Immigration Detention – Page 116 – immigrationcourtside.com

HON. JEFFREY CHASE: PUNISHING THE PERSECUTED — In Matter of A-C-M-, BIA “Adjusts” View Of FMLN As Necessary To Deny Asylum To El Salvadoran Refugees!

Jun 9 Punishing the Victims: Matter of A-C-M-

On June 6, the BIA published its precedent decision in Matter of A-C-M-. As the Board seems to no longer issue precedent decisions en banc, the decision is that of a divided three-judge panel. The two-judge majority found the respondent to be barred from asylum eligibility because in 1990, she had been kidnaped by guerrillas in her native El Salvador, who after forcing her to undergo weapons training, made her do the group’s cooking, cleaning, and laundry while remaining its captive.

In 2011, an immigration judge granted the respondent’s application for cancellation of removal. The DHS appealed the decision to the BIA, which reversed the IJ’s grant, finding that the respondent was ineligible for cancellation under section 212(a)(3)(B)(i)(VIII), which makes inadmissible to the U.S. anyone who has received military-type training from a terrorist organization. The BIA stated in its 2014 decision that it found the guerrillas to be a terrorist organization at the time of the respondent’s abduction in 1990.

The case was remanded back to the immigration judge, where the respondent then applied for asylum, a relief from which she was not barred by the military training. However, the IJ ruled that she was ineligible for asylum under another subsection of the law, which bars anyone who commits “an act that the actor knows, or reasonably should know, affords material support, including a safe house, transportation, communications, funds, transfer of funds or other material financial benefit, false documentation or identification, weapons (including chemical, biological, or radiological weapons), explosives, or training” for either the commission of a terrorist activity, someone who has committed or is planning to commit a terrorist act, or to a terrorist organization or member of such organization.

The respondent in A-C-M- clearly wasn’t providing her labor by choice; she was forcibly abducted by the guerrillas and was then held against her will. However, the BIA decided in a 2016 decision, Matter of M-H-Z-, that there is no duress exception to the material support bar. Therefore, in the Board’s view, the involuntary nature of the labor was irrelevant.

In her well-reasoned dissent, Board Member Linda Wendtland acknowledged a critical question: “whether the respondent reasonably should have known that the guerrillas in 1990 in El Salvador were a terrorist organization.” Note that the statutory language quoted above requires that the actor “knows or reasonably should know” that the support will aid a terrorist activity or organization.

The decision doesn’t name the guerrilla organization (presumably the FMLN). It also fails to mention when the Board itself concluded that the group had been a terrorist organization in 1990. The Board’s view of the guerrillas was not always so, as witnessed in its 1988 precedent decision in Matter of Maldonado-Cruz. The case involved an asylum-seeker from El Salvador who had been kidnaped by guerrillas in that country, given brief military training, and then forced to serve in the group’s military operations. He managed to escape, and legitimately feared that if returned to El Salvador, he would be killed by death squads the guerrillas dispatch to punish deserters.

The BIA denied asylum. In doing so, it expressed the following rationale: “It is entirely proper to apply a presumption that a guerrilla organization, as a military or para-military organization, has the need to control its members, to exercise discipline.” The Board noted that the guerrillas needed non-volunteer troops to fill out the military units required to fight against the government. It continued: “To keep them as cohesive fighting units they must impose discipline; and an important form of discipline…is the punishment of deserters.”

The Board’s language in Maldonado-Cruz really does not sound as if it is describing a terrorist organization. Frankly, it’s tone wouldn’t sound out of place in describing the penalties imposed by the Park Slope Food Coop towards members who miss their shifts. If the Board didn’t contemporaneously view the guerrillas as terrorists, why would they expect the respondent to have done so?

Judge Wendtland did not need to answer that question, because she convincingly argued that the respondent’s cooking and cleaning did not constitute “material support” under the statute. She is correct. Notice the examples of support contained in the statutory language: safe houses, funds, transportation, weapons, explosives, and training. All of these are of a quite different nature from cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry.

The respondent in A-C-M- was not someone whom Congress intended to exclude under the anti-terrorism provisions. She did not provide money or weapons to ISIS to carry out terrorist acts. To the contrary, she performed labor completely unrelated to any violent objective. She was forced to perform such labor – in the words of Judge Wendtland, “as a slave” – for a group whose terrorist nature was far from clear.

In adopting the two-member majority’s view, the Board has chosen an interpretation of the statute that turns Congressional intent on its head by punishing the victims of terrorism, and adds insult to injury by labeling these victims as terrorists themselves. Hopefully, the lone dissenting opinion will prevail on appeal.

Copyright 2018 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

JEFF CHASE

Jun 3 3rd-Generation Gangs and Political Opinion

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

The BIA has a long-standing history of finding ways to construe the law and facts to deny protection to refugees from Central America, one of the most violent areas in the world for decades.

Judge Linda Wendtland is one of the few BIA jurists since the 2003 “Ashcroft Purge” to stand up to her colleagues and the Attorney General for the rights of Central American asylum seekers to fair treatment under the asylum laws.

As most of us familiar with Immigration Court and immigration enforcement know, the “material support” bar is very seldom used against real terrorists and security threats. Most caught up in its absurdly overbroad web are minor players — victims of persecution themselves or “freedom fighters” many of whom actually supported forces allied with or assisting the US Government.

Probably one of the biggest and most grotesque examples of “legislative overkill” in recent history. And, the BIA has made the situation much worse by construing the bar in the broadest, most draconian, and least reasonable way possible.

Moreover, the DHS waiver process is totally opaque compared with the Immigration Court process, thereby encouraging arbitrary and capricious decision-making that escapes any type of judicial review.

PWS

06-10-18

MIKE MILLER @ WASHPOST EXPOSES “TURNSTILE JUSTICE” AT BORDER US DISTRICT COURT: US Magistrate Presides Over “Clown Court” Where Traumatized, Bewildered, Migrants Are Coerced Into Pleading Guilty To Crimes Without Understanding The Consequences — Assistant US Attorney “High Fives” Speedy Finish, Turning “Trials” Into A “Sporting Event” — Even The Public Defender Partakes Of The Clown Show By Purporting To Represent 71 Individuals Simultaneously! — Come On, Folks, Whatever Happened To Due Process, Ethics & Professional Responsibility?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/they-just-took-them-frantic-parents-separated-from-their-kids-fill-courts-on-the-border/2018/06/09/e3f5170c-6aa9-11e8-bea7-c8eb28bc52b1_story.html

Miller writes:

MCALLEN, Texas — The words “all rise” were still ringing in the brightly lit South Texas courtroom last week when Peter E. Ormsby slipped unceremoniously into his seat.

“Good morning,” the 62-year-old federal magistrate said as the courtroom filled with the clanking of shackled defendants returning to their wooden benches. “We’re here to take up a number of criminal cases that allege that the defendants violated the immigration laws of the United States.”

Seated in front of Ormsby were 71 disheveled immigrants caught illegally crossing the Rio Grande. The number of defendants has soared amid President Trump’s crackdown on a new surge of border crossers. But the mass hearing was remarkable less for its size than for who it included: parents.

For the first time, federal courtrooms here and across the Southwest are being flooded with distraught mothers and fathers who have been charged with misdemeanor illegal entry and separated from their children — a shift in policy touted by the administration as a way to stop families from trying to reach the United States but decried by critics as traumatizing and inhumane. Last month a Honduran father separated from his wife and 3-year-old son killed himself in a Texas jail cell, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

In McAllen alone, 415 children had been stripped from their parents between May 21 and June 5, according to federal public defenders.

Now, on the morning of June 6, 14 more parents from Central America were facing an agonizing choice with uncertain consequences. They could plead guilty in the hope of speeding up their reunification with their children, but risk damaging their chances of receiving asylum in the United States. Or they could plead innocent and head to trial, a process that could take days or weeks and prolong their separation from their kids.

Seven miles from Mexico and surrounded by brushlands that are home to the border’s busiest smuggling routes, the Bentsen Tower federal courthouse has become one of the anguished epicenters of family separation.

On Wednesday morning, the evidence of that was the tears on the parents’ faces. Many clutched fliers with a phone number they could call to try to get their kids back from the increasingly crowded federal shelters where they are being housed.

. . . .

By day’s end, he would sentence more than 100 people, including 28 parents. Most would receive the lightest punishment possible — time served — before they were handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The frenzied pace of the proceedings was no accident. As Moody emerged from court in the afternoon, she and a colleague exchanged a high-five.

“I said I’d get done by 3:20,” the prosecutor said, checking the time to see she was only nine minutes behind schedule.

‘Prosecuting everybody’

Aleman-Bendiks had arrived at the tall, dark glass courthouse shortly after dawn that morning. After preparing for an hour in an office decorated with her diplomas from Rice University and Harvard Law, the 52-year-old federal public defender headed upstairs to the courtroom, where the air smelled like sweat and the 71 immigrants were already seated. She was representing all of them.

“How many of you were traveling with children?” she asked in Spanish. More than a dozen hands shot up.

“How did they separate you?” she said to a Guatemalan woman whose 8-year-old daughter was taken away.

“How long since you saw her?” she asked a Honduran separated from her 6-year-old girl.

“They just took them?” she said to a Salvadoran whose two daughters were gone.

This is what Trump’s zero-tolerance policy looked like to Aleman-Bendiks and scores of other federal public defenders along the border.

. . . .

For Meyers, the challenge is not only logistics but the wrenching stories of families being torn apart. In a conference call with her assistant federal public defenders last month, she said she told them to force judges to confront the issue.

“We think it’s important for the court and everybody to hear what’s happening,” she said.

On May 22, Aleman-Bendiks asked Ormsby in court to pressure the government to provide more information about the fate of families being separated. On May 31, she and her boss, Kyle B. Welch, met with ten officials from ICE, Border Patrol, the Justice Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which cares for the children separated from their parents as well as “unaccompanied minors”who arrived in the United States on their own.

“The idea was to try and give us a sense of what’s happening here,” Aleman-Bendiks said, but the meeting delivered little clear information.

One Border Patrol official did say agents in and around McAllen had a policy of not separating children under 5 from their parents — although that policy does not appear to be in place elsewhere along the border. Children as young as 18 months have been taken from their parents.

On Wednesday, Aleman-Bendiks asked Ormsby to order the government to hand over lists of children separated from their parents so that immigration attorneys could ensure they were reunited.

“My concern is that there are lost children here in the system,” she said. “We are hearing it every day, your honor, and it’s not right.”

Ormsby noted that “children are not within the jurisdiction of this court. These people are here because they have a criminal case here.”

He invited her to prepare a brief on how he could order the government to provide lists. “But on its face,” he added, “it seems questionable to me that the court would have the authority to do that.”

. . . .

But immigration advocates aren’t so sure. “They are now convicted of a crime,” said Leah Chavla of the Women’s Refugee Commission. “Under U.S. law, that could be a bar to them receiving asylum, so they’d have to get a waiver.”

In the end, those complications mattered less to the parents in Ormsby’s courtroom than seeing their kids again. All of them pleaded guilty to illegally crossing the border and were sentenced to time served.

“Obviously, in each of your situations, you committed a crime and so the government was within their rights to pursue that,” the magistrate said. “Whether or not they should exercise their discretion that way is something that is obviously being debated.”

“As someone who has children myself,” he added, “it would be a terrible situation to be separated under those conditions.”

Then the guards put handcuffs back on the parents and led them out of the courtroom, where their future remained as unclear as the location of their children.

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

Read Mike’s complete report at the above link.

As described in Mike Miller’s article, U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Ormsby appears to preside over a “court” where “justice” for traumatized, obviously bewildered, and coerced migrants is a cross between a sporting event and a bad joke.

The U.S. Supreme Court held that understanding the immigration consequences of a conviction is a critical element in a migrant’s voluntary decision to plead guilty. Many of these migrant defendants obviously wanted to know whether a guilty plea would 1) free them from detention, 2) reunite them with their children, and 3) adversely affect their asylum cases. Neither Judge Ormsby nor anyone else in his courtroom was able to answer accurately. Judge Ormsby had the authority to defer accepting the pleas until the Assistant U.S. Attorney provided the answers. Yet, he did not do so. These guilty pleas appeared to be neither informed nor voluntary. A federal judge therefore should not have accepted them.

No wonder the prosecuting Assistant U.S Attorney “high fived” at the end of this farce. Likewise, the Public Defender’s claim to simultaneously represent 71 non-English-speaking defendants was a remarkable twist on the canons of ethics and professional responsibility.

Would a group of white, middle class, mostly first-time misdemeanor defendants have been treated this way in federal court? I doubt it. Yet, due process applies equally to everyone in the U.S. regardless of status.

PWS

06-10-18

BLACK PERSPECTIVE: AFRICAN AMERICANS KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TRUMP & SESSIONS MEAN WHEN THEY DISINGENUOUSLY REFER TO THE “RULE OF LAW” — For Most Of Our History, The Law Has Been A “Whites Only” Device — “Turner, eight-months pregnant at the time of her murder, was stripped naked, hanged upside down and burned to death; her stomach was cut open to let her baby fall to the ground and its head was stomped into the red Georgia dirt. Her murderers never spent a day in jail.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-anderson-rule-of-law_us_

Carol Anderson writes in HuffPost:

On Monday, President Donald Trump made it clear: He was not answerable to any law, constitutional or otherwise. “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself,” he tweeted. His attorney, Rudy Giuliani, even said that Trump could shoot former FBI Director James Comey in the Oval Office and, legally, be in the clear.

Many were stunned. They shouldn’t have been.

The rule of law has been under siege for a long time. Most Americans haven’t noticed because it appeared that they weren’t directly affected, and that the system worked. But African Americans have lived with the reality of abuse of power and contempt for the law for generations. For more than a century, each lynching, each murder, each ethnic cleansing, each wink, wink, nod, nod “not guilty,” especially in the face of overwhelming evidence, loosened and discredited the norms of a law-abiding society and put American democracy in Trump’s crosshairs.

That is what should stun so many who are now apoplectic about his threat. The destruction of the rule of law has actually been going on for a long, long time.

The destruction of the rule of law has actually been going on for a long, long time.

In 1918, Walter White, the associate secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, futilely demanded that Georgia’s governor bring to justice the known killers of Mary Turner, who had lived near Valdosta. Turner, eight-months pregnant at the time of her murder, was stripped naked, hanged upside down and burned to death; her stomach was cut open to let her baby fall to the ground and its head was stomped into the red Georgia dirt. Her murderers never spent a day in jail.

In 1921, whites burned and bombed black Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the ground, destroying a thriving, vibrant community and killing up to 300 African Americans. One photo of the destruction happily proclaimed “running the Negro out of Tulsa.” Pleas from Walter White went unheeded. As did the 21st-century work of Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, who attempted to wrench from the warped system some semblance of justice for the surviving victims. Over the span of more than 80 years, though, despite the carnage and the destruction, the lawyers, the politicians and the courts couldn’t fathom that any law had been broken.

In 1951, Florida Sheriff Willis McCall, who saw himself as the alpha and omega of the law in citrus-growing Lake County, was determined to stem the tide of liberalism that appeared to be encroaching on his world. He loved running slave labor camps for the growers. He loved having interracial couples taken into the woods and savagely beaten by his deputies. And he loved putting “uppity” Negroes in their place. When a white woman falsely accused several black men of rape, he was ready for their execution, until the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a new trial. An angry McCall then drove two of the men into the woods and gunned them down. One survived to tell the grisly story of murder and attempted murder. McCall, however, as I previously wrote in LitHub, “kept his job for twenty-one additional years until he finally lost a re-election bid (but was found ‘not guilty’) after bludgeoning yet another black man to death.”

OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY VIA GETTY IMAGES

Black residents search through rubble after the Tulsa Race Riot of June 1921.

As the deaths in Valdosta, Tulsa, and Florida make clear, the rule of law, one of the bedrocks of American democracy, was brutally and willfully trampled on, then dismissed. The justice system looked at the killers ― sheriffs, deputies, store owners, salesmen, and farmers ― and saw nothing untoward, nothing villainous, nothing murderous. Nothing except white respectability.

Even the incredible power of the Civil Rights Movement and the seismic transformation of American society couldn’t shake that reality and make the rule of law viable.

Even the incredible power of the Civil Rights Movement couldn’t make the rule of law viable for black citizens.

In 1969, the Chicago Police Department, aided by the FBI, raided the apartment headquarters of Black Panther Fred Hampton, killing him and fellow Panther Mark Clark, and seriously wounding four others. The next day the Cook County state’s attorney, Edward V. Hanrahan, told the tale of a massive gun battle in which the Panthers opened fire, their shotguns blasting through the door. In this retelling, the police had no choice but to defend themselves with deadly force. Hanrahan pointed to pictures of bullet holes that riddled the small apartment, leaving plaster and wood looking like dirty Swiss cheese.

There was just one problem: It was all a lie. He and 13 other members of law enforcement made it all up to obstruct an investigation into the killings. Forensic specialists proved that the first shot was in fact fired by police, followed by an errant bullet from Mark Clark, and then a volley of nearly 100 police shots raining into the small first-floor apartment. Yet, for blatantly lying about a double murder, Hanrahan and other members of law enforcement were found “not guilty,” and walked away.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE VIA GETTY IMAGES

The Black Panthers’ Fred Hampton speaks at a rally in Chicago’s Grant Park in September 1969. Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark were killed by police later that year.

This isn’t ancient history or living in the past. This is the condition of justice and the rule of law right now. It was apparent when four NYPD officers fired 41 shots at unarmed Amadou Diallo in 1999 and were found “not guilty” of any wrongdoing. And when George Zimmerman walked out of court a free man, although the unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, whom he had stalked through the neighborhood with a loaded 9 mm in 2013, lay dead with a bullet in his heart. And when 12-year-old Tamir Rice… when 7-year old Aiyana Stanley Jones… when Jonathan Ferrell… when Philando Castile…

This willingness on the part of court systems, law enforcement and the respectable folk in society to ignore or explain away egregious violations of the law has consequences beyond the black lives it ruins. Eventually, rampant but selective disregard for the rule of law taints and corrupts the entire system ― it leads to a culture of impunity. Trump’s recent boast makes clear that lawlessness can’t be contained to cops on the ground killing black people.

Eventually, rampant but selective disregard for the rule of law taints and corrupts the entire system.

Nevertheless, many whites believed for so long that they were safe; that this contempt didn’t and couldn’t affect them. They were wrong. A culture of impunity is dangerous and seductive. It creates a heady sense of immunity ― so heady that a presidential candidate can brag that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York and not lose a single vote. Trump is already in the habit of circumventing procedures without consequence, having pardoned Joe Arpaio, a known torturer who defied a federal court order. He also pardoned I. Lewis ”Scooter” Libby, who was convicted of outing a CIA agent and lying to federal authorities about it. Just last week, he pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, a blatant racist and anti-Semite who used straw donors to make illegal campaign contributions.

Trump now insists that he has more pardons in his pocket, including one for himself, for whatever crimes he may or may not have committed. The president of the United States, a man long accustomed to circumventing the rules that apply to most other people, looks around and sees a system that hasn’t deigned to hold the powerful accountable.

And so, he declares that he might make himself president for life, and appears to exchange U.S. national security for some Chinese trademarks for his daughter, and rails against “fake news” and calls the media “the enemies of the American people,” and attacks the Department of Justice and special counsel Robert Mueller because they won’t do his bidding. When he does those stunning-to-some things, remember that this unrelenting assault on the rule of law is just another version of the same contempt for the nation’s statutes and American democracy that left Mary Turner hanging upside down, disemboweled and burning.

The canary in the American mine is once again gasping for breath. The air is toxic and the poison of lawlessness is likely to take us all down. Maybe this time America will listen.

Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. She is the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and the forthcoming One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy.

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

The White Nationalist approach to the Constitution and law has been with us since the founding of our republic (by a group that contained many slaveholders, smart enough to know that slavery was wrong but too corrupted by it to do the right thing).

But, Trump is more than a “garden variety” racist/White Nationalist (that’s Jeff Sessions, Tom Cotton, Stephen Miller, etc.). He is a dangerous, lawless, “populist” authoritarian in the Mussolini mold. Although many of Trump’s supporters don’t recognize it, they and their rights will be “expendable” at his pleasure.

That leaves it to the rest of us (who actually are the majority of Americans) to save folks from Trump and, in far too many cases, from themselves and their short-sighted prejudices and selfishness. It’s a tall order; but the alternative is the end of our republic and a descent into the worst type of authoritarian dystopia.

PWS

06-10-18

DUE PROCESS UPDATE: COULD ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CONSTITUTIONAL SCOFFLAWS SESSIONS & NIELSEN BE ON THE HORIZON? – US District Judge Finds “At a minimum, the facts alleged are sufficient to show the government conduct at issue “shocks the conscience” and violates Plaintiffs’ constitutional right to family integrity. Accordingly, Defendants’ motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ due process claim is denied.”

Judge rules that challenge to family separation at border can proceed

By Tal Kopan, CNN

A federal judge in California ruled Wednesday that a challenge to the practice of separating parents seeking asylum from children at the border can proceed.

The ACLU brought the case against the Trump administration.

In her opinion, the said “at a minimum, the facts alleged are sufficient to show the government conduct at issue ‘shocks the conscience’ and violates Plaintiffs’ constitutional right to family integrity. Accordingly, Defendants’ motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ due process claim is denied.”

The ruling is a victory for critics of the administration’s separation of families — though plenty of hurdles remain before the practice is outlawed.

The ruling does not mean the challenge will ultimately succeed — but it is a substantial step for critics of any separating families who say the practice is abhorrent enough that it should be unconstitutional in any case. The judge’s ruling Wednesday keeps that argument alive.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/06/07/politics/family-separation-ruling/index.html

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

Here’s a copy of Judge Dana Sabraw’s complete order in Ms. L v. ICE. I particularly recommend Part II (E) which sets forth an excellent discussion of how Due Process applies to individuals physically in the U.S. regardless of status.

Interestingly, although the statement of the law of Due Process was basically uncontested by the DOJ attorneys on the case, it conflicts in both tone and substance from most, if not all, of the statements about foreign nationals made by Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, Miller, Cotton, Goodlatte, and the rest of the GOP “White Nationalist gang” who seldom acknowledge that migrants coming to our Southern Border are human beings, let alone that they are actually protected by our Constitution!

Ms L v ICE order 6-6-18

Thanks to my good friend and “immigration guru” Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr of Cornell Law for sending me this decision!

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

I hope that the ACLU will depose Sessions in connection with this case. He has “spun” and lied about what’s really happening to asylum applicants, including those who appear at the border and apply for asylum without making an unlawful entry. Indeed, the “named plaintiff Ms L” is just such an individual who was, for no apparent reason other than cruelty and “deterrence,” separated from her young daughter for 4 months. She was only released when the ACLU filed this case.

Read this account by Jenny Samuels, ACLU Editorial Staff, about Sessions’s web of deceit, legal misrepresentation, and lack of human decency and morality. https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/immigrants-rights-and-detention/jeff-sessions-deceitful-spin-family

Sessions has a history of bias, lawless behavior, and being a less than credible witness under oath. And, a U.S. District Judge might take misrepresentations or perjury more seriously than did the GOP Senators (Sessions’s former colleagues) on the Judiciary Committee.

Although the ultimate resolution of this case might be years down the line, it also raises an interesting question of whether Sessions, Nielsen, and other DHS officials can be held personally liable for a “Bivens Constitutional Tort” if they knowingly and intentionally violated the established Due Process rights of the plaintiffs. If the plaintiffs are correct in their allegations, it certainly seems that this is exactly what happened. Sessions is quickly establishing himself as one of the worst, probably the very worst, “Constitutional Scofflaws” in recent memory.

How bad is Sessions’s lack of respect for the Constitution? Bad enough that the three career DOJ Attorneys assigned to defend the ACA withdrew from the case for ethical reason after Sessions’s latest all out attack on the “rule of law:” His completely disingenuous political decision not to defend further the Government’s previously-established position that the ACA is Constitutional. See https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/6/8/17442238/trump-aca-obamacare-texas-department-of-justice-rule-of-law

While the scared asylum applicants and their children that Sessions and his cronies seek to persecute present no real threat to our security as a nation, Jeff Sessions and his continuing war on equal justice for all, human decency, the law, ethics, and our Constitution is an existential threat to our national security and future as a democracy. He must be thwarted and eventually removed from office through our Constitutional system before it’s too late for everyone!

PWS

06-09-18

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two colleagues also recently dug into the immigration detention squeeze:

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

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

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

Corruption takes many forms.

PWS

06-08-18

LATEST FROM TRAC: IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM COLLAPSING UNDER EXPLODING BACKLOG AS TRUMP/SESSIONS “DISSING” OF DUE PROCESS, BLATANT POLITIZATION, INCOMPETENT ADMINISTRATION, AND “GONZO” ENFORCEMENT POLICIES TAKE HOLD — Backlog Soars By An Amazing 32% In Just Over One Year Since Sessions Assumed Control — Now An Astounding 714,000 – Sessions’s Wrong-Headed Actions Geared To Push It Over ONE MILLION With No Sensible End In Sight!

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Greetings. The Immigration Court’s backlog keeps rising. As of the end of May 2018, the number of cases waiting decision reached an all-time high of 714,067. This compares with a court backlog of 542,411 cases at the end of January 2017 when President Trump assumed office. During his term the backlog has increased by almost a third (32%) with 171,656 more cases added.

The pace of court filings has not increased – indeed, case filings are running slightly behind that of last year at this time. What appears to be driving the burgeoning backlog is the lengthening time it now takes to schedule hearings and complete proceedings in the face of the court’s over-crowded dockets.

For example, cases that ultimately result in a removal order are taking 28 percent longer to process than last year – up from 392 days to an average of 501 days – from the date of the Notice to Appear (NTA) to the date of the decision. And compared with the last full fiscal year of the Obama administration, cases resulting in removal take an average of 42 percent longer.

Decisions granting asylum or another type of relief now take over twice as long as removal decisions. Relief decisions this year on average took 1,064 days – up 17 percent – from last year.

Wait times in Houston, San Antonio, Chicago, Imperial (California), Denver, and Arlington (Virginia) now average over 1,400 days before an immigrant is even scheduled for a hearing on his or her case. At many hearing locations hearings are currently being scheduled beyond 2021 before an available slot on the docket is found.

To read the full report, including how long at each court hearing location current cases are waiting before their hearing is scheduled, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/516/

In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through May 2018. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:

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

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

http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

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 U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

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

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563

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

Wow! The “One Man Supreme Court” is also a “One Man Wrecking Crew” trying his best to bring down the entire U.S. justice system with his remarkable mix of bias, ignorance, cruelty, political grandstanding, and just plain old incompetence. To my knowledge, he’s never run anything larger than a modest sized U.S. Attorney’s Office, and not everyone who worked with him then was enamored by the way he handled that job. In fact, he was so bad that members of his own party his own party helped block him from a U.S. District Judge position because of his perceived racial bias and lack of ability to deal fairly with minorities.

All of this while, the GOP Congress just sits back and “ho hums” about the mess they have created and allowed to fester in the DOJ and their lack of meaningful oversight over Sessions’s destructive, often dishonest, actions and gross mismanagement!

And, destroying the U.S. Immigration Courts is by no means the last or least of his efforts. According to Richard Morosi’s “banner headline top story” in today’s Los Angeles Times, Sessions & Co have so overloaded the U.S. District Courts along the border with non-violent misdemeanor immigration offenders that those courts 1) don’t have time for more serious offenders, major fraudsters, and other real criminals; and 2) are abandoning their values and independence to produce what one former senior prosecutor, Charles La Bella, termed “turnstyle justice” (“not what the federal courts were meant to do”). It’s so horrible that one long-time U.S. District Judge has already quit because he couldn’t take the wanton wastefulness, stupidity, and inhumanity of it all. You can check out Morosi’s full article here: http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=aec32f3c-e756-4d4a-acbc-f7e451bd9d87

In other words, Sessions is compromising the actual safety and security of the United States and threatening the integrity of our U.S. Court System to indulge his own racist, xenophobic desire to punish “regular folks, dishwashers, landscapers . . .people who are coming to pick fruit or find menial work to send money back home.”

At least the Chief U.S. District Judge trying to deal with this mess has included defense attorneys along with judges and prosecutors in his new “case management committee.” Compare that with the Immigration Courts, where Sessions, his DOJ politicos, and administrative bureaucrats in Falls Church manage the cases from afar, based solely on political and enforcement considerations. The U.S. Immigration Judges who actually hear the cases, the hard-working (largely pro bono) defense attorneys, and even the local ICE prosecutors are effectively “frozen out” of the system for setting priorities and managing cases. I’ll wager that there is no other court system in the United States that attempts to operate in this bone-headed and obviously counterproductive manner!

Under Sessions, more judges = more backlog! That militates against Congress throwing any more judges, money, and personnel into this mess until the Immigration Courts are removed from the DOJ, a long, long overdue move.

How do you build more backlog with more judges? First, by demoralizing and effectively forcing out some of the most experienced and fairest judges and replacing them with “newbies,” Sessions reduces judicial legal expertise, productivity, and independence, at least in the short run.

Second, by trashing the very promising “prosecutorial discretion” program undertaken by ICE prosecutors with the encouragement and cooperation of the Immigration Judges, he forces “low priority” cases into the court system at the expense of the more difficult and complex cases that then get pushed to the end of the line. Astoundingly, Sessions’s recent legally flawed “beat down” of “Administrative Closing” virtually guarantees that several hundred thousand low priority “closed” cases will be returned to the courts’ active dockets in the near future, thus artificially pushing the backlog beyond 1,000,000!

This is known as “Aimless Docket Reshuffling.” It started under Obama, but has accelerated dramatically under Sessions. This is essentially what is happening with Sessions’s irresponsible prosecution of minor misdemeanants over in the U.S. District Courts along the border.

Third, and this jumped out from the TRAC report, it now takes much longer to complete cases, particularly asylum case and other cases granting relief, because they are all contested by ICE and Sessions is actively trying to “jack” the law against respondents, particularly asylum applicants. A wise Attorney General actually committed to the job of justice for all in America and responsible use of taxpayer-funded resources would work cooperatively with prosecutors, defense attorneys, and Immigration Judges within existing precedents favorable to asylum applicants to encourage “pretrial” of the many well-documented, meritorious asylum cases and other cases for relief (like cancellation of removal) now unnecessarily clogging the dockets so that they could be granted relief on “short-block dockets” by Immigration Judges. In other cases, they could be closed and removed from the docket to pursue alternative forms of relief at USCIS. This would be a great way of attacking the backlog without running over anyone’s Due Process rights! But, that’s not what Sessions is interested in.

Not only are asylum cases becoming unnecessarily complex and time-consuming under Sessions, but his apparent plan to intentionally misconstrue U.S. asylum law to disadvantage bona fide applicants in favor of his restrictionist agenda and personal biases against asylum seekers, women, and Central Americans is almost sure to result in many “losers” for the Government in the Courts of Appeals. This, in turn, is likely to result in massive returns for “do-overs” — just as happened during the Due Process disaster than occurred following the “Ashcroft Purge” of the BIA in 2003!

PWS

06-08-18

NATION OF CHILD ABUSERS: IT’S NOW THE OFFICIAL POLICY OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATON – The Damage: Irreparable – The Stain On Our National Values: Indelible!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/us/children-immigration-borders-family-separation.html

Miriam Jordan reports for the NY Times:

When he landed in Michigan in late May, all the weary little boy carried was a trash bag stuffed with dirty clothes from his dayslong trek across Mexico, and two small pieces of paper — one a stick-figure drawing of his family from Honduras, the other a sketch of his father, who had been arrested and led away after they arrived at the United States border in El Paso.

An American government escort handed over the 5-year-old child, identified on his travel documents as José, to the American woman whose family was entrusted with caring for him. He refused to take her hand. He did not cry. He was silent on the ride “home.”

The first few nights, he cried himself to sleep. Then it turned into “just moaning and moaning,” said Janice, his foster mother. He recently slept through the night for the first time, though he still insists on tucking the family pictures under his pillow.

José’s separation from his father is part of the Trump administration’s latest and most widely debated border enforcement policy. Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the government would criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally, a directive that is already leading to the breakup of hundreds of migrant families and channeling children into shelters and foster homes across the country.

The goal, according to administration officials, is to discourage Central American families from making the perilous journey to the United States’ southwest border, where they have been arriving in swelling numbers this year to claim asylum.

In just the first two weeks under President Trump’s new policy, 638 parents who arrived with 658 children had been prosecuted, administration officials told Congress.

Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, emphasized that separating families was not the aim but merely the effect of a decision to step up prosecutions of those who cross the border illegally. “We do not have a policy to separate children from their parents. Our policy is, if you break the law we will prosecute you,” she told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on May 15.

She said the Trump administration is doing a better job than its predecessors in assuring that migrant children are placed with sponsors who are carefully screened. “We can make sure that the children go to people who are actually family members and who are not traffickers and who won’t abuse them,” she said.

Whether the policy will succeed as a deterrent remains an open question. What is clear is that it is creating heartbreak and trauma for those subjected to it, with parents and children often unaware of one another’s whereabouts.

. . . .

In several letters to the Department of Homeland Security, the American Academy of Pediatrics has urged an end to parent-child separation, which researchers have said can cause lifelong trauma in children. When the policy was unveiled, the academy’s president, Dr. Colleen Kraft, said she was dismayed at its “sweeping cruelty.”

José’s last name and that of his foster family, as well as where they live, are not being published in order to protect their privacy.

Since his arrival in Michigan, family members said, a day has not gone by when the boy has failed to ask in Spanish, “When will I see my papa?”

They tell him the truth. They do not know. No one knows.

José’s father is in detention, and parent and child until this week had not spoken since they were taken into the custody of United States authorities.

Image
Immigrants near McAllen, Tex., in April. Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the government would criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally.CreditLoren Elliott/Reuters

“I am watching history happen before my eyes. It’s horrendous,” said Janice, 53.

Janice, her husband, Chris, and their two teenage daughters have firsthand experience with underage migrants. They are among a number of families who have in recent years provided a temporary home, called transitional foster care, to minors seeking refuge in the United States, usually after fleeing violence and economic uncertainty in Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala.

In the last two years, 12 children, including two sets of siblings, have occupied the room upstairs with its soothing white-and-light-blue walls and twin beds with colorful bedding. All had arrived in the United States alone and remained in the family’s care for a few weeks or months until a long-term sponsor already in the country, often a relative, was identified and cleared by the authorities to receive them.

“They had access to their parents on a daily basis,” Janice said. “They talked to them on the phone. We have done video chats with Mom and Dad and siblings with every placement — except now.”

José is the first child they have hosted who crossed the border with a parent, rather than alone, then was forcibly separated and left with no ability to contact them. On his flight to Michigan were two other Central American boys in similar circumstances who were placed with families in the area.

The majority of youths apprehended at the border over the past several years have been housed in government shelters and most of them are teenagers who came alone, often expecting to join family members already in the United States. About 11,000 children are currently in these facilities, which are at 95 percent capacity, according to Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. The department has reserved an additional 1,218 beds in various places for migrant children, including some at military bases, he said.

On May 10, three days after Mr. Sessions announced the zero-tolerance policy, the government issued a call for proposals from “shelter care providers, including group homes and transitional foster care” in anticipation of a surge in children separated from their parents who would require housing.

. . . .

“For two days, he didn’t shower, he didn’t change his clothes. I literally had to peel the socks off his feet. They were so old and smelly,” Janice said. “I realized that he didn’t want anyone to take anything away from him.”

Image

A drawing of José’s father. Since the child’s arrival in Michigan, his foster family said, a day has not gone by when he has failed to ask in Spanish, “When will I see my papa?”

The one thing that animated him was discussing his “photos,” as he called the family drawings.

He introduced “mi familia,” pointing to the figures of his parents, brother and younger sister. Staring intensely at the sketch of his father, with a slight mustache and a cap, he repeated his name out loud again and again.

It was “just me and him” on the trip from Honduras, he told Janice one night as he lay in bed shuffling the pictures, taking turns looking at one and then the other.

“He holds onto the two pictures for dear life,” Janice said, through tears. “It’s heart-wrenching.”

Janice does not blame José’s parents for putting him through the ordeal.

In early May, she traveled to Central America to see for herself the conditions on the ground, and returned convinced that gang-fueled violence, extortion and recruitment of children were compelling parents to make the arduous journey over land with their children to the United States. “I have nothing but sorrow and compassion for the families,” she said.

When sirens pierced the quiet of the night last week, José’s eyes widened with fear. “La violencia, la violencia,” he said. The family assured him that it was not violence; it was fire trucks.

In recent days, the boy began attending a multi-age kindergarten at Bethany with about a dozen other migrant children.

. . . .

Earlier this week, José spoke with his parents for the first time since their lives had diverged. The phone calls were separate: His father remains in detention, and his mother is in Honduras.

The calls went smoothly, according to the case manager.

But they changed everything. Somehow, it had sunk in that there was no way of knowing when he would see his family. “It triggered all the separation trauma again,” said Janice.

She tried to offer him his toys, but he erupted in anger, screaming and crying at the kitchen table for almost an hour.

“It was really hard to watch. The look on his face was anguish,” said Janice, her voice breaking.

When his fury subsided, the boy collapsed on the kitchen floor, still sobbing. “Mama, Papa,” he said, over and over.

Nearby lay the family pictures, which he had flung on the floor.

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

Read the entire, totally disturbing and enraging, article at the link.

Is this the way we want to be remembered by our children, grandchildren, and future generations? As nation that put cruel, arrogant, and inhumane individuals in charge of our Government and then stood by and watched while they abused children, spread xenophobia, enriched the rich, mocked ethics, and thumbed their noses at human decency.

Assuming that the “Joses of the world” live to grow up, there will be a horrible price to pay for future generations of Americans as they are forced to come to grips with the grotesque human rights abuses committed in the name of a perverted nationalism. Very much like the reckoning that the Catholic Church has had to undergo for tolerating and covering up decades and generations of sexual, physical, and mental abuse of youth!

Get out the vote to limit the power of the horrible minority that has taken over our Government and our nation and to eventually remove them from office at all levels. America cannot and will not “be great again” until the stain of Trumpism is removed from our national Government!

Due Process Forever! Trump & Sessions, Never!

Join the New Due Process Army today!

PWS

06-07-18

THREE FROM “TIRELESS TAL” @ CNN: 1) First, Salvadoran Women Was Forced To Perform Slave Labor By Salvadoran Guerrillas, Then The BIA Shafted Her; 2) Trump/Sessions Scofflaw Attack On “Sanctuary Cities” Stomped By Yet Another U.S. Judge; 3) GOP Continues Internal Immigration Negotiations!

http://www.cnn.com/2018/06/06/politics/woman-el-salvador-guerillas-ruling/index.html

Woman’s forced labor for Salvadoran guerillas means she must leave US, court rules

By Tal Kopan, CNN

She was kidnapped by Salvadoran guerillas three decades ago, watched her husband be killed and forced to cook and clean for the militants. Now she can’t stay in the US.

The main appellate body of the immigration courts issued a divided opinion Wednesday with broad implications, finding that a woman from El Salvador is ineligible for status in the US because her 1990 abduction and forced labor amount to “material support” of a terrorist organization.

According to the court documents, the woman was kidnapped by the guerillas in El Salvador and made to do the cooking and cleaning “under threat of death.” She was also “forced to witness her husband, a sergeant in the Salvadoran Army, dig his own grave before being killed.”

Nevertheless, the 2-1 opinion holds that the woman’s coerced duties for the group constituted “material support” for a terrorist organization, and thus made her ineligible to be granted asylum or have her deportation order canceled in the US — though a lower court judge had ruled she would otherwise be eligible for such relief. The woman first came to the US illegally in 1991 but gained Temporary Protected Status — which is granted to countries that suffer natural disasters and other mass problems and was afforded to El Salvador for decades.

But she left the US and tried to return in 2004, when the government began deportation proceedings against her. Wednesday’s decision is the product of years of litigation regarding her case in the immigration courts — a judicial body for immigration-related claims run by the Justice Department.

Writing for the majority, Board of Immigration Appeals Judge Roger Pauley ruled that “material support” can be virtually anything that is provided to a terrorist organization that supports their overall mission that they would otherwise would need to seek somewhere else.

“In fact, no court has held that the kind of support an alien provides, if related to promoting the goals of a terrorist organization, is exempt from the material support bar, and we discern no basis to import such a limitation,” Pauley wrote.

Pauley also concluded there was no exception for support given “under duress” under US law and the actions do not need to be “voluntary.”

Dissenting board member and Judge Linda Wendtland blasted the court’s interpretation, pointing out the relevant statute lists a number of examples of “material support” like offering safe houses, transportation, funds and other tangible furtherance of their mission.

“I cannot conclude that the menial and incidental tasks that the respondent performed — as a slave — for Salvadoran guerrillas, including cooking, cleaning, and washing clothes, are of ‘the same class’ as the enumerated forms of assistance set forth in the statute,” Wendtland wrote. “Under the majority’s strained interpretation, providing a glass of water to a thirsty individual who happened to belong to a terrorist organization would constitute material support of that organization, because the individual otherwise would have needed to obtain water from another source.”

For the decision to be overturned, the woman in the case would have to appeal to a federal circuit court or succeed in persuading Attorney General Jeff Sessions — who serves as a functional one-man Supreme Court of the immigration courts — to intervene.

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

Judge slaps Sessions, feds over ‘sanctuary cities’

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

A federal judge has once again rebuked the administration’s efforts to pressure so-called sanctuary cities, going further than any to date in using a recent Supreme Court decision to rule an existing federal law unconstitutional.

The ruling Wednesday from Judge Michael Baylson, a George W. Bush appointee, thus far applies only to his district in the Philadelphia area, but it could lay the groundwork for even more rulings that further limit what the administration can do to punish sanctuary cities — a key priority of the administration.

The decision relies, in part, on a May ruling from the Supreme Court on state gambling laws.

Baylson had already blocked the Justice Department from imposing new conditions on federal law enforcement grants that Philadelphia has received in the past, limiting his November ruling to the city, which had challenged the move by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. A federal judge in Chicago also has already blocked the new conditions nationwide, a ruling that was upheld in April by an appeals court. The effort from Sessions to impose the conditions had been an attempt to punish sanctuary cities after a federal judge in California had blocked the administration from pursuing broader funding threats.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/06/06/politics/sanctuary-cities-court-ruling-sessions-immigration/index.html

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

House GOP immigration negotiations continue ahead of key Thursday meeting

By: Tal Kopan and Lauren Fox, CNN

House Republicans are bracing for a two-hour conference meeting Thursday morning on immigration, which could determine the fate of moderate members’ efforts to force a vote on several immigration bills.

“I think a lot of it hangs on that meeting tomorrow,” said Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, who has signed a House procedural maneuver — known as a discharge petition — that allows lawmakers to bypass leadership and force a vote on the floor if they can get a majority of members to sign on.

Ahead of that consequential gathering, the key leaders on the moderate and conservative sides of the issue were huddling with party leadership in Speaker Paul Ryan’s effort in hopes of reaching a consensus that could be presented to their colleagues in the morning.

On their way to the Wednesday meeting and earlier in the day, negotiators expressed optimism but were still far apart on the issue of establishing citizenship for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/06/06/politics/immigration-daca-discharge-petition/index.html

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

Tal’s range, depth, productivity, and readability are simply breathtaking! Don’t know how she does it, but I’m glad she does! I also love her description of Sessions as a “functional one-man Supreme Court.” Wish I’d thought of that one!

Thanks and kudos also to Tal’s terrific colleague Lauren Fox (below) who also is a “Courtside regular.”

PWS

06-06-18

CALLING ALL U.S. JUDGES (ARTICLE III, U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES, ADMINISTRATIVE, STATE, ACTIVE, RETIRED, SENIOR), INVOLVED IN (OR WHO WOULD LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT) ASYLUM AND REFUGEE ADJUDICATION AT THIS CRITICAL JUNCTURE: Come Join Me At The America’s Conference Of The International Association Of Refugee & Migration Judges At Beautiful Georgetown Law Center In Washington, D.C. , August 1-5, 2018!

International Association of Refugee and Migration Judges

America’s Chapter

Office of the Vice President

Alexandria, Virginia

June 6, 2018

Dear colleagues,

As those of you who know me well realize, since my retirement from the bench, there’s not much that can keep me away from Maine and Wisconsin in July and August! But, this year’s America’s Chapter Conference at the beautiful campus of Georgetown Law in D.C. is one of those exceptions.

As the Vice President of the International Association of Refugee and Migration Judges’ (IARMJ) Americas Chapter, I enthusiastically invite you to join me at the Americas Chapter Conference to be held in Washington, D.C., August 1-5, 2018.

As you may be aware, the IARMJ is a voluntary association of judges and quasi-judicial decision makers whose main purpose is to foster an understanding of the obligations created by the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. For instance, this includes supporting capacity building initiatives and the sharing of best practices with nascent refugee determination systems in the Americas to help develop expertise and practices around the world, in accordance with international legal instruments and standards. Then Chief U.S. Immigration Judge (now BIA Appellate Immigration Judge) Michael J. Creppy and I were among the founding members of the IARLJ (the original name of the IARJM) in Warsaw, Poland, two decades ago. As you might expect, my signature is scrawled large across the bottom of the original articles!

The conference will begin with two days of pre-conference workshops, followed by two days of plenary sessions, and a capstone program examining law and justice at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on day five. Expert speakers at this event will include, in addition to internationally renowned academics and specialists, representatives from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services – Asylum Division as well as other government entities and NGOs.

This August, the Americas Chapter seeks to examine the theme of resilience in our asylum systems through an in-depth legal analysis and discussion of various topics, including trauma-informed adjudications techniques, the real-world impact of heavy workloads and humanitarian caseloads on adjudicators, the impact of bias on adjudicative decisions and how lessons learned from recent migration surges can help to inform the creation of more resilient legal protection systems and processes.

Participation is open worldwide, and we aim to invite asylum and refugee judges, quasi-judicial decision makers and tribunal members at all levels. I am thus writing to request your support to both attend this special and timely Conference and to help us promote participation at the Conference, among current and retired U.S. Immigration Judges, BIA Appellate Immigration Judges, and Article III Federal Judges at all levels.

This will be a unique opportunity to make asylum judges throughout the world aware of the challenges that we are facing here in the United States and to share notes with them on how to effectively adhere to the principles enunciated in the 1952 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

ociation of Refugee Please find attached a draft version of the agenda for your reference. I encourage you to visit our website at https://www.iarlj.org/events/event/56-iarlj-americas-chapter-conference for updated conference information, including registration details. If you have any questions or require further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact the following email: iarmjamericaschapter@gmail.com.

I look forward to seeing you at Georgetown Law in August!

Due Process Forever!

Best regards,

Paul

Americas Chapter, IARMJ

HERE’S THE AGENDA:

Agenda ENG 2018

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

Friends, there has NEVER been a more important time for this Conference and this terrific organization dedicated to promoting professionalism, respect, fairness, Due Process, and international understanding in interpreting and applying the 1952 Convention on the Status of Refugees — the most important international accord in the timeless history of refugees! Meetings like this don’t come to the United States often. Don’t miss this opportunity for a special, one-of-a-kind experience with your peers from elsewhere!

IMPORTANT NOTE: Although we would, of course, love to have you join our organization and will have a favorable membership rate for new members, membership in the IARMJ is not required to attend this conference!

Hope to see you at Georgetown Law in August!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-06-18

TAL @ CNN – TOP “KAKISTOCRAT” JEFF SESSIONS ENTHUSIASTICALLY IMPLEMENTS TRUMP’S IMMORAL, OFTEN LAWLESS, AND PROBABLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA – This Should Disabuse Everyone, Including Federal Article III Courts, Of The (Fictional) “Independence” Or “Professional Responsibility” Of The USDOJ!

Sessions, Justice Department take lead as public face of Trump’s immigration policy

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

If there’s one person besides President Donald Trump who’s associated with his immigration policies, it’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Regardless of whether it’s his agency’s core jurisdiction.

Sessions and the Justice Department have taken a lead role in announcing and defending the administration’s immigration efforts on a number of fronts — including some that only tangentially involve the department.

It was the Justice Department press office that put out a “fact check” statement Tuesday responding to Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley’s publicized border trip to visit detention facilities run by components of the Departments of Homeland Security and of Health and Human Services, and it was Sessions who went in front of cameras the day the DHS announced the policy that would result in more families separated at the border.

Even going back to September, it was Sessions who announced on camera the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, which was rescinded by the DHS citing legal guidance from the Justice Department. Sessions has made immigration and border security at least a passing reference in most speeches he’s given and has made multiple trips to the border to highlight the issue.

His investment in the issue doesn’t mean other agencies aren’t involved, nor that his shouldn’t be. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has vocally defended the policies in front of Congress and in public appearances. At the time of the DACA decision, the DHS was led by an acting secretary, Elaine Duke, who was not a mouthpiece for the administration’s immigration policies. And Sessions has certainly explored every way his agency could be a player in immigration policy.

But in numerous instances, Sessions has been associated with policies his department would otherwise not have a large role in — and the Justice Department seems to relish taking it on.

Asked for comment, a Justice Department spokesman said Sessions is “proud” to execute the administration’s agenda “in lockstep” with Nielsen. The DHS declined to comment.

A former Obama administration Justice Department immigration official, however, said the department’s hand in making policy is counter to what has traditionally been its role — serving as the government’s lawyer to defend policies.

“It’s unclear what the purpose is of talking about Sen. Merkley at all at the Justice Department,” said Leon Fresco, who served in the Obama administration and is now in private practice. “I think in many cases that agencies are best served by the Department of Justice being perceived as a neutral arbiter on all policies and the agencies being the ones who drive the policy-making agenda. When those roles are blurred, it becomes much harder for the lawyers who have to go to court to have to argue that they don’t have a vested interest in the policies that are being advocated.”

Much more: http://www.cnn.com/2018/06/05/politics/sessions-justice-ownership-immigration/index.html

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

It’s no surprise to those who have followed Sessions’ career. Even in the Senate, he was an outspoken voice in the immigration debate, largely to the right of most of his Republican colleagues.

“While Jeff Sessions may have wanted to be attorney general, the area and issue he cared about the most was immigration,” said Peter Boogaard, a former Obama administration spokesman for the White House and DHS who is now with the pro-immigration group FWD.us.

“It’s not something when I worked in the Department of Homeland Security that Justice was trying to do. They were focused on big, large-scale counterterrorism efforts, and big large-scale efforts on public safety and national security,” Boogaard continued. “The Department of Justice did not engage in immigration issues in this capacity and it is surprising that DHS has ceded that ground of authority. But this is not a new trend; this is something that has been the case since the beginning of this administration.”

Pretty much says it all. Sessions “hanging tough” following Trump’s criticism on the Mueller investigation has nothing to do with integrity (gimmie a break — he’d be violating clear ethics and, perhaps, criminal rules if he “un-recused” himself — he’d certainly lose his law license) or protecting the (largely fictional) “independence” of the Justice Department. It has everything to do with a mean and nasty guy with a White Nationalist Agenda wanting to take full advantage of the “chance of a lifetime” to inflict maximum, and perhaps lasting, unnecessary pain and suffering on migrants, women, children and other vulnerable individuals who don’t fit within his “White Nationalist universe.”

Sessions’s tenure “proves beyond a reasonable doubt” that the current Immigration Court system is neither fundamentally fair nor independent and it is incapable, in its current form, of delivering and guaranteeing Due Process for migrants. If and when Congress and/or the Article IIIs are going to recognize the obvious and “do the right thing” is a different question — — one where “the jury is still out.”

PWS

06-06-18

YOU ARE NOT ALONE! — MORE LAW YOU CAN USE FROM COURTSIDE: Pro Bono All-Stars Michelle Mendez & Rebecca Scholtz of CLINIC’s Defending Vulnerable Populations Project Proudly Present “A Practitioner’s Guide To Obtaining Release From Immigration Detention!”

HERE’S THE LINK:

A-Guide-to-Obtaining-Release-from-Immigration-Detention

KEY QUOTE:

As the use of immigration detention continues to increase, it is more important than ever that representatives understand the legal framework governing bond proceedings in order to harness that knowledge toward zealous and well-prepared advocacy on behalf of detained respondents. Successful bond representation can make all the difference in whether a respondent is able to secure release and ultimately prevail on the merits of his or her case. Effective representation in bond proceedings also helps to safeguard the due process rights of detained respondents. The authors encourage practitioners to consider pro bono opportunities available in their jurisdiction or remotely, such as through the Immigrant Justice Campaign, which not only help meet a compelling need but can also provide practitioners with experience and mentoring. Given the ever-changing landscape of immigration detention, practitioners are encouraged to remain connected to others doing bond work in order to share information about the latest trends, successful strategies, and best practices. Finally, the authors wish to remind readers that this guide is intended for general educational use only and that practitioners should independently research the law governing their jurisdiction, as this area of law (like many in the immigration field) is complex and frequently changing.

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

Join the New Due Process Army. Fight for the Due Process rights of everyone in America. Allow yourself to be inspired by and learn from the scholarship, dedication, character, and commitment of amazing attorneys, leaders, and role models like Michelle & Rebecca!

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all! Due Process forever!

PWS

06-05-18

HON. JEFFREY CHASE WITH “LAW YOU CAN USE” TO FORCE THIS ADMINISTRATION TO RECOGNIZE REFUGEES FROM THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE — Yes, Many Recently Arrived Refugees From The Northern Triangle Qualify As “Political” Refugees – Here’s How To Argue & Support Their Cases!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/6/3/3rd-generation-gangs-and-political-opinion

Jun 3 3rd-Generation Gangs and Political Opinion

When Attorney General Jeff Sessions issues his decision in Matter of A-B- (the case he certified to himself to decide whether “being a victim of private criminal activity” can constitute a particular social group for asylum purposes), it may negatively impact those asylum applicants who fear gang violence on account of their membership in a particular social group. Attorneys representing such claimants should consider whether their clients may alternatively claim a well-founded fear of persecution based on their political opinion under a “third-generation gang” theory, supported by country condition evidence.

In their article ‘Third Generation’ Gangs, Warfare in Central America, and Refugee Law’s Political Opinion Ground,1 Deborah Anker and Palmer Lawrence make a very important point: that “the Refugee Convention’s concept of political opinion incorporates ‘any opinion on any matter in which the machinery of the State, government, and policy may be engaged,’ or that of other persecutory agents where the state is unwilling or unable to provide protection” (citing Canada (Attorney General) v. Ward, [1993] 2 S.C.R. 689, 746 (Can.)).

Relying on this broad interpretation of political opinion, Anker and Lawrence next note that some military and law enforcement experts have concluded that the larger Central American gangs (including MS-13 and Mara 18) “have developed a degree of politicization, sophistication, and international reach to qualify them as ‘third generation gangs,’” which “function as de facto governments, controlling significant territory (competing with the state for power).” Anker and Lawrence cite Lieutenant Colonel Howard L. Gray, Gangs and Transnational Criminals Threaten Central American Stability, 7 U.S. Army War College, Strategy Research Project (2009)); in documenting such claims, practitioners should also reference John P. Sullivan and Robert J. Bunker, “Third Generation Gang Studies: An Introduction,” 14-4 Journal of Gang Research 1 (Summer 2007), and “Third General Gangs Strategic Note No. 1: Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) 500 Man Commando Unit Planned for El Salvador,” Small Wars Journal, Sept. 10, 2016. The last article quotes Douglas Farah, Visiting Senior Fellow, National Defense University Center for Complex Operations as stating that “The MS has strong political and military ambitions and now views itself as political/military rather than a gang…MS 13 now has troops, weapons, and a cause…efforts to form a joint force with the 18 is less likely but both sides are in discussion to at least have lines of communication open.”2

Under the definition of political opinion cited above, gangs such as MS-13 and Mara 18 are at least other persecutory agents from which the state is unable or unwilling to provide protection. Such gangs might also be the de facto “state” itself in areas they control. The idea that opinions or matters that engage such gangs might constitute political opinion finds support from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has recently published Eligibility Guidelines for Assessing the International Protection Needs of Asylum Seekers from Guatemala (January 2018), El Salvador (March 2016), and Honduras (July 2016). These can be found on the website Refworld.org. UNHCR has been described as “the entity that most resembles a supervisory body of the [1951] Convention.”3 Although U.S. courts and the BIA have been inconsistent in the deference accorded to its opinions, given the clearly stated intent of Congress in passing the Refugee Act of 1980 to conform U.S. asylum law to the language of the 1951 Convention (which was binding on the U.S. based on its ratification of the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees), it has been argued that courts should defer more consistently to UNHCR’s interpretations of the Convention’s provisions.4

UNHCR’s 2016 Eligibility Guidelines for El Salvador includes an “Assessment of International Protection Needs of Asylum-seekers from El Salvador.” The agency concludes that “depending on the particular circumstances of the case, UNHCR considers that persons perceived by a gang as contravening its rules or resisting its authority may be in need of international protection on the grounds of their (imputed) political opinion…”5 The UNHCR Guidelines report at p. 12 that “gangs are reported to exercise extraordinary levels of social control over the population of their territories.” According to UNHCR, residents in such gang-controlled zones “are reportedly required to ‘look, listen and keep quiet’ (‘mirar, oir, callar’), and often face a plethora of gang-imposed restrictions on who they can talk with and what about, what time they must be inside their homes, where they can walk or go to school, who they can visit and who can visit them, what they can wear, and even, reportedly, the color of their hair.”

At p. 28 of its Guidelines, UNHCR states:

The ground of political opinion needs to reflect the reality of the specific geographical, historical, political, legal, judicial, and sociocultural context of the country of origin. In contexts such as that in El Salvador, expressing objections to the activities of gangs may be considered as amounting to an opinion that is critical of the methods and policies of those in control and, thus, constitute a “political opinion” within the meaning of the refugee definition. For example, individuals who resist being recruited by a gang, or who refuse to comply with demands made by the gangs, such as demands to pay extortion money, may be perceived to hold a political opinion.

Anker and Lawrence note in their conclusion that many denials of such claims “reflect adjudicators’ and courts’ lack of knowledge (often because they are not presented with evidence) of regarding the political nature and context of the present conflict in that region.” This is an extremely important point. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stated in Castro v. Holder6 that “a claim of political persecution cannot be evaluated in a vacuum….” The court noted that it has “remanded cases in which the agency denied an application for asylum based on its failure to properly engage in the “complex and contextual factual inquiry” that such claims often require…Nevertheless, in this case, the agency has once again embraced an ‘impoverished view of what political opinions are, especially in a country where certain democratic rights have only a tenuous hold’” in denying the asylum claim “without any coherent examination of the surrounding political environment.”

Immigration judges dealing with seriously overloaded dockets, limited authority to grant continuances, and completion quotas will be hard pressed to engage in “complex and contextual factual inquiry.” Practitioners should do their best to educate adjudicators through country condition evidence, expert testimony, memoranda of law, and through detailed direct examination of the asylum-seeker.

Practitioners should also rely on the BIA’s precedent decision in Matter of S-P-, 21 I&N Dec. 486 (BIA 1996), which held that imputed political opinion may satisfy the refugee definition (relying in part on the UNHCR Handbook and Procedures for Determining Refugee Status under the 1951 Convention; and that asylum applicants need not show conclusively why persecution may occur, but need only produce facts to establish that a reasonable person would fear that the danger arises on account of a protected ground. The Board in S-P- also set forth five elements to consider in identifying motive, including “indications in the particular case that the abuse was directed toward modifying or punishing opinion rather than conduct (e.g., statements or actions by the perpetrators or abuse out of proportion to nonpolitical ends)” (Id. at 494). With the support of the UNHCR Guidelines, a strong argument can be made that death threats or actual killings for offenses such as “looking mistrustfully at a gang member,” “wearing certain clothing.” or “accidentally turning up uninvited in a gang zone” constitute “statements or actions…out of proportion to nonpolitical ends” under the criteria found in Matter of S-P-.7

Where another motive exists for the feared harm, practitioners should argue that mixed motives will support a grant of asylum where one of the motives is tethered to a statutory ground. See Matter of S-P-, supra at 495. In Osorio v. INS, 18 F.3d 1017 (2d Cir. 1994), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit responded to INS’ argument that a labor union leader could not establish a nexus to political opinion because his dispute with the Guatemalan government was economic in nature by finding “any attempt to unravel economic from political motives is untenable in this case.” The court concluded that the petitioner’s union activities “imply a political opinion,” concluding that “the Government’s view of what constitutes a political opinion is too narrow.” Or, as Anker and Lawrence explain, “gangs can, for example, view a person who refuses extortion as an enemy opposing them and, at the same time, also want the funds.”

Copyright 2018 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Notes:

1. 14-10 Immigration Briefings 1 (October 2014).

2. I first heard Farah speak at a country condition training on gang violence in the Northern Triangle held by USCIS for its asylum officers; at my invitation, Farah was a speaker on the same topic at the 2015 EOIR Training Conference for its immigration judges and BIA staff.

3. American Courts and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees: A Need for Harmony in the Face of a Refugee Crisis (Note), 131 HARVARD L.R. 1399 (March 2018).

4. See, e.g., American Courts and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, supra; Bassina Farbenblum, Executive Deference in U.S. Refugee Law: Internationalist Paths Through and Beyond Chevron,” 60 DUKE L.J. 1059 (2011); Joan Fitzpatrick, The International Dimension of U.S. Refugee Law, 15 BERKELEY J. INT’L L. 1 (1997).

5. UNHCR, Eligibility Guidelines for Assessing the International Protection Needs of Asylum-Seekers from El Salvador (March 2016) at 30. http://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?page=search&docid=56e706e94&skip=0&query=guidelines%20on%20&coi=SLV

6. 597 F.3d 93 (2d Cir. 2010).

7. See UNHCR Guidelines on El Salvador at 29; Matter of S-P-, supra at 494.

JEFF CHASE

JEREMY STAHL @ SLATE: THE BIG UGLY – SEPARATION OF FAMILIES & DETENTION — TRUMP, SESSIONS, NIELSEN = LIES, IMMORALITY, ILLEGALITY!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/trumps-child-separation-policy-is-a-moral-and-constitutional-abomination.html

JURISPRUDENCE

A Moral and Legal Abomination

The government has offered no substantive legal justification for the Trump administration’s policy of indefinitely separating children from their parents at the border.

By JEREMY STAHL

JUNE 03, 20187:30 PM

TWEET

SHARE

COMMENT

On Thursday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein proposed a law that would bar the intentional separation of asylum-seeking parents from their children when they cross the border. “It’s hard to conceive of a policy more horrific than intentionally separating children from their parents as a form of punishment,” the California Democrat said in a statement publicizing the move.

Affidavits from a February lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union show precisely what Feinstein describes. The Congolese asylum-seeker at the center of the case, known as “Ms. L,” described having her 6-year-old daughter taken away by the U.S. government without explanation. “She was taken into another room and then I heard her screaming: Don’t take me away from my mommy!” the woman wrote. In court filings, the government questioned whether Ms. L was in fact her child’s mother. The woman had her child returned only after the suit was filed and the government was made to conduct a DNA test that proved her parentage.

“[T]hese terrible policies call into question whether we are in violation of our own laws and our obligations under international law,” Feinstein said in proposing a law to stop the practice of splitting up families at the border. Feinstein is right: There seems to be no coherent legal justification for separating children from their parents, some of whom—like Ms. L—presented themselves at a port of entry as asylum-seekers and have not been charged with any crimes.

The rationale top Trump administration officials have stated publicly—that such a practice will deter undocumented immigrants from seeking asylum at the border—appears to be so patently unconstitutional that the government’s own lawyers have renounced it in court. If the broad outlines here sound familiar, that’s because the legal fight over the policy is shaping up as a replay of the battle over President Donald Trump’s disastrous first travel ban, which was quickly struck down as a blatant violation of due process rights.

A federal judge in San Diego is set to rule any day on the question of whether the government is lawlessly abducting immigrant children at the border. The ACLU is seeking a classwide preliminary injunction to put a stop to the practice. Based on a close reading of legal filings in the case, the public statements of policymakers, and a transcript from a critical hearing last month, it’s difficult to fathom how the judiciary could possibly rule in favor of the government.

In court proceedings last month, Judge Dana Sabraw indicated that the case, Ms. L v. ICE—filed by the ACLU on behalf of Ms. L and other asylum-seeking parents who have had their children taken away—should hinge on the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Under a series of Supreme Court precedents, family integrity has long been considered a “fundamental” due process right. Among other rulings, the ACLU’s lawsuit cited the Supreme Court’s opinion in 2000’s Troxel v. Granville, which stated that there is “a fundamental liberty interest of natural parents in the care, custody, and management of their child.” This precedent mandates both that the government show a compelling government interest in separating a child and parent—preventing child abuse, for instance—and that it is using the least restrictive means to fulfill that interest.

In the ACLU’s case, the government has not shown a lawful basis for its policy of indefinitely separating immigrant children from their parents at the border. In fact, government lawyers have denied the existence of any such policy at all. In response to Sabraw’s question about whether the government “has a practice, or perhaps even a policy, of separation of families as a deterrence mechanism,” Justice Department attorney Sarah B. Fabian asserted, “There is not such a policy.”

This claim directly contradicts the administration’s publicly stated reasoning. When asked by CNN in March 2017 about the possibility of separating children from their parents at the border, then–Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly said, “I am considering, in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network, I am considering exactly that.”

Per the New York Times, that policy was put on hold at the time because it was deemed too controversial. But in the last several months, as Trump has reportedly put intense pressure on his Cabinet to reverse an uptick in border crossings by undocumented immigrants, such a policy appears to have been put into place. Last month, the Washington Post reported that a pilot version of a program of separating families had occurred “in the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, which includes New Mexico, between July and November 2017, and [the administration] said the number of families attempting to cross illegally plunged by 64 percent.” And in a pair of speeches last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions seemed to herald the launch of a formal policy, calling it a “zero-tolerance” immigration measure. “If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally,” Sessions said. “It’s not our fault that somebody does that.” Kelly, now Trump’s chief of staff, stated again last month in an interview with NPR that the purpose of “family separation” is deterrence. “The name of the game to a large degree … a big name of the game is deterrence,” he said.

The current secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, did not provide a direct answer when asked by NPR if “family separation at the border … [was] meant to act as a deterrent,” explaining that it’s very common for adults to get separated from their children when they commit crimes. In testimony before Congress in April, Nielsen said, “When we separate, we separate because the law tells us to, and that is in the interest of the child.”

In April, the Post reported that portions of the separation policy had been memorialized in a memo—a document that described the maneuver’s deterrent effect:

In a memorandum that outlines the proposal and was obtained by The Washington Post, officials say that threatening adults with criminal charges and prison time would be the “most effective” way to reverse the steadily rising number of attempted crossings. Most parents now caught crossing the border illegally with their children are quickly released to await civil deportation hearings.

“Such a policy would mean separating parents and children, because the parents would be placed in criminal detention, where children cannot be held,” the Post noted.

In a statement provided to the Post, Homeland Security spokeswoman Katie Waldman said, “DHS does not have a policy of separating families at the border for deterrence purposes.” Waldman did justify the splitting of families, though, by claiming it was necessary to combat child smuggling as well as to “protect” children from their own “nefarious” border-crossing parents. “DHS does … have a legal obligation to protect the best interests of the child whether that be from human smugglings, drug traffickers, or nefarious actors who knowingly break our immigration laws and put minor children at risk,” she said.

While the government denies the existence of a concrete policy, the numbers tell a different story. “Customs and Border Protection informed me that 658 children were taken from 638 parents during a 14-day period in May,” Feinstein reported on Thursday. This is a huge uptick from the six-month period between October and April, when the New York Times reported that “more than 700 children”—roughly 120 per month, as compared to 658 in 14 days—were reportedly separated “from adults claiming to be their parents.”

Let’s imagine that, based on all this evidence, Judge Sabraw—who was appointed by George W. Bush—determines there is in fact a new government policy of separating children and parents at the border. The court would then need to examine the government’s stated rationale for enacting such a rule. For the policy to pass constitutional muster, the government needs some legal justification for the indefinite separation of parents from children, even when the parents and children are undocumented immigrants. The Supreme Court held in 2000’s Zadvydas v. Davis that due process rights apply to undocumented immigrants. This holding suggests the government may not separate asylum-seekers from their children indefinitely and without cause. During last month’s arguments, it sounded like the judge believed the policy justification stated by Kelly—deterrence of illegal immigration—was clearly unconstitutional. “A policy of deterring families from entering the United States by separating them … would [that not be] a clear substantive due process violation?” Judge Sabraw asked of Fabian, the government attorney.

“If it was done without any otherwise authority to cause the separation, I think, we might be closer to that problem,” she acknowledged, claiming the government does have such authority stemming from the Immigration and Nationality Act. When Sabraw responded that the government still hadn’t presented a substantive due process rationale, Fabian said the government has a right to separate parents who are jailed for violating the law from their children while those parents are behind bars. The ACLU, in this lawsuit, is not contesting that fact. What it is contesting is the government’s apparent policy of refusing to return children to parents once they’ve served their time—generally around a month for misdemeanor illegal entry—and of taking children from parents who present themselves at a U.S. port of entry seeking asylum and have not been charged with any crime.

When confronted about the legality of these practices, the government has merely asserted they are legal without providing a substantive justification. “They can’t come up with a justification because the truth is that the only justification that makes sense is their perceived view of the deterrence value,” Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney litigating the case, told me.

Having reviewed the transcript from the hearing, and having read the government’s legal filings, Gelernt appears to be correct. At May’s hearing, the judge repeatedly questioned Fabian about whether a substantive due process violation had occurred. Fabian asserted it had not. The judge then made clear that the government had to offer an actual argument. “Simply saying there is detention and … therefore the family integrity gives way doesn’t address specifically what’s happening in this case,” Sabraw said. “Doesn’t there have to be some determination in order to comply with Fifth Amendment rights before separately detaining family members?”

Fabian, at this point, simply stated: “We don’t agree that that has to be made.” She then said that when a minor and parent are separated, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act dictates that the minor be placed with another custodian. But she didn’t explain why the decision to indefinitely separate the minor from the parent would be made in the first place.

Later, the judge specifically addressed those situations in which a person has been convicted of an unlawful entry misdemeanor, had their child lawfully separated from them while they were incarcerated, and then been detained by immigration officials separately from their children while awaiting asylum. “Is there any process that [the Department of Health and Human Services] has or DHS has where after a person has served their time, efforts or a process exists to explore the lawful options of reuniting the parent with the child?” Sabraw asked. “There is not a process that would reunite them at that time because she is in ICE custody and remains unavailable,” Fabian responded. “Shouldn’t there be” some process for reuniting “after a person does their time?” the judge asked. Fabian then argued that it is in the best interests of children to remain separated from their detained parent because such a parent is “not going to be a suitable custodian.”

The notion that a child is better off without his parent not only flies in the face of logic, it also contradicts government policies that allow the detention of some undocumented asylum-seekers with their children. If such parents have historically been considered suitable custodians—and in some cases are still considered suitable custodians—how can other similarly situated parents not be considered suitable custodians?

The government ultimately leaned on the argument that DHS must make decisions in a hurry. “The goal is not to prolong that process but to get folks to the location where they can be housed long-term if that is what is going to happen,” Fabian argued. Again, this argument is illogical: It wouldn’t take any longer to decide to keep parents and children together than it would to decide to separate them. Sabraw also asked if DNA testing might help the government distinguish biological parents from child smugglers, as it had in the case of Ms. L. Fabian said she didn’t know if that was “a feasible option.”

The ACLU has asked the court to allow it to add more plaintiffs to Ms. L v. ICE, which was previously filed with two plaintiffs. One of the motions seeking class certification includes affidavits from several other immigrants who’ve had their children taken away at the border. Those affidavits offer more examples of what it looks like when kids as young as 18 months old are literally ripped away from their parents.

Testimony of Mr. U:

All I can remember is how much my son and I were both crying as they took him away. I do not recall anyone questioning whether I am really his biological father or whether I was a danger to him or abusive in any way. I even had my son’s birth certificate proving I am his father. … It has been six months since I last saw my son.

Testimony of Ms. G:

Shortly after arriving, I was told that I was going to be separated from my daughter. There were no doubts expressed that I was my daughter’s biological mother and I have a birth certificate to show our relationship. They did not say that I was a danger to my daughter or was abusive. … I know that [my children] are having a very hard time detained all by themselves without me. They are only six and four years old in a strange country and they need their parent. I hope I can be with my children very soon. I miss them and am scared for them.

Testimony of Ms. J. I. L.

That day, March 13, a woman came to pick up my kids. I was given only five minutes to say goodbye before J.S.P.L. and D.A.P.L. were torn from me. My babies started crying when they found out we were going to be separated. It breaks my heart to remember my youngest wail, “Why do I have to leave? Mami, I want to stay with you!” … In tears myself, I asked my boys to be brave, and I promised we would be together again soon. I begged the woman who took my children to keep them together so they could at least have each other. She promised she would, and she left with my boys. … I am particularly worried about my older son J.S.P.L. who was not doing well back in El Salvador after he saw MS gang members beat me and threaten me. He did not even want to leave my side to go to the restroom. … Both of my sons need their mother. I do not know if they are eating, sleeping, or even going to the restroom.

Testimony of Mirian:

The U.S. immigration officers then told me that they were taking my [18-month old] son from me. They said he would be going to one place and I would be going to another. I asked why the officers were separating my son from me. They did not provide any reason. … The immigration officers made me walk out with my son to a government vehicle and place my son in a car seat in the vehicle. My son was crying as I put him in the seat. I did not even have a chance to comfort my son, because the officers slammed the door shut as soon as he was in his seat. I was crying too. I cry even now when I think about that moment when the border officers took my son away.

Nielsen has said the government is acting as expeditiously as possible in such cases. “It’s not our intent to separate people one day longer than is necessary to prove that there is in fact a custodial relationship,” she told NPR last month. These affidavits call that claim into question.

Gelernt added that he has never seen anything this dramatic in his many years of working on immigration cases and doesn’t believe the public outrage has been nearly commensurate with the actions taking place.

“I just feel like the debate has become so abstract,” Gelernt told me. “If any policymaker could sit in that room for a day and watch these kids begging and screaming not to be taken away, I don’t know how they could continue this practice.” He says he fears the general population is already forgetting about the stakes of this case: “Roseanne will make another comment and the kids will be sitting there for another eight months, and no one will remember them.”

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

Join the New Due Process Army. Fight the Trump/GOP Immigration Abomination!

PWS

06-04-18

UNFORTUNATELY, AMERICA HAS A LONG HORRIBLE HISTORY OF INFLICTING CHILD ABUSE ON FAMILIES OF COLOR: Don’t Kid Yourself, That’s Exactly The Ugliness Of Our Past That Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, Miller & Their Restrictionist Apologists/Enablers Are Recreating Today! – The Only Real Issue Is How Many Of Us Will Be Complicit In Their Ugliness?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/05/31/barbaric-americas-cruel-history-of-separating-children-from-their-parents/?utm_term=.90aaf24758e8

DaNeen Brown writes for the Washington Post:

A mother unleashed a piercing scream as her baby was ripped from her arms during a slave auction. Even as a lash cut her back, she refused to put her baby down and climb atop an auction block.

The woman pleaded for God’s mercy, Henry Bibb, a former slave, recalled in an 1849 narrative that is part of “The Weeping Time” exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History and Culture, which documents the tragic history of children being separated from their parents during slavery. “But the child was torn from the arms of its mother amid the most heart-rending shrieks from the mother and child on the one hand, and the bitter oaths and cruel lashes from the tyrants on the other.”

Her mother was sold to the highest bidder.

Enslaved mothers and fathers lived with the constant fear that they or their children might be sold away.

“Night and day, you could hear men and women screaming … ma, pa, sister or brother … taken without any warning,” Susan Hamilton, another witness to a slave auction, recalled in a 1938 interview. “People was always dying from a broken heart.”

The Trump administration’s current crackdown on families that cross the border illegally has led to hundreds of children, some as young as 18 months, being separated from their parents. The parents are being sent to federal jails to face criminal prosecution while their children are being placed in shelters operated by the Department of Health and Human Services. Often, the children have no idea where their parents are or when they will see them again.

[Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ at the border is causing child shelters to fill up fast]

The policy has generated outrage among Democrats and immigration advocates. And it has conjured memories of some of the ugliest chapters in American history.

“Official US policy,” tweeted the African American Research Collaborative over the weekend. “Until 1865, rip African American children from their parents. From 1870s to 1970s, rip Native American children from their parents. Now, rip children of immigrants and refugees from their parents.”

Henry Fernandez, co-founder of the collaborative and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said he drafted the tweet based on his research into several periods in U.S. history when government officials sanctioned the separation of children from their parents, including during slavery.

[Missouri v. Celia, a Slave: She killed the white master raping her, then claimed self-defense]

Another period of family cruelty, Fernandez said, began in the late 1800s and lasted well into the 1970s, when indigenous children across the country were forcibly separated from their families and sent to “Indian schools.” At the boarding schools, the children were required to assimilate. They were stripped of their language and culture. Often they were physically and sometimes sexually abused.

“In each case, we look back at the programs as barbaric,” Fernandez said. “History will similarly consider the Trump administration’s ripping children from their parents as an unconscionably evil government action.”

According to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, beginning in the late 1800s, thousands of American Indian children were sent to government-run or church-run boarding schools.

“Families were often forced to send their children to these schools, where they were forbidden to speak their Native languages,” according to the museum.

The exhibit includes a quote from Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School: “In Indian civilization I am a Baptist,” Pratt wrote, “because I believe in immersing the Indian in our civilization and when we get them under, holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked.”

A teacher and students at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania in 1901. (Library of Congress)

At boarding schools, “children were forced to cut their hair and give up their traditional clothing,” according to the museum. “They had to give up their meaningful Native names and take English ones. They were not only taught to speak English, but were punished for speaking their own languages. Their own traditional religious practices were forcibly replaced with Christianity. They were taught that their cultures were inferior. Some teachers ridiculed and made fun of the students’ traditions. These lessons humiliated the students and taught them to be ashamed of being American Indian.”

“They tell us not to speak in Navajo language. You’re going to school. You’re supposed to only speak English. And it was true. They did practice that, and we got punished if you was caught speaking Navajo,” John Brown Jr., a Navajo who served in World War II as a code talker, using his Navajo language for tactical communications the Japanese could not decode, told the National Museum of the American Indian in a 2004 interview.

“When we got talking, ’cause we’re not allowed to talk our tribal language, and then me and my cousin, we get together and we talk in Indian, we always hush up when we see a teacher or faculty coming,” Charles Chibitty, a Comanche code talker, told the museum in 2004. “And then we always laughed and said, ‘I think they’re trying to make little white boys out of us.’ ”

Government Indian school on the Swinomish Reservation in La Conner, Wash., in 1907. (Library of Congress)

Until the end of the Civil War, it was common for slave owners to rip families apart by selling the children or the parents to other slave owners.

“Along with ongoing rape and the use of the whip to discipline human beings,” Fernandez said, “destroying families is one of the worst things done during slavery. The federal government maintained these evils through the fugitive slave laws and other rules which defined African Americans as property with which a slave owner could do whatever they wanted.”

Each of these U.S. policies, Fernandez said, begins with the assumption “that the idea of family is simply less important to people of color and that the people involved are less than human. To justify ripping families apart, the government must first engage in dehumanizing the targeted group, whether it is Native Americans, African Americans or immigrants from Central America fleeing murder, rape, extortion and kidnapping.”

Trump, he noted, dehumanized immigrant children by saying, “ ‘They look so innocent. They’re not innocent.’ ”

“There is no question these children are innocent,” Fernandez said, “but Trump associates them with the idea that these are not like your children and thus less than human.”

Slave narratives reveal the heart-wrenching stories of children taken from families.

According to the Maryland State Archives: “For most slave children, the separation from their parents and the siblings was the hardest aspect of being sold. Slaves went to great lengths to keep their family together, but there was often limits to what they could do.”

[Hunting down runaway slaves: The cruel ads of Andrew Jackson and ‘the master class’]

The report includes a narrative from Charles Ball, who was enslaved as a child and remembered the day he was sold away from his mother.

“My poor mother, when she saw me leaving her for the last time, ran after me, took me down from the horse, clasped me in her arms, and wept loudly and bitterly over me,” Ball recalled. “My master seemed to pity her and endeavored to soothe her distress by telling her that he would be a good master to me, and that I should not want anything.”

Still, his mother would not let go. She walked beside the horse, begging the slave owner to buy her and the rest of her children.

“But whilst thus entreating him to save her and her family,” Ball recalled, “the slave-driver, who had first bought her, came running in pursuit of her with a raw hide in his hand. When he overtook us, he told her he was her master now and ordered her to give that little Negro to its owner and come back with him. My mother then turned to him and cried, ‘Oh, master, do not take me from my child!’ Without making any reply, he gave her two or three heavy blows on the shoulders with his raw hide, snatched me from her arms, handed me to my master, and seizing her by one arm, dragged her back towards the place of sale.”

