Kakistocracy – Page 8 – immigrationcourtside.com

BEWARE AMERICA: TRUMP IS USING HIS STUPID & BUNGLED CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE AS THE “REICHSTAG FIRE” THAT WILL BURN UP OUR CONSTITUTION!

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-borders_n_5e6a530ec5b6dda30fc4be6e

Jessica Schulberg reports for HuffPost:

During his first address to the nation on the global coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump characterized COVID-19 as a “foreign virus” while touting his decision to institute travel restrictions with China and announcing plans to close the U.S. to visitors from most of Europe.

Meanwhile, he has been raked by critics — and the markets — for failing to thoroughly explain how the government plans to address the lack of tests and spiking number of cases across the U.S. His administration has for weeks downplayed the threat of the virus, even as experts warned it is on track to spread exponentially.

Trump clearly sees the novel coronavirus as just another foreign invader to keep out — a viewpoint reflected both in his policy proposals and the way he and his administration talk about the virus. This approach is in line with his overarching political strategy of exploiting Americans’ fears to justify racist, nativist policies.

“This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history,” Trump said Wednesday about his administration’s response while blaming the European Union for failing to take steps to prevent contagion. Several European countries have fewer cases of coronavirus per capita than the U.S.

It’s not just Trump. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar repeatedly referred to the disease as the “China coronavirus” during a briefing last month. Anti-immigration zealot Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) — who is in self-quarantineafter being exposed to coronavirus at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland — has gone out of his way to describe the virus as the “Wuhan virus,” a reference to the location of the first outbreak.

When Gosar’s critics argued that the congressman shouldn’t spread racist stereotypes, Rich Lowry, the editor of the right-wing National Review, wrote an entire column insisting the illness be called the “Wuhan virus.” “China deserves to be connected to the virus that it loosed on the world,” he argued.

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For those who don’t know the history, the “Reichstag Fire” in 1933 was a pivotal step in the Nazi’s rise to power in Germany. At the time, Hitler blamed Communists. The actual cause of the fire has since been debated by historians: some say the Nazis started it themselves, while others say that it was an accident, or the act of a single arsonist.

Regardless of cause, all agree on the result. Hitler used it as a pretext to eradicate the constitution, punish the opposition, and place draconian authoritarian measures in place using the fiction of “national security.” This eventually led to the Holocaust and a World War that killed approximately 75 million.

Fact is that the coronavirus isn’t “foreign.” Viruses don’t possess or recognize nationality. Nor was it spread in the U.S. primarily by “foreigners.” Most cases initially reached the U.S. through U.S. citizens who took cruises or traveled abroad after the start of the virus abroad had been publicized.

Mexico, a frequent target of the Trump regime’s racism, has reported fewer than ten confirmed cases of coronavirus, as opposed to over 1,000 in the U.S. The Northern Triangle of Central America also appears to have avoided major outbreaks to date. On the other hand, the illegal and inhumane anti-asylum policies of the regime, as enabled by the Supremes and complicit Article III Courts, appear to present a realistic danger of spreading the virus to all of those countries which are ill-equipped to handle it.

The market as well as all medical experts recognized and reacted negatively to the idiocy of Trump’s Oval Office speech. The U.S. preparation, public education, and actual response to coronavirus has been one of the poorest and most inept in the world to date. To the extent that the U.S. has mitigated the disease, it has been largely the result of decisive actions by State Governors and local officials of both parties, although primarily Democrats, along with universities and sports leagues.

Expect Trump and his White Nationalists to use the danger to our public health that he didn’t cause, yet unnecessarily aggravated, as an excuse for more irrational, cruel, xenophobic, racist attacks on migrants. And, you can expect the “Chief of Complicity,” John Roberts, and his accomplices to continue to help promote Trump’s attack on human decency, truth, and our democratic institutions. John Roberts has never seen a transparently false “emergency” from Trump that he didn’t love or racism or religious bigotry so obvious that he would actually call it what it is.

Incompetent governance by a corrupt, selfish kakistocracy that promotes myths and conspiracy theories over truth, scientific knowledge, and the common good does not cause epidemics. But, it does unnecessarily aggravate them, hinder effective control, and gravely endanger the public health. It simple terms, it kills! Yet another reason why “regime change” in November might be America’s last chance for survival.

The coronavirus has surfaced perhaps the only competent high level official in the entire Trump Administration — Dr. Anthony Fauci. In case you haven’t noticed, there is no resemblance whatsoever between the scientific truth spoken by Dr. Fauci, who paints a honest but grim picture of the Administration’s half-assed efforts to date, and the unadulterated BS and party line spouted by Trump and the second most unqualified individual in the U.S. to handle a pandemic Mike “Super Sycophant” Pence. Talk about a “Confederacy of Dunces!” I’m just surprised that Trump hasn’t fired Fauci yet, given the well-known Trumpian aversion to all things true.

I’ve watched the smirking nitwit Rich Lowry of the National Review (too) many times on the “talking heads” where he is a favorite because he is one of the few Trump apologists who can put two consecutive sentences together in the English Language. Most of what he says is BS, but at least it’s comprehensible and reasonably articulate BS. And, despite the endless smirk, he isn’t as overtly rude and aggressively crude as most Trumpists. Jessica’s article confirmed my already low opinion of Rich. As Rome burns, by all means, let’s pontificate on what we should call the fire.

Still don’t believe we have “malicious incompetents” in charge? Check out the latest from the L.A. Times on how the regime is stiffing states, screwing the poor, and spreading disease and potential death by blocking states from using Medicaid to respond to the coronavirus. https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-03-13/trump-administration-blocks-states-use-medicaid-respond-coronavirus-crisis

It’s never good to be governed by the malicious, stupid, and cruel in a time of crisis. Kakistocracy has consequences!

PWS

02-13-20

MICHELLE GOLDBERG @ NYT: THE ANTIDOTE FOR “DEMOCRACY GRIEF” — Don’t Get Depressed, Don’t “Tune Out” — Get Angry, Get Energized, Get Involved, Work For The Resistance, Join The New Due Process Army!

\https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/opinion/sunday/trump-democracy.html

. . . .

To those who recognize the Trump administration’s official lies as such, the scale of dishonesty can be destabilizing. It’s a psychic tax on the population, who must parse an avalanche of untruths to understand current events. “What’s going on in the government is so extreme, that people who have no history of overwhelming psychological trauma still feel crazed by this,” said Stephanie Engel, a psychiatrist in Cambridge, Mass., who said Trump comes up “very frequently” in her sessions.

Like several therapists I spoke to, Engel said she’s had to rethink how she practices, because she has no clinical distance from the things that are terrifying her patients. “If we continue to present a facade — that we know how to manage this ourselves, and we’re not worried about our grandchildren, or we’re not worried about how we’re going to live our lives if he wins the next election — we’re not doing our patients a service,” she said.

This kind of political suffering is uncomfortable to write about, because liberal misery is the raison d’être of the MAGA movement. When Trumpists mock their enemies for being “triggered,” it’s just a quasi-adult version of the playground bully’s jeer: “What are you going to do, cry?” Anyone who has ever been bullied knows how important it is, at that moment, to choke back tears. In truth, there are few bigger snowflakes than the stars of MAGA world. The Trumpist pundit Dan Bongino is currently suing The Daily Beast for $15 million, saying it inflicted “emotional distress and trauma, insult, anguish,” for writing that NRATV, the National Rifle Association’s now defunct online media arm, had “dropped” him when the show he hosted ended. Still, a movement fueled by sadism will delight in admissions that it has caused pain.

But despair is worth discussing, because it’s something that organizers and Democratic candidates should be addressing head on. Left to fester, it can lead to apathy and withdrawal. Channeled properly, it can fuel an uprising. I was relieved to hear that despite her sometimes overwhelming sense of civic sadness, Landsman’s activism hasn’t let up. She’s been spending a bit less than 20 hours a week on political organizing, and expects to go back to 40 or more after the holidays. “The only other option is to quit and accept it, and I’m not ready to go there yet,” she said. Democracy grief isn’t like regular grief. Acceptance isn’t how you move on from it. Acceptance is itself a kind of death.

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Read the rest of Michelle’s column at the above link.

Join the New Due Process Army and fight to defend our nation, our democracy, and our human values against the malicious incompetence of Trump’s White Nationalist kakistocracy!

PWS

12-16-19

THANKSGIVING WISH: JUSTICE FOR THOSE HELD IN TRUMP’S DEADLY “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” — DHS KID KILLERS: CDC TELLS CBP TO VACCINATE DETAINED MIGRANTS: CBP Chooses To Kill Kids & Spread Disease!

https://apple.news/Ag7KzWmcGSWqY5RAzCSzygg

Robert Moore reports in the WashPost:

CDC recommended that migrants receive flu vaccine, but CBP rejected the idea

EL PASO — As influenza spread through migrant detention facilities last winter, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that U.S. Customs and Border Protection vaccinate detained migrants against the virus, a push that CBP rejected, according to a newly released letter to Congress.

The CDC recommendation was revealed in a letter from the agency to Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the CDC. The agency’s director, Robert Redfield, issued the letter Nov. 7 in response to questions DeLauro posed last month after the flu had taken a toll on migrants in U.S. custody during the past year.

An 8-year-old Guatemalan boy died of the flu while being detained near El Paso in December, a month before the CDC’s vaccination recommendation. In the months after CBP rejected the recommendation, at least two children — one in El Paso and one in Weslaco, Tex. — died after being diagnosed with the flu in Border Patrol custody, autopsy reports showed. Influenza outbreaks in Border Patrol detention facilities continued through May, sickening hundreds of people, including agents and detainees.

DeLauro said CBP’s continuing refusal to provide flu vaccines to detained migrants is “unconscionable,” especially given Trump administration policies and migrant influxes that at times have caused U.S. facilities to be significantly overcrowded.

“CDC’s recommendations are clear: flu vaccines should be administered to people as soon as possible to prevent the spread of this deadly disease,” she said. “Worse still, administration policies that kept families locked in cages for extended periods of time greatly increased their risk of illness.”

Officials with CBP have never provided immunizations for detained migrants and does not plan to do so now, according to Kelly Cahalan, an agency spokeswoman.

“CBP has significantly expanded medical support efforts, and now has more than 250 medical personnel engaged along the Southwest border. To try and layer a comprehensive vaccinations system on to that would be logistically very challenging for a number of reasons,” she said. “The system and process for implementing vaccines — for supply chains, for quality control, for documentation, for informed consent, for adverse reactions — is complex, and those programs are already in place at other steps in the immigration process as appropriate.”

