👂LISTEN UP BIDEN CAMPAIGN & DEMS: A DYNAMIC LATINA LEADER 🦸🏽‍♀️ HAS THE FORMULA FOR SUCCESS ✌️ON IMMIGRATION IN 2024: SEQUENCE, SOOTH, SATURATE, & SWAY! — Read & Listen To Beatriz Lopez Here!

Beatriz Lopez
Deputy Director
Immigration Hub
PHOTO: Immigration Hub

From The Narrative Intervention on Substack:

Last week, I listened to Ezra Klein ruffle feathers with his provocative, “strategic” advice to Democrats to choose a different presidential nominee that isn’t President Biden. I found his reasoning to be redundant and just another taunt in the vein of what Jon Stewart and other pundits are saying about Biden. What did perk my ears was his short crescendo into the qualities of Vice President Kamala Harris before he lazily landed on his novel advice:

She’s enormously magnetic and compelling. Her challenge will be translating that into her public persona, which is, let’s be blunt about this. A hard thing to do when you’ve grown up in a world that has always been quick to find your faults. A world that is afraid of women being angry of black people being angry. A world where for most of your life it was demanded of you that you be cautious and careful and measured and never make a mistake. And then you get on the public stage and people say, oh, you’re too cautious and too careful and too measured. It’s a very, very, very hard bind to get out of. But maybe she can do it still. It is a party’s job to organize victory.

Klein ends this wonderful reflection with a careless – and let’s be frank – a typical white man move, “If Harris cannot convince delegates that she’s the best shot at victory, she should not and probably would not be chosen.” He later continues his monologue by mentioning a series of other Democrats with résumés that pale in comparison to the VP’s long list of career achievements and experiences.

Oh Ezra. What could’ve been. Progressive white man allyship is like puppy love – it ends when they become dogs.

It’s nothing new for us women of color to deal with men who think they know better and who often fail to recognize the merits and the knowledge that comes from years of diligently doing the work, putting triple the effort, ensuring near perfection, meeting goals, and delivering beyond the standard metrics. It’s a frustration I know all too well.

And look, I’m not saying all white men fall into the Ezra Klein category. There are a few good men – those that stick out their neck for you, who vouch for you and take a step back, who are true friends in the battle. To them, I’m grateful.

But for the most part, we have to deal with the Ezras. Today, I want to focus on three grievances so that I may elevate three women who are telling Democrats how we can win in 2024.

1. Vice President Harris. This spectacular woman who has probably the most thankless job in the country has persevered despite the sexist and racist punditry. She took on the most difficult portfolio of dealing with forced migration and investing in the region. And let me tell you, as a Nicaraguan-American, Central and South American politics is ridiculously complicated, tough and heartbreaking, and still the VP has managed to get millions upon millions of dollars in philanthropy and big business to invest in the region. She spearheaded all kinds of programs in the region to elevate women in business and young people in service. But you don’t hear any of that – or what she’s done and meant to Dreamers, youth, and the LBGTQI+ and Black communities.

While white Democratic operatives warn about losing the Black and Latino men vote, the VP has been working on actually addressing the matter. Not until this Sunday did you probably hear about the VP’s “quiet” meetings with a diverse set of electeds and experts. With her seasoned and smart campaign staff (including Sergio Gonzales) and Julie Rodriguez Chavez, she’s doing the work, strategizing and devising solutions.

This is what women of color do best – ignore the naysayers and get shit done. Every Democratic operative should be lifting the VP and her efforts up, instilling confidence in Democrats and pundits that the VP is strengthening the campaign and showing the public that our VP is the best veep we’ve had in over a century.

It’s with the VP we all rise.

2. Julie Chávez Rodriguez. I have long admired Julie from afar and up close. She embodies the characteristics of the few Latinas in Washington politics – smart, hard-working, strategic, persistent and authentic. She’s not defined by her grandfather’s legacy; she’s defined her own present and future with a committed love to our country and civil service. And yet, you get the sense through beltway rumors, leaks and hot takes that a class of establishment operatives and government officials from yesteryears are either gunning for her failure or humoring the token Latina. Unacceptable.

This mountain-mover has a long history of hustling and delivering on promises. From leading campaigns to working in two administrations, Julie has ensured Democrats invest in the Latino vote and immigrant communities when no one was willing, while strategizing and organizing to advance progressive measures empowering American working families. As Biden’s campaign manager, she has raised more funds than Trump and any candidate in any race.

Despite the comms person in me wanting her to lean into the spotlight, Julie doesn’t seek the James Carville limelight or approach this job as a lucrative ticket to cable punditry or podcasting. She’s doing the job because she believes in civic duty and good governance, she knows what it takes, and she has a strategy to win.

In Julie I trust, and so should you.

3. This last spot is a bit uncomfortable, but – screw it – I’m going to talk about me. Yes, me! For the past seven years, I’ve been telling Democrats that they can’t ignore immigration as a political galvanizer. I’ve led polling, focus groups, message and ad testing, and advertising campaigns in battleground states, and I’m not talking about one and done – nope, I’ve run all of the aforementioned countless times.

And because of my research and what I’ve learned from other partner organizations’ findings, I developed a messaging formula: acknowledge the system is broken, socialize a balanced approach to fixing it (i.e. don’t go Trump-lite; stress humane and orderly border security + pathway to citizenship), relate to voters with shared American values and center the economic contributions of immigrants, and counterattack Republicans, highlighting their extreme rhetoric and record.

Sound familiar? Does it sound like something Senator Chris Murphy may have recently written about or Tom Suozzi may have employed in his campaign? Yup. I guess, I should be glad that white men have validated my strategy to win.

But like I often tell my team – deep breaths and keep your eyes on the prize. Here’s the thing, the most important aspect of my messaging formula is saturation. Going on offense means repeating and delivering the message wherever a persuadable may roam. They need to see Trump and Republicans as foils to Biden and Democrats, and that means employing immigration to make the contrast that Democrats have advanced and pushed for popular solutions that don’t separate families and instead restore order and create opportunities for hard-working immigrants to stay and work in the country they proudly call home.

See? It’s not hard to implement the formula or write such an ad. If most Democratic campaigns targeted immigration ads to persuadable voters with as much gusto as they do on economy-focused ads, I’d bet money they’d see a shift in the polls. I know, I’ve done it before (even written numerous memos on how it can work).

To win in 2024, President Biden and Democrats have to start listening to women of color.

And on this critical issue of immigration, I’m telling you that neither the VP, Julie or I would ever ignore the power of the American dream. So yes, do what Congress failed to do: take action to manage migration at the border with grit and radical empathy AND widen the path to citizenship through administrative action so that Dreamers and other immigrants can continue to thrive without the fear of deportation or Trump. Then, deliver the message to Americans – on repeat.

In case you’re still here… check out how I explain the messaging strategy to win on immigration:

Share

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I highly encourage you to hit the “share button” above and listen to Beatriz’s inspiring and “spot on” 3-minute video in which she succinctly and cogently sets forth her “4-S messaging strategy” on immigration in 2024: Sequence, Sooth, Saturate, and Sway! Needless to say, Beatriz packs more useful information and values-inspired messaging into 3 minutes that most politicos do in a 30-minute “speech.” That’s one of many problems in today’s often-dehumanizing and intentionally off-point political “debate.”

Dems must pay attention to what Beatriz is saying! You can’t “run away” from immigration in a nation of immigrants, nor should you!

You also can’t just point fingers at Trump and the GOP. You need realistic, humane, practical solutions (the delusional Miller Lite “close the border tomorrow” is not one of them). Folks will embrace immigration and asylum seekers, but they also want to see “order at the border” and in the resettlement process. To date, sadly, the Biden Administration has failed to lay out concrete, realistic plans for doing that — other than bombastic promises to to “out-Trump Trump” with a “Miller Lite” agenda of unrealistic promises and soft-pedaled cruelty!

You can subscribe to Beatriz’s The Narrative Intervention on Substack.

Also, Beatriz is the Chief Political and Communications Officer of The Immigration Hub.

If you are inspired by her message and commitment, they are looking for a Manager of Federal Advocacy to join their stellar Leg/Policy Team. Sounds like a great NDPA opportunity with a great team that “walks the walk” when it comes to due process and equal justice for all persons in America!

Here’s the application information:

The Immigration Hub is seeking a stellar candidate to join our Leg/Policy team as the Manager of Federal Advocacy. We’re a smart and strategic organization that loves to empower young leaders who see themselves working in the halls of Congress or driving change in our movement. If you or someone you know is interested, please apply via https://lnkd.in/ezcaFrdZ.

Become part of the solution, rather than just hand-wringing about the problem and blaming and threatening the victims! It’s NOT asylum seekers who have failed over decades to invest in and establish a robust, expert, timely, due-process-compliant, fundamentally fair process for adjudicating asylum claims and resettling asylees in an orderly and helpful manner!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-21-24

⚖️🗽INSPIRING AMERICA: NDPA SUPERSTAR 🌟 & BRILLIANT GEORGETOWN REFUGEE LAW & POLICY ALUM BREANNE PALMER “GETS IT!” — “For me, the line between the so-called ‘Great Replacement Theory,’ the targeting of Black Americans in Buffalo in May 2022, and the deleterious, disproportionate effects of Title 42 on Black asylum seekers couldn’t have been brighter.”

Breanne Justine Palmer, Esquire
Senior Legal Policy Advisor
Democracy Forward
PHOTO: Linkedin

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/breannepalmer_career-retrospective-the-leadership-conference-activity-7074007461837340672-_0EI?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

Breanne writes:

People talk frequently about forward and backward movement in one’s career, but less so about the gift of lateral moves. I have been lucky enough to make at least one facially “lateral” move that drastically changed the scope and reach of my immigration advocacy work: as the first Policy Counsel for Immigration at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights!

Through the work of incredible jacks-of-all-trades on staff like Rob Randhava, The Leadership Conference has played an integral role in a number of major moments in the immigration space and maintained an Immigration Task Force. The organization wanted to concretize this work by hiring a full-time staffer, and on the heels of my work at the UndocuBlack Network, I felt this role was the right fit. I grew up in a distinctly Jamaican household, visiting our home country most of my childhood summers, but I also sought a sterling education in the Black American experience.

One of my proudest moments at The Leadership Conference was also one of the most complex, challenging moments of my career—trying to connect the dots between seemingly disparate, painful topics to highlight the interconnectivity of our racial justice and immigrant justice movements. For me, the line between the so-called “Great Replacement Theory,” the targeting of Black Americans in Buffalo in May 2022, and the deleterious, disproportionate effects of Title 42 on Black asylum seekers couldn’t have been brighter. I felt The Leadership Conference was perfectly poised to connect those dots in a public way, by co-leading a sign-on letter to the Biden Administration. But I had to make my case with both internal and external partners with care and finesse, drawing on all of my education and experiences to guide me. No community wants to feel as though another community is opportunistically seizing a moment to elevate its interests while riding on the backs of others. I am proud to say that I persuaded a number of skeptics, many of whom were rightfully protective of their communities and civil rights legacies, to see the urgency of drawing these connections for those in power. Through this effort I was reminded that the work of connecting the Black diaspora is arduous, but can bear powerful fruit.

Read the rest on my blog!

https://breannejpalmer.squarespace.com/blog/career-retrospective-the-leadership-conference-on-civil-and-human-rights

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I’ve said it many times: There will be neither racial justice nor equal justice for all in America without justice for migrants!

Breanne obviously “gets it!” So do leaders like Cory Booker (D-NJ).

Sadly, however, many Democrats, including notable African-American leaders like President Barack Obama, Vice President Kamala Harris, AAG Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, and former AGs Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch don’t! They all blew or are squandering opportunities to make due process and equal justice for asylum seekers and other migrants a reality, rather than a hollow, unfulfilled promise!

In particular, the “intentional tone-deafness” of the Biden Administration on treatment of asylum seekers and other migrants of color has been astounding and shocking! Speaking out for justice for George Floyd and others while denying due process and the very humanity of Blacks and other people of color seeking legal asylum at the Southern Border is totally disingenuous and counterproductive!

Additionally, while there recently have been some improvements in merit-based selections by AG Garland, the U.S. Immigration Courts, including the BIA, are still glaringly unrepresentative of the communities affected by their decisions and the outstanding potential judicial talent that could and should be actively recruited from those communities. An anti-immigrant, pro-enforcement, uber-bureaucratic “culture” at EOIR, which metastasized during the Trump Administration, discouraged many well-qualified experts, advocates, and minorities from competing for positions at EOIR.

The inexplicable failure of Vice President Harris to establish herself as the “front person” to actively encourage and promote service in the Immigration Courts among minorities and women is highly perplexing. Additionally, the failure of the Biden Administration to recognize the potential of the Immigration Courts as a source of exceptionally-well-qualified, diverse, progressive, practical scholars for eventual Article III judicial appointments has been stunning!

Meanwhile, for an “upgrade” of the struggling EOIR, one couldn’t do better than Breanne Palmer: brilliant practical scholar, forceful advocate, courageous, creative innovator, and inspirational role model. As Breanne says on her website:

I try to live by one of Audre Lorde’s creeds:

“I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.”

Sure could use more of that intellectual and moral courage and “leadership by example” on the bench at EOIR! And, as I mentioned yesterday, there are or will be more judicial positions available at EOIR at both the appellate and trial levels. See, e.g., https://wp.me/p8eeJm-8KK.

Thanks Breanne for choosing to use your tremendous skills and abilities to further due process, equal justice for all, and racial justice in America. So proud of you!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-23-23

🇺🇸🗽⚖️😎🌟🏆NDPA SUPERSTAR LAUREN WYATT WINS AWARD!

Lauren Wyatt Award — NY City Bar
Legal Services Award
Lauren Wyatt

Lauren Wyatt

Lauren Wyatt is an attorney with Catholic Charities Community Services, Archdiocese of New York, where she provides direct representation to immigrants before the Immigration Court, Board of Immigration Appeals, USCIS, and New York family courts. As the Lead Project Attorney for the Immigration Court Helpdesk (ICH), she coordinates pro se application workshops, Know-Your-Rights presentations, legal screenings, and pro bono case placements for unrepresented immigrants in removal proceedings. She also prepares and supervises the implementation of specialized ICH programming in response to emergencies (such as family separation) and changes in law and policy (such as in domestic violence- and family-based asylum claims) She recruits and trains volunteers to provide free legal information and assistance to low-income immigrants. She also supervises and mentors pro bono volunteer attorneys in representing clients before the Immigration Court.

Prior to joining Catholic Charities, Lauren was a Program Associate at the Vera Institute of Justice administering the Legal Orientation Program for detained immigrants. Before moving to New York City, Lauren was an Equal Justice Works AmeriCorps Fellow at Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Washington. At Catholic Charities DC, she represented unaccompanied children in immigration and state court proceedings, as well as in affirmative applications before USCIS. She also trained and mentored pro bono attorneys to represent clients in immigration and family court cases.

Lauren is licensed to practice in New York and Maryland, as well as before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She earned her J.D. from Howard University School of Law in 2014, and her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010. She has studied in Seville, Spain, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Havana, Cuba. She is fluent in Spanish and conversational in Italian.

Refugee Women

SOURCE: I-ARC

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Congrats, Lauren!😎👍🏼

As we can see, eight years out of law school, Lauren has basically “done it all!” When are we going to see Lauren on the Federal Bench?

Like Vice President Kamala Harris, Lauren is a distinguished grad of Howard Law! So, why hasn’t Harris actively recruited her for a judicial or senior management position at EOIR, where due process, racial justice, practical problem solving, and a positive attitude toward human rights are in total tatters and need “big time” change and redirection?

Why are Dems blowing the opportunity to recognize, promote, and empower “the best and the brightest” that the “upcoming generation” of American lawyers has to offer?

Why is EOIR still a “due process wasteland” rather than a model, due process focused, best practices oriented, “progressive judiciary of the future?”

Somebody with some “pipelines” into the Biden Administration should be asking these questions and insisting on positive progressive actions!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-27-22

TAL @ SF CHRON: GARLAND’S LATEST BOGUS GIMMICK TO REDUCE BACKLOG GIVES BIG MIDDLE FINGER 🖕 TO DUE PROCESS, SAY ADVOCATES!

Tal Kopan
Washington Reporter, SF Chronicle

S.F. Immigration Court fast-tracking cases in what critics say call a deportation conveyor belt

By Tal Kopan and Deepa Fernandes

A San Francisco immigration judge took less than an hour on Tuesday to order 23 people deported. But none of the immigrants was present and it’s unclear whether they knew about the hearing — even as they were deported for missing it.

The proceedings are part of a recently enacted effort the San Francisco Immigration Court says it’s undertaking to find immigrants it loses track of. Instead, advocates say the court has set up a deportation conveyor belt, one that fast-tracks removal orders before immigrants can make their case to stay in the country.

The practice appears to have started this summer, when immigration attorneys became aware of a subset of hearings being scheduled for immigrants whose mail was being returned as undeliverable. The court was notifying immigrants of the hearings by sending mail to the same incorrect addresses, practically ensuring few would show up.

In immigration law, not showing up at a hearing is enough to be ordered deported on the spot, in what’s known as an “in absentia” order of removal.

According to court data reviewed by The Chronicle, as many as 173 people were given deportation orders because of such proceedings in August and September — a nearly ninefold increase from the 20 similar orders given the previous seven months combined.

ACLU of Northern California attorney Sean Riordan, who has been tracking the issue, compared the situation to a criminal proceeding where, if a defendant didn’t show up for a routine step, the judge declared them guilty with limited ability to challenge the verdict. What’s more, he said, the court scheduled the proceeding expecting the defendant not to show.

“Our society would not tolerate that, it’s just grossly unfair, and we shouldn’t tolerate something similar happening in the immigration courts,” Riordan said. “It’s especially problematic that the San Francisco Immigration Court is spending significant time and resources to obtain so many removal orders through a special docket in cases where they know people will not be able to appear for their hearings.”

At this time, the effort appears limited to the San Francisco court, one of 70 such venues nationwide that hear immigrants’ cases. But advocates fear other courts may see how many cases the San Francisco bench has closed through in-absentia orders and follow suit, saddling scores of immigrants with unknown deportation orders. The immigration court system is run entirely by the Department of Justice, which also employs the judges.

More: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/San-Francisco-Immigration-Court-fast-tracks-16576102.php

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The (completely unnecessary and self-inflicted) “EOIR Travesty” continues! There are many, many ways that Garland could reduce his Immigration Court backlog (most covered by Courtside or elsewhere online) without stomping on any individual rights! But, this utter nonsense doesn’t happen to be one of them!

As anyone with even a passing familiarity with Immigration Court practice knows, DHS and EOIR are notorious for issuing defective notices and then creating illegal “in absentia” orders. The issue of bad notices has actually been to the Supremes twice recently, with the USG losing badly both times, and the possibility of yet a third trip on the horizon.

Yet, several overt rebukes from the Supremes about “unnecessary corner cutting” have engendered no fundamental changes in the notice system at either agency! Garland & Co. seem just as wedded to anti-due-process, wasteful “mondo enforcement gimmicks” at EOIR as Stephen Miller, “Gonzo” Sessions, and “Billy the Bigot” Barr!🤮

So much for the “racial justice agenda” at DOJ and the reputations of DAG Lisa Monaco, Associate AG Vanita Gupta, and AAG/Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, who have all “looked the other way” while their “boss” Garland continues to promote White Nationalist, anti-immigrant, resource wasting policies at EOIR.☠️

Then, incompetent, tone-deaf Dem politicos wonder why support among their “loyal progressive base” is fading fast? Progressives should “remember the EOIR disaster” and total lack of concern for those “fighting the good fight” in Garland’s disgracefully dysfunctional courts when any of Garland’s complicit lieutenants come up for future Article III judicial appointments!

Conduct like Garland’s at EOIR is a direct result of progressives allowing themselves to be “pushed around and disrespected” by a “Democratic Party Establishment” that gives not a hoot for immigrant justice, racial justice, or fair treatment of asylum seekers except when it’s time to solicit contributions or get out the vote! Vice President Kamala Harris appears to have taken a “leave of absence” on what was supposed to be one of her “signature issues!”

Garland’s “in your face tone-deafness” also contains a very clear message that progressive advocates aren’t “getting!” It’s going to take a “radical break from the past” to achieve any meaningful immigration reform at DOJ!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-01-21

☹️👎🏽BUMBLING BIA BADLY BUNGLES BASICS, AGAIN! — Applies Wrong Standard In Seeking To Reverse Valid CAT Grant — Obviously Frustrated 3rd Cir. Reinstates IJ Decision Following BIA’s Inept Attempt @ Appellate Review! — Arreaga Bravo v. A.G.

Woman Tortured — The BIA’s blunders in trying to help out their “partners” @ DHS Enforcement can sometimes seem almost comical. But, they are no laughing matter to those facing persecution or torture as a result! Why is Garland indifferent to life-threatening injustice in his courts?
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/203300p.pdf

Key Quote from Judge Greenaway’s decision:

Given the strength and rigor of the IJ’s underlying opinion, along with the BIA having exceeded its proper scope of review, we will vacate the BIA’s final order of removal and remand with instructions to reinstate the IJ’s opinion.

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There is the good, the bad, the ugly, and the absurdly horrible. This latest BIA travesty falls in the latter category.

Not surprisingly, the Circuit opinion quotes liberally from the BIA’s insipid, mealy-mouthed “bureaucratic double-speak” language! To paraphrase my BIA colleague the late Judge Fred Vacca, thank goodness the 3rd Circuit finally put an end to this “pathetic attempt at appellate adjudication.”

Interesting that rather than remanding to give the BIA a chance to deny again on some newly invented specious basis, the court just reinstated the IJ opinion. There should be a message here! But, Garland and his lieutenants aren’t “getting it!”

This case illustrates deep systemic and personnel problems that Garland has failed to address. Instead of summarily dismissing the DHS’s frivolous appeal with a strong warning condemning it, these types of bad BIA decisions contribute to the unnecessary backlog and both encourage and reward frivolous actions by the DHS.

Additionally, reversing, for specious reasons, a well-done and clearly correct IJ decision granting relief, just to carry out the wishes of DHS Enforcement and political bosses, is intended to discourage respondents and their attorneys while unethically steering Immigration Judges toward a “norm of denial.”

Abused women of color from the Northern Triangle have been particular targets of the EOIR’s seriously skewed anti-immigrant adjudications. This makes the Garland DOJ’s claims to be a “champion of racial justice” ring all the more hollow and disingenuous in every context. There will be no racial justice in America without radical EOIR reform!

What ever happened to our first ever woman of color Veep? Hypothesize that one of the BIA Appellate Immigration Judges responsible for this mess had come before the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation. Wouldn’t you have had some questions about judicial qualifications? So, why is it OK to continue to employ them in untenured Executive Branch quasi-judicial positions where they exercise life or death power over many of the most vulnerable among us, overwhelmingly persons of color, many women, lots of them unrepresented! Kamala Harris, where are you?

It’s all part of an improper “culture of denial” at EOIR, led and “enforced” by the BIA. Garland has disgracefully failed to come to grips with the “anti-due process” that he fosters every day that the “Miller Lite Holdover BIA” remains in their appellate positions.

For heavens sake, with unnecessary “TV Adjudication Centers” coming out EOIR’s ears, reassign these purveyors of bad law and appellate injustice to those lower “courts” where they can do less cosmic damage and real, better qualified appellate judges can “keep on eye” on them!

I keep thinking (or perhaps hoping) that eventually Circuits will tire of continually redoing the BIA’s sloppy work product and then having the cases come back again, sometimes years later, denied on yet another bogus ground!

On the flip side, Judge Garland seems to have infinite “patience” with well-documented substandard performance and painfully obvious anti-immigrant, pro-DHS bias on the part of his BIA.

Wrongful denial of CAT costs lives and can improperly condemn individuals to gruesome and painful death! This is no way to run a court system! I guess it’s easier to “tolerate” lousy judicial performance when you aren’t the one being unfairly and illegally condemned to torture!

Past time for a “line change” in Falls Church!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-29-21

☠️⚰️🏴‍☠️HAITI IS NOT “SAFE,” & THE PERVASIVE GANG VIOLENCE APPEARS TO BE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED! — “They raped women, burned homes and killed dozens of people, including children, chopping up their bodies with machetes and throwing their remains to pigs. . . . It was organized by senior Haitian officials, who provided weapons and vehicles to gang members to punish people in a poor area protesting government corruption!” — So, Why Are Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, & Garland Illegally Returning Refugees There Without Hearing Their Asylum Claims? 👎🏽🤮

Catherine Porter
Toronto Bureau Chief
NY Times
PHOTO: NY Times website

Natalie Kitroeff
Foreign Correspondent
NY Times
PHOTO: NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/world/americas/haiti-gangs-kidnapping.html?referringSource=articleShare

By Catherine Porter and Natalie Kitroeff

They raped women, burned homes and killed dozens of people, including children, chopping up their bodies with machetes and throwing their remains to pigs.The gruesome massacre three years ago, considered the worst in Haiti in decades, was more than the work of rival gangs fighting over territory. It was organized by senior Haitian officials, who provided weapons and vehicles to gang members to punish people in a poor area protesting government corruption, the U.S. Treasury Department announced last year.

Since then, Haiti’s gang members have grown so strong that they rule swaths of the country. The most notorious of them, a former police officer named Jimmy Cherizier, known as Barbecue, fashions himself as a political leader, holding news conferences, leading marches and, this week, even parading around as a replacement for the prime minister in the violent capital.

. . . .

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Read the rest of this gruesome, yet telling, report at the link.

Over 21 years on the Immigration Bench as both a trial and appellate judge, I adjudicated thousands of asylum claims. The circumstances described on this article undoubtedly would give rise to many potentially valid asylum and withholding claims, based on actual or implied political opinion and/or family or gender-based “particular social groups” and Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) grants based on torture with government acquiescence or actual connivance!

So, how do Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and Garland, who to my knowledge have never represented an asylum applicant or adjudicated an individual asylum case among them, “get away” with simply suspending the rule of law, under false pretenses, for those entitled to seek asylum?

Stephen Miller must be on “Cloud Nine” as Biden & Co. carry out his White Nationalist plans to eradicate asylum, particularly when it protects women and people of color! This is even as Miller and his neo-Nazi cohorts (a/k/a “America First Legal”) are gearing up to sue the Biden Administration to block every measure that might aid immigrants, particularly those of color.

He’s delighted with Biden’s abuse of asylum seekers of color! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

By contrast with Miller’s delight, human rights NGOs have “had it” with the Biden Administration’s grotesque anti-asylum agenda! See, e.g.,https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2021/10/18/2058777/–We-refuse-to-be-complicit-Advocates-leave-Biden-admin-meeting-in-protest-of-Remain-in-Mexico-plan?detail=emaildkre

Haiti Corpses — NGOs don’t share the Biden Administration’s vision of what a “safe” Haiti looks like. Neither do kidnapped American missionaries!
PHOTO: Marcelo Casal, Jr., Creative Commons License

Angering and alienating your potential allies and supporters to aid the far-right program of your enemies who are determined to do whatever it takes to undermine, discredit, and destroy your Presidency! Obviously, I’m no political expert. But, sure sounds like an incredibly stupid, “designed to fail” strategy to me!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

1-23-21

🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO: “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”

Carrie’s guest blog in ImmigrationProf Blog should be be read and taken to heart by everyone who believes in a better, racially equal, America:

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/10/guest-post-by-carrie-rosenbaum-the-slippery-slope-of-systemic-racism-in-immigration-law-del-rio.html

Friday, October 1, 2021

Guest Post by Carrie Rosenbaum: The Slippery Slope of Systemic Racism in Immigration Law – Del Rio

By Immigration Prof

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The Slippery Slope of Systemic Racism in Immigration Law – Del Rio by Carrie Rosenbaum

When Senator Maxine Waters proclaimed that what we witnessed in Del Rio, Texas last week, Customs and Border Protection officers on horseback whipping black men, harkened back to slavery, she drew an age-old, but still relevant connection between slavery, Jim Crow, and anti-immigrant racism. In a press briefing, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated, “[w]e know that those images painfully conjured up the worst elements of our nation’s ongoing battle against systemic racism.” Yet, if both are right, where are our equality, anti-racism principles and why haven’t they been enough to dismantle systemic racism? Should U.S. anti-discrimination law inhibit anti-black and anti-immigrant racism, in the U.S. and at the border? Does it? Is there a slippery slope, such that undeterred discrimination against immigrants at the border seeps beyond the immediate individuals at the border?

Senator Waters was right to blur the boundaries of citizenship and rights in her speech. Racism begets racism, and racism towards black Haitians at the border translates to anti-black racism within the United States, just as anti-Mexican racism does not confine itself to noncitizens, and never has. Examples abound including obvious examples, like Latinx lynching of the late 1840s through 1920s (which coincided with lynching of Blacks), mass expulsion or “repatriation” of persons of Mexican descent that included U.S. citizens in the early 1920s and 1930s again via “Operation Wetback” in the 1950s and more subtle ones like exploitation and expropriation of Mexican and Central American farm workers and laborers, whether authorized or not, and colorblind or race neutral policies that fall most heavily, even if not completely, on persons from Mexico and Central America, like border jails.

While the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. constitution does not limit itself to citizens, it falls vastly short in protecting racialized people of color, especially immigrants. The U.S. treatment of Haitians in Del Rio implicates the problem of anti-black and anti-immigrant racism, and is indicative of the express and implicit bias that continues to evade remedy. It runs much deeper than the disturbing images of CBP agents on horseback, and its impacts have ripple effects.

At the same time that DHS Secretary Mayorkas decried systemic racism, he spelled out the government’s potential argument that the exclusion of Haitians, and Central Americans, and Mexicans that accompanies such brutal treatment was not discriminatory pursuant to the current state of immigration equal protection. He stated, “if we are able to expel them under Title 42 … we will do so” and announced that its application was “irrespective of the country of origin, irrespective of the race of the individual, irrespective of other criteria that don’t belong in our adjudicative process and we do not permit in our adjudicative process.”

Yet this is precisely how systemic racism flourishes. The reality is, this provision has been used to exclude the same racialized immigrants who have been subject to the worst treatment under immigration law. However, because the law is colorblind, Mayorkas can suggest that there was no discrimination. Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s 1977 Arlington Heights decision, discriminatory impact has to be accompanied by proof of discriminatory intent. Just by saying that wasn’t his (or implying it was not Congress’) intent, he can erase what too many know to be real. A new immigration priorities memo by the Agency released today stated that ““We must ensure that enforcement actions are not discriminatory and do not lead to inequitable outcomes.” It is a step in the right rhetorical direction, but does little to meaningfully address the colorblind racism that plagues enforcement.

What is the solution? Aside from a more expansive interpretation of the Equal Protection doctrine in line with Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in the Trump era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals case, and modest progress at the district court level in the crimmigration context, Congress could take steps to stop racial harm inflicted via immigration law and policy. By creating a path to legal status for those who not only have been here, but who have suffered the greatest harms of systemic racism, Haitian immigrants, Mexican immigrants, and others, Congress could start to undo the damage. It could also stop the relatively new practice of detaining or imprisoning migrants at the southern border, who happen to be almost entirely from Mexico and Central America, or abolish immigration prisons entirely. The policies that result in the imprisonment of Mexicans and Central Americans at the southern border now started with expulsion and imprisonment of Haitians in the 1980 and 1990s. Instead of expulsions and rumored potential imprisonment at the notorious Guantanamo Bay as was done in response to Haitians fleeing violence after the U.S. supported overthrow of democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the U.S. could re-evaluate both its involvement in foreign affairs, and treatment of those who flee here after our interventions cause disruption and civil strife. The largest number of Black migrants come from Haiti and their mistreatment is rooted in anti-Black racism. Racializing anti-immigrant demonization does not confine itself to noncitizens, nor should the remedies. Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.

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Carrie Rosenbaum

Law Offices of Carrie L. Rosenbaum

Lecturer & Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley

Access my law review articles and scholarship on SSRN

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Very eloquently said, Carrie!

Compare this with the racist blather and White Nationalist nonsense of nativist pols like Abbott, DeSantis, Cruz, Cotton, and others who glorify Jim Crow and seek to force a sanitized, whitewashed version of American history down the throats of the public!

Also, compare this with the intellectually dishonest actions by Biden Administration officials. They disingenuously claim to be champions of racial equality and racial justice.

But, in reality, they operate “star chamber courts,” “New American Gulags,” and implement discredited, outmoded, and ineffective “Stephen Miller Lite” border enforcement policies that basically dehumanize people of color and deny them the due process and equal protection to which they are entitled under law. Also, think about the many Federal Judges who spinelessly enable that which most first year law students could tell you is illegal and unconstitutional, not to mention totally immoral!

What exactly does Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke do every day at the Civil Rights Division if unraveling the White Nationalist, racially tone deaf policies of her own Department, the DHS, and the “star chambers for people of color” being operated by her “boss” aren’t first and foremost on her “to do” list?

“Floaters”

“Floaters” — The ugly reality of Biden’s “Miller Lite border strategy.” It’s mostly people of color floating face-down in the river, being illegally returned to danger zones, rotting in the “New American Gulag,” and being railroaded through Garland’s biased and dysfunctional “star chamber courts.” Right now, Garland and and the rest of of the Biden Administration have “zero (0) credibility” on racial justice and voting rights!
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

The biggest failure of the Biden Administration to date is their willful blindness to the obvious connection between lack of overall racial justice in America and running star chambers, gulags, and border enforcement policies that are unconstitutional, dehumanizing, and racially demeaning to individuals of color. Sadly, and tragically we seem to have gone from “zero tolerance” under Trump to “zero credibility” under Biden! “When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-02-21

🤮☠️👎🏻 BIDEN ADMINISTRATION DOUBLES DOWN ON ONE OF THE UGLIEST AMERICAN RACIST TRADITIONS: SHAFTING BLACK HAITIAN REFUGEES! — But Cruel, Illegal, Deterrence Gimmicks Won’t Stop Haitian Migration!

Here’s the “policy:’

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Office of Public Affairs

DHS Outlines Strategy to Address Increase in Migrants in Del Rio

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is immediately implementing a new, comprehensive strategy to address the increase in migrant encounters in the Del Rio sector of South Texas. It has six key components.

First, within the next 24-48 hours, U.S. Customs and Border Protection will have surged 400 agents and officers to the Del Rio sector to improve control of the area. If additional staff is needed, more will be sent. The Del Rio Port of Entry has temporarily closed, and traffic is being re-routed from Del Rio to Eagle Pass to more effectively manage resources and ensure uninterrupted flow of trade and travel.

Second, U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) is coordinating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard to move individuals from Del Rio to other processing locations, including approximately 2,000 yesterday, in order to ensure that irregular migrants are swiftly taken into custody, processed, and removed from the United States consistent with our laws and policy.

Third, DHS will secure additional transportation to accelerate the pace and increase the capacity of removal flights to Haiti and other destinations in the hemisphere within the next 72 hours.

Fourth, the Administration is working with source and transit countries in the region to accept individuals who previously resided in those countries.

Fifth, DHS is undertaking urgent humanitarian actions with other relevant federal, state, and local partners to reduce crowding and improve conditions for migrants on U.S. soil. DHS has already taken a number of steps to ensure the safety and security of individuals as they await processing, including having Border Patrol emergency medical technicians on hand and providing water, towels, and portable toilets.

Finally, the White House has directed appropriate U.S. agencies to work with the Haitian and other regional governments to provide assistance and support to returnees.

The majority of migrants continue to be expelled under CDC’s Title 42 authority. Those who cannot be expelled under Title 42 and do not have a legal basis to remain will be placed in expedited removal proceedings. DHS is conducting regular expulsion and removal flights to Haiti, Mexico, Ecuador, and Northern Triangle countries.

Beyond the six steps outlined above, the Biden Administration has reiterated that our borders are not open, and people should not make the dangerous journey. Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion. Irregular migration poses a significant threat to the health and welfare of border communities and to the lives of migrants themselves, and should not be attempted.

# # #

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Here’s the reality:

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/US-nears-plan-for-widescale-expulsions-of-Haitian-16469378.php

Haitians on Texas border undeterred by US plan to expel them

JUAN A. LOZANO, ERIC GAY and ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press

Updated: Sep. 18, 2021 10 p.m.

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48A dust storm moves across the area as Haitian migrants use a dam to cross into and from the United States from Mexico, Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas. The U.S. plans to speed up its efforts to expel Haitian migrants on flights to their Caribbean homeland, officials said Saturday as agents poured into a Texas border city where thousands of Haitians have gathered after suddenly crossing into the U.S. from Mexico.Eric Gay/APShow More

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48Haitian migrants use a dam to cross into and from the United States from Mexico, Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas. The U.S. plans to speed up its efforts to expel Haitian migrants on flights to their Caribbean homeland, officials said Saturday as agents poured into a Texas border city where thousands of Haitians have gathered after suddenly crossing into the U.S. from Mexico.Eric Gay/APShow More

DEL RIO, Texas (AP) — Haitian migrants seeking to escape poverty, hunger and a feeling of hopelessness in their home country said they will not be deterred by U.S. plans to speedily send them back, as thousands of people remained encamped on the Texas border Saturday after crossing from Mexico.

Scores of people waded back and forth across the Rio Grande on Saturday afternoon, re-entering Mexico to purchase water, food and diapers in Ciudad Acuña before returning to the Texas encampment under and near a bridge in the border city of Del Rio.

Junior Jean, a 32-year-old man from Haiti, watched as people cautiously carried cases of water or bags of food through the knee-high river water. Jean said he lived on the streets in Chile the past four years, resigned to searching for food in garbage cans.

“We are all looking for a better life,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security said Saturday that it moved about 2,000 of the migrants from the camp to other locations Friday for processing and possible removal from the U.S. Its statement also said it would have 400 agents and officers in the area by Monday morning and would send more if necessary.

The announcement marked a swift response to the sudden arrival of Haitians in Del Rio, a Texas city of about 35,000 people roughly 145 miles (230 kilometers) west of San Antonio. It sits on a relatively remote stretch of border that lacks capacity to hold and process such large numbers of people.

. . . .

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Not surprisingly, Haiti wants no part of the Biden Administration’s scofflaw nonsense:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/19/world/americas/us-haitian-deportation.html

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As one of my esteemed colleagues summed up the Biden Administration’s latest attack on the rule of law and humanity: “Not a word about asylum, withholding, CAT, humanitarian parole.…”

The Biden Administration has thrown down the gauntlet! Progressive human rights experts had better get out the big litigation guns! Because Biden has basically ripped up “sign-on letters of outrage and concern” and thrown the pieces to the wind. He has delivered a Washington Monument sized “big middle finger” 🖕 to human rights advocates and Black supporters of Haitian refugees! What, if anything, will they do about it!

Whatever happened to our first Black Veep, Kamala Harris? Once, she was a strong voice for an end to racism and fair, humane treatment of asylum applicants, regardless of race. Now, she seems to have disappeared from the racial justice playing field!

Vice President Elect Kamala Harris — Vice President Kamala Harris — Our first Black Veep has “disappeared” on the issue of human rights for Black Haitian asylum seekers!
Official Senate Photo
Public Realm

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-20-21

⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️ WHY BETTER IMMIGRATION JUDGES MATTER — New Study Shows That Who Your Judge Is, Where He Or she Is Located, & What Administration Is In Power Makes A Big Difference In Favorable Outcomes For Migrants — Even Universal Representation Might Not Be Able To Overcome Bad Judging At EOIR!

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3885995

Represented But Unequal: The Contingent Effect of Legal Representation in Removal Proceedings

Law & Society Review

63 Pages Posted: 15 Jul 2021

Emily Ryo

University of Southern California Gould School of Law

Ian Peacock

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Date Written: July 13, 2021

Abstract

Substantial research and policymaking have focused on the importance of lawyers in ensuring access to civil justice. But do lawyers matter more in cases decided by certain types of judges than others? Do lawyers matter more in certain political, legal, and organizational contexts than others? We explore these questions by investigating removal proceedings in the United States—a court process in which immigration judges decide whether to admit noncitizens into the United States or deport them. Drawing on over 1.9 million removal proceedings decided between 1998 and 2020, we examine whether the representation effect (the increased probability of a favorable outcome associated with legal representation) depends on judge characteristics and contextual factors. We find that the representation effect is larger among female (than male) judges and among more experienced judges. In addition, the representation effect is larger during Democratic presidential administrations, in immigration courts located in the Ninth Circuit, and in times of increasing caseload. These findings suggest that the representation effect depends on who the judge is and their decisional environment, and that increasing noncitzens’ access to counsel—even of high quality—might be insufficient under current circumstances to ensure fair and consistent outcomes in immigration courts.

Keywords: access to justice, immigration courts, removal proceedings, judicial decisionmaking

Suggested Citation:

Ryo, Emily and Peacock, Ian, Represented But Unequal: The Contingent Effect of Legal Representation in Removal Proceedings (July 13, 2021). Law & Society Review, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3885995

Download This Paper

Open PDF in Browser

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Some things to consider:

Sessions and Barr appointed over half of the current approximately 550 U.S. Immigration Judges;
Many of those appointed had little or no immigration experience — almost none had actual experience representing asylum seekers or any other migrants in Immigration Court;
With 27 IJ appointments since taking office, AG Garland now has appointed approximately 5% of the Immigration Judiciary;
Only one of Garland’s first 27 appointments has impressive progressive immigration credentials and experience;
The balance of Garland’s appointees to date profile much like Sessions’s and Barr’s — not surprising, because Garland used the same flawed recruiting and selection criteria that Barr had been using;
The average U.S. District Judge completes approximately 250 civil matters annually (including immigration matters), https://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/judge/501/;
An Immigration Judge is required to complete 700 cases annually, just too retain his or her job;
Unlike most civil cases in U.S. District Courts, lives and futures are at stake in almost all Immigration Court cases, with the family, communal, economic, and societal effect of each decision often extending far beyond the individual migrant whose life and/or future is at stake.

Members of the NDPA, let AG Garland, VP Harris, and President Biden know that we need a better and more aggressively progressive system for recruiting (virtually “null” right now — “Sir Jeffrey” Chase and I, along with other members of our Round Table, do more “recruiting” among “practical scholars and progressive experts” in the private sector than the Administration!), selecting, training, and retaining Immigration Judges for these life or death determining positions that, in a better functioning and wiser Administration, would be the door to, and training ground for, a better, more diverse, more representative, more progressive Article III Judiciary!

Lack of creative and aggressive recruiting for a better and more diverse expert Immigration Judiciary is a particular sore point! We now have our first immigrant family, African-American, AAPI, female Vice President, Kamala Harris, a talented lawyer! She has an important immigration and human rights portfolio!

So why isn’t she out there aggressively encouraging diverse, well-qualified, progressive “practical scholars and immigration advocates,” many of whom might not have seen themselves as potential Immigration Judges and BIA Members to apply for these critical jobs? Why aren’t the recruiting and selection criteria for IJs and Board Members both more transparent and involving of some outside expert input!

As VP Harris knows, the key to changing the composition of the power structure is for progressives, particularly female progressives of color, to see others like them in these positions to act as role models. It’s going to take aggressive positive actions by individuals like VP Harris, AAG Gupta, and Assistant AG Clarke to “change the face” of the Immigration Judiciary and the power structure for the better!

With the recent hiring of NDPA superstar Professor Cori Alonso Yoder, VP Harris’s alma mater, Howard University Law, now has it’s most high-profile “immigration and human rights presence” ever! Why isn’t VP Harris over there aggressively encouraging Howard Law grads to seek careers in immigration and human rights, eventually aspiring to the the Federal Judiciary, including the Immigration Judiciary? That’s how real change in the power structure happens!

This is becoming a totally inexcusable “blown opportunity” for progressives! Who knows if or when it will come again?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-30-21

🗽ASYLUM IS OUR LEGAL OBLIGATION, NOT AN “OPTION” OR SOMETHING TO BE “DETERRED” — “For many migrants in peril, waiting in their home countries for a better time to seek asylum in the U.S. is not – nor could ever be – a viable option. . . . ‘I want to live. I want to be somebody. Nobody wants to die.’”

“Floaters” — “Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers” — The Biden Administration’s continuation of the Trump regime’s illegal and deadly anti-asylum policies at the border is totally unacceptable!
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

FROM SPLC:

The message was loud and clear: “Do not come.”

This would be the Biden administration’s initial attempt to deter migrants who fled danger in their home countries from seeking protection in the U.S.

First, President Biden in March discouraged migrants from trekking north to the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum. He suggested they stay in their home countries – where many face violence and persecution – as the administration addressed an increase in the number of unaccompanied migrant children crossing the southwestern border.

Then, the administration continued to rely on the contested Trump-era Title 42 order by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to reject migrants at ports of entry and expel those who cross the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization, thereby denying their legal right to seek asylum.

And in June, the administration delivered another warning to would-be asylum seekers from Guatemala: “Do not come,” said Vice President Kamala Harris during a news conference alongside Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei. “The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our borders. If you come to our border, you will be turned back.”

Sarah Rich, senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project, said the vice president’s comments were strikingly similar to rhetoric employed by the Trump administration.

“Seeking protection from violence and persecution is a fundamental human right, and the right to seek asylum is protected by U.S. and international law,” Rich said. “These remarks fly in the face of the right to seek asylum in the U.S. and indicate a disturbing continuity between the Trump administration and the Biden-Harris administration.”

For many migrants in peril, waiting in their home countries for a better time to seek asylum in the U.S. is not – nor could ever be – a viable option.

“I fled my country because I wanted to survive,” Emiliana Doe, whose name has been changed in this story to protect her identity, told the SPLC in Spanish. “I want to live. I want to be somebody. Nobody wants to die.”

READ MORE

In solidarity,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center

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Speak out against the Biden Administration’s continuation of Trump’s illegal, inhumane, anti-asylum policies at the border! Demand that AG Garland replace unqualified “Miller Lite” anti-asylum Immigration Judges, who happily furthered the past regime’s xenophobic, anti-due-process policies, with far better qualified progressive experts! Demand a BIA that will be a courageous leader in granting legal protection and reducing backlogs through best practices and full due process! Demand that Garland stop dragging his feet and finally fulfill the original EOIR vision of “guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Demand an Attorney General with the backbone and integrity to tell Biden, Harris, & Mayorkas that their continued abrogation of asylum laws and international obligations, not to mention Constitutional protections, is grossly illegal and must end NOW!

By contrast with Garland’s timid, dilatory, and often apparently indifferent approach to the rule of law for migrants, not to mention human lives, Jeff Sessions had absolutely no problem intervening, without invitation, in any agency’s programs and policies to advance his White Nationalist, nativist, xenophobic mis-interpretations of the law!

🇺🇸⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-25-21

“DUH” OF THE DAY: GOP WHITE NATIONALIST RACISM & STUPIDITY, BIDEN ADMINISTRATION BUMBLING LEAD TO ONGOING BORDER CHAOS: “For people like Medina, neither restrictive immigration policies nor dangerous journeys through several countries, border walls, or even statements from politicians deter them from seeking to rebuild their lives in the United States.”

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2021/06/25/threat-of-death-in-their-homelands-continues-to-push-migrants-toward-us-mexico-border/

Maria Ramos Pacheco reports for the Dallas Morning News:

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — While Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday the goal of her trip to El Paso was to understand the “root causes” of the rising influx of migrants from recent months, just across the border Honduran migrant Manuel Medina had a simple explanation for why thousands of people from other countries will continue to try to reach the United States: To stay alive while fleeing countries where their families are threatened by crime and violence.

“I did not leave my country and my wife because I wanted to. [Rising] crime forced me to leave everything; the only thing I want is for my family and me to be safe,” said Medina, 37, who left Honduras in May 2019 after receiving threats from gang members.

Amid a chorus of criticism coming mainly from Republican politicians, Harris made her first trip to the U.S. Southern border flanked by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas; Sen. Dick Durbin, D- Ill; and El Paso Rep. Verónica Escobar.

Amid a chorus of criticism coming mainly from Republican politicians, Harris made her first trip to the U.S. Southern border flanked by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro MayorkasSen.

For people like Medina, neither restrictive immigration policies nor dangerous journeys through several countries, border walls, or even statements from politicians deter them from seeking to rebuild their lives in the United States.

Medina has lived for two years in this city’s El Buen Samaritano shelter, managed by a religious organization, along with his 15-year-old son Nahúm Medina. Their asylum petition was initially rejected in 2019 and he stayed in Ciudad Juárez under the Migrants Protection Protocols, waiting for a second chance.

The MPP or “Remain in Mexico” program was created in 2019 by the Trump administration, which forced people seeking asylum to remain in Mexico. As of May, there were 71,002 active cases.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Maria’s article at the link.

Desperate people do desperate things! Duh!

You’ve heard it before on Courtside:

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/06/24/%e2%9a%a0%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%9a%b8v-p-harris-is-going-to-the-border-she-should-talk-with-the-real-victims-of-her-governments-illegal-wrong-headed-immoral-and-ineffective-border-deterrence-p/

Indeed, since the day of inception in Dec. 2016, Courtside has been very consistent in speaking truth to bigots and misguided inept policy makers:

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2016/12/31/family-detention-raids-expediting-cases-fails-to-deter-scared-central-americans/

Restrictionism, racism, nativism, cruelty, and scofflaw behavior will only continue to make things worse. And, AG Merick Garland, staffing your “courts” with “Miller Lite” holdovers and Trump toadies won’t stop the downward spiral of American justice on your watch!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-27-21

⚠️🚸V.P. HARRIS IS GOING TO THE BORDER: SHE SHOULD TALK WITH THE REAL VICTIMS OF HER GOVERNMENT’S, ILLEGAL, WRONG-HEADED, IMMORAL, AND INEFFECTIVE BORDER DETERRENCE POLICIES — Avoid The CBP “Dog & Pony Show,” & The GOP’s Cowardly “Gunboat Cruz” — Cross Over The Border, View The Human Rights Catastrophe We Have Created, Understand People Have A Right To Seek Legal Refuge, & Fix The Legal Asylum System At Ports Of Entry & Immigration Courts With Humane, Practical Experts! — “The vice president seems to have bought into the… I can’t use another word, but the nativist party line, that somehow these immigrants are the cause of the problem when, in fact, they’re the victims of multiple problems in many cases.” — Stop Blaming, Shaming, & Dehumanizing The Victims & Start Fixing Our Asylum System & Solving The Problems That Force Them To Migrate!

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/06/17/vice-president-kamala-harris-us-mexico-border-immigration-unaccompanied

J.D. Long-Garcia writes in America Magazine:

Last week, Ms. Harris traveled to Guatemala to meet with President Alejandro Giammattei and expressed the Biden administration’s goal to “help Guatelmalans find hope at home.” During a press conference on June 7, she told Guatemalans thinking of making the journey north to the United States: “Do not come. Do not come.”

“O.K., that’s like saying, ‘Stay home and die,’” according to the Rev. Pat Murphy, a Scalabrini priest who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in Tijuana, Baja California. “That message is falling on deaf ears.”

If Ms. Harris does travel to the border, Father Murphy said, she should be sure to make a visit to the Mexican side. “If she just stays on her side, she’s not going to find much,” he said.

In Tijuana, Ms. Harris would see a camp of 2,000 asylum seekers near the port of entry, Father Murphy said. “If she looked a little further, she would see the people who are victims of violence in Tijuana and Mexicali and other places,” he said. Migrants may be eager to escape bad situations in their home countries, Father Murphy said, but they often do not understand how difficult conditions at the border are “until they’re stuck in the middle of [a border city] with no place to go.”

“You can’t understand [border realities] by talking to government officials. You have to talk to the people who are working with migrants and hear about the suffering.”

At diminished capacity because of the pandemic, migrant shelters are full. The United States has started to accept some vulnerable people, like families with children with an illness or those being persecuted because of their sexual orientation, Father Murphy said. But there are also hundreds deported every day.

He believes if the vice president did decide to visit the border, it would be worth her while. “You can’t understand [border realities] by talking to government officials,” Father Murphy said. “You have to talk to the people who are working with migrants and hear about the suffering.”

. . . .

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

Donald Kerwin, the executive director of the Center for Migration Studies in New York, also noted that people have a right not to migrate—to stay in their home country. He sees immigration policy as an arena for a fruitful convergence of Catholic social teaching, international law and contemporary human rights principles.

The Biden administration’s recognition of the forces that drive migration should be applauded, but it can address root causes while re-establishing humane asylum policies at the border.

“States are responsible for ensuring that people can flourish at home,” he said. “But it’s an empty right at this point in many communities in the Northern Triangle countries. They’re facing impossible conditions, caused by natural disasters, climate change, gang violence and extraordinary poverty. So people have a right to flee those impossible conditions and seek lives that are worthy of human dignity. In some cases, that means leaving their countries.”

When they do leave their home countries, people have the right to seek protection wherever they can find it, Mr. Kerwin said. “The vice president seems to have bought into the… I can’t use another word, but the nativist party line, that somehow these immigrants are the cause of the problem when, in fact, they’re the victims of multiple problems in many cases.”

The United States needs a functioning refugee resettlement system, an asylum system and robust humanitarian programs to address the conditions in Central America that are driving people to migrate, he said. “They’re not in place right now,” Mr. Kerwin said, “and until they are in place, people will reluctantly, at a terrible cost…continue to migrate.”

If Ms. Harris visits the border, Mr. Kerwin suggested she speak with migrants that have entered the United States, starting with the children. “Find out why they’ve come, what drove them to the United States and also see what their situation is currently, in often overcrowded facilities,” he said. “At that point, it would be clear as day that these folks are not a problem. These folks fled terrible problems, but they themselves are not the problem.”

Earlier this month, more than 20 bishops, Vatican representatives and leaders of Catholic organizations met for an emergency immigration meeting at Mundelein Seminary, outside of Chicago. Mr. Kerwin, who attended the meeting, said organizers displayed notes written by immigrant children, often addressed to God.

“It’s clear from reading these notes that these are lovely children, who miss their parents and worry about them and are in difficult situations that are not of their own making. And that the United States should do right by them,” he said. “And the right thing is to protect them and reunify them with family members.”

Chloe Gunther, America intern, contributed to this story.

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Read the full article at the link.

Politicians of both parties are averse to the truth. They don’t have the courage and backbone for it! But the truth is quite simple, if somewhat “inconvenient.”

Unless and until we can solve the problems driving refugees to flee the Northern Triangle, we will have to take more of them. We should welcome them through an orderly legal system, including a robust, properly staffed, and honestly administered legal refugee and asylum system.

Alternatively, we could continue our current policies of immorally and illegally killing some on the journey, “snuffing” some in the desert (where their bodies might never be found and “counted”), and enriching smugglers and cartels who will eventually get many determined survivors into the interior.

There, they will join our highly exploitable, yet politically expedient for both parties (for differing reasons), “extralegal population.” A limited number will be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” and be arbitrarily removed by ICE, usually at costs that far exceed any demonstrable benefits. Even fewer will commit misconduct leading to their arrest and removal.

But the bulk of them will blend in somehow and do what’s necessary for themselves and their families to survive, as has been happening for decades and generations. They will also enrich and improve our nation in ways both predictable and unpredictable. Some will eventually find it possible and advantageous to return to their nations of origin, most won’t.

It would be far better for both the migrants and our nation, not to mention humanity as a whole, if we included the bulk of those forced to come here in our legal immigration system. But, whether we are enlightened enough “to do it the right way” or not, they will come as long as the alternatives are starvation, death, unspeakable abuse, and unending despair.

Migration is both our oldest and most persistent human phenomenon and an essential survival skill for humanity. It’s going to take more than inane walls, cruel and illegal imprisonment in American Gulags, unworkable laws, mindless, yet expensive, enforcement, nativist rhetoric, bad judges, and cowardly politicians sending “don’t come” messages to make them “die in place.” Our politicians might be not be bright or brave enough to face reality — but, I guarantee that the forced migrants we like to dehumanize and look down upon are much smarter, braver, more aware, and far more creative, adaptable, and capable than we think!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-24-21

💡NOLAN RAPPAPORT @ THE HILL SAYS BIDEN DIDN’T GO FAR ENOUGH WITH HIS CENTRAL AMERICAN MINORS’ (“CAM”) PROGRAM — He’s Right!

Biden’s program for migrant children doesn’t go far enough

By Nolan Rappaport

Former President Barack Obama established the Central American Minors (CAM) Program in December 2014 to provide in-country refugee processing for children in the Northern Triangle Countries (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) as a safe, legal, and orderly alternative to them making the dangerous journey to the United States to apply for asylum.

But Obama only made the program available to Northern Triangle children who had a parent who was already physically present in the United States and had lawful status.

The Trump administration phased out the CAM program in fiscal 2018 because “the vast majority of individuals accessing the program were not eligible for refugee resettlement.”

On March 10, 2021, the Biden administration announced that it had restarted the CAM program to reunite children from the Northern Triangle countries with parents who are lawfully present in the United States. Biden also wants to save Northern Triangle children from having to make the dangerous journey to the United States in the hands of smugglers.

That’s a noble intent: The trip across the border is incredibly dangerous.

On June 15, 2021, Biden announced an expansion of the CAM program which specified that parents and legal guardians lawfully present in the United States may apply on behalf of the children — this now includes parents or legal guardians in the following legal status categories: Permanent Resident Status; Temporary Protected Status; Parole; Deferred Action; Deferred Enforced Departure; and Withholding of Removal.

According to David Bier, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, this is a great improvement over requiring children to come to the United States in the hands of smugglers; however, it remains to be seen whether it will dissuade families from sending their children here with smugglers.

Biden’s CAM program may be more generous than the Obama administration’s CAM program, but I think Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) was right when he observed that illegal crossings were not reduced when the Obama administration tried this program years ago, and there’s no reason to think it will have that effect now.

Moreover, Biden should know that his revised CAM program is not going to be an effective alternative to making the dangerous journey with smugglers. His administration has acknowledged that only 40 percent of the children from the Northern Triangle who were apprehended at the border this year had a parent in the United States.

I don’t understand why he didn’t make it available to all Northern Triangle children who have a persecution claim. He didn’t have to limit the program to children who have parents or guardians in the United States.

Read more at https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/559334-bidens-program-for-northern-triangle-children-doesnt-go-far-enough

Published originally on The Hill.

Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years. Follow him at https://nolanrappaport.blogspot.com

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

Thanks, Nolan! Go on over to The Hill and read Nolan’s complete article.

Nolan’s proposal sure seems like good government and common sense to me. This expanded policy should be relatively non-controversial. Like Nolan, I don’t understand why the Biden Administration is “missing the obvious here.” Every step helps in better and more humanely managing Central American asylum applications. I’ll bet there are even qualified retired immigration officials from USCIS and Immigration Judges and BIA staff from DOJ who would be willing to return as “rehirees” and travel to Central America to work on a program like Nolan proposes.

Gotta “pick the low hanging fruit,” as Nolan suggests!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-21-21

🗽⚖️LEADING GENDER JUSTICE NGO RIPS HARRIS’S TONE-DEAF “DIE WHERE YOU ARE, WE DON’T CARE” MESSAGE TO NORTHERN TRIANGLE REFUGEES! — Whatever Happened To Biden Administration’s Promise To Restore The Rule of Law @ The Border? — US Is The Problem — USG Lawlessness, Dishonest, Wasteful Policies Go Unchecked By Biden, Harris, Garland, Mayorkas!

Professor Karen Musalo
Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Hastings Law

Dear colleagues,

Please find below and online CGRS’s bilingual statement in response to Vice President Harris’ remarks in Guatemala earlier this week.

—

*en español abajo*

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: Brianna Krong, (415) 581-8835, krongbrianna@uchastings.edu

CGRS Urges V.P. Harris to Reject Short-Sighted Policies that Endanger Central Americans

San Francisco, CA (June 10, 2021) – This week Vice President Kamala Harris visited Guatemala and Mexico, meeting with government and civil society leaders to discuss issues of corruption, violence, and poverty. During a Monday press conference with Guatemalan president Alejandro Giammattei, Harris offered a callous and woefully misguided message to Central Americans. “I want to be clear to folks in the region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border,” Harris said. “Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws … If you come to our border, you will be turned back.” These remarks reflect a deep misunderstanding of our laws and of the conditions forcing people to seek asylum at our border. The Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS) urges the vice president and the Biden-Harris administration to do better.

For people fleeing Central America it is no secret that the voyage north is dangerous, and that they will likely face hostility at the U.S. border. Yet thousands continue to make the treacherous journey because widespread violence, poverty, and disasters in their home countries leave them no other option. Vice President Harris and the Biden-Harris administration should understand this: People flee home because their lives, and the lives of their children, depend on it. The administration’s advice that Central Americans, Haitians, and others escaping grave dangers simply “not come” – as if they have any choice in the matter – is cruel and wildly out of touch. Moreover “enforcing our laws” should mean upholding the right to seek asylum, which is enshrined in both U.S. and international law. Turning people away without the slightest concern for the dangers they’ll face, as the Biden-Harris administration has continued to do under the illegal Title 42 policy, is a blatant violation of our laws.

“Our country has played a direct role in the dangerous conditions that plague Central America by bolstering oppressive regimes and contributing to the violence and instability driving refugee flight from the region,” CGRS Manager of Regional Initiatives Felipe Navarro Lux said today. “Instead of taking responsibility and addressing the harm we have caused, the United States time and time again has doubled down on ineffective and draconian policies that punish Central Americans and other refugees for seeking U.S. protection. We have a legal and moral obligation to do better.”

Our immigration and foreign policies should seek not to suppress migration, but to expand safe and orderly pathways to refugee protection and, in the long term, to make the region safer, so that migration is increasingly an option, rather than a necessity, for Central Americans. We can do so by:

Encouraging transparent and accountable governments that uphold the rights of their residents: The United States should stand with Central American civil society organizations (CSOs) working for change – not abusive or authoritarian governments – to combat corruption, advance the rule of law, and promote respect for human rights, particularly for vulnerable groups including youth, women, Indigenous, Black, and LGBTQ+ people.

Prioritizing humanitarian protection over deterrence. Pressuring countries in the region to increase migration enforcement and militarize their borders only forces people seeking protection to make more dangerous journeys, exposing them to increased human rights violations.

Expanding and developing new pathways for migrants and asylum seekers: We should expand protections those fleeing persecution, increase opportunities for family reunification, and address the needs of those displaced by climate change.

Designating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Guatemala, and re-designating TPS for Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua: TPS allows immigrant communities in the United States to live and work without fear of deportation, and to send remittances to family members in their home countries still recovering from the effects of back-to-back hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Click here to read CGRS’s recommendations for expanding access to protections for refugees and migrants in Central America and Mexico, with Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc., Church World Service, Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración, AC (IMUMI), Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), Latin America Working Group Education Fund (LAWGEF), Washington Office on Latin America, and Women’s Refugee Commission.

—

CGRS urge a la vicepresidente Harris rechazar políticas miopes que ponen en peligro a los centroamericanos

San Francisco, CA (10 de junio de 2021) – Esta semana la vicepresidente Kamala Harris visitó Guatemala y México, reuniéndose con líderes de los gobiernos y la sociedad civil para discutir asuntos de corrupción, violencia, y pobreza. Durante una rueda de prensa junto con el presidente guatemalteco Alejandro Giammattei, Harris leofreció un mensaje cruel y tristemente equivocado a los centroamericanos. “Quiero ser clara con las personas en la región que están pensando en hacer el peligroso viaje a la frontera de Estados Unidos-México”, dijo Harris. “No vengan. Estados Unidos hará cumplir sus leyes… Si vienen a nuestra frontera, serán regresados”. Estas palabras relejan un profundo desconocimiento de nuestra legislación y de las condiciones que obligan a las personas a pedir asilo en nuestra frontera. El Centro de Estudios de Género y Refugiados (CGRS por sus siglas en inglés) urge a la vicepresidenta y al gobierno Biden-Harris a realizar un mejor trabajo.

Para las personas que huyen de Centroamérica no es un secreto que el viaje al norte es peligroso, y que muy seguramente serán recibidos con hostilidad en la frontera de EE. UU. Aun así, miles continúan migrando porque la violencia, pobreza, y desastres en sus países de origen no les dejan otra opción. La vicepresidente Harris y el gobierno Biden-Harris deben entender esto: Las personas huyen de sus hogares porque sus vidas, y las vidas de sus hijos, dependen de ello. El consejo que este gobierno le da a los centroamericanos, haitianos, y otros que escapan de graves peligros cuando les dice que “no vengan” – como si fuera una opción – es cruel y se aleja de la realidad. Mas aún, “hacer cumplir nuestras leyes” debería significar proteger el derecho a solicitar asilo, el cual se encuentra consagrado en la ley nacional e internacional. Retornar a personas en la frontera sin la menor preocupación por los peligros que puedan enfrentar, como el gobierno Biden-Harris continúa haciendo bajo la ilegal política del “Título 42”, es una violación descarada de nuestras leyes.

“Al apoyar gobiernos opresivos y contribuir a la violencia e inestabilidad en Centroamérica, nuestro país ha jugado un papel directo en la creación de los peligros que obligan a miles a huir”, dijo Felipe Navarro-Lux, Gerente de Iniciativas Regionales de CGRS. “En vez de asumir nuestra responsabilidad y aminorar el daño que hemos causado, una y otra vez Estados Unidos ha implementado políticas ineficientes y draconianas que castigan a los centroamericanos y otros refugiados por buscar protección en este país. Es hora de cumplir nuestras obligaciones legales y morales.”

En vez de buscar suprimir la migración, nuestras políticas exteriores y migratorias se deben enfocar en crear y ampliar opciones seguras y ordenadas de acceso a protección para refugiados y, a largo plazo, mejorar las condiciones en la región para que la migración sea cada vez más una opción, y no una necesidad, para los centroamericanos. Podemos hacer esto al:

Promover gobiernos que respeten los derechos de todos sus residentes, urgiendo transparencia y rendición de cuentas: Estados Unidos debe apoyar a las organizaciones de la sociedad civil que trabajan para efectuar cambios – y no a gobiernos corruptos y autoritarios – para combatir la corrupción, reforzar el estado de derecho, y promover el respeto por los derechos humanos, particularmente para la juventud, mujeres, personas indígenas, negras y LGBTQ+.

Priorizar la protección humanitaria sobre la disuasión migratoria. Presionar a los países de la región a aumentar sus controles migratorios y militarizar sus fronteras solo obliga a las personas que buscan protección a tomar caminos más peligrosos, exponiéndolas a mayores violaciones de derechos humanos.

Ampliar y desarrollar nuevas oportunidades para migrantes y solicitantes de asilo: Debemos ofrecer más opciones para aquellos que huyen de la persecución, aumentar las oportunidades de reunificación familiar, y atender las necesidades de aquellos desplazados por el cambio climático.

Designar Estatus de Protección Temporal (TPS, por sus siglas en inglés) para Guatemala, y re-designar TPS para Honduras, El Salvador, y Nicaragua: Con TPS, las comunidades inmigrantes en Estados Unidos pueden vivir y trabajar sin temor a ser deportadas, y enviar remesas a sus familias en sus países de origen, los cuales aún están sintiendo los devastadores efectos de huracanes y la pandemia COVID-19.

Haga click aquí para leer recomendaciones para ampliar el acceso a protección para refugiados y migrantes en Centro América y México, desarrolladas por CGRS, Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc., Church World Service, Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración, AC (IMUMI), Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), Latin America Working Group Education Fund (LAWGEF), Washington Office on Latin America, y Women’s Refugee Commission.

Brianna Krong | Communications and Advocacy Coordinator

Center for Gender and Refugee Studies

200 McAllister Street | San Francisco, CA 94102

(415) 581-8835 (Phone) | (415) 581-8824 (Fax)

krongbrianna@uchastings.edu

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Twitter | Facebook | Donate

Request Assistance or Report an Outcome in Your Asylum Case

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

Casey might ask:

Casey Stengel — “Can’t anyone here play this game?”
PHOTO: Rudi Reit
Creative Commons

When it comes to the Biden Administration on human rights, racial justice, gender justice, due process, immigration, border strategy, and cleaning up corruption, unhappily the answer is “No!”

🇺🇸🗽Due ProcessForever!

PWS

06-10-21

🏴‍☠️PERSECUTED TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUAL DIES ⚰️IN EL SALVADOR WHILE HARRIS, GARLAND, & MAYORKAS FAIL TO RE-ESTABLISH LEGAL ASYLUM SYSTEM, MAKE LONG OVERDUE REFORMS!☠️ — VEEP Apparently Can’t Grasp Why Refugees Refuse To Stay In Countries Where They Are Likely To Be Persecuted & Die — The “Easily Fixable” Part Of The Problem Is NOT Thousands Of Miles Away In Foreign Countries, But With Garland’s & Mayorkas’s Inexcusable Failures To Act On Progressive Reforms Of Our Existing Legal System For Asylum Seekers!

Grim Reaper — “This Dude loves the ‘Miller Lite’ approach to asylum by Garland and Mayorkas, as well as Harris’s latest tone-deaf ‘victim shaming.’” Keeps him (as well as human smugglers) in business! Reaper Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=25ce5cef-76d6-4701-9193-3d887d407397&v=sdk

Marcos Aleman reports or AP in the LA Times:

SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador — Rejected by her family, Zashy Zuley del Cid Velásquez fled her coastal village in 2014, the first of a series of forced displacements across El Salvador. She had hoped that in the larger city of San Miguel she could live as a transgender woman without discrimination and violence, but there she was threatened by a gang.

She moved away from San Miguel, then back again in a series of forced moves until the 27-year-old was shot to death April 25, sending shock waves through the close-knit LGBTQ community in San Miguel, the largest city in eastern El Salvador.

“Zashy was desperate; her family didn’t want her … and the gangsters had threatened her,” said Venus Nolasco, director of the San Miguel LGBTQ collective Pearls of the East. “She knew they were going to kill her. She wanted to flee the country, go to the United States, but they killed her with a shot through her lung.”

One day after Del Cid’s slaying, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris identified anti-LGBTQ violence in Central America as one of the root causes of migration in the region during a virtual meeting with the president of neighboring Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei. She is visiting Guatemala and Mexico this week.

Transgender migrants were present in the Central American caravans that attempted to reach the United States border in recent years, fleeing harassment, gang extortion, violence and police indifference to crimes against them. Even in those large migrant movements, they say they faced harassment.

Things had been rough during Del Cid’s first stint in San Miguel. She had been living in a neighborhood where, as in many parts of the country, the MS-13 gang was the ultimate local authority. Gang members began to harass her, then brutally beat her, breaking her arm in 2015, Nolasco said.

“They warned her to leave, but she didn’t listen,” Nolasco said.

Del Cid moved in with Nolasco in the same neighborhood. One day, the gang grabbed Del Cid again.

“They took her, they wanted to kill her,” Nolasco said. “I begged them not to kill her, to let her go and she would leave the neighborhood.”

Del Cid moved back to her hometown, but her family rejected her again. She tried to please them, but she couldn’t, Nolasco said. Del Cid joined a church, got a girlfriend and had a baby girl, but could not maintain that life, she said.

She returned to San Miguel, where initially things seemed to go better. In 2020, Del Cid received humanitarian and housing support from COMCAVIS TRANS, a national LGBTQ rights organization, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Del Cid rented a home and opened a beauty salon there. She hired another woman to help her and was participating in an entrepreneurship program. She was preparing a business proposal to move the salon into its own space.

But Del Cid was shot in the back walking alone at night down the street. Passersby tried to help her and took her to a hospital, where she died. So far, police have made no arrests, and Nolasco believes that like other hate crimes in the country, “it will be forgotten; they’re not interested in what happens to us.”

Laura Almirall, UNHCR representative in El Salvador, said Del Cid’s killing frightened her community and saddened everyone who knew her.

“She was excited about her new plans and her new life. And unfortunately and tragically, everything came to an end,” she said.

Nolasco said that in San Miguel, some 70 miles east of the capital, the transgender community endures constant harassment from intolerant residents and gangs. They have rocks thrown at them, are beaten and are victims of extortion. If they go to police to make a report, they are insulted and demeaned. “Don’t come here to claim rights, because there are no rights for you,” police tell them, Nolasco said.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Despite some legal nonsense from EOIR and sometimes from uninformed Circuit Judges who have never represented asylum seekers and know little of actual conditions in the Northern Triangle, neither El Salvador nor the other Northern Triangle governments are “willing and able” to protect most individuals suffering gender-based and other forms of persecution. Decisions claiming otherwise are, in most cases, legally wrong and disingenuous to boot.

The U.S. asylum system needs expert Asylum Officers at DHS and progressive expert Immigration Judges at EOIR. Babbling (misleadingly) about “sealed borders” won’t take the place of telling Garland and Mayorkas to stop screwing around, bring in progressive experts, and fix the U.S. asylum system before more die! V.P. Harris could have taken the first necessary step toward “fixing the Southern Border” without even leaving DC.

How are we going to promote the rule of law in other nations when we ourselves are unwilling to exhibit honesty and follow the law with respect to the most vulnerable in the world seeking legal refuge at our borders?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-09-21

From The Narrative Intervention on Substack:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Breanne writes:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Lauren Wyatt

Congrats, Lauren!😎👍🏼

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Key Quote from Judge Greenaway’s decision:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Carrie’s guest blog in ImmigrationProf Blog should be be read and taken to heart by everyone who believes in a better, racially equal, America:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Here’s the “policy:’

Here’s the reality:

Not surprisingly, Haiti wants no part of the Biden Administration’s scofflaw nonsense:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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FROM SPLC:

🇺🇸⚖️Due Process Forever!

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Maria Ramos Pacheco reports for the Dallas Morning News:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

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Biden’s program for migrant children doesn’t go far enough

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Casey might ask:

🇺🇸🗽Due ProcessForever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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