Tag: “New Due Process Army” (“NDPA”)

JULIAN CASTRO: A Democrat With A Sane & Sound Immigration Plan!

https://www.julianforthefuture.com/news-events/people-first-immigration-policy/

 

People First Immigration Policy

By Julián Castro on April 2, 2019

People First Immigration Policy

Immigration Policy Summary

1. Reforming our Immigration System

  • Establish an inclusive roadmap to citizenship for undocumented individuals and families who do not have a current pathway to legal status, but who live, work, and raise families in communities throughout the United States.
  • Provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and those under Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure, through the Dream and Promise Act of 2019, and defend DACA and TPS protections during the legislative process.
  • Revamp the visa system and strengthen family reunification through the Reuniting Families Act, reducing the number of people who are waiting to reunite with their families but are stuck in the bureaucratic backlog.
  • Terminate the three and ten year bars, which require undocumented individuals—who otherwise qualify for legal status—to leave the United States and their families behind for years before becoming citizens.
  • Rescind Trump’s discriminatory Muslim and Refugee Ban, other harmful immigration-related executive orders, racial profiling of minority communities, and expanded use of denaturalization as a frequently used course of action through the USCIS Denaturalization Task Force.
  • Increase refugee admissions, reversing cuts under Trump, and restoring our nation to its historic position as a moral leader providing a safe haven for those fleeing persecution, violence, disaster, and despair. Adapt these programs to account for new global challenges like climate change.
  • End cooperation agreements under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and other such agreements between federal immigration enforcement agencies and state and local entities that erode trust between communities and local police.
  • Allow all deported veterans who honorably served in the armed forces of the United States to return to the United States and end the practice of deporting such veterans.
  • Strengthen labor protections for skilled and unskilled guest workers and end exploitative practices which hurt residents and guest workers, provide work authorization to spouses of participating individuals, and ensured skilled and unskilled guest workers have a fair opportunity to become residents and citizens through the Agricultural Worker Program Act.
  • Protect victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking, ensuring these individuals are not subject to detention, deportation, or legal reprisal following their reporting these incidents.

2. Creating a Humane Border Policy

  • Repeal Section 1325 of Immigration and Nationality Act, which applies a criminal, rather than civil, violation to people apprehended when entering the United States. This provision has allowed for separation of children and families at our border, the large scale detention of tens of thousands of families, and has deterred migrants from turning themselves in to an immigration official within our borders. The widespread detention of these individuals and families at our border has overburdened our justice system, been ineffective at deterring migration, and has cost our government billions of dollars.
    • Effectively end the use of detention in conducting immigration enforcement, except in serious cases.Utilize cost-effective and more humane alternatives to detention, which draw on the successes of prior efforts like the Family Case Management Program. Ensure all individuals have access to a bond hearing and that vulnerable populations, including children, pregnant women, and members of the LGBTQ community are not placed in civil detention.
    • Eliminate the for-profit immigration detention and prison industry, which monetizes the detention of migrants and children.
    • End immigration enforcement raids at or near sensitive locations such as schools, hospitals, churches, and courthouses.
  • Reconstitute the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) by splitting the agency in half and re-assigning enforcement functions within the Enforcement and Removal Operations to other agencies, including the Department of Justice. There must be a thorough investigation of ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and the Department of Justice’s role in family separation policies instituted by the Trump administration.
  • Reprioritize Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to focus its efforts on border-related activities including drug and human trafficking, rather than law enforcement activities in the interior of the United States. Extend Department of Justice civil rights jurisdiction to CBP, and adopt best practices employed in law enforcement, including body-worn cameras and strong accountability policies.
  • End wasteful, ineffective and invasive border wall construction and consult with border communities about repairing environmental and other damage already done.
    Properly equip our ports of entry, investing in infrastructure, staff, and technology to process claims and prevent human and drug trafficking.
  • End asylum “metering” and the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, ensuring all asylum seekers are able to present their claims to U.S.officials.
  • Create a well-resourced and independent immigration court system under Article 1 of the Constitution, outside the Department of Justice, to increase the hiring and retention of independent judges to adjudicate immigration claims faster.
  • Increase access to legal assistance for individuals and families presenting asylum claims, ensuring individuals understand their rights and are able to make an informed and accurate request for asylum. Guarantee counsel for all children in the immigration enforcement system.
  • Protect victims of domestic and gang violence, by reversing guidance by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that prohibited asylum claims on the basis of credible fear stemming from domestic or gang violence.

3. Establishing a 21st Century ‘Marshall Plan’ for Central America

  • Prioritize high-level diplomacy with our neighbors in Latin America, a region where challenges in governance and economic development have consequences to migration to the United States, U.S. economic growth, and regional instability.
  • Ensure higher standards of governance, transparency, rule-of-law, and anti-corruption practice as the heart of U.S. engagement with Central America, rejecting the idea that regional stability requires overlooking authoritarian actions.
  • Enlist all actors in Central America to be part of the solution by restoring U.S. credibility on corruption and transparency and encouraging private sector, civil society, and local governments to work together – rather than at cross purposes – to build sustainable, equitable societies.
  • Bolster economic development, superior labor rights, and environmentally sustainable jobs, allowing individuals to build a life in their communities rather than make a dangerous journey leaving their homes.
  • Ensure regional partners are part of the solution by working with countries in the Western Hemisphere to channel resources to address development challenges in Central America, including through a newly constituted multilateral development fund focused on sustainable and inclusive economic growth in Central America.
  • Target illicit networks and transnational criminal organizations through law enforcement actions and sanctions mechanisms to eliminate their ability to raise revenue from illegal activities like human and drug trafficking and public corruption.
  • Re-establish the Central American Minors program, which allows individuals in the United States to petition for their minor children residing in Central America to apply for resettlement in the U.S. while their applications are pending.
  • Increase funding for bottom-up development and violence prevention programs, including the Inter-American Foundation, to spur initiatives that prevent violence at the local level, support public health and nutrition, and partner with the private sector to create jobs.

 

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Wow!
Finally a thoughtful, empirically-based, plan that stops wasting money, harming people, and limiting America’s future:  Moving us forward rather than “doubling down” on all of the worst failures and most dismal mistakes of the past.
Castro’s plan echoes many of the ideas I have been promoting on immigrationcourtside.com and reflects the “battle plan” of the “New Due Process Army.”  Most important, it establishes an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court, the key to making any reforms effective and bringing back the essential emphasis on fulfilling our Constitutional requirement to “guarantee fairness and Due Process for all.”
While stopping short of recommending “universal representation,” something I would favor, Castro does:
  • Recognize the importance of increasing, rather than intentionally limiting access to counsel;
  • Promote “know your rights” presentations that help individuals understand the system, its requirements, their responsibilities, and to make informed decisions about how to proceed; and
  • Universal representation for children in Immigration Court (thus, finally ending one of the most grotesque “Due Process Farces” in modern U.S. legal history).
So far, Castro remains “below the radar” in the overcrowded race to be the 2020 Democratic standard-bearer. But, even if his presidential campaign fails to “catch fire” his thoughtful, humane, practical, and forward-looking immigration agenda deserves attention and emulation.
Many thanks to Nolan Rappaport for passing this along.
PWS
04-03-19

Related posts:

  1. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  2. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  3. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

JUSTICE PREVAILS AGAIN IN IMMIGRATION COURTS EVEN IN THE “POST-A-B-“ ERA — Outstanding Analysis By Judge Eileen Trujillo Of The U.S. Immigration Court In Denver, CO, Recognizes “Women In Mexico” As PSG, Finds Nexus, Grants Asylum, Distinguishes A-B-

JUSTICE PREVAILS AGAIN IN  IMMIGRATION COURTS EVEN IN THE “POST-A-B-“ ERA — Outstanding Analysis By Judge Eileen Trujillo Of The U.S. Immigration Court In Denver, CO, Recognizes “Women In Mexico” As PSG, Finds Nexus, Grants Asylum, Distinguishes A-B-

Congrats to NDPA warrior (and former EOIR JLC) Camila Palmer of Elkind Alterman Harston, PC in Denver who represented the respondents! Great representation makes a difference; it saves lives!

Conversely, the DOJ EOIR policies that inhibit representation, discourage full and fair hearings, and hinder sound scholarship by U.S. Immigration Judges, thereby making it more challenging for judges to produce carefully researched and written decisions (rather than haphazard contemporaneous oral decisions which often lack professional legal analysis) are a direct attack on Due Process by Government organizations that are supposed to be committed to upholding and insuring it.

Go to this link for a redacted copy of Judge Trujillo’s decision: 

Asylum grant PSG Mexican women

U.S. Immigration Judges are not trained in how to recognize and grant asylum cases (or anything else, favor that matter — judicial training was a recent “casualty” of budget mismanagement by DOJ & EOIR). The BIA, always reluctant to publish “positive precedents” on asylum, is keeping a low profile after its emasculation by former AG Sessions. So these cases actually become “de facto precedents” for advocates to use in assisting Immigration Judges and DHS Assistant Chief Counsel in “doing the right thing” in critically examining and completing cases efficiently in the face of the “hostile environment” for Due Process and cooperation in court that has been created by EOIR and DOJ. 

It’s a huge “plus” that Judge Trujillo was familiar with and used Judge Sullivan’s outstanding opinion in Grace v. Whitaker which “abrogated” (in Judge Trujillo’s words) or “dismantled and discredited” (my words) Sessions’s biased and legally incorrect decision in Matter of A-B-. Shockingly, during the recent FBA Asylum Conference in New York, Judge Jeffrey Chase and I learned from participants that some U.S. Immigration Judges weren’t even aware of Grace v. Whitaker until counsel informed them! Talk about a system in failure! But, the “bright side” is once aware of the decision, Immigration Judges almost everywhere reportedly were appreciative of the information and eager to hear arguments about how its reasoning applied to the cases before them.

It’s important to remember that in the perverse world of today’s EOIR, fairness, scholarship, teamwork, respect, and correct decision-making — in other words, Due Process of law — have been replaced by expediency, focus on “numbers,” churning out orders of removal, and assisting DHS with its “gonzo” and ever-changing enforcement efforts. What real court operates as an adjunct of the prosecutor’s office? Well, that’s what happens in most of the third word countries and authoritarian states that send us refugees. But, in the United States, courts are supposed to operate independently of the prosecutor.

That’s why EOIR, in its present form of a “captive” highly politicized immigration enforcement organization “must go” and be replaced by an independent Article I Court. Until then, everybody who relies on this system, including ironically not only individuals, but DHS enforcement, Article III Courts, and the Immigration Judges and BIA Judges themselves, will continue to suffer from the dysfunction created by “malicious incompetence” and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling.”

Thanks again and congrats to Camila for adding to the growing body of correct asylum jurisprudence available on the internet for all to use. Just think what could be accomplished if we had a Government devoted to “using best practices to guarantee fairness and Due Process for all!”

