Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli – Page 2

“BIG MAC’S” LEGACY IS A PREVIEW OF “COOCH COOCH’S” PLANS FOR FURTHER “WEAPONIZING” DHS AGAINST HUMANITY — Child Abuse, Illegal Actions, Contempt For Court Decrees Likely To Ramp Up Under Spectacularly Unqualified White Nationalist “Statue Of Liberty Denier!”

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2019-10-14/cbp-holds-migrants-longer-than-it-is-supposed-to-lawyer-claims?utm_source=SDUT+Essential+California&utm_campaign=516be9d215-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_15_12_56&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1cebf1c149-516be9d215-84889485

Gustavo Solis reports for the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Customs and Border Protection may be violating the law by holding asylum-seeking children longer than the agency is allowed to, according to lawyers who represent migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

By GUSTAVO SOLIS

OCT. 14, 2019

6:29 PM

Lawyers are accusing Customs and Border Protection in San Diego of breaking their own policies and potentially the law by holding migrant children in custody longer than the agency is allowed to.

Under the Flores Settlement Agreement, the federal government generally cannot detain migrant children and their parents together for more than brief periods. The agreement states CBP should not hold children for more than 72 hours and Immigration and Customs Enforcement should not detain them for more than 20 days.

However, asylum-seeking children are routinely held for more than 72 hours in San Diego, according to Erika Pinheiro, a staff attorney with the nonprofit Al Otro Lado.

“We are seeing cases of prolonged detention every day,” she said. “There is no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes they are released the same day, sometimes it’s a week later. We’ve had cases of people in CBP custody for three weeks.”

Many of the people being held in CBP custody are part of the Remain in Mexico program, which forced asylum seekers to live in Mexico while waiting for their cases to be decided in immigration courts.

The latest example involves a 9-year-old asylum seeker and her mother who have been in CBP custody since Oct. 4, as first reported by KPBS.

The mother and family were released from CBP custody Monday afternoon, Pinheiro said.

That case is particularly disturbing because both the child and mother are reportedly sick — suffering from stomach pain and diarrhea — which could be a separate violation of the Flores Settlement Agreement, the lawyer added.

Apart from limiting the amount of time children can be in federal custody, the Flores Settlement Agreement also establishes basic standards of care that include access to medical care.

A CBP spokesman declined to answer specific questions about the 9-year-old’s case or more general questions about Pinheiro’s claims that the agency is violating the law.

The spokesman said that the agency treats those in its custody with, “dignity and respect,” while striving to, “process individuals as expeditiously as possible,” and noted that, “most individuals are in our facilities for 72 hours or less.”

President Trump has called the Flores Settlement Agreement a “loophole,” that allows immigrants to be released from immigration detention centers. In August, the Trump administration unveiled proposed regulations that would replace Flores.

Specifically, the new policies would abolish ICE’s 20-day limit on detaining families and establish new minimum standards of care for people held in detention centers.

According to CBP’s own policies, “detainees should generally not be held for longer than 72 hours in CBP facility and every effort must be made to hold detainees for the least amount of time required for their processing, transfer, release, or repatriation as appropriate and as operationally feasible.”

Immigration attorney Rose Thompson has seen multiple asylum seekers spend more than 72 hours in CBP custody, including a case of a mother and her adult daughter spending 12 days in CBP custody.

Another asylum seeker said the conditions inside CBP custody were so poor that she asked to be sent back to Mexico, Thompson said.

“It’s horrible,” she said. “It’s not an area that’s intended to detain people for longer than 48 or 72 hours because it’s not comfortable. I don’t know even if there are beds.”

An August 2019 report of conditions inside federal custody noted that the average length of detention for asylum seekers here in San Diego was 3.4 days and more than eight percent of migrants surveyed in the report were held in custody for five days or more.

That report, published by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center, noted that more than 10 percent of asylum seekers in custody reported experiencing medical issues in detention.

The Flores Settlement Agreement also requires the federal government to provide basic care for children in custody. It stipulates that minors most be treated with, “dignity, respect, and special concern for their particular vulnerability.”

Similarly, CBP guidelines regarding medical treatment state that officers are required to report illnesses to a supervisor and document them in an electronic system of record while also seeking or providing medical care in a timely manner.

