TED HESSON @ POLITICO: Is Trump Winning The Border Battle?

Ted Hesson, Immigration, Pro — Staff mugshots photographed Feb. 20, 2018. (M. Scott Mahaskey/Politico)

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Trump’s plan to stem border crossings gets results

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Ted Hesson

President Donald Trump’s plan to force Mexico to stem the flow of migrants across the southwest border of the U.S. appears to be working. Border arrests, a metric for illegal crossings, plummeted to 51,000 in August, according to preliminary government fig…

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Trump’s “methods” are highly problematic in terms of human lives and legal requirements. Also, since the “enforcement only” approach fails to deal with the causes of forced migration, I doubt that the “success” will be sustainable in the long run.

PWS

09-08-19

GET READY NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY — Trump & Miller Planning All-Out White Nationalist Assault On Constitution, Rule Of Law, Asylum, Immigrants, & People Of Color!

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/08/trump-immigration-agency-head-1332660

 

Trump White House plots amped-up immigration crackdown

The purge of Homeland Security leaders will allow the president to shift direction on policy.

President Donald Trump’s dramatic purge of Homeland Security leaders is about more than personnel: It helps clear the way for him to take controversial new steps to curb illegal immigration, including an updated version of his furiously criticized family separation policy.

Leading the new charge is Trump’s top White House immigration aide Stephen Miller, who wants tent cities to house migrants on the border and is pressing to extend the amount of time U.S. immigration officials can detain migrant children beyond the current 20-day limit imposed by a federal judge. Miller wants to force migrant parents arrested at the border to choose between splitting apart from their children or remaining together indefinitely in detention while awaiting court proceedings, according to five people familiar with the plans.

Those hard-line policies could get new traction after a major staffing shakeup at the Homeland Security Department over the past several days. Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned Sunday and Secret Service Director Randolph Alles was ousted Monday. Those moves came after the White House on Friday unexpectedly withdrew its nominee for director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ronald Vitiello. Other officials could be on the chopping block in coming days, according to three other people familiar with the White House’s considerations.

The dramatic proposals and leadership purge are politically risky — family separation has sparked more political anger than almost any other issue in Trump’s presidency — and come as Trump has alarmed his fellow Republicans with abrupt threats to kill Obamacare and to shut down the border. But Trump is determined to make immigration central to his reelection push, betting that he can once again energize his core conservative voters on a promise to secure America’s borders.

Trump and Miller have become increasingly frustrated as the number of Central American migrants massing at the southwest border surges to levels not seen in a decade. Now Miller — who’s even started calling mid-level federal officials to demand they do more to stem the influx — will have a new opportunity to pursue his tougher approach amid the leadership vacuum at DHS.

Trump said Sunday that Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan would become acting DHS secretary. Other top DHS positions currently filled by acting officials will be the deputy secretary, ICE director, inspector general and administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Three of those jobs lack a nominee from the White House.

Miller did not respond to a request for comment.

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a plan to send certain non-Mexican asylum seekers back to Mexico while they await a resolution to their case. The order will not be effective until Friday evening, which allows the administration a chance for a quick appeal.

Still, Miller has a set of new policies he wants to try, according to the five people familiar with the plans, including a “binary choice” between separation or joint detention for families, an idea that first surfaced in the run-up to the midterm elections. Miller also wants to fast-track the regulation that would allow migrant children to be detained for longer than the 20-day limit. He’s eager to finalize the so-called public charge rule, which could block immigrants from obtaining a green card if they’ve received public benefits in the past or are deemed likely to do so in the future.

In addition, Miller has pressed for the federal government to set up tent cities along the border, so that cases can be swiftly resolved — and migrants with non-meritorious claims can be deported.

He’s also pushing for the purge at DHS to continue.

“If you lose Claire, and John, and Francis, I don’t know where that leaves us. But it’s not in a good place,” this person said.

At least some of the personnel moves are getting pushback from immigration restrictionist groups, who like Cissna’s approach.

Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a grassroots organization that seeks lower levels of immigration, said he’s confounded by reports that Cissna may be removed from his post at USCIS.

“He’s great. He’s worked in this issue for years, he’s extremely knowledgeable,” Beck said. “He’s exactly the type of person who needs to be in DHS in leadership.”

But Miller has pressed Cissna, unsuccessfully, to launch more experimentally and legally questionable policies, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Cissna’s defenders contend that he tried to adhere to the law while Miller pressed to overstep legal boundaries.

“If they push out the uber-competent guy that the left hates because he’s getting things done within the law and the right loves because he’s actually being faithful to the president’s campaign promises, they’re even bigger idiots than we already know,” one former DHS official said.

Eliana Johnson, Gabby Orr, Josh Gerstein and Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.

 

TED HESSON @ POLITICO: What’s REALLY Happening At The Border — Not Surprisingly, It Bears Little Resemblance To Trump’s Largely False & Contrived “Panic Narratives” — Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) Says: “In my community when these families are released, the community … scrambles and works hard to create hospitality centers, to feed these people, to help get them to their final destination. If we can do it with a fraction of the resources and power of the federal government, surely DHS can find a better solution.”

https://politi.co/2FtPtru

Ted Hesson, Immigration, Pro — Staff mugshots photographed Feb. 20, 2018. (M. Scott Mahaskey/Politico)

Ted Hesson reports for Politico:

The border crisis that President Donald Trump used to justify declaring a national emergency was never real, but a different crisis at the border is now starting to escalate as immigration officials hold hundreds of parents and children in makeshift facilities, including a parking lot.

During a press conference in El Paso, Texas, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan argued Wednesday that a surge of incoming Central American migrants has pushed the U.S. immigration system to a “breaking point” and that all available resources should be devoted to manage it.

Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), a freshman lawmaker who represents El Paso, fumed Thursday over the border situation — which she also described as a crisis — during an interview after leaving the House floor.

“They knew that the numbers would increase,” she said. “Why were they not planning?”

Here’s what’s really happening now at the border:

The president’s frequent claims that unprecedented numbers of undocumented migrants are streaming into the country remain untrue. (Twice as many came during the 1990s and early 2000s.) And President Trump’s caricature of border-crossers as violent criminals is still belied by study after study showing that immigrants in general, and undocumented immigrants in particular, commit fewer crimes than the native-born.

“We have a capacity crisis, if you want to think of it that way,” Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) told POLITICO. “We don’t have capacity to deal with the populations that they’re getting at the border right now.”

Border Patrol anticipates that it will apprehend more than 55,000 family members in March, by far the highest monthly total since such record-keeping began in fiscal year 2012. The warmer spring and summer months ahead will likely bring even higher numbers.

The adult men from Mexico who a decade ago constituted most border migrants were able to be returned more swiftly, often simply by walking them across the border. While they were detained, the men required comparatively little in the way of social or medical services.

Furthermore, a 2008 federal law and related bilateral agreement allowed the U.S. to repatriate Mexican unaccompanied minors rapidly. The law, called the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, does not similarly authorize quick deportation for children from Central America.

By contrast, the greater volume of children among the new Central American migrants imposes on immigration agencies a need for more psychologists, nutritionists, educators and a host of others. Border officials contend that with the rise in families and children, more migrants have health issues than in the past.

Federal court orders in recent years have limited to 20 days the time children can be kept in detention, which means border agents often must release families into the interior. Such releases speed up processing, but demoralize agents and may encourage more migration, McAleenan argued.

The current migratory flow is also different because of the greater proportion of asylum applications at the border in recent years. Central American families arriving at the border frequently seek such refuge, which puts them into an immigration process that can take years to resolve.

The Trump administration argues that the asylum claims largely lack merit, but immigration court statistics don’t back that up. Roughly 25 percent of defensive asylum applications were approved by an immigration judge in fiscal year 2017, with 41 percent denied and 34 percent resolved in another manner, such as a withdrawn application.

Still, immigration hard-liners contend that lax asylum laws have been a magnet for Central Americans.

Mark Krikorian, director of the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies, compared the current influx at the border to Europe’s migratory surge in 2015.

“We are seeing an Angela Merkel-style disaster on the border caused by loopholes in our laws that the Democrats refuse to even consider changing,” he said.

Democrats and advocates argue that the Trump administration’s response has exacerbated problems at the border.

Administration officials have known for months — arguably years — that more migrant families could trek to the United States, yet they appear to have been caught flat-footed.

During McAleenan’s press conference in El Paso Wednesday, reporters observed hundreds of parents and children held in a parking lot converted into a makeshift detention center.

“That’s their solution? That’s not a solution,” Escobar said. “In my community when these families are released, the community … scrambles and works hard to create hospitality centers, to feed these people, to help get them to their final destination. If we can do it with a fraction of the resources and power of the federal government, surely DHS can find a better solution.”

“They’ve been acting and responding in the same way over the last five years despite the change in the migration pattern,” she said.

The spending package approved by Congress in February included $192 million to construct a large processing center for migrant families in El Paso. The facility will house multiple agencies that deal with families in one building, but will take six months to a year to become functional, according to Escobar.

In the meantime, the Texas Democrat argues that if Trump truly deems immigration a national emergency, he should work harder to house and care for incoming migrants, perhaps with Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers or Red Cross assistance.

Under a January 2017 Trump executive order, federal immigration officials remain tasked with arresting and detaining as many migrants as possible, without a system of prioritization. Advocates contend the enforcement push has sapped resources that could be used to address the care and custody of newly arrived migrant families.

“They just detain any grandpa or mom that they find in the interior and they don’t prioritize who they should be putting in detention,” said Kerri Talbot, a director with the Washington, D.C.-based Immigration Hub. “They don’t need any more money, they need a new strategy.”

Under its “zero tolerance” strategy, the Trump administration sought to prosecute all suspect border crossers for illegal entry. Children couldn’t travel with their parents to criminal detention facilities, so they were reclassified as “unaccompanied” and transferred to the custody of the Health and Human Services Department. Thousands of families were split apart from April until June, only to see Trump reverse the policy and a federal judge order families reunited.

The administration also has sought to keep asylum-seeking migrants in Mexico for longer periods of time.

Using a practice known as “metering,” border officials have forced families to wait in Mexico, only accepting a certain number of asylum applicants at ports of entry each day.

“They’re afraid of waiting in Mexico until they can get in at the port,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “They’re balancing that against their desire to do it legally. And I definitely think its emboldening the smugglers to go to those who are waiting.”

McAleenan acknowledged during a December Senate committee hearing that metering could lead to an increase in the number of people attempting to cross the border illegally, saying it’s “certainly a concern.”

Still, the Trump administration has moved forward with a separate policy to keep asylum seekers in Mexico for extended periods of time.

The administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy — announced in late December and now implemented in several areas along the border — forces certain non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico during the duration of an asylum case.

At the same time, the administration has moved slowly to disperse funding to address root causes of migration in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

POLITICO reported this week that hundreds of millions in aid dollars remain stalled at the White House budget office as aides wonder how seriously to take Trump’s threats to cut the funding.

“Mexico is doing NOTHING to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants to our Country. They are all talk and no action,“ Trump tweeted Thursday. “Likewise, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have taken our money for years, and do Nothing. The Dems don’t care, such BAD laws. May close the Southern Border!“

Trump’s unwise threat to “close” the Southern Border could turn a humanitarian situation into a self-created international crisis. And, Trump continues to be the “best friend” of smugglers, cartels, and gangs.
There is a clear and present threat to our national security. It’s not desperate refugees (mostly women, children, and families) seeking to exercise their legal rights; unfortunately, it’s our President.
PWS
03-31-19

U.S. WHITE NATIONALIST REGIME PLANNING TO JOIN WORLD’S MOST REPRESSIVE AND SELFISH BANANA REPUBLICS BY TOTALLY ABANDONING REFUGEE COMMITMENT — “ZERO IMMIGRATION” APPEARS TO BE GOAL OF RACISTS MILLER, SESSIONS, & TRUMP!

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/02/trump-immigration-refugee-caps-759708?cid=apn

Nahal Toosi – Editorial – POLITICO staff, January 23, 2014. (M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO)
Thanks for looking! Don’t hesitate to like us! © Caffery Photo (www.cafferyphoto.com)

From Politico:

‘Miller is not deterred’: Top immigration aide pushing cuts in refugee numbers

The president suggested going as low as just 5,000, according to a former administration official.

President Donald Trump last year advocated dropping the refugee cap as low as 5,000 people, down from 50,000, according to a former administration official – a cut far more drastic than even his most hawkish adviser, Stephen Miller, proposed at the time.

Ultimately, the administration restricted to 45,000 the flow of refugees into the U.S. this fiscal year – the lowest since the program began in 1980, and less than half the target of 110,000 that President Barack Obama set in his last planning cycle.

But the discussion set the terms of the administration’s refugee policymaking. Now Miller and a group of like-minded aides are pressing to reduce drastically the number of people entering the U.S., both legally and illegally.

The immigration hawks are moving forward despite the blowback they got over their imposition of a “zero tolerance” prosecution policy at the southern border that resulted in the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration officials and outside White House advisers.

One Republican close to the White House and a former White House official familiar with the discussions predicted the cap could fall as low as 15,000 in 2019, continuing a contraction of overall immigration, both legal and illegal. A tiny group of key administration officials led by the National Security Council’s Mira Ricardel were planning to meet Friday to debate the coming year’s refugee cap. Late Thursday, however, a White House official said the meeting about refugees had been postponed. It is not yet determined when it will be rescheduled.

“Inside the Washington beltway, this is a numbers game that’s being carried out by people who don’t care about refugees and are orienting this to their base,” said Anne Richard, who was assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration in the Obama administration

Miller, a policy adviser to Trump since the campaign and, before that, an aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, has made immigration his signature issue. White House officials are loath to cross him given his passion for the subject and his close relationship with the president, according to people familiar with dynamics inside the administration.

“Miller is not deterred,” said one Republican close to the White House. “He is an adamant believer in stopping any immigration, and the president thinks it plays well with his base.”

Miller declined to comment. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Behind the scenes, Miller, 32, has been contacting every relevant Cabinet secretary to convey his interpretation of the president’s thoughts on the refugee cap in an effort to sway the decision, said a former White House official familiar with the discussions.

The wild card is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. No one is quite sure where he stands on the matter – but his State Department is stocked with Miller allies, including deputy assistant secretary of state Andrew Veprek and John Zadrozny, who’s been named to Pompeo’s policy planning staff.

“Is Pompeo going to let his department be used by Miller as an arm of the Domestic Policy Council?” asked the former White House official. “Is he going to take his marching orders from a thirtysomething who’s orchestrated a hostile takeover? This is the moment for Pompeo to show that he is running his own show over there.”

When asked for comment, a State Department official said “each year the president makes an annual determination, after appropriate consultation with Congress, regarding the refugee admissions ceiling for the following fiscal year. That determination is expected to be made prior to the start of fiscal year 2019 on October 1, 2018.”

The refugee cap is just one of several hawkish policies that Miller and his like-minded allies throughout the federal agencies are pursuing on immigration. Through rule-making and executive authority, the Trump administration continues to explore ways to narrow asylum eligibility requirements; to detain together families who cross the border illegally; and to reduce the number of people who acquire legal immigration status through “cancellation of removal” – one of the few avenues left for certain undocumented immigrants.

Inside the country, the Miller cadre intends to make life more difficult for undocumented immigrants already living and working here. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said another Republican close to the White House, intends to continue with its increased focus on worksite enforcement.

This long laundry list of policies to reduce immigration comes on the heels of the “zero-tolerance” policy, which the administration effectively ended following outcry from conservative religious leaders, Republican lawmakers, and even many White House staffers. The administration is now under a federal court order to reunify the parents and children that it separated as a result of the policy.

Miller was distraught in the aftermath of the zero tolerance fiasco, said two Republicans close to the White House. He considered zero tolerance an essential component to his efforts to deter immigration. For his troubles, he got heckled at D.C. restaurants, prompting him in one instance angrily to pitch $80 worth of takeout sushi into a trash bin. Protesters showed up at his apartment complex chanting, “Stephen Miller/ You’re a villain/ Locking up/ innocent children.”

But Miller and other immigration hardliners quickly recovered, and have continued to hold under-the-radar meetings to pursue policies that already are altering the U.S.’s self-perception as a nation of immigrants. White House chief of staff John Kelly is broadly supportive of these efforts, and Miller has been careful to keep his plans fairly secret, speaking only infrequently in larger White House meetings, according to two Republicans close to the White House.

Despite signing an executive order that largely reversed the zero tolerance policy that Miller championed, Trump strongly supports Miller’s efforts because he views immigration as a winning political issue as he heads into the 2018 midterms–one that puts Democrats on the defensive.

“On the political side of things, the Democrats have put themselves now in more peril than ever,” a White House official told POLITICO in June during the height of the family separations. “Through their uninformed, highly inaccurate hysteria, they have elevated the issue of immigration and border security to the forefront of the mid-terms, and this is a much better issue for Republicans. So the reality is they are turning off a lot of swing voters, and they are also motivating a lot of Republican-leaning moderate and conservative voters to go out and vote.”

A recent Gallup poll found the share of Republicans who agreed that immigration was the country’s most important problem doubled at the height of the administration’s family separations policy. In July, 35 percent of Republicans called it a top issue, up from 17 percent in May.

The question remains whether the increased Republican interest in immigration represented support for or opposition to Trump’s family separations policy. A strong majority of Republican voters — 76 percent — approved of how Trump handled family separations at the border, according to a Quinnipiac University pollfrom early July. But the same poll found a similar percentage of Republicans — 70 percent — agreeing that the Trump administration must be held responsible for reunifying separated parents and children.

In Republican congressional primaries, candidates have adopted Trump’s tone on immigration, but no one knows how that will play in the general election, according to Rick Wilson, a Florida-based Republican strategist and Trump critic.

“It pleases Donald Trump, it pleases a certain portion of the base,” Wilson said. “But it’s not without its own downside risks.” Among these, he said, is alienating suburban women and Hispanic voters. “You’re holding onto a base you were going to hold onto anyway.”

Limiting refugee numbers may also upset religious groups that historically have handled resettlement for the government. If the Trump administration opts for a lower refugee ceiling, that may also scale back funding to the nine religious and charity agencies that facilitate the process nationwide.

The State Department’s refugee bureau signaled a possible spending drawdown in a March request for resettlement proposals, saying it “expects to fund a smaller number of recipient agencies” in fiscal year 2019.

Refugee organizations will lobby Pompeo, publicly and privately, to defend the program. The secretary praised “the strength, courage, and resilience of millions of refugees worldwide” during World Refugee Day in June, but also is considering the possible elimination of the department’s refugee office.

“The refugee resettlement program is about so much more than just saving lives,” said Melanie Nezer, senior vice president of public affairs at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a resettlement agency. “It’s also a diplomatic tool, it’s a foreign policy tool, it stabilizes countries that are hosting the refugees.”

The United Nations refugee agency has identified 1.4 million refugees worldwide in need of resettlement, of whom only a small number are placed each year. In 2017, for instance, the U.N. sent just 75,000 refugees to receiving nations for resettlement, according to an annual report.

Kay Bellor, a vice president with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said refugees could be stranded in host countries such as Turkey and Lebanon if the U.S. doesn’t open its doors.

“They’re languishing in refugee camps, their kids are not getting educated, they’re not contributing economically. It’s a pretty horrible situation,” she said. “You’re going to warehouse people who otherwise would be able to move on with their lives.”

Bellor added that it would send a “terrible signal” to host countries. “It’s hard to imagine how this might impact their response,” she said.

The Trump administration argued last year that refugee resources should be shifted to reduce the backlog of asylum seekers in the U.S., which stood at more than 300,000 cases in January.

Nezer doesn’t accept that rationale. “There’s no credible evidence that getting rid of the program serves any purpose other than to keep people out,” she said.

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Will the asylum system, which is created by statute, and the withholding of removal system, which is guaranteed by statute enforcing an international treaty obligation, be “the last stand of America” as country that respects human rights and the rule of law?

Perhaps asylum will continue; but, not if Jeff Sessions has anything to say about it. He’s actively in the process of “deconstructing” U.S. asylum law and reducing it to nothing.

This Congress won’t stop him. Will the Article III Courts? While they have been critical of many aspects of the BIA’s performance and Sessions’s border policies, they have been avoiding the real issue: How can you have Due Process of law in a system run by an overt White Nationalist xenophobic racist with no respect for the Constitution, human dignity, or the rule of law and who publicly favors one party, the DHS.  Not much respect for the Article IIIs either as shown by the flippant, disrespectful, disingenuous “in your face judge” response to Judge Sabraw by Sessions’s DOJ lawyers in the “child separation” case. (Judge not amused; more on that later.)

If the Article IIIs, including the spineless Supremes, don’t have the courage to stand up to this authoritarian scofflaw Administration on the immigration charade that is unfolding right now, they might find themselves swallowed up  by the Trump Swamp themselves. And, I don’t know who will be “willing or able” to throw them a lifeline.

PWS

08-02-18

TED HESSON @ POLITICO: DHS TO ACLU ON SEPARATED PARENTS: “Go find ‘Em Yourself. Not Our Problem!”

Ted Hesson reports for Politico:

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Yeah, as I was saying about lack of accountability in my previous posting. Seems like it’s time for the U.S. District Judge to start issuing some contempt citations for Government officials and lawyers. Perhaps a few days in jail for Secretary Nielsen would light a fire under her to correct the Constitutional abuses undertaken under her authority. And it seems to me that the disingenuous court filings from DOJ in behalf of DHS are more than enough to file disciplinary actions against the DOJ Attorneys and to haul Sessions into court for possible contempt proceedings.

As I’ve said before, if any private lawyer conducted themselves before the District Court the way the Trump Administration did in this case, he or she would be in danger of losing both freedom and license to practice law. But, the laws don’t seem to apply to this Administration the way they do to the rest of us.

PWS

08-02-18

TED HESSON @ POLITICO: Court Rulings Might Not Keep Dreamers From Losing Work Authorization

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/05/dreamers-disruption-immigration-court-orders-385096?cid=apn

Ted Hesson writes at Politico:

“Thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children could face disruptions in their ability to work, even though the Trump administration has for months been under a federal court order to renew protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The problem arises chiefly from the Department of Homeland Security’s refusal to prioritize those DACA renewals due to expire soonest. Instead, the applications are being processed in the order in which they were filed. Consequently, many so-called Dreamers who’ve applied to renew will see their DACA protections expire before DHS acts, increasing their risk of being fired from their jobs or, possibly, being arrested and deported.

“You can’t just say, ‘Don’t show up to work and we’ll kind of keep paying you,’ or ‘wink wink, nod nod,’” said Todd Schulte, president of the pro-immigration FWD.us. “I just think we should assume that a ton of these people are going to lose their jobs.”

DHS did not respond to a request to clarify its enforcement policy for people with recently expired DACA grants.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services estimates 13,090 people have grants that will expire in March. Of those, 4,470 had a renewal pending as of Jan. 31. USCIS, the division of DHS that administers DACA, makes an effort to process DACA renewals within 120 days, but it doesn’t always move that fast, according to Leon Rodriguez, director of USCIS from 2014 to 2017.

The need to process DACA renewals quickly was unforeseen last September, when President Donald Trump announced that he would sunset the Obama-era program. Trump halted DACA renewals in early October and set March 5 — Monday — as a deadline for Congress to take action to protect Dreamers. After that date, Dreamers would start losing DACA protections in large numbers.

But Congress didn’t act, at least partly because San Francisco-based U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup largely mooted the March 5 deadline in early January when he ordered DHS to resume DACA renewals. A Brooklyn-based federal judge issued a similar ruling in mid-February. The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court to intervene, but the high court declined, choosing instead to allow the matter proceed through the lower courts.

USCIS resumed DACA renewals in January, but that unplanned resumption has not proceeded smoothly. “When you have a lot of stopping and starting of activity,” said Rodriguez, “that poses some risk that something might be set up the wrong way and some group of people not be handled as expeditiously as they should,” he said.

“I think it is going to keep getting more chaotic,” Rodriguez said of the weeks ahead.

The agency’s refusal to pull out of the queue renewals that are due to expire soonest (as, for instance, airlines do at the check-in line for passengers whose planes will take off soonest) poses an enormous problem for those Dreamers who filed for renewal after Judge Alsup’s Jan. 9 order.

But another difficulty is that not many Dreamers took advantage of the court ruling, possibly because uncertainty over whether Alsup’s order would be overruled by the Supreme Court left them reluctant to pay the $495 renewal fee. The Supreme Court didn’t announce that it would let Alsup’s order stand until Feb. 26.

. . . .

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Please go on over to Politico at the above link to read Ted’s complete analysis.

I suspect that there might be more legal challenges in the offing, from both the Dreamers and their employers. To date, the Government has pretty much “lost ’em all” when it comes to DACA, a trend that I see continuing at least in the lower Federal Courts where the litigation is likely to be confined for the foreseeable future.

In my view, the Administration’s unwise, callous, and legally questionable treatment of Dreamers to date is providing advocates for Dreamers with some “golden opportunities” to make some “good law” in the Dreamers’ behalf that hopefully can carry over into blocking some of the Administration’s other anti-immigrant initiatives. A good chance for the New Due Process Army to capture some valuable territory in the fight for truth, justice, Due Process, and the American way!

PWS

03-06-18

COVER UP: ADMINISTRATION TRIES TO “DEEP SIX” DHS IG REPORT SHOWING INCOMPETENCE AND LAWLESSNESS SURROUNDING IMPLEMENTATION OF TRAVEL BAN!

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/20/homeland-security-travel-ban-253902

“The Department of Homeland Security’s official watchdog is accusing his own agency of slow-walking the public release of a report about confusion that ensued earlier this year after President Donald Trump issued his first travel ban executive order.

The still-unreleased inspector general report found that senior managers at Customs and Border Protection were “caught by surprise” by Trump’s order and that agency officials “violated two court orders” limiting implementation of Trump’s directive to suspend travel to the U.S. by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries, according to a letter sent to lawmakers Monday and obtained by POLITICO.

The report’s conclusions appear to be sharply in tension with the picture the White House tried to paint of the execution of Trump’s Jan. 27 order, which led to confusion throughout the air travel system, protests at airports and delays at ports of entry to the U.S.

“It really is a massive success story in terms of implementation on every single level,” a senior administration official told reporters two days after Trump ordered the move.

The unusual missive to Congress on Monday from Inspector General John Roth said his 87-page report was sent to DHS leadership Oct. 6, but officials have declined to authorize its release over the past six weeks.

Roth said officials informed his office that the report is under review for information that may be subject to attorney-client privilege or to a privilege protecting the agency’s “deliberative process.”

“I am very troubled by this development,” Roth wrote, referring to the deliberate process claim. “This is the first time in my tenure as Inspector General that the Department has indicated that they may assert this privilege in connection with one of our reports or considered preventing the release of a report on that basis. In fact, we regularly have published dozens of reports that delve into the Department’s rationale for specific policies and decisions, and comment on the basis and process on which those decisions were made.”

Asked about Roth’s letter, DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton defended the department’s handling of the report, as well as the travel ban Trump ordered Jan. 27.

. . . .

Despite the lack of permission to release the report, Roth’s seven-page letter does outline its key findings. He suggests that while most Customs and Border Protection staffers did their best to implement the policy humanely, the lack of advance notice caused significant problems and led to a lack of clarity on key issues, including whether so-called green card holders were covered by the ban.

“During the early period of the implementation of the order, neither CBP nor the Department was sure of the answers to basic questions as to the scope of the order, such as whether the order applied to Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs), a significant percentage of the affected travelers and a fundamental question that should have been resolved early in the process,” Roth wrote.

The IG review compliments CBP personnel at various ports, saying many used their own funds to buy food and water for travelers delayed by the policy. The report also finds that officers generally complied with court orders that were quickly issued freezing efforts to expel travelers from the U.S.

However, Roth said CBP defied court orders by providing guidance to airlines not to allow travelers from certain countries to board flights bound for the U.S.

“While CBP complied with court orders at U.S. ports of entry with travelers who had already arrived, CBP was very aggressive in preventing affected travelers from boarding aircraft bound for the United States, and took actions that, in our view, violated, two separate court orders,” he wrote.

Records obtained by POLITICO through an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit underscore concerns by DHS personnel that there was no clear guidance about how to interpret the first order.

“We got a memo from the White House saying one thing and now the Press Secretary said another,” a senior CBP official wrote to an American Airlines executive in a Feb. 1 email explaining why the agency just abruptly withdrew guidance sent to major international air carriers.

Former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich said a letter like Roth’s is a rarity, but so is an agency trying to block disclosure of a report on the grounds being cited by DHS.

“It’s quite unusual. If agencies asserted these privileges as broadly as the letter says DHS is doing in this case, the ability of IGs to investigate important matters would be significantly compromised,” Bromwich told POLITICO. “In my tenure as IG, I don’t recall any instances in which the attorney-client or deliberative privileges were invoked by DOJ.”

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Read the full report at the link.

Pretty typical Trump Administration stuff.

PWS

11-21-17

THE XENOPHOBIC WHITE NATIONALISM OF TRUMP, SESSIONS, & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS COULD WELL LEAVE AGING BABY BOOMERS WITHOUT NEEDED HEALTH CARE ASSISTANCE!

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/25/immigrants-caretaker-workforce-000556

Ted Hesson reports for Politico:

“One of the biggest future crises in U.S. health care is about to collide with the hottest political issue of the Trump era: immigration.

As the largest generation in American history – the baby boom – heads into retirement and old age, most of those aging boomers will need someone to help take care of them for at least some portion of their twilight years. Demand for home health aides is expected to outstrip the growth for nearly all other jobs in coming decades, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics projecting the number of home health aide positions will increase 38 percent by 2024. That puts it among the top five fastest-growing U.S. occupations.

So who’s going to do it? The question is one of the biggest uncertainties looming over not only the health care, but the labor market overall. Health policy experts have been raising the alarm for some time: No matter how you look at it, the United States is going to need a lot more caretakers and home health aides. And we’re going to need them soon.

Right now, immigrant workers fill a significant share of the formal and informal caretaker workforce. In health care overall, immigrants (both legal and undocumented) make up roughly 17 percent of workers, on par with their representation in the broader labor force. When it comes to home health care, however, that figure is considerably higher: about 24 percent, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

There’s a reason foreign-born workers take so many home health jobs: they’re low-paid, low-skilled and increasingly plentiful. Barriers to entry are low; a high school degree is not usually a requirement and neither is previous work experience. Much caretaking comes from family members, of course. But with families getting smaller, more Americans living alone and chronic diseases growing more complex, a lot of that care in the future will need to come from professionals.

 

The job also isn’t easy. Home health aides can be tasked with bathing and feeding clients, cleaning the person’s house, driving them to doctor’s appointments and even helping with trips to the bathroom. It’s one of those occupations that comes to mind “when people say that immigrants do the jobs that Americans don’t want to do,” notes Patricia Cortés, an assistant professor of markets, public policy and law at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

Bianca Frogner, an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said the low barriers to entry make it a natural fit for immigrants who are new to the U.S. workforce. “It’s easy to get into and they’re in high demand,” she said.

This is where politics comes in: The current move to curb immigration threatens to cut off the main supply of potential new workers to care for aging Americans.

Illegal immigration isn’t the issue. The home health care immigrant workforce is vastly legal. The Pew Research Center found that just 4 percent of nursing, psychiatric and home health aides are in the country without legal status, based on an average from 2005 to 2014. Some home health aide positions require certification, which may drive down the ranks of undocumented immigrants in those positions.

The question for the health care system is what will happen to the flow of legal immigrants. Trump and immigration hawks in Congress have endorsed a bill that would cut legal immigration in half over a decade. The bill would also refocus the immigration system to prize better-educated and more highly skilled immigrants — potentially choking off the supply of lower-skilled workers who are the likeliest candidates to fill the home health aide jobs of the future.

In theory, native-born Americans could take some of those jobs, but there are reasons to assume they won’t.

. . . .

The strange thing about home health care work is that immigrants don’t appear to drive down wages, as happens in some other fields. If anything, they tend to push wages higher. Naturalized citizens who worked as nursing, psychiatric and home health aides earned 22 percent more than their U.S.-born counterparts, according to 2015 American Community Survey data analyzed by the University of Washington Center for Health Workforce Studies.

Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration, said the wage phenomenon and the fact that the work is a natural fit for new immigrants make it a no-brainer: Immigrants are our best caretaking option for the foreseeable future. “You put all that together,” Lowell said, “and I think it’s a good thing.”

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Read the complete article at the link.

In a sane system led by competent individuals with the common good in mind, this would be a “no brainer.”  Legalize the existing undocumented workforce to provide some “upward and sideways” mobility to staff these jobs in the short run, while expanding legal immigration opportunities for these positions in the future. More legal immigration would also contribute to the tax coffers and add needed workers to the Social Security contribution base. Moreover, it would conserve considerable Government funds now being squandered on counterproductive immigration enforcement and unnecessary detention, as well as relieving the pressure on the overwhelmed Immigration Courts. That, in turn, would free up enforcement resources to concentrate on removing serious criminals and shutting down international smuggling cartels.

However, when policy is driven by bias, prejudice, and irrationality, as with guys like Trump, Sessions, Bannon, Miller, and the “RAISE Act Bunch” the results are a lose – lose.

PWS

10-28-17

 

 

 

 

 

 

DHS Wants To Assure Dreamers That They Should NOT Be Reassured — DACA Revocation Still Possible!

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/16/trump-daca-immigration-deportation-relief-program-239654?cid=apn

Ted Hesson writes in Politico:

“The future of an Obama-era deportation relief program remains undecided, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.

The announcement was meant to clarify the department’s position on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows nearly 788,000 undocumented immigrants to apply for work permits and live in the U.S. without fear of deportation.

“The future of the DACA program continues to be under review with the administration,” a DHS spokesperson said in a written statement. “The president has remarked on the need to handle the issue with compassion and with heart.”

DHS felt compelled to issue a statement on the program’s fate after POLITICO and other outlets reportedThursday on guidance posted to the DHS website that suggested DACA would remain on firm footing under the Trump administration.

The guidance came as the administration terminated a separate deportation relief program for parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents that had been blocked by federal courts since early 2015.

On its website, DHS assured that DACA would not be affected by the move. “No work permits will be terminated prior to their current expiration dates,” the guidance read.

The department said today that it intended only to clarify that DACA would not be immediately canceled. The guidance, DHS said, “should not be interpreted as bearing any relevance on the long-term future of that program.”

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Even when faced with an opportunity to do something nice for folks, that would also help DHS out in practical terms, the Trumpsters just can’t resist an opportunity to sow fear and uncertainty.

PWS

06-18-17

POLITICO Covers “Under The Radar” Joint Departures Of EOIR’s Top Execs!

Subject: POLITICO’s Morning Shift: U.S. visas down for Muslim-majority countries — Immigration court chiefs leave — Democrats make minimum wage pledge

By Ian Kullgren | 05/26/2017 10:04 AM EDT

With help from Bianca Padró Ocasio, Ted Hesson and Mel Leonor

U.S. VISAS DOWN FOR MUSLIM-MAJORITY COUNTRIES: “President Donald Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ may be tied up in court, but newly released figures show his administration is issuing fewer visas to visitors from Arab and Muslim-majority countries,” POLITICO’s Nahal Toosi and Ted Hesson report.

“Data posted online this week by the State Department showed that non-immigrant visas granted to people from nearly 50 Muslim-majority countries were down almost 20 percent in April compared to the 2016 monthly average,” they write. “When only Arab countries were considered, non-immigrant visas were down nearly 30 percent in April compared to the 2016 monthly average. Visas issued to the six countries targeted by Trump’s March 6 travel ban – Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen – declined even further, down 55 percent compared to the 2016 monthly average.”

“Stephen Pattison, an immigration lawyer in Maryland who spent nearly three decades as a State Department consular officer, said he thinks Trump policies are having a ‘chilling effect’ on travel to the United States from Muslim nations…. ‘Some people may have canceled trips,’ Pattison said. ‘Some people may have traveled last year but not this year. But I think it would be naive to assume that’s what’s going on in Washington isn’t having an effect on consular adjudications.'” More here.

GOOD MORNING. It’s Friday, May 26, and this is Morning Shift, POLITICO’s daily tipsheet on employment and immigration policy. Send tips, exclusives, and suggestions to thesson@politico.com, mlevine@politico.com, mleonor@politico.com, ikullgren@politico.com and tnoah@politico.com. Follow us on Twitter at @tedhesson, @marianne_levine, @melleonor_, @IanKullgren, and @TimothyNoah1.

PROGRAMMING NOTE – Due to the Memorial Day holiday, Morning Shift will not publish on Monday, May 29. Our next Morning Shift will publish on Tuesday, May 30. Please continue to follow Pro Employment and Immigration issues here.

IMMIGRATION COURT CHIEFS LEAVE: The director and deputy director of the federal immigration courts will leave the office by the end of the month, two sources familiar with the situation told Morning Shift. The courts, known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review, fall under the purview of the Justice Department.

Director Juan Osuna and Deputy Director Ana Kocur announced their departures in a staff-wide email. The reasons for their resignations are unclear, but both assumed their positions during the Obama administration, Osuna in 2011 and Kocur in 2012. Neither EOIR nor the Justice Department responded to requests for comment.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has promised immigration enforcement will be a centerpiece of his approach to criminal justice, and the next director will be under pressure to speed up deportations and clear the immigration case backlog, currently at nearly 586,000 cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Jeremy McKinney, a liaison to the office for the American Immigration Lawyer’s Association, said Osuna oversaw the courts during a difficult period. “He was dealing with very limited resources,” McKinney said. The next director will have more, if the Trump administration gets its way. The White House budget proposal released this week called for the hiring of an additional 75 immigration judges and roughly 375 support personnel.

DEMOCRATS MAKE MINIMUM WAGE PLEDGE…: First 100 days? Old hat. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that Democrats would take up a measure to raise the minimum wage within the first 100 hours after they regain the majority, assuming they win it back in next year’s election. (That’s a pretty big if.) Pelosi made the pledge alongside a handful of other Democratic lawmakers and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as they announced legislation to raise the hourly minimum wage to $15, up from the current $7.25, by 2024.

Democrats are making the pledge part of their campaign strategy for 2018. But even if they fulfill it, don’t hold your breath for it to be signed into law so long as Trump is in the White House. Even many Democrats, Hillary Clinton included, favored an increase only to $12 as recently as last year. Trump proposed an increase to $10 during the campaign, but only after previously suggesting no increase (and even calling into question whether the federal government should set an hourly minimum at all). Trump hasn’t touted the $10 proposal since, and he seems unlikely to. POLITICO’s Elana Schor writes that the Democrats’ embrace of $15 demonstrates the influence that Sanders and the left wing of the Democratic party now wield. More here.

… AND REPUBLICANS FIGHT BACK: Also on Thursday, Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) and half a dozen other Republicans re-introduced legislation to overhaul the National Labor Relations Act to weaken unions’ influence. The so-called Employee Rights Act would allow union members and nonmembers alike to withhold that portion of dues or fees that supports political activities by a union that bargains collectively on their behalf. The bill would also require union locals to conduct a recertification election every year; forbid union leaders from calling a strike without a vote of their members; and criminalize coercion by union leadership (though the violent threats that provision is aimed at are already covered by existing laws). “The rights of American workers were under attack during the Obama presidency,” Roe said in a written statement, “and it is time to restore those rights and work to foster a pro-growth, pro-employee environment.”

Republicans introduced similar legislation three times while President Barack Obama was in office, Sean Sullivan writes in the Washington Examiner. But it isn’t clear that Trump, who has tried to cast himself as a friend to unions, would support the bill. During the election, Trump’s campaign resisted efforts to be pinned down. More here.

DURING SCHOOL HOURS? A Louisiana charter school, International High School of New Orleans, needs to make a dozen modifications to its employee handbook to comply with federal labor laws – including axing a policy that prohibits teachers from using social media during school hours. An administrative law judge ruled Wednesday that the policy runs afoul the National Labor Relations Act. The judge also took issue with a policy that prohibits teachers from using school computers to access social media websites, and another that prohibits teachers from conducting personal business during school hours. The ruling touches on two issues of contention between charter school advocates and unions: whether unions belong in charter schools, and whether charter schools are sufficiently “private” to fall under the jurisdiction of federal labor law. Read the ruling here.

A CASE AGAINST PLAs: Ohio schools built under government-mandated project labor agreements cost 13.12 percent more than schools that were built through competitive bidding, according to a new study by Beacon Hill Institute commissioned by the Associated Builders and Contractors. The study, which looked at schools built since 2000, calculated that PLA constructions cost $23.12 more per square foot than their non-PLA counterparts. Read the study here.

HOGAN TO VETO PAID LEAVE BILL: Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan will veto a paid leave bill that would have given workers in that state five days’ annual paid sick leave. The bill covered all employers of at least 15 workers, but the Republican governor, who proposed addressing paid sick leave with incentives for employers, called it “simply very bad policy.” Hogan said he plans to issue a series of executive orders relating to paid sick leave, including the creation of task force to study the issue. He also plans to mandate paid sick leave for contract employees of the state’s executive branch. Democrat lawmakers will try to override the veto. More from the Baltimore Sun here.

UNIONS SUE TO BLOCK KENTUCKY RIGHT TO WORK LAW: “Organized labor struck back Thursday against Kentucky’s right-to-work law, filing a lawsuit that claims the ban on mandatory union fees in workplaces violates the state’s Constitution,” the Associated Press reports. “The Kentucky State AFL-CIO and Teamsters Local 89 filed the suit, which asks a judge to temporarily block the right-to-work law while the suit proceeds. The labor groups said the law should be struck down for violating numerous sections of the Kentucky Constitution.” More here.

INDY MAY HOLD OFF ON MINIMUM WAGE HIKE: “Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett is urging the City-County Council to hold off on setting a $13-an-hour minimum wage for staff while his office works to eliminate the city’s structural deficit,” James Briggs writes for the Indy Star. “Hogsett on Wednesday said he does not support immediate passage of Proposal 92, which would raise wages for 365 city and county workers who earn between $9.13 per hour and $12.98 per hour.” More here.

ICE ARRESTS NEARLY 200 IN LA: ICE is touting the arrests of 188 undocumented immigrants in the Los Angeles area during a five-day “expanded enforcement” operation that captured a “convicted rapist and a previously deported cocaine trafficker,” ICE said in a written statement Thursday. In addition to identifying where each arrest took place, the ICE statement identified the types of previous criminal convictions and each person’s country of origin.

“Since President Trump signed the Executive Orders regarding immigration enforcement priorities,” ICE said, “ICE has arrested more than 41,000 individuals nationwide who are either known or suspected of being in the country illegally, a nearly 40 percent increase over the same period in 2016.”

COFFEE BREAK:

– “Restaurant: ICE Agents Ate Breakfast Then Detained Employees,” from The Daily Beast

– “Bice: Sheriff Clarke directed staff to hassle plane passenger after brief exchange,” from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

– “Appeal says ruling that vindicated San Diego pension reform could create statewide problems,” from the San Diego Union-Tribune

– “Labor union calls on Harley-Davidson to abandon plan to build overseas plant,” from the Milwaukee Business Journal.

– “Elgin to opt out of Cook County minimum wage, sick leave requirements,” from The Chicago Tribune.

– “Editorial: Don’t tinker with teacher pensions,” from The Detroit Free Press

– “Mass. House Lawmakers Postpone Vote On Bill Aimed At Countering Trump’s Immigration Crackdown,” from WBUR

THAT’S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT.

To view online:
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-shift/2017/05/26/us-visas-down-for-muslim-majority-countries-220535

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Thanks to the always wonderful Bianca Padró Ocasio for sending this item my way!

In my experience, it’s somewhat unusual for the top two career Senior Executives in an agency to depart simultaneously unless they are headed to the same place, which does not appear to be the case here. It’s also somewhat remarkable in light of both Osuna’s and Kocar’s fairly lengthy and very distinguished service to EOIR and the DOJ (Osuna was a Member, Vice Chair, and Chair at the BIA, and a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division, prior to becoming Director) that no official press release on the departures has been issued, and that both EOIR and DOJ refuse to comment. Usually, even when civil servants are effectively “forced out,” the Department gives them a “pat on the back” and “thanks for the service.”

Some have speculated that with AG Sessions’s overriding interest in immigration enforcement, EOIR will be more “directly controlled” by either the Deputy Attorney General or assistants to the Attorney General in the future. Another possibility is that Sessions will appoint a trusted member of his staff to serve as Director. My recollection is that while the Director is not a Presidentially appointed position, it can be filled by either a career or a non-career (i.e., political) SES appointment.

Stay tuned!

Have a great Memorial Day holiday.

PWS

05-26-17


POLITICO: Despite Mis-Steps & Bombast, Trump’s Immigration Enforcement Policies Are Having An Impact!

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/28/trump-immigration-crackdown-237719?lo=ap_c1

and  write in HuffPost:

“President Donald Trump has systematically engineered a major crackdown on immigration during his first 100 days in office — even as courts reject his executive orders and Congress nears a spending deal that will deny him funding for a wall along the southern border.

The number of arrests on the U.S.-Mexico border plummeted in March to the lowest level in 17 years — a strong suggestion that Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric is scaring away foreigners who might otherwise try to enter the United States illegally. In addition, part of a lesser-known executive order that Trump signed in January gave federal immigration agents broad leeway to arrest virtually any undocumented immigrant they encounter.

Granted, Trump’s splashiest immigration promises — the border wall and two successive bans on immigrants from various majority-Muslim nations — have been stymied by Congress and the courts. And Tuesday, Trump received another setback when a district court judge blocked a directive denying federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to help enforce federal immigration laws.

But the president has nonetheless reshaped the nation’s immigration policy substantially.

“Even without putting down one single brick,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that favors lower immigration levels, “Trump has dramatically altered the flow across the southern border.”

Businesses that use foreign workers, worried they’ll get singled out by federal agents during a visa review, are starting to explore the possibility of recruiting domestic labor. Trump’s enforcement policies are affecting higher education, too, with early signs suggesting foreign students are less likely to apply to U.S. colleges and universities. Nearly 40 percent of colleges and universities surveyed by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers reported a decline in international applications, and almost 80 percent said they fielded particular concerns from students in the Middle East. International students are, among other things, an important source of revenue for colleges, since typically they pay sticker price on tuition and fees.

To longtime advocates for undocumented immigrants, the change is less about numbers than about who’s being targeted.

The interior enforcement executive order that Trump signed during his first week in office dumped the Obama administration’s practice of prioritizing the arrests of serious criminals — a policy that allowed low-level immigration offenders to fly below the radar.

“The agents that I’ve talked to over the past few months have said that they feel that they can go out and enforce the law again, whereas they had many limitations on them over the past eight years,” said John Torres, chief operating officer at the consulting firm Guidepost Solutions and acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the George W. Bush administration. “If they encounter someone who is out of status, even though they are not targeting that person, they can now take them into custody.”

Early numbers reflect that shift. ICE arrested 21,362 immigrants from January through mid-March, a 32 percent increase over the same period last year. That tally included 5,441 non-criminals, double the number arrested a year earlier.

Trump, Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have all argued that the administration will target serious criminals first. But a steady stream of reports have shown otherwise.

An Ohio woman with four U.S. citizen children was recently deported to Mexico, despite the fact that she had been in the U.S. for 15 years and had no criminal record. Earlier this month, an Indiana restaurant owner with three U.S. citizen children, a two-decade history in the country, and no criminal record also was removed to Mexico.

“What’s really interesting here is how much of the difference seems to be rhetorical,” said Cecilia Muñoz, who was domestic policy director to formerPresident Barack Obama. “By talking tough, they have unleashed officers who now feel like they can do whatever they want.”

The threat of deportation even hangs over Dreamers in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. That initiative, enacted by Obama in 2012, allows undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. at a young age to apply for deportation relief and work permits.

More than 770,000 people are covered under DACA, which Trump threatened to kill during the campaign. Since taking office, he’s backed off on that pledge — yet infuriated immigration advocates say the administration’s enforcement tactics show Dreamers are in no way safe from deportation.

Earlier this month, Juan Manuel Montes, a DACA recipient who had lived in California, filed a lawsuit that claimed he was deported to Mexico despite his DACA status, the first known removal of its kind under the new administration. The facts of the case remain in dispute — DHS maintains that it has no record of the deportation in question and insists Montes left the U.S. without permission, which would invalidate his DACA protections.

Democrats say Trump’s reluctance to rescind the Obama-era initiative has been a rare silver lining to the new administration’s immigration policy. Still, they are by no means assured, pointing to the ramped-up enforcement by immigration agents across the nation.

“It fails to dispel the fear,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, noting the Montes deportation. “There’s just a variety of ways where the fear can be paralyzing and so insidious. So to have some clear, unambiguous system is so important, and it has been so lacking.”

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Read the full report over on Politico. This analysis, along with others I have posted, suggests that trump is “winning” the immigration war notwithstanding a string of “defeats” in the lower Federal Courts on “signature” immigration issues like the “travel ban” and “sanctions on sanctuary cities.”

 

PWS

04-29-17

 

Trump “Channels A.R.” — Tells “Dreamers” To R-E-L-A-X, Nothing Bad Is Going To Happen — But, Should They Believe Him? — Sessions Has A Different Message: Nobody Is Protected!

https://apnews.com/85c427bf25c747ce85d837caccd90648

Julie Pace reports for AP:

“WASHINGTON (AP) — Young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children and now here illegally can “rest easy,” President Donald Trump said Friday, telling the “dreamers” they will not be targets for deportation under his immigration policies.

Trump, in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, said his administration is “not after the dreamers, we are after the criminals.”

The president, who took a hard line on immigration as a candidate, vowed anew to fulfill his promise to construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. But he stopped short of demanding that funding for the project be included in a spending bill Congress must pass by the end of next week in order to keep the government running.

. . . .

As a candidate, Trump strongly criticized President Barack Obama for “illegal executive amnesties,” including actions to spare from deportation young people who were brought to the country as children and now are here illegally. But after the election, Trump started speaking more favorably about these immigrants, popularly dubbed “dreamers.”

On Friday, he said that when it comes to them, “This is a case of heart.”

This week, attorneys for Juan Manuel Montes said the 23-year-old was recently deported to Mexico despite having qualified for deferred deportation. Trump said Montes’ case is “a little different than the dreamer case,” though he did not specify why.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was launched in 2012 as a stopgap to protect some young immigrants from deportation while the administration continued to push for a broader immigration overhaul in Congress.

Obama’s administrative program offered a reprieve from deportation to those immigrants in the country illegally who could prove they arrived before they were 16, had been in the United States for several years and had not committed a crime since being here. It mimicked versions of the so-called DREAM Act, which would have provided legal status for young immigrants but was never passed by Congress.

DACA also provides work permits for the immigrants and is renewable every two years. As of December, about 770,000 young immigrants had been approved for the program.”

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch, “Fear Monger in Chief” Jeff Sessions had a somewhat less reassuring message for young people and their families:

As reported by Ted Hesson in Politico:

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions could not promise that so-called Dreamers, or participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, will not be deported, when he was interviewed Wednesday morning on Fox News.

Sessions fielded questions from host Jenna Lee about an undocumented immigrant who claims he was deported to Mexico despite his enrollment in the program, which was created through administrative action during the Obama administration.

The program allows undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. at a young age to apply for deportation relief and work permits. In a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday, Juan Manuel Montes, a 23-year-old enrollee in the program, claimed he was sent to Mexico in February despite active DACA status.

“DACA enrollees are not being targeted,” Sessions said on Fox. “I don’t know why this individual was picked up.” But when pressed, Sessions said, “The policy is that if people are here unlawfully, they’re subject to being deported.”

“We can’t promise people who are here unlawfully that they’re not going to be deported,” Sessions added.”

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Neither Trump nor Sessions, or for that matter anyone else in the Trump Administration, has much credibility on anything, particularly immigration policy. In reality, however, it appears that very few, if any, “Dreamers” have actually been removed.
The facts of the “Montes case” are still rather murky. He appears to have reentered the U.S. illegally, which generally would subject even a green card holder to removal.  Montes reportedly is asserting an earlier “illegal removal” to Mexico. But, even if proved, that wouldn’t necessarily justify an illegal return. We’ll have to see how this case “plays out” in Federal Court, before the same judge who had the “Trump University” case.
But, the situation seems unusual enough that I would not draw any conclusion that it represents a policy change. Indeed, most “Dreamers” of whom I am aware do not actually have “final orders of removal.”
If they had pending U.S. Immigration Court cases, such cases were “administratively closed” and removed from the docket. Removal of such a “former Dreamer” would require the DHS to submit a “motion to re-calendar” to the U.S. Immigration Judge.
Once re-calendared, the case would proceed in the “normal manner,” whatever that might mean in the zany world of today’s U.S. Immigration Court. Generally, however, if the “former Dreamer” were not detained, he or she would go to the “end” of the 542,000 pending cases.
In most Immigration Courts, that would mean an “Individual Hearing” date after 2020, the end of Trump’s first term. And, as I have pointed out before, absent some “smart reforms” of the Immigration Court by Congress or the Administration to restore sanity and an emphasis on due process, the 125 new U.S. Immigration Judges proposed by Sessions will not eliminate the docket backlog at any time in the near future.http://wp.me/p8eeJm-Jf
However, notwithstanding what sometimes is called “Docket TPS,” former Dreamers could face another major obstacle: lack of “employment authorization” which was included in the DACA program. Without such authorization, continuing employment could cause major legal problems for both former Dreamers and their U.S. employers.
One possible solution would be for the “former Dreamer” to file an application for immigration benefits that carries with it the opportunity to qualify for a new employment authorization. The most likely application is probably asylum, although some who have never previously been in Removal Proceedings might also qualify to file for “cancellation of removal” or other forms of regularization of status.
Indeed, many of the dreamers who were on my docket when DACA was granted by USCIS had asylum applications pending, either on their own or as a dependent on a parent’s or spouse’s  application, at the time the case was “administratively closed” and removed from my docket. The complexity of individual situations makes the prospect of mass removal of Dreamers even more unlikely.
Stay tuned!
PWS
04-22-17