PWS

03-21-20

Related posts:

  1. THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

ATTENTION NDPA NY BRIGADE AND ALL OTHER “DUE PROCESS WARRIORS” IN THE NY METRO AREA: Come Hear About The Dysfunctional Due Process Mess In Our U.S. Immigration Courts & The Article I Solution!

This is my final “scheduled stop” in the NY Metro Area this Spring. don’t miSs it!

PWS

03-18-19

Related posts:

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

What The DAG SHOULD Have Said To New U.S. Immigration Judges (But, Of Course Didn’t) . . .

WELCOME: DUE PROCESS IS YOUR ONLY MISSION

Congratulations on your appointment as U.S. Immigration Judges. It’s a difficult and important judicial position under the best of circumstances. Given the many controversies surrounding immigration today your job is even more challenging.

You face an overwhelming backlog resulting from factors largely beyond your control. Rather than being consumed or demoralized by that backlog, your job is to guarantee fairness and due process in each individual case coming before you. This requires you to act independently and resist pressures, from any quarter, to “cut corners” or otherwise compromise your constitutional duty to act impartially, fairly, and professionally toward each individual appearing before you.

While you occupy an unusual position as quasi-judicial officers who are also employed by Department of Justice, the Department regulations charge you with exercising your “independent judgment and discretion and . . . [taking] any action consistent with [your] authorities under the Act and regulations that is appropriate and necessary for the disposition of such cases.”

Indeed, the United States Supreme Court in the landmark case U.S. ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U.S. 260 (1954) stated with respect to your similarly situated judicial colleagues on the Board of Immigration Appeals that each administrative judge serving under these regulations “must exercise his authority according to his own understanding and conscience. This applies with equal force to the Board and the Attorney General. In short, as long as the regulations remain operative, the Attorney General denies himself the right to sidestep the Board or dictate its decision in any manner.”

Consequently, although as a cabinet officer the Attorney General might sometimes take certain positions or advocate certain policies, you must consider only the facts, the statutes, the regulations, and any precedent decisions directly relevant to your particular case in reaching your decisions. And, you must always treat the Department of Homeland Security as a separate party, with the same respect and consideration that you will give to individuals coming before you and their attorneys. That you are all employees of the same Government should not entitle DHS to special or preferable treatment or deference not afforded to other parties coming before your courts.

The motto of the Department of Justice, basically refers to one “who prosecutes in the name of justice.” Thus, our Department stands alone in incorporating a moral principle — the requirement of doing justice — into its mission. As that great American Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Some of the most vulnerable individuals entitled to due process under our Constitution will come before you in your courts. Your awesome and solemn responsibility is to insure that they receive due process and fairness — in other words justice — no matter how difficult their individual circumstances might be or any handicaps under which you might be operating.

Many of those arriving in the United States today are applying for asylum under our laws. Those fleeing persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion are eligible for protection. In INS v.Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S 421 (1987) our Supreme Court instructed us to apply the asylum standard in a generous manner. Others who face torture at the hands of, or with the “willful blindness” of, their governments, are entitled to protection without having to establish that the torture results from one of the foregoing “protected grounds.” An important part of your job will be insure that those who qualify for protection under our laws are given a full and fair chance to prepare their cases, to be represented by counsel of their choice, receive fair and reasoned decisions, and are not unfairly returned to harm in the countries they fled.

For my part, I pledge that during the time I remain with the Department of Justice I will do everything in my power to protect your quasi-judicial independence from improper influence, to allow you to manage your own dockets and develop “best practices” without bureaucratic interference,  and to secure for you the resources you need to do your critically important jobs. I trust that my successor will do likewise.

The vision of our Immigration Courts is “through teamwork and innovation become the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Your challenge is to do everything within your power to make that vision a reality each day you are on the bench.

Congratulations again on your selection and on choosing to serve our country in these important judicial positions at this critical juncture in our history. I thank you in advance for your future service and commitment to insuring equal justice for all. Good luck, do great things, and make due process for all your daily goal.

 

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Someday, we will once again have an Attorney General and a DAG who truly respect Constitutional Due Process, don’t fear independent judicial decision-making, and have the courage and backbone to “just say no” to White Nationalist restricitionist agendas that conflict with our Constitution, our statutes, our international obligations, common human decency, and what were once almost universally considered “true American values.”

Until then, it will be up to the “New Due Process Army” and their allies to keep Due Process and fairness for all of us alive during what will go down as one of the darkest and most evil periods in modern American history.

PWS

08-18-19

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  3. WHEN ARTICLE III COURTS FAIL: U.S. “Orbits” Refugee Families To Dangerous Chaos In Guatemala Under Clearly Fraudulent “Safe Third Country” Arrangements As Feckless U.S. Courts Fail To Enforce Constitutional Due Process & U.S. Asylum Laws In Face Of Trump Regime’s Contemptuous Scofflaw Conduct!
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

THE GIBSON REPORT 03-11-19 – Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

TOP UPDATES

 

Leaked Documents Show Government Tracking Journalists, Immigration Advocates

NBC: The documents obtained by NBC 7 Investigates show the U.S. Government has a secret database of journalists and immigration advocates where agents collected information on them and in some cases, placed alerts on their passports. Those alerts kept at least three photojournalists and an attorney from entering Mexico to work.

 

Report: ICE Tracking NYC Protests Through ‘Anti-Trump’ Spreadsheet

Gothamist: The tracking was revealed in an email sent by HSI, obtained by the magazine via a public records request, which contained a four-page “Anti-Trump Protest Spreadsheet 07/31/2018,” detailing the time, location, organizers and descriptions of 17 such events happening over a 17-day period last summer.

 

Trump to demand $8.6 billion in new wall funding, setting up fresh battle with Congress

WaPo: President Trump on Monday will request at least $8.6 billion more in funding to build additional sections of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, setting up a fresh battle with Congress less than one month after he declared a national emergency.

 

Hundreds of immigrant recruits risk ‘death sentence’ after Army bungles data, lawmaker says

WaPo: Army officials inadvertently disclosed sensitive information about hundreds of immigrant recruits from nations such as China and Russia, in a breach that could aid hostile governments in persecuting them or their families, a lawmaker and former U.S. officials said.

 

Migrant Families Arrive In Busloads As Border Crossings Hit 10-Year High

NPR: The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended more than 66,000 migrants at the Southern border in February, the highest total for a single month in almost a decade.

 

Migrants in Limbo as Court Backlog Balloons and Costs Skyrocket

Bloomberg: Spending at U.S. immigration courts has almost doubled to $119 million in fiscal 2018 from $61 million in fiscal 2015, an analysis of contracts shows. ManTech International Corp. and Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. are among those getting contracts, according to the Bloomberg Government study. But despite the spending and lawmakers’ efforts to bolster the immigration courts, the backlog has also doubled.

 

Why U.S. Visa Numbers Are Down

NPR: In 2018, temporary visas were down 7 percent, and immigrant visas for people coming for permanent residence – those were down 5 percent.

 

ICE Has a Podcast

ICE: During this episode of Careers at ICE, hear from Special Agent Allison Carter Anderson and Special Agent Cory Downs, who will discuss what it’s like to be a Special Agent with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI.

 

US Immigration Is Stuck in the Stone Age—and It’s Putting Lives In Danger

Nation: Lost files, poor communication, faulty technology, and seemingly endless delays: federal audits show that Mikhail and Bayley’s experiences weren’t unusual for the agency, which spends $300 million per year on paper and has disastrously mismanaged a 13-year effort to go digital—often leaving immigrants to deal with the consequences.

 

24 deported parents who returned to border hoping to be reunited with their children have been detained

ABC: Twenty-four migrant parents who returned to the United States on Saturday after they said they were separated and deported without their children are now being detained by the U.S. government, according to Erika Pinheiro, a lawyer for the families and the litigation and policy director of Al Otro Lado.

 

‘They used the kids to get to parents like me’: How ICE’s human smuggling initiative targeted parents and children

CIR: CE officials said the operation, called the Human Smuggling Disruption Initiative, targeted people who paid for coyotes to bring children across the border. However, a review of the operation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting casts doubt on that official narrative. A search of more than 1,400 smuggling-related cases filed in federal court in the seven months during and after the operation turned up only one case that was clearly connected to the program.

 

Senators push Trump on emergency legal status for 74,000 Venezuelans

WaExaminer: President Trump’s team has been mulling the possibility of granting Temporary Protected Status, a legal protection from deportation that can be granted to people who confront “extraordinary and temporary conditions” in their home country, for weeks. They haven’t come to a decision yet, but congressional support for the proposal is building as lawmakers look to alleviate the humanitarian crisis under way as Maduro defies international calls to relinquish power.

 

Banks bow to pressure to stop profiting from Trump’s immigration policy, but Big Tech remains defiant

WaPo: Last week, JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, became the latest major corporation to distance itself from Trump’s immigration policies, concluding that its investments in private detention centers conflicted with its broader business strategy.

 

Five takeaways from Wednesday’s hearings on immigration and family separation

CNN: Homeland Security’s acting inspector general said the office is investigating how the agency is processing asylum seekers and whether undocumented parents were deported without their children. And Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan was forced to rehash the botched rollout of that policy to skeptical lawmakers.

 

Census Bureau Seeks Citizenship Data From DHS Ahead of 2020 Census

TIME: As the U.S. Supreme Court weighs whether the Trump administration can ask people if they are citizens on the 2020 Census, the Census Bureau is quietly seeking comprehensive information about the legal status of millions of immigrants.

 

Immigration Groups Want Data On HIV Asylum Seekers

Gothamist: It’s been nearly a decade since the United States began allowing people with HIV from abroad to enter the country as immigrants. But the U.S. has never provided data on the number of HIV-positive refugees or asylum seekers admitted since the immigration law changed in 2010, despite efforts from groups including the Center for American Progress and Immigration Equality.

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

 

In ruling with ‘sweeping implications,’ 9th Circuit rules asylum-seeker is entitled to habeas review

ABA: Immigrants seeking asylum may seek habeas review of the procedures leading to expedited removal orders, a federal appeals court has ruled. The March 7 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco has “sweeping implications,” according to a press release by the American Civil Liberties Union.

 

New York Lawsuit Challenges Replacement of Immigration Court Hearings with Video Technology

Lawfare: In the latest salvo in a long debate over the use of video teleconferencing (VTC) technology in immigration courts, several legal aid organizations filed a class-action lawsuit on Feb. 12 in New York challenging the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) practice of denying in-person hearings to immigrants.

 

Another Federal Judge Bars Trump Administration’s Census Citizenship Question

Recorder: A federal judge in San Francisco has issued a decision finding that the Trump administration’s decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 U.S. Census was “arbitrary and capricious.”

