Tag: White Nationalism

🏴‍☠️“ANY REASON TO DENY”🤮 — GARLAND BIA’S BIASED, ANTI-ASYLUM JURISPRUDENCE CONTINUES TO GARNER PUSHBACK FROM ARTICLE III’s — Dem AG Needs To Pay Attention To Assault On Democracy, Rule Of Law Taking Place In HIS Dysfunctional “Courts!” — Garland Reportedly Plans More Backlog-Building, Due-Process-Denying “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”)!

Lady Injustice
“Lady Injustice” has found a home at Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR!
Public Realm

Here are about a week’s worth of reports from Dan Kowalski at LexisNexis Immigration Community on the continuing disintegration of justice in “Garland’s Courts:”

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca3-on-credibility-cat-njoka-v-garland

CA3 on Credibility, CAT: Njoka v. Garland

Njoka v. Garland (unpub.)

“[W]e conclude that the Board erred in affirming the IJ’s denial of CAT protection. The Board’s sole justification for that affirmance was the adverse credibility finding. The Board suggested that, under Fifth Circuit precedent, an adverse credibility finding defeats a claim for CAT protection. See Ghotra v. Whitaker, 912 F.3d 284, 289 (5th Cir. 2019). But under the law of this circuit, an adverse credibility finding is “not determinative” of a claim for CAT protection.1 Ibarra Chevez v. Garland, 31 F.4th 279, 288 (4th Cir. 2022); see Camara v. Ashcroft, 378 F.3d 361, 371 (4th Cir. 2004) (“Because there is no subjective component for granting relief under the CAT, the adverse credibility determination on which the IJ relied to deny [the petitioner’s] asylum claim would not necessarily defeat her CAT claim.”). The Board was thus obliged to also consider Njoka’s independent evidence in the context of his claim for CAT protection.2 See Camara, 378 F.3d at 371-72. Because the Board did not fulfill that duty, we will grant the petition for review in part and remand for the Board to do so.”

[Hats off to Rajan O. Dhungana!]

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

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-on-interpol-red-notice-cat-gonzalez-castillo-v-garland

CA9 on INTERPOL Red Notice, CAT: Gonzalez-Castillo v. Garland

Gonzalez-Castillo v. Garland

“Petitioner Oscar Gonzalez-Castillo was found to be ineligible for withholding of removal by an Immigration Judge (“IJ”) because there were “serious reasons to believe that [he] committed a serious nonpolitical crime” in his home country of El Salvador. 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(B)(iii). The government only presented one piece of evidence supporting application of the serious nonpolitical crime bar, however. It was an INTERPOL Red Notice, described at greater length below. The Red Notice accused Gonzalez-Castillo of committing “strikes” on behalf of the gang MS13, allegedly committed on a date when Gonzalez-Castillo was in the United States rather than in El Salvador, based on the date of entry found by the IJ. We conclude that substantial evidence does not support the IJ’s finding, affirmed by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”), that Gonzalez-Castillo is ineligible for withholding of removal based on the serious nonpolitical crime bar. This court has long interpreted “serious reasons to believe,” the standard set by the statute for the serious nonpolitical crime bar, as equivalent to probable cause. In this case, the INTERPOL Red Notice cannot, by itself, establish probable cause. The allocation of the burden of proof in immigration proceedings does not change this outcome. We accordingly grant Gonzalez-Castillo’s petition for review in part and remand to the agency to consider whether Gonzalez-Castillo is eligible for withholding of removal. We also grant the petition as to his claim under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”), because the record reflects that the agency failed to consider all of Gonzalez-Castillo’s testimony and statements about the harms he suffered in El Salvador at the hands of state actors, so we remand for more complete consideration of the CAT claim. We are not persuaded, however, by arguments in the petition for review challenging the evaluation of evidence that was discussed or by the argument that that the IJ failed sufficiently to develop the record. We dismiss the petition in part as to his claim for asylum, because the arguments Gonzalez-Castillo raises on appeal with respect to the one-year bar for asylum relief were not exhausted before the BIA.”

[Hats off to Amalia Wille (argued) and Judah Lakin, Attorneys; Nicole Conrad and Joya Manjur, Certified Law Students; University of California, Berkeley School of Law, Berkeley, California; for Petitioner, and John P. Elwood, Kaitlin Konkel, and Sean A. Mirski, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, Washington, D.C., for Amicus Curiae Fair Trials Americas!]

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

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-on-credibility-changed-conditions-sikhs-in-india—singh-v-garland

CA9 on Credibility, Changed Conditions (Sikhs in India) – Singh v. Garland

Singh v. Garland

“We have held that the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) may rely on a prior adverse credibility determination to deny a motion to reopen if that earlier finding factually undercuts the petitioner’s new argument. Greenwood v. Garland, 36 F.4th 1232, 1234 (9th Cir. 2022). But that does not mean the BIA can deny a motion to reopen just because that motion touches upon the same claim or subject matter as the previous adverse credibility finding. Here, Rupinder Singh submitted new evidence about religious persecution independent of the prior adverse finding. The BIA thus erred in holding that the earlier adverse credibility finding barred Singh’s motion to reopen. The BIA also erroneously concluded that Singh failed to show that the conditions for Sikhs in India changed qualitatively since his last hearing. Clear evidence shows the contrary. We thus grant the petition and remand.”

[Hats off to Garish Sarin!]

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

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca1-on-abuse-of-discretion-rivera-medrano-v-garland

CA1 on Abuse of Discretion: Rivera-Medrano v. Garland

Rivera-Medrano v. Garland

“Karen Elizabeth Rivera-Medrano, a citizen and native of El Salvador, has petitioned for review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) affirming the denial of her request for withholding of removal under 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3) and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”), 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.16(c)–1208.18, and denying her motion to remand this case to the immigration judge (“IJ”) based on newly obtained evidence. We conclude that the BIA abused its discretion in denying her motion to remand. Accordingly, we grant the petition for review, vacate, and remand for further proceedings. … The BIA’s oversight is particularly significant here, where the credibility determination rested considerably on minor inconsistencies in what the IJ concluded was an otherwise credible presentation.”

[Hats off to SangYeob Kim, Gilles Bissonnette and Henry Klementowicz!]

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

President Biden is correct that Trump and his MAGA GOP are the biggest threat to American democracy. But, “Dred Scottification,” systemic denial of due process, and racial injustice still running rampant in Immigration “Courts” under a Democratic Administration is right up there as an existential threat!

Additionally, I’ve been getting reports this week from practitioners in various locations that EOIR is embarking on yet another mindless, ill-informed round of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” — guaranteed to increase backlogs, decrease effective representation, and spew out more unprofessional and unjust results. 

Once more, this inane initiative appears to have been undertaken with neither advance input from, nor sufficient notice to, those most affected — respondents and their attorneys! Same old, same old! This must stop!

Enough, already! Why aren’t all the “movers and shakers” of American law lined up in front of Garland’s Office demanding that he end the assault on our Constitution, common sense, good government, and human decency that unfolds every day in the disgracefully dysfunctional parody of a “court” system that is his sole responsibility!

The bar and NGO communities have to fight Garland’s assault on due process and good government with every available tool!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

00-02-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  2. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️COURTS OF APPEALS CONTINUE TO THROW ROTTEN TOMATOES 🍅 @ BIA’S ANTI-ASYLUM BIAS — Basic Analytical, Legal Errors Continue From Weaponized, Non-Expert “Star Chamber” ☠️ Posing As ”Tribunal!” — Judge Garland Must Fix This Inexcusable, Unnecessary, Systemic Failure Now! — Justice For Persons Of Color & Migrants Can’t “Wait For Godot!”
  3. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮
  4. ☠️🤮 “TEFLON MERRICK” — GROTESQUE DUE PROCESS MELTDOWN @ GARLAND’S EOIR CONTINUES UNABATED, WHILE AG AVOIDS ACCOUNTABILITY — 3RD CIR. CASTIGATES GARLAND’S BIASED & INCOMPETENT “STAR CHAMBERS” — “It is more akin to the argument of an advocate than the impartial analysis of a quasi-judicial agency.”

DAN RATHER & ELLIOT KIRSHNER: TRUMP’S VERSI0N OF A “WEST WING NUDIST CAMP” — CHECK YOUR DECENCY @ THE DOOR, ENTERING AN “ETHICS FREE ZONE!” — “The naked self-interest was so rampant that Trump’s West Wing could be considered a nudist colony where decency was shed instead of clothing.” 🏴‍☠️

Clothing/Ethics Optional in MAGALAND
Ethics Prohibited Beyond This Point! “The naked self-interest was so rampant that Trump’s West Wing could be considered a nudist colony where decency was shed instead of clothing.” CREATIVE COMMONS.

They Knew. They All Knew.

Cowardice, Cynicism, Contempt, Rationalizations

Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner

6 hr ago

1,403

476

Documents seized from Donald Trump’s Florida home (credit: Department of Justice)

Sometimes we write a lot of words on Steady. Today will be an exception. Because for all that there is to say, for all that needs to be said, for all that an accounting for history requires we say, the general sentiments are quite simple:

They knew. They all knew.

It was clear to anyone who had an ounce of appreciation for what the job of the presidency entails, to anyone who respected the constitutional order of our government, to anyone who worried about the health and safety of this nation, to anyone with a moral compass, to anyone who prizes the common sense of purpose that great leaders can summon, that Donald J. Trump had no business anywhere near the presidency.

Now, as he melts down in the face of a serious criminal investigation, as we see pictures of how he stored classified material and his utter disregard for our nation’s most sensitive secrets, as we are left to wonder what he was up to and what damage was done, we should recognize that we would not be where we are today without his enablers, apologists, and hangers-on.

They heralded his outrageousness in a chorus of sycophancy.
They feted his vileness.
They viciously attacked those who pointed out the obvious, that Trump was mentally, emotionally, intellectually, morally, and constitutionally unfit for his office.

And who are they? They are the Republican politicians, the so-called serious ones who expressed their concerns in private even as they used Trump to achieve their desired tax cuts and judges. They are the members of his administration — senior and junior — who jockeyed to maximize their career benefit at the expense of doing the necessary work for the American people. They are the lawyers who twisted themselves into pretzels to try to legalize his inherent lawlessness. They are the media personalities who saw Trump as a printing press for their accrual of wealth and power. They are the capitalists who put corporate earnings ahead of the well-being of the nation.

While Trump’s voters were primed with a toxic stew of hatred, bigotry, and divisiveness, the small cabal playing the inside game didn’t bother with the MAGA hats. They were too busy trading access for favors. The naked self-interest was so rampant that Trump’s West Wing could be considered a nudist colony where decency was shed instead of clothing.

But make no mistake…

In their cowardice, they knew.
In their cynicism, they knew.
In their contempt, they knew.
In their rationalizations, they knew.
In their acquittals of his conduct, even for impeachment, they knew.

They knew when they could have stopped him — before he became president, and once he was president.

But they didn’t stop him. And with their inaction, they encouraged him.

As the Trump bubble begins to pop, all these people who knew what he was all along will likely scurry like cockroaches when the lights go on. They will make all sorts of excuses for their complicity. They will gaslight, lie, and try to rewrite history. You can already see it in many of their so-called tell-all books. Except what they are telling is only the story they want people to hear. It is not the truth.

The truth is that they don’t dare say what we all know. They knew.

Note: If you are not already a subscriber to our Steady newsletter, please consider doing so. And we always appreciate you sharing our content with others and leaving your thoughts in the comments.

***********************
Throughout history, despots and would-be despots have surrounded themselves with motley crews of sycophants, toadies, and retainers. Trump has excelled at it!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-01-22

Related posts:

  1. FRANK RICH @ NY MAGGIE: TRUMP TOADIES WILL FACE A RECKONING — “With time, the ultimate fates of those brutalized immigrant and refugee families will emerge in full. And Trump’s collaborators, our Vichy Republicans, will own all of it . . . .”
  2. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CLYDE W. FORD @ LA TIMES: “Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’”
  3. 🤮NO PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TOWARD MEN (WOMEN, OR ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) FROM REGIME OF “BAD SANTAS” 🦹🏿‍♂️🎅🏻— Illegally Separated Families Continue To Suffer Irreparable Trauma, 😰 Volunteer Groups 😇🗽⚖️ Left To Pick Up Pieces — A Reminder That Defeated Regime Has Mocked, Disparaged, & Trashed Christ’s Values & Assaulted Humanity Over Four Christmases!🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎🏻IN NYT OP-ED, FORMER TRUMP DOJ ATTORNEY ERICA NEWLAND ADMITS COMPLICITY! — Having Undermined Democratic Institutions, Sold False Narratives To (Too Often Willing) Federal Judges, & Participated In Racist-Inspired “Dred Scottification” (“Dehumanization”) Of the Other Is Actually a BIG Deal! — So Is The Destruction Of Due Process & Fundamental Fairness In The Immigration Courts (Now, “Clown Courts”🤡, or “America’s Star Chambers”☠️) 

🏴‍☠️CRISTIAN FARIAS @ VANITY FAIR: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A MAJORITY OF A DEMOCRACY’S TOP JUDGES NO LONGER BELIEVE IN DEMOCRACY & ARE UNWILLING TO DEFEND IT?☠️

Cristian Farias
Cristian Farias
Writer 
Vanity Fair

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/08/post-roe-scotus-is-on-a-collision-course-with-democracy

After destabilizing the nation over abortion, and moving further right on guns, climate, and religion, the conservative justices’ sights are on affirmative action, voting rights, and a fringe legal theory that could empower Trump-friendly state legislatures for future elections.

BY CRISTIAN FARIAS

AUGUST 25, 2022

On the eve of his retirement, the nation’s first Black justice and ­constitutional giant, Thurgood Marshall, took a moment to denounce the Supreme Court of the United States over its “radical” path of abandoning past decisions for no other reason than the court’s membership had changed. Owing to these shifts in personnel, Marshall charged, now “scores of established constitutional liberties” hung in the balance, the powerless were left defenseless, and the court’s own authority and legitimacy were diminished. “Power, not reason, is the new currency of this Court’s decisionmaking,” Marshall warned in 1991, in what turned out to be his final dissenting opinion.

The dissenting justices in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the watershed case that discarded nearly 50 years of American jurisprudence protecting a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy, felt the need to quote from Marshall’s decades-old warning because power, indeed, is the only sensible explanation for the Supreme Court’s present course. The seismic end of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, two pillars of a much larger structure of unenumerated constitutional rights the high court has erected over almost a century, was neither legally necessary nor a product of profound changes in American society. Instead, five justices tore these precedents off the law books, ushering in a new era of abortion criminalization and second-class citizenship for half the nation, simply because they could—and had the numbers to do so. “Neither law nor facts nor attitudes have provided any new reasons to reach a different result than Roe and Casey did,” wrote Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan in their anguished Dobbs dissent. “All that has changed is this Court.”

As radical and destabilizing as the fall of Roe is for our most intimate personal decisions, beyond just abortion rights, its ripples will extend to other areas where the conservative justices are already smelling blood. Not satisfied with the erasure of just one constitutional right, Clarence Thomas, writing separately in Dobbs, indicated that contraception and same-sex marriage could be next. That future begins now. These actions and other signals make abundantly clear what Marshall foresaw: The Supreme Court is on a collision course with democracy itself. Dobbs merely sets the stage.

Every new justice creates a new court, the maxim goes. Yet for much of their time on the bench, Justice ­Samuel Alito, long a soldier in the Republican holy war to curtail abortion rights, and Thomas, an avowed Roe antagonist, had the will but not the votes to impose their antiabortion vision on the majority of the Supreme Court, much less on the rest of the country. Their fortunes, and power, changed with the election of Donald Trump, whose own marriage of convenience with white evangelicals and social conservatives paved the way for his presidency and the installation of three new justices of a different mold, all of them more extreme and lacking the moderation of Republican appointees of the past, including those who made Roe and Casey possible.

Next to this “restless and newly constituted Court,” as Sotomayor branded this new majority in June, Chief Justice John Roberts looks as weakened as ever. The Supreme Court may bear his name, and the chief may have come of age during the abortion wars of the 1980s and ’90s, but neither his title nor institutionalist bent could convince the reactionaries to his right that their ­power grab in Dobbs represented “a serious jolt to the legal system” that he simply could not join in full. Too much, too soon. To the Trump justices, plus Thomas and Alito, this shock to the nation could not come soon enough.

Nominated by a president who lost the popular vote and narrowly confirmed by a Senate plagued by minority rule, these justices—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—were all groomed for this moment. All of them were grown in the test tube of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal brain trust that for decades has been a judicial pipeline for Republican administrations and state governments, which since the time of Ronald Reagan have made the fall of Roe a white whale of their politics.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Cristian creates an interesting vignette. The Justices take a few minutes to gather to welcome Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Court. Then, the Right Wing Majority goes to work ignoring her views, insuring her marginalization, and pushing a minority agenda drawing into question her very existence as a person under law. 

The conclusion of the article is perhaps most illustrative of the uncertain future of democracy, human rights, equal justice, and indeed basic human decency:

“Women are not without electoral or political power,” wrote without irony the five justices who ended their right to be full and equal citizens before the law in Dobbs. In asserting power rather than reason over what remains of our less than perfect union, the Supreme Court may well unravel democracy with it, taking us down a path from which there is no return.

Quite an achievement for a Court now dominated by those appointed by Presidents whose election (initial or sole) contravened the will of the majority of voters.

“Better Judges for a Better America!” Why not start with your “wholly owned and operated” Immigration Courts, Merrick Garland?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-29-22

More from today’s WashPost on the threat to our democracy posed by the anti-democracy, scofflaw GOP and their right wing judges:

William Webster and William Cohen on how today’s MAGA-infested GOP has become a cult of the lawless: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/26/mar-a-lago-fbi-attacks-lawless-gop/

E.J. Dionne on how the “off the rails, far right” GOP Supremes’ majority threatens  humanity’s future with their anti-scientific, anti-government, anti-truth far right agenda:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/west-virginia-epa-inflation-reduction-act/

Jennifer Rubin on how one distinguished Senior U.S. District Judge, a Clinton appointee, stood up to the GOP’s anti-abortion overreach: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/28/federal-judge-pushback-idaho-abortion-ban/

 

Related posts:

  1. THE SADNESS OF PROPHECY WITHOUT POWER: Two Years Ago, I Gave A Speech Warning Of The Consequences Of “1939 Germany” — Now, We’re In “Germany 1938” With 1939 Just An Election Away! — Moscow Mitch, Lindsey The Toad, Texas Ted & The Rest Of The GOP Fellow Travelers & Cultists Would Be Right At Home With Franz van Papen!
  2. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️⚖️ MAKING THEIR CASE: The Competition For “America’s Most Dangerous Court” 🏆🤮 Is Fierce, But The Far-Right Scofflaw Fifth Circuit Is Coming On Strong! — The Righty Supremes Fight Back With Gross Abuses Of “Shadow Docket” — Is There Another “Top Contender” Out There Operating Below The Radar Screen?
  3. ☹️HE BEAT THE GOVERNMENT TWICE IN COURT — But, After Three Years In Jail Without Being Charged With Any Crime, Omar Ameen Still Can’t Get A Bond From Garland’s Courts —  How Can A System Where The Prosecutor Makes The Rules & Picks The Judges, Mostly From The Ranks Of Former Prosecutors, Provide The “Fair & Impartial Judging” Required By Due Process?
  4. ⚖️👎🏽🤮☠️HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS BLAST BIDEN, HARRIS, GARLAND, MAYORKAS FOR ILLEGAL RETURNS TO COLOMBIA, CONTINUATION OF MILLER’S XENOPHOBIC, DEADLY & CORRUPT TITLE 42 ABUSES OF HUMANITY!

😰IMMIGRATION 101: SUMMER GRADES POSTED: GARLAND, BIA, & OIL GET “F’s” FROM 1ST (FRENTESCU TEST) & 3RD (CATEGORICAL TEST) CIRS! — Meanwhile, NDPA Litigators Get “A+’s”

Dunce Cap
With lives on the line, the BIA’s performance leaves something to be desired.
PHOTO: Creative Commons

From Dor v. Garland, 1st Cir.

http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/20-1694P-01A.pdf

Given our familiarity with the record at this point, we are prompted to note that it is not at all apparent to us how an application of the Frentescu factors to Dor’s case would lead to a particularly-serious-crime determination. For instance, consider again the June 1 incident — the BIA relied on a police officer’s assessment that Dor had a “large amount” of marijuana on him, but this on-the-scene appraisal by an officer is largely irrelevant to an immigration-law-driven determination that a crime is particularly serious pursuant to the guiding statutes, especially when the actual amount (25 grams, a small amount) is available. See Matter of Castro Rodriguez, 25 I. & N. at 703; Moncrieffe, 569 U.S. at 194 n.7. Consider, too, that while the BIA identified the type of sentence imposed as a Frentescu factor but never mentioned (or weighed) Dor’s sentences, we observe that

– 23 –

Dor received lenient sentences with respect to both offenses (a two-year probation and a one-year suspended sentence that never went into effect since Dor completed a violation-free probation period).

As to Dor’s involvement in trafficking as part of the calculus here, based on the amount in question, and again on the face of this record, this characterization seems ambitious. The May 20 offense officers observed Dor sell “20 bucks[‘ worth]” of marijuana to another individual; the June 1 incident revealed Dor had in his possession a digital scale, a large amount of U.S. currency, and 25 grams of marijuana.

Bottom line: The BIA’s particularly-serious-crime conclusion is devoid of any actual application of the Frentescu factors, and even if we considered it a solid application of the law to Dor’s case, we still do not have a sufficiently rational explanation of the BIA’s particularly-serious-crime conclusion as to Dor’s minor marijuana offenses, and a rational explanation is necessary to ensure Dor was appropriately precluded from obtaining the humanitarian relief he seeks.

DEAN’S LIST: A+‘s go to :

Edward Crane, with whom Philip L. Torrey, Crimmigration Clinic, Harvard Law School, Shaiba Rather, Lena Melillo, and Katie Quigley, Law Student Advocates, Crimmigration Clinic, Harvard Law School, were on brief, for petitioner.

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

From Vurimindi v. AG, 3rd Cir.

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/191848p.pdf

In sum, the Government has identified no evidence that supports divisibility. The statute, the case law, and the available state court documents all support the opposite conclusion.11 Because Pennsylvania’s stalking statute is indivisible as to intent, we apply the categorical approach. And under the categorical approach, Section 2709.1(a)(1), which sweeps more broadly than its generic counterpart in the INA, is not a categorical match. Vurimindi’s offense of conviction therefore does not qualify as a removable offense.

DEAN’S LIST: A+‘s go to DLA Piper’s:

Courtney Gilligan Saleski

https://www.dlapiper.com/en/us/people/s/saleski-courtney-gilligan/

Courtney Gilligan Saleski
Courtney Gilligan Saleski
Partner
DLA Piper

and

Rachel A.H. Horton

https://www.dlapiper.com/en/us/people/h/horton-rachel/

Rachel A.H. Horton
Rachel A.H. Horton
Associate
DLA Piper

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

Interestingly, the BIA’s defective decision in Dor involved improper reliance on police reports. This comes just as a new NIJC report shows how improper reliance by EOIR on police reports means that “racism and inequities in the criminal legal system and policing carry over into the immigration system.” https://default.salsalabs.org/T59538212-844f-4d6d-ade1-0428b5eef400/e9c83407-de3b-4bcf-a318-704cbcd599a2. 

The Dor case also presents a familiarly outrageous characteristic of American immigration policy — still going strong in the era of Biden, Harris, and Garland — “Dred Scottification” — that is systemic injustice — directed at Black Haitian refugees. Indeed, Dor is lucky to be in the “system” at all — no matter how biased and poorly functioning. Following in the footsteps of the overtly racist and xenophobic Trump Administration, under Biden more than 25,000 potential Haitian refugees have been arbitrarily returned under Title 42 with no process at all — not even the “veneer of due process” provided by EOIR! See https://www.wola.org/2022/05/weekly-u-s-mexico-border-update-title-42-ruling-family-self-separations-more-drownings-haiti-expulsion-flights/.

The cases described above have been pending for three and six years, respectively. EOIR presents the worst of both worlds: lengthy delays and backlogs without due process and careful expert consideration of the issues involved. Injustice at a high cost, in more ways than one!

After trips to three levels of our broken immigration justice system, countless hours of legal time, and untold trauma and uncertainty for the individuals subjected to this dysfunctional system, these cases remain far from final resolutions. Now they go back into Garland’s incredible nearly two million case backlog!

Sometimes, the BIA uses this as an opportunity to invent a new “bogus theory of denial.” Other times, the files get lost or reassigned. In other words, they are subject to EOIR’s “specialty:” “Aimless Docket Reshuffling!”

Garland doesn’t lose any sleep over it because: 1) not his life on hold, 2) not his time and money being wasted, and 3) he isn’t paying attention! This is unacceptable public service! Plain and simple! And, there appear to be few, if any, real consequences for anybody except the individuals whose lives and futures are at stake and their (often pro bono) lawyers!

How completely “out of touch” is Garland? He has put bogus, “Mickey Mouse” time limits on new asylum adjudications. Doing incompetent and biased adjudications faster isn’t going to solve the problem. It will actually make backlogs worse and more importantly, increase the number of defective asylum denials — already at beyond unacceptable levels.

You can’t fix a broken system by making it “pedal faster!” Why, after all  these years, Garland doesn’t understand that “fundamental rule of Goverment bureaucracy” is totally beyond me!

The obvious solution: Put emphasis on getting these cases right at the first instance. That means “canning” the “anti-immigrant default and assembly line process” and getting expert IJs willing to rule in favor of individuals where appropriate and a revamped BIA of expert judges willing to issue precedents favorable to individuals and insure that IJs properly follow them. It also means a BIA who will follow precedent even where it doesn’t produce a “DHS Enforcement-friendly result.”  

Additionally, “lose” OIL’s often-dilatory or quasi-frivolous arguments designed to cover up EOIR failures and block justice! (HINT: The Assistant AG, Civil, one of the key sub-cabinet positions at DOJ, and OIL’s “boss,” remains unfilled approaching the halfway point of the Biden Administration.) This system is broken from top to bottom, including the litigation “strategy” that attempts to shield unfair and legally incorrect EOIR decisions from critical substantive review by Article III judges independent from the Executive. 

Yes, Garland recently has “pruned” some of the deadwood at EOIR and brought in a few widely-respected expert “real judges.” That’s some progress.

But, he’s barely scratched the surface of the anti-immigrant culture, “haste makes waste” atmosphere, and shoddy decision making at EOIR and the poorly conceived litigation strategies at OIL! In particular, the dysfunctional DOJ immigration bureaucracy glaringly lacks inspired progressive due-process-committed, human-rights-focused, racial-justice-sensitive leadership willing to stand up for individual rights against Government overreach and abuses!

Of course, the “real” solution is to get the Immigration Courts out of DOJ and into an independent Article I structure. But, unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen tomorrow.

In the meantime, there is plenty that Garland could be doing to improve due process and professionalism and to “pave the way” for the eventual transition to Article I. The more dysfunctional Garland makes his system the more difficult and rocky that transition will be.

Garland isn’t getting the job done! Everyone who cares about the future of our nation and the rule of law should be asking why and demanding better from Garland and his “asleep at the switch” lieutenants!

High-powered lawyers like Courtney Saleski, National Co-Chair of DLA’s White Collar Practice, who successfully litigated Vurimindi in the 3rd Circuit have some “juice.”  They need to team up with the ABA, FBA, AILA, ACLU, Human Rights First, NIJC, the NAACP, Catholic Conference, HIAS, and other human rights and civil rights groups and “camp on Garland’s doorstep” until he “pulls the plug” on his dysfunctional, unprofessional EOIR and brings in due-process-focused competence! How many resources and human lives can our nation afford to waste on Garland’s EOIR disgrace?

Alfred E. Neumann

Individuals whose lives are subject to systemic injustice and their hard-working, often pro bono, attorneys might “dissent” from Garland’s dilatory approach to long overdue due process reforms and key personnel changes in his stunningly  dysfunctional Immigration Courts!
PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-24-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  2. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  3. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️🗽COURT REFORM: GW IMMIGRATION CLINIC STUDENTS WEIGH IN ON ARTICLE I — Emphasize Critical Due Process Need To Entirely Remove AG From Decision-Making Process!
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🆘NO JUSTICE @ JUSTICE! — OUTRAGE OF PROGRESSIVE EXPERTS CONTINUES TO GROW AS GARLAND FAILS TO VACATE SESSIONS/BARR RACIST, MISOGYNIST, ANTI-IMMIGRANT, UNETHICAL, BIASED PRECEDENTS — “Garland’s Star Chambers” Careen Further Out Of Control As AG Dithers While Lives Of Vulnerable Refugee Women Hang in Balance & Pro Bono Advocates Are Forced To Exhaust Resources Fighting Trump DOJ’s Misdeeds That Biden Has Failed To Fix, Despite Promises — “Unforced Errors,” Lack Of Competent Progressive Leadership Continue To Plague Flawed Immigration Agenda @ Justice, Offend Dem Supporters! — Expert Professors Karen Musalo & Stephen Legomsky Call For Immediate Vacating Of Repulsive Matter of A-B- Abomination Before More Lives Of Women Of Color Are Lost!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽AN AMERICAN LEGAL HERO LEAVES BEHIND LEGACY OF COURAGE, SCHOLARSHIP, INNOVATION, COMPASSION: A HEARTFELT TRIBUTE TO HON. WILLIAM VAN WYKE BY HON. “SIR JEFFREY” CHASE!

Judge William Van Wyke
Judge William Van Wyke (D – Aug. 14, 2022)
U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.)
Member Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
“A True Due Process Visionary”
PHOTO: the world.com

 

 

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2022/8/22/william-van-wyke-2

William Van Wyke

On August 14, the immigration law community lost a true giant. William Van Wyke, a former Immigration Judge, advocate, and scholar unexpectedly passed away.

How does one capture William’s essence? I’m going to attempt to do so through his own words (in bold), taken from both public sources and emails he wrote to his former Immigration Judge colleagues in conversations after his retirement from the bench.

“The fearful and crude ideas get put into practice by reflex; compassionate and thoughtful ones wait around until everyone agrees with them. – William” – April 1, 2021 email.

My first real impression of William came from reading his 1992 article “A New Perspective on ‘Well-Founded Fear,” which appeared in AILA’s conference handbook that year.1 In very simple, easy to understand language, WIlliam turned the existing method of asylum adjudication on its head, using an easy to apply concept that correctly brought the process in line with international law. It was absolutely brilliant. Thirty years later, we are still waiting around for the government agencies overseeing asylum adjudication to agree with it.

Prior to authoring that article, WIlliam had spent nine years pioneering the representation of Central American refugees before the Immigration Courts in Washington and Baltimore, beginning this work when the 1980 Refugee Act was still new.

“’We have a law that was intended to be generous, that, when it is well understood, would cover many cases — many, many more cases — than those that are granted,’ Van Wyke says.” –  Quote in Eyder Peralta, “Why A Single Question Decides The Fates Of Central American Migrants,” NPR, Feb. 25, 2016.

In one 1990 case in which his clients were denied asylum, William succeeded in persuading the Immigration Judge to rule that those clients could not be deported to their native El Salvador as long as the civil war continued there. William achieved this result by arguing customary international law, and analogizing a refugee’s flight from war to the customary practice of allowing a ship in distress the right to enter a port without authorization. The Washington Post quoted an immigration law authority who called the decision “one of the most impressive victories ever in an immigration court.” The decision was the subject of a law review article the following year.3

“My own experience is that people with anti-immigrant sentiments, whether in INS, DHS, EOIR or anywhere else, have always cringed at the idea of an IJ giving an unrepresented person sufficient information to make genuinely informed decisions… I remember a talk by Janet Reno at one of our conferences 20 years ago when she mentioned ‘compassion’ 12 times — I counted them. But try to actually be compassionate in specific cases in a legally appropriate and consequential way and you’re accused of overstepping judicial bounds. Didn’t I know that compassion is supposed to be a decoration, not something that actually helps the people before us?”  – Email, Sept. 18, 2019

William’s appointment as an Immigration Judge in March, 1995 sent a message of hope to the immigration law community. On the bench, William maintained his methodical, detail-oriented approach.  Early in his career on the bench, William reported that the INS trial attorneys had given him the nickname “the Van Wyck Expressway,” a reference to the similarly named NYC roadway that most know from traveling to or from JFK Airport. When William pointed out to one of those INS attorneys that his courtroom actually moved quite slowly, the attorney responded: “So does the Van Wyck Expressway.”

While we were both on the bench, I heard that William had developed a highly unique seating plan for his courtroom, and asked him about it one day. He showed it to me, explaining in detail his deeply thought out reasoning for the placement of every chair in the room. I don’t remember the specifics so many years later, but it was a perfect example of the strong sense of responsibility WIlliam felt towards all who set foot in his courtroom.

That sense of responsibility became even more heightened when WIlliam transferred from the court in New York to what he used to call “plain old York,” meaning the detained immigration court in York, Pennsylvania, located inside of the York County Prison.4

In one case he heard there, a non-citizen sat in jail awaiting approval of a green card petition filed by his U.S. citizen wife that could have saved him from deportation. But approval of visa petitions is not something an immigration judge can do; that power lies with the same government agency that was seeking the non-citizen’s deportation (at the time, that was INS; it is now DHS). After continuing the case multiple times to allow for a decision on the visa petition, WIlliam was repeatedly informed by INS’s attorney that no action had been taken.  The INS attorney further refused to inquire as to when a decision might be expected, and insisted that rather than wait, the non-citizen should be ordered deported.

Although at the time such action required the consent of both parties, WIlliam took the bold step of administratively closing the case over the government’s objection, writing a detailed decision explaining the necessity of doing so under the facts presented.

Remarkably, rather than appeal William’s denial to the Board of Immigration Appeals, the INS attorney privately and most improperly contacted the Chief Immigration Judge by phone, who in turn improperly reopened the matter and placed it back on for hearing.

In a decision that should be required reading for all EOIR management, WIlliam fired back at both INS and his own higher-ups, stating that it would be a “manifest injustice” to deport the respondent “simply because INS has not performed its Congressionally-mandated adjudication in a timely fashion.”

Detailing the extensive efforts he had undertaken to get INS to adjudicate the visa petition, WIlliam further noted that “[t]he asymmetry of ordering one party, but asking, begging, pleading and cajoling the other party hearing after hearing without effect, can only diminish the court as an authoritative and independent arbiter in the public’s eyes.”

WIlliam took the INS and the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge to task for their unethical ex parte communication, and the latter’s unauthorized action in response to such conversation:

The Chief Immigration Judge is an administrative and policy officer without appellate or other legal authority to overrule the immigration judge’s procedural decisions in the case, see 8 CFR 3.9, 3.1(b), and ethical rules require the Chief Immigration Judge as well as immigration judges to refrain from taking action in a specific case following an ex parte communication about the case by one of the parties.

William further noted that his “decision to close the case temporarily was not a mere administrative one subject to OCIJ’s general direction, but a legal decision made as an integral part of the adjudicatory process in an individual case.” William cautioned that the private communication, which denied opposing counsel the right to be heard, protected INS from having to defend its position in an appeal to the BIA, thus giving

a procedural and tactical advantage to the INS by demonstrating to respondent, rightly or wrongly, that an INS call to the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge may be enough to undo what the immigration judge does in open court, while encouraging the INS to continue to seek results from the OCIJ privately that it might not be able to get from the BIA publicly.

William concluded:

Unable to establish or enforce the standards of conduct that this judge believes must apply, he will recuse himself from further consideration of the case. In the court’s view, only the OCIJ, which went beyond mere administrative action to direct a particular course of action in this case, is in a position to cure the appearance of impropriety its intervention has produced. The court will therefore refer this case back to the Chief Immigration Judge for whatever action he may deem fit and appropriate.

The extraordinary nature of the matter was reported in an article in the New York Times.5

In retirement, William was a member of our Round Table that filed an amicus brief in an important case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Velasco-Lopez v. Decker.  The case challenged the practice of requiring a detained non-citizen to themself prove that they would not pose a flight risk or danger to the community in order to warrant their release from detention. In its precedent decision, the circuit court agreed that such burden should be borne by the government, and not the detainee.

I share here part of William’s response to the decision

In this decision, the important starting point is that due process applies to every person in their relation to the power of government. This principle humanizes immigrant “others” and shows that when Big Government (i.e. the kind that wields power in favor of the already rich and already powerful) treads on anyone, everyone’s rights are in jeopardy. The principles relevant in bond decisions –– having ties to our communities and not being a danger to others –– are strong values that most of us honor and share, whether recent immigrants or earlier-generation immigrants, and should make all of us resist limitations on our freedom by the coercive power of jailing people.

I don’t know if they still staple those little yellow cards with red print onto files of jailed immigrants that used to say, “RUSH: detained at government expense.”  Years ago when I was at York I wrote to… EOIR General Counsel, to ask if we couldn’t change those cards to be more humane, to say, “RUSH: person deprived of liberty,” or at least more neutral: “person deprived of liberty at government expense.” A change, of course, was “unnecessary” because everyone already knew the immigrants’ hardship, even if our boss’s reminder focused only on the government’s. Maybe they’ll change the cards now to remind adjudicators: “Rush: this person should not be deprived of freedom unless the government quickly decides he/she lacks any community ties AND is dangerous.” I won’t hold my breath, though.

I will conclude by saying that just recently, I set about researching a narrow legal issue that I would imagine most Immigration Judges would resolve in a few pages at most. I came across a decision that William had written on the topic shortly before his retirement from the bench that was exactly what I was looking for. It was 39 pages single spaced, and of course, absolutely brilliant.

On behalf of your fellow judges, and of all who have appeared in Immigration Court, thank you, William, for being you, for never lowering your standards. You restored the hope of so many in the power of law to make a positive difference in people’s lives, and so often showed that there was a way forward when we thought there was none. You are already greatly missed.

Notes:

  1. William Van Wyke, “A New Perspective on Well-Founded Fear,” 1992-93 Immigration & Nationality Handbook(AILA, 1992) at 497.
  2. Carlos Sanchez, “Lawyer’s Persistence Helps Reshape Immigration Law,” Washington Post, March 31, 1991.
  3. Cookson, II, Charles W. “In Re Santos: Extending the Right of Non-Return to Refugees of Civil Wars.” American University International Law Review 7, no. 1 (1991): 145-171.
  4. The York Immigration Court was closed on July 31, 2021.
  5. Eric Schmitt, “Two Judges Do Battle in an Immigration Case,” NYT, June 21, 2001.
  6. 978 F.3d 842 (2d Cir. 2020). The author recognized the outstanding representation in this matter by the petitioner’s counsel, Julie Dona (who argued the case) and Aadhithi Padmanabhan of the Legal Aid Society, and to Souvik Saha of Wilmer Hale for his remarkable assistance in drafting our amicus brief.

AUGUST 22, 2022

NEXT

Can Keathley Be Applied More Broadly?

ARCHIVE

Blog | Archive | Press and Interviews | Calendar | Contact

Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates.

SIGN UP

We respect your privacy.

<img src=”https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/593d84191e5b6ca18cb547ee/1576527959952-C9MO449EII0SH3V1X9M7/Screen+Shot+2019-12-16+at+3.24.24+PM.png” alt=”Screen Shot 2019-12-16 at 3.24.24 PM.png” />

pastedGraphic.png

Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City.  Jeffrey is a former Immigration Judge and Senior Legal Advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals.He is the founder of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, which was awarded AILA’s 2019 Advocacy Award.Jeffrey is also a past recipient of AILA’s Pro Bono Award.He sits on the Board of Directors of the Association of Deportation Defense Attorneys, and Central American Legal Assistance.

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

My first real impression of William came from reading his 1992 article “A New Perspective on ‘Well-Founded Fear,” which appeared in AILA’s conference handbook that year.1 In very simple, easy to understand language, WIlliam turned the existing method of asylum adjudication on its head, using an easy to apply concept that correctly brought the process in line with international law. It was absolutely brilliant. Thirty years later, we are still waiting around for the government agencies overseeing asylum adjudication to agree with it.

. . . .

William spent those years trying to persuade the government of the proper application of the new law.  However, INS and the newly created EOIR remained largely mired in the Cold War-influenced view of asylum that preceded the 1980 changes. And under that Cold War approach, Central Americans fleeing pro-U.S. regimes had nearly no chance to obtain asylum

A 1991 Washington Post article documented how this institutional resistance only caused William to be more persistent and creative in his legal approach.2

Kind of says it all about the entrenched, continuing, institutional resistance at EOIR to correct, generous, fair, practical interpretations of asylum law and other immigration and human rights laws! That’s what helps generate uncontrollable backlogs and brings our entire justice system into disrepute! Worst of all, it threatens the lives of those denied justice by its legal misinterpretations and mis-applications of the law!

What does it say about an institution that no longer touts or actively pursues its noble one-time-vision of “through teamwork and innovation, be the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all?” Ironically, William’s life and achievements embody that now-defunct “EOIR vision.” But, nobody in “management” actually acknowledged that during his often-difficult tenure there.

Encouragingly, a number of Garland’s recent judicial appointments are distinguished, expert, widely respected “practical scholars” in the “Van Wyke mold.” Unfortunately, it’s going to take immediate and dramatic changes in moribund, uninspired EOIR leadership and in the “any reason to deny” BIA to overcome the “Cold War mentality,” anti-immigrant bias, assembly line procedures, “institutionalized go along to get alongism,” and unacceptably poor performance of EOIR. Right now, it’s still drag on our entire justice system that puts the future of our nation at risk!

No wonder we already miss William, his outspoken courage, and his wisdom so much. There is a void in our justice system right now where fierce due-process-focused, creative, humane, practical scholars should be leading the way in our institutions of justice! 

It’s up to the “new generation” of the NDPA to break down the walls of official resistance by Garland and other short-sighted bureaucrats and politicos who lack the vision to make racial justice, immigrant justice, and equal justice for all realities rather than disingenuous unfulfilled rhetoric! Guys, your lives and those of your descendants might depend on it! So, dial up the pressure on the intransigents, many of them in the Biden Administration you helped to elect and who expect your support and votes again this Fall!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-24-22

Related posts:

  1. 🛡⚔️👍🏼“SIR JEFFREY” CHASE — Garland’s Immigration “Judges” Pull The Ol’ “Bait & Switch” — They Only Are “Judges” When “OIL” Is Trying To Convince Ethically & Legally Challenged Article III Courts To “Defer” To EOIR Decisions — Otherwise, They Are Expected To Act Like DOJ ”Grundoons” Mindlessly Carrying Out The Executive’s Agenda Cloaked In Quasi-Judicial Disguise!
  2. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  4. ‘SIR JEFFREY” CHASE: Garland’s “First Steps” To Eradicate Misogyny & Anti-Asylum Bias @ EOIR Are Totally Insufficient Without Progressive Personnel Changes — Regulations Will Only Be Effective If Drafted By Progressive Human Rights Experts Of Which There Currently Are NONE @ DOJ Save For Some Immigration Judges In The Field Whose Expertise, Intellectual Integrity, & Moral Courage Has Been Ignored By Team Garland! — There Will Be No Gender, Racial, Or Immigrant Justice @ Justice As Long As Garland Mindlessly Lets “Miller’s Club Denial” Operate @ BIA! — Progressives Must Turn Up The Heat On Garland To Reform & Remake EOIR With Qualified Expert Judges & Dynamic, Independent, Progressive Leaders!

⚖️ NDPA STALWART MICHAEL MEHR BEATS DOWN MATTER OF CORDERO-GARCIA (Obstruction of Justice) IN 9TH — Dissenting Trump Judge VanDyke Goes Ballistic — Accuses Colleagues Of “Playing Dirty” By Occasionally Ruling In Favor Of Individuals In Immigration Cases!

 

Here’s a report from Nate Raymond @ Reuters:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trump-appointed-judge-says-9th-circuit-playing-dirty-prevent-deportations-2022-08-15/

(Reuters) – A conservative judge appointed by former President Donald Trump on Monday accused his colleagues on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of playing “dirty” in a “trainwreck” of rulings to prevent immigrants from being deported.

U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke’s criticism came in a dissent to a 2-1 decision holding a Mexican native’s California conviction for dissuading a witness from reporting a crime was not a deportable offense under federal immigration law.

VanDyke, who has become known for a string of dissents since joining the liberal-leaning court in 2020, noted he had not been shy in criticizing the San Francisco-based court’s “abysmal and indefensible immigration precedents.”

He said the 9th Circuit for more than a decade has been “doing everything in our power (and much not) to upset” the Board of Immigration Appeals’ “reasonable” interpretation of what constitutes an offense related to obstruction of justice.

The BIA in this case had concluded Fernando Cordero-Garcia committed such an offense after he was convicted in California of sexual battery without restraint, sexual exploitation by a psychotherapist and dissuading a witness from reporting a crime.

“My colleagues in the majority should be embarrassed,” VanDyke wrote. “Perhaps not for their wrong decision today–to err is human, after all, even for those in robes. But they should be troubled by our court’s jaw-dropping, always-increasing, epic collection of immigration gaffes.”Cordero-Garcia’s lawyer, Michael Mehr, declined to comment.

Cordero-Garcia, who entered the country in 1965 as a lawful permanent resident, was a psychologist for the County of Santa Barbara Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services department who prosecutors said sexually assaulted patients, the ruling said.

Two appointees of Democratic presidents — U.S. District Judge Barry Moskowitz, a visiting judge on the court, and U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew Hurwitz — ruled for Cordero-Garcia in overturning the BIA’s decision on the obstruction offense.

Moskowitz, writing for the majority, said he was not writing on a “clean slate,” as the 9th Circuit in 2020 ruled an “obstruction of justice” offense must be connected to ongoing or pending criminal proceedings.

The California law Cordero-Garcia was convicted under, by contrast, does not require any connection to an ongoing or pending proceeding or investigation, making it “not an appropriate comparator” to obstruction under federal law.

VanDyke, though, said the 9th Circuit’s approach had created a “lopsided circuit-split,” with the majority acknowledging its ruling ran counter to decisions by the 1st and 4th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals.

The case is Cordero-Garcia v. Garland, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 19-72779.

For Cordero-Garcia: Michael Mehr of Mehr & Soto

For the United States: Rebecca Hoffberg Phillips of the U.S. Department of Justice

Read more:

Trump-appointed judge blasts 9th Circuit’s ’embarrassing’ immigration rulings

In barbed dissents, Trump appointees call

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

Here’s a link to Matter of Garcia-Cordero, 27 I&N Dec. 652 (BIA 2019) which was reversed by the 9th Circuit:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwip-puUns75AhUlk4kEHaQXAisQFnoECAMQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.justice.gov%2Feoir%2Fpage%2Ffile%2F1210991%2Fdownload&usg=AOvVaw2IVnTOUmhzqK0ppatf4rr7

While VanDyke has been eager to rip into his colleagues for critically reviewing BIA rulings, rather than just “rubber stamp deferring,” he is no stranger to controversy. He received the coveted “not qualified to serve” rating from the ABA and has been characterized as an “unqualified hack” by Joe Patrice over at abovethelaw.com.  https://abovethelaw.com/2021/12/ninth-circuit-judge-has-had-it-with-trump-judges-insulting-dissents/.

Interestingly, a chunk of the dissent is dedicated to showing that Mr. Cordero-Garcia is a louse. However, that doesn’t seem to have much to do with the legal application of the “categorical test” to his crime in the immigration context. For all its difficulties, Congress was well aware that courts had historically applied the “categorical test” as opposed to the “sounds like a bad guy” approach when they enacted the statutory language in question.

Curiously, VanDyke castigates his majority colleagues for “result oriented” decision making. But it seems highly unlikely that either District Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz, who wrote the opinion, or Circuit Judge Andrew Hurwitz would have chosen Mr. Cordero-Garcia’s situation as one to “throw out a lifeline.”

What’s more likely is that they fairly applied controlling Circuit precedent notwithstanding the highly unsympathetic individual involved. By contrast, critics have characterized VanDyke as an ideologue — driven by a far-right agenda — whose main focus on the bench has been “writing vitriolic Town Hall editorials to publish in F.4th.” Id.

From a due process standpoint, one of the most severe problems undermining our entire justice system today is the disturbingly poor performance of the BIA which often functions as a “rubber stamp” on incorrect anti-immigrant decisions by Immigration Judges, many of them appointed during the Trump Administration with questionable credentials, at best. That’s when the BIA isn’t busy serving as a “shill” for DHS Enforcement — often bending the law or going out of their way to sustain ICE appeals from correct decisions below that grant relief or benefit individuals. BIA precedents favorable to asylum seekers and other migrants are few and far between — despite an obvious lack of immigration and human rights expertise among many Trump appointees to the immigration bench.

The problem is compounded when reviewing Circuit Courts ignore the glaring Constitutional conflict of having a “court” that is “owned” by an enforcement agency (and was blatantly “weaponized” against migrants by Sessions and Barr) and the poor quality decision making, lack of scholarship, and overt bias that plagues EOIR. “Rubber stamp deference” to BIA decisions that do not deserve it is a systemic problem for the Article IIIs, actively encouraged by the Supremes judge-created Chevron and Brand X doctrines of undue deference. From this perspective, VanDyke and many (not all) of his Trump colleagues are a big part of the problem — not the solution!

Michael K. Mehr
Michael K. Mehr ESQ!
Senior Partner
Mehr & Soto LLP
Santa Cruz, CA
PHOTO: Website

Many congrats to Michael Mehr for vigorously and successfully litigating this complex issue in the 9th Circuit. It’s telling to compare the “quiet competence” of dedicated, expert advocates like Mehr with the “bombastic grandstanding” of VanDyke and others in the xenophobic right. Mehr and others in the NDPA have honed their their advocacy and scholarship skills by decades of giving a “voice” to those who otherwise are seldom “heard” by the powers that be.

Undoubtedly, given the circuit split, this eventually will end up at the Supremes. There, VanDyke’s fellow Trump appointees could well agree with him. But, that might be more reflective of problems with the composition of today’s Supremes than with the law. Stay tuned!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-17-22

Related posts:

  1. REGIME’S NEWEST SCHEME TO SCREW ASYLUM SEEKERS: BOGUS REGS THAT WOULD ILLEGALLY & UNNECESSARILY EXTEND THE GROUNDS OF “MANDATORY DENIAL,” DECREASE ADJUDICATOR DISCRETION, & SHAFT REFUGEE FAMILIES — Regime’s Outlandish “Efficiency Rationale” Fails to Mask Their Cruelty, Racism, Fraud, Waste, & Abuse – Julia Edwards Ainsley (NBC News) & Dean Kevin R. Johnson (ImmigrationProf Blog) Report
  2. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️

🔌👎🏽GARLAND MUST “PULL THE PLUG” ON HIS FAILED APPELLATE COURT — BIA “DEFIES” EVIDENCE TO MOCK DUE PROCESS & DENY ASYLUM, SAYS 3RD CIR! — OGEE v. AG (Ghana)

Kangaroos
What kind of “judges” would “defy” the evidence of record to wrongfully deny asylum?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/
Creative Commons License

Read the 3rd Circuit’s (unfortunately) unpublished decision here:

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/202423np.pdf

Key quote:

The IJ credited Bimpong’s testimony, and the BIA did not disturb this finding. Yet the BIA concluded that Bimpong’s persecution was a personal land dispute that lacked any nexus to his membership in the Ashanti tribe. In doing so, the BIA deferred to the IJ’s conclusion that “the record is devoid of any evidence indicating that the [Enzema] Tribe targeted the applicant because of membership in the Ashanti Tribe.” AR 97 (emphasis added). That conclusion defies the record, which is replete with evidence that Bimpong’s tribal affiliation was a central reason for his persecution. See, e.g., AR 157, 162-63, 167–68, 185, 596, 598. For example, Bimpong testified that members of

the Enzema “did not want the land that [he] possessed to be owned by non-members of 4

the Enzema tribe,” AR 596, and that he “was a target of persecution because of [an] intertribal dispute between the Enzema tribe and Ashanti tribe.” AR 598.

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

Typical BIA BS prejudged, form denial “boilerplate.” “Devoid of evidence” — gimmie a break! We tried (obviously unsuccessfully) to eliminate this type of non-analytical nonsense several decades ago. It’s indicative of a totally broken system that is unfair and biased against migrants! Why is Garland allowing this continuing systemic injustice?

Demand that Garland replace his inept, unprofessional, unconstitutional, “Trump holdover” BIA with real judges who are experts in immigration, asylum, human rights, and fully committed to due process and fundamental fairness! 

To quote my good friend and Round Table 🛡 colleague, Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” Chase:

At the IJ level, the ACIJs have to be charged with determining if the IJ actually doesn’t know the law, or if they are choosing not to follow it.  Of course, you need ACIJs who actually know immigration law, which isn’t always the case anymore.  If it’s the former, you schedule additional training; if it’s the latter, they may need to suspend or remove the IJ.  That should be a priority for the next Chief IJ.

But why isn’t this being caught at the BIA level?  They continue to act as a rubber stamp.  There have been a few cases just in the past couple of weeks where the errors were really major and apparent.
A BIA that would “rubber stamp” denials without question or meaningful analysis so that OIL could then argue “deference” to railroad refugees and other individuals entitled to relief out of the country is precisely what Barr and Sessions intended to create. In other words, a “parody of justice” that would carry out the White Nationalist restrictionist agenda without giving it any thought. And, it’s no coincidence that this unconstitutional agenda falls hardest on the backs of  asylum seekers and other migrants of color. It also serves to reinforce the vile concept that individuals of color in the U.S. are not equal under the law.
The real question here is why Garland hasn’t effectively changed the system by bringing in real judges who are experts in immigration and human rights and who would be fair to all coming before his Immigration Courts regardless of race or status? “Gradual change” is unacceptable when individuals (and their conscientious representatives) are being subjected to deadly quasi-judicial incompetence on a daily basis. Tell Garland you’ve had enough!  
EOIR Clown Show Must Go T-Shirt
“EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-16-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮
  2. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️CAMILLE J.  MACKLER @ JUST SECURITY “GETS IT!” — How Come Judge Garland & The Biden Administration Don’t? — “If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts.” — Get Involved! Get Angry! Say No To Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, & Dehumanization (“Dred Scottification”) @ EOIR! Force Judge Garland To Pay Attention! Demand Change, Now!
  4. 🔮PROPHETS: MORE THAN SEVEN MONTHS AGO, “SIR JEFFREY”🛡 & I SAID IT WOULD TAKE MORE THAN HOLLOW PROMISES IN AN E.O. TO BRING JUSTICE  FOR VICTIMS OF GENDER VIOLENCE! — Sadly, We Were “Right On” As This Timely Lament From CGRS Shows!

🐥COWARDLY MAGA GOP CLAIMS TO SUPPORT LAW ENFORCEMENT — UNTIL THEY ACTUALLY ENFORCE THE LAW! — JRUBE @ WASHPOST

Jennifer Rubin
Opinion Writer
Washington Post

Jennifer Rubin writes at WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/14/distinguished-persons-fbi-agents-are-patriots-unlike-maga-republicans/

As MAGA thugs are wont to do, their reaction to the lawful search at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, which we now know might have been related to nuclear secrets (which Trump has denied), amounted to an stream of insults and threats designed to whip up unhinged, violent characters.

While the exact motives of the person who attacked FBI offices in Cincinnati on Thursday remain unknown, reports indicate he was in D.C. in the days leading up the Jan. 6 insurrection and might have been at the U.S. Capitol that day. The GOP’s cycle of incitement and violence continues.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray was properly outraged. “Unfounded attacks on the integrity of the FBI erode respect for the rule of law and are a grave disservice to the men and women who sacrifice so much to protect others,” he said in a written statement on Thursday. “Violence and threats against law enforcement, including the FBI, are dangerous and should be deeply concerning to all Americans. Every day I see the men and women of the FBI doing their jobs professionally and with rigor, objectivity, and a fierce commitment to our mission of protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution. I am proud to serve alongside them.”

. . . .

**********************
Read the full op-Ed at the link.

Here’s one of the ways the MAGA GOP insurrectionists show “support” for laws and law enforcement:

Jan 6 MAGA Rioters
DC Capitol Storming IMG 7951.jpg
Crowd of Trump supporters marching on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, ultimately leading the building being breached and several deaths. PHOTO: Creative Commons License.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-15-22

Related posts:

  1. 🏴‍☠️☠️DANA MILBANK @ WASHPOST:  THE JIM CROW GOP WAS AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY LONG BEFORE TRUMP — Today’s Absurdist & Corrupt GOP Reaction TO DOJ’s Long Overdue Investigation Of Trump’s Treason & Criminality Is The Predictable Result Of Many Years Of Corrupt, Racist, Authoritarianism!
  2. 🤮NO PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TOWARD MEN (WOMEN, OR ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) FROM REGIME OF “BAD SANTAS” 🦹🏿‍♂️🎅🏻— Illegally Separated Families Continue To Suffer Irreparable Trauma, 😰 Volunteer Groups 😇🗽⚖️ Left To Pick Up Pieces — A Reminder That Defeated Regime Has Mocked, Disparaged, & Trashed Christ’s Values & Assaulted Humanity Over Four Christmases!🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻
  3. CRIME BLOTTER: CHILD ABUSE🤮☠️⚰️🦹🏿‍♀️: DOJ IG REPORT CONFIRMS WHAT COURTSIDE & OTHERS KNEW FROM THE START: Trump, Sessions, Miller, Rosenstein, Hamilton Are Cowards🐓, Lying 🤥 Criminals, Child Abusers🦹🏿‍♀️, Who Belong Behind Bars For Intentionally Abusing Asylum Seeking Families & Kids & Then Having Their Sleazy DOJ Lawyers Lie To Federal Judges! — What Happened To “Due Diligence” As An Ethical Requirement For Government Lawyers?
  4. EX-US JUDGE UNLOADS TRUTH IN USDC FILING ABOUT BILLY BARR’S ATTEMPT TO SUBVERT JUSTICE BY UNDOING FLYNN PROSECUTION: Corrupt, Dishonest, Unethical, Unprofessional – DOJ’s Request to Dismiss Flynn Prosecution is “Preposterous” – Our Police Departments Aren’t The Only Part of Our Foundering, Rudderless, & Disturbingly Ineffective, Racially & Morally “Tone-Deaf” Justice System That Needs Substantial & Meaningful Reform!        

📖COURTSIDE HISTORY: BEYOND THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT, RACISM IS AT THE CORE OF U.S. IMMIGRATION POLICY — Professor Andrew S. Rosenberg Interviewed On New Book By Isabela Dias @ Mother Jones!

Isabela Dias
Isabela Dias
Staff Writer, Immigration & Social Issues
Mother Jones
PHOTO: Twitter
Professor Andrew S. Rosenberg
Professor Andrew S. Rosenberg
Assistant Professor of Political Science
U of Florida
PHOTO: Website

https://apple.news/AOMcfZiMFQ0OSgozcppDcjg

“Undesirable Immigrants: Why Racism Persists in International Migration”

. . . .

In the book, you dispute the assumption that the right to border control and to exclude foreigners is an inherent feature of sovereign states. Instead, you frame it as a “modern consequence of racism.” Why do you see it that way?

The nation-state is a relatively modern invention on the scale of human history. Today, we have this conventional wisdom floating around that it is the natural right and duty of nation-states as sovereign entities to be able to restrict foreigners and have these really hard borders—and that it’s that ability that makes a state what it is. Actually, if you go back in time and look at the international legal thought that emerged from the 15th through the 19th centuries on what it actually means to be a state, the commonly held assumption that people like the late Justice [Antonin] Scalia and others talk about, is actually an invention of the 19th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the great thinkers of international legal jurisprudence or of state theory either thought that states had a right or an obligation to be hospitable to foreigners and to allow them free passage into their territory or, at most, it was up for raucous debate. It was only in the 19th century, when immigrant-receiving countries like the United States began receiving a large influx of racially different outsiders like the Chinese, that this presumption that sovereign states have a right and an obligation that can be tied back to their status as sovereign states to restrict outsiders emerged.

People like Texas Governor Greg Abbott seem to invoke that supposed inherent right when they describe migrants at the border as an “invasion.”

Precisely. These types of “declarations of war” are one of the clearest examples of this ideology seeping into public debate, which leads everyday people to create this idea that migrants are undesirable outsiders who are not fit for, or are undeserving of reaping the benefits of living in the United States or participating in our society.

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

Read the complete interview at the link.

The myth of the “undesirable immigrant” — at the heart of the anti-immigrant rabble rousing of Trump, Miller, Bannon, DeSantis, Abbott, Cotton, Hawley, etc. — has deep roots in American racial history.

I’ve said it many times: There will be neither racial justice nor equal justice for all without justice for immigrants (regardless of status). Laws like the Refugee Act of 1980, that very explicitly make arrival status irrelevant to access to a fair legal process, have been intentionally misinterpreted and misapplied by right-wing judges from the Supremes all the way down to the Immigration Courts. 

Advocates for civil rights, womens’ rights, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights, disability rights, and other fundamental rights that have been unlawfully restricted or diminished, usually, but certainly not exclusively, by the right, who continue to ignore the primacy of dealing with the intentional unfair, racially biased treatment of migrants do so at their own peril!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-12-22

Related posts:

  1. WHEN ARTICLE III COURTS FAIL: U.S. “Orbits” Refugee Families To Dangerous Chaos In Guatemala Under Clearly Fraudulent “Safe Third Country” Arrangements As Feckless U.S. Courts Fail To Enforce Constitutional Due Process & U.S. Asylum Laws In Face Of Trump Regime’s Contemptuous Scofflaw Conduct!
  2. 👹🎃HALLOWEEN HORROR 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻REICHSREPORT: GRUPPENFUHRER MILLER REVEALS “REICHSPLAN” FOR EXTERMINATION OF IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM, REFUGE BY EXECUTIVE DECREE!  — “The Final Solution??”  — Parents, Protect Your Kids, Families, & Your Country From This Grotesque Un-American Monster!
  3. FELIPE DE LA HOZ @ THE NATION: “The Shadow Court Cementing Trump’s Immigration Policy” — “It’s not a court anymore, it’s an enforcement mechanism,” said Paul Wickham Schmidt, who was himself chair of the BIA between 1995 and 2001 and now writes a popular immigration blog called Immigration Courtside. “They’re taking predetermined policy and just disguising it as judicial opinions, when the results have all been predetermined and it has nothing to do or little to do with the merits of the cases.”
  4. CHARLES M. BLOW @ NYT: TIME TO START CALLING IT WHAT IT IS:  “It is time for us to simply call a thing a thing: White supremacy is the biggest racial problem this country faces, and has faced. It is almost always the cause of unrest around race. It has been used to slaughter and destroy, to oppress and imprison. It manifests in every segment of American life.”

⚖️🗽 US JUDGE IN SAN DIEGO EVISCERATES TRUMP’S ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL “TURNBACKS” OF ASYLUM APPLICANTS; MAYORKAS TERMINATES REMAIN IN MEXICO (AGAIN) EVEN AS RED RESTRICTIONIST AGs FILE MORE FRIVOLOUS OBJECTIONS! 🤮

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12R1mt07Z4S7R7xiieRUznueR9DRXrBdq/view?usp=sharing

Al Otro Lado v. Mayorkas

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant minces no words in blasting both the unlawful, cruel, and unconstitutional policy and the Supreme’s toxic decision to look the other way as immigration enforcement runs roughshod over legal, constitutional, and human rights. 

In its September 2, 2021 decision, this Court held the right to access the U.S. asylum

process conferred vis a vis § 1158(a)(1) applies extraterritorially to noncitizens who are

arriving at Class A POEs along the U.S.-Mexico border, but who are not yet within the

jurisdiction of the United States, and is of a constitutional dimension. (Op. Granting in

Part and Denying in Part Parties’ Cross-Mots. for Summ. J. (“MSJ Opinion”), ECF No.

742.) It further held that Defendants’ systematic turnbacks of asylum seekers arriving at

Class A POEs (the “Turnback Policy”) amounted to an unlawful withholding by

immigration officials of their mandatory ministerial “inspection and referral duties”

detailed in 8 U.S.C. § 1225 (“§ 1225”), in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act,

5 U.S.C. § 706(1) et seq., and the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause. (MSJ Opinion at

33–34, 37–38); see 8 U.S.C. §§ 1225(a)(3) (mapping out immigration officials’ duty to

inspect asylum seekers), 1225(b)(1)(A)(ii) (mapping out immigration officials’ duty to

refer asylum seekers to the U.S-asylum process).

In casting appropriate equitable relief to rectify the irreparable injury Defendants’

unauthorized and constitutionally violative Turnback Policy has inflicted upon members

of the Plaintiff class,2 this Court ordinarily would be guided by the fundamental principle

that an equitable remedy should be commensurate with the violations it is designed to

vindicate. See Columbus Bd. of Educ. v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449, 465 (1979) (“[It is an]

accepted rule that the remedy imposed by a court of equity should be commensurate with

the violation ascertained.”). Equitable relief should leave no stone unturned: it should

correct entirely the violations it is aimed at vindicating. That cornerstone of Article III

courts’ equitable powers generally is unfaltering, whether the party against whom an

injunction is sought is a private entity, a state actor, or, as here, a federal official. Thus, in

2 Plaintiffs consist of the named Plaintiffs listed in the case caption, along with a certified class

consisting of “all noncitizens who seek or will seek to access the U.S. asylum process by presenting

themselves at a Class A [POE] on the U.S.-Mexico border, and were or will be denied access to the U.S.

asylum process by or at the instruction of [Customs and Border Protection] officials on or after January 1,

2016.” (Class Certification Order at 18, ECF No. 513.) The Court also certified a subclass consisting of

“all noncitizens who were or will be denied access to the U.S. asylum process at a Class A POE on the

U.S.-Mexico border as a result of Defendants’ metering policy on or after January 1, 2016.” (Id.)

– 3 – 17cv2366

the ordinary course of things, this Court would not hesitate to issue broad, programmatic

relief enjoining Defendants from now, or in the future, turning back asylum seekers in the

process of arriving at Class A POEs, absent a valid statutory basis for doing so.

Yet the circumstances with which this Court is presented are not ordinary because

of the extraordinary, intervening decision of the United States Supreme Court in Garland

v. Aleman Gonzalez, 142 S. Ct. 2057 (2022). That decision takes a sledgehammer to the

premise that immigration enforcement agencies are bound to implement their mandatory

ministerial duties prescribed by Congress, including their obligation to inspect and refer

arriving noncitizens for asylum, and that, when immigration enforcement agencies deviate

from those duties, lower courts have authority to issue equitable relief to enjoin the

resulting violations. It does so through unprecedented expansion of a provision of the

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1989 (“IIRIRA”), 8

U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1) et seq. (“§ 1252(f)(1)”), which for years the Ninth Circuit has

interpreted as placing a relatively narrow limit on injunctive relief. In essence, Aleman

Gonzalez holds that § 1252(f)(1) prohibits lower courts from issuing class-wide injunctions

that “require officials to take actions that (in the Government’s view) are not required” by

certain removal statutes, including § 1225, or “to refrain from actions that (again in the

Government’s view) are allowed” by those same provisions. Id., 142 S. Ct. at 2065.

Federal courts (except for the Supreme Court) now may only issue injunctions enjoining

federal officials’ unauthorized implementation of the removal statutes in the individual

cases of noncitizens against whom removal proceedings have been initiated. See id.

In no uncertain terms, the logical extension of Aleman Gonzalez appears to bestow

immigration enforcement agencies carte blanche to implement immigration enforcement

policies that clearly are unauthorized by the statutes under which they operate because the

Government need only claim authority to implement to immunize itself from the federal

judiciary’s oversight.

With acknowledgment that its decision will further contribute to the human suffering

of asylum seekers enduring squalid and dangerous conditions in Mexican border

– 4 – 17cv2366

communities as they await entry to POEs, this Court finds the shadow of Aleman Gonzalez

inescapable in this case. Even the most narrow, meaningful equitable relief would have

the effect of interfering with the “operation” of § 1225, as that term is construed by the

Aleman Gonzalez Court, and, thus, would clash with § 1252(f)(1)’s remedy bar. Aleman

Gonzalez not only renders uneconomical vindication of Plaintiff class members’

statutorily- and constitutionally-protected right to apply for asylum, those inefficiencies

inevitably will lead to innumerable instances in which Plaintiff class members will be

unable to vindicate their rights at all. Thus, while the majority and dissent in Aleman

Gonzalez hash out their textual disagreements concerning § 1252(f)(1)’s scope in terms of

remedies, make no mistake, Aleman Gonzalez leaves largely unrestrained immigration

enforcement agencies to rapaciously scale back rights. See Tracy A. Thomas, Ubi Jus, Ibi

Remedium: The Fundamental Right to a Remedy Under Due Process, 41 San Diego L.

Rev. 1633, 1634 (2004) (“Disputes over remedies provide a convenient way for dissenters

to resist conformance to legal guarantees. Courts can declare rights, but then default in the

remedy to avoid a politically unpopular result.” (footnote omitted)).

Although it is no substitute for a permanent injunction, class-wide declaratory relief

is both available and warranted here. In lieu of even a circumscribed injunction enjoining

Defendants from again implementing a policy under which they turn back asylum seekers

presenting themselves at POEs along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Court enters a

declaration in accordance with its MSJ Opinion that turning back asylum seekers

constitutes both an unlawful withholding of Defendants’ mandatory ministerial inspection

and referral duties under § 1158 and § 1225 in violation of both the APA and the Fifth

Amendment Due Process Clause. The Court also issues relief as necessary to named

Plaintiff Beatrice Doe.

. . . .

You can read Judge Bashant’s full opinion at the link.

Meanwhile, Secretary Mayorkas exercised the authority recognized by the Supremes in Biden v. Texas to terminate the reprehensible and illegal “Remain in Mexico” (a/k/a “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico”) program engineered by Trump and Miller. Predictably, the same scofflaw, restrictionist “Red AG’s” who had instituted frivolous litigation to block this long overdue action filed more specious objections with the Trump-appointed US District Judge, as advocacy groups like Justice Action Center (“JAC”) pledged to fight the racist right until this vile (and highly ineffective) program is finally ended.

JAC Responds to Official Termination of Remain in Mexico, Attempts by Texas to Delay Wind-Down

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 9, 2022

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a victory for immigrants’ rights movement, the Remain in Mexico program has been officially terminated after court proceedings following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Biden v. Texas on June 30. Below is a statement from Justice Action Center founder and director Karen Tumlin:

“The official end to shameful Remain in Mexico program is a victory for the immigrants’ rights movement and the right to asylum. RMX is a stain on the country’s history, having harmed tens of thousands of people fleeing for their lives since the Trump Administration instituted the unlawful and immoral program in 2019.

“Since the Supreme Court’s ruling affirming the authority of the Biden Administration to end the RMX program, the #SafeNotStranded campaign has called on the President and DHS to implement a swift and humane wind-down, including halting all new enrollments and allowing everyone in RMX to safely pursue their asylum claims in the U.S. Yesterday, DHS stated its wind-down has begun and new people will not be enrolled in the program, and that it would disenroll individuals with upcoming RMX hearings. These are important first steps to finally redress just some of the immense harm inflicted by the program.

“This commitment by DHS, following such a significant SCOTUS victory, illustrates the strength and resilience of the immigrants’ rights movement. But even after a clear loss, Texas is continuing its hateful attempts to keep this deadly program in place for as long as possible: After the District Court rightfully vacated its injunction of the RMX wind-down yesterday, Texas unfortunately—yet unsurprisingly—filed an amended complaint challenging the second DHS memo rescinding RMX, as well as a motion asking the District Court to stay the memo’s effective date.

“But we will not be deterred: advocates will continue to fight back against ongoing red state efforts to continue Trump’s racist and xenophobic agenda and work towards a world where all people fleeing danger can be safe, not stranded.”

# # #

Contact:  Tasha Moro; 323-450-7269; tasha.moro@justiceactioncenter.org

Justice Action Center (JAC) is a new nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting for greater justice for immigrant communities by combining litigation and storytelling. JAC is committed to bringing additional litigation resources to address unmet needs, empower clients, and change the corrosive narrative around immigrants in the U.S. Learn more at justiceactioncenter.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

 

Related:

8/1/22: JAC Responds to Supreme Court’s Certification of Decision on Remain in Mexico; Encourages Swift and Humane Wind-Down of Deadly Program

6/30/22: Justice Action Center Welcomes Positive Supreme Court Decision on Remain in Mexico in Biden v. Texas

3/21/22: #SafeNotStranded Campaign Launches Ahead of April Supreme Court Arguments in Biden v. Texas

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

We should remember that the Trumpest GOP’s insurrectionist war on American democracy and attack on truth and human decency began with overt lies and racist attacks on migrants of color and non-Christians. It has escalated to become an all out assault on our future as a nation of laws and values.

We can’t go back to a time when liberals and progressives viewed immigration as a tangental or secondary issue. It is THE all-encompassing issue now in preserving American democracy from GOP efforts to destabilize and destroy our nation’s fabric from bottom to top!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-11-22 

Related posts:

  1. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  2. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️LOSING FAITH IN THEIR OWN COMMITMENTS & COMPETENCE: Restoring The Rule Of Law At The Border Should Result In A Fairer, More Humane, More Realistic Asylum System, Encouraging Applicants To Apply Through Legal Channels, While Resulting In More Legal Immigration, Which America Needs, & Allowing CBP To Focus On Real Law Enforcement — Unfortunately, The Biden Administration Doubts Its Own Campaign Promises, As Well As Its Competence To Govern  — Administration Apparently Hopes Righty Courts Will Continue To “Force” Them To Carry Out “Miller Lite” Cruelty & Futility While Absolving Them Of Moral & Political Responsibility For The Ongoing Human Carnage!
  3. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸
  4. ⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies

THE GIBSON REPORT — 08-08-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — Among Headliners: “The [Trump Administration’s child separation] policy’s worst outcomes were all anticipated, and repeated internal and external warnings were ignored,” Reports Caitlin Dickerson in The Atlantic!

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

pastedGraphic.png

 

Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • ◦NEWS
  • ◦LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • ◦RESOURCES
  • ◦EVENTS

 

PRACTICE UPDATES

 

Chief Immigration Judge Email: Taking Cases Off Calendar: Cases may be selected to be taken off the court’s calendar for the following reason(s)…

 

EOIR Schedule: EOIR immigration judges are scheduled for a mandatory training session on Aug. 22, 2022, from 1pm to 5pm EST. The Chicago Immigration Court will re-set all non-detained cases scheduled for that afternoon; detained cases will go forward. It is unclear at this time if/how this affects other courts.

 

NEWS

 

Thune breaks through Democratic bloc on ‘vote-a-rama’ amendments

Roll Call: Senate Democrats stuck together and mostly voted against amendments to their tax, climate and health care package, while using a procedural maneuver to allow their vulnerable incumbents to vote for some that could score political points without actually making any changes to the bill [including on immigration].

 

The secret history of the U.S. government’s family-separation policy

The Atlantic: Over the past year and a half, [the Atlantic] has conducted more than 150 interviews and reviewed thousands of pages of internal government documents, some of which were turned over only after a multiyear lawsuit… The policy’s worst outcomes were all anticipated, and repeated internal and external warnings were ignored.

 

Talk of ‘invasion’ moves from the fringe to the mainstream of GOP immigration message

NPR: In Republican primary races this year, few issues have come up more in TV ads than immigration. And one word in particular stands out: invasion.

 

New York City works to make space for rapidly rising number of asylum-seekers

NPR: On Monday, New York Mayor Eric Adams announced a round of emergency contracts with local agencies and organizations to allow the city to respond to an increasing number of asylum-seekers entering the city’s homeless shelter system.  See also Pentagon denies DC request for National Guard migrant help.

 

Border Patrol Agents Are Trashing Sikh Asylum-Seekers’ Turbans

Intercept: “The turban is sacred.” At least 64 Sikh men have had their headwear confiscated and discarded by Yuma’s Border Patrol.

 

Immigrant Rights Advocates Push Cook County To Find Out If ICE Is Using Data Brokers To Skirt Sanctuary City Ordinances

Block Club: Cook County Commissioner Alma Anaya and several immigrant rights organizations held a public hearing last week in which the county’s Legislation and Intergovernmental Relations Committee heard testimony from experts about how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses data from companies like LexisNexis.

 

The Officer of the Future: Facial Recognition and the Border-Industrial Complex

Border Chron: Facial recognition has become the primary biometric technology for CBP. Everyone who enters the country has their picture taken, though supposedly people can opt out (that often isn’t obvious, thanks to a lack of signage; I cross the border constantly and have never seen anything about opting out). The surveillance technology has also been deployed at 32 airports for people exiting the country. CBP partners with airports and airlines to add another layer to this private-public nexus.

 

Fact Check: Immigrants are not getting Social Security numbers at the U.S. border

AP: Lara Logan, a former Fox Nation host, recently claimed that U.S. Border Patrol agents are distributing Social Security numbers to immigrants at the border. A video of her comments has circulated widely across social media platforms… No such thing is happening, Rhonda Lawson, a spokesperson for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told the AP in an email.

 

NYC Attorney Carlos Moreno Imprisoned For Immigration Fraud

NYCaribNews: Between September 2017 – when Moreno was suspended from the bar – and late September 2018, Moreno took on new clients, practiced law, and gave legal advice to scores of undocumented immigrants. In some instances, even predating his suspension, Moreno defrauded clients by falsely claiming that undocumented immigrants who have resided in the United States for over a decade could secure legal status, a fraud known as the “10-Year Green Card Scam.”

 

DHS Watchdog Reports Understaffing At Afghan ‘Safe Havens’

Law360: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog reported worker shortages at the military sites that provided a temporary refuge to Afghan evacuees, saying the understaffing left officials concerned they couldn’t properly meet Afghan nationals’ needs.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

Supreme Court certifies ruling ending Trump border policy

AP: The two-word docket entry read “judgment issued” to record that justices voted 5-4 in a ruling issued June 30 that the administration could scrap the “Remain in Mexico” policy, overruling a lower court that forced the policy to be reinstated in December.

 

Matter of Fernandes, 28 I&N Dec. 605 (BIA 2022)

BIA: A respondent who has made a timely objection to a noncompliant notice to appear is not  generally  required  to  show  he  or  she  was  prejudiced  by  missing  time  or  place  information. An  Immigration  Judge  may  allow  the  Department  Homeland  Security  to  remedy  a  noncompliant notice to appear without ordering the termination of removal proceedings [Note: Except in CA7, pursuant to Arreola-Ochoa].

 

3rd Circ. Upholds Deportation Of Surgeon In $3M Tax Scheme

Law360: A Swedish plastic surgeon who served prison time for a $3 million tax evasion scheme should not be allowed back into the U.S., the Third Circuit ruled Thursday.

 

4th Circ. Says Death Threat Is Persecution In Asylum Case

Law360: The Fourth Circuit gave a Salvadoran woman and her son a second chance at their asylum application, holding that an immigration judge didn’t give enough weight to her claim of death threats on the basis of religion.

 

CA9 On Cancellation, Pre-Trial Detention: Troncoso-Oviedo V. Garland

LexisNexis: Pretrial detention not credited toward a sentence is not “confinement, as a result of conviction” under § 1101(f)(7).

 

9th Circ. Won’t Stop Man’s Removal Based On 1997 Conviction

Law360: The Ninth Circuit rejected a Mexico native’s bid to reopen his removal proceedings on grounds that his 1997 conviction was modified, saying none of the circumstances allowing the challenge of a removal applied to him.

 

Immigration Enforcement Can’t Block Grants, 9th Circ. Rules

Law360: The Ninth Circuit ruled that federal funds for criminal justice programs can’t be withheld from states and counties that don’t enforce immigration laws, upholding lower court decisions that found the denial an overreach of the U.S. Department of Justice’s authority.

 

11th Circ. OKs Deportation Of Chilean Convicted Of ‘Whatever’

Law360: The Eleventh Circuit affirmed Tuesday a deportation order against a Chilean green card holder who pled guilty to violating a Florida law criminalizing child neglect, while acknowledging that the trial court’s record of the conviction was “hopelessly opaque” and included the state judge specifying the criminal offense was for “whatever.”

 

Travel Ban Waiver Lawsuit Victory: Emami V. Mayorkas

LexisNexis: Drawing all inferences and viewing all evidence in the light most favorable to the government, the Court finds that plaintiffs have met their burden of showing that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact, and that the waiver implementation guidance was arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA.

 

NY Judge Declines Relief For DACA Hopefuls In ‘Limbo’

Law360: A New York federal judge refused to modify an order resuming acceptance of new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals applications, saying clarification sought following a Texas judge’s barring new approvals was actually a request for additional relief.

 

Russian Denied Resident Status Over Cannabis-Related Work

Law360: A California federal judge has affirmed a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services decision to deny a Russian national permanent resident status, ruling that by installing and maintaining a security camera system for a cannabis grower, the person had participated in the trafficking of a Schedule I drug.

 

Pa. Judge Says USCIS Must Redo Spousal Petition After Delay

Law360: A Pennsylvania judge ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to reconsider a man’s petition for his Turkish wife’s green card, saying the agency’s unreasonable delay in denying the petition unfairly hampered the couple’s ability to address the agency’s concerns.

 

Biden Ordered To Revisit Visa Apps Nixed In Trump Travel Ban

Law360: A California federal judge ordered the Biden administration to revisit the tens of thousands of visa applications that were denied under Trump-era travel restrictions, finding that targeted foreigners were still bruised from the travel ban, long after its revocation.

 

USCIS Issuing Updated I-797C for Certain Operation Allies Welcome Parolees

USCIS: Certain EADs with a validity period of less than 2 years are now being automatically extended to align with the parole period shown on the beneficiary’s Form I-94, Arrival/Departure Record.

 

USCIS Issues Policy Guidance on Uncharacterized Military Discharges Eligible for Naturalization

AILA: USCIS issued policy guidance in the USCIS Policy Manual to address the eligibility of military service members with uncharacterized military discharges for purposes for naturalization under section 328 or section 329 of the INA. Comments are due by 9/2/22.

 

EOIR Announces 19 New Immigration Judges

EOIR: [EOIR] announced the appointment of 19 immigration judges to courts in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

 

EOIR Warns of Scammers Spoofing Agency Phone Number

EOIR: The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) today announced it has recently been notified of phone calls that spoof the Arlington Immigration Court as part of a misinformation campaign. The callers will often “spoof,” or fake, the immigration court’s main line, 703-305-1300, so the calls appear to be coming from EOIR on the recipient’s caller ID.

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

 

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added.

 

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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

Interestingly, none of the “perps” of child abuse by the Trump Administration has been held accountable. By contrast, many of their victims have suffered irreparable harm.

Trump officials provided “explicitly false formation” to intentionally mislead the public about the abusive, racist intent behind their program of intentional misconduct. So, why isn’t this a problem?

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-10-22

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. 🤮NO PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TOWARD MEN (WOMEN, OR ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) FROM REGIME OF “BAD SANTAS” 🦹🏿‍♂️🎅🏻— Illegally Separated Families Continue To Suffer Irreparable Trauma, 😰 Volunteer Groups 😇🗽⚖️ Left To Pick Up Pieces — A Reminder That Defeated Regime Has Mocked, Disparaged, & Trashed Christ’s Values & Assaulted Humanity Over Four Christmases!🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻
  2. 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, “PERPS” ON THE LOOSE! — DOJ Internal Report Shows How “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Rosenstein, Hamilton Conspired To Separate Migrant Kids In Violation Of 5th Amendment — When Will These Criminals Be Charged & Prosecuted Under 18 USC 242? — NY Times Reports!
  3. LEE SUNDAY EVANS @ WATERWELL: “The Power of Transcripts”— “It wasn’t hard to recognize the power of each individual story, and the patterns revealed when reading two, three, ten testimonies were a disturbing depiction of how the protections outlined in the Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA) were being violated.”
  4. CRIME BLOTTER: CHILD ABUSE🤮☠️⚰️🦹🏿‍♀️: DOJ IG REPORT CONFIRMS WHAT COURTSIDE & OTHERS KNEW FROM THE START: Trump, Sessions, Miller, Rosenstein, Hamilton Are Cowards🐓, Lying 🤥 Criminals, Child Abusers🦹🏿‍♀️, Who Belong Behind Bars For Intentionally Abusing Asylum Seeking Families & Kids & Then Having Their Sleazy DOJ Lawyers Lie To Federal Judges! — What Happened To “Due Diligence” As An Ethical Requirement For Government Lawyers?

🏴‍☠️☠️DANA MILBANK @ WASHPOST:  THE JIM CROW GOP WAS AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY LONG BEFORE TRUMP — Today’s Absurdist & Corrupt GOP Reaction TO DOJ’s Long Overdue Investigation Of Trump’s Treason & Criminality Is The Predictable Result Of Many Years Of Corrupt, Racist, Authoritarianism!

Dana Milbank
Dana Milbank
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

\https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/dana-milbank-republican-destructionists-book-excerpt/

. . . .

Much has been made of the ensuing polarization in our politics, and it’s true that moderates are a vanishing breed. But the problem isn’t primarily polarization. The problem is that one of our two major political parties has ceased good-faith participation in the democratic process. Of course, there are instances of violence, disinformation, racism and corruption among Democrats and the political left, but the scale isn’t at all comparable. Only one party fomented a bloody insurrection and even after that voted in large numbers (139 House Republicans, a two-thirds majority) to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 election. Only one party promotes a web of conspiracy theories in place of facts. Only one party is trying to restrict voting and discredit elections. Only one party is stoking fear of minorities and immigrants.

Admittedly, I’m partisan — not for Democrats but for democrats. Republicans have become an authoritarian faction fighting democracy — and there’s a perfectly logical reason for this: Democracy is working against Republicans. In the eight presidential contests since 1988, the GOP candidate has won a majority of the popular vote only once, in 2004. As the United States approaches majority-minority status (the White population, 76 percent of the country in 1990, is now 58 percent and will drop below 50 percent around 2045), Republicans have become the voice of White people, particularly those without college degrees, who fear the loss of their way of life in a multicultural America. White grievance and White fear drive Republican identity more than any other factor — and in turn drive the tribalism and dysfunction in the U.S. political system.

Other factors sped the party’s turn toward nihilism: Concurrent with the rise of Gingrich was the ascent of conservative talk radio, followed by the triumph of Fox News, followed by the advent of social media. Combined, they created a media environment that allows Republican politicians and their voters to seal themselves in an echo chamber of “alternative facts.” Globally, south-to-north migration has ignited nationalist movements around the world and created a new era of autocrats. The disappearance of the Greatest Generation, tempered by war, brought to power a new generation of culture warriors.

Dana Milbank: In the GOP, the paranoid fringe is becoming the establishment

But the biggest cause is race. The parties re-sorted themselves after the epochal changes of the 1960s, which expanded civil rights, voting rights and immigration. Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” began an appeal to White voters alienated by racial progress, and, in the years that followed, a new generation of Republicans took that racist undertone and made it the melody.

It is crucial to understand that Donald Trump didn’t create this noxious environment. He isn’t some hideous, orange Venus emerging from the half-shell. Rather, he is a brilliant opportunist; he saw the direction the Republican Party was taking and the appetites it was stoking. The onetime pro-choice advocate of universal health care reinvented himself to give Republicans what they wanted. Because Trump is merely a reflection of the sickness in the GOP, the problem won’t go away when he does.

. . . .

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

Read the full excerpt from “The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party” by Dana Milbank at the link.

As I noted in yesterday’s post, racially charged lies, myths, knowingly false narratives, and bogus attempts to tie migrants to all the ills of society are a key part of the GOP’s toxic narrative! The continuing campaign of hate and misinformation began with immigrants — but as this article suggests, it won’t end until either the GOP is thrown out of office at all levels or our nation’s constitutional structure and democratic republic are in tatters!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-09-22

Related posts:

  1. 🤮NO PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TOWARD MEN (WOMEN, OR ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) FROM REGIME OF “BAD SANTAS” 🦹🏿‍♂️🎅🏻— Illegally Separated Families Continue To Suffer Irreparable Trauma, 😰 Volunteer Groups 😇🗽⚖️ Left To Pick Up Pieces — A Reminder That Defeated Regime Has Mocked, Disparaged, & Trashed Christ’s Values & Assaulted Humanity Over Four Christmases!🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻
  2. 👹🎃HALLOWEEN HORROR 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻REICHSREPORT: GRUPPENFUHRER MILLER REVEALS “REICHSPLAN” FOR EXTERMINATION OF IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM, REFUGE BY EXECUTIVE DECREE!  — “The Final Solution??”  — Parents, Protect Your Kids, Families, & Your Country From This Grotesque Un-American Monster!
  3. CRIME BLOTTER: CHILD ABUSE🤮☠️⚰️🦹🏿‍♀️: DOJ IG REPORT CONFIRMS WHAT COURTSIDE & OTHERS KNEW FROM THE START: Trump, Sessions, Miller, Rosenstein, Hamilton Are Cowards🐓, Lying 🤥 Criminals, Child Abusers🦹🏿‍♀️, Who Belong Behind Bars For Intentionally Abusing Asylum Seeking Families & Kids & Then Having Their Sleazy DOJ Lawyers Lie To Federal Judges! — What Happened To “Due Diligence” As An Ethical Requirement For Government Lawyers?
  4. CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎🏻: Victims Of Trump, Miller, Sessions Child Abuse May Suffer Lifelong Damage Similar To That Of Holocaust Survivors! — “My mom and I have learned along the way that nothing seems to make it go away. Not her prayers. Not my ‘American Dream’ success. Not any logical explanation of how governments work or don’t work. My mother’s touch will always feel foreign to me.” — PLUS: BREAKING UPDATE: Just Released House Report Documents Regime’s Massive Human Rights Criminal Conspiracy Against CHILDREN!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️NDPA ACTIVISTS HELP BEAT BACK GOP NATIVIST SPOILER AMENDMENTS TO RECONCILIATION BILL — Dems Need To Win Midterms To Thwart Newest GOP Immigration Hate Plan!

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

“Sir Jeffrey” Chase reports:

Hi: I just heard that all of the anti-immigration measures that Republicans attempted to add as amendments to the reconciliation bill were defeated.

I’m so in awe of the advocates who were up all night monitoring the process and weighing in with Senators’ offices.

Best, Jeff

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

James “Jim” Crow
James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism, Now At The Heart of The GOP Immigration Agenda

 

But, don’t relax or breathe a sign of relief. The GOP is very up front about the Jim Crow hate agenda they plan to roll out if they gain control of Congress in the midterms. Here is is in all it’s dishonesty, cruelty, and racist agitation:

https://republicans-homeland.house.gov/media/2022/07/Border-Rollout-one-pager_FINAL_formatted.pdf

Yes, you can expect Biden to veto any of this. But, it still will disrupt the business of Congress and will lead to hate rhetoric, lies, and racist stereotypes being hurled against immigrants and people of color. There is virtually no chance that the GOP would have the votes to override the vetoes in both Houses. 

Still, upcoming generations of younger Americans will have to decide whether they want to live and raise their children in the the “American Hungary” — a neo-Nazi state where racial and ethic hatred and anti-Semitism will be at the center of all authoritarian Government policy. If not, the younger generation of the NDPA needs to come up with ways of keeping the GOP out of political power from the top to the bottom. 

However welcome, the latest hard-fought victory over racist nativism and xenophobia was just the beginning of the struggle for the heart and soul of America.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-08-22

Related posts:

  1. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸
  2. 🤮NO PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TOWARD MEN (WOMEN, OR ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) FROM REGIME OF “BAD SANTAS” 🦹🏿‍♂️🎅🏻— Illegally Separated Families Continue To Suffer Irreparable Trauma, 😰 Volunteer Groups 😇🗽⚖️ Left To Pick Up Pieces — A Reminder That Defeated Regime Has Mocked, Disparaged, & Trashed Christ’s Values & Assaulted Humanity Over Four Christmases!🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻
  3. 👹🎃HALLOWEEN HORROR 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻REICHSREPORT: GRUPPENFUHRER MILLER REVEALS “REICHSPLAN” FOR EXTERMINATION OF IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM, REFUGE BY EXECUTIVE DECREE!  — “The Final Solution??”  — Parents, Protect Your Kids, Families, & Your Country From This Grotesque Un-American Monster!
  4. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!

☠️⚰️🏴‍☠️ TITLE 42 CAUSES DEATH @ THE BORDER: Rachel Monroe @ The New Yorker Sums Up The Jim Crow Cruelty, Stupidity, & Futility Of Title 42 In One Paragraph! — Title 42 “has increased business for smuggling cartels and spurred people to cross in more dangerous places.”

RACHEL MONROE
Rachel Monroe
Contributing Writer
The New Yorker
PHOTO: Twitter

https://apple.news/AX5E8qIWlQYOauANHEV2g3w

. . . .

Between 2015 and 2020, about fifty bodies were recovered each year in Brooks County, according to an S.T.H.R.C. report. Then came Title 42, a policy enacted by the Trump Administration at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that closed ports of entry and blocked most avenues for asylum claims, ostensibly for public-health reasons. The policy, which is still in place in a modified form, has increased business for smuggling cartels and spurred people to cross in more dangerous places. “Before Title 42, the calls we got used to be, like, eighty-per-cent apprehended, twenty-per-cent missing,” Canales said. “Now it’s flipped—it’s more like twenty-per-cent apprehended, eighty-per-cent missing.” So far this year, there have been nearly seventy recoveries of remains in Brooks County, putting 2022 on track to be the deadliest year on record.

. . . .

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

Read Rachel’s entire report, directly from the border, at the link.

So, before the Trump Administration’s bogus, racist “invocation” of Title 42, 80% of migrants came to the border or were easily apprehended close thereto — most probably because they turned themselves in to seek asylum through the legal system. And, lets not forget, this was with an already badly broken, fundamentally unfair, asylum legal adjudication system intentionally biased and “loaded” against legitimate refugees seeking protection!

Smart, honest public policy would have improved asylum adjudication at USCIS and at EOIR to quickly recognize and grant, with the assistance of NGOs and legal assistance groups, the many cases of legitimate refugees so that they could take their rightful, legal places in our society.

Additionally, by taking refugees seeking legal determinations “out of the equation,” enforcement against those seeking to evade legal processing — certainly a much, much smaller “universe” than is “out there now” — would have been enhanced. Business would have declined for smugglers, as those seeking protection would have been motivated to use a humane, fair, functioning legal system rather than being forced into “do it yourself” refuge!

You don’t have a genius to figure this out — just not be motivated solely by racism like Stephen Miller and his Trump regime cronies! Better qualified — non-Jim Crow righty — Federal Judges would also produce more humane, honest, and rational results.

Additionally, by running a legitimate asylum system, and complementing it with an honest, robust, legal refugee system for Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, we would finally have sound data on how many of those seeking to enter at the Southern Border are entitled to immigrate as legal refugees and how many are non-refugees. That’s something on which we now have no reliable information  — just myths and anecdotes, many provided by racist restrictionists and nativists with neither expertise in asylum law nor any real interest in the rule of law at the border.

As a result of Title 42, and the unqualified “Jim Crow” Federal Judges, GOP nativist AGs, and their apologists (including some in the media who repeat or republish, without critical examination, GOP racist lies about the border), we now have a deadlier than ever border; the legal immigration system at the border has been functionally abolished and replaced with an underground, extralegal system; the U.S. Government has ceded control of border migration policy to cartels and smugglers; and the job of the Border Patrol — forced to spend time apprehending legal refugees who seek only the protection to which they are legally entitled — has become impossible.

That’s what happens when we let GOP nativist pols, overt racists, and bad, right wing Federal Judges take over the immigration policies that were actually enacted by Congress — a key part of which are legitimate refugee and asylum systems and a fair, functioning, expert Immigration Court. Right now, we have NONE of the foregoing. And, innocent migrants at the border are too often paying the price — with their lives!

Border Death
This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
To comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

“Enforcing the law” does NOT mean unfairly, unwisely, and illegally abrogating the legal asylum system and fair adjudications in Immigration Court at the border. It means fixing the legal asylum system including USCIS Asylum Offices. Perhaps most of all, it means reforming and replacing where necessary the broken, dysfunctional, leaderless, and non-expert Immigration Courts and a BIA that continues to misinterpret asylum and protection laws on a daily basis. We need a BIA of real judges with the expertise and guts to establish fair, humane, correct, positive precedents and to rein in or remove from asylum cases those Immigration Judges who are “programmed to reject, not protect!”

I, along with many others, watched the Brittney Griner travesty unfold. I saw the irony. President Biden was rightfully blasting the outrageous “kangaroo court” show trial that passes for justice in Russia. But, at the same time, he, Harris, and Garland are basically running a farcical “Russian style” dysfunctional immigrant “justice” system at EOIR and calling it a “court!”

Kangaroos
Perhaps, in addition to blasting the Griner farce, President Biden, VP Harris, and AG Garland need to take a closer look at the “Russian-style” justice being inflicted on migrants in their wholly-owned Immigration “Courts”  — which particularly target women, children, and migrants of color seeking justice under US laws. Indeed, many are still being arbitrarily returned without ANY process at all! Others get “off the wall” denials of their valid claims. Its this REALLY any way for a self-proclaimed “nation of laws” to operate?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/
Creative Commons License

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever

PWS

08-05-22

Related posts:

  1. 🗽⚖️🇺🇸LEE GELERNT @ ACLU SAYS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “cannot farm out the asylum system.” Yet, That Appears To Be Largely What They Are Doing Under New, Previously Unpublicized Program!
  2. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  3. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸
  4. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!

🏴‍☠️🤮👎🏽 WHAT’S GARLAND DOING? — LATEST 4TH CIR. REJECTION OF ABSURDIST EOIR ASYLUM DENIAL SHOWS WHY GARLAND MUST “PULL THE PLUG” 🔌 ON THE BIA! — While He’s At It, He Needs To Look At OIL’s Mindless “Defense Of The Clearly Indefensible!” — Why Are American Women Giving Garland A “Free Pass” On Overt, Institutionalized, Racially-Charged, Misogyny @ His DOJ?

Doctor Death
Would you want this guy as your Immigration Judge or BIA “panel?” If not, tell Garland to “pull the plug” on his deadly and incompetent BIA!
Public Domain

https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201762.P.pdf

Sorto-Guzmán v. Garland, 4th Cir., 08-93-22, published

PANEL:  KING and WYNN, Circuit Judges, and FLOYD, Senior Circuit Judge.

OPINION: Judge FLOYD

KEY QUOTE:

In sum, we hold that the IJ’s decision, which the BIA adopted, blatantly ignored our long line of cases establishing that the threat of death alone establishes past persecution. This was legal error, and therefore, an abuse of discretion. See Cordova v. Holder, 759 F.3d 332, 337 (4th Cir. 2014). We hold that Sorto-Guzman has established she was subjected to past persecution in El Salvador.2 She is thereby entitled to the presumption of a well-founded fear of future persecution. Li, 405 F.3d at 176; 8 C.F.R. § 208.13(b)(1). The IJ and the BIA erred in not affording Sorto-Guzman this presumption, which would

2 Sorto-Guzman argues, in the alternative, that the IJ and the BIA erred in finding that she failed to establish a well-founded fear of future persecution. We will not answer that question today. Because we hold that she properly established past persecution, the proper remedy is to remand the case to the BIA to consider the question of whether DHS can rebut the presumption that Sorto-Guzman has a well-founded fear of future persecution.

 11

have then shifted the burden to DHS to rebut the presumption. Ngarurih v. Ashcroft, 371 F.3d 182, 187 (4th Cir. 2004); 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(1)(i).

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

 

Sorto-Guzman is a life-long Catholic who regularly attended Catholic services in El Salvador. In December 2015, about five members of the Mara 18 gang accosted Sorto- Guzman in the street as she was leaving church. At the time, she was wearing a crucifix medallion around her neck. The gang members tore the chain from her neck, hit and kicked her, and threatened to kill her if she ever wore it or attended church again. Sorto-Guzman stopped attending church after the attack, fearing the gang and their threats.
A few weeks later in January 2016, a group of Mara 18 gang members—including some of the gang members from the December 2015 assault—stopped Sorto-Guzman, along with her sister and Rivas-Sorto, as she was coming home from a shopping trip. One of the men attempted to sexually assault Sorto-Guzman and had started to forcefully kiss her. He only stopped when her screams caught the attention of a neighbor. The gang members threatened to kill Sorto-Guzman and Rivas-Sorto if Sorto-Guzman did not join the gang and start living with them.
3

On February 13, 2016, some of the gang members from the prior incidents tracked where Sorto-Guzman lived and broke into her house carrying guns. The gang members viciously beat Sorto-Guzman, threatened her life, and robbed her. Sorto-Guzman’s neighbors called the police, but they did not come until several hours after the assault. Sorto-Guzman reported the assault and robbery to the officers who arrived at the scene. She also went to the local police station the next day to report the attack. The police made one attempt to investigate, but Petitioners were not home when the police arrived, and the officers never followed up. The day after, a gang member called Sorto-Guzman, warning her she would regret making the report to the police and that they would soon kill her, her son, and her sister.

Absurdly, an Immigration Judge found that this gross abuse and death threats by a gang with the ability and willingness to carry them out did not amount to “persecution.” Worse yet, on appeal, rather than reversing and directing the judge below to follow the law, the BIA agreed — invoking the outlandish “theory” that the death threats, on top of the savage beating, weren’t so bad because they had never come to “fruition.” In other words, the applicant hadn’t hung around to be killed. Then, to top it off, attorneys from the DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation (“OIL”) unethically defended this deadly nonsense before the Fourth Circuit! This is “justice” in Garland’s disgraceful, deadly, and dysfunctional “court” system!

Trial By Ordeal
Garland’s BIA Judges applying the “fruition” test. If she lives, it’s not persecution!
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160

NOT, a “mere mistake.”

EOIR’s performance is this case, particularly the BIA’s absurdist conclusion that, essentially, death threats must result in death to constitute past persecution, is a contemptuous disregard for binding circuit precedent, a demonstration of gross anti-asylum bias, misogyny, and a clear example of judicial incompetence.

Would a heart transplant surgeon who “forgot” to install a new heart or neglected to sew up the patient’s chest be allowed to continue operating? Of course not! So, why is the BIA still allowed to botch life or death cases — the equivalent of open heart surgery?

If Garland allows his “delegees” to perform in this dangerous and unprofessional manner, in his name, what is he doing as Attorney General? This is a farce, not a “court system?” Those responsible need to be held accountable! And, OIL’s unethical defense of this deadly nonsense is indefensible!

Alfred E. Neumann
“What are legal ethics?  Not my friends or relatives whose lives as being destroyed by these ‘Kangaroo Courts.’ Just ‘the others’ and their dirty immigration lawyers!  So, who cares? Why worry about professionalism, ethics, and due process in Immigration Court?”
PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

We’ve heard lots lately from Garland about “accountability.” Why doesn’t it apply to his own, wholly owned, totally dysfunctional, legally deficient, contemptuous, unprofessional “court system” that builds astounding, self-created backlogs while causing pain, suffering, and sometimes sending innocents to death?☠️

EOIR Clown Show Must Go T-Shirt
“EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept

Additionally, in Kansas this week, women have shown the power of their just demand to be treated as humans, with rights, rather than dehumanized pawns just there to re-populate the world for the men in charge. So, why not unleash the same passion and rightful fury on Garland and his ongoing, illegal, misogynistic treatment of women (primarily women of color) at EOIR!

Woman Tortured
“She struggled madly in the torturing Ray” — AG Garland has failed miserably to engage with the plight of women, mostly those of color, being denied fundamental rights and abused daily by his lawless, anti-immigrant, anti-asylum, misogynistic “holdover” EOIR! Why are women putting up with his bad attitude and dilatory approach to justice? What happened to Lisa Monaco, Vanita Gupta, and Kristen Clarke? Are they “locked in a dark closet” somewhere in Garland’s DOJ?
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-04-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. ‘SIR JEFFREY” CHASE: Garland’s “First Steps” To Eradicate Misogyny & Anti-Asylum Bias @ EOIR Are Totally Insufficient Without Progressive Personnel Changes — Regulations Will Only Be Effective If Drafted By Progressive Human Rights Experts Of Which There Currently Are NONE @ DOJ Save For Some Immigration Judges In The Field Whose Expertise, Intellectual Integrity, & Moral Courage Has Been Ignored By Team Garland! — There Will Be No Gender, Racial, Or Immigrant Justice @ Justice As Long As Garland Mindlessly Lets “Miller’s Club Denial” Operate @ BIA! — Progressives Must Turn Up The Heat On Garland To Reform & Remake EOIR With Qualified Expert Judges & Dynamic, Independent, Progressive Leaders!
  4. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️