"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
“In 2006, Arizona passed a ballot initiative that barred students without legal immigration status from receiving in-state tuition rates at public universities and colleges.
Dulce Matuz, an electrical-engineering major at Arizona State, ran to find her professor.
Bursting into tears, she told him something she had only ever shared with her closest friends. She was undocumented.
“It felt good to tell my story,” she told the Guardian this week. “It was like a weight had been lifted.”
The law meant Matuz would have to pay the out-of-state tuition rate, which she could not afford. But the next day, her professor gave her a flier advertising scholarships for “people in your situation”.
Matuz had thought she was the only undocumented student on one of the largest campuses in the country. She was wrong.
At an informational meeting, she met dozens of young people with stories similar to hers. Their discussion grew into a statewide coalition, the students rallying with organizations across the US to declare themselves “undocumented and unafraid”.
One by one they shed their anonymity, in effect daring law enforcement to target them.
It was a risky move, especially in a state which was then a cauldron of anti-immigrant sentiment. But the students weren’t alone. Thousands of young immigrants came forward to demand a future in the country where they were raised. Each had a name and a story.
Collectively, they are known as Dreamers, young people without immigration status who were brought to the US as children. Over the last decade, they’ve gone from the “shadows” to the center stage of US politics, and their fate now dangles before an irascible president and a gridlocked Congress.
‘Trump Dreamers’
In September, Donald Trump ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), an Obama-era program that lifted the threat of deportation for Dreamers.
The administration argued that Obama had overstepped his authority. But Trump did give Dreamers a six-month grace period and called on Congress to pass legislation.
“If the Dreamers are able to lead a fight that results in a radical, nativist administration signing into law their freedom, it would be a testament only to how much moral and political power the Dreamers have built,” said Frank Sharry, a long-time advocate of immigration reform and executive director of America’s Voice.
Conservatives suggest Trump is uniquely qualified to succeed where predecessors have failed, to achieve immigration reform, precisely because of his credibility among fierce opponents of illegal immigration.
At a meeting earlier this month, for example, Trump promised to “take the heat” if Republicans passed legislation.
“President Obama tried and couldn’t fix immigration, President Bush tried and couldn’t do it,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who is pushing bipartisan immigration reform.
Timeline
Donald Trump and Dreamers: a timeline of mixed messages
“I believe President Trump can. Today’s Daca recipients can be tomorrow’s Trump Dreamers.”
Polling has consistently shown that a large majority of Americans – 87% in one recent survey – support protections for Dreamers. But general anti-immigrant fervor has stalled efforts to pass legislation and conservatives remain divided over whether Dreamers should ever be allowed to be citizens.
Rounds of negotiations have yielded no solution, only a brief shutdown of the federal government during which Democrats tried to force lawmakers to extend legal status to the Dreamers.
Depending on the day, lawmakers and the president are either on the verge of striking a deal or as far apart as ever. Trump was elected after championing hard-line immigration policies but he has demanded both a “bill of love” and a border wall.
This week, the White House released a proposal that offered a pathway to citizenship for up to 1.8 million undocumented young people – in exchange for a $25bn “trust fund” for a border wall, a crackdown on undocumented migrants and changes to the migration system.
The offer did not go down well, either with Trump’s base or with progressives ranged against him. Immigration hardliners crowned Trump “Amnesty Don”. Advocates for reform rejected the offer as an attempt to seal America’s borders.
In a statement issued on Friday, Chris Murphy, a Connecticut senator, called the offer “a total non-starter” that “preyed on the worst kind of prejudice”, using Dreamers “as a bargaining chip to build a wall and rip thousands of families apart”.
Trump, meanwhile, tweeted that Daca reform had “been made increasingly difficult by the fact that [Senate minority leader] Cryin’ Chuck Schumer took such a beating over the shutdown that he is unable to act on immigration!”
Dreamers say the fight is only beginning.
Matuz became a US citizen in 2016, a decade after she “came out of the shadows”. But she still identifies strongly with her fellow Dreamers.
“We still haven’t achieved what we set out to achieve,” she said.
’They’re speaking up’
The Dreamer movement came of age during the Obama administration. But legislation to build a path to citizenship was introduced to Congress in 2001.
Two senators – Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican – introduced the first Dream Act in August that year, a month before 9/11.
But after the attacks, as concerns over national security and terrorism dominated public life, the immigration debate shifted sharply. The bill stalled. It was reintroduced several times, without success.
Nonetheless, the Dreamers continued to galvanize public support. They escalated their tactics, staging sit ins and actions that risked arrest.
“There was a time when they used to be very quiet,” Durbin said recently at a rally. “Not any more. They’re speaking up and we’re proud that they are.”
The Dreamers’ fight for citizenship, Durbin has said, is the “civil rights issue of our time”.
In December 2010, the Dream Act was brought to the floor. It failed again. In 2012, months before the presidential election, Barack Obama established Daca.
Recipients had to have entered the US before their 16th birthday, which means the oldest beneficiaries are now 35.
The most common age of entry to the US was three while the median age was six, according to a report by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.
Quick guide
What is Daca and who are the Dreamers?
Eight hundred thousand people qualified, the vast majority of them Latino, according to data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Nearly 80% were born in Mexico.
The largest numbers of recipients now live in California and other border states such as Texas and Arizona. They are more likely than their ineligible counterparts to hold a college degree and a higher-skilled job, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute.
“What you’re seeing in the Dreamers is a reflection of the American ideals,” said Daniel Garza, president of the conservative Libre Institute, a free-market Latino advocacy group founded by the Koch brothers.
“When one breathes freedom it manifests itself. And now that these kids have a shot at directing their own future or setting a path toward their own future, let’s remove those barriers and allow them that opportunity.”
‘I’m not alone’
Over the last several months, Dreamers have been in Washington, walking the halls of Congress.
They wear light orange shirts with a comic book POW! bubble with the words: “Clean Dream Act Now.”
They sleep on church floors and friends’ couches; a few missed final exams to join protests in December, when there was a flicker of hope that legislation might receive a vote.
Greisa Martínez Rosas, 29, has been among them, leading members in song at rallies on the lawn in front of the capitol building, in between meetings with members of Congress.
She was eight when she and her father staked out a spot on the Rio Grande river and crossed from Mexico into Texas. She laid seashells to mark the place. The next day, her family swam into the United States.
Profile
Who are the Dreamers?
Martínez Rosas grew up in a Hispanic neighborhood of Dallas and attended Texas A&M University. But the life she was building begin to unravel when her father was deported. Her mother died in 2016.
Fighting for a Dream Act has given her purpose, she said, and she is now advocacy and policy director at United We Dream, a national organization that campaigns for migrant rights. She has three younger sisters, one of them also undocumented.
“I am really lucky to be doing this,” she said. “It gives meaning to a lot of the pain and helps me deal with a lot of the trauma growing up undocumented.
“The reality is that I’m not alone. My story isn’t special. That’s why it’s so important that we wage this fight.”
The Dreamers rejected Trump’s latest proposal, even though it would allow a pathway to citizenship for more than twice the number of Daca recipients.
“We are not willing to accept an immigration deal that takes our country 10 steps back no matter how badly we want reprieve,” Martínez Rosas said. “That’s how much we love this country.”
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The problem isn’t the Dreamers. It’s the 13% of so of White Nationalist citizens who have forgotten their own immigrant heritage and have abandoned human decency, compassion, and common sense in the process. Unfortunately, this minority has, and continues to wield, a disproportionate share of political power.
“At his inauguration, President Trump promised to renew the unity of the American people, claiming that “through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.” Then, Trump seemed intent on creating a reborn civic and social consciousness, and on empowering ordinary people against big government and big money.
And yet, Trump’s administration has ushered in a virulently antisocial politics that dissolves the most basic bonds and leaves individuals powerless against both market and state. Trump, like many populists of the right, gained a foothold by promising that a resurgent nationalism could make people feel cohesive, trusting and strong again. But like his right-leaning populist predecessors, he has offered only the imaginary bonds of nationalism — the illusion of fellow-feeling and homogeneity — even as his policies destroy the real and foundational bonds of family and community in the arenas of health care, immigration, labor and more.
. . . . In its amicus brief in support of unions, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops points out that the destruction of unions based on the loose interpretation of money as speech will render workers weaker than ever before. “Ironically then,” the bishops observe, “a misguided effort to protect one individual from government coercion would leave only individuals to stand against government (or economic) coercion.”
If only that world were really so far away. In reality, it is already here. What unites workfare, the annihilation of DACA and the war on unions is a totalizing individualism — the belief that people are essentially isolated individuals. That we are alone before we are together. That we are more and not less ourselves in total isolation. From that view flow policies that disregard or deny that people are, in fact, embedded in families, communities and industries, and that their bonds and obligations are powerful and ought to be respected and protected by the state. No politics issuing from that view can ever cultivate unity.
What Trump offered as an answer to the aching aloneness of Americans was nationalism, the exchange of an imagined community for actual ones, the promise of a mystic bond with people you’ll never meet even while the ones you know and love are deported, abandoned, dying. It was supposed to bring us together, supposed to make us strong. But his policies stand to leave us more alone than we’ve ever been, and in our solitude, weak.
