"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
From celebrities and chefs to local food banks and grassroots organizations, people everywhere have been pitching in to help mitigate the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on our communities. Here’s how Global Cafe in Memphis is helping healthcare workers in a city that’s both food-insecure and extremely charitable.
Memphis has been a long-time hub for the civil rights movement and more recently, food activism. Global Cafe is no exception.
Located in Crosstown Concourse—a former Sears distribution building that has been transformed into a 1,200,000 square foot mixed use space—the international food hall hosts three immigrant/refugee food entrepreneurs cooking and selling an eclectic mix of affordably priced, authentic dishes from their home countries, which currently includes a delicious mix of Syrian, Sudanese and Venezuelan cuisine. Think: delectable arepas, amazingly tender shawarma, and freshly made baba ganoush.
So far, they’ve cooked and delivered hundreds of meals to the night ER shift at LeBohneur Germantown, the physicians at LeBonheur, the respiratory ICU unit at Baptist East, as well as First Congo Food Justice Ministry in Midtown and the staff of Church Health.
Giving back to the community is part of Global Cafe’s life blood, explains owner and CEO, Sabine Langer.
“Post-election, the climate was very negative towards immigrants and refugees. As an immigrant, I wanted to find a way to make a difference in the lives of immigrants and refugees. I wasn’t sure exactly how but after lots of research, it became apparent that I could help some of the women I had met that were cooking on the side trying to make an additional income to support their families,” she says.
By empowering immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs to set up food businesses with zero start-up cost, Langer says that the food hall has been a wonderful catalyst for many of the team members.
“One of our chefs was able to pay off her house, another one was able to purchase a house, and our trusted dishwasher recently bought a car. It’s fantastic to see this and it warms my heart to know that we are true to our mission and really making a difference in everyone’s lives,” she says.
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Read the rest of Simone’s article, along with some great food pictures, at the link.
Immigrants have long been a powerful force in our culinary arts and food supply. That has become even more obvious during this crisis.
When the pandemic finally gets under control, will we recognize these essential contributions by improving wages, working conditions, and providing a social safety net for these essential workers? Or, will we go back to undervaluing and disrespecting their contributions? Will we emerge as a more equitable, just, and caring society? Or, as happened after the last recession, will we allow the privileged and powerful to increase their authority and line their pockets at the expense of the vast majority of Americans? The lack of an adequate “safety net” has become obvious; but will we finally do what’s necessary to promote the common good rather than living from “crisis to crisis?”
Already, far-right White Nationalist pols like Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions are cynically using the pandemic as an excuse for pushing “immigration moratoriums” and other nativist schemes. Don’t let them get away with it! Immigrants aren’t “taking our jobs;” they’re “saving our lives,” often at the risk of their own!
DETAINED MIGRANTS WIN IN FEDERAL COURT: JUDGE GREENLIGHTS NATIONWIDE CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT
April 16, 2020
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Tens of thousands of immigrants denied medical care and disability accommodations by the federal government will have their day in court
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – A federal judge ruled today that a nationwide class action lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can proceed, greenlighting a challenge to ICE’s system-wide failure to provide standard medical and mental health care and disability accommodations for people in its custody.
U.S. District Court Judge Jesus Bernal issued the ruling in the lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Disability Rights Advocates (DRA), Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC), Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. The plaintiffs seek zero monetary damages and instead only an end to the inhumane and traumatic experience of ICE detention affecting tens of thousands across the country.
Judge Bernal denied the government’s motion to divide the nationwide lawsuit into 15 individual cases in eight district courts. He also denied ICE’s motion to strike the 200-page complaint, which was filed in the U.S District Court for the Central District of California in August 2019.
The ruling comes amid the spread of Covid-19 in detention centers, a dangerous scenario that doctors and public health experts across the country have warned will only be made worse by ICE’s lack of pre-existing medical care and substandard detention center conditions. On March 25, the groups filed an emergency preliminary injunction motion in the case requiring ICE to immediately fix numerous deficiencies in its Covid-19 response, such as inadequate staffing, resources and oversight. The motion further seeks the immediate release of medically vulnerable people if ICE cannot or will not take immediate steps to protect those who are in its custody. Judge Bernal has yet to rule on that injunction.
“Today, the court rejected ICE’s false narrative that our plaintiffs’ stories represent just a few individual problems,” said Lisa Graybill, SPLC deputy legal director. “The court saw through ICE’s deliberate mischaracterization of our case. This is the first step in holding ICE to account for its appalling treatment of the tens of thousands of immigrants needlessly incarcerated and languishing in its prisons around the country.”
According to the lawsuit, ICE has failed to provide detained migrants in over 150 facilities nationwide with safe and humane conditions, as required by agency standards, federal law and the U.S. Constitution. Numerous reports, including accounts by internal government investigators, detail the lack of sufficient medical and mental health care treatment, ultimately resulting in untreated medical needs, prolonged suffering and preventable death. ICE’s punitive use of segregation violates the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The agency’s failure to ensure that detained immigrants with disabilities are provided accommodations and do not face discrimination violates Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
“Mentally, they are killing us,” said plaintiff Ruben Mencias Soto. “What I am living and what I am seeing is not only my situation. This is unjust as a system. [The government] is falling to the lowest level with ICE.”
Mencias Soto, who has been detained at Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California for over a year, has dislocated and herniated discs in his back. He has had his wheelchair and crutches taken away by detention staff, leaving him without a device to help him walk and causing immense pain.
“Across the country, ICE continually fails to provide basic medical care and necessary disability accommodations to people in immigration detention – putting thousands of people in life-threatening danger every day. From holding people with disabilities in solitary confinement solely because of their medical needs to denying patients in detention doctor-ordered emergency medical care, ICE has demonstrated incompetence and cruelty toward people with disabilities. Disability Rights Advocates is committed to fighting for the civil rights of those in custody until ICE complies with U.S. law,” said Stuart Seaborn, Managing Director of Litigation, Disability Rights Advocates.
“ICE’s failure to ensure that private prison companies like the GEO Group adequately take care of people in their custody has been an open secret for a long time,” said Timothy Fox, co-executive director of the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center. “We are pleased that the court will allow us to move forward and hopefully end the impunity with which this agency and its private operators have been acting for too long.”
Plaintiff Jose Baca Hernandez underscored that the goal of the case is to “improve health for me and the rest of the people here [in detention]. This is not only for me. It’s so everyone here can be healthy.” During his time in custody, ICE failed to provide Baca Hernandez–a blind man–with effective communication. He has been forced to rely on his cellmates, attorneys, and guards to read documents, including those related to his medical care and immigration case.
Plaintiff Luis Rodriguez Delgadillo, who has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, had reached a considerable measure of mental health stability before his detention. In detention, however, his shifting medication regime, lack of therapy and the failure of mental health staff to mitigate stressors have caused his mental health to noticeably decline.
This case is about fighting to ensure “we all can get better treatment,” Rodriguez Delgadillo said. “Some people don’t have the means or are scared to speak, so we fight for everyone else.”
The parties will work with the court to set the schedule for the litigation of the case.
See plaintiffs’ opposition to defendants’ motion to sever and dismiss, transfer actions, and strike portions of the complaint here.
See the complaint here and all other filings in the case here.
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What if we had a Government that “did the right thing” without being sued?
Jacqueline Thomsen Courts Reporter National Law Journal
DOJ Said Judges Can’t Stop Immigration Hearings Over COVID-19. Cleary Gottlieb Called That a ‘Death Trap.’
Immigration lawyers and detained immigrants want U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to temporarily stop all in-person immigration proceedings during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Justice Department attorneys told a federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday that he lacks the authority to temporarily halt in-person court proceedings for detained immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic.
. . . .
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Those will full access can go over to the NLJ for Jacqueline’s complete article.
With DOJ lawyers arguing that folks have to “exhaust their administrative remedies” (basically by risking death or serious illness) you get the general tenor of the argument before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in D.C.
I’d be tempted to say that during the pandemic ethical rules have been suspended for DOJ attorneys. But, in my view, that was true even before the pandemic.
And, in their defense, some of their misleading narratives and insane arguments actually WIN in Federal Court, as some Federal Judges are used to deferring to the DOJ and giving their lawyers a pass on both ethical rules and acceptable arguments that generally wouldn’t be extended to private attorneys acting in the same irresponsible manner.
What would be an acceptable response in a better functioning, ethics-biased DOJ: for the lawyers to go back to their “agency clients,” tell them that they won’t defend the indefensible, and advise them to start working immediately with the plaintiffs to develop methods for hearing only the most pressing cases under appropriate health safeguards.
Interestingly, the positions argued by DOJ lawyers are actually putting the lives of their colleagues at EOIR and their fellow Government attorneys at ICE at risk! Perhaps if they “win,” they should be given a chance to risk their lives to represent ICE in Immigration Court! Wonder how their nifty little “exhaustion arguments” would help them ward off the virus.
With 1.4 million cases already in the backlog, it’s not like any one removal more or less during the pandemic is going to make much of a difference. Unlike, perhaps, some other courts built with sufficient space and electronic support, the poorly designed “brandbox” Immigration Courts with marginal, at best, technology, are unhealthy in the best of times. Certainly, it’s difficult to imagine that there are very many cases other than perhaps bonds or stipulated “grant and release” cases that need to go forward right now.
How many lawyers (on both sides) and Immigration Judges are going to have to die before the Article IIIs finally take notice and put the brakes on the nonsense going on at EOIR?☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️
President Trump is spinning his new decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization as an act of decisive leadership — one that showcases his devotion to effective crisis management, to gathering good empirical information, and to holding people accountable for leadership failures that had catastrophic human consequences.
In just about every conceivable way, this is the opposite of the truth.
In making this new move, Trump is inviting us to review the basic timeline of events. And it demonstrates that the WHO, for all its initial failures, was still far ahead of Trump in embracing the need for a comprehensive response to coronavirus.
The timeline also once again illustrates Trump’s epic failures in that regard, and reveals the degree to which Trump is now relying on transparently ridiculous scapegoating to erase his own central role in this catastrophe.
[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]
In announcing an end to funding for the WHO, Trump claimed the organization was complicit in China’s early coverup of the outbreak’s severity there. He insisted the WHO “pushed China’s misinformation,” and ripped WHO for “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread.”
Trump also claimed that if not for WHO, “the outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death.” He lamented that the U.S. can’t rely on WHO for “accurate, timely and independent information to make important public health recommendations and decisions.”
For Trump to position himself in this manner as a spokesperson for crisis management, empiricism and accountability would be positively comical, if the stakes weren’t so monumentally dangerous.
The WHO’s initial mistakes were real, and many critics beyond Trump have pointed to them. The organization was too trusting of China’s early obfuscations about coronavirus, and failed to aggressively push China to be more transparent. The WHO also arguably was too slow to declare a global public health emergency.
But cutting off funding as a punishment is counterproductive and deeply absurd. Indeed, even if you accept that the WHO committed serious errors, the timeline is still far more damning to Trump, by the terms that he himself has set through his criticism of the organization.
The timeline is far more damning to Trump
By Jan. 23, the WHO was already warning that coronavirus could “appear in any country,” and urged all countries to be “prepared for containment” and get ready to exercise “isolation” and “prevention” measures against its spread.
At around the same time, on Jan. 22, Trump was asked point-blank whether he worried about coronavirus’s spread, and he answered: “No, not at all,” insisting it was just “one person coming from China” and that “we have it totally under control.”
And on Jan. 24, Trump hailed China’s “effort” against coronavirus and its “transparency” about it, predicting that “it will all work out well.”
So Trump showed less concern about its spread in countries outside China — including in our own — than the WHO did.
On Jan. 30, the WHO declared coronavirus a global public health emergency. While WHO was still too credulous toward China’s response, WHO also warned that all countries must review “preparedness plans” and take seriously what was coming.
By contrast, on Jan. 30, Trump was directly warned by his Health and Human Services secretary of the threat coronavirus posed. Trump dismissed this as “alarmist.”
And on Feb. 2, Trump boasted to Sean Hannity: “We pretty much shut it down, coming in from China.” He hailed our “tremendous relationship” with that country. Trump continued praising China’s handling of coronavirus all through the entire month of February.
So at the very least, Trump showed precisely the same credulity about China that Trump is now faulting the WHO for showing, but without appreciating the urgency of the international threat coronavirus posed to the degree that the WHO did.
As MSNBC’s Ari Melber aptly put it, these attacks on the WHO are “only calling attention to the fact that the WHO was ahead of President Trump.”
. . . .
Trump is attacking the WHO right now so we’ll talk about the WHO’s shortcomings, and not his own role in this catastrophe. But this blame-shifting utter nonsense, and no one should grant it the slightest shred of credibility.
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Greg Sargent Opinion Writer Washington Post
At the link, read Greg’s complete article which also dismembers Trump’s bogus claim that his “Chinese travel ban” had a major impact on deterring the spread of the pandemic.
So, here’s what really appears to be happening as America’s national government disintegrates under Trump’s malicious incompetence. America is breaking up into a number of “Regional Federated States” which have banded together for mutual assistance under decisive governors, largely, but not exclusively Democrats. We already have one on the West Coast and one in the Northeast. I’d look for the governors of Virginia and Maryland and the Mayor of DC to perhaps form a “DMV Region” to manage the pandemic and the recovery.
That covers about 1/3 of the U.S. population and much of the economic and tax base. The rest of the states will have to limp along as best they can with governors largely in charge and trying to get as much help as they can from the sinking Federal ship by going around Trump and dealing with Pence, Fauci, and Birx. Everyone also counts on some help from the Fed, which isn’t immune from Trump’s blustering nonsensical attacks, but is largely beyond his control and therefore free of his blundering ineptness.
There’s likely to be very bad news for the health and safety of those in states whose GOP governors have proved to be as inept and willfully blind as Trump and the rest of his kakistocracy. South Dakota is a prime example of what happens under a clueless GOP Governor.
Notably, most of the initial victims in South Dakota were Latinos working in the supposedly “essential” meat packing industry under conditions that clearly violated best health practices. The Governor claims that the plant would have remained open even under a “Stay at Home” order. Now, however, workers are sick and all those plants are closed anyway. The worst possible result. So, we’ll see how “essential” they really were. Perhaps if everybody had stayed home, the disease wouldn’t have spread and the plants could have reopened on a more limited basis with proper social distancing and protective equipment. And, if workers are really “essential,” why aren’t we looking out for their health, safety, and income protection?
Internationally, world leaders have long ago learned that Trump is incapable of leadership and that under him the U.S. is no longer a trustworthy or reliable partner. Nothing in Trump’s inept handling of the Pandemic in the U.S., his pathetic attempts to shift the blame elsewhere, and his incredibly stupid decision to stop funding the WHO would convince them otherwise.
Sure, like the drunken bully/oaf in the bar, the “Trumped-up U.S.” throws its weight around in unpredictable ways and is too big to be ignored or easily removed from the premises. So, world leaders have figured out how to move on without the U.S. and hope to largely avoid the irrational acts of petty vengeance and retribution for which he is famous.
Not a pretty picture. But, it will be even worse if we don’t remove Trump and the GOP from power in November.
Dana Milbank had a “spot on” assessment of “Captain Clown” 🤡 in today’s Post:
. . . .
Like Bligh, he is abusive. Unlike Bligh, he is a poor navigator. The Trump-as-errant-captain theme has been explored, delightfully, by novelist Dave Eggers in his recent allegory, “The Captain and the Glory”:
“He nudged the wheel a bit left, and the entire ship listed leftward, which was both frightening and thrilling. He turned the wheel to the right, and the totality of the ship, and its uncountable passengers and their possessions, all were sent rightward. In the cafeteria, where the passengers were eating lunch, a thousand plates and glasses shattered. An elderly man was thrown from his chair, struck his head on the dessert cart and died later that night. High above, the Captain was elated by the riveting drama caused by the surprises of his steering.”
So it is with our captain, who claims absolute authority but takes no responsibility. He announces he’s cutting off funding to the World Health Organization in the middle of the pandemic. He condemns the WHO for praising China’s transparency, even though he said in January he “greatly appreciates [China’s] efforts and transparency.” His conflicting messages about reopening the economy throw the country into confusion. He assembles so many coronavirus task forces that he will need another to keep track of them all. And after his long delayed and botched virus response, even now the number of tests in U.S. commercial labs is falling.
At Wednesday evening’s session, Trump turned the tiller randomly. After proclaiming the United States has “passed the peak” of the virus, he swerved into complaints about “partisan obstruction” holding up his nominees and threatened the never-before-tested “constitutional authority to adjourn both houses of Congress,” which would provoke another crisis in the middle of the pandemic.
He veered into complaints about the “disgusting”Voice of Americaand the “impeachment hoax.”He lurched into attacks on the World Trade Organization , various Democrats and governors generally, asserting that “we have the right to do whatever we want.”He accused the WHO of a conspiracy to hide the virusand boasted about his name going on government-issued relief checks: “People will be very happy to get a big fat beautiful check, and my name is on it.”
The ship has become accustomed to such unpredictable steering: He touts a virus treatment that so far shows more alarming side effects than efficacy. He announces virus-testing schemes that don’t exist. He talks about pardoning Joe Exotic. He blames everybody except his own administration, which is doing things very, very strongly and powerfully. “The Defense Production Act was used very powerfully, more powerfully than anybody would know, in fact, so powerfully that, for the most part, we didn’t have to officially take it out,” he proclaims.
[[The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.]]
As the captain propounds powerful gibberish, the mutiny builds. Regional blocs make their own pandemic-recovery plans. Allies condemn his assault on the WHO. Republican Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) tells Politico that Trump has been “very uneven.” Even Trump-friendly outlets such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page offer some criticism.
“WSJ is Fake News!” shouts the captain.
“What the hell is happening to @FoxNews?”
What’s happening, captain, is you’ve hit the rocks.
Patrick J. McDonnell, Molly O’Toole and Cindy Carcamo report for the LA Times:
MEXICO CITY — More than half the deportees flown back to Guatemala by U.S. immigration authorities have tested positive for coronavirus, the top Guatemalan health official said Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters in Guatemala City, Hugo Monroy, the minister of health, did not specify a time frame or the total number of deportees who had arrived home with infections.
But hundreds of Guatemalans have been returned in recent weeks, including 182 who arrived Monday on two flights from Texas.
Monroy said that on one flight — which he declined to identify — more than 75% of the deportees tested positive.
But he made clear this was not an isolated incident and said many deportees arrived with fevers and coughs and were immediately tested.
“We’re not just talking about one flight,” he said. “We’re talking about all the flights.”
In video later released by the government, Monroy contradicted his earlier statements and said he was referring to just one flight.
The Guatemalan Foreign Ministry said through a spokesman Tuesday that the “official” number of deportees diagnosed with COVID-19 is four, including one who arrived on one of the flights Monday.
A high number of infections among deportees would cast doubt on the official tally of how many of the more than 33,000 migrants in U.S. detention are infected. U.S. immigration officials have said that 77 have tested positive, noting that some of those may no longer be in custody.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.
. . . .
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
For four decades, the U.S. has been deporting its problems to the poorest and most unstable countries in Central America. Gangs such as MS-13 and the 18th Street Gang actually originated in Los Angeles and were “exported” to Central America. Once there, they flourished, grew more powerful, became “de facto governments” in some areas, and instituted a reign of terror and persecution that sent hundreds of thousands of new refugees fleeing north to the United States over the years.
Now, Trump and his cronies once again believe that often illegal and irresponsible deportations to the Northern Triangle countries will allow us to escape accountability. But, it won’t.
Irresponsibly spreading disease in poor countries where public health services are dismal at best will eventually have consequences throughout the Americas. And, we will not be immune from the long-term effects of empowering theTrump kakistocracy and its White Nationalist cronies. What goes around come around. Neither wealth nor arrogant ignorance will save us from paying a price for our lack of concern for humanity.
Due Process Forever! Malicious Incompetence Never!
Immigration Review Office Remains Open Despite Potential COVID-19 Exposure
Most support staff at the Executive Office of Immigration Review in Falls Church, Va., remain unable to telework even after two floors had to be deep cleaned after an employee exhibited coronavirus symptoms at work last week.
The agency responsible for conducting removal proceedings in immigration courts still is not providing telework for many of its employees, even after an employee exhibited coronavirus symptoms at work.
On April 8, an employee on the 20th floor of the Executive Office of Immigration Review’s office in Falls Church, Va., which the agency shares with the Social Security Administration, had symptoms consistent with COVID-19, although the employee has not been tested for the virus.
As a result, employees on that floor and the 21st and 22nd floors were temporarily sent home on weather and safety leave until contractors could conduct a deep cleaning. The 21st and 22nd floor employees returned to work Friday, while the 20th floor reopened on Monday, except to those who came in contact with the employee, who are now undergoing a 14-day quarantine.
“I want to advise you that an EOIR employee working on the 20th floor of the Skyline Tower Building has displayed symptoms of COVID-19,” wrote Executive Office of Immigration Review Director James McHenry in an email to employees last week. “The employee is now self-quarantined for two weeks and all persons identified as close contacts have been advised of their interaction with the symptomatic employee. We are conducting an enhanced cleaning of the 20th and 21st floors and the building’s common areas in compliance with [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines. The CDC guidance does not indicate that any additional EOIR spaces would require cleaning.”
An agency employee, who requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal, said that employees on the 17th floor were told that if they were uncomfortable continuing to work in the office, they would have to take personal leave. And they said that while the attorneys and paralegals may work remotely, the agency still is not allowing most support staff and clerks to telework, citing a lack of laptops.
“Unlike at the immigration judge level, we’re still fully operational,” the employee said. “There’s been no change, no modification to the way we’re operating. We’re 100% fully staffed and we have attorneys, paralegals and support staff.”
The office remains open despite guidance from the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget urging agencies to “maximize telework” for employees wherever possible. Additionally, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Assistant Attorney General for Administration Lee Lofthus directed Justice Department components to “move to a posture of maximum telework” in the Washington, D.C., region beginning March 16.
“Components should exploit all flexibilities in their telework policies, including adjusting duties and work to expand availability of telework to employees whose duties did not previously support telework, and even if the employee would only have enough duties to telework for part of a work day,” Lofthus wrote.
The EOIR employee said the agency has been resistant to implementing a continuity of operations plan that would prioritize detainee cases over non-detainee cases, as immigration courts have done to reduce the time needed to be in the office, and said they fear the agency is more concerned with “keeping up production numbers” than employees’ well-being.
“Why can’t we go into COOP status to minimize staff in the office?” the employee said. “We could go into only working detained cases, just like the courts, and we wouldn’t need as many staff. And with a smaller docket, maybe we could introduce rotations or stagger shifts. Right now the only option to stagger shifts is allowing some employees to work from 6 a.m. until 3 and then someone else could work later.”
The employee noted that, by comparison, when there was a positive coronavirus case among the Social Security Administration’s employees in the building, the agency completely evacuated the office, and employees have not returned since.
“Why did we come back to work so much faster [than Social Security]?” they asked. “SSA had one incident and they’re on 17 different floors, and they haven’t been back.”
The agency did not respond to a request for comment.
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Interestingly, in past “Government shutdowns,” most EOIR HQ personnel were deemed “nonessential” and told to say home. Now, with a true emergency that could affect employee health and safety, and with the Immigration Courts’ “non-detained docket” — more than 95% of the EOIR workload — shut down, it becomes necessary to drag HQ staff in. To do what? Exactly what “essential services” are being performed that justify risking the health and safety of employees, their families, and their communities?
But, I suppose it’s no surprise that an agency sitting on a largely self-created backlog of 1.4 million cases, with no plausible plan for dealing with it, would essentially tell its own employees to “show up and hope for the best.”
The novel coronavirus has been particularly harsh on immigrants. After facing years of harassment and persecution from the Trump administration, the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States have now been left unprotected, unable to receive aid from the government’s historic stimulus package, even though they pay billions of dollars in taxes every year
Local and state officials, especially those in immigrant-friendly states such as California, are scrambling to find a way to help their undocumented communities, but it might not be enough. Without appropriate federal support, prompt access to more effective unemployment benefits or paid sick leave for those in need, many communities could be devastated. Left with the agonizing decision of going to work in the midst of a pandemic that requires strict limits on public movement or see their livelihood disappear, many undocumented people are already risking their health.
[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]
This is a travesty. Undocumented immigrants are productive members of society who deserve all the care afforded to others.Even this administration has deemed workers who harvest and process the country’s food supply as essential, asking them to keep their “normal work schedule” during the crisis. “It’s like suddenly they realized we are here contributing,” Nancy Silva, an immigrant from Mexico who works in the fields of Southern California, told the New York Times. “Contributing” is an understatement. The immigrant workforce is critical for a significant number of industries in the United States.
In June, I interviewed John Rosenow, a Wisconsin dairy farmer who has relied on Mexican immigrants for years. “Our industry doesn’t exist without immigrant labor,” he told me. “Eighty percent of the milk in Wisconsin is harvested by immigrants. If you took the immigrants away, way over half of the farms would go out of business.” Wisconsin’s dairy industry is not alone in its dependence on immigrant labor. Indeed, almost 20 percent of food processing workers and more than 36 percent of agricultural workers are undocumented. The health-care industry relies heavily on immigrants as well,as do the country’s construction and service businesses.
. . . .
Martínez worries that a protracted economic crisis could worsen the nativist backlash against immigration. “If things continue this way,” he said, “we could see further restrictions on work or entrepreneur visas, no matter the obvious contributions we all make to the economy.”
The United States will be worse for it, both morally and economically.
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Read the complete op-ed at the link.
The well-being of the United States as a whole has never been a part of the Trump agenda. Nor is it for the White Nationalist restrictionists who promote his immigration agenda. Their agenda is based largely on racist myths and preconceived false narratives about the dangers of the “other.”
But, in any emergency creating an economic downturn there will be a race to find “scapegoats.” Indeed, essentially “caught red-handed and in full view in failure,” Trump is desperately looking to shift the blame elsewhere for his Administration’s poor initial response and lack of planning. “With great power comes no responsibility” could be his motto.
The nativists are already toting out their shopworn arguments that the pandemic should be an excuse and justification for yet harsher and more restrictive immigration measures. The rest of us need to fight back against their counterproductive nonsense.
Those who complain about the media’s relentless focus on President Trump during a pandemic have yet to internalize the horrendous reality of his pandemic response: Trump’s failures of leadership and character have increased the death toll and continue to threaten lives.
For me, that is a difficult sentence to write. Having spent time in the executive branch, I realize how complicated presidential decisions can be. America’s chief executives are often forced to make momentous choices, based on scant information, under the pressure of a ticking clock. It is easier to attack such decisions than to make them.
But the fact of Trump’s deadly negligence is now demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. Detailed investigative articles in The Post and New York Times have established that there were six weeks of denial and dithering between a credible warning about the virus and decisive action by the president. It is now evident that Trump:
• ignored early intelligence reports of a possible pandemic;
• delayed the ramp up of practical preparations;
• was often more focused on political considerations, on the news cycle and on stock market performance than on epidemiological reality;
• deceptively played down what he knew to be a rising threat;
• coddled China when it should have been confronted;
• instinctively distrusted experts and seemed unable to absorb simple information and sound advice;
• lashed out at aides who took the crisis seriously;
• shifted reluctantly and belatedly from a strategy of containment to mitigation;
• is strangely obsessed with unproven treatments for the novel coronavirus; and
• has systemically lied about the promptness of his own response.
These accounts reveal a White House staffed by incompetent loyalists, distracted by turnover and riven by feuds. A White House carefully pruned and shaped to resemble the chaos in Trump’s mind.
[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]
I urge you to read the articles themselves. In this case, it is a duty of informed citizenship. Americans need to understand the epic smallness of our president in times that demanded something more.
The tension between National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony S. Fauci and President Trump has been simmering for weeks. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
All this is bad enough. But our interest, unfortunately, should not be merely forensic. Trump draws bitterness and resentment out of his experience of the world. He does not draw lessons or wisdom. And he remains just as dangerous to public health on the back side of the curve as he was on the front.
. . . .
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Read the complete op-ed at the link.
“Deadly negligence,” “ malicious incompetence,” “criminal recklessness” — call it what you will, there is more than ample proof that Trump is unqualified in every imaginable way for the office he holds.
Of course, Trump will remain a danger to our national health, safety, and welfare. He has neither the capacity for nor interest in anything beyond himself.
AMERICA (The Borowitz Report)—In order to better coördinate their efforts to combat the coronavirus, the nation’s governors are considering the extraordinary step of forming a country.
The radical proposal is an unusual bipartisan effort, spearheaded by the Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, and the Republican Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine.
“Mike and I were bidding against each other for masks and ventilators, and I was, like, ‘Mike this is crazy,’ ” Whitmer said. “ ‘It would be so much better if we just worked together and formed a country.’ ”
DeWine said that Whitmer’s proposal of creating a country out of the fifty states “made a lot of sense.”
“It was one of those moments where someone throws out a nutty idea and you think, ‘Hold on, let’s think on that for a second,’ ” he said.
While the idea of the fifty states coming together to form a country is still in the embryonic stage, DeWine said that the states would ideally create a “federal government” led by a “President.”
“We’re all in agreement that it would be amazing to have a President right now,” DeWine said.
A straw poll of the governors indicates that the front-runner for President of this yet-to-be-named country is one of their own: Governor Andrew Cuomo, of New York.
“Andrew keeps saying that he doesn’t want to be President,” Whitmer said. “And I’m, like, ‘Dude, you already are.’ ”
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Just after I read this, I was pelted with notifications that Governors in the Northeast and on the West Coast were banding together to develop cooperative regional approaches to restarting their regional economies consistent with best health practices.
After recently claiming that he had no authority to order a nationwide shutdown, Trump now says that reopening is his sole decision to make.
The Trump administration’s novel COVID-19 border ban invokes public health authority to erect a shadow immigration enforcement power in violation of the Refugee Act, legal safeguards for unaccompanied minors, and fundamental procedural rights. Relying on an obscure 1944 provision that provides no authority for immigration removals, the Centers for Disease Control purports to authorize summary Border Patrol expulsions of asylum seekers.
On March 20, the Centers for Disease Control (“CDC”) issued a largely unnoticed but sweeping order authorizing the summary expulsion of noncitizens arriving at the border without valid documents. The Order operates wholly outside the normal immigration removal process and provides no opportunity for hearings or assertion of asylum claims. It deploys a medical quarantine authorization to override the protections of the immigration and refugee laws through the use of an unreviewable Border Patrol health “expulsion” mechanism unrelated to any finding of disease or contagion.
How the COVID-19 Expulsion Policy Works
The CDC Order is based on an emergency Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Interim Final Rule issued simultaneously with the Order under the authority of an obscure provision of the 1944 Public Health Service Act. Section 362 of that Act authorizes the Surgeon General to suspend “introduction of persons or goods” into the United States on public health grounds. Based on an unprecedented interpretation of the 1944 Act, the CDC regulation invokes the COVID-19 pandemic to redefine what constitutes “introduction of persons” and “introduction of communicable diseases” into the United States. It establishes a summary immigration expulsion process that ignores the statutory regime governing border arrivals and disregards the protections and procedures mandated by the 1980 Refugee Act and Refugee Convention as well as the special safeguards for unaccompanied minors under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (“TVPRA”).
The CDC Order “suspending introduction of certain persons” applies to land travel from two countries, Mexico and Canada, and only to those noncitizens defined as “covered aliens.” That definition is unrelated to infection or disease. It includes only those who arrive by land without valid travel documents and immediately “suspends” their “introduction” for a renewable period of 30 days. In actuality the Order singles out those who seek asylum – and children – to order them removed to the country from which they entered or their home country “as rapidly as possible.” A recently leaked Customs and Border Protection directive makes clear that expulsion is the goal and that no process is provided.
The Order’s stated rationale is the risk alleged from “covered aliens” being crowded in “congregate settings.” The apparent justification for bypassing all legal protections and procedures is the CBP’s assertion that Border Patrol officers are “not operating pursuant to” their authority under the immigration laws.
This shadow immigration expulsion regime is not part of some coherent public health or safety plan to seal our borders or to diminish the risk of COVID-19’s introduction into the U.S. A web of other proclamations and restrictions leave open many avenues for other travelers to enter the United States. The risk of processing in congregate settings is a function of DHS’s own practices and policies; it is also not unique to landborders.
The CDC order is designed to accomplish under the guise of public health a dismantling of legal protections governing border arrivals that the Trump administration has been unable to achieve under the immigration laws. For more than a year, the administration has sought unsuccessfully to undo the asylum system at the southern border claiming that exigencies and limited government resources compel abrogating rights and protections for refugees and other noncitizens. The courts have rebuffed those attempts in critical respects. Now the administration has seized on a public health crisis to impose all it has been seeking – and more.
