"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.
“On Petition for Review of a Final Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. (Agency No. A209-343-065). Immigration Judge: David Cheng. … As for Quinteros’s Convention Against Torture claim, our precedent requires the agency to follow certain steps. Yet neither the judge nor the Board did so. … Here, neither the immigration judge nor the Board followed our instructions. … Those procedural failures infected the agency’s decisions. Neither the immigration judge nor the Board considered a separate death threat and beatings that Quinteros got from gang members. In gauging the likelihood and severity of future harm, the agency should have considered the gang’s death threat too. See Herrera-Reyes v. Att’y Gen., 952 F.3d 101, 112 n.5 (3d Cir. 2020). So we will grant the petition as to Quinteros’s Convention Against Torture claim, vacate the Board’s order, and remand.”
Gee whiz, applying and following Circuit precedent seems like “Immigration Judging 101!” Yet two levels of supposedly “expert” EOIR judges blew it — badly! Fortunately, this respondent was represented by experienced Federal litigator Thomas E. Moseley, who is never afraid to go to the Article IIIs to correct EOIR’s errors.
But, most respondents aren’t so lucky. So, it’s likely that for every defective adjudication “outed” by a Circuit, multiple, potentially deadly or at least life changing, mistakes go uncorrected. Worse yet, some are even “institutionalized!” Seems like a “heck of a way to run the railway,” particularly for a former Article III Judge who was once nominated for the Supremes!
Unforced error after unforced error in life or death cases from Garland’s substandard “courts!” Would brain surgeons 🤯☠️ who kept on screwing up critical operations still be “on staff.” I doubt it! So, why aren’t “DOJ attorneys” carrying out quasi-judicial functions subject to some quality controls? In theory, that’s supposed to be the BIA’s function. But, the BIA has firmly established itself as “part of the problem, NOT the solution!”
Congrats to my long-time friend and former “Legacy INS” colleague Tom Moseley. As a former INS Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the SDNY (in the time of “Crazy Rudy”) during the “Inman/Schmidt Era” at INS General Counsel, Tom has also seen both sides of the system!
Rudy Giuliani has been suspended from practicing law in the state of New York.
Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and the former head prosecutor for the federal Southern District of New York, was suspended for making “false and misleading statements” about the election loss of his client, former President Donald Trump.
In a ruling sought by the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department (a mid-level appellate court in the state), a five judge panel implemented an interim suspension of Giuliani’s law license, pending further AGC proceedings.
The ruling, issued Thursday, takes effect immediately.
“There is uncontroverted evidence that respondent communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020,” the court wrote in its decision.
“These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent’s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client. We conclude that respondent’s conduct immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law.”
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Read the full report at the link.
Could get here be just a little justice in the world after all? On the other hand, why are Jeff “Gonzo Apolcalypto” Sessions and “Billy the Bigot” Barr and a bunch of other corrupt Trump officials still walking free and practicing? A few might even be hanging around in USG jobs!
A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to fully restore an Obama-era initiative that protects undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation, requiring officials to open the program to new applicants for the first time since 2017.
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Read the rest of the article at the link. Here’s Judge NICHOLAS G. GARAUFIS’s decision:
Here’s the most telling quote from that decision describing Wolfman’s continuing scofflaw shenanigans:
2 The court believes it made clear that the subsequent attempts of Admin- istrator Peter Gaynor to reinstate Kevin McAleenan’s unauthorized “November Delegation” and Mr. Wolf’s attempt to ratify his prior actions are dead letter. See Batalla Vidal, 2020 WL 6695076 at ,·,9_ Administrator Gaynor, undeterred, issued yet another “Succession Order” just hours after the court issued its opinion on November 14, and Mr. Wolf once again attempted to ratify his prior actions as Acting Secretary on November 16. (See Gaynor Order of Nov. 14, 2020 (Dkt. 348-2); Wolf Ratification of Nov. 16, 2020 (Dkt. 348-3).) Of course, for the exact same reasons, those doc- uments have no legal significance. Neither Administrator Gaynor nor Mr. Wolf currently possesses, nor have they ever possessed, the powers of the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security. See Batalla Vidal, 2020 WL 6695076 at *9.
Says it all. Obviously, ethics have become “optional,” at best, at DOJ and DHS. That’s certainly going to be a problem for the incoming Biden Administration.
This is “civil” litigation, where the Government and its corrupt officials like “Wolfman the Illegal” have no right to a “day in court” to defend their frivolous positions. For the last four years, Government lawyers have regularly been putting forth obvious pretexts, false narratives, and frivolous positions in defense of the regime’s racist immigration agenda. Basic “due diligence” on some of the outlandish assertions by regime officials has become a forgotten concept.
The breakdown in ethics, and the general unwillingness of Federal Judges to enforce ethical requirements on Government lawyers and Trump’s personal lawyers to the same extent they would on the private bar, has become a potentially debilitating legal scandal emerging from four years of kakistocracy!
For the last month, we have been subjected to a barrage of totally frivolous litigation openly pursued by Rudy and the other clowns on “the Big Loser’s” so-called “litigation team” designed for the dual purposes of 1) undermining our democracy, and, 2) assisting in a fundraising scam being conducted from the Oval Office to corruptly line the pockets of the Trump family. These aren’t “state secrets.” The fraud and disloyalty to our nation and our constitutional institutions is right out there in plain view!
Yet Rudy and his buddies aren’t in jail. Stunningly, after publicly conducting a nationwide losing scheme of frivolous litigation and lies, they are still licensed to practice law!
The good news: DACA kids get another shot! And, the incoming Biden-Harris Administration has vowed to protect them. The regime’s disgusting four-year White Nationalist effort to dump on them, led by notorious racists like “Gonzo” Sessions, Miller, Cooch, and Wolfman, has gone down in a blaze of scofflaw behavior and “malicious incompetence.” Like the “Big Loser.”
Former Democratic New York Rep. Joe Crowley offered a bit of advice to new members of Congress during an exit interview with Vice News. “Don’t come here thinking you’re going to change the world overnight,” he said.
It was perhaps advice for the woman taking his spot, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated Crowley last summer in a upset primary victory and who’s rocketed to the top of her class as the most high-profile freshman on Capitol Hill.
In her first month in office, Ocasio-Cortez — or AOC as she’s short-handed commonly in the press — has remained a news cycle fixture for her clapbacks, policy proposals and more than 350 tweets or retweets since January 3.
Here’s how she’s spent her first month in Congress.
Sworn in on at the age of 29 on January 3, becomes the youngest member of the 116th Congress.
Surpassed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Twitter followers (@aoc vs. @SpeakerPelosi) her second day in office.
Posted her most retweeted tweet on January 4, a video of her dancing in front of her office, to poke fun at the video of her dancing in college that surfaced and was mocked following her swearing in. The new Twitter video received more than 20.7 million views and more than 160,000 retweets.
Co-sponsored her first piece of legislation, H.R. 242, repealing the PAYGO Act on January 4.
Her proposal to raise taxes on the rich to pay for the so-called “Green New Deal” proposal ended up on the cover of the January 5 issue of New York Daily News with the headline “Radical Solution.”
She got a shoutout from Cher on Twitter.
Sat for an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired January 6 in which she said the super rich should be taxed more heavily after making $10 million, and that there’s “no question” Trump is racist.
Search interest in “Green New Deal” reached its highest ever point on Google Trends the day after her “60 Minutes” interview.
Said Trump saying “Who cares?” when asked about her calling him racist proves she got under his skin, in a January 14 tweet.
Named to the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees things like banking and lending, which she announced on January 15. It’s led by Chairwoman Maxine Waters of California.
Gave her first speech from the House floor on January 16, where she spoke about a constituent who missed a paycheck from the shutdown, and said the shutdown isn’t about a wall or the border, but “the erosion of American democracy and the subversion of our most basic governmental norms.”
Her speech became C-SPAN’s most-viewed Twitter video ever, with more than 3.34 million views.
She and other freshmen Democrats delivered a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on January 16 calling for an end to the shutdown a start a #WheresMitch social media campaign.
She and Democratic Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut taught a class to fellow lawmakers on how to use social media on January 17 where she counseled them to not use memes if they don’t know what memes are, and not to talk like the Founding Fathers on Twitter.
Spoke at a Women’s March event in New York City on January 19.
Spoke at the MLK Now event in New York City on January 21 where Ta-Nehisi Coates said he thinks she is the person in politics today who represents King’s radical vision.
When asked by Stephen Colbert on the January 21 episode of “The Late Show” how many “f****” she gives about Democrats who’ve criticized her, she said, “zero.”
Shared her skincare routine on Instagram Stories on January 28 after being asked about it from a follower.
Co-wrote a letter along with other freshmen Democrats asking for a reduction in Department of Homeland Security funding because of spending on things including detention facilities.
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Who am I to advise AOC. But, from my parochial perspective she could make herself even more of a political force if she hired a full-time “fact checker” for her staff. I think her already resonant message would be even more powerful if it were invariably backed with “true facts.” (Although Rudy Giuliani, who once famously told Chuck Todd that “truth isn’t truth,” might disagree.)
NBC News personality and “Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd poses for photographers at the NBCUniversal UpFront presentation in New York City, New York, U.S., May 14, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Segar (Newscom TagID: rtrlnine933726.jpg) [Photo via Newscom]
Thinking about what he’s done, or not.By Mike Segar/Reuters.
When Lexington Avenue lothario Rudy Giuliani declared last month that he would be joining Donald Trump’s august legal team, he said that he would only be taking a “leave of absence” from his law firm, Greenberg Traurig, because it’d take just a week, two weeks tops, to resolve the Mueller investigation. On Thursday, though, the law firm announced that the leave of absence has, sadly, become permanent, with Giuliani tendering a “resignation” letter on Wednesday. “After recognizing that this work is all consuming and is lasting longer than initially anticipated, Rudy has determined it is best for him to resign,” the firm’s chairman, Richard A. Rosenbaum, said in a statement. So that’s the party line. More likely, as others have speculated, “America’s Mayor” was told he had 24 hours to cough up a letter announcing his departure, or the firm would cough it up for him.
Greenberg Traurig might have seen this one coming. For starters, any lawyer worth their salt could have told Giuliani that defending the president of the United States in an investigation into possible collusion with a foreign power couldn’t be a side hustle. Second, no one outside of Giuliani actually thought that the Mueller case was going to wrap up in two weeks, or even a month. Perhaps Giuliani’s former bosses would even have granted him a sabbatical, and then allowed him back, if the words coming out of his mouth since joining Team Trump hadn’t become so thoroughly mortifying by association. While Giuliani has said a number of cringe-worthy things since joining Trump’s legal team—that he fantasizes about riding to Ivanka Trump’srescue; that it would have been really bad if the Stormy Daniels story got out a month before the election, etc.—perhaps the most embarrassing was his appearance on Sean Hannity, wherein he implied any lawyer worth his salt has pulled a Michael Cohen.
At his law firm, the sentient denture suggested, such payments porn-star payouts were standard practice. “That was money that was paid by his lawyer, the way I would do, out of his law firm funds,” Giuliani said. Cohen, he added, “would take care of things like this like I take care of this with my clients.” You can see how Greenberg Traurig might have come to the conclusion that Giuliani was not the ideal advertisement for the firm.
Indeed, according to The New York Times, they were not pleased at all. “Firm partners . . . chafed over Mr. Giuliani’s public comments about [the] payments,” write reporters Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman. They were particularly displeased by the implication, which Giuliani spake as gospel, that it’s perfectly normal for a lawyer to secretly take the initiative to silence the porn stars who say they banged their clients. At least not without informing their client first. “We cannot speak for Mr. Giuliani with respect to what was intended by his remarks,” Jill Perry, a spokesperson for the firm, told the paper. “Speaking for ourselves, we would not condone payments of the nature alleged to have been made or otherwise without the knowledge and direction of a client.”
Also likely playing into Greenberg Traurig’s decision to happily part ways with ole Rudy? The fact that in his short time representing Trump, he’s made a name for himself as one of the worst lawyers of all time, so comically bad that even Donald Trump, Mr. Incompetent, can’t believe what a terrible job he’s doing. Those sorts of reviews are typically seen as a negative for companies advertising their legal services.
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Pharma giant: In retrospect, we probably should not have agreed to pay the president’s “fixer” $1.2 million for dubious consulting work
Novartis AG “made a mistake” in striking a deal with Michael Cohen through his shell company, Essential Consultants, for guidance “as to how the Trump administration might approach certain U.S. healthcare-policy matters,” the firm’s C.E.O. toldemployees an e-mail today. “As a consequence, [we] are being criticized by a world that expects more from us.” Vasant Narasimhan did not say if the mistake specifically was agreeing to pay someone $1.2 million before holding a single meeting with him, or if the whole thing in general was one giant mistake, but presumably it’s the latter.
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Hit the above link to read the rest of “The Levin Report.”
You heard it months ago at “Courtside.” I said that Stormy D was smarter, more credible, more decent, and probably a better overall self-promoter than “Don the Con” and predicted that her lawyers would run circles around the 21st Century version of “The Three Stooges” hired by him.
To date, nothing to show I was wrong. Actually, I think I underestimated the incompetence of the Trump Legal Team. But, when everything the client says is a lie, and he can’t keep them straight, it’s hard for those around him to figure out which lies are part of the “party line” and which are . . . well, just plain old lies.
Over the past month, Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and mother Russia has kicked into high gear. Also over the past month, Donald Trump’s legal team, which wasn’t comprised of the country’s most brilliant legal minds to begin with, has completely fallen apart. John Dowd, the president’s personal lawyer, decided he’d had enough and quit. Ty Cobb, who famously claimed the Russia probe would be over by Thanksgiving 2017, is basically persona non grata. Joseph diGenova, who peddled a conspiracy theory that the F.B.I. and D.O.J. were in cahoots to frame Trump, decided at the last minute he didn’t want to be associated with such an epic s–t show. As former Obama general counsel Bob Bauer told my colleague Abigail Tracy, “Like so much else around Trump, [the shake-up] is marked by confusion, a lack of consistency, and an apparent reflection of the president’s uncontrolled impulses.”
At one point, it looked like the ex-Miss Universe owner was going to have to represent himself. But on Thursday, blessing of blessings, the president’s fairy godmother intervened:
Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a combative former prosecutor and longtime ally of President Trump, told The Washington Post on Thursday that he has joined the president’s legal team dealing with the ongoing special counsel probe.
Giuliani, like Trump, is Central Park Five truther, told the Post, “I’m doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller.” The president, naturally, is thrilled by the turn of events, which reunites him with this favorite cross-dressing enthusiast. “Rudy is great,” Trump said a statement issued by counsel Jay Sekulow. “He has been my friend for a long time and wants to get this matter quickly resolved for the good of the country.”
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Get this and much more lively political commentary from Bess in the “Levin Report” here:
Naturally, Andy Borowitz at The New Yorker couldn’t allow Rudy’s resuscitation to go unnoticed:
WARNING: THIS IS “FAKE NEWS” BUT COMES WITH MY ABSOLUTE, UNCONDITIONAL, MONEY BACK GUARANTEE THAT IT CONTAINS MORE TRUTH THAN THE AVERAGE TRUMP TWEET OR SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS NEWS BRIEFING, AND ALSO MORE FACTUAL ACCURACY THAN ANY REPORT PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF “AGENT DEVON!”
SATIRE FROM THE BOROWITZ REPORT
TRUMP HIRES ONLY LAWYER IN U.S. WITH FEWER CLIENTS THAN MICHAEL COHEN
By Andy BorowitzApril 20, 2018
Photograph by Ralph Freso / Getty
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The White House announced on Thursday that Donald Trump had successfully secured the services of Rudolph Giuliani, after an exhaustive search for an attorney with fewer clients than Michael D. Cohen.
“President Trump had become concerned in recent days that Mr. Cohen might be too distracted to pay full attention to his case, what with him having two other clients and all,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said. “So the search was on for a lawyer with zero clients, and with the hiring of Mayor Giuliani, the President believes he has hit the jackpot.”
Speaking to reporters, Giuliani agreed that, by virtue of having three fewer clients than Cohen, he was uniquely qualified to give Trump his full attention. “There is absolutely no chance of my ever putting him on hold,” Giuliani said.
While the former New York mayor’s hiring got high marks from Trump’s inner circle, it drew a bitter reaction from Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, who angrily pointed out that he had not been considered for the job despite having as few clients as Giuliani. “Not only do I have absolutely no clients, I have even less going on, career-wise, than Rudy Giuliani,” Christie said. “Once again, I’ve been screwed.”
Mueller Says That Until Yesterday He Had Almost Forgotten to Investigate Giuliani
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The independent counsel, Robert Mueller, told reporters that, prior to news reports on Thursday, he had “almost forgotten” to investigate the former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
“Like most Americans, I had totally forgotten about Rudy Giuliani’s existence,” he said. “But then when he popped up on the news I was, like, ‘Hold on—shouldn’t we be investigating him?’ ”
Mueller was at a loss to explain why he had failed to investigate Giuliani earlier. “I have no idea how it could have slipped my mind,” he said. “His role in Trump’s campaign was as fishy as all get-out.”
He said that other members of his team were “poking fun” at him for not deciding to investigate Giuliani before Thursday. “I mean, think about it: how do you do a criminal investigation of the Trump campaign and leave Rudy out of it?” he said. “I’ve got to say, I’m pretty darn embarrassed about the whole thing.”
When asked for an estimate of when the Russia inquiry might wrap up, Mueller responded, “I honestly can’t say. I was hoping to bring it to a close in the next month or two, but now that we’re also investigating Rudy Giuliani, God only knows how long it’ll take.”
“A federal judge in Hawaii has placed a nationwide hold on key aspects of President Donald Trump’s second attempt at a ban on travel ― a scaled-back version that targeted all non-visa holders from six Muslim-majority countries, as well as a halt on the U.S. refugee resettlement program ― just hours before the new restrictions were to take effect.
U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson said sections of the new travel order likely amounted to a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which forbids the government from disfavoring certain religions over others.
Watson gave short shrift to the Trump administration’s argument that the new restrictions applied to a “small fraction” of the world’s 50 predominantly Muslim nations ― and thus could not be read to discriminate Muslims specifically.
“The illogic of the Government’s contentions is palpable,” Watson wrote. “The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed.”
The judge also discarded the government’s defense that the text of the new executive order was silent on religion, supposedly solving constitutional defects identified by courts with the first order.
“Any reasonable, objective observer would conclude … that the stated secular purpose of the Executive Order is, at the very least, secondary to a religious objective of temporarily suspending the entry of Muslims,” Watson wrote.”
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Here is Judge Watson’s written decision in State of Hawaii v. Trump:
More bad news for the Administration — the Third Circuit has enjoined the removal of an Afghani interpreter with a visa who was denied admission and allegedly “withdrew” his application. Read about it in the WashPost here:
It’s early in the game on the Administration’s uncompromisingly hard line approach to immigration issues. So far, however, they have racked up an impressive string of losses from coast to coast from Article III Judges all across the spectrum.
In other words, the bombastically inappropriate statements made by Trump and his advisors have “poisoned the well,” and the Administration is probably going to find it difficult to “un-poison” it. And, as long as guys like Bannon, Sessions, Miller, and Kobach are calling the shots, that might never happen.
As some have suggested, perhaps the President and his advisors need a type of “Executive Miranda Warnings” before they shoot off their mouths (or their Twitters) in public: “Everything you say (or Tweet) can and will be used against you.”
The next stop for “Travel Ban 2.0” probably will be the 9th Circuit. But, since the Administration already lost there on its appeal of the TRO in State of Washington v. Trump, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the 9th Circuit to lift the TRO. Like President Obama with the “DAPA Fiasco,” President Trump is learning that U.S. District Judges wield considerable power in our system. As one of my colleagues once said, “U.S. District Judges are the last living potentates.”
None of this bodes well for the Administration’s next ill-advised plan — to ramp up removals, increase the use of immigration detention, maximize “expedited removal,” and reduce what’s left of the U.S. Immigration Court to the equivalent of two-shift assembly line workers churning out removal orders. Chances are that the Article III Courts are going to have something to say about that too. And, unless the Administration moderates its approach, it’s not likely to be anything they like.
