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Jonathan Blitzer Profile picture
@JonathanBlitzer
Sep 16, 2020 • 9 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
We're at DefCon1 levels of *gross mismanagement* @DHSgov at this point, where each day brings another massive scandal. So many of these scandals are unfolding at once, in real time, that it's worth highlighting the basic chronology of a few of them from past couple of weeks. 1/
(i) "Dept has been using major hotel chains to detain [hundreds of] children & families taken into custody at border, creating a largely unregulated shadow system of detention and swift expulsions." 2/ nytimes.com/2020/08/16/us/…
Some context: This comes at a time when the Administration is using the pretext of the public health crisis (Covid) to openly flout immigration law--ignoring asylum, deporting unaccompanied kids, and dreaming up further cuts to legal immigration. 3/ propublica.org/article/leaked…
(ii) After a @USGAO report questions the legitimacy of the Dept's acting secretary & number 2, DHS & its general counsel (Chad Mizelle) issue a blistering, ad hominem attack on the author of the report, accusing him of being a pro-Democrat deep-stater. 4/ washingtonpost.com/business/2020/…
Some context: acting secretary, Chad Wolf, spent the summer turning DHS agents loose on peaceful protestors in Portland, leading the founding head of DHS, Tom Ridge, (among others) to say that the current Admin had "perverted" the mission of dept. 5/ washingtonpost.com/national/dhs-m…
(iii) A whistle-blower complaint made public earlier this month stated that the top brass at the Dept had suppressed intelligence reports on Russian meddling & attempted to rewrite analyses of country conditions in Central America to bolster Trump. 6/ justsecurity.org/72451/whistleb…
(iv) Arguably the most scandalous of all and woefully under-covered: This summer "ICE flew detainees to Virginia so the planes could transport agents to D.C. protests. A huge coronavirus outbreak followed inside the VA detention center." 7/ washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/ic…
(v) A whistle-blower complaint from a privately run immigration detention center in GA emerges, alleging systematic abuse, medical malpractice, and forced hysterectomies of immigrant women in custody. 8/ scribd.com/document/47601…
This is just a **partial list** from the past few weeks. I know I've left things out, and would be grateful for others' input, additions, emendations. end/

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More from @JonathanBlitzer

Jonathan Blitzer Profile picture
Apr 16, 2021
Biden is on pace to resettle the fewest refugees in the history of the program. But there's also another stunning precedent being set here: he is now the first occupant of the WH to reverse his own "Presidential Determination" on the # of refugees his Admin plans to resettle. 1/
On Feb 12, the Secretary of State notified Congress that the Admin planned to resettle 62.5K refugees for the current fiscal year. That number wasn't a campaign promise or a general aspiration. It reflected an elaborate, inter-agency sign-off from State, HHS, DHS, and NSC. 2/
It was vetted, analyzed, and approved by every government stakeholder involved in the resettlement process. And the logic was crystal-clear: the Admin said that the # was "justified by grave humanitarian concerns and is in the national interest." 3/
Read 4 tweets
Jonathan Blitzer Profile picture
Mar 2, 2021
Tomorrow in Guatemala, a judge named Dina Ochoa faces a vote to be re-elected to the country’s Constitutional Court. Her critics accuse her of being corrupt. This thread includes info relevant to that conversation. It’s also about the US & the rule of law in Central America 1/
On September 9, 2019, then Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart & Dina Ochoa, at the time a magistrate on the Constitutional Court, had a meeting in Washington w Mauricio Claver-Carone, then an official at the WH (& now the controversial head of Inter-American Development Bank) 2/
Stephen Miller was angry & on edge. US was trying to get Honduras & El Salvador to follow Guate in signing a safe third country deal. Problem was: Guate, the 1st gov’t to sign, hadn’t yet implemented the deal. The Constitutional Court ruled that Congress first had to approve 3/
Read 9 tweets
Jonathan Blitzer Profile picture
Jan 30, 2021
The Trump policy closing the border to asylum seekers during the pandemic (Title 42) put Biden in a bind from day 1. The policy was adopted in bad faith, w no scientific basis. The Biden Admin acknowledges that, but still faces complex reality at border 1/ nytimes.com/2021/01/29/us/…
Keeping border partially closed to asylum seekers gives the new Admin breathing room, to restart & stand back up an asylum system that’s been dismantled over past 4 years. But, of course, it also exposes a searing moral (& legal) dilemma: you either believe in asylum or not. 2/
You can’t answer that question in a meaningful way unless you’re reckoning w genuinely confounding operational questions—not just of restarting a broken system, but of doing so during a world-historical pandemic. How, for instance, do you process large #s of people right now? 3/
Read 8 tweets
Jonathan Blitzer Profile picture
Jan 11, 2021
Chad Wolf is stepping down w barely a week left in Trump’s term. For many months Wolf’s been dogged by legal questions (& court judgments) abt how he was serving illegitimately as acting DHS sec’y. How will he be remembered in the post? 1/
He’ll go down as a Trump shill who did the bidding of the White House at the very real cost of inflicting permanent damage on DHS as an institution. His handling of protests this past summer was militant and widely decried by his Republican & Democratic predecessors. 2/
DHS agents were deployed in DC to crack down on peaceable BLM protestors. They were sent to other major cities (NYC, Philly) to police crowds. In Portland, Wolf personally riled up his agents beforehand in what one former official described to me as a “pep rally.” 3/
Read 7 tweets
Jonathan Blitzer Profile picture
Dec 22, 2020
As usual, so much vying for our attention. But tonight two members of Biden team gave the most detailed interview to date abt incoming Admin’s plans for dealing w asylum, Central American migration, & the southern border. It was more a statement of purpose than an action plan. 1/
There are very encouraging signs and, as expected, some lacunae. A few noteworthy details: (1) The advisors said Biden will “expand legal pathways for migration...allowing people to apply for refugee resettlement & temporary worker and employment-based programs” in the region. 2/
All presidential admins (some MUCH more cynically than others) stress the dangerousness of the overland journey to the US. It obviously *is* dangerous. It’s also true that large #s of those arriving at US border don’t qualify for asylum under strict dictates of US imm law. 3/
Read 17 tweets
Jonathan Blitzer Profile picture
Oct 30, 2020
Absolute blockbuster report from @aflores w an early look at unpublished DHS IG report. At the peak of the family separation crisis in spring/summer of 2018, DHS officials insisted that there was a right and a wrong way to seek asylum at the border. 1/ buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfo…
The "wrong way" was to cross the border *between ports of entry*. Anyone who did this was fair game for prosecution (i.e. separation from children). The "right way" was to ask for asylum at ports of entry. (This formulation isn't accurate or legal, but that's another issue.) 2/
According to this report, DHS was doing 2 things at the same time as it was telling people (falsely) that their only legitimate option for seeking asylum was to go to ports. (1) It formally instituted metering *at the ports* as a way to keep out up to 650 immigrants per day. 3/
Read 6 tweets

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