Program at Catholic Charities Community Services, Immigration and Refugee Services. The group represents immigrant children in New York City who have been separated from their parents

While the Trump administration now reports that all eligible children age 4 and younger have been reunited, many more young children are still working their way through the complex federal system as they wait to one day again see their mothers and fathers.

The children’s cases first land in immigration court during ‘master calendar’ hearings, which are open to the public. More than a dozen juvenile cases can come before the judges in a single day.

In New York City, many immigrant children who have been separated from their parents are represented by Catholic Charities Community Services attorneys, who typically seek a continuance to give the children time to locate parents and determine if they have a case to stay in the country through asylum or otherwise.

On a recent day during one of these so-called ‘juvie dockets,’ an ICE attorney in the courtroom of New York City immigration Judge Helen Sichel repeatedly sought to advance deportation proceedings against children as young as 7, and challenged efforts by Catholic Charities to learn the location and legal disposition of their parents.

The ICE attorney objected to requests for continuances and asked the judge why locating the parents was necessary and relevant, given that the government had enough to make a case that the children were aliens and deportable.

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President Donald Trump, accompanied by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (L) and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence (R), displays an executive order he signed in the White House on June 20 that will end the practice of separating family members apprehended at the southern U.S. border

The attorney for Catholic Charities argued that otherwise these children could wind up alone in their home country.

On this particular day and in this courtroom, the judge decided in favor of the children.

‘It has to be clear and unequivocal that there is someone in the home country who can take care of him when he arrives,’ Sichel said. ‘He’s only eight.’

However, children in other parts of the country may not fare so well: Immigration judges in New York State are the most likely to grant asylum, with a 34 percent denial rate, according to federal data obtained by the Daily Mail. By comparison, immigration judges in North Carolina and Georgia have a 96 percent asylum denial rate.

Imelda Maynard is a staff attorney for Catholic Charities in southern New Mexico, which has a 91 percent denial rate in asylum cases. In that region the organization primarily represents parents who have been separated from their children.

‘I, personally, have not been able to get a clear answer out of ICE on how we can assist them in the reunification efforts,’ Maynard told DailyMail.com. ‘The kids we have found have been all over the country. We’ve found kids in New York, Florida, Chicago, and their parents are here in New Mexico.’

The younger children may not always be aware of what is going on as their fate is being decided, said a New York-based interpreter who asked to remain anonymous to avoid losing the job.

‘They kind of sit there and smile at you and they know that they’re in court, but they’re not really understanding the whole process,’ the interpreter told DailyMail.com. ‘It’s kind of useless to interpret for them because they’re not really getting a grasp of what’s happening, what my role is, what the attorneys’ roles are and who is really helping them stay … it’s heart breaking.’

+5

The likelihood of whether an immigrant’s application will be successful varies dramatically depending on the state in which their case is heard. New York was the most likely to welcome asylum seekers, with only 34 percent denied in 2018, while immigration judges in North Carolina and Georgia had a 96 percent denial rate

Santiago, 7, recently attended a court session in New York City wearing a Batman shirt and a big grin. His feet dangled a foot above the ground and he cast smiles toward the other kids waiting their turn before the judge.

Later on, Rosa, 8, looked more scared as she sat before the judge. She wore a yellow tutu and red sneakers and whispered her name when asked. She had already been detained for 55 days.

Ana Christina, 15, was one of the lucky ones. She was to be reunited with her father in a week after 123 days of detention – though it remained unclear if they would be allowed to stay in the country.

Each of their proceedings took just a few minutes. Children can wait up to 60 days in detention before receiving a notice to appear, Enriquez said.

‘If you are a minor and you have no legal claim to be in the country, then yeah, we have to put you through the procedure and initiate removal proceedings,’ Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the anti-immigration Federation for American Immigration Reform, told DailyMail.com.

‘It would be much, much better if their parents were with them, but under the current conditions we do not have the option of detaining the children and parents together for more than 20 days,’ Mehlman added.

If the children are sent to their home countries, many would face horrific violence and poverty – particularly in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, said Lucy Luna, executive director of the Salvadorian Association for Rural Health in El Salvador. The organization works with poor children in rural communities.

‘The police are killing the gangsters, the gangs are killing the police,’ Luna told DailyMail.com. ‘Between those situations there are people who have to survive every day.’

In one case, Luna’s organization has been working with a 5-year-old girl who attempted suicide by jumping out of a window onto a nearby electric fence. That is the level of desperation driving these families into the United States, she said.