 

Humanitarian and Security Crisis at Southern Border Reaches ‘Breaking Point’

DHS: The U.S. Border Patrol is currently encountering illegal immigration at the highest rates since 2007, according to new data. In fact, in February more than double the level of migrants crossed the border without authorization compared to the same period last year, approaching the largest numbers seen in any February in the last 12 years, The New York Times reported.

 

S.___: Fair Day in Court for Kids Act of 2019

On 3/6/19, Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI), along with Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), announced the Fair Day in Courts for Kids Act of 2019, which would provide legal representation for unaccompanied immigrant children during removal proceedings. AILA Doc. No. 19030637

 

S.___: Immigration Court Improvement Act of 2019

On 3/6/19, Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI), along with Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), announced the Immigration Court Improvement Act of 2019, would help insulate immigration judges from political interference or manipulation. AILA Doc. No. 19030638

 

DHS Announces Extension of TPS Designation for South Sudan

DHS Secretary Nielsen announced the extension of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for South Sudan for 18 months, through November 2, 2020. Further details, including information on the re-registration process and EADs, will appear in a Federal Register notice. AILA Doc. No. 19030831

 

DOS Announces U.S. Embassy in Bogota Begins Processing Venezuelan Immigrant Visas

DOS announced that due to suspension of routine visa services, nonimmigrant visa applications may be submitted at an Embassy or Consulate outside of Venezuela. The U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia has been designated as the primary site to process immigrant visas for residents of Venezuela. AILA Doc. No. 19022834

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

ImmProf

 

Sunday, March 10, 2019

Saturday, March 9, 2019

Friday, March 8, 2019

Thursday, March 7, 2019

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Monday, March 4, 2019

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

Thanks so much to Elizabeth for organizing the “New Due Process Army Reunion Dinner” at Le Botaniste following the FBA Asylum and Immigration Law Conference at New York Law School last Friday, March 8. It was wonderful seeing many former Georgetown Law students, Arlington Immigration Court interns, Judicial Law Clerks, and the many practitioners, retired judges, professors, FBA officials, and NAIJ members who stopped by to “celebrate due process” and envision what a brighter future for America could look like with an independent Immigration Court.

PWS

02-11-19

Related posts:

  1. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⚖️🗽🇺🇸FORMER DEPUTY AG DON AYER, JUDGE MIMI TSANKOV AMONG “HEADLINERS” AT TIMELY UPCOMING NY CITY BAR ASSN. EVENT: “Rule of Law Forum – Preserving the Rule of Law in an Age of Disruption” — Register Now, Right Here!
  2. THE GIBSON REPORT — 11-16-20 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Tales Of The Destructive Death Throes Of A Defeated Regime & Other News From The Twilight Zone!
  3. ⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 03-22-21 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Georgetown Law Journal Makes History, Of The Best Kind! — My Invitation To Current Georgetown Law Students To Get Involved!
  4. 🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸WHO’S JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts! — Coming April 7, 2021! — Sponsored By The HNBA! — Don’t Miss It!

“DUE PROCESS FOREVER, XENOPHOBIA NEVER!” — Here’s An Inspirational Creation By The Courageous Students Of Professor Claire Thomas Of NY Law School, Stalwart Members Of The New Due Process Army!

This is derived from the closing lines of my speech to the 2019 FBA New York Asylum and Immigration Law Conference at NY Law School last Friday, March 8!

“Practicing what they preach,” Professor Claire Thomas of NY Law School and her courageous, smart, and dedicated students are now at the Southern Border saving lives and making a historical record of the cruel, ineffective, illegal, and bias-driven policies of the Trump Administration.

Thanks again to Professor Thomas, who was also one of the primary organizers of the “sold-out” Conference, and her inspiring students for all they are doing to preserve America and our system of justice against the attacks on the rule of law, our Constitution, and simple human decency by the scofflaw and incompetent Trump Administration.

Here’s the amazing Professor Thomas:

 

Due Process Forever, Xenophobia Never!

PWS

03-11-19

Related posts:

  1. THE ART OF SOCIAL JUSTICE — HON. POLLY WEBBER’S TRIPTYCH “REFUGEE DILEMMA” HITS THE ROAD!
  2. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. 18 YEARS AFTER 09-11, THE “BAD GUYS” ARE WINNING THE BATTLE TO DESTROY AMERICAN JUSTICE & SPLIT THE COUNTRY! — Here’s The Disturbing Proof Of What Passes For “Justice” In America Today!

THE ART OF SOCIAL JUSTICE — HON. POLLY WEBBER’S TRIPTYCH “REFUGEE DILEMMA” HITS THE ROAD!

 

  1.  a) “Fleeing From Persecution;” b) “Caught in the Covfefe;” c) “Safe Haven;”
  2. The stories behold each rug by the artist, Hon. Polly Webber;
  3. Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase & Hon. Polly Webber admiring “Caught in the Covfefe” during a break at the 2019 FBA New York Asylum & Immigration Law Conference at NY Law School on March 8, 2019;
  4. Closeup of “Caught in the Covfefe.”

Art powerfully expresses the overwhelming need to fight for social justice and human dignity in the age of Trump’s unabashed cruelty, racism, and White Nationalism.

It’s even more powerful when the artist is Retired U.S. Immigration Judge Polly Webber (a proud member of “Our Gang” of retired judges) who has spent her life promoting Due Process, fundamental fairness, justice, and the rule of law in American immigration. She has served as an immigration attorney, former President of AILA, U.S. Immigration Judge, and now amazing textile artist bringing her full and rich life and deeply held humane values to the forefront of her art.

Thanks, Polly, for using your many talents to inspire a new generation of the “New Due Process Army!”

I’m only sorry that my photos don’t do justice to Polly’s art. Hopefully, the “real deal” will come to a venue near you in the future!

PWS

03-10-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. NATION OF CHILD ABUSERS: WHILE MANY RIGHT WING APOLOGISTS (ALONG WITH ALAN DERSHOWITZ) PAN NAZI COMPARISON, ACTUAL HOLOCAUST CHILD SURVIVOR YOKA VERDONER UNDERSTANDS THE PARALLELS! — Child Abuse Is Child Abuse —Evil Is Evil — Damage Is Irreparable!
  2. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

PARENTS VICTIMIZED BY SESSIONS’S CHILD ABUSE RETURN TO BORDER SEEKING THEIR CHILDREN, JUSTICE, & MERCY FROM A SYSTEM RUN BY THOSE WHO MOCK THE CONCEPTS! — Abusers Escape Accountability While Victims Continue To Suffer!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/29-parents-separated-from-their-children-and-deported-last-year-arrive-at-us-border-to-request-asylum/2019/03/02/38eaba7a-2e48-11e9-8781-763619f12cb4_story.html

Kevin Sieff and Sarah Kinosian report for the Washington Post:

Twenty-nine parents from across Central America who were separated from their children by U.S. immigration agents last year crossed the U.S. border on Saturday, demanding asylum hearings that might allow them to reunite with their children.

The group of parents quietly traveled north over the past month, assisted by a team of immigration lawyers who hatched a high-stakes plan to reunify families divided by the Trump administration’s family separation policy last year. The 29 parents were among those deported without their children, who remain in the United States in shelters, in foster homes or with relatives.

At about 5 p.m. local time, the families were taken to the U.S. side of the border by immigration agents, where their asylum claims will be assessed.

Although the Trump administration’s family separation policy has prompted congressional hearings, lawsuits and national protests, the parents have for nearly a year suffered out of the spotlight at their homes in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. They celebrated birthdays and Christmas on video calls, trying to determine whether their children were safe.

Now, they will pose a significant test to the embattled American asylum system, arguing that they deserve another chance at refuge in the United States, something rarely offered to deportees.

Before the Trump administration, families had never been systematically separated at the border. And before Saturday, those families had never returned to the border en masse.

More than 2,700 children were separated from their families along the border last year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. About 430 of the parents were deported without their children, and at least 200 of them remain separated today. Some waited in the hope that U.S. courts would allow them to return to the United States. Others paid smugglers to get them back to the border. Then came Saturday’s confrontation.

The group of parents walked toward the border here, flanked by local religious officials, and then waited at the entrance to the United States as the lawyers negotiated with U.S. officials. The parents sat on wooden benches, surrounded by their luggage, while officials decided how many of the parents to allow into the country.

Over the past three weeks, the parents stayed in a Tijuana hotel, sharing rooms and preparing for asylum hearings. They showed one another documents that their children had sent them: photos of foster families and report cards from Southwest Key, a company that runs shelters for migrant children.

A woman explained through tears how her daughter had tried to kill herself while in government custody. A man spoke about trying to communicate with his daughter, who is deaf, over a shelter’s telephone. Others carried bags full of belated Christmas gifts for their children.


José Ottoniel, 28, from Guatemala, at the Hotel Salazar in Tijuana, Mexico. Ottoniel was separated from his 10-year-old son, Ervin, and deported. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Many of the parents, like José Ottoniel, from the tiny town of San Rafael Las Flores, Guatemala, said they had been pressured into signing deportation papers after being separated from their children, before they could begin their asylum claims. When he returned home after being deported in June, Ottoniel was told that his 10-year-old son, Ervin, was still in the United States at a shelter.


Ottoniel and Ervin are seen in a picture taken on Sept. 15, 2017, Guatemala’s independence day. (Daniele Volpe/for The Washington Post)

The family chose to keep Ervin in the United States with an uncle, rather than forcing him to return to the violence and poverty of their home village. It was a wrenching decision that Ottoniel’s wife, Elvia, who had remained in Guatemala when Ottoniel had tried to cross the border, eventually decided she couldn’t live with. In January, she paid a smuggler $8,000 to travel to the United States to reunite with Ervin in Arkansas, applying for asylum in South Texas.

[These migrants were separated from their children — and aren’t sure they should be reunited]

A few days later, Ottoniel received a call from an American immigration lawyer with the Los Angeles-based legal advocacy group Al Otro Lado, which means “to the other side.” The attorney asked him if he was willing to travel the 2,500 miles from his village to the U.S.-
Mexico border to deliver himself once again to immigration agents.

Al Otro Lado had received more than a million dollars in financial assistance from organizations such as Families Belong Together and Together Rising, which mounted fundraising campaigns in the midst of the government’s separation policy. The lawyer told Ottoniel that the organization would pay for his buses, flights and hotels.

“At that point, we were already seeing some of these parents paying smugglers to bring them back to the U.S.,” said Erika Pinheiro, litigation and policy director for Al Otro Lado, which had interviewed deported parents from across Central America who feared for their lives because of violence in their home countries. “We needed to provide them with another option.”

For Ottoniel, who referred to his family as “disintegrated,” it seemed his best shot at a reunion.

“It was a chance to see my son again. How could I say no?” he said.

Ottoniel and other parents converged at a three-story hotel in Tijuana,where lawyers told them to remain quiet about their plans. They rehearsed how they would address U.S. immigration officials. They watched telenovelas. At night, they called their children across the border.