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Read the rest of Elizabeth’s op-ed at the link.
First, it was Mexicans, Muslims, and undocumented workers. Then came Legal Immigrants, Latinos, African-Americans, LGBTQ individuals, demonstrators, the sick, the poor, women seeking to exercise their constitutional right to abortion, unionists, Liberals, and Democrats. Don’t see YOUR GROUP on the “hit list.” Just wait. It keeps expanding, Folks like Trump and his White Nationalist buddies can’t live without an “enemy of the day” to rally their “base.”
When the GOP White Nationalists decide that YOU no longer fit their image of America, who will be left to stand up for YOUR rights. Harm to the most vulnerable members of our community, and failure to stand up for them, harms and ultimately diminishes the humanity of all of us. And, that’s how free societies are “deconstructed and destroyed.” Stand up for everyone’s rights! Just say no to Trump and his White Nationalist Cabal!
“Just a week ago, Harry Pangemanan was being honored for helping rebuild hundreds of homes along the Jersey Shore after the devastation of Superstorm Sandy. Now, the Indonesian is pleading for protection from deportation after narrowly escaping U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during a raid.
ICE agents swept through Central New Jersey on Thursday morning and arrested two other Indonesians, the Deportation and Immigration Response Equipo, which tries to intervene in ICE raids, told U.S.A. Today.
After managing to avoid arrest, Pangemanan, who has two U.S.-born children, was reportedly escorted to a local church near his Highland Park home, where he was joined by three other Indonesian Christians, to claim sanctuary, the newspaper reports.
Undocumented immigrants face deportation under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has since visited Pangemanan and other Indonesians seeking sanctuary at the Reformed Church of Highland Park to lend his support.
“Many of the houses that he worked on, in the lawn of the homes he was working on were big Donald Trump signs and yet he was still rebuilding those homes to get Jersey families back inside,” the church’s reverend, Seth Kaper-Dale told the governor.
Pangemanan’s plight is shared by many other undocumented immigrants who face deportation under the Trump administration’s crackdown.
Republicans and Democrats are expected to address immigration policy changes in Congress, with Democrats hoping to strike a deal to protect undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, known as Dreamers, from deportation before February 8.
That’s when a short-term extension on government funding is supposed to run out, after Congress voted to briefly restore the flow of funds following a three-day government shutdown with the promise that a vote would be held on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which had protected dreamers before President Donald Trump officially ended it in September.
A deal to protect Dreamers would not, however, help undocumented immigrants like Pangemanan, an Indonesian Christian who fled religious persecution in 1993.
While violent persecution has affected only a small percentage of Christians in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, Open Doors U.S.A. says on its website that the overall situation for the minority “has deteriorated in recent years.”
Pangemanan, who is married and has had two U.S. born children with his wife, has tried to gain legal status after overstaying his visa, according to U.S.A. Today, but has been unable to acquire the necessary support for his asylum application.
The undocumented immigrant was responsible for leading a team of volunteers who rebuilt more than 200 homes in Monmouth and Ocean counties after they were destroyed by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Just last week, Pangemanan received the 2018 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award from the Highland Park Human Relations Commission for his work.
“I’m working. I’ve worked hard for my family,” the Indonesian told an Asbury Park Press reporter. “I’m not dependent on somebody else.”
In 2012, during the Obama administration, Pangemanan was also reportedly forced to enter sanctuary in the same church, along with a number of other Indonesian Christians who feared they would be deported by ICE agents.
At the time, ICE agents decided to give him a temporary reprieve from deportation, allowing him a “stay of removal”.
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A nation of ingrates takes aim at its friends and supporters. Happy to accept their help and labor — but, not willing to recognize their humanity and their contributions to our society. Hmmm. Reminds me of some of the other worst parts about American history. In the end, mistreating the most vulnerable diminishes each of us. Maybe that’s how Thomas Jefferson shrunk from six feet to about six inches.
“The roughly 10-20 percent of Americans who do not support protecting the Dreamers in any way have long had a hugely outsized influence on our politics. Gerrymandered white Republican districts led to a wave of radical anti-immigration restrictionists in the House. That trend, of course, continued through the 2016 election, when hardline immigration opponents got perhaps their greatest champion in recent memory in the White House with President Donald Trump. While he has been very inconsistent on DACA, he has consistently elevated and empowered immigration hardliners in his administration — those who appeal to his white nationalist base.”
The Dreamers have won the hearts of most all Americans — across our political boundaries — whose country they joined when they were just children and who are clearly Americans too.
There is enormous public support for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) from the American people. According to a poll released by CBS News last week, “nearly 9 in 10 Americans (87%) favor allowing young immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children to remain in the U.S.” This number includes 79 percent of Republicans, 92 percent of Democrats, and 87 percent of independents who favor the policy.
The DACA program, which is designed to shield from deportation undocumented Americans who were brought to this country by their parents, was established by President Obama in 2012 and ended by President Trump in September. Congress has tried and failed for the last 17 years to pass legislation that would formally confer legal status on these young men and women.
Because of President Trump’s decision, about 800,000 Dreamers currently protected by DACA will be at risk of deportation in early March unless Congress passes legislation and the president signs it by then. That’s why Democrats and some Republican members of Congress have felt such urgency to finally pass permanent legal protection for the Dreamers. Until the issue is resolved legislatively, it is likely to dominate the political debates in Washington in the weeks to come.
Dreamers are essential members of our communities. As politicians play games with their futures, it’s important that we share their stories. They are Dreamers like Mauricio Lopez-Marquez, who is 28 years old and was able to become a social worker after receiving DACA. In that role and as a dance instructor for an after-school program, he works with 180 young people in New Mexico. They are Dreamers like 22-year-old Teresa Rivera, who is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a part-time child facilitator at an organization that supports women and children who have experienced domestic violence. They are Dreamers like Zabdi Samuel Olvera, 18, who was brought from Mexico to Charlotte, N.C., at 6 months old, and is currently majoring in computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Zabdi’s work with underprivileged children in South Charlotte and his excellence on his varsity wrestling team earned him a Golden Door Scholarship, which provides a full-tuition scholarship that is making it possible for him to earn his degree. If Congress does not pass legislation to protect the Dreamers by early March, these young men and women and so many more will be unable to work legally in the United States and could be vulnerable to deportation.
In 2012 many Dreamers had the opportunity to step out of the shadows and participate fully in the economy in ways that were previously impossible. They have done so, however, at great risk: In exchange for legal protection, they had to provide their personal information to the government. And now, unless Congress acts, the government could use that information to find and deport them. This is not a tenable moral or political position, and the public support for a permanent DACA fix reflects that. Americans understand that the Dreamers are our children’s teachers, they work in our communities, and they serve their country in all kinds of ways, including the military.
It is also undeniable that churches across the theological and political spectrum of American Christianity have been steadfast in support for the Dreamers. Even among white evangelicals, the base of Donald Trump’s support, 57 percent favor protection for Dreamers. This support comes from biblical commands about how we should treat “the stranger” among us, a religiously inspired sense of what is moral and just, and the fact that many Dreamers and their families are members of our church communities —and even our pastors. As I’ve written many times before, the biblical command to protect immigrants is unambiguous, and that certainly informs how many Christians approach this issue. But the human stories are perhaps even more influential in changing minds and hearts. Indeed, many churchgoers have discovered over the last five years that people they know well and care for deeply are undocumented because DACA gave them the incentive to step out of the shadows. Now, congregations all over the country are facing the possibility that many families in their midst will soon be torn apart. That is justifiably causing righteous outrage and determination for Christians all over the country to stand beside Dreamers and demand a solution from Congress.
Yet the problem, as it has been for many years, is to translate the strong public support for protecting Dreamers to actual policy change. The roughly 10-20 percent of Americans who do not support protecting the Dreamers in any way have long had a hugely outsized influence on our politics. Gerrymandered white Republican districts led to a wave of radical anti-immigration restrictionists in the House. That trend, of course, continued through the 2016 election, when hardline immigration opponents got perhaps their greatest champion in recent memory in the White House with President Donald Trump. While he has been very inconsistent on DACA, he has consistently elevated and empowered immigration hardliners in his administration — those who appeal to his white nationalist base.
We don’t know how this fight will ultimately turn out, but we do know two things. First, we know that the right thing for Christians to do is to fight — and fight hard — for Dreamers until they get the permanent protection they need, and continue fighting for their parents and the many other undocumented people living among us. These are the people Jesus literally commands us to treat as we would treat him.
Second, we know that since an overly influential group of hardline anti-immigration White House officials and politicians in Congress are blocking both the will of the overwhelming majority of the American people and what God wants, we must defeat them at the ballot box. There are fundamental Christian issues that cause Christians to vote against political candidates — and being opposed to immigrants should become one of those issues. We need to ensure that the fate of the Dreamers and other undocumented Americans is a voting issue for Christians this November and beyond.
Jim has nailed it! Our public immigration policy has been taken over by a group of White Nationalist GOP restrictionists who represent a minority of Americans, but are now driving the debate and the policies.
Guys like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose racially tinged White Nationalist views on immigration as a Senator were so extreme that he was once marginalized within his own party, and his White Nationalist strategist/protégée Steven Miller, are now in charge of the Government’s immigration policies. They and others in the GOP with similar restrictionist views have made overtly racist immigration policies “fashionable” again.
We now “debate” things like “should we reduce African immigration, deport long-term law abiding Hispanic residents, and bar Muslims” as if these immoral minority proposals were a legitimate “other side” of the immigration issue. The real issues often get shoved aside.
The minority might have seized control. But that doesn’t mean that they are entitled to ram their anti-immigrant, basically anti-American policies down the throats of the rest of us.
The resistance is going to take a prolonged and energetic effort — at the ballot box, in the courts, and in the arena of public opinion. But, eventually, human decency, true American values, and having our “nation of immigrants” treat current and future migrants as human beings whose contributions we recognize and value will be restored!
I focus specifically on how TPS recipients can potentially adjust their status within the United States through either a family-based I-130 petition or an I-140 employment-based petition for permanent residency. A September 2017 practice advisory from the American Immigration Council points to two decisions from the Ninth and Sixth Circuit, Ramirez v. Brown, 852 F.3d 954 (9th Cir. 2017) and Flores v. USCIS, 718 F.3d 548 (6th Cir. 2013), holding that TPS constitutes an admission for purpose of establishing eligibility for adjustment of status under INA 245(a).”
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Go on over to Dan Kowalski’s fabulous LexisNexis Immigration Community at the above link to get the rest.
Given the sad saga of the “Dreamers” — whose legalization should have been a “no brainer” for any group other than Trump and the GOP restrictionists — we can’t count on Congress coming to the Haitian and El Salvadoran TPSers “rescue” before their “final extension” expires. So, it’s critical for lawyers to help as many as possible of these great, hard-working folks achieve legal status under existing law before the window closes!
Sadly, one of the key cases cited by Cyrus in his full article, the BIA’s very helpful precedent decision in Matter of Arrabelly and Yerrabelly, 25 I&N Dec. 771 (BIA 2012) is rumored to be on AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions’s restrictionist “chopping block.” So, there’s no time to lose!
“Some 70% of Americans support a legislative solution that would allow DACA recipients who entered the U.S. illegally as children to stay in the United States—but the fight to pass that legislation has stalled so much that it led to the shutdown of the federal government. In part, that’s because some Republicans are making divisive and hardline demands about broader reforms to the immigration system in exchange for DACA protections.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen reportedly passed out a four-page memo at a meeting earlier this month that includes a bulleted list of the administration’s 46 “must haves” on immigration negotiations, according to Politico, which published the memo on Wednesday.
The site reports President Donald Trump had not seen the list of demands before the January 9 meeting and reportedly told attendees to ignore the list. But according to Politico, the memo is backed by White House chief of staff John Kelly and xenophobic White House senior adviser Stephen Miller—who has wielded major influence on the administration’s immigration policy—as well as Nielsen. It also echoes bills introduced in both the House and Senate.
The memo—titled “MUST HAVE’S: AUTHORITIES & FUNDING FOR IMMIGRATION DEAL”—includes some some well-known demands, like $18 billion to fund Trump’s wall, but it also lists dozens of lesser known “must haves.”
One is a call for immediate access to federal lands and expedited acquisitions of other properties to “eliminate certain geographical limitations” in order to find space for the border wall. This could mean long legal fights with Native American reservations along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The memo also calls for re-classifying overstaying a visa as a misdemeanor. Currently, that is handled as a civil violation in immigration court proceedings.
The memo’s “must haves” call for even more immigration agents than previously proposed, including 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, 8,000 new Border Patrol agents, 1,000 new ICE attorneys, and 370 new immigration judges. (Since the Border Patrol can’t even meet minimum staffing levels mandated by Congress, getting 8,000 extra agents seems unlikely.)
The administration also wants to make it tougher for unaccompanied children and asylum seekers to prove they have a legitimate credible fear of returning to the countries they fled. And when they can prove they’re being persecuted, the Trump administration now wants to send them to “safe third countries.”
The memo also includes all the other stuff we’ve heard about, like limiting “sanctuary cities,” ending family reunification programs (what Trump calls “chain migration”) and the elimination of the diversity visa lotteries.
To top it all off, the memo calls for making the legalization process even more expensive for immigrants who are authorized to be here legally, by imposing additional surcharges on visa, immigration, and border crossing fees.”
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Sick and tired of racist, “21st Century Know Nothings,” like Steven Miller and Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions running immigration policy, spineless “go along to get along” bureaucrats like Kirstjen Nielson in change of important Government immigration agencies, and restrictionist pols like Sen. Tom Cotton, Sen. David Perdue, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, and Rep. Raul Labrador blocking sensible, humane immigration reform.
That’s why Ballot Boxes were invented! Vote these evil, ignorant, clowns who are ruining America out of office at your earliest opportunity!
“The Justice Department on Wednesday escalated its attempt to crack down on so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions, threatening to subpoena 23 states, cities and other localities that have policies the department suspects might be unlawfully interfering with immigration enforcement.
President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have long promised to target places with policies friendly to those in the country illegally — warning they might withhold federal money from some and trying to tie grant eligibility to cooperation with federal authorities on immigration matters. The Justice Department had previously contacted the 23 jurisdictions threatened Wednesday, raising worries they might be in violation of a federal law barring places from enacting policies that block communication with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In a new letter, Bureau of Justice Assistance Director Jon Adler said officials remained “concerned” that the places had policies that violate the law, even after their previous responses. He asked for a new bevy of documents — including “any orders, directives, instructions, or guidance to your law enforcement employees” — and said the department would subpoena the materials if necessary.
. . . .
Among those jurisdictions in the crosshairs are Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles and the states of California, Illinois and Oregon. In total, the 23 jurisdictions received more than $39 million in fiscal year 2016 money from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program — which Sessions is now threatening to put at risk.
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Local leaders criticized the move. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D), president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said he would skip a planned White House meeting on infrastructure because of it. “An attack on one of our cities mayors who are following the constitution is an attack on all of us,” he said. His city was not among those targeted Wednesday.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio similarly wrote on Twitter he would skip the gathering after Trump’s Justice Department “decided to renew their racist assault on our immigrant communities. It doesn’t make us safer and it violates America’s core values.”
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) said officers in his city endeavor to build trust with residents to reduce public safety threats, and “you cannot do that if you drive a wedge between any immigrant community and the law enforcement.” He said Sessions’s threats were “amazing” in that the attorney general seemed to “disregard what the court system has already said uniformly from coast to coast.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “The White House has been very clear that we don’t support sanctuary cities. We support enforcing the law and following the law, and that is the Department of Justice’s job is to do exactly that, and if mayors have a problem with that, they should talk to Congress.”
Much of this crackdown has been stymied by the courts. A federal judge in California last year blocked Trump’s executive order to cut funding to such places, and a federal judge in Chicago ruled that Sessions had exceeded his authority in imposing new conditions, such as requiring recipients to give immigration authorities access to jails and 48 hours notice when suspected illegal immigrants are to be released. A federal judge in Philadelphia also ruled that city was in compliance with the law and blocked the Justice Department from withholding money. The Justice Department has appealed all those cases.
. . . .
Sessions has long sought to tie crime to immigration — recently releasing data, which experts said was misleading, that said 73 percent of terrorism convictions in the U.S. involved individuals from other countries. Determining a link between illegal immigration and other crime is statistically difficult to do, though some research shows that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than those who are native born. Civil liberties and immigration advocates, too, note there is irony in Sessions threatening to withhold law enforcement grants in the name of fighting crime.”
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Read the complete article at the link.
On paper, Gonzo isn’t actually in charge of the DHS. That job is nominally in the hands of Lightweight Sycophant Kirstjen Nielsen.
Remarkably, what Sessions is actually supposed to be doing is administering a fair and unbiased U.S. Immigration Court System in a manner that guarantees the legal and Constitutional Due Process rights of each individual brought before those courts by the DHS. Yeah, right! Sessions never met a migrant he didn’t despise and want railroaded out of the country as part of his White Nationalist agenda. And, he’s clearly “in bed” with DHS Enforcement. That’s why the U.S. Immigration Courts under Gonzo Apocalypto are well on their way to becoming mere “Whistle Stops on the Deportation Railway.”
There was a time when what is now ICE worked hard to gain community support and be considered part of the “legitimate law enforcement apparatus.” But, those days are long gone.
Trump, Gonzo, and Tom Homan are well on the way to making ICE the most hated, distrusted, and despised police force in America — the “New American Gestapo” if you will. The aforenamed “nasty clowns” will be gone someday. But, I’m not sure that ICE will ever be able to undo the damage they are doing to its reputation and standing in the law enforcement community.
As one or more Federal Judges has noted in enjoining Gonzo’s illegal overstepping, “once lost, community trust is not easily, if ever, regained by the police.”