However, Pinheiro claims that CBP is also violating this aspect of both the Flores Agreement and the agency’s internal policies.

She points to the mother and daughter released from detention on Monday as just the latest example of migrants not receiving adequate care while in custody.

“I have never had a client say they saw a doctor while in CBP custody,” she said.

Conditions of migrants in CBP custody made headlines in June, when a group of lawyers in Texas asked a judge to issue a temporary restraining order and a contempt order calling for CBP to “immediately start processing children for release to parents or relatives,” and provide children with, “basic necessities including adequate food, clean water, medical care, and access to sleep.”

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There is a fairly simple solution for the problem of a Government that disobeys the law. Federal Judges should start throwing “Cooch Cooch,” his subordinates, Barr, and the DOJ lawyers advancing untrue and unethical arguments in support of their “clients’” indefensible positions in jail for contempt of court. In the case of lawyers, like “Cooch Cooch,” Barr, and his subordinates they should also be referred to their respective state bars for disbarment proceedings.

Until these thugs are held accountable, the child abuse and other human rights outrages will continue.

PWS

10-15-19

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: “Twofer” — Trump Combines Assault On Healthcare With Attack On Legal Immigrants!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-found-a-way-to-simultaneously-sabotage-our-health-care-and-immigration-systems/2019/10/07/6fb734dc-e943-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html

President Trump sabotaged the health-care system. Separately, he’s sabotaged the immigration system.

And now, in a presidential twofer, on Friday night the administration found a way to sabotage both simultaneously.

Unable to repeal Obamacare, the Trump administration has worked to make it less functional and more expensive. It has done this by zeroing out the individual mandate, expanding the availability of cheap but worthless junk insurance and curtailing the annual open-enrollment period, among other actions.

The cumulative effect of these policies has been to reduce the share of people who have (real, non-junk) insurance; those still motivated to seek comprehensive insurance tend to be sicker and more expensive to cover. The predictable result? Premiums hundreds of dollars higher than they would otherwise be, according to estimates from health-care analyst Charles Gaba.

And, unsurprisingly, those who don’t qualify for the subsidies that shield enrollees from these price hikes are dropping out of the individual market altogether because they can’t afford the insurance.

But no worries. For years, administration officials and fellow Republican lawmakers have argued this is merely an expansion of a fundamental American freedom — the freedom to go uninsured.

Simultaneously, of course, the administration has also been undermining our legal immigration system. Emphasis on “legal” here: For all of Trump’s vitriol for undocumented immigrants, he’s also been targeting people who are trying to come to this country lawfully.

Among the creative, non-legislative ways the administration has sabotaged the legal immigration system: huge and arbitrary delays in visa and citizenship application processing; cruel and inhumane treatment of families seeking asylum; reductions in the refugee admissions cap to its lowest level on record; and, of course, the travel ban placed on several majority-Muslim countries.

And then there are all of the policies intended to penalize legal immigrants whom the Trump administration claims are a financial burden.

To be clear: Immigrants are in fact a net fiscal boon to the United States, according to a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and their children are “among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the U.S. population.” But Trump and his aides are convinced that immigrants are, and will forever be, a drain on society.

Or, as Trump’s acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Ken Cuccinelli put it: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet.”

Cuccinelli was talking about a new administration rule — currently being challenged in eight lawsuits — that makes it harder for immigrants to receive green cards if they have ever used or might someday need safety-net benefits such as food stamps or Medicaid. But it’s actually one of several policies the administration has devised to drive down immigration numbers under the guise of fiscal prudence.

The latest such development was rolled out Friday night. This new policy, issued via presidential proclamation, bars issuance of visas to immigrants unless they can prove they will obtain health insurance within 30 days of their arrival in the United States, or otherwise demonstrate that they can pay medical expenses out of pocket.

That’s right, the Trump administration has brought back the individual mandate, but for immigrants only — the GOP’s supposed commitment to “freedom” notwithstanding. The Migration Policy Institute estimates the change could end up excluding about two-thirds of future immigrants.

The new policy is vague about how would-be immigrants would even be able to prove they meet the new requirement. Maybe they’d need to somehow buy insurance before they leave their home countries, while still waiting in that interminable visa queue; maybe not.