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A view of inside U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention facility shows children at Rio Grande Valley Centralized Processing Center in Rio Grande City, Texas, June 17, 2018

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A young demonstrator participates in the Families Belong Together – Freedom For Immigrants March at Los Angeles City Hall on June 30

‘The situation in the country is you’re going to live or die,’ she said. ‘When people make the decision to go to the U.S. border they know what is going to happen, but there is no community here, so the only choice they have is to go.’

Details on the separation of children from parents at the southern U.S. border emerged in April when the New York Times reported that the process had begun no later than October 2017.

The Trump administration initially denied such a policy existed, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testifying before Congress in April that separation was not being used as a deterrent, but done in the best interest of the child.

Her testimony came shortly after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the ‘zero tolerance’ policy, which directed the government to prosecute all adult immigrants entering the country illegally, resulting in the separation of families.

‘If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law,’ Sessions said in May. ‘If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.’

Outrage reached a crescendo in June when ProPublica released audio of 10 Central American children sobbing and screaming for ‘Mami’ and ‘Papa’ at a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol facility.

By June 20, the public anger pressured Trump into signing an executive order directing that families be reunited. On June 30 protests were held in more than 700 U.S. cities in opposition of Trump’s handling of the issue.

Timeline: Separation at the Border

March 7, 2017: John Kelly, former secretary of Homeland Security confirms that the Trump administration is considering separating families at the border as a deterrent.

April 6, 2018: Attorney General Jeff Sessions announces a ‘zero tolerance policy’ ordering the government to prosecute all adult migrants entering the country illegally, which leads to the separation of children from their parents.

April 11, 2018: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testifies in Congress that there is no policy to deter immigration through separation of families.

April 20, 2018: The New York Times reports that more than 700 children have been separated from their parents since October 2017.

June 15, 2018: The Department of Homeland Security reveals nearly 2,000 children have been separated from their parents since the zero tolerance policy was introduced in April.

June 18, 2018: President Donald Trump repeats previous claims that family separation is the fault of Democrats in Congress and that he is unable to do anything about the situation, saying: ‘We could have an immigration bill, we could have child separation. We’re stuck with these horrible laws. They’re horrible laws. What’s happening is so sad. It’s so sad.’

June 20, 2018: Facing a national backlash, Trump signs an executive order to end the separation of parents from children. More than 2,300 had been separated from their children during the zero tolerance policy, according to Homeland Security.

June 27, 2018: In response to an ACLU lawsuit, a federal judge ordered the reunification of the thousands of parents and children forcibly separated by the Trump administration. In its ruling, the court said all children must be reunited within 30 days; children under five within 14 days; and all parents must be able to speak with their children within 10 days.

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I keep coming back to Eugene Robinson’s question: Why aren’t these scofflaw officials and their attorneys in jail for contempt of court? Seems like we’re filling our jails with the wrong folks!

PWS

07-18-18

LISTEN TO TAL KOPAN AND CATHERINE SHOICHET OF CNN DISCUSS SEPARATION OF MIGRANT FAMILIES ON THIS PODCAST!

Here are Tal and Catherine for your listening pleasure:

http://podcasts.cnn.net/embed/single/skin/xqwdnq/the-latest-in-immigration.html

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My takeaways:

No immigration crisis here; this is a humanitarian crisis created solely by the cruel and perverted actions of this Administration;
Good Government solves problems; the Trump Administration creates problems that it has neither plans nor the ability to solve = Bad Government;
It’s always easier to create a mess than to clean it up;
Each individual lawsuit against the Trump Administration is an important step in upholding American democracy;
Only the Article III Courts have the ability to get some truth out of an inherently dishonest and disingenuous Administration;
The free press is playing a critical role in exposing the intentional cruelty, incompetence, and fundamental dishonesty of the Trump Administration;
Messing with kids is always stupid as well as inhumane;
Under the GOP, Congress has abdicated its role, basically leaving the Executive and the Judiciary to govern;
Right now, Trump has the upper hand with the GOP Congress stuffing the Courts with “go along to get along” appointees who won’t stand up for our country or to Trump & Sessions!

CONCLUSION: WE NEED REGIME CHANGE NOW! THE ONLY WAY TO GET IT WILL BE AT THE BALLOT BOX THIS FALL. GET OUT THE VOTE! JUST SAY NO TO TRUMP, SESSIONS, THEIR GOP ENABLERS & THEIR REGIME OF CRUELTY, INCOMPETENCE, & DISHONESTY!

PWS

07-18-18

LATEST NEWS FROM THE KAKISTOCRACY: SURPRISE! — COULD BE “TOUGH NOOGIES” FOR THOSE FAMILIES ALREADY SUBJECTED TO CHILD ABUSE – THEY MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT EVER FIND THEIR KIDS – HHS UNABLE TO PROVIDE GUIDANCE!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/20/politics/trump-family-separation-executive-order/index.html

Tal Kopan reports for CNN:

Doesn’t reunite families already separated

The order does not speak to any families that have already been separated — and existing policies place the onus on parents to find their children in HHS custody and seek to reunite with them.

On Wednesday afternoon, HHS spokesman Kenneth Wolfe said, “For the minors currently in the unaccompanied alien children program, the sponsorship process will proceed as usual.”

Later Wednesday, HHS’ families division’s senior director of communications put out a statement that Wolfe “misspoke,” but didn’t articulate any changes yet to plans for separated families.

“It is still very early and we are awaiting further guidance on the matter,” Brian Marriott said. “Our focus is on continuing to provide quality services and care to the minors in HHS/ORR funded facilities and reunifying minors with a relative or appropriate sponsor as we have done since HHS inherited the program. Reunification is always the ultimate goal of those entrusted with the care of UACs, and the administration is working towards that for those UACs currently in HHS custody.”

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Read the rest of Tal’s analysis of the entire Executive Order at the link.

Chaos normally ensues when Trump rolls out one of his “amateur night” Executive Orders on immigration. Not too surprising, since nobody in the Administration really understands immigration laws anyway. They just operate off of cue cards and backgrounders written by White Nationalist organizations. Not always your best source of legal expertise.

By this time tomorrow, there will probably be half a dozen contradictory statements or just outright lies about what happened or is going to happen to those already separated. The important thing up until this afternoon was to separate families to give Little Stevie Miller and his former boss Gonzo Apocalypto their jollies and to “send a message.” Whether kids ever see their families again — who cares? Brain damaged for life — who cares? Should have stayed in El Salvador and died together as a family rather than expecting humane treatment or compliance with international obligations from the United States.

I predict that it will take one or more court orders to finally get the Trumpsters to do the right thing.

PWS

06-20-18

JIM CROW’S RETURN: SESSIONS ENDS TOXIC WEEK BY REVEALING HIMSELF AS ANTI-CHRIST! — Makes Bogus Claim That Christian Teaching Supports Child Abuse & Cruelty In The Name of “The Law” — African Americans Well Understand AG’s Perverted Bible Quote Once Used To Justify Slavery And Dehumanization (As Well As Nazism & Apartheid) — Shines Spotlight On His Own Deviance From The Merciful, Healing, Kind, & Forgiving Message of Christ!

Here’s a wonderful response to Sessions by Kansas City Attorney Andrea C. Martinez:

The “Christian” B.S. Litmus Test
By , Andrea C. Martinez, Esq.

To my amazing friends who are atheist, agnostic, or non-Christian. To the good-willed and the pissed-off. To the people who are genuinely confused as to how Jefferson Sessions and Sarah Huckabee Sanders can use the Bible as a justification for abhorrent policies such as the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the border or the persecution of vulnerable asylum seekers, I am a Jesus-follower with a Bible degree from a Christian college and I GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO CALL B.S.

Please join me in calling B.S. whenever you hear people use the Bible to justify the oppression of others. Especially when they misuse and cite Romans 13 to justify their mistreatment. While Romans 13:4 calls us to submit to government authorities because “the one in authority is God’s servant for your good” it does not require us to submit to an unjust law. If the government authority is not acting in a way that reflects God’s law, which is the loving treatment of others, Jesus invites us to participate in civil disobedience. Remember when Jesus healed a man’s hand on the Sabbath in violation of the Jewish law (Mark 3:1-6) and says, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” Matthew 3:4. Then he goes ahead and heals the man. There are numerous other examples in the Bible of civil disobedience that I would be happy to analyze with you at a different time (like the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego).

We must look first and foremost to Jesus Himself and His words when deciding whether a law is just and therefore should be followed. Jesus gave us a “Greatest Commandment” litmus test for determining which actions are really done in his name: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Luke 6:31. And Jesus provided us a pretty simple “B.S. Litmus Test” (my words, not Jesus’!) to determine whether an action or law reflects His heart. The B.S. Litmus Test is this: “is this law/action/policy treating others as I would like to be treated?” (Matthew 7:12). And a second question would be, “does this law reflect love or fear?” If the latter, it is not from God. Because “perfect love casts out fear.” 1 John 4:18.