The two agencies that hold migrants for extended periods, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, provide flu vaccines. Adults and families who cross the U.S. border increasingly are being sent back to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols program before they are turned over to ICE and thus do not get vaccinated. Unaccompanied children generally go to ORR shelters.

A Trump administration strategy led to the child migrant backup crisis at the border

The CDC recommends that most people in the United States age 6 months and older receive a flu vaccination, as it is the primary preventive measure against what can be a potentially severe illness. In the 2018-2019 flu season, nearly 63 percent of children under the age of 18 received the flu vaccine and just more than 45 percent of adults received the vaccine.

CDC officials visited Border Patrol detention facilities in El Paso and Yuma, Ariz., in December and January, at CBP’s request. The CDC’s January report warned that because of inadequate medical infrastructure in the facilities, “illness in the Border Patrol facilities stresses both the Border Patrol staff and community medical infrastructure.”

The report made nine recommendations for minimizing the spread of the flu, and CBP adopted many of them, including expanding medical staff at detention facilities and increasing flu surveillance.

But CBP did not implement a recommendation for an aggressive vaccination program that would prioritize children and pregnant women.

Brazilian families spent weeks in tent-like border facility, far longer than typical

In his Nov. 7 letter to DeLauro, Redfield reiterated the vaccination recommendation: “CDC recommends that priority should be given to the screening and isolation of ill migrants, early antiviral treatment, and flu vaccinations for all staff. CDC further recommends influenza vaccination at the earliest feasible point of entry for all persons at least six months of age, which is in concurrence with our general influenza vaccine recommendations.”

Other health experts also have recommended vaccines for migrants detained by CBP, especially children. A group of physicians that reviewed autopsy reports of children who died in CBP custody made that recommendation in an August letter to DeLauro and others in Congress.

A new report from the Brookings Institution warns that risk factors such as lackluster sanitation, overcrowding and poor nutrition are creating a “perfect storm” of conditions in CBP detention facilities that could lead to severe outbreaks of the flu and other communicable diseases. The report recommends vaccinating detained migrants as a way of limiting outbreaks.

Robert Moore is a freelance journalist based in El Paso.

Democracy Dies in Darkness

© 1996-2019 The Washington Post\

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Trump’s White Nationalist “DUD” (“Detain Until Dead”) policy in action! Might also include in your Thanksgiving thoughts those abused under Trump’s “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico” program as well as those who will soon be “orbited” to potential harm or death under bogus “Dangerous Third Country Agreements.”

Will Markie “Fund My TGIF” Morgan and his fellow killers, child abusers, and human rights abusers at DHS ever be held accountable for their arrogant misdeeds in Trump’s service? Don’t count on it. But, removing this truly cruel, immoral, and otherwise horrible group of “kakistocrats” and their Supreme Leader in 2020 is both possible and necessary for the continued existence of our country and would be a service to the future of the human race.

Doesn’t mean it will happen; but, our nation might not survive if it doesn’t.

Give thanks for the New Due Process Army!

Due Process Forever; New American Gulag Never!

Happy Thanksgiving,

PWS

11-28-19

HOW TRUMP, COMPLICIT COURTS, FECKLESS CONGRESS, AND DHS ARE KILLING MORE CHILDREN AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER WHILE HELPING HUMAN SMUGGLERS STRIKE IT RICH – “Malicious Incompetence” Fueled By Judicial Dereliction Of Duty & Congressional Malpractice Is A Boon to The Bad Guys! – “Most of all, he sees no end to the ways he can make profits off the border crackdown. He makes a joke out of it.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-19/a-smuggler-describes-how-children-die-and-he-gets-rich-on-border

Nacha Cattan reports for Bloomberg News:

Children Die at Record Speed on U.S. Border While Coyotes Get Rich

Deaths of women and children trying to cross into U.S. set record in first nine months of the year, UN research project finds

By

Nacha Cattan

October 19, 2019, 8:00 AM EDT

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Roberto the coyote can see a stretch of border fence from his ranch in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, about a mile south of El Paso. Smuggling drugs and people to “el otro lado,” the other side, has been his life’s work.

There’s always a way, he says, no matter how hard U.S. President Donald Trump tries to stop the flow. But this year’s crackdown has made it a tougher proposition. A deadlier one, too—especially for women and children, who are increasingly dying in the attempt.

Not much surprises Roberto, who asks not to be identified by his surname because he engages in illegal activity. Sitting on a creaky metal chair, shaded by quince trees and speaking above the din from a gaggle of fighting roosters, the 65-year-old grabs a twig and scratches lines in the sand to show how he stays a step ahead of U.S. and Mexican security forces.

Here’s a gap in the fence that migrants can dash through—onto land owned by American ranchers in his pay. There’s a spot U.S. patrols often pass, so he’s hiring more people to keep watch and cover any footprints with leaf-blowers.

Coyote Roberto, on Aug. 28.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

Roberto says he was taken aback in July this year, when he was approached for the first time by parents with young children. For coyotes, as the people-smugglers are known in Mexico, that wasn’t the typical customer profile. Roberto asked around among his peers. “They were also receiving a lot of families,” he says. “Many, many families are crossing over.”

That helps explain one of the grimmer statistics to emerge from all the turmoil on the U.S.-Mexican border.

Even more than usual, the 2,000-mile frontier has turned into a kind of tectonic fault line this year. Poverty and violence—and the pull of the world’s richest economy—are driving people north. At the border, they’re met by a new regime of tightened security and laws, imposed by Trump in tandem with his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, also known as AMLO.

Some give up and go home; some wait and hope—and some try evermore dangerous ways to get through.

Nineteen children died during attempted crossings in the first nine months of 2019, by drowning, dehydration or illness, according to the UN’s “Missing Migrants” research project. That’s up from four reported through September 2018 and by far the most since the project began gathering data in 2014, when two died that entire year. Women are dying in greater numbers, too—44 in the year through September, versus 14 last year.

A 9 month-old baby sleeps inside El Buen Pastor migrant shelter, on Aug. 29. The baby had been in and out of hospitals due to respiratory illnesses during his shelter stay.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

Many of those families are fleeing crime epidemics in Central America, as well as economic shocks. Prices of coffee—a key export—in the region plunged this year to the lowest in more than a decade, crushing farmers.

Making matters worse, climate change will produce more frequent crop failures for those growers that will, in turn, drive more migration, said Eleanor Paynter, a fellow at Ohio State University. “Asylum law does not currently recognize climate refugees,” she said, “but in the coming years we will see more and more.”

The demand side is equally fluid. When the Great Recession hit in 2007, a slumping U.S. economy led to a sharp drop in arrivals from Mexico and Central America. Today, the reverse is true: Record-low unemployment in the U.S. is attracting huge numbers from Central America.

Recession Factor

The U.S. economy’s slump a decade ago coincided with a sharp drop in migrant arrivals from Central America

Source: Estimates by Stephanie Leutert, director of Mexico Security Institute at University of Texas, based on model created for Lawfare blog

But none of those factors fully explains why so many families are now willing to take such great risks. To understand that, it’s necessary to go back to the birth of the “Remain in Mexico” policy in January, when new U.S. rules made it much harder to seek asylum on arrival—and its escalation in June, when Trump threatened to slap tariffs on Mexican goods, and AMLO agreed to deploy 26,000 National Guard troops to the border.

The crackdown was aimed at Central Americans—mostly from such poor, violent countries as El Salvador and Honduras—who’d been entering the U.S. through Mexico in growing numbers. Many would cross the border, turn themselves in and apply for asylum, then wait in the U.S. for a court hearing. That route was especially favored by migrants with young children, who were likely to be released from detention faster.

Under the new policy, they were sent back to Mexico by the tens of thousands and required to wait in dangerous border towns for a court date. They might wait in shelters for months for their number to be called, with only 10 or 20 families being interviewed each day. Word was getting back that applications weren’t being approved, anyway.

A white cross marks the death of a person near the border between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

That pushed thousands of families into making a tough decision. Juan Fierro, who runs the El Buen Pastor shelter for migrants in Ciudad Juarez, reckons that about 10% of the Central Americans who’ve stayed with him ended up going back home. In Tijuana, a border town hundreds of miles west, Jose Maria Garcia Lara—who also runs a shelter—says some 30% of families instead headed for the mountains outside the city on their way to the U.S. “They’re trying to cross,” he says, “in order to disappear.”

The family that approached Roberto in Ciudad Juarez wanted to take a less physically dangerous route: across the bridge into El Paso.

Roberto has infrastructure in place for both options. He says his people can run a pole across the Rio Grande when the river’s too high, and they have cameras on the bridge to spot when a guard’s back is turned. He has a sliding price scale, charging $7,500 for children and an extra $1,000 for Central Americans—fresh proof of studies that have shown smugglers’ prices rise with tighter border controls. “They pay a bundle to get their kids across,” he says. “Why don’t they just open a small grocery with that money?”

Typically, migrants don’t come from the very poorest communities in their home countries, where people struggle to cover such coyote costs, or from the middle class. Rather, they represent a range from $5,000 to $10,000 per capita in 2009 dollars, according to Michael Clemens, an economist at the Center for Global Development in Washington. This happens to be the level that the economies of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have reached.

A mother and her 5-month-old baby has lived in a migrant shelter since July, waiting for their November court date, on Aug. 29.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez

For the family going across the bridge into El Paso, Roberto wanted to send the parents and children separately, to attract less attention. Ideally, the kids would be asleep, making the guards less likely to stop the car and ask questions. But that raised another problem. He resolved it by arranging for a woman on his team to visit the family and spend three days playing with the children. That way, they’d be used to her and wouldn’t cry out if they woke up while she was taking them across.

Roberto says the family made it safely into the U.S. with their false IDs, a claim that couldn’t be confirmed. He earned about $35,000 from the family, and soon after had another three children with their parents seek passage. “They want to cross, no matter what,” he says. “I don’t know where the idea comes from that you can stop this.”

But people are being stopped and turned back, and the number of migrants caught crossing the U.S. border has plunged from its peak in May. That has allowed Trump to portray the new policy as a success. (Mexican officials tend to agree, though the Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.) Yet it’s not that simple. Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, said the flow northward initially surged because Trump threatened to close the border, setting off a wave of migrant caravans and smuggling activity. Arrests rose 90% through September from a year earlier, but they’re now at the same levels they were before the surge.

Enrique Garcia was one of those arrested. A 36-year-old from Suchitepequez in Guatemala, he was struggling to feed his three children on the $150 a month he earned as a janitor. So he pawned a $17,000 plot of land to a coyote in exchange for passage to the U.S. for him and his son.

They slipped into Mexico in August on a boarded-up cattle truck, with eight other adults and children, and drove the length of the country, to Juarez. The coyotes dropped them by car at the nearby crossing point called Palomas, where they literally ran for it.

After 45 minutes in the summer heat, Garcia was getting worried about his son, who was falling behind and calling out for water. But they made it past the Mexican National Guard and gave themselves up to a U.S. border patrol, pleading to be allowed to stay. Instead, they were sent back to Mexico and given a January court date.

Children play outside a migrant shelter while a women hand washes clothing in a sink.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

Garcia, who recounted the story from a bunk bed in a Juarez shelter, said he was devastated. He couldn’t figure out what to do for five months in Mexico, with no prospect of work. His coyotes had managed to reestablish contact with the group, and most of them—with children in tow—had decided to try again. This time, they wouldn’t be relying on the asylum process. They’d try to make it past the border patrols and vanish into the U.S.

But Garcia decided he’d already put his son’s life at risk once, and wouldn’t do it again. He scrounged $250 to take the boy home to Guatemala. Then, he said, he’d head back up to the border alone. He wouldn’t need to pay the coyotes again. They’d given him a special offer when he signed away his land rights—two crossing attempts for the price of one.

Researchers say there’s a more effective deterrent to such schemes: opening more lawful channels. Clemens, at the Center for Global Development, noted that illegal immigration from Mexico dropped in recent years after U.S. authorities increased the supply of H-2 visas for temporary work, almost all of them going to Mexicans—a trend that’s continued under Trump.

The current debate in Washington assumes that “hardcore enforcement and security assistance in Central America will be enough, without any kind of expansion of lawful channels,” Clemens said. “That flies in the face of the lessons of history.”

The Legal Route

Illegal crossings by Mexicans have plunged. They’re now much more likely to enter the U.S. with temporary H-2 work visas

Source: Calculations by Cato Institute’s David Bier based on DHS, State Dept data

A hard-security-only approach deters some migrants, while channeling others into riskier routes where they’re more likely to die. That’s what happened after Europe’s crackdown on migration from across the Mediterranean, according to Paynter at Ohio State, who’s studied data from the UN’s “Missing Migrants” project. In 2019, “even though the total number of attempted crossings is lower, the rate of death is three times what it was,” she said.

A child plays outside a migrant shelter in Ciudad Juarez.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

As for Roberto, he expresses sadness at the children who’ve died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. He claims he would’ve tried to help them, even if they couldn’t pay.

Most of all, he sees no end to the ways he can make profits off the border crackdown. He makes a joke out of it.

“I’m hearing Trump wants to throw crocodiles in the river,” he says. “Guess what will happen? We’ll eat them.” And then: “Their skin is expensive. We’ll start a whole new business. It’ll bring in money, because we’ll make boots, belts and wallets. We’ll look real handsome.”

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The “Trump Immigration Kakistocracy” is as evil and immoral as it is stupid and incompetent.

But, that shouldn’t lessen the responsibility of complicit Article III Appellate Judges (including the Supremes) and a sleazy and immoral GOP Senate who are failing to stand up for our Constitution, the rule of law, and human rights. They should not be allowed to escape accountability for their gross derelictions of duty which are killing kids with regularity and unconscionably abusing vulnerable asylum seekers on a daily basis.

America can’t afford to be governed by idiots abetted by the spineless. Join the “New Due Process Army” and fight to save our country, our Constitution, and humanity from evil, incompetence, and disgusting complicity.

PWS

10-31-19

FRESH CLAIMS OF CHILD ABUSE BY DHS IN YOUR “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” – Ever Wonder Why YOUR Tax Dollars Are Being Used To Fund What Medical Professionals Say Is An Inherently Abusive & Potentially Permanently Damaging “Kiddie Gulag?” – And, In Cases Like This, The Alleged Abuse Is Actually Individualized & Beyond the “Regular Damage” Intentionally Inflicted By The Trump DHS, Abetted By Complicit Courts!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/25/texas-immigration-detention-guard-assault-child-claims?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

A private prison guard physically assaulted a five-year-old boy at an immigration detention center in Texas, according to a complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

She raised her niece like a daughter. Then the US government separated them at the border

Read more

Advocates for the boy and his mother expect the family to be deported on Friday and asked the US government to halt the deportation to investigate the alleged assault. The advocates also said the family, who are anonymous for safety reasons, face imminent harm or death in their home country of Honduras.

The alleged assault occurred in late September, when the boy was playing with a guard employed by the private prison company CoreCivic who had played with the boy before.

The five-year-old tried to give the guard a high-five, but accidentally hit him instead, angering the guard, according to a complaint seen by the Guardian. The guard then allegedly grabbed the boy’s wrist “very hard” and would not let go.

“The boy’s mother told the guard to let go and tried to pull her son’s hand away, but the guard kept holding on,” according to the complaint. “He finally released the boy and threatened to punish him if he hit him again.”

The complaint said the boy’s hand was swollen and bruised and he was treated with pain medication and ice at the South Texas family residential center in Dilley, in a remote part of the state about 100 miles from the US-Mexico border.

The Dilley detention center has been controversial since it opened in 2014. Dilley can hold 2,400 people, the most of any family detention center in the country, and in March 2019 held at least 15 babies under one year old.

“Since the assault, the boy is afraid of male officials at the jail, goes to the bathroom in his pants, bites his nails until they bleed, and does not want to play, sleep, eat, or bathe,” the complaint said.

The Guardian contacted US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the homeland security agency which oversees immigration detention, and CoreCivic for comment, but they had not provided a response at the time of publication.

Katy Murdza, advocacy manager for the Dilley Pro Bono Project, which sends volunteers into the Dilley detention center to help families, met with the mother on Wednesday.

Murdza said the mother is fearful of her imminent deportation and is upset about what happened to her son because she had little power to protect him.

“She was unable to prevent someone from hurting her child and while she has tried to report it, she hasn’t received any information on what the results are, so she still does not have control of whether the detention center let that staff member back in,” Murdza said.

“When people are detained and it’s hidden from the public, these sorts of things happen and there are probably many other cases that we have never learned about that could be similar to this,” Murdza added.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said in March 2017 that no migrant child in the custody of their parent should ever be detained because the conditions could harm or retraumatize them.

The US government can release asylum-seeking families in the US while they wait for their cases to be heard in court, but Donald Trump’s administration favors expanding detention and has tried to extend how long children can be held in detention centers.

Katie Shepherd, national advocacy counsel with the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign, filed the complaint on Thursday with the DHS watchdog, the office of the inspector general, and with its office for civil rights and civil liberties.

“The government has a long history demonstrating it’s not capable of holding people in their custody responsibly and certainly not children who require special protections and safeguards,” Shepherd said. “They require a different environment, not one where guards are going to be physically abusing them.”

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Ever wonder how things might be different if Article III Judges’ children and grandchildren were being treated this way?

Please think about situations like this the next time you hear sleazy folks like Kelly, Nielsen, or “Big Mac With Lies,”and other former “Trump toadies” tout their “high-level executive experience” and how “proud” they were of their law enforcement initiatives at DHS and other parts of the Trump kakistocracy! What’s the relationship between abusing children and real law enforcement or protecting our national security? None!

Outrageously, these former Trump human rights abusers not only have escaped legal and moral accountability for their knowing and intentional human rights abuses, but they have the audacity to publicly attempt to “leverage” their experience as abusers into “big bucks gigs” in the private sector. How disgusting can it get.

Here’s Professor (and ImmigrationProf Blog guru) Bill O. Hing’s “spot on” description of the “despicable John Kelly:”

Despicable John Kelly – Profits from Detention of Children

By Immigration Prof

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I was recently reminded of how John Kelly, former DHS Secretary and former White House Chief of Staff, is now on the board of Caliburn International: the conglomerate that runs detention facilities for migrant children. He is despicable. This was reported in May:

Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly can now count on a second line of income.

In addition to his attempt at scoring paid speaking gigs, Kelly has now joined the board of Caliburn International, the company has confirmed to CBS News. Caliburn is the parent company of Comprehensive Health Services, which operates four massive for-profit shelters that have government contracts to house unaccompanied migrant children.

Kelly’s new job first became apparent when protesters gathered outside Comprehensive Health Services’ Homestead, Florida facility last month — it’s the biggest unaccompanied migrant child detention center in the country. They, along with a local TV station, spotted Kelly enter the facility, and CBS News later confirmed his affiliation. Read more..

When Kelly was DHS secretary, he began the implementation of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda in the early stages of the administration. Julianne Hing reported on Kelly’s record at DHS on the eve of becoming chief of staff for Trump.

Read here…

bh

October 20, 2019

Apparently, Kelly’s USG pension as a retired 4-star General wasn’t enough to support him in the style to which he aspired (perhaps after rubbing shoulders with the Trump family and its circle of grifters). So, he found it necessary to supplement his income off the misery of families and children in the “New American Gulag” he helped establish.

I had accurately predicted that Kelly wouldn’t leave his “service” to Trump with his reputation intact. Nobody does, except those with no reputation to start with.

Trump runs a kakistocracy. The private sector should treat the steady stream of spineless senior officials fleeing the Trump Circus accordingly.

Or compare the “achievements” of horrible frauds like these guys, who abused their time in the service of Trump by betraying our country’s most fundamental values, with that of a real American hero like the late Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) who was eulogized today. As President Obama said, “he was ‘honorable’ long before he was elected!”

PWS

10-25-19

THE DOWNSIDE OF KAKISTOCRACY: Trump Has Neither The Interest Nor Talent To Successfully Address The Problem Of Forced Migration From The Northern Triangle!

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-theres-a-migrant-crisis-at-the-us-border-and-theres-only-one-way/

From The Globe & Mail:

EDITORIALS

There’s a migrant crisis at the U.S. border. And there’s only one way to end it

The image of a father and his two-year-old daughter, their corpses face down in the mud on the banks of the Rio Grande, illustrates one part of the crisis on the southern border of the United States. The nightmarish conditions for migrants, with many held in severely overcrowded U.S. detention facilities, are another chapter. And then there’s how the U.S. Congress, paralyzed by distrust between Democrats and Republicans, waited until last week to vote additional funding aimed at improving life in those holding pens.

