🚨 New! A.G. Barr takes ANOTHER whack at the asylum process, issuing a new precedential decision in Matter of A-C-A-A-, 28 I&N Dec. 84 (A.G. 2020) and giving both immigration judges and the BIA more leeway to deny asylum claims.
Before I go through this latest attack on the asylum process, please enjoy a picture of Petra, who is a Very Good Cat. I hope this softens the blow a tiny bit.
A.G. Barr begins his decision (issued under authority to set precedent in immigration court) by basically saying that the Board of Immigration Appeals hasn't been digging deeply enough in every single case to find ways to deny people asylum. It's hard to read it otherwise.
In the underlying decision, the respondent was found to be credible and to have suffered past persecution on the basis of membership in a particular social group. Because of changed circumstances, the judge found no well-founded fear, but granted humanitarian asylum.
Notably, DHS did NOT appeal the grant of humanitarian asylum. Instead, they only appealed the IJ's finding that the respondent was credible and that the IJ shouldn't have found past persecution.
The BIA affirmed the IJ's decision in a very brief order.
Despite the fact that DHS did NOT appeal the grant of humanitarian asylum, A.G. Barr believes that the BIA should have evaluated whether or not the IJ should have granted humanitarian asylum anyway.
A.G. Barr lays out here the role he sees the BIA as playing in asylum cases under what he articulate as "de novo review."
Basically, question everything, dig through the record, and find ways to deny applicants.
In the decision, Barr basically tells the BIA to utterly ignore all normal rules of appellate procedure. Who cares if the government didn't raise an issue—or even stipulated to an issue! The BIA should ignore all of that and go digging through the record.
This decision makes even more clear that the immigration courts are fully broken. They have been politicized to death and are now fundamentally incompatible with due process.
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NEW: As the Trump admin is flying Afrikaners here today to be resettled as "refugees," @Sec_Noem is terminating Temporary Protected Status for Afghanistan — meaning they may start deporting women and allies who protected our troops to the Taliban to be persecuted or killed!
If @Sec_Noem were to visit Afghanistan, she would be banned from even SPEAKING IN PUBLIC, and yet today she declares that deporting people to the Taliban is actually completely fine — while Trump welcomes a planeload of Afrikaners allegedly facing "persecution."
According to @DHSGov, Secretary Noem's decision today will strip protected status from nearly 12,000 Afghans, most here since Operation Allies Welcome in 2022.
Congress failed by a whisker to give them all a path to permanent legal status; now Trump wants them all deported.
UPDATE: The judge's decision on this came out last night, and it's a DOOZY.
It exposes how the Trump admin stripped a guy of a student visa because Betar tweeted about him, then issued an ICE arrest warrant for him based on an outright lie just 48 hours after Betar's tweet.
Judge Kelly found that ICE's arrest of Mr. Ercelik was intended to punish him for pro-Palestinian advocacy.
The DHS warrant issued 48 hours after Betar's tweet said it was because he had been placed into removal proceedings. That was a lie. It didn't happen until 15 days later.
The judge found that Mr. Ercelik was arrested and detained by ICE because of Betar's advocacy in support of deporting students who have engaged in pro-Palestine advocacy:
"Respondents’ pursuit of detention seems to have been almost exclusively triggered by Betar Worldwide."
WHOA. This case wasn’t even on my radar. So this guy had to go to court to get ICE not to arrest and detain him on the way to the airport where he’s planning on leaving the country?!
@johnhawkinson reports that the judge just granted a habeas petition — required so he can leave!
The Trump admin’s position here is that they want a judge to halt her order granting a guy the right to self-deport — because they want to instead detain him, keep him in custody for weeks/months, and THEN deport him.
She ruled that ICE is trying to punish him, not deport him.
Ack sorry. Hasn’t granted yet, but looks like she’s about to.
HOLY CRAP. The D.V.D. litigators say the Trump administration’s planned flight to Libya is going to be for ASIAN nationals, including Cambodians, Filipinos, and Vietnamese people — and that say that ICE is throwing people into solitary for refusing to agree to be sent to Libya!
According to litigators, on Tuesday, at one detention center in Texas, ICE gathered together 1 Vietnamese, 1 Lao, and 4 other people in detention and ordered them to sign paperwork agreeing to be sent to Libya.
All 6 refused, so ICE handcuffed them and threw them into solitary.
Just moments ago, Judge Murphy issued an order telling ICE that any efforts to deport non-Libyans to Libya without giving them an opportunity to object and raise a fear of torture “would clearly violate this Court’s Order.”
He’s putting ICE on notice that it would be illegal.
Here's a quick 🧵 on WHY this Trump-appointed judge ruled the way he did.
First, look at the actual text of the Alien Enemies Act itself. It can only be used during a "declared war" or any "invasion or predatory incursion" by a foreign nation or government against the U.S.
Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act claimed that (1) Tren de Aragua is a "foreign nation or government" because it's controlled by Venezuela, and (2) that the gang was "perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion" against the US with its criminal acts.
2/4
However, the overwhelming weight of historical evidence, as cited by the judge today, makes clear that when Congress wrote the Alien Enemies Act in 1798, "invasion" and "predatory incursion" referred specifically to MILITARY action. Here are some examples cited by the judge.
NEW! Two weeks ago Trump was stopped from sending more people to be imprisoned in El Salvador. Now we're learning who they were — and the stories are OUTRAGEOUS.
One guy was accused of being in TdA because of his tattoos, which include Pikachu, Toad, and Patrick from SpongeBob!
Another man facing imminent risk of being imprisoned in El Salvador potentially for life is a guy working at H-E-B- and doing Doordash on the side.
His tattoos? A pocket watch with the date his father passed away, and roses to honor his family. ICE said they were gang tattoos!
All of this is happening even though experts have repeatedly said TREN DE ARAGUA DO NOT USE GANG TATTOOS. They are not like MS-13, a gang with a formalized set of tattoos.
So these men were going to be imprisoned without trial or due process based on a complete fiction!