What’s more, if they get subsidized insurance through the individual exchanges, Trump’s proclamation says it won’t count. This is yet another way the administration is sabotaging Obamacare, which explicitly allows immigrants to purchase subsidized exchange insurance. It also places low- and moderate-income immigrants in an impossible position, since they’re now stuck buying insurance at the sticker prices that the Trump administration has helped jack up through its earlier rounds of Obamacare sabotage.

Under the proclamation, immigrants could instead buy junk insurance. But, as the administration also surely knows, these Trumpcare plans cover almost nothing. So forcing immigrants to buy such policies seems unlikely to shield taxpayers (or hospitals) from immigrants’ emergency medical costs — which is allegedly the goal here.

Of course there is also a fundamental tension between arguing that uninsured immigrants impose huge costs on the country but uninsured native-born Americans don’t cost anyone anything. But no one said consistency was this administration’s strong suit — aside from its consistent desire to find new ways to destroy as many institutions as possible.

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Yup! Catherine nails the GOP’s disingenuous approach to almost everything. But, perhaps there are unifying principles of the GOP: hate, dehumanization, cruelty, selfishness, intolerance, intellectual dishonesty, and short-sightedness.

Of course the requirements of the new “policy” are “vague.” That’s because the intent is not to have immigrants get insurance coverage before they come. The real intent is to keep them from coming at all even though they meet all of the legal requirements. It’s just another aspect of the Trump GOP’s racist, extralegal assault on all migrants, legal and undocumented. The next time you hear one of his GOP or bureaucratic sycophants disingenuously claim that they are “in favor of legal immigration, just not unlawful migration” call out “BS” at the top of your voice!

Catherine’s column “connecting the dots” supports my own observation that the Trump GOP’s attack on migrants is just a “placeholder” for attacks on the majority of Americans who don’t fit the GOP’s toxic White Nationalist agenda.

PWS

10-09-19

AMERICA THE UGLY: Here’s An “Inside Look” At The Illegal & Immoral “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico” Program Engineered By Trump & His White Nationalists, Implemented By “Big Mac with Lies,” “Cooch Cooch” & Their Henchmen (& Women), & Enabled By Complicit 9th Circuit & 5th Circuit Judges With Encouragement From The Legally Challenged & Morally Untethered Supremes, Funded By YOUR Tax Dollars! – “We are better than this. The humanitarian crisis has not gone away it is just south of the border and worse than ever. In 24 years as a lawyer I have never seen so much extreme cruelty.”

Jodi Goodwin, Esquire
Immigration Attorney
Harlingen, TX

Immprof list subscribers: This post is from Jodi Goodwin, who is an immigration attorney in Harlingen, TX struggling to provide support to asylum seekers turned back due to the “Remain in Mexico” policy. This description is from a public post on her Facebook page, and she has given permission to share widely. Margaret Taylor

From Jodi:

Long post….please read. Especially if you are an immigration Judge or an ICE attorney.

Two days. 100 degrees. 100% humidity. And a beautiful rainbow to start our second day this weekend in Matamoros with Project MPP Matamoros. We saw about 80 plus principal applicants (that means we didn’t count spouses and children so the real reach is much higher) to help them understand immigration court proceedings and asylum applications.

But not just that….today I met with 5 pregnant or just had their babies in the last week women. One thrown back into Mexico after CBP had taken her to hospital to stop her contractions, one so heavily pregnant she spent 7 days in the hielera only to be sent to Mexico to give birth less than 12 hours after CBP threw her back. Another 13 weeks along dehydrated, sick, living in inhumane conditions on the streets of Mexico that she fainted and then began vomiting. No one from the Mexican authorities came to assist. Myself and some other refugees grabbed some chairs to make a makeshift bed, had her drink rehydration salts and used peppermint oil to bring her back after the fainting spell. More electrolytes, water, and a granola bar I had in my bag. It took about 40 minutes until her pupils returned to normal. Luckily, a Cuban refugee with some EMT training was barking orders for us to try to find the various things he thought could help her all while checking her vitals super old school style with a watch to count her pulse and listening for her breaths as she laid on the makeshift bed. I guess street lawyering means you are also a nurse/EMT. Glad I had the things the Cuban man was barking orders to find.