Regarding Jesus’ exact instructions on the treatment of immigrants, read Matthew 25: 34-46. Jesus refers to the immigrant/refugee/foreigner as “the stranger” and says, “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger (refugee/immigrant/foreigner) and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” -JESUS

PLEASE BE ON GUARD: when you hear a government official use a passage like Romans 13 to try to justify actions that contradict the commandments of Jesus Himself, it is akin to a lawyer trying to convince a judge that a policy or regulation should be followed even though a statute or the Constitution of the United States itself prohibits it. Oh wait, that is exactly what is happening in the Jeff Sessions video above. The United States has ratified international refugee treaties legally obliging our nation to consider the claims of each asylum-seeker on its own merit and the Attorney General has now created his own self-indulging policy persecuting asylum seekers as a “deterrent” to seeking the protection they are legally entitled to. Laws trump policies in the hierarchy of authority, and Jesus’ words trump unjust government action in the spiritual context.

So please join me in calling BS on policies that oppress the immigrant, the refugee, and the foreigner. No citation to Romans 13 can ever trump Jesus’ calling to love the immigrant in Matthew 25. I stand with Jesus-followers and non-Christians alike in the disgusted renunciation of any attempt to cite Holy Scripture as a justification to oppress the weak or the vulnerable. I proudly stand with Jesus and will continue to defend the “stranger” in my law practice as an act of worship to my Jesus who I know loves and cares for them even more than I do.

Thank You,

Andrea C. Martinez, Esq.

Attorney/Owner

” src=”blob:http://immigrationcourtside.com/1416d79c-b6be-44d1-aab8-d9f091b8c723″ alt=”cid:image001.jpg@01D238F4.0AFDDA30″ class=”Apple-web-attachment”>

7000 NW Prairie View Road, Suite 260

Kansas City, MO 64151

(816) 491-8105: phone

(816) 817-2480: fax

info@martinezimmigration.com

www.martinezimmigration.com

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

Thanks Andrea!

I call B.S. But, then most of what Sessions says is B.S.

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**Here’s another from JRube in the WashPost:**

Attorney General Jeff Sessions displayed an appalling lack of appreciation for the religious establishment clause, not to mention simple human dignity. Speaking to a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and in the wake of the Church’s condemnation of the barbaric policy of separating children from their parents at the border, Sessions proclaimed: “Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government, because God has ordained them for the purpose of order. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.” Later in the day, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeated his religious admonition to obey the law.

This is horrifically objectionable on multiple grounds. First, he is a public employee and must uphold the First Amendment’s establishment clause. If Sessions wants to justify a policy, he is obligated to give a secular policy justification. (Citing the Bible — inaptly — to Catholic bishops who exercise their religious conscience in speaking out against family separation may be the quintessential example of chutzpah.) Second, he is a policymaker, in a position tochange a position that is inconsistent with our deepest values, traditions and respect for human rights. Third, the bishops were not advocating civil disobedience; they were objecting to an unjust law. Sessions is trying to use the Bible to squelch dissent.

We should point out that invoking this Biblical passage has a long and sordid history in Sessions’s native South. It was oft-quoted by slave-owners and later segregationists to insist on following existing law institutionalizing slavery (“read as an unequivocal order for Christians to obey state authority, a reading that not only justified southern slavery but authoritarian rule in Nazi Germany and South African apartheid”).

I’m no expert in Christianity, but the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was when he drafted his letter from the Birmingham jail:

Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

Sessions perfectly exemplifies how religion should not be used. Pulling out a Bible or any other religious text to say it supports one’s view on a matter of public policy is rarely going to be effective, for it defines political opponents as heretics.

The bishops and other religious figures are speaking out as their religious conscience dictates, which they are morally obligated to do and are constitutionally protected in doing. A statement from the conference of bishops, to which Sessions objected, read in part:

At its core, asylum is an instrument to preserve the right to life. The Attorney General’s recent decision elicits deep concern because it potentially strips asylum from many women who lack adequate protection. These vulnerable women will now face return to the extreme dangers of domestic violence in their home country. This decision negates decades of precedents that have provided protection to women fleeing domestic violence.

Reminding the administration of the meaning of family values, the bishops continued, “Families are the foundational element of our society and they must be able to stay together. While protecting our borders is important, we can and must do better as a government, and as a society, to find other ways to ensure that safety. Separating babies from their mothers is not the answer and is immoral.”