There was Luisa Hidalgo, 31, from El Salvador, whose daughter, Katherinne, 14, is in the Bronx with a foster family. The girl texted her mother the same words over and over: “Fight for me.”

Luisa Hidalgo, 31, from El Salvador, displays a jewelry box she purchased to give her daughter when they reunite. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Hidalgo sits for a portrait Feb. 14 in Hotel Salazar. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

There was Antolina Marcos, 28, who said she fled Guatemala after gangs began killing members of her family. She was separated from her 14-year-old daughter, Geidy, in May. “How can I live when she’s so far away?” Marcos said.

There was Santos Canelas, 44, who said he fled Honduras with his 16-year-old daughter, Merin, in May after gang members threatened to sexually assault her. She is living in New Orleans with a cousin. “Without my daughter, I’m dead inside,” he said.

In most of the 2,700 cases from when the Trump administration separated families at the border last year, both the parents and children remained in the United States, sometimes held in shelters and detention centers thousands of miles apart. Almost all of those families have now been reunified and are in the process of pursuing their asylum claims.

But the cases of about 430 parents deported without their children were particularly difficult. Often, the government lost track of which child belonged to which parent, and it did not link their immigration cases, sending parents back to Central America without telling them where their children were.

In some of those cases, parents later made the painful decision to leave their children in the United States, typically with relatives, rather than bringing them back to the violence and poverty from which the families fled. In other cases, the U.S. government determined that the parents were unfit to receive their children, often based on their criminal records.

Pablo Mejia Mancia, 53, from Honduras, was separated from his 10-year-old daughter, Monica, when they crossed the border in Reynosa, Mexico. Monica was detained for 3½ months. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Santos Canelas, 45, from Honduras, was separated from his daughter Merin, 16, who was detained for five months. Back home, gang members had threatened to rape his daughter. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

After Trump signed an executive order officially ending the family separation policy on June 20, lawyers launched a legal battle to reunify many of the deported parents and their children in the United States. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit demanding that the government allow 52 parents back into the United States to pursue their asylum claims, which the lawyers argued had been stymied after the parents were separated from their children at the border.

But the government has not responded to that appeal and later said it needed more information about the parents from the ACLU. It remains unclear when, or if, the U.S. government will invite those parents back to the United States to launch new asylum claims.

“The government has resisted bringing anyone back who was separated and deported without their kids,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “We hope the government will take a fresh look at these cases.”

[ACLU asks judge to order Trump administration to determine how many children were separated from their parents at border]

But as the government declined to articulate any plan to reunify the families, Pinheiro decided waiting much longer would put the parents at risk. Some had relocated to a safe house in Guatemala City to escape threats in El Salvador and Honduras. Some had already been without their children for more than a year, and those separations were taking a psychological toll.

“We gave them the option — you can wait for the court process, or you can do it this way,” Pinheiro said. Al Otro Lado worked with the ACLU to identify the separated parents in Central America, but the ACLU was not involved in bringing the 29 parents back to the border.

With few other options, Pinheiro said, almost every parent she approached accepted her offer. The parents first gathered in the Guatemalan city of Tecun Uman before crossing into Mexico with humanitarian visas that Al Otro Lado helped arrange. They flew to Mexico City and then to Tijuana, eventually taking a bus to Mexicali.

“We’re traveling back to the border where we lost our children in the first place,” said Pablo Mejia Mancia, 53, of Honduras, who was separated from his daughter, who is now 9 years old, when they crossed the border into Texas in May.


Antolina Marcos said she fled Guatemala after gangs began killing members of her family. She was separated from her 14-year-old daughter, Geidy, in May. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

It’s likely that some of the parents could be detained for months if the government decides to process their asylum claims. The U.S. policy of forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico has not yet been put into practice in Mexicali.

“They’re standing right at the border, preparing to reenter a system that traumatized their families months earlier,” Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, who counseled the parents in Tijuana, said before the parents crossed into the United States. “It says a lot about what they’re fleeing, and what they lost.”

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

Folks, we don’t have to look much further than Michael Cohen’s testimony (even if every word isn’t absolute truth), the House Judiciary GOP’s disgusting “head in the sand” performance, and Trump’s totally deranged two-hour litany of lies, distortions, fabrications, and White Nationalist myths before a deliriously giddy audience at CPAC this weekend to see that our country is in deep trouble. 

Four out of ten voters and a major party just don’t care if we’re “led” by a congenital liar, racist, and suck-up to the world’s worst dictators, who lacks any trace of human empathy, an essential ingredient for governing for the common good.

In the meantime, your tax dollars are being spent on misguided, wasteful, and counterproductive “immigration enforcement” and a failed Immigration Court system that no longer prioritizes Due Process and fundamental fairness. Never forget that the damage already done to these families and children might well be irreparable and that we are responsible as a nation for the atrocities, deceptions, and mindless cruelty carried out by Trump and his minions in our name. Yes, as these pictures by Carolyn Van Houten show, there are real human beings out there, decent people much more like us than we might choose to believe, who are suffering because of what our Government has become.

It could be a long uphill fight to save our republic.  But, that’s what the New Due Process Army is fighting to do every day!

PWS

03-03-19

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. WHEN ARTICLE III COURTS FAIL: U.S. “Orbits” Refugee Families To Dangerous Chaos In Guatemala Under Clearly Fraudulent “Safe Third Country” Arrangements As Feckless U.S. Courts Fail To Enforce Constitutional Due Process & U.S. Asylum Laws In Face Of Trump Regime’s Contemptuous Scofflaw Conduct!
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”

GREAT NEWS ON THE SIJ FRONT: Legal Aid & Justice Center Reports Major Legislative Change To Help Endangered Juveniles in Virginia — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Dan Kowalski Reports On New SIJ Legislative Victory in Colorado! — It’s The “New Due Process Army” In Action Across The Country!

THREE OF THE “DUE PROCESS WARRIORS” FROM THE LEGAL AID & JUSTICE CENTER OF VIRGINIA:  Amy Woodard, Tanishka Cruz, & Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg

For Immediate Release

Contact:            Amy Woolard, (434) 529-1846, amy@justice4all.org

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, (703) 720-5605, simon@justice4all.org

NEW VIRGINIA LAWS HELP IMMIGRANT CHILDREN SEEK PROTECTION FROM ABUSE, NEGLECT, AND ABANDONMENT

RICHMOND: On Friday, February 22, the Virginia General Assembly passed SB 1758 and HB 2679, identical bills that will aid immigrant children fleeing abuse, neglect, and abandonment in their home countries in seeking protection from deportation in Virginia.

Across the country, many immigrant children and DREAMers facing deportation proceedings seek a form of immigration relief called “Special Immigrant Juvenile Status” (SIJS). SIJS is unique in that it requires a state court to issue a certain type of order before the child may even attempt to seek SIJS relief from the federal government. In a 2017 case called Canales v. Torres-Orellana, brought by the Legal Aid Justice Center, the Virginia Court of Appeals sharply restricted state judges’ ability to issue these orders, leaving hundreds of Virginia immigrant children without protection. Virginia became one of the most difficult states in the nation to obtain SIJS.

During this year’s General Assembly session, Legal Aid Justice Center worked closely with legislators and the Governor’s office to pass these bills, which would overturn the Canales case and restore Virginia immigrant children’s ability to apply for SIJS. The bills also address the needs of other children before the juvenile courts, easing the way for any Virginia child to seek a state court’s assistance in proving eligibility for other benefits such as adoption assistance, TANF assistance, and timely public school enrollment.

SB 1758 was introduced by Sen. Scott Surovell (D-Mount Vernon). HB 2679 was introduced by Del. Marcus Simon (D-Falls Church). The bills initially took different approaches to fixing this issue, and each passed their respective chambers with an overwhelming bipartisan majority of votes. The bills were then placed into committees of conference in an attempt to gain consensus, and identical bills emerged that combined the approach of both; they garnered unanimous support in the House, and only two dissenting votes in the Senate. The bills now go to Governor Northam’s desk for his signature; once signed, they will take effect on July 1 of this year. The conference report with bill text is available at: http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?191+ful+SB1758S1+pdf

“Immigrant children in Virginia can breathe a little more easily now,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Legal Director of Legal Aid Justice Center’s Immigrant Advocacy Program. “Our agency has represented over 150 children fleeing truly horrific situations of abuse or neglect in their home countries. Fairness dictates that they be afforded the same rights as immigrant children in any other state. Now these new DREAMers will be able to seek protection and apply to remain in the United States with green cards.”

“This excellent result could not have come about without the leadership and hard work of Senator Surovell and Delegate Simon, and the support of Governor Northam’s administration,” said Amy Woolard, Legal Aid Justice Center Attorney and Policy Coordinator. “Virginia’s Juvenile and Domestic Relations courts should exist to protect the best interests of all children in the Commonwealth, and these bills will now make clear that is true for immigrant children seeking safety through SIJS, as well.”

“The United States has a long history of protecting abused, neglected, and abandoned children, and the Commonwealth will continue to play its part,” said Sen. Surovell. “These bills will clarify and restore Virginia courts’ authority to make factual findings necessary to protect children fleeing abuse, neglect, and abandonment from abroad, and I appreciate the broad bipartisan support of legislators who saw this as consistent with Virginia’s longstanding values.”

“I’m so pleased we were able to pass this important legislation to give our courts the authority they need to be able help some of the most vulnerable and powerless people in our Commonwealth,” said Del. Simon. “It is so important that we not let victims of abuse, neglect, and often abandonment fall through the cracks because of a technical deficiency in our code. Those are the common sense problems we are elected to come down here and fix.”

A downloadable PDF of this statement may be accessed here.

# # #

Legal Aid Justice Center is a statewide Virginia nonprofit organization whose mission is to strengthen the voices of low-income communities and root out the inequities that keep people in poverty. We provide legal support to immigrant communities facing legal crises and use advocacy and impact litigation to fight back against ICE enforcement and detention abuses. More information is available at http://www.justice4all.org/.

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

And, here’s the latest from the fabulous Dan Kowalski, “Chief Immigration Guru” at LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Thanks to the efforts of the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (“RMIAN”).

 

Passage of HB19-1042: Extension of State Court Jurisdiction for Vulnerable Youth 

RMIAN is thrilled to announce the passage of House Bill 19-1042 through the Colorado House and Senate. The bill was sponsored by Representative Serena Gonzales Gutierrez and Senator Julie Gonzales and is now awaiting signature by Governor Polis. This bill will allow immigrant youth who have been abused, neglected, and abandoned to gain access to Colorado State courts for necessary protection and care, and to establish their eligibility for federal immigration relief. Ashley Harrington with RMIAN Children’s Program helped to craft this important legislation with Representative Gonzales Gutierrez, Senator Gonzales, Denise Maes with the ACLU of Colorado, Kacie Mulhern with the Children’s Law Center, Ashley Chase from the Office of the Child’s Representative, Katie Glynn with Grob & Eirich, and Bridget McCann, a RMIAN pro bono family law attorney. Celebrating the law’s passage today Ashley Harrington says, “I am so proud and honored to have been a part of making this law a reality that will impact the lives of many vulnerable immigrant children and ensure that they can find safety and stability in Colorado.”
Denise Maes, Ashley Harrington, Senator Gonzales, Representative Gonzales Gutierrez, Katie Glynn and Kacie Mulhern at the Capitol 3/1/19.

