"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
I’m concerned about the impact of the CBP One app on children and families seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. The March 12 front-page article “At the border, a technology wall” underscored the injustice inflicted on these families.
Children and families fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries arrive at the U.S. border needing safety and security. Unfortunately, because of the failures of the CBP One app, many are denied access to the asylum process. Our colleagues at Save the Children Mexico have documented at least 30 instances in which families have chosen to separate instead of remaining in danger together. Additionally, they have seen countless cases of fraud and extortion related to the use of this app. The U.S. government is again causing family separations, this time because of the improper rollout of this app, causing children and families to become victims to extortion and abuse.
But even if the app functioned properly, it would exclude anyone without a cellphone, internet access or the ability to navigate this complicated technical system. Owning a phone and having access to the internet should not be obstacles to seeking safety from violence.
Our elected leaders and the Homeland Security Department need to better address the various issues with the CBP One app to ensure that asylum seekers can seek safety and protection in the United States through an orderly and fair process.
Christy Gleason, Washington
The writer is executive director of the Save the Children Action Network and vice president of policy, advocacy and campaigns for Save the Children.
*********************
Thanks for speaking out Christy! Recently, with the “Ticketmaster Disaster” we all saw that Taylor Swift and her legion of fans are one of the few forces in America who can strike bipartisan fear and spark action in the wacky and self-centered halls of Congress!
Perhaps, Christy and her colleagues can convince Swift that the plight of vulnerable families and children facing rape, robbery, extortion, exploitation, beatings, sexual slavery, death, and dismemberment, who are being shafted by CBP One’s failed technology and its abusive use as a “gatekeeper,” are at least as important as the trauma facing those denied concert tickets by Ticketmaster!Maybe Swift could exert her outsized influence to demand Congressional investigation and corrective action!
T. Swift. Loss of chance to attend her latest concert due to Ticketmaster SNAFU caused immediate bipartisan Congressional outrage and hearings! Loss of chance to plead for life because of DHS CBP One App SNAFU, not so much! Dehumanization of our fellow humans degrades our society. LOS ANGELES – Swift at 2019 iHeartRadio Music Awards on March 14, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Glenn Francis/Pacific Pro Digital Photography) Creative Commons License.
Maybe Swift also could do a “benefit concert” at the border to draw attention to the human rights abuses and dehumanization being inflicted by cowardly politicos from both parties on vulnerable asylum seekers who only want our “nation of laws” to live up to its long-standing legal obligations to provide refuge and fair, dignified treatment. The proceeds could go to asylum seekers and the amazing NGOs and volunteers who have been doing the jobs that the Biden Administration, the State of Texas, GOP restrictionists, and the Mexican Government all shirk!
One common thread: Like Ticketmaster, CBP is basically a “failed monopoly” that provides lousy services — and then lies and blames the user — because there is no competition (except criminal enterprises) and little meaningful oversight or accountability.
Alicia A. Caldwell Immigration Reporter Wall Street JournalAngel of Death Artist: Evelyn De Morgan 1880 Public Realm The Angel of Death (“AOD”) comes for another asylum seeker at the border. Biden border policies have created “full employment” for the AOD!
Santiago Perez & Alicia Caldwell report for the WSJ:
EAGLE PASS, Texas—Local officials keep a refrigerated truck to hold the bodies of migrants who drown in the currents of the Rio Grande while trying to cross the border into the U.S.
Across the river, families having picnics or walking along the waterfront promenade of Piedras Negras, Mexico, say they sometimes see bodies floating by or bobbing among the reeds under a bridge. “We had times when we received four or five bodies a week,” said Hugo González, owner of Funerarias González in Piedras Negras. “At one point, there were a lot of corpses and there was nowhere to put them. We just didn’t have enough refrigerators at the funeral home.”
A spike in deaths along the most dangerous stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border reflects the escalating number of migrants seeking to cross into the U.S. from troubled home countries. At the same time, U.S. immigration policies are allowing fewer of them legal entry. Many migrants have turned to human smugglers and WhatsApp messages to help them navigate more lightly patrolled—and treacherous—sections of the border to enter illegally, U.S. officials said.
. . . .
***************************
Those with WSJ access can read the full article at the link. Those without can register for a limited number of free articles.
Remarkably, the existing law provides a legal framework for encouraging refugees to apply in or near their native countries and also for legal asylum seekers to apply in an orderly fashion at legal ports of entry. It also, for better or worse, provides DHS with an “expedited removal” process for those at the border who can’t establish a “credible fear” of persecution after initial proper screening by a trained expert Asylum Officer. This process does not require full Immigration Court hearings.
Sadly, the Trump and now the Biden Administrations have chosen to avoid or evade these existing legal tools for granting refuge in a timely and orderly fashion. Instead, encouraged by nativists, they have chosen to employ extralegal “gimmicks” like Title 42 to close down the legal avenues for seeking asylum at ports of entry.
Those who are allowed into the system face a series of the Government’s intentionally-imposed hurdles. These include: impeding access to representation; punitive imprisonment in substandard conditions in obscure places; deficient technology used as a “gatekeeper;” poorly-qualified adjudicators who lack expertise and “real life” experience assisting asylum seekers; unduly restrictive interpretations of what are supposed to be generous, protection-oriented asylum laws; a mismanaged and backlogged system that moves either too fast too slow for due process, but never “just right;” random scheduling and politicized resettlement; lack of adequate notice of the legal requirements they are supposed to meet.
Tragically, while Administrations and nativists disingenuously claim the opposite, this “dual lack” of competence and integrity has essentially left control of refuge in the U.S. to extra-governmental actors — basically smugglers, cartels, and other organized criminal enterprises. With legal avenues for seeking protection cut off or unduly restricted, refugees who need protection will resort to extralegal methods to save themselves and their families.
In addition to “empowering the bad guys to run the system,” the Government’s short-sighted approach actually dilutes border enforcement. That’s because it improperly and unnecessarily “lumps in” refugees and legal asylum seekers with individuals and groups actually seeking to enter for purposes unrelated to seeking legal protection under our laws.
It’s little wonder that despite questionable claims of lower numbers, the most obvious empirical effect of years of bad border policies and inept administration of the law has been to increase the number of border deaths, as related in the above article.
It would be nice to think that some day, our nation will have leaders who actually value human lives, rather than just viewing human rights as a “throwaway line” — subservient to their desire to amass and maintain political power. Until then, more will needlessly die.☠️🤮
Felicia Rangel-Samporano and Victor Cavazos founded The Sidewalk School, then a migrant shelter in Mexico. Now they also provide tech-support for a flawed U.S. immigration app.
Since opening, the school has also expanded to the neighboring Mexican border city of Reynosa. Because life in the migrant camps is transitory, The Sidewalk School’s teachers came and went, sometimes within weeks, said Rangel-Samponaro. They decided it would be easier to hire educators from Mexican border communities instead. Residents also understand better how to navigate the complicated dynamics at play in cities like Matamoros and Reynosa, which are riven by cartel-related crime—most recently, the kidnapping of four U.S. citizens in Matamoros, two of whom were shot and killed by cartel gunmen.
The Sidewalk School teaches based on the U.S. school calendar. In February they celebrated Black History Month, for example, she said. They focus on reading, writing, drawing, and play activities. Classes are typically held from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. They currently have 10 people on staff in Matamoros and Reynosa. “We need even more staff,” Rangel-Samponaro said. “In both cities.”
Frontline Responders
As elected leaders in both Mexico and the United States fail to acknowledge the seismic shift in global displacement due to climate change, Covid-19, and other factors, migrant camps continue to appear up and down the Mexican border.
Border residents have been frontline responders, adapting to the most pressing needs in the camps, one of which is housing. Recently, The Sidewalk School joined the church group Kaleo International to build a shelter in Reynosa. The shelter houses mostly Haitian and African migrants, who are some of the most vulnerable since they are routinely targeted for kidnapping and persecution in Mexico.
But one of the biggest surprises, said Rangel-Samponaro, is that they now serve as tech support for the CBP One app, which was rolled out in January by the U.S. government for migrants to apply for asylum, as an exemption to Title 42. The app has been plagued with errors. And humanitarian groups have complained that the app, which requires that each person upload a selfie to begin the asylum process, often won’t accept photos of darker-skinned applicants.
Currently, there are thousands of Haitians in both Reynosa and Matamoros, as well as other darker-skinned asylum seekers, who are stuck because they can’t get the app to accept their photos. (The manual on the app, which Sidewalk School employees consult daily is 73 -pages long).
I visited Reynosa and The Sidewalk School in late February and spoke with several Haitian families who had tried to use the CBP One app.
I was quickly surrounded by frustrated parents who said they’d been trying for weeks to make the app work. Living in makeshift shelters made of tarps and cardboard and having little to no access to the internet, parents were waking up at 3:00 a.m. in the morning to find a place with an internet connection, then registering, and trying to take and upload their photo before 8:00 a.m., when the app began accepting daily applications.
“I have an appointment,” one father told me. “But the app won’t accept the photos of my children, so I can’t get appointments for them.”
The app often timed out, crashed, or gave error messages, they said. “It’s a disaster,” one man said, after I asked him to sum up his experience trying to use the app.
“People don’t like hearing it, much less acknowledging what is happening to Black asylum seekers,” Rangel-Samponaro said. “They are stuck inside these encampments for months compared to people of Latin descent, who are at the camps for maybe two weeks or a month.”
I spoke with at least 10 different Haitian families, and they all told me that they’d been living in the migrant camp in Reynosa for at least five months.
“We don’t have enough food,” a Haitian boy told me in Spanish, who said he was 11 years old. “And I have this rash on my face.” He pointed to his cheek. Open sewers and trash littered the area around the camps. And the families, who said they couldn’t work and were struggling to buy food, said they were growing desperate.
Felicia Rangel-Samporano visiting a migrant camp in Reynosa with mostly Haitian and Venezuelan asylum seekers. (Photo: Melissa del Bosque)
So desperate that families were considering splitting up. Rangel-Samponaro said there had been anguished meetings with parents who were considering sending their children across as unaccompanied minors. If the parents could get appointments through the app, they would reclaim their children once they arrived in the United States. At least that’s what they hoped.
Recently, The Sidewalk School brought in an immigration attorney to explain to parents how difficult it can be to find a child once they have been designated as unaccompanied in the U.S. immigration system. Children are held by CBP, then transferred to a shelter run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement somewhere in the country. “We’ve explained to them that it’s unlikely that they will cross, and their child will be there waiting for them,” she said.
And once people are accepted by the app for an appointment, they are extensively vetted through a series of law enforcement databases, and some are turned back, she said. “Just because you’ve got an appointment doesn’t mean they’re going to let you in to the United States.”
Rangel-Samponaro, like many others who provide humanitarian services in Mexico, is in frequent contact with CBP about problems with the app. In early March, she said, the agency updated the app so that it only requires one member of the family to submit a photo. But there are still not enough appointments for every member of the family, she said, so families are still splitting up and sending their children across as unaccompanied minors.
The Border Chronicle requested a response from CBP about the app. Tammy Melvin, a CBP press officer, replied in an email that the agency “continues to make improvements to the app based on stakeholder feedback.”
She said that “appointments will only be shown if enough slots for each member in the profile is available.”
And Melvin added in the email that they’ve not seen any issues linked to ethnicity. “CBP One is not conducting facial recognition that compares photos submitted in the application against any other reference system to identify someone,” She wrote. “CBP is not seeing any issues with the capture of the liveness photos due to ethnicity.”
Rangel-Samponaro and others disagree. “We’ve invited the app developers to Reynosa and Matamoros to see the problems we’re having firsthand, but they’ve declined to visit,” she said.
Meanwhile, the hardships keep growing for asylum seekers. Recently, the Biden Administration announced, beginning in May after Title 42 is lifted, that asylum seekers must apply for asylum in the first country they enter, rather than at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Rangel-Samponaro said The Sidewalk School is doing everything it can to help, as even more people will likely be stuck in limbo after the policy change in May. They’re providing educational programs, running a shelter, and now providing tech support, and helping people navigate the U.S. government’s glitch-filled app. “I struggle to categorize everything that we do now,” she said.
Just one of the many error messages encountered while using the CBP One app that Rangel-Samponaro and others try to troubleshoot for asylum seekers. [The “error messages” are all too real! The CBP denial that there is a problem is surreal!]
The first two years were rough going, she said, and she and Cavazos spent their own money to keep The Sidewalk School afloat. Now they’re receiving some grants and donations. But it’s always a struggle, she said. “We need more volunteers, more funding,” she said. “Because the need never stops.”
For volunteer opportunities and to learn more about The Sidewalk School click here.
************
Read Melissa’s full article at the link.
How’s this for “contrast?” Felicia Rangel-Samporano and Victor Cavazos, private citizens, gave up comfortable lives in the U.S. and invested their own time and money in addressing the needs of children and families essentially “tashed” by lawless inhumane policies of both the Trump and Biden Administrations. Meanwhile, racist, cowardly, bullying Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) is leading a clearly unconstitutional effort to deny children in Texas U.S. the public education to which they are entitled under Supreme Court precedent. Have to ask what’s wrong with a state that puts a horrible person like Abbott, who doesn’t even govern very well in emergencies or other areas, in charge? They also enabled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), another bullying, lawless, coward who is basically the “bottom of the barrel!”
What the major networks and “mainstream”nmedia aren’t telling you:
“[E]lected leaders in both Mexico and the United States fail to acknowledge the seismic shift in global displacement due to climate change, Covid-19, and other factors;”
“Same old, same old” deterrence and officially-sanctioned cruelty, even in large, expensive, wasteful doses will NOT “solve” refugee flows;
The U.S. “system,” such as it is, systematically mistreats Black asylum seekers;
“CBP One” is defective technology that should never have been put into operation without testing and approval from the humanitarians actually working in the camps in Mexico;
So bad is CBP One that it is encouraging family separation;
The “requirement” that every family member obtain a separate appointment throughCBP One is totally insane;
Even when asylum applicants get an appointment, it’s still a “crap shoot” because the Administration functions in a lawless, opaque, and arbitrary fashion without the necessary legal and practical expertise and safeguards in place;
The very idea that Mexico is a “safe” place to send non-Mexicans rejected at the border, under the totally irrational and illegal “presumption of denial” proposed by the Administration, is beyond preposterous;
The Biden Administration has failed to heed the advice of experts who have actually worked on the border and who have constructive ideas for making the law work.
I’m not just getting the above from this article. I have recently had a chance to hear from individuals actually providing legal and humanitarian services at the border who basically said that the situation there is “beyond FUBAR” and that the Administration officials “crafting” border policies are out of touch with reality and not up to their jobs! In some cases, they are just paying no attention to the law or the advice of those who actually understand the system, both in and out of Government.
That seems exactly what we voted out of office when the Trump kakistocracy was removed. Why, then, does Biden think that ignorance, bias, cruelty, and incompetence on human rights and racial justice is now a “winner?” Why is he aligning himself and his Administration with GOP nativist zealots like Abbott, Paxton, DeSantis, Trump, and Miller, rather than with folks like Rangel-Samporano and Cavazos who actually represent the humane, practical, problem-solving values that the Dems ran on in 2020?🤯
With human lives at stake every day, one would think that our Government’s massive violations of human rights and cavalier dismissal of legal rights recognized for more than four decades, would be of great interest to the so-called “mainstream media” and that all Democrats would be demanding changes in human rights/immigration leadership (obviously, Mayorkas & Garland are the wrong folks) and a competent, legal, humane approach from the Biden Administration. But, unfortunately, you would be wrong! Dead wrong, in some cases! ☠️⚰️
This Article posits that the United States treats asylum as exceptional, meaning that asylum is presumptively unavailable and is offered only in rare cases. This exceptionality conceit, combined with an exclusionary apparatus, creates a problematic cycle. The claims of asylum seekers arriving as part of wide-scale refugee flows are discounted, and restrictive policies are adopted to block these claims. When the claims mount anyway, the United States asserts “crisis” and deploys new exclusionary measures. The problems created by the asylum system are not addressed but instead deepen. The Article commends a turn away from policies that have led down the same paths once and again.
The Article first describes the development of the modern U.S. asylum system, highlighting data demonstrating that the system has exceptionality as a basic feature. In doing so, the Article reconsiders an assumption underlying much scholarship that the U.S. asylum system is fundamentally a generous one even if it has sometimes failed to live up to its promise. The Article then establishes that the emphasis on exceptionality has led to an exclusionary asylum process, which mostly takes place in the context of deportation proceedings and layers on additional procedural barriers. Next, the Article documents how the system places genuine refugees in danger while causing violence at the border. Further, embedded bias in the system, resulting from the focus on exceptionality, creates a legitimacy problem. The system discredits commonly-arising claims from neighboring nations, particularly Central America, while favoring asylum seekers from distant nations such as China. The system also violates international human rights and refugee law.
The Article concludes by offering suggestions for more stable, effective, and humane policies to address refugee arrivals in the United States. In addition to eliminating many existing substantive restrictions on asylum, the system should incorporate presumptions of asylum eligibility for applicants from designated nations or situations that are sending significant refugee flows. In addition, the United States should adopt a specialized non-adversarial asylum system for all cases, apart from the deportation system and with genuine independent review of denials of asylum.
******************
Read the complete article at the link.
You’ve “hit the nail on the head,” Denise!Unhappily, those in charge, in both parties, are “wedded” to variants of “rejection theory.” Unless and until that changes, our refugee policies will continue to struggle and fail.
Indeed, quite discouragingly, the “answer” of the Biden Administration to virulent, racist attacks on refugees and other vulnerable populations, is basically to abandon human rights to the GOP White Nationalists by “killing” refugee and asylum laws, dissing advocates, ignoring experts, and adopting a more or less “randomized,” politicized, extralegal, and restrictionist approach to refugees.
The “leading” GOP presidential candidates bash and demean refugees, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals, women, the poor, on an almost daily basis. When is the last time you heard Biden or any other Administration official aggressively defend the rights of refugees and asylees and tout their value and contributions to America?
It’s pretty much what our approach was in the 1970’s, prior to the Refugee Act of 1980. “Back to the future,” in more ways than one!
“Thrown Under the Bus” Asylum seekers & advocates again expendable to Dems. “Electoral politics trump values when it comes to asylum access.” Creative Commons 2.0 non-commercial license
Biden’s breaks with the left have a common thread: He’s mostly doing it on cultural issues where his party is politically vulnerable, seeking to choke off avenues for the GOP to make inroads with key swing voters. Instead, Biden is trying to keep his focus on economic issues facing the middle class where Democrats hold advantages, such as lowering drug prices and preserving Social Security.
In the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats lost voters who named immigration as their top issue by a 48-point margin and lost voters who cited crime as their top issue by a 16-point margin, exit polls showed. Voters trusted Republicans more than they trusted Democrats on immigration (by 6 points) and on crime (by 9 points).
. . . .
***************
Read the full story at the link.
There is another school of thought out there: If Dems once in office performed better on immigration, they could win more elections. Since they don’t effectively “model” the many benefits that immigrants bring to what is, after all, a nation of immigrants, they have little except rhetoric to combat the vicious, xenophobic hate campaigns and nativist lies put up by the GOP.
By failing to effectively and creatively use existing laws, however imperfect, to solve problems and showcase the strength of “normalized” immigration, Dems surrender themselves to the GOP right which has pledged to block any constructive immigration reform.
How might things have been different if Dems had reformed the Asylum Offices and EOIR as recommended by experts; “incentivized” arriving asylum seekers to apply at ports of entry by treating them fairly, humanely, and generously; admitted many more as refugees or asylees, with work authorization and a path to green cards “right off the bat” — rather than “warehousing” them in endless backlogs; worked with NGOs and communities to establish “reception centers” rather than failed and inhumane detention; worked with local development agencies to resettle individuals through regional centers that would match skills with communities needing help, particularly rural areas and areas rebuilding from natural disaster? Think that “outsourcing” asylum seeker relocation to GOP White Nationalist Govs DeSantis and Abbott was a great “strategy?”
Dems could have actual, practical examples of why robust, orderly, immigration, including refugees of all types, is actually a great opportunity for all involved. Perhaps, if more Dem politicos believed in immigration and immigrants’ rights, and acted on those beliefs, rather than treating immigration as a “campaign throwaway issue,” they wouldn’t have to “run and hide” from it when given the chance to govern.
Many voters who view immigration as their “top issue,” are going to be far right anti-immigrant extremists. Dems can “pretzel” 🥨 as much as they want. But, it’s unlikely that they are going to win over many votes among this group!
Others, who favor humane immigration, are probably more likely to view it as one of a number of important issues or to “lump it in” with other social justice issues such as civil rights, voting rights, racial justice, or justice reform.
I doubt that Dems throwing asylum seekers, otherimmigrants, and their supporters “under the bus” is a sound or necessary strategy. Back in 2017, “regular Americans” across the country turned out at airports to welcome those immigrants targeted by Trump’s Muslim ban and to support those challenging Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.
There is recent evidence that despite the GOP’s demonization of immigrants and the Dems basic abandonment of immigrants as a group worthy of aggressive support, there still is a strong constituency among Americans who vote for orderly migration and granting refuge. https://immigrationforum.org/article/new-poll-americans-value-offering-refuge-welcome/
Unfortunately, neither party seems to see supporting immigration and immigrants rights as a “political winner.” And, for all their talent, expertise, and energy, immigration and human rights advocates have failed to “sell” themselves as an important political force to be respected and reckoned with. Contrast this with how a relatively small, non-representative group of extremists, election deniers, and conspiracy theorists plays a dominant role in GOP politics!
Unless or until that changes, immigrants and their advocates are likely to remain “political roadkill” ☠️ for both parties! Contrary to the White Nationalist blather, uncritically accepted by some Dems, that’s not going to stop migrants from coming, although it undoubtedly will confine more of them to an exploitable “extralegal community” while enriching smugglers and cartels. But, it will prevent America from reaching our full potential in the future!
From “LEADING BY EXAMPLE, HONORING COMMITMENTS,” by Human Rights First:
The recommendations below follow multiple prior sets of blueprints and recommendations previously issued for the Biden administration and outline critical steps for the administration including:
Ramp up, speed up and strengthen regional refugee resettlement, parole and other safe migration pathways in the Americas, never coupling such initiatives with the denial of access to asylum, while respecting and centering human rights — including the right to seek asylum and protection from violence — in regional discussions, and redoubling U.S. efforts to support the development of refugee hosting capacity in other countries in the Americas to also ensure access to asylum.
Uphold and comply with refugee law at U.S. borders without discrimination, including to restart and maximize (rather than restrict or “meter”) asylum at ports of entry, take all steps consistent with court rulings to end the Title 42 policy, and ensure people seeking asylum have prompt access to ports of entry — access which should not be limited to CBP One, but assured to people approaching ports of entry to seek asylum. Restoring asylum at ports of entry after years of blockage is essential not only to uphold refugee law, but also to end the counterproductive consequences of Trump policies that, by restricting and blocking access to asylum at ports of entry, have long pushed populations that previously sought asylum at ports of entry to instead attempt to cross the border.
Implement effective and humane refugee reception structures, coordination, funding mechanisms, and case support, including to enhance efforts to communicate, plan, coordinate with and resource the network of faith-based groups, shelters, legal, refugee aid and non-profit humanitarian organizations along the border and across the country that are essential to an effective reception and case support system, create a White House Task Force to improve coordination including with humanitarian organizations and destination communities, develop the new Shelter and Services grant program to remedy some of the limitations of FEMA ESFP-H funding, launch and support public-private asylum reception and orientation initiatives by such humanitarian organizations, ensure prompt provision of work authorization for asylum seekers — a top need identified by both asylum seekers themselves as well as local communities hosting refugees, and ultimately ensure a focused humanitarian and refugee reception agency rather than just “emergency” responses.
Upgrade asylum adjudication processes so that they are prompt, accurate, and fair, improve the new asylum rule process so it leads to efficiency rather than rushed and counterproductive inaccurate adjudications, work with Congress to fund sufficient asylum adjudication capacities to address asylum backlogs, as well as ensuring timely adjudication of new cases, and support and champion funding for legal representation.
Rescind — and do not resurrect — other Trump policies, including the asylum entry and transit bans (or versions of them) and other fatally flawed policies of the last administration that punish or block refugees from protection — and abandon the harmful plan to propose another transit ban.
Stand firm against the anti-immigrant rhetoric and efforts of politicians aligned with the former Trump administration to force continuation and/or codification into law of the former Trump administration’s cruel, racist, and counterproductive policies or other policies that deny refugees access to asylum —and clearly and firmly reject any such Congressional proposals.
It’s not rocket science! It’s achievable! It’s been available since before the 2020 election! It incorporates and realizes values that Biden/Harris ran on in 2020! If Biden had brought in real leaders and experts at the beginning, many of the problems could be on their way to solution right now and the “White Nationalist myths” would be refuted!
Leading by positive example on human rights and the rule of law is a powerful, effective,posture for America that has been largely ignored by the Trump & Biden Administrations. The GOP lacks positive values. But, Dems “run” on them in elections and then “run away” from them once in office!
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up” — Help get this poor little guy back on his feet! He’s been down far too long!Don’t just complain about the awful mess @ EOIR! Get on the bench and do something about it! Public Domain
Contact: Communications and Legislative Affairs Division Phone: 703-305-0289 PAO.EOIR@usdoj.gov
www.justice.gov/eoir @DOJ_EOIR March 13, 2023
EOIR to Host Recruitment Outreach Sessions Join Us to Learn How to Become an Immigration Judge
SUMMARY: The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is looking for qualified candidates from all backgrounds to join our immigration judge corps. Interested parties are invited to attend an information session where senior EOIR staff will discuss the immigration judge career path, duties, qualifications, and benefits of being an immigration judge. You will learn how to apply for immigration judge positions when they become available and have the opportunity to ask questions about the immigration judge position and application process. Please join us for one of the sessions below.
March 16, 2023
March 23, 2023
March 30, 2023
Noon – 1 p.m. Pacific Time Noon – 1 p.m. Central Time Noon – 1 p.m. Eastern Time
Arelis R. Hernandez Southern Border Reporter Washington Post
Arelis R. Hernandez reports for WashPost:
MATAMOROS, Mexico — It was supposed to be his last day in Mexico. The 7-year-old Venezuelan boy beamed as he bade farewell to his teacher, Liliana Carlos, at a school for migrant children living in tents while waiting for their chance to enter the United States.
His family, finally, had obtained an appointment in February with U.S. Customs and Border Protection after weeks of trying to use a new app to secure a slot.
Now they hoped to be allowed to begin a new life in America. No more sleeping on the ground. No more threats of kidnapping. No more watching his mother cry.
But instead of the safety his family longed for inside the United States, the boy returned to the Sidewalk School, inconsolable, his teacher recalled. CBP officials on the border bridge sent back about 50 families, including his. They’d all made appointments online as family units. But agents were now enforcing a rule requiring each child to register individually.
“We are never going to leave,” Carlos recounted the boy telling her as she ushered the wailing child into an alcove known as the “calm corner.”
. . . .
Two weeks after the boy was sent back to the Sidewalk School, Carlos said her once hopeful student still doesn’t have a new appointment. The child’s name is being withheld by The Washington Post out of concerns for his safety.
She tried to console him, she recalled, but he was despondent, telling her: “I want to die.”
. . . .
Within a northern Mexico safe house, a 30-something-year-old asylum seeker ran his fingers across the bumpy scar tissue that had healed unevenly around his wrists. The marks are remnants of the torture he endured two weeks earlier.
His voice quivered as he recalled black-clad kidnappers ambushing the house where he was living at 1 a.m. in late January. They bound his hands and feet with electric cables and threw him in the trunk of a vehicle.
For two days, he was repeatedly burned and beaten.
The Washington Post is withholding the man’s name and other identifying characteristics for safety reasons because he is still in Mexico. But the man showed a reporter the lacerations and described how men pistol-whipped and beat him. Dark circular scars mark the spots on his legs where his captors pressed lit cigarettes into his flesh.
“The app doesn’t feel fair,” said the man, who was denied an exemption to the Title 42 rule barring most migrants from entering and has failed to secure an appointment. “I need protection in the United States.”
. . . .
Nearby in Reynosa, a three-acre lot covered in human feces near a sandy river peninsula overrun by Mexican cartel members sits adjacent to a camp for migrants.
They sleep and eat 50 feet away from the open pit. Soiled toilet paper clings to cactus needles. A toxic plume of nostril-singeing smoke rises over the encampment from a trash heap at the river’s edge where plastic burns.
Nearby, a collection of tall glass candles bearing the image of La Santa Muerte, a Grim Reaper-like Mexican folk saint worshiped by narcos, have been placed in a circle drawn into the sand.
This is Camp Rio, where at least 1,000 Haitian asylum seekers are spending each day they can’t get an appointment.
Many Black migrants are pushed to the fringes of border cities to wait in subhuman conditions. They have more difficulty accessing shelters than those with lighter skin and often experience racism in Mexico.
. . .
The crowd of people around the attorneys swelled. Parents with upcoming dates wondered what would happen if they sent their small children across the bridge alone as unaccompanied minors. D’Cruz begged them not to.
“If we don’t, we will lose everything we’ve worked for,” a woman from Nicaragua said, pressing her bewildered daughter against her leg.
Advocates counted between 40 and 50 children surrendered at the bridge alone days later.
Back at the Sidewalk School, the number of children enrolled has swelled. Carlos, the coordinator, said they went from teaching a handful of kids each day to more three dozen in recent weeks. She said that means more and more children, and their families, aren’t getting appointments.
The longer they despair in Mexico, parents say, the more they consider sending their children to the United States alone.
Valentina Sanchez, 24, of Venezuela, and her husband had appointments in February. Their 3-year-old son did not. He crossed and she stayed behind with the toddler.
******************
Read the complete article at the link.
Folks, tragically, we’ve seen in the last few days how totally unsafe Mexico is even for U.S. citizens! Yet, the Biden Administration thinks it’s “A-OK” to propose illegally repelling tens of thousands of non-Mexicans back to danger, torture, exploitation, and death without fairly considering their legal claims for refuge and without insuring that those making such life and death decisions are actually qualified to do so (hint, many aren’t).
At the current rate of 800 “interviews” per day, it would take the Administration four months just to process the 100,000 humans already waiting at the border (4 interviews/officer/day). If the Administration had started with a plan to hire and train 1,000 Asylum Officers over the more than 2.5 years they have been in office, the job could be done in less than a month!
The Administration can (and does) make all the false claims that “CBP One” works that it wants. As Arelis and others who actually interface with asylum seekers on the border have documented, the facts say otherwise!
I happened to be watching “Meet The Press” with Chuck Todd. House Judiciary Chair Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ)said we need a “surge” of Asylum Officers to the border, grant asylum to those who qualify, remove those who don’t, use more TPS strategically, and open more pathways to legal immigration. Not “rocket science” by any measure!
Yet, although Biden has “dabbled” in some of these initiatives, he still has no systemic plan for reinstating asylum law in a fair and effective manner at the border. Sen. Menendez correctly noted that if Biden continues on the course he has charted, he will go down as the “Asylum Denier In Chief.”
Senator Menendez also said that if Biden has the poor judgement to reinstitute “family detention,” it will fail just as it did in both the Obama and Trump Administrations. He characterized having eliminated family detention upon assuming office as one of the best moves that Biden has made on immigration. Talk about “taking points off the scoreboard!”
Thanks to Arelis Hernandez and a few other reporters who refuse to let the human disaster of the Biden Administration’s treacherous abandonment of the law at the border and the values it represents go unnoticed! It doesn’t have to be this way!
“I was working at the Justice Department on immigration issues largely related to enforcement, figuring out how to make our laws more just, more fair, more humane. . . . But the Board of Immigration Appeals also has jurisdiction over dealing with regulations. It’s the highest administrative agency dealing with immigration issues—not only one-off cases, but we set national precedent for things like asylum, dealing with children who are detained in the United States. It’s a very powerful agency. Not a lot of people realize how much influence it has. And so that’s significant because when Trump was elected, we saw such a marked change in the direction of the work, where the focus of the policies seemed to be cruelty for the point of cruelty. And I couldn’t continue to work there and uphold my oath to protect and defend the Constitution, let alone maintain my own moral compass. And so I took a stand and I left.”
Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) Visit Creator: Ike Hayman Credit: Ike Hayman SOURCE: WikipediaMary Harris Host & Managing Editor What Next PHOTO: Slate.com
Not just a thing of the past. Unsplash [In fact, it’s Arkansas GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s “vision of the future” now that she has eliminated those pesky “burdensome and obsolete” child labor laws!]BY MARY HARRISMARCH 09, 20233:40 PMCongresswoman Hillary Scholten remembers exactly where she was when she realized her new job on Capitol Hill was about to get a lot more complicated. “My heart just sank,” she said. “I couldn’t believe what I was reading.”Scholten was reading the New York Times, a big investigation into immigrant child labor. The very first anecdote in this 5,000-word opus is about a 15-year-old girl bagging cereal on the graveyard shift in the Hearthside Food Solutions plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Scholten is a third-generation Michigander. She’s from Grand Rapids. And it wasn’t just that companies in Scholten’s hometown were employing kids. It was that many of these kids seemed to be living without their parents. And a lot of them were falling asleep in school because they had full-time jobs. The machines they were working on? They had been known to slice off workers’ fingers.Congresswoman Hillary Scholten remembers exactly where she was when she realized her new job on Capitol Hill was about to get a lot more complicated. “My heart just sank,” she said. “I couldn’t believe what I was reading.”Scholten was reading the New York Times, a big investigation into immigrant child labor. The very first anecdote in this 5,000-word opus is about a 15-year-old girl bagging cereal on the graveyard shift in the Hearthside Food Solutions plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Scholten is a third-generation Michigander. She’s from Grand Rapids. And it wasn’t just that companies in Scholten’s hometown were employing kids. It was that many of these kids seemed to be living without their parents. And a lot of them were falling asleep in school because they had full-time jobs. The machines they were working on? They had been known to slice off workers’ fingers.
“Especially as an attorney who has worked on these issues her entire career, it felt like a personal attack,” Scholten said.
On Wednesday’s episode of the show, I spoke with the former immigration attorney–turned–congresswoman about the broader powers she has now that’s she in D.C. and whether she will be able to use them. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Mary Harris: Rep. Hillary Scholten says the nuances of immigration have always been important to her. Before she was an attorney, she worked as a migrant advocate. But once she got her law degree, she took that experience one step forward, joining the DOJ.
Hillary Scholten: I was working at the Justice Department on immigration issues largely related to enforcement, figuring out how to make our laws more just, more fair, more humane.
You were working on immigration appeals, right?
Yeah, exactly. But the Board of Immigration Appeals also has jurisdiction over dealing with regulations. It’s the highest administrative agency dealing with immigration issues—not only one-off cases, but we set national precedent for things like asylum, dealing with children who are detained in the United States. It’s a very powerful agency. Not a lot of people realize how much influence it has. And so that’s significant because when Trump was elected, we saw such a marked change in the direction of the work, where the focus of the policies seemed to be cruelty for the point of cruelty. And I couldn’t continue to work there and uphold my oath to protect and defend the Constitution, let alone maintain my own moral compass. And so I took a stand and I left.
Scholten soon got a new job at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. But almost as soon as she arrived, her work—and the work of many other immigration attorneys across the country—was thrown into chaos. Things got especially bad as it became clear the Department of Homeland Security was separating migrant children from their parents at the border, leaving lawyers and advocates to figure out what to do next. That’s when Hillary Scholten started seriously considering a run for Congress.
At the height of the family separation crisis, our agency was responsible for helping reunite and represent so many children. Imagine a legal services waiting room that turned into a virtual day care center overnight with kids who didn’t know where their parents were. And there were a lot of reasons I raised my hand to run, but no doubt I can pinpoint the moment when I was like, “Oh, hell no, I got to do more.” It’s the height of the summer. My dear husband came to visit me at work. It was going to be a late night, and he brought me an iced coffee. And we were chatting, and we walked through our waiting room. He’s normally a pretty stoic guy, and he fell silent. And I turned and looked at him, and his eyes had just filled with tears. And I realized that we had walked past a set of three siblings, all dressed in their Sunday best, between the ages of 5 and 7. That’s how old our children were at the time. And he just said, “Hill, you see this stuff on the news. It is an entirely different level to look these children in the eye.”
One of our youngest clients was separated from his parents at 4 months old. You’re not just walking away from a parent. You’re being taken from their arms.
Five years later, this investigation by the New York Times has Scholten thinking about different ways to help migrant children. Just this past weekend, she returned to her district to connect with constituents and think about how she can intervene, now that her community’s child labor problem is no longer a secret. She can already see the way the news has rippled outward.
One of the saddest things about the fallout of all of this is that there has continued to be some real discontent within the immigrant communities here, where shining a light on the exploitation of children has also shined a light on the fact that there have been so many other individuals working without authorization in these factories. And as companies have started to look into who’s actually working here, their labor pool has vanished. Hearthside, after the Times ran the investigation, said they were going to be doing inspections on the manufacturing floor, and 75 percent of their workforce didn’t show up the next day.
. . . .
**************************
Read/listen to the full interview at the above links.
As Hillary says, the BIA is “a really powerful agency.” That’s exactly why the Trump Administration “packed” it with unqualified restrictionist “Appellate Judges” known for their anti-asylum bias and astronomical asylum denial rates!
That’s also why Biden, Harris, and Garland’s near-complete failure to “clean up the BIA” and the rest of the failed EOIR “judiciary” and bring in the “best legal minds in the business” to establish a model progressive expert judiciary is such a scandal and indicator of the repeated failure of Dem Administrations to take advantage of the transformational opportunities given them.
By contrast, whether we like it or not, the far right extremist GOP knows exactly how important the Immigration Courts are and accordingly acts decisively to weaponize, pack, “dumb down,” and co-opt them in their nativist battle to dehumanize and demonize migrants. This was a key “first step” in the GOP’s attack on all of the “others” in America! Transgender youth, African Americans, women, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and others being targeted by the GOP’s nationwide assault on their rights, humanity, and the truth about our history might look to the Biden Administration’s fecklessness in dealing with immigrants’ rights and human rights to understand how they are being “left out on a limb” by a Dem Administration — more interested in its re-election than in serving those who helped put them in office.
Hillary had the guts and moral courage to take a stand. Yet, Biden, Harris, Garland, Mayorkas and others in this Administration, not so much! Frankly, that’s appalling! 🤮
“It is an entirely different level to look these children in the eye.” This encapsulates the problems of immigration, human rights, child abuse, and racial injustice! Unlike Hillary, very few legislators, Federal Judges, Biden politicos, or GOP nativist Governors and AGs have ever had to get their “hands dirty” by “looking . . . in the eyes” of children and others whom they abuse, dehumanize, and bully on a regular basis!
Attribution: ROLLING BACK CHILD LABOR PROTECTIONS by Randall Enos, Easton, CT Republished under license.
Contrast Hillary’s “hands on” experience and search for bipartisan practical solutions with the predictable stupidity and abuse by GOP Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a living incarnation of the “Peter Principle,” who recently and gleefully signed into law an insane provision reducing child labor protections in Arkansas while incredibly claiming that protecting children was “burdensome and obsolete!”
The law eliminates requirements for the state to verify the age of children younger than 16 before they can take a job.
Sanders believes the provision was “burdensome and obsolete,” spokeswoman Alexa Henning said in an emailed statement.
Ark. Gov. Huckabee Sanders’s MAGA “child welfare plan” has its Anglo-Saxon roots firmly planted in the famous British workhouses that many GOP politicos admire! Public Realm
As part of their “willful blindness” to the deterioration of American democracy, the so-called “mainstream media” often likes to falsely portray GOP Governors as presenting a “saner” alternative to America’s leading liar/insurrectionist “The Donald.” But, as Sanders, DeSantis, Abbott, Youngkin, and others remind us on a regular basis, there are some REALLY BAD GOP Governors out there who are every bit as much a threat to America’s future as Trump!
The anti-woke crusade is rooted in fear and ignorance, a mnemonic placeholder for the bigoted things most people wouldn’t dare say aloud. Black Americans have been using the term “woke” since the 1940s to describe a state of awareness toward racist policies and worldviews that negatively impact the Black community. However, many White people now use the term as a derogative slur, a cowardly way of spilling the beans while denying any beans were spilled.
. . . .
Saying you are anti-woke is a way of admitting you are anti-Black without feeling the backlash many outspoken racists receive. Likewise, anti-woke crusaders are promoting anti-democratic policies by controlling what topics schools and businesses can read and discuss without getting labeled a fascist for circumventing the First Amendment of the Constitution. America was founded by White men interested in securing their rights while denying that same access to Black people, women, and racial and ethnic minority groups. We don’t have to worship the founding fathers blindly, nor should any American. It seems many conservatives are afraid of saying the quiet part out loud, of admitting that their crusade on “woke” is really an attempt to diminish the gains made by the Civil Rights Movement, of framing progress as regressive. Americans should challenge more conservatives to define “woke” on their own terms because the more descriptions they provide, the more we can see through the smoke and mirrors.
*******************
Those with Medium access can read the complete article at the link.
Here’s one of my favorite comments on this article, from Walter Rhein: “When people say they are ‘anti-woke,’ I interrupt them and say ‘You mean ‘anti-black.’ They become enraged and act like they’re the victims (like racists always do).”
Cowardly insurrectionist racist oppressors and chronic liars bogusly claiming they are “victims,” perhaps of “the biggest witch hunt on history?” Sound familiar?
The far right’s war of hate directed against the “other” started with the White Nationalist war on immigrants. It’s called “Dred Scottification” of the other. Yet, the mainstream media downplays the real message and “normalizes” these vile attacks on our democracy. They “whitewash” the dangerous message of hate being promoted by DeSantis, Abbott, and their ilk.
Ron DeSantis Dave Grandlund PoliticalCartoons.com Republished under license Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are “campaigning” on an agenda of racism, hate, and White Supremacist grievance not seen since the late Gov. George Wallace. Yet, mainstream media has largely “normalized” that which would have been unacceptable and unthinkable only a few years ago!
Even the Biden Administration fails to “connect the dots” between the White Nationalist restrictionist war on asylum seekers of color they have adopted from Trump and Miller and the extremist right’s attack on Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, LGBTQ, women, teachers,Jews, Muslims, health care professionals, journalists, and everyone else “White Supremacist nation” perceives as a threat to their kakistocracy. In that way, this Dem Administration becomes part of problem, not the solution.
Wendy Young President, Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”)
In response to news reports that the Biden Administration is considering a return to the detention of families seeking safety in the United States, a policy the President vowed to abandon, Kids in Need of Defense President Wendy Young issued the following statement:
“The Biden Administration’s reported plan to reintroduce immigration detention for families seeking safety in the United States is starkly out of step with the President’s stated commitment to implement more humane and orderly immigration policies rooted in American values. It echoes the previous Administration’s deeply flawed approach to immigration, punishing families seeking safety and endangering the well-being of children. Layering failed deterrence strategies like family detention, Title 42, and the new proposed asylum ban will only result in increased family separations and higher numbers of unaccompanied and separated children needing protection.”
KIND notes that earlier this week 103 unaccompanied children were found among 343 migrants packed into an abandoned trailer in Veracruz, Mexico, a development that underscores the urgency to implement sensible and humane immigration policies that keep families together and create safe and efficient ways to seek protection in the United States. The organization’s midterm assessment of the Biden Administration’s protection of unaccompanied children urged the President to make good on his promise to protect unaccompanied children and implement policies that are a stark departure from the previous Administration.
“This Administration vowed to do better than its predecessor, but the asylum ban and the potential to return to family detention are seriously missing that mark,” concluded Young. “Relying on the failed policies of the past puts children at risk and keeps us from true reforms that have the potential to save lives.”
**************
Joe Biden wouldn’t be President if he had run on this guy’s “hate platform.” So why does Biden think that he can get away with a “bait and switch?” Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com
“Deterrence” directed at legal asylum seekers, particularly vulnerable families and children, is obscene! 🤬 It’s also highly ineffective.
As Wendy points out, there are lots of humane potential solutions to restoring the rule of law at the border. The Biden Administration isn’t interested in keeping their campaign promises or finding solutions. Why?
Today is International Women’s Day! I can’t think of a better representative of powerful, courageous, brilliant, and inspirational women leaders than KIND President Wendy Young — certainly one of my “personal heroes!”🦸🏻🦸🏻🏅 Thanks for all you do, Wendy, your human rights leadership, and your consistent courage to “speak truth to power!” We need more “values-driven” leaders like you!
Immigration Court can be a daunting experience even for veteran litigators. For folks like this, alone with no representation, it’s “mission impossible.” Yet Biden A.G. Merrick Garland has done little to fix the systemic “user unfriendliness” and sometimes outright hostility to pro se litigants in his totally dysfunctional “courts in name only!” (“CINOs”). PHOTO: Victoria Pickering, Creative Commons License
Clearly, gimmicks rolled out by Garland and the Biden Administration, including stunts like “dedicated dockets,” “expedited dockets,” “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” detention courts in the middle of nowhere, unregulated bond procedures, lousy precedents, wasteful litigation against practitioners, proposed regulations irrationally “presuming” denial of asylum, abuse of Title 42, assigning asylum seeker resettlement to GOP nativists like DeSantis and Abbott, and refusal to bring in qualified experts with Immigration Court experience to fix this disasterous system have made the already horrible plight of the unrepresented worse! See, e.g.,https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/674/.
With respect to DHS detainees awaiting hearing, a few are subject to so-called “mandatory detention without independent review” as a result of statutes. Others are imprisoned because ICE claims that they are so-called “arriving aliens” (a designation that even some IJs struggle with, but that has huge consequences for a respondent), “likely to abscond,” or ”security risks!”
But, a significant “unstated purpose” of immigration detention, often in substandard conditions, is to coerce detainees into giving up legal rights or waiving appeals and to punish those who stubbornly insist on asserting their rights.
When the almost inevitable “final order of removal” comes, officials in Administrations of both parties believe, without much empirical evidence, that detainees will serve as “bad will ambassadors,” carrying back woeful tales of wonton cruelty and suffering that will “deter” others from darkening the doors of “the world’s most generous nation.”
In spite of this overall “institutionalized hostility,” there is a small, brave cadre of “due process/fundamental fairness heroes” known as the Office of Legal Access Programs, or “OLAP” at EOIR!Forced into “the darkest corners of the EOIR Tower dungeon” during the reign of terror of “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and “Billy the Bigot” Barr, they have finally been released into daylight.
The Dungeon Former A.G. Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions had a special place in the EOIR Falls Church Tower for those trying to assist pro se litigants in Immigration Court. Public Realm
But, make no mistake about it — these courageous folks at OLAP aren’t helping to “drive the train” at EOIR under Biden and Garland, as they certainly should be! No, as was the case before Trump, they are racing down the station platform to catch the train as it departs without them.
How do I know? It’s actually pretty obvious. If Garland & the Administration were actually serious about promoting representation, they would:
Require a positive report from the OLAP before opening any new Immigration Court;
Subject all existing detained “courts” (that aren’t really “courts” at all, within the common understanding of the term) to an OLAP analysis, involving input from the pro bono bar, and close any location where pro bono counsel can’t be made reasonably available to all detainees who want it;
Make part of the IJ hiring process input from the OLAP and the public into the demonstrated commitment of each “finalist” for an Immigration Judge position to working to maximize representation; and
Work with outside programs like Professor Michelle Pistone’s innovative “VIISTA Villanova Program” for training accredited representatives to “streamline and expedite” the Recognition & Accreditation process housed within OLAP.
To my knowledge, none of these obvious “first steps” to address the representation crisis at EOIR have been instituted. Tells us about all we need to know about the real importance of the OLAP in Garland’s galaxy.
Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with Alicia de La O, her attorneys, and interns at the ABA who are helping the OLAP “staff” the “pro se hotlines” for detainees in immigration proceedings. Of course, they can’t provide “legal advice,” although they can direct pro se litigants to available “self help” materials prepared by OLAP and reliable pro bono NGOs. But, as I pointed out, just being available to speak with isolated detainees, listen sympathetically, and direct them to available resources is a “big deal” from both a human and a practical perspective.
Alicia de la O Senior Attorney/Chief Counsel, ABA Commission on Immigration PHOTO: Linkedin
Remarkably, the amazingly talented, informed, and energetic undergraduate internsworking with the ABA had a far better understanding of the corrosive effect on democracy and America’s future of the mocking of due process, fundamental fairness, racial justice, and human dignity in Immigration Courts than inept and often clueless Biden Administration so-called “immigration policy officials” have acknowledged with their words and deeds. Indeed, one of the undergraduate interns had already completed the VIISTA program. He therefore probably knows more about the Immigration Courts at the “retail level” than some of the clowns Garland has running EOIR!
The energy and commitment of these interns to take on existential challenges that our “leaders” from both parties have shunned, gave me some hope for America’s future. That is, if democracy can survive the overt attacks from the right and its tepid defense by Democrats, by no means an assured outcome.
This opportunity to meet with those working on the front lines of helping the most isolated, vulnerable, and intentionally neglected among us got me thinking about what I might say to a pro se litigant stuck in the “EOIR purgatory,” based on my experience. I note, with some pride, that during my time on the trial bench, almost every pro se individual who wanted to appeal one of my orders was able to file timely with the BIA based on the detailed instructions I gave them at the end of the hearing.
So, as promised, here’s “my list!”
PRO SE CHECKLIST
Judge (Ret.) Paul Wickham Schmidt
March 1, 2023
1) Be careful in filing out the I-589. Everything in the application, including mistakes, omissions, and failure to answer questions can be used AGAINST you at the hearing. Filing a fraudulent application can have severe consequences beyond denial of your case.
2) Do NOT assume that significant omissions or errors in the I-589 can be corrected or explained at the hearing without adverse consequences.
3) If you use a translator, ask that the application be read back to you in FULL for accuracy, before signing. Generally, there is no such thing as an “insignificant error” on an asylum application. All inaccuracies can and will be considered by the IJ in determining whether you are telling the truth.
4) Obtain any relevant documentation supporting the claim and attach to the application. All documents in a foreign language MUST be translated into English. A certificate of accuracy from the translator must also accompany the document. DO NOT expect the court interpreter to translate your documents during the hearing.
5) Understand NEXUS to a “protected ground;” merely claiming or even proving that you will suffer harm upon return is NOT sufficient to win your case; many pro se cases fail on this basis.
6) Any pro se case claiming a “Particular Social Group” will need help in formulating it. Do NOT expect the IJ or ACC to assist in defining a qualifying PSG.
7) Keep a copy of the application and all evidence submitted.
8) Sign your application.
9) Make sure that the original signed copy goes to the Immigration Court and a copy to the ACC.
10) Keep documents submitted by ICE or the Immigration Court.
11) Do NOT rely on your translator, friends, relatives, or “jailhouse lawyers” for advice on filling in the application. NEVER embellish or add incorrect information to your I-589 just because someone else tells you to or says it’s “the only way to win your case.”
12) DO NOT let friends, detention officers, the IJ or anyone else (other than a qualified lawyer working for you) talk you out of pursuing a claim if everything in it is true. You must “tune out chatter” that everybody loses these cases, and therefore you are wasting your time.
13) Do NOT tell the IJ and/or ACC that everything in your application is true and correct if it is not true!
14) If you discover errors in your application before the hearing, ask the IJ at the beginning of the hearing for an opportunity to correct them. Do NOT wait to see if the ACC brings them up.
15) If you will be testifying through an interpreter, ask the IJ for a brief chance to converse with the interpreter before the hearing to make sure you understand each other. If there is any problem, tell the IJ BEFORE the hearing begins.
16) The Immigration Court hearing is a formal, adversary hearing, NOT an “informal interview” like the Asylum Office.
17) Be courteous and polite to the Immigration Judge, the ICE Assistant Chief Counsel, and the interpreter at all times, BUT BE AWARE:
1) The IJ and the ACC are NOT your friends;
2) They do NOT represent your interests;
3) The ACC’s basic job is to urge the IJ to deny your application and enter an order of removal;
4) The IJ is NOT an independent judge. He or she works for the Attorney General a political enforcement official. Some IJs function with a reasonable degree of independence. But, others see themselves largely as assisting the ACC in in denying applications and rapidly turning out removal orders.
5) The interpreter works for the court, NOT you.
18) YOU will be the only person in the courtroom representing your interests.
19) Don’t answer a question that you don’t understand. Ask the IJ to have it repeated. If it is a complicated question, ask the IJ if it can be broken down into distinct parts.
20) If you really don’t know the answer to a question, don’t “guess!” “I don’t know, your honor” is an acceptable answer, if true.
21) If the ACC introduces evidence at the hearing — say a copy of the Asylum Officer’s notes — ask the IJ for a full translation through the interpreter before answering questions.
22) If documents you submitted support your claim, direct the IJs attention to those documents.
23) When it is time for the IJ to deliver an oral decision, make sure that you are allowed to listen through the interpreter.
24) Bring a pencil or pen and a pad of paper to the hearing. Try to take notes on the decision as it is dictated by the IJ.
25) If the decision goes against you, tell the IJ that you want to reserve an appeal and request copies of the appeal forms. You can always withdraw the appeal later, but once an appeal is waived it is difficult, often impossible, to restore it.
26) If the IJ rules in your favor, and the ACC reserves appeal, understand that the order in your favor will have no effect until the appeal is withdrawn or ruled upon by the BIA. For detained individuals, that probably means remaining in detention while the appeal is resolved, which might take months.
27) If you appeal, fill out the forms completely according to instructions and file with the BIA as soon as possible, the same or next day if you can. That is when your memory will be best, and it maximizes the chance of the BIA receiving your appeal on time. Do NOT wait until the last minute to file an appeal.
28) Be SPECIFIC and INCLUSIVE in stating why you think the IJ was wrong. Attach a separate sheet if necessary. Just saying “The Judge got it wrong” or “I disagree with the decision” won’t be enough and might result in the BIA rejecting your appeal without further review.
29) Remember to file the separate fee waiver request form with the Notice of Appeal.
30) Assume that all filing deadlines will be strictly applied and that pro se applicants will NOT be given any breaks or special treatment, despite mailing difficulties and other problems.
31) DON’T count on timely mail delivery. The Notice of Appeal, brief, or any other document is not “filed” with the BIA until they actually receive it. Merely placing it in the mail before the due date will NOT be considered a timely filing if the document arrives late. Mail early!
32) If you are not in detention, use a courier service to deliver filings to the BIA so you have solid evidence of timely filing.
33) If you check the box on the appeal form saying you will file a brief or additional statement, you MUST do so, even if short. Failing to file a brief or written statement after checking that box can be a ground for the BIA to summary dismiss your appeal without considering the merits.
34) Info about the BIA Pro Bono Project.
NOTICE: The ideas above are solely mine. They are not legal advice, and have not been endorsed or approved by any organization or any other person, living or dead, born or unborn.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, associate dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar, clinical professor of law, and director of the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Penn State Law in University Park, will be appointed to the position of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer (CRCL) in the Department of Homeland Security. This is a presidential appointment during which Wadhia will take a leave of absence from Penn State Law.
The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties supports the Department of Homeland Security in providing security for the nation while “preserving individual liberty, fairness, and equality under the law.” CRCL also includes civil rights practices in the Department’s activities and takes step to advance them within the Department.
“This is a full circle moment for me,” said Wadhia, reflecting on her career as an immigration attorney, policy advocate where she engaged in legislative advocacy surrounding the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and her work at Penn State where she teaches students about the role of federal agencies and the intersection of immigration and administrative law.
Victor Romero, interim dean of Penn State Law and the School of International Affairs, Maureen B. Cavanaugh Distinguished Faculty Scholar, and professor of law said, “We’re deeply proud of Shoba and all her accomplishments at Penn State Law, and we’re excited to see what she achieves in her new position as the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer. She’s a shining example of excellence and leadership in the legal community. We wish her the best of luck during her appointment and eagerly wait for her to share her experiences with the students at Penn State Law upon her return.”
Wadhia looks forward to bringing her experience as CRCL Officer back to the classroom and sharing her work in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and contributions more broadly to Penn State Law and beyond. Her teaching courses include Asylum and Refugee Law, Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, Immigration Law, and Law and (In)equity.
“Bringing back my experience at DHS will help me enrich the classroom experience for my students and broaden my lens on the internal work of agencies, and how institutions can respond or reform issues through an equity lens,” said Wadhia.
Her work has been published in numerous law journals, including Duke Law Journal, Emory Law Journal, Texas Law Review, Washington and Lee Law Review, Harvard Latino Law Review, Administrative Law Review, Howard Law Journal, Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, and Columbia Journal of Race and Law.
Wadhia is the founder and director of the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic (CIRC), which has earned a national reputation for its high-quality work product and impact in the community. CIRC was honored with the Excellence in Legal Advocacy Award in 2017 by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and named legal organization of the year in 2019 by the Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center.
Prior to joining Penn State, Wadhia was deputy director for legal affairs at the National Immigration Forum in Washington, D.C., where she provided legal and policy expertise on multiple legislative efforts, including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, comprehensive immigration reform, immigration enforcement, and immigration policy post 9-11. Wadhia has also been an associate with the immigration law firm Maggio Kattar of P.C. in Washington, D.C., where she represented individuals and families in asylum, deportation, family, and employment-based immigration. She is a 1999 graduate of Georgetown University Law Center.
LAST UPDATED MARCH 1, 2023
*****************************
Many congrats, Shoba, and thanks for taking on this important challenge! Like your PSU Law colleagues, we’re all proud of you!
As one member of our Round Table quipped upon hearing the great news about Shoba: “Love Shoba! And then for comparison, look at who EOIR has running its agency.”
All the best to you in your new position, Shoba! And, thanks again for doing this for the cause of justice in America!
“Juana,” a client of the Asylum & Convention Against Torture Clinic and Annunciation House in Texas, after she won asylum and was released from detention in spring 2019.
Asylum and Convention Against Torture Appellate Clinic Celebrates 20th Anniversary
February 17, 2023
Twenty years ago, Cornell Law School established its Asylum and Convention Against Torture Appellate Clinic. Since then, some 200 students have represented close to 100 clients. In a system where the vast majority of asylum seekers lose their appeals, the clinic has won an estimated sixty-six percent of its cases.
“Because of the complexity of immigration law, it is very hard to win asylum for someone,” says clinic codirector Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of Immigration Law Practice. “We are fortunate that we have excellent students who work tirelessly to save their clients from persecution or torture.”
Emily Rivera ’23, who is taking the clinic for a second year, writes, “This has been the most rewarding experience of my law school career. From working on federal court appeals to submitting request releases on behalf of detained clients, I have had the chance to engage in work that I am deeply passionate about.”
The experience has inspired careers in immigration law—and also deeply informed alumni’s work in other areas. Neethu Putta ’19, who took the clinic for two years as a student and now contributes to its work as an adjunct professor, observes, “The clinic taught me how to artfully frame issues and tell a client’s narrative in a way that leaves the court no choice but to find for them. As a practicing commercial litigator, I now use those skills daily.”
Clinic codirector Estelle McKee, clinical professor of law (Lawyering), notes that the clinic offers students a unique glimpse into the lives of individuals whose paths they would otherwise never cross. “Our clients are brave; many have undergone unspeakable persecution and torture, and have embarked on treacherous journeys to protect their families,” she says. “Their experiences and persistence offer students deep insight into the importance of zealous advocacy.”
McKee shares some comments sent to her by clinic clients. A Salvadoran asylum-seeker wrote, “I sincerely want to thank you for all your willingness, commitment, responsibility, and the respect with which you offer me your help. Few people do what you did for me, so I will be forever grateful to you.” [translated from Spanish]
Another reflection comes from a Cameroonian client who had been found “not credible” by an immigration judge and was ailing in a for-profit prison when the clinic took up his case. Against the odds, McKee and her students were able to get the case reopened and will represent this asylum-seeker as he returns to court. He says, “I continue to appreciate your care and concern and effort to my case… [Y]ou have really been a blessing to me… I will never forget you.”
For the professors as well, the experience has been unforgettable. Says Yale-Loehr, “The clinic has been a highlight of my legal career. I feel honored to have worked with so many excellent students over the years to help persecuted people win asylum and start a new life in the US.”
McKee adds, “There is nothing like clinical teaching. Not only does it present the opportunity to provide the representation so desperately needed by underserved populations, but it also enables a teacher to help shape the next generation of lawyers while also having an impact on the development of the law.”
*******************
Clinical education has been the biggest development in modern legal education — applied scholarship, practical skills, changing lives, problem solving, and developing the law, all before students join the bar! No better way to learn than at the chaotic, high-stakes “retail level” of our justice system. As I often tell students, “If you can win one of these cases, in this environment, everything else in law and many of the challenges of life will be a piece of cake!”
Immigration and human rights clinics, like Cornell and many others, have been at the very forefront of innovation and the clinical teaching movement. That’s why many of the “superstars” of clinical teaching are now being “tapped” by their institutions for leadership positions as Deans, Associate Deans, Assistant Deans, etc.
Where U.S. law remains “behind the eight ball:” Bringing these extraordinarily well-qualified “practical scholars,” leaders, and administrators onto the Federal Bench and in key leadership positions within the Government’s struggling legal bureaucracy, particularly in the dysfunctional agencies responsible for immigration, human rights, racial justice, due process, and equal justice. And, what passes for “policy making” on these issues in the Biden Administration is nothing short of a preventable and embarrassing humanitarian disaster!
Nowhere is this glaring disparity more obvious than between the dynamic talent and creativity in the private sector and the “backward looking, stuck in a rut, timid, uninspired” leadership inflicted on the public by these downward-spiraling, hugely wasteful and inefficient USG bureaucracies and the poorly-conceived and too often disingenuous “policies” (actually cruel “recycled Stephen Miller Lite gimmicks”) coming out of the West Wing!
🇺🇸 America needs change. And that requires some new faces, courage, innovation, and better solutions from the USG!The talent is available! Why are we being subjected to “Amateur Night at the Bijou” — or worse?
The Biden Administration has looked in some mighty strange places to assemble its amazingly inept human rights/immigration team. Why didn’t they try clinical programs and NGOs where the “real talent” is? That’s a question that the ghosts of dead and damaged legal asylum seekers might be asking for a long time to come! PHOTO: Thomas Hawk Creative Commons Amateur Night
Heidi Altman Director of Policy National Immigrant Justice Center PHOTO: fcnl.orgRev. Craig Mousin Ombudsperson Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Grace School of Applied Diplomacy DePaul University PHOTO: DePaul Website
FEBRUARY 23, 2023 CRAIG B. MOUSIN SEASON 1 EPISODE 34
Lawful Assembly Podcast
Episode 34: Support Humanitarian Asylum Welcome
00:00
|
24:29
Rewind Speed Forward
Info
LAWFUL ASSEMBLY PODCAST
Episode 34: Support Humanitarian Asylum Welcome
FEB 23, 2023 SEASON 1 EPISODE 34
Craig B. Mousin
In this interview, Rev. Craig B. Mousin, an Adjunct Faculty member of DePaul University’s College of Law, Refugee and Forced Migration Studies Program, and the Grace School of Applied Diplomacy interviews Heidi Altman, the Policy Director of the National Immigrant Justice Center (www.immigrantjustice.org). Ms. Altman discusses a proposed rule that will effectively preclude most asylum-seekers from safely and effectively applying for asylum in the United States. She advocates for humanitarian asylum welcome. She previously served as the legal director for the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and was a Teaching Fellow in the immigration clinic at Georgetown University Law School.
ACTION STEPS
1. Invite friends and family to learn how the proposed rule will undermine refugee protection and encourage them to respond to their elected representatives and the Biden administration urging withdrawal of the proposed rule.
2. The Sanctuary Working Group of the Chicago Religious Leadership Network currently serves and advocates alongside newly arrived asylum seekers in the Chicagoland area. There are many impactful ways you can help asylum seekers, from providing sponsorship and temporary housing to covering legal fees and advocating for policy change. Interested individuals, faith communities, or organizations may contact CRLN staff/consultant David Fraccaro at davidfraccaro99@gmail.com to talk about ways to partner together in supporting and protecting our newest neighbors.
Craig Mousin volunteers with the National Immigrant Justice Center. We welcome your inquiries or suggestions for future podcasts. If you would like to ask more questions about our podcasts or comment, email us at: mission.depaul@gmail.com
Thanks, Craig and Heidi for a very interesting and informative session!
T. Swift. Loss of chance to attend her latest concert due to Ticketmaster SNAFU caused immediate bipartisan Congressional outrage and hearings! Loss of chance to plead for life because of DHS CBP One App SNAFU, not so much! Dehumanization of our fellow humans degrades our society. LOS ANGELES – Swift at 2019 iHeartRadio Music Awards on March 14, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Glenn Francis/Pacific Pro Digital Photography) Creative Commons License.
Here are “my takeaways:”
Asylum seekers have a legal right, established by the Refugee Act of 1980 and international conventions, to seek asylum at our border or in the U.S., regardless of status and/or nationality;
The Trump and Biden Administrations have abrogated this right without legislation;
The Trump Administration’s anti-asylum actions and intentional dehumanization of asylum seekers was rooted in White Nationalist nativism;
Despite recognition during the 2020 campaign of the invidious motivation for Trump’s anti-asylum policies, the Biden Administration has retained, or even enhanced, the dehumanization and denial of rights to asylum seekers at the border;
Over the past two Administrations, acceptance of the basic rights and obligations of the U.S. toward asylum seekers, incorporated in the Refugee Act of 1980, has been eliminated or reduced to a superficial “shell” (“asylum in name only,” as some advocates have termed Biden’s latest proposed anti-asylum border policies);
By abandoning the framework set forth in the Refugee Act of 1980, the Trump and Biden Administrations have re-injected the ad hoc approach,disorder, nationality bias, and ideological preferences at the border that the Refugee Act of 1980 was specifically enacted to eliminate;
There is much under-appreciated support for welcoming, fairly treating, and helping refugees and asylum seekers among Americans in communities throughout our nation;
NGOs and experts have dozens of great ideas for restoring and improving the legal right to seek asylum in fair, humane, non-discriminatory ways which they have shared or are happy to share with the Biden Administration;
The Biden Administration to date has shown little if any interest in adopting and implementing better humanitarian solutions for asylum seekers at the border;
Both parties lack leaders with the integrity and courage to stand up for the legal and human rights of asylum seekers;
We must continue to discuss ways to break the cycle of dehumanization, cruelty, and scofflaw treatment of asylum seekers and replace it with enhanced humanitarian procedures and a welcoming culture, in accordance with the Refugee Act of 1980, the U.N. Convention and Protocol, and the very best traditions of our nation of immigrants.
