Tag: Immigration Detention

HERE’S WHAT THE DISHONEST SCOFFLAW OFFICIALS IN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Many Who Escape From The Northern Triangle Are, In Fact, Refugees — When They Are Given Access To Competent Counsel & Fair Hearings Before Fair & Impartial Judges, They Often Succeed In Getting Protection! – Here’s Another “Real Life” Example!

“New Due Process Army” stalwart, Professor Alberto Benitez of the George Washington Law Immigration Clinic, reports:

Friends,
Please join me in congratulating Immigration Clinic student-attorney Megan Elman, and her clients, R-G, his wife, J, and their two kids, ages 10 and 5 respectively, R and L, from El Salvador.  This afternoon, after a two and a half-hour hearing, IJ Cynthia S. Torg granted the clients’ asylum application.
R-G was a maritime police officer, and because of that status, he and his family were threatened with death by mara gang members.  During an outing at the beach, the family had a gun pointed at them while being threatened. One of the maras told R-G that his order was only to tell him to move away, but he wished he had been given the order to kill him, because he would have preferred to cut off R-G’s head and hang it from  a tree.  Afterward, R and J tried to file a complaint with their local police, but were advised by the police not to bother and instead flee the country.  That night, unknown, masked, armed men appeared outside their house.  Eventually the men left, but the family decided to flee to the USA.
Congratulations also to Sarah DeLong, Jonathan Bialosky,  Solangel González, and Sam Xinyuan Li, who previously worked on this case. 
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Alberto Manuel Benitez
Professor of Clinical Law
Director, Immigration Clinic
The George Washington University Law School
650 20th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
(202) 994-7463
(202) 994-4946 fax
abenitez@law.gwu.edu
THE WORLD IS YOURS…
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Contrary to what the Trump Administration and EOIR Management would have you believe, these types of cases are neither unique nor extraordinary in their factual setting. I encountered lots of “slam dunk” Northern Triangle asylum, withholding, and/or CAT cases at the Arlington Immigration Court.
What is unusual is that these individuals; 1) got access to the hearing process, 2) had access to competent pro bono counsel, 3) had sufficient time in a non-detained setting to gather evidence in support of their applications, 4) were given sufficient time to fully present their cases in court, 5) didn’t have to wait many years for their final hearing, and 6) and perhaps most significantly, were fortunate enough to have a fair, impartial, and scholarly Immigration Judge like Judge Cynthia S. Torg, to decide their cases. I’d also infer from this description that the DHS Assistant Chief Counsel played a constructive role in critically, yet fairly and professionally, developing the facts so that the Immigration Judge could make an immediate decision and appeal could be waived.
Imagine how this case might have come out had it occurred in Atlanta, Charlotte, or El Paso where the Immigration Judges are notorious for prejudging asylum cases against the applicants and merely providing the “trappings of due process.” Or, if these individuals had been forced to “represent” themselves in a godforsaken so-called “detention court” unprepared, traumatized, and within a short time after arrival. Or, if the Immigration Judge had insisted on truncating the process to complete her “quota” of four cases per day. Or, if under the Trump regime, they had never been given access to the Immigration Court hearing process in the first place. Or, if the Assistant Chief Counsel had appealed to the BIA where delays are common and panels vary widely as to their commitment to a fair, impartial, and overall generous view of asylum law in accordance with their own (often cited, not always followed) precedent in Matter of Mogharrabi! Or, if after the fact, a political hack like Jeff Sessions had arbitrarily and unethically intervened to deny relief to satisfy his White Nationalist restrictionist “agenda.”
The truth is that many, perhaps the majority, of the Northern Triangle asylum cases could be efficiently and promptly granted by the USCIS Asylum Office. With the “reinstatement” of A-R-C-G- (recognizing domestic violence) and some positive precedents (when’s he last time you saw one of those from the BIA on asylum?) covering recurring situations such as this one, many more Northern Triangle asylum cases could be granted by stipulation of counsel following short hearings before the Immigration Judges.
On the flip side, in a fairer system, it would be easier for everyone to recognize situations that didn’t merit protection under the law after fair hearings. My experience in Arlington was that when I listened carefully and issued a clear and reasoned explanation of why protection could not be granted, the applicants often (not always) would waive appeal and accept my order as final. Actual, as opposed to cosmetic, fairness helps both sides to accept the decisions below.
That’s precisely what the biased Jeff Sessions has “disempowered” in this now inherently unfair court system. A system run by political officials in the Trump Administration (or any other Administration for that matter) can never be perceived as fair.
Issuance and enforcement of more positive precedents by the BIA (without the current political interference by the DOJ) would also lead to greater uniformity, as judges in places like Atlanta, Charlotte, El Paso, Stewart, etc., would be required to follow the asylum laws and apply them in the generous manner required by the Supreme Court in Cardoza-Fonseca, rather than acting on their enforcement biases against asylum seekers and trying to “lead the league” in producing rote unfair removal orders to the delight of the DOJ politicos.
If restructured into an independent court system with Due Process as the one and only goal and a merit selection system for judges going forward, the Immigration Courts have the potential to make justice with efficiency the norm, rather than the exception. But, that’s not going to happen in the current  politically compromised and incompetently administered structure of EOIR within DOJ.
America needs an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court. The Fifth Amendment to our Constitution demands it! 
PWS
11-28-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!

JRUBE @ WASHPOST: Trump’s Racist & Intentionally Illegal Immigration Enforcement Policies Have Been A Failure & A Gross Abuse of Government Authority & Taxpayer Resources — It’s High Time For Some Real Accountability!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/11/27/congressional-oversight-should-start-with-a-policy-fiasco-like-this-one/

Rubin writes in WashPost:

Trump administration scandals surely must be examined by the new Democratic-controlled House, which intends to take its constitutional obligations seriously, in contrast with the GOP House majority. But congressional oversight should be about more than scandals: Equally important is to probe the policy disasters (as numerous as the ethical lapses), both to hold the executive branch accountable and to help formulate appropriate legislation. The border situation is a prime example.

The Post reports:

A day after U.S. agents fired tear gas to repel migrants breaking through the border fence in Southern California, Homeland Security officials defended the use of force and their decision to close the country’s busiest port of entry, saying they expect additional confrontations and shutdowns.

Facing dismal conditions in Mexico and long waits for the chance to request asylum in the United States, thousands of Central American migrants are becoming more agitated, and officials see no quick resolution to the tensions that erupted Sunday. …

On Monday, critics of the Trump administration denounced border agents’ use of force on groups that included families with children, but U.S. officials praised what they called “quick and effective action” against crowds of stone-slinging young men who pried open the border fence at multiple locations to squeeze through.

Like the family separation debacle, this is a crisis of the Trump administration’s own making. Sending the military (with threats to use force on civilians), threatening to “close the border” and attempting to issue a blanket denial of asylum (halted by the courts) have all created a sense of panic:

The migrants who participated in Sunday’s border rush were a minority among the 5,000 or so Central Americans who have arrived in caravan groups to Tijuana in recent weeks hoping to enter the United States. Critics of the administration’s hard-line response have insisted that members of the caravan groups would exercise their legal right to seek asylum at U.S. border crossings. But with more than 4,000 people on a wait list to approach the border crossing, and U.S. immigration authorities insisting that they have the capacity to process just 60 to 100 asylum seekers per day, frustration has been welling at the camp where migrants are sleeping in tents and enduring long lines for food.

Instead of sending troops and making unconstitutional threats, the Trump administration should be dispatching an army of judges to consider the asylum applications — and working with Central American governments to address the conditions that force their citizens to flee.

Rather than accept responsibility for their own bad decision-making, the Trump administration falsely accuses the Obama administration of practicing the same inhumane family separation policy. (The Post’s fact checkers find: “It’s not the first time [President] Trump tries to minimize the scope of his family separations at the border by claiming that President Barack Obama had the same policy. This claim and its variations have been roundly debunked. We gave them Four Pinocchios in June. … There is simply no comparison between Trump’s family separation policy and the border enforcement actions taken by the Obama and George W. Bush administrations.”)

‘We come in peace’: Central American migrants’ uncertain future

A full congressional investigation is essential to answer the most basic questions:

  • Who issued the zero-tolerance policy, and who approved it?
  • What discussion/consideration of the ensuing family separations was undertaken?
  • What basis is there for the administration’s assertions that there are “Middle Eastern” people and criminals in the caravan? (“It has almost nothing but supposition to show the public. Many of the caravan members are women and children fleeing violence in their home countries or seeking economic opportunity in the United States. They hardly fit Trump’s description of ‘very tough people’ rushing the border.”)
  • Where are the “stone-cold criminals” Trump keeps claiming are part of the caravan, and why wouldn’t they be rejected through the normal asylum evaluation process?
  • Against whom did U.S. agents lob tear gas?

Aside from debunking a host of false claims by the Trump administration and anti-immigrant zealots, the hearings ideally should produce legislation that at a bare minimum permanently bans family separations, allocates funds for border security and for immigration judges (even Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, supports that), gives protection to the dreamers and supports aid to Central American countries from which migrants are fleeing.

In short, Congress needs to do its job, instead of acting as a cheerleader for Trump’s racist, hysterical rhetoric.

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I’ve been saying this for a long time!  There has been no accountability for anything under the GOP. including unwarranted deficits, high-level corruption (starting with the White House and the Trump family), and total waste of taxpayer money.

And, it’s not too late to hold corrupt White Nationalist scofflaw Jeff Sessions accountable for his gross abuses of his office, of our Constitution, and his crimes against humanity. How about some accountability for the evil racist anti-American subversive Stephen Miller? Also, don’t forget airhead sycophant Nielsen and her DHS underlings who mindlessly mouth Trump lies by blaming the Federal Courts, Democrats, and, most despicably, the victims for the messes that their own cruel incompetence and mockery of the rule of law has created!

PWS

11-28-18

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: AS SESSIONS RAMPS UP THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG,” RAMPANT SEXUAL ABUSE OF FEMALE DETAINEES CERTAIN TO INCREASE! – AG’S Child Abuse Also Makes Him Complicit In Sexual Abuse! – See The Short Video By Emily Kassie Here!
  4. TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION “POLICIES” ARE BASED ON RACISM, CRUELTY, LIES, & KNOWINGLY FALSE NARRATIVES — THE GOP HAS SOMETIMES ENCOURAGED, & OTHER TIMES ENABLED, THESE OUTRAGES AGAINST HUMANITY & THE RULE OF LAW — Now Some Accountability For These Despicable Actions Are On the Horizon!

TAL @ SF CHRONICLE: Trump’s Scofflaw Attack On Local Jurisdictions Is Not Only Terrible Law Enforcement, But Also Is A Stupid & Risky Litigation Strategy!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/Trump-gambled-big-on-sanctuary-cities-Could-he-13425437.php

Trump gambled big on sanctuary cities. Could he lose big?

Tal Kopan

 

WASHINGTON — On July 1, 2015, a single gunshot rang out on San Francisco’s Pier 14, fatally wounding 32-year-old Kate Steinle. By July 3, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was tweeting about it.

 

An undocumented immigrant and five-time deportee who had been released from San Francisco jail was charged with her murder, though he was acquitted two years later. By the time he went on trial, the incident had become a rallying cry for conservatives in general and Trump in particular. He took action just days into his presidency to block federal funds to sanctuary cities, a catch-all term that describes jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

 

And then Trump’s administration began to lose — repeatedly — in court.

 

Now, experts say that by continuing to press the issue, the administration’s strategy could backfire — possibly jeopardizing the cooperation that federal authorities now receive from many local governments and preventing Congress from even passing legislation on the topic.

Related Stories

 

Trump’s first legal setback came in response to the executive order he issued to block any federal funding to sanctuary cities, when a federal judge in San Francisco ruled in April 2017 that he could not broadly withhold money to force cooperation with immigration agents.

 

Trump, via then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then tried to impose more targeted punishment, making law-enforcement grant money conditional on cities’ cooperation with immigration enforcement. Courts in Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco again blocked his efforts. The Justice Department also sued California to try to pre-empt its state sanctuary law. A federal judge in Sacramento blocked that as well.

 

But it’s not just the grants that are at stake — the administration is at risk of losing the one law on which it has hung all its efforts.

 

The key development came in May in an unrelated case, when the Supreme Court ruled that a federal law prohibiting states from legalizing sports gambling was unconstitutional. The justices said the law illegally “commandeers” states to follow federal policy and intrudes on their lawmaking authority.

 

The decision had major ramifications for sanctuary cities litigation.

 

The Trump administration’s anti-sanctuary campaign is based on a piece of immigration law commonly referred to by its code number, 1373. That law prohibits state and local governments from restricting information about an immigrant’s status from federal officials.

 

Former President Barack Obama’s administration made some law enforcement grant money conditional on compliance with 1373. The Trump administration seized on that and sought to expand the interpretation of what was required of cities and states.

 

The law, government lawyers argued, covered more than just a person’s immigration status. They said it also required local governments to share the date immigrants would be released from custody, so federal agents could pick them up. The law became the underpinning of the government’s lawsuit over California’s sanctuary legislation.

 

However, lower courts following the Supreme Court’s ruling in the gambling case have applied it to 1373-related lawsuits — and have found that the immigration law also violates local governments’ rights.

 

A federal judge in Philadelphia ruled in June that not only were the immigration-related conditions on grants unconstitutional, so was 1373 itself. A federal judge in Chicago followed suit in July. In October, U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco agreed, ruling in favor of San Francisco and striking down 1373.

 

If the administration leaves those cases where they are, the effects will be relatively minimal. Each of those lower court rulings applies only to the cities that sued the Trump administration — they would not become nationally binding precedent unless federal lawyers appeal the decisions to higher courts and lose.

 

“If I were them, I would not want this at the Supreme Court, and would just leave it, leave these decisions as they are and just let the rest of the country continue to think that 1373 is constitutional,” said Bill Hing, professor of law and migration studies at the University of San Francisco.

 

Some issues in the cases have been heard on appeal, but those were decided before the Supreme Court’s gambling ruling. The Justice Department has filed a pending appeal in the Chicago case, looking not to overturn the judge’s decision but to seek a ruling that it and the administration’s other courtroom defeats should apply only to the individual cities and not nationwide.

 

Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston and contributor to the conservative legal group the Federalist Society, argues that winning on the issue of limiting nationwide rulings would be worth it, even if the administration jeopardizes 1373 in the process. He argues that appellate courts can decide these cases without needing to weigh in on 1373, which he called a “useless statute.”

 

“If that statute’s declared unconstitutional, then so what?” Blackman said. “The government often enacts policies that they know have a greater than average chance of failing, but if it advances the agenda of the executive branch, it’s worth taking the chance.”

 

Hing, though, called that strategy risky in light of the high court’s gambling decision. If the Trump administration keeps losing, he said, cities that cooperate now with federal immigration authorities could be sued by sanctuary advocates with legal precedent on their side.

 

Justice Department spokesman Steven Stafford said it was “absurd” to argue that sanctuary jurisdictions should receive federal law enforcement funding. The agency, he says, wants local authorities to “stop actively obstructing federal law enforcement.”

 

That position “is not only allowed by the Constitution, it is demanded by the Constitution,” Stafford said. “The Supreme Court’s decision in (the gambling case) has no bearing on the federal government’s ability to place conditions on funding.”

 

Immigration attorney Leon Fresco, who served in the Justice Department under Obama, said the Trump administration may have never believed it would prevail on sanctuary cities, but pursued the case to win a political talking point and potentially spur congressional action. But he warned that if courts make clear it’s unconstitutional for the federal government to force state and local governments to cooperate with immigration agents, it could give congressional Democrats cover for not acting.

 

“They’re making it easier for Democrats to say, ‘It’s not I’m not for solving this issue, it’s that we legally can’t,’ ” Fresco said. “The more (Trump officials) tease this out and make it true, the more likely they are to lose not just the legal issue, but the political issue.”

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Bottom line: The Trump Administration essentially is abusing the Federal Courts with largely frivolous litigation to score political points with its base.  Seems like fraud, waste, and abuse, as well as unethical behavior on the part of DOJ attorneys.

PWS

11-28-18

 

Related posts:

  1. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  2. TAL @ SF CHRON: 9TH CIR. STICKS A FORK IN CORE OF “GONZO APOCALYPTO” SESSIONS’S CHILD ABUSE PROGRAM — Many Of DOJ’s Wasteful “Criminal” Prosecutions Of Harmless Asylum Seekers Were Illegal — Conservative Icon Judge Jay Bybee Becoming A Key Judicial Voice For The Rule Of Law Against Trump & Co’s Executive Abuses!
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!

“OUR GANG” IN ACTION: 9th CIR. REMANDS JENNINGS V. RODRIGUEZ, KEEPS INJUNCTION IN EFFECT, HINTS THAT ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS COULD BE IN FOR ANOTHER BIG LOSS! – Will We See The End Of Indefinite Mandatory Immigration Detention & A Resurgence Of The Fifth Amendment?

http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2018/11/19/13-56706.pdf

“Our Gang” of Retired U.S. Immigration Judges continues to play a key role in defending Due Process and advancing the cause of justice in America!  Here’s what one of our leaders, Judge Jeffrey Chase, had to say about the latest case decided in accordance with the arguments made in our Amicus Brief:

Hi all:  I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  It seems just before the holiday, the Ninth Circuit issued a decision in Rodriguez v. Marin (the remand of the Jennings case from the Supreme Court concerning indefinite detention).  20 of us were amici on a brief filed with the 9th Cir. drafted by a team at Wilmer Hale headed by Adriel Cepeda-Derieux.

The Supreme Court remanded for consideration of the constitutional question, which the district court, on remand, will consider in the first instance.  The following language by the Circuit Court from its decision is heartening:

Like the Supreme Court, we do not vacate the permanent injunction pending the consideration of these vital constitutional issues. We have grave doubts that any statute that allows for arbitrary prolonged detention without any process is constitutional or that those who founded our democracy precisely to protect against the government’s arbitrary deprivation of liberty would have thought so. Arbitrary civil detention is not a feature of our American government.

Stay tuned!  Attached is a link to the full decision, and a PDF copy of our amicus brief.  Best, Jeff

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Great language from the Ninth Circuit. Sadly, however, unconstitutional conduct and mockery of the rule of law, particularly in connection with immigration matters is a mainstay of this “Scofflaw Administration.” (I will note that the Obama Administration took the same “thumb your nose at our Constitution” position as Trump has in this long-running case.)
Trump and his DOJ lawyers like to advertise that they consider the Supremes “bought and paid for” and that they fully expect the GOP-appointed majority to “take a dive” every time the Administration wants to bend the law or operate in a “Constitution free” zone. As an indication of their total contempt for the judicial process and their belief that the “own” a majority of the Supremes, they have taken the almost unprecedented step in a number of key cases of trying to “short-circuit” the normal judicial process in the lower Federal Courts by going straight to the Supremes with the pleas for intervention.
But, in this case, they are likely to be out of luck.  The case has already been to the Supremes and they quite pointedly “punted” it back to the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. District Court. As the Ninth Circuit notes in its remand opinion, the Fifth Amendment constitutional issue is straightforward and was fully briefed by the parties before the Supremes. But, it’s obvious that the Supremes wanted no part of it at that time.
So, it’s highly unlikely that the Supremes will intervene before the case works its way back up through the District Court and the Ninth Circuit, a process that will take months, if not years. Meanwhile, the injunction against indefinite detention without bond hearings remains in effect within the Ninth Circuit, which generates the largest number of immigration cases.
If Chief Justice Roberts really wants to demonstrate judicial independence and fair and impartial justice within the Third Branch this is his chance (along with Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, who both would do well to put some distance between themselves and Trump) to show it in actions, not just rhetoric!
He squandered his opportunity in the “Travel Ban” case. If nothing else, he can now see that rather than respectfully considering his “warning shots,” Trump has specifically ignored them and treated the Chief Justice with the same utter contempt as he treats the spineless lackeys who surround his presidency.
But, the good thing about “judging,” at any level, is that you often get a chance to redeem yourself for past mistakes. Whether Roberts has the judicial integrity and leadership skills to pull it off, remains to be seen.
This also should be a “warning shot” to the DOJ that former AG Sessions’s vile plan (which he left unfinished when Trump unceremoniously axed him) to undo bond for asylum applicants who pass credible fear, on the basis of a clearly bogus and contrived reading of the Supreme’s Jennings v. Rodriguez remand, is likely to be found unconstitutional and therefore “DOA” in the Ninth Circuit. 
PWS
11-27-18

Related posts:

  1. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
  2. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

11-26-18

 

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. FOUR TODDLERS RESCUED BY PRO BONO LAWYERS FROM DEADLY SITUATION IN CBP CUSTODY — Putrid, Unsanitary, Repressive Conditions Causing Lifetime Harm To Other Traumatized Kids — But, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Wants You To Know That She’s Not Taking Responsibility For The Humanitarian Disaster Intentionally Engineered On Her Watch!
  2. “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” MORPHS INTO CONTEMPT FOR COURT AS ADMINISTRATION TELLS COURT & SEPARATED FAMILIES “GO POUND SAND” — They Just Don’t Care About Humanity!
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. 🤮NO PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TOWARD MEN (WOMEN, OR ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) FROM REGIME OF “BAD SANTAS” 🦹🏿‍♂️🎅🏻— Illegally Separated Families Continue To Suffer Irreparable Trauma, 😰 Volunteer Groups 😇🗽⚖️ Left To Pick Up Pieces — A Reminder That Defeated Regime Has Mocked, Disparaged, & Trashed Christ’s Values & Assaulted Humanity Over Four Christmases!🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻

THE HILL: Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) Points Finger @ Trump For Bogus Border Crisis!

https://apple.news/AJe1kxmmyRdi0l-QX8e70xQ

By Brett Samuels in The Hill:

Dem Senator: Trump administration’s policies ‘caused anxiety at the border’

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) on Monday blamed the Trump administration for causing “anxiety” at the southern border a day after border agents fired tear gas in response to migrants attempting to breach the border.

“There’s a better way to handle this. The United States, the Trump policies has caused anxiety at the border,” Cardin said on CNN’s “New Day.”

“There’s an orderly process that should have been used,” he added. “Should we fix our immigration system? Absolutely. But this administration has made no effort to fix our immigration system.”

President Trump has repeatedly blamed Congress and Democrats, in particular, for failing to pass legislation hardening the country’s immigration laws. The White House and lawmakers have been unable to reach an agreement on a host of immigration issues, though Congress has provided some funding for border security.

Cardin said Monday that the Trump administration has enacted policies that have exacerbated the problem at the border with the so-called caravan of Central American migrants, citing the White House’s move to curb immigrants’ ability to claim asylum and the previous policy of separating families who illegally cross the border.

“So they’re making the circumstances worse, and here we look at children being subject to tear-gassing,” Cardin said. “That’s the United States causing that. That’s outrageous.”

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Sunday shut down the busy San Ysidro port of entry near San Diego as hundreds of migrants approached. Tensions flared further when dozens of migrants broke away from a larger group to try and breach the border.

CBP said in a statement that officers fired tear gas into the crowd after attempted illegal crossings and after some migrants threw rocks at border agents.

Trump on Monday morning called on Mexico to deport the migrants back to their home countries and threatened to permanently close the southern border. The president has for weeks painted the group of migrants as an imminent security threat, prompting fierce criticism from Democratic lawmakers.

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

“There’s an orderly process that should have been used.” Yup! But, Trump refuses to use it and make it work! And, it could have been done for less money and fewer resources than the estimated $200 million military boondoggle at the border.

I also hope Sen. Cardin will urge Rep. Cummings (D-MD) and his colleagues in the House to exercise some “oversight” involving the senior Border Patrol officials who publicly proclaimed that most of those arriving at the border, who have been neither interviewed nor screened because of intentional delays by the US Government, are “economic refugees” not “real refugees.”

I tend to doubt that these loud-mouthed law enforcement officials, who have allowed themselves to become political puppets of the Trump White House, have any idea of what makes someone a “real refugee” under the law. Fact is, that in some Immigration Courts away from the Southern Border, the Immigration Judges continue to be fair and knowledgeable (NOT places like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Stewart). Those Immigration Judges take the necessary hours to fairly and impartially hear asylum cases (apparently largely disregarding artificial “quotas”). And, as a result, some properly documented domestic violence, family based, religious based, and political opposition to gang cases continue to be granted to applicants. Shows what happens when rather than prejudging cases like Trump, Sessions, DHS Senior Officials, and, sadly, some Immigration Judges, have done, asylum applicants from the Northern Triangle aren’t hustled through the “assembly line” and are given a fair chance to be represented and to gather the documentation necessary to overcome Sessions’s badly warped misconstruction of country conditions and intentionally misleading dicta in Matter of A-B-.

So, how can these Border Patrol folks tell by “eyeballing” thousands of individuals from the other side of the border whether their claims are “bona fide” or not? That, even after Trump’s and Sessions’s best efforts to “game” the system, the majority of arrivals from Central America still manage to pass “credible fear” examinations from the USCIS Asylum Office suggests that these Border Patrol officials are blowing (dangerous) “hot air” into an already volatile situation. That’s totally irresponsible  Time for some accountability all up and down the line for those carrying out Trump’s misguided immigration policies with no visible resistance to actions that at best strain, and quite possibly violate, our established asylum laws and procedures!

PWS

11-26-18

Related posts:

  1. 18 YEARS AFTER 09-11, THE “BAD GUYS” ARE WINNING THE BATTLE TO DESTROY AMERICAN JUSTICE & SPLIT THE COUNTRY! — Here’s The Disturbing Proof Of What Passes For “Justice” In America Today!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  4. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”

INSIDE EOIR: LA TIMES: Former EOIR Attorney Reveals Truth Of Sessions’s Ugly, Corrupt, Mean-Spirited, Attack On Judicial Independence & The Totally Demoralizing Effect On Judges & Other Dedicated Civil Servants – No Wonder This “Captive Court System” Is A Dysfunctional Mess Being Crushed Under An Artificially Created “Sessions Legacy Backlog” of 1.1 Million+ Cases With Neither Sane Management Nor Any End In Sight!

https://apple.news/AnkcqK5ITQ76IwHCZq2FnBw

I resigned from the Department of Justice because of Trump’s campaign against immigration judges

Gianfranco De Girolamo November 26, 2018, 3:05 AM

One of the proudest days of my life was Dec. 16, 2015, when I became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

I shed tears of joy as I swore allegiance to the United States at the Los Angeles Convention Center, along with more than 3,000 other new Americans. I was celebrating a country that had welcomed me with open arms, treated me as one of its own and opened doors I hadn’t known existed. Just a few years before, in the remote village in southern Italy where I grew up, this would have been unimaginable.

Another of my proudest moments came just a year later, when I was awarded a coveted position in the U.S. Department of Justice. This happened in late November 2016, a few weeks after President Trump was elected.

Like many, I harbored reservations about Trump. But I did not waver in my enthusiasm for the job. In law school, l had learned about the role of civil servants as nonpolitical government employees who work across administrations — faithfully, loyally and diligently serving the United States under both Republicans and Democrats.

I was designated an attorney-advisor and assigned to the Los Angeles immigration court. There, I assisted immigration judges with legal research, weighed in on the strengths and weaknesses of parties’ arguments and often wrote the first drafts of judges’ opinions.

Soon enough, however, the work changed. In March 2018, James McHenry, the Justice Department official who oversees the immigration courts as head of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, announced a mandate imposing individual quotas on all the judges. Each judge would be required to decide 700 cases per year, he said.

With these new quotas, which went into effect on Oct. 1, immigration judges must now decide between three and four cases a day — while also reviewing dozens of motions daily and keeping up with all their administrative duties — or their jobs will be at risk.

The announcement of the quotas in March was the first in a series of demoralizing attacks on immigration judges this year. In May, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, since fired by Trump, personally issued a decision that placed limits on the ability of immigration judges to use a practice known as administrative closure, which allows judges to put cases on indefinite hold, and which, in immigration cases, can be a tool for delaying deportation orders.

The Justice Department enforced the decision in July by stripping an immigration judge in Philadelphia of his authority in scores of cases for continuing to use administrative closure.

All this was in addition to a barrage of disparaging comments made directly by the president. In June, Trump tweeted that there is no reason to provide judges to immigrants. He also rejected calls to hire more immigration judges, saying that “we have to have a real border, not judges” and asking rhetorically, “Who are these people?”

The demoralizing effect on immigration judges was palpable. Morale was at an all-time low. I was new to civil service, but these judges, some of whom have served continuously since the Reagan administration, made clear that this was an unprecedented attack on the justice system.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion »

I’ve long admired the independence and legitimacy that the judiciary enjoys in the United States, so I found the attacks on judges deeply disturbing and troubling. They reminded me of Trump’s Italian alter-ego, Silvio Berlusconi, who spent most of his tenure as Italy’s prime minister fighting off lawsuits by delegitimizing and attacking the judiciary, calling it “a cancer of democracy” and accusing judges of being communist.

I voiced my concerns to my supervisors and directly to Director McHenry in a letter. Seeing no opportunity to make a positive difference and unwilling to continue to lend credence to this compromised system, I submitted my resignation in July, explaining my reasons in a letter.

This was not how I wanted to end my career in government. I had hoped to serve this country for the long haul. But I couldn’t stand by, or be complicit in, a mean-spirited and unscrupulous campaign to undermine the everyday work of the Justice Department and the judges who serve in our immigration courts — a campaign that hurts many of my fellow immigrants in the process.

Gianfranco De Girolamo was an attorney at the Department of Justice from 2017 to 2018.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook

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

Thanks for speaking out Gianfranco! I published an earlier, at that time “anonymous,” letter from Gianfranco at the time of his resignation. I’m sure there are many others at EOIR who feel the same way.  But, they are “gagged” by the DOJ — threatened with job loss if they “tell the truth” about the ongoing legal farce and parody of justice within our Immigration Courts.

It’s a “closed system” at war with the public it serves, the dedicated attorneys who represent migrants, the essential NGOs who are propping up what’s left of justice in this system, and the very civil servants who are supposed to be carrying out the courts’ mission. What a horrible way to “(not) run the railroad.”

Someday, historians will dig out the whole truth about the “Sessions Era” at the DOJ and his perversion of justice in the U.S. Immigration Courts. I’m sure it will be even worse than we can imagine. But, for now, thanks to Gianfranco for shedding at least some light on one of the darkest and most dysfunctional corners of our Government!

PWS

11-16-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  3. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”
  4. THE ROUNDTABLE IN ACTION: HON. ILYCE SHUGALL DELIVERS POWERFUL STATEMENT IN THE LA TIMES ON WHY SHE COULD NO LONGER SERVE AS A JUDGE IN OUR OBSCENELY DISTORTED AND UNFAIR U.S. IMMIGRATON COURT SYSTEM – “But nothing prepared me for the unprecedented, unfair and unworkable policies the Trump administration imposed on the courts and the immigration process.”

BUZZFEED NEWS: Two Years Of Trump’s Bad Immigration Policies Predictably Culminate In Border Gassings!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/trump-blame-crisis-border-asylum

Adolfo Flores, Hamed Aleaziz, & Karla Zabludovsky for BuzzFeed News:

TIJUANA, Mexico — For Trump administration officials, an unprecedented confrontation at the US-Mexico border on Sunday invited an assessment that their policies have only exacerbated the problems of an overwhelmed immigration system whose court backlog has grown larger since Trump’s inauguration 22 months ago.

León Rodriguez, who headed the US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency from 2014 to 2016, didn’t want to comment on the events on the ground, but said what happened at the border seemed to be “a foreseeable result of the US policy of placing every conceivable obstacle in the way of orderly legal migration and of not having a policy that [recognizes] the desperate circumstances driving migration.”

Mexican officials shared that negative assessment. Héctor Gandini, who will take over as spokesperson for Mexico’s Interior Ministry when Mexico swears in a new president on Saturday, said that the US use of tear gas on migrants attempting to cross illegally into the country was “not correct. We don’t want them to hound migrants.”

“You have to respect migrants’ human rights,” Gandini added.

For Josué Rosales, one of the migrants who took part in the ill-fated march to the border, what began as a journey of hope had turned into one of despair, one that promised weeks of more nights inside the tent he’s now sharing with his girlfriend on the grounds of the Benito Juarez stadium, where the caravan has been camped for days. He said he’s not ready to give up.

“I’m waiting to see if Trump comes to some type of agreement that allows us to cross,” Rosales said. “If he says no we’ll figure out another way to cross.”

The Trump administration faces a situation its best efforts have failed to control.

Administration officials have imposed a number of policies to discourage migrants from seeking to enter the United States. Then Attorney General Jeff Sessions personally rewrote key immigration court decisions to eliminate domestic violence and fear of gang violence as reasons for asylum to be granted. The administration imposed a controversial family separation policy that was intended to discourage parents from crossing the border with their children. Trump dispatched 5,800 US active-duty soldiers to the border in a show of force that many critics also claim was a blatant political ploy ahead of the midterm elections earlier this month.

Kim Kyung-hoon / Reuter

And yet border apprehensions are at the highest level yet of the Trump administration (though still at historically low levels), family detentions are at record levels, and the number of people granted asylum actually rose in the fiscal year that just ended, to the highest level in two decades.

In Tijuana, where the number of would-be asylum seekers is growing by the day, immigration attorneys and advocates describe a bottleneck system that makes asylum seekers wait weeks before they can seek to enter the US for refuge. That’s created an enormous backlog.

And the situation promises only to get worse as more people seeking to reach the US arrive in Baja California, the Mexican state that abuts California. Mexico’s interior ministry said there are 8,247 people now in Mexico who are traveling as part of so-called caravans from Central America. The vast majority of migrants — 7,417 — are in the cities of Mexicali and Tijuana. The other 424 are in a Mexico City shelter, 253 are in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, and another 153 are making their way north on their own. It’s unclear how many of them will ask for asylum.

Caring for the migrants is costing about $27,000 daily — money Tijuana’s mayor says the city does not have.

Sunday’s march to the border was intended to be peaceful, but it devolved into a frantic rush toward the border fence after the group, which numbered about 500, according to the Mexican interior ministry, was blocked from reaching the San Ysidro port of entry by a line of Mexican federal police.

Then after being blocked on the street in front of the Chaparral border crossing by metal barriers and another line of federal police with shields, a group walked to a train border crossing a few minutes away.

Several members of the group told BuzzFeed News they wanted to negotiate some type of agreement with the Trump administration that would let them enter the United States. Others said they hoped to be able to cross into the US as a group.

Instead, US border officers met them with tear gas and pepper balls, according to a statement from Customs and Border Protection, the agency responsible for border law enforcement.

CBP said its officers deployed the tear gas and pepper balls after some members of the group threw objects, including rocks, at agents while others tried to enter the United States illegally, some through a gap in the metal barrier along the railroad tracks.

Kim Kyung-hoon / Reuters

But not all immigration officers were willing to defend the US actions. One US asylum officer, who could not talk about policy publicly, said the confrontation likely was the result of the US’s inability or unwillingness to process asylum claims at the border daily. The officer said USCIS recently had told staff to be on standby to be sent to San Diego to help hear asylum claims.

“I’m just glad nothing worse happened,” the officer said. “I think it’s illegal that they closed the border. We cannot decide when we can close the border if there’s no state of emergency. For a couple dozen asylum seekers? That was not an emergency that should justify closing the border. I’m just relieved it wasn’t worse.”

Another government official, who works on the issue but does not make policy, blamed the Trump administration for the tensions at the border.

“Trump has broken the law by not having people at the border processed for months and months and creating a bottleneck there,” the official said. “Tear gassing children because maybe they’ll get into the US? Heaven forbid.”

Mexican authorities late Sunday were contemplating what to do next. In a press release, the interior ministry said Mexican police had retaken control of the area leading to the San Ysidro port of entry and that Mexican troops would not be deployed “despite the magnitude of the situation.”

A government official who requested anonymity because they were not allowed to talk to reporters told BuzzFeed News that 30 migrants had breached the border and were promptly detained by CBP. The National Migration Institute said that it planned to deport as many as 500 others who attempted to cross into the US illegally but were unsuccessful. Since the first caravan entered Mexico on October 19, 11,000 migrants from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua have been deported.

The escalation at the border comes at a complicated time — the country’s embattled president, Enrique Peña Nieto, will conclude his mandate in less than a week.

BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month that the Trump administration was attempting to broker a deal that would force people to wait in Mexico while their asylum cases were processed. The Washington Post reported that incoming Mexican president Andres Manuel López Obrador’s transition team had agreed to this plan, but that report was disputed by the same officials it cited; they pointed out that López Obrador’s government would not take office for several more days. “There is no agreement of any sort between the future government of Mexico and the US government,” said a press release from López Obrador’s transition team.

Immigration promises to be a major challenge for López Obrador, who has pledged to give work permits and offer jobs to Central American migrants in Mexico. Detentions and deportations of migrants have increased steadily since 2014, when the government launched the Southern Border Program, shortly after a large wave of unaccompanied minors surged across the US-Mexico border.

Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

Sunday’s events were much different from the results of a spring caravan that arrived in Tijuana in late April with hundreds of asylum seekers. The group camped out on the grounds of the Chaparral border crossing for days after being turned away by CBP agents because the port of entry was at capacity. Over several days, small groups of asylum seekers were allowed into the US to make their claim, 93% of whom passed what’s known as a credible fear interview, a crucial first step in the asylum application process.

But that caravan was much smaller, at most 1,500 at its start in southern Mexico, than the thousands now waiting in Tijuana, and its members had been vetted by the NGO that led it, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, to weed out those whose asylum claims were likely to be found without merit by the time it reached the border. In the end, only 228 people sought asylum in a process that took just five days. Separately, other members of the caravan asked for asylum before and after those five days, putting the total number of asylum seekers at 401.

This time around, asylum seekers have been told they would likely have to wait weeks in Tijuana before they could ask the US for refuge because of a backlog at the border. The current expected wait to begin the process is now up to six weeks.

Delay at the border for requesting asylum is nothing new, but it’s been getting worse under Trump. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found recently that US immigration authorities’ inability to handle the number of people seeking asylum at ports of entry had forced migrants to cross illegally. But there’s little sign that US officials are planning to take steps to improve the wait times.

And the likelihood is great that those who must wait in Tijuana will find only that their frustration will grow in the coming months.

“It’s difficult because we came as one peaceful caravan and now we’re just waiting here without any results,” Rosales, the march participant, told BuzzFeed News. “We’re sitting in the sun, thirsty, hungry, with no resolution to our situation.”

************************************************
The Trump Administration created this artificial mess. The solution is hardly “rocket science:”
  • More USCIS Asylum Officers;
  • More pro bono private attorneys;
  • More U.S. Immigration Judges and staff;
  • Restoring authority to Immigration Judges to work with both parties before their courts to close and remove hundreds of thousands of “low priority” cases from the courts’ dockets, thus freeing up judicial time to work on asylum cases of more recent arrivals;
  • Restoring precedents that would allow refugees with documented cases of persecution on the basis for domestic violence and family relationships to be expeditiously granted, thus freeing up docket space for other types of cases.

No chance that the Trump Administration will do this voluntarily. But, there might be an opening for House Democrats to condition further immigration enforcement funding on improvements in the foregoing areas and an end to the Trump-created “border backups.”

PWS

11-26-18

 

Related posts:

  1. IMMIGRATION COURTS: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE ON STEROIDS” — With Court System Reeling & Asylum Applicants Suffering, Administration Plans Another Round Of Massive “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), Reports Hamed Aleaziz @ BuzzFeed News!
  2. BUZZFEED NEWS: “Our Gang” Leader Judge Jeffrey Chase Blasts Nielsen’s Latest Disingenuous Attack On Legal Asylum Seekers — “Outrageous Move”
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”

“NOT SO FAST!” — CONFUSION AS USUAL IN THE AGE OF TRUMP: LA Times, HuffPost Report That Mexico Denies Reaching Immigration Pact With U.S.! – Incoming Oversight Chair Cummings (D-MD) Opposes Trump’s Border Policies – “That’s The Law!”

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=4f1306b6-386f-4594-85ce-f14cbc1126b4

By Cecilia Sanchez and Patrick J. McDonnell

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s incoming leadership is denying a published report that it had agreed to a Trump administration proposal requiring asylum seekers arriving at the southwest border to wait in Mexico as U.S. authorities consider their claims for safe haven.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that Washington had won the support of the government of Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — who takes office on Dec. 1 — for a plan mandating that asylum seekers at the border remain in Mexico as their claims move through the U.S. immigration system.

The Trump administration has long sought such an accord with Mexico as a means of resolving what it has termed a “crisis” of an escalating number of Central American asylum applicants — and limited detention space in which to hold them on U.S. territory as their petitions are considered.

Critics on both sides of the border have long assailed the notion of Mexico serving as a way station or detention grounds for Central Americans and others applying for asylum in the United States.

The administration of Mexico’s current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, rejected a similar Trump administration proposal last year.

But the Post quoted Olga Sanchez Cordero, Mexico’s interior minister-designate, as saying Mexico’s new government had accepted the policy as a “short-term solution” to the issue of Central American migration — which has been dramatized in recent weeks as thousands of U.S.-bound Central Americans have made their way north through Mexico in caravans.

Later Saturday, however, she denied that Mexico had agreed to host people seeking U.S. asylum as their cases awaited judgment.

“There is no agreement of any sort between the future Mexican federal government and the U.S.,” the incoming interior minister said in a statement.

Moreover, she said Mexico’s new government had rejected any deal in which Mexico would be considered “a safe third country” for U.S. asylum applicants.

In a Twitter message on Saturday, President Trump reiterated threats to close the southern border — threats that have alarmed many in Mexico, since cross-border trade is a mainstay of the Mexican economy.

In his tweet, Trump also said migrants would not be allowed into the United States “until their claims are individually approved in court.”

Others, he said, would “stay in Mexico,” he added, without elaboration.

The Twitter message did not specify whether Washington had reached any kind of agreement with Mexico on the matter.

Only a small minority of Central American applicants are ultimately granted political asylum in the United States, but the decision-making progress can take months or years — during which time many are released and gain footholds in the United States.

Trump has vowed to end what he calls the “catch and release” system. “Our very strong policy is Catch and Detain,” he tweeted Saturday. “No ‘Releasing’ into the U.S.”

The White House has also pushed an alternative “safe third country” approach in talks with Mexican officials. Under such a plan, Central Americans seeking asylum would generally have to file for protection in Mexico, not in the United States.

The proposal is a variant of the Trump administration’s “remain in Mexico” plan, under which asylum seekers would wait in Mexico until their cases were adjudicated in the United States.

With a “safe third country” designation, the United States would consider Mexico a secure nation for receiving asylum applicants. In practice, that would bar most asylum seekers who entered Mexico from filing asylum claims in the United States. The United States already has such an understanding with Canada.

But immigrant advocates have long opposed such a designation for Mexico for a number of reasons — principal among them the country’s widespread and rising violence, which often targets Central American migrants. Mexico cannot be considered safe for asylum seekers, many argue.

Critics also say Mexico’s system for processing refugee requests is already overwhelmed and ill-prepared to handle a huge new influx.

In her statement, Mexico’s incoming interior secretary echoed the vows of leftist President-elect Lopez Obrador to protect the human rights of caravan travelers and other Central American migrants while providing them with food, healthcare and shelter. Lopez Obrador has also vowed to help Central Americans acquire work papers if they opt to remain in Mexico.

More than 6,000 caravan members, mostly Hondurans, have arrived this month in the Mexican border cities of Tijuana and Mexicali, posing a humanitarian, logistical and political challenge for the two cities on the border. The migrants say they are fleeing poverty and violence in their homelands.

Tijuana’s mayor declared a “humanitarian crisis” Friday as the border city sought additional federal and state aid to help house the migrants, most of whom are crowded into a sports complex a block from the U.S.-Mexico border fence.

Tijuana officials anticipate that as many as 10,000 Central American migrants could eventually converge on the city and be stuck there for months as they seek to file asylum claims in the United States, a time-consuming process. U.S. officials at the San Ysidro crossing generally accept no more than 100 asylum applications a day.

Special correspondent Sanchez reported from Mexico City and Times staff writer McDonnell from Washington.

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

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mexico-asylum-migrant-deal-trump_us_5bfa5d83e4b0eb6d930f3155

Dominique Mosbergen reports for HuffPost:

President Donald Trump suggested on Saturday that asylum seekers would be allowed to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed through the U.S. immigration system — but Mexico’s incoming government has denied making any such deal.

“There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the U.S. government,” future Interior Minister Olga Sanchez told Reuters on Saturday, contradicting Trump and an earlier Washington Post report that said a deal ― albeit an informal one ― had been struck between the two governments.

The Post had quoted Sanchez as saying the administration of Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who will take office on Dec. 1, had “for now” agreed to the so-called “Remain in Mexico” plan.

Sanchez was quoted by the paper as saying that Mexico would allow asylum seekers to stay in the country as a “short-term solution.”

Following the publication of the Post’s report, however, Sanchez back-pedaled on those remarks. She told Reuters that Obrador’s administration was “in talks” with the U.S., but stressed officials who weren’t yet in office couldn’t formally make any agreements.

Seven-year-old Honduran migrant Genesis Belen Mejia Flores waves an American flag at two U.S. border control helicopters flyi

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Seven-year-old Honduran migrant Genesis Belen Mejia Flores waves an American flag at two U.S. border control helicopters flying overhead near a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico.

Reuters reported that Sanchez “did not explicitly rule out” that Mexico could allow Central American caravan migrants ― thousands of whom have arrived in Tijuana, just south of California ― to wait in the country while their claims are processed in the U.S.

Sanchez did, however, say that plans for Mexico to assume “safe third country” status had been “ruled out.” Under a “safe third” agreement, the U.S. could force migrants to seek asylum in Mexico.

Trump said in a pair of Saturday evening tweets that migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border “will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court.”

“No ‘Releasing’ into the U.S. … All will stay in Mexico,” the president wrote.

His tweets were interpreted as possible confirmation of the posible deal between the U.S. and Obrador’s administration.

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum declared a humanitarian crisis last week as approximately 5,000 Central American migrants fleeing violence and poverty arrived in the city ― to the chagrin of many locals.

Gastélum said on Friday that he’d asked the United Nations for aid to help with the influx of asylum seekers.

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

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/rep-cummings-it-s-law-let-asylum-seekers-across-border-n939806

 

By Leigh Ann Caldwell for NBC News

WASHINGTON — The incoming chairman of a key oversight committee in the House of Representatives said Sunday that any attempt by President Donald Trump to keep migrants from claiming asylum in the U.S. would be unlawful.

“That’s not the law,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said in an exclusive interview on “Meet the Press,” indicating that Congress will act if the president moves ahead with that policy. “They should be allowed to come in, seek asylum, that’s the law.”

President Donald Trump has said he’s reached a deal with the government of Mexico to keep migrants traveling in large caravans from Central America in Mexico until their court date to plead asylum. But a spokesman for incoming Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said talk of such a deal is premature and U.S. officials told NBC News that the details are still being worked out.

Cummings said he supports the law as it stands. “I think we have a system that has worked for a long time. This president’s come in, wants to change it, that’s up to him. But now the Congress has got to stand up and hopefully they will,” Cummings said.

Family detention at the border and the separation of children from their parents after crossing the border was already on Cummings’ list of potential investigations as chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee when Democrats take control of Congress in January.

Cummings has a list of 64 subpoenas it is ready to send to the Trump administration on a variety of issues ranging from immigration to voting rights act, drug prices and the opioid epidemic.

“I think the American people have said that they want checks and balances,” Cummings said. “And subpoenas, by the way, that may involve, say, private industries like the pharmaceutical companies” over “these skyrocketing drug prices.”

Full Cummings Interview: ‘We have to hit the ground flying’

NOV. 25, 201808:09

When asked about the priorities he is setting for areas of investigation, Cummings said he will focus on issues that “go to the very heart of our democracy and protecting that democracy.”

Cummings also said Sunday that his committee will “probably” look into Trump’s financial ties, especially to Saudi Arabia, and if it violates the emoluments clause, which is aimed at preventing a president from profiting on the office.

Cummings said he wanted to determine “whether the president is acting in his best interest or those of the American people,” adding, “I think this would be appropriate and there are other committees that will be looking at this too.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, also criticized Trump over his support for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman despite reports that a CIA assessment concluded that the Saudi ruler ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Lee said that Trump’s assessment is “inconsistent” with the intelligence he’s seen. “Intelligence I’ve seen suggests this was ordered by the crown prince,” he said.

Lee says that Khashoggi’s murder and Trump’s response provides “an opportunity” for Congress to weigh in to the U.S.-backed Saudi role in Yemen that has created a worsening humanitarian disaster.

“I think Congress has to take some ownership of U.S. foreign policy, especially as it relates to our intervention in this war,” Less said. “Our unconstitutional fighting of a civil war in Yemen that has never been declared by the U.S. Congress as a problem. And that’s on us.”

****************************************************
I agree with Congressman Cummings.  Indeed, I’ve been saying for some time now that the law is well-designed to deal with the flow of asylum applicants to the Southern Border. This Administration has simply chosen not to make it work, in many ways. The result is a self-created crisis. I’m looking forward to some real oversight of the intentionally created immigration mess in the coming year, including holding some of those responsible for creating it accountable!
PWS
11-25-18

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  1. 18 YEARS AFTER 09-11, THE “BAD GUYS” ARE WINNING THE BATTLE TO DESTROY AMERICAN JUSTICE & SPLIT THE COUNTRY! — Here’s The Disturbing Proof Of What Passes For “Justice” In America Today!
  2. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  3. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

THE HILL: Nolan Reminds Us That Bad Border Policies Didn’t Originate With The Trump Administration!

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/417994-bill-clintons-attempts-to-secure-the-border-caused-a-humanitarian-crisis

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

In 1994, President Bill Clinton established a prevention through deterrence border security strategy for the Border Patrol that concentrated enforcement resources on major entry corridors.

This made it more difficult for migrants to make illegal entries at those locations. Consequently, many of them went around those areas to make their entries at remote locations that were not patrolled so heavily, such as the Arizona desert.

This resulted in a humanitarian crisis.

According to U.S. Border Patrol data, 7,216 people died while illegally crossing the southwest border at remote locations in the 20-year period from FY 1998 to FY 2017. Most of them perished in the desert from dehydration, hypothermia or heatstroke.

The actual number of deaths is much higher. According to CNN, the Border Patrol usually just counts dead bodies they discover while patrolling the border. In FY 2017, for instance, the Border Patrol reported 294 deaths, but CNN identified at least 102 more, not including scores of other likely crossing deaths in which officials were not able determine whether the remains were migrants.

