Tag: Sanctuary Cities

THE GIBSON REPORT — 12-31-18 — Compiled By The Always Amazing Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

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Looking forward, Elizabeth, to even more reports of Due Process victories for the NDPA and further defeats for this Administration’s scofflaw White Nationalist agenda in 2019. Thanks for all you do to keep us up to date and informed!

PWS

01-01-19

 

 

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  4. THE GIBSON REPORT — 05-13-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories

2019 Immigration Stories

  • Dreamer Litigation
  • Asylum Procedures Litigation
  • Continuing Collapse of Immigration Courts
        • More bogus, anti-immigrant, anti-Due Process certification decisions from AG
        • Pereira mess in scheduling
        • Cancellation mess; hundreds of thousands eligible for relief; no plans for adjudication
        • Dockets will continue to be screwed up by failure of responsible enforcement policies by DHS, failure of prosecutorial discretion exercised by virtually all other law enforcement authorities, and mindless, inappropriate “re-docketing” of previously Administratively Closed cases for no particular reason except White Nationalist inspired meanness
        • Massive returns of asylum and other improperly decided cases to Immigration Courts by Article IIIs
    • More deaths, illness, abuses resulting from Trump’s cruel, ill-conceived detention and border policies
    • Mexico and Article IIIs will,”push back” against Administration’s ill-conceived plans to “dump” legitimate asylum seekers over Mexican border
    • Public Charge Controversy
    • TPS Termination & Litigation
      • One of Trump’s dumbest, most unnecessary, & disruptive moves will wreak havoc on the economy and the legal system
    • Lots of fraud, waste, and abuse at DOJ and DHS will be exposed by House Committees
    • Will new AG prove to be “Button Down Version of Jeff Sessions?”

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

 😎👍🏼🍻🍾🏈❄️☃️🥳

PWS

01-01-19

Related posts:

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

KAREN TUMULTY @ WASHPOST: Trump Is The Ugliest American – Amazingly, He Keeps Getting Uglier!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/29/with-trump-there-is-no-bottom/

Karen Tumulty writes in WashPost:

With President Trump, there is no bottom. Every time you think you have seen it, he manages to sink even lower.

It is not news that the president is indifferent to human suffering. His limp response to the devastation of the 2017 hurricane in Puerto Rico — which he claimed to have been a “fantastic job” on the part of his administration — stands out in that regard. But on Saturday, we saw yet another level of depravity when Trump made his first comments regarding the deaths in recent days of two migrant Guatemalan children after they were apprehended by federal authorities. It revealed not only callousness but also opportunism, as he sought to turn this tragedy into a partisan advantage in his current standoff with Democrats over the government shutdown.

His statements came, not unexpectedly, over Twitter. First this:

Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. They can’t. If we had a Wall, they wouldn’t even try! The two…..

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And then, minutes later, this:

…children in question were very sick before they were given over to Border Patrol. The father of the young girl said it was not their fault, he hadn’t given her water in days. Border Patrol needs the Wall and it will all end. They are working so hard & getting so little credit!

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Not a word of sympathy here — much less remorse on the part of the government over the deaths of a 7-year-old girl and 8-year-old boy while in its custody. Nor does Trump address questions that are being raised about whether the administration’s new policy seeking to limit the ability of immigrants to seek asylum protection might be a factor in putting more at risk. Under recent changes, migrants must remain in Mexico as their asylum cases are processed, possibly increasing their willingness to do something reckless to come across the border.

Then there was the dissonance: His blast came on a day that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was visiting Yuma, Ariz., after stopping in El Paso, Tex. Her department has promised more thorough medical screenings and is calling on other agencies to help. “The system is clearly overwhelmed and we must work together to address this humanitarian crisis and protect vulnerable populations,” Nielsen said in a statement.

Even if Trump were to get funding for the wall — and even if the wall were the deterrent he promises it would be, a more dubious proposition — that would be many months if not years in the future. This is an immediate crisis, for which the president seems to have no concern. Nor does Trump address the fact that what he claims are Democratic immigration policies have been in place for decades, and yet, until this month, it had been more than a decade since a child had died while in Customs and Border Protection custody.

It is true that greater numbers of vulnerable Central American children are being put into treacherous situations. My colleagues Joshua Partlow and Nick Miroff have done excellent reporting on how smugglers are gaming a dysfunctional immigration system:

This is happening because Central Americans know they will have a better chance of avoiding deportation, at least temporarily, if they are processed along with children.

The economics of the journey reinforces the decision to bring a child: Smugglers in Central America charge less than half the price if a minor is part of the cargo because less work is required of them.

Unlike single adult migrants, who would need to be guided on a dangerous march through the deserts of Texas or Arizona, smugglers deliver families only to the U.S. border crossing and the waiting arms of U.S. immigration authorities. The smuggler does not have to enter the United States and risk arrest.

The Trump administration tried to deter parents this spring when it imposed a “zero tolerance” family-separation policy at the border. But the controversy it generated and the president’s decision to halt the practice six weeks later cemented the widely held impression that parents who bring children can avoid deportation.

As Trump fulminates about the wall, he rarely brings up the idea of doing anything about the source of the problem: the desperation of people who are being driven from their native countries by poverty and violence. Until those forces are addressed, migrants will keep coming, even if it means taking greater risks to do so.

In the meantime, we have a president who is willing to politicize the deaths of two young children to score points against the opposition party. And the most shocking thing about seeing him scrape along a new moral bottom is this: It is no longer shocking at all.

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Read the original article at the link.

The key:

As Trump fulminates about the wall, he rarely brings up the idea of doing anything about the source of the problem: the desperation of people who are being driven from their native countries by poverty and violence. Until those forces are addressed, migrants will keep coming, even if it means taking greater risks to do so.

Walls, detention centers, tent cities, and more Border Patrol Agents won’t solve this problem. Nor will proposed changes in the law and administrative actions aimed at further undermining our legal obligations toward refugees and asylum seekers. In fact, as we can see, the Administration’s approach is making things worse.

Establishing a fairer and appropriately more generous interpretation and application of our asylum and related protection laws, investing in addressing  “push” conditions in Central America, establishing robust “in country” refugee programs in the Northern Triangle, cooperation with the UNHCR is seeking “regional solutions” closer to the Northern Triangle, more well-trained Asylum Officers, and more well-trained, fair and impartial U.S. Immigration Judges with a prior background in fair and humane treatment of asylum seekers would, over time, improve the situation. Perhaps in the long run, it would even solve the problems.

PWS

12-31-18

Related posts:

  1. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
  2. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
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SYSTEMIC FAILURE: Tanking Immigration Court & Asylum Adjudications Mock Due Process! — Disgraceful Lack Of Professional Integrity & Simple Human Decency Have Become Hallmarks!

https://www.courthousenews.com/uncle-max-made-it-past-the-border-patrol/

Robert Kahn, Editor of Courthouse News writes:

My Uncle Max made it past the Border Patrol and became a doctor in the United States — a chest specialist. He wasn’t really my uncle. He was a med student who fled the Nazis in 1936 — before the United States started turning away Jewish refugees — and ended up living in Chicago with my grandparents.

I don’t know how Uncle Max found his way to my Oma and Opa, and I suppose I’ll never know. All of them are dead. I heard the story from Uncle Max in 1973, after I graduated from college and had a nagging cough.

I had no money for a doctor. I was working for the Post Office in Portland, Oregon, and playing baritone sax in a funk band.

“Call your Uncle Max,” my Mom told me from Chicago.

“Who’s Uncle Max?” I said.

Uncle Max examined me, suggested I cut down on the weed, and told me his story.

He was a medical student in Germany — fairly advanced, as he already had the tools of his trade. He lived with his parents. They were Jewish.

One day, some Nazi gentlemen knocked on their door, or barged in, ransacked the place, and found Max’s little black bag. In it they found a syringe and some hypodermic needles.

“Aha! A morphinist!” one said. They left, but said they’d be back.

Uncle Max’s parents — I do not know their names — told him he had to leave the country immediately. And he did — the next day, I believe.

This was two years before Kristallnacht — Nov. 9-10, 1938 — when the war on the Jews had become official policy. Four years after Kristallnacht, with the big war on, FDR turned away boatloads full of Jews fleeing the Third Reich. FDR called them a threat to national security.

Max’s entire family was murdered by the Nazis. In Auschwitz, I believe. But what does it matter where they died? We know who killed them, and why, and to some extent, how it could have been prevented.

How Max hooked up with my Oma and Opa, as I’ve said, I do not know. I suppose through some Jewish relief organization.

Uncle Max, a refugee, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1944, though he did not have to, as he was 35 years old. He married in 1950 and he and his wife raised three children, two girls and a boy.

Now, here is an interesting thing. This is not the first time I’ve written this column. The first time was 30 years ago, give or take. I was city editor of The Brownsville Herald, in Texas, and the Reagan administration was rounding up and imprisoning tens of thousands of refugees from government death squads in Central America — women, children and babies — for the despicable crime of trying to escape from war.

The Herald hired me because I’d written a few news articles about the work I’d done as a paralegal in U.S. immigration prisons, helping attorneys represent victims of rape, torture and war. I’d also covered the privatization of our immigration prisons, in which our federal government hired private, money-seeking Republican campaign contributors — I mean, corporations — and gave them the power to strip-search children, mothers and babies.

The privatization of immigration prisons gives private corporations — above all, Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, which changed its name to CoreCivic in 2016, because the CCA logo had become so thoroughly soaked in the blood of children; and GEO Group, CoreCivic’s main competitor; and dozens of well-intentioned but benighted church-affiliated groups that imprison refugee children to save the federal government the bother and expense — as I was saying, all these private prisons give the U.S. government a way to sidestep responsibility for the war crimes it is committing, and has been committing for decades — surely since 1985, when my 3-year-old client was strip-searched in CCA’s Laredo prison because her Salvadoran mother made the outrageous demand to speak to a pro bono attorney.

This is all true.

Do you like it?

I can’t see how you could.

What is going on today, under the Trump administration, is far worse.

I know what you’re thinking: What could be worse than strip-searching children?

Killing them.

I am tired, my friends. I worked for virtually nothing in U.S. immigration prisons to try to save Central Americans’ lives under the Reagan administration. I’m not going back to the prisons. But hundreds of other human rights workers are doing it.

They are doing — dare I say it? — God’s work, and doing it under obnoxious and intrusive government surveillance. Most of them are doing it for free, or for far less than minimum wage.

