NICOLE NAREA – Page 2 – immigrationcourtside.com

NICOLE NAREA @ VOX NEWS: Trump Brings Ignominious End To Six Decades Of U.S. Global Leadership On Refugees – Functionally Ends One Of America’s Most Successful, Beneficial, & Enriching Programs!

https://apple.news/AIdY3RXXGRp2vAq_TNEIM1w

Trump’s cuts to the refugee program signal the end of an era.

By Nicole Narea | October 1, 2019 7:30 am

The United States’ refugee program once served as a global model of how a powerful country should support the world’s most vulnerable people. But under President Donald Trump, America is now accepting fewer refugees than ever, signaling that not even they are immune to the president’s restrictionist immigration policies.

On Thursday, the administration announced that the US will accept 18,000 refugees at most over the next year, the fewest in history and down from a cap of 110,000 just two years ago. A new executive order from Trump will allow state and local authorities to block refugees from settling in their areas.

The Trump administration claims that lowering refugee admissions would allow the US to take in more asylum seekers: people fleeing violence and persecution who apply for protection when they are already in the US, unlike refugees, who are processed by international organizations.

But the administration is also doing everything it can to keep asylum seekers out of the US. Migrants can be returned to Mexico to await decisions on their asylum applications, barred from obtaining asylum if they passed through another country before arriving in the US, or sent back to the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to seek protections there.

During his campaign, Trump painted refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war as national security threats. In office, his administration hasn’t distinguished among asylum-seekers, refugees, and other migrants. It’s painted them all as a threat to or drain on American society and has crafted policies that try to keep as many people out of the US as possible.

The Trump administration is setting up the admission of refugees and asylum seekers as a “zero-sum game.” But in reality, it’s just trying to block immigration across the board, said Elizabeth Foydel, deputy police director at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

The US has the capacity to take in both more refugees and more asylum seekers. But the Trump administration is sending a message: The US is no longer the same safe haven it once was. The policies are in line with acting US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli’s amendment to Emma Lazarus’s famous poem on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet.”

During the campaign, Trump helped stoke anti-refugee sentiment

The refugee program has historically flourished under Republican presidents. Even in previous Republican administrations seeking to curtail immigration, no one has ever set the cap on refugee admissions as low as Trump has. Former President George W. Bush briefly cut the number of refugees admitted after the 9/11 attacks, but even then the limit was set at 70,000.

But the bipartisan consensus on maintaining a robust refugee resettlement program began to unravel after the Paris terror attacks in late 2015, said Yael Schacher, senior US advocate for Refugees International, when suicide bombers — reportedly sanctioned by the Islamic State — killed 130 civilians in explosions and mass shootings throughout the city.

There was speculation that one of the attackers was a refugee, one of 5.6 million Syrians who have been displaced since 2011 by the still-ongoing civil war. It was later confirmed that all of the perpetrators were citizens of the European Union. But the rumors were enough to spark a panic about Syrian refugees and start a movement among governors, mostly Republicans, to cut back US admissions of Syrian refugees and resettlement efforts more broadly.

Governors from 31 states, all Republican but for New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan, said they no longer wanted their state to take in Syrian refugees. In 2016, Mike Pence, then governor of Indiana, also tried to prevent refugee resettlement agencies in his state from getting reimbursed for the cost of providing social services to Syrian refugees.

But states didn’t have the legal authority to simply refuse refugees; that’s the prerogative of the federal government. Pence ultimately had to back down after a federal court ruled against his decision to withhold the reimbursements.

Trump, then campaigning for president, stirred up more fear, suggesting that Syrian refugees were raising an army to launch an attack on the US and promising that all of them would be “going back” if he won the election. He said that he would tell Syrian children to their faces that they could not come to the US, speculating that they could be a “Trojan horse.”

“Military tactics are very interesting,” Trump said. “This could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time. A 200,000-man army, maybe. Or if they sent 50,000 or 80,000 or 100,000 … That could be possible. I don’t know that it is, but it could be possible.”

When Trump eventually took office, he delivered on his promise to slash refugee admissions from Syria, suspending refugee admissions altogether from January to October 2017. From October 2017 to October 2018, the US admitted only 62.

State leaders lined up behind him: The Tennessee legislature, for instance, filed a lawsuit in March 2017 claiming that the federal government was infringing on states’ rights by forcing them to take in refugees (a court challenge that also failed).

