UW Immigrant Justice Clinic – immigrationcourtside.com

😢👎🏽HOW MUCH USCIS “SERVICE” DOES $575 BUY A REFUGEE? — Not Much, According To Deanna García @ “Early Arrival” — Plus Other Top News For Immigration Advocates!

Deanna Garcia — Deanna García
Immigration Journalist
PHOTO: Muckrack.com

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OCTOBER 25, 2021

Hello, this is Deanna Garcia with today’s edition of Early Arrival. You can email me at deanna.garcia@documentedny.com.

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NJ Immigrant Detainees Worried About Transfers as ICE Contracts End

📍 Documented Original

As New Jersey jails began to terminate their contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency has started sending immigrant detainees to other jails in the U.S., further away from their families and friends. ICE told lawyers that the agency can’t release their clients because it considers them a public safety threat, even though majority of them are imprisoned over unresolved charges for nonviolence crimes. This action indicates the power ICE has on where and how immigrant detainees are being held. “We all hoped that ICE would use its discretion to release,” said Ellen Pachnanda, the attorney in charge of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project. “As long as ICE retains this discretion to transfer, they will transfer.” Read more at Documented.

Documented is the only newsroom that creates journalism with and for New York’s immigrant communities. This work is not easy and it is not cheap. Help us fuel this work for $10/month.

AOC Revives Citizenship Bill for 9/11 Cleanup Crew

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and two other legislators reintroduced a federal bill to put immigrants who helped clean up after the 9/11 attacks on a fast track to U.S. citizenship. The 9/11 Immigrant Worker Freedom Act is an adjusted version of a bill that former Rep. Joseph Crowley introduced in 2017, which didn’t advance to the House. New York immigrants have asked for years to obtain legal immigrant status as compensation for the work they did and health problems they’ve suffered since the attacks. Several dozens are still protesting, while others gave up on fighting. The Associated Press

New Jersey Haitian Leaders Protest Deportations

Haitian community leaders and immigrant advocates gathered outside of a federal immigration office to protest the Biden administration deporting thousands of Haitian migrants under Title 42. The group of 50 people demanded that President Joe Biden allow more Haitians to seek asylum in the U.S. “These people just want to work and find a better way of life. We’re speaking in Newark because this city is a bedrock for New Jersey’s Haitian population,” said the Rev. Jean Maurice of the New Jersey Haitian Pastors Organization. According to U.S. Census data, New Jersey has roughly 60,000 Haitian residents. North Jersey

Advocates Rally Again for Schumer to Ensure a Pathway to Citizenship

For the last few weeks, immigrant advocates have been demanding Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to work to provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. On Friday, that demand continued at Schumer’s Peekskill office. Immigrants and advocates said they help Democrats gain power in Washington, so now they want Schumer to work for them. “We’ve delivered that control to the Democrats, so we feel that the Democrats have to deliver the promise that they’ve made us and make sure that citizenship is being included in this year’s reconciliation package,” said Peekskill City Councilor Vanessa Agudelo. Advocates said they’re in talks with Schumer’s office and will continue the pressure. News12 the Bronx

ICE Investigation Discovered Falsified Documents of Immigrant’s Suicide

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s External Reviews and Analysis Unit, medical and security staff at Stewart Detention Center in Georgia violated several agency rules when handling Efraín Romero de la Rosa’s suicide in 2018. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed suicide after being in solitary for 21 days. The review discovered staff falsified documents, poorly dealt with his medication, didn’t follow proper care procedures and improperly placed him in disciplinary solitary confinement, even though there were multiple warnings of his declining mental health. The review also lists 22 separate violations of ICE and Stewart Detention Center rules by staff during Romero de la Rosa’s four months in detention and eight separate “areas of concern.” The Intercept

Migrant Caravan Breaks Mexican National Guard Roadblock

Roughly between 3,000 and 4,000 migrants left the U.S.-Mexico border city of Tapachula on Saturday morning and headed to Mexico City. Caravan organizers say that will be their last stop while they continue to attempt to secure humanitarian permits for Haitians andCentral and North American migrants to move freely throughout Mexico. But some migrants said they plan on going to the southern border as part of their push. Videos on social media show the caravan recently ran into a Mexican National Guard roadblock and broke through it, with soldiers making no attempts to pursue or draw weapons against them. Border Report

California Hires Border Wall Contractor to Screen, Test and Vaccinate Migrants

California Gov. Gavin Newsom hired Sullivan Land Services Co. to screen, test and vaccinate migrants for COVID-19 at the border. SLSCO, based in Galveston, Texas, received a no-bid $350 million contract from California. This was the same company former President Donald Trump used to build the border wall along the border. Newsom had criticized the border wall and even pushed to file several lawsuits to halt its construction. According to a report, SLSCO staff gave COVID-19 services to about 60,000 migrants at five locations. Immigration advocates and health care leaders aren’t happy about the state’s partnership with SLSCO. KXAN

Child Allowed into U.S. for Urgent Cancer Treatment and Given Humanitarian Parole

Carlitos, a 2-year-old boy from Guatemala, was allowed to enter the U.S. from Tijuana in an ambulance. According to his attorney Hollie Webb, his story of kidnapping, expulsion, lack of access to medical care and a serious illness that without proper treatment could kill him, provided him with a rare outcome. Attorneys and doctors campaigned U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials to allow Carlitos and his mother, Ana, to cross into San Diego under a humanitarian parole to give him cancer treatment. CBP granted the request after an inquiry from The San Diego Union-Tribune. The two crossed into the U.S. Thursday evening to a hospital in San Diego. The San Diego Union-Tribune

Georgia Lawmakers Consider Immigration Solutions Amid Labor Shortages

Just like elsewhere in the U.S., Georgia is facing labor shortages as its economy recovers from the pandemic. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has been meeting to figure out how Georgia’s immigrants can help solve this problem and contribute to the state’s economy. They spoke with industry leaders and immigration advocates to learn what prevents immigrants from maximizing their participation in the workforce. According to Darlene Lynch, a representative of Georgia’s Business & Immigration Partnership, about 1 in 5 foreign-born Georgians with college degrees are either unemployed or employed in a low-wage job, which costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax revenue per year. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Biden Allowing Private Groups to Sponsor Afghan Evacuees, Small USCIS Staff Tackling Humanitarian Requests, Arizona Mayor Claims Migration Stresses Local Services

The Biden administration plans on revealing a program Monday that would let private groups sponsor Afghan evacuees and assist their resettlement in the U.S., three sources familiar with the plan told CBS News. According to a presentation describing the plan, groups of about five individuals could apply to become “sponsor circles” that would help Afghan refugees secure housing, basic necessities, financial support, legal counsel and medical services for about 90 days. This program would become an alternative to the traditional refugee resettlement process, which is overseen by nine national agencies and their local affiliates. The “Sponsor Circle Program,” a joint initiative between the Department of State and the Community Sponsorship Hub, oversees online applications from potential sponsors and helps connect them with refugees. CBS News

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services allocated just six employees to process roughly 14,000 humanitarian requests for Afghan evacuees seeking relocation last week, drawing condemnation from lawmakers. “That is completely and utterly unacceptable, and I call on USCIS to address the shortcoming immediately,” said Rep. Jim Langevin, (D-R.I.). As of Friday, that number jumped to close to 20,000 requests, which is 10 times more than the number of humanitarian applications submitted around the world in a typical year, said a USCIS official. In response to Langevin’s criticism, the USCIS official said the agency is assigning additional staff for the workload. VOA News

Yuma, Arizona, Mayor Douglas Nicholls (R) told a Washington, D.C. forum that the increase of undocumented immigrants is stressing health care and nonprofits that assist migrants in his town. “As these (migrant) numbers continue to increase, it’s going to be beyond their capability,” he said. “From that perspective we have real concern about our health care system holding up, our nonprofit system holding up, and even our economy.” His comments come as apprehensions of immigrants at the southern border are at their highest numbers in decades. Immigration advocates say those numbers can be misleading since they might represent one migrant who was stopped multiple times. They also argued that nonprofits were under stress due to the pandemic before immigration numbers increased in Trump’s last year in office. AZMirror

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Recently, I wrote about the heroic efforts of my friends Processor Erin Barbato and the UW Law Immigration Clinic and Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr and the Cornell Law Immigration Clinic to help Afghan refugees, including assistance filing applications for “humanitarian parole.”

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/10/21/%f0%9f%91%8d%f0%9f%8f%bc%f0%9f%98%8e%f0%9f%97%bdmore-ndpa-news-immigration-guru-professor-stephen-yale-loehr-cornell-immigration-clinic-help-afghan-refugees-with-humanitarian-parole-requests/

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/10/21/%f0%9f%97%bd%f0%9f%91%8d%f0%9f%8f%bc%f0%9f%98%8endpa-news-amazing-practical-scholar-professor-erin-barbato-leads-uw-law-clinic-in-helping-afghan-refugees-ft-mccoy-wi/

I also questioned the unusually high $575 fee being charged by USCIS for these emergency humanitarian applications! Now, we find out that for this outrageously high fee, USCIS has assigned only a “skeletal staff” of six adjudicators to process those very predictable applications. Undoubtedly, that will result in unnecessary backlogs and processing delays.

Ur Mendoza Jaddoul — Ur Mendoza Jaddou
Director, USCIS
PHOTO: PotomacLaw.com

These are the types of “X’s & O’s” practical problems that USCIS Director Ur Jaddou was hired to fix. So, she needs to “get on the stick” and fix this NOW!

A drastic increase in humanitarian parole applications and backlogs was totally predictable. Why is it only getting attention after it becomes a problem and draws public criticism?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-25-21

NDPA SUPERSTAR ⭐️ PROFESSOR ERIN BARBATO 🦸‍♀️ ORGANIZES EVENT, SPEAKS OUT IN MADISON CAP TIMES ON ICE ABUSES IN THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” (“NAG”) — “We must rebuild the system from the ground up and work toward a future in which immigrants are treated with respect and dignity. Our shared humanity demands it.”

https://madison.com/ct/opinion/column/erin-m-barbato-immigrant-detention-today-relies-on-systemic-racism-and-life-threatening-policies-it/article_0b8a6c14-99bf-5aa4-bd81-30b7923d9c54.html

Last month, a nurse at a federal immigration detention center in Irwin, Georgia, filed a whistleblower complaint detailing the abhorrent treatment of people detained there. She charged that women in detention were subjected to hysterectomies and invasive gynecological exams without their knowledge or consent, and often without assistance from interpreters.

The complaint is heartbreaking, but far from surprising. These atrocities are consistent with practices employed at U.S. detention centers for decades, and they are sadly consistent with our tragic history of forced sterilization of minority women. The implications of the complaint are perfectly clear: we must end the civil detention of immigrants, so fraught with systemic racism that undervalues the lives of Black, Indigenous and other people of color. There is no other option.

With over 200 detention centers, the United States has the largest immigration detention system in the world. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has over the past two years detained an average of 40,000 daily, an astonishing number that surpasses the population of Wisconsin cities like Brookfield and Wausau. Yet the detention of immigrants is just a microcosm of the inhumanity that characterizes our immigration system today. Many immigrants come to the U.S. to seek refuge and a better life for themselves and for their families. But when they arrive in this country, they are forced into conditions that violate human rights principles under both international and domestic standards, and that, frankly, violate our moral obligations to each other as human beings.

ICE has the authority to release most people from detention through monetary bonds or parole, and ICE policy requires that people seeking asylum are released from detention when they can establish their identity and demonstrate they are neither a danger nor a or flight risk. Instead of using these tools, though, ICE almost always chooses detention, ostensibly to deter others from coming into the country. But far from showing detention to be an effective deterrent, statistics reveal the opposite: harsher penalties have not reduced the numbers of undocumented migrants crossing U.S. borders. What the data does show is how immigrant detention has become a big business, with taxpayer dollars helping to subsidize a billion-dollar private prison industry that profits from human trauma.

Often located in remote places, immigrant detention facilities are ripe for the abuse of detained migrants. There is no community oversight and little — often no — access to legal representation. People in detention will only have an attorney if they can afford one or are lucky enough to find pro bono representation.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Erin’s article at the link! Erin reinforces points that I make often here on Courtside: the real objectives of unnecessary and highly cost-ineffective “civil detention” are to deprive migrants of access to counsel, coerce them into abandoning potentially successful claims, punish them for exercising legal rights, and deter others from asserting legal rights.

All of these are clear violations of Constitutional due process and equal protection! The conditions under which these non-criminals are held to “punish” them for their audacity to assert their legal rights also violate the Eighth Amendment, as some lower Federal Court Judges have found.

Unfortunately, too many Article III Judges have abdicated their oaths to uphold the Constitutional rights of the most vulnerable persons among us in the face of improper political pressure and a regime overtly out to undo American democracy and institute a far-right reactionary, white nationalist kakistocracy.

And, here’s info on a great “virtual event” that Erin helped organize to raise awareness of the existence and devastating effects of “Baby Jails” in the U.S. Allowing such cruel and inhuman abominations to flourish in our nation is beyond disgraceful! (See also the recent book Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America, by my good friend and Georgetown Law colleague Professor Phil Schrag).

https://law.wisc.edu/calendar/event.php?iEventID=32578180

The Flores Exhibit: Stories of Children Held in Immigrant Detention Facilities

WHEN

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

7:30 pm to 8:30 pm

WHERE

Virtual

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Artists, lawyers, advocates and immigrants read the sworn testimonies of young people under the age of 18, who were held in two detention facilities near the U.S./Mexico border in June 2019. Followed by a discussion with panelists.

Organized by the Immigrant Justice Clinic, Latinx Law Student Association, and American Constitution Society at UW Law School.

Zoom link will be sent to via email to those who register.

Registration

INTENDED AUDIENCE

Faculty, Students, Staff

EVENT CATEGORY

Speaker/Discussion

Email this event

Download for import into your calendar

« Back to the Calendar

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I proudly note that my good friend Judge (Ret.) Jeffrey S. Chase and other distinguished members of our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges are “readers” in “The Flores Exhibit.”

I am also inspired by all that Erin has accomplished and the lives she and her students have saved through the Immigrant Justice Clinic at my alma mater, UW Law!

Erin and others like her are exactly the type of progressive, practical, scholar-problem solvers that we need as Federal Judges and in key Government policy-making positions. We need to replace the reactionary kakistocracy with a progressive, equal justice oriented, practical, problem-solving humanitarian meritocracy.

“Equal Justice For All” isn’t just a “throwaway slogan.” It’s a vision of a better, more efficient, more effective, more tolerant, more inclusive, more diverse, more representative Government that will work with people of good faith everywhere to maximize opportunities for all and promote a brighter future for everyone in America! It’s in our power to make it happen,and the necessary change starts this Fall.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-12-20

THANK UW LAW: Unemployment Insurance Was The Brainchild of Two Amazing UW Law Students Who Were Also In Love — It All Began In L-1 Torts! — PLUS: The “Wisconsin Idea” Continues Today Through The Work of Professor Erin Barbato!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/18/unemployment-checks-great-depression-coronavirus/h

Michael S. Rosenwald writes in the WashPost:

A line to apply for unemployment benefits in San Francisco in 1938. (Library of Congress)

They first laid eyes on each other in torts class.

It was 1923, a period of prosperity before the Great Depression.

He was the son of Walter Rauschenbusch, a prominent theologian and key figure in the Social Gospel movement. She was the daughter of Louis Brandeis, the progressive Supreme Court justice and the most famous Jew in America. Each inherited their parents’ zeal for social justice.

At the University of Wisconsin Law School, these two idealists — Elizabeth Brandeis and Paul Raushenbush — noticed each other immediately. She was brainy and shy, her hair long and dark. He was handsome and outgoing. On hikes and canoe outings, they fell in love romantically and intellectually — a partnership instrumental in passing the nation’s first unemployment compensation law.

The story of how they did it is largely forgotten, but the 22 million people who have applied for unemployment during the coronavirus pandemic — and, of course, the millions before them — have this unlikely couple to thank. The law they conceived of and helped pass in Wisconsin laid the foundation for unemployment insurance throughout the country.

“Their story is absolutely staggering to think about right now,” said their grandson Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, a Baptist minister and senior adviser for public affairs and innovation at Interfaith Youth Core, a nonprofit organization. “It was their life’s work to make laws like this available to everyone.”

Raushenbush, who lives in New York, has spent the last few years writing a history of his family, including interviewing his father, Walter, who is 92 and lives in McLean, Va. Raushenbush was working on the unemployment insurance section as the coronavirus pandemic arrived in America.

Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush and Paul Raushenbush. (Courtesy of Paul Brandeis Raushenbush)

As part of his research, Raushenbush has been reading a privately published book his grandparents wrote based on interviews they gave to a Columbia University oral history project. The book is the story of the legislation — where the idea came from, the characters involved, how the law was ultimately passed.

“It really reads like a novel,” Raushenbush said.

The main characters, of course, are his grandparents.

And Wisconsin.

His grandmother moved there to attend law school. She had lost her job as a researcher for the D.C. Minimum Wage Board following the Supreme Court’s ruling that the minimum wage for women was unconstitutional. Justice Brandeis, who as a lawyer and jurist was renowned for his progressive stance on social issues, did not cast a vote because of his daughter’s job.

E.B., as she was known to family and friends, wanted a career at the intersection of economics, labor and the law. She hoped to attend an elite East Coast law school, but those programs, including Harvard, where her father studied, didn’t accept women. With her father’s approval, she chose the University of Wisconsin, where the “Wisconsin Idea” — fusing academic research to solving social problems — was flourishing.

“I have no doubt that the Wisconsin Law School is good enough for your purposes,” E.B.’s father wrote to her, “and should think it probable that you would find economics instruction, and doubtless, other considerations more sympathetic there than at Yale.”

Her future husband chose Wisconsin for the same reason. There, the couple studied under professor John R. Commons, an influential social economist who crafted Wisconsin’s workers’ compensation law. Commons tried and failed several times to pass legislation protecting unemployed workers, whose numbers were soaring, especially after the stock market crash in 1929.

Paul Raushenbush signing the paperwork for the first unemployment compensation check in 1936. (Courtesy of Paul Brandeis Raushenbush)

Commons took a particular interest in his graduate students, inviting them for regular dinners on Friday nights to discuss societal problems.

“I suppose the characteristic thing about Commons was that he was trying to use his brains and enlist the brains of his students in attempting solutions of economic problems,” Raushenbush said during the Columbia University oral history interviews. “This was no ivory tower guy. Sure, he did research and wrote books, but perhaps the main interest that attracted his students was that they were being invited to participate in an attempt to deal with difficult problems on an intelligent basis.”

By 1930, E.B. and her husband both were teaching economics at the University of Wisconsin. They had become friends with Philip La Follette, the local district attorney, whose parents were friends with Justice Brandeis. One day in June, La Follette invited the couple, along with another Wisconsin economist, Harold Groves, to his house in Madison.

La Follette told them he planned to run for governor, that he planned to win, and that he wanted to pass legislation instituting unemployment compensation. He asked the trio to come up with a plan.

And did they ever.

They spent the weekend hiking along the Wisconsin River batting around ideas. Their key idea — one that survives today — was that the benefits should be funded entirely by employers, thus giving them the incentive to maintain steady levels of employment or bear the cost of not doing so. The economists also decided that Groves, who grew up on a Wisconsin farm, should run for the State Assembly and introduce the legislation.

Everything clicked.

In 1932, Wisconsin Gov. Philip La Follette signs the nation’s first unemployment measure into law. Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush and Paul Raushenbush are second and third from the left. (Courtesy of Paul Brandeis Raushenbush)

The first unemployment check issued in Wisconsin. (Wisconsin Historical Society)

. . . .

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Read the rest of the article in the WashPost at the link.

Scholarship, teamwork, creativity, hard work, and a healthy dose of romance produces results that are still “making a difference” today. Nice story! Beyond that, it’s an inspiring story for today’s world.

What if we had more folks like the Raushenbusches in government today? Folks looking for ways in which government could work to make the lives or ordinary working people better. Compare that with the “Trump Kakistocracy,” a bunch of self-centered incompetents mostly out to disable government, screw working folks, line their own pockets, glorify and suck up to their “Supreme Leader-Clown,” and shift blame for their mess, all while attempting to advance a destructive far-right political agenda that cares not for the public good! Then we had folks like Phil La Follette; now we have Stephen Miller!

Professor Walter Brandeis Raushenbusch, the son of Elizabeth & Paul, was on the faculty of U.W. Law when I was there from 1970-73. However, I never had him for a class. We did study the “LaFollette Era” and its contributions to President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in several of my classes.

I believe that U.W. Law gave me a strong grounding in teamwork with my colleagues (now retired Wisconsin State Judge Thomas S. Lister was one), how to apply scholarship to achieve practical results, and solving complex problems.

Speaking with Judge Lister earlier this year during a “pre-lockdown” visit with his wife Sally to D.C., I could see how our time together at U.W. Law had a continuing profound influence on both of our careers, particularly the “judicial phases.” In our different ways, we were always striving to establish “best practices,” promote “good government,” and make the “system work better” for the public it served. Just like some of the “progressive ideas” that were interwoven with our legal education in Madison. “Teaching from the bench” was how I always thought of it. Sometimes we succeeded, other times not so much; but we were always “in there pitching,” even up to today. See, e.g., the “Lister-Schmidt Proposal” for an Auxiliary Judiciary for the U.S. Immigration Courts here: https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/08/19/an-open-letter-proposal-from-two-uw-law-73-retired-judges-weve-spent-90-collective-years-working-to-improve-the-quality-delivery-of-justice-in-america/. We haven’t given up on this one!

Hon. Thomas Lister
Retired Jackson County (WI) Circuit Judge

And, the “Wisconsin Idea” is still alive and thriving at U.W. Law, thanks to dedicated professors like my good friend and fellow warrior for the “New Due Process Army,” Professor Erin Barbato, Director of the U.W. Immigrant Justice Clinic. Erin uses creative scholarship, teaches practical, usable, courtroom and counseling skills, promotes teamwork, and saves “real lives” in her work with asylum seekers and other migrants. She is also a role model who is inspiring a new generation of American lawyers committed to advancing social justice and guaranteeing Due Process and fundamental fairness for all. Indeed, Erin was a guest lecturer at my Georgetown Law class and inspired my students with her courage, energy, and real life examples of “applying law to save lives!” It really made the “textbook come alive” for my students! Thanks for all you do, Erin!

On Wisconsin!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-19-20

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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