I would like to list the names of a few of them here — pro bono legal organizations, human rights groups — who are doing what our government should be doing, and failed to do, in the 1940s and 1980s, and is failing to do today. But times being what they are, I fear this might do them more harm than good.

We should support them. Most of them are tax-exempt nonprofits.

(Courthouse News editor Robert Kahn’s book, “Other People’s Blood: U.S. Immigration Prisons in the Reagan Decade,” (1996) was the first history of U.S. immigration prisons.)

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https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-ol-2-enter-the-fray-here-are-just-a-few-of-the-ways-our-1546013604-htmlstory

Scott Martelle writes in the LA Times:

Two court actions a continent apart are driving home — yet again — the point that the U.S. asylum system neither lives up to basic standards of human decency and due process nor, it seems, to the promises of the Constitution.

In New York on Thursday, a federal district court judge slammed the government for failing to even offer a bond hearing to a man it had detained for 34 months after he arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border and asked for asylum because of threats he’d received in his native Ivory Coast over his political affiliations.

Is that sufficient grounds for granting asylum? Good question, and we have both laws and a court system to guide the answer. Was it necessary for the government to detain Adou Kouadio, 43, while his application worked its way through the system?

No one knows because the government has not been forced to answer two basic questions: Does Kouadio pose a flight risk? And does he pose a danger to public safety? Both those fundamental questions determining whether an asylum-seeker or other migrant will remain incarcerated get addressed in a bond hearing.

Which the government has not granted. For 34 months.

U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein on Thursday ordered a bond hearing be held within 14 days, a ruling legal experts said was both a rebuke to federal detention policies and a recognition that fundamental rights of due process extend to migrants.

“Petitioner has a clean record, never having been arrested or convicted,” Hellerstein wrote. “There is little risk of flight, since he seeks asylum within the United States, and little risk of danger to the community, judging from his lack of a prior criminal history. Yet, Petitioner has suffered 34 months of detention without an opportunity for a bond hearing while waiting for a final decision on his petition for asylum.”

The judge noted that the government had an interest in weighing due process rights against the national interest but that it had failed to make the case that Kouadio posed a particular threat.

“This nation prides itself on its humanity and openness with which it treats those who seek refuge at its gates,” Hellerstein wrote. “By contrast, the autocracies of the world have been marked by harsh regimes of exclusion and detention. Our notions of due process nourish the former spirit and brace us against the latter. The statutory framework governing those who seek refuge, and its provisions for detention, cannot be extended to deny all right to bail.”

Meanwhile, here on the West Coast, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Riverside to protect another right of migrants. The suit accuses the federal government and some of the organizations it relies on for detaining people facing deportation — private prison operator Geo Group and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department — of making it nearly impossible for migrants to consult lawyers, which they have a right to do.

Geo Group operates the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department operates the Theo Lacy Facility in Orange and the James A. Musick Facility near Irvine; all three facilities house migrants at ICE’s behest.

According to the complaint (which you really ought to read), three men seeking asylum have been unable to use telephones to find or consult with attorneys under bizarre systems in which the phones hang up automatically at the sound of an automated response, detained migrants are forced to make their calls within hearing of others (undermining fundamental attorney-client privilege), and detainees often don’t gain access to phones until after normal business hours.

Also, mail is slow to get delivered and sometimes arrives opened and damaged, further hindering the detainees’ ability to present their cases, the lawsuit charges.

These are no minor things. Hanging in the balance is the ability not only to get proper legal advice, but also to collect the sorts of documents often required to support an asylum claim. Detainees have missed court deadlines because of slow mails and inability to gather their documents from far-flung sources.

And I should note this isn’t a Trump thing. ICE officials, and their contracted detention overseers, have been acting in such manners for years. One of the plaintiffs, Jason Nsinano of Namibia, was initially detained under the Obama administration, as was Kouadio, the man for whom the New York judge ordered a bond hearing.

Though that hearing might not do much good. Shortly after his detention, ICE determined that Nsinano posed neither a flight risk nor a danger to public safety and set bond at $10,000 — an amount that Nsinano doesn’t have.

So Nsinano has been incarcerated for more than three years not because he has been charged with a crime, nor because he poses a flight risk or danger to society, but because he sought asylum and didn’t have the foresight to bring $10,000 with him.

That’s outrageous.

 

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Yup! Our treatment of asylum seekers and other migrants is outrageous! What’s even more outrageous are the legislators and Administration politicos who perpetuate this broken and corrupt system when fixing it should be legal and moral imperatives. And it would be a heck of a lot cheaper than the failed, corrupt, “killer” strategies being pursued now. We could get lots of much needed Due Process for less than $5 billion!

PWS

12-30-18

Related posts:

  1. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
  4. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!

KILLER SYSTEM: ASYLUM OFFICES, IMMIGRATION COURTS FAIL TO PROVIDE BASIC DUE PROCESS, FUNDAMENTAL FAIRNESS, COMMITMENT TO THE GENEROUS HUMANITARIAN INTENT OF ASYLUM LAW — Those Entitled To Asylum Or Other Protections Pay With Lives Or Suffer Further Persecution As A Result Of Poor Performance From Failing System! — When Will This Deadly National Disgrace Now Driven By Outlaw Administration End?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/classic-apps/when-death-awaits-deported-asylum-seekers/2018/12/26/6070085a-a62d-11e8-ad6f-080770dcddc2_story.html

Kevin Sieff & Carolyn Van Houten report for WashPost:

SAN SALVADOR — The threats from MS-13 had become incessant. There were handwritten letters, phone calls and text messages that all said the same thing: The gang was preparing to kill Ronald Acevedo.

His family pieced together a plan. They paid a smuggler to take Acevedo to the United States border. It was April 2017, three months after Donald Trump was inaugurated. The family believed that Acevedo could convince anyone, even the new president, that returning to El Salvador meant certain death. The country had the world’s highest murder rate. Acevedo had already been stabbed once.

“They already kill my friends, and they are going to do the same to me,” he said, according to his asylum application.

The plan didn’t work. After eight months in detention, Acevedo, 20, abruptly withdrew his asylum claim, reversing course and telling an immigration judge, “I don’t have any fear” of returning to El Salvador.He was deported to El Salvador on Nov. 29, 2017. He disappeared on Dec. 5, 2017, and his body was later found in the trunk of a car, wrapped in white sheets. An autopsy showed signs of torture.

His family says that he expressed a willingness to return to El Salvador only after immigration officers told him that he had no chance at gaining asylum and could spend many more months in detention.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) did not respond to the family’s allegations that immigration officials dissuaded him from continuing his asylum case but said in a statement that it had a legal obligation to hold him in detention.

“ICE’s detention authority is based in the furtherance of an alien’s immigration proceedings, and if so ordered, their removal from the country,” the agency said.

Acevedo’s relatives spoke on the condition that his full name not be used, out of fear for their safety. (The Post is using only part of his name.) In a series of interviews, they discussed his asylum application and provided letters, Facebook messages and official documents outlining what happened to him. The Post also obtained transcripts of the proceedings and asylum documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.

. . . .

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Read the complete report at the link.

Based on these facts, Acevedo should have had a “slam dunk” claim for a grant of protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”): a probability of torture at gang’s hands with government acquiescence/willful blindness.

He might also have had a grantable withholding of removal claim on the basis of imputed political opinion — opposition to gangs in a country where gangs are a political force, actually the de facto government in many areas.

He also appears to meet the basic requirements for a grant of asylum on the same ground. However, his participation in assisting gangs could be a basis for a discretionary denial of asylum. Depending on further development of the facts, it also might amount to “assistance in persecution of others” which would bar withholding of removal under the Refugee Act but not CAT protection.

Obviously, Acevedo was entitled to a full, fair hearing on this complex and substantial claim. That requires a lawyer and an impartial U.S. Immigration Judge.

Instead, individuals literally pleading for their lives under U.S. and binding international laws face a policy of official coercion, lack of real training, rampant bias and political interference, a “captive court” that lacks the authority and the will to do what’s necessary to get the results correct, widespread contempt for individuals, their lawyers, and human life: That’s “business as usual” at DHS, the Asylum Office, DOJ, EOIR and the Immigration Courts — all glommed together in an unethical and probably unconstitutional morass that elevates (often bogus or wildly exaggerated) enforcement concerns above the law and our obligations to provide fair opportunities to be heard and protect human life. Perhaps worst of all, nobody is held truly accountable for this ungodly mess that is a blot upon our national conscience and an affront to the rule of law.

Congress has been AWOL. The Article III Courts have provided some welcome pushback, but have only scratched the surface of this deeply corrupt and lawless system; they are still disingenuously deferential to an inherently flawed process that merits no deference whatsoever!

PWS

12-28-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”

GENDER-BASED PERSECUTION OF WOMEN IN CENTRAL AMERICA IS WIDESPREAD & WELL-ESTABLISHED! — Trump Administration’s Disingenuous Refusal To Treat Them As Refugees Is Illegal & Immoral! –“Homicides will only be brought under control when we teach society that women’s lives are worth more.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-is-better-not-to-have-a-daughter-here-latin-americas-violence-turns-against-women-11545237843?emailToken=5cbcc917221424825baa00c26277a3bdzdI+3vtll7KBkMM00Z6+dsoSHU6OaTUnSQQuir5waepAYBzkaUG3llg70bJ/Sf2HOx/vEO/irclDJDwOJpFXRJ2amiJz9BofjN/oVgB1wR4Meq2bA099I4KJFl6mnIF+UPdNqetFe3GINnT3AxJmN+bjIXPxZD7CpkIoH4UmAzE%3D&reflink=article_email_share

Juan Forero reports for WSJ:

Women in Latin America Are Being Murdered at Record Rates

The deadliest region for men has become perilous for women as well, especially in gang-riddled parts of Central America

655 COMMENTS

By

Juan Forero | Photographs by
Meridith Kohut for The Wall Street Journal

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    El PLATANAR, El Salvador—Andrea Guzmán was just 17 but sensed the danger. For weeks, the chieftain of a violent gang had made advances that turned to threats when she rebuffed him.

    He responded by dispatching seven underlings dressed in black to the two-room house she shared with her family in this hamlet amid corn and bean fields. They tied up her parents and older brother, covered Andrea’s mouth and forcibly led her out into the night in her flip-flops.

    Hours later, one of her abductors fired a shot into her forehead in a field nearby. And once again, another woman had been slain, one of thousands in recent years in this violent swath of Central America, simply because of her gender.

    “It is better not to have a daughter here,” said her weeping father, José Elmer Guzmán, recounting how he had found his girl, wearing the shorts and a T-shirt she liked to sleep in, off the side of a road. “I should have left the country with my children.”

    ‘Andrea’s only sin was being beautiful,’ said Claudia Solórzano, shown holding a photo of her murdered daughter. (The Wall Street Journal chose to publish the photograph of Andrea Guzmán’s murder, at top of article, because it viscerally shows the reality of violence sweeping Latin America. Her parents provided the image and gave the Journal permission to use it.)
    ‘Andrea’s only sin was being beautiful,’ said Claudia Solórzano, shown holding a photo of her murdered daughter. (The Wall Street Journal chose to publish the photograph of Andrea Guzmán’s murder, at top of article, because it viscerally shows the reality of violence sweeping Latin America. Her parents provided the image and gave the Journal permission to use it.)

    Latin America has the highest homicide rate in the world. The region’s most-murderous corner—the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America, including El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala—annually registers the deaths of thousands of young men who shoot, stab, bludgeon and asphyxiate each other, often in gang-related violence.

    Now, the Northern Triangle is turning deadly for women, too.

    El Salvador, a tiny country of 6 million, has seen homicides of women more than double since 2013 to 469 last year. The death rate per 100,000 women, at 13.5, is more than six times that of the U.S., with Honduras and Guatemala close behind.

    Gang violence has turbocharged the problem here, but doesn’t explain all of it. Women die disproportionately at the hands of men throughout much of Latin America. From Mexico to Brazil, episodes of lethal domestic violence are frequent staples on social media and television.

    Women in Danger

    A total of 2,559 cases of femicide were reported in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2017. Central American nations top the list of the 10 riskiest countries for women.

    *The definition of femicide varies from country to country, but at its narrowest means the intentional murder of women because they are women.

    Source: United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

    In August, Brazilians were horrified after a TV news show broadcast security camera video showing a muscle-bound young man chasing his 29-year-old wife around the underground parking lot in their building and then struggling with her in the elevator as it ascended to their fifth-floor apartment. The camera then captured her lifeless body—she had been strangled, investigators later said—falling from the apartment balcony to the street below.

    A Peruvian man poured gasoline on 22-year-old Eyvi Ágreda Marchena on a public bus in April and set her on fire. The attack so horrified the country that President Martín Vizcarra visited her in the hospital before she died in June from the burns. Her assailant admitted killing her, telling investigators she had spurned his advances.

    “She uses her looks to use men,” he said, according to authorities. “I gave her a stuffed bear and flowers last year when I saw that she was sad. But she was annoyed. She said I wasn’t her boyfriend.”

    Friends and family gather at the wake of 31-year-old Berta Hernández Arce, who was murdered in El Salvador by MS-13 gang members after refusing to pay $8,000 they were trying to extort from her and her husband. The assailants shot her 40 times in front of her 6-year-old niece.

    What amounts to a public health crisis has women of all ages living in fear, according to researchers and interviews with dozens of women in El Salvador. As elsewhere in Latin America, the challenge is enormous for an overtaxed and poorly funded judicial system that can solve only a minority of homicides, let alone effectively prosecute rapes and spousal battery cases, also endemic here.

    The ramifications are broken families and traumatized children. The violence generates migration to the U.S., with women who say they flee to save their lives increasingly filing asylum claims before American immigration judges.

    “Women are looked down upon as they grow up, making them second-class citizens,” said Silvia Juárez, a lawyer with the Organization of Salvadoran Women for Peace, which catalogs violence against women. “Homicides will only be brought under control when we teach society that women’s lives are worth more.”

    Specialists studying violent crime in Central America say the killings of women often come at the hands of their partners, and that the rise of vicious gangs has added a tragic new dimension.

    “Violence against women existed before the gangs,” said Angelica Rivas, a women’s rights lawyer. “The gangs make it worse.”

    Activists hold a candlelight protest against femicides in El Salvador on Nov. 30.
    Activists hold a candlelight protest against femicides in El Salvador on Nov. 30.

    The two gangs that operate in nearly all of El Salvador’s 262 municipalities—MS-13 and Barrio 18—treat women as little more than slaves, say law-enforcement authorities and women’s-rights advocates.

    Once an initiated gang member, or homeboy as they call themselves, takes possession of a teenage girl or young woman, she risks a beating or death if she tries to leave without permission.

    “When you have a woman, she becomes property for you, and only for you, no one else,” said Wilfredo Cabrera, who is 24 and recently left a gang.

    The safe houses the gangs use to store weaponry, cash and contraband are also used to imprison girls, some as young as 12 and 13. Gang rape is not uncommon.

    Lisseth, a slight, 21-year-old woman, cried gently as she described her life in such a house of horrors. Escaping an abusive family at 12, Lisseth said she was lured by gang members “who said they would take care of me and give the love that my family had not given me.”

    Instead, she was forcibly kept in the basement of a safe house. At one point, she recalled, 12 gang members took turns raping her. “When they wanted to use me, they’d say, ‘Come on up,’” said Lisseth, who made an escape and is now in a home that protects women who have been victims of violence.

    Lisseth, 21, poses for a portrait while in hiding from the gang MS-13 in El Salvador.
    Lisseth, 21, poses for a portrait while in hiding from the gang MS-13 in El Salvador.

    Families with girls in gang-controlled regions know they, too, can be targeted if a homeboy takes an interest. Saying “no” isn’t an option.

    The local gang overlord in Manuel Juárez’s neighborhood on the outskirts of San Salvador wanted his oldest daughter, he recounted. He warned her that if she didn’t go along with him, her family would be killed.

    “He would see her. He would touch her, kiss her wherever, in the street,” Mr. Juárez, 45, said. “He came and told me, ‘I’m going to take your girl. Do not look for her or else I will kill you.’ ” Mr. Juárez was too afraid to go to the police.

    Gang members did take his daughter, leaving her pregnant before the family was able to get her, eventually, to a new life in Spain. Now, Mr. Juárez worries about his youngest daughter, just 16, and whether one option might be to flee to the U.S. should gang members take interest.

    RELATED

    It’s too late for Mr. Guzmán and his wife, Claudia Solórzano. They can only recount the sense of hopelessness and anguish they felt as gang members began to notice Andrea, with her blue eyes and long black hair.

    First it was a chieftain nicknamed Thunder, who dated Andrea. But when he was jailed, the homeboy who replaced him, who went by the alias Little Spoon, wanted her for himself, said her mother, Ms. Solórzano.

    He followed Andrea. He phoned her constantly. Sometimes, he’d wave his semiautomatic handgun at her father, making clear he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

    “He’d come across, tell her, ‘Be careful. You look real good,’ ” Ms. Solórzano said. “She would say, ‘I don’t want to be the girlfriend of a gang member.’ When he sent her chocolates, she didn’t eat them.”

    Andrea seemed to sense that her life could be cut short. Ms. Solórzano said that near the end, her daughter went so far as to tell a neighbor she wanted two black roses placed on her casket.

    Prosecutor Graciela Sagastume, who heads a new unit that investigates violence against women, said attacks have been so commonplace that Salvadoran society had become inured. She said that may be changing in the wake of several high-profile killings of professional women at the hands of their partners, among them a Health Ministry doctor beaten to death by her husband in January.

    “Sadly, it took the death of a woman doctor for us to take note that the deaths of women due to domestic violence exist,” Ms. Sagastume said. “They are everyday cases.”

    The casket had to be closed at the wake of Berta Hernández Arce because her body was so badly mutilated.
    The casket had to be closed at the wake of Berta Hernández Arce because her body was so badly mutilated.

    Last year in El Salvador, 345 women became victims of what authorities classified as femicides, the killing of a woman for no other reason than her gender.

    Unlike the killings of men, women slain here usually know their killers. In more than half the cases, it was a partner, ex-partner, family member or other acquaintance, including a gang member known to the victim.

    Intentional Homicide Rate (per 100,000 people)

    Sources: Igarapé Institute (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala); FBI (U.S.); National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Mexico)

    Whereas men are often shot to death, women are killed with particular viciousness, according to a 2015 Salvadoran government study on femicides that noted how some victims had been tortured, had fingers cut off, been raped, tied up or burned.

    “In many cases,” the report said, “the methods used surpassed those needed to cause death.”

    Ms. Sagastume said the violence sometimes arises when men are threatened by women who challenge the traditional gender roles of Salvadoran society.

    Those factors were at play in the case of Karla Turcios, a newspaper columnist asphyxiated in April, her body left on the side of a road. Prosecutors charged her husband, Mario Huezo. He is jailed, awaiting trial and says he is innocent.

    Ms. Sagastume said various aspects of the relationship between Ms. Turcios and Mr. Huezo led investigators to conclude he bristled at her success.

    He would drive her to work and then wait in the parking lot until she finished her shift. She couldn’t spend time with co-workers or friends. He held control of her bank accounts.

    Yet, she had been the one with the salaried job. She owned the car. She paid for the couple’s daily needs. Her death came after she asked him to contribute his fair share, Ms. Sagastume said, adding, “He felt humiliated by her.”

    Mario Huezo, the accused husband of slain journalist Karla Turcios, is led away by police after a court hearing in San Salvador.
    Mario Huezo, the accused husband of slain journalist Karla Turcios, is led away by police after a court hearing in San Salvador. PHOTO: RODRIGO SURA/EPA-EFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

    The Salvadoran government, with aid from the U.S., is developing courts to deal with violence against women and staffing them with specially trained prosecutors, judges and other personnel, among them psychologists, to work with victims. The number of cases of homicide processed has risen to 270 in 2017, from 130 in 2015. Convictions are still a minority of all cases but they rose from 76 in 2015 to 117 last year.

    Judge Glenda Baires said the new system, which also handles assaults and sex crimes against women, is persuading more women to denounce their assailants. “Women are now saying, ‘I’m going to say something before I get killed,’” she said.

    In a ballad popular here and elsewhere in Latin America, “Kill Them With An Overdose of Tenderness,” the singer advises an extreme response when confronting heartbreak.

    “Get a gun if you want, or buy a dagger if you prefer, and become a killer of women,” the lyrics go.

    It’s a melodic refrain sung with gusto at parties.

    More than a quarter of women in El Salvador reported being a victim of violence in their lifetime while 43% said they had suffered a sexual assault, according to a national household survey in 2017 by the country’s statistics agency.

    Women from the “La Cachada” theatre troupe perform a play about the struggles of informal street vendors in El Salvador based on their personal experiences. The troupe has delved into issues of gender-based violence both as a cathartic exercise for themselves and as a public service.
    Women from the “La Cachada” theatre troupe perform a play about the struggles of informal street vendors in El Salvador based on their personal experiences. The troupe has delved into issues of gender-based violence both as a cathartic exercise for themselves and as a public service.

    In San Salvador, Meghan López, an American expert on family violence working on her doctorate at Johns Hopkins University, is carrying out research on the impact of parenting skills on children in dangerous, poverty-stricken environments.

    She uses a research tool called the Adverse Childhood Experiences International Questionnaire, or ACE-IQ, which identifies 13 factors in young lives that can lead to problems in adulthood. Those ACEs, which include violence, sexual abuse, family dysfunction, neglect, poverty and other factors, are each assigned a point.

    Ms. López’s work is still preliminary, but she has found that parents of young children in the four communities she is examining score an average of 8, which she calls “astronomical.” In the U.S., a 4 would be considered high.

    Exposure to ACEs can alter the development of a child’s brain as well as their hormonal system, stunting the cognitive tools they need as adults to rationalize and react calmly to stressful situations, Ms. López said. That can cause the brain’s more primitive areas to overdevelop while those responsible for emotional control can be underdeveloped.

    What that means on a national scale is violence is bred from one generation to another in El Salvador, a country already buffeted by pervasive violence and the legacy of civil war in the 1980s.

    “If we don’t break the cycle of violence,” said Ms. López, “it’s not going to get better.”

    A mural painted by artist Julia Valencia on a wall in San Salvador denounces femicide.
    A mural painted by artist Julia Valencia on a wall in San Salvador denounces femicide.

    Write to Juan Forero at Juan.Forero@wsj.com

    Appeared in the December 20, 2018, print edition as ‘Latin America Turns Deadly for Women.’

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

    Go to the link above for the full article and to be able to read the charts!

    Folks, this is the Wall Street Journal, bastion of conservative thought and rhetoric, for Pete’s sake! It’s not HuffPost or Slate. And, it’s not just Latin American Countries that are guilty of devaluing the lives of women. Trump, Pence, Sessions, Kelly, Nielsen, Whitaker, Francisco, U.S. Immigration Judge Couch, some BIA Appellate Immigration Judges, EOIR Officials, DOJ Politicos, Pompeo, GOP Legislators, to name just a few dehumanize women and trash their legal rights on a regular basis by pushing a scofflaw restrictionist immigration agenda targeting people of color, particularly women and girls of color.

    “Women in [X Country]” clearly fits the three basic criteria for a “particular social group” protection under asylum and refugee law:  1) immutable/fundamental to identity; 2) particularized; 3) socially distinct. It’s not material that not all women are equally in danger. Those harmed clearly are targeted largely (sometimes entirely) because of their gender. So, there’s a clear “nexus” or “at least one central reason” as the law states. The idea pushed by Sessions and other restrictionists that countries in the Northern Triangle are “willing and able” to protect them is preposterous, as this article demonstrates.

    Also women who are activists, members of religious groups opposed to gangs, political candidates, or members of indigenous populations are targeted for political, racial, or religious reasons.

    In other words, refugee women fleeing Central America often fit squarely within “classic” refugee protection.

    Some are granted protection by conscientious and courageous U.S. Immigration Judges who simply refuse to let the anti-refugee, anti-Central-American bias of their “superiors” in the Administration influence their decisions. But, many other female refugees find themselves improperly denied (or denied any hearing at all by the Asylum Office) by those anxious to please the White Nationalist restrictionists in power, to “expedite” dockets by looking for anti-immigrant “handles” in Sessions’s skewed precedents, or actually relish their chance to release their own anti-asylum biases on women of color.

    And, in the absence of positive BIA precedents requiring grants and recognizing the truth about female refugees from Central America, justice is terribly uneven and depends largely on the “luck of the draw.” Traditionally, U.S. Immigration Judges serving in DHS Dentition Centers and at the border often have been less willing than others to recognize legitimate refugees by granting asylum. Not incidentally, those also happen to be locations where representation rates for asylum seekers are lowest.

    The treatment of these legitimate refugees by our country is a national disgrace! Recently, in Grace v. Whitaker, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan (what a difference a real, truly independent judge makes) began the arduous process of exposing the legal flaws and bias in the Sessions-initiated attack on justice for vulnerable refugees from Central America.

    But, it will take much more effort, as well as a continuing outcry of public outrage, for justice to be restored to the system corrupted by Sessions and his restrictionist ilk. It’s also something that Democrats must and should address for the record during the upcoming Barr confirmation hearings.

    No more “Jeff Sessions” as Attorney General! We need a U.S. Attorney General (regardless of party) who will uphold human dignity and enforce the legal rights and privileges of everyone under our Constitution, not just the privileged. We also need an Attorney General with the confidence in and respect for our justice system to let the BIA and the Immigration Courts operate in an independent manner and set their own dockets and legal standards, free from political interference and White Nationalist restrictionist agendas.

    PWS

    12-26-18

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    THE HILL: Welcoming Refugees & Other Immigrants Makes Countries Happier!

    https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/421768-countries-that-welcome-refugees-and-immigrants-are-happier

    Megan A. Carney writes for The Hill:

    The Department of Health and Human Services recently reported that nearly 15,000 children are being held in immigrant detention centers across the United States. Most, if not all of these children are asylum-seekers, fleeing conditions of abject violence and poverty in their home countries. Regardless of one’s outlook on immigration, it is hard not to feel extremely saddened at the thought of so many children locked up, away from their loved ones and during the holiday season no less. It is even harder to fathom how this present scenario is making anyone happy. Imagine being separated from your family this holiday season.

    Recent research shows that societies more open and welcoming to refugees and immigrants experience much higher happiness gains. Based on the findings of their research, the Migration Policy Institute concluded that “policies that contribute to migrant happiness are likely to create a win-win situation for both immigrants and natives.” In other words, both native- and foreign-born populations fare better in terms of overall happiness — also referred to as subjective well-being in the social sciences — when given a policy and social environment that accepts and promotes immigration.

    Conversely, oppressive or negative attitudes toward immigrants and refugees are associated with declines in subjective well-being. Findings from a recent survey of 27 nations by the Pew Research Center suggest that many people worldwide, including a whopping 82 percent of Greeks, 72 percent of Hungarians, 71 percent of Italians, and 58 percent of Germans oppose immigration. That’s (potentially) a lot of unhappy people.

    Policies and practices that restrict immigration such as building border walls, placing bans on certain nationalities from entering a country, and detaining and deporting individuals who lack legal status, may not only lead to happiness declines. They also heighten people’s fears and anxieties, predisposing them to negative psychological and physical health outcomes.

    My research with Latin American communities in the U.S. for instance, has shown that immigrants’ fears and anxieties around the possibility of surveillance, detention, and deportation can lead to poor health in the form of depression, anxiety disorders, and avoidance of health care settings and providers.

    What distinguishes societies that are more accepting of immigrants versus those that are less accepting?

    This is a question that has been at the center of my own research in comparing contexts of immigrant reception in the U.S. and Italy for several years. In Italy, I’ve been particularly intrigued by the emergence of solidarity initiatives and networks between citizens and noncitizens that seek to collectivize risk and improve overall material and subjective well-being.

    Building on findings from the medical and social sciences that societies rich in social capital, less unequal, and more egalitarian show higher life expectancies on average, one hypothesis of this research is that the promise of improved subjective well-being incentivizes people to enact solidarities such as take actions to feel aligned with one another — across lines of race, class and citizenship.

    At a time of especially pronounced hostilities toward refugees and immigrants in the U.S., it is perhaps unsurprising that the U.S. trails far behind (18th) in world happiness rankings. Punitive immigration policies and negative attitudes toward immigrants not only harm the people directly targeted. These practices may also represent a sort of self-harm to the segment of the population that is native-born.

    As the end of the year draws to a close, many of us exchange gifts because we think it will bring some shred of happiness. In our quest to spread this joy and bring more of it into our lives, perhaps this year more of us can act more humanely and compassionately toward refugees, asylum-seekers, immigrants, and other displaced persons who comprise an ever-growing segment of the global population.

    Megan A. Carney is assistant professor in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and a Public Voices Fellow with The Op-Ed Project. She is the author of “The Unending Hunger: Tracing Women and Food Insecurity Across Borders” and director of the UA Center for Regional Food Studies.

    TAGS MEGAN A. CARNEY IMMIGRATION CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRANTS CHRISTMAS
    ********************************************
    Countries that allow themselves to be “led” by sociopaths, not so much!
    PWS
    12-26-18

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    CHRISTMAS EVE @ COURTSIDE: A Muslim Gets The Message Of Christ Better Than Many Christians!

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/opinion/muslim-christian-trump-supporters.html

    By Wajahat Ali

    NY Times Contributing Opinion Writer

    Image

    A Christmas nativity scene.CreditCreditAmir Levy/Getty Images

    At Bellarmine, an all-boys Catholic school in San Jose, Calif., I was often the token Muslim and probably the only person who began freshman year thinking the Eucharist sounded like the name of a comic book villain. I eventually learned it’s a ritual commemorating the Last Supper. At the monthly Masses that were part of the curriculum, that meant grape juice and stale wafers were offered to pimpled, dorky teenagers as the blood and body of Christ.

    During my time there, I also read the King James Bible and stories about Jesus, learned about Christian morality, debated the Trinity with Jesuit priests and received an A every semester in religious studies class. Twenty years later, I can still recite the “Our Father” prayer from memory.

    Growing up, I’d been taught that Jesus was a major prophet in Islam, known as “Isa” and also referred to as “ruh Allah,” the spirit of God born to the Virgin Mary and sent as a mercy to all people. Like Christians, we Muslims believe he will return to fight Dajjal, or the Antichrist, and establish peace and justice on earth. But it was everything I learned in high school that came together to make me love Jesus in a way that made me a better Muslim.

    Even though I don’t personally celebrate Christmas, the season always makes me think of his legacy of radical love. This year, it’s especially hard to understand how Trump-supporting Christians have turned their back on that unconditional love and exchanged it for nativism, fear and fealty to a reality TV show host turned president.

    According to a Washington Post/ABC poll conducted in January, 75 percent of white evangelicals in the United States — compared with 46 percent of American adults over all — said “the federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants” was a positive thing. Sixty-eight percent of them believe America has no responsibility to house refugees, according to a Pew Research poll conducted in April and May.

    The numbers aren’t quite as jarring when we look at different slices of religious America. According to a PRRI poll conducted in late August and early September, 59 percent of Catholics and 75 percent of black Protestants view Trump negatively. Still, I can’t fathom how anyone who knows the Jesus I encountered at Bellarmine could be comfortable with this administration.