There are so many stories I can tell. MPP is wrong on a moral level. MPP is wrong legally.

Then there are all the court documents that have fake addresses where CBP puts in an address to a shelter that no one can get in. They are homeless. But the judges buy those fake addresses and use them to deport people. The “tear sheets” which are supposed to instruct refugees how to appear to court are either not given at all or given with wrong information telling them to appear at the bridge at the same time their hearing is supposed to start which ensures they will not make it to their hearing on time. Then there are those thrown back without even giving them their court documents. When they go to the bridge to ask about their paperwork they are told CBP doesnt handle that…..when in fact it is CBP who does! How in the world are refugees supposed to know when and where to go to court when CBP won’t even give them the court documents. And of course I can not fail to mention all the defects in the court charging documents….it goes on and on.

We are better than this. The humanitarian crisis has not gone away it is just south of the border and worse than ever. In 24 years as a lawyer I have never seen so much extreme cruelty. If you are a lawyer and have some time to work remotely on document preparation contact me. If you are a Spanish Speaking Immigration lawyer with asylum law experience, we could use you for 4 days of your life from Friday to Monday.

Jodi is a private immigration attorney, struggling to make a living as she tries to address this humanitarian crisis. Here’s her firm website with a contact form:

https://www.jodigoodwin.com/

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

Many thanks to my good friend Professor Margaret Taylor of Wake Forest Law for passing along Jodi’s message and request for help.

While I know that Jodi, Margaret, and other members of the “New Due Process Army” are “better than this,” it’s hard to say that about our country right now. After all, these U.S. Government sponsored attacks on the legal system, the rule of law, human rights, and human decency are happening right now, every day, “as we speak.”

Those carrying them out, like Trump, Miller, “Big Mac With Lies,” “Cooch Cooch,” Matt Albence, Bill Barr, and a host of other sleazy characters operate with total arrogance and impunity.

Appellate Judges of the 9^thCircuit, 5^thCircuit, and the Supremes, whose sworn duty is to uphold the rule of law against such attacks, have instead gone “belly up,” thrown away their moral compasses, and joined the abusers, cowardly hiding in their “Ivory Towers” from having to actually witness the terrors they are inflicting on the most vulnerable, needy, and deserving of our protection. A truly disgusting performance in judicial spinelessness and task avoidance. Don’t know how those “robed dudes” with lifetime sinecures sleep at night!

And, of course, under GOP Senate leadership, Congress, which could and should have acted by veto proof margins to rebuke Trump and restore the rule of law has functionally ceased to exist. The GOP has made human rights abuses and false racially charged narratives about immigrants part of its official party platform.

And the Dems are “running out the clock” on an impeachment debate that most folks have ceased to care about and which everyone and his brother knows is never going to happen. Where is the House-enacted “Immigration Reform Agenda” that could be a blueprint for future change?

PWS

09-18-19

CHILD ABUSERS ON THE LOOSE! — No Matter What Lies Trump, Big Mac, Cooch Cooch, Albence & The Gang Spew Out, The Truth Is Clear: Detention Is Child Abuse!

Leah Hibe; — Leah Hibel
Associate Professor
UC Davis

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/opinion/migrant-children-detention.html

By Leah Hibel and Caitlin Patler

NY Times

Dr. Hibel is a professor of human development and family studies. Dr. Patler is a professor of sociology.

The Trump administration last week announced a new regulation that would allow the government to indefinitely detain migrant families who cross the border. If it goes into effect, it would terminate an agreement known as the Flores settlement that has been in place since 1997 to ensure that children are kept in the least restrictive setting possible, receive certain standards of care, have access to lawyers, and are generally released within 20 days. The effect would be to extend the well-documented suffering of migrant children in detention centers.

. . . .

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

Go to the link for the full story.

Why are children being abused and detained while the corrupt officials who promote and lie in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable remain free and supported by the “public dole?”

PWS

08-27-19

TRUMP UNLOADS VILE RACIST, MISOGYNIST ATTACK ON FOUR U.S. CONGRESSWOMEN!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-four-liberal-congresswomen-should-go-back-to-the-crime-infested-places-from-which-they-came/2019/07/14/b8bf140e-a638-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html

Felicia Sonmez & Mike DeBonis report for the Washington Post:

President Trump said Sunday that four minority, liberal congresswomen who have been critical of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” prompting other Democrats — including Pelosi — to leap to their defense.

Pelosi denounced Trump’s tweets as “xenophobic comments meant to divide our nation,” while the four congresswomen promised to continue fighting Trump’s agenda and accused him of seeking to appeal to white nationalists.

Trump’s remark swiftly united a House Democratic caucus that had been torn apart in recent days by infighting between Pelosi and the four freshman women of color — Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.). It also comes as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are preparing to round up migrant families that have received deportation orders across the country.

Trump kicked off the furor with a string of tweets before heading to his golf club in Sterling, Va., on Sunday morning.

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” Trump tweeted.

Pressley was born in Cincinnati, Tlaib was born in Detroit and Ocasio-Cortez was born in New York — about 20 miles from where Trump was born. Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia; her family fled the country amid civil war when she was a child, and she became a U.S. citizen as a teenager.

All four women won election to Congress in 2018.

In a follow-up tweet, Trump suggested that the four Democrats should leave Washington.

“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he said. “Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

Trump’s tweets prompted a sharp response from Pelosi, who described them as racist and divisive.

Scenes from the third year of Trump’s presidency

“When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again,” she said in a tweet. “Our diversity is our strength and our unity is our power.”

The four Democratic lawmakers also fired back at Trump on Twitter. Omar wrote that “As Members of Congress, the only country we swear an oath to is the United States.”

Trump was “stoking white nationalism,” she argued, out of anger that she and other women of color are fighting in Congress against his “hate-filled agenda.”

Pressley shared a screenshot of Trump’s tweets and stated, “THIS is what racism looks like. WE are what democracy looks like. And we’re not going anywhere. Except back to DC to fight for the families you marginalize and vilify everyday.”

Tlaib warned Trump, “I am fighting corruption in OUR country. . . . Keep talking, you’ll be out of the WH soon.”

And Ocasio-Cortez sent a string of tweets defiantly addressing the president. “You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us,” she said. “You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Mr. President, the country I “come from,” & the country we all swear to, is the United States.

But given how you’ve destroyed our border with inhumane camps, all at a benefit to you & the corps who profit off them, you are absolutely right about the corruption laid at your feet.

https://

twitter.com/realdonaldtrum

p/status/1150381394234941448

…

Donald J. Trump

✔

@realDonaldTrump

So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……

114K

12:34 PM – Jul 14, 2019

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Trump’s tweet came after House Democrats spent the prior week locked in internal tumult over whether Pelosi and House leaders have unfairly marginalized the four liberal freshmen. The firestorm reignited late Friday when the official House Democratic Caucus Twitter account attacked Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff for suggesting that Democrats had voted to “enable a racist system.” And on Saturday, Pressley made comments at the annual Netroots Nation conference that seemed to add to the conflagration.

But within a few hours on Sunday, Democratic lawmakers were united in defending their colleagues against Trump’s attack.

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to bring everybody together — I think the president just did that for us,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said. “Nobody in our caucus is going to tolerate that kind of hatred. They’re not going to tolerate xenophobia, and they’re not going to tolerate racism. . . . This puts it all in perspective.”

Dingell, whose suburban Detroit constituency includes one of the largest Muslim American populations of any House district, said she was “furious” at Trump’s tweet and said it represented a direct attack on her community.

“It’s just stark hatred,” she said. “It’s absolute total hatred. He doesn’t know what he does to a community like the one that I live in when he does something like that. . . . It reinforces the fear of so many people in this country.”

Even lawmakers who have butted heads with the quartet of freshmen stood up for them on Sunday. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), co-chair of the centrist Problem Solvers Caucus and a frequent critic of the four, said in a tweet that Trump’s comments about them were “totally unacceptable and wrong.”

Some lawmakers pointed out Trump’s history of “birtherism” as well as the fact that the president’s wife, Melania, had immigrated to the United States. Melania Trump emigrated from Slovenia in 1996 for her modeling career.

“3 of 4 are American born and other is a citizen,” Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said of the four Democratic lawmakers in a tweet. “They are all ‘more’ American than 2 of Trumps wives (he seems partial to foreign women) and his grandparents.” Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump, was born in what was then Czechoslovakia, and Trump’s grandparents and mother were born in Europe.