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

Compare this with the Trump Administration’s cruel and shortsighted efforts to mindlessly restrict the scope of these important SIJ protections for some of our most vulnerable youth. Here’s my recent blog featuring WNYC’s Beth Fertig reporting on the Federal Judge’s adverse reaction to the DOJ’s disingenuous arguments “in defense of the indefensible” in his court. Talk about abuse of our court system by our Government! https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/02/27/beth-fertig-wnyc-federal-judge-tires-of-administrations-absurdist-legal-positions-in-court/

SIJ cases also have the huge benefit of being processed outside the clogged U.S. Immigration Court asylum system, thus keeping many cases out of the largely artificially created “backlog” that is handicapping Due Process in Immigration Court.

There are many ways of using and building on current laws to make the immigration and justice systems work better. It’s a national disgrace that the Trump Administration isn’t interested in Due Process, fairness, or making our immigration system function in a more rational manner.

The good news: Eventually, the small minds, incompetence, and “radical White Nationalism” of this Administration and its enablers will be replaced by smarter, wiser, more capable folks like those in the LAJC, the RMIAN, and other members of the New Due Process Army. These are the folks who someday will lead us out of today’s darkness into a brighter and more enlightened future for all Americans!

PWS

03-02-19-

Related posts:

  1. CHILD ABUSE: COWARDLY ADMINISTRATION USES FALSE NARRATIVES & DISTORTED FACTS TO ATTACK PROTECTIONS FOR REFUGEE CHILDREN — Our National Morality & Human Decency In Free-fall Under Trump! — “It has been national law and policy that as adults we look out for children …. No longer.”
  2. REPORT # 2 FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “APPELLATE LITIGATION IN TODAY’S BROKEN AND BIASED IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM: FOUR STEPS TO A WINNING COUNTERATTACK BY THE RELENTLESS ‘NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY’”
  3. COURTS OF INJUSTICE: How Systemic Bias, Bad Precedents, Gross Mismanagement, & Poor Decision-Making Threaten Lives In Immigration Court — What Should Be “Slam Dunk” Grants Of Protection Are Literally “Litigated To Death” Adding To Backlogs While Mocking Justice! — Featuring Quotes From “Roundtable” Leader Hon. Jeffrey Chase!
  4. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️COURTS OF APPEALS CONTINUE TO THROW ROTTEN TOMATOES 🍅 @ BIA’S ANTI-ASYLUM BIAS — Basic Analytical, Legal Errors Continue From Weaponized, Non-Expert “Star Chamber” ☠️ Posing As ”Tribunal!” — Judge Garland Must Fix This Inexcusable, Unnecessary, Systemic Failure Now! — Justice For Persons Of Color & Migrants Can’t “Wait For Godot!”

SYSTEMIC FAILURE: 9TH Circuit’s Most Recent Reversal Of BIA Demonstrates Disturbing Lack Of Basic Judicial Competence At All Levels Of EOIR – But, Even The 9th’s Rebuke Misses The Real Point – There Can Be No Due Process In Complex Cases Of This Type Without Legal Representation! – Arrey v. Barr

Arrey v Barr — 9th — Firm Resettlement

Arrey v. Barr, 9th Cir., 02-16-19, Published

SUMMARY BY COURT STAFF:

The panel granted in part a petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision affirming an immigration judge’s denial of asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture to a citizen of Cameroon, and remanded.

The panel rejected petitioner’s contention that she was deprived of her due process right to a full and fair hearing based on the denial of her right to retained counsel and an unbiased fact finder. The panel held that the IJ in this case provided petitioner reasonable time to locate an attorney, where the IJ provided several continuances so she could do so, warned her repeatedly that he would not grant further continuances, and attempted to call her attorney when he failed to appear on the day of her merits hearing. The panel also held that although the IJ was rude and harsh with petitioner, petitioner failed to establish that the IJ’s conduct prejudiced her, where the IJ held a complete hearing and made a thorough decision that fully examined the underlying factual matters, and any potential prejudice caused by the IJ’s questionable adverse credibility determination was cured by the Board’s subsequent decision assuming the credibility of petitioner’s testimony in full.

The panel held that the Board committed three legal errors in its application of the firm resettlement bar, which precludes asylum relief if an applicant was firmly resettled in another country prior to arriving in the United States. First, the panel held that the Board erred by failing to consider whether the conditions of petitioner’s offer of resettlement in South Africa were too restricted for her to be firmly resettled. Second, the panel held that the Board erred by applying the firm resettlement rule not as a mandatory bar to petitioner’s asylum claim, but instead as a limitation on the evidence the Board considered in support of her claim for relief from removal to Cameroon, thus causing the Board to improperly ignore evidence of the abuse petitioner suffered in Cameroon before fleeing to South Africa, as well as evidence of the nature of her relationship with her abuser. Third, the panel held that the Board erred by applying the firm resettlement bar to petitioner’s withholding of removal claim, which is not subject to the firm resettlement bar.

Turning to petitioner’s CAT claim, the panel held that substantial evidence did not support the Board’s determination that petitioner could avoid future harm through internal relocation in Cameroon.

The panel remanded petitioner’s asylum, withholding, and CAT claims for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

 

PANEL: Ronald M. Gould and Marsha S. Berzon, Circuit Judges, and Frederic Block,* District Judge.

* The Honorable Frederic Block, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation.

OPINION BY:  Judge Gould

KEY QUOTE:

Petitioner Delphine Arrey petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA” or “Board”) decision dismissing her appeal of an immigration judge’s (“IJ”) denial of her application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). We conclude that the IJ did not deny Arrey her due process rights to counsel and an unbiased factfinder. As to Arrey’s asylum and withholding of removal claims, we conclude that the Board erred as a matter of law in its analysis and application of the “firm resettlement” rule. As to Arrey’s claim for relief under CAT, we conclude that substantial evidence does not support the Board’s determination that Arrey could safely relocate in another area of Cameroon. We grant the petition in part and remand for reconsideration of Arrey’s claims consistent with our opinion.

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

Even the 9th Circuit “blew” the fundamental issue here: No matter how annoying the respondent’s conduct might have been, there was no way to conduct a fair hearing in a case of this complexity without counsel present.  

From this recitation of facts, it’s pretty obvious that the respondent had no idea what “firm resettlement” was or how the process for proving or disproving it worked. Going ahead with the hearing created a miscarriage of justice that simply wasted time by going all the way the 9th Circuit and then being returned for competent judicial adjudication applying the correct standards. Haste makes waste.

And the overwhelming backlog that obviously was on the judge’s mind here was not created by this respondent and her attorney; no, it primarily results from “aimless docket reshuffling,” poor administration, Congressional neglect, and “designed to fail policies” by politicos in the DOJ (under the improper and unethical political influence of the DHS) which went into “overdrive” under Sessions.

Getting to the merits, beyond apparently correctly setting forth the respondent’s name and “A number,” the Immigration Judge and the BIA got largely everything else in this case wrong! The basic errors range from a “clearly erroneous” adverse credibility ruling, to a legally incorrect standard for “firm resettlement,” to an idiotically nonsensical ruling that “threats and one attempted assault of rape” did not “rise to the level of persecution” (cases involving these facts were routinely granted by the BIA during my tenure and, to my knowledge, were uniformly granted by IJs in Arlington; indeed, I can’t even imagine an ICE Assistant Chief Counsel during my tenure in Arlington arguing the contrary), to wrong evidentiary determinations, to another completely nonsensical finding on internal relocation.

In other words, this was a “rubber stamp” by BIA “judges” of a staff attorney’s writeup with canned “any reason to deny” language. It was not a fair and impartial adjudication by an “expert” group of appellate judges.

Far from it. If a student had turned this in as an exam answer to a hypothetical case on my Georgetown Law final exam, it would have received “zero credit.” So, how is it “OK” to have a system where individuals in what are supposed to be senior judicial positions, requiring great expertise in immigration, asylum, and human rights law, perform in a manner that would have been deemed unacceptable for L2s and L3s?

It isn’t; and it’s up to the Article III Courts and Congress to get some backbone and some integrity and put an end to this travesty. Yeah, this is “only one case.” But, it involves a human life. Cameroon is a horrible country; credible Cameroonian asylum cases were routinely granted in the Arlington Immigration Court, normally without appeal by ICE.

And for every case where a respondent is lucky enough to get a “Court of Appeals intervention,” dozens of individuals, many without lawyers or the faintest knowledge of what’s happening, are “railroaded” through this fundamentally unfair and constitutionally defective system. This, rather than the bogus wall, or an influx of desperate refugee families seeking asylum, is our true “national emergency” involving immigration: The disdain by our current Administration for the rule of law, human rights, judicial quality, simple human decency, and Due Process of Law under our Constitution! 

Congrats to Attorney Ron Richey, an “Arlington Immigration Court regular,” who appeared before me many times, for fighting for due process and justice in another jurisdiction. You are an inspiration to all of us in the “New Due Process Army!”

PWS

03-01-19

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. GONZO’S WORLD: RECENT ARTICLES SHOW HOW SESSIONS’S SHOCKINGLY INAPPROPRIATE REMARKS TO NEW IMMIGRATION JUDGES VIOLATED EOIR CODE OF JUDICIAL ETHICS, SHOWED DISRESPECT FOR THE LAW, AND VIOLATED THE FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF GOOD IMMIGRATION JUDGING BY DIRECTING JUDGES NOT TO BE SYMPATHETIC TO REFUGEES! – TURNING REFUGEE LAW AND HISTORY ON ITS HEAD!

NEWEST BATTALION OF THE “NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY:” I Gave The Inaugural Speech To The Tulane Immigration Law Society (“TILS”)!

TILS President Sophia I. Barba, Me, TILS Vice President Amanda M. Glenz

New Orleans, LA

February 14, 2019

Here’s a link to the “video version” of “Welcome to The Breakfast Club — Tulane Law Version:”

https://wavetulane-my.sharepoint.com/personal/pdunn_tulane_edu/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Fpdunn%5Ftulane%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FStudent%20Organizations%2FWelcome%20to%20the%20Breakfast%20Club%2DTulane%20Law%20Edition%2Emp4&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Fpdunn%5Ftulane%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FStudent%20Organizations

And, here’s the “complete transcript of proceedings” prepared by Sophia Barba (good practice for a future stint as a Judicial Law Clerk at the U.S. Immigration Court, Sophia):

Transcription Tulane Law 2019

Congratulations again to Sophia, Amanda, and the other wonderful members of the TILS.  Honored to have you join the NDPA. Also thanks to Professor Mary Yanik and my good friend and former Georgetown Law colleague Professor Laila Hlass for being the “faculty support” for TILS.  And, of course, it was a singular honor to have been your inaugural speaker.