Here’s a “foursome” of updates from the amazing and prolific Tal Kopan at CNN:
“Immigration talks: What’s next?
By Tal Kopan, CNN
As the dust settled Monday on an agreement to reopen the government, the path forward for immigration remained as murky as ever.
Democrats and Republicans who worked to break the impasse over the shutdown spun their vote to accept a slightly shorter continuing resolution as a victory because of a commitment to turn to immigration. But the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy and discussions on border security are undetermined.
“Well, there’s conversations already started, bipartisan conversation, about whether we can come up with a bipartisan Senate bill before February 8,” said Senate No. 2 Democrat Dick Durbin, who had been pursuing a DACA compromise for months.
The “hope,” he said, for those who pushed for a promise to move to immigration is that if a bill can pass the Senate with a strong bipartisan vote, President Donald Trump may endorse it and push the House to act.
Since Trump ended DACA, which protects young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children, lawmakers have worked to find a way preserve the popular program while meeting the President’s and Republicans’ demands for border security and immigration enforcement changes along with it.
The White House on Monday continued to meet with Republican senators, many of whom are conservative hardliners, as it has remained opposed to bipartisan proposals that have been floated thus far.
Still, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pledged Monday to consider an immigration bill, including DACA, sometime soon.
“it would be my intention to take up legislation here in the Senate that would address DACA, border security, and, related issues as well as disaster relief, defense funding, health care, and other important matters,” McConnell said Monday, saying the process would have “a level playing field” and be “fair to all sides.”
After a brief weekend shutdown, Congress on Monday voted to fund government until February 8 — which will be the new deadline for any agreement between the parties on immigration and other outstanding issues. Absent agreement, McConnell said, the Senate will move to an open debate.
That was enough to convince a number of Democrats to support the funding bill — but they all indicated they expected to see the promise delivered.
Exclusive: Republican Study Committee pushes Ryan for vote on Goodlatte bill
By Tal Kopan, CNN
As Senate moderates pushed their leader to make a commitment to have a bipartisan immigration vote, House conservatives on Tuesday were pushing their leadership to tack to the right on the issue.
The Republican Study Committee, an influential group of more than 150 Republicans, on Tuesday will announce it has voted to support an immigration bill from conservative hardliners and will push for a vote on the legislation, setting up a potential showdown between the House and Senate on the issue.
The nearly two-dozen-strong steering committee of the RSC voted to make the decision to back the bill, which also would extend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, from committee and subcommittee chairmen Bob Goodlatte, Mike McCaul, Raul Labrador and Martha McSally, and warned against cutting a deal with Democrats behind conservatives’ backs.
“The Securing America’s Future Act is the framework to strengthen border security, increase interior enforcement and resolve the DACA situation,” the steering committee said in a statement. “We believe an eventual stand alone floor vote is essential. We oppose any process for a DACA solution that favors a backroom deal with Democrats over regular order in the House.”
Scalise: No guarantee House GOP will consider Senate immigration bill
By Tal Kopan, CNN
The House isn’t planning to take up what the Senate might pass on immigration, the House Republican whip said Monday, setting a potential showdown between the two chambers on the issue.
House Republican Whip Steve Scalise told reporters Monday afternoon that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pledge on the Senate floor to turn to immigration in February — a key part of ending the government shutdown — held little weight on the House side.
“There were no commitments made in the House,” Scalise said.
“I think we’ve been very clear that any final solution has to include funding for a wall and we’ve been working closely with President Trump on that,” he added.
Scalise also ruled out “amnesty,” though he wasn’t clear on how he defined it and whether it would mean a pathway to citizenship for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, a program that protected young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children that Trump has decided to end.
Feel like there’s something familiar about what’s happening in the immigration debate?
You’re probably not alone.
See my latest story.
Thanks for reading!
Tal
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/23/politics/house-senate-showdown-immigration/index.html
Senate-House divide on immigration in spotlight after shutdown fight
By Tal Kopan, CNN
For veterans of immigration reform, it’s déja vu all over again. And it could spell another disappointment for lawmakers who have long sought a compromise on the issue.
In the wake of the government shutdown, which Democrats in the Senate agreed to end in exchange for a vague commitment to debate immigration on the Senate floor, reality is dawning that the House is taking a much different approach — and neither party in either chamber has figured out a plan to reconcile the differences.
It’s leaving lawmakers and staff feeling the echoes of 2013, when the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration bill that died when the House did not take up that bill or any other that would be similar. Vermont Sen. Pat Leahy, who called passing that Senate bill one of his “proudest moments,” said it died in the House because of an informal rule against bringing legislation without the support of a majority of the Republican conference, and it just might again for the same reason.
“Which must have given Speaker Hastert some pleasure, probably, sitting in his prison cell serving his sentence for (charges related to covering up allegations of) child molestation, to see they’re still following the sacred Dennis Hastert Rule,” Leahy said. “You’ve got to have members in both parties who are more interested in substance than soundbites.”
Signs of Trouble
Hours after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on the floor Monday that he intended to hold an open debate on immigration in the Senate, even if no broad agreement is reached by the time government funding runs out, the House majority whip poured cold water on the notion that his chamber would follow suit.
Rep. Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters Monday afternoon that McConnell’s pledge on the Senate floor to turn to immigration in February held little weight on the House side.
“There were no commitments made in the House,” Scalise said.
In fact, even as a bipartisan group of senators is pushing McConnell to find a bipartisan compromise that can pass the Senate, where Republicans hold only hold a 51-49 majority and 60 votes are needed to advance legislation, Republicans on the House side are pushing their leadership to seek as conservative a bill as possible.
The Republican Study Committee, a group of more than 150 House Republicans, on Tuesday announced it would back a hardline immigration bill that has a rough path to pass the House, let alone the Senate. The move follows efforts by the House Freedom Caucus, a smaller group of vocal conservatives, that extracted a promise from leadership to whip the bill in exchange for their votes on government funding.
“Do I empathize with (leadership)? I do,” said RSC Chairman Rep. Mark Walker of North Carolina in an interview about the decision Monday. “You have so many factions in the House … so you’ve got a lot to wrestle with. At the same time, when you have a bill like this that has the support of a majority of the conference, I believe this is the foundational piece to move forward.”
Scalise said that any bill that passed the House would need to include funding for a border wall and could not include “amnesty.” But Scalise wasn’t clear on how he defined that and whether it would mean a pathway to citizenship for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, a program that protected young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children that Trump has decided to end. A version that could pass the upper chamber would almost certainly require a pathway to citizenship.
“Ultimately, we’ve got to see how all sides can come together,” Scalise said. “Let’s see if the Senate can come together with something that President Trump can support. And I think there’s a deal to be made, but in my mind it would not include amnesty and has to include border security and funding of a wall.”
Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina told CNN on Monday that the House should pass something “as conservative as it possibly can be” and then go to conference with whatever the Senate passes, but he said the bill “can’t start in the Senate.”
Paths forward
The disconnect has the potential to lead to an impasse that can’t be breached without the President’s firm support of a path forward.
One veteran House Democratic aide struck a pessimistic note about the situation, especially after the failed attempt in the Senate to push the issue forward through the shutdown tactics.
“It is really hard to see a way out of it right now. I’m hopeful, still, but,” the aide said, trailing off. “It’s not strategically bad to go Senate first, but it’s bad when that’s your only strategy and you don’t have a House strategy other than, ‘Well, we’ll magically get the Senate bill through or the House will feel forced to do it.'”
A senior House GOP aide expressed frustration that the Senate side was taking the same approach as in 2013.
“It’s the same mistake they’ve made every single time,” the aide said of the Senate’s plan. “It’s like Groundhogs Day. Somehow, include the House.”
But that seemed to be the hope, if the President could be engaged on it.
“Get a big vote in the Senate and have the President support it, I think that’s it,” said Arizona GOP Sen. Jeff Flake, who has pushed for a compromise, when asked by CNN on Tuesday how to get a bill through the House.
Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford, who is working on immigration in the Senate now but was in the House during the last effort, said the path will require White House leadership:
“The best thing that could happen is the White House put out a proposal and then try to work with House and Senate Republicans and say this is where our boundaries are and then try move from there.”
The worst plan, said Florida Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart on CNN on Tuesday, would be to work in isolation.
“The concept that either a House bill can be shoved through the Senate or a Senate bill can be shoved through the House just doesn’t tend to work,” Diaz-Balart said. “It has to be bipartisan, with buy-in from the White House, otherwise there is nothing doing, and bicameral.”
CNN’s Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.
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Well, we’ll see what happens. Sometimes, the sun comes out just when things look the darkest. But, it sure sounds like the House GOP is dead set on “torpedoing” any reasonable DACA compromise that might be acceptable to the Dems and a bipartisan group of Senators. But, they also could just be setting a “marker” for future negotiations with the Senate, if things ever get that far. Gotta win elections to change policies! And, as the Dems just learned, the “leverage” of a USG shutdown has its limits, particularly for a party that generally believes in Government and what it can accomplish. Stay tuned!
He’s speeding up their hearings, and if that leads to expelling exemplary immigrants on whose paperwork the government is sitting—well, that’s tough.
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department
This could be Jeff Sessions’s year.
Not that he wasn’t busy in 2017, a year marked by his rescinding Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), attacking sanctuary cities, reinstating debtors’ prisons, and cracking down on recreational marijuana. Indeed, over these last few months Sessions appears to have been working with the single-minded focus of a man who reportedly came within inches of losing his job in July after falling into President Trump’s bad graces for recusing himself from the Mueller probe.
But 2018 will provide him his best chance yet at Trumpian redemption.
Sessions has long railed against the United States’ “broken” asylum system and the massive backlog of immigration court cases, which has forced immigrants to suffer unprecedented wait times and has put a significant strain on court resources. But the attorney general’s appetite for reform has now grown beyond pushing for more judges and a bigger budget, both largely bipartisan solutions. The past few months have seen Sessions begin to attempt to assert his influence over the work of immigration courts (which, unlike other federal courts, are part of the Executive Branch) and on diminishing the legal protections commonly used by hundreds of thousands of immigrants—developments that have alarmed immigration judges, attorneys, and immigrant advocacy groups alike.
Earlier this month, Sessions announced that he would be reviewing a decades-old practice used by immigration judges and the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals to shelve cases without making a final ruling. Described by judges as a procedural tool for prioritizing cases and organizing their case dockets, the practice—“administrative closure”—also provides immigrants a temporary reprieve from deportation while their cases remain in removal proceedings. Critics argue that administrative closure, which became far more frequent in the later years of the Obama administration, creates a quasi-legal status for immigrants who might otherwise be deported.
There are currently around 350,000 administratively closed cases, according to according to the American Bar Association’s ABA Journal.
Should Sessions decide to eliminate administrative closures—a decision many observers describe as imminent—those cases could be thrown into flux. The move would be in line with previous statements from various figures in the Trump administration and executive orders signed by the president himself—namely, that no immigrant is safe from deportation; no population is off the table.
Beyond creating chaos for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, the premature recalendaring of cases could also lead to erroneous deportations. For instance, in the case of unaccompanied minors applying for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a humanitarian protection granted by Citizenship and Immigration Services, an untimely return to court could be the difference between remaining or being ordered to leave the country. Even if a minor has already been approved by a state judge to apply for a green card, there is currently a two-year visa backlog for special visa applicants from Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras and more than a one-year backlog for those from from Mexico. Administrative closures allow these children to avoid deportation while they wait in line for a visa to become available.
But if judges can no longer close a case, they will either have to grant a string of continuances, a time-consuming act that requires all parties (the judge, defendant, and government attorney) to show up to court repeatedly, or simply issue an order of removal—even if the immigrant has a winning application sitting on a desk in Citizenship and Immigration Services. Under the Trump administration, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has been actively filing to recalendar cases of non-criminals that had been administratively closed for months, including those of children whose applications had already been approved. Now Sessions, who as a senator zealously opposed immigration reforms that would benefit undocumented immigrants, could recalendar them all.
Unshelving hundreds of thousands of cases would also further bog down an already towering backlog of approximately 650,000 immigration court cases, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse—a policy result that at first seems antithetical to Sessions’s rhetoric about cutting the backlog and raising efficiency. That is unless, as some suggest, the backlog and efficiency were never really his primary concerns to begin with.
“When [Sessions] says he wants to decrease the court backlog and hire more immigration judges, what he really means is he wants more deportation orders, whatever the cost,” says Heidi Altman, director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center.
Removing a judge’s ability to close a case would be the second in a one-two punch aimed at knocking down avenues of relief for cases that remain in the system for long periods of time.
Sessions’s decision to review administrative closure surprised few who had been following his rhetoric over the past few weeks. In a December memo detailing plans to slash the backlog, the attorney general said that he anticipated “clarifying certain legal matters in the near future that will remove recurring impediments to judicial economy and the timely administration of justice.” The Justice Department had already largely done away with allowing prosecutors to join in motions to administratively close a case that didn’t fall within its enforcement priorities. Removing a judge’s ability to close a case would be the second in a one-two punch aimed at knocking down avenues of relief for cases that remain in the system for long periods of time.
And it’s unlikely that Sessions will stop there. As attorney general, he is free to review legal precedents for lower immigration courts. In changing precedential rulings, he could do away with a multitude of other legal lifelines essential to immigrants and their attorneys.
. . . .
“Administrative closure makes a good starting point for Sessions, because the courts likely won’t be able stop it,” says Paul Schmidt, a former immigration judge and former head of the Board of Immigration Appeals. “Administrative closure was a tool created by the Justice Department and therefore it can be dismantled by the Justice Department.”
“After all, the bad thing about the immigration courts is that they belong to the attorney general,” Schmidt adds.
Unlike other federal judges, immigration judges are technically considered Justice Department employees. This unique status as a judicial wing of the executive branch has left them open to threats of politicization. In October, it was revealed that the White House was planning on adding metrics on the duration and quantity of cases adjudicated by immigration judges to their performance reviews, effectively creating decision quotas. A spokeswoman for the National Association of Immigration Judges described the proposal as a worrying encroachment on judicial independence. “Immigration judge morale is at an all time low,” says Dana Marks, former president of the association and a judge for more than 30 years. Other federal judges are not subject to any such performance evaluations.
It’s no coincidence that a review of administrative closure was announced just a few months after it was discovered that the Justice Department was considering imposing quotas on judges. Streamlining deportations has proven an elusive goal, even for Sessions: Deportations in 2017 were down from the previous year, according to DHS numbers. Meanwhile, arrests surged—up 42 percent from the same period in 2016. Flooding already overwhelmed immigration courts with even more cases would certainly cause chaos in the short-term, but wouldn’t necessarily lead to deportations by itself. If an end to administrative closures is paired with decision quotas on immigration judges, however, a surge in deportations seems inevitable.”
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Read Manuel’s complete article at the above link.
As I’ve noted before, Due Process clearly is “on the run” at the U.S. Immigration Courts. It will be up to the “New Due Process Army” and other advocates to take a stand against Sessions’s plans to erode Constitutional Due Process and legal protections for immigrants of all types. And don’t think that some U.S. citizens, particularly Blacks, Latinos, and Gays, aren’t also “in his sights for denial of rights.” An affront to the rights of the most vulnerable in America should be taken seriously for what it is — an attack on the rights of all of us as Americans! Stand up for Due Process before it’s too late!
Offended by the ‘sanctuary state’ legislation, Trump administration petulantly looks for payback.
State and local governments in California rightly recognize that it’s up to the federal government to determine which people living in the country illegally ought to be tracked down and deported. It’s no more the responsibility of local cops to run immigrants to ground than it is for them to sniff out people cheating on their federal income taxes.
There is an important public safety reason for keeping local police and sheriff’s deputies out of the deportation business. If people who are living in the country illegally come to view local law enforcement officers as just another set of immigration agents, they will be far less likely to report crimes or cooperate with investigators. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said last year that fewer Latinos in the city were reporting rapes, spousal abuse and other crimes for fear of being deported under the Trump administration’s policy of stepped-up arrests.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration has made no secret of its disdain for state and local governments that refuse to use their own resources to help Washington enforce federal immigration law. Twice this month, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Thomas Homan said they have asked the Justice Department whether local officials who don’t report residents who are in the country illegally can be charged under the federal law against harboring “aliens.”
Homan also has warned that he will “significantly” increase ICE’s presence in California to ramp up arrests in neighborhoods and on streets as payback for the California Values Act (the “sanctuary state” law adopted last year), which denied ICE agents access to jailsunless they have a warrant. “California better hold on tight,” he said in a Fox News interview. “They’re about to see a lot more special agents, a lot more deportation officers in the state of California.”
That’s not enforcing immigration law. That’s coercion by the federal government to try to compel local officials to, in effect, do their jobs for them. It is also the kind of thuggishness we’d expect from someone like Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, not the president of the United States.
Homan also argued that without the cooperation of local law enforcement, “violent criminal aliens” are being released back onto the streets rather than being deported. “If the politicians in California don’t want to protect their communities, then ICE will,” Homan said.
That’s preposterous. ICE has access to databases that reveal who is incarcerated and when they are scheduled for release. If “violent criminal aliens” reenter their communities, it’s because ICE failed to identify them while in custody and pick them up upon release from prison or jail.
Now comes word that ICE may be planning a massive sweep in Northern California targeting as many as 1,500 immigrants, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. That would be little more than showboating. According to the best estimates, California has about 2.35 million immigrants who are living in the state illegally. No matter how hard he tries, Homan is not going to arrest away that problem. Rather, such draconian enforcement actions — and have no doubt, the impetus comes from President Trump — will do little more than disrupt families and communities.
Just last week, the government deportedprosecutorial discretion Jorge Garcia, 39, who was living in the country illegally but was otherwise a productive and law-abiding member of the community. For years, the federal government had exercised not to enforce a deportation order against him. Garcia arrived in the U.S. as a 10-year-old, grew up in the Detroit area and is married to an American citizen with whom he has two American children. What possible good comes from breaking apart that family?
It’s deplorable that the government is pursuing such a heartless and heavy-handed approach to enforcement in service of a system that is hopelessly broken. A wise president would pursue truly dangerous immigrants who are here illegally, find ways to keep new arrivals out (and ensure visa holders leave when they are supposed to) and work with Congress for a humane resolution to the fate of more than 11 million people who have lived in the U.S. for, on average, more than a decade. But wisdom and this president are opposing forces.”
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For the Trumpsters, it’s never been about “smart,” “efficient,” or “effective” law enforcement. No, it’s always been about White Nationalism, pandering to an extremist base, and turning ICE into more or less of an “internal security police” to terrorize primarily Latino, but also other ethnic and minority, communities. That’s why Congress should “Just Say No” to the Administration’s outrageous requests for yet more DHS enforcement agents (when they aren’t even able to fill their existing vacancies with qualified candidates).
After a few years when he had earned the nickname “Deporter-in-Chief,” Obama pivoted to refocus immigration authorities—in effect, a parallel criminal justice system—on migrants considered dangerous, and created safeguards for those brought here as children. He visited a prison, endorsed congressional reform of mandatory-minimum sentences, and spoke empathetically of the Black Lives Matter movement. He nominated judges regarded as progressives.
In less than a year, President Trump demolished Obama’s legacy.
“I think all roads in Trump’s rhetoric and Sessions’s rhetoric sort of lead to immigration,” said Ames Grawert, an attorney in the left-leaning Brennan Center’s Justice Program who has been studying the administration’s ideology. “I think that’s going to make it even harder for people trying to advance criminal justice reform because that’s bound up in the president’s mind, in the attorney general’s mind, as an issue that they feel very, very passionately on—restricting immigration of all sorts.”
Here are nine ways Trump has transformed the landscape of criminal justice, just one tumultuous year into his presidency.
He changed the tone
Words matter, and Trump’s words were a loud, often racially charged departure from the reformist talk of being “smart on crime” and making police “guardians, not warriors.” His response to a New York City terrorist truck attack last year reflects the new tone:
“We… have to come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now,” Trump said. “They’ll go through court for years. And at the end, they’ll be—who knows what happens. We need quick justice and we need strong justice—much quicker and much stronger than we have right now. Because what we have right now is a joke and it’s a laughingstock. And no wonder so much of this stuff takes place.”
The president’s rhetoric seemed to trickle down. Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, adopted what many call “Trumpism” during his fall campaign, vilifying Democrat Ralph Northam as being soft on crime. His ads accused Democrats of restoring the voting rights of a child pornography collector—targeting one man out of the 168,000 former felons who had had their voting rights restored.
In a hotly contested Alabama senate race, Trump accused the Democrat—a prosecutor who had won convictions against two Klansmen who helped plot the 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls—of being “soft on crime.”
While both of the Republicans lost, prisoner advocates worry the discourse has re-sparked irrational fears and will spook conservatives who have in recent years joined the reform movement. And Trump has not limited his target set to Democrats. He has attacked members of his own party, like Arizona senator Jeff Flake, as “weak on crime and border.”
He wants to keep the “mass” in mass incarceration
Of all the moves Sessions made in 2017, none brought as much consternation from all sides of the political spectrum—from the Koch brothers and Rand Paul to the ACLU and Cory Booker—as this: He revoked the Obama-era instruction to federal prosecutors to be more flexible in charging low-level, nonviolent offenders. Under this policy, federal prosecutions had declined for five consecutive years and, in 2016, were at their lowest level in nearly two decades, according to the Pew Research Center.
Sessions ordered prosecutors to seek the maximum punishment available, prompting widespread fear of a return to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the federal prisons filled with drug offenders. In what it is calling a budget cut, the Bureau of Prisons has also ordered the closure of several halfway houses, which can extend the length of time soon-to-be released prisoners are spending behind bars.
The administration has also cast doubt on the prospect of legislation aimed at reducing mandatory-minimum sentences and encouraging diversion to drug treatment and mental health care. Governors and advocates who boast of success at reducing state prison populations—notably in red states—met with the president and son-in-law Jared Kushner on January 11 to plead for similar measures in the federal system, but the discussion was largely confined to rehabilitating the incarcerated rather than incarcerating fewer people in the first place. While sentencing reform seems to be fading, there appears to be progress toward a Kushner-led crusade that calls on churches and private businesses to mentor prisoners upon release and help them find jobs and housing. Trump may also look to cut regulations such as licensing requirements that prohibit applicants with felony records from some lines of work.
He made immigration synonymous with crime
Perhaps the most consistent theme of his young administration is that immigrants, especially immigrants of color, are a danger. From the Mexican “rapists” to the “shithole countries” of the third world, the president has played to a base that believes—evidence to the contrary—that immigrants bring crime and displace American workers.
Deportation orders have surged. The Department of Justice said in early December that total orders of removal and voluntary departures were up 34 percent compared with the same time in 2016. Actual removals have not kept pace—in fact, they were at their lowest level since 2006, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University—but it is clear the Trump administration is ramping up ways to deport undocumented immigrants.
The declared ending of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was met with wide consternation from Republicans and Democrats, and is being fought out in courts and bipartisan political negotiations. Trump has given mixed signals as to whether the DACA recipients, brought into the US illegally as children, get to stay, and at what political price. But in the meantime he has ordered an end to protection of refugees from Haiti (at least 60,000) and El Salvador (at least 200,000) who were granted temporary legal status under a bill signed by the first President Bush. And just the other day Sessions limited the power of immigration judges to close complicated cases, a move that could lead to thousands more deportations.
The immigrants-as-menace meme recurs in the argument over “sanctuary cities,” where officials have declined to help in the roundup of the undocumented. Sessions has threatened to withhold federal policing funds from uncooperative venues, so far unsuccessfully.”
“Donald Trump doesn’t need to actually call me “nigger.”
The Central Park Five didn’t need to read it in that ad he published in 1989 calling for their deaths, nor did the tenants in his housing developments who sued him for discrimination in the ’70s. The Mexicans whom Trump branded as “rapists” surely got the gist, as did the Muslims whom he banned from traveling here. It went unsaid when he shared willfully ignorant memes about black crime and complimented the neo-Nazis who terrorized Charlottesville. We hear him loud and clear. It doesn’t matter so much whether you are called a “nigger” when you are being treated like one.
Case in point, last Thursday. “Why do we want these people from all these shithole countries here?” Trump reportedly asked a group of lawmakers meeting with him in the Oval Office about immigration. He’d just finished denigrating Haiti and African nations. To drive home the racism of it all, he added, “We should have more people from places like Norway.” The following day, Trump denied making the comments — but Sen. Dick Durbin, a Illinois Democrat who was in the meeting, said the reports got it right. “He said these hate-filled things and he said them repeatedly,” Durbin said.
A year into Trump’s presidency, we still handle these incidents horribly. Political junkies get hemmed up about which Republican issued the inevitably soft rebuke. Earnest defenders try to prove that these poor, black countries are really great places, as if that should matter. Engage on that level if you wish, but other than perhaps “Who hurt you, Mr. President?” it is past time to ask more urgent questions.
Can a person perform these kinds of racist acts and still function as president of the United States in today’s day and age? How much does trying to bring about a white ethno-state get in the way of doing the actual job? Can you be the birther-in-chief and still be effective as the commander-in-chief? No.
Governing as an open racist certainly isn’t as easy for Trump as it may have been for his hero, Andrew Jackson. Two things stand in his way: the pragmatic functions of the job, and the reality of the country he governs.
These are questions about effectiveness, not sentiment. It’s important that we have a president who functions well, no matter the party, and being a leader who acts like Trump does has proven consequences. He gets in his own way: Courts have blocked his orders, including his efforts to cancel DACA and enact his beloved Muslim ban, thanks to his biased statements. Eleven inmates at Guantanamo are making a similar argument now, since Trump has said he never wants anyone to be released. But even in a systemically racist nation, does racist behavior make the job harder?
Pairing this new barb with the president’s earlier remark about Nigerian visa recipients never wanting to “go back to their huts,” Trump has casually tossed aside any hope of meaningful dialogue and cooperation with industrialized and developing African countries alike — likely ceding that diplomatic space to China and other nations who take Africa seriously. He’s slandered Haitians again needlessly, after previously describing them as “all having AIDS.” If we’ve learned anything about his modus operandi, he will randomly target still other countries with his ire. Moreover, his racist barbs shed a new light on his government’s negligence in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. That’s how he treats black and brown folks who are American citizens. You can see why he wouldn’t think twice about slurring those he considers foreign invaders.
Being a functional modern American president requires effectively managing the nation’s relations with other countries; it also requires a deep investment in the wellbeing of one’s own citizens. On that note, consider what James Baldwin said in aWGBH interview in the spring of 1963. Answering a question about whether he was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of America, the prophetic authorsaid “the future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country.” The two fortunes are insoluble, he said. This is the standard by which I judge President Trump and his forebears, above all others. People of color in this country, no matter their national origin, are as much a part of America as he is. Any objective analysis would conclude that improving life for us black folks is commensurate with and key to an improving economy. Is this president governing to truly try to lift all boats in the rising tide?
I never expected him to ever try to meet that standard, let alone try. Even worse, Trump’s staff remains actively complicit. Why else would they tell CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that they predict the president’s “shithole” slur would resonate well with the same base that loved it when he cursed out kneeling NFL players protesting racial injustice?
That rubbish may please his adoring audience, but it is anathema to what the presidency has represented and how it has functioned. If Baldwin is right, if America goes as well as black people go, then how do moments like “shithole” help him govern? The DACA mess is a good example — a bipartisan deal is necessary to keep the government running, and few congressional representatives want to be seen negotiating with known racists. And even on other issues that seem less partisan ― take infrastructure, for example ― Democrats and many Republicans are trying to avoid Trump. Even if the president himself believes that overt racism plays well politically, the work Americans need to get done doesn’t get done.
Trump’s casual racism may have brought him more than electoral success 100 or even 50 years ago, but the country he and his voters want to make “great” again has undergone some irreversible changes since then. Trump is using Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, as a goon squad in his effort to cosmetically whiten the country. Eliminating Temporary Protective Status for Salvadorans, Haitians, and other brown andblack people he considers expendable, the very policy change that prompted his “shithole” remark, is another tool.
The recent comment may be the clearest example of Trump manifesting his personal biases in policy. But even if he destroys thousands of families and kills businesses in the process, he can’t kill or deport them all, as he promised. Not to give a racist advice, but going the white nationalist route with a dwindling base is an eventual loser. That he looks at the America of today and thinks that outright white nationalism could do more than win him an election — with the help of vote suppressors here and abroad — is curious, to say the least. It’s a testimony to how little Trump understands about the job he has and the country he runs.
If Trump cared one half a damn about being an effective leader for anyone who isn’t rich, white and male, he’d listen. But since white Americans are the only ones who seem to have his ear, I’ll share one other important thing Baldwin offered in that same 1963 interview in the hopes that change can come from below. The author laid out, in his way, the path for white Americans to understand their common journey with Americans of color. “What white people have to do,” Baldwin said, “is to try to find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place.” He added, “If I’m not a nigger” — just to be clear, he was not, nor am I — “and you, the white people, invented him, then you’ve got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on … whether or not it’s able to ask that question.”
Donald Trump so badly needs a “nigger.” The people need a real president. We are both out of luck.
Jamil Smith is a journalist and radio host. He covered the 2016 election for MTV News and, in addition to his HuffPost column, is a contributing opinion writer for the Los Angeles Times.”
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Trump, Sessions, and the GOP white Nationalists are definitely moving the country in the wrong direction. The real question, posed by many commentators, is how long, if ever, it will take to repair the damage they are doing to American democracy and our standing in the world. Interestingly, most world leaders see Trump for exactly what he is — an out of his depth clown who is working hard to make American irrelevant in the world — politically first, and eventually, perhaps economically as well.
“Lost in the shitstorm over “shithole” was another equally damning example of President Donald Trump’s blatant racism and sexism. It was an outward display of a mindset that in many ways has paved the way for the government shutdown we’re facing now.
Last week, NBC News reported that last fall, the president of the United States asked a career intelligence analyst “Where are you from?” She responded, “New York,” and that should have ended the conversation. It didn’t.
He asked again, and she responded, “Manhattan.”
For those who have initiated a similar conversation, if you ask twice and you don’t get the answer you are fishing for ― just drop it. Take a hint. We don’t want to go there with you.
Trump, clearly oblivious to this social cue, follows up and asks where “your people” are from.
Finally relenting, the analyst answered that her parents are Korean. At this point, Trump, through his ignorance, has robbed this woman of all the hard work, intellect and skill she has invested into her profession by placing some artificial value on her (and her family’s) ethnicity.
Where she or her parents are from has zero bearing on her job or value. It’s one thing if someone volunteers information about their culture, background, family and upbringing. But until they do, it’s none of your business and should have no role in how you judge, evaluate and view them as professionals or human beings.
Taking it even further, Trump somehow manages to combine sexism with racism by asking why the “pretty Korean lady” wasn’t negotiating with North Korea. The insane thing about this statement is that I’m 100 percent certain that in Trump’s mind, he was paying her a compliment.
What he did was demean and insult a woman who was simply trying to do her job.
Trump owes this “pretty Korean lady” an apology for his ignorant, racist and sexist comments. I don’t think Trump realizes or cares about the consequences that his tone, tenor and words have had in the lives of people who don’t look like him.
Pretty much my entire life, I’ve been asked (primarily by white people) the question that I imagine every “Asian-looking” person cringes at inside: “Where are you from?”
In most cases, I’m certain that the person asking this is not consciously discriminatory, but rather is just completely ignorant of how annoying this question is to people who look like me. Like the career intelligence analyst attempted to do with Trump, I answered the question by saying “New York” or “California” ― where I had spent my childhood and formative years. Inevitably comes the dreaded follow-up: “No, I mean what is your background? Chinese or Japanese?
The puzzled looks I would receive when I responded: “German and Italian” were priceless but also revealing. I simply did not fit into their preordained stereotypical worldviews.
My name is Kurt (German) Bardella (Italian), and I am adopted.
For most of you out there who ask this question of people who look or sound “different,” you’re probably just genuinely curious and mean no harm. You’re just trying to start conversation.
But the case of Trump and the career intelligence professional reveals something much more offensive. It was a glimpse into the racially charged worldview that Trump subscribes to,a worldview that has infected the Republican Party and now led us to a government shutdown.
It’s the same worldview that led to his vulgarly demeaning the lives of would-be immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and nations in Africa. It’s the same worldview that has him obsessed with building a border wall to keep “bad hombres” out of the United States. And it’s the same worldview that drove him to end DACA.
Trump and his Republican enablers are so fixated on enacting these outwardly racist policies that they are willing to preside over a government shutdown to get them.
The shutdown showdown unfolding right now is about much more than government funding. It is about two different portraits representing the American identity. The Trump-GOP viewpoint sees our country as one that is, first and foremost, Caucasian. The Democratic perspective sees a diverse nation of many cultures, backgrounds, languages and customs.
That’s what we are fighting about. It may be more politically expedient for Democrats to back down, but with our national identity hanging in the balance, this is the time to take a stand.
Kurt Bardella was born in Seoul, South Korea, and adopted by two Americans from Rochester, New York, when he was three months old. He currently lives in Arlington, Virginia.
This piece is part of HuffPost’s brand-new Opinion section. For more information on how to pitch us an idea, go here.
Kurt Bardella is a media strategist who previously worked as a spokesperson for Breitbart News, the Daily Caller, Rep. Darrell Issa, Rep. Brian Bilbray and Senator Olympia Snowe.”
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One had only to listen to Senator Tom Cotton on “Meet the Press” yesterday to see how true Bardella’s commentary is. Cotton lied, obfuscated, and generally avoided answering Moderator Chuck Todd’s questions.
Then, he let loose with his biggest fabrication: that somehow legalizing the Dreamers and eventually allowing their parents to legally immigrate would “do damage” to the U.S. which would have to be “offset” by harsher, more restrictive immigration laws! So, in allowing the Dreamers, who are here doing great things for America, and somewhere down the road their parents, some of whom are also here and are also doing great things for America, to become part of our society is a justification for more racially-motivated restrictions on future immigration. What a total crock!
Cotton said:
But it gives them legal status. That’s an amnesty, by adjusting their status from illegal to legal, no matter what you call it. It didn’t give money to build any new border barriers, only to repair past border barriers. It didn’t do anything to stop chain migration. Here’s what the president has been clear on. Here’s what I and so many Senate Republicans have been clear on: we’re willing to protect this population that is in the DACA program. If we do that, though, it’s going to have negative consequences: first, it’s going to lead to more illegal immigration with children. That’s why the security enforcement measures are so important. And second, it means that you’re going to create an entire new population, through chain migration, that can bring in more people into this country that’s not based on their skills and education and so forth. That’s why we have to address chain migration as well. That is a narrow and focused package that should have the support of both parties.
Meanwhile, on Meet the Press, GOP Latino leader Al Cardenas hit the nail on the head in charging Cotton and others in the GOP with a disturbing “lack of empathy” for Dreamers and other, particularly Hispanic, immigrants:
Cardenas said:
“Excuse me, that’s right. And you know, look, for the Republican Party the president had already tested DACA. The base seemed to be okay with it. Now that things have changed to the point where this bill passes, and it should, Democrats are going to take all the credit for DACA. And we’re taking none. Stupid politics. Number two, the second part that makes us stupid is the fact that no one in our party is saying, “Look, I’m not for this bill but I’ve got a lot of empathy for these million family.” Look, I can see why somebody would not be for this policy-wise. I don’t understand it. But I can respect it. But there’s no empathy. When I saw the secretary of homeland security in front of a Senate saying she’d never met a Dreamer. And yet she’s going to deport a million people, break up all these families. Where is the empathy in my party? People, you know the number one important thing in America when somebody’s asking for a presidential candidate’s support is, “Do you care…Does he care about me?” How do we tell 50 million people that we care about them when there’s not a single word of empathy about the fate of these million people.”
Here’s the complete transcript of “Meet the Press” from yesterday, which also included comments from Democratic Senator Dick Durbin and others. Check it out for yourself, if you didn’t see it.
Unlike Cotton and his restrictionist colleagues, I actually had “Dreamer-type” families come before me in Immigration Court. The kids eventually had obtained legal status, probably through marriage to a U.S. citizen, naturalized and petitioned for their parents.
Not only had the kids been successful, but the parents who were residing here were without exception good, hard-working, tax-paying “salt of the earth” folks. They had taken big-time risks to find a better life for their children, made big contributions to the U.S. by doing work that others were unavailable or unwilling to do, and asked little in return except to be allowed to live here in peace with their families.
Most will still working, even if they were beyond what we might call “retirement age.” They didn’t have fat pensions and big Social Security checks coming.
Many were providing essential services like child care, elder care, cleaning, cooking, fixing, or constructing. Just the type of folks our country really needs.
They weren’t “free loaders” as suggested by the likes of Cotton and his restrictionist buddies. Although I don’t remember that any were actually “rocket scientists,” they were doing the type of honest, important, basic work that America depends on for the overall success and prosperity of our society. Exactly the opposite of the “no-skill — no-good” picture painted by Cotton and the GOP restrictionists. I’d argue that our country probably has a need for more qualified health care and elder care workers than “rocket scientists” for which there is much more limited market! But, there is no reason se can’t have both with a sane immigration policy.
Famous Chef Jose Andres writes in the Washington Post:
“Washington is the kind of city where you can learn a lot by listening to the conversations over dinner. At my restaurants, I have been lucky to join the conversation with presidents and first ladies, senators and ambassadors.
But right now, you can hear the most important conversations if you walk past the tables out front and into my kitchens. There — amid the din of knives chopping, plates clattering and chefs calling out a staccato stream of food orders — you’ll hear from people who look and sound a lot like America. English predominates, but you’ll also catch Haitian Creole, French and Spanish. Natural-born citizens and naturalized citizens like me work alongside those on temporary visas. I believe that all these voices make us stronger, more creative and courageous, less complacent and fearful.
Manuel is one of those people in the kitchen who prepare food for the powerful. (I am using only his first name here, to protect him from the threats many immigrants are now facing.) He was born in El Salvador, in a small town called Santa Rosa de Lima. He came to the United States in 1997 and, after a massive earthquake in his native country, was granted temporary protected status (TPS) in 2001. When immigration officials asked how he came into the United States, he didn’t lie about his walk across the border. “Matamoros,” he said.
It was also in 2001 that Manuel started as a cook at my Spanish restaurant, Jaleo. I have come to know him as someone who works hard, pays his taxes and is raising his children — a son with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status and two American-born children — to respect the country that gave him so much. But now, his family’s future is in doubt. “I just want to work to be able to send my two American-born children to university; I want them to have a better life than mine,” he told me.
The Trump administration’s decision to revoke protective status for Salvadorans (affecting 200,000 immigrants living in the United States, including 32,000 in the Washington area), Haitians (59,000 immigrants) and possibly Hondurans (86,000 immigrants) has thrown families across the country into chaos. This policy shift also has the potential to devastate my industry and hurt the overall economy.
Congress created TPS in 1990 to provide legal status to foreigners who could not safely return home because of war, natural disasters or other extreme conditions. Republican and Democratic administrations alike have extended those protections, six to 18 months at a time, recognizing that conditions remain dangerous. El Salvador, for example, is in such a state of turmoil that the State Department advisesU.S. citizens to reconsider traveling there. An influx of tens of thousands of returning citizens would only make things worse.
In the meantime, people like Manuel have built lives in the United States, buying homes (nearly a third have mortgages) and becoming active in their communities. Like Manuel, many TPS recipients are married and have children who are U.S. citizens — immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras are raising about 273,200 U.S.-born children, according to the Center for American Progress.
Understandably, few parents would want to uproot their spouses and children to travel to a country with little opportunity and widespread violence. So, instead, these individuals face an agonizing choice: to leave without their families, or to remain in the United States without the legal means to work and in constant fear of deportation. No doubt, many will disappear from their jobs, obtain fake documents and become ghosts in a country where they used to belong.
As Americans, we also have much to lose if hundreds of thousands of industrious migrants are expelled. The Center for American Progress estimates that removing TPS workers from the economy would generate a $164 billion hole in gross domestic product over the next decade.
Because restaurants are among the main employers of these immigrants (along with construction companies, landscape businesses and child-care services), the restaurant industry stands to be particularly hard hit. Immigrants, including Salvadorans and other Central Americans, make up more than half of the staff at my restaurants, and we simply could not run our businesses without them. With national unemployment at 4 percent, there aren’t enough U.S.-born workers to take their places — or cover the employment needs of a growing economy.
Let me be frank: The administration is throwing families and communities into crisis for no good reason. This is not what people of faith do. It’s not what pragmatic people do. It’s not what America was built on.
I came to the United States from Spain in 1991 with an E-2 visa and big ambitions. I wanted to introduce America to the food of my heritage while at the same time reimagining it. I wanted to become a chef and start my own restaurant.
Despite the many hardships of being a new immigrant, life was relatively easy for me — in no small part because of my fair skin and blue eyes. America isn’t the only place where this happens; it is a human sickness. We have a hard time welcoming those who are different from us.
With the help of many friends and mentors, I worked hard to realize my ambitions. And I made sure to bring as many people as I could along with me. That is the American Dream: to live your own dream while helping others achieve theirs.
As an employer and friend of Salvadorans, Haitians and incredible people of many other nationalities, I hope Congress can work with the administration to change course on immigration policy.
TPS recipients, who have contributed for so long to the U.S. economy and our communities, should be able to apply for green cards and start on the path to citizenship. And DACA recipients, like Manuel’s son, should be able to apply for permanent status so they can truly belong to the country they have long thought of as their own.
Let’s also create a revolving-door visa, allowing people from Mexico, El Salvador and other countries to work for a few months and then return home, bringing their earnings back with them. Revolving-door visas would help the U.S. economy continue to grow and help grow the economies of our allies, too.
President Trump knows full well the value of temporary visas. From his family’s winery in Virginia to his construction projects in New York, he has hired many foreign workers to build his businesses.
President Trump, if you are reading this: Back in 2016 you told me in a phone conversation that you wanted to hear more about my views on immigration. We haven’t spoken in a while. So let me say this here: Walls will not make America safer or greater. But the money our immigrants send back home most certainly does, because economic stability contributes to political stability and international security. Allowing immigrants to work without fear of deportation or exploitation would help, too, because it would sustain American businesses and support American families. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the American way to transform what might seem a problem into an opportunity.”
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Jose Andres doesn’t just talk and write; he acts! During the recent Puerto Rico disaster, while the Trump Administration was dithering and pointing fingers, Andres was “on the ground” serving free meals to those who needed them. Seems like we have the “wrong kind of businessman” in the White House! One who is more concerned about himself than he is about others and the country.
Today, my daughter Marisa and I joined thousands of women, men, and children in Washington, DC and other cities around the country to march for equality and for justice.
First and foremost on my mind while I marched with my daughter were the migrant and refugee women, children, and families for whom I advocate every day. With each step, I thought about the brave mothers who escape danger in their home countries because, like all mothers, they want a bright future for their children. Expecting to find safety at our border, these women and children are instead met by the Trump administration’s policies of ripping families apart.
I decided to march today in honor of the women and children who reach for safety but are instead betrayed.
The Women’s Refugee Commission will march forward with our important work supporting women and children seeking safety at our border. We will continue to utilize the court systems, inform the press and public, and hold the Trump administration accountable until asylum seekers have the protection and services they need to be safe, healthy, and to rebuild their lives. But there is strength in numbers.
In the spirit of the Women’s March, and the women for whom we march, please join us by donating today.
We can accomplish so much more together than we can alone.
In solidarity,
Michelle Brané
Director, Migrant Rights and Justice Program
Like me, my friend Michelle began her career as an Attorney Advisor at the BIA. She is also a distinguished alum of Georgetown Law where I am an Adjunct Professor.
The Women’s Refugee Commission does some fantastic work in behalf of vulnerable women and children who arrive at our border seeking refuge and justice, only to be detained and railroaded back to life-threatening conditions by the anti-refugee, anti-Due-Process, White Nationalist regime of Trump, Sessions, Miller, Nielsen, and their complicit minions.
Michelle was named one of the “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” by Women’s e-News.
Imagine what a great country this could be if our Government and our justice system were led by smart, courageous, principled, values-driven, humane leaders like Michelle and her colleagues, rather than by a cabal of morally bankrupt White Nationalist men and their sycophantic subordinates.
