immigrationcourtside – Page 334 – immigrationcourtside.com

NYT OPINION: Migrant Children & Their Families Deserve Fair Treatment!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/opinion/sunday/these-are-children-not-bad-hombres.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region%C2%AEion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Sonia Nazario writes:

“Last year 7-year-old Kendra Cruz Garcia and her 10-year-old-brother, Roberto Guardado Cruz, crossed the Rio Grande alone. When their tiny boat reached the shore, they started walking into Texas.

The Border Patrol agents who soon caught the Salvadoran siblings deemed them “unaccompanied” because no parent was with them. Children with this designation are granted special, well-deserved protections.

They aren’t subject to quick deportation and are entitled to a full hearing before an immigration judge. They can’t be held for long periods in immigration jails. Instead, they are transferred to child-friendly shelters operated by Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, and released, usually within a month, to a parent, relative or sponsor while their court hearings proceed. Instead of facing cross-examination by adversarial prosecutors, children are interviewed by an asylum officer trained to gently probe whether they qualify to stay in the country legally.

In other words, they are treated with kindness and decency by our government because they are innocent children.

But President Trump has decided to get tough on many of the 60,000 Central American children who arrive at our border each year begging for safety after fleeing some of the most dangerous places on earth. His executive orders, and memos from the Department of Homeland Security on how to interpret them, could strip this special treatment from the roughly 60 percent of unaccompanied children who have a parent already living in the United States. If Kendra and Roberto were just entering the United States now, they would fall into this group; instead they kept their protections and were eventually united with their mother, a house painter in Los Angeles.

Parents like her, the argument goes, are exploiting benefits established to help children who really are alone here. The administration has threatened to deport parents who send for their children or prosecute them for hiring smugglers.

Last week Mr. Trump’s press secretary said the president’s intention was to prioritize the deportation of immigrants who “represent a threat to public safety.” Supporters say he’s upholding the law. But these children are not threats, and there are many ways to preserve the integrity of our immigration laws while treating them humanely.”

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I have written on a number of occasions that turning our collective backs on families and children in need of protection will come back to haunt us as a nation.

PWS

02/26/17

NYT: Is The Trump Administration Creating A “New Underground” In America?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/trump-migrants-deportation.html?mwrsm=Email&_r=0&mtrref=undefined

MAX FISHER and AMANDA TAUB report:

“New deportation rules proposed by the Trump administration risk creating an American underclass with parallels to others around the world: slum residents in India, guest workers in oil-rich Persian Gulf states and internal migrant workers in China.

Those groups provide a cautionary tale for what could happen if the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, as well as their family members, are forced deep into the shadows.

Stuck in a gray zone outside the legal system, they are vulnerable to exploitation, including wage theft and sex trafficking. Because they are denied formal protections or services, informal alternatives take their place — creating an ideal space for corruption, gangs and other forms of criminality.

The result is often the precise opposite of what the administration is seeking: not a cohesive society but a fragmented one, not less crime but more, and, rather than ending undocumented immigration, deepening the secrecy that makes it difficult to manage.”

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Read the full article at the link.

PWS

02/26/17

WashPost VA POLITICS: Gov. McAuliffe Meets With DHS Sec. Kelly — Says DHS Assures No “Random Raids!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/mcauliffe-says-trump-administration-promises-no-random-immigration-arrests/2017/02/26/5d6a2722-fc5a-11e6-8f41-ea6ed597e4ca_story.html?hpid=hp_local-news_mcauliffe-0435pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.9d7c237ac950

Gregory S. Schneider reports:

“Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said Department of Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly assured him Sunday that immigration agents are not conducting random raids and will not target undocumented residents unless they are suspected of being involved in illegal activity.

“He explained to me what the new procedures were,” McAuliffe said Sunday after a private 45-minute briefing with Kelly, who is a retired general. “I do take a four-star U.S. Marine general at his word.”

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Sure seems like Gen. Kelly and the White House are giving different messages here.

PWS

02/26/17

NEW SCHOLARSHIP: Hon. Dorothy Harbeck Compares Immigration Bonds With The NJ Bail Reform Act

Harbeck – BondArticle for Dissemination

The article is entitled

“A NEW CALCULUS FOR THE MEASURE OF MERCY: DOES THE NEW JERSEY BAIL REFORM AFFECT THE IMMIGRATION COURT BOND HEARINGS?” It’s published in the Rutgers Law Record.

Judge Harbeck writes:

“[T]he New Jersey Bail Reform will not directly affect how the immigration courts determine immigration bonds. However, while the state criminal system is wholly distinct from the federal immigration system, there are increasing intersections of state law having unintended consequences in immigration proceedings. Under the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, federal law is the “Supreme Law of the Land,” and states have no authority to regulate immigration enforcement. That said, there are a number of similar rationales between the new state bail reform and the existing bond determination criteria in the immigration court. This article outlines those similarities as well as the differences between the two. It is also important to note from a practical point of view that New Jersey bail reform has no impact on immigration detainers. An immigration detainer is the process by which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may detain a non-citizen without a warrant, but only if ICE has “reason to believe” that the non-citizen “is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest.”

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Read the full article at the link. While Judge Harbeck’s timely scholarship is of particular interest to New Jersey lawyers, it is also helpful for any lawyer seeking to understand the bond setting process in U.S. Immigration Courts. With the Administration’s new enforcement initiatives underway, bond is sure to be a “hot topic.”

PWS

02/26/17

HuffPost: Sessions Reinstates Dangerous Private Prisons — Health & Safety of Inmates Takes Back Seat to Expediency And Profits For Private Prison Industry!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/doj-private-prisons-sessions_us_58af529ce4b0a8a9b780669a

Ryan J. Reilly a Ben Walsh report:

“WASHINGTON ― Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday withdrew an Obama-era Justice Department memo that set a goal of reducing and ultimately ending the Justice Department’s use of private prisons.

In a one-page memo to the acting head of the Bureau of Prisons, Sessions wrote that the August 2016 memo by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates “changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.”

A Justice Department spokesman said Sessions’ memo “directs the Bureau of Prisons to return to its previous approach to the use of private prisons,” which would “restore BOP’s flexibility to manage the federal prison inmate population based on capacity needs.”

BOP currently has 12 private prison contracts that hold around 21,000 inmates. Yates had said that private prisons compared “poorly” to BOP prisons. Her memo followed a damning report from the Justice Department’s inspector general which found that privately run facilities were more dangerous than those run by BOP.

The two largest private prison companies have told investors that they have room to accommodate increased use of their prisons by federal or state and local authorities. On an earnings call with stock analysts this week, executives at GEO Group emphasized that their company has a total of 5,000 spots in its prisons that are presently either unused or underutilized.

GEO senior vice President David Donahue put it fairly bluntly, telling analysts that their idle and underutilized cells are “immediately available and meet ICE’s national detention standards.”

CoreCivic, formerly known as CCA, told investors on Feb. 17 that the company has nine idle prisons that can hold a total of 8,700 people. Those prisons are ready to accept inmates on short notice. “All of our idle facilities are modern and well maintained, and can be made available to potential state and federal partners without much, if any capital investment or the lead-time required for new construction,” CEO Damon Hininger said.

Indeed, Haninger said that CoreCivic was already holding more detained immigrants for the federal government than they anticipated. “Our financial performance in the fourth quarter of 2016 was well above our initial forecast due, in large part, to heightened utilization by ICE across the portfolio,” he said.

And, Haninger said, the Trump administration’s actions could boost financial performance even further. “When coupled with the above average rate crossings along the Southwest border, these executive orders appear likely to significantly increase the need for safe, humane and appropriate detention bed capacity that we have available in our existing real-estate portfolio,” he said. “We are well positioned,” to get more business from ICE, Haninger said.

David C. Fathi, who directs the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, said that giving for-profit companies control of prisons is “a recipe for abuse and neglect.” He said the Sessions memo was a further sign the U.S. “may be headed for a new federal prison boom” under the Trump administration.”

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The disaster of Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General continues to unfold. Contrary to what he told Senators during his contentious confirmation hearings, he’s the same old tone-deaf, insensitive, hard-liner he’s always been. There will be wrongful death suits in Sessions’s future naming him personally. While these so-called “Bivens actions” are usually a steep uphill climb for plaintiffs, given that Sessions acted with knowledge of both the Inspector General’s highly negative findings and his predecessor’s resulting action to curb private prison use, there could be a case there. I hope he took out personal liability insurance and got the highest amount of coverage. He might need it before his tenure is up.

And, as for the inmates and civil immigration detainees who are going to be kept in substandard conditions, I guess it’s just “tough noogies” as far as Sessions is concerned.

PWS

Zoe Tillman on BuzzFeed: U.S. Immigration Courts Are Overwhelmed — Administration’s New Enforcement Priorities Could Spell Disaster! (I’m Quoted In This Article, Along With Other Current & Former U.S. Immigration Judges)

https://www.buzzfeed.com/zoetillman/backlogged-immigration-courts-pose-problems-for-trumps-plans?utm_term=.pokrzE6BW#.wcMKevdYG

Zoe Tillman reports:

“ARLINGTON, Va. — In a small, windowless courtroom on the second floor of an office building, Judge Rodger Harris heard a string of bond requests on Tuesday morning from immigrants held in jail as they faced deportation.
The detainees appeared by video from detention facilities elsewhere in the state. Harris, an immigration judge since 2007, used a remote control to move the camera around in his courtroom so the detainees could see their lawyers appearing in-person before the judge, if they had one. The lawyers spoke about their clients’ family ties, job history, and forthcoming asylum petitions, and downplayed any previous criminal record.
In cases where Harris agreed to set bond — the amounts ranged from $8,000 to $20,000 — he had the same message for the detainees: if they paid bond and were set free until their next court date, it would mean a delay in their case. Hearings set for March or April would be pushed back until at least the summer, he said.
But a couple of months is nothing compared to timelines that some immigration cases are on now. Judges and lawyers interviewed by BuzzFeed News described hearings scheduled four, five, or even six years out. Already facing a crushing caseload, immigration judges are bracing for more strain as the Trump administration pushes ahead with an aggressive ramp-up of immigration enforcement with no public commitment so far to aid backlogged courts.
Immigration courts, despite their name, are actually an arm of the US Department of Justice. The DOJ seal — with the Latin motto “qui pro domina justitia sequitur,” which roughly translates to, “who prosecutes on behalf of justice” — hung on the wall behind Harris in his courtroom in Virginia. Lawyers from the US Department of Homeland Security prosecute cases. Rulings can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is also part of the Justice Department, and then to a federal appeals court.
As of the end of January, there were more than 540,000 cases pending in immigration courts. President Trump signed executive orders in late January that expanded immigration enforcement priorities and called for thousands of additional enforcement officers and border patrol officers. But the orders are largely silent on immigration courts, where there are dozens of vacant judgeships. And beyond filling the vacancies, the union of immigration judges says more judges are needed to handle the caseload, as well as more space, technological upgrades, and other resources.
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly acknowledged the immigration court backlog in a memorandum released this week that provided new details about how the department would carry out Trump’s orders. Kelly lamented the “unacceptable delay” in immigration court cases that allowed individuals who illegally entered the United States to remain here for years.
The administration hasn’t announced plans to increase the number of immigration judges or to provide more funding and resources. It also isn’t clear yet if immigration judges and court staff are exempt from a government-wide hiring freeze that Trump signed shortly after he took office. There are 73 vacancies in immigration courts, out of 374 judgeships authorized by Congress.
“Everybody’s pretty stressed,” said Paul Schmidt, who retired as an immigration judge in June. “How are you going to throw more cases into a court with 530,000 pending cases? It isn’t going to work.”

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Zoe Tillman provides a well-reaserched and accurate description of the dire situation of justice in the U.S. Immigration Courts and the poorly conceived and uncoordinated enforcement initiatives of the Trump Administration. Sadly, lives and futures of “real life human beings” are at stake here.

Here’s a “shout out” to my good friend and former colleague Judge Rodger Harris who always does a great job of providing due process and justice on the highly stressful Televideo detained docket at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, VA. Thanks for all you do for our system of justice and the cause of due process, Judge Harris.

PWS

02/24/17

Problems Mount For Administration On Travel Ban — Can’t Find Support For Their “Pre-Hatched” Conclusions — Stephen Miller Shoots Off Mouth Again — DOJ Litigators Undoubtedly Cringe As In-Court Statements Undermined!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-new-travel-ban-with-mostly-minor-technical-differences-that-probably-wont-cut-it-analysts-say/2017/02/22/8ae9d7e6-f918-11e6-bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html?utm_term=.e2b487b295a7

Matt Zapotsky writes in the Washington Post:

“Senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said President Trump’s revised travel ban will have “mostly minor technical differences” from the iteration frozen by the courts, and Americans would see “the same basic policy outcome for the country.”

That is not what the Justice Department has promised. And legal analysts say it might not go far enough to allay the judiciary’s concerns.

A senior White House official said Wednesday that Trump will issue a revised executive order on immigration next week, as the administration is working to make sure the implementation goes smoothly. Trump had said previously that the order would come this week. Neither the president nor his top advisers have detailed exactly what the new order will entail. Miller’s comments on Fox News, while vague, seem to suggest the changes might not be substantive. And that could hurt the administration’s bid to lift the court-imposed suspension on the ban, analysts said.

“If you’re trying to moot out litigation, which is to say, ‘Look, this litigation is no longer necessary,’ it is very bad to say our intent here is to engage in the prohibited outcome,” said Leon Fresco, who worked in the office of immigration litigation in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/02/23/white-house-gives-plenty-of-ammunition-to-travel-bans-opponents/?utm_term=.9442c17ff14b

Jennifer Rubin writes in Right Turn in today’s Washington Post:

“Opponents of President Trump’s travel ban have one big advantage — the Trump White House. If not for the confusion, lack of staffing (nary a deputy, let alone an undersecretary or assistant secretary, has been named in national security-related departments), organizational disarray, policy differences or all of the above, the administration might have put together on its first try a legally enforceable executive order. It might by now even have come up with a new executive order, thanks to a road map provided by the 9th Circuit. However, the rollout has been pushed back to next week.

Understand that if this is such a matter of urgent concern, the president would have had his advisers working around the clock on this (not transgender bathroom assignments, plans to deport non-criminal illegal immigrants or haggling with Mexican officials over a wall that Trump insists they pay for). In fact, since the point of the ban is to initiate a review of our vetting procedures, you’d think that the Homeland Security Department would already have come up with its proposed “extreme vetting” recommendations.

Meanwhile, the president and his staff continue to provide legal ammunition to opponents of the ban. On Tuesday, senior adviser Stephen Miller in a Fox News interview boldly declared, “Fundamentally, you’re still going to have the same basic policy outcome for the country, but you’re going to be responsive to a lot of very technical issues that were brought up by the court.” Just to remind the courts of the administration’s arrogance, Miller proclaimed that there was nothing wrong with the first order.

“By saying that the policy effects of the new travel ban will be essentially the same as those of the travel ban that so many federal judges found constitutionally suspect, Miller is effectively inviting federal courts to suspend the new one as well, given that the religiously discriminatory history of the ban can’t be ignored, much less erased, simply by purporting to start over again,” Supreme Court litigator and professor Larry Tribe tells me. “If, as I am told, the new ban is a more artfully disguised version of [an] anti-Muslim measure, without explicit preferences for religious minorities in Muslim-majority countries (i.e., for Christians) written into the very text of the ban, then some judges might be less inclined to issue a temporary restraining order, but most federal judges would be savvy enough to recognize that they are being treated to a masquerade.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/23/politics/white-house-effort-to-justify-travel-ban-causes-growing-concern-for-some-intel-officials/index.html

Meanwhile, Jake Tapper and Pamela Brown on CNN highlight more difficulties with the Administration’s “shoot first, ask questions later” approach:

“Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump has assigned the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Justice Department, to help build the legal case for its temporary travel ban on individuals from seven countries, a senior White House official tells CNN.

Other Trump administration sources tell CNN that this is an assignment that has caused concern among some administration intelligence officials, who see the White House charge as the politicization of intelligence — the notion of a conclusion in search of evidence to support it after being blocked by the courts. Still others in the intelligence community disagree with the conclusion and are finding their work disparaged by their own department.
“DHS and DOJ are working on an intelligence report that will demonstrate that the security threat for these seven countries is substantial and that these seven countries have all been exporters of terrorism into the United States,” the senior White House official told CNN. “The situation has gotten more dangerous in recent years, and more broadly, the refugee program has been a major incubator for terrorism.”

The report was requested in light of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ conclusion that the Trump administration “has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.” The seven counties are Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The senior White House official said the desire to bolster the legal and public case that these seven countries pose a threat is a work in progress and as of now, it’s not clear if DHS and DOJ will offer separate reports or a joint report.
One of the ways the White House hopes to make its case is by using a more expansive definition of terrorist activity than has been used by other government agencies in the past. The senior White House official said he expects the report about the threat from individuals the seven countries to include not just those terrorist attacks that have been carried out causing loss of innocent American life, but also those that have resulted in injuries, as well as investigations into and convictions for the crimes of a host of terrorism-related actions, including attempting to join or provide support for a terrorist organization.
The White House did not offer an on-the-record comment for this story despite numerous requests.

. . . .

Asked about the report Thursday on “The Lead,” Rep. Dan Donovan, R-New York, emphasized that the intelligence community be nonpartisan.
“They should take data, take information, shouldn’t interpret it in a political way and provide the President the information he needs to make decisions to protect our country,” he said.
Also commenting on the report was Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who acknowledged that he hadn’t seen the specifics but “it looks wrong to me.”
“We ought to be doing the intel first, then set the policy and in large part based upon the intelligence,” Haass said. “If these reports are true, it’s yet another example where this administration is having real trouble ing a functional relationship with the intelligence community.”

[Emphasis supplied in all quotes]

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I was never a “line litigator.” But, I was involved in defending and prosecuting thousands of cases during the “Legacy INS Phase” of my career. I also participated in thousands more cases as an appellate and trial judge during the last 21 years at EOIR.

One of my jobs in providing litigation assistance as the Deputy General Counsel of the INS was to make sure my “institutional clients” did not comment on pending cases. Such comments both unnecessarily antagonized the judges hearing the cases and, on occasion, when folks didn’t heed my instructions, completely “tanked” our positions by giving our opponents new arguments.

As a sitting judge, I can guarantee that one of the least successful approaches was for a lawyer to insult my intelligence or integrity and then turn around and ask me to help out his or her client. Sure, in the end, I had to separate the law from the lawyer and do the right thing. But, it certainly interfered with the effectiveness of the lawyer’s communication and made it more difficult for me to get to the substance of his or her client’s case.

And, one thing that certainly infuriated all judges, including me, was for a lawyer to represent one thing in court and then have his or her client do something else. It made me lose confidence in the lawyer’s reliability and integrity and his or her ability to control and speak for the client. I can remember “chewing out” several lawyers at Master Calendar for misrepresenting facts or law to me in their briefs or oral arguments.

It appears that the Trump Administration’s combination of arrogance, ignorance, and disrespect for the court system and the role of judges is undermining both their credibility and the credibility of the Department of Justice career lawyers whose job is to represent them over and over again before most of the same judges. Once a judge loses faith in the credibility of a lawyer and/or her or his client, “bad things will happen” and they do.

PWS

02/23/17

WSJ: Trump, Kelly, Tillerson Continue On Different Pages Re Immigration Enforcement Program — Mexico Remains Skeptical!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-officials-on-tough-trip-in-mexico-trump-says-1487871849

FELICIA SCHWARTZ, JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA and ROBBIE WHELAN write in the WSJ:

“MEXICO CITY—Top Trump administration officials tried Thursday to soften the message on expanded U.S. immigration-enforcement efforts during talks here, but Mexican officials signaled little progress had been made in bridging differences that threaten to further fray ties between the two countries.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly faced a skeptical Mexican government as they sought to explain Washington’s decision to step up the enforcement of immigration laws, outlining policies to enlist local authorities in the U.S. to jail and deport more people and to send detainees back to Mexico—even if they aren’t Mexican.
Meanwhile in Washington, President Donald Trump made comments that seemed to sharpen the tone.

“All of a sudden for the first time we’re getting gang members out, we’re getting drug lords out, we’re getting really bad dudes out of this country at a rate that nobody’s ever seen before,” the president said during a White House event with manufacturing executives. “And it’s a military operation because they’re allowed to come into our country.”
“We’re going to have a good relationship with Mexico I hope,” Mr. Trump said. “And if we don’t, we don’t.”

In midday meetings in Mexico City, the U.S. cabinet members delivered two key assurances to their Mexican counterparts: that they wouldn’t institute “mass deportations,” and that the U.S. military wouldn’t take part in rounding up and ejecting illegal migrants.

Gabriela Cuevas, the head of the Mexican Senate’s foreign relations committee, said she was deeply troubled by the apparent discrepancy between what the U.S. envoys said in Mexico City and Mr. Trump’s actions and words.

“I see a different message coming from the White House and from the secretaries visiting here,” she said. “One doesn’t know if Secretary Tillerson and Secretary Kelly are telling the truth or not. It’s a problem of credibility. Did they come to tell lies? Or are they just not coordinating with their boss? Who do you believe?”

Later Thursday, the White House sought to walk back Mr. Trump’s use of the word “military” in reference to the immigration enforcement.

“The president was using that as an adjective. It’s happening with precision and in a manner in which it’s being done very, very clearly,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, at a news briefing. “The president was clearly describing the manner in which this was being done.”

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Lots of mixed messages here. I don’t see much chance at present that Mexico is going to agree to allow non-Mexican-citizens to wait for their U.S. immigration hearings in Mexico.

PWS

02/23/17

The Economy: Build Safe Dams, Not Walls — America Needs Some Serious Infrastructure Programs That Create Jobs While Making Our Country Safer — When, If Ever, Is the Trump Administration Going To Get Going On Fixing The Real Problems?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/23/us/americas-aging-dams-are-in-need-of-repair.html?emc=edit_nn_20170223&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=79213886&te=1&_r=1

TROY GRIGGS, GREGOR AISCH and SARAH ALMUKHTAR write in today’s NY Times:

“After two weeks that saw evacuations near Oroville, Calif., and flooding in Elko County, Nev., America’s dams are showing their age.

Nearly 2,000 state-regulated high-hazard dams in the United States were listed as being in need of repair in 2015, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. A dam is considered “high hazard” based on the potential for the loss of life as a result of failure.

By 2020, 70 percent of the dams in the United States will be more than 50 years old, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

“It’s not like an expiration date for your milk, but the components that make up that dam do have a lifespan.” said Mark Ogden, a project manager with the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers keeps an inventory of 90,000 dams across the country, and more than 8,000 are classified as major dams by height or storage capacity, according to guidelines established by the United States Geological Survey.

Dam failures can have
serious consequences.

Two weeks ago, heavy rains caused the Twentyone Mile Dam in Nevada to burst, resulting in flooding, damaged property and closed roads throughout the region.

The earthen dam, built in the early 1900s and less than 50 feet tall, is one of more than 60,000 “low hazard” dams, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. Typically, failure of a low hazard dam would cause property damage, but it would most likely not kill anyone.
What Happened at the Oroville Dam
Built in the 1960s and more than 16 times the height of the Nevada dam, Oroville was listed as a high hazard dam. Had it not been for the speed of the response last week, there could have been severe flooding of the surrounding area.

“The larger dams are being watched very carefully. The smaller dams don’t enjoy that level of scrutiny,” Mr. Ogden said.

The U.S. would need to spend billions
to repair public and private dams.

In 2016, the Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimated that it would cost $60 billion to rehabilitate all the dams that needed to be brought up to safe condition, with nearly $20 billion of that sum going toward repair of dams with a high potential for hazard.”

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Read the complete article with charts and maps at the link. Sure seems like this would be a better way to spend our money and create meaningful jobs for U.S. workers than building an expensive, impractical, unneeded, and sure to be ineffective border wall.

Why not create some “win-win” situations, rather than provoking confrontation, controversy, and potential litigation at every turn? As the full article points out, there already is some pending legislation that, while not solving the entire program, would be a start on both job creation and improving the infrastructure. And, fixing dams would not provoke Mexico, Canada, the EU, China, or anyone else.

PWS

02/23/17

“Feel Good” Story Of the Day: Muslim Americans Stand With Jewish Americans In Helping To Rebuild Desecrated Cemetery!

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39049102

Thanks to Nolan Rappaport for sending in this article from the BBC:

“A US Muslim-led fundraising project to help repair a Jewish cemetery that was vandalised has raised more than four times its $20,000 (£16,000) target.

The crowdfunding campaign, which calls for “solidarity with the Jewish-American community”, aims to help “rebuild this sacred space”.

More than 170 headstones were damaged at the Jewish cemetery in St Louis, Missouri on Monday.

It comes after a string of anti-Semitic threats targeting the Jewish community.

The fundraising effort, launched by Linda Sarsour and Tarek El-Messidi, has received over 3,000 donations and has raised more than $85,000.

“Muslim Americans stand in solidarity with the Jewish-American community to condemn this horrific act of desecration,” the fundraising page states.
The project, which is still accepting funds, aims to repair damage at the Chesed Shel Emeth cemetery in St Louis, but the campaigners said that any additional funds raised would be used to “assist other vandalised Jewish centres nationwide”.

Vice-president Mike Pence visited the cemetery on Wednesday during a trip to St Louis.

“We condemn this vile act of vandalism and those who perpetuate it in the strongest possible terms,” he told reporters travelling with him.

He added that “it’s been inspiring to people all across this country to see the way the people of Missouri have rallied around the Jewish community with compassion and support”.

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Helping those in need is the American way! And, I think that it is good that Vice President Mike Pence personally showed up, rolled up his sleeves, and pitched in to help clean things up. Positive symbolism combined with visible actions are important. Sadly, and to me unbelievably, anti-semitism seems to be on the rise throughout the world. It’s critical that we stand together in rejecting the hateful message.

PWS

02/22/17

President Trump Might find That Mexico Has More Leverage Than He Anticipated — Beating Up On Your Friends & Neighbors To Score Political Points At Home Is Likely To Backfire!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mexico-may-strike-back-heres-how/2017/02/22/5d1e8f56-f949-11e6-bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.12282059b

WashPost Editorial:

“PRESIDENT TRUMP has a good idea of the power the United States wields over Mexico, and the pain it may inflict — the construction of a wall Mexico fiercely opposes; taxes that could be slapped on Mexican imports, wreaking havoc on its economy; deportations of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the United States, who would be thrust back into a country that would struggle to absorb them. Mr. Trump might have a fuzzier idea of the pain Mexico, its people furious and its pride wounded by his taunts and contempt, might inflict on the United States.

Start with those deportations. At least half of America’s 11 million unauthorized immigrants are Mexican, but many have no documents proving their nationality. For the Trump administration to deport them, it would need cooperation from Mexico, which cannot be forced to accept deportees without certifying that they are Mexicans. As former Mexican foreign minister Jorge G. Castañeda has already warned, Mr. Trump can round up hundreds of thousands or millions of migrants, but without Mexico’s cooperation, they could clog U.S. detention centers and immigration courts — at enormous cost and, conceivably, for years.

Consider, too, the effect on America’s southern border if Mexico were to loosen immigration controls on its own southern border — the one over which Central American refugees are already streaming north in near-record numbers. Even with what U.S. officials say are aggressive interdiction efforts by Mexican authorities, the Border Patrol detained more than 220,000 mainly Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans crossing from Mexico into the United States in the fiscal year ending last fall, exceeding the number of Mexicans apprehended, which has fallen to a 45-year low. If you think the Border Patrol is swamped now, as Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly insists, imagine if Mexico, which last year sent home more than 140,000 Central Americans, simply stepped aside.”

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Predictably, other countries take “sovereignty” just as seriously as we do.

PWS

02/22/17

DHS Trumpets The New Bureaucratic Doublespeak: You’re All Targets, But Don’t Worry Because We Don’t Have The Ability To Do What We Say We’ll Do — And, When We Do Deport You (Ideally, Without A Hearing & After Detaining You Just Because You’re You & We Can), We’ll Be Polite & Humane About It — We’ve Finally “Taken The Shackles” Of Restraint, Wisdom & Prudence Off Our Agents So That They Are Free To Be Nice & Reasonable — And We’re Planning To Bring On Thousands Of Minimally Trained New Agents And Local Cops To Do What We Can’t Do Now — But, Don’t Worry, It’ll All Work Out For You Back In Mexico, El Salvador, Somalia,Or Wherever You Belong

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-administration-seeks-to-prevent-panic-over-new-immigration-enforcement-policies/2017/02/21/a2a695a8-f847-11e6-bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_3_na&utm_term=.20ca5c9e4384

David Nakamura Reports in the Washington Post:

“The Trump administration on Tuesday sought to allay growing fears among immigrant communities over wide-ranging new directives to ramp up enforcement against illegal immigrants, insisting the measures are not intended to produce “mass deportations.”

Federal officials cautioned that many of the changes detailed in a pair of memos from Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly will take time to implement because of costs and logistical challenges and that border patrol agents and immigration officers will use their expanded powers with care and discretion.

Yet the official public rollout of Kelly’s directives, first disclosed in media reports over the weekend, was met with outrage from immigrant rights advocates over concerns the new policies will result in widespread abuses as authorities attempt to fulfill President Trump’s goals of tightening border control.

Trump took a hard line against illegal immigration during his campaign, at times suggesting he would seek to create a nationwide “deportation force” to expel as many of the nation’s estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants as possible.

In a conference call with reporters, a senior Department of Homeland Security official moved to avert what he called a “sense of panic” among immigrant communities.”

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Summary: Duh! So, we roll out this big new program in the first 35 days of the new Administration to great fanfare. But, nobody considered the resource and funding implications with Congress. So, it’s much ado about nothing (for now). But, don’t you dare lie about all the great things we’ve already accomplished. Watch for the biased media falsely claiming that it’s all smoke and mirrors or that we’re already rounding up some of the folks we said we’d deport. We mean what we say, but we’re not actually doing what we said we’d do. What kind of fools would panic about that?

PWS

02/22/17

Immigration Is Hot — Asylum Is Hotter — Get The Asylum Litigation “Triple Play” (Free) — 1) My Newly Revised Comprehensive Three-Page Treatise “Practical Tips For Presenting An Asylum Case In Immigration Court:” 2) My Accompanying “Practical Tips” Lecture (UDC Law School Version); 3) Judge Dorothy Harbeck’s “The Commonsense Of Direct and Cross-Examinations In Immigration Court!”

Click Here for my 3-page treatise “Practical Tips for Presenting An Asylum Case In Immigration Court” (Rev. Feb. 2017); PRACTICAL TIPS FOR PRESENTING AN ASYLUM CASE-02-17-17

Click here for my accompanying lecture, “Practical Tips, UDC Law Version:” Practical Tips for Presenting an Asylum Case in Immigration Court-UDCVersion-02-21-17

Click here for Judge Harbeck’s “The Commonsense of Direct and Cross-Examinations In Immigration Court” (NJ Lawyer @ 30): NJLFeb2017

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PWS

02/22/17

Instant Summary Of New TRAC Immigration Court Reports By Dean Kevin Johnson On ImmigrationProf: Courts Are Peddling Faster But Going Backwards — Backlog Now Tops 542,000!

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2017/02/immigration-courts-deciding-more-cases-but-backlog-growing-.html

“Unfortunately, this growth in case completions has been insufficient to stem the growing backlog of cases still waiting for resolution before the Immigration Court. At the end of January 2017, the court’s backlog had increased to a record 542,411. Even if no additional cases were filed, the backlog now represents over a two and a half year workload for the court’s judges, based upon its current capacity to handle the matters before it.”

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Needless to say, the Trump Administrations’s ill-conceived “max enforcement – no common sense or judgment” program — as announced by DHS today — will completely “tank” what remains of due process in the U.S. Immigration Courts. Unless Congress steps in (highly unlikely) with legislation to establish an independent Article I Court which sets its own priorities, the entire immigration justice system is headed for collapse. Then, it will be up to the Article III courts to decide what, if anything, the Constitution requires for due process in immigration and what, if anything, the Executive Branch must do to reform the system. Stay tuned.

PWS

02/21/17

The Atlantic: The Eternal Wall — Even Two Terms Might Not Be Enough To Complete “Trump’s Folly!”

http://immigrationcourtside.com/2017/02/21/president-trump-takes-very-nuanced-approach-to-daca-retention-see-the-video-clip-from-cnn/

Nolan Rappaport forwarded this very interesting piece by ADRIENNE LAFRANCE in The Atlantic:

“The construction of a massive wall along the border of the United States and Mexico is one of President Donald Trump’s central campaign promises. And it’s a promise he intends to keep.

Within days of taking the oath of office in January, Trump began laying the groundwork for the construction of a series of walls and fences that would span some 1,250 miles along the border. On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a memo outlining its commitment to “begin planning, design, construction and maintenance of a wall” to deter and prevent illegal entry into the United States. The memo follows an executive order in which Trump called for the wall’s “immediate construction.”

But how immediately can Trump’s wall be built?

One of the latest estimates, from an internal Department of Homeland Security report obtained by Reuters, is that the wall will take three-and-a-half years to build. The agency is aiming to seal the border in three phases of construction of fences and walls, completing its work by the end of 2020, Reuters reported.
But that estimate is almost certainly too ambitious, and for a few reasons. First and foremost, there’s the fact that Congress still has to approve the bulk of the money for a project that is likely to cost tens of billions of dollars, according to several estimates.

Even if lawmakers approved that kind of cash this week, the wall almost certainly wouldn’t be complete by the end of Trump’s first term—or even a potential second term. The “iron law” of infrastructural megaprojects, according to a paper by Bent Flyvbjerg published in the Project Management Journal in 2014, is that they will go “over budget, over time, over and over again.”

This is obviously the case in projects where everything that can go wrong seemingly does (think: Boston’s infamous Big Dig highway project). But even for well-managed megaprojects, building major infrastructure always seems to take longer than estimates suggest. Sometimes that’s because a time estimate only pertains to the actual construction—not the time leading up to it, says Andrew Natsios, the director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University.”

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Gotta ask the obvious question: Why not repair bridges and highways to somewhere rather than build a wall to nowhere?

PWS

02/21/17

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