Trump’s executive order Thursday may vindicate the states that wanted to turn refugees away. (The International Refugee Assistance Project said it is contemplating challenging the order in court.) Under the executive order, local governments that do not have the resources to support refugees in becoming “self-sufficient and free from long-term dependence on public assistance” will be able to turn them away.

It’s not clear how it will play out in practice. States won’t just be able to refuse refugees from certain nations, such as Syria, Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor at Cornell Law, said. Immigration law provides that state and local governments must provide aid “without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex or political opinion.”

But it could prove complicated when states and municipalities disagree over whether to accept refugees. It’s possible that states will be able to override local governments. Take, for example, cities like Dallas, which has historically taken in many refugees but is located in Texas, which has previously sought to prohibit them.

The executive order would also create inconsistent refugee policies across the country, making it next to impossible for the federal government to properly plan for refugee settlement, Schacher said.

“We are one nation,” she said. “The idea that governors can direct where refugees can first resettle not only undermines federalism but divides us on a policy which is fundamentally a national one.”

Trump’s refugee policy reflects his broader attitude toward immigrants

The Center of Immigration Studies (CIS), which advocates for lowering immigration levels overall, has influenced many of the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies. The refugee cap is no exception.

The organization has gained influence in the Trump era, with some of its former researchers assuming senior positions in the administration. CIS threw support behind the movement to block Syrian refugees in 2016, casting doubt on whether the United Nations’ refugee office could actually vet them for security threats before they arrive in the US.

The organization has also claimed that the current system allows the federal government to impose too much financial burden on states to carry out refugee resettlement. And it has called into question why the US should dedicate resources to resettling refugees rather than focusing on the southern border.

Trump’s most recent refugee policy moves are “long overdue,” in particular his executive order allowing states the opportunity to refuse refugees, CIS senior researcher Nayla Rush writes.

“Refugees are not just parachuted into a void,” she said. “Positive reception and orientation are, therefore, necessary for a successful integration.”

It all fits in with one of the broader ideas guiding Trump’s immigration policy: that immigrants “exploit public assistance” without offering the US anything in return, Foydel said.

In the same vein, the Trump administration has published a rule, set to go into effect October 15, that would allow the Department of Homeland Security to weigh certain immigrants’ use of Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Section 8 housing assistance, and federally subsidized housing against them in their applications for green cards or visas. The rule will primarily affect a small proportion of family-based green card applicants, but immigrants are already disenrolling from public benefits out of fear that they will be penalized.

Trump has justified it as a means of ensuring that immigrants are “financially self-sufficient” and to “protect benefits for American citizens.”

“I am tired of seeing our taxpayer paying for people to come into the country and immediately go onto welfare and various other things,” Trump said when announcing the rule. “So I think we’re doing it right.”

Foydel said that Trump is trying to abdicate federal responsibility for the most vulnerable immigrants, forcing states that already serve as immigrant “sanctuaries” to step up. He threatened to release detained immigrants into sanctuary cities in April, and Thursday’s executive order also requires states that agree to receive refugees to publish their “consent letters” publicly, which some have questioned as a means of politically targeting immigrant-friendly areas.

“The positions of different states might be politicized and used to foment anti-refugee sentiment,” Schacher said.

It’s a mischaracterization to say that immigrants take advantage of welfare programs, Foydel said.

In her experience, refugees have no desire to be on public assistance for any longer than necessary and start working as soon as they can. She also pointed to research that refugees end up contributing more in taxes than what it costs to resettle them: on average, $21,000 among refugees who entered the US as adults between 2010 and 2014, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“I think that there are a number of policies we’ve seen that have this language of economic self-sufficiency,” Foydel said. “It’s part of a false narrative about refugees and also immigrants more broadly exploiting public assistance when the data says it’s not true.”

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Trump‘s cowardly attacks upon the world’s most vulnerable, aided and abetted by morally corrupt GOP policitos, and “masterminded” by neo-Nazi advisor Stephen Miller (taxpayers are actually supporting this evil clown — talk about abuse of public assistance!), ends what had been one of our most important and long-lasting bipartisan policy successes.