The Catholics are not alone. The administration’s vile policy has alarmed a wide array of faith leaders. The Southern Baptist Convention issued their own statement. It is quoted at length because it is so powerful:

WHEREAS, Every man, woman, and child from every language, race, and nation is a special creation of God, made in His own image (Genesis 1:26–27); and

WHEREAS, Longings to protect one’s family from warfare, violence, disease, extreme poverty, and other destitute conditions are universal, driving millions of people to leave their homelands to seek a better life for themselves, their children, and their grandchildren; and

WHEREAS, God commands His people to treat immigrants with the same respect and dignity as those native born (Leviticus 19:33–34; Jeremiah 7:5–7; Ezekiel 47:22; Zechariah 7:9–10); and

WHEREAS, Scripture is clear on the believer’s hospitality towards immigrants, stating that meeting the material needs of “strangers” is tantamount to serving the Lord Jesus Himself (Matthew 25:35–40; Hebrews 13:2); and

WHEREAS, Southern Baptists affirm the value of the family, stating in The Baptist Faith and Message that “God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society” (Article XVIII), and Scripture makes clear that parents are uniquely responsible to raise their children “in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). . . .

RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Dallas, Texas, June 12–13, 2018, affirm the value and dignity of immigrants, regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity, culture, national origin, or legal status; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we desire to see immigration reform include an emphasis on securing our borders and providing a pathway to legal status with appropriate restitutionary measures, maintaining the priority of family unity, resulting in an efficient immigration system that honors the value and dignity of those seeking a better life for themselves and their families; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we declare that any form of nativism, mistreatment, or exploitation is inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage all elected officials, especially those who are members of Southern Baptist churches, to do everything in their power to advocate for a just and equitable immigration system, those in the professional community to seek ways to administer just and compassionate care for the immigrants in their community, and our Southern Baptist entities to provide resources that will equip and empower churches and church members to reach and serve immigrant communities. . . .

Rabbi David Wolpe dryly observed that “until 2018, I don’t believe any reader of the Bible has argued that separating families is rooted in the Bible, and if the Bible is about obeying the government, it is hard to understand what all those prophets were yelling at the kings about.” (Meanwhile, 26 Jewish organizations sent a letter condemning the policy to Sessions.)

Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has written extensively on the role of religion in politics. “I would say that this is just the most recent, but also one of the most egregious, ways that those who call themselves Christians are disfiguring and discrediting their faith. They are living in an inverted moral world, where the Bible is being invoked to advance cruelty,” he said. “Rather than owning up to what they are doing, they are trying to sacralize their inhumane policies. They are attempting to harm children and then dress it up as Christian ethics.”

He added: “This shows you the terrible damage that can be done to the Christian witness when the wrong people attain positions of power. They subordinate every good thing to their ideology, twisting and distorting everything they must to advance their political cause. In this case, it’s not simply that an authentic Christian ethic is subordinate to their inhumane politics; it is that it is being thoroughly corrupted, to the point that they are using the Bible to justify what is unjustifiable.”

If the administration is embarrassed by a policy they are trying to insist is required by law (that is untrue, and I know the prohibition against lying is very biblical) they should change it. Trump and his aides need to stop shifting blame to other politicians, and stop telling Christians what their obligations are. Frankly, the lack of outrage from Trump’s clique of evangelical supporters on this issue is not simply unusual given the near-universal outrage in faith-based communities, but is a reminder that leaders of “values voters” traded faith for the political game of power and access. As Wehner put it, “To watch the Christian faith be stained in this way by people like Jeff Sessions and Sarah Huckabee Sanders is painful and quite a disturbing thing to watch. I don’t know whether they realize the defilement they’re engaging in, but that’s somewhat beside the point. The defilement is happening, and they are leading the effort. It’s shameful, and it’s heretical.”

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

Remarkably, Sessions claims to be a Christian and a Methodist (although I can’t for the life of me find a speck of the actual kind, merciful, forgiving, teachings of Jesus Christ in any aspect of Sessions’s life, career, or actions). He’s one of the most “unChristian” people I’ve ever witnessed in American public life. And, I’ve seen some pretty bad actors, going all the way back to infamous Wisconsin GOP Senator Joe McCarthy! In his own way, Sessions is just as far removed from the true meaning of Christ’s teaching as his pagan, idolatrous boss, Trump.

At any rate, the Methodist Council of Bishops has joined other religious denominations in condemning Sessions’s policies of cruelty and child abuse.

Faith leaders’ statement on family separation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, June 7, 2018

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church is joining other faith organizations in a statement urging the U.S. government to stop its policy of separating immigrant families.

Below is the full statement signed by dozens of faith organizations. Bishop Kenneth H. Carter, president of the Council of Bishops, signed on behalf of the Council.

FAITH LEADERS’ STATEMENT ON FAMILY SEPARATION

Recently, the U.S. Administration announced that it will begin separating families and criminally prosecuting all people who enter the U.S. without previous authorization. As religious leaders representing diverse faith perspectives, united in our concern for the well-being of vulnerable migrants who cross our borders fleeing from danger and threats to their lives, we are deeply disappointed and pained to hear this news.

We affirm the family as a foundational societal structure to support human community and understand the household as an estate blessed by God. The security of the family provides critical mental, physical and emotional support to the development and wellbeing of children. Our congregations and agencies serve many migrant families that have recently arrived in the United States. Leaving their communities is often the only option they have to provide safety for their children and protect them from harm. Tearing children away from parents who have made a dangerous journey to provide a safe and sufficient life for them is unnecessarily cruel and detrimental to the well-being of parents and children.

As we continue to serve and love our neighbor, we pray for the children and families that will suffer due to this policy and urge the Administration to stop their policy of separating families.

His Eminence Archbishop Vicken Aykazian
Diocesan Legate and
Director of the Ecumenical Office
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America

Mr. Azhar Azeez
President
Islamic Society of North America

The Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera
Bishop of Scranton, PA
Chair, Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs

Senior Bishop George E. Battle, Jr.
Presiding Prelate, Piedmont Episcopal District
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

Bishop Kenneth H. Carter, Jr.
President, Council of Bishops
The United Methodist Church

The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry
Presiding Bishop
Episcopal Church (United States)

The Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer
General Minister & President
United Church of Christ

The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton
Presiding Bishop
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

The Rev. David Guthrie
President, Provincial Elders’ Conference
Moravian Church Southern Province

Mr. Glen Guyton
Executive Director
Mennonite Church USA

The Rev. Teresa Hord Owens
General Minister and President
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Rabbi Rick Jacobs
President
Union for Reform Judaism

Mr. Anwar Khan
President
Islamic Relief USA

The Rev. Dr. Betsy Miller
President, Provincial Elders’ Conference
Moravian Church Northern Province

The Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson II
Stated Clerk
Presbyterian Church (USA)

Rabbi Jonah Pesner
Director
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

The Rev. Don Poest
Interim General Secretary
The Rev. Eddy Alemán
Candidate for General Secretary
Reformed Church in America

Senior Bishop Lawrence Reddick III
Presiding Bishop, The 8th Episcopal District
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church

The Rev. Phil Tom
Executive Director
International Council of Community Churches

Senior Bishop McKinley Young
Presiding Prelate, Third Episcopal District
African Methodist Episcopal Church

###

Media Contact:
Rev. Dr. Maidstone Mulenga
Director of Communications – Council of Bishops
The United Methodist Church
mmulenga@umc-cob.org
202-748-5172

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Ed Kilgore over at NY Magazine also nails Sessions’s noxious hypocrisy:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/no-jeff-sessions-separating-families-isnt-biblical.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Intelligencer-%20June%2015%2C%202018&utm_term=Subscription%20List%20-%20Daily%20Intelligencer%20%281%20Year%29

No, Jeff Sessions, Separating Kids From Their Parents Isn’t ‘Biblical’

By Ed Kilgore

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St. Paul would probably like Jeff Sessions to keep his name out of his mouth. Photo: Getty Images

When he spoke to a law enforcement group in Indiana today, the attorney general of the United States was clearly angry about religious objections to his administration’s immigration policies. He may have had in mind incidents like this very important one this week (as notedby the National Catholic Reporter):

The U.S. bishops began their annual spring assembly by condemning recent immigration policies from the Trump administration that have separated families at the U.S.-Mexico border and threatened to deny asylum for people fleeing violence.

The morning session here began with a statement, but by its end escalated to numerous bishops endorsing the idea of sending a delegation to the border to inspect the detention facilities where children are being kept and even floating the possibility of “canonical penalties” for those involved in carrying out the policies.