Unquestionably, the United States faces a pandemic of unknown scope and duration that has led to the greatest social and economic disruption and restrictions on personal movement in our lifetime. The hospital and healthcare system is under siege and threatened with collapse in some areas. Infected persons can be asymptomatic and may not be detected. The addition of contagious individuals can exacerbate spread of the virus, place additional strains on hospitals, pose dangers to healthcare workers and law enforcement officers, and increase the risk of infection for others.
But the COVID-19 ban is an act of medical gerrymandering. It is crafted to override critical legal rights and safeguards in singling out only those arriving at the border without authorization and deeming that class of people a unique and unmitigable public health threat. It tries to justify an end-run around congressionally mandated procedural rights and protections essential for refugees and unaccompanied minors and it does so to achieve an impermissible goal. What’s additionally shocking here: the statutory provision does not actually give the executive branch expulsion authority.
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Read the rest of Lucas’s “mini treatise” at the above link.
The law is clearly against Trump here, as Lucas so eloquently and cogently sets forth. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean much in an era of a feckless GOP-stymied Congress and an authoritarian-coddling righty Supremes’ majority led by Roberts and his four sidekicks.
The Supremes have delivered a strong message to the lower Federal Courts that Trump can do just about anything he wants to migrants. He just has to invoke some transparently bogus “national security” or “emergency” rationale for ignoring the Constitution and statutes.
It’s “Dred Scottification” in full force. Largely the same way the courts buried the rights and humanity of African Americans to enable a century plus of “Jim Crow” following the end of the Civil War. The “law of the land” just became meaningless for certain people and in certain jurisdictions. “Any ol’ justification” — states’ rights, separate but equal, no jurisdiction, etc. — was more than enough to read Africans-American citizens out of their Constitutional and other legal protections.
Don’t kid yourself. That’s exactly what Trump, the GOP, and the Supremes’ majority are up to here.
And, the amazing thing, here in 21st Century America, they are getting alway with it! In plain sight!
This November, Vote Like Your Life Depends On It! Because It Does!
Elizabeth Gibson Attorney, NY Legal Assistance Group Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
COVID-19
Note: Policies are rapidly changing, so please verify the latest policies on the relevant government websites and with colleagues on listservs as best you can.
New
BIA Email Filings: The BIA is now accepting email filings for limited purposes. This guidance is separate from the previously posted general IJ email filing guidance.
OCAHO Email Filings: Until further notice, complainants can file new complaints by emailing the complaint and all required attachments
IJ Email Filings: The new email filing system seems to sometimes send a confirmation email but sometimes it does not. IJs also have sometimes not had access to confirmed email filings at hearings.
Bond: The New York Field Office is not processing bonds until further notice. The Newark office may serve as an alternative.
Parole Requests: Are being accepted by mail at 26Fed and Varick in New York. See also attached ICE Guidance on Discretionary Release.
ICE-Appointments: NY Field Office OSUP appointments are canceled through April 30.
A running list of positive coronavirus cases at county jails in North Jersey
ACIJ Changes: Effective Monday, April 13, Immigration Judge David Cheng will begin serving as the Assistant Chief Immigration Judge overseeing the Newark and Elizabeth immigration courts, replacing ACIJ Carrie C. Johnson-Papillo, who will now serve exclusively as the ACIJ at the New York – Federal Plaza Immigration Court. ACIJ Cheng will be based out of the Newark Immigration Court.
NIP: In early 2020, the Trump Administration began implementing a multi-pronged effort to collect DNA samples from immigrants to be used by federal and state law enforcement authorities to investigate crimes. Beginning April 8, 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is authorized to collect DNA from all detained immigrants.
NJ.com: Almost one-third of all federal detainees infected with the coronavirus are being held in New Jersey, according to the latest figures from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
CityLimits: Without help from the government, community-based organizations are trying to fill that gap. Mixteca Organization is providing prepaid $250 debit cards to 100 families in distress in the immigrant community of Sunset Park.
DocumentedNY: Jorge, who asked to be referred to only by his first name for fear of reprisal, was arrested by ICE on his 18th birthday from a shelter in Westchester, New York on March 18. He was then transferred to the Orange County Correctional Facility, according to attorneys at the Brooklyn Defender Services. See also “We are trapped”: Immigrant women detained during pandemic speak out.
CNN: There are no official statistics on how many Chinese nationals in the US have lost jobs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, but CNN has seen two groups on WeChat, a “must-have” messaging platform for the Chinese diaspora, in which hundreds of people claiming to be in this situation share stories and exchange information.
NPR: New White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is working with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to see how to reduce wage rates for foreign guest workers on American farms, in order to help U.S. farmers struggling during the coronavirus, according to U.S. officials and sources familiar with the plans. See also Shortage of Farmworkers Threatens Americans’ Food Supply During the Coronavirus.
DocumentedNY: According to detainees at Batavia, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has blocked all visits to doctors unless they have a coronavirus related emergency; meaning many who have long-term chronic conditions have to go without care.
Marshall Project: In two courthouses in the center of the besieged city, hearings for unaccompanied children—migrants who were apprehended without a parent—are speeding forward. The U.S. Department of Justice, which controls the immigration courts, has said it has no plan to suspend them.
TRAC: Although the Immigration Courts with the largest backlogs of cases are located in large cities, the latest Immigration Court records show that when adjusted for population, many rural counties have higher rates of residents in removal proceedings than urban counties.
LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS
SDNY TRO grant for Essex detainees with more serious criminal justice contact (see attached)
NYIFUP: On Friday night, Judge Torres granted a TRO for two people BDS represents detained at Essex (the third person was released post-filing) in a decision with some great language against severing a group petition and about the continuing danger at Essex. Torres cited to the declarations filed for two of the “Basank 10,” Mr. Picasso and Mr. Pena, who wanted to share their experiences to help others. This win is very gratifying also because these two clients have more serious criminal justice contact than in other recent habeas cases, but Judge Torres agreed that they should still be released and the real issue is what conditions are appropriate.
Also, Judge Arleo of the DNJ issued a TRO for the immediate release of 5 individuals held in Hudson and Bergen County Jails.
AILA, the Immigration Justice Campaign, the NIPNLG, and several detained individuals filed an emergency TRO challenging EOIR’s operation of in-person immigration court hearings and ICE’s conditions of confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic. (NIPNLG et al., v. EOIR et al., 4/8/20) AILA Doc. No. 20040830
A district court judge issued a TRO, given the COVID-19 pandemic, granting relief to individuals detained in Adelanto ICE Processing Center through 4/25/20, and asked the government why he should not convert this order into a preliminary injunction. (Torres, et al. v. DHS, et al., 4/11/20) AILA Doc. No. 18121703
For purposes of determining whether an alien is subject to the firm resettlement bar to asylum, a viable and available offer to apply for permanent residence in a country of refuge is not negated by the alien’s unwillingness or reluctance to satisfy the terms for acceptance.
Law360 reports that a federal judge granted class certification in the lawsuit filed by AILA and partners challenging the president’s healthcare proclamation. AILA Director of Litigation Jesse Bless called it an “important step towards making sure the proclamation never becomes effective.” AILA Doc. No. 20040961
ImmProf: The court found the inclusion of “so help me God” as a means of completing the naturalization oath does not violate the First or Fifth Amendments or RFRA.
ImmProf: In the very first paragraph, the essence of the decision is announced: “Without addressing the coup, the BIA found that any change in gender based violence was incremental or incidental and not material. Because this conclusion is not supported by the record, we grant the petition and remand.”… The most notable thing about the panel’s 2-1 decision besides its well thought-out reasoning is the lack of any discussion involving Matter of A-B-, 27 I & N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018), anywhere in either the majority’s or dissent’s decisions.
The President issued a memo directing the Secretary of State to impose visa sanctions pursuant to INA section 243(d) on any foreign country that denies or delays the acceptance of its citizens after being asked to accept them, and if such denial or delay impedes DHS operations regarding COVID-19. AILA Doc. No. 20041300
ICE issued guidance on its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. ICE confirmed that as of 4/10/20, 50 detainees, 15 detention facility personnel, and 66 ICE employees, have tested positive for COVID-19. AILA Doc. No. 20031658
USCIS 30-day extension of a comment period originally announced at 84 FR 55167 on proposed revisions to Form I-864, Affidavit of Support Under Section 213A of the INA, as well as Forms I-864EZ and Form I-864A. Comments are now due 5/11/20. (85 FR 20292, 4/10/20) AILA Doc. No. 20041030
ICE issued a memo on its COVID-19 action plan for ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC)-staffed and non-IHSC-staffed, ICE-dedicated facilities. The memo was released by ICE as an exhibit in Fraihat v. ICE. AILA Doc. No. 20040901
USCIS notice that a new version of Form I-9 (Employment Eligibility Verification) with a version date of ‘‘(Rev. 10/21/2019)’’ is available for use beginning today, 1/31/20. Employers may continue using the prior version of the form until 4/30/20. (85 FR 5683, 1/31/20) AILA Doc. No. 20013130
USCIS issued policy guidance in the USCIS Policy Manual regarding eligibility requirements, filing, and adjudication of adjustment of status applications based on the Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness (LRIF) law. The guidance is effective immediately. Comments are due May 7, 2020. AILA Doc. No. 20040730
ACTIONS
Email Kyle Barron (kbarron@bds.org) at BDS to join the NY-NJ Habeas Working Group listserv.
Andrea Castillo and Brittny Mejia report for the LA Times:
For weeks, as the coronavirus spread, Jose Hernandez Velasquez worried about the dangers of being detained inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center 80 miles east of Los Angeles.
The 19-year-old Guatemalan immigrant listened uneasily as other men called their families, begging them to do everything possible to get them released so as to reduce their odds of contracting the deadly illness.
Ultimately, in light of the pandemic, a federal judge ordered immigration authorities to release Hernandez, an asylum seeker with hypertension who had spent nearly 21/2 years at the facility. When a guard came to tell him the news, Hernandez was speechless. Other detainees burst into applause.
“I was really worried,” he said in a phone call after his release. “It was so difficult to be inside.”
As an increasing number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees across the country test positive for COVID-19, California lawyers are working to free as many clients as they can by invoking constitutional rights and arguing on humanitarian grounds. In the last two weeks, U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter Jr. ordered at least 10 people released from Adelanto, one of the country’s largest detention centers, holding nearly 2,000 people.
It’s unclear how many detainees have been released nationwide because of coronavirus concerns. In recent weeks, federal judges across the country have ordered the release of more than 40 detainees.
Like Hernandez, most have been released after lawyers petitioned federal courts on their behalf. Others have been released on bond or through humanitarian parole, which is free to people with a compelling emergency.
In response to the pandemic, ICE has instructed field offices to assess and consider for release those deemed to be at greater risk of exposure, reviewing cases of individuals age 60 and older, as well as those who are pregnant.
In court filings, ICE has argued that concern about detainees contracting COVID-19 is “based on mere speculation” and that releasing large numbers of them would set a precedent that would persist even after the virus subsides.
Until ICE agrees to release more detainees, “you’re going to keep seeing petitions like this,” said Jessica Bansal, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which got Hernandez and others released from Adelanto. “Because people need to get out.”
The ACLU has sued ICE facilities in multiple states over coronavirus concerns.
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Read the rest of the article at the above link.
Empowering a regime that functions in such a contemptuous, cruel, and incompetent manner is insane and wasteful to boot. Everyone, including the legitimate needs of DHS enforcement (not much resemblance to the current racially-driven scofflaw mess) would benefit from a professionalized, accountable, and properly focused DHS and an independent, due process with efficiency-oriented U.S. Immigration Court.
Immigration enforcement could focus on priorities that actually relate to the safety and security of our nation, the private and NGO immigration bar could expand individual case representation before the Immigration Courts thus promoting efficiency with due process, and the U.S. District Courts could return to other cases. It would be a win-win-win, notwithstanding the bogus blather of the White Nationalist restrictionists who seek to use the pandemic as a weapon to “zero out” legal immigration and force all migration into the “black market” where it can more easily be exploited and abused by them and their cronies.
Due Process Forever! Malicious Incompetence Never!
Javier H. Valdes Co-Director Make the Road NYNedia Morsy Organizing Director Make the Road NJ
https://apple.news/AZ3raIrMIQX2JtEjfdMbJRw
Javier H. Valdés & Nedia Morsy write in the NY Daily News:
Immigrants are on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they’re being left out of the federal government’s solutions.
Immigrants are our delivery workers, grocery-store and warehouse workers, nurses, janitors and more. They make up more than 50% of the city’s frontline workers. Many don’t have the luxury of working remotely; millions are going to work, putting themselves at risk to provide others with food, basic necessities and care.
Few employers provide adequate protective materials or protocols to reduce risk to workers. Amazon workers on Staten Island, many of them immigrants, have walked off the job because the company failed to provide safe working conditions despite confirmed COVID-19 cases on-site. Employees at another company’s New Jersey warehouse were told to report to work and were not given adequate protective gear, before being unlawfully told they could not take paid sick days. They continue working in a tinderbox of potential infection.
Meanwhile, other immigrants have been devastated by joblessness. Unemployment has disproportionately hit Hispanic and immigrant communities. In New York City, where a CUNY study found 29% of households have at least one newly jobless person in this crisis, the figure for Hispanic households is 41%.
Immigrant communities have also been hit hardest by the virus itself, with communities like Corona, Queens and the South Bronx reporting the highest death tolls.
We hear daily from desperate workers who have lost their jobs, but, because they are undocumented, are ineligible for unemployment insurance. And they don’t have enough savings to pay rent.
Take Alejandra, a pregnant Long Island mother, who, until last month, worked a minimum-wage factory job. She was laid off and doesn’t know how she will pay her bills. Since her health insurance was through work, she also faces the uncertainty of getting through her pregnancy uninsured.
So far, the Trump administration and Congress have mostly excluded immigrants like Alejandra from relief. The cash assistance passed in the third stimulus bill, the CARES Act, excludes Individual Taxpayer Identification Number filers, a tax status many undocumented immigrants use. Many of the millions of children and spouses of ITIN holders will also be ineligible, even if they are U.S. citizens.
. . . .
Having already prioritized the Trump administration’s enormous slush fund for Wall Street, Congress must advance a just recovery package that puts people first, regardless of immigration status. That means immediate, recurring cash payments and unemployment insurance for all. It means testing and treatment for all. It means worker safety provisions and paid sick leave for all. It means a rent freeze so families have safe spaces to self-quarantine. And it means releasing people from jails, prisons and detention centers at grave risk.
While state and local governments must also respond quickly and prioritize the most vulnerable, only Washington can ensure recovery at the necessary scale.
We need a recovery package that goes directly to working-class and low-income people and includes everyone. If we leave immigrants behind, everyone will suffer.
Valdés* is the co-executive director of Make the Road New York. Morsy is the organizing director of Make the Road New Jersey.*
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Read the complete article at the link.
The GOP Right’s view of who is “critical” or “essential” to society has been wrong from the git go. Indeed, the many undocumented workers laboring in our food supply chain have proved to be essential to our survival. In fact, they always have been essential. The pandemic and ensuing crisis has just made the truth more obvious.
But, don’t expect the dose of reality dished out by the pandemic to change GOP dogma going forward. Policies driven largely by racism, classism, and the desire to maintain disproportionate power have always dealt in myths, rather than facts, anyway. That makes them largely “factproof.”
It will be up to the rest of us, working together and cooperatively, to build a fairer, juster, more humane, better nation “on the other side” of the current crisis.
Join the New Due Process Army & Fight For a Just America For Everyone!
John A. Freedman Senior Counsel Arnold & PorterHon. Ilyce Shugall U.S. Immigraton Judge (Retired) Director, Immigrant Legal Defense Program, Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Assn. of San Francisco.Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase Blog Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Retired Immigration JudgesKnightess of the Round Table
Key Excerpt:
We are in the midst of a nationwide pandemic. From the approach of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) headquarters, one would never know that. Through a series of chaotic and inconsistent announcements, EOIR —the office that manages the procedural components of the immigration court system on behalf of the United States Department of Justice2—has continued to schedule non-essential proceedings, requiring judges, court staff and security personnel, litigants and case participants, attorneys, witnesses, interpreters, and interested members of the public to come immigration court, exposing them, their families, and their communities to unnecessary risk of COVID-19.
1 In accordance with Local Rule 7(o), no party’s counsel authored this brief in whole or in part, nor did any party or party’s counsel, or any other person other than amici curiae, contribute money that was intended to fund preparing or submitting this brief.
2 See 8 C.F.R. § 1003.0(b) (setting forth the authority of the Director of EOIR).
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The madness of EOIR s approach is evident in one example, representative of its
approach. Yesterday – April 8 — the immigration court in Elizabeth, New Jersey was open for business as usual. This court is across the Hudson River from New York City, and is near the epicenter of the largest COVID-19 hotspot on the planet, and is in a jurisdiction that has had a mandatory shelter-in-place” order since March 21. Yet EOIR insisted that proceedings continue
yesterday. Until it was learned that two detainees in the courthouse were positive for COVID- 19. Only then did EOIR accede to the obvious, scrambling to order the court to shut the Elizabeth court down. But immigration courts were open in many other jurisdictions yesterday, and are scheduled to be open today and for the foreseeable future.
EOIR’s intransigence defies the practice of numerous federal and state courts, the
recommendations of public health officials, and the orders of dozens of Governors who have ordered all non-essential business be deferred. As Judge Samuel Cole, a spokesperson for the National Association of Immigration Judges warned, everyone is being put at risk.” Close immigration courts? Lawyers and judges push to stop in-person hearings amid coronavirus spread, Fortune (Mar. 26, 2020) (describing how attorneys are wearing swim googles and masks to comply with EOIR orders).
The current EOIR approach manifests this disarray because there was not, and has never been, any meaningful continuity planning by EOIR. EOIR, and therefore the immigration court system itself, has sacrificed due process in favor of rapid removals, leaving the court without any incentive at all to plan to protect the public health or the individuals and participants in the system.
Amici urge the issuance of a temporary restraining order to allow for development of a more comprehensive, systemic, and scientifically sound policy that respects due process and the
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public health. We offer a framework for what a legally and scientifically sound policy could look like and why a court-ordered pause on all non-essential activities for a short 28-day period could allow for such a policy to emerge in deliberations with stakeholder communities.
Read the entire brief, which contains our proposed solution for how the Immigration Courts could conduct essential operations consistent with health, safety, and due process during this pandemic: Amicus brief_NIPNLG
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Again, many, many thanks to John Freedman and his group at Arnold & Porter as well as Ilyce & Jeffrey for their leadership.
U.S. immigration officials must disclose the number of releases they have granted or denied from detention centers in five southern states to migrants considered at higher risk of dying from coronavirus.
The order from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg came during a hearing Thursday – days after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expanded the categories of detainees who should be considered for release beyond pregnant women and those over age 70.
On Saturday, ICE directed field offices nationwide to reassess custody of anyone over 60, as well as those of any age with chronic illnesses compromising their immune systems.
“What I’m looking for is, is it in fact happening on the ground?” Boasberg told lawyers for ICE at an emergency hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington in a lawsuit brought by immigrant advocates seeking release of asylum seekers detained in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
Boasberg, who ordered the numbers released by April 30, said ICE’s shift may “go a long way” toward releasing the most vulnerable detainees.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeremy Simon said ICE will determine if it can release the information. He said ICE also retains full discretion over the outcome of reviews, saying “none of the [listed] factors are determinative” of release, with public safety a high priority.
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Read the rest of the article at the above link.
Unfortunately, April 30 might be too late for some of those held in the Gulag.
The “ICE guidance” sounds like the normal DHS bureaucratic doublespeak that promotes arbitrariness and allows individual offices to do whatever they feel like doing, while providing a “smokescreen” of reasonable action. Hopefully, Judge Boasberg won’t be fooled.
