What America voted for

If you voted for any Republican last fall, you voted for this. If you voted for Trump, you voted for this explicitly.

From an immigration lawyer in the DC area:

Dealing with ICE, or how a 63-year-old grandma is about to be deported to Nicaragua

Nicaragua, by the way, is a single-party authoritarian state run by Daniel Ortega who was first elected president in *2006*. Amazingly, during several of his reelection campaigns Ortega had the good fortune to run against people who ended up being arrested on various Very Serious Not At All Trumped Up charges. It doesn’t get the press that Venezuela gets because I guess VZ has some of that old-timey Communist vibe, but Nicaragua is just as bad.

Monday, I get the message I have been dreading since January – “they detained my mom at her ICE check-in today.” [not an actual quote as the message was in Spanish] I know they’re trying to use expedited removal to try and deport people who were paroled into the US under various Biden-era policies before they can have their asylum claims adjudicated. We just got her asylum petition in last week and it still wasn’t showing in the system, so they put this 4’11” grandma in wrist, arm and leg shackles. She was being held in Baltimore.

I haven’t had a detained client since the first Trump administration. I had a few folks who were detained try and retain me during Biden years, but I would just recommend another lawyer because I didn’t want to deal with that. Now it’s unavoidable. ICE has an online e-filing system to file G-28 forms, which basically say I am the individual’s counsel and the government can communicate with me about the case. I file online and then literally drive a copy up to the Baltimore ICE field office. Under the regulations, even when the government is trying to use expedited removal, the detainee is still entitled to a credible fear interview and to be able to consult with counsel in a confidential, attorney-client privileged area that the government is supposed to provide (maybe they think their only duty is to “facilitate” such communication). I tell my client’s daughter to have her mom request a CFI, and I also make a formal CFI request in writing, along with a bond request, both through email, and again by literally driving physical copies to the ICE field office in Baltimore. I went up on Wednesday to leave the requests knowing that the office closes at 4:30. After grinding through both DC and Baltimore rush hour traffice, I arrive at 4:20, only to have the security guards tell me that the ICE field office “closed early.” So I had to get back there yesterday with the physical copies, even though I had already submitted these requests via email. Between Monday, Wednesday and yesterday, I have spent more than 7 hours total driving to and from Baltimore from northern Virginia.

The daughter calls me today and tells me that her mom has been shipped to a detention center in Texas. I immediately renew my requests with the Harlingen, TX ICE field office via email. On the website for the detention center where she is being held, there is a phone number to call in order to find out who is her deportation officer and how I can get in touch with them (they’re ALL they/them now). When you call the number, literally no answer. I called 5 different times, no answer. Not even an annoying AI chatbot.

At this point, I’m out of ideas. I’ve been leaning on the local bar to see if anyone else has ideas of things that I haven’t tried yet. Perhaps a habeas petition, but I’ll need to find someone admitted to whatever godforsaken Texas federal district court has jurisdiction just to bring the action. And I’m not even certain that will get the job done.

So this 63 year old grandma who fled Nicaragua because her family was targeted by police and the Sandinista’s secret police because her family was involved in anti-Sandinista protests in 2018 … is now likely to be deported back to Nicaragua. The story here isn’t that the government is trying to speed up deportations, it’s that they are trying to deny deportees the legal avenues they have BY LAW to avoid deportation. And they do not care about communicating with counsel because that just slows them down. No answer at the phone line, no responses to email, nobody with any decision-making authority who will speak to me in person when I’m standing right there in the lobby of the field office. Nobody at DHS to complain to, and any order of a federal court will just be used to wipe Tom Homan’s ass once she is ten toes down in Managua.

Again, this elderly woman has no criminal history of any kind and a legal pending asylum claim.

The Biden administration instituted parole policies for various groups which basically glide-path’d their entry into the US in order to try and obtain some relief from deportation. Usually asylum but there are other very limited means of relief. These were for people from various countries like Afghanistan, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Ukraine. The current administration are unwinding all of those paroles and trying to deport anyone they can find who is arguably deportable. It’s new policy changes every day and policy execution intended to frustrate immigrants and their counsel.

In case any of your MAGA relatives think that they’re only deporting “the bad hombres.” Tell them they’re full of shit. If you even deign to speak to them anymore.

To be clear, the Biden administration’s immigration policies were bad. The Trump administration’s policies are much, much worse. “Bad” should be preferred to “much, much worse than bad,” which I believe may be one of those tautology thingees that they teach in the cultural Marxist classes in college, unless you need to at all costs maintain the purity of your precious political fluids.

This is sickening and enraging and it is happening to thousands of people every day right now, because the Donald Trump is a fascist, and the Republican party is a fascist party, and everyone associated with either should be treated accordingly.