But the most revealing thing about the migration issue, and its solution, are the words of Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador.

On Monday, the same day funerals were held for Oscar Alberto Ramirez and his daughter Valeria, Salvadorans who drowned while trying to ford the river that marks the border into the promised land, Mr. Bukele was asked about the reason for the tragedy.

“People don’t flee their homes because they want to,” he said in English. “People flee their homes because they feel they have to. Why? Because they don’t have a job, because they are being threatened by gangs, because they don’t have basic things like water, education, health.

“We can spit blame to any other country but what about our blame? I mean, what country did they flee? Did they flee the United States? They fled El Salvador. They fled our country. It is our fault.”

And also: “If people have an opportunity of a decent job, a decent education, a decent health-care system and security, I know forced migration will be reduced to zero.”

That’s the issue, in a nutshell. Problem and solution.

If President Donald Trump was serious about fixing the crisis on his country’s southern border, instead of playing it for political advantage, he’d be listening to Mr. Bukele.

The people of El Salvador are hardly to blame for what has happened to their homeland. The Central American country and neighbouring Honduras and Guatemala are corrupt, economically depressed and violent. In 2016, El Salvador had the world’s highest murder rate. Honduras was second. It’s why so many feel they have no choice but to leave.

In May, U.S. authorities took more than 144,000 migrants into custody at the southern border. That means more people crossed from Mexico to the United States in one month than have crossed into Canada at the Roxham Road unofficial crossing point in three years. The vast majority crossing the U.S.-Mexico border did so between official posts, as Mr. Ramirez and his daughter attempted to do. Most came to make a refugee claim.

The flow of migrants entering the United States in May was roughly three times as high as it was during the Obama administration. The surge is driven by people from the so-called Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. As Mr. Bukele correctly described it, misery spurs migration.

But El Salvador is not doomed to forever be a land of misery. Consider that nearby Costa Rica has long been peaceful, democratic and relatively prosperous. And Panama, a dictatorship just a generation ago, has made big strides and is now level with Costa Rica. The United Nations Human Development Index ranks both countries ahead of Brazil, Mexico, China and nearly all of Latin America and the Caribbean. El Salvador is far behind. But change is always possible.

In 2018, Mr. Trump famously said he wanted fewer immigrants from “shithole countries.” To put it in words Mr. Trump can understand, the way to stop people from fleeing crappy countries is to make them less, you know, crappy.

Mr. Bukele, the son of Palestinian immigrants, has a dream of turning El Salvador into a place that draws investment and people, rather than chasing them away. It’s part of the reason why he said what he said about his country’s responsibility for migration. He wants and needs Washington’s help.

If the United States were serious about stemming the flow of migrants, it would be crafting a Marshall Plan for Central America. It would be helping the Northern Triangle achieve better government and more development and investment.

Instead, Mr. Trump earlier this year announced that, as punishment for sending so many migrants, he would cut aid to the Northern Triangle. His administration quietly backed away from the pledge, but the message has been sent. Enlightened self-interest is not on this President’s menu.

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The real problem here is that solutions to forced migration issues:

Take time;
Require knowledge and intellectual sophistication;
Require international cooperation; and
Aren’t in the White Nationalist “playbook” from which Trump gets all of his failed ideas on migration.

PWS

07-05-19

AMEN: A PRAYER IN THE TIME OF KAKISTOCRACY!

Judge (Ret.) Jeffrey S. Chase writes:

Hi all: I volunteer on Tuesday nights at a free immigration law clinic run by the New Sanctuary Coalition, based in Judson Church In Greenwich Village, NYC. As you can imagine, fear has been running high since the announcement of multi-city raids. Micah Bucey, a minister at Judson, composed the following non-denominational centering prayer that is now recited before each clinic. I share with you for inspiration:

Spirit of Resistance,

You who are beyond the capacity of any border or name,

You who stretch beyond the indignity of any cage

You who envelop us in the power to persist, to protest, and to rehumanize, //

As we bring our passion and our pain to this place,

We offer gratitude for small gatherings that do monumental things,

We offer gratitude for a fierce community that unbuilds walls

And we offer gratitude for dreams of the world we are creating. //

We ask that you

Refresh us with new breath and energy for the long haul,

Guide us through fear, frustration, and panic,

Expand our hearts to envelop all those who pass through this room tonight and all those who have yet to make it to this room,

Ignite the fire of our faith in the truth that love knows no borders. //

Help us to never forget

That ICE is meant to melt,

That you cannot deport a movement,

And that the moral arc of the universe only bends toward justice if we keep bending it together. //

Amen

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

PWS

06-29-19

TRUMP SEEKING TO END LEGAL IMMIGRATION? — Proposed Appointment Of Supremely Unqualified Far Right Bigot “Cooch Cooch” To Replace Fired Hardliner Cissna @ USCIS Threatens To Topple Whole System With “Malicious Incompetence” — But, Has He Finally Pushed Senate’s “Top Turtle” Too Far?

https://apple.news/AndEGsINTRO-3yhD1KPQLAw

Raul Reyes writers in Slate:

On Friday, the New York Times reported that former Virginia attorney general Kenneth Cuccinelli will be tapped for a role in the Trump administration. He will be put in charge of the country’s legal immigration system, as head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). While it had been earlier rumored that Cuccinelli would be placed in a new job as “immigration czar,” both the Times and the Washington Post noted that he now seems set for the top spot at USCIS.

No matter what job Cuccinelli ends up in, he is neither deserving nor qualified to play any role in shaping immigration policy. He is an immigration hardliner with views that are at odds with American values. He has a history of xenophobic, homophobic, and sexist comments. Ironically, one nice thing that can be said about Cuccinelli is that he fosters bipartisanship — he has generated opposition from both sides of the aisle.

Given that Cuccinelli could soon be presiding over USCIS, his comments on immigration are worthy of review. In 2018, he told Breitbart News Daily that states should use “war powers” to turn back migrants: “You just point them back across the river and let them swim for it,” he said. In 2015, appearing on a conservative radio station, he claimed that President Obama was encouraging an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants. In 2012, he compared immigration policy to pest control. He’s called the infamous Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) “one of my very favorite congressman.” So Cuccinelli is hardly someone who can be trusted to run USCIS in keeping with the agency’s core values, which include “respect” and “integrity.”

Most importantly, Cuccinelli has no significant experience in immigration policy, notwithstanding his failed attempt to end birthright citizenship as a state senator. He is not from a border state, nor has he been a credible voice in the immigration debate. His background is in law enforcement, not immigration law.

Cuccinelli’s prime qualification for his new job seems to be that he has been a tireless defender of the president on cable news. That could almost be seen as laughable if the stakes were not so high. Consider that as head of USCIS, Cuccinelli would wield tremendous power over immigrants like refugees, domestic abuse victims, and asylum-seekers. Or that our legal immigration system is byzantine and complicated, attracting the largest number of immigrants in the world. In FY 2017, the U.S. granted Legal Permanent Resident status to about 1.1 million people, including 120,000 refugees and 25,000 asylum-seekers.

Cuccinelli’s anti-LGBTQ record is especially troubling. As attorney general, he was against policies banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in public colleges and universities. As a state senator, he unsuccessfully fought to criminalize sodomy, calling “homosexual acts… intrinsically wrong.” In 2008, he declared that homosexuality “brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul.” The extreme views matter because LGBTQ people are among our most vulnerable immigrants. The Human Rights Campaign, for example, has documented “the precarious position of transgender immigrants and asylum seekers.” Sadly, it seems unlikely that Cuccinelli would respect their human rights, let alone treat LGBTQ immigrants with kindness and compassion.

There are myriad ways in which Cuccinelli has demonstrated that he is far out of the mainstream, so much so that handing him a huge job would be dangerous. The man who worried about getting his newborn son a social security number because he was concerned about the government tracking his family is probably not the ideal person to put in charge of E-Verify, the federal database that checks employment eligibility.

True, the president can choose whomever he likes for high-level positions. But Cuccinelli isn’t even a smart political pick. In addition to being unpopular with Democrats, he doesn’t have the full support of Republican lawmakers either. According to the website Vox, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) does not want to confirm Cuccinelli (the ill will stems from the fact that Cuccinelli headed up a political action committee that supported primary challenges to incumbent Republicans in 2014). Besides, on immigration most Americans are moving away from Trump. This January, the Pew Center found that 62 percent of Americans believe that immigrants strengthen our country. A restrictionist like Cuccinelli is not what the public wants or needs.

As head of USCIS, Cuccinelli would bring little to the job except a track record as a Trump loyalist. With his outdated and narrow views, he would be a disaster overseeing our legal immigration system.

Raul A. Reyes is an immigration attorney and member of the USA Today Board of Contributors. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Law School, he is also a contributor to NBCNews.com and CNN Opinion. You can follow him on Twitter at @RaulAReyes, Instagram: raulareyes1.

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

Let’s remember that fired hardliner L. Francis Cissna was the man who “took the ‘Services’ out of US Citizenship and Immigration Services.” His dismal anti-immigrant polices and undermining of public service have brought unprecedented backlogs to USCIS adjudications that are now under Congressional investigation. He also reportedly “tanked” employee morale at USCIS. Nevertheless, he wasn’t quite nasty enough for Trump and his neo-Nazi White Nationalist advisor Stephen MIller.

As a Virginia resident who suffered through “Cooch Cooch’s” disastrous tenure as Attorney General and his thankfully unsuccessful bid to become our Governor, I can testify that he is indeed without any redeeming social values. In other words, a perfect fit for the “Trump Immigration Kakistocracy.” But, “Cooch Cooch” has some powerful enemies in the GOP Senate. He pissed off Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and powerful Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) can’t be too pleased with Trump’s treatment of his former staffer Cissna.

In the meantime, it’s “chaos as usual” in the DHS/USCIS kakistocracy.

PWS

05-31-19

CHIEF CLOWN VOWS TO “MAKE AMERICA PAY” FOR HIS FAILURES: With His “Maliciously Incompetent” Immigration Policies in Shambles, Trump Promises To Punish American Consumers & Businesses With Tariffs On Mexico Having Nothing to Do With Trade!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/politics/trump-mexico-tariffs.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Annie Karni and Ana Swanson report for the NY Times:

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday that he planned to impose a 5 percent tariff on all imported goods from Mexico beginning June 10, a tax that he said would “gradually increase” until Mexico stopped the flow of undocumented immigrants across the border.

The announcement, which Mr. Trump hinted at on Thursday morning and announced on his Twitter feed, said the tariffs would be in place “until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP.”

In a presidential statement that followed, he said that tariffs would be raised to 10 percent on July 1 “if the crisis persists,” and then by an additional 5 percent each month for three months.

“Tariffs will permanently remain at the 25 percent level unless and until Mexico substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory,” the statement said.

Mr. Trump’s anger over undocumented immigrants has been steadily increasing since January, after he failed to force Democrats to give him billions of dollars to build his long-promised wall along the southwestern border. Since then, he has moved to cut off all foreign aid to countries like Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and threatened to completely seal off the border with Mexico, in an attempt to punish countries he blames for the flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States.

His growing frustration of his own administration’s handling of immigration issues this year led to a purge of the top officials at the Department of Homeland Security, including its secretary, Kirstjen M. Nielsen.

Mr. Trump has previously threatened to tax cars flowing across the border with Mexico, saying in April that he would take such action if Mexico did not stop the flow of migrants and drugs into the United States.

“If the drugs don’t stop, or largely stop, we’re going to put tariffs on Mexico and products, in particular cars — the whole ballgame is cars. And if that doesn’t stop the drugs, we close the border,” he said at the time.

Mr. Trump’s announcement of tariffs came the same day that his administration told Congress it planned to seek congressional approval of the new trade pact with Mexico and Canada, known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

The president has used the threat of tariffs to try to pressure foreign leaders into taking a wide array of actions, like renegotiating trade deals as well as limiting the amount of metal or cars they ship to the United States.

In April, he threatened to place a 25 percent tariff on Mexican cars if the country would not take action to stem the flow of migrants through the southwestern border, walking back a promise he had made in the revised North American trade agreement to exempt Mexico from such a measure.

The president has told his advisers that he likes tariffs because they can be done immediately and unilaterally. But tariffs are typically used to counter trade-related violations.

Such a move would also risk derailing relations with Mexico and Mr. Trump’s revised North American trade pact, which preserves the ultralow tariffs the original deal put into place.

The announcement comes as the Trump administration started a congressional process on Thursday that both clears a procedural hurdle toward having Congress vote on the agreement and ramps up pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats who have called for substantial changes to the pact before it is ratified.

The White House sent a draft “Statement of Administrative Action” to Congress on Thursday. Under congressional rules, that clears the way for the administration to submit an enforcement bill to Congress after 30 days, which in turn starts a 90-day clock for an up-or-down vote on the pact.

That is likely to come as a challenge to Ms. Pelosi, who has recently told other lawmakers and union officials that Democrats are planning a study of the pact that could drag on well into the fall. In a statement, Ms. Pelosi described the move as “not a positive step. It indicates a lack of knowledge on the part of the administration on the policy and process to pass a trade agreement.”

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

Wow! Just think of how far we have fallen as a nation. Let’s imagine that Obama, Bush, or Clinton proposed such idiotic, incoherent, nonsense, blatantly exhibiting something between total derangement and gross incompetence.

Journalists would be stunned, economists horrified. Politicians of both parties would be “talking 25th Amendment!”

Yet with Trump, it’s merely “ho hum, another day in nut-land” with only our country’s and the world’s future at stake. After all, he’s always threatening to take utterly insane, totally illegal actions. And, he only follows through about half the time.

Can we really survive this type of Clown Kakistocracy? Why won’t Mexico, China, Canada, India, and the EU just get together, negotiate some sound trade agreements based on real economics and sane diplomacy, and let the U.S. wander off into never-never land?

Yeah, I know, the economy continues to blaze away, markets are high, and unemployment low. But, remember the little warning line at the bottom of the prospectus of your most successful financial investment: Past results are not a prediction of future returns.

Well, there is some good news. At least there won’t be any suspense on who gets the “Courtside Five Clown Award” for this week. Who else but the Chief Clown! He’s earned it, and you can’t say that about much else in his tawdry life.

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

PWS

05-31-19

DHS KAKISTOCRACY RIPS OFF VULNERABLE IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR FAMILIES!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/ice-is-holding-204-million-in-bond-money-and-some-immigrants-might-never-get-it-back/2019/04/26/dcaa69a0-5709-11e9-9136-f8e636f1f6df_story.html?fbclid=IwAR3vw-xzEXl2SSo2e-F0_kT54OSpZcckjBQz1WK26d2OBnsy0Rv6AADtniw&utm_term=.3a3765b59dfc

Meagan Flynn reports for WashPost:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is holding on to more than $200 million in bond money that belongs to immigrants who have been in the agency’s custody, cash that has yet to be returned to thousands of immigrant families or the U.S. citizens who bailed them out, according to data obtained through open records requests.

The unreturned bond money stood at $204 million as of July 31, 2018, according to the data, which immigration law clinics at Stanford University and the University of California at Davis obtained and shared exclusively with The Washington Post. The pot of immigrant bond money grew by $57.3 million between September 2014 and July 2018, the data shows.

More than 18,000 bond payments went unclaimed in that four-year period, according to the data.

[Read the Stanford and U.C. Davis immigration report]

Though the trust fund — which the Treasury Department maintains — cannot be used for any other purpose, getting the money back to immigrants and their friends and families has proved a difficult and lengthy process. ICE officials said the agency makes multiple attempts to reach the people who posted the bond, but paperwork and checks mailed to them sometimes are undeliverable or receive no response, and it can be impossible to find the people if they moved out of the country. Those who do submit claims, ICE said, receive their funds within a month.

ICE did not provide data on average wait times to claim the money, and several lawyers and immigrants told The Post they have in some cases waited a year or longer after submitting for reimbursement.

Invisible walls: The lives altered by Trump’s crackdown on immigration

Numerous immigration attorneys said the system for reclaiming the funds is mystifying and nearly impossible to navigate without a lawyer or English-language proficiency, and some who pay the bonds are unlikely to see the money again. As bond amounts remain on the rise, lawyers said thousands of people are putting their life savings in ICE’s hands to secure an immigrant’s temporary freedom without any idea of when or if they’ll see the money again. Many immigrants say it takes far longer than a month to reclaim their funds.

“The toll on a poor family having to pay thousands of dollars in bond can’t be overstated,” said Jayashri Srikantiah, director of Stanford’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. “Clearly, something is breaking down when there are hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in an account that belongs to those immigrant families. If nothing else is clear, that is clear.”

Srikantiah and Holly S. Cooper, co-director of UC Davis’s Immigration Law Clinic, said they intend to push for congressional oversight of ICE’s bond system. They said the amassing of bond money indicates a serious problem and could amount to a massive theft from people who can least afford it.

Marco Antonio Torres Rojas, a father of three from Mexico, won his immigration case in August, but it took roughly seven months for ICE to return the $25,000 bond his family and friends paid to gain his release — seven years ago.

When he was detained in 2012 — for overstaying an H-2B work visa — an immigration attorney assured his family that paying the $25,000 bond would be the only way to stave off deportation. But for Rojas, a landscaper and snowplow driver in Minnesota, the sum appeared impossible. He and his wife had just a few thousand dollars in savings.

So they started pooling money: Three thousand from an aunt. Four thousand from a cousin. Eight thousand from Rojas’s closest friend. Sums that drove each into debt.

“We felt a sense of desperation,” Rojas said.

A Guatemalan migrant and his 10-year-old son look at the Miami cityscape outside an immigration courthouse in January. Some immigrants who are required to pay bond have to make difficult decisions about posting the cash payments, knowing they might not see the money back for years. (Brynn Anderson/AP)

Pay legal fees, or bond fees?

While criminal defendants typically can pay a bondsman 10 percent of the set bail amount to gain release, in the immigration system about 90 percent of bonds require cash for the whole amount upfront.

ICE initially sets bonds on a “case-by-case basis,” the agency said, though not everyone is eligible for bond or release.

For those who are eligible, bonds have been steadily rising since the second half of the Obama administration, after an influx of Central American immigrants. The average bond set by a judge was $3,000 to $5,000 for years, but it rose to $8,000 in fiscal year 2016, according to data from the Executive Office of Immigration Review. Bonds have remained at that level or slightly higher into the first months of fiscal year 2019.

Lawyers say the unexplained rises in fees have forced detainees into an impossible choice.

“I hear from people who call me asking, ‘Should I use the money to pay legal fees or pay the bond fees?’ ” Cooper said. “ ‘I only have one truck. If I sell it, it’s $5,000.’ ”

Once the money is raised — often from numerous people in each case — only a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident can post the bond. Because many immigrants don’t have a close relative who fits the definition, they sometimes turn to acquaintances or neighbors, said Michelle N. Mendez, an immigration attorney at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network in Silver Spring, Md. That person, according to ICE policies, is the only one who will ever get a copy of the bond paperwork.

Mendez said many immigrants don’t know that once the bond is posted, only the person who posted the bond can get it back.

“Then life happens,” Mendez said. “Maybe they don’t keep in touch with the obligor. Maybe the obligor is not a person of integrity — he’s a fraudster. Or they just lose touch with the obligor, because the obligor is some random person they found to post the bond.”

[Nations targeted by U.S. for high rates of visa overstays account for small number of violators]

The person who posted the bond money might move across the country or even out of the country; they might lose the original paperwork required to reclaim the money back, creating additional hurdles; the obligor might die.

Gloria Contreras Edin, an immigration attorney in Minnesota, said she had one undocumented client whose obligor was on the brink of dying of cancer. Before the man died, her client wheeled him into her office so he could sign over the bond responsibilities to someone else. Her client, Anibal El Verengue, a Guatemalan who lives in Minnesota and was ordered removed in 2015 for entering the country illegally, said he would not have known to do this if he did not have an attorney to advise him.

A friend who lives in Idaho and is married to a U.S. citizen offered to be responsible for El Verengue’s bond; El Verengue said he has been waiting on a refund of the bond payment since December. He then had to pay a second bond after he was arrested on DUI charges, a bond that is still open, his attorney said.

“One friend who I owe money won’t even speak to me, because he doesn’t trust me anymore,” El Verengue said, whose application for asylum is pending.

María Sosa washes dishes in her apartment in the Panorama City neighborhood of Los Angeles. Her husband won his immigration case in October, and it took five months to get his bond payment back from the federal government. (Ivan Kashinsky for The Washington Post)

Money just sits there

Mendez said she discovered how dire the problem was in 2009, two years after a well-publicized immigration raid at a Baltimore 7-Eleven resulted in numerous deportations. When Mendez checked in on some of the families of the deported men, she discovered they were living in poverty.

“I wanted to make sure that when the breadwinner got deported, the family would have some money,” Mendez said. “Those were the cases where I started to think: How do we get this money back? Nobody really knew . . . At that point, they’re really so far removed from the bond posting — thinking, ‘Oh well. I lost my case. I’m not entitled to anything’ — that they just let it be.”

To assist the Baltimore-area families, she started investigating the process for bond refunds: Once an immigrant’s case is closed — win or lose — the bond is “canceled” so long as they met the legal conditions that went along with it. The person who posted the bond, not the immigrant, should receive notice by mail.

“ICE does not notify the alien for whom the bond was executed, because its contract is with the obligor,” ICE said in a statement.

ICE makes three attempts to locate the person, but if the person who posted the bond did not file paperwork indicating a change of address, it might not be possible to find them.

And even those who follow the procedures said the process is rife with delays.

María Sosa, a legal permanent resident in California, said her husband won his immigration case in October but that she did not receive a bond cancellation notice from ICE until January. Unable to speak English, she made numerous visits to an ICE office to understand what she needed to do to get her money back; she received it on March 29.

To pay the $3,000 bond in the first place, Sosa, a worker at a prepackaged food factory, borrowed money from three people and dipped into her savings, which were supposed to fund a visit to Mexico to visit family. While she was waiting for the check from ICE, she said, her father-in-law in Mexico grew seriously ill and died.

She said she and her husband could not afford to attend his funeral.

“The whole system is created in a way that doesn’t foster the accessibility to those funds,” Contreras Edin said. “And so many times the money is left and just sits there.”

ICE pays interest on bond money while unclaimed, up to one year. After that, the funds are transferred to the Treasury Department. The Treasury Department said it does not know what year the $204 million began accumulating. The U.S. government is not allowed to use the money unless immigrants fail to adhere to bond conditions and forfeit it, otherwise known as a bond breach.

Bonds can be breached for reasons such as failure to show up in court or failure to turn the immigrant over to authorities if ICE asks the obligor to do so. But there can also be mistakes. Mendez recalled a case in which ICE breached her client’s bond for failure to show up to be deported — but her client was still appealing the removal order, and ICE had apparently missed that information, according to 2015 correspondence with ICE she provided to The Post.

About $34.5 million in bonds are forfeited each year, money that ICE uses to defray detention and apprehension costs.

Advocates at Stanford and UC Davis argue that the arrangement creates a conflict of interest.

“They obviously have incentive to not exercise discretion favorably and to breach more bonds,” said Emily Child, who worked on the Stanford and UC Davis research with Cooper. “That money goes right back into their pockets.”

ICE said that all breach decisions can be appealed to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. When breaching bonds, agents consider whether the violation was an accident or intentional and whether the obligor or immigrant was acting in good faith, ICE said in a statement.

‘An incredible amount’

Rojas was getting nervous. It was March, and he had been waiting seven months for a check that would be addressed to his brother’s wife, the U.S. citizen who posted his bond.

He called his attorney, Contreras Edin, expressing his fear that something had fallen through the cracks. The lawyer’s office contacted ICE bond specialists. A few weeks later, the check arrived.

Cooper and Srikantiah said they believe that working with an attorney is crucial to recovering the bond money, and many immigrants and those who post the bonds don’t have lawyers or can’t afford one.

They argue that ICE’s systems are outdated and cumbersome, and they believe immigrants should receive copies of their bond paperwork in a language they can understand, something that could mitigate the possibility of fraud and ensure that those who pay bonds receive the money back when they are entitled to it.

“While something like $5,000 or $10,000 might not be a lot of money to the federal government, to an individual family that has pulled all of their money together in order to get a loved one out of detention, it’s an incredible amount,” Srikantiah said. “With detention growing at the rate it is, we think this is a really good time for Congress to provide some oversight and actually investigate why this is happening.”

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

My favorite comment:

“So, we steal their children and their money. How contemptible.”

Says it all!

PWS

04-28-19

INSIDE TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION KAKISTOCRACY WITH TRAC: “Malicious Incompetence” Reigns As DHS & EOIR “Fly Blind” On Asylum System & Are Now Hiding Data From Public To Cover Up Own Malfeasance!

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__trac.syr.edu_immigration_reports_556_&d=DwMFAg&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=5P7-gWBTtD9g2EDR8U0pyQ5iVCpXWh5b63SXxj7pZPM&m=7PPq-dt8e4s-LLVyEA4t_Pm56qGq-luz6SZ4sXKnbvY&s=04Kf565VLlHoKvcIpERtb5vE2fKENyBuhZ-26wZhkmA&e=

Data Lacking on Why Immigration Courts Not Overwhelmed with Family Cases

Given reports on the number of families arrested at the border, why aren’t there more of these cases before the Immigration Courts? No one seems to know precisely what happens to each family after members are arrested by the Border Patrol and at ports of entry. In general, DHS itself is responsible for providing “notices to appear” to those arrested, and DHS agencies are also responsible for filing copies of these NTAs, where appropriate, with the Immigration Courts. This is supposed to occur whether or not families remain detained.

NTAs are the “notices to appear” that are given individuals providing official notification that the government is seeking to deport them. DHS agencies – including Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) – have the authority to issue NTAs, and to file them as needed with the Immigration Courts. Although CBP initially arrests these families at the border and at ports of entry, ICE becomes involved if longer periods of detention are needed. Asylum officers at USCIS also enter the picture as they are responsible for conducting “credible fear” and “reasonable fear” reviews for those seeking asylum.

It appears that the government itself does not actually know what happens to those it arrests at the border. It admits it lacks the ability to reliably follow cases when they pass from one agency of DHS to another – such as CBP to ICE and to USCIS – or to connect those cases when jurisdiction has been passed to the Department of Justice (DOJ) where the Immigration Courts are located. This appears to parallel the difficulties the government has had in reuniting children separated from their parents because separate record systems didn’t pass along relevant information.

In many respects it appears that the Administration continues to be flying blind. Clearly, if agency officials don’t have the data they need, they will be unable to effectively manage the situation, or even to accurately identify what additional personnel and other resources are most urgently needed. They also will be unable to effectively assess the impact of alternative policy choices that may be proposed.

In addition, the public is not being providing sufficient access to the data that is being recorded. A new barrier to public access arose just this month when the Department of Justice decided to review what information was released under the Freedom of Information Act. It stopped providing TRAC with particular case-by-case Immigration Court records tracking the processing of asylum and related applications for relief. Information both on historical as well as new asylum applications are now being withheld during this review. Other vital data TRAC had been routinely receiving and making publicly available on its website are also now being withheld.

As a direct result, TRAC is currently unable to update either its asylum web query tool, or its access tool on representation in Immigration Court by state and county. In addition, several of the fields in its tool that allows the public to drill into details on deportation proceedings, are no longer available.

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Attacks on Due Process fueled by “malicious incompetence” are the real “immigration emergency.” And, unlike the “fake asylum/border crisis” staged by the Kakistocracy, this one is a threat to our national security. Why isn’t anyone being held accountable here?

PWS

04-25-19

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION LIES, BUT TRAC STATS DON’T: TRAC Exposes Trump’s False Narratives About Families & “Sanctuary Cities” – No Families Are Not “Overwhelming” The System & Most Of Them Already Have Been Absorbed By So-Called “Sanctuary Jurisdictions!”

==========================================
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Despite the concern about the number of families arriving at the border seeking asylum, families continue to remain a minor proportion of new cases arriving at the Immigration Courts each month. For example, during March 2019, just 18.7 percent of the new cases that came in involved these families. Despite this, the court’s backlog continues to climb and reached a new historic high of 869,013 cases on its active docket at the end of March.

After being released in border communities, families seldom remain there. Since September 2018, 32 courts in 24 states have received at least 100 new family cases. Over half of these cases are before courts headquartered in sanctuary cities. Among the top ten courts where family cases are located, six are usually classified as sanctuary jurisdictions. These courts include those in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.

These results are based upon the latest court records analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. These data were obtained from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Full data on what happens to families after they are arrested at the border, however, are not available. The Justice Department has now stopped providing TRAC with information needed to track the processing of asylum and related applications for relief. Information both on historical as well as new asylum applications are now being withheld during this review.

In addition, the government admits it lacks the ability to reliably follow cases when they are transferred from one agency to another. Without this information, agency officials are unable to effectively manage the situation. This appears to parallel the difficulties the government has had in reuniting children separated from their parents because separate record systems didn’t pass along relevant information.

For the full report, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/556/

In addition, a number of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through March 2019. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:

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

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

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

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

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

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

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563
trac@syr.edu
https://trac.syr.edu

———————————————————————————
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (https://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (https://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to https://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.

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Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), the DHS “Advisory Committee,” and other Trump Apologists to the contrary, neither arriving families nor the current asylum law are the problems (except that the Administration fails to apply the current asylum law and procedures fairly). No, the problem is the “malicious incompetence” of the Trump kakistocracy in the White House, at DHS, and in the DOJ.

Democrats must take care not to be “stampeded” by Trump’s bogus White Nationalist narrative (even parroted by some members of the “mainstream press”) into changing asylum laws to further screw asylum seekers. Rather they need to stand firm on insisting that the Trump Administration follow existing laws on asylum, protection of unaccompanied minors, and other forms of humanitarian protection.

There isn’t going to be a “grand bargain’ on immigration until the Trump kakistocracy and its enablers are removed from power. And “border security” does not require a reduction or truncation of the rights of migrants and asylum seekers as a “trade-off” for legalization programs.

Actually, clearing intentionally and maliciously overcrowded Immigration Court dockets of cases of individuals whose removal actually hurts the U.S. and figuring out a way of getting more of these folks we need into the legal immigration system right off the bat (instead of forcing them into the “immigration black market”) are essential parts of any border security program.

What real border security does require is a competent focus on making the asylum adjudication system and the Immigration Court system function in accordance with protection laws, Due Process, and fundamental fairness. A fair, timely, and efficient Immigration Court system serves everyone’s needs, including DHS enforcement.

Fair, impartial, and independent judges who are not controlled by politicos with a White Nationalist agenda would be the basic starting point. It also includes a fair application of the law to include gender based persecution and persecution by gangs and other entities exercising quasi-governmental authority in “failed states.” Indeed, if any “clarifications” are made in asylum law it should be to specifically write these interpretations into the refugee definition as was done by a bipartisan group of legislators in the past who were dissatisfied with the administrative failure to include victims of persecution in the form of coercive family planning in the refugee definition.

PWS

04-21-19

MOLLY HENNESSEY-FISKE @ LA TIMES: As DHS Disintegrates Under Trump, Volunteers Pick Up The Pieces & Save Lives!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=c0589a9f-92f8-4e10-98e2-b19dd6e8d7ee

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

McALLEN, Texas — Federal immigration officials dropped the first group of several dozen asylum seekers — all Central American parents with children — at the downtown bus station early in the day.

They dropped more throughout the day, all of them Spanish speakers in need of food, medicine and guidance from volunteers.

Jose Manuel Velasquez, 24, cradled his squirming 3-year-old-daughter, Sofia, as volunteer Susan Law advised him how to reach Oklahoma City, where he hoped to join his cousin. He was one of thousands of asylum seekers trying to leave the border region this week to reach friends, family and immigration court hearings in other parts of the country.

Ahead of President Trump’s Friday visit to California,volunteers along the border helped hundreds of asylum seekers who had been released from U.S. custody. Cities are pitching in, but helping the migrants has mainly fallen to volunteers whose resources were already at a breaking point from responding to a slew of new immigration policies.

On Thursday in McAllen, the U.S. released 700 migrants to crowded nonprofit shelters and dropped others at the bus station. Some arrived at the station with confirmation numbers to claim tickets paid for by relatives. Many arrived confused.

Law, a volunteer with the group Angry Tias and Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley, said the constant arrivals this week made volunteers’ work “more overwhelming.”

The 73-year-old, a retired human resources director for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, sat with one parent after another Thursday. She explained each step of their bus trip, highlighting connections on a stack of maps.

She reviewed their paperwork, reminded them to keep their addresses updated and attend immigration court, and shared lists of free legal services at their destinations.

Many eastbound buses arriving in McAllen on Thursday were already packed with those released in El Paso and San Antonio. The wait time for migrants released to shelters to make it onto a bus has stretched to two days, according to Eli Fernandez, a volunteer at a nonprofit shelter.

Migrant advocates have suggested that recent mass releases at the border were intended to create chaos and give Trump something to point to when he argues that there is a national emergency.

Border Patrol officials have said their resources were strained by people crossing into the U.S. and asking for asylum. The officials have asked for millions more in funding to run temporary holding areas in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency team arrived in the valley this week, meant to support Border Patrol operations and nongovernmental groups, a FEMA spokeswoman said. But many volunteers said they hadn’t been contacted by the agency.

Trump policies blocking asylum seekers led volunteers to found Angry Tias and Abuelas about a year ago, after U.S. officials blocked asylum seekers at a border bridge south of McAllen. They brought food and supplies to the bridge and kept helping migrant families once Border Patrol started separating them. As immigrant parents were released, the volunteers shifted to the bus station to assist Catholic Charities, which runs a nearby shelter.

Most volunteers in Angry Tias and Abuelas are local, some are winter Texans, and others out-of-state visitors.

Luis Guerrero, a retired firefighter, remembers a 4-year-old Salvadoran girl explaining why she and her parents had to flee to the U.S.: Armed men had broken into their house and demanded money. “If you stay here,” Guerrero told the couple, “make sure your daughter gets therapy.”

Many of the migrants are from poor, rural areas and need the most basic help, volunteers said.

A young Honduran mother paid attention Thursday as Law traced the route she would follow to join her sister, a legal resident who migrated years ago and settled in Memphis, Tenn. Olga Lara had brought her 3-year-old, Alva, but left her 13-year-old daughter, Lilia, in Honduras with Lara’s mother.

Lara, 29, said she hoped to learn to read, as her sister had, in the U.S. She doesn’t know how to spell her name. She has never attended school, she said, because her family couldn’t afford it.

Law ensured the woman was traveling with another migrant who could read, write and look out for her. Law also warned Lara and other female migrants about the risk of trafficking, advising them to stay in main bus terminals and avoid anyone who might try to persuade them to leave.

Lara tucked her ticket into her bra and her paperwork into a bag next to Alva’s Elmo doll. She was wearing a donated puffy jacket and sneakers that were stripped of shoelaces while she was in Border Patrol detention. Law ran to grab her some of the laces she keeps stashed at the bus station. Lara threaded them through her shoes and thanked the volunteer.

On Thursday, good Samaritans from local churches dropped by with books, toys and hot breakfast tacos for the migrants. But there were not enough tacos to go around. A van from the nearby shelter was delayed when it ran out of gas. A few families boarded buses without eating.

Volunteer Roland Garcia, a former U.S. Marine, loaned his cellphone to a single Salvadoran mother of three, a domestic violence victim, so she could contact family in Houston and book her bus ticket.

“If we could just get more volunteers to help these people,” he said. “To them, everything is new. Some of them don’t even know how to work the Coke machine.”

Garcia, 60, who used to be a truck driver, started volunteering after he ducked into the bus station a few months ago to wait during a delivery and saw the crowds. He had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and felt the need to do something meaningful. He’s already recruited other volunteers.

His friend Rafael Mendoza said volunteers counter misinformation some asylum-seeking families receive from staff in Border Patrol facilities: “You’re wasting your time, you’re going to lose your case, you’re not welcome here.”

“Our own agents are telling them that,” said Mendoza, 59. “It’s very discouraging.”

The Catholic Charities shelter was packed Thursday, even after opening a second site when the Border Patrol started releasing large groups of families two weeks ago. The shelter’s halls were full of parents with small children who had not bathed in days while being held in chilly Border Patrol cells, where they said they caught colds.

Honduran Eulogio Erazo Varela said his 3-year-old daughter developed a fever while they were held for almost a week, first in a Border Patrol cell — what migrants call a hielera, or icebox — then behind a chain-link fence in a converted warehouse.

He was relieved to meet volunteers at the bus station Thursday. He said they treated him kindly as he prepared to catch a bus to Memphis — unlike Border Patrol agents, he said, who didn’t provide much treatment or help.

Many of the volunteers, including Law, had caught the migrants’ colds. But they were determined to keep helping. Law has driven a few migrants whose families could afford tickets to the airport, and hoped to recruit more volunteer escorts to help them navigate air travel in coming weeks.

Law recalled a migrant mother she met Wednesday, confused by her bus itinerary until the volunteer walked her through it in Spanish. Afterward, the woman said she would have been lost without Law’s help.

“That’s what keeps me going,” Law said.

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Ironically, government by the worst among us (“kakistocracy”) is bringing out the best in many others. Along with the efforts of the “New Due Process Army,” it’s certainly reason to hope for a better future for America and for mankind!

PWS

04-07-19

DR. EDITH BRACHO-SANCHEZ @ CNN: Traumatizing Youth — Trump Administration Routinely Violates Wilberforce Act Protections For Vulnerable Kids — Their Outrageous Solution — Eliminate The Law!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/28/health/unaccompanied-minors-18th-birthday/index.html

Dr. Bracho-Sanchez writes for CNN:

(CNN)On your 18th birthday, immigration officials will come for you, a lawyer explained. You will be shackled, you will be placed in an orange jumpsuit, and you will be taken to jail. “But I need you to know you are not a criminal.”

This is how Allison Norris, toll litigation staff attorney at Americans for Immigrant Justice, prepares her teenage clients in federal migrant detention shelters who are nearing age 18 without the prospects of a suitable sponsor to whom they can be released.

One of these clients is Veronica, whose name has been changed to protect her identity for fear of retribution. At age 17, she arrived in the United States alone, fleeing sexual predators in El Salvador.

Between the time Veronica arrived and when she turned 18, just over four months, Norris says, she attempted to find a sponsor. But none of the family friends who applied met the extensive list of requirements of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in order for her to be released from the shelter for migrant children in South Florida where she was detained.

ICE arrested 170 potential sponsors of unaccompanied migrant children

On her 18th birthday, she woke up scared, wondering what would happen to her, Veronica said. Norris’ detailed warnings had not exactly calmed her down.

At 8 a.m. on her birthday, immigration officials arrived at the shelter. She was placed in ankle shackles and put in a “very cold room” for hours before being taken into adult detention, Veronica said.

In the months that followed, Veronica describes feeling depressed, crying every day and losing hope. Because she wasn’t serving a specific sentence, she had no idea how long she’d spend in detention.

With hours to fill in a cell she shared with three older women, she relived in her mind the attacks she suffered in El Salvador.

“I didn’t know what was worse: to have died in El Salvador or to be locked up,” she said.

Veronica is part of a group of kids known as ORR age-outs. When unaccompanied minors arrive in the United States, they are placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, a humanitarian agency in nature.

Unaccompanied minors risk life for American dream

Once they turn 18, teens are moved into the custody of the Department of Homeland Security — more specifically, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a law enforcement agency known as ICE. Migrant youth cannot, by law, stay in the shelters that housed them before they turned 18.

“I have interviewed the children right before they turn 18 and they go into these facilities,” said Yenis Castillo, a forensic psychologist with the nonprofit advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights. “All the kids I interview are terrified.”

In the weeks leading up to their 18th birthdays, Castillo said, she has seen teens act out, develop chronic headaches or high blood pressure, become depressed and even become suicidal.

“When people undergo trauma, they live in a constant state of alert, and on top of that, then we are sending them to prison,” she said.

Neha Desai, director for immigration at the National Center for Youth Law, has toured immigrant child detention centers across the country. “Everywhere I go, the kids that are in most extreme and visible distress are the ones that are approaching age-out. There’s so much anxiety in that period of time,” she said.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, passed in 2000 and reauthorized in 2008 and 2013, states that when unaccompanied immigrant children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement turn 18, ICE “shall consider placement in the least restrictive setting available after taking into account the [individual’s] danger to self, danger to the community, and risk of flight.”

“What we’ve seen is that they very rarely do,” said Xiaorong Jajah Wu, immigration attorney and deputy program director at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. Wu oversees offices in Houston and Chicago, where she says it is the child’s attorney or child advocates who put forth alternatives to adult detention, “basically begging ICE not to take these kids on their 18th birthday.”

Wu said her team has not seen what they’d consider “any level of thought” being put into the decision of whether to take a migrant youth into adult detention.

In California, Lindsay Toczylowski, an immigration attorney and founder and executive director of the immigrant Defenders Law Center, says the move into adult detention has become the norm rather than the exception for teens over the past two years.

“What we’ve seen is a lack of discussion for ICE when deciding whether or not they are going to take a kid into custody,” she said. Toczylowski also worries about the way in which this is done, which she describes as “overkill,” considering that these are typically petite teens from rural communities in Central America who have committed no crimes.

Record numbers of migrant children are in US custody, hoping they won’t be forgotten

Kate Melloy Goettel, senior litigation attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center, noted that “Congress really understood that these kids are vulnerable. And now we are just trying to get ICE to understand that they have obligations under the law to really try to find options other than detention.”

These options, Goettel explains, includes placement with family members, non-family sponsors, shelters, group homes and institutional placement.

Jennifer Elzea, press secretary for ICE, wrote in an email that “custody determination is made by ICE on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the totality of the individual’s circumstance, to include flight risk, threat to the public and threat to themselves.” Elzea acknowledged understanding the requirement that the agency consider the least restrictive setting available and to consider alternatives to detention.

Goettel is part of the team of attorneys at the National Immigrant Justice Center who, in March 2018, sued Homeland Security and ICE on behalf of two migrant teens who were placed in adult prisons when they turned 18. The lawsuit alleges that ICE “failed to consider them for placement in ‘the least restrictive setting available’ and to provide them with meaningful alternatives to detention, as required by amendments to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.”

According to documents obtained from the Office of Refugee Resettlement as part of the class-action lawsuit, 528 children aged out of custody in 2015. The number doubled to 1,044 in 2016, remained about the same at 1,091 in 2017 and, in the first half of 2018 alone, included 1,240 kids.

Record 14,000 unaccompanied immigrant children in US custody, HHS confirms

In November, Health and Human Services confirmed that there were a record 14,000 unaccompanied children in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody.

Since the lawsuit was filed, a judge required ICE to reassess the custody of the two original teens and place them in the “least restrictive setting possible.” In August, the court granted a motion for class action certification, meaning the lawsuit against Homeland Security is now on behalf of all unaccompanied migrant children in custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement who “age out” when they turn 18.

When asked about the lawsuit, Elzea said, “ICE does not comment on pending litigation”

As for Veronica, she spent just over two months in adult detention. Norris, her attorney, says that a family friend with lawful status was able to get all required documents quickly, and Homeland Security released Veronica to live with her.

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Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team.

But, Norris says, the process can take much longer for other teens, many of whom lose hope while in detention and ask to be sent back to their home countries.

“They fought all this way to come here, raised all this money to go on this very dangerous journey to escape horrific violence, and all of a sudden they’ve been in detention for three months, and they’re like ‘just send me back. I can’t take it anymore,’ ” she said.

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The obvious solution: protect the kids; resist the Trump Kakistocracy. That’s what the New Due Process Army does!
PWS

03-31-19

TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=d85e48a2-1a59-4182-854b-dfd9a146177c

TThe numbers are sobering. The federal government reported Tuesday that immigration agents apprehended 76,000 people — most of them families or unaccompanied minors — at the U.S.-Mexico border in February, twice the level of the previous year and the highest for February in 11 years. The increase continues a trend that began in the fall, and offers direct evidence that President Trump’s strategy of maximal enforcement at the border is not reducing the flow of migrants.

And no, the answer is not “a big, beautiful wall.” Most of those apprehended weren’t trying to sneak past border agents; instead, they sought out agents once they reached the border and turned themselves in, hoping to receive permission to stay.

Furthermore, the situation isn’t a national security emergency, as he has declared in an effort to spend more on his border wall than Congress provided. It’s a complex humanitarian crisis that appears to be worsening, and it’s going to take creative analytical minds to address.

For instance, the vast majority of the families flowing north in recent months come from poor regions of Guatemala, where food insecurity and local conflicts over land rights and environmental protections are pushing more people off their farms and into even deeper poverty, according to human rights observers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Just months earlier, gang violence in urbanized areas were pushing people north to the United States; increasingly now, it’s economics.

But Trump’s rhetoric may be playing a role too. The more he threatens draconian enforcement and cutbacks in legal immigration, the more people contemplating moving north are pushed to go sooner, before it gets even harder to reach the U.S. Similarly, more migrants are arriving at more treacherous and remote stretches of the border to avoid getting stuck in Tijuana or other border cities where the U.S. government has reduced the number of asylum seekers it will allow in, claiming an inability to process the requests.

The system is overwhelmed. But the solution isn’t to build a wall, incarcerate more people, separate children from their parents or deny people their legal right to seek asylum. The solution is to improve the efficiency and capacity of the system to deal with the changed migrant demographics. A decade ago, about 1 in 100 border crossers was an unaccompanied minor or asylum seeker; now about a third are.

More judges and support staffs are necessary for the immigration court system, as the Trump administration has sought from Congress. Yet the case backlog there has continued to grow — in part because the increase in enforcement actions, in part because the Justice Department ordered the courts to reopen cases that had been closed administratively without deportations, often because the migrant was in the process of obtaining a visa. A faster and fair process would give those deserving asylum the answer they need sooner, cutting back on the years they spend in limbo, while no longer incentivizing those unqualified for asylum to try anyway.

The Migration Policy Institute, a think tank, has suggested one partial fix. Currently, migrants claiming asylum have a near-immediate initial “credible fear” hearing with an asylum officer from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who determines whether the migrant has a significant potential to make a successful asylum claim. Most migrants pass that low threshold and are then directed to the immigration courts to make the formal case, a more involved process that can take years. Keeping those cases within the citizenship and immigration branch for an administrative hearing instead of sending them to immigration court could lead to faster decisions for the deserving at a lower cost — a single asylum agent is cheaper than a court staff — while preserving legal rights by giving those denied asylum a chance to appeal to the immigration courts. That’s a process worth contemplating.

More fundamentally, the current system hasn’t worked for years, and under Trump’s enforcement strategy it has gotten worse. It’s a big ask, but Congress and the president need to work together to develop a more capable system that manages the many different aspects of immigration in the best interests of the nation while accommodating the rights of the persecuted to seek asylum.

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=1cbd9b3d-f2d0-4249-b602-37223ff3f407

The U.S. government is reportedly compiling dossiers on journalists, lawyers and activists at the border.

ASan Diego television station recently obtained some troubling documents that seem to show that the U.S. government, working with Mexican officials under a program called Operation Secure Line, has created and shared dossiers on journalists, immigrant rights lawyers and activists covering or involved with the so-called caravans of migrants moving from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Worse yet, the government then detained some of these people for questioning (one photojournalist was held for 13 hours), barred some of them from crossing the border and interfered with their legitimate efforts to do their jobs. NBC 7 also received a copy of a purported government dossier on lawyer Nicole Ramos, refugee program director for a migrant rights group, that included a description of her car, her mother’s name, and details on her work and travel history. That’s not border security, that’s an intelligence operation and, as the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out, “an outrageous violation of the First Amendment.”

The ACLU noted correctly that it is impermissible for the government to use “the pretext of the border to target activists critical of its policies, lawyers providing legal representation, or journalists simply doing their jobs.”

It’s unclear when the intelligence gathering began, or how widespread it is, but the Committee to Protect Journalists reported in October that U.S. border agents, using the broad power the law gives them to question people entering the country, seemingly singled out journalists for in-depth examinations, including searching their phones, laptops and cameras — all without warrants, because they’re generally not required at the border. These are troubling developments deserving of close scrutiny by Congress and, if warranted, the courts.

The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for controlling the flow of people across U.S. borders and has broad and court-recognized authority to search for contraband. But the government should not use that authority as a pretext to try to gain information to which it would not otherwise be entitled. And it certainly doesn’t give it a framework for harassing or maintaining secret files on journalists, lawyers and activists who are covering, representing or working with activists.

Homeland Security defended the targeting by linking the intelligence operation to the agency’s investigation of efforts this winter by some Central American migrants to cross the wall near San Ysidro, Calif. It said also that all the people entered into the database had witnessed border violence. That sounds an awful lot like a criminal investigation, not a border security operation.

The name of the report leaked to NBC 7 was “Migrant Caravan FY-2019: Suspected Organizers, Coordinators, Instigators, and Media.” The only thing suspect here is the government’s actions.

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Unfortunately, the second editorial on the “enemies list” shows why the first one on solving the Central American forced migration issue in a sensible, legal, and humanitarian manner simply isn’t in the cards without “regime change.”

First, the Trump Administration simply lacks the competence, professionalism, and expertise to solve real problems. The absolutely stunning incompetence of Nielsen and the rest of the politicos who supposedly run immigration and national security policy these days was on full display this week. America’s “real” enemies must have been watching with glee at this public demonstration of lack of competence and concern for any of the actual national security issues facing our nation.

Career civil servants who have the knowledge, expertise, motivation, and ability to solve migration problems have been forced out, buried in make-work “hallwalker jobs” deep in the bowls of the bureaucracy, or simply silenced and ignored. The Administration has also declared war on facts, knowledge, human decency and scorns the humanitarian expertise available in the private and NGO sectors.

Second, there is zip motivation within the Trump Kakistocracy to solve to the problem. As long as neo-Nazi Stephen Miller is in charge of immigration policy, we’ll get nothing but White Nationalist, racist nonsense. Miller and the White Nationalist restrictionists (like Trump & Sessions) have no motivation to solve immigration problems in a practical, humane, legal manner.

No, the White Nationalist agenda is to use lies, intentionally false narratives, racial and ethnic stereotypes, bogus statistics, and outright attacks on our legal system to further an agenda of hate, intolerance, and division in America intended to enfranchise a largely White GOP kakistocracy while disenfranchising everyone else. It plays to a certain unhappy and ill-informed political “base” that has enabled a minority who cares not a whit about the common good to seize control of our country.

While the forces of evil, division, and Constitutional nihilism can be resisted in the courts, the press, and now the House of Representatives, the reign of “malicious incompetence” can only be ended at the ballot box. If it doesn’t happen in 2020, and there is certainly no guarantee that it will, it might well be too late for the future of our republic.

PWS

03-07-19

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