I often hear @prisonculture discuss that prisons and policing put a “ceiling on our imaginations.” I think this article provides a tragic illustration of the ceiling on the imagination effect in immigration advocacy. https://twitter.com/MHackman/status/1200077294787792898

One bit of background not in the story: Most advocates, lawyers etc. that I know want an “independent immigration court” i.e. one not under the thumb of a maniacal throwback racist like William Barr.

So this story is about how judges in one court are “not going with the flow” of one of this admin’s most brutal and effective white nationalist initiatives.

This particular form of hashtag resistance comes in the form of judges rejecting many ICE deportation cases against people forced back to Mexico under the #MigrantPersecutionProtocols.

Probably most of the rejections are for “notice” issues. ICE has to show that they notified someone of hearings, but because they don’t really know where anyone forced back to Mexico is staying they do silly stuff like pick a random shelter to mail to, or Facebook message people.

So these judges are saying: nope, sorry, not good enough. And they’re throwing out the deportation case. Yay, right?

Except this will actually have almost no material effect in the real world.

The article says this is “undermining the . . . goal of quickly ordering the deportation of more illegal border crossers who request asylum . . .”

Leaving aside the errors and racist framing of that sentence, who cares? They were already physically deported to a refugee camp.

If they tried to re-enter tomorrow, they’d be put back in the same program (i.e. forcibly removed to prison camp conditions again).

All this does is scratch some due process fetishist itch.

But this is what independent immigration judges gets us. AND interest in things like the independence of immigration judges sets this story up as a fight between some rogue justice-pursuers and an evil administration, when actually effectively nothing is at stake here.

I just can’t get behind demanding faithful administrators of violent and racist laws. And I really believe that whenever some dem gets into office, y’all are going to be complicit in letting them off the hook when they make BS changes and leave those violent racist laws in place.

Like, really? We’re calling this a “rebellion”?