[House Democrats infighting escalates into all-out war]

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) responded to Trump by recounting how, despite being born in the United States, he was repeatedly told to “go back to Mexico” from childhood through adulthood, regardless of his service in the Marine Corps or how well he did in school.

“To people like Trump I will never be American enough,” Gallego said in a tweet. “So if you wonder why I give no inch to these racists, now you know. Nothing will ever satisfy them, all we can do is stop them.”

Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said on “Fox News Sunday” that Trump’s tweet was “racist” and “wrong.”

“Telling people to go back where they came from? These are American citizens elected by voters in the United States of America to serve in one of the most distinguished bodies in the U.S. House of Representatives,” said Luján, who is assistant House speaker.

For years, Trump repeatedly raised doubts about former president Barack Obama’s birth certificate, making the issue part of his 2016 presidential run. He finally acknowledged in September 2016 that Obama was born in the United States — but falsely accused the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton of being the source of the rumor.

“Trump is now turning the same birtherism he directed at President Obama against women of color serving in Congress,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said. “Everyone should call this what it is: racism.”

Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.), a vocal Trump critic who recently left the Republican Party, also defended the four Democratic lawmakers.

“To tell these American citizens (most of whom were born here) to ‘go back’ to the ‘crime infested places from which they came’ is racist and disgusting,” Amash said in a tweet.

By late Sunday afternoon, at least 27 congressional Democrats, plus Amash, had used the words “racist” or “racism” on their Twitter accounts to describe Trump’s tweets.

Some Democrats went even further. “This is white nationalism,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who is running for president.

Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, were largely silent Sunday. In television appearances, several Trump administration officials declined to defend the president’s tweets.

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Jake Tapper asked Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, whether he knew whom the president was talking about in his tweets.

“I don’t. I don’t,” Cuccinelli said.

Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, also declined to weigh in. “I think that you need to talk to the president about his specific tweets,” Morgan said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

Jeh Johnson, who was homeland security secretary during the Obama administration, said Morgan had “ducked” the question. Johnson argued that by sending the inflammatory tweets, Trump was undermining his own administration’s efforts on a bipartisan immigration reform deal.

“I cannot believe a president of the United States would make a statement about foreign-born members of Congress, suggesting they go back from where they came from. … Americans should not become numb to this kind of language and offensive statements,” Johnson said on “Face the Nation.

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

Trump continues to demonstrate why he is unfit for any public office, let alone the one he holds. And that goes for the anti-American Republicans who continue to support this vile, disgusting, and dangerous clown who desires nothing less than the destruction of America for his own amusement.

A-lso worth’s noting how “fellow Trumpeters” Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli and Mark Morgan ducked the question when an immediate and unqualified condemnation would have been in order.

PWS

07-14-19

INSIDE THE KAKISTOCRACY: “Cooch Cooch” Takes Commanding Lead In Race To The Bottom – Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) Nails Him Cold!

Rep. Don Beyer

@RepDonBeyer

Ken Cuccinelli immediately stands out in an Administration that values cruelty. What a despicable and heartless thing to say.

Quote Tweet

The Washington Post

@washingtonpost

Jun 28

Ken Cuccinelli, head of citizenship service, blames migrant father for drowning deaths captured in photo (link: https://wapo.st/2NlcWTb) wapo.st/2NlcWTb

8:19 AM · Jun 28, 2019· Twitter for iPhone

590

Retweets

1.6K

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Thanks, Don, and well said! I’m proud to have you for our Representative here in Alexandria. You have been a constant voice of decency, common sense, and opposition to the “malicious incompetence” of the Trump Kakistocracy. And those of us in Virginia who survived the “Modern Day Jim Crow Era” of “Cooch Cooch” as Virginia Attorney General know just what a nasty, vile, unqualified, racist hack he has always been and always will be. Heck, even Mitch McConnell can’t stand him, and that says something!

“Cooch Cooch’s” latest despicable act of note comes along with provoking an immediate rebellion among Asylum Officers. As I predicted, “Cooch Cooch” has already distinguished himself as a “lowlife among bottom dwellers.”

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.

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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

Customs and Border Protection may be violating the law by holding asylum-seeking children longer than the agency is allowed to, according to lawyers who represent migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

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