"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
William Samuel is an accomplished citizen writer publishing with a specific focus on current affairs and military history.
De Spretter writes on Linkedin:
When asked in 1922 what his priorities would be if elected chancellor of Germany, then up-and-coming National Socialist leader, Adolf Hitler, answered candidly:
“Once I’m really in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews.”
Proclaiming with vitriolic zeal, they’d be “hanged indiscriminately… until all of Germany has been completely cleansed of Jewry”, German Jews, understandably, had no desire to remain when he assumed the chancellorship in 1933…
In desperate hopes of securing safe passage to their ancestral homeland – Eretz Israel – tens of thousands flocked to the British embassy; only to be told on arrival there, “strict limits” had been imposed on the quota of Jews who’d be granted entry.
Although, sadly, the fate of most was thus sealed, countless more would have suffered the same had it not been for the defiant courage of Britain’s Vice-Consul, then-Captain Francis “Frank” Foley.
As a man who, in reality, was using his position as a cover for his long-serving role as an MI6 spymaster, Frank’s intelligence gathering had long confirmed that Hitler’s threats against the Jewish people were far from “empty rhetoric”.
For that reason, Frank was “quite unwilling to toe the line with London…”
Instead, he didn’t just “tear up the rulebook” that dictated whom he could issue lifesaving visas to but, when the “Kristallnacht” pogrom of 1938 was unleashed, he even transformed his place of residence into a safe haven for Jewish families.
From the “Night of Broken Glass” onwards, the number of Jews filing for immigration visas increased dramatically; but still, Frank’s superiors refused to ease the stringent requirements that prevented him from granting them.
Once again, therefore, he not only decided to “bend the rules” by easing them himself but, when he then received an official reprimand for his brave “contravention”, Frank doubled down on his rescue efforts by forging passports for Germany’s beleaguered Jewish citizens.
Despite being fully aware that no level of diplomatic immunity would protect him if the Gestapo had uncovered his clandestine activities, Frank persevered regardless, with no fear or concern for his personal safety.
In so doing, he enabled no fewer than 10,000 Jews to flee Hitler’s Reich; and yet, humble man that he was, Frank never spoke of his selfless deeds during his lifetime…
Incredibly, it was only after his passing, in May 1958, that his heroic exploits were revealed by his beloved wife, Katherine; and, it wasn’t until over four decades later, on this day in 1999, that he was deservedly recognized for having saved so many Jewish lives.
Honored as a posthumous Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, the latter paid tribute to Frank – “the British Schindler” – by describing him as “a man of great faith and conviction…”
Indeed, “as a deeply devout Christian, Frank did nothing more than act upon his sense of justice and compassion.”
#WeRemember
Captain Francis “Frank” Foley SOURCE: Linkedin
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Inspiring and timely piece of history. Thanks to Samuel for posting this on LinkedIn!
What if 600 bureaucrats had each made it their business to save 10,000 lives? The course of history would have been changed.
This is worth keeping in mind as our leaders of both parties and the immigration bureaucracy make “bullying the most vulnerable” and dehumanizing asylum seekers their daily mission. And, they brag about their cruelty and intention to violate laws in even more deadly ways! What if the same amount of effort were devoted to addressing humanitarian crises and saving lives?
Professor Philip G. Schrag Georgetown Law Co-Director, CALS Asylum ClinicProfessor from Practice; Director, Human Rights Institute; Director, Center for Applied Legal Studies PHOTO: GeorgetownLawProfessor Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs I. Herman Stern Research Professor Temple Law PHOTO: Temple Law
Here’s the abstract of the latest “practical scholarship” from the RR3:Professors Phil Schrag, Andy Schoenholtz, and Jaya Ramji-Nogles, “The New Border Asylum Adjudication System: Speed, Fairness, and the Representation Problem,” which will appear in the Howard Law Journal:
The New Border Asylum Adjudication System: Speed, Fairness, and the Representation Problem
In 2022, the Biden administration implemented what the New York Times has described as potentially “the most sweeping change to the asylum process in a quarter-century.” This new adjudication system creates unrealistically short deadlines for asylum seekers who arrive over the southern border, the vast majority of whom are people of color. Rather than providing a fair opportunity for those seeking safety to explain and corroborate their persecution claims, the new system imposes unreasonably speedy time frames to enable swift adjudications. Asylum seekers must obtain representation very quickly even though the government does not fund counsel and not enough lawyers offer free or low-cost representation. Moreover, the immigration statute requires that asylum seekers must corroborate their claims with extrinsic evidence if the adjudicator thinks that such evidence is available – a nearly impossible task in the time frames provided by the new rule. As a result, the new rule clashes with every state’s Rules of Professional Conduct 1.1 and 1.3, imposing duties of competence and diligence in every case that a lawyer undertakes. It will be extremely difficult for lawyers to provide competent and diligent representation under the new, excessively short deadlines. For immigration lawyers, the new rule exacerbates a challenge that they share with public defenders and other lawyers working within dysfunctional systems: how to provide even the most basic level of procedural due process for their clients, most of whom are people of color.