Clinton’s plan was to make some of the resources available for other locations when the Border Patrol had control over the major corridors. The Border Patrol would then monitor the flow of illegal entries and shift resources to areas that had a lot of activity.

The instructions on implementing the strategy acknowledged, however, that although the Border Patrol knew where apprehensions were made, it did not have a reliable way to determine where aliens who eluded them were crossing. This made it difficult to know where to place additional resources.

. . . .

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

Go on over to The Hill to read the rest of Nolan’s article. It’s a timely historical reminder that failed border policies have a long and unhappy history in the U.S.

I was in private practice in 1994. However, I will admit to being involved in a number of such failed efforts over the past 45 years. That’s why I’m convinced that the issues driving migration to and across our Southern Border won’t be solved unilaterally by draconian enforcement strategies on this end. They have all been tried to some degree or another and ultimately failed.

An effective answer must involve a cooperative international effort to address the “sending” or “push” factors so that the vast majority of folks in Latin America will be able to live safely, peacefully, and relatively prosperously in their native countries.

Of course there will always be those who want to emigrate. More power to them and to us for finding ways to accept, integrate, and benefit from their skills. But, an orderly, predictable, legal migration system would be in everyone’s best interests. Sadly, we’re heading in the opposite direction at present.

PWS

11-25-18

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  2. TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!
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  4. EUGENE ROBINSON @ WASHPOST: KID KILLERS ON THE LOOSE: “Sixteen-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez died horribly and needlessly. The Trump administration’s policy of deliberate, punishing cruelty toward Latin American migrants killed him.”

NO, IT’S NOT “OBAMA JUDGES IN THE 9TH CIRCUIT” – Federal Judges Across The Spectrum & Throughout The Country Are Handing Scofflaw Prez A Record Number Of Well-Earned Defeats!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/22/trump-judicial-fantasy-what-chief-justice-roberts-could-have-told-him-didnt/

Fred Barbash reports for the WashPost:

Late Monday, a U.S. district judge in San Francisco blocked the Trump administration from denying asylum to migrants who crossed the southern border illegally, saying the president violated a “clear command” from Congress to allow them to apply. Trump’s reaction was to add “Obama” judges, specifically those sitting on the 9th Circuit out West, to his list of those responsible for what he calls the nation’s “open borders.”

“This was an Obama judge,” the president said. “And I’ll tell you what, it’s not going to happen like this anymore. Everybody that wants to sue the United States, they file their case in — almost — they file their case in the 9th Circuit. And it means an automatic loss no matter what you do, no matter how good your case is.” He strung out the theme on Thanksgiving, demonizing the judges who, he tweeted, will be responsible for “bedlam, chaos, injury and death” for not letting law enforcement do their jobs.

His attack on Judge Jon S. Tigar, who issued the temporary order on asylum, was sufficient to arouse Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

Trump clashes with conservative chief justice over judiciary

Chief Justice John Roberts pointedly defended the independence of the federal judiciary on Nov. 21 after President Trump criticized the courts. (Reuters)

As unusual as Roberts’s comments were, he could have said so much more, like maybe, you’ve got to be kidding, Mr. President, if you think your judicial problems are confined to “Obama” judges in a single circuit.

He could have noted that the number of rulings against his administration’s actions now stands somewhere in the range of about 40 to 50, according to a rough estimate by The Washington Post. Norman Siegel, writing at Law.com in January, counted 37 “major” losses, and that was in January, before numerous other rulings that thwarted Trump administration decisions.

And he could have observed that all of this is a bit of a surprise. All presidents lose cases. But a losing streak of this magnitude for a president is a new phenomenon.

Despite the endless decades of rhetoric about “judicial activism,” judges at the district court level are generally a timid lot when it comes to confronting presidents. Historically, they are inclined to do what former federal judge Nancy Gertner calls “duck, avoid and evade.”

“Now,” she wrote in the April issue of NYU Law Review, “I am not so certain. . . . Perhaps ‘judging in a time of Trump’ ” is different, she wrote. “It is one thing to ‘duck, avoid and evade’ when you believe that official actors are acting more or less within constitutional bounds. It is another to do so when you are concerned about real abuse of power.”

An abuse of power was what Tigar found: “Whatever the scope of the President’s authority,” he wrote, “he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden.” Trump did not discuss Tigar’s actual findings.

The biggest defeats have included four decisions blocking the president’s travel ban before the Supreme Court finally upheld its third iteration; his attempt to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, blocked by at least four courts; and the proposed ban on transgender people in the military, stopped in its tracks by no fewer than four judges, with two of the rulings upheld by appeals courts. Judges in Chicago and Philadelphia, as well as California, temporarily stopped Trump’s “sanctuary cities” crackdown.

Trump calls court ‘totally out of control’

President Trump slammed the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit Nov. 22, telling reporters it was “very unfair to law enforcement.” (The Washington Post)

A total of five rulings, by judges in Oregon, New York and the District of Columbia, among other places, enjoined the administration from cutting off funds to teen pregnancy prevention programs that failed to preach abstinence to the satisfaction of the Department of Health and Human Services.

This doesn’t count environmental rulings, like the Nov. 8 one halting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline issued by a judge in Montana. Judge Brian Morris was indeed appointed by President Barack Obama, though he clerked for the most conservative chief justice in modern history, William H. Rehnquist.

Roberts could have noted that those defeats have come at the hands of judges appointed not just by Democratic presidents but by Republicans dating all the way back to Ronald Reagan.

It was U.S. District Court Judge Dana M. Sabraw, for example, a California jurist appointed by President George W. Bush, who ripped the administration repeatedly for its family separation debacle.

[The Trump administration’s crazy losing streak in the courts: No, Jeff Sessions, it’s not about the judges]

And how could Trump forget that it was his own appointee, Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who slapped down the effort to ban CNN’s Jim Acosta from the White House.

Many of these judges do indeed sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (which covers a vast swath of territory of nine states — California, Nevada, Arizona, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Alaska and Idaho — and Guam and Northern Marianas, and is a traditional target for conservatives).

But as noted, rulings thwarting Trump have also come from judges sitting in New York, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Virginia, Michigan and beyond.

While there’s no scientific way of comparing judicial rhetoric, Republican appointees outside the 9th Circuit have actually seemed more inclined than others to lecture the president about the Constitution.

One of the toughest dressings-down came from a decision blocking Trump’s “sanctuary cities” crackdown written by Judge Ilana Rovner, appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, based in Chicago. In a decision joined by a Gerald Ford appointee and a Reagan appointee upholding a lower-court ruling by a Reagan appointee, she lit into the Trump administration for assuming powers to withhold money not granted to it by Congress to punish states and cities that didn’t go along with efforts to round up those in the country illegally.

Her message to Trump and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, translated, was basically, who do you think you are?

Our role in this case is not to assess the optimal immigration policies for our country. . . . The founders of our country well understood that the concentration of power threatens individual liberty and established a bulwark against such tyranny by creating a separation of powers among the branches of government. If the Executive Branch can determine policy, and then use the power of the purse to mandate compliance with that policy by the state and local governments, all without the authorization or even acquiescense of elected legislators, the check against tyranny is forsaken.

There was one possibly accurate observation in Trump’s comments: He said his losses sometimes seem “automatic.”

Based on the record, that’s not far from the truth.

But Roberts would never say that.

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

Much of what Trump says are outright lies or racist, White Nationalist false narratives. While sadly that has proved to sometimes be a “winning” political strategy  (because of a system that allows minority rule), it’s seldom a good litigating strategy in the 21st Century.

So, it’s hardly surprising that Trump is a “Big Loser” in court. It’s predictably outrageous for Trump to make the bogus claim that the courts are “out of control.” In fact, Trump and his scofflaw Administration are totally out of control, particularly in their often illegal and always immoral immigration policies. Indeed, until next January when the Democrats retake control of the House, the Federal Courts have actually been the only meaningful control on Trump. Perhaps their efforts will be enough to save the country from the greatest existential threat since world War II.  Only time will tell.

PWS

11-23-18

 

 

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. 🤡CLOWN CAPITOL:  J.R. PRESIDES OVER GOP CLOWN SHOW HE HELPED CREATE — Empowering The Koch Bros, Suppressing Minority Votes, Enabling GOP Gerrymandering, Ignoring Invidious Racial & Religious Motives, Turning A Blind Eye To Lies & Pretexts, It All Contributed To The Arrogant Display Of GOP Dishonesty & Impunity Now On Public Display In The Senate! — Plus Bonus Friday Mini-Essay: “Profiles in Fecklessness”
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS’ LATEST PLOT AGINST ASYLUM SEEKERS SURE TO CAUSE INTERNATIONAL CHAOS & DRAW NEW LEGAL CHALLENGES – No Wonder These Immoral Cowards Have Such Fear Of Truly Independent Judges (Not To Be Confused With EOIR’s “Captive Judges”)

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS’ LATEST PLOT AGINST ASYLUM SEEKERS SURE TO CAUSE INTERNATIONAL CHAOS & DRAW NEW LEGAL CHALLENGES – No Wonder These Immoral Cowards Have Such Fear Of Truly Independent Judges (Not To Be Confused With EOIR’s “Captive Judges”)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-plan-would-force-asylum-seekers-to-wait-in-mexico-as-cases-are-processed-a-major-break-with-current-policy/2018/11/21/5ad47e82-ede8-11e8-9236-bb94154151d2_story.html?utm_term=.4059c5192c0c

Nick MIroff, Joshua Partlow, and Josh Dawsey report for the WashPost:

November 21 at 10:18 PM

Central Americans who arrive at U.S. border crossings seeking asylum in the United States will have to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed under sweeping new measures the Trump administration is preparing to implement, according to internal planning documents and three Department of Homeland Security officials familiar with the initiative.

According to DHS memos obtained by The Washington Post on Wednesday, Central American asylum seekers who cannot establish a “reasonable fear” of persecution in Mexico will not be allowed to enter the United States and would be turned around at the border.

The plan, called “Remain in Mexico,” amounts to a major break with current screening procedures, which generally allow those who establish a fear of return to their home countries to avoid immediate deportation and remain in the United States until they can get a hearing with an immigration judge. Trump despises this system, which he calls “catch and release,” and has vowed to end it.

Among the thousands of Central American migrants traveling by caravan across Mexico, many hope to apply for asylum due to threats of gang violence or other persecution in their home countries. They had expected to be able to stay in the United States while their claims move through immigration court. The new rules would disrupt those plans, and the hopes of other Central Americans who seek asylum in the United States each year.

[Trump lashes out at judge after order to allow illegal border crossers to seek asylum]

Trump remains furious about the caravan and the legal setbacks his administration has suffered in federal court, demanding hard-line policy ideas from aides. Senior adviser Stephen Miller has pushed to implement the Remain in Mexico plan immediately, though other senior officials have expressed concern about implementing it amid sensitive negotiations with the Mexican government, according to two DHS officials and a White House adviser with knowledge of the plan, which was discussed at the White House on Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the administration’s new plan, if a migrant does not specifically fear persecution in Mexico, that is where they will stay. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is sending teams of asylum officers from field offices in San Francisco, Washington, and Los Angeles to the ports of entry in the San Diego area to implement the new screening procedures, according to a USCIS official.

To cross into the United States, asylum seekers would have to meet a relatively higher bar in the screening procedure to establish that their fears of being in Mexico are enough to require immediate admission, the documents say.

“If you are determined to have a reasonable fear of remaining in Mexico, you will be permitted to remain in the United States while you await your hearing before an immigration judge,” the asylum officers will now tell those who arrive seeking humanitarian refuge, according to the DHS memos. “If you are not determined to have a reasonable fear of remaining in Mexico, you will remain in Mexico.”

Mexican border cities are among the most violent in the country, as drug cartels battle over access to smuggling routes into the United States. In the state of Baja California, which includes Tijuana, the State Department warns that “criminal activity and violence, including homicide, remain a primary concern throughout the state.”

The new rules will take effect as soon as Friday, according to two DHS officials familiar with the plans.

Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for DHS, issued a statement late Wednesday saying there are no immediate plans to implement these new measures.

“The President has made clear — every single legal option is on the table to secure our nation and to deal with the flood of illegal immigrants at our borders,” the statement says. “DHS is not implementing such a new enforcement program this week. Reporting on policies that do not exist creates uncertainty and confusion along our borders and has a negative real world impact. We will ensure — as always — that any new program or policy will comply with humanitarian obligations, uphold our national security and sovereignty, and is implemented with notice to the public and well coordinated with partners.”

A Mexican official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that current Mexican immigration law does not allow those seeking asylum in another country to stay in Mexico.

On Dec. 1, a new Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will be sworn in, and it’s also unclear whether his transition team was consulted on the new asylum screening procedures.

The possibility that thousands of U.S.-bound asylum seekers would have to wait in Mexico for months, even years, could produce a significant financial burden for the government there, especially if the migrants remain in camps and shelters on a long-term basis.

[At the U.S. border, migrant caravan will slow to a crawl]

There are currently 6,000 migrants in the Tijuana area, many of them camped at a baseball field along the border, seeking to enter the United States. Several thousand more are en route to the city as part of caravan groups, according to Homeland Security estimates.

U.S. border officials have allowed about 60 to 100 asylum seekers to approach the San Ysidro port of entry each day for processing.

Last week, BuzzFeed News reported that U.S. and Mexican officials were discussing such a plan.

Mexico also appears to be taking a less-permissive attitude toward the new migrant caravans now entering the country.

Authorities detained more than 200 people, or nearly all of the latest caravan, who recently crossed Mexico’s southern border on their way to the United States. This is at least the fourth large group of migrants to cross into Mexico and attempt to walk to the U.S. border. They were picked up not long after crossing. The vast majority of the migrants were from El Salvador, according to Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.

After the first caravan this fall entered Mexico, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration offered migrants the chance to live and work in Mexico as long as they stayed in the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca. Most chose not to accept this deal, because they wanted to travel to the United States.

nick.miroff@washpost.com

joshua.partlow@washpost.com

josh.dawsey@washpost.com

Partlow reported from Mexico City. Dawsey reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.

*******************************************************
Let’s see, Trump shrugs off the murder of a Washington Post journalist by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, downplays Putin’s overt interference in our elections, promotes mindless nationalism of the exact type responsible for two World Wars and tens of millions of avoidable deaths, and praises massive human rights violator and murderer Kim even as the latter is duping him on nukes. So, he’s scared to stand up to anyone powerful or for ideals and values that take courage to promote and advance.
But, when it comes to bullying, demonizing, and beating up on harmless but extremely vulnerable and desperate refugees, many of them women, children, and families fleeing for their lives, he excels. What does that tell us about the lack of character of the “man,” and the total lack of judgement and regard for American values of those in the minority who put him in office and continue to prop him up?
This appears to be a reaction to: 1) Federal Courts requiring Trump to follow the  law; 2) Mexico’s refusal to be bullied into signing an absurdly inappropriate and totally one-sided “safe third country” agreement; 3) Congresses failure to fund the wasteful “Wall;” and 4) the near total, yet highly predictable, failure of Trump’s racist, White Nationalist inspired “get tough” immigration enforcement policies.
The Federal Courts are likely to permanently enjoin Trump from ignoring the law that specifically allows anyone in the U.S., legally or not, to apply for asylum. Additionally, Trump encourages violence against refugees and creates unsafe, inhumane conditions on the Mexican side of the border.  Consequently, the end result of Trump’s intentional “making folks wait in Mexico” policy is likely to be encouraging individuals seeking asylum to enter illegally and then turn themselves in to the authorities to apply for asylum in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the better options of working with the UNHCR and Mexico to promote a multinational approach to protection and to solve the problems in the Northern Triangle causing this humanitarian flow remain unaddressed by the Trumpsters.
Also, when will the “Face of Evil,” Stephen Miller, finally be held accountable for his consistently cowardly and racist attacks on the law and the American legal system?
PWS
11-22-18

Related posts:

  1. SPRINT TO THE BOTTOM: Trump Administration Trashes Refugees & Human Rights In A Despicable Return To “1939-Style Fascism Lite!” — America’s Rancid Conduct & Negative Leadership Presages Another Worldwide Refugee Tragedy — This Time The Blood Will Be Directly On Our Hands!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! – TRUMP SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN! – Judge Considers Sanctions Against Administration Officials & Their Lawyers For Lies, Disobeying Court Orders, & Continuous Course Of Unethical Behavior! — “Government Has Acted Ignobly In This Case” — Trumpsters Win “Courtside’s” Coveted Five Turkey Award!

http://www.aclumich.org/article/us-district-court-orders-release-iraqi-detainees

The ACLU reports:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan applauds the decision of U.S. District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith to order the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release all Iraqis within 30 days.

“The law is clear that the Federal Government cannot indefinitely detain foreign nationals while it seeks to repatriate them, when there is no significant likelihood of repatriation in the reasonably foreseeable future,” wrote Judge Goldsmith in a 59-page opinion.

Judge Goldsmith also wrote that he will impose sanctions on the Government for “…failing to comply with court orders, submitting demonstrably false declarations of Government officials, and otherwise violating its litigation obligations—all of which impels this Court to impose sanctions.”

“Today’s decision is about accountability,” said ACLU senior staff attorney Miriam Aukerman. “ICE thought it could get away with lying to a federal judge. ICE thought it could get away with using indefinite detention to coerce Iraqis to accept deportation despite the dangers they face in Iraq. Today, Judge Goldsmith made it clear that ICE is not above the law.”

“It is appalling that ICE lied to the Court, and even more appalling that it did so in order to keep people wrongfully incarcerated,” said University of Michigan law professor Margo Schlanger, a cooperating attorney for the ACLU. “The Court made it absolutely clear that it will not tolerate such misconduct, and that ICE cannot simply lock people up and throw away the key.”

“We are delighted that families who have been separated for so long will finally be reunited,” said Kim Scott, an attorney at Miller Canfield who also represents the detainees. “As a result of today’s order, many of those who were unjustly detained will be home with their families for the holidays.”

Today’s ruling is the latest development in Hamama v. Adducci, a nationwide class action filed in June 2017 on behalf of hundreds of Iraqi nationals, who were arrested throughout the country without warning and threatened with immediate deportation. Many came to the U.S. as children and have lived and worked in the U.S. for decades. They now face persecution, torture, or even death in Iraq because of their religion, ethnicity, or the fact that they are Americanized. Approximately 120 Iraqis remain detained.

Read Judge Goldsmith’s order here.

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

Thanks to Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis Immigration Community for passing this along. And, congrats to the ACLU for brightening the Thanksgiving Day of not only these long-abused Iraqi detainees, but also of the substantial number of us who still believe in and cherish real American values — even in the “Dark Ages” of  the Trump Administration!

Great news, and long, long overdue!  Many of us have been calling for some time now for full accountability for Trump officials and their often ethically challenged lawyers who are out to abuse and destroy our precious legal system. There was a time in the not too distant past when U.S.Government lawyers were supposed to be held to a higher standard of promoting fairness, justice, and judicial efficiency. As I used to tell newly hired INS lawyers — “The Government wins when justice prevails — regardless of which party ‘wins’ the case.” That went out the door when Trump and his corrupt cronies like Jeff Sessions stepped in.

Federal Judges finally are losing patience with the types of blatant, “in your face” abuses by the Trump Administration that undoubtedly would have landed private parties and counsel in hot water long ago.  Where’s the justice in a system that imprisons, deports, and otherwise abuses victims while letting the abusers walk free to strike again?

“[T]he Government has acted ignobly in this case, by failing to comply with court orders, submitting demonstrably false declarations of  Government officials, and otherwise violating its litigation obligations—all of which impels this Court to impose sanctions.”  — U.S. District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith

For their shockingly inappropriate and unethical conduct of and in Federal Court litigation, the Trump Administration officials involved in this and many similar abusive cases get “Courtside’s” Thanksgiving “Five Turkey Award.”

 

PWS

11-22-18

🦃🦃🦃🦃🦃

 

Related posts:

  1. SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S ILLEGAL ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW: ORDERS PROCESSING OF ALL WHO APPLY TO RESUME! — “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden!”
  2. “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” MORPHS INTO CONTEMPT FOR COURT AS ADMINISTRATION TELLS COURT & SEPARATED FAMILIES “GO POUND SAND” — They Just Don’t Care About Humanity!
  3. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  4. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!

CHIEF JUSTICE DEFENDS JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE AS BABY DONALD CONTINUES TO THROW SPITBALLS – Trump Makes Absurd Claims In Desperate Attempt to Deflect Attention From Existential Danger He & His Historically Corrupt Administration Pose To America’s Future!

https://apple.news/ANc5WDrEdTK-LHT9ys0Qtqg

Matthew Choi reports for Politico:

Politics

Trump hits back at Chief Justice Roberts, escalating an extraordinary exchange

The president had originally attacked a District Court judge who ruled against his asylum policy as an ‘Obama judge.’

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and President Donald Trump took swipes at each other Wednesday in an extraordinary exchange over just how partisan federal courts really are.

Roberts said Wednesday morning there are no “Obama judges or Trump judges” after the president attacked the judge who ruled against his attempt to restrict asylum seekers at the border earlier this week.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

Later in the afternoon, Trump hit back with two posts on Twitter:

“Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country. It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an ‘independent judiciary,’ but if it is why…..,” the president wrote, followed by: “…..are so many opposing view (on Border and Safety) cases filed there, and why are a vast number of those cases overturned. Please study the numbers, they are shocking. We need protection and security — these rulings are making our country unsafe! Very dangerous and unwise!”

The statement from Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, was a stark divergence from the chief justice’s stoic aversion to publicly criticizing Trump, even as the president has railed against federal judges who did not rule in his favor.

Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, called Trump’s comments against the judiciary “unprecedented” in modern history and praised Roberts for defending the Judicial branch. Chief justices have historical avoided fighting with the other co-equal branches of government, but Tobias said he was “heartened” by Wednesday’s break from deference to keep Trump in his lane.

“I think it’s great that the chief justice has said something, because the Senate has done nothing on these issues and somebody has to protect the independence of the judiciary,” Tobias said. “So I’m not troubled.”

The Associated Press first reported Roberts’ comments.

Talking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday, Trump criticized Judge Jon Tigar of U.S. District Court in Northern California, who ruled against his policy announced this month that would require migrants to apply for asylum at legal border crossings. Currently, migrants can present themselves to immigration officers after illegally crossing the border and request asylum. Cases from the Northern District of California are appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A number of advocacy groups sued the Trump administration shortly after it announced the policy, and Tigar issued a temporary restraining order effectively thwarting the president’s efforts. Trump on Tuesday accused Tigar of being an “Obama judge” and called the 9th Circuit a “disgrace.” Tigar was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2012.

“Every case gets filed in the 9th Circuit because they know that’s not law. They know that’s not what this country stands for. Every case that gets filed in the 9th Circuit, we get beaten.” Trump said. “People should not be allowed to immediately run to this very friendly circuit and then file their case.”

He also said, “The 9th Circuit is really something we have to take a look at because it’s not fair.”

Trump added that he felt confident the case over his asylum policy would go to the Supreme Court where his administration would prevail — similar to his travel ban on citizens of several majority Muslim countries. A modified version of that policy was upheld in the Supreme Court after several challenges in lower federal courts, with Roberts writing the majority opinion in that case.

Even before Trump’s presidency, Republicans have tried to fill federal courts with conservative judges, blocking Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland from getting a Senate vote. Trump ultimately filled the seat left vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death with Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Senate Republicans stalled several of Obama’s appointees to federal courts until former Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) unleashed the “nuclear option” to change Senate rules requiring only a simple majority to approve most federal judicial nominations.

This year, Republicans and Democrats engaged in a dramatic fight over the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh — Trump’s second nominee to the high court — which was mired in allegations of sexual assault. Both parties accused each other of toying with parliamentary procedure and manipulation in order to block or ram through the confirmation.

Trump has a track record of attacking the judiciary. He disparaged a federal judge in Hawaii last year as practicing “unprecedented judicial overreach” when he blocked an executive order barring entry to citizens of some majority Muslim countries.

In another Wednesday tweet, Trump even toyed with dividing the 9th Circuit into two or three circuits because, he said, it is “too big.”

Trump also lambasted U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who presided over a class-action lawsuit against the now-defunct Trump University in 2016. Trump called Curiel, who is of Mexican descent and was born in Indiana, a “Mexican judge” to discredit his rulings. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called the remarks at the time the “textbook definition of a racist comment.”

Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get top news and scoops, every morning — in your inbox.

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

I could have told Chief Justice Roberts that his weak-kneed attempt to tell Trump to “cool the rhetoric” and stop “pushing the envelope” in the Travel Ban case would fall on deaf ears. In fact, as I predicted, Trump’s toxic combination of ignorance, arrogance, and corruption was only “fired up” by the disingenuous performance of the Supremes’ majority in that case.

Trump believes that there are now five “bought and paid for GOP Justices,” including Roberts, on the Supremes; he fully intends to exploit and treat them as the same type of cowards and toadies who have done, and continue to do, his dirty work for him in Congress and the Executive Branch.

Statements in support of judicial independence are most welcome and in this case long overdue. But, actions speak louder than words. Until Roberts and the majority of this colleagues start enforcing the Constitution and the rule of law against the all-out assault by a President who neither understands nor believes in American democracy, Trump will continue to treat them as the same type of patsies that he regularly counts on to mindlessly do his bidding (See, e.g., Sen. Chuck Grassley; Sen. Mitch McConnell; Sen. Lindsey Graham; Speaker Paul Ryan, etc.).

The solution is pretty simple: All nine Justices need to pull together in the future (starting now) and “just say no” to Trump’s abuses of the rule of law.

PWS

11-21-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. 🤡CLOWN CAPITOL:  J.R. PRESIDES OVER GOP CLOWN SHOW HE HELPED CREATE — Empowering The Koch Bros, Suppressing Minority Votes, Enabling GOP Gerrymandering, Ignoring Invidious Racial & Religious Motives, Turning A Blind Eye To Lies & Pretexts, It All Contributed To The Arrogant Display Of GOP Dishonesty & Impunity Now On Public Display In The Senate! — Plus Bonus Friday Mini-Essay: “Profiles in Fecklessness”
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: AILA Blasts Appointment Of Prosecutors Without Judicial Qualifications To Top Judicial Positions in Billy the Bigot’s Weaponized Anti-Due-Process “Court” System — Dysfunction, Bias, Illegitimate Decisions Run Rampant As Congress, Article IIIs Fail to Enforce U.S. Constitution!

SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S ILLEGAL ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW: ORDERS PROCESSING OF ALL WHO APPLY TO RESUME! — “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/us/judge-denies-trump-asylum-policy.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Miriam Jordan reports for the NY Times:

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to resume accepting asylum claims from migrants no matter where or how they entered the United States, dealing at least a temporary setback to the president’s attempt to clamp down on a huge wave of Central Americans crossing the border.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order that blocks the government from carrying out a new rule that denies protections to people who enter the country illegally. The order, which suspends the rule until the case is decided by the court, applies nationally.

“Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Mr. Tigar wrote in his order.

As a caravan of several thousand people journeyed toward the Southwest border, President Trump signed a proclamation on Nov. 9 that banned migrants from applying for asylum if they failed to make the request at a legal checkpoint. Only those who entered the country through a port of entry would be eligible, he said, invoking national security powers to protect the integrity of the United States borders.

Within days, the administration submitted a rule to the federal registry, letting it go into effect immediately and without the customary period for public comment.

But the rule overhauled longstanding asylum laws that ensure people fleeing persecution can seek safety in the United States, regardless of how they entered the country. Advocacy groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, swiftly sued the administration for effectively introducing what they deemed an asylum ban.

The advocacy groups accused the government of “violating Congress’s clear command that manner of entry cannot constitute a categorical asylum bar” in their complaint. They also said the administration had violated federal guidelines by not allowing public comment on the rule.

But Trump administration officials defended the regulatory change, arguing that the president was responding to a surge in migrants seeking asylum based on frivolous claims, which ultimately lead their cases to be denied by an immigration judge. The migrants then ignore any orders to leave, and remain unlawfully in the country.

”The president has sought to halt this dangerous and illegal practice and regain control of the border,” government lawyers said in court filings.

Mr. Trump, who had made stanching illegal immigration a top priority since his days on the campaign trail, has made no secret of his frustration over the swelling number of migrants heading to the United States. The president ordered more than 5,000 active-duty troops to the border to prevent the migrants from entering.

The new rule was widely regarded as an effort to deter Central Americans, many of whom request asylum once they reach the United States, often without inspection, from making the journey over land from their countries to the border.

United States immigration laws stipulate that foreigners who touch American soil are eligible to apply for asylum. They cannot be deported immediately. They are eligible to have a so-called credible fear interview with an asylum officer, a cursory screening that the overwhelming majority of applicants pass. As result, most of the migrants are released with a date to appear in court.

In recent years, more and more migrants have availed of the asylum process, often after entering the United States illegally. A record 23,121 migrants traveling as families were detained at the border in October. Many of the families turn themselves in to the Border Patrol rather than queue up to request asylum at a port of entry.

The Trump administration believes the migrants are exploiting asylum laws to immigrate illegally to the United States. Soaring arrivals have exacerbated a huge backlog of pending cases in the immigration courts, which recently broke the one-million mark. Many migrants skip their court dates, only to remain illegally in the country, which Mr. Trump derides as “catch and release.”

But advocates argue that many migrants are victims of violence or persecution and are entitled to seek sanctuary. Gangs are ubiquitous across El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, where lawlessness and corruption enable them to kill with impunity.

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

Entirely predictable. “Many of the families turn themselves in to the Border Patrol rather than queue up to request asylum at a port of entry.”

Why aren’t ethical requirements being enforced on Government lawyers who present and defend these clearly frivolous positions in court?  Knowingly and intentionally depriving individuals of statutory, civil, and constitutional rights, while tying up Federal Judges and other “officers of the court” on frivolous political stunts directed at harming individuals on the basis of race and nationality must, at some point, be deterred!

These are not criminal proceedings, and the Administration is not entitled to a “presumption of innocence” for its lawless actions. At some point, ethical lawyers have an obligation “not to serve” a lawless Administration and to publicly disclose and oppose the Administration’s intentionally illegal actions and intentional wrongdoing aimed at migrants and communities of color in the U.S.  “Job security” doesn’t entitle Government employees, let alone those who also are members of the bar, to violate their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

And no, no matter how much the GOP appointees might want to do so, the Supremes can’t authorize the President to rewrite the clear terms of the law at his whim.

PWS

11-20-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”