    Jesus was a humble carpenter from Nazareth who miraculously fed 5,000 people but never humiliated them with condescending lectures about God favoring those who pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Mr. Trump has expressed enthusiasm for gutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the nation’s most important anti-hunger program, by adding unnecessary and cruel work requirements for food stamp recipients.

    Mr. Trump also chose Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon who admitted he isn’t qualified to run a federal agency, to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Dr. Carson, who says his Christian faith helps him “serve the nation even better,” tweeted he’s “moving more people toward self-sufficiency” by advocating huge cuts to housing aid, increased rent and more stringent work requirements. In high school, I must have missed the sermon where Jesus told the poor, hungry and homeless to stop asking God for handouts.

    President Trump and Republicans have also waged a nonstop war on Obamacare for nine years, allowing 14 states to opt out of Medicaid expansion, leaving four million eligible Americans unable to enroll. The Jesus I met in high school healed a blind man. Guess what he didn’t do? Rail against the socialist evils of taking care of people’s health.

    The Jesus I know commanded, “You shall love your neighbors as yourself.” He didn’t add “unless they are undocumented immigrants or Muslim or gay.” He would welcome refugees from Central America, feed them, wash their feet. He would have been horrified at the conditions that led 7-year-old Jakelin Caal to die of dehydration and shock in Border Control custody after seeking refuge in this country with her father.

    Christianity isn’t unique: Every religion is abused as such by some of its followers and manipulated to advance political agendas. But the hypocrisy of white Evangelical Christians’ support for Trump in light of his undeniable cruelty and apathy — toward refugees, Puerto Rican citizens recovering from a devastating hurricane, victims of California fires and a newspaper columnist killed by Saudi Arabia — is too much to bear. Despite this barrage of hate, Evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham still support Mr. Trump because they believe he “defends the faith.” How?

    Our school’s motto was “Men for others,” a reminder that the Christian faith should be lived through active selfless service. Judging from the type of Christianity that is practiced and preached by some Trump supporters, they must know a Jesus whose message is “Every man for himself.”

    At Bellarmine, we had to perform 100 hours of community service before graduating. I volunteered at the senior center and the local homeless shelter, where my friends and I cleaned the kitchen and packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for struggling men and women, most of them eager for employment.

    This Christmas, I hope Trump-supporting Christians try to find compassion for people who are similarly suffering. I hope they open their Bible and reflect on James 2:14: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?”

    Thankfully, I know many Christians who resemble Jesus, investing their life to uplifting vulnerable people. Mr. Trump’s supporters should meet Sister Simone Campbell, who in 2012 organized Nuns on the Busto oppose the Paul Ryan-backed budget plan’s assault on social programs for the poor. They should join the Rev. William Barber II of North Carolina, who has revived the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign to fight racism and income inequality. They should donate to Sister Norma Pimental of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, which runs a “respite center” in McAllen, Tex.,offering food, clothes and shoes to people seeking asylum.

    These are the kinds of Christians who I believe are following the lessons and footsteps of Jesus, the prophet I met and loved as a Muslim at a Catholic high school. This Christmas, I hope some of the Christians who support President Trump can meet him too.

    Wajahat Ali is a playwright, lawyer and contributing opinion writer.

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

    There’s no doubt that if Jesus were here today he’d be holed up with the migrants waiting on the Mexican side of our Southern Border for a chance at justice or whiling aways the hours in DHS detention. One place he’d never be found would be in the West Wing, Mar A Lago, or any far right Evangelical Church that preaches doctrines of exclusion, intolerance, and “beggar thy neighbor.”

    And when his time came, Jesus, as a scruffy, unemployed, uneducated, single Palestinian male who led a ragtag band of similarly unemployed men and was considered to be a subversive by the authorities would be given short shrift by the U.S. system and returned to those who would torture and kill him.

    Something to think about.

    Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays

    PWS

    12-24-18

    🎄👍😎

     

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    4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

    SCOFFLAWS THWARTED: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE EMMET G. SULLIVAN EXPOSES SESSIONS’ S OUTRAGEOUSLY ILLEGAL WHITE NATIONALIST ATTACK ON U.S. ASYLUM LAW — MATTER OF A-B- EXCEEDED SCOFFLAW A.G.’S AUTHORITY — Grace v. Whitaker

    Grace v. Sessions, U.S.D.C. D.D.C., 12-19-18, Hon. Emmet G. Sullivan, Published

    Grace 106 12-19-18

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

    MY STATEMENT ON GRACE V. WHITAKER:

     

    As a former United States Immigration Judge, Chair of the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals, and Acting General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel of the “Legacy INS” involved in developing the Refugee Act of 1980, I am deeply gratified by the decision of U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan today in Grace v. Whitaker. Judge Sullivan strongly supports the rule of law and the generous humanitarian protections and procedural rights afforded by Congress to vulnerable asylum seekers against a lawless and unjustified attack by former Attorney General Sessions in Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316 (AG 2018) and the largely erroneous Policy Memorandum incorporating that decision issued by the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”).

     

    Among the most important holdings, Judge Sullivan:

     

    • Reaffirmed the duty of the Executive Branch to comply with the rule of law as enacted by Congress to protect individuals fleeing persecution;
    • Reaffirmed the generous humanitarian intent of the asylum provisions of the Refugee Act of 1980;
    • Recognized the generous “well-founded fear” (10% chance) standard for asylum as enunciated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca;
    • Reaffirmed the “extraordinarily low” bar for applicants in “credible fear” interviews before DHS Asylum Officers: “to prevail at a credible fear interview, the alien need only show a ‘significant possibility’ of a one in ten chance of persecution, i.e., a fraction of ten percent;”
    • Found that Congress intended that the term “particular social group” must be interpreted generously in accordance with the United Nations’ guidance;
    • Rejected Sessions’s unlawful attempt to generally preclude domestic violence and gang-related claims from qualifying for asylum;
    • Reaffirmed the necessity of case-by-case determinations of credible fear and asylum;
    • Rejected Session’s unlawful attempt to engraft a “condoned or completely helpless” requirement on the interpretation of when a foreign government is “unwilling or unable” to protect an individual from persecution by a private party;
    • Reaffirmed Congress’s unambiguous understanding that persecution means “harm or suffering . . . inflicted either by the government of a country or by persons or an organization that the government was unable or unwilling to control;”
    • Rejected DHS’s misinterpretation of the “circularity requirement” in the Policy Memorandum;
    • Rejected the Department of Justice’s disingenuous argument that Article III Courts must “defer” to administrative interpretations of Article III Court decisions;
    • Rejected the Policy Memorandum’s illegal requirement that an asylum applicant (usually unrepresented) “delineate” the scope of a particular social group at the credible fear interview;
    • Emphatically rejected the Policy Memorandum’s attempt to elevate administrative precedents over the conflicting decisions of U.S. Courts of Appeals.

     

    Judge Sullivan’s cogent decision dramatically highlights the problems with an U.S. Immigration Court system that is controlled by political officials, like former Attorney General Sessions, who are not fair and impartial judicial officials and whose actions may be (and in Sessions’s case definitely were) driven by political philosophies and enforcement objectives inconsistent with judicial responsibilities to insure that non-citizens are fairly considered for and when appropriate granted the important, often life-saving, protections conferred by law and guaranteed by due process. A clearly biased political official like Jeff Sessions should ethically never been permitted to act in a quasi-judicial capacity.

     

    As a result of Sessions’s anti-immigrant bias, unlawful actions, and gross mismanagement of the Immigration Courts, innocent lives have been endangered and one of our largest American court systems has been driven to the precipice with an uncontrolled (yet unnecessary) backlog of over 1.1 million cases and crippling quality control issues. When it finally plunges over, it will take a large chunk of our American justice system and the Constitutional protections we all rely upon with it!

     

    Congress must create an independent Article I United States Immigration Court to ensure that the immigration and refugee laws enacted by Congress are applied to individuals in a fair, efficient, and impartial manner.

     

    Many, many thanks to the ACLU and all of the other wonderful pro bono lawyers who stood up for the rule of law and the rights of the most vulnerable among us against the intentionally illegal actions and unethical behavior of this Administration.

     

    PWS

    12-19-18

     

    Related posts:

    1. NOTORIOUS CHILD ABUSER JEFF SESSIONS ALSO TARGETED REFUGEE WOMEN & GIRLS FOR DEATH, RAPE, TORTURE, & OTHER MAYHEM — HIS EVIL PLANS HIT A ROADBLOCK: THE LAW! — Read The Latest Commentary From Hon. Jeffrey S.Chase On Challenges To Sessions’s Effort To Pervert The Law — Matter of A-B- In Light Of Grace v. Whitaker!
    2. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
    3. THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!
    4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

    ELIZABETH BRUENIG @ WASHPOST: Advice For Dems in 2020: Don’t Count Out The Possibility Of Standing Up For Values As Part Of A Winning Strategy!

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/my-advice-to-progressives-dont-back-down/2018/12/14/b6e0bacc-ffbf-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html?utm_term=.5aa9cb81d603

    Elizabeth writes:

    A reductive, but not incorrect view of the Democratic debacle in the 2016 elections holds that when President Trump took office, centrists lost the present and leftists lost the future. In 2020, Democrats will have a new opportunity to either reach backward for the Obama era, or to lay the foundation for a bolder, progressive future. Deciding which goal to pursue will likely become the chief party fault line as the 2020 primaries approach. My advice to progressives: Don’t back down.

    For the party’s center-leaning establishment, a return to the Obama era makes sense. Centrists were happy then — thrilled to witness the passage of health-care reform that did something but not too much (so long, public option !), comfortable with what one might gently label a muscular foreign policy , pleased with the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, though it came at the expense of homeowners in foreclosure while coddling Wall Street . All in all, things seemed stable and sustainable. Only tweaks and patches lay ahead.

    But then, history — presumed dead by those who believed, with socialism extinguished, the future held nothing but increasing gains for liberal democracy — happened again. The 2016 election witnessed a swell of populist disenchantment with the status quo and concluded with the election of Trump. With Trump came a queasy uncertainty that still characterizes politics to this day,leaving old norms dissolved and common sense unequal to its task.

    So much of centrist-Democrat fantasizing about 2020 already seems aimed at repeating a golden past. Consider the groundswell of interest in Beto O’Rourke, the Texas congressman who narrowly lost his recent Senate race against Sen. Ted Cruz. For Democrats excited about O’Rourke, his primary draw is his similarity to Barack Obama — both in form and content. O’Rourke has held conversations with the former president about a possible run, to build on a belief that O’Rourke, as my colleague Matt Viser described it, is “capable of the same kind of inspirational campaign that caught fire in the 2008 presidential election.”

    O’Rourke’s politics also fall into the same ambiguously centrist zone as Obama’s. “Like Mr. Obama as he entered the 2008 campaign, Mr. O’Rourke can be difficult to place on an ideological spectrum, allowing supporters to project their own politics onto a messaging palette of national unity and common ground,” a recent New York Times report observed . Meanwhile, other candidates straight from Obama’s orbit — such as former vice president Joe Biden and former housing secretary Julián Castro — are also eyeing the nomination, with appeals to unity and centrist perspectives.

    When not absorbed in hopes of re-creating the Obama era, Democrats mainly seem intent on beating Trump, with little comment or insight, at least so far, on what they will do with power once they have it. (After I questioned in my last column whether O’Rourke has demonstrated serious commitment to progressive values, some readers responded by arguing they’re glad he hasn’t — that Democrats need to run an Obama-style centrist to win back conservatives who might otherwise favor Trump. “A too-progressive Democratic nominee in 2020,” one reader wrote, “would be a gift to President Trump.”) Likewise, at a recent event in New York, former FBI director James B. Comey implored Democrats to put aside their political projects in favor of an all-consuming focus on simply beating Trump . “I understand the Democrats have important debates now over who their candidate should be,” Comey said, “but they have to win. They have to win.”

    Presidential elections provide an opportunity for parties to identify and rally around their principles — and even to radically reshape them. If all the Democrats can manage is to hark back to the past and focus on winning for its own sake, they’re missing an opportunity to lay out a blueprint for the future. I don’t think that putting forth progressive priorities is incompatible with beating Trump; in fact, I think that having a clear and persuasive vision of what a better America can look like is likely to be more attractive to voters than promising them something vaguely like the past. One of the political lessons of recent years is that history is never over. The future is waiting, if we want to build it.

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

    Certainly the Obama Administration was “golden” by comparison with the current corrupt, White Nationalist regime that has made overt racism and hate front and center. However, despite some good things like DACA, stateside processing, and a late stab at wider use of prosecutorial discretion (“PD”), Obama was fairly disappointing from an immigration standpoint.

    Under Obama, there was lots of ambiguity and misdirected enforcement, substantial overuse of detention (particularly substandard private detention), and the forerunner of the Trump Administration’s failed “border deterrence” strategy. Obama folks didn’t seek and glory in the cruelty and dehumanization the way that this Administration does. But, in human terms, the results often were similar for the individuals concerned: split families, indefinite detention, kids in jails, a failing U.S. Immigration Court system, and only a smattering of real “immigration pros” in key positions where they too often were not ” driving the train” or being taken seriously.

    Can an immigration system based on the reality that immigration is good and necessary for our country, a professionally run independent U.S. Immigration Court dedicated to Due Process with efficiency, a more robust acceptance of refugees, a secure border, cooperation with the international community in solving problems, and treating those who can’t be accepted fairly, humanely, and respectfully be part of winning political strategy?

    PWS

    12-17-18

    Related posts:

    1. PROFESSOR FITZ BRUNDAGE @ WASHPOST: Can We Regain Our Humanitarian Values In The Age Of Trump? — “We must shine a spotlight on cruel and illegal policies that undermine our national ideals and find the wisdom and the courage to do better.”
    2. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
    3. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
    4. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

    JRUBE @WASHPOST: “Horrifying indifference to children’s lives”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/16/horrifying-indifference-childrens-lives/

    Rubin writes:

    The Post reported this week:

    A 7-year-old girl from Guatemala died of dehydration and shock after she was taken into Border Patrol custody last week for crossing from Mexico into the United States illegally with her father and a large group of migrants along a remote span of New Mexico desert, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Thursday. . . .

    According to CBP records, the girl and her father were taken into custody about 10 p.m. Dec. 6 south of Lordsburg, N.M., as part of a group of 163 people who approached U.S. agents to turn themselves in.

    More than eight hours later, the child began having seizures at 6:25 a.m., CBP records show. Emergency responders, who arrived soon after, measured her body temperature at 105.7 degrees, and according to a statement from CBP, she “reportedly had not eaten or consumed water for several days.”

    The Department of Homeland Security’s statement in response to reports of the child’s death was a moral and legal disgrace:

    Traveling north through Mexico illegally in an attempt to reach the United States, is extremely dangerous. Drug cartels, human smugglers and the elements pose deadly risks to anyone who seeks to cross our border illegally. Border Patrol always takes care of individuals in their custody and does everything in their power to keep people safe. Every year the Border Patrol saves hundreds of people who are overcome by the elements between our ports of entry. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts and the best efforts of the medical team treating the child, we were unable to stop this tragedy from occurring.

    “Once again, we are begging parents to not put themselves or their children at risk attempting to enter illegally. Please present yourselves at a port of entry and seek to enter legally and safely.”

    For starters, the federal government is responsible for the health and welfare of anyone it detains — whether it is a criminal in a prison, a child in its foster-care system or families detained at the border. Regardless of what the children’s parents did or did not do, the United States has an obligation to the children the moment it detains them. Not to give food and water, or to check the health of those it has in custody, is inexcusable. Blaming the parents as Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen did (“This is just a very sad example of the dangers of this journey. This family chose to cross illegally”) reflects her legal and moral obtuseness. In our care, the child’s welfare became our responsibility.

    “This tragedy represents the worst possible outcome when people, including children, are held in inhumane conditions,” the ACLU’s Border Rights Center said in a statement. “Lack of accountability, and a culture of cruelty within CBP have exacerbated policies that lead to migrant deaths.” The ACLU continued, “In 2017, migrant deaths increased even as the number of border crossings dramatically decreased. When the Trump administration pushes for the militarization of the border, including more border wall construction, they are driving people fleeing violence into the deadliest desert regions.” The statement pointed out that the incident wasn’t reported for a week. “We call for a rigorous investigation into how this tragedy happened and serious reforms to prevent future deaths,” the statement concluded.

    Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a progressive pro-immigration group, also responded. Sharry pointed out that a “tragic and preventable death of an innocent seven-year old girl should not be seen as a mistake made in an otherwise humane system, but rather a deliberately cruel and dehumanizing system that has produced yet another death.” His statement asserted that CBP’s holding facilities are characterized by “freezing temperatures, no beds, lights left on, no showers, not enough toilets or toilet paper, filthy conditions, horrible smell, inedible food and not enough clean water to drink, and [are] run by insulting and abusive agents.” The system the administration has set up is seemingly designed to inflict the maximum amount of suffering in a failed attempt to deter migrants:

    [The] strategy has many components: tell those who want asylum to request it at ports of entry while making it nearly impossible to request asylum at ports of entry; prosecute those who present themselves to Border Patrol agents between ports of entry for “illegal entry;” separate families in numbers large (now halted by a federal judge) and small (under the flimsy pretext of protecting children from “criminal family members”); detain as long as possible those who seek asylum; lock up minors who arrive unaccompanied minors and scare away their U.S.-residing parents and relatives who want to sponsor them by threatening to arrest and detain those who come forward; and gut asylum standards by unilaterally changing the bases for deciding cases, pressuring trained Asylum Officers to reduce their high rates of deeming Central Americans as having a credible fear of return, and bullying Immigration Judges to deny cases when finally adjudicated.

    Now if a pregnant migrant asserts her right to seek an abortion, this administration will go to any lengths to protect the life of the unborn child; for the already-born minors (and adults) in its custody, however, the administration cannot be bothered to ensure humane and safe conditions.

    Under the Republican-majority House and Senate, rigorous oversight of the Department of Homeland Security and legislation to try to ameliorate these conditions were all but impossible. With a Democratic-majority House, this will no longer be the case. The House Judiciary Committee will be headed by Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) in the new Congress. He left no doubt as to his intention to get to the bottom of the tragedy and the conditions that allowed this to occur:

    On Friday, Nadler and Democrats who will head House Judiciary subcommittees sent a letter to the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security requesting the IG “initiate an investigation into this incident, as well as CBP policies or practices that may have contributed to the child’s death [and] CBP’s failure to timely notify Congress of this incident.” The letter told the IG, “It is hard to overstate our frustration with the fact that we learned of this incident through media reports one week after the incident occurred. It is clear that CBP failed to follow the reporting requirements laid out in last year’s omnibus appropriations bill until after the news of this death was already public.”

    With adequate border security and staffing, a sufficient number of immigration judges deployed to handle the caseload, reversal of the administration’s deliberately cruel policies, and effective diplomacy with and provision of assistance to the countries from which these people are fleeing for their lives, the current, intolerable situation should improve.

    It’s a cruel irony that Trump has portrayed refugees as a threat to Americans. In fact, the reverse is true.

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

    Rubin is right.  Part of this Administration’s cruel scheme here is to deflect attention from the real threat to our national security and Constitution presented by Trump and his corrupt, scofflaw gang. And, in the long disgraceful tradition of cowards, bullies, and authoritarians, he does so by attacking the most vulnerable and least able to defend themselves, playing on racism and nationalist jingoism.

    That’s why the New Due Process Army is such an important force for protecting the human and legal rights of migrants, and by so doing, protecting the rights of all Americans against Executive abuse!

    PWS

    12-17=18

     

    Related posts:

    1. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
    2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
    3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
    4. AMEN: A PRAYER IN THE TIME OF KAKISTOCRACY!

    TAL @ SFCHRON: N. Cal. Immigration Arrests Lag National Stats – No Obvious Explanation – Increases Come Almost Exclusively From Non-Criminals – No Obvious Benefit To Anyone Except Restrictionist Pols!

    https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Are-sanctuary-laws-driving-down-immigration-13467855.php

    Are sanctuary laws driving down immigration arrests in Northern California?

    Tal Kopan Dec. 14, 2018

     

    WASHINGTON —Immigration arrests fell in Northern California in the past year even as arrests nationally rose 11 percent, a trend that may be linked to tightening sanctuary laws that limit local cooperation with U.S. deportation agents.

     

    But while fewer people in the region were arrested overall, arrests of noncriminal immigrants went up, according to data released Friday, reflecting Trump administration policies that anyone in the country without documentation is a target for enforcement.

     

    The Immigration and Customs Enforcement office that oversees Northern California was one of only a handful nationally to see fewer arrests in the 2018 fiscal year — which ended Sept. 30 — than in 2017. The 14 percent drop in arrests was the steepest decline in the country.

     

    The office, based in San Francisco, was also the only one in the country to post fewer arrests in 2018 than fiscal 2016, the last under President Barack Obama.

     

    Under President Trump, arrests of undocumented immigrants, especially noncriminal ones, have been steadily climbing, as he has made immigration enforcement and border security his central pitches to voters.

     

    Overall, ICE arrested nearly 160,000 immigrants last fiscal year, 34 percent of whom had no criminal convictions. That was an 11 percent increase in arrests overall, but was almost entirely driven by the surge in arrests of noncriminal immigrants. Arrests of those with a criminal conviction slightly trailed the year before.

     

    The story was similar for deportations, which were up overall nationally but dipped slightly in Northern California.

     

    Trump and his deputies have declared that no undocumented immigrant is exempt from the government’s grasp, a change from a policy adopted late in President Obama’s administration that focused ICE’s efforts and finite resources primarily on criminals.

     

    The administration has focused particular ire toward sanctuary cities and has clashed repeatedly with Bay Area and California officials over their policies. The administration sued unsuccessfully to try to block California’s sanctuary law from going into effect after Gov. Jerry Brown signed it in late 2017, and engaged in a heated back-and-forth with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf this year after she issued a preemptive public warning about a planned immigration sweep in the region.

     

    It’s difficult to know why San Francisco lagged behind the rest of the country in arrests, but sanctuary laws could be a factor, especially those that limit cooperation between local jails and ICE officers who want to pick up undocumented inmates. ICE officials did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment.

     

    The data varied substantially by region. The San Diego sector saw among the biggest increases in arrests in the past year, up 32 percent overall with noncriminals representing more than half of those arrested, a jump that could be related to surges of migrants arriving at the border there.

     

    The Los Angeles office, however, was more in line with San Francisco. There, ICE made 7 percent fewer arrests in fiscal 2018, though the agency also arrested a slightly higher number of noncriminal immigrants.

     

    Former Obama administration ICE Director John Sandweg said regions rarely see varying numbers due to conscious decisions.

     

    “It certainly isn’t, and almost never is a, ‘Hey guys, let’s do more or less in this area of responsibility.’ That’s just not the way it works,” Sandweg said.

     

    His best guess to explain the discrepancy in Northern California was the limitation on ICE’s access to jails. Having to arrest more immigrants in the community takes more time and resources than the “efficient” handover of an immigrant in a jail, he said.

     

    That could also explain why more noncriminal immigrants got caught up in the crosshairs, he added.

     

    “This is an unintended consequence of sanctuary policies that I’m not sure is always thought through,” Sandweg said. “If you say no to picking up people in jail, there are going to be some dangerous people we feel compelled to get, so when you do that, you’re not just exposing those dangerous people to ICE but their family, their friends, their neighbors.”

     

    Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan

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

    Other possible explanations for the pattern of non-criminal arrests in Northern California:

    • Retaliation for “Sanctuary Cities” laws and for suits finding Sessions’s “Anti-Sanctuary Crusade” illegal;
    • Need to meet “arrest quotas” for annual bonuses (just like U.S. Immigration Judges, except they are ineligible for bonuses — but the Director and other “Managers” in Falls Church can pocket some extra cash by revving up removals to please the DOJ politicos).

    I also wouldn’t put too much store on the so-called “criminal arrest” numbers put out by DHS either. DHS tends to jack up numbers by concentrating on relatively minor offenders rather than hunting down the real “bad guys” which tends to produce lower numbers.

    Indeed, in the Federal bureaucracy the “quantity” that produces budget increases is almost always in tension with “quality” which is harder to quantify and certainly harder for Congressional staff to comprehend and “sell” and for individual legislators to take credit. For example, Session’s wasteful program of prosecuting first time border jumpers for misdemeanors probably produced lots of bogus “criminal removals” and perhaps some “criminal arrests” without actually accomplishing anything useful. Indeed most evidence suggests that while wasting time on Sessions’s “racist follies,” Federal prosecutors actually reduced investigation and prosecution of real crimes (e.g. serious felonies) in Federal Courts. https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2018/08/as-zero-tolerance-cases-skyrocket-other-prosecutions-slow/

    Indeed, I surmise that an objective study of DHS’s civil, non-criminal enforcement activities would actually show little if any net benefit from leaving U.S. families without one or both parents, taking productive workers out of their jobs, and spreading fear and distrust of local police in ethnic communities. Just how that benefits anyone in the U.S. except Trump and his White Nationalist cronies isn’t apparent to me.

    We also should throw in all of the legal time and court time wasted by the DOJ and other Federal prosecutors in tying up the Federal Courts with semi-frivolous litigation to advance their often illegal White Nationalist agenda. If those resources were instead dedicated to getting individuals in Immigration Court represented and improving the quality of Due Process and independence in Immigration Court, we’d be on the way to solving at least one phase of the immigration mess created largely by Congress and the last three Administrations.

    For the last two years, DHS Enforcement has been operating largely without any rational enforcement objectives or professional supervision in a Department where management failure, fraud, waste, and abuse are endemic. Some meaningful oversight by the House and some requirement for rational planning, prudent use of taxpayers’ money, and accountability would be most welcome.

    PWS

    12-15-18

     

    Related posts:

    1. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
    2. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
    3. TAL @ SF CHRON: 9TH CIR. STICKS A FORK IN CORE OF “GONZO APOCALYPTO” SESSIONS’S CHILD ABUSE PROGRAM — Many Of DOJ’s Wasteful “Criminal” Prosecutions Of Harmless Asylum Seekers Were Illegal — Conservative Icon Judge Jay Bybee Becoming A Key Judicial Voice For The Rule Of Law Against Trump & Co’s Executive Abuses!
    4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

    GONZOISM LIVES: Whitaker Delivers “Gonzo Apocalypto Like” Racially Tinged Xenophobic Rant On Immigration Enforcement, Including Bogus Stats and False Narratives — Targets U.S. Courts For Upholding Constitution & Rule Of Law Against White Nationalist Assault!

    https://apple.news/ALcj5KtVpQ-6BYe6egb-ipw

    R.G. Ratcliffe reports for Texas Monthly:

    The word had come down from the U.S. Department of Justice last summer: people who enter the country without authorization are to be referred to as “illegal aliens,” not “undocumented immigrants.” So when Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker was in Austin Tuesday to give a pep talk to the U.S. attorneys there, and he referred to these immigrants ten times as “illegal aliens,” and once resorted to a slang term that is sometimes considered racist as he described Austin as a Top 20 city, with “over 100,000 illegals” living in the area.

    Immigrant advocates for years have tried to dissuade people from using terms like “illegal alien” or “illegal immigrant” because a person cannot of themselves be illegal. A person can commit an illegal act, such as entering the country without authorization or in violation of the law. Terms such as these, advocates say, dehumanize immigrants. The Associated Press in 2013 removed the term “illegal alien” from proper usage for journalists for this very reason.

    But the Department of Justice memo says that since the word “undocumented” does not appear in the U.S. Code, attorneys and public information officers should refer to people who enter the country illegally as “illegal aliens.” In the most literal sense, this may be true, but it also advances the Trump Administration’s efforts to portray all immigrants who enter the country illegally as part of a force of darkness.

    “More important than the financial cost we pay is the cost we pay in American lives. Massive illegal immigration makes all of us less safe,” Whitaker told the attorneys.

    “We know that the vast majority of the cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and fentanyl that are killing record numbers of Americans was not made in this country. It came over the Southern border. We also know that vicious gangs like MS-13 recruit new members from the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who cross our border illegally every year. The result is that Americans die every year because we do not have a secure Southern border.” He did not mention that MS-13 got its start on the streets of Los Angeles.

    Whitaker pointed to the case of Juan Lopez in Austin. Lopez last month was sentenced to 49 years in prison for raping a family friend as the woman’s child watched. Lopez had been deported after serving a sentence for homicide and then re-entered the country illegally. “It is a crushing failure to secure our border and just one example of where we can do better.”

    Without giving exact details, Whitaker said the U.S. Border Patrol had apprehended more than 50,000 people in the past two months who have crossed the U.S. border illegally from Mexico, including 23,000 people in family units. “That’s the size of a small city every single month.” He said the estimated 11 million people living in the United States illegally is equal to the population of Georgia.

    Whitaker repeatedly emphasized the prosecution of people who enter the country illegally, but he never mentioned President Trump’s push for a border wall. He did, however, criticize federal courts that have blocked Trump’s efforts to block immigration.

    Whitaker took no questions from the news media gathered for the event. It was one-way messaging. Journalists did not have a chance to ask about the wall or whether Whitaker thought the millions of people already living in the country illegally should be deported. We didn’t get a chance to ask whether immigration reform laws would ameliorate the situation. There were no questions about reports that he is under consideration to serve as the president’s chief of staff, or the status of a Department of Justice investigation into whether Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke used his office for personal gain.

    Whitaker’s time in office is short. Former Attorney General William Barr has been nominated by Trump to replace former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. But while he holds the office, Whitaker should know a news conference without questions is just a dog and pony show that depends on media complicity.

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

    Here’s the “full text” of Whitaker’s Speech: https://t.co/KeNU8OQXJd

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    • Whitaker continues to spread the false narratives attempting to connect migrants with increased crime and drug trafficking; there is no such documented connection;
    • Whitaker also tries to connect migrants with gang activities; but, it’s much more likely that an asylum applicant from the Northern Triangle will be fleeing from gangs than a member of one;
    • Whitaker ignores the U.S.’s own role in both creating the gang problem in the Northern Triangle (it actually was “deported” from Los Angeles, as noted by Ratcliffe) and following questionable strategies to combat gangs in both the U.S. and the Northern Triangle;
    • The vast, vast majority of the 11 million or so undocumented individuals in the U.S. are not criminals; at worst, they are just seeking safety and a better life for themselves and their families, very understandable human tendencies; even assuming that they ultimately don’t belong here, why intentionally demean and dehumanize them by using the racially tinged term “illegal alien” and “illegals,” rather than treating them with the respect and humanity due all human beings;
    • The comparison between the “State of Georgia” and the number of undocumented individuals is directly out of one of Sessions’s inflammatory speeches to EOIR; the real point is that undocumented individuals are like our “51st state” — they contribute much to our economy and society (just ask those who worked for Trump) and ask for relatively little — Trump and the GOP have routinely and disgracefully exploited their labor and contributions while denying their fundamental humanity;
    • Well over one million of the undocumented population are actually here with legal permission: mainly through DACA and TPS; while the Administration would like to terminate those programs, they have not yet been able to do so; consequently, the individuals are not here “illegally” — they can’t be removed until their current status is terminated.
    • Whitaker mis-states the asylum approval rate: it’s actually 35% for 2018, not “a five-year average of 20%” as Whitaker falsely claims (since the 35% was a “recent low” the real five-year average per TRAC is much higher, well in excess of 40% — indeed up until FY 2016, asylum approvals actually exceeded denials, until the Trump Administration started interfering with the system); for the Northern Triangle it’s 23%, 20%, and 18% for El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras respectively, multiples of Whitaker’s false claim of 9%; and the “allowed to remain in the U.S.” for asylum applicants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras whose cases were decided by Immigration Judges during FY 2018 were 31%, 25%, and 24% respectively);
    • More important, except for the restrictionist right, nobody familiar with our asylum system doubts that the approval rate for the Northern Triangle would be much higher, perhaps twice as high or more, if individuals were 1) given reasonable access to lawyers; 2) time to gather evidence and prepare their cases; and 3) had their claims adjudicated by a fair, impartial, apolitical, independent judges, well-trained in asylum law, and committed to the generous principles established by the Supremes in Cardoza-Fonseca (not today’s politicized and captive EOIR);
    • Many of those denied asylum, whether properly or not, clearly face harm or death upon return — but, Whitaker doesn’t admit that we’re really knowingly returning individuals to possible death;
    • Actually the Federal Courts are the ones upholding the “rule of law” against the efforts of biased, unqualified, political hacks like Whitaker who are committed to carrying out a racist, White Nationalist agenda that mocks our Constitution and our national values.
    • As noted by Ratcliffe, Whitaker lacked the guts to take questions; not really surprising for someone so committed to various false and misleading narratives.

    The appointment of Whitaker as Acting AG is every bit as much of a national disgrace as the tenure of White Nationalist Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions. That Trump’s next AG Bill Barr called Sessions “outstanding” does not bode well for the rule of law, or the legal rights and human dignity of people of color and other vulnerable groups who are the most in need of those protections.

    Fortunately, the New Due Process Army is in the field and “ready for action” against the further abuses planned by Whitaker and Barr.

    PWS

    12-12-18

    Related posts:

    1. GONZO’S WORLD: WHITE NATIONALIST AG MAKES VICIOUS UNFOUNDED ATTACK ON REFUGEES & THEIR ATTORNEYS THE CENTERPIECE OF HIS SPEECH TO LARGEST CLASS OF INCOMING U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES — “Good lawyers using all their talents and skills work every day … like water seeping through an earthen dam to get around the plain words of (immigration law) to advance their clients’ interests.”
    2. PROFESSOR STEPHEN LEGOMSKY IN USA TODAY: Gender Is Clearly a “Particular Social Group” – Congress Must Amend The Law To Insure That Neither Bureaucratic Judges Nor Political Hacks Like Sessions & His Ilk Can Deprive Women & LGBTQ Individuals Of The Protections They Need & Deserve!
    3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
    4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

    MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE ON WHY JUDGE BYBEE’S 65-PAGE EVISCERATION OF TRUMP’S LAWLESS ASYLUM ORDER IS SO IMPORTANT: “The next time Trump floats a flagrantly lawless idea, then, it’s worth remembering that nativist bluster cannot transmogrify an illegitimate command into a permissible executive order. Just because the president considers ending citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants, for instance, does not mean he can actually get away with it. Like the INA, the Constitution grants certain rights that the president cannot unilaterally rescind—including birthright citizenship. Bybee felt no compunction to pretend that Trump’s illicit scheme has any legitimacy. Neither should the rest of us.”

    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/bush-judge-rejects-trump-asylum-plan.html

    Stern writes:

    If there were any lingering doubt that Donald Trump’s latest plan to curb asylum is flatly unlawful, Judge Jay Bybee quashed it on Friday.

    In a meticulous 65-page opinion, Bybee—a conservative George W. Bush appointee—explained that the president cannot rewrite a federal statute to deny asylum to immigrants who enter the country without authorization. His decision for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a twofold rebuke to Trump, halting the president’s legal assault on asylum-seekers and undermining his claim that any judge who blocked the order is a Democratic hack. The reality is that anyone who understands the English language should recognize that Trump’s new rule is illegal. Like so many of Trump’s attention-grabbing proposals, this doomed policy should never have been treated as legitimate in the first place.

    Friday’s ruling involves a proclamation that Trump signed on Nov. 9, ostensibly to address the “continuing and threatened mass migration of aliens with no basis for admission into the United States through our southern border.” The order alluded darkly to the caravan of asylum-seekers then approaching the border, which Trump tried and failed to exploit as a campaign issue. To remedy this “crisis” and protect “the integrity of our borders,” he directed the federal government to deny asylum to any immigrant who enters the United States unlawfully.

    Ten days later, U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar halted the new rule, holding that it likely exceeded the president’s authority. Trump responded by dismissing Tigar, a Barack Obama appointee, as an “Obama judge.” The comment led to a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, who told the AP: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

    As Trump escalated his feud with Roberts, his Department of Justice appealed Tigar’s ruling to the 9th Circuit. It faced a seemingly propitious panel: Bybee, Judge Edward Leavy, and Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz. Bybee is a very conservative jurist who authored the original “torture memo,” justifying the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation of detainees. Leavy is a staunchly conservative Reagan appointee; only Hurwitz, an Obama appointee, leans to the left. Under Trump’s partisan vision of the judiciary, the DOJ would seem to have a good shot at reviving the asylum rule.

    But Bybee didn’t bite. In a crisp and rigorous opinion for the court, he wrote that Tigar was correct to conclude that the policy almost certainly violates the law. The problem, Bybee explained, is that Congress expressly provided asylum-seekers with the right that Trump now seeks to revoke: an ability to apply for asylum regardless of how they came into the country. The Immigration and Nationality Act states that “[a]ny alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival …), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section.” This provision implements the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which the United States has ratified. It directs signatories not to “impose penalties [on refugees] on account of their illegal entry or presence.”

    The plain text of the law couldn’t be clearer: Immigrants in the U.S. are eligible for asylum whether they arrived legally (through a “designated port of arrival”) or illegally. If the president wants to change that fact, he’ll have to convince Congress to break its treaty obligations and alter the law.

    In light of the proclamation’s fundamental illegality, Bybee, joined by Hurwitz, affirmed Tigar’s nationwide restraining order. Leavy dissented in a curious five-page opinion insisting that the INA grants the executive branch power “to bring safety and fairness to the conditions at the southern border.” His anemic analysis is no match for Bybee’s thorough demolition of the DOJ’s illogical position. It seems quite likely that a lopsided majority of the Supreme Court will eventually agree with Bybee’s majority opinion.

    It is satisfying to see a “Bush judge” (in Trumpian parlance) hand the president such a stinging legal defeat. Roberts overstated the case in totally dismissing the role of partisanship in the judiciary; of course some judges are political. But for now, a majority of the federal judiciary remains willing to stand up to the president, at least when he issues blatantly illegal orders. Judges like Roberts and Bybee may let Trump manipulate ambiguous laws to do some very bad things to immigrants. But they are not willing to let the president ignore a clear and constitutional directive from Congress.

    The next time Trump floats a flagrantly lawless idea, then, it’s worth remembering that nativist bluster cannot transmogrify an illegitimate command into a permissible executive order. Just because the president considers ending citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants, for instance, does not mean he can actually get away with it. Like the INA, the Constitution grants certain rights that the president cannot unilaterally rescind—including birthright citizenship. Bybee felt no compunction to pretend that Trump’s illicit scheme has any legitimacy. Neither should the rest of us.

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

    Stern points out that contrary to Trump’s belief that he can bully, co-opt, and control the judicial system, in the way that other authoritarian fascists have done in the past, even so-called “conservative” judges have lines beyond which they won’t be pushed.   And, lifetime tenure protects them from retaliation by Trump and his corrupt White Nationalist cronies.

    Few things can be more important than having judges across the board, regardless of judicial philosophy, stand up to Trump and his lawless abuses of Executive Power as well as “pushing back” on a Department of Justice that has, with a few exceptions, lost its professionalism, moral compass, and courage, along with any semblance of independence.

    PWS

    12-10-18

    Related posts:

    1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
    2. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
    3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
    4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

    TAL @ SFCHRON: HOW LOW CAN THEY GO? – ICE Using Kids As “Bait” To Catch Non-Criminal Migrants, As “Kiddie Gulag” Reaches New Heights!

    ICE arrested undocumented adults who sought to take in immigrant children

    By Tal Kopan

    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has arrested 170 undocumented immigrants who came forward to try to take migrant children out of government custody, including more than 100 with no criminal record, federal officials said Monday.

    The new totals were released as the number of undocumented immigrant children in government custody has reached record highs, with no signs of slowing down.

    According to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, the agency arrested 170 immigrants from July through November on the basis of information the government learned about them when they applied to take an immigrant child out of custody. Of that group, nearly two-thirds, or 109, had no criminal record.

    ICE had confirmed 41 such arrests in September, prompting Democrats to propose legislation to block the practice. California Sen. Kamala Harris has joined onto a bill in the Senate, which has a bipartisan House counterpart, that would bar ICE from arresting an adult seeking to take in a child on the basis of information uncovered in a background check.

    More: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/ICE-arrested-undocumented-adults-who-sought-to-13455142.php

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    Golly gee, and some folks wonder why the “Abolish ICE” Movement continues to gather steam! Yes, ICE performs important law enforcement functions. But, lots of their “mission” isn’t really essential to good law enforcement, and some is actually quite counterproductive and wasteful.

    Clearly, there is a case for Congress at least re-examining the amount of funding, priority, and effectiveness of some of which ICE is doing on the “civil side” these days. And, what would be the purpose of jamming more folks into a court system already crumbling under a largely artificially created 1.1 million case backlog? Not much that I can see, unless these folks being “lured” are really “bad actors,” which the majority of them don’t seem to be.

    PWS

    12-10-18

    Related posts:

    1. THE HILL: NOLAN SAYS THERE IS A BETTER WAY TO ADDRESS PROBLEMS AT ICE
    2. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
    3. GONZO’S WORLD: WHITE NATIONALIST AG MAKES VICIOUS UNFOUNDED ATTACK ON REFUGEES & THEIR ATTORNEYS THE CENTERPIECE OF HIS SPEECH TO LARGEST CLASS OF INCOMING U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES — “Good lawyers using all their talents and skills work every day … like water seeping through an earthen dam to get around the plain words of (immigration law) to advance their clients’ interests.”
    4. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories