The Ashcroft Purge

Judges are meant to be impartial; but, U.S. Immigration Judges have political bosses who are willing and able to fire them while making little secret of their pro-enforcement, anti-immigrant political agenda. What are the public consequences of an Immigration Court with limited autonomy from the Executive Branch? We begin the podcast at one of the “turning points,” when Attorney General John Ashcroft fired almost all the most “liberal” Board Members of the BIA, all of whom were appointed during the Clinton Administration. What followed created havoc among the U.S. Courts of Appeals who review BIA decisions. The situation has continually deteriorated into the “worst ever,” with “rock bottom” morale, overwhelming backlogs, fading decisional quality, and the “weaponized”Immigration Courts now tasked with carrying out the Trump Administration’s extreme enforcement policies.

What is American Immigration from Mariel to Miller?

Judge (Ret.) Paul Wickham Schmidt & Podcaster Marica Sharashenidze, with an “up close and personal look” at American’s most misunderstood issue.

For nearly five decades, retired Judge Paul Wickham Schmidt has been involved in the development and application of American immigration law. From the staff of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) at the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”), to the General Counsel’s Office of the “Legacy” Immigration & Naturalization Service (“INS”), where he was the Deputy General Counsel and Acting General Counsel, to partnerships at two of America’s most distinguished law firms, Jones Day, then Fragomen, to appointment as Chairman and an Appellate Judge at the BIA, followed by 13-years on the trial bench at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, VA, the “retail level of American immigration,” until his retirement in 2016, Judge Schmidt has “seen it all” and lived much of it. Since “retiring,” he has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown Law, a proud member of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges (amici in more than 50 cases seeking to uphold due process in Immigration Court), the author of the blog immigrationcourtside.com, and an oft-quoted commentator on, and outspoken critic of, current developments in immigration law, due process, and human rights.

In this timely, hard-hitting, highly personal seven-episode series, podcaster Marica Sharashenidze interviews Judge Schmidt about six events that shaped American immigration and his life in the law: From the Mariel Boatlift and the Refugee Act of 1980, to the fundamental changes made by the Immigration Reform & Control Act of 1986 (“IRCA”), the development of the BIA in the 1990s, the infamous “Ashcroft Purge,” all the way up to the Trump Administration’s all-out assault on due process in our Immigration Courts, and ending with a more recent look at what the future might hold for both immigrants and America’s role as a nation that welcomes and depends on them.

Get some unique historical context and learn how the re-emergence and “normalization” of racism, xenophobia, false narratives, unbridled nationalism, and de-humanization of “the other” in our national immigration and refugee policies and dialogue presents an existential threat to the rights and future of every American.

Cover photo by Alice Wycklendt from https://freeimages.com/"