"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals PAUL WICKHAM SCHMIDT and DR. ALICIA TRICHE, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
IMMIGRATION DETENTION IS PART OF MASS INCARCERATION: THE CASE FOR ABOLISHING ICE AND EVERYTHING ELSE
NOT MANY PEOPLE besides immigration law wonks had probably heard of “Section 1325,” before Julián Castro called for repealing it during the first Democratic presidential primary debate this summer. The law in question makes it a federal crime to enter the U.S. without permission — turning an immigration offense into a criminal one. President Donald Trump used a policy of “zero tolerance” for breaking that law to justify separating families at the border, but under George W. Bush and Barack Obama before him, 1325, along with illegal reentry — coming back after being deported — was already being used to jail and deport more and more immigrants. In fact, immigration-related crimes now make up the majority of all federal criminal prosecutions.
Castro’s proposal to repeal 1325 might have seemed to come out of left field, but it’s the exercise of the law that is historically the outlier: While laws criminalizing entry have existed since 1929, they “were largely ignored for a century,” the lawyer and scholar César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández reminds us in a new book, “Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants.” In 1975, he noted “a mere 575 people” were charged with an immigration crime; in 1993, only 2,487. Contrast that with fiscal year 2018, when prosecutors brought 105,692 federal immigration charges.
T he criminalization of immigration, especially the scale at which it happens now, is a relatively recent trend, Hernández argues. And it ought to be reversed. His book joins a number of recent works that put contemporary immigration politics in the same light that scholars and activists have shone on mass incarceration — showing it to be a phenomenon inextricably linked to the history of land, race, and capitalism in the United States. “The immigration prison is a reminder that human bondage based on racial and economic markers of undesirability can’t be relegated to some distant past,” Hernández writes. “If we’re willing to lock people up, we’ll find a reason. Most of the time the targets will be people of color. We can call this coincidence, but we would be lying to ourselves.”
Hernández lays out in a lucid, linear fashion the evolution of immigration law and its enforcement in the United States, from laws restricting the movement of certain people across state lines — formerly enslaved people, for instance — to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first in a series of acts that barred Asian immigrants for decades.
Any history of how the notion of “illegality” in migration took root has to consider the experience of Mexicans. While the first U.S. immigration laws focused with explicit racism on excluding Asians, Mexicans were the ones often physically targeted by Border Patrol — harassed, removed, or allowed to pass to satisfy the desires of powerful Southwest planters. In Hernández’s words, Border Patrol “detained and deported their way to a scared workforce.” Many of those workers, whether unauthorized or sanctioned under the bracero program, which ran from 1942 to 1964, were rendered “illegal” by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which got rid of national quotas and more or less established the United States’ current immigration regime, wherein countries are allotted a certain number of visas. Though ostensibly a progressive measure doing away with the racist quotas and nationality bans of previous eras, when it came to Mexico, the act, also known as Hart-Celler, ignored the closeness of the nations and subjected Mexicans to a national cap nowhere near high enough to accommodate traditional migration levels. “Perversely, the Hart-Celler Act’s formal equality turned immigration law against Mexican migrants,” Hernández writes. Mexicans became “illegal,” and “illegal aliens” became racially coded as Mexican.
Its focus on detention sets Hernández’s book apart from other recent histories of immigration and the border, including Kelly Lytle Hernández’s history of the Border Patrol; “Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration,” by Ana Raquel Minian; and Greg Grandin’s “The End of Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.” Early immigration prisons were “atrocious” “dockside facilities,” like a two-story wooden shed on the San Francisco wharf run by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, where Chinese migrants waited to be approved entry by U.S. officials. Ironically, it was to address these terrible conditions in company-run centers that the federal government got involved, creating facilities like Ellis Island in the New York Harbor, which opened in 1892, and Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. For the first time, Congress required inspection officers “to detain anyone not ‘clearly and beyond doubt entitled to admission,’” César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández writes in “Migrating to Prison.” In 1896, the Supreme Court “emphatically declared that immigration imprisonment was constitutionally permissible.”
Yet it was a relatively brief experiment. By 1954, under Dwight D. Eisenhower, Immigration and Naturalization Service (the precursor to today’s immigration agencies) “had all but abandoned its detention policy.” Ellis Island shut down with little fanfare. Hernández concludes that, “in fact if not in law, the United States came remarkably close to abolishing immigration imprisonment.” While that was, in the words of the attorney general at the time, a step in the direction of “humane administration of the immigration laws,” it was also self-interested, Hernández notes. Immigration prisons were costly, and, as has been the case throughout U.S. history, businesses wanted migrants out of prison so they could be used as cheap labor.
Again, Hernández connects this history to that of incarceration writ large in the U.S. There was a time when, even within Richard Nixon’s Justice Department, the utility of prison was questioned. But the ’70s ushered in a politically orchestrated crime panic, and the war on drugs, which led to mandatory minimum prison terms and sentencing disparities for powder cocaine and crack. A parallel process played out with immigration. Migrants, like black Americans, were linked to drugs, crime, and unrest, and portrayed as leeches on government services.
In the 1980s and ’90s, legislation introduced new levels of criminality for immigrants, which in turn expanded the population of imprisoned people. As Hernández writes, “Congress denied immigration judges the discretion to release anyone convicted of an aggravated felony,” which includes serious offenses like murder but also shoplifting and tax fraud. Detention and deportation, once decided with considerable discretion, became mandatory for all sorts of offenses. The link between mass incarceration and immigrant incarceration is clear in the legislative history: The same 1986 law that created mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine created “detainers,” requests to local police to hold someone in jail until they can be picked up by immigration. Liberals were complicit too. As Grandin notes, Bill Clinton played a key role, signing “a number of extremely punitive crime, terrorism, and immigration bills into law, which created the deportation regime that exists today.”
Muslims and other immigrants from majority-Muslim countries suffered the racist expansion of immigration detention after September 11, 2001, as counterterrorism enveloped immigration into the ballooning national security apparatus. And, as with the incarceration of U.S. citizens, black migrants have been disproportionately impacted by the shift to “crimmigration,” as scholars call it — more likely to be detained for a crime, and more likely to be removed.
Considering the recent explosion in immigration detention, Hernández explores federal contracts with local law enforcement and private prison companies. He looks not just at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but also the U.S. Marshals Service, which holds some 60,000 people a day in pre-trial detention, making deals with state and local jails around the country (the deaths of immigrants in Marshals custody were recently investigated by Seth Freed Wessler for Mother Jones). Again, the degree to which immigration offenses dominate the criminal justice system is stark — in 2013, marshals detained 97,982 people on immigration crimes, compared with 28,323 drug defendants. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, under the Department of Health and Human Services, had 49,000 children in custody in 2018, in “shelters” that range in comforts offered but which are all tightly controlled. Whatever agency officially holds them, Hernández argues, “to the migrants who are under constant surveillance and whose liberty has been denied there is little difference.”
Detention is also used with the idea that it will dissuade people from coming. Although Hernández points out this is legally suspect — detention of asylum-seekers and people accused of other non-criminal immigration offenses is not supposed to be a punishment — multiple administrations have invoked deterrence as a reason to keep people locked up.
Trying to separate immigrants who deserve imprisonment and those who don’t, distinguishing between shelters and detention centers and jails, obscures the workings of the whole system, Hernández says, which is designed to punish people for nothing more than being born in the wrong place. “Migrants are expected to live out the exceptionalism that U.S. citizens imagine in themselves,” he writes. The legal immigration system rewards wealth, education, and family connections, while the immigration enforcement system has no tolerance for human error.
Daniel Denvir’s forthcoming book, “All-American Nativism: How the Bipartisan War on Immigrants Explains Politics as We Know It,” complements Hernández’s by focusing on political history. He, too, traces the development of anti-immigrant sentiments and policies alongside anti-black ones, arguing that “resistance to desegregation, a white identity politics of racial grievance, mass incarceration, the war on terror: all were dedicated to a quixotic mission to keep dangerous others from crossing U.S. borders and to restrict the free movement of those inside them.”
Democrats likewise fell into the trap of demonizing “illegal immigrants” and “criminal aliens,” believing that by doing so they could protect legal immigration from hard-right restrictionists and defend themselves from soft-on-crime accusations (just as they’d attempted to do by jumping on the war-on-drugs bandwagon).
T he bipartisan embrace of immigration enforcement, Denvir argues, was the product of the elusive quest for so-called comprehensive immigration reform, which would combine a path to legalization for people already in the country with the liberalization of legal immigration — goals sought by immigrant rights groups and big business alike. In order to get it, Democrats and some Republicans, from Clinton through Bush and Obama, tried to appease nativists with promises of “border security,” miles of fencing, massive increases in the Border Patrol, and surveillance systems befitting a war zone. Each time, however, the nativists were not, in fact, appeased, crying “amnesty” and sabotaging the prospect of reform. “The long-term advantage,” of focusing on enforcement, Denvir writes, “would accrue to the Right, which was better positioned to link the immigrant threat to crime, welfare, black people and terrorism.” Trump’s attempt to demand funding for his pet wall in order to save the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program last year, was a repeat of the same pattern. In the end, Trump plowed ahead with construction (literally, through delicate desert ecosystems), and DACA’s fate remains unsettled.
Over time, the left flank of immigration activism has grown wary of both comprehensive immigration reform (finding those “reforms” incremental) and the attempt to distinguish “good” immigrants from “bad” ones. As Denvir notes, “lots of ‘good’ immigrants were being deported too. And how bad were the bad ones, given the vast number of individuals convicted of crimes in the carceral state?”
Hernández ends his book with the case for abolishing immigration detention, while admitting that few people have a specific vision for how to do it. Denvir ends with an analysis of an electorate that might be willing to try. As he puts it, “record deportations and a radicalizing racist right has triggered a revolt among the Democratic Party’s increasingly young and diverse base,” and Democrats under Trump have become “staunchly pro-immigrant” and “more hostile to enforcement.” Hernández also decides to see Trump’s hostility to immigrants not just as horror but also as opportunity. Has the bipartisan consensus of “immigration is a ‘problem’ that needs fixing” finally broken? Will Trump’s nativist wish list of anti-immigrant, anti-refugee policies permanently shift Democrats away from their position that enforcement is always necessary?
Decriminalization of entry and reentry is a start, as Denvir and Hernández advocate (among the remaining Democratic presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, and Andrew Yang have said they agree). Denvir also calls for downsizing the Border Patrol, destroying existing physical barriers, breaking up agreements between ICE and local law enforcement, and increasing opportunities for legal immigration, especially from Central America and Mexico. Hernández urges, on a personal and institutional level, divestment from private prison companies. Eliminating cash bail and giving every migrant the right to a lawyer would drastically increase their odds of success, as would case management — offering help with housing and legal assistance.
These types of measures might actually lead to better compliance with immigration law, satisfying the obsession with people migrating “the right way.” But they would not offer concessions to a nativist right that wants any and all nonwhite immigration restricted, and they would have to resist the scare tactics bent on tying immigrants to crime and the rhetoric of scarcity that will inevitably accompany an economic downturn and worsening climate conditions. The court cases challenging the most horrendous aspects of confinement in immigrant detention centers are important. But if radical changes come, Hernández writes, “it won’t be because the law demands it. It will be because people demand it.”
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This is a study in how a motivated minority can shove bad and fiscally irresponsible policies down the throats of a complicit majority.
The legal, fiscal, and humanitarian arguments against the NAG are out there, but the Dems keep getting “sidetracked” by buying into the bogus concept that “hard line enforcement and a little cruelty” is a necessary “quid pro quo” for rational immigration reform. But, the truth is that no amount of repression, cruelty, and irrational enforcement will ever satisfy the White Nationalists who have taken over the GOP.
Maybe, rather than trying to appease the unappeasable, the Dems’ strategy needs to be getting 100% of Democrats out to vote and registering the large number of new and younger potential voters who don’t favor racially driven policies of unrelenting cruelty and wasteful immigration restrictionism.
As the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which has been a symbol of liberty and freedom from oppression for 2,000 years approaches, 25 Jewish members of Congress, all Democrats, have signed a letter demanding the resignation of Donald Trump’s main architect of oppression and persecution against nonwhite immigrants. This is even as Miller is reportedly preparing a new secret plan to inflict more appalling cruelty and violations of basic human rights against detained immigrant children because he objects to the color of their skin.
For more on the Congressional members’ letter, which was in reaction to the shocking revelation of Miller’s almost 1,000 recent extremist white supremacist anti-immigrant emails, see CNN (December 20):
The letter, addressed to Donald Trump (who will now forever be known as the third president in US history to be impeached by the House of Representatives) states in part:
“As Jewish members of Congress, we are calling on you to immediately relieve White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller of all government responsibilities and to dismiss him from your administration…His documentation of white nationalist and virulently anti-immigrant tropes is wholly unacceptable and disqualifying for a government employee.”
But even as the above letter was written a news item has now come to light about a secret new policy that Miller has reportedly launched that will make it harder for detained immigrant children to be released by ICE to the custody of family members or friends who are willing to come forward to take custody of them.
This vicious new policy represents a new low in the appalling cruelty that Trump and Miller have shown toward young children whom Trump and Miller do not think should be welcome in the US because, as Trump reportedly said almost two years ago (in January 2018), they are not from “Countries like Norway.”
Details of Miller’s plan, which has not been publicly announced are contained in a December 20 Washington Post article entitled:
Under secret Stephen Miller plan, ICE to use data on migrant children to expand deportation efforts
The Post reports that senior officials at the Department of Health and Human Services:
“…agreed to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to collect fingerprints and other biometric information from adults seeking to claim children at migrant shelters. If these adults are deemed ineligible to take custody of children, ICE could then use their information to target them for arrest and deportation.”
The Post;s report also shows that this appears to be yet another attempt by the Trump-Miller regime to defy the intention of Congress, in keeping with the virtual dictatorship over immigration policy that America’s third president to be impeached by the House (and the second for abuse of power) is imposing under the authoritarian “unitary executive” theory which directly conflicts with the Constitution and with our basic principles of democracy.
The Post report states:
“The arrangement appears to circumvent laws that restrict the use of the refugee program for deportation enforcement. Congress has made clear that it does not want those who come forward as potential sponsors of minors in U.S. custody to be frightened away by potential deportation.”
But this is precisely what Stephen Miller is attempting to do, according to the above report.
How ironic that this appalling attack against children in pursuit of the Trump-Miller administration’s racial immigration agenda came to light just before the Hanukkah holiday This holiday, which began this year on the evening of December 22, celebrates the heroic resistance of the Maccabees, Jewish freedom fighters, against an oppressive ruler, Antiochus, king of Syria, in 169 B.C.
Rabbi Sid Schwarz explains the meaning of Hanukkah as follows:
“Hanukkah is the Jewish festival of religious liberty and freedom.”
But Hanukkah stands for more than just freedom of religious persecution – such as Donald Trump instituted within days after taking office ac president by imposing his Muslim ban – a blatant violation of the Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom which should have immediately led to impeachment proceedings at that time.
As Rabbi Schwarz also writes concerning the tradition that a small amount of oil for the temple lamp lasted for eight days, Hanukkah is also a celebration of Human Rights in general:
“Whether one believes literally in the miracle of the high-octane oil, on a spiritual level Hanukkah is about a much bigger miracle. It is the miracle of faith conquering fear. of the few overcoming the many, of liberty winning out over oppression.
Hanukkah falls close to Human Rights Day which we celebrate every year on December 10. We ignore this day at our peril. The date was based on the 1948 ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the general Assembly of the United Nations.
Enshrines in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are principles at the core of democracy: the right to life, liberty and security of person; equal justice before the law; protection against cruel and degrading forms of punishment…”
www.rabbisid.org/hanukkah-and-human-rights/
What could be a more cruel and degrading practice than keeping young children incarcerated while intimidating their parents or other family members against coming to pick them up because of fear of being deported? It would be hard to imagine any greater form of deliberate sadism.
Therefore I would like to make the following proposal to Stephen Miller, the great grandson of an impecunious early 20th century Jewish immigrant who would without any question be barred from entry to the US under Miller’s own vastly expanded Public Charge rules (if they ever go into effect).
I would ask Miller, who seems to be totally oblivious to the history of persecution and exclusion that Jewish immigrants were subjected to by the US government for much of the 20th century, including the 1930’s and 1940’s at the time of their most desperate need, whether he would be willing to agree to the following proposal:
If Stephen Miller and Donald Trump, who claims to be a great friend of the Jewish people and whose own daughter and son-in-law are Jewish, are unwilling to abandon their inhuman and arguably illegal practice of frightening parents or other relatives of detained immigrant children from coming to pick them up and arrange their release, through fear of action by ICE, would Trump and Miller be willing to suspend this barbaric practice for at least the eight days of Hanukkah as a gesture of good will, and in the spirit of the holiday?
Or would that be too much to ask?
With the above thoughts, I wish all readers a Happy Hanukkah and a very Merry Christmas.
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Roger Algase
Attorney at Law
At the time when President Barack Obama instituted DACA, there was a warning from the opposition side that one day, under a different president, DACA might make it easier rather than harder to deport immigrants registering for that program. The reasoning was that by registering for DACA, millions of unauthorized immigrants would be providing the government with personal information which could later be used against them for deportation purposes.
However, the fact that DACA information might later on be misused by a future malevolent president for a purpose opposite the the one intended was certainly no reason for scrapping the entire program. At least it is unlikely that the 800,000 immigrants who are now benefiting from DACA would agree. Almost any action that is taken with regard to immigration might have results in the future different from those initially contemplated.
To give an example of a different immigration program, at the time that Trump instituted the Muslim ban executive orders, supporters of the ban didn’t seem to realize that if a current president were given the power to defy the guarantee of religious freedom enshrined in our Constitution by banning immigrants from Muslim countries, a future president whose bigotry might run in a different direction form Trump’s bigotry, might use the same power to ban Jewish immigrants from Israel, or to ban Catholic immigrants from Europe (as was in fact done in the 1924 immigration law..
In any event, warnings about possible misuse of DACA in the future were not taken seriously, because at the time that he announced the termination of DACA, Trump put out the line that, of course, he would never dream of doing anything as nasty as actually deporting DACA recipients. Later on, during Supreme Court argument on DACA, Chief Justice Roberts bought into these assurances hook, line, and sinker, as Frank Sharry of America’s Voice describes in a December 23 press release entitled:
Chief Justice Roberts, You were wrong. Trump does want to deport DACA recipients
Sharry quotes Roberts during the Supreme Court’s oral argument on DACA as saying:
“…the whole thing [about DACA] was about work authorization and these other benefits. Both administrations have said that they’re not going to deport the people.”
Now, with a December 21 CNN report that the Trump-Miller administration is moving to reopen previously closed deportation cases against DACA recipients who have no or only minor criminal records, Trump’s assurances are turning out to be a hollow, if not actually fraudulent, as so many of his other statements on immigration have been.
For this reason, Roberts was either in denial, as Frank Sharry asserts, or was being misled by the Trump administration about the real issue involved in DACA. See CNN:
Is this about-face (one might call it turncoat action) by Trump and Miller the fault of former president Barack Obama? That would seem to be an example of convoluted, if not Orwellian, reasoning at best – the idea being that a president who saved neatly a million immigrants from deportation through DACA really hurt them instead, while a different president who is actually threatening to deport them has no responsibility for this action.
CNN reports as follows:
“ICE confirmed to CNN that DACA recipients whose deportation cases have been administratively closed can expect to see them reopened. In an email, the agency states that ‘re-calendaring of administratively closed cases is occurring nationwide and not isolated to a particular state or region.'”
The same CNN report also states:
“The move to reopen deportation cases against Dreamers comes as the US Supreme Court considers whether to let the Trump administration end the program – and during oral arguments in November, at least some justices made it clear that they were accepting the president’s assurances that ending DACA would not mean deporting Dreamers.”
The only possible conclusion is that the Trump administration either deliberately misled the Supreme Court, whose Chief Justice and, as CNN also mentions, other justices as well, relied on its assurance that no Dreamers would be deported; or else that the no deportation assurance is now “inoperative” (to use a famous expression from the Nixon administration during the Watergate scandal).
The above raises a few questions:
1) Is this act of outright deception (worst case) or sleight of hand (at best) on the part of the Trump administration with regard to its intention to deport Dreamers if DACA is terminated the fault of former President Obama?
2) Full information about Dreamers whose deportation cases were closed was already known to the government at the time that President Obama established DACA. Otherwise, the deportation cases would not have been started in the first place. How could establishing DACA and closing their cases have put these deportation respondents at any greater risk than they already were subject to?
3) President Obama established DACA to try to save the “Dreamers” from being deported. Donald Trump is now trying to end DACA in order to deport them. If they are eventually deported, will that be President Obama’s fault? That kind of argument could only come out of a George Orwell novel.
4) Finally, we must ask, why is it so important to the Trump and Miller administration to deport the “Dreamers”? To answer that question, we need look no further than Miller’s recently revealed almost 1,000 emails contending that non-white immigrants are not welcome in the United States, with or without legal status.
Deporting 800,000 “Dreamers” would be only one part of Miller’s drive to accomplish this sweeping, white supremacist agenda, which would take America back to the 1924 Europeans-only immigration regime that Miller reportedly holds up as his ideal in the above mentioned emails, and which has very arguably become the basis of the Trump administration’s entire immigration agenda.
As The Atlantic states regarding Miller’s recently revealed immigration related emails (November, 2019):
” That Miller himself possesses a Jewish background is no obstacle to his believing that the racist and anti-Semitic restrictions of the 1920’s were a great achievement and that the law that repealed them was a great tragedy. These comments shed a great deal of light on Miller’s motives in shaping administration policy.”
Nothing could be clearer about who will be responsible for deporting up to 800,000 Dreamers if Chief Justice Roberts and the other Supreme Court “conservatives” buy into the Trump administration’s worthless assurances that the Dreamers will be safe from deportation even if DACA is terminated.
The president responsible for that exercise in ethnic cleansing will not be named Barack Obama.
Thanks, Roger, for sharing your thoughts and for “telling it like it is!”
It’s pretty obvious that Solicitor General Noel Francisco lied to the Supremes about the Dreamers’ fate! He also misrepresented the dire consequences of depriving them of employment authorization and other aspects of being allowed to reside here “under color of law” as opposed to just “not being removed.” That’s in addition to his mental gymnastics of substituting a non-existent “policy” rationale (hint, there is no legitimate policy rationale for dumping on the Dreamers) for the original “bogus legal rationale” put forth by Sessions.
It’s by no means the first time that DOJ lawyers have lied to or mislead Federal Courts about immigration policies and the motives for actions by the Trump regime. How about the “Census Case,” providing bogus rationales for the Travel Ban, reprogramming money for “the Wall” based on a fabricated “national emergency,” denying the existence of a child separation program, claiming that reuniting children was “too difficult,” the “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico” program, or papering over Session’s nativist bias and motives for the “A-B- Atrocity,” to name just a few of the more obvious and egregious ones? Essentially, it’s like claiming that “poll taxes” were about “raising revenue” or that “separate” was “equal.”
For most lawyers, lack of candor to a Federal Court would be a serious matter, putting their licenses to practice law at risk. Why are Francisco and the rest of his merry band at DOJ, all the way up to Barr and Sessions before him, exempt from the normal rules of ethics and professional conduct? Why do the Supremes continue to reward his dishonesty by time and again granting his largely frivolous requests to “short circuit” normal judicial procedures and get an immediate audience with the Supremes?
Since Trump and “Moscow Mitch” are stacking the Article III Judiciary with what they believe to be reliable Trump sycophants, it probably would be a mistake to think that “equal justice for all” will reappear in the Article IIIs any time soon.
9th Circuit panel says White House can’t force L.A. to help deport immigrants in order to receive funds.
By Maura Dolan
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court decided unanimously Thursday that the Trump administration may not force Los Angeles to help the government deport immigrants as a condition of receiving a federal police grant.
A panel of two Republican appointees and one Democrat of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said federal law did not permit the Trump administration to impose the conditions.
The decision involved the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, the primary provider of federal aid to local and state law enforcement agencies.
Congress authorized the program in 2005 to help law enforcement pay for personnel, supplies and other services. It is administered by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In 2017, the Trump administration imposed two new requirements on the grant. One required recipients to notify immigration authorities before releasing immigrants from jail. The other said recipients had to give federal agents access to correctional facilities to meet with immigrants who might be in the country without authorization.
The city of Los Angeles sued, saying it did not cooperate with immigration agents because doing so would discourage immigrants from helping police in fighting crime.
A district judge blocked the requirements, and the Trump administration appealed to the 9th Circuit.
Judge Sandra S. Ikuta, writing for the panel, said the 9th Circuit agreed with two other circuit courts that the law authorizing the grants does not give the Justice Department “broad authority to impose any condition it chooses.”
Ikuta, appointed by President George W. Bush, was joined by Judge Jay S. Bybee, also appointed by Bush, and Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, a Clinton appointee.
Wardlaw wrote separately, saying she agreed the conditions were unlawful but criticizing the majority’s analysis as “contrary to every other court to have addressed the issue in a reasoned opinion.”
Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer called Thursday’s decision “a victory for public safety on our streets and for the Constitution.”
“We will continue to fight the Trump administration’s unlawful overreach and to stand up for the best interests of L.A. residents,” he said.
Los Angeles uses the federal grant to support local criminal law enforcement and drug treatment and enforcement programs.
The immigration conditions would have denied the grant to hundreds of sanctuary cities.
Last year, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction preventing the federal government from applying the immigration conditions. That ruling stemmed from a lawsuit by the city of Chicago.
In another decision this year, the 3rd Circuit also decided the conditions were not authorized by law. That case was brought by the city of Philadelphia.
The grants can be used for technical assistance, strategic planning, research and evaluation, data collection, training, personnel, equipment, forensic laboratories, supplies, contractual support and criminal justice information systems.
The law authorizes $1.1 billion in grants, but funding is generally significantly lower.
According to the National Criminal Justice Assn., Congress appropriated $830 million for fiscal year 2002, but in later years funding for the grants was about $500 million.
A wiser, more professional, and less ideological future Administration likely could work out agreements with states and localities for mutually beneficial cooperation in the immigration area.
But, the Trump Administration’s intentionally toxic and inflammatory White Nationalist rhetoric and actions overtly intended to terrorize local ethnic communities have “poisoned the well.” They have also been bad for legitimate law enforcement; reporting of serious crimes, particularly domestic violence, as well as cooperation in anti-gang efforts, has gone down in localities mindlessly targeted by Trump’s totally politicized DHS.
It’s also significant that conservative Bush-appointed Judge Jay S. Bybee, often the target of liberals because of his involvement in Bush-era attempts to legally rationalize torture, has stood up against the Trump Administration’s lawlessness on several important occasions.
Brittany Mejia and Joel Rubin report for the LA Times:
Trump dealt 3 legal defeats on immigration
White House assails ‘misguided’ court rulings it says hinder law enforcement.
By Brittny Mejia and Joel Rubin
In a third defeat in less than a day for the Trump administration, a federal judge blocked it from vastly extending the authority of immigration officers to deport people without first allowing them to appear before judges.
The decision late Friday came before the policy, which was announced in July, was even enforced. The move would have applied to anyone in the country less than two years.
The decision came just after a federal judge barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement from relying solely on flawed databases to target people for being in the country illegally.
Early Friday, the administration suffered what would be its first defeat on the immigrant front in less than 24 hours when a federal judge blocked its plan to dismantle protections for immigrant youths and indefinitely hold families with children in detention.
Those protections are granted under the so-called Flores agreement, which was the result of a landmark class-action court settlement in 1997 that said the government must generally release children as quickly as possible and cannot detain them longer than 20 days, whether they have traveled to the U.S. alone or with family members.
In a statement Saturday, the White House responded angrily to the decision to halt its plans for expedited removal of immigrants.
“Once again, a single district judge has suspended application of federal law nationwide — removing whole classes of illegal aliens from legal accountability,” the statement read in part. “For two and a half years, the Trump administration has been trying to restore enforcement of the immigration laws passed by Congress. And for two and a half years, misguided lower court decisions have been preventing those laws from ever being enforced — at immense cost to the whole country.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which had sought the injunction, granted just before midnight, celebrated the result.
“The court rejected the Trump administration’s illegal attempt to remove hundreds of thousands of people from the U.S. without any legal recourse,” said ACLU attorney Anand Balakrishnan, who argued the case. “This ruling recognizes the irreparable harm of this policy.”
In the first setback Friday for the Trump administration, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said new rules it planned to impose violated the terms of the Flores settlement. Gee issued a strongly worded order shortly after, slamming the changes as “Kafkaesque” and protecting the original conditions of the agreement.
Gee wrote that the administration cannot ignore the terms of the settlement — which, she pointed out, is a final, binding judgment that was never appealed — just because leaders don’t “agree with its approach as a matter of policy.”
Barring a change in the law through congressional action, she said, “defendants cannot simply impose their will by promulgating regulations that abrogate the consent decree’s most basic tenets. That violates the rule of law. And that this court cannot permit.”
The new regulations would have eliminated minors’ entitlement to bond hearings and the requirement that facilities holding children be licensed by states.
They also would have removed legally binding language, changing the word “shall” to “may” throughout many of the core passages describing how the government would treat immigrant children.
The government is expected to appeal.
In the second decision Friday, U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr. issued a permanent injunction barring ICE from relying solely on databases when issuing so-called detainers, which are requests made to police agencies to keep people who have been arrested in custody for up to two days beyond the time they would otherwise be held.
ICE is also blocked from issuing detainers to state and local law enforcement in states where there isn’t an explicit statute authorizing civil immigration arrests on detainers, according to the judge’s decision.
The decision affects any detainers issued by an ICE officer in the federal court system’s Central District of California.
That designation is significant because the Pacific Enforcement Response Center, a facility in Orange County, is an ICE hub from which agents send out detainer requests to authorities in 43 states, Guam and Washington, D.C. It is covered by the Central District.
“ICE is currently reviewing the ruling and considering our legal options,” Richard Rocha, an agency spokesman, said in a statement.
“Cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement agencies is critical to prevent criminal aliens from being released into our communities after being arrested for a crime.”
Tens of thousands of the requests are made each year to allow ICE agents additional time to take people suspected of being in the country illegally into federal custody for possible deportation. Approximately 70% of the arrests ICE makes happen after the agency is notified about someone being released from local jails or state prisons.
In fiscal year 2019, ICE has lodged more than 160,000 detainers with local law enforcement agencies, according to the agency.
Although police in California do not honor these ICE requests because of earlier court rulings that found them unconstitutional, agencies in other parts of the country continue to enforce them.
The civil case, which has wound its way through years of delays and legal wrangling, has broad implications for President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration as the ACLU and other groups sought to upend how immigration officers target people for being in the country illegally.
“I think the decision is a tremendous blow to ICE’s Secure Communities deportation program and to Trump’s effort to use police throughout the country to further his deportation programs,” said Jessica Bansal, senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California.
The class-action lawsuit, which represents broad categories of people who have been or will be subjected to detainers, alleged the databases that agents consult are so badly flawed by incomplete and inaccurate information that ICE officers should not be allowed to rely on them as the sole basis for keeping someone in custody.
The judge agreed with that assessment, finding that the databases often contained “incomplete data, significant errors, or were not designed to provide information that would be used to determine a person’s removability.”
These errors, according to the decision, have led to arrests of U.S. citizens and lawfully present noncitizens. From May 2015 to February 2016, of the 12,797 detainers issued in that time frame, 771 were lifted, according to ICE data. Of those 771, 42 were lifted because the person was a U.S. citizen.
The detainer process begins when police arrest and fingerprint a person. The prints are sent electronically to the FBI and checked against the prints of millions of immigrants in Homeland Security databases. If there is a match — such as someone who applied for a visa or was apprehended by Border Patrol — it triggers a review process, which often culminates with an agent at the center deciding whether to issue a detainer.
Last year, the Pacific Enforcement Response Center issued 45,253 detainers and alerted agents at field offices to more than 28,000 additional people released from law enforcement custody before ICE could detain them.
Trump has singled out police in California and elsewhere for their refusal to honor detainers, using them to highlight what he says are problems with the country’s stance on immigration enforcement and the need to take a more hard-line approach.
In the years since the lawsuit was filed, ICE has amended its policies, saying the changes made the process for issuing detainers more rigorous.
Times staff writers Andrea Castillo and Molly O’Toole and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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These are important decisions by the Federal District Courts upholding the Constitution and the rule of law. Whether the higher Federal Courts will do their duty by “Just Saying No” to Trump’s abuses or go “belly up” as they did in Barr v. East Side Sanctuary Covenant and Innovation Law Lab v.McAleenan remains to be seen.
Go New Due Process Army! Beat back the Trump Administration’s extralegal attacks on migrants and the rule of law.
Catherine Rampell Opinion Columnist Washington Post
Catherine writes in the Washington Post:
You’ve heard of the Wars on Drugs, Terror, Poverty, even Women. Well, welcome to the War on Children.
It’s being waged by the Trump administration and other right-wing public officials, regardless of any claimed “family values.”
For evidence, look no further than the report released Wednesday by the Department of Health and Human Services’s own inspector general. It details the trauma suffered by immigrant children separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s evil “zero tolerance” policy.
Thousands of children were placed in overcrowded centers ill-equipped to provide care for them physically or psychologically. Visits to 45 centers around the country resulted in accounts of children who cried inconsolably; who were drugged; who were promised family reunifications that never came; whose severe emotional distress manifested in phantom chest pains, with complaints that “every heartbeat hurts”; who thought their parents had abandoned them or had been murdered.
Such state-sanctioned child abuse was designed to serve as a “deterrent” for asylum-seeking families, as then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and other administration officials made clear.
Of course, they failed to recognize just how horrific are the conditions these asylum-seeking children are fleeing — conditions that further decreased HHS’s ability to adequately care for them.
“Staff in multiple facilities reported cases of children who had been kidnapped or raped” back in their home countries, the IG report states. Other children witnessed family members raped or murdered.
But hey, Trump believes these kiddos must be punished further for the crime of seeking refuge — a.k.a., the “invasion” of America.
Despite this and other abundant evidence that government facilities are not able to care for children for extended periods, last month, the administration also announced a new policy that would allow it to keep children (along with their families) in jail-like conditions for longer periods of time.
This is hardly the only way the administration has knowingly enacted policies that harm children.
In August, it finalized a rule that would make it more difficult for immigrants to receive green cards if they have used certain safety-net services they’re legally entitled to — or if government officials suspect they might ever use such services. Confusion and fear about the policy and whom it affects abound. This has already created a “chilling effect” for usage of social services, with immigrant parents disenrolling even their U.S.-citizen children just to be safe.
Last fall, for instance, I interviewed a green-card-holding mother who decided not to enroll her underweight newborn in a program that would have provided free formula (even though the program in question was not mentioned in the rule, and the baby is a U.S. citizen). Huge recent declines in children’s Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollment are also believed to be at least partly a result of fears about this policy change.
If Your Dog Does This, It Could Be Them Signaling A Warning
And lest you think only immigrant or brown children are being targeted in this war: U.S. servicemembers’ children, of all sorts of backgrounds, are being hurt, too.
The Trump administration is siphoning billions from various defense projects to fund border wall construction, despite promises that Mexico would pay for it. This might sound unlikely to affect kids, but somehow the Trump administration found a way. Among the projects losing funds are schools for the children of U.S. servicemembers based in Kentucky, Germany and Japan, and a child-care center at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
Trump’s proposed federal budgets have likewise axed funding for other programs that serve children, such as subsidized school meals and Medicaid. Indeed, both federal and state GOP officials more broadly are still working to kill the Medicaid expansion, as well as other Affordable Care Act provisions that benefit kids.
The GOP has likewise ignored the pleas of children who want their lives protected from gun violence, or who want their futures protected from a warming planet.
A year ago, I offered a suggestion : that Democrats make children the theme of their midterm campaign. They mostly ignored me and still did okay. Nonetheless, I’m re-upping it.
Because even without Trump’s baby jails and proposed Medicaid cuts, our country’s emphasis on children’s well- being is seriously deficient.
Last year, for the first time on record, we spent a greater share of the federal budget servicing the national debt than we did on children, according to an analysis out next week from First Focus on Children. Spending on children as a share of the federal budget is also expected to shrink over the coming decade, crowded out by both debt service and spending on the elderly.
This is despite the fact that spending on children (especially low-income children) has among the highest returns on investment of any form of government spending.
Whatever the opposite of Trump’s War on Children is, that’s what Democrats should be running on.
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Thanks, Catherine, for speaking out so clearly and articulately about what has become our #1 National Disgrace: Trump’s War On Human Decency & Future Generations and its sleazy cast of supporting characters like Pence, Kelly, Miller, Nielsen, “Big Mac With Lies,” Homan, Albence, Morgan, “Cooch Cooch,” “Gonzo Apocalypto,” Barr, Cotton, Graham, and others with their glib immorality and disregard for truth, our Constitution, the rule of law, and basic human values.
Who thought the U.S. would ever stoop so low — to use our government’s power and might to abuse defenseless, already traumatized, and highly vulnerable children. (Catherine’s article does’t even get into how, with the help of scofflaw Attorneys General Sessions and Barr and some complacent Article III Judges, the Administration has manipulated asylum law and Immigration “Court” procedures to deny children and other asylum seekers the legal protection to which they are entitled under U.S. and international laws.)
There are many groups out there in the “New Due Process Army” fighting every day against this kind of outrageous behavior by our elected leaders, their corrupt cronies, and their many “go along to get along” enablers in the bureaucracy. Join or donate to one today!
The war to save America and humanity from Trump’s vile and cowardly agenda is one that we can’t afford to lose: For the sake of future generations!
This paper critiques US immigration and asylum policies from perspective of the author’s 46 years as a public servant. It also offers a taxonomy of the US immigration system by positing different categories of membership: full members of the “club” (US citizens); “associate members” (lawful permanent residents, refugees and asylees); “friends” (non-immigrants and holders of temporary status); and, persons outside the club (the undocumented). It describes the legal framework that applies to these distinct populations, as well as recent developments in federal law and policy that relate to them. It also identifies a series of cross-cutting issues that affect these populations, including immigrant detention, immigration court backlogs, state and local immigration policies, and Constitutional rights that extend to non-citizens. It makes the following asylum reform proposals, relying (mostly) on existing laws designed to address situations of larger-scale migration:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and, in particular, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) should send far more Asylum Officers to conduct credible fear interviews at the border.
Law firms, pro bono attorneys, and charitable legal agencies should attempt to represent all arriving migrants before both the Asylum Office and the Immigration Courts.
USCIS Asylum Officers should be permitted to grant temporary withholding of removal under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) to applicants likely to face torture if returned to their countries of origin.
Immigration Judges should put the asylum claims of those granted CAT withholding on the “back burner” — thus keeping these cases from clogging the Immigration Courts — while working with the UNHCR and other counties in the Hemisphere on more durable solutions for those fleeing the Northern Triangle states of Central America.
Individuals found to have a “credible fear” should be released on minimal bonds and be allowed to move to locations where they will be represented by pro bono lawyers.
Asylum Officers should be vested with the authority to grant asylum in the first instance, thus keeping more asylum cases out of Immigration Court.
If the Administration wants to prioritize the cases of recent arrivals, it should do so without creating more docket reshuffling, inefficiencies, and longer backlogs
My long-time friend Don Kerwin, Executive Director of CMS, has been a “Lt. General of the New Due Process Army” since long before there even was a “New Due Process Army” (“NDPA”). Talk about someone who has spent his entire career increasing human understanding and making the world a better place! Don is a great role model and example for newer members of the NDPA, proving that one can make a difference, as well as a living, in our world by doing great things and good works! Not surprisingly, Don’s career achievements and contributions bear great resemblance to those of our mutual friend, the late Juan Osuna.
So, when Don asked me to consider turning some of my past speeches about our immigration system and how it should work into an article to honor Juan, I couldn’t say no. But, I never would have gotten it “across the finish line” without Don’s inspiration, encouragement, editing, and significant substantive suggestions for improvement, as well as that of the talented peer reviewers and editorial staff of JMHS. Like most achievements in life, it truly was a “team effort” for which I thank all involved.
Those of you who might have attended my Boynton Society Lecture last Saturday, August 10, at the beautiful and inspiring Bjorklunden Campus of Lawrence University on the shores of Lake Michigan at Bailey’s Harbor, WI, will see that portions of this article were “reconverted” and incorporated into that speech.
Also, those who might have taken the class “American Immigration, a Cultural, Legal, and Anthropological Approach” at the Bjorklunden Seminar Series the previous week, co-taught by my friend Professor Jenn Esperanza of The Beloit College Anthropology Department, and me had the then-unpublished manuscript in their course materials, and will no doubt recognize many of the themes that Jenn and I stressed during that week.
Perhaps the only “comment that really mattered” was passed on to me by Don shortly after this article was released. It was from Juan’s wife, the also amazing and inspiring Wendy Young, President of Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”):“Juan would be truly honored.”
Donald M. Kerwin Executive Director Center for Migration StudiesJuan P. Osuna (1963-2017) Judge, Executive, Scholar, Teacher, Defender of Due ProcessWendy Young President, Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”)Me
The erratic Trump administration has had just one consistent policy principle, one guiding North Star: punitive and often sadistic treatment of nonwhite immigrants.
President Trump’s claim that he supports legal immigration, as opposed to the undocumented “invasion” he rails against, turns out to be — big surprise — a lie. On Monday, the administration proved its antagonism toward those who “stand in line” and “come in the right way” by issuing a new rule forcing many legal immigrants to make an impossible choice: accept needed government benefits to which they are fully entitled, or preserve their chances of obtaining permanent residence.
Say you’re an immigrant from Mexico who came here legally to join family members who are already permanent residents or citizens. Say you’re working a full-time minimum-wage job, plus odd jobs nights and weekends. You are a productive member of society. You are paying payroll taxes, sales taxes, vehicle registration fees and other government levies. Still, as hard as you work, you can’t make ends meet.
You may be legally entitled to health care through Medicaid. You may be entitled to food assistance through the SNAP program, formerly known as food stamps. You may be entitled to housing assistance. But according to the new Trump administration rule — set to take effect in two months — if you use any of these programs, you might forfeit the opportunity to ever obtain a green card making you a permanent resident. That means you also forfeit the chance of ever becoming a citizen.
Long advocated by White House adviser Stephen Miller, the Torquemada of the immigration inquisition, the new policy is a major step in Trump’s crusade to Make America White Again. If it survives court challenges, the new rule could dramatically reduce legal — I repeat, legal — immigration from low-income countries. Not just coincidentally, I am sure, this means fewer black and brown people would be granted resident status.
Trump’s message to the world: Keep your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. As he memorably and disgracefully put it: “Our Country is FULL!”
A Homeland Security Investigations officer guards detained workers Aug. 7 after immigration raids at seven work sites across Mississippi. (Handout/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement/AFP/Getty Images)
This is part of a well-established pattern. Trump often uses immigrants as scapegoats, encouraging his supporters to blame them for any and all problems they face. But beneath the cynical posturing there appears to be genuine animus.
Does the president hate all immigrants? He did once allegedly muse about wanting more newcomers from Norway. But those who are not white are treated, by this administration, as if they were not fully human.
How else to characterize a policy of cruelly separating children from their asylum-seeking parents at the border? Of keeping children in cages and denying them toothbrushes or soap? Of cramming adults into overcrowded lockups when their only crime was to lawfully seek refuge from violence and persecution?
Last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement staged what was apparently the biggest one-day immigration raid in modern American history. Approximately 680 men and women classified as “removable aliens” were arrested at seven work sites in Mississippi. Taken from their job sites, many left young children waiting in vain, and in anguish, for their parents to pick them up from school or day care.
ICE has limited resources — certainly nowhere near enough to go after all the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States. The only policy that makes sense is to prioritize the capture and removal of those who pose a genuine danger, such as MS-13 gang members. But that’s not who you find punching a clock for minimum wage at a chicken plant in Mississippi. Instead, you find hard-working people trying to put food on the table for their families.
The raid was a demonstration, a warning, a show of force. If the administration were serious, it would have gone after the employers, who were not immediately hit with charges or sanctions — and are already looking for replacement workers. The message to undocumented migrants was: You are weak. We can hurt you whenever we want.
Sensible immigration reform would provide the law-abiding undocumented with a pathway to legal status and citizenship. But the Republican Party blocks action because it is terrified that these immigrants would eventually become Democrats. I wonder why.
I’m betting that not a single unemployed steelworker or laid-off coal miner moves to Mississippi to take those jobs plucking poultry. Trump’s immigration policy isn’t a matter of economics. Nor is it a matter of principle or fairness.
Cruelty isn’t a sideshow in the way Trump deals with nonwhite immigrants. It’s the main event.
I’m betting that not a single unemployed steelworker or laid-off coal miner moves to Mississippi to take those jobs plucking poultry. Trump’s immigration policy isn’t a matter of economics. Nor is it a matter of principle or fairness.
Cruelty isn’t a sideshow in the way Trump deals with nonwhite immigrants. It’s the main event.
So, why is it OK to have mindless cruelty be the “official policy” of the US? If it isn’t “OK,” what is each of us doing to remove this cancer that is eating away the fabric of America under the incredibly bogus and insulting mantra of “Making America Great Again?”
Is cruelty great? Is stupidity great? Is dumping on our fellow man great? Is environmental degredation great? Is blatant racism great? Is misogyny great? Is beating up on children great? Is corruption great? Is lying great? Is cowardice great? Is selfishness great? Is White Nationalism great? Is encouraging gun violence great? Are out of control deficits great? Is turning our backs on vulnerable refugees great? Is bullying other countries great? Is insulting our allies great? Are useless “trade wars” great? Is sucking up to the world’s worst dictators great? Is nuclear proliferation great? Is wiping entire species from the earth great? Is less health care great? Is election minipultion by Putin great? Are collasing bridges and deteriorating roads great? Is using public office for private gain great? Is nepotism great? Is failing to pay taxes great? Just what part of Trumpism does the “MAGA Crowd” think is “great?”
It’s not rocket science. Trump, Miller, ”Cooch Cooch,” & company are the vilest racists since the supposed end of Jim Crow (as we’re now seeing, that was an illusion; it never ended for the GOP and the Trumps of the world). The DHS and disgraceful and disingenuous cowards like McAleenan, Morgan, Albence, and Provost are their “handmaidens.” Barr is their enforcer. And the GOP is the racist party of the “New Jim Crow.”
It’s not just immigrants, Eugene. Once Trump and his neo-Nazi gang are done “Dred Scottifying” migrants, they are going after you and every other person of color and minority in the U.S. who dares to stand up to up to them.
Ironically, it’s a small handful of truly bizarre African Americans and Hispanic Americans who continue to support Trump, wrongly thinking that they are now “De Facto White” and consequently the “railroad cars will never be coming for them,” along with those who don’t vote, who could give Trump the electoral college edge he needs to remain in office (while likely losing the popular vote by an even larger margin than in 2016) and seal their own eventual demise and that of their families.
Some German Jews had converted to Lutheranism or Catholicism before World War II thinking that it would save them from Hitler and the anti-Semites. How did that work out for them?
Trump and today’s GOP are unapologetic racists as well as congenital liars lacking in any type of fundamental values. Their lies are many, selfishness rampant, and their policies and pronouncements vile. But, they must be taken seriously for the existential threat they are to the rest of us. To treat them as anything else or to express surprise when they turn out to be “as advertised,” is to push America and the world ever closer to the abyss.
Treating Trump as “normal” or a “legitimate” U.S. President, as too may Federal Judges, legislators, and some members of the media do, is a potentially fatal mistake. He’s a 24-caret fraud, but every bit as much of a threat to our nation’s future as George III was when the Declaration of Independence was written; probably greater, because he’s here on our shore, in person –trying to satisfy his own insatiable ego while destroying our nation.