This article begins by describing the regular asylum process. It then summarizes the history of expedited removal, a screening system that limits access to that process for asylum seekers who arrive at the southern U.S. border without visas. It then explains and assesses the Biden administration’s first and second versions of the new asylum rule, highlighting the major flaw that will make the current version an unfairly formidable hurdle for asylum seekers subject to it. The article concludes by setting out a way for the Biden administration to create a more fair, accurate and efficient border asylum adjudication system and ensure that the U.S. can comply with domestic and international refugee law.
Keywords: Asylum, Asylum adjudication, Asylum process, Expedited removal, Immigration, Legal ethics, Due process, Administrative law
JEL Classification: K39
Suggested Citation:
Schrag, Philip G. and Ramji-Nogales, Jaya and Schoenholtz, Andrew I., The New Border Asylum Adjudication System: Speed, Fairness, and the Representation Problem (September 29, 2022). Howard Law Journal, Vol. 66, No. 3, 2023, Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4233655
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New regulations pasted on old anti-asylum, anti-lawyer, anti-due-process attitudes and relying on an ever more dysfunctional EOIR, now at war with the asylum bar, won’t cut it! Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
You can download the complete article from SSRN at the above link.
Expect the Biden Administration to “blow off” the suggestions for improvement at the end of the article. They seem to glory in “tuning out” the views of practical experts who know how to fix the broken asylum adjudication system.
As I predicted when these regulations first came out, they were “programmed for failure.”
Due-process-denying, representation-killing, arbitrary time limits imposed from above have been tried by Administration after Administration. They have always failed and will continue to do so. So, why are they a key part of the Administration’s so-called “reforms?”
Compare the article’s discussion of the importance of representation and the practical and ethical problems caused by the new regulations with the reality of the “nutsos” ways EOIR is mis-treating attorneys currently trying to practice before the Immigration Courts!
Additionally, the unwarranted, yet largely self-fulfilling assumption by the Biden Administration that only 15% of asylum applications would be granted at the “Asylum Office stage” show why this program was designed to fail by the wrong officials. For the system to meaningfully address the Immigration Court asylum backlog, the grant rate would have to be multiples of that — probably at least 50%.
That’s a realistic projection, given the well-documented, atrocious human rights conditions in most “sending countries” and the current artificial limitations on grants imposed by bad precedents and flawed, biased, or incompetent adjudications. When I was at the Arlington Immigration Court from 2003-16, a significant majority of the “referrals” from the Asylum Office were granted asylum, withholding of removal, or CAT protection, often with concurrence or only token opposition by ICE. That suggests that there is a huge unrealized potential for many more timely asylum grants at the Asylum Office. But, success will never be achieved with the current “anti-asylum, afraid to correctly and fairly implement refugee law gang” in charge — committed to retaining the bad attitudes and repeating the mistakes of the past!
Hanging over the whole disaster is the “uncomfortable truth” that I’ve been shouting:
The Biden Administration is still operating EOIR and large portions of the immigration bureaucracy at DHS with Trump-era “holdovers” who were improperly “programmed to deny” asylum.
There is a dearth of positive precedents from the BIA on gender-based asylum and other types of common asylum applications at the border that are routinely and wrongfully mishandled and denied.
There are cosmic problems resulting from failure to provide qualified representation of asylum seekers at the border.
Detention continues to be misused as a “deterrent” to legal claims and “punishment” for assertingthem.
Despite “touting” a much larger refugee admissions program beyond the border, the Administration has failed to deliver a robust, realistic, refugee admissions program for Latin America and the Caribbean which would take pressure off the border.
Racism and White Nationalism continue to drive the Administration’s dramatically inconsistent approach to White refugees from Ukraine compared with refugees of color at the Southern Border.
Indeed, this entire “reform effort” is essentially “upside down.” It’s a “designed to fail” attempt to avoid the broken and malfunctioning Immigration Court system without dealing with the REAL problem: EOIR!
Without the necessary progressive personnel and structural reforms at Garland’s EOIR (“clean house” of unqualified, under-qualified, or misplaced administrators and judges from past Administrations), the cultural changes (“out with the anti-asylum, anti-immigrant, racially challenged, too often misogynistic, EOIR culture”) it would bring, and most of all, the substantive changes to align asylum law with due process, best practices, and the generous interpretations that were foreshadowed by the Refugee Act of 1`980 but have been intentionally suppressed by politicos of both parties, there will be neither justice nor stability in our asylum and immigration systems, nor will there be equal justice for all, including racial justice, in America!
Even my esteemed “RR3” friends understate the debilitating effects of the ever-worsening dysfunction at EOIR and Garland’s failure of leadership on due process and human rights!
Perhaps the most telling statement in their article is this: “Asylum officers are more highly trained in asylum adjudication than immigration judges . . . .”Why, on earth, would that be?
Why isn’t the BIA led and comprised of internationally-respected asylum experts like Schrag, Schoenholtz, Ramji-Nogales, and others like them? Why aren’t all Immigration Judges drawn from the ranks of universally-respected “practical scholars” in asylum and human rights?Plenty of them are out here! Why aren’t they on the bench? Why is the Biden Administration running a “D-Team Judiciary” at EOIR rather than “the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all” as EOIR was once envisioned? What’s the excuse for lousy training at EOIR when top-flight “modulated” asylum training is available from expert sources like Professor Michele Pistone’s innovative VIISTA Villanova program? What’s the excuse for the colossal EOIR failure that threatens lives and our democracy on a daily basis? Why aren’t alarm bells going off at the White House about Garland’s failed stewardship at EOIR?
Reforming the asylum system, starting with EOIR, could also potentially have big societal and economic benefits for America. Asylees gain legal status, can work, get in line for green cards, eventually become citizens, and realize their full potential as productive members of our society. Not incidentally, they also become regular taxpayers and can help bolster essential enterprises and infrastructure improvements.
For example, just yesterday the Portland (ME) Press Herald featured an article about the critical, chronic shortage of workers in Maine. https://www.pressherald.com/2022/10/02/how-can-maine-solve-its-workforce-crisis/ Why isn’t the Biden Administration working with Maine authorities, NGOs, and economic development groups to “fast track” asylum approvals for those who might be persuaded to resettle in Maine to take advantage of these economic opportunities, for everyone’s benefit? Mainers also are suffering from a shortage of affordable housing. I’ll bet that with a little “seed money,” there are enterprising, skilled groups of potential asylees who could help build and maintain affordable housing for communities in need, in Maine and elsewhere in the U.S. Why are they instead “rotting at the border” or being aimlessly “orbited” around America by nativist GOP governors trying to score political points with their White Nationalist base?
By adopting the nativists’ dehumanizing mis-characterization of asylum seekers as a “problem” to be measured in “numbers,” deterred, and held at bay, the Administration is missing a golden opportunity to achieve some much-needed “win-wins.” Why run bone-headed “built to fail, haste makes waste” asylum pilot programs in a few cities rather than trying things that might work to everyone’s advantage, as I have described above?
At a time when many in America are finally learning the truth about our disgraceful failure to offer refuge to Jews during the period leading up to the Holocaust from the Ken Burns documentary, we (our at least some Americans) appear to be committed to making the same mistakes again. We should not undervalue the lives and contributions of refugees because of systemic or structural boas against certain groups!
Claiming to “reform” the U.S. refugee and asylum system without dealing with the ongoing, worsening, disasterous dysfunction at EOIR is a fool’s errand. The way to make the system work more efficiently is to grant the large number of deserving asylum cases in a timely, practical, manner driven by due process, best practices, and best interpretations of asylum law. Unless and until those in charge act on this truth, the awful mess at EOIR will continue to be an existential threat to democracy!
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland — His poignant recollection of the inability of his great aunts to find refuge in the U.S., and their resulting deaths in the Holocaust, haven’t stopped him from daily “pushing the St. Louis back out to sea” and denying legal protections and full due process to asylum seekers at our Southern Border and at EOIR — his “wholly owned court system” that functions more like a branch of DHS enforcement than a court of law! Official White House Photo Public Realm
“Garland believes that a thorough de-Trumpification of the Justice Department would … be called partisanship and would call into question the institution of the Justice Department, but the institution has already been called into question,” says Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Sessions and Barr came in with a goal of assaulting and undermining the institution of the Justice Department, and it’s just weird to presume that they failed. We presume that they succeeded. They were in the building. They hired their minions. They assessed people. They politicized everything. Garland presuming that the previous Department of Justice was behaving in good faith requires the same suspension of disbelief as believing dragons are real in a fantasy novel.”
. . . .
And so, we’ll also be judging Garland by another standard: how well his approach fortifies the institution against a future administration that once again disrespects norms and politicizes the rule of law.
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These quotes go to the heart of the problem with Garland’s stewardship and his naive, ivory tower, ineffectively timid approach to restoring the rule of law at Justice. “By the book” is NOT an effective strategy against opponents who seek to burn the book, bury the ashes, and lie about it! It’s basically no “strategy” all!
I’d be shocked, as would most knowledgeable observers, if the next GOP Administration doesn’t “disrespect the norms and politicize the rule of law.” Not only have the past two GOP Administrations done exactly that, in spades, but that’s basically what today’s GOP stands for: neo-fascist, anti-democracyrule based on big lies and a cult of personality.
To the extent the modern GOP believes in anything, it’s the exercise of power without restraint of law or morality. “Why? Because we can, and you can’t stop us. We’re in power, and you aren’t,” was largely the Trump McConnell mantra, particularly when it came to judges. How did the dying plea of RBG and the appeals of Dems for fairness and consistency in Supremes’ appointments work out? It was a classic “heads I win, tails you lose” that once again left the Dems grasping at thin air.
So, these folks are going to respect long-gone “norms” from the 1970s? “Norms” that couldn’t and didn’t stop Ashcroft, Gonzalez (“Gonzo I”), Mukasey, Sessions, or Barr? You have to be kidding? I don’t know what universe Garland has been living in for the past four plus years, but it doesn’t appear to be this one.
Contrary to Garland’s approach, there is absolutely nothing wrong with:
Coming clean on recent abuses at DOJ;
Replacing lawless immoral intentional misconstructions of law with better progressive ones that adhere to and further both the rule of law and “good government;” and
Replacing political hacks who furthered the White Nationalist agenda or other personnel who “went along to get along” with abuses, to keep their jobs, with progressive experts committed to due process and best practices who’ll get the job of restoring the rule of law, respect, and human dignity done.
Not only is there nothing wrong with the foregoing, but they are moral and practical imperatives if lives are to be saved and our democracy preserved! For Pete’s sake, these are actually the things that Biden and Harris campaigned upon and won! Why is Garland reticent to act upon truth?
This isn’t an “academic exercise!” It’s an actual life or death moment for migrants and for our democracy! And, the opponents are not folks who intend to honor norms established by Garland or any other Dem.
Indeed, they will characterize all of his actions as “radical socialism,” as they already have, regardless of the truth. In many ways, Garland’s incremental, largely passive, approach to “de-Trumpifying justice @ Justice” has been a huge gift to GOP anti-democracy insurrectionists and restrictionists. But, if I were him, I wouldn’t wait for the “thank you note.”
To shrink from the bold decisive actions necessary to clean up the disgraceful mess at the DOJ and its most grotesque manifestations at EOIR shows not only a lack awareness, but a lack of beliefin the progressive, democratic, humane values that got Biden and Harris elected in the first place and got Garland his job.
And, it’s not as if the problem with the values and institutional integrity at DOJ started only in the Trump regime. Under Bush II, Ashcroft and his advisor, notorious White Nationalist xenophobe Kris Kobach, had their plan to dismantle due process and fundamental fairness in the Immigration Courts, through compromising the BIA, in action before they even set foot in the building 10th & Pa. Ave.Those changes have actually cost some migrants their lives, and some DOJ attorneys their jobs (for the “crime” of standing up for due process for migrants) even before the Trump kakistocracy arrived.
And, al la Garland, the Obama Administration’s failure to either acknowledge the historical truth or take the obvious and necessary corrective actions sent our Immigration Courts and justice for migrants into a steep decline that became a “death spiral” under Sessions (“Gonzo Apocalypto”) and Barr and continues its accelerated downward trajectory under Garland. It’s a contributing factor in the largely self-created 1.3 million case Immigration Court backlog generated by Sessions and Barr at EOIR.
Indeed, the lack of quality, intellectual honesty, practical guidance, humane values, common sense, expertise, and legitimacy at EOIR has spread to and adversely affected other areas of our beleaguered justice system and now threatens to take down everything in a messy heap. Why a former Article III Appellate Judge can’t grasp that reality and act accordingly is beyond me.
Maybe its because he didn’t personally experience enough of EOIR’s deadly, failed, corner-cutting “work product” at the D.C. Circuit because DC has no “resident Immigration Court.” Maybe it’s because he can’t “connect the dots” between his relatives who died in the Holocaust and having no legal asylum system for those arriving at our Southern border and denying asylum seekers full due process every day @ EOIR.
For the reasons set forth in the article, it seems that Judge Garland is philosophically and by personality incapable of leading and implementing long overdue, critical progressive changes at this point in his otherwise distinguished career. The only hope would be that one of his advisors could light a fire and get him out of his inept centrist institutionalist funk.
But, the two best hopes to do that, Associate Attorney Vanita Gupta and Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, who should be personally familiar with the practical and racial justice disaster at EOIR and its overall adverse effects on justice in America, have failed to make a visible impact.
Garland needs a practical expert like Dean Kevin Johnson at U.C. Davis Law, Professor Karen Musalo at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings Law, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Associate Dean at Temple Law, Judy Rabinowitz at ACLU, Marielena Hincappie at the National Immigration Justice Center, or someone of equal expertise and stature in civil and human rights to advise him and lead the reform effort at EOIR. Sadly, he does not appear interested in surrounding himself with such capable, talented individuals who could “save him from himself” while saving the lives of those like his great aunts who perished in the Holocaust for want of a viable refugee and asylum system.
Like Garland, I was at the DOJ during the Levi-Civiletti post-Watergate reform era. I once knew him and certainly helped out his “boss” Ben Civiletti on several occasions.
Somewhere in the “archives,” I have a handwritten note from Ben Civiletti expressing his gratitude that he never had to use the “administrative subpoena” and “designation as an “immigration officer” that I had drafted for him in the midst of one of a number of “immigration emergencies” involving a plane on the tarmac.
Somewhere along the line, Merrick seems to have forgotten that even Civiletti was willing to take bold actions when necessary to advance the cause of immigration justice! There was no “precedent” for the Attorney General personally serving an INS subpoena. But, Civiletti was on the verge of doing it, until “Plan A” prevailed, and the crisis was resolved without resorting to “Plan B” or even “Plan C.”
I was also there and directly affected when the likes of Ashcroft, “Gonzo I”, Kobach, and Mukasey cut through those post-Watergate reforms at EOIR as though they never existed, with little resistance except for a few of us “survivors” who adapted and continued to fight for due process and individual justice in a deteriorating system.
I watched in disgust and disbelief as the Obama Administration (“change?” — not so much in immigration) completely “blew” the opportunity to make life and democracy saving corrections at EOIR. I then saw from the outside as “Gonzo Apocalypto” and Barr aggressively and systematically dismantled American justice, starting with the Immigration Courts. Their job was made infinitely easier by the indolence of the Obama Administration in failing to systematically bring progressive reforms and appoint more progressive judges at EOIR.
But, those of us “on the outside” were not just “passively outraged” by the due process and human rights abuses flowing from DOJ, we took action! Among many groups forming the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”), our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, some of whom had resigned or retired as an act of conscience, helped lead the charge against the Trump regime’s inhumane, scofflaw policies and bogus legal interpretations.
We filed over 100 amicus briefs in tribunals from the Supremes to the BIA, many of them successful in helping to correct and reverse the regime’s anti-due process, anti-immigrant, racially driven policies. We also wrote, educated, did media interviews, organized, inspired others to join the resistance, and voted for change!
Even assuming, as I do, that any future GOP Administration would move to undo progressive reforms and replace progressive judges, their job would be made much more difficult if Garland creates the progressive judiciary that he should at EOIR. Moreover, even if exiled, “trueprogressive practical scholars” will form the expert backbone of the resistance to neo-fascism in the “next generation” of the Round Table and the NDPA.
Some “graduates” of a progressive Immigration Judiciary could be elevated to the Article III Judiciary where they will have continuing beneficial influence beyond the ability of the next GOP Administration to change. Others could use their knowledge of the system to fight the forces of nativism, restrictionism, White Nationalist myths, and mindless cruelty. Others will run for office and improve our moribund legislative branch! Who knows, we could even get Article I during the Biden Administration, giving a progressive immigration judiciary yet another degree of protection from right-wing political shenanigans!
Garland’s “stuck in the irretrievable past” approach to EOIR and the DOJ generally is blowing a golden, perhaps never-to-come again, chance to finally create an effective progressive judiciary at EOIR and, perhaps most important, to save lives and stop “pushing the St. Louis” back out to sea! It’s something that Biden can’t fully achieve in the Article IIIs. It’s painful to watch him squander the opportunity.
Merrick Garland might well have been a great Supreme Court Justice had Mitch McConnell and the GOP had a serious interest in institutional integrity and preserving norms. They didn’t (which should have been “signal” that got Garland’s attention)! Garland might also have been great Attorney General in a bygone era.
Sadly for both Garland and America, he’s not the “right fit” for the job under today’s realities. Not only will that forever tarnish his reputation, but it could well cost the rest of us our democracy.
🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Timidity and false “restraint” in delivering equal justice for all, never!
The meek might well inherit the earth in the next world. But, they won’t restore the rule of law to the Department of Justice in this one!☠️
Come on, Judge Garland, take off the blinders and show that you are smart, flexible, and capable enough to get beyond the limitations of your past experiences and take the bold, aggressive, courageous, potentially controversial, yet absolutely necessary and long overdue, actions necessary to restore the rule of law at Justice in the 21st year of the 21st Century. And, that starts with progressive due process reforms and major personnel changes at EOIR!
PWS
07-26-21
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HISTORICAL ADDENDUM FROM HON. “SIR JEFFREY” CHASE:
I actually had Civiletti’s desk at the BIA (I was told that Tony Moscato had brought it with him from Main Justice).
Jessica Schulberg Politics & Extremist Groups Reporter HuffPost
Jessica Schulberg reports for HuffPost:
During his first address to the nation on the global coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump characterized COVID-19 as a “foreign virus” while touting his decision to institute travel restrictions with China and announcing plans to close the U.S. to visitors from most of Europe.
Meanwhile, he has been raked by critics — and the markets — for failing to thoroughly explain how the government plans to address the lack of tests and spiking number of cases across the U.S. His administration has for weeks downplayed the threat of the virus, even as experts warned it is on track to spread exponentially.
Trump clearly sees the novel coronavirus as just another foreign invader to keep out — a viewpoint reflected both in his policy proposals and the way he and his administration talk about the virus. This approach is in line with his overarching political strategy of exploiting Americans’ fears to justify racist, nativist policies.
“This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history,” Trump said Wednesday about his administration’s response while blaming the European Union for failing to take steps to prevent contagion. Several European countries have fewer cases of coronavirus per capita than the U.S.
It’s not just Trump. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar repeatedly referred to the disease as the “China coronavirus” during a briefing last month. Anti-immigration zealot Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) — who is in self-quarantineafter being exposed to coronavirus at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland — has gone out of his way to describe the virus as the “Wuhan virus,” a reference to the location of the first outbreak.
When Gosar’s critics argued that the congressman shouldn’t spread racist stereotypes, Rich Lowry, the editor of the right-wing National Review, wrote an entire column insisting the illness be called the “Wuhan virus.” “China deserves to be connected to the virus that it loosed on the world,” he argued.
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For those who don’t know the history, the “Reichstag Fire” in 1933 was a pivotal step in the Nazi’s rise to power in Germany. At the time, Hitler blamed Communists. The actual cause of the fire has since been debated by historians: some say the Nazis started it themselves, while others say that it was an accident, or the act of a single arsonist.
Regardless of cause, all agree on the result. Hitler used it as a pretext to eradicate the constitution, punish the opposition, and place draconian authoritarian measures in place using the fiction of “national security.” This eventually led to the Holocaust and a World War that killed approximately 75 million.
Fact is that the coronavirus isn’t “foreign.” Viruses don’t possess or recognize nationality. Nor was it spread in the U.S. primarily by “foreigners.” Most cases initially reached the U.S. through U.S. citizens who took cruises or traveled abroad after the start of the virus abroad had been publicized.
Mexico, a frequent target of the Trump regime’s racism, has reported fewer than ten confirmed cases of coronavirus, as opposed to over 1,000 in the U.S. The Northern Triangle of Central America also appears to have avoided major outbreaks to date. On the other hand, the illegal and inhumane anti-asylum policies of the regime, as enabled by the Supremes and complicit Article III Courts, appear to present a realistic danger of spreading the virus to all of those countries which are ill-equipped to handle it.
The market as well as all medical experts recognized and reacted negatively to the idiocy of Trump’s Oval Office speech. The U.S. preparation, public education, and actual response to coronavirus has been one of the poorest and most inept in the world to date. To the extent that the U.S. has mitigated the disease, it has been largely the result of decisive actions by State Governors and local officials of both parties, although primarily Democrats, along with universities and sports leagues.
Expect Trump and his White Nationalists to use the danger to our public health that he didn’t cause, yet unnecessarily aggravated, as an excuse for more irrational, cruel, xenophobic, racist attacks on migrants. And, you can expect the “Chief of Complicity,” John Roberts, and his accomplices to continue to help promote Trump’s attack on human decency, truth, and our democratic institutions. John Roberts has never seen a transparently false “emergency” from Trump that he didn’t love or racism or religious bigotry so obvious that he would actually call it what it is.
Incompetent governance by a corrupt, selfish kakistocracy that promotes myths and conspiracy theories over truth, scientific knowledge, and the common good does not cause epidemics. But, it does unnecessarily aggravate them, hinder effective control, and gravely endanger the public health. It simple terms, it kills! Yet another reason why “regime change” in November might be America’s last chance for survival.
The coronavirus has surfaced perhaps the only competent high level official in the entire Trump Administration — Dr. Anthony Fauci. In case you haven’t noticed, there is no resemblance whatsoever between the scientific truth spoken by Dr. Fauci, who paints a honest but grim picture of the Administration’s half-assed efforts to date, and the unadulterated BS and party line spouted by Trump and the second most unqualified individual in the U.S. to handle a pandemic Mike “Super Sycophant” Pence. Talk about a “Confederacy of Dunces!” I’m just surprised that Trump hasn’t fired Fauci yet, given the well-known Trumpian aversion to all things true.
I’ve watched the smirking nitwit Rich Lowry of the National Review (too) many times on the “talking heads” where he is a favorite because he is one of the few Trump apologists who can put two consecutive sentences together in the English Language. Most of what he says is BS, but at least it’s comprehensible and reasonably articulate BS. And, despite the endless smirk, he isn’t as overtly rude and aggressively crude as most Trumpists. Jessica’s article confirmed my already low opinion of Rich. As Rome burns, by all means, let’s pontificate on what we should call the fire.
For another viewpoint on the urgency of defeating Trump’s politics of hate against immigrants and other minorities in he upcoming election this November, see Kristian Ramos in The Hill (January 11):
We can’t let ‘white nativism’ politics cloud 2020 election
Two late-breaking January 10 news stories show that Trump and his Republican allies are ramping up the hate against legal non-European immigrants in preparation for this November’s election.
The Washington Post reports that Texas has become the first state to bar resettlement of refugees under Trump’s executive order giving them the authority to do so. Admission to the UIS of legal refugees this year is already at an historic low under the agenda of Trump and Miller. Miller reportedly didn’t want to any refugees at all to be admitted this year.
For more on this latest show of bigotry by Texas Republican governor Greg Abbot, see:
Both of these developments, which involve barring legal immigrants whose ethnicity or religion doesn’t happen to fit in with Trump’s avowed goal of admitting only immigrants from “Countries like Norway” and with Miller’s goal (expressed in almost 1,000 recent emails) of taking America’s immigration system back to the openly racist 1924 regime (which Adolf Hitler expressed so much admiration for in Mein Kampf) show that exploiting and stirring up more hate against nonwhite immigrants, including those eligible to come to the US legally, will be the order of the day for Trump’s re-election campaign.
My earlier comment follows below:
While the media remain focused on Donald Trump’s apparently now-abandoned threat to commit a war crime by blowing up cultural heritage sites in Iran, as an end result of his dehumanizing 2017 Muslim Ban order; or on the travesty that Senate Republicans are planning in order to “acquit” Trump of cravenly timid Democratic impeachment charges which entirely ignore his High Crimes and Misdemeanors against the basic human rights of nonwhite immigrants, what could very arguably be considered a Crime Against Humanity that the Trump administration is carrying out against desperate asylum seekers at the Mexican border in service of Stephen Miller’s white supremacist agenda is growing worse and worse.
The Guardian reports on January 9 that an obviously desperate Mexican asylum-seeker killed himself on the international bridge after being refused entry to the United States.
This may be less surprising than it seems in light of the appalling, inhuman conditions that legitimate asylum seekers fleeing gang violence and other life-threatening conditions in Central America are forced to endure as a result of Trump’s racist and inhuman (as well as almost certainly illegal) “Remain in Mexico” asylum policy. See Vox (December 20, 2019):
In camps on the US-Mexico border, asylym-seekers have been abandoned
This horrendous display of inhumanity by the Trump administration as led to a protest by a leading Jewish religious leader, Arnold Eisen, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary (in New York City) America’s leading institution for the Conservative branch of Judaism against what he calls America’s failure to carry out its moral obligation toward desperate asylum seekers and immigrants and other immigrants. See, The Hill, January 9:
After visiting overcrowded immigrant border shelters , an ICE detention center and an asylum hearing courtroom along with other Jewish clergy, Eisen writes:
“What we saw was profoundly sobering. The predicament of those trapped at the Mexican border looks increasingly bleak as the federal government enacts more restrictive policies in the name of protecting Americans from the alleged invasion.”
Eisen then explains what motivated him to write:
“When people asked me why I was making this journey, my answer was simple: ‘Because I am a Jew.’ My grandparents arrived in this country seeking a better life, in some cases fleeing pogroms and persecutions, and the Torah’s command to care for the stranger summons me in a voice I dare not ignore. The Bible tells us that Jews are not permitted to stand by in the face of suffering and injustice.”
He then explains that this is not only a Jewish issue.:
“But the crisis at the border is a non-denominational issue and it should be non-partisan.”
Unfortunately, in today’s America, the crisis caused by the Trumps administration’s egregious violations of essential human rights of nonwhite immigrants is anything but non-partisan. One party is blindly following its Leader into making hatred of non-European immigrants, both legal and “irregular”, as the centerpiece of its agenda, while the other party’s leaders are too cowardly to mount an effective defense of immigrants’ human rights which are being trampled on.
Ironically, the driving force of this agenda of anti-immigrant persecution, Stephen Miller, is also the grandchild of a Jewish immigrant. What kind of understanding of the Jewish heritage of care and compassion for the suffering of the stranger in our midst is he showing?
And how much understanding of this tradition of essential humanity does Miller’s boss Donald Trump, who claims to be a great friend of Israel and the Jewish people, show in his immigration policy, which includes drastic measures against even the most highly skilled and educated legal immigrants, not only asylum seekers and unauthorized immigrants?
Unfortunately, for America and the world, Roger has it pegged exactly right. Humanity, compassion, decency, and equal justice for all have disappeared from U.S. foreign and domestic policy under Trump. That’s the essence of a White Nationalist kakistocracy. And, as Roger also recognizes, there is more than a little anti-semitism and racism mixed in and driving these policies. It just so happens that Hispanics and folks with brown skins are the current “target of the day.”
But, actually, nobody is safe in the “Age of Trump” as his sycophants and supporters have found out (see., e.g., Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Kristjen Nielsen, Steve Bannon, John Bolton, Michael Cohen, et al.). The only thing or person that Donald Trump has ever cared about is (surprise): Donald Trump. Everybody else, including our nation, the environment, and world civilization, is expendable.
I also appreciate Roger’s “outing” of bigoted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for his ridiculous and disingenuous attempt to “bar” refugee resettlement in Texas. For the record, quite contrary to Abbott’s racist whining, few states have benefitted more than Texas from migrants, whether they be refugees, asylum recipients, documented, or undocumented. See, e.g., https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/immigrants-in-texas
In the “race to the bottom,” never count out Donald Trump and his GOP stalwarts!
