Willa Frej – immigrationcourtside.com

WILLA FREJ @ HUFFPOST: Trump’s Blatant Lies About Family Separation Just Keep Flowing!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-child-separation-obama_us_5bfbb980e4b0eb6d93105dd6

President Donald Trump falsely claimed that his policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern U.S. border was the “exact same” as the one implemented during the Obama administration.

In complaining about a “60 Minutes” segment that aired Sunday, Trump tried to deflect criticism of his “zero tolerance” immigration policy by arguing that former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush also separated immigrant families.

“I tried to keep them together but the problem is, when you do that, vast numbers of additional people storm the Border,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “So with Obama seperation [sic] is fine, but with Trump it’s not.”

. . . .

Obama deported a record number of immigrants during his time in office which earned him the nickname of “deporter-in-chief.” Prioritizing the removal of people with criminal histories, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported more than 2.7 million people between fiscal years 2009 and 2016.

The administration worked to quickly detain and deport migrants for several months in 2014, in response to a surge in migrant arrivals. Yet children who had come into the country with their parents didn’t get separated from them, and if families got deported, they were deported together.

The Ninth Circuit ruled that the Flores agreement ― a 1997 federal court decision requiring children to remain in custody for as little time as possible ― also applied to both accompanied and unaccompanied children. They could only be held in detention for a maximum of 20 days.

But Trump administration has gone far beyond his predecessor, separating almost 2,000 immigrant children from their parents in the spring. Many were held in caged detention centers and exposed to severe health consequences. Trump has also tried to withdraw from the Flores settlement and put forth new rules to replace it, which could lead to children being detained indefinitely.

As for deportations, the Trump administration opted to prosecute every single migrant who crossed the border illegally, expanding the Obama-era strategy of focusing on criminals.

The notion that Trump is merely carrying out Obama’s legacy is “preposterous,” Denise Gilman, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School, told NBC News. “There were occasionally instances where you would find a separated family — maybe like one every six months to a year — and that was usually because there had been some actual individualized concern that there was a trafficking situation or that the parent wasn’t actually the parent.”

“The agencies were surfacing every possible idea,” a top Obama domestic policy advisor, Cecilia Muñoz, told The New York Times. “I do remember looking at each other like, ‘We’re not going to do this, are we?’ We spent five minutes thinking it through and concluded that it was a bad idea. The morality of it was clear — that’s not who we are.”

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Read Willa’s full article, including Trump’s revolting tweets, at the link.

Separate ‘em, jail ‘em, abuse ‘em, gas ‘em! What’s not to like about an unhinged authoritarian with a neo-Fascist program, a propaganda machine masquerading as “news,” and a bunch of mindless supporters who cheer as he and his band of cowards pick on kids and the downtrodden?

Every day is a new “Reichstag Fire” – a fake, manufactured “crisis” and a call to blame and eradicate the “usual suspects.” Some day there will be hell to pay for America’s abandoning human values and allowing Trump to represent our Government! We should all be ashamed of what our country is doing in the name of fake “border security.”

We are diminishing ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!

PWS

11-26-18

DEPORTING THE INNOCENT – DESTROYING AMERICAN FAMILIES & COMMUNITIES – A TRUMP/SESSIONS/DHS SPECIALTY!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/deport-man-30-years_us_5a5dc32fe4b04f3c55a56e47

Willa Frej reports for the Huffington Post:

“Jorge Garcia, 39, bid his family farewell Monday under the watchful gaze of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who required him to return to his native Mexico after living in the Detroit area for 30 years.

Emotional video of Garcia hugging his wife and two children at Detroit’s Metro Airport captured the emotional trauma that deportations can cause for families. Though members of Garcia’s family all are U.S. citizens, he was technically living in the country illegally.

NIRAJ WARIKOO/DETROIT FREE PRESS/USA TODAY SPORTS IMAGES

Jorge Garcia, 39, of Lincoln Park, Michigcan, hugs his wife, Cindy Garcia, and their two children Jan. 15, 2018, at Detroit Metro Airport moments before being forced to board a flight to Mexico to be deported.

“Yes, he was brought here at 10 years old and yes, he entered the country illegally, but he has no criminal record and his case needs to be looked at individually because he deserves to be here in a country that he’s known ― not Mexico,” his wife, Cindy Garcia, told CNN.

During President Barack Obama’s administration, Garcia received temporary extensions allowing him to avert a deportation order from 2009, according to the Detroit Free Press. ICE renewed the order in November and told Garcia he needed to exit the country by Jan. 15.

President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants includes widescale raids, arrests and deportations. From the time Trump took office until the end of September, ICE removals that resulted from an arrests increased by 37 percent over the previous year, the Department of Homeland Security said. Meanwhile, the number of people apprehended attempting to cross the U.S. southern border dropped to a historical low in fiscal 2017.

Garcia expressed sadness and apprehension about returning to a country he barely remembers.

“I got to leave my family behind, knowing that they’re probably going to have a hard time adjusting, me not being there for them for who knows how long,” he said in an interview with the Detroit Free Press the night before his deportation. “It’s just hard. It’s going to be kind of hard for me to adjust, too.”

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Senseless as it is cruel, stupid, and wasteful. As I’ve pointed out before, if this is how DHS is “setting priorities,” using law enforcement resources, and wasting taxpayer money, they clearly do not need any more agents.

PWS

1-16-18

PREXY ABOVE LAW SAYS “MOUTHPIECE” (Or, Perhaps, His “Tweetpiece?”)

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-lawyer-flynn-comey-obstruct-justice_us_5a252c0de4b0a02abe924355

Willa Frej reports for HuffPost:

“If President Donald Trump knew for months that Michael Flynn lied to the FBI, is he guilty of obstructing justice? His lawyer doesn’t think so. F
John Dowd reportedly told The Washington Post this weekend that Trump likely knew about Flynn’s erroneous reporting of his conversations with the Russians as early as January, months before he fired then-FBI Director James Comey.
But Dowd has shot down any speculation that his client obstructed justice, saying Trump is president and therefore above the law.
The “President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution’s Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case,” Dowd told Axios in an interview published Monday.
It’s a claim reminiscent of one made in 1977, when former President Richard Nixon said the presidents can essentially behave as they wish.
“Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,” Nixon said at the time, in a TV interview with David Frost.
Trump raised questions on Saturday about the timeline of his knowledge, tweeting, “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies.” Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI the day before.
The implication that Trump had known his former national security adviser had lied to the FBI set off alarm bells. The White House had previously said Flynn was fired over false statements he provided to Vice President Mike Pence.

. . . .

Dowd said he actually drafted the tweet about Flynn being fired, but “did not admit obstruction. That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion.”
“I’m out of the tweeting business,” Dowd told ABC News. “I did not mean to break news.”
Trump and Comey met a few weeks after the president found out about Flynn, according to the Post. It was during that meeting that Comey has said that the president asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn.
That led to speculation that Trump fired Comey to punish him for not giving up on his probe, which may also constitute obstruction of justice.

. . . .

The question over whether a president is constitutionally capable of obstructing justice has no clear answer, according to legal scholars.
“The claim that the president can commit such a crime faces a powerful objection rooted in the Constitution,” two University of Chicago Law School professors, Daniel Jacob Hemel and Eric Posner, explained in a California Law Review article from July.
“Obstruction of justice laws are normally applied to private citizens — people who bribe jurors, hide evidence from the police, or lie to investigators,” they wrote. “The president’s control over law enforcement is sometimes regarded as a near-sacred principle in our constitutional system.”
Yet this conflicts with the constitutional principle that no person can be above the law. That’s why, according to Hemel and Posner, Congress holds the ultimate key to impeachment.
The impeachment charges for both Nixon and former President Bill Clinton involved obstruction of justice. However, Nixon resigned before he could be impeached, and the Senate vote on Clinton’s impeachment resulted in a 50-50 tie. A two-thirds vote from the Senate is needed for a conviction.”

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Not very surprising that Trump holds himself above the law. We’ve elected a would-be Dictator who thinks that he rules a nation of morons who can’t figure out what he and his minions are up to! And not a very smart or talented Dictator at that! At least this should resolve the BS about Sessions and the Trumpsters promoting the “Rule Of Law.”

And, if John Dowd even knows how to “Tweet” . . . .

PWS

12-04-17

“RACIST JOE’S” CONVICTION STANDS, AT LEAST FOR NOW — U.S. Judge says Trump Can Wipe Out The Consequences But Can’t Erase The Dirty Deeds!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/joe-arpaio-criminal-conviction-not-erased_us_59e9d4b3e4b0df10767c4e07?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Willa Frej reports for HuffPost:

“A judge rebuffed former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s request to expunge his criminal conviction for unlawfully detaining individuals based on suspicions of their legal status after President Donald Trump pardoned him in August.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton ruled Thursday that the pardon wasn’t a reason to erase Arpaio’s guilty verdict.

“The power to pardon is an executive prerogative of mercy, not of judicial record-keeping,” she wrote. “The Court found Defendant guilty of criminal contempt. The President issued the pardon. Defendant accepted. The pardon undoubtedly spared defendant from any punishment that might otherwise have been imposed. It did not, however, revise the historical facts of this case.”

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Read the rest of the story at the above link.

You can lie to your heart’s content, but you can’t rewrite history, as Joe and the rest of his racist/White Nationalist cronies in the Trump Administration are finding out.

PWS

10-20-17

DEAL OR NO DEAL? — You Can’t Tell With “The Donald” — But He Didn’t Really Deny That Something Is “In Play” With The Dems!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-border-wall-daca_us_59ba570ee4b0edff971983ee

Willa Frej reports for HuffPost:

“President Donald Trump denied on Thursday that he had made a firm agreement with Democrats on immigration, but did not dispute key details from the deal ― namely, that protection for young undocumented immigrants wouldn’t be tied to his long-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.

In a series of tweets on Thursday, Trump said that any deal on Dreamers ― undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children ― would be contingent on “massive border security,” but did not specifically say it had to be the wall.

He later said that the wall is “already under construction in the form of new renovation of old and existing fences and walls” and would proceed.

Trump also told reporters outside the White House on Thursday that “the wall will come later.” Asked if he favors amnesty, the president replied that “the word is DACA.”

The president also seemed to throw cold water on concerns that he wanted to deport beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program, which the administration decided earlier this month to end.

Trump’s Thursday comments followed a dinner he held the previous evening with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.). Following the meeting, they announced that the president agreed to a border security plan that would offer protections to the 800,000 Dreamers, and that the wall was not part of the deal.

Pelosi and Schumer released a statement Thursday clarifying their announcement from the night before, confirming that no final deal had been put in place.

Yet they added, “While both sides agreed that the wall would not be any part of this agreement, the President made clear he intends to pursue it at a later time, and we made clear we would continue to oppose it.”

Many of Trump’s staunchest supporters, including Fox News Host Sean Hannity and conservative commentator Ann Coulter, quickly lashed out at reports that president seemed to be softening his stance on immigration.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later tweeted that “excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to,” but a spokesman for Schumer shot back that, while the wall wasn’t dead yet, it wasn’t part of this deal specifically.

This story has been updated to include Trump’s additional comments to reporters and a statement from Pelosi and Schumer.”

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You know you’re on the right track, Mr. President, when you are being criticized by racist, national embarrassments Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) (how come the GOP hasn’t banished this guy for his unapologetically racist and xenophobic views? — Yeah, he has a Constitutional right to spout his poisonous lies on and off the floor of Congress, and the folks in his Congressional District have a right to elect him to publicly represent their racism, lack of decency, and lack of judgment. — But, that doesn’t entitle him to membership in one of our two major political parties.)

And ignoring the rancid input of AG Jeff Sessions and his White Nationalist clone Stephen Miller on anything touching on immigration or national security would also be wise. Just see where this “Demonic Duo” is going and head the other way as fast as you can.

Along with Bannon, Sessions and Miller are at home on the wrong side of history, particularly racial and migration history. The President already got bad legal advice, based on bogus ideological reasoning, from Sessions in terminating DACA. Now he is having to put distance between himself and the markedly xenophobic anti-DACA narrative that Gonzo set forth when gleefully announcing an end to DACA and cheerfully throwing 800,000 American lives into turmoil. What a guy!

PWS

09-14-71

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