After the end of the Civil War, thousands of former slaves looked for lost relatives and children who had been sold away from their families. They placed thousands of ads in newspapers.

Mary Bailey searches for her children, Nancy, Ben, Polly, Tempa and Isham Bailey. The ad ran in the Daily Dispatch newspaper in Richmond on Nov. 24, 1866.

Those ads are now being digitized in a project called “Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery,” which is run by Villanova University’s graduate history program in collaboration with Philadelphia’s Mother Bethel AME Church.

[‘My mother was sold from me’: After slavery, the desperate search for loved ones in ‘last seen ads’]

The ads started appearing about 1863. By 1865, when the Civil War ended, they were coming out in streams, thousands of “Information Wanted” notices in black-owned newspapers across the country, seeking any help to find loved ones.

Mothers looked for their children; children looked for their mothers; fathers placed ads for lost sons; sisters looked for sisters; husbands sought their wives; wives tried to find their husbands.

The ads often gave detailed physical descriptions of the missing, names of former slave owners, locations where family members were last seen, and sometimes maps, tracing how many times they were sold from one owner to the next until they were so far from family members all they had to cling to were sketchy memories.

Elizabeth Williams, who had been sold twice since she last saw her children, placed a heart-wrenching ad in the Christian Recorder newspaper in Philadelphia:

“INFORMATION WANTED by a mother concerning her children,” Williams wrote March 17, 1866.

In four column inches, the mother summed up her life, hoping the details would help her find the children. She listed their names — Lydia, William, Allen and Parker — and explained in a few words that she last saw them when they were “formerly owned together” by a man named John Petty, who lived about six miles from Woodbury, Tenn.

She explained how her family was split apart when she was sold again and taken farther south into captivity.

“She has never seen the above-named children since,” the ad said. “Any information given concerning them, however, will be gratefully received by one whose love for her children survives the bitterness and hardships of many long years spent in slavery.”

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

Resist the toxic, inhumane, immoral, and illegal immigration policies of Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, Miller, and the rest of their White Nationalist Gang. “Just say no” to the “Make America Grotesque Again” Mob. Join the New Due Process Army and stand up for the Constitutional rights of everyone in America, regardless of color, creed, or status!

PWS

06-02-18

LAW YOU CAN USE: ALL-STAR PROFESSOR LINDSAY MUIR HARRIS TELLS US HOW TO STOP THE TRUMP, SESSIONS, NIELSEN PLAN FOR A “NEW AMERICAN GULAG:” “CONTEMPORARY FAMILY DETENTION AND LEGAL ADVOCACY” — 136 Harvard Latinx Law Review Vol. 21 — “This is our time to act and proudly join the brigade of “dirty immigration lawyers” to ensure protection and due process for the most vulnerable!”

FULL ARTICLE:

SSRN-id3179506

ABSTRACT:

Abstract

This essay explores the contemporary practice of detaining immigrant women and children — the vast majority of whom are fleeing violence in their home countries and seeking protection in the United States — and the response by a diverse coalition of legal advocates. In spite of heroic advocacy, both within and outside the detention centers from the courts to the media to the White House, family detention continues. By charting the evolution of family detention from the time the Obama Administration resurrected the practice in 2014 and responsive advocacy efforts, this essay maps the multiple levels at which sustained advocacy is needed to stem crises in legal representation and ultimately end family detention.

Due to a perfect storm of indigent detainees without a right to appointed counsel, remote detention centers, and under-resourced nonprofits, legal representation within immigration detention centers is scarce. While the Obama Administration largely ended the practice of family detention in 2009, the same administration started detaining immigrant families en masse just five years later. In response to the rise in numbers of child migrants seeking protection in the United States arriving both with and without their parents, and with the purported aim of deterring future flows, the Obama administration reinstituted the policy of detaining families. The Ad- ministration calls these detention centers “family residential centers,” while advocates use the term “baby jail.”

The response from the advocate community was swift and overwhelming. Lawyers and law students from all over the country traveled to the detention centers, in remote areas of New Mexico and later Texas, to meet the urgent need for representation of these asylum-seeking families. This essay calls for continued engagement by attorneys throughout the nation in filling the justice gap and providing representation to these asylum-seeking families and other detained immigrants.

The crisis in representation for detained immigrants is deepening. Given the success of intensive representation at the family detention centers discussed in this article, advocates are beginning to experiment with the same models in other locations. For example, at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, the Southern Poverty Law Center, in conjunction with four other organizations, launched the Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative in 2017. This initiative enlists and trains lawyers to provide free legal representation to immigrants detained in the Southeast who are facing deportation proceedings. The American Immigration Lawyers Association and the American Immigration Council have partnered to create the Immigration Justice Campaign, where pro bono attorneys are trained and mentored when providing representation to detained immigrants in typically underserved locations. Given the expansion of the volunteer model of providing legal services to detained immigrants, opportunities will continue to arise for lawyers, law students, and others to engage in crisis lawyering and advocacy. This article provides the background to understand the government’s practice of detaining families, to the extent that it can be understood, and to emphasize a continuing need for legal services for this population.

The introduction explains the population of asylum seekers and the law and procedure governing their arrival, detention, and release into the United States. The essay then traces the evolution of the U.S. government’s most recent experiment in detaining families from the summer of 2014 to present. The next part outlines the access to counsel crisis for immigrant mothers and children in detention and highlights the difference that representation makes. The article concludes with a call to action to attorneys and non-attorney volunteers nationwide to commit and re-commit to providing services to detained immigrant families and individuals.

MY FAVORITE QUOTE:

We are in an era of incredible need for immigration legal services. That need is most acute within detention centers located outside of major metro- politan areas, including within the family detention centers.

Ultimately, neither the Trump nor the Obama administration can claim to have won or be “winning” with the policy of family detention. The vast majority of women and children still receive a positive result during their credible fear interviews, because they are indeed individuals fleeing persecu- tion under the Refugee Convention. It is a poor use of resources, then, to continue to detain this population. Instead, tax-payer dollars, government energy, and resources, should be invested in providing representation and case management for this population to ensure that they appear in court and follow all required procedures to pursue their claims for protection.125 In the current era of intense immigration enforcement, combined with the Trump Administration’s plans to increase detention bed space and Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Session’s clear attacks on asylum-seekers,126 family de- tention is, however, likely here to stay.

In light of this reality, crowdsourcing refugee rights, as Stephen Man- ning articulates, is more important than ever.127 It is heartening to see the expansion of the model of lawyering within immigration detention centers expand to centers in Georgia and Louisiana, where asylum grant rates are dismal, conditions of detention dire, with a historical extreme lack of access to counsel. Lawyers are needed to ensure that individuals can properly ac- cess their due process rights and to help the immigration court system run more smoothly.128

Lawyers, specialized in immigration or not, must arm themselves with the knowledge and tools to join this fight. Just as non-immigration lawyers quickly rose to a call to action in January at the airports,129 lawyers must again rise, and continue rising, to provide representation for families and individuals held in immigration detention. This is our time to act and proudly join the brigade of “dirty immigration lawyers” to ensure protection and due process for the most vulnerable.

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

Lindsay is “one of the best.” We were colleagues at Georgetown Law when I was an Adjunct Professor and she held the prestigious “CALS Fellowship” working with Professors Andy Schoenholtz and Phil Schrag (of “Refugee Roulette fame”). Lindsay was a guest lecturer in my Refugee Law & Policy class, and I have since returned the favor at both George Mason Law and UDC Law where she now teaches with another of my good friends and superstars, Professor Kristina Campbell. Indeed, my friend Judge Dorothy Harbeck and I are “regulars” at their class and are in the process of planning another session this fall.

Lindsay and Kristina “talk the talk and walk the walk.” They appeared before me frequently at the Arlington Immigration Court with their clinical students. The have also gone “on site” at some of the worst immigration detention facilities in the country to help refugees in need.

In a truly unbiased, merit-based, independent, Immigration Court system (of the future) they would be ideal judges at either the trial or appellate level. They possess exactly the types of amazing scholarship, expertise and “hands on” experience representing actual individual clients before our Immigration Courts that is sorely lacking in, and in my view has largely been systematically banished from, the 21st Century immigration judiciary, to the detriment of our Immigration Courts, Due Process, and the entire American justice system. That’s one reason why our Immigration Courts are functioning so poorly in basic areas like efficiency, deliberation, quality control, and fundamental fairness!

Some important “take aways” from this article:

Contrary to Administration propaganda and false narratives, most of the recent arrivals who have lawyers are found to have credible claims for protection under our laws.
Similarly, if given fair access to competent counsel and time to prepare and present their claims in a non-coercive setting to a truly unbiased decision-maker, I believe that majority would be granted asylum, withholding of removal, or protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”).
This is the truth that Trump, Sessions, & Company don’t want revealed: most of the folks we are so cavalierly mistreating are, in fact, legitimate refugees, even under current legal rulings that have been intentionally and unfairly skewed against asylum applicants from Central America for years!
Even those who don’t currently fit the arcane legal categories for protection probably have a legitimate fear of harm or death upon return. They certainly are entitled to fully present and litigate their claims before being returned to life-threatening situations.
Finally, a better country, with better, wiser, more humane leaders, would devise ways of offering these individuals fleeing the Northern Triangle at least temporary protection, either here or in another stable country in this hemisphere, while doing something constructive to address the severe, festering, chronic human rights problems in the Northern Triangle that are sending us these refugees.
The “enforcement only” approach has failed over and over in the past and will continue to do so until we get better political leadership in the future.
In the meantime, join Lindsay, Kristina, and the other “Charter Members of the New Due Process Army” in resisting the evil, immoral, and illegal policies of the Trump Administration.
Due Process Forever! Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all!

PWS

06-02-18

Tag: Immigration Detention

HON. JEFFREY CHASE: PUNISHING THE PERSECUTED — In Matter of A-C-M-, BIA “Adjusts” View Of FMLN As Necessary To Deny Asylum To El Salvadoran Refugees!

Jun 9 Punishing the Victims: Matter of A-C-M-

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

NATION OF CHILD ABUSERS: IT’S NOW THE OFFICIAL POLICY OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATON – The Damage: Irreparable – The Stain On Our National Values: Indelible!

THREE FROM “TIRELESS TAL” @ CNN: 1) First, Salvadoran Women Was Forced To Perform Slave Labor By Salvadoran Guerrillas, Then The BIA Shafted Her; 2) Trump/Sessions Scofflaw Attack On “Sanctuary Cities” Stomped By Yet Another U.S. Judge; 3) GOP Continues Internal Immigration Negotiations!

YOU ARE NOT ALONE! — MORE LAW YOU CAN USE FROM COURTSIDE: Pro Bono All-Stars Michelle Mendez & Rebecca Scholtz of CLINIC’s Defending Vulnerable Populations Project Proudly Present “A Practitioner’s Guide To Obtaining Release From Immigration Detention!”

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all. Join the New Due Process Army and fight for the legal rights of refugees!

JEREMY STAHL @ SLATE: THE BIG UGLY – SEPARATION OF FAMILIES & DETENTION — TRUMP, SESSIONS, NIELSEN = LIES, IMMORALITY, ILLEGALITY!

A Moral and Legal Abomination

The government has offered no substantive legal justification for the Trump administration’s policy of indefinitely separating children from their parents at the border.

Join the New Due Process Army. Fight the Trump/GOP Immigration Abomination!

Jun 9 Punishing the Victims: Matter of A-C-M-

Jun 3 3rd-Generation Gangs and Political Opinion

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Jun 3 3rd-Generation Gangs and Political Opinion

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all. Join the New Due Process Army and fight for the legal rights of refugees!

Related posts:

Join the New Due Process Army. Fight the Trump/GOP Immigration Abomination!

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts: