Immigration Court – Page 48 – immigrationcourtside.com

HAMILTON NOLAN @ THE GUARDIAN: America Needs Help & Carrying Out Dem Platform (Including Fixing Immigration) Would Provide It — So Why Do Dems Get Sidetracked Fighting Asinine GOP Culture Wars They Can’t Win? — “Racism is a wonderfully effective political tool for Republicans, yet explicit racism is frowned upon in polite society now, so there is a constant flow of new issues to stand in for racism in political discourse.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/11/democrats-fake-culture-wars-crt-republicans?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I do not know if I can survive three more years of Democrats stumbling over themselves to disavow the Democratic platform in a doomed attempt to win bad-faith culture wars. It is too painful, like watching ruthless hunters herding panicked animals over the side of a cliff. The poor, dumb beasts inevitably go extinct if they are not able to outthink such a rudimentary strategy.

Message to Democrats: embrace economic bread-and-butter issues to win | Matthew Karp and Dustin Guastella

Walk around your town. Explore a major American city. Drive across the country. What are the most important problems you see? There is poverty. Homelessness. A lack of affordable housing. Vast and jaw-dropping economic and racial inequality. There is a lack of public transportation, a broken healthcare system, environmental degradation, and a climate crisis that threatens to upend our way of life. These are real problems. These are the things that we need our government to fix. These are what we need to hear politicians talk about. These are what we must debate and focus on, if we are really concerned about human rights and our children’s future and all the other big things we claim to value.

I guarantee you that neither “cancel culture” nor “critical race theory” nor, worse of all, “wokeness” will grab you as enormous problems after your exploration of America, unless that exploration ranges only from a college faculty lounge to a cable TV studio to the office of a rightwing thinktank. These are all words that mean nothing. To the extent that they are real at all, they are niche concerns that plague such a small subset of Americans that they deserve to be addressed only after we have solved the many other, realer problems.

All these terms function primarily as empty vessels into which bad-faith actors can pour racism, so that it may appear more palatable when it hits the public airwaves. Common sense tells us we should spend most of our time talking about the biggest problems, and less time on the lesser problems, and no time on the mythical problems. To engage in long and tortured debates over these slippery and indefinable culture war terms is to violate that rule, with awful consequences for everyone.

Republicans will push these culture wars as far as they can, but it takes Democrats to make the strategy work

Let’s not bullshit about this. Racism is a wonderfully effective political tool for Republicans, yet explicit racism is frowned upon in polite society now, so there is a constant flow of new issues to stand in for racism in political discourse. Lee Atwater, who invented Nixon’s “southern strategy”, explained this all decades ago, and it is still true. George Wallace could be outright racist, but subsequent generations of politicians have had to cloak it in “welfare reform” or being “tough on crime” or, now, opposition to “wokeness” and “critical race theory” – things which mean, by the way, “caring about racism”.

Three-quarters of a million Americans are dead from a pandemic. We have a Democratic president and a booming economy. So we will get culture wars, and more culture wars, all of which are built on stoking various forms of hate. This is a game that serious leaders should not play. Unfortunately, we don’t have too many serious leaders. We have the Democratic party.

. . . .

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Read the complete article at the link. Nobody manipulated “stand in racism” more skillfully than incoming Virginia GOP Governor Glenn Younkin. So, we can expect a steady onslaught of these sleazy, yet highly effective, tactics over the next three years.

By now, a Dem Administration could have eliminated Title 42 restrictions, regularized asylum processing at the border, instituted a robust refugee program near the Northern Triangle to “incentivize” applications abroad, slashed the Immigration Court backlog to a manageable size, and replaced unsuitable Immigration Judges and Appellate Immigration Judges with competent ones who would do the right thing and issue the necessary positive guidance to end systemic abuses by both EOIR and DHS.

As an added bonus, unnecessary and expensive litigation in the Circuits resulting from EOIR‘s poor performance could be reduced. The savings on both sides could be “repurposed” into increasing Immigration Court representation.

Sure, Repubs would drum up racist myths and carry out an energetic campaign of hate and xenophobia to rally their base. They undoubtedly would make the outrageously false claim that complying with the Refugee Act of 1980, the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the Convention Against Torture amounts to “open borders.” But, in case the Dems haven’t noticed, that’s already happening!

The Biden Administration could shoot everyone approaching our border dead and the GOP would still say “open borders.” Honesty, reality, and human decency simply aren’t part of the GOP game plan. Yet, the Dems keep falling for the bait!

The Administration is basically carrying out a “Miller Lite” restrictionist immigration policy and demeaning themselves by violating statutory and constitutional requirements right and left. But, that hasn’t stopped the GOP from dishonestly claiming “open borders,” nor has it deterred the so-called “mainstream media” from repeating this BS.

What the Dems have done is “de-energized” an important segment of their own base as well as dis-served the nation by continuing illegal anti-immigrant policies at a time when we could and should be admitting more immigrants through a revived legal immigration system and much more honest and robust refugee and asylum programs. In other words, Dems have shot themselves in both feet!

Following the asylum and refugee laws and giving applicants due process isn’t actually a “policy option.” It’s the law!

Dem spinelessness and intransigence on immigration have created the worst of all worlds. Even with truth, logic, justice, and common sense potentially on their side, the Dems cluelessly are helping the GOP succeed on their toxic agenda of stupidity, dishonesty, hate, and “deconstruction of democracy.”

There is, of course, no guarantee that any particular actions will bring electoral victory in the future. But, rather than being the GOP’s foil, why not do the right thing? Even if they ultimately lose, the Dems would save some lives, improve the situation of millions of Americans, and, at the very worst, go down fighting for something worthwhile, rather than being “herded over the cliff” by the GOP racists.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-12-21

🏴‍☠️TOTALLY LOST IN TRANSLATION!🤮 — Inadequate Interpretation Is Just One Of Many Mockeries Of Due Process In Garland’s Disgracefully Dysfunctional Immigration Courts! — “[T]he promise of justice in immigration court is little more than a façade!”

https://cmsny.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ab341dd06620fe24c64cc2f00&id=8c2b818989&e=be87a1d505

By Maya P. Barak, University of Michigan-Dearborn:

This quote sums it all up for me:

. . . .

Ultimately, perceptions of justice within immigration court merit examination not despite the fact that due process can be used to manipulate images of fairness, but because of it.

This study highlights just some of the many problems running deep within the US immigration system. Current interpretation and technology practices reveal the promise of justice in immigration court is little more than a façade—at least from immigration attorneys’ perspectives. Further exploration of due process within immigration court is needed to determine whether or not addressing existing interpretation and technology problems through the reforms proposed here would improve immigrants’ access to justice in a meaningful way. Drawing inspiration from movements to abolish the death penalty, prison, and the police, meaningful immigration court reform efforts should also reduce the need for an immigration court altogether.

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When I arrived at the Arlington Immigration Court in 2003, I found the contract interpreters to be excellent — some truly outstanding. A key part of the “Due Process Team.”

Before I retired in 2016, however, EOIR “re-competed” the interpretation contract and awarded it to a company that did not appear to have sufficient qualified interpreters already on staff to perform the functions. That company offered to employ most of the interpreters of the “deposed contractor,” but evidently at lower salaries and less favorable terms. The predictable result: Some of the best interpreters left and went to Article III Courts, State Courts, or other types of interpretation offering better wages and working conditions.

“[T]he promise of justice in immigration court is little more than a façade!” This bears repeating, over and over, until we get the radical due process reforms and long overdue personnel changes we need at EOIR.

This isn’t exactly “new news” to Garland and friends! Shortly after the “Ashcroft Purge of ’03,” Peter Levinson wrote a scholarly, yet scathing, expose’ of the “farce of justice at the BIA” entitled “The Facade Of Quasi-Judicial Independence In Immigration Appellate Adjudication.”

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2018/05/17/courtside-history-lest-we-forget-the-ashcroft-purge-at-the-bia-in-2003-destroyed-the-pretext-of-judicial-independence-at-eoir-forever-heres-how-read-peter-levinson/

“Eyore In Distress” — Some believe that Attorney General Merrick Garland could be charged with “cruelty to stuffed animals” for his callous failure to heed the desperate cries for help from poor abused, long suffering EYORE.

Nearly two decades later, now almost a year into the second “post-Ashcroft” Dem Administration, and still no effective corrective actions at EOIR! Indeed, whatever remnants of due process might have existed in 2003 have deteriorated steadily since then, despite nearly nine years of Dem Administrations and enough weighty evidence to sink a battleship. During that time, thousands of lives and American families have been ruined and several generations of immigration attorneys driven to despair (some quitting the field) by a system any first year law student could see is totally out of compliance with Constitutional due process and fundamental fairness!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-12-21

😎🗽ASYLUM GRANT RATES REBOUND MODESTLY UNDER BIDEN AFTER FOUR YEARS OF SYSTEMIC ARTIFICIAL WHITE NATIONALIST REPRESSION UNDER TRUMP, EVEN AS NUMBER OF ASYLUM DECISIONS RECEDES — Grant Rates Still Lag Far Behind FY 2012 When Well Over 50% Were Granted, Showing Inexcusable “Lost Decade” In EOIR’s Asylum Adjudications & Proper Legal Development Of Asylum Law!

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

Asylum Grant Rates Climb Under Biden

Under the new Biden administration, asylum seekers are seeing greater success rates in securing asylum. While relief grant rates had fallen ever lower during the Trump years to just 29 percent in FY 2020, they rose to 37 percent in FY 2021 under President Biden.

However, with the ongoing partial Court shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a sustained drop in the number of asylum decisions. Even with the greater odds of success, the number of asylum seekers who were granted asylum during FY 2021 was only 8,349 with an additional 402 granted another type of relief in place of asylum. In sheer numbers, this was only about half the number of asylum seekers who had been granted relief during FY 2020, the final year of the Trump administration.

The improved asylum grant rates during FY 2021 began only after the new Biden administration took office at the end of January 2021. Tracking asylum grant rates month-by-month rather than year-by-year, the increase in asylum grant rates under President Biden for the last quarter of FY 2021 (July-September 2021) was even larger: asylum seekers’ success rates climbed to 49 percent. Not only was this much higher than at any period during the Trump years, the asylum success rate was up five percentage points from 44 percent during the last quarter of the Obama administration.

Historically, asylum seekers have had greater success in the Immigration Court for affirmative as compared with defensive asylum cases. At one time, the majority of asylum applications decided by Immigration Judges were affirmative cases referred by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). However, most asylum applications today are considered defensive applications and filed in response to the Department of Homeland Security initiating removal proceedings in Immigration Court.

Asylum seekers who are represented by an attorney – as most are in affirmative asylum cases – have greatly increased odds of winning asylum or other forms of relief from deportation. For all Court decisions in FY 2021, nearly nine out of ten (89%) asylum seekers in affirmative and defensive cases were represented. This was clearly a vital factor in improving overall asylum success rates since in the prior year, FY 2020, representation rates were 80 percent or nine (9) percentage points lower.

Read the full report – the first in a two-part series – to obtain many more details about trends in Immigration Court asylum decisions over the past two decades at:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/667

The impact of gender, age, language, and nationality will be covered in the second report in this two-part series. Readers need not wait to probe these and many more details on asylum decisions using TRAC’s free web query tool — now updated through September 2021 and expanded to cover gender, age, and language details. As before users can also drill in to see how decisions vary geographically, by state, Immigration Court, and hearing location. Go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/

To examine a variety of Immigration Court data, including asylum data, the backlog, MPP, and more now updated through September 2021, use TRAC’s Immigration Court tools here:

https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive a notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1

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TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

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Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

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Here’s some historical perspective. When the Refugee Act of 1980 was enacted, the INS took the position that the standard of proof for asylum was the same as the “traditional” standard for the pre-existing relief of withholding of deportation. That was a “clear probability,” of persecution, which means “more likely than not.”

Because this was a high standard that had been “over-rigorously applied” to deny almost all withholding cases (refugees from communism — Other Than Chinese — were about the only folks who had any chance of being granted withholding, and that was rare) the asylum grant rate remained very low for the first six years following enactment of the Refugee Act. In 1987, that grant rate was only approximately 11%.

In 1987, the Supreme Court decided INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421 (1987). (As the Acting General Counsel/Deputy General Counsel of INS, I had helped the Solicitor General prepare and articulate the Government’s position. My future Immigration Court friend and colleague, Judge Dana Leigh Marks, then known as Dana Marks Keener, argued for Ms. Cardoza-Fonseca. I sat at counsel’s table with the “SG’s Team” during the oral argument before the Court. Shortly thereafter, I left INS to go into private practice at Jones Day.)

To the surprise of many of us, the Supremes soundly rejected the INS position and ruled in favor of Ms. Cardoza-Fonseca. The Court said that a “well-founded fear” of persecution was intended to be a much more generous standard, significantly less than a probability and including a “10% chance” of persecution.

Thereafter, the BIA issued a precedent implementing the “well founded fear” standard as “significantly less than a probability” — an “objectively reasonable” fear of persecution — in Matter of Mogharrabi, 19 I&N Dec. 437 (BIA 1987). Mogharrabi also stood out as one of the very few BIA precedents up to that time actually granting, rather than denying asylum on appeal. (When I returned to Government service in 1995 as Chairman of the BIA, I was a “true believer” in making the as yet “unfulfilled promise of Cardoza and Mogharrabi” a reality! That’s still at the top of my “Due Process Forever Wish List!”)

In the immediate aftermath, while “parroting” the Cardoza and Mogharrabi generous standards, most Immigration Judges and BIA panels appeared to actually continue to apply the more restrictive “probability” or “more likely than not” standard. But, over time, the Circuit Courts of Appeals and sometimes even Board Members (most often in dissent) began “calling out” EOIR Judges for what appeared to be an intentional misapplication of the asylum standard.

A regulation change to provide a “rebuttable presumption of future persecution” arising out of past persecution also helped. That is, once the Article III Courts forced EOIR judges to actually apply, rather than ignore or disingenuously “work around,” the regulatory presumption. See generally, Matter of Chen, 20 I&N Dec. 16 (BIA 1989) (particularly the concurring opinion by Judge Michael J. Heilman) for the “Bush I Era” historical impetus for the past persecution regulations. Ironically, the BIA sometimes had trouble “following up” on the generous teachings of their own Chen precedent.

Additionally, Judge Marks and other trained asylum experts from outside the Government who joined the Immigration Court prior to 2001 began actually applying the correct standard to grant asylum. (By stark contrast, Sessions and Barr “stacked and packed” the BIA with some of the most virulent anti-asylum judges in America while appointing far too many individuals with no immigration or asylum expertise whatsoever to be Immigration Judges at the trial level. The idea was to “build the deportation railroad” 🚂 with the BIA and Immigration Court as “mere whistle stops,” at best.)

Consequently, over time, between 1987 and 2013, there was a slow but steady increase in asylum grant rates as Courts and some Immigration Judges and BIA Members pushed EOIR to finally “live up” to the more generous Cardoza/Mogharrabi standard. A number of those who helped this push for justice for asylum seekers are now members of our “Round Table of Former Immigration Judges!”🛡⚔️

The world certainly was a dangerous place for refugees in the years leading up to FY 2012, when asylum grants actually reached their “high water mark” of well over 50%. But, it has gotten even more dangerous over the past decade.

That, until recently, asylum grant rates had steadily declined since FY 2012 while conditions for refugees continued to worsen shows that the EOIR system is largely about politically driven enforcement manipulation rather than a test of reality or a fair, efficient, competent, and legally sound approach to asylum law.

The modest but welcome rise in asylum approval rates under Biden happened notwithstanding a BIA that continues to churn out unduly and intentionally restrictive precedents and to botch basic asylum decisions on a regular basis! It also occurred under an Attorney General who has largely “looked the other way” and exhibited indifference as the BIA (composed mostly of “holdover” Trump-era appointees or “survivors” of the Trump regime) continues to abuse asylum seekers.

Lawyers and applicants who have kept fighting for their rights in a system designed to railroad and demoralize them deserve much credit for the improved results and for constantly battling to expose the “Garland BIA’s” gross deficiencies to the Article III Circuit Courts. That’s what the “New Due Process Army” is all about!

Just think what the asylum grant rate might look like with a better BIA of independent expert judges who consistently provided positive precedents and guidance on asylum law and consistently enforced them against those Immigration Judges who have improperly and unethically created “Asylum Free Zones” in some jurisdictions!

Think of how many lives could be saved with better judges at the trial, and particularly the appellate, levels of EOIR! Backlogs and unnecessary litigation would also begin to decrease — without bogus and wasteful “enforcement gimmicks” like Garland’s “Dedicated Dockets” designed and implemented from above by disconnected, sometimes clueless, bureaucrats as a toxic example of backlog-building “Aimless Docket Reshuffling!”

Not rocket science! 🚀 Too bad nobody at Garland’s DOJ appears to care much about human lives and taxpayer dollars going down the drain on an unfair, backlogged, and stunningly dysfunctional asylum system at EOIR and on the Southern Border. ☹️

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-10-21

🤮POLITICS: REBECCA SOLNIT: DEMS NEED TO STOP “TRYING TO UNDERSTAND” THE NEO NAZI GOP RIGHT WING & FIGHT IT LIKE THE THREAT TO HUMAN DECENCY, TRUTH, & ETHICAL BEHAVIOR THAT IT IS! — “And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?”

https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-on-not-meeting-nazis-halfway/

From Literary Hub:

Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting

Nazis Halfway

Why Is It So Hard for Democrats to Act Like They Actually Won?

By Rebecca Solnit

November 19, 2020

When Trump won the 2016 election—while losing the popular vote—the New York Times seemed obsessed with running features about what Trump voters were feeling and thinking. These pieces treated them as both an exotic species and people it was our job to understand, understand being that word that means both to comprehend and to grant some sort of indulgence to. Now that Trump has lost the 2020 election, the Los Angeles Times has given their editorial page over to letters from Trump voters, who had exactly the sort of predictable things to say we have been hearing for far more than four years, thanks to the New York Times and what came to seem like about 11,000 other news outlets hanging on the every word of every white supremacist they could convince to go on the record.

The letters editor headed this section with, “In my decade editing this page, there has never been a period when quarreling readers have seemed so implacably at odds with each other, as if they get their facts and values from different universes. As one small attempt to bridge the divide, we are providing today a page full of letters from Trump supporters.” The implication is the usual one: we—urban multiethnic liberal-to-radical only-partly-Christian America—need to spend more time understanding MAGA America. The demands do not go the other way. Fox and Ted Cruz and the Federalist have not chastised their audiences, I feel pretty confident, with urgings to enter into discourse with, say, Black Lives Matter activists, rabbis, imams, abortion providers, undocumented valedictorians, or tenured lesbians. When only half the divide is being tasked with making the peace, there is no peace to be made, but there is a unilateral surrender on offer. We are told to consider this bipartisanship, but the very word means both sides abandon their partisanship, and Mitch McConnell and company have absolutely no interest in doing that.

Paul Waldman wrote a valuable column in the Washington Post a few years ago, in which he pointed out that this discord is valuable fuel to right-wing operatives: “The assumption is that if Democrats simply choose to deploy this powerful tool of respect, then minds will be changed and votes will follow. This belief, widespread though it may be, is stunningly naive.” He notes that the sense of being disrespected “doesn’t come from the policies advocated by the Democratic Party, and it doesn’t come from the things Democratic politicians say. Where does it come from? An entire industry that’s devoted to convincing white people that liberal elitists look down on them. The right has a gigantic media apparatus that is devoted to convincing people that liberals disrespect them, plus a political party whose leaders all understand that that idea is key to their political project and so join in the chorus at every opportunity.”

There’s also often a devil’s bargain buried in all this, that you flatter and, yeah, respect these white people who think this country is theirs by throwing other people under the bus—by disrespecting immigrants and queer people and feminists and their rights and views. And you reinforce that constituency’s sense that they matter more than other people when you pander like this, and pretty much all the problems we’ve faced over the past four years, to say nothing of the last five hundred, come from this sense of white people being more important than nonwhites, Christians than non-Christians, native-born than immigrant, male than female, straight than queer, cis-gender than trans.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just complained that “you can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Now it’s considered bigotry.” This is a standard complaint of the right: the real victim is the racist who has been called a racist, not the victim of his racism, the real oppression is to be impeded in your freedom to oppress. And of course Alito is disingenuous; you can say that stuff against marriage equality (and he did). Then other people can call you a bigot, because they get to have opinions too, but in his scheme such dissent is intolerable, which is fun coming from a member of the party whose devotees wore “fuck your feelings” shirts at its rallies and popularized the term “snowflake.”

Nevertheless, we get this hopelessly naïve version of centrism, of the idea that if we’re nicer to the other side there will be no other side, just one big happy family. This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists’ “everyone’s feelings are valid” applied to everything. But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?

I’ve spent much of my adult life watching politicians like Bill Clinton and, at times, Barack Obama sell out their own side to placate the other, with dismal results.

I think our side, if you’ll forgive my ongoing shorthand and binary logic, has something to offer everyone and we can and must win in the long run by offering it, and offering it via better stories and better means to make those stories reach everyone. We actually want to see everyone have a living wage, access to healthcare, and lives unburdened by medical, student, and housing debt. We want this to be a thriving planet when the babies born this year turn 80 in 2100. But the recommended compromise means abandoning and diluting our stories, not fortifying and improving them (and finding ways for them to actually reach the rest of America, rather than having them warped or shut out altogether). I’ve spent much of my adult life watching politicians like Bill Clinton and, at times, Barack Obama sell out their own side to placate the other, with dismal results, and I pray that times have changed enough that Joe Biden will not do it all over again.

. . . .

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Read the rest of the article at the link.

As Rebecca points out, “understanding,” “compromising,” and “engaging in productive dialogue” with the disingenuously disgruntled and “uber angry” far right turns out to be a “one way street” (surprised?). A “fools errand” if you will.

I dealt with transgender youth on a number of occasions during my career on the bench of the Arlington Immigration Court. All of they had suffered severe mental trauma and/or physical mistreatment from peers and adults who should have known better. Most had attempted suicide one or more times.

How is it acceptable for them and their fundamental identities to be “abused” and “dehumanized” by out of control, irresponsible “adults” and “parents” at school board meetings and other events? The GOP should be ashamed for giving in and seeking “political capital” from these reprehensible and cowardly attacks on students, teachers, and public officials trying to do the right thing on accommodating the needs of LBGTQ+ students and African American and other minority students and immigrants whose histories, humanity, and contributions for many generations continuing into the present have not been dealt with honestly, fairly, and humanely by our society. How will appeasing or meeting halfway those peddling lies and hate make things better for future generations?

Just how much “understanding,” “compassion,” “courtesy,” or “compromise” did George Floyd’s family, vulnerable transgender youth, or black students suffering from generations of systemic societal racism and anti gay laws, policies, and social institutions (and “false denial”) get from these folks on the right?

Stunning examples of Dems failures to stand up for their principles, and the disastrous consequences for humanity, are the continuation of Stephen Miller’s grotesque misuse of Title 42 at the border and AG Garland’s failure to clean house and institute common sense reforms at his dysfunctional, anti-immigrant, anti-asylum, anti-due process, intentionally dehumanizing Immigration Courts known as EOIR! His “tolerance” for gross abuses by so-called “courts” that he controls and for the dehumanization and mistreatment of asylum seekers and other migrants on a daily basis is not “compromise” or “understanding!” It’s an ongoing national disgrace!

Did Stephen Miller really win the last election? Garland & Mayorkas are acting like he did!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-09-21

🤮👎PROPER CAT ANALYSIS A VICTIM OF GARLAND’S “ANY REASON TO DENY” BIA — Arulnanthy v. Garland, 5th Cir.

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/19/19-60760-CV0.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca5-on-jurisdiction-cat-arulnanthy-v-garland#

“The collateral consequences of the BIA’s order ensure that Arulnanthy’s petition for review remains justiciable despite his removal to Sri Lanka. Substantial evidence supports the finding that Arulnanthy was not a credible witness. And the BIA was right to consider Arulnanthy’s lack of credibility fatal to his asylum claim. But the BIA’s refusal to consider his country-conditions evidence in the purely objective CAT context was error. We therefore REMAND the petition as to the CAT claim and DENY it in all other respects.”

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This isn’t “rocket science” and the 5th Circuit is hardly known as a hotbed of due process and fundamental fairness for migrants!

But, when the BIA starts with “the migrant loses” as the “bottom line,” and then reasons backwards (if they bother reasoning at all, in their usual haste to keep the “deportation assembly line” moving) the “analysis” is likely to be defective. This 5th Circuit panel actually took their job of analyzing the record before them more seriously than Garland “faux expert” BIA!

One would think that a former Court of Appeals Judge would take due process, impartiality, and quality control seriously in his “wholly owned and operated ‘court’ system.” But, that would be someone other than Judge Garland!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Xenophobia, Never!

PWS

11-09-21

⚠️BIA’S GRUDGING ACCEPTANCE OF SUPREMES’ RULING ON “STOP TIME RULE” MASKS ATROCIOUS ANTI-ASYLUM PRECEDENT TARGETING INDIGENOUS REFUGEES! — Garland Ignores Bad Law, Anti-Immigrant Precedents Flowing From His Court!”🤮 — Matter of M-F-O-, 28 I&N Dec. 428 (BIA 2021)

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1446396/download

“Floaters” — Garland, Mayorkas, and other Biden honchos appear unable to get beyond this “Stephen Miller vision” for legal asylum seekers. “Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

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“Inside Baseball”⚾️ — The human, administrative, and taxpayer costs of the BIA’s unwillingness to uphold the statute in the face of DHS and EOIR “Management” intransigence — and their disregard for clear warning signals from the Supremes — are unfathionable to anyone outside this totally dysfunctional and out of control system! See, e.g., https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-on-stop-time-rule-quebrado-cantor-v-garland.

Could there be any clearer example of the need to take this mess out of the DOJ and create a competent, expert, independent Article I Immigration Court with real judges?

The asylum/withholding portion of this decision appears to be an atrocious misconstruction and intentional misapplication of asylum law by the BIA!

In fewer than five minutes of “internet research,” I found three authoritative pieces of evidence that should have been sufficient to show an endemic, ongoing racial and psg persecution of Indigenous Guatemalans and a total failure of state protection. See, e.g., https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-ca6-18-03500/pdf/USCOURTS-ca6-18-03500-0.pdf; https://monthlyreview.org/2020/09/01/a-violent-guatemala/; https://minorityrights.org/trends2018/guatemala/.

This, in turn, should long ago have been adequate for a BIA of better-qualified appellate judges who have asylum expertise and are willing to to stand up for the legal rights of asylum seekers to issue a precedent finding a “pattern or practice” of such persecution in Guatemala. See, e.g., 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(2)(iii)(A).

With such a precedent, cases like this could be expeditiously granted at the Asylum Office or in focused Immigration Court hearings, instead of “kicking around the system” for more than three years and then being wrongly decided at both the trial and appellate levels. Wonder why our immigration system is a mess? Look no further than Garland’s anti-immigrant EOIR!

The panel’s conclusion that indigenous status wasn’t even “a reason” for gang persecution is preposterous — proof of institutional bias against asylum seekers, particularly those from the Northern Triangle!

The improperly and intentionally skewed asylum denial rates at our Southern Border feed the nativist fiction that asylum seekers are illegally seeking entry into the US. In reality, they appear to be victims of systemic racial, ethnic, and xenophobic bias fueled by both DHS and DOJ even under this Administration.

We currently have no functioning legal asylum system at ports of entry, nor have we had one for several years. “Gimmicks” like “Remain in Mexico” and “Title 42” have illegally replaced our legal protection system.

Why WOULDN’T folks seek refuge through irregular entry in such an insane situation? Who in their right mind wouldn’t?

This system further generates bogus “apprehension” numbers used by DHS, DOJ, and politicos of both parties to generate false panic about the arrival of persons seeking legal status that we have unlawfully suspended!

Many of these individuals deserve to be legally admitted and allowed to contribute to our society! Instead, they are demonized, demeaned, dehumanized, and otherwise mistreated by our Government.

Indeed, GOP politico-restrictionist-alarmists are already trying to inflame public opinion by raising the manufactured “specter” that a slow moving so-called “caravan” of unarmed, desperate, and vulnerable migrants seeking to apply for legal refuge from some of the most repressive and dangerous countries in the world are an existential threat to the security of what is supposed to be the most powerful nation on earth! Letter asking BIden to enforce laws at brder 11.4.21 What poppycock!

They mischaracterize the group as having “nonexistent asylum claims.” But, how would they or anyone else know, since we currently have no system to fairly adjudicate such claims and no reliable information about the individual circumstances on which they are based?

Instead of engaging in racially charged panic and lawless enforcement, why not just direct them to report to legal ports of entry where they could be properly screened by trained Asylum Officers in a prompt and fair manner? 400 well-trained Asylum Officers doing two cases per day could complete the screening in a matter of days or several weeks at most!

Those who pass credible fear could be referred to Immigration Court in cooperation with legal aid and NGO groups to help them prepare and insure appearance. Represented asylum seekers appear for Immigration Court at a rate approaching 100%! Why wouldn’t an Administration truly interested in a fair and orderly asylum system concentrate on increasing representation rather than imposing more “guaranteed to fail” enforcement-only gimmicks?

Those who do not pass credible fear could be returned, provided that can be done in a safe and humane manner, perhaps working with the UNHCR and other international aid organizations to insure safe and orderly acceptance in the home nations.

And, unlike the current lawless system, we would actually have some empirical information about the claims of those applying at the border. It seems likely that under a fair and legal application asylum law, many would have valid asylum claims. But, without a fair hearing system and more Immigration Judges and BIA judges who are experts in asylum law and will fairly apply it, who knows? Right now, everyone is just “guessing” about the potential merits the claims because we don’t now have, and haven’t for some years had, a fair system for deciding those individual cases!

Here’s a still-timely article from Professor Bill Hing (ImmigrationProf Blog) about how we are repeating our past mistakes of mistreating Central American asylum seekers. https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_race_poverty_law_journal/vol17/iss2/5/

The same is true of Haitians seeking asylum. https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/11/biden-is-replaying-a-forgotten-us-atrocity-against-haitian-refugees.html

An Administration unwilling to stand up for values, justice, and the rule of law for the most vulnerable among us doesn’t stand for much of anything at all. Maybe cowardice and lack of moral compass is the reason why Dems can’t govern and keep losing elections they should have won!

The GOP long ago “cornered the market” on dishonesty, immorality, and anti-democratic behavior. The Dems can gain nothing, and lose much, by emulating them!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-05-21

⚖️👎🏽LATEST QUAD OF ARTICLE III “BODY SLAMS” SHOWS ENDEMIC PROBLEM OF ANTI-IMMIGRANT BIAS, UNPROFESSIONAL WORK PRODUCT @ GARLAND’S BIA — Wrong On: PSG, Failure Of State Protection, Internal Relocation, Nexus, Right To Counsel, Statutory Interpretation!

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca6-on-psg-zometa-orellana-v-garland-unpub

CA6 on PSG: Zometa-Orellana v. Garland (Unpub.)

Zometa-Orellana v. Garland

“Ana Mercedes Zometa-Orellana, a native and citizen of El Salvador, suffered regular beatings and rape by her domestic partner. She sought asylum and withholding of removal based both on political opinion and membership in a particular social group. An immigration judge (IJ) denied asylum and withholding of removal, and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed that ruling. Since then, however, a crucial case on which both the BIA and the IJ relied to assess Zometa-Orellana’s particular social group was vacated by the Attorney General. And the IJ and BIA failed to consider the entire record in determining the El Salvadorian Government’s willingness to respond and Zometa-Orellana’s ability to relocate in El Salvador. For these reasons, we GRANT the petition, VACATE the BIA’s decision, and REMAND for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.”

[Hats off to Dr. Alicia Triche!]

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

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca4-on-nexus-aleman-medrano-v-garland-unpub

CA4 on Nexus: Aleman-Medrano v. Garland (Unpub.)

Aleman-Medrano v. Garland

“Aleman-Medrano’s central argument on appeal is that the agency [EOIR: the IJ and the BIA] erred at the second step of the analysis, improperly rejecting his claim that he was targeted by gang members “on account of” his family ties to his daughter. We agree and, finding no independent basis on which to affirm the agency’s denial of relief, remand for further proceedings. … [W]e are compelled to conclude that Aleman-Medrano’s relationship with his daughter was at least one central reason why he, and not someone else, was threatened by MS-13. … MS-13’s threats to Aleman-Medrano arose “on account of” his family ties and that he thus has met the nexus requirement for both asylum and withholding of removal.”

[Hats off to Abdoul A. Konare!]

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

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-2-1-on-right-to-counsel-usubakunov-v-garland

CA9 (2-1) on Right to Counsel: Usubakunov v. Garland

Usubakunov v. Garland

“This is not a case of a petitioner abusing the system or requesting serial delays of his merits hearing—Usubakunov had found an attorney willing to take his case. Although it may be tempting to look for a bright-line rule, we hew to our precedent that the “inquiry is fact-specific and thus varies from case to case.” Biwot, 403 F.3d at 1099. In doing so, we do not suggest that there is “no limit,” Dissent at 19, to the permissible delay for obtaining a lawyer. Our factspecific inquiry here leads us to conclude that the IJ’s refusal to grant a continuance violated Usubakunov’s right to counsel. … This case illustrates diligence, not bad faith, coupled with very difficult barriers faced by a detained applicant who does not speak English. Usubakunov sought and identified counsel within the period the IJ originally thought reasonable, but he was stymied by counsel’s scheduling conflict. He had identified by name and organization the lawyer who would ultimately represent him, and Usubakunov thus sought his first continuance of the merits hearing. We conclude that “[u]nder these circumstances, denial of a continuance was an abuse of discretion because it was tantamount to denial of counsel.” Biwot, 403 F.3d at 1100. Given these unique circumstances, our grant of the petition will not open the floodgates of continuances, as we apply the same fact-based inquiry we have done for years. That concludes our inquiry, as a petitioner who is wrongly denied assistance of counsel at his merits hearing need not show prejudice. See Gomez-Velazco, 879 F.3d at 993 (citing Montes-Lopez v. Holder, 694 F.3d 1085, 1090 (9th Cir. 2012)). In light of the need to remand for a new hearing, we do not address Usubakunov’s other challenges. We grant Usubakunov’s petition for review and remand for further proceedings. PETITION GRANTED and REMANDED.”

[Hats off to Bardis Vakili (argued), ACLU Foundation of San Diego and Imperial Counties, San Diego, Kristin MacLeod-Ball, American Immigration Council, Brookline, Massachusetts; Mary Kenney, American Immigration Council, Washington, D.C.; for Amicus Curiae American Immigration Council; and Laura J. Edelstein, Jenner & Block LLP, San Francisco, California, for Amicus Curiae Women’s Refugee Commission!]

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

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/natz-victory-slams-matter-of-zhang-melara-v-mayorkas

Natz. Victory Slams Matter of Zhang: Melara v. Mayorkas

Melara v. Mayorkas

“Matter of Zhang, 27 I&N Dec. 569 (BIA 2019) is not entitled to deference by this Court because it is a dramatic break with past agency interpretation, is in conflict with the Department of State’s current interpretation of the false claim to citizenship ground of inadmissibility, and is a break from Congress’s clearly expressed intent. An agency’s interpretation of an unambiguous statute receives no deference if the interpretation is not in line with Congress’s clearly expressed intent. See, e.g., Valenzuela Gallardo v. Lynch, 818 F.3d 808, 815 (9th Cir. 2016). Matter of Zhang takes a dramatic and unique approach to the knowledge element out of the term “false claim to U.S. citizenship.” See, e.g., Richmond v. Holder, 714 F.3d 725, 729 (2d Cir. 2013) (assuming without deciding that false claim inadmissibility provision has knowledge element); Muratoski v. Holder, 622 F.3d 824, 828 (7th Cir. 2010) (agency determined that applicant lacked good moral character because he “knew or should have known” that he was not a United States citizen at the time he made that claim); Valdez-Munoz v. Holder, 623 F.3d 1304, 1308 (9th Cir. 2010) (reasonable factfinder would not be compelled to disagree with agency’s determination that applicant was inadmissible because he “intended to and did make a false claim of United States citizenship”). … The Court finds that Petitioner Antonio Fernando Melara has met his burden of proving each element of naturalization by preponderance of the evidence. Judgment is GRANTED for Petitioner.”

[Hats way off to Sabrina Damast and Patricia M. Corrales!]

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

Individuals are being mistreated! Attorneys are frustrated! Due Process is mocked! Garland is disinterested in fixing the huge structural, personnel, and quality control problems at BIA/EOIR!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-03-21

⚖️🗽TIRED OF BUREAUCRATIC DOUBLESPEAK & BS ON ASYLUM FROM EOIR & DHS? — Get The “Real Skinny” On How U.S. Asylum Should Operate From This Free ABA Seminar Featuring Round Table 🛡⚔️ Experts Judge Joan Churchill, Judge Paul Grussendorf, & Judge Jeffrey Chase On Wednesday, Nov. 10! (Registration Required)

Judge Joan Churchill — Honorable Joan Churchill
Retired U.S. Immigration Judge
Member Round Table of Retired Judges

Hon. Paul Grussendorf
U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.)
Member, Round Table of Former IJs
Author
Source: Amazon.com

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

American Bar Association International Law Section

Program Spotlight: Refugees and Asylum in the U.S.

&

Review of Domestic Interpretations at Odds with International Guidance

Presented by the American Bar Association International Law Section, Immigration & Naturalization Committee, and the International Refugee Law Committee

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

12:00pm ET – 1:00pm ET

Register Today for this Free Program:

This program will review the differences between the Refugee and Asylum processes (which includes Withholding of Removal) in order to provide clarity to new practitioners about the stark contrasts between the two U.S. refugee programs and to inform on international law compliance.

Topic 1: Contrast and compare Refugees and Asylum law and process, and

Topic 2: Compare U.S. domestic interpretations of the legal criteria of Refugees and Asylum seekers with international law and policy.

Moderator and Chair: Joan Churchill (Former Immigration Judge)

Speakers:

Topic 1: The Hon. Paul Grussendorf

Paul Grussendorf has worked with both the refugee and asylum programs in the United States and abroad. He headed a law school legal clinic at the The George Washington University Law School representing asylum seekers, served as an Immigration Judge handling asylum cases, worked as a Supervisory Asylum Officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services [CIS], as a refugee officer with Refugee Affairs Division of USCIS, and as a refugee officer and supervisor with the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

Topic 2: The Hon. Jeffrey Chase

Jeffrey Chase is a retired Immigration judge for New York City. He has written extensively about the inter relationship of international law sources with the U.S. national law when administering cases involving asylum and refugee applications.

He has a blog entitled Opinions/Analysis on Immigration Law. He coordinates The Round Table of Retired Immigration Judges, an informal group of Retired Immigration Judges from both the trial and appellate level, who weigh in on topics relating to the administration of justice by the Immigration Court. The Round Table files amici briefs, and has issued position papers and testimony on issues affecting due process and the administration of justice by the Immigration Courts.

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

Many thanks to my round table friends and colleagues for putting this fantastic free program together and to the ABA International Law Section for sponsoring it!

In 1980, Congress enacted the Refugee Act of 1980 to bring the U.S. into compliance with the U.N. Convention & Protocol on The Status of Refugees, to which we are a signatory through the Protocol.

After some steady progress over the first two decades, today, as a result of actions taken by the last four Administrations since 2001, we are further away than ever from the goal of compliance. Bungling bureaucrats at DHS and DOJ wrongfully view large numbers of refugees and asylees as a “threat” to be “deterred,” rather than as the legal obligation and undeniable assets to our nation that they in truth are.

They fail miserably to fix systemic problems, to properly welcome refugees and asylees, and to adjudicate their claims in a fair and timely manner consistent with due process and racial justice. With stunning tone deafness, they eschew the advice of experts like Judges Churchill, Grussendorf, and Chase in favor of cruel, inept, and “bad faith” gimmicks, like gross misuse of Title 42 to suspend the asylum system indefinitely without Congressional approval.

One only has to look at the evening news to see firsthand what a horrible failure these “Stephen Miller Lite” policies have been and how they ruin lives and trash the reputation of our nation. The failure of the Biden Administration to make good on its campaign promises to migrants and refugees is nothing short of a national disgrace!

The first step in holding Mayorkas, Garland, and the others responsible for this ongoing mess accountable and restoring the rule of law is to understand how the system should and could work.

Then, you will have the tools to sue the hell out of the irresponsible public officials and their bumbling bureaucrats, lobby Congress for better protections for asylum seekers, and generate outraged public opinion until the rule of law, common sense, and human decency are restored to our land! And, we can save some lives that are well worth saving in the process!

Knowledge is power! The Biden Administration’s knowledge of how to implement an efficient, practical, legal, successful asylum system would fit in a thimble with room left over! Get the “upper hand” by listening to these Round Experts!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-02-21

TAL @ SF CHRON: GARLAND’S LATEST BOGUS GIMMICK TO REDUCE BACKLOG GIVES BIG MIDDLE FINGER 🖕 TO DUE PROCESS, SAY ADVOCATES!

Tal Kopan
Washington Reporter, SF Chronicle

S.F. Immigration Court fast-tracking cases in what critics say call a deportation conveyor belt

By Tal Kopan and Deepa Fernandes

A San Francisco immigration judge took less than an hour on Tuesday to order 23 people deported. But none of the immigrants was present and it’s unclear whether they knew about the hearing — even as they were deported for missing it.

The proceedings are part of a recently enacted effort the San Francisco Immigration Court says it’s undertaking to find immigrants it loses track of. Instead, advocates say the court has set up a deportation conveyor belt, one that fast-tracks removal orders before immigrants can make their case to stay in the country.

The practice appears to have started this summer, when immigration attorneys became aware of a subset of hearings being scheduled for immigrants whose mail was being returned as undeliverable. The court was notifying immigrants of the hearings by sending mail to the same incorrect addresses, practically ensuring few would show up.

In immigration law, not showing up at a hearing is enough to be ordered deported on the spot, in what’s known as an “in absentia” order of removal.

According to court data reviewed by The Chronicle, as many as 173 people were given deportation orders because of such proceedings in August and September — a nearly ninefold increase from the 20 similar orders given the previous seven months combined.

ACLU of Northern California attorney Sean Riordan, who has been tracking the issue, compared the situation to a criminal proceeding where, if a defendant didn’t show up for a routine step, the judge declared them guilty with limited ability to challenge the verdict. What’s more, he said, the court scheduled the proceeding expecting the defendant not to show.

“Our society would not tolerate that, it’s just grossly unfair, and we shouldn’t tolerate something similar happening in the immigration courts,” Riordan said. “It’s especially problematic that the San Francisco Immigration Court is spending significant time and resources to obtain so many removal orders through a special docket in cases where they know people will not be able to appear for their hearings.”

At this time, the effort appears limited to the San Francisco court, one of 70 such venues nationwide that hear immigrants’ cases. But advocates fear other courts may see how many cases the San Francisco bench has closed through in-absentia orders and follow suit, saddling scores of immigrants with unknown deportation orders. The immigration court system is run entirely by the Department of Justice, which also employs the judges.

More: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/San-Francisco-Immigration-Court-fast-tracks-16576102.php

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The (completely unnecessary and self-inflicted) “EOIR Travesty” continues! There are many, many ways that Garland could reduce his Immigration Court backlog (most covered by Courtside or elsewhere online) without stomping on any individual rights! But, this utter nonsense doesn’t happen to be one of them!

As anyone with even a passing familiarity with Immigration Court practice knows, DHS and EOIR are notorious for issuing defective notices and then creating illegal “in absentia” orders. The issue of bad notices has actually been to the Supremes twice recently, with the USG losing badly both times, and the possibility of yet a third trip on the horizon.

Yet, several overt rebukes from the Supremes about “unnecessary corner cutting” have engendered no fundamental changes in the notice system at either agency! Garland & Co. seem just as wedded to anti-due-process, wasteful “mondo enforcement gimmicks” at EOIR as Stephen Miller, “Gonzo” Sessions, and “Billy the Bigot” Barr!🤮

So much for the “racial justice agenda” at DOJ and the reputations of DAG Lisa Monaco, Associate AG Vanita Gupta, and AAG/Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, who have all “looked the other way” while their “boss” Garland continues to promote White Nationalist, anti-immigrant, resource wasting policies at EOIR.☠️

Then, incompetent, tone-deaf Dem politicos wonder why support among their “loyal progressive base” is fading fast? Progressives should “remember the EOIR disaster” and total lack of concern for those “fighting the good fight” in Garland’s disgracefully dysfunctional courts when any of Garland’s complicit lieutenants come up for future Article III judicial appointments!

Conduct like Garland’s at EOIR is a direct result of progressives allowing themselves to be “pushed around and disrespected” by a “Democratic Party Establishment” that gives not a hoot for immigrant justice, racial justice, or fair treatment of asylum seekers except when it’s time to solicit contributions or get out the vote! Vice President Kamala Harris appears to have taken a “leave of absence” on what was supposed to be one of her “signature issues!”

Garland’s “in your face tone-deafness” also contains a very clear message that progressive advocates aren’t “getting!” It’s going to take a “radical break from the past” to achieve any meaningful immigration reform at DOJ!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-01-21

☠️🤮UNDER NEW MISMANAGEMENT: Trump’s “New American Gulag” (“NAG”) Now Being Run By Biden, Harris, & Mayorkas, With Garland’s Embedded “Star Chambers” — Coercion, Denial Of Right To Counsel Endemic In Illegal, Immoral, Secretive Biden “Civil” Prison System! — “[W]ithout having knowledge, we’ll go directly to the slaughterhouse!” ⚰️ — That’s The Goal Of “Detention & Deterrence!”

Slaughterhouse — “[W]ithout having knowledge, we’ll go directly to the slaughterhouse!”
Creative Commons License

Star Chamber Justice — “Do you still want to talk to a lawyer, or are you ready to take a final order?” “Justice” Star Chamber Style

https://immigrationimpact.com/2021/10/29/ice-detention-contact-lawyer/

Emma Winger writes on Immigration Impact:

“Ben G.” is a 35-year-old veterinarian from Nicaragua who fled to the United States after he was beaten and tortured by police. When he crossed the border into the United States, he requested asylum. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) eventually transferred Ben to the Winn County Correctional Center, an ICE detention facility in rural Louisiana located four hours away from the nearest metropolitan area. It is also the facility with the fewest immigration attorneys available in the entire country.

Despite passing the government’s initial screening and having a credible fear of persecution, Ben was still unable to find a lawyer. As a fellow detained person noted, “without having knowledge, we’ll go directly to the slaughterhouse.”

Ben’s story illustrates the monumental barriers that detained immigrants face in finding lawyers to represent them. As described in a letter sent October 29 by the American Immigration Council, the ACLU, and 88 legal service provider organizations to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, ICE detention facilities have systematically restricted the most basic modes of communication that detained people need to connect with their lawyers and the rest of the outside world, including phones, mail, and email access.

This must change. The immigration detention system is inherently flawed, unjust, and unnecessary. The best way to eliminate these barriers to justice is to release people from detention.

Although immigrants have the right to be represented by lawyers in immigration proceedings, they must pay for their own lawyers or find free counsel, unlike people in criminal custody who have the right to government-appointed counsel. In many cases, detained immigrants cannot find lawyers because ICE facilities make it so difficult to even get in touch and communicate with attorneys in the first place.

The importance of legal representation for people in immigration proceedings cannot be overstated. Detained people with counsel are 10 times more likely to win their immigration cases than those without representation. Yet the vast majority of detained people — over 70% — faced immigration courts without a lawyer this year.

ICE has set the stage for this problem by locating most immigration detention facilities far from cities where lawyers are accessible. Each year, ICE locks up hundreds of thousands of people in a network of over 200 county jails, private prisons, and other carceral facilities, most often in geographically isolated locations, far from immigration attorneys.

Even when attorneys are available and willing to represent detained people, ICE detention facilities make it prohibitively difficult for lawyers to communicate with their detained clients, refusing to make even the most basic of accommodations. For example, many ICE facilities routinely refuse to allow attorneys to schedule calls with their clients.

As described in the letter, the El Paso Immigration Collaborative reported that staff at the Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico have told their lawyers that they simply don’t have the capacity to schedule calls in a timely manner, delaying requests for more than one week or more.

The University of Texas Law School’s Immigration Law Clinic attempted to schedule a video teleconferencing call with a client at the South Texas ICE Processing Center. An employee of the GEO Group, Inc., which runs the facility, told them that no calls were available for two weeks.

. . . .

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

A “Jim Crow Mentality” of never being held accountable for abuses of law or human morality permeates the politicos, legislators, and Federal Judges of both parties responsible for enabling and upholding this toxic system.

Nowhere is this more obvious than at the DOJ Civil Rights Division. While pontificating on racially abusive local police policies and actions, these folks go to great lengths to overlook the DOJ-run “Star Chamber Courts” embedded in DHS’s “New American Gulag” that disproportionally harm persons of color and deny them basic legal, civil, and human rights every day.

This system is thoroughly rotten! Yet, Garland’s DOJ “defends the indefensible” in Federal Court almost every day.

🇺🇸⚖️ Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-30-21

☹️👎🏽BUMBLING BIA BADLY BUNGLES BASICS, AGAIN! — Applies Wrong Standard In Seeking To Reverse Valid CAT Grant — Obviously Frustrated 3rd Cir. Reinstates IJ Decision Following BIA’s Inept Attempt @ Appellate Review! — Arreaga Bravo v. A.G.

Woman Tortured — The BIA’s blunders in trying to help out their “partners” @ DHS Enforcement can sometimes seem almost comical. But, they are no laughing matter to those facing persecution or torture as a result! Why is Garland indifferent to life-threatening injustice in his courts?
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/203300p.pdf

Key Quote from Judge Greenaway’s decision:

Given the strength and rigor of the IJ’s underlying opinion, along with the BIA having exceeded its proper scope of review, we will vacate the BIA’s final order of removal and remand with instructions to reinstate the IJ’s opinion.

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

There is the good, the bad, the ugly, and the absurdly horrible. This latest BIA travesty falls in the latter category.

Not surprisingly, the Circuit opinion quotes liberally from the BIA’s insipid, mealy-mouthed “bureaucratic double-speak” language! To paraphrase my BIA colleague the late Judge Fred Vacca, thank goodness the 3rd Circuit finally put an end to this “pathetic attempt at appellate adjudication.”

Interesting that rather than remanding to give the BIA a chance to deny again on some newly invented specious basis, the court just reinstated the IJ opinion. There should be a message here! But, Garland and his lieutenants aren’t “getting it!”

This case illustrates deep systemic and personnel problems that Garland has failed to address. Instead of summarily dismissing the DHS’s frivolous appeal with a strong warning condemning it, these types of bad BIA decisions contribute to the unnecessary backlog and both encourage and reward frivolous actions by the DHS.

Additionally, reversing, for specious reasons, a well-done and clearly correct IJ decision granting relief, just to carry out the wishes of DHS Enforcement and political bosses, is intended to discourage respondents and their attorneys while unethically steering Immigration Judges toward a “norm of denial.”

Abused women of color from the Northern Triangle have been particular targets of the EOIR’s seriously skewed anti-immigrant adjudications. This makes the Garland DOJ’s claims to be a “champion of racial justice” ring all the more hollow and disingenuous in every context. There will be no racial justice in America without radical EOIR reform!

What ever happened to our first ever woman of color Veep? Hypothesize that one of the BIA Appellate Immigration Judges responsible for this mess had come before the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation. Wouldn’t you have had some questions about judicial qualifications? So, why is it OK to continue to employ them in untenured Executive Branch quasi-judicial positions where they exercise life or death power over many of the most vulnerable among us, overwhelmingly persons of color, many women, lots of them unrepresented! Kamala Harris, where are you?

It’s all part of an improper “culture of denial” at EOIR, led and “enforced” by the BIA. Garland has disgracefully failed to come to grips with the “anti-due process” that he fosters every day that the “Miller Lite Holdover BIA” remains in their appellate positions.

For heavens sake, with unnecessary “TV Adjudication Centers” coming out EOIR’s ears, reassign these purveyors of bad law and appellate injustice to those lower “courts” where they can do less cosmic damage and real, better qualified appellate judges can “keep on eye” on them!

I keep thinking (or perhaps hoping) that eventually Circuits will tire of continually redoing the BIA’s sloppy work product and then having the cases come back again, sometimes years later, denied on yet another bogus ground!

On the flip side, Judge Garland seems to have infinite “patience” with well-documented substandard performance and painfully obvious anti-immigrant, pro-DHS bias on the part of his BIA.

Wrongful denial of CAT costs lives and can improperly condemn individuals to gruesome and painful death! This is no way to run a court system! I guess it’s easier to “tolerate” lousy judicial performance when you aren’t the one being unfairly and illegally condemned to torture!

Past time for a “line change” in Falls Church!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-29-21

⚖️👩🏻‍⚖️👩🏽‍⚖️👨🏾‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️ GARLAND FINALLY SHOWS SOME PROGRESS ON QUALITY IMMIGRATION JUDGE HIRING — 2/3 of 24 Appointments Have Prior Immigration Practice & Almost Half (11) Have Recent Experience Representing Individuals In Immigration Court, A Substantial Improvement In A Flailing System!

After an extremely disappointing start, Attorney General Merrick Garland is finally bringing some much needed balance and immigration expertise to his broken, dysfunctional, hopelessly backlogged, and overall reeling Immigration Courts. He appears to be at least partially heeding the advice of experts and tapping into the deep pool of private sector, NGO, and clinical program talent to improve the balance, professionalism, fairness, and efficiency of the U.S. Immigration Courts.

After years of a toxic combination of neglect, mismanagement, outright “weaponization,” and poor to haphazard judicial selections biased against well-qualified immigration and Immigration Court experts from the private/NGO/academic sectors, the latest round of judicial hiring by Garland shows a more appropriate and diverse balance of private sector experts, government employees with relevant immigration experience, and those with other types of judicial experience.

Here’s the complete list of 24 new Immigration Judges from EOIR:

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1444911/download

For me, personally, two names particular “jumped out.” First, “NDPA All-Star”🌟 Judge Rebecca J. Walters, until recently the Managing Attorney at nonprofit AYUDA’s Virginia Office, will be Assistant Chief Immigration Judge at the Arlington Immigration Court! (Full disclosure: I am on the AYUDA Advisory Board.) Her “specialty” at AYUDA was litigation on behalf of SIJS applicants before both immigration agencies and the Virginia State Courts.

Judge Rebecca Walters — Hon. Rebecca J. Walters
Assistant Chief Immigration Judge
Arlington, VA
PHOTO: AYUDA

Rebecca and her colleagues appeared before me at the Arlington Immigration Court. Among many other things, she was legal intern at our court while a student at the Washington College of Law at American University. We’ve all come a long way since the days when Rebecca and her fellow interns and JLCs used to “run the stairs” with Judge John Milo Bryant and me when our court was at Ballston, VA!

The second notable appointment is Judge Louis Gordon, until recently of Los Angeles, now at the San Francisco Immigraton Court. He is the son of the late beloved Immigration Judge Nate Gordon. As I mentioned in an obit for his father in Courtside, Louis, then a highly regarded private attorney, argued before the BIA when we visited Los Angeles during my tenure as BIA Chair.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/01/17/in-memorium-judge-nate-gordon-one-of-the-good-guys-tribute-by-carl-shusterman-esquire/

Congrats to Judge Walters, Judge Gordon, and the other recent selections.

Don’t get me wrong! It’s going to take more — much, much more — than a few better judicial appointments to right the rapidly sinking ship at Garland’s EOIR. But, at least it appears to be progress. And, every voice of expertise, fairness, due process, and humanity in a system seriously lacking in all the foregoing qualities helps save lives and generate some energy for systemic improvements, in both “culture” and actual judicial performance, that have long been missing at EOIR.

Yes, although the honchos at the top of EOIR’s “Management Pyramid” would have you believe otherwise, practical, positive change can often come from below in any organization, even one as totally and completely screwed up as EOIR!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-28-21

☠️⚰️👎🏽🤮 SHAFTOLA! — RIGHTY JUDGES USE UNREPRESENTED CASE TO STICK IT TO FEMALE REFUGEES PERSECUTED BY DOMESTIC VIOLENCE! — America’s Worst Circuit Strikes Again! — Jaco v. Garland

https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/20/20-60081-CV0.pdf

PANEL: Jolly, Elrod, and Oldham, Circuit Judges.

OPINION: Jennifer Walker Elrod, Circuit Judge

KEY QOUTE:

We will start, as we did in Gonzales-Veliz, with the state of immigration law. In Matter of M-E-V-G-, the BIA synthesized prior BIA decisions addressing the definition of “particular social group.” 26 I. & N. Dec. 227, 228 (BIA 2014). In doing so, it clarified that an applicant must show that the group is (1) composed of members who share a common immutable characteristic, (2) defined with particularity, and (3) socially distinct within the society in question. Id. at 237. Furthermore, there must

3 The Attorney General issued A-B-II to clarify questions arising from A-B-I. Matter of A-B-, 28 I. & N. Dec. 199 (A.G. 2021) (A-B-II).

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be a nexus between the particular social group and its persecution; the persecution must be “on account of” membership in the group. Id. at 242; 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42).

In clarifying these requirements, the BIA carefully distinguished between the existence of a social group and the nexus between that social group and its persecution. As to the existence of a social group, drawing on the language of the statute, prior BIA decisions, and federal circuit court decisions, the BIA stated that the “social group must exist independently of the fact of persecution,” and that “this criterion is well established in our prior precedents and is already a part of the social group analysis.” M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 236 n.11 (citing Matter of A-M-E- & J-G-U-, 24 I. & N. Dec. 69, 74 (BIA 2007) and Lukwago v. Ashcroft, 329 F.3d 157, 172 (3d Cir. 2003)); see also id. at 242 (referencing the text and structure of 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)).

This does not mean that past persecution is irrelevant. Rather, it means that the group must be sufficiently defined and particularized by characteristics other than persecution. See W-G-R-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 216 (“Circuit courts have long recognized that a social group must have ‘defined boundaries’ or a ‘limiting characteristic,’ other than the risk of being persecuted, in order to be recognized.”). To illustrate, the BIA considered a hypothetical group of former employees of a country’s attorney general. M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 242–43. The employees’ shared experience of working for the attorney general satisfied the requirement of an immutable characteristic. And the group would also be sufficiently particularized. But the group, without more, may not be considered sufficiently distinct in its society. In this case, government persecution may “cataly[ze] the society to distinguish the former employees in a meaningful way and consider them a distinct group.” Id. at 243. But “the immutable characteristic of their shared past experience exists independent of the persecution.” Id.

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In a decision released on the same day as M-E-V-G-, the BIA elaborated on the nexus requirement. W-G-R-, 26 I. & N. Dec. 208 (BIA 2014). In W-G-R-, the BIA stated that “membership in a particular social group [must be] a central reason for [the] persecution.” Id. at 224. This common-sense definition highlights the importance of the distinction between the existence of a group and the persecution that it suffers. In the BIA’s words: “The structure of the Act supports preserving this distinction, which should not be blurred by defining a social group based solely on the perception of the persecutor.” Id. at 218. To define a social group by its persecution collapses the “particular social group” and “persecution on account of membership” inquiries into the same question, contrary to the structure of the INA. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42).

Nevertheless, later in the same year the BIA decided A-R-C-G-. 26 I. & N. Dec. 388 (BIA 2014). In A-R-C-G-, the petitioner claimed that “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” constituted a particular social group. Id. at 388–89. Whereas the IJ determined that the woman’s husband did not abuse her “on account of” her membership in this group, the BIA reversed on appeal. Professing to apply M-E-V-G-, it determined that the “immutable characteristics” of “gender,” “marital status,” and “the inability to leave the relationship” combined “to create a group with discrete and definable boundaries.” A-R-C-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 393.

In 2018, however, the Attorney General overruled A-R-C-G- in A-B-I. 27 I. & N. Dec. at 316. After the BIA recognized the group “El Salvadoran women who are unable to leave their domestic relationships where they have children in common [with their partners],” the Attorney General directed the BIA to refer the decision for his review. Id. at 316–17, 321; see also 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(h)(1)(i). Upon review, the Attorney General reversed. He reiterated that “[t]o be cognizable, a particular social group must ‘exist

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independently’ of the harm asserted in an application for asylum or statutory withholding of removal.” Id. at 334 (citing M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 236 n.11, 243; W-G-R-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 215; and a collection of federal circuit court cases). He reasoned that “[i]f a group is defined by the persecution of its members, then the definition of the group moots the need to establish actual persecution.” Id. at 335. For this reason, he concluded that “[g]enerally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by non-governmental actors will not qualify for asylum.” Id. at 320.

A-B-I, however, was itself overruled by the Attorney General in 2021. On February 2, 2021, the President issued an executive order directing the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security to address the definition of “a particular social group.” Exec. Order No. 14010, § 4(c)(ii), 86 Fed. Reg. 8267, 8271 (Feb. 2, 2021). Because A-B-I and A-B-II addressed that definition, the Attorney General vacated both decisions in anticipation of further rulemaking. He also instructed immigration judges and the BIA to follow “pre-A-B-I precedent, including A-R-C-G-.” A-B-III, 28 I. & N. Dec. at 307.

B.

Swept up in this flurry of overrulings is our decision in Gonzales-Veliz. In that case, we faced the question whether the group “Honduran women unable to leave their relationship”—defined identically to Jaco’s proposed social group—qualified as a particular social group. 938 F.3d at 223. Issued after A-B-I but before A-B-III, we relied in part on A-B-I in concluding that the group was not cognizable. Thus, keeping in mind our duty to exercise Chevron deference, we must determine whether the overruling of A-B-I gives us reason to depart from our decision in Gonzales-Veliz. We hold that it does not.

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In holding that the group in Gonzales-Veliz was not cognizable, we relied in part on A-B-I. Yet we relied on A-B-I not out of deference to it but based on the quality of its reasoning. Indeed, our decision hinged on the inherent circularity involved in defining a particular social group by reference to the very persecution from which it flees. We held that the group was “impermissibly defined in a circular manner. The group is defined by, and does not exist independently of, the harm—i.e., the inability to leave.” Id. at 232. For this reason, we concluded that such an interpretation would “render the asylum statute unrecognizable.” Id. at 235.

In contrast, we recognized that the Attorney General’s “interpretation of the INA in [A-B-I] is . . . a much more faithful interpretation” of the statute. Id. This interpretation was, we said, “a return to the statutory text as Congress created it and as it had existed before the BIA’s A-R-C-G- decision.” Id. That our conclusion had support in the overwhelming weight of BIA precedents shows only that our reading of the statute was correct, not that A-B-I or any other decision was necessary for our conclusion.

Nor does Chevron deference affect our conclusion here. Although we review the BIA’s legal conclusions de novo, we grant Chevron deference to the BIA’s precedential decisions interpreting statutes that it administers. E.g., Rodriguez-Avalos v. Holder, 788 F.3d 444, 449 (5th Cir. 2015). Chevron entails a two-step process for determining whether deference is appropriate. First, the relevant statutory provision must be ambiguous. And second, the agency’s interpretation must be reasonable. E.g., Dhuka v. Holder, 716 F.3d 149, 154 (5th Cir. 2013). Here, even assuming arguendo that the phrase “particular social group” is ambiguous and that A-R-C-G- requires upholding the cognizability of Jaco’s group, that interpretation would be unreasonable for the reasons we gave in Gonzales-Veliz. Relying on circular reasoning is a logical fallacy. An interpretation that renders circular a

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statute’s reasoning is unreasonable and therefore unworthy of deference

under Chevron.4

In the alternative, we hold that even if Gonzales-Veliz were not good law, Jaco’s petition would still be denied.5 Following pre-A-B-I precedent, as A-B-III instructs, would not change the result. In A-B-III, the Attorney General instructed immigration judges and the BIA to follow “pre-A-B-I precedent, including [A-R-C-G-].” A-B-III, 28 I. & N. Dec. at 307. This was also the relevant law at the time of the IJ’s decision, and the IJ correctly distinguished Jaco’s case from that upheld in A-R-C-G-. Because A-R-C-G- is not clearly on point and did not overrule prior case law, we must

4 Our circuit has consistently refused to recognize particular social groups defined primarily by the persecution they suffer. This is true before and after both A-R-C-G- and Gonzales-Veliz. E.g., Orellana-Monson v. Holder, 685 F.3d 511, 518–19 (5th Cir. 2012); De Leon-Saj v. Holder, 583 F. App’x 429, 430–31 (5th Cir. 2014) (per curiam); Suate-Orellana v. Barr, 979 F.3d 1056, 1061 (5th Cir. 2020); Gomez-De Saravia v. Barr, 793 F. App’x 338, 339–40 (5th Cir. 2020) (per curiam); Serrano-de Portillo v. Barr, 792 F. App’x 341, 342 (5th Cir. 2020) (per curiam); Hercules v. Garland, 855 F. App’x 940, 942 (5th Cir. 2021) (per curiam); Argueta-Luna v. Garland, 847 F. App’x 260, 261 (5th Cir. 2021) (per curiam).

This is true even after A-B-III. See Castillo-Martinez v. Garland, No. 20-60276, 2021 WL 4186411, at *2 (5th Cir. Sept. 14, 2021) (per curiam); Santos-Palacios v. Garland, No. 20-60123, 2021 WL 3501985, at *1–2 (5th Cir. Aug. 9, 2021); Temaj-Augustin v. Garland, 854 F. App’x 631, 632 (5th Cir. 2021) (per curiam).

Some, but not all, of our sister circuits have agreed with this anti-circularity principle. Sanchez-Lopez v. Garland, No. 18-72221, 2021 WL 3912145, at *1 (9th Cir. Sept. 1, 2021); Del Carmen Amaya-De Sicaran v. Barr, 979 F.3d 210, 217–18 (4th Cir. 2020); Amezcua-Preciado v. United States Attorney General, 943 F.3d 1337, 1345–46 & n.3 (11th Cir. 2019) (per curiam); but see Juan Antonio v. Barr, 959 F.3d 778, 789 n.2, 791–92 (6th Cir. 2020) (observing that “married indigenous women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” constitutes a cognizable particular social group); Corea v. Garland, No. 19-3537/20-3252, 2021 WL 2774260, at *3–4 (6th Cir. July 2, 2021) (remanding to the BIA to consider whether “Honduran women unable to leave their relationships” is a cognizable social group in light of A-B-III).

5 Alternative holdings are not dicta and are binding in this circuit. Texas v. United States, 809 F.3d 134, 178 n.158 (5th Cir. 2015).

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read it in light of prior BIA decisions, including M-E-V-G-. Cf. Gonzales- Veliz, 938 F.3d at 235 (“[A-B-I] did not alter [prior immigration law]; it simply restated established legal principles and overruled A-R-C-G- because A-R-C-G- deviated from those principles.”).

Indeed, multiple factors counsel toward reading A-R-C-G- narrowly, including (1) the fact that DHS had conceded the existence of a particular social group, and (2) A-R-C-G-’s own statement that “where concessions are not made and accepted as binding, these issues will be decided based on the particular facts and evidence on a case-by-case basis as addressed by the Immigration Judge in the first instance.” 26 I. & N. Dec. at 392–93, 395. For these reasons, Jaco’s group would not be recognized even if Gonzales-Veliz were not the law of this circuit.

We also reject Jaco’s argument that intervening BIA decisions since the time of the IJ’s decision require a remand of her case. A-R-C-G- was the relevant law at the time of the IJ’s decision. Now that A-R-C-G- has been revived, a remand would place Jaco back where she started. And her claims have already been correctly rejected under that standard. Alternatively, regardless of the controlling decision, only an unreasonable interpretation of the INA can support her proposed group.

A remand is also inappropriate because it would be futile. See, e.g., United States v. Alvarez, 210 F.3d 309, 310 (5th Cir. 2000) (per curiam) (declining to remand where a remand would be futile); see also Villegas v. Stephens, 631 F. App’x 213, 214 (5th Cir. 2015) (per curiam) (same). Applicants for asylum or withholding of removal must show that the government “is unable or unwilling to control” the applicant’s persecution. See Tesfamichael v. Gonzales, 469 F.3d 109, 113 (5th Cir. 2006) (citing 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(1)). As the IJ held—and as the BIA affirmed in its first decision—Jaco failed to make this showing. Jaco received child support and

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a restraining order from the Honduran government against her former partner. While her former partner appeared to violate the restraining order on at least two occasions, Jaco reported only one occasion to the judge, and never informed the police. Rather than being unable or unwilling to protect her, the record reflects that the government was responsive to her fears when apprised of them. Therefore, even if Jaco could show membership in a cognizable particular social group, a remand would be futile because it would not change the disposition of her case.6

In holding that Jaco’s proposed group is not cognizable, we do not hold that women who have suffered from domestic violence are categorically precluded from membership in a particular social group. We hold only that a particular social group’s immutable characteristics must make the group sufficiently particularized and socially distinct without reference to the very persecution from which its members flee. E.g., Perez-Rabanales v. Sessions, 881 F.3d 61, 67 (1st Cir. 2018) (“A sufficiently distinct social group must exist independent of the persecution claimed to have been suffered by the alien and must have existed before the alleged persecution began.”); Rreshpja v. Gonzales, 420 F.3d 551, 556 (6th Cir. 2005) (“The individuals in the group must share a narrowing characteristic other than their risk of being persecuted.”).

Accordingly, even if Jaco’s group meets the immutable characteristic and nexus requirements, we still hold that her group is neither particularized nor socially distinct.7 In Gonzales-Veliz, we determined that—even as defined by the persecution that it suffers—the group “Honduran women unable to leave their relationships” lacked the requisite particularity and

6 See supra note 5. 7 See supra note 5.

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social distinction. 938 F.3d at 232; see also Suate-Orellana v. Barr, 979 F.3d 1056, 1061 (5th Cir. 2020); Orellana-Monson v. Holder, 685 F.3d 511, 521–22 (5th Cir. 2012). The same is true here. Substantial evidence supports the BIA’s conclusion that her group is neither particularized nor distinct. And without the illicit element of persecution, the group “Honduran women” is even less particularized. Jaco’s proposed group fails this test.

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

Judge Elrod’s opinion is as preposterous as it is intellectually dishonest and legally wrong. Of course “Honduran women” — whether in a relationship or not — are both socially distinct in society and “particularized” as it excludes men and women of other nationalities. And, there can be little doubt based on empirical reports about femicide and its causes that Honduran women suffer disproportionately.

Indeed, until the BIA went to work restricting the definition following the “Ashcroft Purge of ‘03” the “touchstone” for recognizing a particular social group was “immutability” (including “fundamental to identity”). See,e.g., Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1996).

Indeed, most refugee NGOs and experts view the BIA’s departure from the “immutability test” as both improper and intellectually dishonest. “Social visibility” actually was put forward by the UNHCR as a way of expanding the refugee coverage by insuring the inclusion of groups that strictly speaking might not be “immutable” or “fundamental to identity.”

Contrary to Judge Elrod’s claim, the 1951 Refugee Convention, upon which our Refugee Act of 1980 was modeled, was intended to protect, not reject, refugees to insure that there would be no repetition of the Western democracies’ disgraceful performance prior to and during the Holocaust!

The best comment I have seen so far is from my friend and immigration guru Dan Kowalski:

This is a travesty. For such an important case, the Court should have appointed counsel. I hope pro bono counsel will step in to petition for rehearing and/or en banc review.

“Travesties of justice” are what right wing Federal Judges and White Nationalist restrictionist politicos stand for. The only question is when, if ever, is Congress finally going to act to put an end to this continuing national disgrace that actually harms and kills refugees?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-27-21

⚠️🚸🆘☠️☹️THE GIBSON REPORT —10-25-21 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Posts Show How USG’s Scofflaw Asylum Policies Generate Unnecessary Irregular Entries, Misleading Statistics, More Unnecessary CBP “Apprehensions,” More CBP Abuses, No Accountability For Abusers, & No Plans By Biden Administration To Rectify Situation — Lack Of Principled, Realistic, Legally Compliant Border Policy Undermines Democracy!

Elizabeth Gibson
Attorney, NY Legal Assistance Group
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

NEWS

9th Circ. nixes order mandating more COVID protections for ICE detainees

Reuters: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling said the preliminary injunction issued last year improperly placed ICE’s entire network of detention facilities under the direction of a single federal judge, an error because the plaintiffs failed to show systemic nationwide shortfalls in detainee health protections.

DOJ lifts Trump-era case quotas for immigration judges

ABA: Immigration judges will no longer be required to close 700 cases per year to get a “satisfactory” rating.

Border Patrol apprehensions hit a record high. But that’s only part of the story

NPR: The Border Patrol recorded nearly 1.7 million migrant apprehensions at the Southern border over the past year — the highest number ever, eclipsing the record set more than two decades ago. But that doesn’t mean it’s the biggest number of individual migrants who’ve illegally crossed from Mexico into the U.S. in a single year. In fact, it’s probably not even close. See also Tired of waiting for asylum in southern Mexico, thousands of migrants march north.

New York Set Aside $2.1 Billion for Undocumented Workers. It Isn’t Enough.

NYT: A demand for aid has depleted the Excluded Workers Fund in New York, and thousands of those who qualify could miss out on payments. See also Immigrant families struggle to access child tax credit payments.

A Leaked US Government Report Documents How People With Medical Conditions And Disabilities Were Forced Into The “Remain In Mexico” Program

BuzzFeed: The report offers a rare window into the behind-the-scenes dysfunction and confusion surrounding the so-called Remain in Mexico program, which is set to come back.

‘It Should Not Have Happened’: Asylum Officers Detail Migrants’ Accounts of Abuse

NYT: More than 160 reports, obtained by Human Rights Watch, reveal details of mistreatment that asylum seekers described experiencing from border officials and while in U.S. custody.

Border agents who made violent, lewd Facebook posts faced flawed disciplinary process at CBP, House investigation finds

WaPo: A U.S. Customs and Border Protection discipline board found that 60 agents “committed misconduct” by sharing violent and obscene posts in secret Facebook groups but fired only two — far fewer than an internal discipline board had recommended, according to a House Oversight and Reform Committee report released Monday.

ICE Review Of Immigrant’s Suicide Finds Falsified Documents, Neglect, And Improper Confinement

Intercept: An internal review of Efraín Romero de la Rosa’s death in ICE custody found almost two dozen policy violations during his stint in detention.

Biden’s Pick To Lead CBP Supports Two Of Trump’s Most Controversial Border Initiatives

Intercept: In a confirmation hearing, Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus signaled support for Title 42 and border wall construction.

Biden’s Embrace Of Border Tech Raises Privacy Concerns

Law360: President Joe Biden hasn’t shied away from using controversial technologies for immigration enforcement, raising concerns that his predecessor’s pet project to build a border wall is being replaced with a “virtual wall” rife with privacy and civil liberties problems.

California Hires Border Wall Contractors to Screen, Vaccinate Migrants

Newsweek: SLS was previously assigned to build the border wall under the Donald Trump administration, but now it is expected to work with the health department to also offer migrants prescription services and transportation for “safe onward travel.”

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Justices Revive Citizenship Suit After Feds Yield Ground

Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday vacated a Third Circuit ruling in a deportation case that barred a Yemeni man from acquiring citizenship through his naturalized but divorced parents, after the Biden administration said the lower court overlooked precedent.

Anti-Immigration Group Asks Justices To Nix Bond Hearings

Law360: Advocates of drastically reduced immigration urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to overturn decisions in the Third and Ninth circuits that said migrants who have been detained more than six months should get a bond review hearing.

High Court Urged To Reverse ‘Impossible’ Review Standard

Law360: A coalition of conservationists and ranchers has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Ninth Circuit ruling that the federal government need not subject immigration policies to environmental review, saying it created an “impossible” standard for challenging immigration programs.

1st Circ. Orders BIA To Weigh Honduran Man’s Testimony

Law360: The First Circuit revived a Honduran man’s bid for protection from a deportation order, ruling that immigration authorities saw discrepancies in his testimony that he faced persecution as an HIV-positive gay man where there were none.

CA2 Finds Connecticut Convictions for Possession of Narcotics with Intent to Sell Were Aggravated Felony Drug Trafficking Offenses

AILA: The court held that the petitioners’ convictions under Connecticut General Statute §21a-277(a) were controlled substance offenses and aggravated felony drug trafficking crimes, and that the jurisdictional holding of Banegas Gomez v. Barr remained good law. (Chery v. Garland, 10/15/21)

CA3 Finds BIA Misapprehended Applicable Law by Not Considering Religious Persecution Against Chinese Petitioner Cumulatively

AILA: Granting the petition for review and remanding, the court held that while the BIA was correct in finding that the petitioner had not suffered political persecution in China, its reasons for rejecting religious persecution were flawed. (Liang v. Att’y Gen., 10/12/21)

CA4 Strikes Down Matter of S-O-G- & F-D-B-

AILA: The court abrogated Matter of S-O-G- & F-D-B-, holding that 8 CFR §§1003.10(b) and 1003.1(d)(1)(ii) unambiguously grant IJs and the BIA the general power to terminate removal proceedings. (Chavez Gonzalez v. Garland, 10/20/21)

5th Circ. Wants DOJ Input On Full Court Review Of ICE Policy

Law360: The Fifth Circuit on Wednesday asked the federal government to respond to Texas and Louisiana’s petition for the full appellate court to review a panel’s decision allowing the Biden administration’s policy curbing immigration enforcement operations to remain in place.

Feds Can’t Put DACA Challenge On Hold For Rulemaking

Law360: The Fifth Circuit refused to freeze the Biden administration’s appeal of a lower court order stopping the federal government from approving new applications under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program while it inks a replacement rule.

CA9 (2-1) Reverses Fraihat Preliminary Injunction

LexisNexis: Fraihat v. ICE Maj. – “COVID-19 presents inherent challenges in institutional settings, and it has without question imposed greater risks on persons in custody. But plaintiffs had to demonstrate considerably more than that to warrant the extraordinary, system-wide relief that they sought.

District Court Orders Government to Begin Processing 9,905 FY2020 Diversity Visas as Soon as Is Feasible

AILA: The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the defendants to commence processing the 9,905 DV-2020 visas as soon as is feasible, and to conclude such processing no later than the end of FY2022, or September 30, 2022. (Gomez, et al. v. Biden, et al., 10/13/21)

Feds Say DC Court Wrong To Narrow Power To Expel Migrants

Law360: The federal government urged the D.C. Circuit to erase a lower court’s injunction blocking its use of a public health law to expel migrant families, arguing that the lower court interpreted its powers under the authority too narrowly.

Judge Scolds CBP In Partial Win For Press Freedom Group

Law360: A D.C. federal judge ordered U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Monday to release previously withheld documents related to the government’s 2017 attempt to unmask a Trump administration critic’s Twitter account, while scolding the agency for its “lackluster efforts” to comply with Freedom of Information Act requirements.

Mich. Judge Drops DACA Holders’ Travel Permit Suit

Law360: A Michigan federal judge rejected two brothers’ claims that their due process and religious freedom rights were violated when they were denied travel authorization to Mexico for their grandfather’s funeral, saying that they had no recourse against the officials involved.

Documents Related to Lawsuit Seeking to Make Unpublished BIA Decisions Publicly Available

AILA: DOJ provided a status update to the court, which states that the BIA and NYLAG are in discussions regarding the possibility of posting certain unpublished BIA decisions online, both prospectively and retrospectively. (NYLAG v. BIA, 10/15/21)

DOD Denies Flouting Immigrant Soldier Citizenship Order

Law360: The Pentagon denied foreign-born soldiers’ contention that it was flouting an injunction to process their citizenship requests, telling a Washington, D.C., court that it was complying and close to doubling the number of requests that are processed annually.

IJ Finds Respondent Merits Favorable Exercise of Discretion for Fraud Waiver Under INA §237(a)(1)(H)

AILA: In balancing respondent’s desirability as a permanent resident with social and humane considerations, the IJ found that respondent was entitled to a waiver of removability for fraud or misrepresentation under INA §237(a)(1)(H). Courtesy of Christopher Helt. (Matter of Mohammed, 9/13/21)

CBP Notification of Continuation of Travel Restrictions from Mexico and Intent to Lift Restrictions for Vaccinated Individuals

AILA: CBP notification of the continuation of travel restrictions limiting non-essential travel from Mexico into the U.S. at land ports of entry through 1/21/22, while also announcing the intent to lift these restrictions for individuals fully vaccinated against COVID-19. (86 FR 58216, 10/21/21)

DHS Notice on Implementation of Employment Authorization for Individuals Covered by DED for Hong Kong

AILA: DHS notice establishing procedures for individuals covered by Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) for Hong Kong to apply for employment authorization through 2/5/23. (86 FR 58296, 10/21/21)

RESOURCES

AILA: Attorney Obligations When Posting on Social Media

AILA: Practice Pointer: Best Practices for Preparing and Filing Form I-912, Request for Fee Waiver

AILA: Practice Pointer: Liaison Assistance for VAWA, Us, and Ts

AILA: Use of Video Teleconferences During Immigration Hearings

AILA: Practice Alert: Biden Administration Plans to Rescind COVID-19 Travel Bans and Instead Require Proof of Vaccination

AILA: Position on the Use of Virtual Hearings in Removal Proceedings

AILA: Sample Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief Under the APA in a Claim Against CBP

CLINIC: Central American Family Law Codes

CLINIC: Current Updates on USCIS Processing Times

NIP/NLG: Explainer: Budget Reconciliation and the Filibuster

Suffolk County DA: Newly created Immigrant Affairs unit. The Chief of the unit is Leslie Anderson and Deputy Chief is Imran Ahmed. Their hotline is 631-852-2950 and the dedicated email address is immigrantaffairsDA@suffolkcountyny.gov.

USCIS: Immigration Benefits for Noncitizen Crime Victims

USCIS: Updated T & U Information for Law Enforcement Agencies and Judges

USCIS: Questions and Answers: Victims of Human Trafficking, T Nonimmigrant Status

USCIS: T Visa Law Enforcement Resource Guide

USCIS: I-601A, Application for Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver, Starting 12/20/21, we will only accept the 08/31/21 edition

VIISTA — Villanova Interdisciplinary Immigration Studies Training For Advocates

White House: Report On The Impact Of Climate Change On Migration

EVENTS

10/26/21 Emerging Issues in Asylum Law

10/26/21 Legal Trends in Consular Adjudications: Updates to the Foreign Affairs Manual

10/27/21 Challenging Expedited Removal and Reinstatement Orders

10/28/21 What’s Old Is New Again: “Hail Mary” Relief and Creative Lawyering Options That Are Back!

11/3/21 U Visa Adjustment

11/3/21 Unaccompanied Minors: Changing the Narrative & Taking Action

11/4/21 USCIS Data Listening Session

11/4/21 IDP Training: ICE Detainers in NYC: The Impact on State Criminal Cases

11/7/21 Together We Welcome: A National Faith Gathering to Strengthen Support for Refugees, Immigrants and Migrants

11/9/21, 11/16/21 Two-Part Introduction to Asylum Law and Procedure

11/10/21 Remedies for Surviving Relatives

11/11/21 Inadmissibility: A Look at Common Grounds and Red Flags

11/12/21 Haitian People at the Border: Historical and Current Push Factors and the Role of U.S. Foreign Policy

11/16/21 Advocating for Prosecutorial Discretion Under the Current Enforcement Priorities

11/16/21 Considerations for I-601A Waivers and I-212

11/18/21 Dealing with Post-Consular Interview Nightmares for Immigrant Visas

11/18/21 Ethical Representation: Serving Clients with Criminal Contacts on November 18, 2021 at 3-4:30pm

11/22/21-12/13/21 Webinar Series: Selected Issues in Family-Based Immigration

11/23/21 Establishing Social Group in Asylum Claims

11/23/21 But I’m Not an Expert! What You Need to Know About Common Non-Immigration Questions Your Clients Expect You to Know

11/29/21-12/3/21 Partial to Full Accredited Representative Initiative 2021

12/1/21 54th Annual Immigration and Naturalization Institute

12/2/21 Post-Conviction Relief For Immigrants: New Laws, New Developments, New Advice

12/7/21 Hardship in Non-LPR Cancellation Cases

12/9/21 December Immigration Update

12/15/21 FOIA

12/16/21 Ethical Scenarios for Removal Defense

02/03/22 Basic Immigration Law 2022: Business, Family, Naturalization and Related Areas

02/04/22 Asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Crime Victim, and Other Immigration Relief 2022

ImmProf

Monday, October 25, 2021

VIISTA online certificate training to represent asylees/refugees

Immigrant of the Day: Karine Jean-Pierre (Martinique)

Biden Asylum Rule Spurs Criticism, Even From Supporters

Immigration Article of the Day: Refugee Responsibility Sharing or Responsibility Dumping?” by Katerina Linos & Elena Chachko, California Law Review

Sunday, October 24, 2021

Poetry Break: The Unwritten Letter from my Immigrant Parent by Muna Abdulahi

Immigrants in the United States

Belonging Begins With Us

Advocates say US immigration is rooted in anti-Blackness. Here’s how policies puts Black migrants at risk

Immigration Article of the Day: Labor Citizenship for the Twenty-First Century by Michael Sullivan, Seattle Journal for Social Justice

Saturday, October 23, 2021

Your Playlist: El Tri

House Democrats press Senate leaders to override parliamentarian on immigration

Immigration Article of the Day: Children as Bargaining Chips by Clare Ryan, UCLA Law Review

Friday, October 22, 2021

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Issues a Ruling in Fraihat v. US ICE

Thursday, October 21, 2021

“I Want to be a Border Patrol Agent When I Grow Up!”

Conference: Detention, Incarceration, and Administrative Law

Say It Ain’t So, Joe: Despite Promises, Biden Looks a Lot Like Trump on Border Issues

Human Rights Watch Report: US Records Show Physical, Sexual Abuse at Border

DOJ Walks Back Immigration Judge Case Quotas

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

CFP: Business Accountability for Human Rights: Addressing Human Rights Issues in Global Supply Chains

Strategy Conference on Climate-Induced Displacement (Virtual Conference – Oct 25, 2021)

Case update: Citizenship for children of naturalized divorced parents

Facebook Settles With DOJ Over Discrimination in H1-B Hiring

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

The Climate Migration: Testing point of Human Sensitivity

2d Amendment Rights of Undocumented Migrants

Comprehensive Immigration Reform is Long Overdue

Remove the Bureaucratic Red Tape for Afghan Nationals

Detention or Punishment?

Afghanistan: Broken Promises or Hopeful Futures

Miru Alcana – Auschwitz Survivor

University of San Francisco Immigration Clinic Attorney Position Opening

Changing Demographics in Long Island City

At the Movies: Themes of immigration and family dominate Nigerian film Eyemofe

“Fake heiress” Anna Sorokin has been jailed by ICE for 7 months

Supreme Court Sends Derivative Citizenship Case Back to Third Circuit

Monday, October 18, 2021

Job Announcement: Cardozo Clinical Immigration Fellowship

Chinese immigrant contributions on display in Yosemite

Kidnapping on Rise in Haiti

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

Sadly, more than eight months in, the Biden Administration lacks:

A coherent vision for the border;
A cogent plan to restore the refugee system and the legal asylum system (the poorly conceived “proposed asylum regs” — mostly opposed by our Round Table and other asylum experts — don’t make it);
The tough, courageous, well-informed leadership to make the necessary border enforcement and Immigration Court reforms and to stand up to the entirely predictable, well-organized nativist opposition, led by Stephen “Gauleiter” Miller and his accomplices.

Not a “recipe for success,” in my view!

Another item worthy of note: The pending settlement between NYLAG and EOIR on making unpublished decisions readily accessible to the public could open new avenues for advocates.

For example, the 1st Circuit recently cited an unpublished BIA decision in reversing the BIA on “equitable tolling.” https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca1-equitable-tolling-remand-james-v-garland#

BIA panel decisions favorable to respondents are almost never published as precedents by an organization where judicial independence and due process have long taken a back seat to “job preservation” within the DOJ. Politicos @ DOJ are normally much more interested in supporting enforcement and “false deterrence” goals than with enhancing due process, enforcing immigrants’ rights, and achieving racial justice when it comes to immigrants.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

1-26-21

⚖️🗽🇺🇸👍🏼👩🏻‍⚖️ JUSTICE FOR KIDS IN COURT — ROUND TABLE ⚔️🛡 “WARRIOR QUEEN” 👸🏻 HON. SARAH BURR SPEAKS OUT FOR “FAIR DAY IN COURT FOR KIDS ACT OF 2021!” — “We cannot in good conscience allow any unaccompanied children to appear in immigration court alone.”

Hon. Sarah Burt — Hon. Sarah Burr
Retired U.S. Immigration Judge
Knightess of The Round Table
Photo Source: Immigrant Justice Corps website

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/578076-why-are-children-representing-themselves-in-immigration-court

From The Hill:

As a retired immigration judge, I have watched with concern reports of the surge of unaccompanied immigrant children crossing the border into the United States. There are many reasons for concern—their housing, their health, their safety. To me, there is an additional, very real, and often overlooked question looming on the horizon: What will happen when these children, even toddlers and babies, appear alone in immigration court?

Yes, alone. While a person in immigration proceedings is entitled to be represented by a lawyer if they can afford it, there is no constitutional or even statutory right to appointed counsel in immigration proceedings. That means those who cannot afford a lawyer must appear in court alone, including children.

While I am pleased to see the Biden administration plans to provide government-funded legal representation for certain immigrant children in eight U.S. cities, this new initiative is still a far cry from the universal representation needed to support children in removal proceedings.

Imagine, if you can, a child — 2 years old, 10 years old or 17 years old — appearing before an immigration judge alone. How does a child, already intimidated and confused by the courtroom setting, understand the nature of the court proceedings and the charges against them? How can a child understand the complexities of immigration law, their burden of proof, and possible defenses against deportation? The short answer is they cannot.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the op-ed at the above link.

The “Fair Day For Kids in Court Act of 2021” is endorsed by the “Round Table” ⚔️🛡 among many other groups in the NDPA!

Here’s a summary (courtesy of Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” S. Chase):

Senator Mazie Hirono (of [Round Table “Fighting Knightess” Judge] Dayna Beamer’s home state of Hawaii) plans to introduce the attached bill on Thursday, that would provide counsel for unaccompanied children in Immigration Court by:

Clarifying the authority of the federal government to provide or appoint counsel to noncitizens in immigration proceedings;
Requiring the appointment or provision of legal counsel to all unaccompanied children in proceedings unless they obtained counsel independently;
Mandating access to counsel for all noncitizens in CBP and ICE facilities;
Requiring that, if the government fails to provide counsel to an unaccompanied child and orders that child removed, the filing of a motion to reopen proceedings will stay removal; and
Requiring government reporting on the provision of counsel to unaccompanied children.

Here’s the text of the bill, which will be introduced by Sen. Hirono later this week:

Fair Day Text FINAL

Thanks Sarah and Jeffrey! So pleased to be part of the “support group” for this long-overdue and badly needed legislation that would do what to date Congress, the Federal Courts, and DOJ have failed to do: Enforce the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment in Immigration Court!

And, of course, we should never forget the ongoing, daily work performed by NDPA Superhero 🦸🏻‍♂️ Wendy Young and Kids in Need of Defense (“KIND”) in ending the disgraceful blot on American justice of unrepresented kids in Immigration Court:

Dear Paul,

I met Maria* in immigration court. The judge sat in his robes behind the bench when he called her deportation case.

A trial attorney from the Department of Homeland Security sat at the front, prepared to argue for Maria’s removal from the U.S.. Maria was by herself without a lawyer by her side.

She was five years old.

She approached the bench, wearing her nicest clothes, clutching a doll. She sat behind the respondent’s desk, barely able to see over the microphone. The judge asked her a number of questions about why she was in the US and about her life here, none of which she could answer. Her eyes grew bigger and bigger as she sat silently, until he finally dismissed her and told her to come back at a later date. As she left the court, he asked her what the name of her doll was. In Spanish, she replied, “Baby Baby Doll.” That was the only question she could answer.

That moment haunts me. I continually wonder about the insanity of asking a five year old to stand alone and defend herself against deportation in a federal courtroom. It should never happen. Which is exactly why KIND has mobilized and trained a powerful group of pro bono attorneys to represent and work with children just like Maria who deserve legal representation in a U.S. immigration court.

This October, KIND is honoring the pro bono attorneys who have helped more than 27,000 children referred to KIND receive legal representation that often means the difference between relief and deportation and, by extension, a child’s safety or danger.

Will you make a tax-deductible donation now to support the children we work with in and out of the courtroom?

Here’s the direct impact your gift today can have for children like Maria:

$75 will support a child’s success and provide a backpack and basic school supplies for a child beginning school in the U.S.

$100 will give nourishment, and provide groceries and essentials to help keep children fed and healthy while they await the outcome of their legal case.

$250 will give a child a voice by helping pay for an interpreter so an indigenous child can tell their story in court.

$500 will allow us to make a life-saving connection and train attorney’s across the country to evaluate and work with refugee children in need of representation and critical social services.

$1500 will help us connect kids to mental health resources, including psychological evaluation and other mental health services for a child seeking asylum in the U.S..

$5000 will provide hope and safety to a vulnerable child by ensuring we have the resources we need to offer comprehensive legal representation and social service needs for however long it takes to win their case.

Paul, these are just a few ways we’ll put your gift to work, but know that your donation in ANY amount is critical to the number of children we can reach, and represent, through the amazing efforts of our pro bono attorney network.

These kids are scared, they are traumatized. They are intimidated. And without the services provided by organizations like KIND, they are all alone.

But that’s why we’re here – and that’s why I hope you’ll consider making a gift today to support this life-changing work. Your donation today will have a direct impact on the lives of refugee children who deserve to have someone in their court.

Thank you so much for your generosity today, and always.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-26-21

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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This quote sums it all up for me:

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Key Quote from Judge Greenaway’s decision:

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