THE DEPORTATION sweep Wednesday by hundreds of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at several food processing plants in Mississippi left a trail of tears, business jitters and widespread anxiety in places where undocumented immigrants are so tightly woven into communities that the towns would struggle to exist without them. The raids inflicted predictable suffering — especially among children whose parents were suddenly carted off — to such a degree that just 24 hours afterward, ICE had released some 300 of the 680 migrants it had arrested, including those who had no criminal records.
President Trump, whose own family business has for many years employed migrants who entered the country illegally , pronounced the Mississippi action a “very good deterrent ” to unauthorized immigration. The evidence for that assertion is nil. Still, the sweep provided some useful reminders, not least that the United States cannot deport its way out of a dysfunctional immigration system.
First, the raids underline American agriculture’s deep dependency on undocumented workers, who in 2014 accounted for 17 percent of employees in the sector — and considerably more than that on farms and in many food processing plants. Little wonder that plant managers and local residents in towns targeted by ICE last week worried that the raids would sap their businesses and vitality.
The fact is that relatively few Americans want dirty, dangerous jobs that pay $12 per hour, while requiring some employees to report to work at 3 a.m. One study commissioned by the dairy industry suggested 3,500 dairy farms would close if half the country’s foreign-born workers were deported; another survey, from North Carolina, showed that in 2011, a minuscule number of the state’s nearly half-million jobless workers applied for 6,500 available farm jobs, and most of those who were hired couldn’t hack the work; most of the jobs were then filled by Mexicans.
Second, any large-scale enforcement action will inevitably result in families being broken apart — including those whose children are U.S. citizens. In 2017, two-thirds of unauthorized adult migrants had lived in the United States for more than a decade, according to the Pew Research Center; their median duration of residence was 15 years. Officials may not like the optics of crying toddlers and preteens whose parents have been taken away, but they shouldn’t be surprised.
Third, businesses like the ones in Mississippi that employ undocumented workers are subject to federal prosecution. But it was Republican leaders in the House of Representatives last year, on Mr. Trump’s watch, who blocked legislation that would have required private employers to use E-Verify, a data system used to check whether employees are legally present in the country. Farm groups, including those who represent major employers in Republican districts in California and elsewhere, are dead set against requiring E-Verify, knowing it would produce severe labor shortages.
ICE officials and federal prosecutors are right that deportation sweeps are within their purview as lawful enforcement actions. The problem is that the law is so blatantly misaligned with economic, social and political realities that it is magical thinking to believe that enforcement alone, in the absence of sweeping reform of existing laws, can make a dent in the nation’s population of 10.5 million undocumented immigrants.
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Best Point: Immigrants at the “lower levels” of our economic ladder make just as much, probably more, contribution to the national prosperity, continued existence, and welfare as those at the top. And, certainly they do more for the good of the nation than Trump and the useless civil enforcement authorities at DHS.
While I’m not going to turn away a “rocket scientist” who wants to immigrate, we certainly need more qualified agricultural, home health care, and construction workers than “rocket scientists.” And, yes, logical choices to enforce and administer the law in a rational manner, including declining to enforce useless and counterproductive provisions, and to resist political pandering stemming from racist motives are well within the lawful discretion of all law enforcement agencies.
Quibble: Just because enforcement is technically “lawful” does not mean that it’s prudent or appropriate. Most of today’s civil immigration enforcement is immoral, wasteful, and corruptly intended to support racism and White Nationalism.
I suspect that the majority of the criminal statutes and ordinances now on the books in the U.S. are largely unenforced or only sporadically enforced. That’s good policing, good public policy, and poor legislating.
What if your local police devoted 100% of their resources to “busting” anyone who drove 1 mile over the speed limit while failing to investigate and prosecute homicide, rape, robbery, and other violent felonies? That’s technically “legal,” but both inane and fundamentally corrupt. Those responsible would likely be quickly removed from office.
And, let’s be clear: While DHS resources are being concentrated on White Nationalist nonsense like the “Mississippi Raids,” REAL CRIMES, such as fraud, wage and hour violations, abuse of migrants, hate crimes directed at migrants, human trafficking, drug trafficking, domestic violence, rape, bribery, soliciting of sexual favors by DHS agents, extortion, perjury, tax evasion, and other felonies are NOT being aggressively investigated or prosecuted by Trump’s White Nationalist regime.
That’s basically the way the immigration laws are being (mal)enforced in Trump’s name by folks like McAleenan, Albence, Morgan, Provost, and others. Don’t fall for their nonsensical apologist “we’re only enforcing the law” BS. (Also, what about the laws protecting refugees, asylum seekers, and encouraging legal immigration that these complicit clowns are unlawfully perverting or failing to enforce?)
Instead, vote to insure they and everyone associated with Trump are removed from office, required to make an honest living in the future, and replaced with competent, humane, and ethical folks who will resist and when necessary “out” racism and White Nationalism in all of its toxic forms. Just because enforcement of obsolete, unworkable, and discriminatory laws might be technically “legal” doesn’t make it right, sensible, or moral. And, in the case of the Trump Administration, it’s downright immoral, dishonest, and counterproductive.
It’s a significant omission and a stark difference from the written document that has been linked to the 21-year-old gunman who allegedly opened fire on weekend shoppers Saturday at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The shooter’s alleged document mentions a Hispanic invasion, the increasing Hispanic population and a decision by its writer to target Hispanics after reading a right-wing conspiracy theory asserting Europe’s white population is being replaced with non-Europeans.
“We’ve got dead bodies. The majority are Hispanic. Some are foreign nationals from Mexico and we got a manifesto describing what he intends to do and why,” said state Rep. Cesar Blanco, a Democrat who represents El Paso.
“I think it’s telling; he failed to mention Latinos,” Blanco said of the president. “He failed to mention that our community is majority Latino, but it doesn’t surprise me.”
The Mexican government confirmed that eight of the victims identified so far were Mexican citizens, not unexpected considering the city of El Paso and surrounding communities of El Paso County, Texas are about 83 percent Latino.
Add to that the number of shoppers and workers from Mexico who legally cross the international border each day to shop, dine, work and visit family. The Walmart is part of a complex of retail outlets, with a Sam’s Club and the Cielo Vista mall next door. There is also a theater close by along with many restaurants and hotels.
Trump did say in the speech that he had sent his condolences to Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, because eight citizens from Mexico were among the dead. But he didn’t make specific mention of El Paso’s residents of Latino descent, who comprise the majority of the community.
Jeramey Maynard, 26, a local artist and restaurant manager, said Trump’s response has been largely political, exemplified by the president’s call to combine gun regulation reforms with immigration reform.
“He’s choosing his words without saying Hispanic or immigrant and making it about other things,” Maynard said. “He’s been having these racist comments. When it comes time to defend the community, of course we are not going to hear him say anything about the Hispanic community.”
Maynard added that he thought Trump “would paint it with the broadest brush he can. Why would he say something he thinks supports the Democratic Party?”
‘Target on our back’
Trump launched his 2016 election campaign with disparaging words, seen by many as racist, about people in the United States who have come from Mexico.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems,” Trump said to a largely white crowd at Trump Tower in New York. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people …”
Some defended the president saying he was referring only to immigrants who commit crimes and not speaking of Latinos in the United States as a whole.
But then Trump went on to question the ability of a U.S. district court judge to be impartial because he is of Mexican descent.
Trump’s political rallies have often been filled with chants of “Build the Wall” in reference to his pledge to build a wall across the entire border and make Mexico pay for it.
He responded to the influx of Central Americans seeking asylum by separating children from their parents and allowing border officials to hold them in chain-link pens.
In the past several days, many Latinos have been vocal about what they see as a through line between the president’s rhetoric and the shooting in El Paso.
Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes El Paso, said she had hoped Trump would have apologized for his rhetoric, which she said put a target on the city’s back.
“I would encourage him to do that,” she said.
The city has seen stark evidence of fear that exists among families because of the Trump hardline on immigration, according to several residents.
Marisa Limón Garza, deputy director of the Hope Border Institute, said the organization fielded calls from families who were directly affected by the shootings and families who were looking for loved ones.
They were afraid to go to the hospital or to interact with police and border enforcement, who responded to the shooting.
“If you are undocumented or of a mixed status household, the last place you want to go is where there is a tremendous amount of police presence,” Limón Garza said. Immigrants often are part of families that may include a mix of citizens, legal residents and people without legal status.
Her organization has been working with families to help them get the help they need, but she said it is a daily occurrence for people without legal permission to be in the country to be afraid to go to the hospital.
“This is just another layer of psychological trauma that this community has to face when we have already been ground zero for so many other challenges,” she said.
‘The illness is racism and xenophobia’
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus pushed Trump to commit to no longer using “invasion“ to describe Hispanic communities, immigrants or refugees to the country.
The caucus also asked the Trump administration to “acknowledge the threat of white supremacy and domestic terrorism” and to “combat this state of emergency head-on” with federal resources.
Rep. Joaquín Castro, D-Texas, twin brother of presidential candidate Julián Castro, said in a statement that the caucus is grateful Trump addressed the El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, tragedies.
But he said, “this does not make up for the years of attacks by President Trump on Hispanic Americans and our immigrant communities.”
“During the president’s address, he blamed the Internet, news media , mental health and video games, among others … Unfortunately, he did not take responsibility for the xenophobic rhetoric that he has frequently used to demonize and dehumanize Hispanic Americans and immigrants over the past four years.”
But Limón Garza said the tragedy has not been confined to immigrants.
“Here in El Paso we are a community that is over 80 percent Latino and that means people that are immigrant themselves and then people who have been here for generations,” she said. “It’s clear it was not just a random attack. It’s clear that this cannot be called someone with a mental illness. This illness is racism and xenophobia.”
Trump delivered a dishonest, divisive, and totally insincere condemnation of White Supremacy designed and delivered primarily to reassure his White Supremacist supporters that he’s really still on their side.
His ridiculously inappropriate upcoming visit to El Paso is a totally dishonest and divisive self-promotion stunt which all residents should either ignore or peacefully protest.
There is no human good, empathy, or redeeming quality in Donald Trump. Decent folks have to stop looking for that which doesn’t (and never did) exist and band together and use what remains of our Constitutional system to remove him from office before he destroys our country and everyone in it. It won’t be easy, but the lives of generations to come and the world’s future are at stake.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Monday moved to end asylum protections for most Central American migrants in a major escalation of the president’s battle to tamp down the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
According to a new rule published in the Federal Register , asylum seekers who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border. The rule, expected to go into effect Tuesday, also applies to children who have crossed the border alone.
There are some exceptions: If someone has been trafficked, if the country the migrant passed through did not sign one of the major international treaties that govern how refugees are managed (though most Western countries have signed them) or if an asylum-seeker sought protection in a country but was denied, then a migrant could still apply for U.S. asylum.
But the move by President Donald Trump’s administration was meant to essentially end asylum protections as they now are on the southern border.
The policy is almost certain to face a legal challenge. U.S. law allows refugees to request asylum when they arrive at the U.S. regardless of how they did so, but there is an exception for those who have come through a country considered to be “safe.” But the Immigration and Nationality Act, which governs asylum law, is vague on how a country is determined “safe”; it says “pursuant to a bilateral or multilateral agreement.”
Right now, the U.S. has such an agreement, known as a “safe third country,” only with Canada. Under a recent agreement with Mexico, Central American countries were considering a regional compact on the issue, but nothing has been decided. Guatemalan officials were expected in Washington on Monday, but apparently a meeting between Trump and Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales was canceled amid a court challenge in Guatemala over whether the country could agree to a safe third with the U.S.
The new rule also will apply to the initial asylum screening, known as a “credible fear” interview, at which migrants must prove they have credible fears of returning to their home country. It applies to migrants who are arriving to the U.S., not those who are already in the country.
Trump administration officials say the changes are meant to close the gap between the initial asylum screening that most people pass and the final decision on asylum that most people do not win. But immigrant rights groups, religious leaders and humanitarian groups have said the Republican administration’s policies amount to a cruel and calloused effort to keep immigrants out of the country. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are poor countries suffering from violence .
Along with the administration’s recent effort to send asylum seekers back over the border , Trump has tried to deny asylum to anyone crossing the border illegally and restrict who can claim asylum, and Attorney General William Barr recently tried to keep thousands of asylum seekers detained while their cases play out.
Nearly all of those efforts have been blocked by courts.
Meanwhile, conditions have worsened for migrants who make it over the border seeking better lives. Tens of thousands of Central American migrant families cross the border each month, many claiming asylum. The numbers have increased despite Trump’s derisive rhetoric and hard-line immigration policies. Border facilities have been dangerously cramped and crowded well beyond capacity. The Department of Homeland Security’s watchdog found fetid, filthy conditions for many children. And lawmakers who traveled there recently decried conditions .
Immigration courts are backlogged by more than 800,000 cases, meaning many people won’t have their asylum claims heard for years despite move judges being hired.
People are generally eligible for asylum in the U.S. if they feared return to their home country because they would be persecuted based on race, religion, nationality or membership in a particular social group.
During the budget year for 2009, there were 35,811 asylum claims, and 8,384 were granted. During 2018 budget year, there were 162,060 claims filed, and 13,168 were granted.
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Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.
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The Trump Administration launches its most brazen attack yet on the rule of law, our Constitution, and American Democracy.But, ultimately it’s likely to fail for the following reasons:
As usual, the Trump Administration fails to comply with the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”) in publishing a major policy change without advance opportunity for notice and comment;
The regulation violates the Immigration and Nationality Act’s (“INA’s”) guarantee of a right to apply for asylum except in very limited circumstances not applicable here;
A similar regulation purporting to end asylum rights for those applying between ports of entry was immediately halted by the Federal Courts;
Even under the regulation, refugees arriving in the U.S. retain the right to apply for mandatory “withholding of removal” under the INA and the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) — although the standard is higher, those showing “past persecution” are entitled to a regulatory presumption of future persecution for purposes of withholding of removal under the INA;
Smugglers eventually can develop (more dangerous and expensive) water routes to the U.S. which do not require passing through any other “signatory country” on the way;
Smugglers could eventually shift their “business model” to higher risk more expensive schemes designed to avoid the U.S. asylum system completely and deposit individuals in the interior of the U.S. where most of them will be able to “lose themselves” among the millions of other foreign nationals residing and working in the U.S. without documentation.
We are diminishing ourselves as a nation, but that won’t stop human migration.
And, remember, YOUR legal and Constitutional rights might be the next casualty of Trump and his out of control band of scofflaws.
Join the New Due Process Army and fight for the legal and Constitutional rights and the human dignity of everyone in America!
THE NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY IS ALIVE AND WELL IN BOOTHBAY HARBOR — Singer/Songwriter John Schindler & Friends Inspire & Uplift With Benefit Concert For Maine’s Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (“ILAP”) At Congregational Church Of Boothbay Harbor!
Boothbay Harbor, ME, July 14, 2019.In the face of continuing U.S. Government cruelty, disregard of asylum laws, and dehumanization which has drawn national and international condemnation, an estimated 150 enthusiastic supporters of due process, the humanity of asylum seekers, and the true spirit and teachings of Jesus Christ heard, saw, and participated in “the real America” at the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor Sunday night.
Singer/songwriter/guitarist John Schindler and Friends entertained the crowd with an upbeat, beautiful, heartfelt, down home, optimistic, generous, and welcoming view of America presented through their own music and arrangements. Among Schindler’s “friends” were local artist, singer, multi-instrument musician, and composer Kat Logan and songstress, composer, and guitar player Lisa Redfern.
Logan delighted the audience her versatility by playing the guitar, piano, banjo, accordion, and singing a cappella. She and Redfern collaborated seamlessly on several numbers. Schindler closed the performance with a number of his own compositions eliciting love, family, and American values including his award-winning composition The Start of the Freedom Trail, honoring the courage, determination, and sometimes tragedies of American immigrants throughout history.
The event was sponsored by Reverend Sarah Foulger and the Mission Committee of the Congregational Church, which is also sponsoring a mission trip to the southern border in November. All proceeds from the concert will be donated to the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (“ILAP”), Maine’s largest provider of pro bono legal support and representation to asylum seekers and refugees.
In her introduction, Rev. Foulger cogently and movingly pointed out that represented asylum seekers succeed on their claims at a rate of five times those forced to proceed without lawyers. And, although asylum proceedings have been likened by prominent judges to the equivalent of “death penalty trials in traffic court,” our laws currently provide indigent asylum seekers with no right to appointed counsel. Thus, essential efforts like those of ILAP are saving the lives lives of the most vulnerable among us every day.
The deep understanding of the plight of refugees and asylum seekers in today’s intentionally toxic, racially charged, and dehumanizing atmosphere created by our Government was both impressive and inspiring. Lots of folks in this small town in Maine understand our legal and ethical obligations to refugees and asylum seekers, the overwhelming obstacles refugees must overcome, and their essential contributions to the past and future greatness of America.
It’s a unfathomable tragedy that those running our Government (into the ground) are advancing a White Nationalist restrictionist agenda that unfairly demonizes and intentionally dehumanizes those whom we should be welcoming and treating with respect and dignity under our laws.
Anyone interested in contributing to this extraordinary effort by the “Maine Branch of the New Due Process Army” may do so by mailing tax deductible contributions made out to the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor (designated for ILAP), P.O. Box 468, Boothbay Harbor, Maine 04538.
Due process forever, malicious incompetence never. Join the New Due Process Army today, and fight for our Constitution and the promise of social justice for everyone in America. The life you save, might turn out to be your own.
Congregational Church Boothbay Harbor, MEJohn Schindler Musical Artist Boothbay Harbor, MEKat Logan Musical and Graphic Artist Boothbay Harbor, MELisa Redfern Musical Artist Boothbay Harbor, MERev. Sarah Foulger Congregational Church Boothbay Harbor, ME
This Fourth of July, We Celebrate Our Immigrant Neighbors
“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”– Franklin D. Roosevelt
As we gather together to celebrate America’s Independence Day with family and friends, let us take a moment to reflect on the important contributions that immigrants and their children have made to the values we celebrate on the Fourth of July: Perseverance. Love of family. Generosity. Faith. Gratitude. Strength.
More than one million of our neighbors in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC have moved here from abroad with dreams of a better future and to share in these common values, like Fernanda.
Fernanda successfully passed her citizenship exam in May and is anxiously awaiting her oath ceremony to become a U.S. citizen.
Fernanda, a long-time client of Ayuda, arrived to the United States at age two from Peru. Ayuda assisted her and her family in securing legal status through the Violence Against Women Act, represented her in her green card interview, and now represents her in her citizenship/naturalization process.
Fernanda is a student at Virginia Tech, pursuing a double-major in criminology and sociology. She is an active member of her community, and is interning this summer with Virginia Child Protective Services, assisting in protecting local children from abuse and neglect.
After taking her citizenship oath and graduating from Virginia Tech, Fernanda hopes to pursue a position in the federal government, preferably with the FBI, or with USCIS.
Thank you, Fernanda, for sharing your story.
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Thanks, Paula, for all that you and AYUDA do to make the REAL America Great!
Happy July 4 to all!🎇🎇🇺🇸🇺🇸
DUE PROCESS FOREVER, MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE NEVER!
WASHINGTON, DC – On July 2, 2019, Attorney General (AG) Barr published a final rule, further expanding his authority to reshape immigration law. The rule was issued in a highly unusual manner by resurrecting an old proposed regulation from 11 years ago and making it final within 60 days without any opportunity for public comment.
AILA President Marketa Lindt said, “This regulation exemplifies why the immigration courts should not be housed under the Department of Justice (DOJ). Under this administration, the AG has already utilized the certification power in an unprecedented manner to unilaterally strip immigration judges of basic operational authorities, interfere with judicial independence, and even attempt to rewrite asylum and detention laws. The American legal system is designed with fundamental procedural protections, such as briefing by the parties, to ensure the decision maker-here the AG-hears all points of view before deciding an important case. This new rule, however, authorizes the AG to singlehandedly designate Board of Immigration Appeals (Board) decisions as precedent – and do so literally overnight bypassing the necessary legal procedures and without any checks and balances.”
AILA Executive Director Benjamin Johnson added, “This is the most aggressive effort to unify control over the immigration courts in 20 years; I have never seen an administration claw back a discarded rule like this in order to further assert its power. The scope of this power grab could be immense. This rule attempts to shield decisions issued by the Board – including decisions for which the Board didn’t even bother to write an opinion – from federal court review and tries to force the U.S. Courts of Appeals to presume that the Board reviewed all the available information and claims made by the parties even if there’s nothing to show the Board did so. Simply put, the AG will have more power with less oversight, and immigrants’ right to appeal to the federal courts will be far more limited. This attack on the judicial branch proves further that our nation urgently needs an independent immigration court system separate from the Department of Justice. Nothing less will suffice.”
Every Court of Appeals Judge who signs off on one of these constitutionally defective removal orders produced by EOIR, an illegitimate “court” that functions without either fundamental fairness or impartiality under procedures that no such judge would accept if applied to them or their loved ones, should hang his or her head in shame.
Once the Trump nightmare is over, courage and integrity to stand up against Government overreach should be the touchstone for all future Article III judicial appointments. No more “go along to get along” Federal Judges at any level of the system! The Judicial Branch was actually conceived and established as a protector of liberty and justice against tyranny, not as an enabler of, and apologist for, “abuses by the Crown” (or in this case, “the Clown”).
What kind of “judge” stands by and watches while empowered cowards like Trump and Barr unconstitutionally “beat up” on America’s most vulnerable who seek only the basic justice and fairness that our Constitution supposedly guarantees to “all persons.” Judges who allow the dehumanization and “de-personification” of others, in others words “Dred Scottification,” might someday find themselves and those they actually care about becoming “Dred Scott” by their dereliction of duty!
Julia Edwards Ainsley Investigative Reporter, NBC NewsAnnie Rose Ramos Producer, NBC News
WASHINGTON — Government investigators have identified poor conditions in another sector of the southern border, publishing graphic photos showing extreme overcrowding in Rio Grande Valley migrant facilities and finding that children there did not have access to showers and had to sleep on concrete floors.
Investigators for the Department of Homeland Security who visited border stations in the El Paso, Texas, sector in May found similar conditions: Migrants being held in temporary facilities for weeks rather than days, single adults living in standing room-only cells with no space to lie down, and concerns about serious health risks.
The investigators for the DHS Office of the Inspector General toured five Border Patrol facilities and two ports of entry in the Rio Grande Valley sector during the week of June 10 and published their report as a “management alert” to the department on Tuesday.
The Rio Grande valley of Texas has the highest volume of immigrants along the United States-Mexico border. At the time of the visits by investigators, Border Patrol was holding 8,000 detainees in custody, with 3,400 being held longer than the 72-hour limit.
One senior manager at a facility called the situation a “ticking time bomb,” according to the report. When immigrants detained in the facilities saw investigators walking through, they banged on the cell windows and pressed notes against the plexiglass to show the length of time they had spent in custody. One said “Help 40 Day Here.”
On Monday, NBC News published findings by the inspector general that detailed poor conditions for migrants in border stations in El Paso as far back as May 7. Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan said at a press conference Friday that reports of poor conditions for children in border stations were “unsubstantiated.” McAleenan said children were given showers as soon as they could be made available.
“Most single adults had not had a shower in CBP custody despite several being held for as long as a month,” according to the latest report on conditions in the Rio Grande Valley.
The report also detailed what it called “security incidents” in which immigrants have tried to escape and once refused to return to their cells after being removed during maintenance. To address the problem, Border Patrol called in its special operations force to “demonstrate it was prepared to use force if necessary,” the report said.
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Go to the link to see the DHS IG’s own photos documenting the abusive conditions and to get a link to the redacted report showing how McAleenan, Provost, Trump and others are coving up an intentionally created human rights disaster inflicted upon the most vulnerable.
We’re beyond “malicious incompetence” and basically into covering up possible criminal misconduct. Why haven’t McAleenan, Provost, and the other human rights abusers been fired? I guess it’s because this is the Trump Administration where neither the law nor morality matter!
To state the obvious, if Pro Publica can find this “hidden in plain sight” trash, it’s been right there under the noses of McAleenan, Provost, Morgan, and other DHS malicious incompetents all along. They just chose to look the other way.
Last year, as part of an effort to carry out President Trump’s promise of “extreme vetting” of visitors to the United States, the Department of Homeland Security began collecting social media account information from millions of people seeking to cross the border.
After all, a radical online could be a radical offline.
That’s why the stream of posts ricocheting around a 9,500-member Facebook group, comprising current and former Border Patrol agents as well as some people with no apparent connection to the Border Patrol, is so troubling. Members of the group, as documented by ProPublica this week, “joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings.”
Of a 16-year-old migrant from Guatemala who died while in Border Patrol custody in May, a member of the group wrote, “If he dies, he dies.”
Customs and Border Protection said on Monday that it had informed the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general about the posts and had started its own investigation. The National Border Patrol union decried the posts as “inappropriate and unprofessional.”
A reckoning from their superiors is due for any border agents who dishonored their uniform by spreading vileness on social media. In June, when the Plain View Project, a nonprofit research effort, released documentation on dozens of police officers from eight departments across the country posting racist, misogynist and Islamophobic material, 72 police officers in Philadelphia were pulled off the streets and the top prosecutor in St. Louis said she would no longer accept cases from 22 officers.
In a larger sense, the Border Patrol Facebook posts reveal a worrying mind-set among some of those charged with administering the harshest crackdown on migrants and asylum-seekers in decades. “These are clearly agents who are desensitized to the point of being dangerous to migrants and their co-workers,” Representative Joaquin Castro, who heads the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, told ProPublica.
The realities of that crackdown have created conditions that Americans would condemn if they were in another country.
While lawmakers refuse to compromise on emergency aid for the humanitarian needs at the border, “children are held for weeks in deplorable conditions, without access to soap, clean water, showers, clean clothing, toilets, toothbrushes, adequate nutrition or adequate sleep,” groups supporting the children wrote in a recent court filing. A judge on Friday ordered Customs and Border Protection to allow health workers into facilities where children are being held to ensure that conditions are “safe and sanitary.”
On Monday, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez toured facilities where migrants and asylum-seekers are being held. “Officers were keeping women in cells w/ no water & had told them to drink out of the toilets,” she tweeted.
As the congressional delegation arrived at one detention facility, they were heckled and cursed at by demonstrators, including one man wearing a Make America Great Again hat. (Another heckler hurled ethnic slurs at Representative Rashida Tlaib.)
Only a callous person could find mirth in the misery at the border. And only a desensitized nation could continue to permit the separation of children from their parents — and detaining all of them in atrocious conditions — as a morally acceptable form of deterrence.
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The constant lies, false narratives, intentional inhumanity, and “deterrence only” of Trump’s self-created “border crisis” are merely the latest example of how White Nationalism demeans our nation. This Administration has all of the legal tools necessary to process arriving asylum seekers in a fair, timely, and orderly manner. They just refuse to use them as they were intended to solve, rather than intentionally create and aggravate, migration problems.
Contrary to Trump/GOP false narratives, that includes the present ability to establish a legitimate refugee application program in or near the Northern Triangle and to use it as an incentive for refugees to apply outside the United States rather than coming to the border to apply for asylum. However, to work as an incentive, rather than a failed deterrent, the refugee program must be administered in a fair and generous manner that would allow those who have legitimate fears of persecution on the basis of gender, actual or political opposition to gangs, ethnicity, or religious activities to be properly classified as refugees and resettled here or in some other truly safe location as determined in conjunction with the UNHCR and signatory countries outside the Northern Triangle who can actually provide at least a reasonable chance of safety.
That likely means a goal of admitting at least 50,000 to 100,000 refugees to the U.S. from Central America over the next year. That, along with robust aid to address the problems creating the refugee flow would be the legal and effective approach to the forced migration issue.
Additionally, the Administration has the ability to reauthorize and extend “Temporary Protected Status” (“TPS”) to qualified individuals from the Northern Triangle already present in the U.S. until such time as the conditions in their home countries can be stabilized. This would also have the advantage of tracking the presence of such individuals in the United States while reducing the pressure on the already backlogged U.S. Immigration Court system.
Of course, the Administration has no intention of using any of these tools to solve the problem. That would be inconsistent with their racist, restrictionist, White Nationalist agenda aimed primarily at keeping non-white individuals out of the United States and reducing the rights and political power of those who are already citizens. The purpose of refugee protection laws is actually to protect refugees, not, as this Administration posits, to kill as many of them as possible outside the U.S. or at our border to “deter” other refugees from coming.
Indeed, the Administration’s absurdly inhuman and unlawful proposal to keep refugees from leaving the very countries where they are being persecuted, without addressing the conditions there, is basically that having them die, be tortured, or abused there is just fine with us. Whether folks like to face it or not, that is indeed a neo-Nazi philosophy. And, every day that Trump remains in the office for which he is so supremely unqualified further corrupts our nation.
