Tag: Sanctuary Cities

DACA MESS: GOP AGs FILE SUIT WITH “FRIENDLY” JUDGE TRYING TO FORCE SUPREME’S HAND ON DACA!

7 states sue to end DACA, potentially jumbling its legal future

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

The future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program got murkier Tuesday when the Texas attorney general made good on a threat to challenge it in court.

The lawsuit throws a wrench in an already-complicated legal morass for the DACA program, which protects young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children and which President Donald Trump has been blocked from ending, for the time being, by other federal courts.

The lawsuit has the potential to create a headache for the Justice Department and courts as it could potentially conflict with rulings from judges in three separate judicial regions of the country who have blocked the end of DACA and could force the government to take an awkward position in the case.

It may also potentially seal the issue’s path to the Supreme Court.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and six other states on Tuesday filed a lawsuit challenging the lawfulness of DACA, arguing that former President Barack Obama’s initial creation of DACA in 2012 violated the Constitution and federal law.

The move follows through on a threat from Paxton and what was originally nine other states to challenge DACA in court as part of a lawsuit regarding a similar but broader program that expanded upon DACA to include parents. Paxton issued an ultimatum to Trump: End DACA himself or defend it in court and face the prospect it is overturned by a judge that had already rejected the program’s expansion in that other lawsuit.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/politics/daca-lawsuit-challenge-texas/index.html

(Bonus link: https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/us/border-patrol-agent-less-dangerous-than-being-police-officer-invs/index.html )

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The DACA kids aren’t going anywhere. It’s just a question of how much unnecessary pain and suffering can be inflicted on America’s future leaders and how much enmity from the growing Hispanic electorate Paxton and his White Nationalist cronies will create for the GOP. It figures to be lots.

Hopefully, enough to eventually lead to the GOP’s demise as a viable political force in US politics and the rise of a non-racist Conservative opposition party to take its place.

No, it’s not going to happen in my lifetime! But, hopefully in my kids or grandchildren’s. That’s really what the “New Due Process Army” is all about!

On the “bonus coverage,” it’s a shame that the false narratives about immigration and crime pushed by DHS and encouraged by the Trump Administration are eclipsing truth and understanding.

I’ll testify from my work representing and training Border Patrol Agents at the “Legacy INS” that it’s a difficult, dangerous, important, and thankless job. The vast majority of Border Patrol Agents perform it with courage, dedication, and professionalism. I had friends in the Patrol. Somewhere in the dusty recesses of the Schmidt attic among the remains of my Government career is a box of Border Patrol mementos and memorabilia.

Immigration law enforcement is also being hurt by the bogus White Nationalist “scare stories,” false crime narratives, and constant overt and covert messages of racism being delivered by Trump, Sessions, and their cronies. In the end their dishonest and distorted picture of immigrant communities, the asylum system, their denial of the contributions of all migrants, and their constant over hyping of the dangers of undocumented immigration (it’s been a net gain for the US, and would be an even greater net gain had we enacted a more rational and realistic legal immigration system) hurt everybody in the US, including law enforcement.

In this, as in most situations, a Government dedicated to truth rather than lies and exaggerations designed to divide our country and “fire up” a voter base would better serve the national interest and the interests of everyone concerned.

The Border Patrol’s mission can and should stand on its own merits. It doesn’t need inflated statistics and false narratives.

PWS

05-03-18

 

 

Related posts:

  1. INSIDE THE CHILD ABUSE CONSPIRACY: LIKE MANY CRIMINALS, TRUMP’S “GANG OF SIX” CAN’T KEEP THEIR STORIES STRAIGHT — But, There Is One Consistency — Everything These “Kakistocrats” Say Is A Lie!
  2. TAL @ CNN: TRUMP’S “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT POLICIES LIKELY TO FAIL AND ACTUALLY AGGRAVATE FORCES DRIVING UNDOCUMENTED MIGRATION!
  3. TAL & FRIENDS REPORT @ CNN: DACA TALKS HUNG UP ON CITIZENSHIP – TRUMP’S LATEST SCOFFLAW IMMIGRATION IDEA: Deal With Self-Created Bogus “Crisis” By Ignoring Statute, Treaties, & U.S. Constitution!
  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! 

EUGENE ROBINSON @ WASHPOST – THE ST. LOUIS DOCKS AGAIN AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER — TRUMP, SESSIONS & CO. WANT THE US TO FAIL THE MORAL TEST AGAIN – But, This Time It’s Anti-Hispanic Racism, Rather Than Anti-Semitism Behind Our Government’s Intentional Immorality — Trump & Sessions “are sincere in their desire to stanch the flow of Latino immigration — not, I strongly suspect, because of drugs or crime, but because they loathe the demographic and cultural change that is taking place.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-immigrant-caravan-is-a-test-trump-wants-us-to-fail/2018/04/30/124b975c-4cb4-11e8-84a0-458a1aa9ac0a_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.72fbc5bc8d11

The immigrant ‘caravan’ is a test. Trump wants us to fail.

By Eugene Robinson

The “caravan” of asylum-seeking migrants that has finally arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border is a test of American character and purpose — a test President Trump wants us to fail.

I put caravan in quotation marks because the group that reached Tijuana hardly qualifies for the term. Just a few dozen would-be entrants presented themselves at the Port of San Ysidro on Sunday — only to be told that U.S. immigration officials were too busy to attend to them. Another several hundred were reported to be in the general area, waiting their turn to attempt to cross the border.

Trump has spoken of these people as if they were some kind of rampaging horde. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has accused them of “a deliberate attempt to undermine our laws and overwhelm our system.” The truth is that this sort of thing happens every year: Would-be migrants seek safety in numbers as they make the long and perilous trek north through Mexico.

Sessions probably understands this context; Trump probably doesn’t. But I believe both are sincere in their desire to stanch the flow of Latino immigration — not, I strongly suspect, because of drugs or crime, but because they loathe the demographic and cultural change that is taking place.

While he and his administration were being appropriately roasted at the White House Correspondents’ Associationdinner on Saturday evening, Trump was at a rally in Michigan saying that our immigration laws are “corrupt . . . so corrupt” and that the motives of those who defend our nation’s traditional role as a haven for asylum seekers are political. “The Democrats actually feel, and they are probably right, that all of these people that are pouring across are going to vote for Democrats, they’re not going to vote for Republicans.”

They’re not going to vote for anybody, of course, since they’re not citizens. Truth doesn’t matter to Trump. But you knew that.

What seems to really drive the president crazy is that the United States remains a haven for those fleeing persecution. Trump laid out his complaint Saturday: “If a person puts their foot over the line, we have to take them into our country, we have to register them. We then have to ask them a couple of questions. Lawyers are telling them what to say. How unsafe they are. And once they say that, we have to let them go, to come back to court in like a year. Only one problem: They don’t come back, okay. That’s the end. Welcome to the United States.”

You will have noticed that missing from Trump’s rant is any sense of morality or mission.

There is a reason the law makes provision for those seeking asylum. In 1939, Congress rejected a bill that would have admitted 20,000 German Jewish children. Later that year, authorities refused to allow the St. Louis, a ship carrying about 900 German Jews, to dock in Miami; the Coast Guard sent out patrol boats to warn the ship away. The St. Louis was forced to return to Europe, and 254 of its passengers later perished during the Holocaust.

That shameful history led to changes in immigration policy that prohibit rejecting claims of asylum out of hand. The bar is high, but many of the Central American asylum seekers probably clear it.

In El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, the major threat comes from rampant gang violence. Boys are often offered a stark choice: Join a gang or be killed. Girls are threatened with rape. It is easy to say this is a problem local elected officials and police ought to solve, but government institutions are weak, and corruption is widespread. What choice does a family under imminent threat have but to flee? What would you do?

It is of course true that not every Central American who asks for asylum truly merits it. That’s why each case is examined and evaluated, with all the time needed to reach a proper determination — which is how the migrants now at the border must be handled, despite what Trump and Sessions might prefer.

To close our eyes and hearts to legitimate claims of persecution would be to repeat the shameful and tragic mistakes of the World War II era. If the subjects of Trump’s demagoguery were summarily denied entry, as he apparently would like, most would be forced to go home and some would be killed. That would be a terrible stain on the nation’s conscience.

I’m tempted to add that it would be a stain on Trump’s conscience as well, but it’s not clear that he has one.

Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.

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I remember walking through the “St. Louis Exhibit” at the Holocaust Museum (on an EOIR-sponsored tour, no less, for a long ago and far away Annual Judges Conference — my how official racism & xenophobia have changed things) and asking myself how we could have done that to our fellow human beings.

Then, we had a “special session” explaining the catastrophic failure and cowardice of the German Judiciary during the Nazi rise to power. Judge after judge “adhered to the rule of law” even when those laws unfairly disenfranchised Jews, deprived them of their properly and lawful occupations, and eventually sentenced them to mass death!

I’ve now come to the unhappy realization that the St. Louis might have represented the norm, rather than the exception, to the reality of American democracy and its serious anti-Semitic and racially biased undertones. And, the actions of the corrupt & cowardly German judges of that era are certainly what Trump, Sessions, and their cronies are referring to when they disingenuously pontificate about “the rule of law” and looking for judges, Government officials, and lawyers who are committed to applying it in a biased and one-sided fashion

It’s their rule of law, as they consistently misconstrue it to protect only their favored political and racial groups, and misuse it “punish enemies” and to carry our their increasingly racist, White Nationalist agenda.

And yet 40% of our fellow countrymen are enthusiastically supportive of this heinous agenda. What’s wrong with them? Why ask ourselves how Nazism could have overtaken Germany when we’re in the process of trying to repeat that sordid history here? It’s pretty easy to see Hitler rallies of the 1930s in the Trump rallies of today. The same vicious disregard of both the truth and humanity, scapegoating, and an attacks on the true rule of law and on those who stand up for democracy, all wrapped in an appeal to false religious nationalism! 

We’re failing as a nation on both a moral and a legal basis. It remains to be seen whether the resistance to Trump, his supporters, and his enablers will be sufficient to preserve democracy and human decency in America.

PWS

05-01-18

Related posts:

  1. 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?” 
  2. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  3. 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!
  4. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!

CHILD ABUSE: COWARDLY ADMINISTRATION USES FALSE NARRATIVES & DISTORTED FACTS TO ATTACK PROTECTIONS FOR REFUGEE CHILDREN — Our National Morality & Human Decency In Free-fall Under Trump! — “It has been national law and policy that as adults we look out for children …. No longer.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/us/immigration-minors-children.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Eli Hager of The Marshall Project in the NY Times:

On April 4, the White House posted a fact sheet on its website warning that legal “loopholes” were allowing tens of thousands of immigrant children who entered the country on their own to remain in the United States.

The next day, another post went up: “Loopholes in Child Trafficking Laws Put Victims — and American Citizens — At Risk.”

And the same week, the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services not normally known for its politics, announced that it “joins the President in calling for Congress to close dangerous loopholes.”

Over the past month, the Trump administration has taken aim at a set of child protection laws created to protect young people who cross into the United States without a parent or guardian, perhaps aided by smugglers. The administration now sees some of these same youths as a threat, and is portraying the laws as “loopholes” that are preventing the quick deportation of teenagers involved in gangs.

The campaign is aimed at Capitol Hill, but the Trump administration is not waiting for legislation: In a series of at least a dozen moves across multiple federal agencies, it has begun to curtail legal protections for unaccompanied children who cross the border. Many of these safeguards were created by a 2008 law that provided protections for children who might otherwise be forced into labor or prostitution.

The young people affected by the administration’s measures have been fleeing deadly gang violence in Central America since 2014, when civil strife erupted in the region. They are a less politically shielded group of young people than the so-called “Dreamers,” most of whom came to this country as toddlers with their parents.

The new directives appear aimed at detaining more of these youths after their arrival and speeding deportation back to their home countries — where they may face violent reprisals from gangs or other forms of abuse.

“It has been national law and policy that as adults we look out for children,” said Eve Stotland, director of legal services for The Door, a youth advocacy organization in New York. “No longer.”

Endangered Central American Children

Among the many new directives, the State Department in November gave just 24 hours’ notice to endangered children in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador before canceling a program through which they could apply for asylum in the United States before getting to the border. About 2,700 of them who had already been approved and were awaiting travel arrangements were forced to stay behind in the troubled region.

The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has sharply cut back on granting a special legal status for immigrant juveniles who have been abused, neglected or abandoned; the program dropped from a 78 percent approval rate in 2016 to 54 percent last year, according to statistics compiled by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In New York, Texas and elsewhere, the agency in recent months has also begun revoking this protection for children who had already won it, according to legal aid organizations in the states.

The Justice Department has also issued legal clarification for courts and prosecutors about revoking “unaccompanied child” status, which allows minors to have their cases heard in a non-adversarial setting rather than in immigration court with a prosecutor contesting them. (The White House has said that it intends to remove this protection altogether, but has not yet done so.)

And the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which provides social services to vulnerable immigrant youth, is now placing all children with any gang-related history in secure detention instead of foster care, whether or not they have ever been arrested or charged with a crime, according to an August memo to the President’s Domestic Policy Council.

“It’s law enforcement mission creep, and our office is ill-prepared for it,” said Robert Carey, who was director of the refugee agency under President Barack Obama.

A Focus on Gangs

The Trump administration has said that its actions are necessary to stem the tide of violent crime. It has focused on teenagers belonging to or associated with the Salvadoran-American street gang MS-13, which has been linked by the police since 2016 to at least 25 homicides on Long Island — a testing ground for many of the president’s new policies.

About 99 of the more than 475 people arrested in the New York City area during ICE raids for gang members had come to the U.S. as unaccompanied children, a representative for the agency said.

To fortify the “loophole” narrative, official announcements of these ICE actions often point out that a number of those arrested were in the process of applying for various forms of child protection.

Yet 30 of 35 teenagers rounded up during these ICE raids last year and who later filed a class-action lawsuit have subsequently been released because the gang allegations against them were thin, according to the ACLU. And the Sacramento Bee reported that a juvenile detention center in California recently cut back its contract with the federal government and complained that too many immigrant teens were being sent there with no evidence of gang affiliation.

The refugee agency acknowledged in its August memo to the White House that only 1.6 percent of all children in its care have any gang history.

“The arguments they’re making are just really challenging to basic logic,” said Elissa Steglich, a law professor at the University of Texas who teaches a clinic for immigrant families.

“The arguments they’re making are just really challenging to basic logic,” said Elissa Steglich, a law professor at the University of Texas who teaches a clinic for immigrant families.

. . . .

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Read the complete article at the link.

Yes, folks, it’s way past time to use the correct term for the Trump Administration’s outrageous, and in many cases illegal, policies directed against primarily Hispanic migrant children:  “Child Abuse!”

I met many of these kids and families coming through my court over the years. While there were a tiny number of “bad actors” (which the DHS did a good job of discovering) the vast, vast majority were nothing like what Trump, Sessions and others are describing. They actually much better represented “true American values,” courage, and the “American work ethic” than do Trump and his valueless cronies.

That’s right folks! OUR U.S. Government is using racist-inspired lies to conduct a war against Hispanic children and to illegally return many of them to deadly and life threatening situations! Bad things happen to nations that let bullies and cowards bully, demean, and harm children!

The Trump Administration’s abuse of migrant children and their legal and Constitutional rights could be taken right out of a State Department Country Report on human rights abuses in a Third World Dictatorship. Is this they way YOU want to be remembered by history?

No, Constitutional and statutory protections for children are NOT “loopholes.” What kind of human beings speak such trash?  The Trump Administration’s response to the “rule of law” when, as is often the case, it doesn’t fit their White Nationalist agenda is always to tell lies, rail against it, and look for ways around it.

Stand up against the lawless behavior and immoral actions of Trump, Sessions, and the rest of their “hate crew!” Join the “New Due Process Army” and fight against the Trump Administration’s erosion of our national values, morality, and the true “rule of law” (which is there to protect migrants and the rest of us from abuse at the hands of our Government).

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all!

PWS

05-01-18

Related posts:

  1. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  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. GONZO’S WORLD: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A DIVERSE “NATION OF IMMIGRANTS” ANOINTS A COMMITTED XENOPHOBE AS ITS CHIEF LAW OFFICER? – Gonzo Is Deconstructing Our System Of Justice, One Day At A Time!
  4. 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!

DAVID LEONHARDT @ NYT: FROM FORD TO NOW – HOW THE CONCEPT OF “NEUTRAL JUSTICE” & THE AGs WHO BELIEVED IT DISAPPEARED FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE WITHOUT A TRACE! – Today’s DOJ Offers A “Disingenuous Charade” Of “Equal Justice For All!” — “It undermines the idea of equal justice. It tells Americans that our legal system is merely another instrument of partisan battle, that our prosecutors and law-enforcement officers are political hacks in disguise.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/29/opinion/the-sense-of-justice-that-were-losing.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Leonhardt writes:

Edward Levi and Griffin Bell were very different men. One was the son and grandson of rabbis, a legal scholar whose life revolved around the University of Chicago. The other was a country lawyer who became a master operator in the Atlanta legal world. One was appointed to high office by a Republican president, the other by a Democrat.

Yet for all their differences, Levi and Bell came to share a mission. Together, they created the modern Department of Justice and, more important, the modern American idea of the rule of law.

They were the first two attorneys general appointed after Watergate — Levi by Gerald Ford and Bell by his fellow Georgian Jimmy Carter. And they both set out to refashion the Justice Department into the least political, most independent part of the executive branch. “Our law is not an instrument of partisan purpose,” Levi said. It cannot become “anyone’s weapon.” Bell described the department as “a neutral zone in the government, because the law has to be neutral.”

They understood Richard Nixon’s deepest sins: He saw the law as an instrument not of justice but power. Yet Levi and Bell also knew that Nixon hadn’t been the only problem. Other administrations had also misused the law — investigating enemies and rivals, like civil-rights leaders. So Levi and Bell made sure that the crisis of Watergate didn’t go to waste.

They changed the rules for F.B.I. investigations. They put in place strict protocols for communication between the White House and Justice Department. They made clear — with support from Ford and Carter — that the president must have a unique relationship with the Justice Department.

“It’s perfectly natural and fine for the president and others at the White House to have interactions with the Justice Department on broad policy issues,” Sally Yates, the former deputy attorney general, told me last week. “What’s not O.K. is for the White House, and especially the president, to have any involvement with criminal prosecutions. That really turns the rule of law on its head.”

No administration has been perfect in the pursuit of neutral justice, but every one from Ford’s through Barack Obama’s stayed true to the post-Watergate overhaul. They allowed uncomfortable investigations to proceed unimpeded. They did not treat the law as a weapon.

Then came President Trump.

The story of Levi and Bell highlights how fragile the rule of law is. Much of it does not depend on the Constitution or legislation. It depends on political culture and habits. And that culture and those habits can change. In the sweep of history, the reforms of Levi and Bell are still quite young.

The most obvious ways that Trump is undermining the law involve the Russia investigation. Like Nixon, Trump is enraged that anyone in his administration would investigate anyone else in it. But Russia is only one part of the problem: Trump really does view the law as a weapon, to protect his allies and strike his enemies.

The incomplete list includes: He suggested an end to the prosecution of someone he likes (Joe Arpaio) and the start of prosecutions of people he hates (Hillary Clinton, James Comey). Trump defended his personal lawyer by claiming that the government regularly fabricates evidence. Trump has dragged federal prosecutors into politics, bringing one of them — John Huber, Utah’s top federal prosecutor — to the White House to give a speech lobbying for new immigration laws.

Other presidents did none of this. It undermines the idea of equal justice. It tells Americans that our legal system is merely another instrument of partisan battle, that our prosecutors and law-enforcement officers are political hacks in disguise.

The Trump attacks on the justice system demand a stronger response. The media can’t become numb. His aides and appointees need to stand up to him more often — rather than, for example, assenting to a baseless new inquiry into Clinton, overseen by none other than Huber.

And other Republicans, in Congress and private life, should summon more courage. “We don’t see senior Republican officials, either current or past, defending the Department of Justice and the F.B.I.,” John Bellinger III, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration, said last week at a Georgetown University conference on democratic norms. “It’s just inexplicable.”

Where are the Republican defenders of law and order? Where are you, John Ashcroft? What about C. Boyden Gray, Larry Thompson, Paul Clement, Ted Olson, Susan Collins and Ben Sasse? At least a few of them should be willing to take a little heat in defense of the American system of justice.

In retrospect, Levi almost seemed to be pleading with them in his 1977 goodbye speech as attorney general: “We have shown that the administration of justice can be fair, can be effective, can be nonpartisan. These are goals which can never be won for all time. They must always be won anew.”

You can join me on Twitter (@DLeonhardt) and Facebook. I am also writing a daily email newsletter and invite you to subscribe.

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Yup! And, in some cases, the disguise is pretty transparent — perhaps the only “transparency” in today’s DOJ.

This time period comes close to spanning my career in the DOJ. I worked for both Attorney General Ed Levi and Attorney General Griffin Bell (“known on the “5th Floor” of the DOJ as “Judge Bell”).

I don’t have a recollection of personally meeting Attorney General Levi. However, I did have a strong impression of his integrity because he disqualified himself from a key BIA disbarment case being then being written by my office mate Lauri Steven Filppu who later served with me as an Appellate Judge at the BIA.

The case was Matter of Koden, 15 I&N Dec. 739 (BIA 1974; A.G., BIA 1976), aff’d , 564 F.2d 228 (7th Cir. 1977). The conflict apparently involved the fact that Levi’s wife served on the board of  a charitable organization in Chicago where Koden had worked as an attorney.

Compare that with Jeff Sessions who continues to interfere in BIA cases by certification notwithstanding the obvious conflict of interest and ethically required disqualification stemming from his many pejorative (often untrue and/or distorted) statements about migrants exercising their legal rights, particularly asylum seekers.

I knew Judge Bell better. As INS Deputy General Counsel I accompanied my then boss General Counsel (now Judge) David Crosland to a number of meetings in Bell’s office. I believe that our response to the Iranian Hostage situation was the main topic. I remember him as having a very pronounced Southern accent and being just what I expected of a former judge — concerned with the fair enforcement of the law.

Those days are long gone. The DOJ now appears to have reverted to what it was in the Nixon Administration, when Attorney General John Mitchell actually plotted Federal Crimes from his office.

PWS

04-30-18

 

Related posts:

  1. BILL BARR – Unqualified For Office – Unfit To Act In A Quasi-Judicial Capacity
  2. CHILD ABUSE: COWARDLY ADMINISTRATION USES FALSE NARRATIVES & DISTORTED FACTS TO ATTACK PROTECTIONS FOR REFUGEE CHILDREN — Our National Morality & Human Decency In Free-fall Under Trump! — “It has been national law and policy that as adults we look out for children …. No longer.”
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A DIVERSE “NATION OF IMMIGRANTS” ANOINTS A COMMITTED XENOPHOBE AS ITS CHIEF LAW OFFICER? – Gonzo Is Deconstructing Our System Of Justice, One Day At A Time!
  4. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!

POST EDITORIAL SLAMS INSTITUTIONALIZED CHILD ABUSE BY TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION KAKISTOCRACY! — Human Rights Abuses “Business As Usual” Under Anti-Values Administration!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administration-traumatizes-children-in-the-name-of-scaring-migrants-away/2018/04/29/fe779b50-4a5a-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html?utm_term=.f866c5f999d8

The WashPost Editorial Board writes:

By Editorial Board April 29 at 7:46 PM

INFANTS, TODDLERS, tweens, teens — Trump administration officials are less interested in the age of an unauthorized child migrant than they are in removing the child from his or her parents as a means of deterring illegal border-crossers. That plan, first floated by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly last year when he was homeland security secretary, was widely regarded as so callous and such a radical departure from historical practice that it was unthinkable for any U.S. government.

If only.

In fact, not only has the idea of systematically separating undocumented children and parents gained currency among top officials determined to turn the tide on illegal entry, it’s already happening with increasing frequency. The Department of Homeland Security insists it has not adopted the practice as a matter of official policy — despite White House pressure to do so — but administration officials acknowledge that hundreds of children, including scores younger than 4, have been taken from their parents in the past few months.

By now it’s clear that there are few red lines President Trump is unwilling to cross in his crusade to rid the United States of undocumented immigrants. For Mr. Trump, having washed his hands of the “dreamers” — young migrants, most in their 20s, raised and educated in the United States after being brought here as children — it’s hardly a moral leap to inflict lasting psychological damage on younger children by taking them from their parents if it will further his goal of combating illegal immigration.

As reported by The Post’s Maria Sacchetti, top immigration and border officials have recommended that all parents who enter the country illegally with their children be detained and prosecuted, meaning the automatic separation of minors, who cannot legally be held in jails or detention centers designed for adults. Until recently, that was extremely uncommon; most parents who crossed the border with children would be released pending an immigration court hearing, or, in some cases, detained together in a facility designed for families. Prosecuting parents for illegal entry, a misdemeanor under federal law, has been exceedingly rare — specifically because of the harm it would cause blameless children.

In addition, many of the parents who would be prosecuted are eligible under U.S. law to seek and be granted asylum. That’s hardly a stretch for migrants from El Salvador and Honduras, beset by drug cartels, gang violence, domestic abuse and some of the world’s highest homicide rates. In the last three months of 2017, more than two-thirds of the 30,000 asylum seekers crossed into the country illegally — and it is far-fetched to exempt from prosecution only those who announce themselves as asylum seekers at legal ports of entry, as Homeland Security officials propose. Are desperate, impoverished people fleeing violence to be penalized because they enter the United States in the wrong place?

The United States has a legitimate interest in deterring illegal border-crossing. It is within its rights to detain and deport individuals and families who fail to make a persuasive case for asylum. But to splinter families and traumatize children in the name of frightening away migrants, many of whom may have a legitimate asylum claim, is not just heartless. It is beyond the pale for a civilized country.

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Pretty ugly! Eventually our country, particularly future generations, will pay a high price for abandoning civilized values and human decency. The world is watching and the historical record is being made of the Trump Administration’s cowardly response to humanitarian tragedies and the folks who are enabling him and his White Nationalist cronies.

Get on the “right side of history!” Join the New ‘Due Process Army!”

PWS

04-30-18

Related posts:

  1. MARIA SACCHETTI IN WASHPOST: INSIDE THE “NAG” (NEW AMERICAN GULAG) — CRUEL, INHUMAN, DEGRADING TREATMENT APPEARS TO BE WIDESPREAD IN SO-CALLED “CIVIL” IMMIGRATION DETENTION! — Where’s The Outrage? — Where’s The Congressional Oversight? — Why Aren’t Guys Like “Gonzo” & Homan Who Knowingly Promote Violations Of Legal & Human Rights As (Unlawful) “Immigration Deterrence” Under Investigation For Their Roles In Violating Human, Constitutional Rights!
  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. AMEN: A PRAYER IN THE TIME OF KAKISTOCRACY!
  4. EUGENE ROBINSON @ WASHPOST: KID KILLERS ON THE LOOSE: “Sixteen-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez died horribly and needlessly. The Trump administration’s policy of deliberate, punishing cruelty toward Latin American migrants killed him.”

GONZO’S WORLD: TRAVESTY AT JUSTICE: HOW SESSIONS’S DISINGENUOUS WHITE NATIONALIST AGENDA DEGRADES THE MEMORY OF AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER W.E.B. DU BOIS – “It is often said that elections have consequences. Distorting history, though, and the contributions of past scholars is not a political consequence but rather degrades our intellectual tradition.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2018/apr/26/jeff-sessions-is-shamefully-undermining-web-du-boiss-legacy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Marc Mauer writes in The Guardian:

Since 2002, the US Department of Justice’s WEB Du Bois program has sponsored research fellowships on issues of race and criminal justice. During Republican and Democratic administrations, a diverse group of academics have carried the spirit of the noted sociologist and civil rights leader to the race challenges of the 21st century. Given the racial disparity endemic at every stage of the justice system the DoJ’s investigation of these issues has been praiseworthy.

But with Jeff Sessions as attorney general exploring the roots of this injustice may now be compromised. In the recently released solicitation for the Du Bois fellowships the DoJ invited scholars to engage in research on five issues arising out of the “tough on crime” era that would make a student of the Du Bois legacy shudder.

Whereas Du Bois is widely known for promoting the idea that “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line”, the DoJ solicitation displays no interest in such high-profile issues as police killings of unarmed black men or the impact of mass incarceration on the African American community. Instead, “protecting police officers” is the only area of law enforcement prioritized by the DoJ.

Another research priority, “enhancing immigration enforcement”, coming at a moment when barely disguised racist imagery accompanies those policies, seems particularly jarring when upheld in the name of a civil rights legend.

The DoJ approach to research is unfortunately consistent with the misconstrued “law and order” agenda that Jeff Sessions has brought to his leadership. Within a month of taking office Sessions had rescinded the Obama-era decision to phase out federal contracting with private prisons. That initiative had been based in part on an inspector general’s finding that such prisons had higher levels of assault and safety concerns than public prisons.

Sessions overturned a policy adopted by his predecessor Eric Holder that urged federal prosecutors to use their discretion to avoid bringing drug charges that would carry a mandatory minimum sentence if the facts of the case suggested that the defendant had little criminal history and was not a major player in the drug trade. A year after its implementation the number of such sentences had declined by 25%, with no adverse effects on drug law enforcement.

In contrast, Sessions now requires that federal prosecutors seek the most serious charge they can bring in every case. This policy is faulty on two counts. First, it fails to recognize that no two crimes or defendants are exactly alike, and that sentencing needs to be individualized. Second, the directive conflicts with the ethical standard for prosecutors to seek justice, not vengeance. In some cases, justice may represent a prison term, in others it may be placement in residential drug treatment.

Sessions also has emerged as the primary political obstacle to the bipartisan sentencing reform movement on Capitol Hill, and joined with President Trump’s barbaric call for the death penalty for drug sellers. At a moment when Americans increasingly recognize that treatment is more effective than punishment for addressing addiction, such a dehumanizing message will only inflame the public debate in unproductive ways.

Perhaps most unsettling about the Du Bois initiative and the thrust of current policy is its disconnect from evidence and the current realities of crime and justice. Certainly law enforcement officers need to be protected as they do their jobs, but so do communities of color when they are harmed by racist policing. Suggesting that we need to enhance immigration enforcement at a time when this is already at record levels fails to engage in the vitally needed conversation about how to develop immigration policy that offers refuge to those fleeing violence and enhances cross-border economic opportunity and family stability.

It is often said that elections have consequences. Distorting history, though, and the contributions of past scholars is not a political consequence but rather degrades our intellectual tradition.

  • Marc Mauer is the executive director of The Sentencing Project and the author of Race to Incarcerate

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

Sessions is and always has been a racist. That he has now shifted most of his intellectual dishonesty, intentionally racially inflammatory rhetoric, and false narratives to attacking Hispanics, immigrants, and gays, rather than concentrating on demeaning African-Americans, doesn’t change anything.

About the best that can be said for “Gonzo” is that he’s an “equal opportunity racist.” That he has risen to the position of Attorney General while espousing his White Nationalist views is a continuing stain on America and our national values. It’s also something for which the GOP must be held accountable once they finally lose their ultimately doomed quest to “Keep America White.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others were right about Sessions. That they were ignored and rudely “tuned out” by their GOP colleagues is an ongoing national disgrace.

PWS

04-29-18

 

Related posts:

  1. MLK DAY 2018 — DR. KING’S DREAM OF AN AMERICA CELEBRATING EQUALITY & RACIAL HARMONY IS UNDER VICIOUS ATTACK BY TRUMP, PENCE, SESSIONS, AND A HOST OF OTHERS IN TODAY’S WHITE NATIONALIST ENABLING GOP — Who Is Going To Fight To Reclaim The Dream, & Who Is Going To “Go Along To Get Along” With The 21st Century Version Of Jim Crow?
  2. BLACK PERSPECTIVE: AFRICAN AMERICANS KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TRUMP & SESSIONS MEAN WHEN THEY DISINGENUOUSLY REFER TO THE “RULE OF LAW” — For Most Of Our History, The Law Has Been A “Whites Only” Device — “Turner, eight-months pregnant at the time of her murder, was stripped naked, hanged upside down and burned to death; her stomach was cut open to let her baby fall to the ground and its head was stomped into the red Georgia dirt. Her murderers never spent a day in jail.”
  3. 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!
  4. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!

RACISM IN AMERICA: WILL YOU OR YOUR FAMILY BE NEXT IN THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG?” — Think It Can’t Happen Because You Are A US Citizen? — Guess Again! — DHS Has Detained Nearly 1,500 Citizens, & They Are Largely Indifferent To The Problem! Of Course It Will Get Worse Under Trump, Unless You’re A “White Guy!”

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=8d20e42e-cd60-4330-b0f1-f808600e59b5

Paige St. John & Joel Rubin report for the LA Times;

Immigration officers in the United States operate under a cardinal rule: Keep your hands off Americans. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents repeatedly target U.S. citizens for deportation by mistake, making wrongful arrests based on incomplete government records, bad data and lax investigations, according to a Times review of federal lawsuits, internal ICE documents and interviews.

Since 2012, ICE has released from its custody more than 1,480 people after investigating their citizenship claims, according to agency figures. And a Times review of Department of Justice records and interviews with immigration attorneys uncovered hundreds of additional cases in the country’s immigration courts in which people were forced to prove they are Americans and sometimes spent months or even years in detention.

Victims include a landscaper snatched in a Home Depot parking lot in Rialto and held for days despite his son’s attempts to show agents the man’s U.S. passport; a New York resident locked up for more than three years fighting deportation efforts after a federal agent mistook his father for someone who wasn’t a U.S. citizen; and a Rhode Island housekeeper mistakenly targeted twice, resulting in her spending a night in prison the second time even though her husband had brought her U.S. passport to a court hearing.

They and others described the panic and feeling of powerlessness that set in as agents took them into custody without explanation and ignored their claims of citizenship.

The wrongful arrests account for a small fraction of the more than 100,000 arrests ICE makes each year, and it’s unclear whether the Trump administration’s aggressive push to increase deportations will lead to more mistakes. But the detentions of U.S. citizens amount to an unsettling type of collateral damage in the government’s effort to remove undocumented or unwanted immigrants.

The errors reveal flaws in the way ICE identifies people for deportation, including its reliance on databases that are incomplete and plagued by mistakes. The wrongful arrests also highlight a presumption that pervades U.S. immigration agencies and courts that those born outside the United States are not here legally unless electronic records show otherwise. And when mistakes are not quickly remedied, citizens are forced into an immigration court system where they must fight to prove they should not be removed from the country, often without the help of an attorney.

The Times found that the two groups most vulnerable to becoming mistaken ICE targets are the children of immigrants and citizens born outside the country.

Matthew Albence, the head of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, declined to be interviewed but said in a written statement that investigating citizen claims can be a complex task involving searches of electronic and paper records as well as personal interviews. He said ICE updates records when errors are found and agents arrest only those they have probable cause to suspect are eligible for deportation.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement takes very seriously any and all assertions that an individual detained in its custody may be a U.S. citizen,” he said.

But The Times’ review of federal documents and lawsuits turned up cases in which Americans were arrested based on mistakes or cursory ICE investigations and some who were repeatedly targeted because the government failed to update its records. Immigration lawyers said federal agents rarely conduct interviews before making arrests and getting ICE to correct its records is difficult.

. . . .

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Read the complete, very scary, story at the link.

Just more support for my position that DHS should not be given any additional agent positions until they account for how they are using (and in too many cases misusing) their current positions. If there is anything that the Trumpsters have clearly shown it’s their total disdain for the Constitution and laws of the U.S. except as they might advance and protect the parochial interests of Trump and his supporters.

There is little doubt that the Trump/Sessions/Miller/Homan crew see DHS as “Internal Security Police” — largely beyond anyone’s control — that they will use for partisan political purposes. The case for the ultimate abolition of ICE in its current form and leadership looks stronger all the time.

And, as usual these days, Congress is AWOL while this Administration undermines American democracy.

Now, a REAL Attorney General might be concerned about getting to the bottom of this lawless behavior affecting the rights of U.S. citizens. But, White Nationalist Jeff Sessions is too busy creating false narratives, demonizing immigrants, and undermining the rights of Hispanic Americans, LGBTQ Americans, and African-Americans to be bothered with fundamental violations of Constitutional rights particularly where the victims aren’t White Guys. Jim Crow lives! And all of us should be worried about where he will strike next.

PWS

04-29-18

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. LA TIMES: ICE DRAGNET SNARES US CITIZENS — Quick To Arrest, Slow To Release — The “Crime” Of Being Latino & Born In Mexico — How Would YOU Prove U.S. Citizenship If The ICEMEN Cometh?
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CLYDE W. FORD @ LA TIMES: “Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’”

AMERICAN INJUSTICE: ADVOCATES COMPLAIN ABOUT US IMMIGRATION JUDGE V. STUART COUCH’S BIAS AGAINST CENTRAL AMERICAN WOMEN SEEKING ASYLUM – APPEALS BOARD AGREES, FINDING COUCH’S RULINGS “CLEARLY ERRONEOUS” IN MANY CASES – Now They Fear That Judge Couch Has A “Kindred Spirit” In The Overtly Xenophobic Jeff Sessions!

Judge in case Sessions picked for immigrant domestic violence asylum review issued ‘clearly erroneous’ decisions, says appellate court

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

Jeff Sessions recently used his special authority as attorney general to review an asylum case that could have sweeping implications for how the US treats immigrants fleeing domestic violence.

Newly released records now show that the case he handpicked, which involves a Central American woman fleeing domestic abuse from her ex-husband, comes from a judge who has been repeatedly rebuked by appellate judges for his multiple rejections of asylum claims from victims of domestic abuse.

Advocates and immigration attorneys fear that Sessions could be using the case as an opportunity to reverse case law that has protected Central American women fleeing violence and sexual assault from husbands by granting them asylum in the US.Stuart

Couch, an immigration judge in Charlotte, North Carolina, has sought to justify denying such women the right to stay in the US in multiple cases, even with the appellate body repeatedly ruling that his findings were “clearly erroneous,” according to records released after a Freedom of Information Act request.

Couch’s decision in the case Matter of A-B-, a convention of naming cases in immigration court that protects the individual’s identity, is a rare opinion that Sessions has referred to himself for review. Sessions has been using a little-known authority to refer immigration cases to himself for review, allowing him to almost single-handedly direct how immigration law is interpreted in this country.

In reviewing Couch’s decision, Sessions invited interested parties to comment on the notion of whether being the victim of a crime can count for asylum, a complicated aspect of asylum law.

The case was initially kept secret by the Justice Department and immigration courts on privacy grounds, but was made public by immigration attorneys as a domestic violence case. Input on the case was due to Sessions on Friday.

It was also later revealed that Sessions decided to consider the case over the objections of the Department of Homeland Security, which had asked him to hold off on diving into the case until the Board of Immigration Appeals, the immigration courts’ appellate body, decided on a request from Couch to take the case back up themselves. Sessions denied DHS’s request.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on why or how Sessions chose the case, and it’s not known how he will rule. When Sessions initially referred himself the case, a department official said he was considering it “because of a lack of clarity in the court system on the issue.”

More on Couch’s decisions: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/28/politics/jeff-sessions-immigration-courts-domestic-violence-asylum/index.html

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You should read Tal’s entire article for a profile of just how biased Judge Couch — the second most reversed Judge among hundreds in the Immigration Courts — is in asylum cases.  He had 58 cases reversed by the BIA just in 2017, while piling up an “asylum denial rate” 26% above the national average!

And, remember that this “isn’t the Ninth Circuit” by any stretch of the imagination. The BIA is a considered a conservative tribunal with a strong predilection to rule for the DHS to begin with!

I’m glad that the anti-asylum bias that runs through too much of today’s Immigration Court system, and is actually fanned and encouraged by Sessions, is finally being exposed. Even if Congress won’t solve this glaring problem by removing these Courts from the DOJ and creating an independent Immigration Court, with a merit-based hiring system, I hope that the Article III reviewing courts are getting the picture that much of what they are getting from EOIR in the area of asylum denials is the product of an intentionally unfair and biased system.

In this outrageous example, Matter of A-B-, the BIA was actually quite properly trying to “rein in” Judge Couch. Rather than encouraging justice, Sessions actually interfered with the BIA’s actions, even though neither the BIA nor any party had requested his review. What kind of “court system” allows a law enforcement official to control the results? Sounds like something directly out of the DOS Country Report on a Third World Dictatorship!

Judge Couch actually was appointed during the Obama Administration, illustrating the widespread and chronic nature of the problem of anti-asylum biased judging at EOIR. The Obama Administration was not accused of the overtly politicized hiring engaged in by the Bush Justice Department.

Nevertheless, from a statistical standpoint, the opaque, closed, and glacial (two-year average) Obama DOJ selection system was biased in favor of attorneys from government backgrounds and against those with experience representing asylum applicants by an astounding 9 to  1 ratio! Many believe this intentionally produced a BIA and an Immigration Court that would more or less “go along to get along” with construing the law and the facts against asylum applicants from countries considered to be “enforcement priorities” by the Obama Administration.

It’s time to put an end to this charade of justice and Due Process in our Immigration Courts. We need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court with a merit-based selection system.  If not, we need a “helpful intervention” by the Article III Courts to end this chronically unfair and dysfunctional administration of justice by the Department of Justice! 

PWS

04-28-18

Related posts:

  1. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  2. THE EVER-AMAZING TAL @ CNN GIVES US THE “LOWDOWN” ON SESSIONS’S ALL-OUT PLAN TO DISABLE US PROTECTION LAWS – Pulling Out All The Stops In Attempting To Turn US Legal Protection System Into A “Killing Floor” For Most Vulnerable Refugees! – No Wonder Many U.S. Immigration Judges See Looming Conflict With Oath To Uphold U.S. Constitution & Exercise Independent Judgment Coming At Them with Breakneck Speed!
  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. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!

CALL OUT THE CAVALRY, WE NEED REINFORCEMENTS! – “CARAVAN” OF A FEW HUNDRED MEEK REFUGEE WOMEN & CHILDREN REACH S. BORDER, THREATEN TO EXERCISE LEGAL RIGHTS TO APPLY FOR ASYLUM, AS TRUMP, SESSIONS, NIELSEN, HOMAN, & CO. COWER IN FEAR WITHIN “FORTRESS AMERICA” — Trump Administration Views Individual Constitutional Rights As “Dangerous Loopholes” & “Threats To National Security” That Must Be Eliminated – “Grandfathering” Sought For Current & Former Trump Officials, Friends, Family Who Might Need To Assert Fifth Amendment Right Against Self-Incrimination!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/at-the-us-border-a-diminished-migrant-caravan-readies-for-an-unwelcoming-reception/2018/04/27/7946a154-4a52-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html?utm_term=.cd296045d4c6

Nick Miroff reports for the Washington Post:

TIJUANA, Mexico — The American president, a former real estate mogul, does not want Byron Garcia in the United States. But the Honduran teenager was too busy building his own hotel empire this week to worry much about that.

Vermont Avenue and Connecticut Avenue were his. Now he was looking to move up-market.

The mini-Monopoly board on the dusty floor of the migrant shelter was small, but it fit well in the small space beside the tents. His older sister, Carolina, rolled a 2 and landed on Oriental Avenue.

“That’ll be $500,” said Garcia, 15, gleefully extending his hand. “I love this game!”

Garcia is coming to America on Sunday. Or maybe not. His mother, Orfa Marin, 33, isn’t sure it will be a good day to walk up to the border crossing and tell a U.S. officer that her family needs asylum. She knows President Trump wants to stop them.

Marin and her three children are among the 300 or so remaining members of the migrant caravan who have arrived here at the end of a month-long geographic and political odyssey, a trip that has piqued Trump’s Twitter anger and opened new cracks in U.S.-Mexico relations.

Central American migrant children play Monopoly at the Movimiento Juventud 2000 shelter on April 26, 2018 in Tijuana, Mexico. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

The organizers of the caravan say they are planning to hold a rally Sunday at Friendship Park, the international park where a 15-foot border fence splits the beach. From there, activists and attorneys plan to lead a group of the migrants to the U.S. port of entry at San Ysidro, Calif., where they will approach U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers and formally request asylum.

. . . .

Trump has ordered U.S. soldiers to deploy and Homeland Security officials to block the migrants. But the diminished version of the caravan that has arrived here, mostly women and children, has only underscored its meekness.

Migrant families arrive on a bus at the Ejercito de Salvacion shelter on April 26, 2018 in Tijuana, Mexico after driving from Mexicali, Mexico. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

The families are drained after weeks of travel, coughing children and pinto beans. They have crowded here into shelters in the city’s squalid north end, where the sidewalks are smeared with dog droppings and skimpily dressed women hand out drink promotions among the strip clubs and brothels. The tall American border fence is two blocks away.

Children play on the sidewalks outside the shelters, the boredom broken whenever a car with donations arrives to drop off clothes and toys.

Central Americans migrants in Mexico have long been treated as a kind of renewable natural resource, ripe for exploitation by thieves, predators and politicians. The geopolitical importance attached to this particular group was a sign to many here that the U.S. president had recognized an opportunity, too.

“We’re not terrorists or bad people,” Marin said.

Regardless of its size, Trump officials have measured this caravan in symbolic terms, as an egregious example of the “loophole” they want to shut and an immigration system whose generosity is being abused, they say, by hundreds of thousands of Central Americas trying to dupe it.

. . . .

“These people have no option but to seek refuge in another country, and they have every right to seek asylum, they have decided to face the consequences and to be strong in demanding what is their right,” said Leonard Olsen, 26, a law student and one of several caravan organizers from the United States. He wore a tattered Philadelphia Eagles cap and arrived in Tijuana on Thursday with a busload of women and children.

. . . .

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

I can understand why guys like Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, and Homan would be scared by mothers with talented kids who show the kind of courage, honesty, humanity, and respect for law that they themselves so conspicuously lack.

Without 5th Amendment protections, who would join the Trump Administration?

PWS

04-28-18

Related posts:

  1. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  2. CRUEL & UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT: DHS KAKISTOCRACY WANTS TO TARGET FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN FOR SEPARATION AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF PARENTS AS PART OF WAR ON HUMANITY AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER – Every American Will Bear The Stain Of Our Government’s Actions!
  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. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”

CRUEL & UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT: DHS KAKISTOCRACY WANTS TO TARGET FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN FOR SEPARATION AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF PARENTS AS PART OF WAR ON HUMANITY AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER – Every American Will Bear The Stain Of Our Government’s Actions!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/top-homeland-security-officials-urge-criminal-prosecution-of-parents-who-cross-border-with-children/2018/04/26/a0bdcee0-4964-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports for WashPost:

The nation’s top immigration and border officials are urging Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to detain and prosecute all parents caught crossing the Mexican border illegally with their children, a stark change in policy that would result in the separation of families that until now have mostly been kept together.

If approved, the zero-tolerance measure could split up thousands of families, although officials say they would not prosecute those who turn themselves in at legal ports of entry and claim asylum. More than 20,000 of the 30,000 migrants who sought asylum during the first quarter — the period from October-December — of the current fiscal year crossed the border illegally.

In a memorandum that outlines the proposal and was obtained by The Washington Post, officials say that threatening adults with criminal charges and prison time would be the “most effective” way to reverse the steadily rising number of attempted crossings. Most parents now caught crossing the border illegally with their children are quickly released to await civil deportation hearings.

The memo sent to Nielsen on Monday — and signed by acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan, Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services L. Francis Cissna and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan — said attempted crossings by parents with children increased to nearly 700 a day last week, the highest level since 2016. The officials predicted that the number will continue to rise if Nielsen does not act.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has filed a federal lawsuit in California over earlier instances of family separations at the border, said the proposal would make “children as young as 2 and 3 years old pawns in a cruel public policy experiment.”

. . . .

Philip G. Schrag, a Georgetown law professor and asylum expert, said that expanding the forced separation of parents and children could cause severe psychological harm to families that ultimately might have legal grounds under federal asylum law to remain in the United States permanently.

“I think it’s absolutely wrenching psychologically and terrible for both the children and the parents,” he said. “What are we doing to those children psychologically that will haunt us years down the road if they become Americans?”

Federal officials say asylum applications have skyrocketed in recent years, raising concerns about fraud. Advocates for immigrants say those seeking asylum have legitimate claims under federal law and are fleeing some of the world’s most dangerous countries.

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

Read Maria’s complete article at the link.

I associate myself completely with the remarks of my good friend and Georgetown Law colleague Professor Phil Schrag. Cruelty to children is stupid, counterproductive — children are our future — and morally wrong. It will definitely haunt us as a country for generations to come. It’s largely what I said before about the misguided policies of the Obama Administration. But, as with many things, the Trump Administration takes every dumb and wrong immigration policy of the past and multiplies it.

PWS

04-27-18

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. CALL OUT THE CAVALRY, WE NEED REINFORCEMENTS! – “CARAVAN” OF A FEW HUNDRED MEEK REFUGEE WOMEN & CHILDREN REACH S. BORDER, THREATEN TO EXERCISE LEGAL RIGHTS TO APPLY FOR ASYLUM, AS TRUMP, SESSIONS, NIELSEN, HOMAN, & CO. COWER IN FEAR WITHIN “FORTRESS AMERICA” — Trump Administration Views Individual Constitutional Rights As “Dangerous Loopholes” & “Threats To National Security” That Must Be Eliminated – “Grandfathering” Sought For Current & Former Trump Officials, Friends, Family Who Might Need To Assert Fifth Amendment Right Against Self-Incrimination!
  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. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

JUSTICE ON ICE – SESSIONS DOJ’S “AMNESTY FOR WHITE COLLAR CRIMINALS” — BEATING UP UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANTS IN CRIMINAL COURT WHILE DOING A LOUSY JOB ON REAL CRIME – “NUMBERS GAME” CONCEALS WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS @ DOJ — “If you’re working on a misdemeanor illegal entry case, as a matter of fact, you are not working on something more serious,” Purdon, who left office in 2015, told HuffPost. “It is a net drain on the scarce resources of U.S. attorneys. Full stop.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-wants-to-make-the-justice-department-more-like-ice_us_5ae0f3d3e4b02baed1b60aff

Roque Planas reports for HuffPost:

When Tim Purdon became U.S. attorney for North Da kota in 2010, he had a priority: improving public safety on the state’s four Indian reservations. Prosecuting violent crimes on Indian reservations falls to the Justice Department, and Purdon himself had worked similar cases as a public defender before taking on the U.S. attorney job.

But when Purdon took office, he found that more than a third of his criminal caseload consisted of immigration prosecutions, even though North Dakota lies more than 1,000 miles from the border with Mexico. Despite the state’s proximity to Canada, the defendants were by and large Latin Americans who’d been caught in the U.S. after getting deported. The cases were easy to win. All prosecutors needed was to present paperwork proving the prior deportation. But the cases sapped time away from Purdon’s prosecutors, whom he’d have rather tasked with crimes on the reservations or white-collar cases.

That all happened under the Obama administration. But President Donald Trump has doubled down on immigration prosecutions, seeing it as a way to draft the Justice Department into his immigration crackdown. Earlier this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced what he called a “zero tolerance” policy on immigration crime, directing all U.S. attorneys in the four Southwestern border states to prosecute every misdemeanor illegal border-crossing case “to the extent practicable.”

Purdon was livid.

“If you’re working on a misdemeanor illegal entry case, as a matter of fact, you are not working on something more serious,” Purdon, who left office in 2015, told HuffPost. “It is a net drain on the scarce resources of U.S. attorneys. Full stop.”

Despite Trump’s insistence that the border is in “crisis,” illegal entries from Mexico have hit their lowest level since 1971. But illegal entry prosecutions are still taking up half of the federal criminal courts’ workload. If Sessions gets his way, that percentage will continue to increase: Every U.S. attorney in the country will be doing more of the same work that Purdon complained about, and the five U.S. attorneys whose districts touch the southwest border will take on increasingly petty cases to keep the numbers up.

“We want to achieve this zero tolerance across the border and we are redirecting resources,” Sessions told a House Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday.

. . . .

“Isn’t the reality of the situation that the Justice Department is ICE?” Erendira Castillo, an attorney who has represented defendants facing immigration prosecutions for two decades in Tucson, told HuffPost. “Let’s call a spade a spade.”

. . . .

Doubling down on such small potatoes cases might make sense if the Justice Department did an effective job confronting more serious crimes. But its track record on more complex investigations doesn’t always inspire confidence.

Some 9 million Americans lost their homes in the aftermath of the 2007 housing and financial crisis. Despite widespread allegations that fraudulent and predatory behavior on the part of banks and peddlers of predatory mortgages drove that crisis, the Justice Department secured a conviction in only one major case against an investment banker.

That institutional failure wasn’t a fluke — it’s also a reflection of the Justice Department’s priorities. As the number of immigration prosecutions grew by a factor of 11 over the last two decades, the number of prosecutions for white-collar crime in federal court plummeted by 41 percent, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The steady decline continued in 2017, Sessions’ first year as attorney general.

“DOJ’s real amnesty policy,” said Matt Stoller, a fellow with anti-monopolization nonprofit Open Markets Institute, “was for white-collar executives.”

Yes, DOJ under Sessions very clearly has become ICE, or more accurately DHS. That makes it a totally inappropriate place for the supposedly impartial U.S. Immigration Courts.
As the article points out, this trend stretches back over a number of Administrations of both parties.  Certainly, the Obama DOJ misused EOIR as part of its futile “Border Surge Enforcement Strategy” setting off a flurry of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) that if not the immediate cause of the unmanageable backlogs certainly was a primary contributor and aggravator of the problem. DOJ simply doesn’t belong in the Immigration Court business — in all honesty, it probably never has.
PWS
04-27-18

Related posts:

  1. 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!
  2. ROQUE PLANAS @ HUFFPOST: TRUMP’S BOGUS CARAVAN THREAT MIGHT BE HIS MOST OUTRAGEOUS SCAM YET! — GOP’S Racist Commercial So Vile That Even Fox Pulls It!
  3. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  4. 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!

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY: Bogus Focus On Harmless Migrants Exercising Legal Rights To Apply For Asylum While Defunding State & Local Response Programs & Ignoring Real Security Threats!

Lawmakers question Trump’s Homeland Security chief over focus on immigrant caravan, border wall

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

The secretary of homeland security faced sharp questioning about agency priorities from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday, with many expressing deep concerns about whether the Trump administration is properly promoting Americans’ safety.

Democrats in particular questioned Kirstjen Nielsen about the administration’s prioritization of immigration enforcement and the building of a border wall while also seeking to cut funding for state and local governments to prepare for and respond to security threats.

“Tell us how cutting this kind of funding helps America be safer,” demanded Rep. Bill Keating, D-Massachusetts.

The top Democrat on the committee, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, had sharp words for Nielsen in his opening remarks, accusing the department of intentionally attacking non-dangerous immigrants as a distraction.

“Based on your press releases this week, you would think the most important homeland security problem facing the nation is a handful of Central Americans moving through Mexico,” Thompson said, referring to a caravan of mostly women and children asylum seekers that takes place every year to call attention to the plight of Central Americans. “That does not make it so. … Better to distract the American people from the very real issues facing the department and perhaps from the President’s own problems too.”

In one particularly sharp exchange, Florida Democratic Rep. Val Demings, a former chief of police in Orlando, pressed Nielsen on whether she prioritized the wall and immigration over helping local communities.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/26/politics/caravan-border-wall-kirstjen-nielsen-hearing/index.html

 

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/26/politics/caravan-border-wall-kirstjen-nielsen-hearing/index.html

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

As I’ve said before, Nielsen is an intellectual lightweight, sycophant, and White Nationalist enabler. She proves it almost every time she opens her mouth in public. Her disingenuousness and toadyism make her a threat to our security every day she is in office.

Fortunately, there appear to still be enough professional civil servants in the ranks of DHS somewhere to have averted a national security disaster to date. But, if we survive this Administration, and it’s toxic focus on immigration to the exclusion of real law enforcement and national security problems, it certainly will be in spite of, not because of, folks like Nielsen.

PWS

04-27-18

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  2. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  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. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

GONZO’S WORLD: YIELDING TO BIPARTISAN CONGRESSIONAL PRESSURE, GONZO “TEMPORARILY REINSTATES” LEGAL ORIENTATION PROGRAM (“LOP”) AT EOIR

 

http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/25/politics/immigration-legal-advice-program-resumed/index.html

 

Sessions resumes immigrant legal advice program under pressure from Congress

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed course on suspending a legal advice program for undocumented immigrants, saying he has ordered the resumption of the program pending a review of its effectiveness.

Sessions announced the move at the opening of a hearing before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds the Justice Department, saying he made the decision at the request of Congress, which has consistently appropriated money for the program.

At issue is the Legal Orientation Program, created under President George W. Bush in 2003. Unlike in the criminal justice system, immigrants are allowed to have legal counsel but the government is not obligated to provide it, so many undocumented immigrants have no legal help as they argue their case to stay in the US. The program is administered through outside groups and works with nonprofit organizations to provide immigrants with presentations, workshop sessions and referrals to potential pro bono legal services.

Earlier this month the Justice Department decided to suspend the program as it conducted a review. A 2012 audit by the department found, consistent with previous studies, that the program actually reduced the length of immigration court cases and detention, saving the government nearly $18 million.

Sessions told the subcommittee on Wednesday that while he has “previously expressed some concerns about the program,” he heard from bipartisan members of the committee that led him to reverse course.

“Out of deference to the committee, I have ordered that there be no pause while that review is conducted,” Sessions said. “I look forward to evaluating the findings as are produced and will be in communication with this committee when they are available.”

The top Democrat on the committee, New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, said she was “pleased” to hear that from Sessions but reminded him that the committee still has unanswered questions about the methodology of the review Sessions is conducting.

Advocates and those who work to represent immigrants immediately decried the move when it was announced as a threat to due process rights that could actually make the courts more backlogged, not less.

The move had followed other recent efforts by the Justice Department to, in their words, expedite proceedings in the immigration courts to cut down on the extensive backlog of cases, which result in some immigrants living in the US for years while they await their fate, many of which have similarly been criticized by opponents as a risk to due process rights.

A internal study commissioned by the Justice Department that was made public this week recommended expanding the Legal Orientation Program as a way to make the courts more efficient.

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

Obviously, bipartisan Congressional oversight can work. My question: Where has it been for the last 17 years as a succession of Attorneys General, beginning with John Ashcroft and continuing through Sessions have run EOIR and the U.S. Immigration Courts into the ground?

PWS

04-26-18

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  3. NEW EOIR MEMO ENCOURAGES IMMIGRATION JUDGES TO DUMP ON UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN (“UACS”) – “When In Doubt, Kick ‘em Out” New Motto Of Gonzo’s “Captive Courts!” — We’ve Come A Long Way From “Guaranteeing Fairness And Due Process For All” In A Short Time!
  4. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!

FORMER EOIR ATTORNEY EM PUHL SPEAKS OUT IN HUFFPOST: SESSIONS MAKING U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS INTO 🤡 “CLOWN COURTS” 🤡 WHERE “JUSTICE IS A BAD JOKE,” BUT THE POTENTIALLY FATAL RESULTS ARE NO LAUGHING MATTER!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-puhl-legal-orientation-program_us_5adde3a4e4b075b631e82e2e

This will soon be the reality for the tens of thousands of individuals who are arrested and held in detention facilities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice effectively decided to suspend the Legal Orientation Program, citing concerns about cost-effectiveness.

The Department of Justice established the LOP in 2003 to improve the efficiency of the immigration courts by helping unrepresented detained immigrants work with an attorney to prepare their cases. The program operates through 18 nonprofit organizations across the country and has a budget of just under $8 million. At least once a month, these organizations bring both paid attorneys and volunteers from the community to over 38 detention centers to educate detained immigrants about their rights through group orientations, individual consultations and self-help workshops.

These interactions with attorneys, along with the legal resources that the program makes available, help detained immigrants make informed decisions about their cases and prepare for their court hearings. LOP organizations also refer detained individuals to pro bono attorneys when they are unable to represent themselves or would benefit from direct legal representation.

A father and daughter from Honduras wait for assistance at the Immigrant Respite Center after they were released from U.S. im

JOHN MOORE VIA GETTY IMAGES
A father and daughter from Honduras wait for assistance at the Immigrant Respite Center after they were released from U.S. immigration officials on Feb. 23 in McAllen, Texas. 

The men, women and children who LOP assists cannot search for help from attorneys on their own — many are confined in detention centers located hours from a major city — and the government does not provide them an attorney. Without LOP staff and volunteers physically visiting detention centers, detained immigrants must resort to calling attorneys through a phone system that either requires purchasing a phone card (something that is difficult when you have no access to money, because you are detained) or hoping law offices will answer collect calls. As a result, 84 percent of detained individuals do not have legal representation in deportation proceedings.

In my visits to immigration courts across the country as a volunteer attorney, I have witnessed firsthand how the LOP volunteers serve as a rare lifeline for immigrants in detention. Each visit, I play my part in the same heartbreaking scene: I arrive with other volunteer attorneys to find an empty room with a TV screen. We are connected to a feed at one of the country’s many detention facilities, located in remote towns that would take hours to physically reach.

There are a number of immigrants waiting patiently to speak with us, sometimes a handful, sometimes over a dozen, almost all without a lawyer to represent them. Many of them do not understand why they have been in immigration custody or what was going to happen during the hearing that day. We have just a short time before they appear in court, giving us on average less than 10 minutes to attempt to answer the dozens of questions they have about their immigration cases.

At the end of the conversation with every individual, we always inform them that they should speak more in-depth with a volunteer through the Legal Orientation Program’s monthly visit. During the hearing, the immigration judge parrots the same advice: that they should to speak with LOP volunteers for more help with their questions, to help them find an attorney and to prepare them for the next hearing.

The DOJ would effectively eliminate the only guaranteed way that detained immigrants can access guidance in a high-stakes legal setting.

Opponents of the Legal Orientation Program argue that the program is “duplicative” because immigration judges are supposed to advise immigrants of their rights during their hearings. First, we should give up the pretense that someone without a law degree can understand one of the most complex areas of law after hearing it for the first time in the middle of a courtroom proceeding.

This argument also ignores the most important function of the Legal Orientation Program for immigrants and for defenders of the larger justice system in the U.S.: This program helps people find an attorney. An immigration judge, as opposed to an LOP volunteer, cannot, by definition, provide advice to the immigrant, cannot represent them in their hearings, and cannot facilitate communication with other attorneys who may provide them representation. The Legal Orientation Program fulfills these needs, which are pivotal to the functioning of a just legal system.

By cutting off individuals’ access to legal information through the Legal Orientation Program, and forcing those who are locked up during their deportation proceedings to get all information about their rights from an ostensibly neutral arbiter, the DOJ would effectively eliminate the only guaranteed way that detained immigrants can access crucial, reputable guidance in a high-stakes legal setting. This will affect the lives of everyone whom the current administration wants to detain, including those fleeing persecution, children, pregnant women, parents who are long-term residents of this country, people with medical conditions and even U.S. citizens.

In effect, without access to an LOP volunteer and attorney, almost anyone who is detained by ICE is virtually guaranteed to be deported, with no effective defense against a government attorney or an immigration judge, who has been mandated by this administration to close deportation cases as quickly as possible, fair day in court be damned.

If the Department of Justice moves to end the Legal Orientation Program for good, it will strip away the last shred of evidence that immigrants have a right to due process and will eliminate any semblance of justice left in the immigration system. The immigration courts will effectively become a sham, in utter betrayal of our country’s rich immigrant heritage.

Em Puhl is a San Joaquin Valley Law Fellow at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, and a former attorney adviser at the Executive Office for Immigration Review in the Department of Justice.

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

Shortly after Em’s article came out, Sessions yielded to bipartisan pressure from Congress and “temporarily reinstated” the LOP. But, his so-far aborted attempt to destroy the LOP remains the most bone-headed, dishonest, and downright despicable attack yet on what little remains of the pretense of justice in our U.S.Immigration Courts by Sessions.

As a former U.S. Immigration Judge, I can testify, as can almost all of my former colleagues, DHS Assistant Chief Counsel, and anyone else actually familiar with and working in the Immigration Court system that the LOP probably provides the best “value for the dollar spent” of any program in EOIR.

PWS

04-25-18

 

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. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  3. 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.”
  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.”

PUBLIC INVITED TO ABA COMMISSION ON IMMIGRATION PANEL ON US IMMIGRATION COURT REFORM: FRIDAY, MAY 4, 2018 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM

final_may_4_program_flyer.authcheckdam

Featured Panelists:

(Ret.) Immigration Judge Paul Schmidt, Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law

Center Heidi Altman, Policy Director, National Immigration Justice Center James R. McHenry, Director, Executive Office for Immigration Review Judge Denise Slavin, President Emeritus, National Association of Immigration Judges

James R. McHenry, Director, Executive Office for Immigration Review

Judge Denise Slavin, President Emeritus, National Association of Immigration Judges

Karen Grisez, Special Advisor to the ABA Commission on Immigration; Public Service Counsel, Fried Frank LLP

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

This event is FREE & OPEN TO ALL. I believe there will be a “public comment” opportunity. So, this is your chance to weigh in on the US Immigration Court “Train Wreck” and the Attorney General’s recent actions!🚂🚂🚂🚂🚂🚂🚂🚂🚂

Seating might be limited, and I would expect interest to be high. So, I strongly recommend arriving early!
PWS
04-25-18

Related posts:

  1. MICA ROSENBERG, READE LEVINSON, & RYAN McNEILL EXPOSE UNEQUAL JUSTICE & ABUSE OF VULNERABLE ASYLUM SEEKERS FROM “COURT” SYSTEM LACKING BASIC JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE! Sessions’s Chilling Response: Speed Things Up, Establish Deportation Quotas, Strip Asylum Seekers Of Rights To Due Process, Eliminate Professional Judicial Training, & Aimlessly Throw More Inexperienced, Untrained Judges Into This Mess! – Will He Get Away With His Atrocious Plan To Make Immigration Courts The “Killing Floor?” — AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE UNFOLDING IN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT ON A DAILY BASIS!
  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. GONZO’S WORLD: JUDICIAL REBELLION – Less Than One Year Into Gonzo’s Reign at The DOJ, One of America’s Most Conservative Judiciaries Seeks Protection From His Plans to Politicize The U.S Immigration Courts!
  4. JULIA PRESTON: CHAOS IN COURT! – TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S MAL-ADMINISTRATION OF IMMIGRATION COURTS RUINS LIVES, FRUSTRATES JUDGES!