And, since much of the expertise and hard work that made the program so successful were contributed by NGOs and (real, not Trumpian) religious organizations, those programs are now being dismantled and the expertise and resources directed elsewhere. Literally decades of irreplaceable knowledge, expertise, and organizational talent has been lost almost overnight.

Even when a wiser, more humane, decent Administration finally wants to “restart” these critically important programs, it will be no easy task. It basically took nearly half a century to build up the current expertise. Once dissipated, it won’t be easily re-created – certainly not overnight. Obviously, there are serious, long-term consequences to allowing a kakistocracy to take over the government of our nation.

PWS

10-08-19

NICOLE NAREA @ VOX.COM: Here Are The Immigration Questions The Candidates Should Answer During Tonight’s Democratic Debate!

https://www.vox.com/2020-presidential-election/2019/9/12/20858374/immigration-questions-democratic-presidential-debate?utm_campaign=vox&utm_content=entry&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

Democratic presidential candidates have mostly been able to avoid a substantive discussion of what immigration policy should look like. Expressing outrage over President Donald Trump’s policies has sufficed for debate soundbites.

That might be politically expedient; immigration is one of the top issues on voters’ minds, but also one of the most divisive. Being vague is a way to put off alienating various wings of the party until the primaries are over.

The candidates have tended to speak in platitudes, like when Amy Klobuchar said in the first debate, “Immigrants do not diminish America. They are America.” Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker got mixed reviews for answering questions about immigration in Spanish in an attempt to show solidarity with Latino voters.

There was one moment that spurred numerous immigration think pieces. During the first debate in June, Julián Castro asked fellow candidates onstage to commit to repealing Section 1325 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a provision in federal law that makes crossing the border without authorization a crime. But that moment stood out because it was unusually specific.

If a Democratic president makes “comprehensive immigration reform” a priority, as virtually all of the candidates have vowed, voters do not have much information about what that means. With a (mercifully) smaller pool of 10 candidates taking the stage for Thursday night’s upcoming debate, there might finally be more room to elaborate.

Here are five questions that moderators should ask to get a more expansive view of the candidates’ positions:

1. What immigration-related executive actions could we expect from your administration in your first 100 days?

The US Supreme Court has historically recognized the president’s broad powers over immigration, but Democrats have accused Trump of overstepping his executive authority with his unilateral, sweeping changes to immigration policy.

In the wake of Trump’s travel ban, when the president issued an executive order banning individuals from seven countries, Democrats in the House and Senate proposed a bill that would rein in the executive authority of all future presidents such that they could not issue any similar ban. House Democrats also filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the southern border, claiming that he could not invoke his emergency powers simply to circumvent Congress’ refusal to fully fund his border wall in its 2019 budget deal.

But limiting executive authority over immigration is a double-edged sword for Democrats. If Republicans retain control of the Senate as expected in 2020 and gridlock in Congress continues, a Democratic president’s only means of reversing the Trump administration’s immigration policies would be by executive fiat.

For that reason, candidates including Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker rely heavily on executive actions in their immigration plans. For example, Booker would order the Department of Homeland Security on day one in office to bring detention centers into compliance with federal detention standards, and Sanders has said that his first executive action would be closing privately operated immigration detention centers.

Others have suggested executive actions they will pursue, but haven’t nailed down a timeline: Elizabeth Warren says she will first “work with Congress to pass broad-reaching reform” but is “prepared to move forward with executive action if Congress refuses to act.”

Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, meanwhile, have not made formal commitments to use executive authority to reverse Trump’s immigration policies.

While all of the candidates have promised wide-reaching, progressive change in immigration and across other issues, presidents only have so much time and political capital. After pushing through sweeping health care reforms with the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama failed to pass a comprehensive immigration reform package in 2013.

So, asking the Democratic candidates to elaborate on their immigration priorities for their first 100 days will help determine whether the issue is actually a top priority for them.

2. What would your overall approach be to immigration enforcement on the US-Mexico border?

Republicans have accused Democrats of pushing for open borders. In reality, few go that far; some just think that crossing the border without authorization should not be a crime, as it is currently under Section 1325 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Historically, most immigrants who cross the border illegally have never been prosecuted, but the Trump administration has begun doing so under its “zero tolerance” policy and cited those prosecutions as the basis of family separations.

Polls show that a majority of Americans oppose Trump’s border wall, but not all forms of border security: About three-quarters of the public support hiring “significantly more” border patrol agents and a third say that immigration levels should be decreased overall.

If voters’ attitudes toward border security are nuanced, Democrats’ border security plans should reflect that. To start, they will have to answer questions about how they will detain immigrants (if at all), what kinds of unauthorized immigrants might be targeted with limited enforcement resources, how much funding immigration enforcement agencies will get, and how they will reduce the backlog of cases in immigration court.

Democrats can agree that Trump’s method, which includes separating families in immigration detention and sending Central American migrants back to Mexico, is abhorrent. But how they would go about securing the border is a tricky question, and previous Democratic administrations have not exactly provided a good model.

Obama struggled to balance humanitarian concerns with border enforcement. As Trump has repeatedly noted, it is true that Obama did separate families in immigration detention, albeit on a much smaller scale than the current administration. Immigrant rights groups labeled him as the “deporter in chief” because he deported more immigrants than any other president — over 385,000 in fiscal years 2009 to 2011 and peaking at 409,849 in fiscal 2012 (though former Obama officials have defended that the administration only targeted recent arrivals and violent criminals).

Five years later, Democrats are still wrestling with how they will approach immigration enforcement, tackling it piecemeal for now.

The idea of abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has gained the most attention in advocacy circles. Elizabeth Warren has endorsed the “Abolish ICE” movement, and Kamala Harris has also pushed for major changes to the agency, suggesting that the federal government should “probably think about starting from scratch.” Castro has backed the decriminalization of unauthorized border crossings, challenging his opponents to do the same during a Democratic debate in June.

3. How many refugees should the US aim to resettle?

This is a simple, numerically based question that can help voters gauge the candidates’ commitment to reestablishing the US’s reputation as a world leader in protecting the most vulnerable immigrant populations. So much of the conversation around refugees and asylees in the debates so far has been dominated by denouncing Trump’s policies, so it would be useful to force the candidates to commit to hard numbers of how many they would admit.

Historically, the US has taken in more refugees, about 3 million since 1980, than any other nation. But the US has scaled back its refugee program under Trump, lowering the cap on refugees admitted to the US from 110,000 in fiscal year 2017 to 30,000 in fiscal year 2019 — the lowest number since the Refugee Act was signed into law in 1980. And the Trump administration is expected to cut refugee admissions even further.

Some Democratic presidential candidates have proposed elevating the refugee cap as part of their immigration plans. Booker and Castro have proposed reverting to the pre-Trump refugee cap of 110,000, but Elizabeth Warren would go even further, setting the cap at 125,000 initially and increasing it to 175,000 by the end of her first term.

4. How would you work with governments in Central America to reduce factors driving migrants away from their home countries?

In light of declining migrant arrests, Trump may claim that he is delivering on his promise to secure the southern border, but it’s not so clear that his policies have done anything to address the underlying problem: unprecedented numbers of migrants fleeing Central America. This question would illuminate how Democrats would reduce push factors and think not just about a border crisis but a regional crisis.

Previously, migrants arrested at the southern border were primarily single adult males from Mexico. But since the summer of 2018, there has been a fundamental change in migration patterns: Now, it is primarily Central American children and families.

Castro and Booker have proposed significant aid packages, but Democrats would also likely need to smooth over political tensions with Mexico and the “Northern Triangle” countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in Trump’s wake.

In June, Trump had threatened to impose tariffs on all Mexican goods if it did not step up its immigration enforcement efforts.

And acting US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan told reporters Monday that Trump is pressuring Northern Triangle countries to adopt agreements that would effectively cut off migrants before they reach the US. The so-called Safe Third Country agreements would make any migrant who passes through those countries ineligible to apply for asylum in the US.

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Nice, very timely, analysis, Nicole!

Also, many, many congrats on your new home over at the vox.com Immigration Desk!

PWS

09-12-19

ROUNDTABLE NEWS: Judge Jeff Chase & I Quoted By Nicole Narea In Law360 On How Trump’s Latest Assault On Immigrants’ Rights Could Go Belly Up Even With Some Statutory Support!

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog

https://www.law360.com/immigration/articles/1182014/deportation-rule-may-violate-due-process-procedural-law

Deportation Rule May Violate Due Process, Procedural Law

By Nicole Narea

Law360 (July 25, 2019, 8:31 PM EDT) — The Trump administration’s recent expansion of its power to fast-track deportations is likely to invite legal challenges if the new process is seen as a violation of administrative law and the Constitution’s due process guarantees.

Under a rule published Monday, unauthorized noncitizens across the entire U.S. — not just those apprehended within 100 air miles of a land border — who arrived in the last two years via a land border could be subject to expedited removal proceedings and deported without an immigration court hearing. The American Civil Liberties Union has vowed to challenge the rule, which went into effect Tuesday and, by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s estimates, will affect more than 20,000 immigrants a year.

Contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, however, the rule may not qualify for an exception to the Administrative Procedure Act’s public notice requirements that allows the DHS secretary to unilaterally change the scope of the agency’s expedited removal authority. It also raises due process concerns for individuals who may not be able to prove their period of residency in the U.S. and for asylum-seekers who might be erroneously subject to expedited deportation.

“Unleashed expedited removal undermines our immigration system and the rule of law,” said Shoba Wadhia, a professor at Penn State Law in University Park.

Administrative Procedure Act

To justify the rule, acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan invoked his authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act to have “sole and unreviewable discretion” to alter the scope of expedited removal proceedings. The rule is therefore exempt from the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirement to give the public an opportunity to comment on it before it goes into effect, DHS said in its announcement.

But Paul Schmidt, former chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals during the Clinton administration, said there “does not appear to be any legitimate reason” for noncompliance with the APA’s notice-and-comment requirements, especially given that the rule had such a long gestation period. Trump has been considering such a rule since the first days of his administration.

Wadhia said opponents of the rule could argue that the government failed to show “good cause” that invoking notice and comment is in fact “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest” as the APA requires.

“The government’s position that there is a ‘good cause’ lacks integrity,” she said.

Most lawsuits that have succeeded in challenging Trump immigration policies have brought claims under the APA, including the recent challenge to a question about citizenship status on the 2020 census. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately found that the decision to include the question on the census did not abide by the APA’s requirement that agencies provide a reasoned explanation for their actions.

Due Process Issues

Ken Johnson, dean of University of California, Davis School of Law, said the new rule could also be subject to due process challenges in light of the Supreme Court’s 1982 case Landon v. Plasencia, in which the justices applied a balancing test of interests in deciding the constitutionality of immigration admission procedures. That decision established that the interests of a noncitizen who has lived in the country for two years are much weightier than the interest at stake for a noncitizen who has been in the country for only two weeks because they have stronger ties to their community, he said.

Since the new rule expands expedited removal to apply to individuals who have lived in the U.S. for up to two years, they may be entitled to a higher standard of due process. Trump’s expansion of expedited removal also appears to exceed the limits provided by the Immigration and Nationality Act, resulting in further due process concerns.

Jeff Chase, a former legal adviser to the BIA and immigration judge, said the original intent of expedited removal was to stem an increase of inadmissible noncitizens arriving at airports in the 1990s who were paroled into the U.S. after announcing they were seeking asylum. The new rule, however, far surpasses that purpose.

“The present rule extends the application well beyond the purpose of controlling entry to the country, and now threatens to deprive those already here of their rights to apply for relief,” he said.

He said he also anticipates that expedited removal will be mistakenly applied to those beyond the scope of the rule, impacting those with a period of residence longer than two years, whose “attempts to stay under the government’s radar will create difficulty meeting their burden of establishing their period of residence in the U.S.”

Wadhia said that genuine refugees may also be erroneously denied due process, turned away as opposed to referred to an asylum officer to determine whether they have fear of persecution in their home countries, as required by law. Even if they have a credible fear interview, they are unlikely to pass in light of reports that asylum officers have been pressured to significantly lower their credible fear approval rates, Chase said.

Even U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, unaccompanied children and others who are exempt from expedited removal by statute could be unfairly and unlawfully targeted by the DHS, Wadhia said.

“The opportunity for profiling and violations of due process by DHS is rampant,” she said.

–Editing by Breda Lund and Kelly Duncan.

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The Government’s case for an “emergency” exemption to the APA is laughable. This bogus “immigration emergency” is actually a human rights tragedy that has been unfolding in “super slow motion” before us since before last Thanksgiving. Virtually every part of it is a predictable result of Trump’s “maliciously incompetent” racist-driven approach to migration situations. To say that it now requires an “emergency” exemption, when Trump announced the proposed policy change in an Executive Order over two years ago, and his incompetent agencies have been fiddling around with it ever since, is simply absurd.

The Constitutional problem raised by Dean Johnson and others is very real.

And, there is no question that Trump’s DHS will misuse this authority to detain and deport lawful permanent residents and even U.S. citizens. Indeed, it’s already happening even without the regulatory change. See, e.g., “Texas-Born Student Held In Immigration Custody For Weeks Released,” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-student-immigration-custody-detention_n_5d36f637e4b020cd99498588.

Yes, some Federal Judges can be tone deaf to the plight of ordinary individuals, particularly when they wrongly think that they are “above the fray.”

Perhaps we need to hope that the DHS wrongfully detains a Federal Judge, a Federal Judge’s spouse, or the child of a Federal Judge so that the message about how Trump’s misguided policies affect ALL of us gets through to the “Judicial Ivory Tower” sooner, rather than later.

PWS

07-26-19

“ABSURD, FARCE” — Chase, Musalo, Other Asylum Experts Lambaste Trump’s Scheme To Designate One Of World’s Most Dangerous Counties, Without A Functioning Asylum System, As “Safe” For Asylum Seekers!

https://www.law360.com/articles/1170313/guatemala-is-not-as-safe-for-asylum-seekers-as-trump-says

Professor Karen Musalo
Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Hastings Law

Nicole Narea reports for Law360:

. . . .

Trump tweeted Monday night that Guatemala is “getting ready to sign” a socalled safe third country agreement with the U.S., and he lauded Mexico for “using their strong immigration laws” to stop migrants well before they reach the southern U.S. border. Mexico said Friday it would also weigh a safe third country agreement with the U.S. if its efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement as part of a trade deal do not succeed within 45 days.

The announcements came as the Trump administration moved to reduce its obligations to asylum seekers by expanding its “Remain in Mexico” policy, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, by which migrants are sent back to Mexico while they await hearings in U.S. immigration court.

As for Guatemala, experts have protested that Mexico’s southern neighbor cannot offer asylum seekers the kind of security intended by a safe third country agreement.

But the Trump administration is not proposing such an agreement with Guatemala because it believes the country to be safe, said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and ex senior legal adviser to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Rather, the White House believes the accord will stop asylum seekers from countries farther south from entering the U.S., Chase said.

Migrants from El Salvador and Honduras have to travel through Guatemala en route to the U.S., and if Guatemala were subject to such an agreement, the Trump administration would have an “excuse to turn away those fleeing violence in those countries,” he said.

Karen Musalo, the founding director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, said that to call Guatemala safe is absurd.

“I don’t think that anyone familiar with the human rights situation in Guatemala — with its extremely high levels of homicides, femicides, gender violence, gang and organized crime violence, corruptions, etc. — could say with a straight face that asylum seekers would be safe there,” she said.

. . . .

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Those with access to Law360 can read Nicole’s complete article at the above link.

It isn’t just that Trump (supported by some equally dishonest and nasty GOP legislators and flunkies like Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli, and Kevin McAleenan) is blatantly lying about asylum seekers and Guatemala being “safe.” What he essentially proposes is the U.S.-sanctioned murder of innocent asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle.

Why is this outrage against the law and humanity “below the radar screen?” Seems like it’s actually the most clear “impeachable offense” that Trump has committed to date. And, it’s right out in plain view for all to see, with irrefutable proof that Guatemala is NOT a safe country for anyone, let alone asylum seekers. That’s exactly why folks are fleeing Guatemala for their lives every day.

PWS

06-21-19

EOIR SHAKEUP: Chief Immigration Judge, Deputy Director, General Counsel Ousted!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt for Immigrationcourtside.com

Alexandria, VA, June 8, 2019. The nation’s totally dysfunctional and highly politicized Immigration Court System, known as the Executive Office For Immigraton Review (“EOIR”), has ousted three of its top career senior executives, according to a report filed yesterday by Nicole Narea of Law360. Here’s a link to Narea’s story for those with Law360 access. https://www.law360.com/articles/1166974/three-senior-eoir-officials-to-step-down.

Evidently, Chief Immigration Judge MaryBeth T. Keller, General Counsel Jean King, and Deputy Director Katherine H. Reilly all “got the boot” late this week. They are career civil servants. Keller and King were “holdovers” from the prior Administration, while Reilly was appointed to her recent position by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Piecing together bits from anonymous sources, it’s likely that the three clashed with EOIR Director James McHenry and Department of Justice (“DOJ”) politicos over some of the more extreme aspects of the Administration’s “master plan” to demean and degrade Immigration Judges and Appellate Immigraton Judges at the Board of Immigration Appeals, strip them of the last vestiges of judicial independence and docket control, and return the Immigration Courts to their pre-EOIR status as perceived appendages of DHS (then INS) enforcement.

Keller supposedly “retired,” an unusual move given her age group and that senior executives are the civil service equivalent of brigadier generals. King was transferred to the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO”), long known as the “Siberia of EOIR” and a repository for prior senior executives who had fallen out of favor with “EOIR Management” and their DOJ “handlers.” Reilly reportedly transferred to a senior executive position with the U.S. Postal Service (“USPS”), another surprising move for a top senior executive attorney at the DOJ.

Predictably, there has been no official announcement from EOIR or the DOJ, nor have any replacements been named. Meanwhile, the backlog mushrooms, morale sinks further, conditions continue to deteriorate, and due process and fundamental fairness are mocked every day in the EOIR “courts” and also by life-tenured Article III Judges who are willing to “rubber stamp” the results of this patently illegal and unjust system.

Keller, King, and Reilly have “escaped from the circus.” But, hopefully there someday will be accountability for those throughout government and the Article III Courts who continue to participate in, enable, and further this ongoing farce and the resulting gross perversion of American law and human values.

“OUR GANG” LEADER HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE QUOTED BY NICOLE NAREA IN LAW 360 RE: L-A-B-R- MESS!

But Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and senior legal adviser to the BIA, said that the attorney general’s ruling is more likely to hinder efficient case adjudications. He said that immigration judges are already facing pressure to meet case completion quotas imposed by the Executive Office of Immigration Review earlier this year, and they have been forced to double-book hearings, meaning that cases will, by necessity, have to be continued.

“Under this latest ruling, judges will now have to write lengthy, detailed decisions for each continuance, an unrealistic expectation where judges must also complete three or more full hearings a day,” he said. “Some judges report receiving 10 or more motions for continuance a day, and lack the time and resources to write lengthy decisions on each while also hearing a full docket of cases.”

. . . .

Chase said that the decision’s “emphasis on efficiency over justice is particularly callous” given that, for many asylum applicants in immigration court, deportation may be a “death sentence.” He also pointed out that the decision does not seem to apply to continuances requested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“It is unfair to require noncitizens seeking immigration status to demonstrate good cause for a continuance, while allowing ICE continuances for avoidable reasons such as misplacing the file, failing to obtain a needed document or not having adjudicated a petition in time,” he said.

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Those of you with access can read Nicole’s full article over at Law 360.

Of course as Judge Chase says L-A-B-R- will not “promote judicial efficiency.” Far from it!

Immigration Judges will have to spend more time writing decisions to justify granting, as well as denying, continuances. That means less time for merits cases. The BIA will see an increase in “interlocutory appeals” from both sides, but particularly from DHS. Again, this takes time away from work on the merits appeals, which is why the BIA quite properly discouraged such interlocutory appeals in the first place. And, denial of a continuance to a respondent, particularly when it involves finding an attorney, attorney preparation, or obtaining evidence or witnesses, is an appealable due process issue on petitions for review to the Article III courts. Consequently, expect plenty of remands from the Circuit Courts as Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Immigration Judges are pushed to churn out more denials and final orders of removal under Sessions’s “tilted field” approach.

As Jeffrey also points out, DHS requests and gets many continuances for routine matters like failure to have files or missing evidence to support the charges. Moreover, in L-A-B-R- Sessions totally ignores one of the main culprits for today’s backlog: Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) by EOIR often to accommodate the enforcement aims of DHS or politicos at the DOJ.

“Just pedal faster gimmicks” and having unqualified politicos tell judges how to manage dockets and run their courtrooms are a prescription for failure. The only question is how big the train wreck caused by this hunk of Sessions’s malfeasance will be!

Thanks for speaking out, Jeffrey. And thanks for your coverage, Nicole.

PWS

08-21-18

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