Tag: Interior Enforcement

☠️💀⚰️DEATH VALLEY DAYS: ASYLUM SEEKERS & LAWYERS FACE HARSH CONDITIONS IN QUEST FOR ASYLUM IN GARLAND’S DYSFUNCTIONAL EOIR — Bad Law, Bias, Incompetence, Inconsistency, & Indifference To Humanity Among Obstacles — The Majority Perish Along The Way! — “Courtside” Takes You “Inside The Numbers” Of TRAC’s “New Look” IJ Asylum Reports — New Format, But Same Old Broken & Unfair System!

Death Valley
Asylum seekers and lawyers must cross hostile territory, with a dearth of naturally-occurring due process, to successfully negotiate Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR. Most never make it!
Death Valley
Creative Commons

Here’s the TRAC “New Format” IJ Asylum Report:

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

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

INSIDE THE NUMBERS FOR THE TRAC 10-09-22 IJ REPORT

NOTE: Does not account for: IJs no longer on the bench; IJs appearing in more than one location; differences among detained, non-detained dockets; profiles of high and non-high-denying courts excluded locations with fewer than four IJs listed. No guarantee of accuracy for my “hand count” — but, in accordance with the old government motto, “I did the best I could under the circumstances.”

  • Precipitous unexplained rise in nationwide denial rate since FY 2012, from 44.5% to 63.3%, even though human rights conditions in most so-called “sending countries” remained horrible and in some cases significantly deteriorated. See for FY2012 stats, https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/306/
  • Lots of “Nay-Sayers” on the Immigration Bench:
    • 92 IJs denied asylum 90% or more of the time.
    • Another 94 IJs denied 85-90% of the time.
    • Total of 186 “High Deniers” — those who denied 85% or more — significantly (21.7% or more) above already inexplicably high 63.3% national rate.
  • High Denying Courts (majority of IJs listed denied 85%+)
    • Atlanta (including ATD-Detained) (10 of 10 IJs)
    • Charlotte (6 of 8 IJs)
    • Conroe (5 of 9 IJs)
    • Houston (19 of 22 IJs)
    • Houston-Greenspoint (4 of 5 IJs)
    • Jena (6 of 6 IJs)
    • LA – North (8 of 11 IJs)
    • Los Fresnos (5 of 6 IJs)
    • Lumpkin (5 of 7 IJs)
    • Memphis (6 of 11 IJs)
    • Miami (20 of 31 IJs)
    • Miamii – Krome (7 of 9 IJs) 
  • Non-High-Denying Courts (all, or almost all, listed IJs denied less than 85%)
    • Adelanto (5 IJs)
    • Arlington (3 of 25 IJs High Deniers)
    • Bloomington (1 of 13 IJs High Denier)
    • Boston (1 of 15 IJs High Denier)
    • Baltimore (1 of 16 IJs High Denier)
    • Batavia (1 of 4 IJs High Denier)
    • Chicago (1 of 16 IJs High Denier)
    • Denver (2 of 8 IJs High Deniers)
    • Detroit (4 IJs)
    • Elizabeth (5 IJs)
    • Imperial (5 IJs)
    • New York (46 IJs, 0 High Deniers) **
    • New York Detained (17 IJs, 1 High Denier) 
    • Newark (3 of 16 IJs High Deniers)
    • Otay Mesa (7 IJs)
    • Pearsall (5 IJs)
    • Philadelphia (8 IJs)
    • Portland OR (4 IJs)
    • San Francisco (2 of 27 High Deniers)
    • Seattle (8 IJs)
    • Tacoma (5 IJs)
    • Van Nuys (1 of 7 IJs High Denier)
  • Telling stats:  99.1%, 97.4%, 94.3% 90.4% — Asylum denial rates for four BIA Appellate Immigration Judges listed in the chart who continue to serve on Garland’s BIA. No wonder asylum seekers are saddled with bad law and sloppy, one-sided appellate review within Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR.
  • Best courts for asylum seekers: Generally  in the Northeast and Northern California: Arlington, Boston, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Newark, San Francisco, Chicago.
  • Worst places for asylum seekers: Atlanta, Miami, Charlotte, Houston, Louisiana.
  • Mind-blowing stat: Compare the performance of IJs in Arlington and Baltimore with those in Charlotte, all within the 4th Circuit.
  • Observations:
    • New York, followed by San Francisco, appear to be the largest and best functioning courts with respect to actually following the generous standards for asylum seekers set forth by the Supremes in Cardoza-Fonseca, enunciated (but seldom followed) by the BIA in Mogharrabi, and to a large extent incorporated into sporadically enforced regulations.
    • In NY, 46 IJs, 0 High Deniers, 24 listed IJs granted at least 50% or more of the cases, denial rates ranging from 7.1% to 83.5%, still a rather mind-boggling range.The 24 IJs in the 50% or more grant range would seem like a good place for Garland to look for a model for rebuilding EOIR as a fair, due-process-oriented, subject matter expert court. He doesn’t seem interested in doing that, but it could be done with better leadership.
    • Although generally one would expect Detention Courts to be in the “High Denier” category, that’s not always the case. Courts like NY-Detained, Elizabeth, Adelanto, Otay Mesa, and Pearsall, all had some significant asylum grant rates. Conversely, several predominantly non-detained courts like Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, and Houston were unseemly “dead zones” for asylum seekers. Garland’s failure to address the gross inconsistencies and abuses of asylum law going on in those and other “High Denier Courts” is disgraceful.
  • Overall, this is a statistical picture of a failed and dysfunctional court system where critical life or death decisions depend more on where you are and who your judge or BIA “panel” is than on the quality of the evidence or the state of the law. It has failed to deliver on its promise of being a court of widely acknowledged subject matter experts who will guarantee due process, fundamental fairness, and best judicial practices for all on some of the most important and life-determining decisions in American jurisprudence. It’s bad; and not significantly improving under the Dems!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-28-22

Related posts:

  1. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  2. 👍🏼⚖️🗽MAJORITY OF ASYLUM SEEKERS WIN THEIR CASES, EVEN IN A BROKEN & BIASED  SYSTEM INTENTIONALLY STACKED AGAINST THEM — But, Only, If They Can Get To A “Merits Adjudication!” — Nativist Lies, Myths, Driving USG Policies Exposed! — Why USCIS & EOIR Self-Created Backlogs Primarily Shaft Those Deserving Legal Protection Of Some Type!
  3. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  4. 🏴‍☠️BIA’S MISOGYNISTIC, ANTI-ASYLUM, IGNORE THE EXPERTS & THE EVIDENCE APPROACH 🤮 REBUKED AGAIN — 9th Cir. Slams BIA Big Time In Rodriguez Tornes v. Garland! — “Concurring, Judge Paez wrote that in addition to ignoring evidence that Rodriguez was targeted on account of her feminist political opinion, the Board also ignored extensive record evidence from a leading authority on domestic violence that directly rejected the Board’s premise that domestic violence is presumed to be motivated by nothing more than the private dynamics of a ‘personal relationship.’”

🤯 BREAKING: DUE PROCESS MELTDOWN @ EOIR: 140 PRACTITIONERS, EXPERTS, ACADEMICS, NGOs PROTEST GARLAND’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL & UNETHICAL “SCHEDULING” & “AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING” (“ADR”) ON STEROIDS IN IMMIGRATION COURTS!

Meltdown
Meltdown
Public Realm

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Special

Oct. 26, 2022

 

“Due process cannot exist if an attorney does not have sufficient time and advance notice to prepare for a case.” 

The above is an elementary statement of the minimum requirement for due process in any court setting! Yet, in the “wacky world of Garland’s EOIR” 🤯 it is being knowingly and intentionally violated hundreds of times each day!

Not only does this inhibit effective professional representation of those fortunate enough to have lawyers, but it actively discourages attorneys from taking on cases in Immigration Court, particularly those acting in a pro bono or low bono capacity. How will we interest and inspire new lawyers to get into the practice when this is the way they can expect to be treated? It’s a truly disgusting and disgraceful development!

The following letter from a consortium of practitioners, academics, and NGO leaders protests the insane, due-process-denying lack of notice and the “Aimless Docket Reshuffling on steroids” ongoing @ EOIR and makes suggestions for constructive changes to restore at least some order to Garland’s dysfunctional courts. In my view, this situation raises huge Constitutional, ethical, and policy issues affecting all justice in America! It also illustrates the incredibly poor judgement and dismissive attitude of the Biden Administration and Garland’s DOJ in approaching the most serious “life or death” issues involving human rights and racial justice!

Among the signers:

NJ AILA chapter signed on, former judges, Rocky Mountain Advocacy Network, professors, CGRS, ASAP (150,000 members), NC Justice Center, etc. Attorneys practicing in every state + DC + Puerto Rico ended up signing-on to this letter.

I am a signatory. As you know, many of us believe that the ongoing intentional deterioration of due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices at EOIR is a preventable national disgrace that is undermining equal justice and democratic institutions in America. Consequently, I think it is critical to keep this issue “in the public eye” and to demand constructive, common sense reforms at EOIR.

The “constructive suggestions” contained in the letter are great! But, it’s a colossal waste of time and resources to have unqualified bureaucrats, far removed from the actual practice before these dysfunctional “courts,” unilaterally institute these ill-advised, unethical, due-process denying changes. Then, it’s left to the “outside experts” to drop everything and “plead and beg” for common sense and sanity from an arrogant, dysfunctional system!

The American justice system can’t continue to afford to let this wasteful and highly counterproductive “clown show” 🤡 go on unabated! It’s up to everyone who cares about equal justice in America (NOT just immigration practitioners) to demand that Merrick Garland get rid of the incompetents at EOIR and replace them with expert administrators and real, well-qualified judges who are “practical scholars” in the law, understand the needs of justice, and will reform this broken system to work for the best interests of everyone in America!

Here’s a copy of the letter, as sent: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kb25xExBERwZG65EbGZ9iR29UoQiGLL6/view?usp=sharing

🇺🇸“Due Process Forever!”

Paul⚖️🗽😎

10-26-22

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️👍🏼BREAKING — THE NDPA STRIKES BACK WITH VIGOR: 70 Human Rights, Civil Rights, Due Process, Good Government, Immigration, Equal Justice, Racial Justice, Progressive, Gender Justice Organizations Rip Garland, Monaco In Letter Protesting Their Abject Failure To Address Due Process, Racial Justice, Rule Of Law Disaster At EOIR — New, Competent, Diverse, Progressive Leadership & Judges Needed To Counteract 4 Years Of White Nationalism, Biased Hiring, “Malicious Incompetence!” — No More “Miller Lite Unhappy Hour” @ DOJ!
  2. 🤮☠️ MORE THAN 100 ORGANIZATIONS (WHO, UNLIKE GARLAND, ACTUALLY PRACTICE BEFORE HIS DYSFUNCTIONAL “COURTS”) RIP GARLAND’S INSANE, DUE-PROCESS-DENYING “DEDICATED DOCKETS!”
  3. 🏴‍☠️👎🏽🤮 AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING (“ADR”) ON STEROIDS! — EOIR Dysfunction Shows What Happens When “Captive Court System” Kowtows To Political Handlers Rather Than Serving The Public! — Jason Dzubow, The Asylumist, Reports!
  4. THE GIBSON REPORT— 01-02-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Garland’s Aimless Docket Reshuffling (“ADR”) Squeezes Refugees On Both Ends Of His Ludicrous Backlog, As Those Patiently Waiting Given Court Dates Nearly A Decade In The Future, While Recent Arrivals Mindlessly Rocketed To The “Front Of The Line” Struggle To Find Lawyers & Prepare Cases — Plus Other New Year News From The Dystopian World Of U.S. Immigration!

☠️⚰️💀GARLAND’S STAR CHAMBERS — “SLOW VIOLENCE” ON PEOPLE OF COLOR!🥵— Bias, Bad Law, Bungling Bureaucracy! — “Where Due Process Goes To Die!” 🤮 — Upcoming Book Will Expose Garland’s Lawless, Cruel, Inhumane “Court” System!

 

Slow Injustice @ EOIR
Garland’s approach to immigrant justice in his courts harkens back to “the bad old days.” Yet he remains impervious — and unaccountable!
The Wasp 1882-01-06 cover Slow but sure.jpg
Slow, but Sure. Cartoon depicts Lady Justice riding a tortoise, about to hang a man.
George Frederick Keller
Public domain

Dean Kevin Johnson @ ImmigrationProf Blog previews upcoming book by Professor Maya Pagni Barack:

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2022/10/from-the-bookshelves-the-slow-violence-of-immigration-court-procedural-justice-on-trial-by-maya-pagn.html

Friday, October 21, 2022

From the Bookshelves: The Slow Violence of Immigration Court Procedural Justice on Trial by Maya Pagni Barak

By Immigration Prof

The Slow Violence of Immigration Court Procedural Justice on Trial by Maya Pagni Barak (forthcominng March 2023, NYU Press)

The publisher’s description of the book reads as follows:

“Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants are moved through immigration court. With a national backlog surpassing one million cases, court hearings take years and most migrants will eventually be ordered deported. The Slow Violence of Immigration Court sheds light on the experiences of migrants from the “Northern Triangle” (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) as they navigate legal processes, deportation proceedings, immigration court, and the immigration system writ large.

Grounded in the illuminating stories of people facing deportation, the family members who support them, and the attorneys who defend them, The Slow Violence of Immigration Court invites readers to question matters of fairness and justice and the fear of living with the threat of deportation. Although the spectacle of violence created by family separation and deportation is perceived as extreme and unprecedented, these long legal proceedings are masked in the mundane and are often overlooked, ignored, and excused. In an urgent call to action, Maya Pagni Barak deftly demonstrates that deportation and family separation are not abhorrent anomalies, but are a routine, slow form of violence at the heart of the U.S. immigration system.”

KJ

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

The ongoing national disgrace called “EOIR” continues to mete out injustice and inane bureaucratic nonsense under a DEMOCRATIC Administration that pledged to return the rule of law and humanity to our broken Immigration Court system! 

That system is “headed and controlled” by a DEMOCRATIC AG, Merrick Garland. He is a former Federal Appellate Judge who certainly knows that what passes for “justice” in his broken “court” system is nothing of the sort! Also this ongoing debacle doesn’t say much good about Garland’s “lieutenants:” Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, Associate AG Vanita Gupta, Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, and Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.

They have all “looked the other way,” defended, or failed to condemn this travesty undermining our entire justice system, unfolding under their collective noses at EOIR every day! At some point in the future, all these guys will be “making the rounds” of major law firms, NGOs, universities, mainstream media, and corporations — seeking to “cash in” on their DOJ “experience.” Then, folks should remember how they ACTUALLY PERFORMED (or didn’t) when they had a chance to fix “America’s worst courts” — hotbeds of racial and ethnic injustice, purveyors of bad law, and a haven for ridiculously dysfunctional procedures!

Perhaps a suitable future for these willfully blind “public servants” would be to require them to spend the balance of their careers practicing on a pro bono basis before the “star chambers” they inflicted on others! See how they like being “scheduled,” with no or inadequate notice, to do 15 or 20 asylum cases per month; appearing before too many ill-qualified “judges” who have already decided to deny regardless of the law and facts; appealing to a captive “appellate court” dominated by individuals, working for the Executive, whose main “judicial qualification” was that they denied close to 100% of the asylum claims that came before them in Immigration Court and were known for their rude and dismissive treatment of asylum applicants and their lawyers! See, e.g., “Confronting The American Star Chamber . . .,” https://wp.me/p8eeJm-4Vm.,

Here’s Professor Barak’s bio from the U of Michigan-Dearborn website:

Maya Barak, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Studies

Maya P. Barak
Maya P. Barak, PhD
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Studies
U. of Michigan -Dearborn
PHOTO: UM-D Websitew

College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters

College-Wide Programs

mbarak@umich.edu

1070 Social Sciences Building | 4901 Evergreen Road | Dearborn, MI 48128

Personal Website

Teaching Areas: Arab American Studies, Criminology & Criminal Justice Studies, Master of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Women’s & Gender Studies

Research Areas: Capital Punishment, Criminal Justice, Criminology, Gangs, Immigrants / Crimmigration, Legal Sociology, Procedural Justice, State-Corporate Crime

Biography and Education

I am an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. I hold a PhD in Justice, Law and Criminology from American University (2016), an MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Eastern Michigan University (2011), and a BA in Social Anthropology and Peace and Social Justice from the University of Michigan (2009). My research brings together the areas of law, deviance, immigration, and power, utilizing interdisciplinary approaches that span the fields of criminology, law and society, and anthropology.

Education

Ph.D. in Justice, Law and Criminology

Teaching and Research

Courses Taught

Selected Publications

Books

Gould, Jon B. and Maya Barak. 2019. Capital Defense: Inside the Lives of America’s Death Penalty Lawyers. New York: NYU Press.

Selected Articles

Barak, Maya. 2021. “Can You Hear Me Now? Attorney Perceptions of Interpretation, Technology, and Power in Immigration Court.” Journal on Migration and Human Security (https://doi.org/10.1177/23315024211034740).

Barak, Maya. 2021. “A Hollow Hope? The Empty Promise of Rights in the U.S. Immigration System”/ “¿Una promesa vacía? La ilusión de “los derechos” en el sistema migratorio de los Estados Unidos.” Las Cadenas Que Amamos: Una panorámica sobre el retroceso de Occidente a todos los niveles.

Barak, Maya. 2021. “Family Separation as State-Corporate Crime.” Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime Vol. 2(2), 2021, pp. 109-121 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2631309X20982299). (2021 Outstanding Article or Book Chapter Award, Division of White-Collar and Corporate Crime, American Society of Criminology)

Barak, Maya, Leon, K., and Maguire, Edward. 2020. “Conceptual and Empirical Obstacles in Defining MS-13: Law-Enforcement Perspectives.” Criminology and Public Policy (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9133.12493).

Barak, Maya. 2017. “Motherhood and Immigration Policy: How Immigration Law Shapes Central Americans’ Experience of Family.” In Forced Out and Fenced In: Immigration Tales from the Field, edited by Tanya Golash-Boza. New York: Oxford University Press.

Advocates and all Americans committed to racial justice and equal justice under law need to keep raising hell — and supporting progressive candidates — until this horrible system is replaced by a real court system, with subject matter expert judges, totally focused on delivering due process, fundamental fairness, and best judicial practices to all!

What’s happening to individuals (fellow humans, “persons” under our Constitution) and their lawyers at EOIR is NOT OK, nor is it acceptable from a DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION!

Yeah, “there’s trouble, right here in River City!” And, it begins with “E,” ends with “R,” and rhymes with “EYORE!”

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-22-22

Related posts:

  1. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  2. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  3. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO:  “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”
  4. REGIME’S NEWEST SCHEME TO SCREW ASYLUM SEEKERS: BOGUS REGS THAT WOULD ILLEGALLY & UNNECESSARILY EXTEND THE GROUNDS OF “MANDATORY DENIAL,” DECREASE ADJUDICATOR DISCRETION, & SHAFT REFUGEE FAMILIES — Regime’s Outlandish “Efficiency Rationale” Fails to Mask Their Cruelty, Racism, Fraud, Waste, & Abuse – Julia Edwards Ainsley (NBC News) & Dean Kevin R. Johnson (ImmigrationProf Blog) Report

🤯 GARLAND’S BIA & OIL SCREW UP 🔩 YET ANOTHER CIMT CASE, IN 3RD CIR! — Biden Administration’s Human Rights/Racial Justice Hypocrisy Continues To Take A Toll!

Dan Kowalski
Dan Kowalski
Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)

 

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration community:

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/213100np.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/unpub-ca3-cimt-victory-king-v-atty-gen#

“King, a native and citizen of Jamaica, arrived in the United States in August 2016 pursuant to a visa, which later expired. He pleaded guilty in January 2020 to third-degree felony fleeing or eluding a police officer in violation of 75 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 3733(a). The Government initiated removal proceedings and charged King as removable for having overstayed his visa and for having been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude (“CIMT”) within five years of entering the United States. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1227(a)(1)(B), (a)(2)(A)(i). King later married a United States citizen and has applied to adjust to the status of lawful permanent resident. … The BIA … conclud[ed] that a Pennsylvania felony fleeing conviction is categorically a CIMT because it involves a culpable mental state of willfulness and applies to reprehensible conduct. … The plain language of the statute, coupled with the reasoning of Mahn and Ramirez-Contreras, persuades us that the Pennsylvania felony fleeing statute does not qualify as turpitudinous. While the failing to stop for a police officer while crossing a state line is conduct that may put another in danger, it does not necessarily do so. The agency therefore erred in its conclusion that King was convicted of a CIMT. For the foregoing reasons, we will grant the petition for review.”

[Hats off to William C. Menard!  And personally, I think this case should be published, because it highlights errors made by the IJ, the BIA and OIL.]

William C. Menard
William C. Menard, Esquire
Member
Norris McLaughlin
PHOTO: Firm

 

Daniel M. Kowalski

Editor-in-Chief

Bender’s Immigration Bulletin (LexisNexis)

cell/text/Signal (512) 826-0323

@dkbib on Twitter

dan@cenizo.com

Free Daily Blog: www.bibdaily.com

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

It’s always helpful to have superstars 🌟 like William C. Menard of Norris McLaughlin on the side of the NDPA. Too bad they and other top flight lawyers “out here” who know and understand the plight of migrants and its inextricable ties to racial justice in America aren’t “running the show” at the DOJ like they should be! The American legal system would function much better if due process and best practices for migrants were a part of it (that is, “institutionalized”), rather than something that has to be achieved case-by-case at a great cost in resources and inconsistent justice!

I concur with my friend Dan that this case should be published as yet another public reminder and “citable” permanent record of the seemingly unending stream of errors, misguided arguments, and “worst practices” streaming out of Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR and OIL!

A Dem Administration inexplicably continues to subject migrants and their representatives to “4th class justice” from Garland’s broken EOIR. Ironically, at the same time, the Administration is begging advocates and NGOs to “empty their pockets and pound the streets” in behalf of their candidates. Talk about “being taken for granted!”

Go figure!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-18-22

 

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  2. 🏴‍☠️“ANY REASON TO DENY”🤮 — GARLAND BIA’S BIASED, ANTI-ASYLUM JURISPRUDENCE CONTINUES TO GARNER PUSHBACK FROM ARTICLE III’s — Dem AG Needs To Pay Attention To Assault On Democracy, Rule Of Law Taking Place In HIS Dysfunctional “Courts!” — Garland Reportedly Plans More Backlog-Building, Due-Process-Denying “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”)!
  3. ⚖️🗽🇺🇸🦸‍♂️ NDPA SUPERLITIGATOR RAED GONZALEZ DRUBS GARLAND AGAIN! — “Who else could persuade CA5 to agree with CA9, and get an award of costs,” asks Dan Kowalski of LexisNexis Immigration Community? — When will the unconscionable failure of immigrant justice at Garland’s Department of “Justice” finally end? When our nation’s democracy goes down in flames?🔥 ♨️
  4. 🏴‍☠️👎🏽🤮 AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING (“ADR”) ON STEROIDS! — EOIR Dysfunction Shows What Happens When “Captive Court System” Kowtows To Political Handlers Rather Than Serving The Public! — Jason Dzubow, The Asylumist, Reports!

THE GIBSON REPORT — 10-10-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — AMONG HEADLINERS: Ignoring Kids At Risk; Biden’s Marihuana Pardon Unlikely To Help Many Migrants; Garland’s DOJ On Wrong Side Of IJ “Muzzling” Suit!

 

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • NEWS
  • LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • RESOURCES
  • EVENTS

NEWS

 

Appeals Court Says DACA Is Illegal but Keeps Program Alive for Now

NYT: The decision from the three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit — one of the country’s most conservative federal appellate courts — affirmed a 2021 lower court decision. The Biden administration will need to continue its legal fight to enroll new applicants in the program, called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

 

Biden’s marijuana pardon not likely to help many immigrants with deportation cases

SD Union-Trib: Simple marijuana possession is usually charged at the state rather than federal level, so if governors follow Biden’s lead, there could be a wider impact on immigration court cases…Biden’s Thursday proclamation also explicitly says that undocumented noncitizens are not eligible for the pardon.

 

New York Faces Record Homelessness as Mayor Declares Migrant Emergency

NYT: Mayor Eric Adams stepped up calls for state and federal aid as the number of people in city shelters topped 61,000. See also Democrat-led Texas city steps up migrant busing to New York, outpacing Republican effort; Documents: Florida migrant transport planning began in July.

 

“A Failure on All Our Parts.” Thousands of Immigrant Children Wait in Government Shelters.

ProPublica: The public has largely stopped paying attention to what’s happening inside shelters and other facilities that house immigrant children since President Donald Trump left office, and particularly since the end of his administration’s zero tolerance policy, which separated families at the southern border.

 

Migrants from three countries are driving the spike in encounters at the southern border, swamping a backlogged immigration system

CNN: Migrants from just three countries – Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba – made up about 56,000 of those encounters, or about 28 percent, federal data shows. See also US immigration: Why Indians are fleeing halfway around the world.

 

Blinken Announces Aid for Migrants, Refugees

VOA: Shortly before attending OAS ministerial talks on the perplexing question of migration in the western hemisphere, Blinken told reporters of “new humanitarian and bilateral and regional assistance” to the tune of $240 million. See also United States fell far short of refugee goal last fiscal year

 

Critic of Biden border policy in line to oversee DHS budget

Roll Call: With Cuellar in line to be the top Democrat in the next Congress on the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection budgets, some Democrats and advocacy groups are growing concerned.

 

Border agents fired fatal shots after migrant grabbed weapon, FBI says

WaPo: A Mexican man who was shot fatally inside a Border Patrol station in Texas this week had grabbed an “edged weapon” off a desk inside the facility and continued to approach U.S. agents after they attempted to stop him with a Taser, the FBI said in a statement late Wednesday.

 

2 Russians Seek Asylum in US After Reaching Remote Alaska Island

VOA: Two Russians who said they fled the country to avoid military service have requested asylum in the U.S. after landing in a small boat on a remote Alaska island in the Bering Sea, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office said Thursday.

 

Undaunted by DeSantis, immigrant workers are heading to Florida to help with hurricane cleanup

CNN: Word that immigrants are now coming to help clean up some of his state’s most storm-ravaged communities hasn’t softened the governor’s stance.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

High Court Won’t Review ‘Unfair’ Deadline For Deported Man

Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a deported Salvadoran man’s bid to look into an allegedly “unfairly” crafted deadline for filing deportation order reconsideration requests, ending his decades-long hope of returning to the U.S.

 

5th Circ. Affirms Toss Of DACA, Asks For Review Of Final Rule

Law360: The Fifth Circuit on Wednesday affirmed a Texas judge’s ruling that vacated the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has protected some young immigrants from deportation, and barred new applicants, but asked the lower court to review the Biden administration’s recent final rule on the DACA program.

 

CA5 On Evidence, CAT, Cameroon: Ndifon V. Garland

LexisNexis: Ndifon claims the BIA failed to consider country conditions evidence when separately analyzing his CAT claim. We agree.

 

CA9 on Consular Reviewability: Muñoz v. Dept. of State

LexisNexis: Because we conclude that the government failed to provide the constitutionally required notice within a reasonable time period following the denial of Asencio-Cordero’s visa application, the government was not entitled to summary judgment based on the doctrine of consular nonreviewability.

 

Matter Of Bador, 28 I&N Dec. 638 (BIA 2022)

LexisNexis: A fraud waiver under section 237(a)(1)(H) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”), 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(H) (2018), does not waive a respondent’s removability under section 237(a)(1)(D)(i) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(D)(i), where conditional permanent residence was terminated for failure to file a joint petition

 

Minn. Judge Ends Migrant Detention Suit, After $80K Deal

Law360: A Minnesota federal judge ended an American Civil Liberties Union-backed suit alleging that U.S. Customs and Border Protection assaulted and degraded two teenagers in its custody, after the agency agreed to pay the girls $80,000 to resolve the claims.

 

Fla. Seeks Trial Over Alleged US Policy Not To Detain Migrants

Law360: Florida pushed for a trial to resolve its contention that the Biden administration has a policy of releasing immigrants subject to detention, but asked a federal judge to first declare that the state has standing to challenge the alleged policy.

 

Feds Want Immigration Judges’ ‘Muzzled’ Speech Suit Axed

Law360: The head of a U.S. Department of Justice office on Friday asked a Virginia federal judge to nix a suit filed by an immigration judges association claiming they are “muzzled” by a policy that they say bars them from discussing their personal views on immigration, contending that a new policy encourages speech and simply requires supervisory approval.

 

USCIS 30-Day Notice and Request for Comment on USCIS Online Account Access

AILA: USCIS 30-day notice and request for comment on USCIS’s Online Account Access system, formerly called Identity and Credential Access Management (ICAM). Comments are due 11/7/22.

 

CBP Announces CDC Screening of Individuals with Travel Nexus to Republic of Uganda

AILA: Following an outbreak of Ebola in the Republic of Uganda, the CDC announced enhanced public health screening for flights departing after 11:59 pm (ET) on 10/10/22, for flights carrying travelers with nexus to Uganda. Said flights will be funneled through JFK, EWR, IAD, ATL, and ORD.

 

RESOURCES

 

EVENTS

 

 

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Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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

Given the disgraceful mess @ EOIR, it’s understandable that Garland & Co. fear IJ’s speaking out in public. It’s just not a justifiable position, particularly for a Democratic Administration.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-11-22

Related posts:

  1. THE GIBSON REPORT — 03-28-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC — HEADLINERS: ICE Lies To Congress About Attorney Access; BIA Flagged By 11th For Another “Categorical Approach” Blunder!
  2. ⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 07-11-22 —  Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC — Glimpses Of Some Failing Righty Federal Judges & An Administration That Lacks A Bold Plan For Improving Immigration, Human Rights, & Racial Justice, Particularly @ EOIR!
  3. THE GIBSON REPORT:  05-09-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, National Immigrant Justice Center — HEADLINERS: 2d Cir. Reverses BIA On CIMT; Texas AG Targets Legal Assistance To Migrants; EOIR “Friend of Court” Memo; Lack Of Immigrants Hurting U.S. Economy — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE:  New Legal Aid Alliance Aims to Build a Model for Universal Representation for Detained Immigrants!
  4. ⚖️ THE GIBSON REPORT — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC: Stephen Miller Was Even More Of A Disreputable Scofflaw! — 9th Halts BIA’s “Rote Formula” For Improperly Denying CAT W/O Meaningful Analysis — EOIR In Louisiana Continues To Be “Death Valley” ☠️⚰️  For Asylum Seekers:  “‘I feel that the big problem we face today is that there is a real dehumanization of the entire process,’ said Mich Gonzalez, Associate Director of Advocacy at the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

🤮DREAMER DISASTER: America’s Future Hung Out To Dry By GOP Nativists In All Three Branches — From Ridiculous Legislative Roadblocks, To Mindless Executive Attacks, To Absurdist Righty Judges Who Ignore Established Law On Prosecutorial Discretion, Dreamers & American Society Suffer The Consequences Of 21st-Century Insurrectionist Republicanism!

Catherine Rampell
Catherine Rampell
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

Catherine Rampell @ WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/06/daca-court-ruling-congress-must-protect-dreamers/

. . . .

Many immigration issues are divisive. Protecting dreamers is not. Virtually every poll conducted on the subject finds that Americans of all political persuasions favor granting dreamers some form of permanent legal status, including a path to citizenship. Even Trumpers are on board, surveys show. Faith groups, law enforcement officials, employers, national security experts and other major constituencies besides typical bleeding-heart immigration advocates have urged Congress repeatedly to grant these young immigrants greater legal certainty.

Unfortunately — as is the case on so many issues — Congress has abdicated its responsibility to act. Instead, the executive branch has been tasked with devising temporary workarounds.

In 2012, the Obama administration announced a sort of Band-Aid solution, known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA offers some of these young immigrants access to (temporary) work permits and protections from deportation, which must be frequently renewed. Eligibility extends only to those who meet certain age and educational requirements, have lived here continuously since 2007 and pose no threat to public safety, among other conditions.

This program was generally expected to be a stopgap while Congress worked on broader immigration reforms or at least a pathway to citizenship for dreamers; so far, neither has materialized.

[As DACA immigrant program turns 10, legal challenges persist]

In the decade since it was introduced, DACA has weathered multiple legal challenges — including from a coalition of red states led by Texas, as well as attempted repeal by President Donald Trump. For now, the program remains mostly intact while the red-state challenge wends its way through the courts. But DACA’s days look numbered.

. . . .

This is hardly the only immigration issue on which Republican politicians have complained about executive overreach yet been reluctant to exercise their own powers. Other vulnerable, sympathetic populations of immigrants — such as the Afghan allies who were temporarily “paroled” into the United States — are stuck in their own legal limbo unless and until Congress acts.

But it’s always easier for politicians to grandstand over everyone else’s immigration policy choices than to produce solutions of their own.

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

Read Catherine’s complete article at the link.

How stupid and cruel is the GOP’s assault on Dreamers? It’s not like most “Dreamers” are going anywhere. After all, there are already about 2 million individuals (not to mention family members, employers, etc.) backed up on Garland’s dysfunctional Immigration Courts. And, under Garland’s misguided leadership, more judges are actually building more backlog!

But, without DACA’s work authorization, those not eligible for other forms of relief (e.g., asylum, cancellation of removal) will lose their authorization to work. Since many are in critical or essential jobs with employers who can’t afford to be out of compliance with Federal laws, it’s reasonable to assume that Dreamers would lose those jobs. That means that many will have to take lesser jobs in the substantial “underground economy” operating in the U.S., largely as a result of the GOP’s obstinance on sensible immigration policy.

If that appears stupid, it’s because it is! But, what else is new with the GOP’s cruel, xenophobic, and unrealistic approach to immigration.

It’s remarkable that out of touch righty judges on the 5th Circuit, whose jobs and existence actually depend on the systemic non-prosecution of most Federal offenses, would actually have the gall to issue their off the wall ruling dumping on Dreamers! In reality, by necessity, only a small number of violations of Federal statutes are prosecuted. See. e,g., https://prisonprofessors.com/federal-crimes-to-prosecute-or-not/.

How vigorously did the Trump Administration pursue violations of environmental laws, civil rights laws, tax laws, ethics laws, or white collar crime laws, etc? Not very! Indeed, to give one egregious example, under Sessions and Barr, the policy was to turn a “blind eye” to serious Constitutional violations by law enforcement! See, e.g., https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2021/05/03/the-feds-are-investigating-local-police-departments-again-heres-what-to-expect

The Fifth Circuit’s “off the wall” apparent theory that Federal officials lack discretion to redirect prosecution resources toward the most serious offenders is pure “Federalist Society political poppycock!” It’s particularly out of bounds to critique the Feds for taking steps to insure that such discretion is exercised uniformly and reasonably, rather than arbitrarily and capriciously. 

I had lots of experience with “PD” programs over four decades in Federal service. The DACA program is far and away the premier “model” program for the effective and rational exercise of PD. 

The major impediment to the rational immigration law and policy adjustments America needs is today’s nativist-driven GOP. Unless and until enough American voters wise up and throw the GOP out at all levels, America will not achieve it’s full potential!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-09-22 Continue reading 🤮DREAMER DISASTER: America’s Future Hung Out To Dry By GOP Nativists In All Three Branches — From Ridiculous Legislative Roadblocks, To Mindless Executive Attacks, To Absurdist Righty Judges Who Ignore Established Law On Prosecutorial Discretion, Dreamers & American Society Suffer The Consequences Of 21st-Century Insurrectionist Republicanism!

Related posts:

  1. 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?” 
  2. 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! 
  3. THE GIBSON REPORT — 02-14-21💝 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Mandatory E-Filing @ EOIR Starts & Lots Of Other “Interesting Stuff!”  — CMS Study Shows How Garland Is Ignoring the “Low Hanging Fruit” On His Out of Control EOIR Backlog! ☹️
  4. 🤡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”

🇺🇸 MIGRANTS, W/ OR W/O DOCS, ARE AGAIN BAILING OUT FLA, DESPITE DeSANTIS’S RACIST STUNTS — Don’t Expect Reality To Change The White Nationalist False Narrative!

https://apple.news/AFdtHuzYiQS-N1caP0gT6UA

Ciara Nugent
Ciara Nugent
Staff Writer
Time
PHOTO: Time.com

From Time Maggie:

Migrants Are Leading Clean-up Efforts in Florida, Despite DeSantis’ Crusade Against Them

Migrant workers are flooding-in to help Florida rebuild after Hurricane Ian, even as Governor Ron DeSantis wages a crusade against them.

CIARA NUGENT

Three days after Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida on Sept. 28 as a Category 4 storm, Johnny Aburto arrived in Port Charlotte, a mostly white community of 64,000, popular with retirees, on the state’s southwestern coast. The town suffered extensive damage during the storm: roofs blown off, homes flooded, power lines downed. There is a lot of work to be done.

Aburto, 42, is here to do it. Originally from Nicaragua, he is part of a large, informal, overwhelmingly immigrant workforce that travels the U.S. cleaning up after increasingly frequent climate-related disasters. Once a hurricane hits, these crews are bussed in by contractors desperate for workers, or they drive to the area themselves and wait in Walmart or Home Depot parking lots to be picked up for a day’s work. Aburto, a skilled laborer, was in New Orleans after Katrina in 2005, Baton Rouge after Louisiana’s floods in 2016, Panama City Beach after Michael in 2018, and Lake Charles after Laura in 2020. “These kinds of events really affect people,” he says. “We do our bit to help them.”

In Port Charlotte, Aburto is now busy covering roofs with tarpaulins—a crucial first step to keep homes safe from future rain, so that power can be restored and residents can come back. He’s also cleaning out soaked debris from interiors. When that kind of work is done, he says, many of his colleagues will stay on to make more permanent repairs.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Sadly, America has a long disreputable history of denying the humanity and rights of those whose labor and skills built our nation and made it great. African Americans,  Chinese-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Filipino-Americans, Haitian-Americans, and many others have all felt the sting of racism, demonizing myths, dehumanization, exploitation, and grotesque ingratitude. 

I happen to be reading UVA Professor Amanda Frost’s outstanding book on “citizenship stripping.” I was struck by this quote about the exploitation of Mexican workers during the “Bracero Program” which was followed by “Operation Wetback” — the Eisenhower Administration’s totally illegal mass removal of Mexicans, including lawful immigrants and U.S. citizens!

“As one grower put it, “We used to own our slaves. Now we just rent them.” 51”

— You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers by Amanda Frost

https://a.co/0BsTPuZ

Amanda Frost
Amanda Frost
Professor UVA Law
Author, “You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers “
PHOTO: UVA Law

It would be nice to think this time will be different — that we have advanced as a nation. But, I wouldn’t bank on it!

Floridians have a golden opportunity to replace DeSantis with a real Governor, Charlie Crist, who would serve all people, use government resources prudently, and govern in the public interest. Polls, however, say that such a “Florida epiphany” is unlikely. But, it’s still possible.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-08-22

Related posts:

  1. 👹🎃HALLOWEEN HORROR 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻REICHSREPORT: GRUPPENFUHRER MILLER REVEALS “REICHSPLAN” FOR EXTERMINATION OF IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM, REFUGE BY EXECUTIVE DECREE!  — “The Final Solution??”  — Parents, Protect Your Kids, Families, & Your Country From This Grotesque Un-American Monster!
  2. POLITICS: DANIEL DENVIR @ LITERARY HUB: The Case Against Immigration Centrism – Liberals Inevitably Get Co-Opted Into “Nativism Lite” & The Result Is Donald Trump & His Overtly White Nationalist GOP!
  3. 😰👹👺🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮“DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN” — Nicole Narea @ Vox With A Glimpse Of Trump’s Second Term: American Apocalypse — Dark, Ugly, Hateful, Violent, Dishonest, Exclusionary, Stupid, Racist, Diminished, Yet Very White & Privileged — Are People Of Color & Their Allies Really Going To Stand By & Watch While Their Past & Our Future As A Strong, Creative, Tolerant, Diverse, Humane Nation Is Written Out Of History By A Racist GOP & Its Totally Wacko Yet Dangerously Evil Cult Leader?
  4. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

😰ASYLUM: “PROGRAMMED FOR FAILURE” — “Refugee Roulette Three” (“RR3”) Confirm What Many Of Us Said Right Off The Bat About Biden Administration’s Tragically Botched Stab At Asylum Reform!

The “Notorious RR3:”

Professor Philip G. Schrag
Professor Philip G. Schrag
Georgetown Law
Co-Director, CALS Asylum Clinic
Professor Andrew Schoenholtz
Professor from Practice; Director, Human Rights Institute; Director, Center for Applied Legal Studies
PHOTO: GeorgetownLaw
Professor Jaya Ramji-Nogales
Professor Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
I. Herman Stern Research Professor
Temple Law
PHOTO: Temple Law

 

Here’s the abstract of the latest “practical scholarship” from the RR3:  Professors Phil Schrag, Andy Schoenholtz, and Jaya Ramji-Nogles, “The New Border Asylum Adjudication System: Speed, Fairness, and the Representation Problem,” which will appear in the Howard Law Journal:

The New Border Asylum Adjudication System: Speed, Fairness, and the Representation Problem

Howard Law Journal, Vol. 66, No. 3, 2023

59 Pages Posted:

Philip G. Schrag

Georgetown University Law Center

Jaya Ramji-Nogales

Temple University – James E. Beasley School of Law

Andrew I. Schoenholtz

Georgetown University Law Center

Date Written: September 29, 2022

Abstract

In 2022, the Biden administration implemented what the New York Times has described as potentially “the most sweeping change to the asylum process in a quarter-century.” This new adjudication system creates unrealistically short deadlines for asylum seekers who arrive over the southern border, the vast majority of whom are people of color. Rather than providing a fair opportunity for those seeking safety to explain and corroborate their persecution claims, the new system imposes unreasonably speedy time frames to enable swift adjudications. Asylum seekers must obtain representation very quickly even though the government does not fund counsel and not enough lawyers offer free or low-cost representation. Moreover, the immigration statute requires that asylum seekers must corroborate their claims with extrinsic evidence if the adjudicator thinks that such evidence is available – a nearly impossible task in the time frames provided by the new rule. As a result, the new rule clashes with every state’s Rules of Professional Conduct 1.1 and 1.3, imposing duties of competence and diligence in every case that a lawyer undertakes. It will be extremely difficult for lawyers to provide competent and diligent representation under the new, excessively short deadlines. For immigration lawyers, the new rule exacerbates a challenge that they share with public defenders and other lawyers working within dysfunctional systems: how to provide even the most basic level of procedural due process for their clients, most of whom are people of color.

This article begins by describing the regular asylum process. It then summarizes the history of expedited removal, a screening system that limits access to that process for asylum seekers who arrive at the southern U.S. border without visas. It then explains and assesses the Biden administration’s first and second versions of the new asylum rule, highlighting the major flaw that will make the current version an unfairly formidable hurdle for asylum seekers subject to it. The article concludes by setting out a way for the Biden administration to create a more fair, accurate and efficient border asylum adjudication system and ensure that the U.S. can comply with domestic and international refugee law.

Keywords: Asylum, Asylum adjudication, Asylum process, Expedited removal, Immigration, Legal ethics, Due process, Administrative law

JEL Classification: K39

Suggested Citation:

Schrag, Philip G. and Ramji-Nogales, Jaya and Schoenholtz, Andrew I., The New Border Asylum Adjudication System: Speed, Fairness, and the Representation Problem (September 29, 2022). Howard Law Journal, Vol. 66, No. 3, 2023, Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4233655

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

Four Horsemen
New regulations pasted on old anti-asylum, anti-lawyer, anti-due-process attitudes and relying on an ever more dysfunctional EOIR, now at war with the asylum bar, won’t cut it! 
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

You can download the complete article from SSRN at the above link. 

Expect the Biden Administration to “blow off” the suggestions for improvement at the end of the article. They seem to glory in “tuning out” the views of practical experts who know how to fix the broken asylum adjudication system. 

As I predicted when these regulations first came out, they were “programmed for failure.”

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/06/06/⚖%EF%B8%8F🗽-human-rights-first-files-public-comments-pointing-out-due-process-eroding-flaws-in-biden-administrations-new-asylum-regulations/

Due-process-denying, representation-killing, arbitrary time limits imposed from above have been tried by Administration after Administration. They have always failed and will continue to do so. So, why are they a key part of the Administration’s so-called “reforms?”

Rather than addressing the representation crisis in a rational, cooperative manner, the Biden Administration’s EOIR farce has driven a huge wedge between the clueless policy makers who operate in the “twilight zone” and the NGO, pro bono, and low bono legal community that they need to succeed on immigration, human rights, and racial justice. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/09/30/%f0%9f%86%98-sos-from-round-tables-%f0%9f%9b%a1-%e2%9a%94%ef%b8%8f-judge-sue-roy-complete-due-rocess-meltdown-eoir-newark-as-garlands-leadership-continues-to-fail-%e2%98%a0/

Compare the article’s discussion of the importance of representation and the practical and ethical problems caused by the new regulations with the reality of the “nutsos” ways EOIR is mis-treating attorneys currently trying to practice before the Immigration Courts!

Additionally, the unwarranted, yet largely self-fulfilling assumption by the Biden Administration that only 15% of asylum applications would be granted at the “Asylum Office stage” show why this program was designed to fail by the wrong officials. For the system to meaningfully address the Immigration Court asylum backlog, the grant rate would have to be multiples of that — probably at least 50%.

That’s a realistic projection, given the well-documented, atrocious human rights conditions in most “sending countries” and the current artificial limitations on grants imposed by bad precedents and flawed, biased, or incompetent adjudications. When I was at the Arlington Immigration Court from 2003-16, a significant majority of the “referrals” from the Asylum Office were granted asylum, withholding of removal, or CAT protection, often with concurrence or only token opposition by ICE. That suggests that there is a huge unrealized potential for many more timely asylum grants at the Asylum Office. But, success will never be achieved with the current “anti-asylum, afraid to correctly and fairly implement refugee law gang” in charge — committed to retaining the bad attitudes and repeating the mistakes of the past!

Hanging over the whole disaster is the “uncomfortable truth” that I’ve been shouting:

  • The Biden Administration is still operating EOIR and large portions of the immigration bureaucracy at DHS with Trump-era “holdovers” who were improperly “programmed to deny” asylum.

  • There is a dearth of positive precedents from the BIA on gender-based asylum and other types of common asylum applications at the border that are routinely and wrongfully mishandled and denied.

  • There are cosmic problems resulting from failure to provide qualified representation of asylum seekers at the border.

  • Detention continues to be misused as a “deterrent” to legal claims and “punishment” for asserting  them. 

  • Despite “touting” a much larger refugee admissions program beyond the border, the Administration has failed to deliver a robust, realistic, refugee admissions program for Latin America and the Caribbean which would take pressure off the border. 

  • Racism and White Nationalism continue to drive the Administration’s dramatically inconsistent approach to White refugees from Ukraine compared with refugees of color at the Southern Border.

Indeed, this entire “reform effort” is essentially “upside down.” It’s a “designed to fail” attempt to avoid the broken and malfunctioning Immigration Court system without dealing with the REAL problem: EOIR!

Without the necessary progressive personnel and structural reforms at Garland’s EOIR (“clean house” of unqualified, under-qualified, or misplaced administrators and judges from past Administrations), the cultural changes (“out with the anti-asylum, anti-immigrant, racially challenged, too often misogynistic, EOIR culture”) it would bring, and most of all, the substantive changes to align asylum law with due process, best practices, and the generous interpretations that were foreshadowed by the Refugee Act of 1`980 but have been intentionally suppressed by politicos of both parties, there will be neither justice nor stability in our asylum and immigration systems, nor will there be equal justice for all, including racial justice, in America! 

Even my esteemed “RR3” friends understate the debilitating effects of the ever-worsening dysfunction at EOIR and Garland’s failure of leadership on due process and human rights!

Perhaps the most telling statement in their article is this: “Asylum officers are more highly trained in asylum adjudication than immigration judges . . . .”  Why, on earth, would that be? 

Why isn’t the BIA led and comprised of internationally-respected asylum experts like Schrag, Schoenholtz, Ramji-Nogales, and others like them? Why aren’t all Immigration Judges drawn from the ranks of universally-respected “practical scholars” in asylum and human rights?  Plenty of them are out here! Why aren’t they on the bench? Why is the Biden Administration running a “D-Team Judiciary” at EOIR rather than “the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all” as EOIR was once envisioned? What’s the excuse for lousy training at EOIR when top-flight “modulated” asylum training is available from expert sources like Professor Michele Pistone’s innovative VIISTA Villanova program? What’s the excuse for the colossal EOIR failure that threatens lives and our democracy on a daily basis? Why aren’t alarm bells going off at the White House about Garland’s failed stewardship at EOIR?

Reforming the asylum system, starting with EOIR, could also potentially have big societal and economic benefits for America. Asylees gain legal status, can work, get in line for green cards, eventually become citizens, and realize their full potential as productive members of our society. Not incidentally, they also become regular taxpayers and can help bolster essential enterprises and infrastructure improvements.

For example, just yesterday the Portland (ME) Press Herald featured an article about the critical, chronic shortage of workers in Maine. https://www.pressherald.com/2022/10/02/how-can-maine-solve-its-workforce-crisis/ Why isn’t the Biden Administration working with Maine authorities, NGOs, and economic development groups to “fast track” asylum approvals for those who might be persuaded to resettle in Maine to take advantage of these economic opportunities, for everyone’s benefit? Mainers also are suffering from a shortage of affordable housing. I’ll bet that with a little “seed money,” there are enterprising, skilled groups of potential asylees who could help build and maintain affordable housing for communities in need, in Maine and elsewhere in the U.S. Why are they instead “rotting at the border” or being aimlessly “orbited” around America by nativist GOP governors trying to score political points with their White Nationalist base?

By adopting the nativists’ dehumanizing mis-characterization of asylum seekers as a “problem” to be measured in “numbers,” deterred, and held at bay, the Administration is missing a golden opportunity to achieve some much-needed “win-wins.” Why run bone-headed “built to fail, haste makes waste” asylum pilot programs in a few cities rather than trying things that might work to everyone’s advantage, as I have described above?

At a time when many in America are finally learning the truth about our disgraceful failure to offer refuge to Jews during the period leading up to the Holocaust from the Ken Burns documentary, we (our at least some Americans) appear to be committed to making the same mistakes again. We should not undervalue the lives and contributions of refugees because of systemic or structural boas against certain groups!

Claiming to “reform” the U.S. refugee and asylum system without dealing with the ongoing, worsening, disasterous dysfunction at EOIR is a fool’s errand. The way to make the system work more efficiently is to grant the large number of deserving asylum cases in a timely, practical, manner driven by due process, best practices, and best interpretations of asylum law. Unless and until those in charge act on this truth, the awful mess at EOIR will continue to be an existential threat to democracy!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-03-22

Related posts:

  1. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  2. 🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”
  3. DEMS NEED TO STOP REPEATING THE BOGUS 🤥 NARRATIVES ABOUT THE (LARGELY SELF-CREATED & OVERBLOWN) “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS:” Channeling “Courtside,” Yale Schacher Sets Forth A Plan For Using Experts To Not Only Reinstitute But Drastically Improve Due Process ⚖️🗽🇺🇸 For Asylum Seekers! — It’s NOT Rocket 🚀 Science!
  4. ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”

THE GIBSON REORT — 09-26-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — DHS’S CONTINUING BOGUS NOTICE PROBLEMS HARM MIGRANTS!

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

Weekly Briefing

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

CONTENTS (jump to section)

NEWS

GEO Group Wins Legal Challenge to California Ban on Private Immigrant Prisons

Reuters: The 9th Circuit, in an 8-3 decision, said the government has come to rely almost exclusively on detention centers operated by GEO Group and other companies. California, the largest U.S. state, does not have the authority to second-guess that decision, the court said.

Florida’s DeSantis Sued for Flying Migrants to Martha’s Vineyard

Bloomberg: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was sued for sending plane loads of immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, with the migrants claiming they were duped into making the trip with vouchers for free fast food and promises of employment and housing. See also Ron Desantis Chartered Planes From GOP-Allied Donor To Fly Migrants To Martha’s Vineyard; Far-Right Sites Exploded With Violent Threats Against Migrants After Flight Stunt; Washington, DC, approves creation of new agency to provide services for migrants arriving from other states; Why New York Is Resorting to Tents to House Surge of Migrants; West Ridge’s Shuttered YMCA Being Used To House Migrants Bused In From Texas;Delaware braces for migrant flight in U.S. political standoff.

A dramatic shift at the border as migrants converge on a remote corner of South Texas

NPR: In August alone, the Border Patrol recorded more than 50,000 apprehensions in the Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass — tens of thousands more than in traditional migration corridors like the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso. The number of migrants arriving from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua was nearly equal to the number from Mexico and northern Central America.

Arrests at Southwestern Border Exceed 2 Million in a Year for the First Time

NYT: In an unusual step, Biden administration officials gave some reporters a background briefing on Monday before Customs and Border Protection’s routine monthly release of data. Officials noted that the number of removals over the past year — more than 1.3 million — was more than any previous year. See also How to understand the latest immigration numbers.

Border Agents Keep Sending Immigrants To Wrong Addresses With Little Regard For How It Could Affect Their Court Cases, Advocates Say

Buzzfeed: For months, Border Patrol and ICE have been releasing immigrants with documents incorrectly listing their future residences as addresses to nonprofits or churches. These immigrants and asylum-seekers, most of them from Venezuela, then show up to random buildings confused and unsure of what to do next.

Immigration is a divisive issue, but most Americans agree on certain points

NPR: A majority of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for certain groups of immigrants, including farmworkers, those deemed as essential workers and for immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. That’s according to an NPR/Ipsos poll conducted in 2021. And yet action in Washington has stalled.

DHS Watchdog Says CBP Skipped Migrant Screening Process

Law360: The Border Patrol along the southwest U.S. border skipped assigning some noncitizens entering the country “alien registration numbers” used to create a profile of their immigration history, according to a report by a U.S. Department of Homeland Security watchdog.

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

CA9 On FFOA, CIMT: Lara-Garcia V. Garland

LexisNexis: The BIA held that, in order to qualify for relief under Lujan-Armendariz, a state conviction must have resulted in a sentence of no more than one year of probation. … In sum, the BIA legally erred by holding that, because he received a sentence of three years of probation, Petitioner’s expungement did not qualify under Lujan-Armendariz.

Feds drop case against judge charged in immigrant’s escape

AP: Prosecutors moved to drop the case against Newton District Judge Shelley Joseph after she agreed to refer herself to a state agency that investigates allegations of misconduct by members of the bench.

DHS, ICE Sued For Sitting On Docs That Could Expose Abuse

Law360: The University of Washington’s human rights center sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Seattle federal court for failing to provide documents that could shed light on reports that detained immigrants are enduring medical neglect, sexual assault, beatings and long periods without food.

Colo. Panel Finds No Immunity For Sheriff In ‘ICE Hold’ Suit

Law360: Colorado’s Court of Appeals, which initially sided with a sheriff accused of detaining a man for four months after his daughter posted bond, has ruled that the sheriff’s refusal to release the man put him beyond the shield of immunity.

Work Permit Suit Tossed After USCIS Adjudicates Applications

Law360: A D.C. federal judge tossed a proposed class action Friday by 95 visa holders who allege the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ lengthy processing times for work permit applications violate the Administrative Procedure Act, finding the agency has since issued decisions on each application and the claims are moot.

USCIS Stopped Applying June 2020 Rules Pursuant to Court Order in Asylumworks v. Mayorkas

USCIS: he final rule removes certain regulatory text governing asylum applications, interviews, and eligibility for employment authorization based on a pending asylum application. Relevant regulatory text is restored to appear as it did before the effective dates of the vacated rules. The final rule is effective on Feb. 7, 2022.

USCIS Reviewing Military Naturalization Policy Based on Settlement Agreement in Calixto v. Department of the Army, Civ. A. No 18-1551 (PLF) (D.D.C.)

USCIS: On Sept. 22, 2022, USCIS was notified of a settlement agreement between the U.S. Army and class members of the civil action captioned Calixto v. Department of the Army, Civ. A. No. 18-1551 (PLF) (D.D.C.). The Calixto settlement agreement affects USCIS’ military naturalization policies, and USCIS is reviewing policy changes based on the terms of this settlement agreement.

US Embassy in Cuba to process full immigrant visas in 2023

AP: The Biden administration said Wednesday that the U.S. Embassy in Cuba will begin processing full immigrant visas in early 2023, making it easier for Cubans to reunite with family members in the United States.

Advance Copy: DHS Notice of Extension and Redesignation of Burma for TPS

AILA: Advance copy: DHS notice extending the designation of Burma for TPS for 18 months, from 11/26/22 through 5/25/24, and redesignating Burma for TPS. The notice will be published in the Federal Register on 9/27/22.

RESOURCES

EVENTS

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook| Twitter

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

Thanks, Elizabeth!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-29-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 07-11-22 —  Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC — Glimpses Of Some Failing Righty Federal Judges & An Administration That Lacks A Bold Plan For Improving Immigration, Human Rights, & Racial Justice, Particularly @ EOIR!
  2. ⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 05-23-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, National Immigrant Justice Center — Contrary To Myth, Vast Majority of Released Migrants Appear For Hearings; Trump Judges Continue Cruel, Illegal, Racially Motivated Programs!
  3. ⚖️ THE GIBSON REPORT — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC: Stephen Miller Was Even More Of A Disreputable Scofflaw! — 9th Halts BIA’s “Rote Formula” For Improperly Denying CAT W/O Meaningful Analysis — EOIR In Louisiana Continues To Be “Death Valley” ☠️⚰️  For Asylum Seekers:  “‘I feel that the big problem we face today is that there is a real dehumanization of the entire process,’ said Mich Gonzalez, Associate Director of Advocacy at the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
  4. THE GIBSON REPORT — 07-25-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC — HEADLINERS: Supreme Irresponsibility Leaves ICE Enforcement In Shambles; Righty Judges, Fascist GOP AGs, & Cruel But Ineffective Immigration Enforcement Help Create Billion Dollar Industry For Smugglers & Cartels; Racism, Brutality In ICE Detention!

🗽👍HUMANITY WINS:  FOOD, SHELTER, REPRESENTATION, TEAMWORK, OVERCOME DeSANTIS’S & ABBOTT’S CRUEL SHENANIGANS! — DeSantis created “a picture of a carefully orchestrated, taxpayer-funded operation with little apparent concern for the interests of the migrants caught in the middle.” 

Beth Reinhard
Beth Reinhard
Investigative Reporter
Washington Post
PHOTO: WashPost Website
Maria Sacchetti
Maria Sacchetti
Immigration Reporter, Washington Post
Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Immigration Reporter
Washington Post
PHOTO: WashPost Website

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/25/desantis-perla-migrant-flight-marthas-vineyard/

This WashPost article by , and sets forth in detail how the courage and perserverance of asylum seekers, the humanity and initiative of the local community in Martha’s Vineyard, timely assistance by the Massachusetts Government, and heroic efforts by pro bono lawyers, came together  to  “redirect” the cruelty behind nativist GOP Govs’ idiotic political stunt. 

. . . .

Nearly two weeks later, though, Jose is one of dozens of migrants who now question Perla’s efforts to entice them onto a flight that unexpectedly ended on the wealthy island of Martha’s Vineyard — a political operation engineered by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to gin up outrage over the United States’ border crisis.

Much remains unknown about the effort. While DeSantis has embraced his role in staging the flight, arguing that it protected Florida from “negative ramifications” of a border crossing surge, his office has been less clear about the purpose of nearly $1.6 million paid to a contractor, according to state records, and the role of state officials in developing the plan.

But Post interviews with several migrants directly recruited by Perla, as well as court documents and state records, paint a picture of a carefully orchestrated, taxpayer-funded operation with little apparent concern for the interests of the migrants caught in the middle. Florida officials began researching Texas’s migrant situation weeks before the flights, and a contractor with ties to the DeSantis administration later handled the efforts. Some migrants, meanwhile, say they were misled into signing documents after being lured into the trip with food and hotel stays.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Imagine what could be accomplished if Texas and Florida officials actually worked to HELP resettle individuals in an orderly and reasonable manner that recognized their humanity and respected and facilitated their legal rights to apply for asylum and other protections in the US? What if the Biden Administration actually brought in a team of qualified experts to lead and operate our existing refugee and asylum systems fairly and effectively instead of using stale approaches and personnel who simply lack the skills, vision, and courage to get the job done?

Fortunately, the asylum seekers, NGOs, and state and local officials, and ordinary citizens in welcoming American communities have stepped up to get the job done notwithstanding the glaring failures and counterproductive efforts of the previously-mentioned groups!

The preposterous attempt by DeSantis to link “sanctuary” with asylum seekers! Loosely speaking, “sanctuary jurisdictions” are those that have declined to voluntarily cooperate with certain ICE enforcement activities, primarily directed at so-called “civil” immigration enforcement. 

But, the Venezuelan asylum seekers “orbited” to Martha’s Vineyard had all been examined by DHS and released to pursue their legal requests for asylum in the US! Indeed, most probably turned themselves in to DHS Enforcement after being forced to cross illegally to present claims that the U.S. Government (with the connivence of GOP state Attorneys General and biased right wing Federal Judges) has refused to accept at legal ports of entry as they are supposed to do under our laws. 

These individuals are NOT “wanted” by ICE enforcement. There is no connection whatsoever between any “sanctuary jurisdiction’s” decision not to cooperate with ICE enforcement in rounding up certain individuals for possible deportation and legal asylum seekers from Venezuela (or any other country) pursuing their claims, beyond the fact that sanctuary jurisdictions value human dignity and are more welcoming to migrants of all types and statuses when called upon to provide assistance to them.

Venezuelan asylum seekers are part of the larger forced exodus of 6-7 million Venezuelans escaping the repression of the Maduro regime. 95% of these forced migrants have found refuge in countries OTHER than the U.S. Colombia is the largest destination country with at least 1.7 million Venezuelans, many times more than the U.S.

The vast majority of Venezuelans have found refugee in countries far poorer and less able to resettle them than the U.S. The idea that “sanctuary policies” of Martha’s Vineyard or any other U.S. jurisdiction is driving Venezuelan asylum seekers is beyond absurd. Indeed, it now appears that the Venezuelan asylum seekers “orbited” to Martha’s vineyard as part of the DeSantis scheme neither knew where it was nor had any idea they were being sent there until they were well on their way! 

Indeed, the decision to  send these individuals to an island with neither a DHS Office nor an Immigration Court (as opposed to, say, resettling them in Boston with advance notice), and with few “own site” pro bono lawyers, actually undermined their ability to comply with legal requirements and squandered resources that could and should have been put into getting timely and fair adjudications of their legal asylum applications. But, even in the face of GOP-led efforts to create maximum chaos, these legal asylum seekers and their supporters are committed to making our legal system work — against all odds! 

Finally, congrats to Molly Hennessy-Fiske, long time LA Times immigration reporter who has now joined the team at WashPost!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-26-22

Related posts:

  1. 🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. 🤮🤯🏴‍☠️👎🏽GARLAND’S DOJ GOES “FULL MILLER LITE” ON TRAUMATIZED REFUGEE FAMILIES! — Some Dem “Strategists” Like New Policy: Dis Progressives, Abandon Campaign Promises, Trash Vulnerable Migrant Families Of Color In Hopes Of Appeasing White Nationalist GOP Nativists!
  4. ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”

🤯 OUTRAGE BOILS OVER AT MERRICK GARLAND’S  “MILLERESQUE” WAR ON DUE PROCESS AT EOIR & HIS GROTESQUE MISMANAGEMENT OF IMMIGRATION COURTS! — Garland Might Be A Greater Threat To Our Democracy Than DeSantis and Abbott!

Jason Dzubow
Jason Dzubow
The Asylumist

The latest report on Garland’s accelerating disaster @ EOIR from Jason Dzubow, “The Asylumist:”

https://www.asylumist.com/2022/09/21/due-process-disaster-in-immigration-court/

Due Process Disaster in Immigration Court

It is not easy to convey the magnitude of the ongoing disaster at EOIR, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the office that oversees our nation’s Immigration Courts. Simply stated, the agency is rescheduling and advancing hundreds–maybe thousands–of cases without notifying attorneys, checking whether we are available to attend the hearings or checking whether we have the capacity to complete the cases.

On its face, this appears to be a mere scheduling problem. But in effect, it is a vicious and unprecedented assault on immigrants, their attorneys, and due process of law.

pastedGraphic.png

“Advancing hearings with no notice and no time to prepare? Why didn’t I think of that?!”

For me at least, the problem started small. A few cases were rescheduled and advanced without anyone at the Immigration Court bothering to inquire about my availability: Your case that was scheduled for two years in the future has been advanced and is now set for two months in the future. I was angry and upset, but I did not want to let my clients down. So I set other work obligations aside. I set family time aside. I put off doctors appointments. And I completed the cases, which were approved. I hoped that these cases were anomalies and that EOIR would stop this unfair and abusive practice. But that was not to be.

Instead, EOIR has dramatically expanded its effort to reschedule cases, often without providing sufficient notice–or any notice–to get the work done for our clients. As best as we can tell, the problem is occurring in California, Colorado, Maryland, and Virginia. I myself have had about a dozen cases rescheduled and advanced (so far). These cases had been scheduled for 2023 or 2024, and suddenly, they are now set for the fall of 2022. Other attorneys have had 20, 30 or more cases advanced, including some that were double booked. One lawyer reported having seven cases scheduled for the same week and 47 cases set for one month. Another lawyer purportedly told a judge that if she had one more case scheduled within the next six months, she would commit suicide.

Here, I want to break down what is happening, so noncitizens in Immigration Court can at least have some idea about EOIR’s disruptive practices.

First, when I say that EOIR is not providing notice of the hearings, that is not entirely accurate. They are not sending us a notice or contacting us in advance. Instead, they are posting the new hearing dates on our portal. What does this mean? Each attorney has access to a portal page with a calendar. We can scroll through the calendar one month at a time. Days with hearings are highlighted, and we can click on those days to see what is scheduled. When I review my calendar, I often find new hearings that were not previously on the schedule. The only way to know whether a new hearing has been scheduled is to scroll through our portals month-by-month and compare what’s there with our existing calendar–a burdensome process that leaves plenty of room to overlook a date. Needless to say, every time I sign on to the portal, I feel a nauseous sense of dread about what I might find.

Once we discover the new date, we need to review the file, contact the client, and determine whether we can complete the case. This all takes time. If we cannot complete the case, or we do not have an attorney available on the scheduled date, we need to ask for a continuance. Of course, clients who have been waiting years for a decision usually want to keep the earlier hearing date. They do not understand why we cannot complete the work or why we are not available that day. Their perspective is perfectly reasonable, but they only have one case, where lawyers have many and we are daily being ambushed by EOIR with additional work. All this can result in conflicts between clients (who want their cases heard) and lawyers (who need time to get the work done). It also makes it difficult to serve our other clients, who must be pushed aside to accommodate the new work randomly being dumped on us.

Even if the client agrees to request a continuance, that does not solve the problem. Motions to continue can be denied. Even when they are granted, the judges tend to reset the date for only a few weeks in the future, which is often not enough time to properly complete the work. Other times, judges simply do not rule on the motion, so we are left to prepare the case, not knowing whether it will go forward or not.

Also, while we sometimes discover a new date that is a few months in the future (and so in theory, we might have time to do the work), other times, the new date is only a few weeks in the future. Since the evidence, witness list, and legal brief are due at least 15 days before the hearing, and since even a “simple” asylum case takes 20 or 30 hours to prepare, this is not nearly enough time. Worse, some cases are randomly advanced and placed on the docket after the evidence is due, and so by the time we have “notice” of the case, our evidence is already late.

Adding insult to injury, another common problem is that cases are still being cancelled at the last minute. And so we drop everything to prepare a case, only to have it postponed once all the work is done. Since this is all utterly unpredictable, it is impossible to prioritize our work or advise our clients.

Again, if this were only a few cases, attorneys could set aside other work and get the job done. But lawyers who do immigration law tend to have many cases, and we are seeing dozens and dozens of cases advanced with no notice. This is such a blatant and obvious abuse of due process that it is impossible to believe it is accidental. I might have expected this policy from the Trump Administration, which was hell-bent on restricting immigration by any means necessary. But as it turns out, President Biden’s EOIR is far worse than President Trump’s. Indeed, the current level of callousness would make even Stephen Miller blush.

The solution to these problems is so basic that it should not need to be said, but here it is anyway: EOIR should stop advancing and rescheduling cases without notice and without consideration for whether we have time to complete the work. Unless something changes, we can expect many noncitizens to be unfairly denied protection, immigration attorneys will leave the profession (or worse), and EOIR will become illegitimate. Let us hope that sanity and decency will soon return to the Immigration Courts.

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

Ever wonder why Dems struggle to govern and often lose elections they should win?  This is a pretty good example of how the Biden Administration, through cowardice, ignorance, arrogance, and failure to prioritize racial justice and immigrant justice are “shooting themselves in the foot, over and over!”

They are going into midterms where every vote counts. They need “all hands on board” in the human rights community to help bail them out of the gross failures of the White House, Garland, and Mayorkas to reestablish a fair, efficient, and properly robust system for legally admitting refugees and processing asylum claims at the borders and the interior. This, in turn, has empowered disingenuous nativists like DeSantis and Abbott to “play games with human lives.” 

But, the Biden Administration “strategy” is to do everything possible to offend and drive a wedge between them and some of their most loyal and important groups of supporters — the immigration, human rights, and racial justice communities. (Make no mistake: The ongoing disaster at Garland’s EOIR disproportionally targets individuals of color.)

Garland seems to be impervious to his self-inflicted disaster at EOIR.  I think that advocates are going to have to sue to bring his “Stephen Miller Lite” travesty of justice at EOIR to a grinding halt. Those are resources that could and should be used to help asylum seekers “orbited” around the country by DeSantis and Abbott. 

I, for one, have been saying for a long time that Garland’s unfathomably horrible performance at EOIR is a threat to our entire justice system and to the future of our nation. Sadly, every day, Garland proves me right!

The real shame: It was all so preventable with just a modicum of competence and backbone from our failing AG!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever! Merrick Garland’s deadly Clown Courts 🤡, Never!

PWS

09-21-22

Related posts:

  1. EOIR TARGETS UNACCOMPANIED KIDS FOR DEPORATION RAILROAD!
  2. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  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.”

THE GIBSON REPORT — 09-19-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — LITIGATION: Avalanche Of Circuit Reversals Hits Garland’s “Star Chambers!”

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

pastedGraphic.png

 

Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • ◦NEWS
  • ◦LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • ◦RESOURCES
  • ◦EVENTS

 

NEWS

 

Mexico Officials Abused 47% of Migrants Awaiting US Asylum

Bloomberg: Nearly half of US-asylum seekers returned to Mexico under the “remain-in-Mexico” program to await a US immigration court hearing said they’d been abused by local officials, according to a Human Rights First report released Thursday. See also Biden urges Mexico to take migrants under COVID expulsion order he promised to end.

 

FY 2022 Seeing Rapid Increase in Immigration Court Completions

TRAC: Immigration Court case completions have been rapidly increasing. During the first eleven months of FY 2022. Immigration Judges have closed over 375,000 cases — a historical record. If the pace continues, closures should top more than 400,000 by the end of the fiscal year. This is nearly three times as many case closures as last year. It is also roughly 50 percent higher than the previous high in FY 2019 during the Trump administration.

 

Migrant Crisis Puts N.Y. ‘Right to Shelter’ Law to the Test

NYT: Mr. McGuire cited the city’s failure on Monday to offer beds to 60 migrants who arrived at the men’s intake facility on East 30th Street in Manhattan, where homeless men are assessed when they first enter the shelter system — the first major such lapse in over a decade.

 

Thousands of Migrants Are Arriving in El Paso. They Have Nowhere to Sleep.

Vice: Since the beginning of September, over 1,100 migrants have been arriving every day in El Paso, more than 90 percent of them from Venezuela, according to the city’s CBP authorities. The influx has completely overwhelmed the city’s immigration shelters, and since most have no U.S. sponsor—support to get a visa to stay lawfully in the U.S.—immigration authorities have to release nearly 500 migrants a day into the streets of El Paso. And about 1,000 stay there to sleep every night.

 

Migrants Flown to Martha’s Vineyard Say They Were Misled

NYT: A fleet of buses arrived at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Edgartown on Friday morning to ferry about 50 migrants — many of them dazed and a bit confused, but happy to be in the United States at last — to Joint Base Cape Cod, a temporary shelter. See also Texas sends another busload of migrants to Kamala Harris’s home; POLITICO Playbook: Breaking down DeSantis’ migrant stunt; DeSantis Flying Migrants to Martha’s Vineyard Is Part of a 60-Year-Old Segregationist Playbook.

 

The majority of Americans think migrants are ‘invading’ the U.S. Meanwhile, suffering at the border continues.

America: A majority of Americans—52 percent—now believe the nation is experiencing an “invasion” on the southern border, and 49 percent say that migrants are responsible for an uptick in U.S. drug overdoses because they are transporting fentanyl and other drugs.

 

Immigrants Keep Getting Lied To By Human Smugglers On Platforms Like Facebook, WhatsApp, and TikTok

BuzzFeed: The Tech Transparency Project found that human smugglers advertise their services on Facebook Marketplace and in local buy-sell groups, with third-party ads for bona fide businesses embedded within the posts that allow Facebook to make money every time a potential immigrant looks for smuggling services on the platform. Some of the listings even featured an ad for a scholarship run by Meta.

 

‘Never sleeps, never even blinks’: the hi-tech Anduril towers spreading along the US border

Guardian: Funded by Trump supporter Peter Thiel, the autonomous surveillance towers can detect a human from 2.8km away.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

EOIR Final Rule on Limited Representation of Pro Se Individuals

AILA: EOIR final rule on limited representation of pro se individuals, which permits practitioners to provide document assistance to pro se individuals by entering a limited appearance through new Forms EOIR-60 or EOIR-61. The rule is effective 11/14/22.

 

CA2 on Evidence: Santiaguez v. Garland

LexisNexis: In denying his petition for CAT relief, the agency acknowledged that Santiaguez is an indigenous gay man and LGBT activist and that there is widespread violence against members of the LGBT community throughout Mexico. Nonetheless, the agency concluded that Santiaguez failed to satisfy his burden for CAT relief because he did not establish a likelihood that Mexican authorities would either torture him directly or acquiesce to his torture by private actors. In reaching this conclusion, the agency erred in several respects.

 

2nd Circ. Says Mexican Father Was Wrongly Denied Witnesses

Law360: The Second Circuit on Thursday revived a Mexico native’s bid to cancel his deportation on grounds that his children would experience extreme hardship without him, saying he should have been allowed live witness testimony to support his case.

 

3rd Circ. Finds Judge Stymied Asylum Seeker’s Right To Atty

Law360: The Third Circuit on Thursday in a precedential opinion resurrected a Dominican man’s request for asylum, finding that the lower courts interfered with his right to an attorney by denying a request to reschedule a hearing so that the lawyer he retained just 24 hours before would be better prepared.

 

CA4 On Corroboration: Garcia Rogel V. Garland

LexisNexis: One of those circumstances requiring review by a three member panel is when the IJ’s decision “is not in conformity with the law or with applicable precedents.” 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(6)(iii). Petitioner’s appeal of the IJ’s decision therefore should have been adjudicated by a three member panel of the BIA. … In conclusion, we grant the petition for review so that the IJ may reconsider the police report in light of In re Arreguin de Rodriguez, 21 I. & N. Dec. 38 (B.I.A. 1995).

 

6th Circ. Says BIA Ruling Has Its Hands Tied In Asylum Case

Law360: A split Sixth Circuit appellate panel has denied the asylum bid of a Salvadoran couple fleeing the gang MS-13, saying the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals did not err when it found the couple had not shown the Salvadoran authorities were incapable of protecting them from the gang.

 

Split 9th Circ. Revives Indian Man’s Asylum Bid

Law360: The Board of Immigration Appeals did not go through with an analysis that would have shown an Indian man was persecuted for his political affiliation, a split Ninth Circuit panel ruled Wednesday in reviving the man’s asylum bid.

 

9th Circuit Revives Mexican Man’s Bid To Avoid Deportation

Law360: The Ninth Circuit on Friday held that a Mexican man who was tortured and harassed in his home country should get another shot at avoiding deportation, ruling that the Board of Immigration Appeals erred in how it went about overturning an immigration judge’s decision in the man’s favor.

 

CA9 on Standard of Review: Chavez-Escamilla v. Garland

LexisNexis: The BIA failed to correctly apply the clearly erroneous standard. While the BIA indicated disagreement with the IJ’s findings, it did not explain why the IJ’s decision was illogical, implausible, or without support. … Clear error review requires the BIA to “explain how these alleged errors showed lack of logic, plausibility, or support in the record on the part of the IJ.”

 

11th Circ. Says Private Dispute Doesn’t Support Asylum Bid

Law360: The Eleventh Circuit on Tuesday denied a petition from a Honduran man seeking asylum over claims that narcotics traffickers targeted his family, saying the dispute with the traffickers stemmed from a private “vendetta,” making him ineligible for asylum to avoid persecution.

 

Notice of Potential Class Membership, Al Otro Lado v. Mayorkas (PDF, 212.97 KB)

USCIS: This notice is intended to provide information for individuals who (1) may be an AOL PI Class Member; (2) had the “third-country transit rule” applied to their immigration case; (3) were ordered removed from the U.S. under an “expedited removal order”; and (4) currently reside in the United States.

 

Notice Of Appeal From A Decision Of An Immigration Judge – Comments Requested

EOIR: As part of EOIR’s “Access EOIR” initiative, the agency is seeking to revise its Form EOIR-26, Notice of Appeal from a Decision of an Immigration Judge, to include a section for unrepresented respondents to consent to have their case be considered for inclusion in the BIA Pro Bono Project.

 

USCIS 30-Day Notice and Request for Comments on New Version of e-Request Tool

AILA: USCIS 30-day notice and request for comments on a new version of USCIS’s e-Request Tool. Comments are due 10/17/22. (87 FR 56968, 9/16/22)

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

 

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.

 

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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

Avalanche
Merrick Garland ignores the existential threat from the avalanche of dangerous and defective decisions by his Trump holdover BIA. But, the rest of us see exactly what’s happening.
PHOTO: Creative Commons

I count no fewer than seven Circuit rejections of wrong-headed BIA decisions in Elizabeth’s report this week. The legal incompetence of EOIR under Garland is astounding! 

Disturbingly, several reversals involve outrageous denials of routine continuances. Garland runs a system where cases languish for years, sometimes decades, because of poor judicial decisions and inept docket management by EOIR. Yet, some IJ’s and the BIA are “programmed” to deny well-justified continuances in clear violation of Due Process. What a disgrace!

Garland has failed miserably to bring enough well-qualified judges and competent administrators into his dysfunctional Immigration Courts. Yet, he wanders around America giving clueless speeches about the wonders of the American justice system and the greatness of immigrants!

Meanwhile, a nationwide rebellion among practitioners is brewing against Garland’s latest round of mindless, due-process-denying “Aimless Docket Reshuffling.” It’s going to take more than a few cosmetic “regional stakeholder meetings” to get things back on track at EOIR. Everyone except Garland and his lieutenants knows that!

And, the continuing meltdown at EOIR helps “fuel” disgraceful stunts by nativist racists like DeSantis and Abbott.

🇺🇸 DUE PROCESS FOREVER!

PWS

09-18-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 09-96-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — CAIR Seeks Examples Of “IJs using [boilerplate] and engaging in little/no actual legal analysis in a particular case.” — NIJC Looking For “PD Stories” — Many Helpful Practice Advisories & Alerts!
  2. 🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸WHO’S JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts! — Coming April 7, 2021! — Sponsored By The HNBA! — Don’t Miss It!
  3. ⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 07-11-22 —  Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC — Glimpses Of Some Failing Righty Federal Judges & An Administration That Lacks A Bold Plan For Improving Immigration, Human Rights, & Racial Justice, Particularly @ EOIR!
  4. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️

🤯 ASTOUNDING HEIGHTS OF HYPOCRISY! — Garland Praises Rule Of Law, Equal Justice, & Immigrants While Running Biased, Unconstitutional, Dysfunctional, Backlogged Immigration “Courts” That Trample All Three! — There’s Not Much That’s “Fair” Or “Equal” In Garland’s “Star Chambers!”

Star Chamber Justice
A.G. Merrick Garlands gratitude to America for accepting his family doesn’t extend to those suffering injustice in his wholly owned “Immigration Courts” — still churning our “Trump-era” restrictionist nonsense and “managed” in a way that promotes maximum dysfunction and inefficiency!

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-merrick-b-garland-administers-oath-allegiance-and-delivers

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Administers the Oath of Allegiance and Delivers Congratulatory Remarks at Ellis Island Ceremony in Celebration of Constitution Week and Citizenship Day

New York, NY ~ Saturday, September 17, 2022

Remarks as Delivered

It is my great honor to welcome you as the newest citizens of the United States of America. Congratulations!  Please be seated.

Just now, each of you took an oath of allegiance to the United States. In so doing, you took your place alongside generations who came before you, many through this very building, seeking protection, freedom, and opportunity.

This country – your country – wholeheartedly welcomes you.

I know that you have made sacrifices in order to be here today. You should be proud of all you have accomplished. I am proud of you.

You have made the decision to become Americans not only at an important time in our country’s history, but on an important day.

It was 235 years ago on this day, September 17, 1787, that 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention representing 12 states signed their names to the Constitution of the United States.

Like you, those who signed the Constitution were relatively new Americans. In fact, America had only existed for 11 years at that point.

Like you, those Americans had great hopes for their own future – and for the future of their new country.

In the preamble of the Constitution, those Americans enumerated those hopes: to form a more perfect union; establish justice; ensure domestic tranquility; provide for the common defense; promote the general welfare …

And importantly – in their words – “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Like them, each of you has now made a commitment not only to this nation and your fellow Americans, but to the generations of Americans who will come after you.

In that commitment, you have given your posterity – and the posterity of all of us – a precious gift.

I know how valuable that gift is because it is the same one my grandparents gave my family and me.

I come from a family of immigrants who fled religious persecution early in the 20th Century and sought refuge here in the United States. Some of my family entered right here, at Ellis Island.

My grandmother was one of five children born in what is now Belarus. Three made it to the United States, including my grandmother who came through the Port of Baltimore.

Two did not make it. Those two were killed in the Holocaust.

If not for America, there is little doubt that the same would have happened to my grandmother.

But this country took her in. And under the protection of our laws, she was able to live without fear of persecution.

I am also married to the daughter of an immigrant who came through the Port of New York in 1938.

Shortly after Hitler’s army entered Austria that year, my wife’s mother escaped to the United States. Under the protection of our laws, she too, was able to live without fear of persecution.

That protection is what distinguishes America from so many other countries. The protection of law – the Rule of Law – is the foundation of our system of government.

The Rule of Law means that the same laws apply to all of us, regardless of whether we are this country’s newest citizens or whether our [families] have been here for generations.

The Rule of Law means that the law treats each of us alike: there is not one rule for friends, another for foes; one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless; a rule for the rich, another for the poor; or different rules, depending upon one’s race or ethnicity or country of origin.

The Rule of Law means that we are all protected in the exercise of our civil rights; in our freedom to worship and think as we please; and in the peaceful expression of our opinions, our beliefs, and our ideas.

Of course, we still have work to do to make a more perfect union. Although the Rule of Law has always been our guiding light, we have not always been faithful to it.

The Rule of Law is not assured. It is fragile. It demands constant effort and vigilance.

The responsibility to ensure the Rule of Law is and has been the duty of every generation in our country’s history. It is now your duty as well. And it is one that is especially urgent today at a time of intense polarization in America.

The United States is no stranger to what our Founders called the risk of faction. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote about it in the Federalist Papers. George Washington warned against it in his Farewell Address.

Overcoming the current polarization in our public life is, and will continue to be, a difficult task.

But we cannot overcome it by ignoring it. We must address the fractures in our society with honesty, with humility, and with respect for the Rule of Law.

This demands that we tolerate peaceful disagreement with one another on issues of politics and policy. It demands that we listen to each other, even when we disagree. And it demands that we reject violence and threats of violence that endanger each other and endanger our democracy.

We must not allow the fractures between us to fracture our democracy.

We are all in this together. We are all Americans.

On this historic day and in this historic place, let us make a promise that each of us will protect each other and our democracy.

That we will honor and defend our Constitution.

That we will recognize and respect the dignity of our fellow Americans.

That we will uphold the Rule of Law and seek to make real the promise of equal justice under law.

That we will do what is right, even if that means doing what is difficult.

And that we will do these things not only for ourselves, but for the generations of Americans who will come after us.

I have often thought about what members of my family felt as they came through buildings like this. And I have often thought about what their decisions meant for my own life.

My family story is what motivated me to choose a career in public service. I wanted to repay my country for taking my family in when they had nowhere else to go. I wanted to repay the debt my family owes this country for our very lives.

My family members who immigrated here have now long since passed. I regret that I cannot express to them how grateful I am for the gift they gave me in choosing to come to this country.

So let me thank each of you.

Thank you for choosing America as your home. Thank you for the courage, dedication and work that has brought you here.

Thank you for all you will do to help our country live up to its highest ideals.

Thank you on behalf of a nation that is fortunate to call you as its citizens.

And thank you upon on behalf of the generations of Americans who will come after you. Thank you.

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

The man lives in a “reality-free bubble” on the 5th Floor of DOJ. He must also “tune out” the many Circuit Court decisions lambasting the BIA’s sloppy decisions, anti-due-process “culture,” and wrong anti-immigrant legal rulings issued in his name. He seems incapable of understanding how the unfathomable mess he presides over at EOIR affects the health and welfare of those practicing before it!

I’m curious as to how denying access to counsel, denying reasonable continuances, failing to follow precedent, using improper “one judge” review, intentionally misconstruing “notice” statutes, and applying legally incorrect standards, all subjects of recent Circuit “blowbacks,” fit into Garland’s view of equal justice for immigrants in America. How does “Aimless Docket Reshuffling on steroids” fit in with his concept of due process and professional court administration?

Know a man not by his words, but by his deeds. In Garland’s case, it’s an ugly picture.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-29-22

Related posts:

  1. 🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸WHO’S JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts! — Coming April 7, 2021! — Sponsored By The HNBA! — Don’t Miss It!
  2. ⚖️🗽SATURDAY MINI-ESSAY: ONE TINY STEP FOR MANKIND: But It’s Going To Take Much More Than Finally Replacing A Few Stunningly Unqualified Judges To Save EOIR!
  3. 🏴‍☠️👎🏻🤮“HOUSTON, WE’VE STILL GOT A PROBLEM!” — A HUGE AND GROWING ONE — Garland’s Failure To Restore “Justice @ Justice” Reverberates Throughout Our Nation!🆘
  4. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️

THE GIBSON REPORT — 09-12-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney. NIJC — How Bogus Are CBP “Apprehension Stats?”

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

pastedGraphic.png

 

Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • ◦NEWS
  • ◦LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • ◦RESOURCES
  • ◦EVENTS

 

PRACTICE UPDATES

 

USCIS Releases Revised Editions of Forms I-589 and I-765

USCIS: USCIS released the revised editions of Form I-589 and Form I-765 in compliance with the Asylumworks decision. Effective Nov. 7, 2022, USCIS will only accept the 07/26/22 editions of the Form I-589 and Form I-765. Until then, you can submit either the new editions, or the previous editions of Form I-589 (dated 08/25/20) and Form I-765 (dated 05/31/22 and 08/25/20).

 

NEWS

 

Texas Says 10,000 Migrants Have Been Bused to Democratic Cities

Bloomberg: Abbott said Friday that the state has bused more than 7,900 people to Washington in the past five months, sent 2,200 to New York and 300 to Chicago. See also Inside Migrants’ Journeys on Greg Abbott’s Free Buses to Washington; Attack on asylum seeker in New York sparks outrage over conditions. (If you’re curious how conservative media is playing this: Chicago mayor accused of ‘hypocrisy’ for sending migrants to GOP suburb.)

 

Most Border Patrol Apprehensions are for Repeat Crossers, But Agency Data Doesn’t Yet Provide the Full Picture

TRAC:  Using detailed government records, TRAC found that the percent of Border Patrol (BP) apprehensions that comprise repeat border crossers did not significantly increase when, under Title 42 , illegal border crossers were not penalized or sanctioned before they were expelled. This finding, based on data obtained from the Border Patrol by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, is contrary to agency contentions and arguments by policy analysts that immediate expulsions without applying meaningful sanctions such as criminal prosecution to repeat crossers encourages illegal reentry attempts.

 

Republicans and Democrats have different top priorities for U.S. immigration policy

Pew: Republicans place particular importance on border security and deportations of immigrants who are in the country illegally, while Democrats place greater importance on paths to legal status for those who entered the country illegally – especially those who entered as children, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

 

DHS unwinds Trump-era ‘public charge’ rule for immigrants

Politico: The new law unravels the Trump-era public-charge rule, under which immigrants could be denied permanent resident status if they had received or were expected to receive food assistance, Medicaid, housing assistance, or other public benefits. The Biden administration in stopped enforcing that regulation in March 2021.

 

ICE violated federal law by holding migrant teens in adult custody

Sentinel: Following a ruling that transferring migrant kids to adult detention centers just as they turned age 18 was illegal, a federal judge approved a settlement in a 2018 lawsuit this week.

 

‘Scary and chilling’: AI surveillance takes U.S. prisons by storm

Reuters: Beginning in 2019, Suffolk County was an early pilot site for the Verus AI-scanning system sold by California-based LEO Technologies, which uses Amazon speech-to-text technology to transcribe phone calls flagged by key word searches… Suffolk County is among dozens of county jails and state prisons in seven U.S. states including major metro areas such as Houston, Texas, and Birmingham, Alabama, that LEO says have so far implemented the Verus system to monitor inmates’ calls.

 

Deported veterans who returned to US face uncertain futures

RollCall: A Biden administration initiative brought them back to America under a temporary immigration status that expires after a year.

 

USCIS Has Used Nearly All Available Employment-Based Immigrant Visas for FY2022

JDSupra: This is a significant accomplishment for the agency because it approved approximately twice the annual allocation of employment-based immigrant visas in fiscal year 2022 (FY22).

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

3rd Circ. Tosses Salvadoran Man’s Deportation Review Bid

Law360: A Salvadoran man convicted of marijuana possession cannot overcome removal requirements of the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act through a waiver found in a 1952 immigration law, the Third Circuit ruled Friday, denying his petition for review of a deportation order.

 

5th Circ. Says Guatemalan’s Stepkids Can’t Stop Deportation

Law360: The Fifth Circuit on Friday rejected a Guatemalan man’s bid to cancel his deportation on the basis that it would cause his stepchildren extreme hardship, saying he didn’t provide evidence strong enough to prove they were U.S. citizens.

 

9th Circ. Says High Court Ruling Limits Detainee Bond

Law360: The Ninth Circuit ruled Thursday that immigrants challenging deportation orders from mandatory detention aren’t entitled to bond hearings while the federal courts review the orders, citing a recent high court ruling at odds with a prior circuit decision allowing bond.

 

Final Settlement Approved In Lawsuit On Unlawful Detention Of Unaccompanied Youth

NIJC: A federal court approved a settlement agreement on September 7 in a lawsuit challenging the unlawful detention of unaccompanied children who turn 18 in U.S. government custody and are transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities.

 

Immigration Judges Say the FLRA Made Up Rules to Decertify Union

GovExec: In its appeal in federal circuit court, the National Association of Immigration Judges accused the Federal Labor Relations Authority’s then-Republican majority of already deciding to decertify the union before considering arguments in the case.

 

Final Rule: Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility

DHS: The rule restores the historical understanding of a ‘public charge’ that had been in place for decades, until the prior Administration began to consider supplemental public health benefits such as Medicaid and nutritional assistance as part of the public charge inadmissibility determination.

 

DHS Notice of Extension of Venezuela for TPS

AILA: DHS notice extending the designation of Venezuela for TPS for 18 months, from 9/10/22 through 3/10/24. The 60-day re-registration period for existing TPS beneficiaries runs from 9/8/22 through 11/7/22. (87 FR 55024, 9/8/22)

 

EOIR Memo: Credible Fear and Asylum Procedures

EOIR: This memorandum summarizes certain key provisions of the interim final rule and provides guidance on the new streamlined removal proceedings.

 

EOIR to Relocate Arlington Immigration Court, EOIR to Open Sterling Immigration Court

EOIR: The Arlington Immigration Court will end normal operations at noon on October 6, 2022, to prepare for the court’s relocation to Annandale.

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

 

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added.

 

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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

Sure looks like CBP is “apprehending” the same individuals multiple times. Also, many of these  so-called “apprehensions” want to be “caught” because it’s the only possible way of getting the chance to apply for asylum that our law guarantees, but fails to provide in practice. That’s because ports of entry are still “closed” under bogus Title 42 restrictions. So, the overhyped “border apprehensions” appear, to a significant extent, to be “smoke and mirrors.”

It’s really not surprising that “sanctions” apparently don’t deter unlawful entries. That’s because 1) the vast majority of unlawful entrants aren’t “criminals” in any normal sense of the word except in the mind of  White Nationalist xenophobes, 2) many are just trying to get the Government to follow the law and let them apply for asylum, or other legal protections, and 3) even those without credible claims for protection are, for the most part, at worst, just coming here to work at jobs that U.S. workers don’t want.

Jeff Session’s racist “zero tolerance program” of useless border prosecutions violated the Constitution by intentionally separating families, cost the Government millions, ruined lives, squandered prosecutorial resources that should have been spent on real crime, and accomplished absolutely nothing positive. Yet, Sessions, his neo-Nazi henchman Stephen Miller, and the government sycophants (including unethical DOJ lawyers) who carried out this travesty remain free and will never be held accountable.

Somehow, GOP nativists have gotten away with turning the self-created border “crisis” upside down. If we cut through their smokescreen, we see that the Government actually is the “law breaker” and many of the “forced irregular entrants” actually are trying to comply with the law! Not to mention that the USG has failed to establish viable refugee programs to process Western Hemisphere refugees before they come to our borders. Pretty kafkaesque! 

Also, the effort by unqualified right-wing Federal “Judges” and neo-fascist GOP state AG’s to close the border to legal asylum seekers is a national disgrace that seems to be “below the radar screen.” Gotta hope that history “toasts” these corrupt, ignorant, and immoral public officials even if there is little interest in holding them accountable in “real time.”

But, somehow, even the so-called “mainstream media” hypes the wrong story!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-14-22

Related posts:

  1. [BUREAU] ‘CRATS CONTINUE TO FLEE SINKING DHS SHIP AS ABUSES, LIES, COVER-UPS MOUNT — John Sanders Latest To Exit — Trump Taps Mark Morgan, Eager Architect Of Administration’s Temporarily Aborted “Community Reign of Terror” (A/K/A/ “Operation Wetback ‘19”) Program As Next Acting CBP Chief — Expect More Mindless Cruelty, Lies, False Narratives, White Nationalist Racism, Violations Of Law & Human Rights!
  2. TRAC: TRUMP DOJ’S “MALICIOUSLY INCOMPETENT POLICIES” SIGNIFICANTLY CONTRIBUTED TO ASTOUNDING 1,346,302 BACKLOG AND 4+ YEAR WAITS FOR HEARINGS — Don’t Let The Villains Blame The Victims & Their Lawyers For This Largely Self-Created Mess!
  3. 👍🏼⚖️🗽MAJORITY OF ASYLUM SEEKERS WIN THEIR CASES, EVEN IN A BROKEN & BIASED  SYSTEM INTENTIONALLY STACKED AGAINST THEM — But, Only, If They Can Get To A “Merits Adjudication!” — Nativist Lies, Myths, Driving USG Policies Exposed! — Why USCIS & EOIR Self-Created Backlogs Primarily Shaft Those Deserving Legal Protection Of Some Type!
  4. THE GIBSON REPORT — 05-13-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

🏴‍☠️🤯👎🏽 CRUMBLING INSTITUTIONS: OF COURSE THE OUT OF TOUCH, POLITICIZED SUPREMES’ GOP MAJORITY IS SHEDDING LEGITIMACY AS THEY IMPLEMENT AN EXTREME FAR-RIGHT POLITICAL AGENDA WITHOUT LEGAL BASIS! — C.J. Roberts’s Incredibly Lame Claim Otherwise Proves It!

John Roberts
His defense of the indefensible went over like a lead balloon with those whose lives have been upended by the radical right Justices’ political agenda!

Every time a GOP politico or media sycophant preferences remarks with “I’m not a racist,” you know that some outrageous racist statement is about to follow. What they are doing is dishonestly attempting to preemptively “shift the blame and focus” to those who call out their vile, dishonest conduct!

Over the weekend, Chief Justice John Roberts, drifted down a similar discredited path of disingenuous “preemptive denial.” In a ludicrously tone deaf statement that echoed Tricky Dick’s “I’m not a crook” speech, Roberts lamely attempted to defend the legitimacy of his Court’s stripping of fundamental human rights from women. In doing so, he basically reinforced critics’ points about the Court’s illegitimate, extralegal, right-wing, political war on individual and human rights with a good bit of misogyny thrown in!

Richard Nixon
Nixon’s “I’m not a crook speech” convinced many that he was, indeed, a crook. Roberts’s “My Court isn’t illegitimate just because it advances a far-right political agenda speech” is heading in the same direction!
PHOTO: Twitter

Never mind that the Court basically aligned itself with authoritarian theocrats promoting “forced birth” and overt subjugation of a woman’s fundamental right to decide whether or not to reproduce. Indeed, advancing that minority political agenda was the fundamental reason why Roberts and his GOP crew are on the Court in the first place! To pretend otherwise is off the wall!

There are some strong moral, societal, economic, and  medical arguments to be made about why women should or should not choose to have children. Under the First Amendment, both those who favor abortion and those who oppose it have always been free to argue their points. 

But, the idea that these choices should be removed from those directly concerned and placed in the hands of political and religious authorities is preposterous. Lacking convincing arguments to persuade all women facing that choice to their side, the far right theocracy did a preemptive strike! And, their “wholly-owned Justices” went along!

Needless to say, Roberts’s insultingly disingenuous defense of the indefensible did not fare well with informed critics. 

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill, now an MSNBC analyist, On Meet the Press:

On Sunday, McCaskill – an MSNBC political analyst – tore into Roberts for taking the country backward and recalled that the jurists who signed onto Alito’s originalist rationalization misled the public during their respective Senate confirmation hearings.

“He’s so so out of touch. I mean really, this interview shows why the numbers for the Supreme Court are so bad. For him to say something like that, he just doesn’t get it. You don’t take away a right that’s been around for 50 years and you don’t have a party go to extremes of trying to make sure rape victims have to have forced birth,” McCaskill said.

“You don’t do that and not have it splash back on the Supreme Court,” she continued. “And they all said they respected precedent when they were confirmed. I heard them. America heard them. Clearly, they didn’t, and you can feel me getting angry at John Roberts right now because he knows better when he says that stuff.”

Professor (and former prosecutor) Joyce White Vance, Professor Leah Litman, Professor Stephen I. Vladeck, Political Scientist Norman Ornstein:

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/claire-mccaskill-john-roberts-roe/

“Roberts’s failure to understand why the court has lost credibility with so many Americans smacks of ‘Let them eat cake,’ ” Joyce White Vance, a former prosecutor and a distinguished professor of the practice of law at the University of Alabama law school, told me. “The Supreme Court has a proud history of defending our rights, not taking them away. The Roberts court will go down in history as the first one” to strip away people’s rights.

University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman said: “I would be embarrassed to say something that naive and divorced from reality if I had said it as a first-year law student. For the chief justice to say it is just an insult to the intellect of everyone who knows anything about the court, American democracy and politics.”

. . .

If Roberts and the conservative bloc were to engage in just a tiny amount of self-reflection, they would understand that their own actions have brought them to this point. Law professor Stephen I. Vladeck, of the University of Texas school of law, asked me rhetorically: “If the court’s legitimacy doesn’t come from public acceptance of the principled nature of its decision-making, where does it come from?”

While Roberts might not have written the most egregious opinions, he has joined in them, from the abortion ruling in Dobbs, to the prayer-in-schools ruling in Bremerton, to a Brnovich decision on voting rights, written by Alito, that “blatantly ignored the plain language of the law and rewrote it to fit his partisan and ideological views,” as political scientist Norman Ornstein told me. Moreover, Ornstein said, it is Roberts who has “ignored Clarence Thomas’s blatant conflicts of interest and continues to oppose applying the judicial code of ethics to the Supreme Court, even as its credibility plummets.”

He concluded: “John G. Roberts Jr. is far from the worst justice undermining the fundamental legitimacy of the court, but he is surely culpable.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/12/roberts-criticism-supreme-court-whining/

Jennifer Rubin, WashPost opinion writer:

The court has failed to regulate itself and instead has abused its power. None of the six right-wing justices acknowledge, nor do they signal they want to halt, the conduct that has lost the public’s confidence.

So it’s up to Congress and the president to shore up the court’s credibility. Allocating more seats to correct the damage done by Sen. Mitch McConnell’s court-packing, imposing term limits on all justices and enacting a mandatory code of ethics would be good places to start.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/12/roberts-criticism-supreme-court-whining/

Eric Lutz in Vanity Fair:

But it’s not just the outcome, which decimated a right Americans had held for five decades and put a variety of other privacy rights in jeopardy. It’s the way that decision — and others on guns, climate change, and religion — recently came to pass.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/09/john-roberts-defends-supreme-court-against-legitimacy-questions

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

In this case, Roberts would have done better to confine himself to “calling balls and strikes.” Sadly, he and his GOP colleagues have gotten out from behind the plate and taken the field in their “Federalist Society” uniforms. He’s going to have to learn to live with objections and catcalls from those in the stands who see what’s really going on here and are understandably upset about the Court’s overreach, substandard legal performance, lack of accountability, absence of self-awareness, and, yes, lack of legitimacy.

Better judges for a better, fairer America — from the Immigration Courts to the Supremes! 

By the way, we can’t change the Supremes overnight. But, Biden, Harris, & Garland COULD have reformed, repaired, and legitimized the Immigration Courts, including the BIA, that they control. That they have failed to do so is the biggest “unforced error” of the Biden Administration — one that will haunt Democrats and Americans for ages! 

Every day Garland’s parody of a court system, still largely bearing the unmistakable stamp of White Nationalists Sessions, Barr and Miller, continues to run roughshod over individual rights, often in life or death cases, while degrading the judicial process. Misogyny and racism are also on full display, as a disproportionate brunt of their unprofessional, wrong-headed, result-oriented “any reason to deny” decision-making falls on refugee women of color (and often on their accompanying children).

There is a very direct connection between “DHS agents in robes” in our Immigration Courts and “right-wing politicos in robes” at the Supremes. Part of the idea is to “normalize” injustice directed at “the other” — just so long as YOUR life isn’t directly affected, who cares? It’s also known as “Dred Scottification.”  It’s the “polar opposite” of Dr. Martin Luther King’s observation that “injustice anywhere is a threat to  justice everywhere.” If Dems don’t “connect the dots,” they might not be able to save our democracy!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-12-22.

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