Being a Protestant and all, Sessions has no fear of the kind of “canonical penalties” Catholic bishops might levy. But perhaps he is aware of an official resolution passed by his own United Methodist Church in 2008 (and reaffirmed in 2016), which reads in part:

The fear and anguish so many migrants in the United States live under are due to federal raids, indefinite detention, and deportations which tear apart families and create an atmosphere of panic. Millions of immigrants are denied legal entry to the US due to quotas and race and class barriers, even as employers seek their labor. US policies, as well as economic and political conditions in their home countries, often force migrants to leave their homes. With the legal avenues closed, immigrants who come in order to support their families must live in the shadows and in intense exploitation and fear. In the face of these unjust laws and the systematic deportation of migrants instituted by the Department of Homeland Security, God’s people must stand in solidarity with the migrants in our midst.

So Sessions decided he’d smite all these ninny-faced liberal clerics with his own interpretation of the intersection of Christianity and immigration:

In his remarks, Sessions hit back at the “concerns raised by our church friends about separating families,” calling the criticism “not fair or logical” and quoting scripture in his defense of the administration’s tough policies.

“Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” Sessions said. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”

Those who are unacquainted with the Bible should be aware that the brief seven-verse portion of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans has been throughout the ages cited to oppose resistance to just about every unjust law or regime you can imagine. As the Atlantic’s Yoni Appelbaum quickly pointed out, it was especially popular among those opposing resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act in the run-up to the Civil War. It was reportedly Adolf Hitler’s favorite biblical passage. And it was used by defenders of South African Apartheid and of our own Jim Crow.

Sessions’s suggestion that Romans 13 represents some sort of absolute, inflexible rule for the universe has been refuted by religious authorities again and again, most quoting St. Augustine in saying that “an unjust law is no law at all,” and many drawing attention to the overall context of Paul’s epistle, which was in many respects the great charter of Christian liberty and the great rebuke to legalism in every form. Paul was pretty clearly rejecting a significant sentiment among Christians of his day: that civil authorities deserved no obedience in any circumstance.

Beyond that, even if taken literally, in Romans 13 Paul is the shepherd telling the sheep that just as they must love their enemies, they must also recognize that the wolf is part of a divinely established order. In today’s context, Jeff Sessions is the wolf, and no matter what you think of his policies, he is not entitled to quote the shepherd on his own behalf. Maybe those desperate women and men at the border should suck it up and accept their terrible lot in life and defer to Jeff Sessions’s idolatry toward those portions of secular immigration law that he and his president actually support. But for the sake of all that’s holy, don’t quote the Bible to make the Trump administration’s policies towards immigrant families sound godly. And keep St. Paul out of it.

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

Last, but certainly not least among my favorite rebuttals to Sessions is this article from Marissa Martinelli at Slate incorporating a video clip from John Oliver which captures the smallness, meanness, and lack of humane values of Sessions perfectly:

https://slate.com/culture/2018/06/stephen-colbert-quotes-the-bible-to-jeff-sessions-video.html

Stephen Colbert Tells Jeff Sessions to Go Reread the Bible Before He Defends Trump’s Child Separation Policy

By MARISSA MARTINELLI

JUNE 15, 201811:33 AM

There’s nothing funny about the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border, which doesn’t make it an ideal topic for late night hosts. Stephen Colbert acknowledged that difficulty directly on The Late Show on Thursday night, explaining that he usually only addresses tragic stories on the show if everyone is already talking about them. But he’s willing to make an exception:

That’s my job: to give you my take on the conversation everyone’s already having. With any luck, my take is funnier than yours, or I would be watching you. But this story is different, because this is the conversation everybody should be having. Attorney General and man dreaming of legally changing his name to “Jim Crow” Jeff Sessions has instituted a new policy to separate immigrant kids from their parents at the border.

An estimated 1,358 children have been taken from their families so far, with some officials reportedly telling their parents that the children were being taken away for a bath, only to never return them. “Clearly, no decent human being could defend that,” said Colbert. “So Jeff Sessions did.”

Colbert, who is devoutly Catholic, especially took issue with Sessions quoting the bible—specifically, Romans 13, the same passage used to defend slavery in the 1840s—to justify the policy as morally acceptable. Colbert suggested that Sessions might want to go back and reread that bible, and quoted Romans 13:10 to him. “Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law,” he recited, before ripping into Sessions’s use of the bible as a smokescreen: “I’m not surprised Sessions didn’t read the whole thing. After all, Jesus said, ‘Suffer the children to come unto me’ but I’m pretty sure all Sessions saw was the words children and suffer and said ‘I’m on it.’”