PWS

02-28-19

Related posts:

  1. PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP — PROFESSOR LAILA HLASS @ TULANE LAW TAKES ON “GUILT BY ASSOCIATION” AND “IMPLICIT BIAS “ IN IMMIGRATION ADJUDICATIONS INVOLVING GANG ALLEGATIONS!
  2. LET THE IMMIGRATION JUDGES SPEAK! — What Kind Of “Court System” Muzzles Judges, Shuns Educational Dialogue? 
  3. JUSTICE PREVAILS AGAIN IN IMMIGRATION COURTS EVEN IN THE “POST-A-B-“ ERA — Outstanding Analysis By Judge Eileen Trujillo Of The U.S. Immigration Court In Denver, CO, Recognizes “Women In Mexico” As PSG, Finds Nexus, Grants Asylum, Distinguishes A-B-
  4. ⚖️👩🏽‍⚖️ MORE NDPA CLE: Ellsberg, Harris, Schmidt, Among Headliners @ Inaugural Fourth Circuit Asylum Law Conference @ William & Mary Law on March 11!

INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE: YOU DON’T NEED A LAW DEGREE TO KNOW THIS SIMPLE TRUTH: Seeking Asylum In The U.S. Is Legal; Turning Away Asylum Seekers Is Not!

https://www.rescue.org/article/fact-check-what-national-emergency-do-we-need-wall

Behind the headlines

Fact check: What is the national emergency? Do we need a wall?

At the same time vulnerable families are reportedly being returned across the border to wait for their asylum claims to be processed, under a new administration policy called “Remain in Mexico.” Rather than make America safer, these policies will expose Central American children and families who have fled persecution, torture and violence to even more danger and uncertainty. Here’s what you need to know:

There is no national emergency at the border.

The number of irregular border crossings is actually at historic lows, according to Customs and Border Patrol figures. “This is clearly a manufactured ‘emergency,’” says Jennifer Sime, senior vice president, U.S. Programs for the International Rescue Committee.

The crisis is elsewhere.

The real crisis is the instability in Central America, which is forcing people to flee for their lives. People living in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are enduring some of the worst violence outside an active war zone. Many of those fleeing to the U.S. border have traveled together in caravans for safety.

A Central American girl holds a book as others traveling in a caravan climb the Mexico-U.S. border fence in an attempt to cross to San Diego County.

Every nation has the right to control its border. Both U.S. and international law also provide for the safe and legal movement of vulnerable people and the right to seek asylum.

Photo: ​​GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP/Getty Images

But rather than offering safe haven, the U.S. administration continues to block people from claiming asylum, separate families as part of its ‘zero tolerance’ effort, and forcibly return asylum seekers to Mexico as part of the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy.

Seeking asylum is legal. Turning away asylum seekers is not.

Every nation has the right to control its border. Both U.S. and international law also provide for the safe and legal movement of vulnerable people—including Central American refugees and asylum seekers—and the right to seek asylum.

The administration’s policies violate these laws, and rob asylum seekers of their due process rights, including access to legal counsel. They will also expose thousands of families and children to unsafe conditions.

IRC staff who have been in Tijuana say people awaiting asylum claims, and those helping them, are fearful as they face a credible risk of being targeted by violence. “They have called the idea of sending people back appalling, and sending children in particular, unthinkable,” says Jennifer Sime.

The emergency declaration harms America

The emergency declaration and systematic attacks on asylum seekers by the U.S. administration place some of the most vulnerable people on earth in harm’s way. Alongside reports of forcibly returned children, they fatally undermine the United States’ strategic leadership and moral clarity on humanitarian issues.

Read our full statement:  IRC responds to U.S. Emergency Declaration, reports of forcible return of children to Mexico (Feb. 15, 2019)

How the IRC helps

The International Rescue Committee is calling on the U.S. administrationto rescind this cruel and irresponsible policy, follow domestic and international law, and uphold America’s humanitarian commitments.

In addition to speaking out, the IRC provides emergency assistance to help those in El Salvador who are most at risk to find shelter and safety, as well as cash assistance to help people rebuild their lives.

In the U.S., the IRC will continue to help meet asylum seekers’ basic needs, facilitate family reunifications, connect people to critical legal services and help them access psychosocial support.

Stand with asylum seekers

Instead of receiving the welcome and protection they need, families fleeing violence have had the door slammed in their faces when they reach the U.S.

 

Related news & features

  • A Honduran couple and their five children, heading to the U.S. in a caravan, wait to cross into Mexico
    Central American caravans
    Fact check: Is there a crisis at the border?
    February 6, 2019
  • A Honduran migrant couple and their five kids taking part in a caravan heading to the US, wait to cross the border from Ciudad Tecun Uman in Guatemala, to Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico. Photo: ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images
    Flight from violence
    Real stories of Central American families searching for safety
    October 25, 2018
  • Families seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border are detained
    Central American caravans
    Families seeking asylum from violence in Central America are not criminals
    December 20, 2018
  • U.S. border “crisis”

    Asylum seekers are not criminals: what you need to know

    December 7, 2018
Join the “New Due Process Army” and fight to uphold our laws and Constitution against a scofflaw and dishonest Administration.
PWS
02-24-19

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  1. SPRINT TO THE BOTTOM: Trump Administration Trashes Refugees & Human Rights In A Despicable Return To “1939-Style Fascism Lite!” — America’s Rancid Conduct & Negative Leadership Presages Another Worldwide Refugee Tragedy — This Time The Blood Will Be Directly On Our Hands!
  2. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

JUDICIAL BRAIN DRAIN: As Outlaw Administration Attacks Due Process & Attempts To Institutionalize Xenophobic Bias, Experienced, Conscientious U.S. Immigration Judges Head For The Exits – Abandonment Of Scholarship, Fairness, Commitment To Due Process Threatens Entire U.S. Justice System!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/immigration-policy-judge-resign-trump

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

Being An Immigration Judge Was Their Dream. Under Trump, It Became Untenable.

“It has become so emotionally brutal and exhausting that many people I know are leaving or talking about finding an exit strategy,” said one immigration judge. “Morale has never, ever been lower.”

Hamed AleazizBuzzFeed News Reporter

Map of San Francisco, California

Reporting From

San Francisco, California

Posted on February 13, 2019, at 6:15 p.m. ET

Former immigration judge Rebecca Jamil in Fremont, California, on Dec. 28, 2018.

Constanza Hevia for BuzzFeed News

Former immigration judge Rebecca Jamil in Fremont, California, on Dec. 28, 2018.

SAN FRANCISCO — Rebecca Jamil was sitting in a nondescript hotel ballroom in suburban Virginia when she realized that her dream job — being an immigration judge — was no longer tenable. It was June 11, 2018, and then–attorney general Jeff Sessions, her boss, was speaking to a room packed with immigration judges, running through his list of usual complaints over what was, in his estimation, a broken asylum system.

Toward the end of the speech, Sessions let slip some big news: He had decided whether domestic abuse and gang victims could be granted asylum in the US. Advocates, attorneys, and judges had been waiting months to see what Sessions, who in his role as attorney general had the power to review cases, would do. After all, it would determine the fate of thousands of asylum-seekers, many fleeing dangerous situations in Central America.

Sessions didn’t reveal to the room the details of his ruling but Jamil, based in San Francisco since she was appointed in 2016, learned later that day that the attorney general had decided to dramatically restrict asylum protections for domestic abuse victims.

“I’d seen the faces of these families,” the 43-year-old judge said. “They weren’t abstractions to me.”

Hundreds of people overflow onto the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a US immigration office with numerous courtrooms in San Francisco.

Eric Risberg / AP

Hundreds of people overflow onto the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a US immigration office with numerous courtrooms in San Francisco.

Jamil, a mother of two young daughters, had been shaken by the images and sounds that came as a result of the Trump administration’s policy to separate families at the border. As a judge who oversaw primarily cases of women and children fleeing abuse and dangers abroad, this was the last straw.

Soon after, she stepped down from the court.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she told friends. “I felt that I couldn’t be ‘Rebecca Jamil, representative of the attorney general’ while these things were going on.”

In many ways, her resignation underscores the tenuous position of immigration judges, who are overseen by the attorney general and susceptible to the shifting winds of each administration. To avoid potential conflicts, the union that represents the judges has long called for its court to be an independent body, separate from the Department of Justice.

The Trump administration has undertaken a monumental overhaul of the way immigration judges, which total around 400 across the country, work: placing quotas on the number of cases they should complete every year, ending their ability to indefinitely suspend certain cases, restricting when asylum can be granted, and pouring thousands of previously closed cases back into court dockets.

In the meantime, the case backlog has jumped to more than 800,000 under the administration and wait times have continued to skyrocket to hundreds of days.

The quotas in particular have made judges feel as if they were cogs in a deportation machine, as opposed to neutral arbiters given time to thoughtfully analyze the merits of each case.

“The job has become exceedingly more difficult as the court has veered even farther away from being administered as a court rather than a law enforcement bureaucracy,” said Ashley Tabaddor, an immigration judge who heads the National Association of Immigration Judges, a union representing around 350 judges.

And it’s not just Jamil who has departed because of the massive changes to the court undertaken by the Trump administration, according to observers within the Department of Justice and those on the outside. While some, like Jamil, have resigned, others have retired early in large part because of the policies instituted under Trump, they said.

For those remaining at the immigration court, the mood is bleak.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a news conference on Oct. 16, 2018.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a news conference on Oct. 16, 2018.

“It has become so emotionally brutal and exhausting that many people I know are leaving or talking about finding an exit strategy,” said one immigration judge who declined to be named. “Morale has never, ever been lower.”

Another Justice Department official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told BuzzFeed News, “It is exhausting when you feel undervalued by the people at the top of your organization, especially when they are motivated by partisanship and have not spent their careers doing the job that you do.”

Tabaddor, the head of the union, said that her group has noticed a higher rate of retirements and resignations than in the past because of the way judges have been treated under Trump.

Some have been bold in their timing. John Richardson, a former immigration judge in Phoenix, stepped down on Sep. 30, 2018 — the day before the administration instituted a quota for the number of cases to be completed by judges.

“The timing of my retirement was a direct result of the draconian policies of the Administration, the relegation of [judges] to the status of ‘action officers’ who deport as many people as possible as soon as possible with only token due process, and blaming [judges] for the immigration crisis caused by decades of neglect and under funding of the Immigration Courts,” he said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

Another judge who resigned from the bench in September told staff members in a goodbye email, “I know things are getting difficult for you at [the Executive Office for Immigration Review], but I believe all you will ‘ride through the storm’ and ‘come out with a smile.’”

There have long been work challenges for immigration judges, including heavy caseloads and assignments, leading to comparatively high burnout rates. Justice Department officials told BuzzFeed News that concerns over retirements were nothing new.

According to the agency, from the beginning of fiscal year 2014 through Feb. 12, 2019, 94 immigration judges have retired, separated, or died. More than a third of those judges, 32, have left since Oct. 1, 2017. The agency does not track why judges leave their positions.

To those within the court and others who have recently retired, the situation has worsened to an unprecedented level. Richardson, the former judge in Phoenix, said he would have continued presiding over immigration cases if the status quo had remained.

“Yes, I was 75 years old with over 50 years of honorable federal service with the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, but had no plans for retirement as long as I was treated with respect, appreciated, and provided adequate support,” he said. “I had 28 years as an IJ and very much enjoyed my job, even with the poor funding and lack of support by Congress and the White House during that 28 years.”

Jeff Chase, a former immigration judge who stepped down years ago and who speaks regularly with others who’ve left the bench, was blunt in his characterization.

“The fastest growth industry is former immigration judges,” Chase said. Those still on the bench have told him, “It’s horrible. Whatever you think it is, it is much, much worse.”

In the meantime, the Trump administration has hired more than 100 judges to not only fill the vacancies of those who’ve retired but to add numbers to the bench. It’s a rehauling of the courts that could “have a drastic impact,” according to Chase.

Many of the judges retiring in recent months are experienced jurists, hired by the Clinton administration in the mid to late ’90s, he said. These judges, Chase said, were more willing to push back on claims made in court by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or to allow immigrants extended time to make their cases in what could otherwise be a rushed procedure.

In their place, Chase said, are judges hired by the new administration with case completion quotas, a two-year probation period, and a mandate to avoid showing sympathy for the people appearing before them.

“Even if it doesn’t show up on the sheet, just the level of humanity, that makes a huge difference — that’s what this administration is trying to remove from the immigration judge corps,” he said.

Rebecca Jamil holds her immigration judge certificate.

Constanza Hevia for BuzzFeed News

Rebecca Jamil holds her immigration judge certificate.

For her part, Jamil wanted to become an immigration judge from the earliest moments of her legal career. After working as a staff attorney at the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals, she joined the government as a prosecutor with ICE in 2011, where she was able to use discretion to focus deportation efforts on those with serious criminal backgrounds. Under the Trump administration, ICE attorneys have been told that nearly all undocumented immigrants are priorities for deportation.

In 2014, Jamil took a chance to fulfill her dream: She applied to become an immigration judge. It was a 17-month process, full of drawn-out interviews in Washington, DC, but finally, in 2015 she received a phone call informing her that she got the job.

“I thought, and I must have told most people I know, that this is the last job that I would ever have. It’s all I wanted to do,” she said.

Jamil dedicated herself to the exhausting career. She oversaw a docket made up primarily of families and regularly heard cases in which women and children applied for asylum based on abuse that they had experienced by partners and family members abroad.

Day in and day out, Jamil heard intense testimony of physical and sexual violence against women and children.

“You’re sitting in a windowless room and people tell you the very worst parts of their life and you have to decide if it is enough to stay in the US,” she said. “That is very tiring day after day to be the person who makes that decision.”

Then, under the Trump administration, things started to change. In 2018, Sessions instituted a new policy, severely limiting when judges could suspend certain cases. Suddenly, her docket expanded and she wasn’t allowed to decide which cases deserved to remain in court and which didn’t.

Jamil and fellow immigration judges were in attendance at the Virginia conference where Sessions spoke for annual trainings on courtroom procedure. The year before, jurists heard substantive legal updates and trainings on bias in the courtroom.

This version of the training, however, felt different.

“The entire conference was profoundly disturbing. Do things as fast as possible. There was an overarching theme of disbelieving aliens and their claims and how to remove people faster,” Jamil said. “That is not what I saw my job as an immigration judge to be. I was not trained to do that.”

Soon after she returned home, Jamil put in her resignation. Her colleagues fretted, probing her about whether she had considered the type of judge that could fill her spot on the bench and the impact that could have.

She didn’t have an answer, but she knew that she couldn’t do it any longer.

“Family separations; Sessions making his own case law on asylum; when we could continue cases — I could no longer sit below the seal of the Department of Justice and represent the Department of Justice at that point,” Jamil said. “They just chipped away at our authority on a daily basis. It felt like we weren’t really judges. It was frustrating and demoralizing.”

A former colleague, Laura Ramirez, worked for years as an immigration judge in San Francisco. In December, she retired at the earliest date possible, five days after she turned 60.

The changes put in place by the Trump administration, especially the case quotas, and the politicization of her job, became too much to handle.

The loss of judges like Jamil and others could be immeasurable to both immigrants and Department of Homeland Security attorneys, Ramirez said.

“For the system of justice, there’s these highly qualified, fair, thoughtful people who are being squeezed out of the system for political reasons, basically,” she said. “If people like her are squeezed out, it’s a loss to people who appear before her. The system can’t be fair if good people like her are pushed out.”

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

Forcing the “best, brightest, and fairest” out. Reinforcing “worst practices.” Enabling judges with well-established records of anti-asylum, nationality-based, and misogynistic bias. Attacking those private attorneys who steadfastly defended legal and Constitutional rights that were being systematically undermined by the Administration. Blaming others for his own incompetence and lack of scholarship. That’s what the “Sessions program” was all about.

The only good news: folks like Judge Jamil, Judge Ramirez, Judge Richardson, and Judge Chase are now part of the ever-growing “Our Gang” of retired Immigraton Judges helping others to fight the injustices and destruction of Due Process being pushed by the Trump Administration and a DOJ that has abandoned its mission in favor of a White Nationalist political agenda. Our voices are being heard in support of the efforts of the “New Due Process Army.”

And, while I doubt that anyone outside of Trump and Miller can match the viscous lies, racism, and knowingly false narratives of Sessions, I wouldn’t expect much improvement under Barr. Barr thought Sessions was “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” That, more than the Mueller investigation, should have caused all Democrats to vote against his confirmation. He’ll just “lose” some of the overtly racist and inflammatory lingo of the White Nationalist restrictionists and attack immigrants on the basis of bogus “strict enforcement” platitudes.

Every American who believes in our Constitution and thinks that America is different from the “Banana Republics” we often criticize will be threatened by this development. Malicious harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all; and the collapse of one of the “building blocks” at the “retail level” of the American justice system will adversely affect everybody’s ability to get justice with fairness and impartiality.

Many of us don’t think we will need fair, independent, and impartial courts until we do. Once the Trump Administration destroys them, they won’t easily be rebuilt.

Who will defend your rights when the time comes if you stand by and watch the rights of others being trampled?

PWS

02-14-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: RECENT ARTICLES SHOW HOW SESSIONS’S SHOCKINGLY INAPPROPRIATE REMARKS TO NEW IMMIGRATION JUDGES VIOLATED EOIR CODE OF JUDICIAL ETHICS, SHOWED DISRESPECT FOR THE LAW, AND VIOLATED THE FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF GOOD IMMIGRATION JUDGING BY DIRECTING JUDGES NOT TO BE SYMPATHETIC TO REFUGEES! – TURNING REFUGEE LAW AND HISTORY ON ITS HEAD!
  3. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

TRUMP TAKES “LIEFEST” TO EL PASO BORDER — Many Protest Against His White Nationalist Baloney! 

TRUMP TAKES “LIEFEST” TO EL PASO BORDER — Many Protest Against His White Nationalist Baloney! 

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-beto-border-rallies-20190211-story.html

Eli Stokols & Molly Hennessy-Fiske reports for the LA Times:

President Trump falsely told a raucous rally in El Paso on Monday night that he is already building a wall on the adjacent border with Mexico, as a potential Democratic challenger assailed him at a large protest nearby and, in Washington, congressional negotiators announced a tentative funding deal without the billions he demanded for a wall.

Beneath banners reading “Finish the Wall,” Trump hailed what he called a “big, beautiful wall right on the Rio Grande,” though no such construction is known to be underway. When supporters launched into a chant of “Build the wall!” — standard at his rallies for years — Trump corrected them: “You mean finish the wall.”

The president alluded to lawmakers’ announcement of a deal, which came moments before he took the stage, but did not give it his blessing. Nor did he disparage it though one of his foremost confidants, Fox News host Sean Hannity, came on the air midway through the president’s rally and condemned the reported agreement as “this garbage compromise.”

Without the president and Congress agreeing to a border security funding bill by midnight Friday, the government could be partially shuttered again, just three weeks after a shutdown that at 35 days was the longest ever. The “agreement in principle” called for $1.375 billion for 55 miles of new barrier on the 2,000-mile border — less than a quarter of the $5.7 billion Trump demanded.

He told the crowd that he hadn’t bothered to find out the particulars of the agreement because he was eager to take the stage. “I could have stayed in there and listened, or I could have come out to the people of El Paso, Texas,” he said. “I chose you.”

Outside the El Paso County Coliseum, thousands of protesters, bundled against the evening chill, marched along the Rio Grande to a nearby park. There, El Paso’s former congressman and a possible Democratic 2020 presidential candidate, Beto O’Rourke, joined other locals who spoke of El Paso and neighboring Juarez, Mexico, as one community and expressed indignation over Trump’s false characterization of their city as a violent one in last week’s State of the Union address.

“With the eyes of the entire country upon us, all of us together are going to make our stand. Here in one of the safest cities in the United States of America — safe, not because of walls but in spite of walls,” O’Rourke said, in the sort of rousing speech that brought nationwide attention to his Senate race last year, though he lost to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Let’s own this moment and the future and show this country there’s nothing to be afraid of when it comes to the U.S.-Mexico border,” O’Rourke said to cheers. “Let’s make sure our laws, our leaders and our language reflect our values.”

Late Monday, the House-Senate committee bargaining over border security funding and trying to avert another shutdown reached an “agreement in principle,” according to Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Talks had stalled on the weekend, Republicans said, over Democrats’ demands to limit the detention of undocumented immigrants, many of them seeking asylum.

Should Congress pass a compromise, the onus would be on the president to accept it, or risk taking blame again for a partial federal shutdown. Before arriving in El Paso, Trump sought to preemptively shift blame to Democrats should the legislative effort ultimately fail. After the recent shutdown, polls showed the public put the blame squarely on him, and his approval rating slid.

With both his rally and the protest featuring O’Rourke receiving national coverage, the split-screen moment promised something of an audition of a hypothetical 2020 matchup, effectively creating a live debate between the president and a charismatic potential challenger on the issue that most animated Trump’s followers in 2016 and probably will again in his reelection bid.

