Tag Archives: immigration

The Attorney General and Immigration Judges

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John Yoo, who was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, has reminded us of the authority of the AG vis-à-vis immigration judges.

He [the AG] has the power to overrule immigration judges. Immigration judges have been making mistakes….

Aside from the immigration judges’ error rate, it’s really quite clear that the AG can overrule them. Not only are immigration judges not Article III judges, they’re employees of the Department of Justice—they work for the AG. Beyond that, they’re not even judges; they’re Special Inquiry Officers.

Progressive-Democrat’s Bigotry

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Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) has displayed her bigotry again.  This time she’s called Stephen Miller, a senior advisor for President Donald Trump, a white nationalist.

Stephen Miller is a white nationalist. The fact that he still has influence on policy and political appointments is an outrage.

She also knows that Miller is a Jew.  This is just another of her blatant anti-Semitic bigotry, which now she’s using to smear the President over his immigration policies, because Omar is incapable of forming a coherent argument regarding immigration.

Paraphrasing her own six-year-old daughter: Knock it off. You’re a Congresswoman.

And, because the Progressive-Democratic Party agrees with her behavior, as plainly shown by their refusal to condemn her prior anti-Semitic remarks and House Party members remaining silent on this latest slur, I add this: Knock it off.  You’re a political party.

The fact that Omar still has influence in a political party is an outrage.

Backwards

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A 9th Circuit District Judge has said that illegal aliens claiming to seek asylum in the US cannot be sent back to Mexico to wait for their day in court.  The judge’s ruling held, in essence, that

…the administration lacked a legal basis under current law for adopting the policy. He also found the policy ran afoul of the US’ legal obligations not to remove people to a country where their lives or freedom are threatened.

This is wrong on both counts. The whole point of Executive Actions of any sort is to fill a gap in “current law” and so to accomplish something that a President determines needs doing.  The laws authorizing such things explicitly authorize a President to fill such gaps.  Certainly, a President cannot create new law; his Orders, Proclamations, and so on, must fit within the existing legal system—and, not being law, they can be undone by subsequent Presidents via the same mechanisms.

What’s required is a law that prevents this or that policy from being adopted by Executive Action, and that law does not exist.  This Federal judge is legislating from the bench, and that’s a violation of his oath of office.

The other wrong is the judge’s claim that moving purported asylum seekers back to Mexico to wait for their case to be heard is moving them to a nation where their lives or freedom are threatened.  This is simply nonsense. Mexico has offered these folks asylum in Mexico, and that nation has gone further: it’s offered them job opportunities so they can earn their way while they wait—or in the event they choose to stay.  Mexico is a far safer nation than any of the three Caravan Triangle nations whence most of these purported asylum seekers began their trek.  Indeed, the judge’s ruling on this aspect misreads the law.  Claimants must make their claims on the basis of the country they’re leaving, not the country from which they originated.  That’s Mexico, not Honduras, or El Salvador, or Guatemala.

There’s one other factor here, too.  These folks should have no case when their claims do come up in court.  They can’t possibly be seeking asylum when they’ve already been offered precisely that from the nation they’re trying to leave to enter the US, and rejected it.

There’ll Be Blowback

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But it’ll be badly misplaced.  President Donald Trump is moving to stop further direct aid to the Caravan Triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras over those nations’ failure to control those caravans by putting to actual use that aid—which was intended to support improved economies, the living conditions within those economies, and training to deal with gangs and the drug trade.

[T]he State Department…notified Congress that it would look to suspend 2017 and 2018 payments to the trio of nations, which have been home to some of the migrant caravans that have marched through Mexico to the US. border.

This comes as Honduras has formed and put on the road a caravan of 20,000 people.  In response to this, Trump said

We were giving them $500 million. We were giving them tremendous aid.  We were paying them tremendous amounts of money, and we’re not paying them anymore because they haven’t done a thing for us.

Indeed, the blowback has already begun.  Senator Robert Menendez (D, NJ), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is claiming

Instead of doing our part to help stabilize the situation in the Northern Triangle and stem the flow of children and refugees to our borders, President Trump reportedly wants to make matters worse by blocking resources for programs that get to the root causes of this humanitarian crisis.

Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL), a member of the same committee, presaged the blowback with his October tweet:

I understand instinct to cut US aid to punish countries for failing to stop illegal migration. But our aid to #Honduras & #Guatemala isn’t cash.  It’s primarily equipment & training to stop drugs headed to US & to deal with the gangs causing people to leave those countries.

The sad fact is, though, that neither Menendez nor Rubio understand the underlying facts, that the aid, cash and equipment and training, are not going to the folks who need it—those people being gathered up into caravans.  It’s going through those governments to the oligarchs and thieves.  The people—and the putative trainers and trainees—are not seeing a cent or a centavo of the aid, nor are they getting a single bit of the equipment or training.

Beyond that, Mexico has already offered “migrants” and “asylum seekers” jobs and job opportunities and asylum.  That these folks ignore or reject Mexico’s offer gives the lie to the claim that they’re coming here to escape terrible conditions at home or to seek the protection of another government.

Wages of Bigotry?

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It seems that some Americans are waking up to the institutional bigotry of the Progressive-Democratic Party, an awakening triggered by the blatant disregard for Party antisemitism that House Progressive-Democrats proudly displayed in their refusal last month to censure Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) over her anti-Semitic statements.  In that instance, Party chose, instead, to pass a heavily diluted resolution “disapproving” of bigotry in “all its forms,” but refusing to name the names of bigots in its own house.  Some Americans with Jewish heritage and religion are speaking up with dismay.

Mark Schwartz (D) Deputy Mayor of Teaneck, NJ:

We felt we had a home there [in the Party].  And now we feel like we have to check our passports.

Jordan Manor, a “gay Jewish Israeli-American” of Manhattan:

 The party I thought cared about me seems to disregard me when it comes to my Jewish identity.

Mark Dunec, Livingston, NJ, consultant and 2014 Progressive-Democratic candidate for Congress:

I’m physically afraid for myself and for my family.  I see my own party contributing to the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States.

A teacher in Queens has rejected Omar’s—and by extension, Pelosi’s—defense that Omar just didn’t know any better.

The fake defense she doesn’t know what she’s saying? I don’t believe it.  This is a grown woman and a member of Congress. Trying to excuse this as naivete is inexcusable.

It isn’t just anger, either; many are acting.  The Queens teacher has quit Party and now is registered as an Independent.  Allison Gangi of Manhattan, too:

The watered-down resolution triggered my decision to walk away from the Democratic Party.

That Teaneck Deputy Mayor?

Our only question now is, do we start voting Republican, or do we become Republicans?

And others, like this one, see the danger explicitly:

I’m homeless. I don’t think I can vote for Trump, even though he’s great for Israel.  But as a Jew, I can’t see a way to support the Democratic Party. It’s supporting your own destruction.