Colbert concluded the segment by borrowing a phrase from Samantha Bee: “If we let this happen in our name, we are a feckless … country.”

Here’s a link to the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4KaLkYxMZ8#action=share

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

A NOTE TO MY WAYWARD CHILD, JEFF

I am very concerned about our relationship, Jeff.

For I was hungry Jeff, and you gave me nothing to eat.

I was thirsty, Jeff, and you gave me nothing to drink.

I was a stranger seeking refuge, Jeff, and you did not invite me in.

I needed clothes, Jeff, and you clothed me only in the orange jumpsuit of a prisoner.

I was sick and in a foul prison you called “detention,” Jeff, and you mocked me and did not look after me.

I said “suffer the children to come unto me,” Jeff, and you made my children suffer.

In your arrogant ignorance, Jeff, you might ask when did I see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

But, Jeff, I was right there before you, in a caravan with my poor sisters, brothers, and children, having traveled far, seeking shelter and refuge from mistreatment and expecting mercy and justice under your laws. But, in your prejudice and ignorance, Jeff, you did not see me because I did not look like one of you. For you see, Jeff, as you did not show love, mercy, forgiveness, kindness, and human compassion for the least of my children, you did not do for me.

And so, Jeff, unless you repent of your wasted life of sins, selfishness, meanness, taking my name and teachings in vain, and mistaking your often flawed view of man’s laws for my Father’s will, you must go away to eternal punishment. But, the poor, the vulnerable, the abused, and the children who travel with me and those who give us aid, compassion, justice, and mercy will accompany me to eternal life.

For in truth, Jeff, although you yourself might be immoral, none of God’s children is ever “illegal” to Him. Each time you spout such nonsense, you once again mock me and my Father by taking our names, teachings, and values in vain.

Wise up, Jeff, before it’s too late.

Your Lord & Would Be Savior,

J.C.

THREE NEW ARTICLES FROM MICA ROSENBERG & FRIENDS @ REUTERS SHOW SESSIONS’S DEEP MORAL CORRUPTION!I

I wanted to pass along our latest story about the U.S. Mexico border:

EXCLUSIVE: Nearly 1,800 families separated at U.S.-Mexico border in 17 months through February

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-children-exclusive/exclusive-nearly-1800-families-separated-at-u-s-mexico-border-in-17-months-through-february-idUSKCN1J42UE

and for a deeper dive on the new “zero tolerance”’ prosecution policy:

Concerns over U.S. court backlog grow with rising border prosecutions

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-prosecutions/concerns-over-u-s-court-backlog-grow-with-rising-border-prosecutions-idUSKBN1IA310

Two colleagues also recently dug into the immigration detention squeeze:

Exclusive: U.S. sending 1,600 immigration detainees to federal prisons

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-prisons-exclusi ve/exclusive-u-s-immigration-authorities-sending-1600-detainees-to-federal-prisons-idUSKCN1J32W1

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

Corruption takes many forms.

PWS

06-08-18

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Newly released memo reveals secretary of homeland security signed off on family separation policy

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Here’s a link to the order:

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EXCLUSIVE: ICE attorneys STILL trying to deport immigrant children WITHOUT their parents despite Trump’s promises to reunify families

Timeline: Separation at the Border

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CONCLUSION: WE NEED REGIME CHANGE NOW! THE ONLY WAY TO GET IT WILL BE AT THE BALLOT BOX THIS FALL. GET OUT THE VOTE! JUST SAY NO TO TRUMP, SESSIONS, THEIR GOP ENABLERS & THEIR REGIME OF CRUELTY, INCOMPETENCE, & DISHONESTY!

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Doesn’t reunite families already separated

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Here’s a wonderful response to Sessions by Kansas City Attorney Andrea C. Martinez:

Thanks Andrea!

I call B.S. But, then most of what Sessions says is B.S.

Here’s another from JRube in the WashPost:

At any rate, the Methodist Council of Bishops has joined other religious denominations in condemning Sessions’s policies of cruelty and child abuse.

Faith leaders’ statement on family separation

Ed Kilgore over at NY Magazine also nails Sessions’s noxious hypocrisy:

Last, but certainly not least among my favorite rebuttals to Sessions is this article from Marissa Martinelli at Slate incorporating a video clip from John Oliver which captures the smallness, meanness, and lack of humane values of Sessions perfectly:

A NOTE TO MY WAYWARD CHILD, JEFF

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**Here’s another from JRube in the WashPost:**