Before leaving the White House, the president signaled that he too saw the dueling rallies as an early competition, with his familiar emphasis on crowd sizes. “We have a line that’s very long already,” Trump told reporters at the White House, referring to people waiting to enter his El Paso venue. He added, “I understand our competitor’s got a line too, but it’s a tiny little line.”

At his rally, Trump bragged that 10,000 supporters were inside the arena and 25,000 more were standing outside. According to the El Paso Fire Department, 6,500 people — the building’s capacity — were allowed inside, while at least 10,000 attended the protest rally. Organizers, however, had a slightly lower estimate.

“We have 35,000 people tonight and he has 200 people, 300 people,” Trump said. “Not too good. That may be the end of his presidential bid.”

While the border visit was intended as an opportunity for Trump to promote his signature issue, he wandered widely in his remarks — attacking Democrats repeatedly, including on abortion and on a so-called Green New Deal environmental platform that some are advocating, and mocking Virginia Democrats for controversies that have roiled the state’s government.

Trump’s drumbeat on immigration has yet to pay political dividends beyond his own supporters, and it has further galvanized his opponents. His fear-mongering during campaign rallies last fall over caravans of immigrants failed to prevent a Democratic wave that cost Republicans a net 40 seats and their majority in the House.

And during his State of the Union address, his incorrect portrayal of El Paso — he said it had “extremely high rates of violent crime” and was “one of our nation’s most dangerous cities” until the government built a “powerful barrier” there — touched a nerve among civic leaders and citizens.

The El Paso County Commissioners Court on Monday approved a resolution assailing the president and his administration for misinformation and lies about a “crisis situation” on the U.S.-Mexico border, and noting that the federal government said “no crisis exists” and that “fiscal year 2017 was the lowest year of illegal cross-border migration on record.”

Yet Trump, at the rally, denounced his critics and media fact-checkers who disputed his claims that existing border fencing had slashed crime rates in El Paso. “They’re full of crap when they say it doesn’t make a difference,” he said, suggesting that local officials tried to “pull the wool over everybody’s eyes” by reporting low crime rates.

Lyda Ness-Garcia, a lawyer and founder of the Women’s March of El Paso, said organizers of Monday night’s protest were motivated to counteract Trump’s “lies” about their city.

“There was a deep sense of anger in our community, from the left and the right. It’s the demonization of our border. It’s the misrepresentation that the wall made us safe when we were safe long before,” she said.

Referring to the Mexican city just over the border, Garcia added: “We’re connected to Juarez. People forget. We’re not separate. We’re one culture.”

In truth, violent crime dropped in El Paso after a peak in 1993. It was at historic lows before Congress authorized a fence along the Rio Grande in 2006. Crime began to rise again over the next four years, after the fencing went up.

The city’s Republican mayor, Dee Margo, admonished Trump after the State of the Union speech, saying during an appearance on CNN that the president’s depiction of El Paso is “not factually correct.”

Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, said organizers intended the march as a community celebration rather than an anti-Trump or pro-O’Rourke political event. “The administration, they didn’t believe our community would react, that people would get upset about the lies,” he said. “Our community spoke in numbers.”

Garcia noted that residents had seen the fallout from the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies firsthand, both in family separations and in asylum-seekers being turned away from border bridges and required to remain in Mexico while they await hearings.

In December, two Guatemalan migrant children died in Border Patrol custody in the El Paso area after seeking asylum.

“Trump has created policies and strategies that have created deep wounds in our region,” Garcia said. “We are not a violent city. We are not criminals. We are part of America and we deserve respect from this president.”

Although the protest event brought together roughly 50 local groups, O’Rourke’s political star power generated significant media coverage.

“If you’re Beto, there couldn’t be a better, more visual contrast,” said Jen Psaki, a former communications director to President Obama. “By leading a march, he gets back to his grass-roots origins and it allows him to stand toe to toe with the president of the United States and to echo a message that even local Republicans agree with. It gives him a platform and a megaphone at a beneficial time.”

Not willing to cede the moment completely to O’Rourke, Julian Castro — a former mayor of San Antonio, an Obama Cabinet member and already a declared presidential candidate — went Monday to the border checkpoint where his grandmother entered the United States as a young girl. He filmed a video denouncing the president and calling Trump’s visit to El Paso an effort “to create a circus of fear and paranoia” and “to tell lies about the border and about immigration.”

Speaking directly into the camera, Castro added, “Don’t take the bait.”

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Eli Stokols

CONTACT

Eli Stokols is a White House reporter based in the Los Angeles Times Washington, D.C., bureau. He is a veteran of Politico and the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the 2016 presidential campaign and then the Trump White House. A native of Irvine, Stokols grew up in a Times household and is thrilled to report for what is still his family’s hometown paper. He is also a graduate of UC Berkeley and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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Molly Hennessy-Fiske

CONTACT

Molly Hennessy-Fiske has been a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times since 2006. She won a 2018 APME International Perspective Award;2015 Overseas Press Club award; 2014 Dart award from ColumbiaUniversity; and was a finalist for the Livingston Awards and Casey Medal. She completed a Thomson Reuters fellowship in Lebanon in 2006 and a Pew fellowship in Mexico in 2004. Hennessy-Fiske grew up in Upstate New York and graduated from Harvard College. She spent last year as Middle East bureau chief before returning to cover foreign/national news as Houston bureau chief.

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The racist lies about immigration just keep spewing forth from Trump and his White Nationalist support groups, including the “right wingnut” media.

We’re not being invaded by foreign criminals. Actually, we’re experiencing a quite predictable and potentially manageable influx of refugees seeking to exercise their legal rights to lawfully apply for asylum in the US. Not surprising, given that we have no viable refugee program in or near the Northern Triangle and have undoubtedly contributed to the breakdown of the rule of law and society in those “failed states.” 

The idea that real criminals, terrorists, drug smugglers, or human traffickers will be stopped or even materially deterred by a Wall is beyond absurd. Walls generally “reroute migration” and kill more innocent people. Real threats to our security are laughing at Trump and his base while they view the diversion, wasted time and money, and the failure to beef up intelligence, undercover, and anti-smuggling operations as a free gift.

And, I’m sure they cheer the focus on “rounding up” and detaining asylum applicants who turn themselves in to apply for asylum (because Trump has intentionally disabled reasonable processing through legal ports of entry) instead of doing the real law enforcement work of breaking up criminal enterprises. 

“Numbers” aren’t everything, particularly when the majority of the apprehensions have little to do with criminals or other “bad guys. But, it’s easier to “chalk up big numbers” and support a bogus White Nationalist narrative about “loss of border security” by apprehending asylum applicants who are in search of ever more elusive justice in the U.S.

Unfortunately, outright fibs and bogus racist narratives seem to work for our “Lier-in-Chief!” Here is an article from today’s NY Times by native Texan Richard Parker actually suggesting that Trump succeeds because Texans are as addicted to “Tall Tales” as Trump is to “Big Lies!” In other words, a “match made in Heaven.”  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/opinion/el-paso-trump-beto.html

Rather an unhappy commentary, if true. Who am I as a “mere Badger” to say, but I would suspect that these tall tales of fake invasions and bogus fear mongering directed mostly at the growing Latino community appeal more to some Texans than to others.

Just shows the importance of the work of the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”) in defending our laws and Constitution!  Also illustrates the importance of committing ourselves to “regime change” in 2020. The immigration nonsense from Trump and his supporters and the intentional divisiveness, chaos, and anarchy that flow from it is an existential threat to our national existence —  much greater than his mostly fake “border emergency.” 

PWS

02-12-19

Related posts:

  1. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  2. MOLLY HENNESSEY-FISKE @ LA TIMES: As DHS Disintegrates Under Trump, Volunteers Pick Up The Pieces & Save Lives!
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

EXPOSED: In Matter of A-B-, Sessions & An Immigration Judge Found That The Government Of El Salvador Offered “Reasonable Protection” To Persecuted Women & That Internal Relocation Appeared “Reasonably Available” To A Severely Battered & Threatened Woman — They Lied!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/el-salvador-votes-for-president-as-the-country-seeks-a-new-way-to-deal-with-gangs/2019/02/02/1ce34c1e-2288-11e9-b5b4-1d18dfb7b084_story.html

Anna-Catherine Brigida reports on the recent El Salvadoran presidential election for the Washington Post:

. . . ..

“The ultimate actor who determines whether you have more or less homicides tomorrow or right now or in a week is not the government. It’s the gangs,” said José Miguel Cruz, an expert on Salvadoran gangs at Florida International University. “They do it for political purposes as a bargaining tool to improve their position vis-a-vis the government or vis-a-vis the society.”

. . . .

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Read Anna’s complete article at the link.  This is a “must read” for members of the NDPA or anyone else handling El Salvadoran asylum cases in this “Post-Matter of A-B- Era.”

Fact is, the gangs are in many practical ways the “de facto government” in El Salvador. That makes Sessions’s suggestion that persecuted individuals can get reasonable protection from the government or avoid persecution in a tiny, totally gang-infested country absurdly disingenuous. It also calls into question the judicial integrity of those U.S. Immigration Judges who mindlessly “parrot” Sessions’s “parallel universe” dicta regarding conditions in El Salvador. Indeed, it has been reported elsewhere that gangs are actually the largest employer in El Salvador, exercising far more power over politics and the economy than the government! https://www.newsweek.com/ms-13-barrio-18-gangs-employ-more-people-el-salvador-largest-employers-1200029

Also, this article illustrates the absurdity of the position often taken by the BIA and some Immigration Judges that resistance to gangs is not a “political act.” In a country where gangs and government are inextricably intertwined, and gangs actually control more of the country than does the national government, of course resisting or publicly standing up against gangs is an expression of political opposition to those in power. And, it’s a political statement for which the consequences all too often can be deadly.

Matter of A-B- has yet to be tested in a Court of Appeals. But, it spectacularly “flunked” its initial judicial test before Judge Sullivan in Grace v. Whitaker. https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3rd  Judge Sullivan clearly saw through many of Sessions’s biased conclusions that contradict not only  the history and purpose of he Refugee Act, but also well established case law. Although A-B- was an Immigration Court case, and many of Sullivan’s conclusions would apply in Immigration Court proceedings, EOIR saw fit to construe Grace narrowly as applying solely in “Credible Fear Reviews.” https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3BE

It’s important for advocates to press all challenges to Matter of A-B- in the Circuit Courts of Appeals. If appellate judges agree with Judge Sullivan, all of the erroneous “summary denials” of asylum based on A-B- will come back to Immigration Court for rehearings, thus further adding to the Administration-created mess in America’s most dysfunctional and fundamentally unjust court system, where Due Process for asylum seekers has become a bad joke rather than the watchword.

PWS

02-04-19

 

 

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  2. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations!