White Nationalism – Page 104 – immigrationcourtside.com

THANKSGIVING WISH: JUSTICE FOR THOSE HELD IN TRUMP’S DEADLY “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” — DHS KID KILLERS: CDC TELLS CBP TO VACCINATE DETAINED MIGRANTS: CBP Chooses To Kill Kids & Spread Disease!

https://apple.news/Ag7KzWmcGSWqY5RAzCSzygg

Robert Moore reports in the WashPost:

CDC recommended that migrants receive flu vaccine, but CBP rejected the idea

EL PASO — As influenza spread through migrant detention facilities last winter, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that U.S. Customs and Border Protection vaccinate detained migrants against the virus, a push that CBP rejected, according to a newly released letter to Congress.

The CDC recommendation was revealed in a letter from the agency to Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the CDC. The agency’s director, Robert Redfield, issued the letter Nov. 7 in response to questions DeLauro posed last month after the flu had taken a toll on migrants in U.S. custody during the past year.

An 8-year-old Guatemalan boy died of the flu while being detained near El Paso in December, a month before the CDC’s vaccination recommendation. In the months after CBP rejected the recommendation, at least two children — one in El Paso and one in Weslaco, Tex. — died after being diagnosed with the flu in Border Patrol custody, autopsy reports showed. Influenza outbreaks in Border Patrol detention facilities continued through May, sickening hundreds of people, including agents and detainees.

DeLauro said CBP’s continuing refusal to provide flu vaccines to detained migrants is “unconscionable,” especially given Trump administration policies and migrant influxes that at times have caused U.S. facilities to be significantly overcrowded.

“CDC’s recommendations are clear: flu vaccines should be administered to people as soon as possible to prevent the spread of this deadly disease,” she said. “Worse still, administration policies that kept families locked in cages for extended periods of time greatly increased their risk of illness.”

Officials with CBP have never provided immunizations for detained migrants and does not plan to do so now, according to Kelly Cahalan, an agency spokeswoman.

“CBP has significantly expanded medical support efforts, and now has more than 250 medical personnel engaged along the Southwest border. To try and layer a comprehensive vaccinations system on to that would be logistically very challenging for a number of reasons,” she said. “The system and process for implementing vaccines — for supply chains, for quality control, for documentation, for informed consent, for adverse reactions — is complex, and those programs are already in place at other steps in the immigration process as appropriate.”

The two agencies that hold migrants for extended periods, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, provide flu vaccines. Adults and families who cross the U.S. border increasingly are being sent back to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols program before they are turned over to ICE and thus do not get vaccinated. Unaccompanied children generally go to ORR shelters.

A Trump administration strategy led to the child migrant backup crisis at the border

The CDC recommends that most people in the United States age 6 months and older receive a flu vaccination, as it is the primary preventive measure against what can be a potentially severe illness. In the 2018-2019 flu season, nearly 63 percent of children under the age of 18 received the flu vaccine and just more than 45 percent of adults received the vaccine.

CDC officials visited Border Patrol detention facilities in El Paso and Yuma, Ariz., in December and January, at CBP’s request. The CDC’s January report warned that because of inadequate medical infrastructure in the facilities, “illness in the Border Patrol facilities stresses both the Border Patrol staff and community medical infrastructure.”

The report made nine recommendations for minimizing the spread of the flu, and CBP adopted many of them, including expanding medical staff at detention facilities and increasing flu surveillance.

But CBP did not implement a recommendation for an aggressive vaccination program that would prioritize children and pregnant women.

Brazilian families spent weeks in tent-like border facility, far longer than typical

In his Nov. 7 letter to DeLauro, Redfield reiterated the vaccination recommendation: “CDC recommends that priority should be given to the screening and isolation of ill migrants, early antiviral treatment, and flu vaccinations for all staff. CDC further recommends influenza vaccination at the earliest feasible point of entry for all persons at least six months of age, which is in concurrence with our general influenza vaccine recommendations.”

Other health experts also have recommended vaccines for migrants detained by CBP, especially children. A group of physicians that reviewed autopsy reports of children who died in CBP custody made that recommendation in an August letter to DeLauro and others in Congress.

A new report from the Brookings Institution warns that risk factors such as lackluster sanitation, overcrowding and poor nutrition are creating a “perfect storm” of conditions in CBP detention facilities that could lead to severe outbreaks of the flu and other communicable diseases. The report recommends vaccinating detained migrants as a way of limiting outbreaks.

Robert Moore is a freelance journalist based in El Paso.

Democracy Dies in Darkness

© 1996-2019 The Washington Post\

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Trump’s White Nationalist “DUD” (“Detain Until Dead”) policy in action! Might also include in your Thanksgiving thoughts those abused under Trump’s “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico” program as well as those who will soon be “orbited” to potential harm or death under bogus “Dangerous Third Country Agreements.”

Will Markie “Fund My TGIF” Morgan and his fellow killers, child abusers, and human rights abusers at DHS ever be held accountable for their arrogant misdeeds in Trump’s service? Don’t count on it. But, removing this truly cruel, immoral, and otherwise horrible group of “kakistocrats” and their Supreme Leader in 2020 is both possible and necessary for the continued existence of our country and would be a service to the future of the human race.

Doesn’t mean it will happen; but, our nation might not survive if it doesn’t.

Give thanks for the New Due Process Army!

Due Process Forever; New American Gulag Never!

Happy Thanksgiving,

PWS

11-28-19

THREE THANKSGIVING CHEERS FOR IMMIGRATION JUDGE JULIE NELSON (SF) & APPELLATE IMMIGRATION JUDGE ELLEN LIEBOWITZ (BIA) — Doing Justice, Granting Asylum, Saving Lives In The Age Of Trump!

My colleague Judge Jeffrey Chase of our Roundtable of Former Immigration Judges reports some good news:

Also, for those of you who subscribe to Ben Winograd’s index of unpublished BIA Decisions, today’s update includes an unpublished decision dated Nov. 6, 2019, Matter of A-C-A-A- (single BM Ellen Liebowitz), affirming the IJ’s grant of asylum in a domestic violence case based on her cognizable PSG of “Salvadoran females.” The written decision of the IJ, Julie L. Nelson in SF, is also included.

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Thanks to those judges like Judge Nelson and Judge Liebowitz who are continuing to stand up for the rights of asylum seekers “post-A-B-.”

And, many thanks to Jeffrey & Ben for passing this good news along and for all they do for Due Process every day!

What if rather than the “A-B- atrocity” made precedent by unethical White Nationalist Jeff Sessions, we had an honest, independent Immigration Court system that encouraged fair and impartial adjudications and implemented asylum laws generously, as intended (see, e.g., INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca) by publishing precedent decisions like this recognizing the right to protection?

BIA precedents on asylum have intentionally been constructed in a negative manner, showing judges how to deny, rather than grant, protection and encouraging them to take a skewed anti-asylum view of the law. Even worse, bogus, unethical, legally incorrect “Attorney General precedents” are uniformly anti-asylum; the applicant never wins.

Some judges, like Judge Nelson and Judge Leibovitz, take their oaths of office seriously. But, too many others “go along to get along” with the unlawful and unethical “anti-asylum program” pushed by the White Nationalist Trump Regime.

Indeed, even during my tenure as an Immigration Judge, I remember being required to attend asylum “training” sessions (in years when we even had training) where litigating attorneys from the Office of Immigration Litigation basically made a presentation that should have been entitled “How to Deny Potentially Valid Asylum Claims And Have Them Stand Up On Judicial Review.”

It’s also past time for the Supremes and the Circuit Courts of Appeals to get their collective heads out of the clouds, start paying attention, begin doing their jobs and strongly rejecting “disingenuous deference” to bogus, illegal, unethical “precedents” rendered by politically biased enforcement hacks like Sessions and Barr who have unethically usurped the role of quasi-judicial adjudicator for which they are so clearly and spectacularly unqualified under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. It’s nothing short of “judicial fraud” by the Article IIIs! Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

With a more honest and legally correct favorable precedents on asylum, many more cases could be documented and granted at the Asylum Office and Immigration Court levels. The DHS would be discouraged from wasting court time by opposing meritorious applications. The backlog would start going down. There would be fewer appeals. Justice would be served. Worthy lives would be saved. DHS could stop harassing asylum seekers and start enforcing the laws in a fair and reasonable manner. America would lead the way in implementing humanitarian laws, and we would become a better country for it.

Help the New Due Process Army fight for a better, more just, future for America and the world.

Due Process Forever!

Happy Thanksgiving.

PWS

11-28-19

BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR: Trump Taps Favorite Slumlord Jared To Seize Private Property For “Show Wall” — What Could Go Wrong?

https://apple.news/ArI8xX4mHT-CGSh_DnR78OQ

Bess writes:

Great Ideas

Jared Kushner’s New Big Boy Job: Building Trump’s Wall

First order of business: Seize all the private land.

When we last checked in about the progress of Donald Trump’s fantasy border wall, things were not going super well in that very little of it had actually been built. Plagued by logistical issues—not to mention opposition by the majority of Americans—as of last month the administration had reportedly acquired only 16% of the land it needs in Texas, where at least 100 landowners will have to give up valuable property for the project to happen. That news was presumably of little bother to the millions of people who think the border wall is a patently absurd, wildly racist, completely pointless monument to Trump’s ego, but for the president it was completely unacceptable. So, insistent that he will deliver the fence by the end of 2020 as a gift to his rabid base, he’s brought in the big guns: Jared Kushner.

Yes, in addition to his 387 other jobs at the White House, which include bringing peace to the Middle East, solving the opioid crisis, “fixing the government with business ideas,” reforming veteran care, and overhauling the entire immigration system, the first son-in-law is the “de facto project manager” for constructing the border wall, according to a new report from the Washington Post. What big ideas has he come up with so far? Well, where government officials have been resistant to the president’s “take the land” edict, wherein he thinks using eminent domain to seize private land will go over great both legally and politically, Jared is all for it. Once a slumlord, always a slumlord!

According to one person involved in the matter, Kushner has “annoyed” officials due to his total lack of knowledge of the government’s procurement process for obtaining land and the “realities” of the project. “So he took a much more hands-on role in figuring out, mile by mile, how to get more wall up,” this person told the Post. “It didn’t help put wall up faster and cheaper. His interventions actually just created more inefficiency in the process.”

While Kushner insists that everything is on target to meet the goal of 450 miles by the end of next year—a pace that means accelerating construction at least fourfold—to date just 83 miles of new barrier have been completed, with nearly all of that classified by CBP as “replacement wall,” a characterization the president does not appreciate:

Though Kushner has blamed his predecessors for not moving quickly enough to obtain necessary land, a former Department of Homeland Security official told the Post the reason for that was this little thing called the law. “We weren’t taking people’s land willy-nilly,” said the official.

The White House declined to comment; Kushner’s allies in the administration say he is bringing private sector know-how to the project, which is a bit worrisome given his track record in the private sector.

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Imagine what we could do if the time and money spent on these political gimmicks were redirected to humane, practical immigration enforcement that complied with laws and Due Process. Gee, we might actually solve problems instead of making them worse and unnecessarily creating new ones.

Also, remember that there was a time when the GOP claimed to stand for the “sanctity of private property.” But, that was then; this is now.

PWS

11-27-19

ANOTHER ILLEGAL TRUMP IMMIGRATION POLICY PUT ON HOLD: This Time It’s His “Insurance Scam” To Slash Legal Immigration — But, Will The Supremes Ultimately Uphold The Rule Of Law, Or Cave To The Trump Regime Again?

Susannah Liuthi — Susannah Luthi
Healthcare Reporter
Politico

https://apple.news/A-uzpmvT_TDyK8JGHsQ60ZA

Susannah Luthi for Politico:

Policy: Employment & Immigration

Judge halts Trump’s insurance mandate for immigrants

A federal judge in Oregon blocked President Donald Trump’s bid to deny immigrants visas unless they buy health insurance within 30 days of entering the country or otherwise show they can cover their medical costs.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon issued an order on Tuesday to stop the State Department from enforcing a policy that officials unveiled in late October under a mandate from President Donald Trump, and which could drastically curtail the ability of people to legally migrate to the United States.

Simon noted that the requirement that immigrants buy unsubsidized insurance — meaning they couldn’t get financial assistance through Obamacare — barred poor people from entering the country, which he said clearly infringed on the law.

“The proclamation is anticipated to affect approximately 60 percent of all immigrant visa applicants,” the judge wrote. “The president offers no national security or foreign relations justification for this sweeping change in immigration law.”

Simon agreed with plaintiffs, including U.S. citizens and their overseas family members as well as the non-profit Latino Network, that the rule violated the Constitution’s separation of powers. His decision applies nationwide.

Immigration officials could have begun enforcing the requirement on Dec. 1. The administration is expected to appeal.

Simon, a Barack Obama appointee, had already temporarily blocked the policy from taking effect early this month, saying there was sufficient concern about the legality of the new requirements to merit a delay, particularly since the administration didn’t use a standard public comment period for the new rules.

The plaintiffs argued the sweeping nature of the executive action showed an attempt “to rewrite our country’s immigration laws and fundamentally shift the balance of power between the branches of government.”

The policy originated with a proclamation Trump issued on Oct. 4 that cast confusion and uncertainty onto the immigrant community and raised immediate concerns it could be unworkable. In the original order, Trump laid out the parameters for the types of health insurance legal immigrants could buy as a condition for getting a visa.

They wouldn’t be able to use federal subsidies to buy coverage on Obamacare exchanges, but could buy short-term insurance plans the administration has promoted that are cheaper but only offer barebone coverage.

That latter option layered Trump’s tough immigration policies on top of the fight over short-term plans. Democrat-led states including New York and California — which happen to draw a large share of immigrants — have banned the sale of such plans.

The plaintiffs also argued that since short-term plans leave people underinsured, the directive is undermining its own stated goal of cutting some of the uncompensated care costs from the U.S. health care system.

They also estimated the State Department through the policy would bar up to 375,000 people who could otherwise legally enter the country, shrinking the annual number of legal immigrants by nearly two-thirds.

The administration contends the criticisms are overblown and that the policy wouldn’t affect all legal immigrants, such as parents coming to the country to reunite with their children or vice versa.

Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get top news and scoops, every morning — in your inbox.

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Of course Trump’s intent was to invidiously discriminate against immigrants of color and the poor. Of course, that’s unconstitutional. It’s not rocket science! It’s not even very complicated constitutional law.

But, then again, Trump’s “Muslim Ban,” his rewriting of asylum statutes, and his misappropriation of funds for his border wall stunt were also clearly unconstitutional. That didn’t seem to bother the Supreme’s GOP majority a bit in their “race to roll over for the Trump Regime.” After all, as Trump and his chump Solicitor General Noel Francisco keep not too subtly reminding the “Gang of Five,” they are “bought and paid for” and expected to perform as Regime toadies. Most of the time, they get the message.

So far, the Supremes and many Circuit Courts have lacked the guts and integrity to stand up consistently and powerfully to the Trump Regime’s attacks on our Constitution and humanity.

They apparently think that they are above the fray, particularly when the rights of the most vulnerable and defenseless are involved. But, maybe they are wrong. Perhaps, when Trump has finished eradicating constitutional norms and imposed his unique form of authoritarian dysfunction on our nation, these “robed wondermen” will be refugees along with the rest of us.

Nobody that I’ve ever met expects or wants to be a refugee. It can happen to anyone, at any time, no matter how fat, content, above the fray, and complicit you might be in your current position. Disturbingly, a majority of our very highest judges appear to lack the human perspective, historical knowledge, decency, courage, and empathy to see themselves in the position of those whose legal rights they abuse in Trump’s behalf. They certainly try hard not to understand the situation of refugees and migrants.

Yes, we want fair and impartial judges (something the Supremes have conveniently overlooked in dealing with the Immigration Courts). But, we don’t want or need judges who are detached from or indifferent to humanity and human suffering. After all, our laws are made by humans to regulate human conduct. When detached from its human roots and consequences, it becomes a tool for disorder and tyranny.

PWS

11-27-19

SURPRISE (NOT): Many Of Us Already Knew That CBP Acting Commish Mark Morgan Is Sleazy, Cruel, Immoral, Unethical, & Not Very Bright — Now, It’s Confirmed By The DOJ’s Inspector General — That’s Why He’s A Perfect Fit For The Trump Regime’s Immigration Kakistocracy!

Tal Kopan reports for the SF Chronicle:

Exclusive: Trump’s top border official broke FBI rules to fund happy hours

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s top border official broke federal ethics rules in a previous job by seeking sponsors to buy alcohol and fancy food for FBI happy hours, according to a watchdog report exclusively obtained by The Chronicle.

Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection agency, continued asking the outside entities to pay for the social events even after being warned it was against federal rules, the Justice Department’s inspector general found.

The previously unreported finding raises questions about the Trump administration’s vetting process for top officials. Although Morgan’s role is typically subject to Senate confirmation, Trump has not nominated him for the job. That has circumvented the traditional review by the Senate — leaving it unclear whether the ethical lapse was ever known to the administration.

Customs and Border Protection and Morgan declined to comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The violations occurred when Morgan was working at the FBI in 2015 as deputy assistant director of the training division, according to the inspector general’s report. Midway through the investigation in the summer of 2016, Morgan retired from the FBI and was named under then-President Barack Obama to head the Border Patrol. He declined to cooperate with the probe after that, the report said.

More: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Exclusive-Trump-s-top-border-official-broke-14864340.php#

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Let’s see. Morgan is the racist charlatan who claimed that he could identify a future gang member just by “looking in their eyes.” He was also an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s threatened (but never fully implemented) “reign of terror” directed against families in ethnic communities. And, of course, as acting CBP Honcho, he encourages and presides over parts of the “New American Gulag,” “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico,” and other human rights violations every day.

Plus, Morgan is as dim as he is evil if he considers government ethics advice to be “mere suggestions.” But, of course, when funding of a TGIF is on the line, why not “push the envelope.” He does exhibit the arrogance and disregard for the rules that apply to others that is a hallmark of the Trump Regime’s Kakistocracy.

However, it’s also significant that this information was available when Obama appointed Morgan Border Patrol Chief. Lots of today’s gross abuses by the Trump Regime have their roots in the Obama Administration’s overall poor, often uninformed, and sometimes negligent approach to immigration issues.

Travesties like “family detention,” “insider-only” hiring at the Immigration Courts and the BIA, absolutist positions on indefinite detention, defense of “toddlers representing themselves” in Immigration Court, and use of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” at the Immigration Courts in support of inappropriate and unethical “enforcement goals” all helped create unnecessary disorder and inhumanity in the already poorly functioning system.

Obama had a golden chance both to resolve Dreamers and create an Article I Immigration Court at the beginning of his Administration with badly needed, straightforward statutory reforms. Instead, by putting all of his attention on healthcare, to the exclusion of other pressing humanitarian problems, he more or less insured the later “weaponization” of the Immigration Courts, the creation and expansion of the “New American Gulag,” and holding “Dreamers” hostage.

If Obama had taken bold action in 2009, many of the “original Dreamers” would be fully integrated into our society and on their way to citizenship and full participation in our political process by now. Instead, they are being “hung out to dry” by Trump, the GOP, and likely the Supremes. A generation of American youth is being denied the opportunity to contribute and achieve their full potential in the United States.

And, think of how a “real” independent Immigration Court system, with a diverse judiciary with true immigration, human rights, and due process expertise, might have dealt with Trump’s consistent legal overreach on immigration and asylum issues. Indeed, while the Immigration Court backlog might not have been eliminated by an Article I Court, I’ll be it would be considerably less than it is now with an independent court where judges, not enforcement-driven bureaucrats, are in charge of managing their own dockets.

Obviously, we can’t change the past. But, we certainly can avoid repeating its mistakes in the future. Something to consider when looking at Democratic Presidential contenders.

PWS

11-27-19

MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE: SESSIONS & BARR ERADICATED DUE PROCESS WHILE DOUBLING THE IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOG: “[S]uch backlogs result when ‘the government focuses concern on immigrants and puts enforcement ahead of due process and civil rights.'” – Complicit Article III Appellate Courts Are Likely To End Up With The Absolute Disaster They Enabled!

https://apple.news/AbprF_RZWSBmtsn5WT35I_w

By DANAE KING, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Immigration court backlog has nearly doubled under Trump

November 25, 2019 05:00 PM EST

The nation’s backlog of active immigration court cases has surpassed the 1 million mark and has nearly doubled since President Donald Trump took office, a new analysis shows. In Ohio, 12,851 cases are pending in Cleveland’s immigration court, which includes Columbus-area cases. That’s up from 3,295 in 2009.

While most people might look a few weeks into the future when scheduling appointments for work, Amy Bittner has put court dates on her calendar for 2022.

The Columbus-based immigration lawyer already knows she’ll have to make the 280-mile round trip to Cleveland to represent a client at a hearing in three years.

“The backlog is a victim of this administration’s priorities. There did not used to be this backlog,” Bittner said.

Nationwide, the backlog has almost doubled, from 542,411 pending cases when President Donald Trump took office in January 2017 to just over 1 million as of Sept. 30, according to an October report by TRAC, a Syracuse Universityclearinghouse that gathers and analyzes immigration data from government agencies.

In Ohio, 12,851 cases are pending in Cleveland Immigration Court, the state’s only such court. That is up significantly from 3,295 in 2009. It’s also double the 6,184 in 2016.

Hearings are scheduled in the Cleveland court through Dec. 30, 2022.

Trump administration policies have not helped temper the rise in the country’s immigration court backlog, the TRAC report says.

Austin Kocher, a faculty fellow at TRAC and an Ohio State alumnus , said such backlogs result when “the government focuses concern on immigrants and puts enforcement ahead of due process and civil rights.”

“Very little resources actually go to the immigration court system and judges” compared with enforcement efforts, Kocher said.

Although the judges in northeastern Ohio stay busy, the backlog at Cleveland’s immigration court isn’t the worst in the country. In areas such as New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, immigrants are waiting an average of 1,450 days, or just under four years, to see a judge.

Part of the reason for the backlog, TRAC says, is that then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in May 2018 ordered the nation’s immigration judges to end their practice of removing cases from their dockets without issuing decisions. That resulted in formerly closed cases being reopened, according to TRAC.

“The decision to reopen previously closed cases has single-handedly exacerbated the immigration court crisis, yet it has not received sufficient attention,” the TRAC report states. “This single policy decision has caused a much greater increase in the court’s backlog than have all currently pending cases from families and individuals arrested along the southwest border seeking asylum.”

Others blamed the delays in part on one of Trump’s earliest executive orders, from January 2017, when he made every immigrant who was in the country illegally a priority for deportation. The norm had been to prioritize those who had committed crimes.

“It is a senseless waste of taxpayer money to attempt to remove people who are not criminals and who are well-integrated into our community,” Bittner, the Columbus immigration lawyer, told The Dispatch in an email.

She said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should close deportation cases involving long-term U.S. residents who are not dangerous.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Department of Justicebranch that supervises the federal immigration court system, did not respond to requests by The Dispatch for comment.

The backlog has grown despite the Trump administration having given the immigration courts “the greatest amount of resources,” said Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, a union.

The nation has 442 immigration judges, according to TRAC. Although about 220 judges have been hired in the past three years, about 100 others have left, Tabaddor said. She said that many of those who have left have expressed feeling like the Trump administration doesn’t allow them to do their jobs properly while adding quotas and micromanaging their work.

Each judge has about 2,000 cases, according to TRAC.

In 2016, when Cleveland’s immigration court had three judges, Bittner went to the court only twice. Now it has six judges, and she goes more than once a month.

Hiring more judges hasn’t fixed the backlog, Bittner said.

“It is very frustrating because justice delayed is justice denied, and while foreign nationals wait years for the adjudication of their cases, they are putting down roots here and having families, which makes removal from the United States even crueler if their case is ultimately denied,” Bittner wrote in the email.

She said some of her clients are grateful for the wait because they have more time to build a life here. Others, however, are frustrated, Bittner said, because they feel that they are constantly in limbo, and once they’ve built a life, it could all come crashing down when their day in court finally arrives.

A few of her clients who had waited years to make their asylum case in the U.S. court left for Canada instead, hoping things would go more smoothly up north.

“It just seems to be getting worse,” Bittner said.

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Actually, this article significantly understates the true scope of the backlog. Because, as noted in the article, in Castro-Tum, Sessions unethically, mindlessly, and unlawfully created a situation that, if not halted by the Congress or the Appellate Courts (note the 4^th Circuit Court of Appeals has “just said no” to Session’s bogus ruling), will require that over 300,000 low priority, properly “administratively closed” cases be restored to the docket. They vast majority of these are (absurdly) themselves backlogged, “awaiting re-docketing” (more than a clerical process in the antiquated, non-automated, paper heavy Immigration Courts). That makes the total backlog well over 1.4 million and still growing every day.” “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” at its worst!

And, because of the almost guaranteed legal and quality control problems with the Regime’s “cutting corners to deny due process” approach, many of these will end up in the Circuit Courts of Appeals in a condition that requires “return to sender.”

It doesn’t take a legal scholar or much of a judge to recognize that today’s Immigration “Courts” being run by biased, maliciously incompetent DOJ prosecutors don’t satisfy the basic requirement for “fair and impartial adjudications” to conform to Fifth Amendment Due Process. Moreover, the incompetent, “bad faith” mis-management of the Immigration Courts basically “throws garbage” into the higher courts and precludes effective, timely judicial review.

The solution: recognize that this travesty is unconstitutional and require a court-approved “special master” to run the Immigration Courts in place of the DOJ until Congress fixes the glaring Due Process and court management problems with an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court as recommended by almost all experts!

We also must remember the DOJ’s & EOIR’s concerted White Nationalist attacks on foreign nationals and their legal and Due Process rights in the Immigration Courts is also a vicious, unprovoked assault on the courageous attorneys representing the most vulnerable among us and trying, against the odds, to make the system function for everyone’s good. By failing to aid and support “officers of the court” in this dire situation, the Federal Judiciary basically undermines our entire justice system and brings it into disrepute!

Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

11-26-19

IT’S NEVER BEEN ABOUT “LEGAL V. ILLEGAL,” “BORDER SECURITY,” “JOBS,” OR “GETTING IN (NON-EXISTENT) LINES” — The Trump Regime Has Always Been About A White Nationalist Immigration Agenda Of Hate!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-no-other-way-to-explain-trumps-immigration-policy-its-just-bigotry/2019/11/25/348b38f4-0fcc-11ea-9cd7-a1becbc82f5e_story.html

Catherine Rampell in the WashPost:

November 25, 2019 at 7:58 p.m. EST

It was never about protecting the border, rule of law or the U.S. economy. And it was never about “illegal” immigration, for that matter.

Trump’s anti-immigrant bigotry was always just anti-immigrant bigotry.

There’s no other way to explain the Trump administration’s latest onslaught against foreigners of all kinds, regardless of their potential economic contributions, our own international commitments or any given immigrant’s propensity to follow the law. Trump’s rhetoric may focus on “illegals,” but recent data releases suggest this administration has been blocking off every available avenue for legal immigration, too.

Last month, the number of refugees admitted to the United States hit zero. That’s the first month on record this has ever happened, according to data going back nearly three decades from both the State Department and World Relief, a faith-based resettlement organization.

So what happened?

The problem wasn’t that the 26-million-strong global refugee population lacked a single person who met America’s strict screening requirements. No, our admissions flatlined because Trump announced and then delayed signing a new refugee ceiling for the 2020 fiscal year. This delay led to a complete moratorium on admissions.

Hundreds of flights were canceled for approved refugees who had waited years or decades to come — once again, legally — to our shining city on a hill. As the moratorium dragged on, some refugees’ eligibility expired. At least four were minors who have now turned 18. This means they’ve aged out of the resettlement program they were accepted under and now must get back in line, perhaps indefinitely, to reapply under a different system as adults.

By the way, when Trump finally did sign off on that new fiscal 2020 refugee ceiling, it was for a mere 18,000 admissions. That too is an all-time low. The Trump administration has also thrown up other roadblocks for refugees, such as allowing states and localities to veto any resettlements within their borders. (This policy is being challenged in court.)

Trump supporters might argue that, whatever our moral obligations to the world’s destitute and desperate, the president is merely keeping immigrants out to protect our economy.

They are wrong.

The Trump administration’s own research — which it attempted to suppress — found that refugees are a net positive for the U.S. economy and government budgets. That is, over the course of a decade, refugees pay more in taxes than they receive in public benefits.

The Trump administration is also turning away categories of legal would-be immigrants who are historically admitted because they are economically valuable.

Last week, for instance, we learned that enrollment of new international students has fallen more than 10 percent over the past three years, according to the Institute of International Education.

This is a shame. Higher education has been one of our most successful industries, adding $45 billion to the U.S. economy last year alone. International students spend money in the local economies where they study — on lodging, food, books, entertainment. They are also more likely to pay full freight in tuition. This means they cross-subsidize American students, especially in states where public education funding has fallen.

International students are also more likely to major in high-demand STEM fields, providing U.S. employers with a pipeline of talent that supports the jobs of native-born Americans.

New international student enrollment is declining for a number of reasons, including high tuition and fear of campus gun violence. But the barrier most frequently cited by universities lately is problems with the visa-application process. Meanwhile, other developed countries, such as Canada and Australia, are poaching students who might otherwise have contributed their talents here.

These are hardly the only signs we’re discouraging or denying legions of desirable and legal would-be immigrants.

Denial rates for H-1B visas — awarded to high-skilled workers — have more than doubled since Trump took office, according to tabulations from National Foundation for American Policy. Processing delays for citizenship applications have doubled. Naturalization and visa fees have skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, when families apply for their legal right to asylum at the border, we tell them to await processing in Mexico, in a region so dangerous that Americans are instructed not to visit. (“Violent crime, such as murder, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, extortion, and sexual assault, is common,” the State Department website advises.)

There, asylum seekers live outdoors, in filthy, flooded, freezing tents. Agonized parents send sick and frostbitten toddlers to cross into the U.S. alone, because they fear they’ll die waiting in Mexico.

And if these desperate families don’t like living in squalor, we tell them they should just return home, get in line and apply through another legal route into the United States. Perhaps as refugees, students or workers.

As though there were still such routes to be found.

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

It’s institutionalized hate, racism, sexism, lawlessness, and cruelty.

One of the worst things is that’s it’s basically enabled by Federal Appellate Courts who see the same problems as many U.S. District Judge do, but “go along to get along” by “normalizing” Trump’s disgraceful racist behavior and “deferring” to pretextual Executive actions that are merely facades for a dishonest, illegal, and unconstitutional White Nationalist agenda. Sort of reminds me of the bogus “separate but equal” doctrine of judicial cowardice.

Apparently, too many life-tenured Article IIIs in the ivory tower think that they and their privileged circles will escape the gratuitous harm being inflicted on our nation and on vulnerable individuals by a scofflaw executive. Certainly, not unlike the enabling white male judges and Supreme Court Justices who “looked the other way” and thereby enabled Jim Crow regimes to corruptly use our legal system to disenfranchise, murder, oppress, and otherwise abuse African American citizens.

Where has judicial courage among the higher levels of our Federal Judiciary gone?

PWS

11-26-19

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: HOW TRUMP’S WHITE NATIONALIST REGIME SEIZED CONTROL OF THE IMMIGRATION BUREAUCRACY & IS USING IT TO RE-CREATE 1924 & PROMOTE ITS AGENDA OF RACIST HATE — Who Needs Legislation When You Have GOP Obstructionists In Congress & Feckless Federal Courts?

https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/invisible-wall/

Rachel Morris writes in Highline:

IN THE TWO YEARS AND 308 DAYS THAT DONALD Trump has been president, he has constructed zero miles of wall along the southern border of the United States. He has, to be fair, replaced or reinforced 76 miles of existing fence and signed it with a sharpie. A private group has also built a barrier less than a mile long with some help from Steve Bannon and money raised on GoFundMe. But along the 2,000 miles from Texas to California, there is no blockade of unscalable steel slats in heat-retaining matte black, no electrified spikes, no moat and no crocodiles. The animating force of Trump’s entire presidency—the idea that radiated a warning of dangerous bigotry to his opponents and a promise of unapologetic nativism to his supporters—will never be built in the way he imagined.

And it doesn’t matter. In the two years and 308 days that Donald Trump has been president, his administration has constructed far more effective barriers to immigration. No new laws have actually been passed. This transformation has mostly come about through subtle administrative shifts—a phrase that vanishes from an internal manual, a form that gets longer, an unannounced revision to a website, a memo, a footnote in a memo. Among immigration lawyers, the cumulative effect of these procedural changes is known as the invisible wall.

In the two years after Trump took office, denials for H1Bs, the most common form of visa for skilled workers, more than doubled. In the same period, wait times for citizenship also doubled, while average processing times for all kinds of visas jumped by 46 percent, even as the quantity of applications went down. In 2018, the United States added just 200,000 immigrants to the population, a startling 70 percent less than the year before.

Before Trump was elected, there was virtually no support within either party for policies that make it harder for foreigners to come here legally. For decades, the Republican consensus has favored tough border security along with high levels of legal immigration. The party’s small restrictionist wing protested from the margins, but it was no match for a pro-immigration coalition encompassing business interests, unions and minority groups. In 2013, then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions introduced an amendment that would have lowered the number of people who qualified for green cards and work visas. It got a single vote in committee—his own. As a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security observed, “If you told me these guys would be able to change the way the U.S. does immigration in two years, I would have laughed.”

. . . .

In November, Cuccinelli was promoted to DHS deputy acting secretary. Kathy Nuebel Kovarik became acting deputy at USCIS and Robert Law, the former FAIR lobbyist, ascended to the head of the policy office. The agency has promised a new flurry of major policy changes before the end of the year. And in what is perhaps the purest expression of the administration’s intentions so far, it started sending Central American asylum seekers to Guatemala with no access to an attorney, no review by an immigration court, far away from the border infrastructure of activists and reporters and lawyers or any form of help at all.

IT’S EASY ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THAT BECAUSE NONE of the Trump administration’s reforms are entrenched in law, they can be overturned as quickly as they were introduced. And yet even though, in theory, the policy memos can all be withdrawn, the “sheer number of both significant and less significant changes is overwhelming,” said Jaddou, the former USCIS chief counsel. “It will take an ambitious plan over a series of years to undo it all.” Formal regulations, like the third-country asylum rule and public charge rule, if it succeeds, will be especially hard to unravel.

The institutional implications run deeper. The backlog of delayed cases will likely take several years to get under control. The administration has promoted six judges with some of the highest asylum denial rates to the Justice Department’s immigration appeals court, including one who threatened to set a dog on a 2-year-old child for failing to be quiet in his courtroom. Those appointments are permanent.

The refugee program, too, will take years to rebuild. The plunge in admissions caused a plunge in funding to the nine resettlement agencies, which have closed more than 100 offices around the country since 2016. That’s a third of their capacity, according to a report by Refugees Council USA. “The whole infrastructure is deteriorating,” said Rodriguez, the former USCIS director. Because the application process is so lengthy, even if a new administration raises refugee admissions on day one, it would take as long as five years before increased numbers of people actually make it to the United States. Consider that in January 2017, the State Department briefly paused in-bound flights for refugees who had finally made it through the gauntlet of health, security and other checks. As of this summer, some of those refugees were still waiting to leave. While the flights were grounded, they missed the two-month window during which all of their documents were current. When one document expires, it can take months to replace, causing others to expire and trapping the refugee in what the report called “a domino effect of expiring validity periods.”

Even harder to repair is the culture shift within USCIS. New visa adjudicators will remain in their jobs long after the political appointees have gone—kings and queens of their own offices. Employees who were promoted for their skeptical inclinations will stay in those positions, setting priorities for subordinates. The multitude of changes at USCIS are the product of an administration that regards immigration as its political lifeblood. There’s no guarantee—or indication—that any of the potential Democratic nominees would apply the same obsessive zeal to overturning them.

Back in 1924, Johnson-Reed’s supporters never anticipated the Holocaust, and yet they expanded its horrors. We don’t know where our own future is headed, but we live in a time of metastasizing instability. Last year, the United Nations’ official tally of refugees passed 70 million, the highest since World War II. Mass migrations, whether because of violence or inequality or environmental calamity or some murky blend of factors that don’t conveniently fit existing laws, are the reality and challenge of our era. There aren’t any easy solutions. But already, what started as a series of small, obscure administrative changes is resulting in unthinkable cruelty. If left to continue, it will, in every sense, redefine what it means to be American.

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

Read Rachel’s entire, much longer, article at the link.

Building Due Process and fundamental fairness is a painstaking incremental process that takes years, sometimes decades, to achieve. Destroying it can happen basically overnight.

This should never have happened if the Supremes had stood up to the Administration’s unconstitutional, factually bogus, racist, religiously targeted “Travel Ban” instead of green-lighting the return of “Jim Crow 2” under a clearly pretextual and fabricated “national security” facade. Judicial complicity and task avoidance enables cruelty and the destruction of democratic institutions (including, ultimately, the independent judiciary). That’s why the “New Due Process Army” is in it for the long run!

Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

Due Process Forever. White Nationalism Never! Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

11-26-19

TRUMP PLANS TO KICK OFF NEW YEAR WITH MORE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — Removals Of Asylum Seekers To Dangerous Honduras Just Latest Example Of Congressional & Judicial Complicity In White Nationalist Regime’s Grotesque Perversions Of Law & Truth!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/asylum-seekers-deportation-honduras-trump

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

The White House has directed the Department of Homeland Security to implement a deal to send asylum-seekers to Honduras by January, the second in a series of controversial agreements made with Central American countries to deport immigrants seeking protection at the southern border, according to a government document obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Implementing the agreement has been met with a series of issues that appear to be complicating the January deadline. The deal with Honduras was initially signed in September — at the time, agency officials did not provide many specific details about its implementation — and is part of the Trump administration’s strategy to deter asylum-seekers from coming to the US border.

Critics say the Trump administration is forcing people who are fleeing violence and poverty to go back to countries in what’s known as the Northern Triangle that have weak asylum systems and are unable to protect their own people, let alone immigrants.

Last week, DHS officials implemented a similar agreement to send adult asylum-seekers picked up in the El Paso area who are from Honduras and El Salvador to Guatemala.

In October, DHS officials traveled to Honduras to discuss details about implementing the unprecedented plan, called the Asylum Cooperative Agreement (ACA), according to briefing materials drawn up for acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The discussions in Honduras appear to have hit a few roadblocks. First, Honduran officials requested that no one convicted or accused of a felony crime be sent to their country, a proposal that was seen by DHS officials as “operationally unfeasible given the expedited nature of the removals.”

They also wanted asylum-seekers to “manifest their conformity,” or express their agreement, to being transferred — something DHS officials recommended rejecting or clarifying because it was “not legally or operationally feasible.”

And third, Honduras wanted transfers to start only once both countries “provided notification that they have complied with the legal and institutional conditions necessary for proper implementation of this agreement.” But privately, DHS officials viewed that request as an attempt to get out of the deal if they wanted to.

“This reads as GOH’s escape-hatch not to implement the ACA given its lack of ‘institutional conditions’ or as the hook to demand more assistance” from the US or non-governmental organizations, the officials wrote.

The Central American country also wanted a definition of what would constitute a “public interest” exemption to deporting someone to Honduras. The vague exemption is also being used in the plan to deport asylum-seekers from El Salvador and Honduras to Guatemala.

But in their recommendation to Wolf, DHS officials said the request should be rejected since “it gives the US government more operational flexibility not to define what we consider the ‘public interest exemption’ for when we chose not to remove an alien pursuant to the ACA.’”

DHS officials have previously said that more than 71% of those apprehended at the southern border in the 2019 fiscal year were from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador.

Honduras had a homicide rate of 40 per 100,000 people in 2017, while Guatemala’s was 22.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, among the highest in the Western Hemisphere, according to InSight Crime.

The “third country”-like agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, paired with policies that force asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico for the duration of their cases in the US and a rule that bars asylum for people who cross through Mexico to get to the southern border, would nearly close off the US to people fleeing persecution in Central America.

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

The functional end of U.S. refugee and asylum laws without any participation from Congress which had enshrined them in statute will go down as one of the most disgraceful and cowardly acts of a disintegrating republic now ruled by a White Nationalist regime.

PWS

11-26-19

GET THE LATEST SKINNY ON THE REGIME’S ANTI-IMMIGRANT AGENDA HERE: The Gibson Report — 11-25-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

Elizabeth Gibson
Attorney, NY Legal Assistance Group
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

TOP UPDATES

1st Honduran returned to Guatemala under US asylum accord<https://apnews.com/50f77fd8b67f49db8744daa788914187>

AP: Under a July agreement between the U.S. and Guatemala, asylum seekers have to file claims in Guatemala rather than in the United States if they crossed through Guatemala on their way to the U.S. border. The agreement primarily affects immigrants from Honduras and El Salvador whose land routes to the U.S. border pass through Guatemala. See also leaked training materials.<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-guatemala-asylum/trump-administration-prepares-to-send-asylum-seekers-to-guatemala-idUSKBN1XU2SI>

The Trump Administration Was Ordered to Let These Migrants Seek Asylum. It Didn’t Tell the Judges Hearing Their Cases.<https://www.propublica.org/article/the-trump-administration-was-ordered-to-let-these-migrants-seek-asylum-it-didnt-tell-the-judges-hearing-their-cases>

ProPublica: A federal judge ruled Tuesday that migrants couldn’t be barred from asylum under a regulation that came out while they were waiting at the U.S.-Mexico border. The administration appears to be dragging its feet in complying.

Trump Plans Far-Reaching Set Of New Immigration Regulations<https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2019/11/21/trump-plans-far-reaching-set-of-new-immigration-regulations/#271a3870262a>

Forbes: Many items on the regulatory agenda aim to restrict asylum, which has already seen wholesale changes in procedures in the past three years.

NY’s Backlog of Immigration Cases Continues to Grow<https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2019/11/21/ny-state-s-backlog-of-immigration-cases-continues-to-grow>

NY1: The Trump administration’s budget proposal calls for spending $71 million more and hiring an additional 100 judges and support staff next year.

A Top US Immigration Official Threatened To Fire Employees For Leaking Information To The Media<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/us-immigration-officials-threatened-media-leaks>

BuzzFeed: “I feel like there were no leaks before USCIS started doing super-sketchy things,” one official told BuzzFeed News in response to the memo.

USCIS Issues Guidance on Adjustments by Individuals Whose Conditional Permanent Residence Has Been Terminated<https://www.aila.org/infonet/guidance-on-adjustments-by-cpr-individuals>

USCIS issued policy guidance on the application of Matter of Stockwell, clarifying when USCIS may adjust the status of an individual whose Conditional Permanent Resident (CPR) status has been terminated. An immigration judge does not need to affirm the termination of CPR status before the individual can file a new adjustment of status application. This guidance applies to adjustment of status applications filed with USCIS on or after 11/21/19. Comments are due by 12/5/19. AILA Doc. No. 19112190

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Scott Warren Not Guilty in Trial for Border Humanitarian Work<https://theintercept.com/2019/11/23/scott-warren-verdict-immigration-border/>

Intercept: A jury found Scott Warren not guilty in the government’s second attempt to lock him up for providing humanitarian aid on the border in Arizona.

5 Journalists Are Suing the U.S. Government After Border Officials Questioned Them at Length<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/21/attempt-criminalize-basic-human-kindness-fails-activist-scott-warren-found-not>

AP: The lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union recounts the experiences of the freelance photographers and seeks to test the limits of U.S. officials’ broad authority to question anyone, including journalists, entering the country.

<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/21/attempt-criminalize-basic-human-kindness-fails-activist-scott-warren-found-not>

Supreme Court sets briefing in case reviewing immigration advocacy as violation of statute prohibiting enouragement of unlawful presence<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/supreme-court-reviewing-immigration-advocacy-as-free-speech-vs-encouragement.html>

ImmProf: The Supreme Court has agreed to take up United States v. Sineneng-Smith this term, a case that concerns a little-used provision of immigration law that forbids “encourag[ing] or induc[ing] an alien to … reside in the United States” when the encourager knows that person has no legal status.

Matter of REYES, 27 I&N Dec. 708 (A.G. 2019)<https://go.usa.gov/xpXSc>

Pursuant to 8 C.F.R. §1003.1(h)(1)(i), I direct the Board of Immigration Appeals (“Board”) to refer this case to me for review of its decision. The Board’s decision in this matter is automatically stayed pending my review. See Matter of Haddam, A.G. Order No. 2380-2001 (Jan. 19, 2001). To assist me, I invite the parties and interested amici to submit briefs that address whether an alien who has been convicted of a criminal offense necessarily has been convicted of an aggravated felony for purposes of 8 U.S.C. §1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), where all of the elements of the underlying statute of conviction, and thus all of the means of committing the offense, correspond either to an aggravated felony theft offense, as defined in 8 U.S.C. §1101(a)(43)(G), or to an aggravated felony fraud offense, as defined in 8 U.S.C. §1101(a)(43)(M)(i).

DHS Notice of Agreement Between United States and Guatemala Regarding Protection Claims<https://www.aila.org/infonet/dhs-84-fr-64095-11-20-19>

Posted 11/20/2019

DHS published a copy in the Federal Register of the Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Guatemala on Cooperation Regarding the Examination of Protection Claims, which was signed on 7/26/19. (84 FR 64095, 11/20/19)

AILA Doc. No. 19112030

EOIR Releases Guidance on Implementation of Asylum Cooperative Agreements<https://www.aila.org/infonet/eoir-releases-guidance-on-implementation-of-asylum>

EOIR issued PM 20-04, with guidelines regarding new regulations providing for the implementation of the Asylum Cooperative Agreements. Guidance is effective as of 11/19/19 and applies to individuals who arrive at U.S. ports of entry, or enter, or attempt to enter on or after 11/19/19. AILA Doc. No. 19112036

EOIR Issues Guidance on Child Advocates Appointed by HHS for UACs<https://www.aila.org/infonet/eoir-issues-guidance-on-child-advocates-appointed>

EOIR issued PM 20-03 memorializing EOIR’s policy regarding child advocates appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services under the TVPRA of 2008, stating that this authority only exists for “child trafficking victims and other vulnerable unaccompanied alien children,” not for all UACs. AILA Doc. No. 19112035

USCIS Issues Policy Alert on USCIS Special Immigrant Juvenile Classification<https://www.aila.org/infonet/uscis-issues-policy-alert-uscis-special-immigrant>

USCIS updated the USCIS Policy Manual regarding the Special Immigrant Juvenile classification to incorporate recent clarifications made in three adopted AAO decisions. Clarifications are effective immediately and apply to cases pending on or filed on or after 11/19/19. Comments are due by 12/3/19. AILA Doc. No. 19111932

Executive Branch Fall 2019 Regulatory Plan<https://www.aila.org/infonet/executive-branch-fall-2019-regulatory-plan>

The Executive Branch released its Fall 2019 Regulatory Plan. AILA Doc. No. 19112132

EOIR Final Rule Exempting OCAHO Case Management System from Privacy Act<https://www.aila.org/infonet/eoir-84-fr-64198-11-21-19>

EOIR final rule exempting the “OCAHO Case Management System” system of records from certain provisions of the Privacy Act. The rule is effective 12/23/19. (84 FR 64198, 11/21/19) AILA Doc. No. 19112130

EVENTS

*   11/25/19 How to Fight the Harmful Proposed Changes to Immigration Filing Fees and Fee Waivers Webinar<https://www.ilrc.org/webinars/how-fight-harmful-proposed-changes-immigration-filing-fees-and-fee-waivers>

*   11/26/19 ONA Webinar – Court Ruling Upholds Special Immigrant Juvenile Status Protections<https://forms.gle/KxCvKv8EsXLNbcsVA>

*   12/4/-5/19 52nd Annual Immigration & Naturalization Institute<https://www.pli.edu/programs/immigration-and-naturalization-institute?t=live>

*   12/4/19 Public Charge Train the Trainer<https://tockify.com/thenyic/detail/72/1575468000000>

*   12/5/19 U Visas in Removal Proceedings<https://agora.aila.org/Conference/Detail/1629>

*   12/5/19 Trauma Informed Interviewing For Lawyers – NSC Pro Se Clinic<https://www.newsanctuarynyc.org/trauma_informed_interview_lawyer_training_20191205>

*   12/5/19 Foundations in Immigration Law<https://mailchi.mp/e0c658697ffb/save-the-dates-new-immigration-law-fundamentals-series?e=09f6a8c81a>

*   12/10/19 Working With Transgender, Gender Non-conforming, and Non-binary Immigrants: A Guide for Legal Practitioners!<https://avp.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fb8da3e27ad6713b5d8945fc2&id=70a5b33685&e=15233cf2a6>

*   12/12/19 Family-Based Immigration<https://mailchi.mp/e0c658697ffb/save-the-dates-new-immigration-law-fundamentals-series?e=09f6a8c81a>

*   12/12/19 Annual AILA New York Chapter Symposium<https://agora.aila.org/Conference/Detail/1637>

*   12/17/19 Adjustment of Status and Consular Processing<https://mailchi.mp/e0c658697ffb/save-the-dates-new-immigration-law-fundamentals-series?e=09f6a8c81a>

*   12/17/19 Incredibly Credible: Preparing Your Client to Testify<https://agora.aila.org/Conference/Detail/1632>

*   12/17/19 Keeping Our Communities Safe: The Impact of ICE Arrests at NYS Courts<https://www.eventbrite.com/e/keeping-our-communities-safe-the-impact-of-ice-arrests-at-nys-courts-registration-80735649501>

*   2/7/20 Asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Crime Victim, and Other Forms of Immigration Relief 2020<https://www.pli.edu/programs/asylum-juvenile-immigration-relief?t=live>

*   2/28/2020 5th Annual New York Asylum and Immigration Law Conference

ImmProf

Monday, November 25, 2019

*   60 Minutes: A widow recalls how her husband and daughter drowned in the Rio Grande<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/60-minutes-a-widow-recalls-how-her-husband-and-daughter-drowned-in-the-rio-grande.html>

*   Immigration Article of the Day: Supremacy, Inc. by David S. Rubenstein<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/immigrtaion-article-of-the-day-supremacy-inc-by-david-s-rubenstein.html>

Sunday, November 24, 2019

*   Deported & Disowned<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/deported-disowned.html>

*   Another Immigration Case for the Supreme Court? United States v. California<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/another-immigration-case-for-the-supreme-court-united-states-v-california.html>

*   Trump’s latest gambit: Send asylum seekers to ‘Safe Third Countries’ that are less than safe<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/trumps-latest-gambit-send-asylum-seekers-to-safe-third-countries-that-are-less-than-safe.html>

*   U.S.-Canada Border Community’s Culture Changes As Security Tightens<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/us-canada-border-communitys-culture-changes-as-security-tightens.html>

*   Immigration Article of the Day: The Trauma of Trump’s Family Separation and Child Detention Actions: A Children’s Rights Perspective by Jonathan Todres and Daniela Villamizar Fink<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/immigration-article-of-the-day-the-trauma-of-trumps-family-separation-and-child-detention-actions-a-.html>

Saturday, November 23, 2019

*   Your Playlist: The Beatles<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/your-playlist-the-beatles.html>

*   Immigration Article of the Day: Trump’s ‘Immployment’ Law Agenda: Intensifying Employment-Based Enforcement and Un-Authorizing the Authorized by Kati L. Griffith & Shannon Gleeson<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/immigration-article-of-the-day-trumps-immployment-law-agenda-intensifying-employment-based-enforceme.html>

Friday, November 22, 2019

*   Immigrant of the Day: Dr. Fiona Hill<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/immigrant-of-the-day-dr-fiona-hill.html>

*   Karen Musalo: Restore asylum for women fleeing abuse and death<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/karen-musalo-restore-asylum-for-women-fleeing-abuse-and-death-.html>

*   Immigration Article of the Day: Enter at Your Own Risk: Criminalizing Asylum-Seekers by Thomas M. McDonnell and Vanessa H. Merton<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/immigration-article-of-the-day-enter-at-your-own-risk-criminalizing-asylum-seekers-by-thomas-m-mcdon.html>

Thursday, November 21, 2019

*   New Homeland Security Asylum Rule Allows Removal to Central American Countries That Have Signed Agreements With the U.S.<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/new-homeland-security-asylum-rule-allows-removal-to-central-american-countries-that-have-signed-agreements-with-the-us.html>

*   Five Films about Immigration and Belonging, intro by Viet Thanh Nguyen<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/five-films-about-immigration-and-belonging-intro-by-viet-thanh-nguyen.html>

*   News from the US/Mexico Border: JURY ACQUITS NO MORE DEATHS VOLUNTEER OF FELONY HARBORING CHARGES<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/news-from-teh-usmexico-border-jury-acquits-no-more-deaths-volunteer-of-felony-harboring-charges.html>

*   Immigration Article of the Day: What Matter of Soram Got Wrong: ‘Child Abuse’ Crimes that May Trigger Deportation Are Constantly Evolving and Even Target Good Parents by Kari E. Hong & Philip Torrey<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/immigration-article-of-the-day-what-matter-of-soram-got-wrong-child-abuse-crimes-that-may-trigger-de.html>

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

*   Professor Tom Wong Announces Bid for 53rd Congressional District (San Diego, Californa)<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/professor-tom-wong-announces-bid-for-53rd-congressional-district-san-diego-californa.html>

*   Supreme Court sets briefing in case reviewing immigration advocacy as violation of statute prohibiting enouragement of unlawful presence<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/supreme-court-reviewing-immigration-advocacy-as-free-speech-vs-encouragement.html>

*   Inspector General sounds warning about lack of permanent senior leadership at DHS<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/inspector-general-sounds-warning-about-lack-of-permanent-senior-leadership-at-dhs.html>

*   From the Bookshelves: No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison by Behrouz Boochani<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/from-the-bookshelves-no-friend-but-the-mountains-writing-from-manus-prison-by-behrouz-boochani.html>

*   Immigration Article of the Day: 287(g) Agreements in the Trump Era by Huyen Pham<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/immigration-article-of-the-day-287g-agreements-in-the-trump-era-by-huyen-pham.html>

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

*   BREAKING: Federal Court Blocks Trump Asylum Ban from Being Applied to Thousands of Asylum Seekers<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/breaking-federal-court-blocks-trump-asylum-ban-from-being-applied-to-thousands-of-asylum-seekers.html>

*   President Trump’s Latest Efforts to Stop the Flow of Central American Asylum Seekers to the United States<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/president-trumps-latest-efforts-to-stop-the-flow-of-central-american-asylum-seekers-to-the-united-st.html>

*   From the Bookshelves: America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States by Erika Lee<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/from-the-bookshelves-america-for-americans-a-history-of-xenophobia-in-the-united-states-by-erika-lee.html>

*   Immigration Article of the day: Rodrigo’s Rebuke: Originary Violence and U.S. Border Policy by Richard Delgado<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/immigration-article-of-the-day-rodrigos-rebuke-originary-violence-and-us-border-policy-by-richard-de.html>

*   Fox Sports: America’s best foreign imports in sports<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/fox-sports-americas-best-foreign-imports-in-sports.html>

Monday, November 18, 2019

*   Pete Wilson Continues to Defend Proposition 187<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/pete-wilson-continues-to-defend-proposition-187.html>

*   From the Booksheves: Immigration and Nationality Law: Problems and Strategies by Lenni B. Benson, Stephen W. Yale-Loehr, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, second edition<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/from-the-booksheves-immigration-and-nationality-law-problems-and-strategies-by-lenni-b-benson-stephe.html>

*   Guest Post: RELIANCE INTERESTS AND FUTURE DACA LITIGATION by Geoffrey A. Hoffman<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/guest-post-reliance-interests-and-future-daca-litigation-by-geoffrey-a-hoffman.html>

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

So many ways to screw migrants out of their rights and lives. So many unethical government officials doing it. So many Article III Judges looking the other way.

PWS

11-25-19

FOR TRUMP & HIS GOP, BOGUS “RULE OF LAW” ARGUMENTS ARE MERELY TOOLS TO BE USED FOR PERSONAL AND POLITICAL CORRUPTION: “Trump learned to see the law as Cohn did: ‘not as a system of rules to be obeyed . . . but as a potent weapon to be used against his adversaries.’”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trumps-legal-strategy-if-you-cant-beat-the-case-beat-the-system/2019/11/21/1555586a-f998-11e9-8190-6be4deb56e01_story.html

David Farenthold in the Washington Post:

Donald Trump’s friend, lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn had an adage: “F— the law,” he liked to say, according to a new book by attorney James D. Zirin. “Who’s the judge?” He meant that, although idealists might imagine that the courts were august and impartial, the judiciary was in fact made up of people who could be bullied or bamboozled or bought off. To Cohn, politics was a brutal and unfair game, and the law was just an extension of politics, with extra paperwork. If you understood that, he believed, you could get a huge head start on the idealists.

For a young Trump, this was a foundational lesson, according to Zirin. In his book “Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits,” Zirin argues that Trump learned to see the law as Cohn did: “not as a system of rules to be obeyed . . . but as a potent weapon to be used against his adversaries.” Trump sued often but rarely won big. Winning in court wasn’t always the point: The lawsuit itself was the thing, a tool of intimidation cloaked in legalese, an outgoing missile that left your enemies buried in costs and hassle. That approach had costs for Trump, too. But he could bear them. He lost friends, wives, lawyers and business partners — but always found new ones, who thought their fate would be different.

. . . .

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

Go to the link to read the rest of the review.

Trump has betrayed his country and everyone around him. His “skill” is that he keeps his gang of gullible GOP sycophants believing that he will treat them differently from everyone else, right up to the time of the final betrayal.

Anytime the word “law” comes out of Trump’s mouth or is uttered by one of his sycophants, you can be sure that a stream of outrageous lies is about to follow.

It’s also worth remembering that the entire Jim Crow Era was cloaked in a bogus use of the “rule of law” and BS about “states’ rights” while the “justice” system, including many morally and intellectually corrupt “judges” and “prosecutors” at all levels, were “weaponizing” the law to deny the Constitutional and human rights of African-American citizens!

PWS

11-25-19

PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO @ LA TIMES: We Can Restore Legality & Humanity To U.S. Asylum Law — That’s Why The Refugee Protection Act Deserves Everyone’s Support — “The bill lays out a plan to allow women and girls fleeing gender-based violence the opportunity to obtain asylum, and bring our country back in line with its humanitarian commitments. It’s a vision that all members of Congress should be able to get behind, even at a time of bitter partisanship.”

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=55eeae6e-b617-4ffd-b041-a54c15a3ada7&v=sdk

Professor Musalo writes in the LA Times:

Every day, courageous women and girls arrive at our southern border seeking refuge from unimaginable violence. Under our laws, they have the right to apply for asylum and have their cases heard. But rather than offering protection, the Trump administration is determined to send them back to the countries they have fought so hard to escape.

On Thursday, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) introduced the Refugee Protection Act. The bill lays out a plan to allow women and girls fleeing gender-based violence the opportunity to obtain asylum, and bring our country back in line with its humanitarian commitments. It’s a vision that all members of Congress should be able to get behind, even at a time of bitter partisanship.

It’s no secret that this administration is systematically dismantling our asylum law. Women and children have borne the brunt of the suffering — from the egregious policies of family separation and “Remain in Mexico,” to the quiet publication of decisions by the attorney general that have closed door after door to those seeking safety.

The Refugee Protection Act would rectify many of these inhumane actions, and includes language to reverse recent decisions that have made it nearly impossible for women fleeing domestic violence or gang brutality to qualify as refugees.

One of those decisions — known as Matter of A-B- — was handed down by then-Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions in 2018. That decision has been used to limit the legal definition of “refugee” in an attempt to eliminate the possibility of asylum in the U.S. for victims of domestic violence, sex trafficking and other gender-based human rights violations. Since then, we have seen asylum approval rates plummet for women, children and families arriving at our southern border.

The Matter of A-B- case involves a domestic violence survivor from El Salvador who fears she will be killed if she is sent back to her country. My organization, the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, has represented A.B. in her asylum case for nearly two years.

In El Salvador, A.B., a courageous and resilient woman, endured over 15 years of beatings, rapes, death threats and psychological abuse at the hands of her husband. She secured a divorce and even moved to another part of El Salvador, desperate to escape her abuser. But no matter where she went, he tracked her down. When she requested a restraining order, the police provided her one — and told her to hand-deliver it to him. Fearing that he would make good on his threat to kill her, she fled to the United States.

In 2016, A.B. was granted asylum by the highest administrative tribunal in the immigration system, the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals. But in a highly unusual procedural move, Sessions seized upon A.B.’s case, overturned the grant of asylum, and used it to declare that the United States should no longer extend protection to domestic violence survivors.

A.B. has appealed Sessions’ action, but until a final decision is reached, she remains terrified that she will be deported. Countless other women who have made the arduous journey to the United States also face a hostile immigration system and, post-Matter of A-B-, an even harder legal battle.

Congress has an opportunity to correct this. The new bill would clarify legal requirements for asylum and provide clear guidance for cases involving gender-based violence. It would ensure that asylum seekers like A.B. get a fair opportunity to argue her claim before a judge.

The United States has a long history of giving refuge to people who’ve come to our shores. This measure would be a step toward restoring that tradition.

Karen Musalo is a law professor and the founding director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at UC Hastings College of the Law. She is also lead coauthor of “Refugee Law and Policy: An International and Comparative Approach (5th edition).”

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

Here’s a link to an ImmigrationProf Blog summary and the text of the Refugee Protection Act, a recently introduced bill:

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/11/karen-musalo-restore-asylum-for-women-fleeing-abuse-and-death-.html

PWS

11-24-19

WHITE NATIONALIST ADMINISTRATION, CORRUPT BUREAUCRATS, FECKLESS FEDERAL JUDGES COMBINE TO COMMIT “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” AGAINST LEGAL ASYLUM APPLICANTS UNDER “LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO” PROGRAM — “[R]eturning home would be suicide.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/in-squalid-mexico-tent-city-asylum-seekers-are-growing-so-desperate-theyre-sending-their-children-over-the-border-alone/2019/11/22/9e5044ec-0c92-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html

Kevin. Sieff reports for the WashPost:

November 22, 2019 at 3:43 p.m. EST

MATAMOROS, Mexico — In the middle of the largest refugee camp on the U.S. border — close enough to Texas that migrants can see an American flag hovering across the Rio Grande — Marili’s children had fallen ill.

Josue was 5. Madeline was 3. The small family was huddled together in a nylon camping tent with two blankets last week when the temperature sank to 37 degrees. The children started coughing, Marili said. Then their fingers and toes turned bright red. The camp’s doctor had begun to see cases of frostbite.

Like most of the roughly 1,600 asylum seekers at the informal camp, Marili and her children had crossed the border into the United States this summer only to be sent back to Mexico to await their asylum cases — part of a year-old U.S. policy called the Migrant Protection Protocols.

In recent weeks, dozens of parents have watched as their children, sleeping outside in the cold, have become sick or despondent. Many decided to get them help the only way they knew how — sending them across the border alone. As Josue and Madeline grew sicker, it was Marili’s turn to make a decision.

USAID helped set up microfinance in Guatemala. Now it’s funding illegal migration.

These cases illustrate the human toll of the Trump administration’s policy and suggest the United States, Mexico and the United Nations were unprepared to handle many of the unforeseen consequences.

Marili, fleeing gang violence in Honduras, knew that unaccompanied children were admitted into the United States without enduring the MPP bureaucracy and the months-long wait. The 29-year-old mother — who, like others here, asked not to be identified by her last name, for fear it could affect her asylum case — believed that returning home would be suicide. So she bundled up her children in all of their donated winter clothes and scrawled a letter to U.S. immigration officials on a torn piece of paper.

“My children are very sick and exposed to many risks in Mexico,” she wrote. “I don’t have any other way to get them to safety.”

She pressed the letter into Josue’s hand, she said, and pointed the children to three U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in the middle of the Gateway International Bridge, the span across the Rio Grande that connects Matamoros to Brownsville, Tex.

“Josue told me, ‘Please don’t send us,’ ” Marili said, crying at the memory. “But as a mother, I knew it was the best decision for them.”

Then she sprinted to the bottom of the bridge and watched through the fence as her children turned themselves in, weeping and wondering when she would see them again, hoping they would find their way to her husband. He had entered the United States and applied for asylum before MPP was implemented. He was allowed to stay.

When they filed their asylum claim, they were told to wait in Mexico. There, they say, they were kidnapped.

In the past three weeks, migrants and aid workers say, at least 50 children have made the same crossing. The Washington Post interviewed the parents of 20 of them. On Tuesday morning, three more children were sent over. On Wednesday, another three. From tent to tent, families now talk openly about whether and when they will send their children.

More than 47,000 migrants have been sent back to Mexico since MPP started in January. Through September, 9,974 cases had been completed; only 11 migrants, or 0.1 percent, had received asylum, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, a research center at Syracuse University.

“It’s becoming clear to us that this whole thing is a lie,” said Reyna, 38, who sent her 15-year-old daughter, Yoisie, across the border last week. “They tell us to wait and wait and wait, but no one here gets asylum.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not return calls seeking comment.

Asylum seekers began sleeping out in the wooded field here at the base of the international bridge in August. They receive no assistance from the United States or the United Nations. They rely instead on tents, clothing and food donated by a group of American retirees and medical attention from a nonprofit group whose one doctor sits under a blue tarp.

U.N. officials say they were told months ago that the migrants would be moved by the Mexican government to better conditions. It hasn’t happened.

“We started hearing about the situation, but we just didn’t have enough capacity to help,” said Dora Giusti, the head of child protection at UNICEF in Mexico. “And the Mexican government kept saying [the migrants] would be moved out of the state, so we were waiting to see if we could respond there.”

The U.N. refugee agency says border cities in Tamaulipas state, where Matamoros is located, “are among the most insecure and dangerous in the country, which has limited our actions on the ground.”

A 19-year-old Salvadoran woman wanted to reunite with her father in California. She was shot dead in Mexico.

The municipal government opened a shelter at an indoor basketball court last month. With a capacity of 300, it’s already full. It’s also miles from the bridge, making it more difficult for migrants to reach the border for their court dates, or to meet with pro-bono lawyers. Every day, the U.S. government sends dozens of migrants to Matamoros under MPP. They are taken directly to the encampment and often sleep outside until they find a tent.

The camp consists of hundreds of tents clustered together on a spit of sidewalk and a stretch of scrubland along the Rio Grande. There are only a few showers, so many people bathe and wash their clothes in the river. Once a dead cow floated by and became lodged next to the camp. Another time, the headless corpse of a man washed ashore.

A cold front settled here for three days last week. Immediately, children started getting sick.

Gabrielle, 15 — from San Pedro Sula, Honduras — started coughing. Sarai, 12 — also from Honduras, from Santa Rosa de Copan — was vomiting. Valeria, 5 — from the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa — developed a fever and became despondent.

Global Response Management, the Florida-based nonprofit that runs the small medical clinic under the blue tarp, saw a surge in patients, most of them children. The most common cases were respiratory illnesses, said Megan Algeo, the doctor on call at the time. In one case, Algeo said, she persuaded U.S. immigration agents to admit a child for emergency care.

Elderly Mexicans are visiting their undocumented children in Mexico — with the help of the State Department

Parents in different parts of the camp decided it wasn’t fair to keep their children here. Some joined a Facebook group called Mothers in Search of Asylum to discuss their options and what would happen if their children crossed the border alone.

“I kept thinking, my daughter is going to die here,” said Blanca, Valeria’s mother.

They all had relatives in the United States. Their idea was to send their children to live with spouses, siblings, cousins while they waited in Matamoros to complete the asylum process. They worried about another cold front, or another flood (there was one in September), or cartel-sponsored kidnappings.

Gabrielle walked across the bridge alone, carrying a plastic bag with her asylum papers. Sarai went with a friend. Valeria and her sister, Anahi, 7, crossed together, holding hands.

All are now in shelters in different parts of the United States. Under U.S. policy, children who enter the country unaccompanied are taken into government custody until authorities can connect them with relatives to whom they can be released.

Glady Cañas, who runs Helping Them Triumph, one of the few humanitarian organizations at the camp, tries to persuade parents not to send their children alone.

“Why did you send your child?” she demanded of Israel, Gabrielle’s father.

Israel, 40, stared at the ground. They were standing in front of his blue tent.

“She was sick,” he said. “We were desperate. A child can’t wait here for a year like this.”

Cañas hugged him.

“I personally don’t agree with what they are doing,” she said later. “A child needs their parents. But when you look around here, you understand the desperation.”

Falling coffee prices drive Guatemalan migration to the United States

For many families here, the children — and the threats against them — were the reason they fled their countries in the first place.

Victor, 28, left El Salvador with his daughter, Arleth, now 10, after she was sexually assaulted by a man affiliated with a local gang. Victor pressed charges. He carries court documents and hospital records that substantiate the case in alarming detail. The man was sentenced to 12 years in prison for “sexual aggression of a minor,” one court transcript says.

As soon as he was sentenced, Victor said, gang members came after the family. In August, they fled.

Victor and Arleth were sent back to Matamoros on Aug. 28, before tents were available. They spent 15 days sleeping outside. Eventually, he found a job in a Chinese restaurant earning $7 per day. He saved up and bought a camping tent.

But after two months, Arleth was sick, vomiting all the time. Their tent had flooded twice in the rain. After her assault, she struggled to remain calm in large groups of people, and she hated walking across the camp to use one of the portable toilets.

Victor took her several times to the Doctors Without Borders nurse who came to the camp twice a week. But she never improved.

Their ancestors fled U.S. slavery for Mexico. Now they’re looking north again.

In late September, on Arleth’s 10th birthday, Victor bought her a cake and five candles. He asked someone in a neighboring tent to take a picture of them smiling.

When her health did not improve, Victor asked her what she thought of crossing alone.

“She told me: ‘Dad, I just want to be out of this place. I want to be in the United States,’ ” he said.

Lawyers working in the camp have recently become aware of the many parents choosing to send their children alone.

“These parents have been forced to consider an unthinkable choice — to save their children by sending them into the U.S. alone or to keep them in northern Mexico, where they will be exposed to severe illness, kidnapping, torture and rape,” said Rochelle Garza of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

During the last week of October, Victor walked Arleth to the edge of the international bridge and watched her shuffle toward U.S. immigration agents.

“We had never been apart,” he said later, crying. “Her entire life, we had always been together. . . .

“People might hear what I did and think I’m a bad parent. But it’s the opposite. I did this for my daughter because we had no other choice to save her.”

For a week he didn’t hear from her. Then she called his mother back in El Salvador. She was at a government shelter somewhere in Texas. The details were hazy.

His mother recorded a message from daughter to father.

“Don’t worry, Dad. I’m okay,” she said. “I hope that soon you’ll be with me.”

He played the message over and over and cried.

“The truth is I don’t have much confidence that my case is going to work out,” he said. “I’m fighting it for her. But I don’t know.”

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

The Trump Administration response: Expand the “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico Program” to additional locations near Tucson, Arizona.

It’s a national disgrace unfolding before our eyes, getting worse every day!

PWS

11-23-19

WHITE NATIONALIST AGENDA: Trump Regime Announces Plans For All-Out Assault On Legal Immigration — “It’s an attempt to lock into place changes to immigration policy that cannot be easily undone, regardless of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.”

https://apple.news/AKO1peXCgQpS_Ol7Hfyg_6g

Stuart Anderson writes in Forbes:

Trump Plans Far-Reaching Set Of New Immigration Regulations

The Trump administration plans a far-reaching set of new immigration regulations that, if enacted, would profoundly affect employers, international students, H-1B and L-1 visa holders, EB-5 investors, asylum seekers and others. The proposed forthcoming rules are detailed in the administration’s just-released Unified Agenda for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

H-1B Visas: “As a result of more restrictive Trump administration policies, denial rates for H-1B petitions have increased significantly, rising from 6% in FY 2015 to 24% through the third quarter of FY 2019 for new H-1B petitions for initial employment,” according to a recent National Foundation for American Policy analysis. A new H-1B regulation would make life even more difficult for employers and high-skilled foreign nationals.

The summary of a forthcoming H-1B rule states it would: “[R]evise the definition of specialty occupation to increase focus on obtaining the best and the brightest foreign nationals via the H-1B program, and revise the definition of employment and employer-employee relationship to better protect U.S. workers and wages. In addition, DHS will propose additional requirements designed to ensure employers pay appropriate wages to H-1B visa holders.” (The target date for publishing a proposed rule is December 2019.)

The rule could be used to defend the administration against lawsuits from companies that contend many actions by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on H-1B petitions have violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not going through the rulemaking process.

“Undoubtedly they will push the boundaries and aim for long-term, structural changes to the H-1B visa category,” said Lynden Melmed, a partner at Berry Appleman & Leiden and former Chief Counsel for USCIS, in an interview. “But absent new authority from Congress, going too far risks a court injunction and they could end up with nothing.”

One way USCIS may try to push the boundaries would be to place into regulation the theory behind a March 31, 2017, internal document now used in adjudications that excluded computer programmers from qualifying as a specialty occupation. The document discusses computer programmers and tells adjudicators that since the Department of Labor Occupational Outlook Handbook states that “. . . some employers hire workers with an associate’s degree . . . it suggests that entry level computer programmer positions do not necessarily require a bachelor’s degree and would not generally qualify as a position in a specialty occupation.” (Emphasis added.)

The March 31, 2017, document notes this has applicability to many occupations and states: “The Policy Memorandum is specific to the computer programmer occupation. However, this same analysis should be conducted for occupations where the Occupational Outlook Handbook does not specify that the minimum requirement for a particular position is normally a bachelor’s or higher degree in a specific specialty.” (Emphasis added.)

“Companies may be surprised to learn how many different positions do not require a bachelor’s degree under Department of Labor standards,” said Melmed. “Employers may have to rethink how they approach their talent strategy.”

A new regulation that would “revise the definition of employment and employer-employee” will make it even more difficult for IT services companies and others that place employees at customer locations. Such companies already have experienced much higher H-1B denial rates due to USCIS policies that, attorneys say, have targeted the companies for tougher scrutiny.

H-4 EAD: The administration continues to place on the regulatory agenda a measure to rescind an existing rule that allows many spouses of H-1B visa holders to work. The target date for a proposed rule is March 2020. (See here for more background.)

L-1 Visas: The irony of USCIS trying to tighten the L-1 visa category is companies complain the Trump administration already has made it nearly impossible to gain approval of L-1 visas at U.S. consulates in India to transfer employees into the United States. Companies also cite U.S. consular posts in China as a problem. “Our refusal rate for L visas at consular posts in India is 80% to 90%,” an executive of a major U.S. company told me in an interview. Denial rates have also increased considerably at USCIS for individual L-1B petitions (used for employees with “specialized knowledge”).

According to the summary of a new item placed on the regulatory agenda: “In order to improve the integrity of the L-1 program, the Department of Homeland Security will propose to revise the definition of specialized knowledge, to clarify the definition of employment and employer-employee relationship, and ensure employers pay appropriate wages to L-1 visa holders.” (September 2020 is the target date for publishing a proposed rule.)

Companies note they already endure visa denials by consular officers who, with little background knowledge, decide that a company should only have a limited number of people who possess “specialized knowledge” – even though there is nothing in the law or regulation about a numerical limit within a company on employees with specialized knowledge of a company’s “product, service, research, equipment, techniques, management, or . . . expertise in the organization’s processes and procedures.”

Regulating on L-1 wages may place USCIS in legal difficulties. “As a practical matter, most employers already pay their L-1 workers at high rates of pay,” said Kevin Miner, a partner at the Fragomen law firm, in an interview. “We will want to see what specific regulatory proposals are made regarding wage rates for L-1 workers, since Congress specifically did not impose prevailing wage requirements in the L-1 statute. Adding requirements that Congress has not put into the statute would be an overreach by the agency and would call into question the legal viability of the new regulations.”

International Students, OPT and Unlawful Presence: New enrollment of international students at U.S. universities declined by more than 10% between the 2015-16 and 2018-2019 academic years – and new Trump administration regulations are likely to further discourage international students from coming to America.

The ability to gain practical work experience following a course of studies attracts many international students to the United States. Many competitors for talent and students, such as Canada and Australia, already make it easier than the United States for international students to work after graduation.

The administration continues to target Optional Practical Training (OPT), which allows international students to work for 12 months after graduation and 24 additional months in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. A summary of a rule proposal on the agenda states: “ICE [Immigration and Custom Enforcement] will amend existing regulations and revise the practical training options available to nonimmigrant students on F and M visas.” (August 2020 is the target date for a proposed rule.)

Ironically, Trump administration officials from the State Department recently praised Optional Practical Training. “OPT is one of our greatest strengths,” said Caroline Casagrande, a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of State, during a November 18, 2019, press event on international students. “And we know that students value the practical experience that they gain here in the United States and it is one of our most helpful recruitment tools as a reason that a student chooses to study in the United States.”

A 2019 National Foundation for American Policy study by economist Madeline Zavodny concluded, “There is no evidence that foreign students participating in the OPT program reduce job opportunities for U.S. workers.”

In 2018, USCIS issued policy memos that could cause many international students who unknowingly violate their immigration status to be barred from the United States for 10 years. On May 3, 2019, a U.S. District Court issued an injunction blocking the two policy memos following a lawsuit (Guilford College) filed by universities.

USCIS placed on the regulatory agenda plans for a proposed rule (with a September 2020 prospective date) called “Enhancing the Integrity of the Unlawful Presence Inadmissibility Provisions.”

“The recent announcement in the regulatory agenda regarding unlawful presence is likely a response to the Guilford College litigation,” Paul Hughes, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery and the lead attorney in the case, told me. “In Guilford College, the court issued a nationwide injunction blocking USCIS from applying this memo, both because it did not undertake the notice-and-comment rulemaking required by the Administrative Procedure Act, and because it was at odds with the statutory text. It appears that the administration is now trying to use rulemaking in an apparent effort to cure the procedural errors they made the first time.”

The Department of Homeland Security regulatory agenda contains at least two other measures of interest to the education community and international students. An item on the agenda (with a June 2020 target date for a proposed rule) states: “ICE proposes to vet all designated school officials (DSOs) and responsible officers (ROs), who ensure that ICE has access to accurate data on covered individuals via the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS).”

An item that remains on the regulatory agenda – with a February 2020 target date for publishing a proposed rule – would establish a “maximum period of authorized stay for students.” Currently, international students are admitted for the “duration of status” until they complete their studies. Universities warn changing to a maximum period of stay is likely to carry negative consequences for students.

EB-5: USCIS has proposed and finalized (November 21, 2019) a rule governing EB-5 (employment-based fifth preference) “immigrant investor classification and associated regional centers” that made significant changes to the category, including substantially raising the minimum investment amount for a foreign investor. The administration appears interested in further restricting the category with two items placed on the agenda. One would make regulatory changes to the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Regional Center Program, including how they file, and their designation, termination and continued participation. The other rule would “increase monitoring and oversight of the EB-5 program as well as encourage investment in rural areas.”

Family Sponsorship: After failing to convince Congress to reduce or eliminate most family-sponsored immigration, the Trump administration put forward two measures that could significantly reduce legal immigration to the United States: 1) an October 4, 2019, presidential proclamation (blocked at least temporarily by a court) would bar new immigrants from entering the United States without health insurance and 2) a rule on Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds – finalized on August 14, 2019, but blocked by an injunction.

A proposed rule on “Enhancing the Integrity of the Affidavit of Support” shows the administration wants to restrict and discourage Americans from sponsoring family members. “DHS intends to update regulations at 8 CFR 213a by aligning the requirements with the statutory provisions and amending sponsorship requirements to better ensure a sponsor has the assets and resources to support the intended immigrant at the statutorily required level,” according to a summary. “DHS further intends to update the provisions to allow the public benefit granting agencies to more easily obtain information from USCIS in order to seek reimbursement from a sponsor when the sponsored immigrant has received public benefits.”

Asylum: Many items on the regulatory agenda aim to restrict asylum, which has already seen wholesale changes in procedures in the past three years. All of the proposed rules are designed to make it more difficult for individuals to avail themselves of the U.S. asylum system.

In one measure, “The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security propose to amend their respective regulations governing the bars to asylum eligibility. The Departments also propose to remove their respective regulations governing the automatic reconsideration of discretionary denials of asylum applications.” In another proposed rule, DOJ and DHS would “amend regulations governing the standards and procedures for making credible fear determinations or reasonable fear determinations for aliens who are subject to expedited removal, but who want to seek asylum or express a fear of persecution or torture.” Others would affect asylum interviews, work authorization and procedures.

Other Rules on the Agenda: The administration proposes to continue with its announced fee increases for immigration benefits, make changes that could affect adjustment of status and limit a future administration’s use of parole and employment authorization. “Removal of International Entrepreneur Parole Program” is listed on the agenda with a “final action” date of December 2019.

The Trump administration’s regulatory agenda on immigration is ambitious and far-reaching. It’s an attempt to lock into place changes to immigration policy that cannot be easily undone, regardless of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. There is one glaring omission from the Trump administration’s regulatory agenda – any measure to make it easier for foreign-born individuals to work, study or live in the United States.

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With “Moscow Mitch” and the GOP making sure that Congress can’t do its job and the Supremes and much of the Federal Judiciary apparently in his pocket, Trump’s plans for a White Nationalist Fascist State are on a roll. As Stuart points out, once the damage is done to our nation, it’s likely to take a long time to repair, regardless of when Trump finally leaves office.

Who would have thought that institutions and values developed painstakingly over centuries would be so easily thrust aside by a lawless authoritarian and his gang.

PWS

11-22-19

TRUMP REGIME ORDERS OFFICERS TO IGNORE EVIDENCE, VIOLATE HUMAN RIGHTS OF ASYLUM SEEKERS — “‘We are being asked to violate human rights,’” the asylum officer told BuzzFeed News.”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/asylum-officers-guatemala-deport-central-guidance

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

US immigration officers implementing a Trump administration plan to deport asylum-seekers from Central America to Guatemala were provided materials this week detailing the dangers faced by those in the country, including gangs, violence, and killings with “high levels of impunity.”

The “resource guide” on Guatemala was given to asylum officers as part of materials to implement a controversial policy to deport adult asylum-seekers from El Salvador and Honduras to Guatemala. The guide, which was obtained by BuzzFeed News, relies primarily on public sources: academic publications, research from Human Rights Watch and other organizations, and news reports.

A Human Rights Watch report from 2018 that was included in the guide for asylum officers, said “Violence and extortion by powerful criminal organizations remain serious problems in Guatemala. Gang-related violence is an important factor prompting people, including unaccompanied youth, to leave the country.”

The research provided to the officers confirmed some of their worst fears about sending people to the country.

“Being told to send asylum-seekers to Guatemala without even a screening on their claim while also being given research explaining, in detail, the incredible danger that exists throughout the country is extensively frustrating,” said one asylum officer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “This agreement feels like a pretext to get rid of as many asylum claims as possible.”

Emilio Espejel / AP

Central American migrants wait at the El Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico.

The Trump administration began this week carrying out its controversial new policy of deporting to Guatemala adults from El Salvador and Honduras who have sought asylum at the southern US border. DHS officials confirmed an initial flight to Guatemala in a Thursday press briefing.

The Trump administration says the plan is a key element in its strategy to deter migration at the border and another method to restrict asylum-seekers from entering the US. Advocates and asylum officers previously told BuzzFeed News that the unprecedented plan lacks legality and organization, and will lead immigrants to be placed in dangerous circumstances.

“Data from Guatemala’s Attorney General’s Office shows that nearly 8,400 extortion complaints were filed in 2017, but less than 700 convictions made,” reads one research paper linked in the guide to asylum officers on extortion issues in the country. “Amid such high levels of impunity, fear of reprisals for not paying extortion demands is a huge concern among victims.” A link to a Guardian article titled “Guatemala in grip of ‘mafia coalition,’ says UN body in scathing corruption report,” is also included, among other stories detailing major safety issues in the country.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services officials included the guidance in an email to asylum officers across the country Wednesday morning in a notice that implementation of the policy would begin, according to a copy of the email provided to BuzzFeed News.

Under the policy, border officials in the El Paso, Texas, area will refer a small number of adult asylum-seekers from El Salvador and Honduras who have recently arrived at the border to asylum officers for interviews, according to two sources with knowledge of the process.

BuzzFeed News recently revealed that, up until late last week, Department of Homeland Security officials were still scrambling to resolve critical details about the Guatemala plan. “There is uncertainty as to who will provide orientation services for migrants as well as who will provide shelter, food, transportation, and other care,” read a DHS brief drafted for Acting Secretary Chad Wolf in the run-up to a meeting Friday with Guatemala Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart.

Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and has the sixth-highest rate of malnutrition in the world. Nearly half of the country suffers from chronic malnutrition, with the prevalence reaching about 70% in some indigenous areas, according to a 2018 report from USAID.

The country has struggled with violence but has seen a drop in murders in recent years, with a homicide rate of 22.4 per 100,000 people. By comparison, the US had a homicide rate of 5.3 per 100,000.

“We are being asked to violate human rights,” the asylum officer told BuzzFeed News.

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Summary: Government officials routinely and openly violate human rights of asylum seekers and other migrants with impunity.

Sounds like something out of the Country Reports for some of the repressive states that I used to deal with in deciding asylum cases as an Immigration Judge.

Now, it describes the United States.

Even before Trump, the U.S. had a rather poor record of holding human rights violators accountable. The folks who mapped out the clearly illegal “torture program” during the Bush II Administration were never held accountable. Indeed, several of them were actually rewarded despite their involvement in immoral and illegal actions.

PWS

11-22-19

Give thanks for the New Due Process Army!

Due Process Forever; New American Gulag Never!

Happy Thanksgiving,

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