Immigration & Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) – Page 81

NEW BIA PRECEDENT: CAL. ROBBERY IS CATEGORICAL AGFEL — Matter of Delgado, 27 I&N Dec. 100 (BIA 2017)

BIA HEADNOTE:

“Robbery under section 211 of the California Penal Code, which includes the element of asportation of property, is categorically an aggravated felony theft offense under section 101(a)(43)(G) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(G) (2012), regardless of whether a violator merely aided or abetted in the asportation of property stolen by a principal.”

PANEL: BIA Appellate Immigration Judges Pauley, Guendelsberger, Malphrus

OPINION BY: Judge Pauley

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PWS

09-12-17

THE ECONOMY: What America REALLY Needs: More Legal Workers, No More “Gonzo” Immigration Enforcement — More Immigrant Workers Needed To Save Our Economy — And They Don’t Have To Be Rocket Scientists & PhDs: Construction & Service Industries That Support US Economy Need “Entry Level” Workers!

http://host.madison.com/wsj/business/wisconsin-businesses-grapple-with-a-growing-worker-shortage/article_3ef1000e-c18b-5f72-bbcd-720ee2456111.html#utm_source=host.madison.com&utm_campaign=%2Femail%2F&utm_medium=email&utm_content=26CD42536544E247751EC74095D9CEDC67E77EDB

The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison) reports:

A Madison restaurant has raised pay for entry-level chefs in recent years more than 50 percent to $14 an hour, but still closes on Sunday evenings — not because of a lack of customers, but because workers are scarce.

Those and countless other stories across Wisconsin are symptoms of a growing worker shortage that is expected to worsen over the next decade, according to Wisconsin State Journal interviews with dozens of employers, economists, advocacy group experts and state political and economic development officials.

“We are right at the brink of the crisis,” said Ann Franz, director of the Northeast Wisconsin Manufacturing Alliance in Green Bay. “There just aren’t enough human beings in Wisconsin with baby boomers retiring. Just driving down the road there are constantly signs hiring. I’ve seen them on billboards: ‘Come to our car dealership and buy our car. Come so we can give you a job.'”

Employers from a broad range of industries are reporting difficulty finding workers — and not only for skilled professionals such as nurses, welders and computer programmers, who require a strong education and training system, but also for workers with a high school diploma and some additional training at restaurants, farms, construction sites, factories, senior care facilities, retailers and other businesses.

“I would call it Wisconsin’s mega-issue,” said Kurt Bauer, president of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business group, which recently found 77 percent of members surveyed had difficulty finding workers, up from 53 percent two years ago. “All other issues, they may be important, but they are subordinate to workforce.”

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Read the rest of the article at the link.

In this context, terminating DACA, thereby depriving existing productive American workers of work authorization, is not only cruel, but also crazy. And supporting the RAISE Act — specifically designed by White Nationalist restrictionists to lower legal immigration while limiting the remaining opportunities largely to White, English speaking individuals with college degrees — is simply insane.

Legal immigration is good for America in many ways (beyond the economy) and we need more, not less, of it. Indeed, had we developed a more rational and realistic legal immigration system, most of the Dreamers and their families would have been admitted in an orderly fashion under the legal system years ago.

Guys like Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions who worked as an effective legislative minority to block sensible immigration reform through parliamentary maneuvers, are now falsely claiming that deportations, “gonzo” arbitrary enforcement, and a reign of terror are the only solutions to a fake crisis that they largely created.

But, in fact, there is no crisis. Most of the 11 million migrants here without documentation are working hard, in jobs we need, part of American families, English speaking or learning English, and fitting well into American communities. Indeed, they are far less disruptive to society than are ICE’s arbitrary and fear spresding enforcement policies. That’s certainly the case here in Alexandria and Northern Virginia. And even more of them would pay taxes if we simply made it easy for them by granting legal status.

The relatively small minority of undocumented migrants who are engaging in anti-social behavior can be identified and removed with some reasonable readjustment of existing resources. For example, more money allocated to the U.S. Immigration Courts, training, technology, community-based policing, and focused “smart”enforcement instead of wasteful and inhumane detention, unfocused arbitrary enforcement, unneeded walls, and filling prisons with minor immigration violators. ICE prosecutors should be authorized and encouraged to use their discretion to prioritize their Immigration Court dockets with a focus on due process and bettering society while recognizing that judicial time will always be both precious and limited.

The current scare tactics and dire, but false, scenarios being pushed by the Trump Administration will neither aid our economy nor serve America’s real needs. They would make us both less safe and less great as a nation.

PWS

09-10-17

NYT: THE “ANTI-DREAMERS'” (KNOWINGLY) FALSE NARRATIVE!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/us/politics/why-common-critiques-of-daca-are-misleading.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Linda Qiu writes:

“Defenders of President Trump’s decision to rescind an Obama-era immigration policy that shielded young immigrants from deportation have offered misleading critiques of the program.

They say the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, known as DACA, led to a humanitarian crisis on the border, put native-born Americans out of work and conferred legal status to recipients. Here’s an assessment.

DACA does not specifically grant legal permanent residency or citizenship, but there are pathways for recipients.
Conservative news personalities have suggested that DACA leads to citizenship or that recipients are eligible. These claims require more context.

DACA grants recipients work permission and protects them from deportation, but it alone does not confer citizenship or legal permanent resident status. They are not granted legal status, according to the Department of Homeland Security, though their removals are deferred.

But, according to immigration data, just under 40,000 DACA recipients have obtained “green cards,” or legal permanent residency, and over 1,000 have become American citizens. This is possible because DACA recipients can change their immigration status through a legal basis other than DACA (like marrying an American citizen).

While immigration law bars people who overstayed their visa from returning to the United States for three or 10 years, depending on how long they have resided here unlawfully, DACA halts recipients’ accrual of “unlawful presence.” So someone who obtained DACA status before the re-entry penalty was triggered would remain protected from it.

DACA recipients who entered the country illegally cannot apply for residency the same way as people who entered legally and overstayed their visas. They can, however, apply for “advance parole,” which gives recipients permission to travel outside the United States under special circumstances and is not specific to DACA. When they return to the United States, they enter legally, opening up other avenues for legal status.

It’s misleading to suggest that DACA triggered a wave of migration from Central America.
In a statement, Mr. Trump blamed DACA for spurring “the massive surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America,” a claim echoed by his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and other Republican lawmakers. But the link between DACA and the humanitarian crisis in 2014 is largely anecdotal and overstated.

Nearly 70,000 children, overwhelmingly from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, tried to cross the United States border alone in the 2014 fiscal year. They would not have qualified for DACA, a program for undocumented immigrants brought in before age 16 who had been living in the United States since 2007.

There were certainly reports of children who listed American immigration policy as having prompted their solo journeys. The Obama administration’s clarification that the minors were not eligible for DACA also suggests a need to swat away the notion. And researchers have noted the possibility that DACA might have given migrants hope that the United States could provide future reprieve from deportation.

Still, it’s a stretch to say DACA was the single or even the main motivating factor behind the surge in migrant children reaching the border. For one, Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran applications for asylum to other Central American countries increased by 1,185 percent from 2008 to 2014, showing that the children were seeking relief not only in the United States.

More significant drivers of the migration were violence, poverty, gang presence, economic opportunity and the desire to be reunified with family, and “it remains unclear if, and how, specific immigration policies have motivated children to migrate to the United States,” according to a 2014 Congressional Research Service report.

Department of Homeland Security data also shows that the surge in unaccompanied minors preceded President Barack Obama’s June 2012 DACA executive order. The number of apprehensions began to rise in January 2012 and plateaued from June 2012 to January 2013, before increasing and then peaking in May and June of 2014.

The evidence that DACA recipients have displaced native-born workers is lacking.
According to Mr. Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, more than four million unemployed Americans in the same age group as DACA recipients “could possibly have those jobs” held by DACA recipients. And Mr. Sessions was more emphatic: The executive order “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.”

While it’s certainly possible that there are individual cases of an employer hiring a DACA recipient instead of an American citizen, the claim of a widespread trend is unproved.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that trends in foreign-born and native-born unemployment rates have not changed with DACA. For example, the unemployment rate for natives who had attended college was lower than their foreign-born peers both before and after 2012, while the unemployment rate for natives without a high school diploma has consistently been higher than the foreign-born population.

Similarly, DACA appears to have had no discernible effect on the number of total job openings or those specifically in white collar industries — where DACA recipients are more commonly employed — which have been steadily rising since mid-2009. Economists dispute the overarching argument that less immigration leads to more jobs for Americans.

The defense that Mr. Trump’s order does not open up DACA recipients to deportation is false.
Rescinding DACA will not lead to the “mass deportation of people,” the conservative radio host and author Laura Ingraham said in an interview on Fox News. Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, argued on CNN that the “only folks that are subject to deportation right now are those that have engaged in criminal activity.”

Mr. Jordan’s claim is false. The Department of Homeland Security has been clear that officials will potentially arrest and deport any undocumented immigrant without protected status, regardless of a criminal record. Though undocumented immigrants with criminal records still make up the majority of immigration arrests, noncriminal arrests more than doubled in Mr. Trump’s first 100 days as president, compared to the same time period in 2016.

Immigration lawyers say it’s too early to tell whether DACA recipients, who had to provide personal information to officials to apply for the status, will especially be at risk after Mr. Trump’s order. Previously, their information was “protected from disclosure” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection for the purpose of enforcement. The order, however, notes that information “will not be proactively provided to ICE and CBP,” and the president has said that former recipients would not be a priority for deportation.

“It’s very unclear to me whether U.S.C.I.S. will share that information if ICE affirmatively asks,” said Kate Voigt of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, referring to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. It is clear, though, that Mr. Trump’s order rescinding DACA opens recipients up to deportation.”

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Truth is that DACA is good for the U.S. But, truth seldom, if ever, enters into the restrictionist White Nationalist narrative.

PWS

09-10-17

“JRUBE” IN WASHPOST: DEPT OF IN–JUSTICE: Under “Gonzo Apocalypto” White Nationalist, Xenophobic, Homophobic Political Agenda Replaces “Rule Of Law” — Latest DOJ Litigation Positions Fail “Straight Face” Test: “making up rules willy-nilly so as to show its rabid xenophobic base it is adhering to its promise of racial and ethnic exclusion!” — Read My “Mini-Essay” On How Advocates and U.S. Courts Could Restore Justice & Due Process To Our Broken U.S. Immigration Courts!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/09/08/trump-is-getting-rotten-legal-advice-and-once-again-it-shows/?utm_term=.e34528c36b2c

Jennifer Rubin writes in “Right Turn” in the Washington Post:

“The 9th Circuit gave the back of the hand to the argument that the Trump administration could borrow a definition from another section of the immigration statute to exclude grandmothers. The Supreme Court had used mothers-in-law as an example of a close familial relationship it wanted to protect. The 9th Circuit judges wrote: “Plaintiffs correctly point out that the familial relationships the Government seeks to bar from entry are within the same ‘degree of kinship’ as a mother-in-law.” It’s hard to make a case that grandmothers would not qualify. It does not appear that the government even made a good-faith effort to apply the Supreme Court’s direction.

On one level, it’s shocking that a Republican administration that is supposed to be a defender of “family values” would take such a miserly position. But, of course, family values are of little consequence to an administration that is more than willing to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, auguring for the breakup of intimate family relations (e.g., one sibling gets deported but American-born siblings remain).

The 9th Circuit also looked at the administration’s argument that a refugee with a formal assurance of settlement lacks a bona fide relationship with some entity or individual in the United States. The court set out the laborious screening process refugees undertake (making a mockery of the notion these people are a security threat) and noted that after all those steps are completed the refugee gets a sponsorship assurance “from one of nine private non-profit organizations, known as resettlement agencies.” The 9th Circuit held: “The Government contends that a formal assurance does not create a bona fide relationship between a resettlement agency and a refugee, and stresses that ‘[t]he assurance is not an agreement between the resettlement agency and the refugee; rather, it is an agreement between the agency and the federal government.’ But the Supreme Court’s stay decision specifies that a qualifying relationship is one that is ‘formal, documented, and formed in the ordinary course, rather than for the purpose of evading [the Executive Order].”’”

Again, one cannot help but come away with the impression that the government is throwing up every half-baked idea it can find to limit the number of people entering the country, regardless of the national security risk or the hardship its action inflicts. The Trump administration is plainly reasoning backward — deny as many people as possible admittance and then think up a reason to justify its position.

In its fixation with keeping as many immigrants out of the United States as possible, the Trump administration cannot claim to merely be following the dictates of the law. (Gosh it’s out of our hands — “Dreamers” and grandmas have to go!) It is making up rules willy-nilly so as to show its rabid xenophobic base it is adhering to its promise of racial and ethnic exclusion. It’s hard to believe seasoned career Justice Department lawyers agree with these arguments. In its oversight hearings Congress should start grilling Attorney General Jeff Sessions as to how he comes up with his cockamamie legal arguments and whether political appointees are running roughshod over career DOJ lawyers.

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Read Rubin’s full article at the link.

Mini-Essay:

TIME FOR ACTION ON THE BROKEN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS — IF CONGRESS WON’T ACT, THE FEDERAL COURTS MUST

Paul Wickham Schmidt

United States Immigration Judge (Retired)

If nothing else, the Trump Administration has given me a new appreciation for the Post’s “JRube.” She certainly has “dialed up” Gonzo’s number and exposed what’s behind his pompous, disingenuous misuse of the term “rule of law.”

No chance that a GOP Senate with Chuck Grassley as Judiciary Chair is going to hold Gonzo accountable for his daily perversions of “justice.” But, at some point, Federal Courts could begin sanctioning DOJ lawyers for willful misrepresentations (the Hawaii arguments before the 9th contained several) and frivolous positions in litigation. It’s possible that some DOJ lawyers all the way up to Gonzo himself could be referred by Federal Judges to state bar authorities for a look at whether their multiple violations of ethical standards should result suspension of their law licenses.

Another thought kicking around inside my head is that Gonzo’s actions and his public statements are starting to make a plausible case for a due process challenge to the continued operation of the U.S. Immigration Courts.

As with school desegregation, prison reform, and voting rights, a Federal Court could find systematic bias and failure to protect due process. That could result in something like 1) a requirement that the DOJ submit a “due process restoration” plan to the court for approval, or 2) the court appointment of an independent “judicial monitor” to run the courts in a fair and unbiased manner consistent with due process, or 3) the Federal Courts could take over supervision of the US Immigration Courts pending the creation of an Article I (or Article III) replacement.

High on the list of constitutionally-required reforms would be ending the location of courts within DHS detention facilities. All courts should be located in areas where adequate pro bono counsel is reasonably available and accessible. Immigration Courts should be located outside of DHS facilities in buildings accessible to the public with reasonable security requirements. Immigration Judges must be required to continue cases until pro bono counsel can be retained. Alternatively, the Government could provide for appointed counsel.

Another obvious due process reform would be to strip the Attorney General of his (conflict of interest) authority to establish or review precedents and operating procedures for the U.S. Immigration Courts. Along with that, the DHS should be given an equal right to appeal adverse BIA appellate decisions to the Courts of Appeals (rather than seeking relief from the AG — clearly an interested party in relation to immigration enforcement).

There also should be an immediate end to the appointment and supervision of U.S. Immigration Judges by the politically-biased AG. U.S. Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Immigration Judges should be appointed on a strict merit basis by either an independent judicial monitor or by the U.S. Courts of Appeals until Congress enacts statutory reforms.

The current U.S. Immigration Court system mocks justice in the same way that Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions mocks it almost every day. There might be no practical way to legally remove Gonzo at present, but the Federal Courts could step in to force the U.S. Immigration Courts to undertake due process reforms. The current situation is unacceptable from a constitutional due process standpoint. Something has to change for the better!

PWS

09-09-17\

PETULA DVORAK IN WASHPOST: DISHONEST LEADERS SOW “FALSE FEARS” WHILE IGNORING REAL THREATS!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/what-happens-when-a-presidency-runs-on-fakefears-real-fears-are-ignored/2017/09/07/83ead004-93d1-11e7-8754-d478688d23b4_story.html

Dvorak writes:

Fake fear is our new leader.

Washington’s new ruling class is not governing with compassion, common sense, measured research, knowledge of history or the future. Theirs is a doctrine of fake fears. And these same people also have a problem with things we should actually be afraid of.

Let me explain.

Fake Fear: The “bad hombres” President Donald Trump talked about during the campaign last year begot this week’s DACA repeal thing. Trump wants us to be afraid of these immigrants, and he’s ready to trash the lives of more than 800,000 Americans looking for a path to legal residency by killing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The truth is that these immigrants, brought here as children by their parents, “have lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans of the same age and education level,” according to a report issued last week by the nonpartisan CATO Institute.

Real Fear: Hurricanes. You know them — from Katrina to Harvey to Irma — millions of people and billions of dollars tell you hurricanes devastate lives, cities and industries.

But Trump refuses to fear them. Earlier this year, he proposed a budget that slashed about $667 million for the disaster preparedness programs run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That budget also proposed $6 billion in cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which helps rebuild homes and hospitals.

The fake fear administration also killed a post-Katrina rule requiring building projects eligible for federal funding to take such measures as elevating structures in flood zones away from the reach of rising water before they get government cash. And they did this just in time for hurricane season.

But hey, the $108 billion in damage and the 1,800 lives lost in Hurricane Katrina must not mean much when it your moral compass is fake fear.

Fake fear: The apparent crime wave that Attorney General Jeff Sessions keeps warning Americans about.

“We have a crime problem,” Sessions said in February. “I wish the rise that we are seeing in crime in America today were some sort of aberration or a blip. My best judgment, having been involved in criminal law enforcement for many years, is that this is a dangerous, permanent trend that places the health and safety of the American people at risk.”

But the facts say otherwise.

This year is on pace to have the second-lowest violent crime rate of any year since 1990, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice this week that analyzed statistics from the nation’s 30 largest cities.

Real fear: Though we’ve seen more and more horrifying videos of civilians being shot by police officers, we still have little comprehensive data that shows how often this happens and how agencies can prevent these tragedies.

“What we really need to know is how many times police shoot people, not just how many of those people die,” David A. Klinger, a criminal justice professor at the University of Missouri in St. Louis who studies police use of force, told The Washington Post earlier this summer.

The Post began compiling this information in 2015, relying on local news, social media and our own reporting.

This is a real fear for real people. This is true whether you’re a black man, such as beloved cafeteria worker Philando Castile, who was doing nothing wrong when he was killed in Minnesota last year by a nervous police officer. And it’s true if you’re a white woman, like nurse Alex Wubbels, who was seen in a viral video last week being roughed up and arrested by a Utah detective for simply doing her job. The fake fear people seem to have little interest in addressing this problem.

The FBI’s weak, self-reporting system that has been the only way to track this was called “embarrassing and ridiculous” by fired FBI director James B. Comey.

Fake fear: Muslims in America. Trump’s attempts at a travel ban, fulfilling his campaign promise of a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” have reinforced a growing and misplaced Islamophobia throughout our country. We’ve seen the fake-fear sentiment in workplaces, in small-town councils trying to mess with mosques that have been peaceful and unnoticed for years, and I even saw it one of my sons’ sports teams this summer.

The truth is, from 2008 to 2016, right-wing extremists carried out twice as many terrorist attacks on U.S. soil than Islamist extremists, according to a recent report from The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund and The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal.

Real Fear: White supremacists in America. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint intelligence bulletin that said white supremacists “were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016 … more than any other domestic extremist movement.”

They issued this statement just a couple months before the protests in Charlottesville, where an avowed Nazi sympathizer was arrested after a car drove into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. There is no mistaking that was real.

We deserve real care and real concern from our leaders when it comes to real fears. There’s no shortage of them.

Let’s start by calling out #FakeFears when we see them. Washington is full of those these days, too.

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Dvorak succinctly captures what White Nationalist governance and propaganda is all about: fear, loathing, lies. Too cowardly to address real problems because that might offend the “White Nationalist base” that put and keeps them in power.

PWS

09-08-17

ABA JOURNAL: “Dickie The P” Reportedly Quit 7th Over Rift With Colleagues About Treatment Of Pro Se Litigants — Perhaps He Should Check Out In Person How Sessions’s DOJ & Captive Immigration Courts Intentionally Abuse & Deny Due Process To Unrepresented Migrants!

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/why_did_posner_retire_he_cites_difficulty_with_his_colleagues_on_one_issue/?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly_email

Debra Cassens Weiss reports:

“Judge Richard Posner had intended to stay on the federal appellate bench until he reached 80, an age he believed to be the upper limit for federal judges.

But on Friday, at the age of 78, he abruptly announced his retirement from the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, effective the next day. The reason is due to “difficulty” with his colleagues over the court’s treatment of people who represent themselves, he told the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin in an email.

“I was not getting along with the other judges because I was (and am) very concerned about how the court treats pro se litigants, who I believe deserve a better shake,” Posner said. The issue will be addressed in an upcoming book that will explain his views and those of his colleagues “in considerable detail,” Posner said.

Posner said he did not time his retirement to allow President Donald Trump to appoint his replacement. “I don’t think it’s proper for judges or justices to make their decision to retire depend on whom they think the president will appoint as replacements,” he told the Law Bulletin. With Posner’s retirement, the 7th Circuit has four vacancies.

Posner was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, and was widely considered a conservative. He has since written more than 3,300 judicial opinions, and not all please conservatives, according to the Law Bulletin. On the one hand, he struck down the Illinois ban on carrying weapons in public, called for fewer restrictions on domestic surveillance, and limited class certification in class-action lawsuits. But he has also written opinions favoring abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

In a 2012 interview with National Public Radio, Posner said he has become less conservative “since the Republican Party started becoming goofy.” But he won’t remain above the fray in politics.

He told the Law Bulletin that his retirement will allow him to assist his cat, Pixie, in a run for president in 2020. Above the Law had endorsed Pixie last year, but Posner was unable to participate in the campaign.”

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Perhaps “Dickie The P” can take some time away from Pixie to visit the kangaroo courts that DOJ has established in prisons intentionally located in out of the way places where traumatized individuals seeking refuge from life-threatening conditions are held in substandard conditions and forced to represent themselves in “death penalty cases” involving some off the most complex and (intentionally) obtuse concepts in modern American law.

Love him or loathe him (or both), Posner is a prolific writer and thinker whose views can’t be ignored or swept under the table. What’s happening in the U.S. Immigration Courts under Sessions is a national disgrace. A high profile legal commentator like Posner, who frankly doesn’t care whom he pisses off, could shed some light on the travesty now passing for due process in the Immigration Courts and how too many of his former Article III colleagues have turned their backs on their constitutional duties rather than taking a strong legal stand against intentional abuse of the most vulnerable by our legal system. A voice like Posner’s advocating for an Article I Court would be heard!

PWS

09-08-15

IN HARVEY’S WAKE: GONZO’S ANTI-DREAMER POLICIES LIKELY TO CAUSE MORE LASTING DAMAGE TO HOUSTON THAN STORM: Homes & Businesses Can Be Rebuilt — Ruined Lives, Dashed Dreams, & Destroyed Trust Can’t: “how suffering can needlessly be inflicted!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/opinion/daca-trump-hurricane-harvey-.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region%C2%AEion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Lacy M. Johnson writes in the NY Times:

“HOUSTON — As the floodwaters rose in my west Houston neighborhood after Hurricane Harvey landed, my husband and many of our neighbors pulled boats through waist-high water, knocked on doors and plucked people from their submerged houses. They rescued elderly couples, young roommates, families who do not speak English. There was no checking of IDs, no debate on whether a life was worth saving.

All across the city, as catastrophic flooding threatened to drown us, regular people risked their lives to help others. Alonso Guillen, a radio host and D.J. who lived in Lufkin, Tex., two hours from Houston, brought a boat and a group of friends here to join in those efforts. He was on that boat, saving people he had never met before, when it capsized last Wednesday and he drowned. Alonso Guillen died a hero, if not an American citizen. He was a Dreamer, a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and like the nearly 141,000 other Dreamers in Texas, he followed the requirements of the program — to stay in school or be gainfully employed — and had never been convicted of a crime. More than that, Texas was his home.

Around the time Alonso Guillen was buried in Lufkin, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced President Trump’s decision to cancel the DACA program, saying that “enforcing the law saves lives, protects communities and taxpayers, and prevents human suffering.” Instead, what the announcement shows is how suffering can needlessly be inflicted.

The end of DACA means that hundreds of thousands of people nationwide will lose their eligibility to work. As many as 80,000 Dreamers in the greater Houston area alone could be deported to countries where they have no relationships, where they do not even speak the language. It is the disaster of this decision — more than the hurricane — that threatens to tear our city apart.

. . . .

Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the choice to end DACA “the compassionate thing.” But this decision doesn’t look like any kind of compassion I’ve seen in Houston, where everyone I know has chosen to open their homes to strangers, to feed them, clothe them, raise money for the restoration of their homes. Even people whose own houses were destroyed are helping others in the ways they can.

. . . .

The conversation about what comes next, how to rebuild and how to engineer a more equitable city, is a long one and is now only beginning. Tomorrow, some of us will choose to prepare meals, to join a work crew, to deliver donations on a flatbed truck. We’re planning to fight like hell for every single one of our Dreamers — to keep them where they are already home.”

Lacy M. Johnson is the author of “The Other Side: A Memoir” and the forthcoming essay collection “The Reckonings.”

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Hurricanes are “acts of God” (aggravated by anti-science politicians and unwise, greed-driven choices in urban development). But, empowering White Nationalist restrictionists and their gonzo views and policies on immigration is purely a man-made disaster that can be reversed at the ballot box. (That’s why White Nationalist Kris Kobach and his Voter Suppression Commission is working so hard to restrict suffrage!)

PWS

09-08-17

JULIA EDWARDS AINSLEY & ANDREW BLANKSTEIN AT NBC: Weather Forces ICE To Cancel Mega-Bust!

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ice-plans-mega-largest-immigration-raid-operation-its-kind-n799691

“WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security had planned nationwide raids to target 8,400 undocumented immigrants later this month, according to three law enforcement officials and an internal document that described the plan as “the largest operation of its kind in the history of ICE,” an acronym for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But after NBC News reported the plans late Thursday, the agency issued a statement saying it had cancelled nationwide enforcement actions due to Hurricane Irma and the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey.

. . . .

It is not unusual for ICE operations to target immigrants by the hundreds or even low thousands. The higher-than-usual target number may have been partially driven by an effort to reach a deportation goal by the end of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, one of the officials said.

The cancelled operation comes on the heels of Trump’s controversial decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, that allows some immigrants who were brought into the United States as children to stay.

ICE had been planning the operation internally since mid-August and had instructed officers in the field to target adults deemed to be gang members or perpetrators of serious crimes, said one of the officials. Other undocumented immigrants not suspected of crimes may have been swept up in the raids as “collateral,” the official said.

Immigration agents often only arrest one-quarter to one-half of the target population due to the difficulty of locating individuals and getting them to open their doors to agents.”

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Read the full story at the link.

Yup, gotta jack up those fiscal year-end numbers with plenty of “collaterals.” Year-end performance bonuses could be at risk here!

Of course, a more rational factor might be that we’re not going to be able to rebuild and recover from multiple major hurricanes without the help of immigrants, both documented and undocumented. Gonzo’s fabrications notwithstanding, there aren’t enough other American workers available with the skills and work ethic to get the job done. And, if Gonzo has his way, the worker shortage will become chronic and tank our economy. But, ruining America is well worth it to build the White Nationalist Empire that Trump, Bannon, and Sessions envision.

Also, congratulations to the fantastic Julia Edwards Ainsley on starting her new gig at NBC News! Julia formerly was the Washington Reporter for Reuters. Different organizations, same incisive reporting!

PWS

09-07-17

BIA SHOWS AGAIN HOW YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE CONVICTED TO BE “CONVICTED” UNDER THE INA: Matter of Mohamed, 27 I&N Dec. 92 (BIA 2017)

3900

BIA HEADNOTE:

“Entry into a pretrial intervention agreement under Texas law qualifies as a “conviction” for immigration purposes under section 101(a)(48)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(48)(A) (2012), where (1) a respondent admits sufficient facts to warrant a finding of guilt at the time of his entry into the agreement, and (2) a judge authorizes an agreement ordering the respondent to participate in a pretrial intervention program, under which he is required to complete community supervision and community service, pay fees and restitution, and comply with a no-contact order.”

PANEL: BIA APPELLATE IMMIGRATION JUDGES GRANT, PAULEY, MANN

OPINION BY: JUDGE GRANT

*********************************

Under the INA state criminal proceedings cannot be “relitigated” in U.S. Immigration Court. States go to great lengths to relieve certain first or minor offenders of the legal consequences of a conviction. But, at that point, the INA ditches out state determinations and imposes its own broad definition of “conviction.” Rule: Whatever is necessary to screw the migrant!

PWS

09-07-17

NYT EDITORIAL ON DACA: Trump Is A Coward & Sessions Is A Liar

“President Trump didn’t even have the guts to do the job himself. Instead, he hid in the shadows and sent his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to do the dirty work of telling the country that the administration would no longer shield from deportation 800,000 young undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children.

Mr. Sessions, a longtime anti-immigrant hard-liner, was more than up to the task. In a short, disingenuous speech, he said a program set up by President Barack Obama in 2012 — known as DACA, for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — was a lawless policy that “yielded terrible humanitarian consequences” and denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of American citizens. (Mr. Trump echoed these claims in a statement released by the White House.) Mr. Sessions called DACA “an unconstitutional exercise of authority” and said “failure to enforce the laws in the past has put our nation at risk of crime, violence and terrorism.”

False, false, false and false.

DACA recipients are not threats to public safety or national security; to the contrary, they must have a nearly spotless record to be eligible in the first place. They do not receive legal status in this country, only a two-year, renewable deferral of deportation along with a work permit and eligibility for other government benefits down the road. And they are not taking jobs from native-born Americans, whose declining levels of employment can be chalked up to other factors.

As for the policy’s legality, there’s no question that the president has the authority to set immigration-enforcement priorities. Presidents of both parties have done that for decades, and President Obama did it by focusing on people with criminal records and not on those brought to this country as children. For most of this latter group, the United States is the only home they’ve ever known. About 9 in 10 are working taxpayers, and deporting them could reduce the gross domestic product by over $400 billion over the next decade.

In short, DACA is morally right, legally sound and fiscally smart policy. It was also the only humane choice Mr. Obama had in the face of Congress’s failure to pass any meaningful immigration reform in the last two decades.

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If all that weren’t enough, DACA remains overwhelmingly popular among Americans of all political stripes. Polls put its approval rating at roughly double that of President Trump himself. Even the Chamber of Commerce, usually a reliable backer of the Republican legislative agenda, called the decision to end DACA “contrary to fundamental American principles.”

The only bad thing that could be said about DACA is that, because it was a presidential memorandum, it was always vulnerable to being undone by a shortsighted administration playing to its base.

Now that that has happened, 800,000 people — all of whom gave their personal information and immigration status to the government, believing it would not be used against them — face the prospect of being shipped back to a country they may have no connection to or even remember.

This wouldn’t be a concern if Congress had done its job and passed the Dream Act, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for people brought to this country as children, and which has kicked around Capitol Hill for 16 years. Even though it has been stymied mainly by Republican opposition at every turn, it’s still theoretically on the table. But there’s little sign the dwindling Republican moderates in Congress have the stomach to confront their party’s nativist core. Mr. Trump called on Congress to act, but didn’t have the courage to tell it what he wanted it to do.

Contrast that with President Obama’s willingness to defend a policy that has always had detractors. “Ultimately, this is about basic decency,” Mr. Obama wrote on Facebook on Tuesday. “This is about whether we are a people who kick hopeful young strivers out of America, or whether we treat them the way we’d want our own kids to be treated.”

Mr. Trump has no good rejoinder. That’s partly because there isn’t one and partly because, as is so often the case, he doesn’t fully understand the scope of what he’s done. One would hope that the widespread outrage at Tuesday’s announcement, and the impending suffering of hundreds of thousands of people who’ve done nothing but try to become contributing members of society, might impress it upon him.”

********************************

Amen!

PWS

09-05-17

SLATE: “Jeff Sessions Spews Nativist Lies While Explaining Why Trump Is Killing DACA!”

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/05/sessions_daca_speech_was_full_of_nativist_lies.html

Mark Joseph Stern writes:

“Many Republicans have made clear in recent weeks that they favor the basic policy DACA enshrined, and merely oppose its executive implementation. Sessions, who helped persuade Trump to kill the program, is not one of those Republicans. In his remarks, he directly denounced the very idea of granting any kind of amnesty to undocumented individuals brought to the U.S. as children through no fault of their own. At the heart of his speech were two lies, straight from Breitbart, explaining why DACA must end:

The effect of this unilateral executive amnesty, among other things, contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border that yielded terrible humanitarian consequences. It also denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.

Let’s examine these falsehoods in turn.

First: Sessions claimed that DACA “contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border.” This allegation, often touted by far-right xenophobes, is false. A study published in International Migration, a peer-reviewed academic journal, found that the surge in unaccompanied minors actually began in 2008. (DACA was announced in 2012.) The authors pointed to a host of factors contributing to this phenomenon, including escalating gang violence in Central America, as well as drug cartels’ willingness to target and recruit children in Mexico. But the study found that DACA was not one of these factors. Its authors concluded that “the claim that DACA is responsible for the increase in the flow of unaccompanied alien children is not supported by the data.”

Even without the study, it should be obvious that DACA played no role in this surge of unaccompanied minors because the theory itself makes no sense. Undocumented children who arrived in the United States following DACA’s implementation would not qualify for the program. Only those individuals who “have continuously resided in the United States since June 15, 2007” and “were physically present in the United States on June 15, 2012” could receive DACA status. Why would parents send their children to the U.S. to participate in a program in which they are not legally permitted to participate?

Second: Sessions alleged that DACA has “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.” This line is obviously drawn from the false narrative that immigrants steal jobs from American citizens. There is no actual evidence that DACA recipients have taken jobs from any Americans, let alone “hundreds of thousands.” There is, however, strong evidence that killing DACA will significantly damage the economy—a fact that Sessions conveniently omitted from his speech.

Once DACA is fully rescinded, its former recipients will lose their work permits (and thus their jobs) and face possible deportation. According to the left-leaning Center for American Progress, about 30,000 people will lose their jobs each month as their DACA status expires. The loss of these workers could reduce the national GDP by $280 billion to $433 billion over the next decade. According to estimates by the libertarian Cato Institute, DACA’s demise will cost employers $2 billion and the federal government $60 billion. Trump’s decision to end DACA isn’t a job-saver; it’s a job-killer.

Toward the end of his speech, Sessions praised the RAISE Act, a Republican-backed bill that would tightly curtail immigration into the U.S. Sessions claimed the act would “produce enormous benefits for our country.” In reality, the measure marks an effort to return America to an older immigration regime that locked out racial and ethnic minorities. Sessions has praised the 1924 law that created this regime—a law whose chief author declared that his act was meant to end “indiscriminate acceptance of all races.” On Tuesday, Sessions revived this principle in slightly more polite language.

The attorney general’s utterly gratuitous defamation of young Latino immigrants tells you everything you need to know about the decision to kill DACA. Before Tuesday, the Trump administration seemed eager to frame its DACA decision as respect for constitutional separation of powers: Congress, it insisted, not the president, must set immigration policy. But after Sessions’ speech, it is difficult to view this move as anything other than an attempt to implement the white nationalism that Trump and Sessions campaigned on.”

**********************************************

Read the full report at the link.

It shouldn’t be news by now that “Gonzo Apocalypto” is a lifelong racist and White Nationalist totally unfit to serve as Attorney General. That’s what Liz Warren and others said during the confirmation process when Sessions’s GOP “fellow travelers” were so eager to brush over his un-American record and his anti-American views.

Latinos, Asians, Blacks, Jews and other American minorities need to unite with those of us who don’t want a return to the “Jim Crow” American South of the earlier 20th Century (which spawned the likes of Sessions and where the white GOP population is still racially and culturally tone deaf) behind some good candidates, get out the vote, and throw the White Nationalists and their GOP enablers and apologists (guys like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and most of the rest of the today’s GOP legislators who take responsibility for nothing while encouraging the Trump Administration’s outrageous conduct by refusing to join with Congressional Democrats to “just say no'”) out of office at the ballot box. Otherwise, there won’t be an America in the future. We’ve got to stop letting “the “30%” who either never knew or have forgotten what it means to be a real American run roughshod over our country and particularly our kids. It’s going to be a long four years. Feels like it already.

PWS

09-05-17

BREAKING: “GONZO APOCALYPTO” IS POLITICAL POINT MAN FOR ENDING DACA — TRUMP HIDES DURING ANNOUNCEMENT — AG Doesn’t Know Enough Law To Defend African American Voters Or American Kids — Other AGs Able To Do Both — Time For A “Competency Check?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/09/05/trump-administration-announces-end-of-immigration-protection-program-for-dreamers/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_daca-1110a-duplicate%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.7cbb30e0641e

David Nakamura reports for the Washington Post:

“In announcing the decision at the Justice Department, Attorney General Sessions said that former president Barack Obama, who started the program in 2012 through executive action, “sought to achieve specifically what the legislative branch refused to do.”

He called it an “open-ended circumvention of immigration law through unconstitutional authority by the executive branch,” and said the program was unlikely to withstand court scrutiny.

The Department of Homeland Security said it would no longer accept new applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which has provided renewable, two-year work permits to nearly 800,000 dreamers. The agency said those currently enrolled in DACA will be able to continue working until their permits expire; those whose permits expire by March 5, 2018, will be permitted to apply for two-year renewals as long as they do so by Oct. 5.

New applications and renewal requests already received by DHS before Tuesday will be reviewed and validated on a case-by-case basis, even those for permits that expire after March 5, officials said.

Trump administration officials cast the decision as a humane way to unwind the program and called on lawmakers to provide a legislative solution to address the immigration status of the dreamers. Senior DHS officials emphasized that if Congress fails to act and work permits begin to expire, dreamers will not be high priorities for deportations — but they would be issued notices to appear at immigration court if they are encountered by federal immigration officers.

. . . .

Sessions wrote a memo Monday calling DACA unconstitutional, leading acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke to issue a memo Tuesday to phase out the program. The decision came on the day set by Texas and several other states to pursue a lawsuit against the Trump administration if it did not terminate DACA.

It is unclear whether the states will still move forward with legal action.

“As a result of recent litigation,” Duke said in a statement, “we were faced with two options: wind the program down in an orderly fashion that protects beneficiaries in the near-term while working with Congress to pass legislation; or allow the judiciary to potentially shut the program down completely and immediately. We chose the least disruptive option.”

. . . .

The fight now could shift to Congress to act on a bill to grant permanent legal status to the dreamers. A bill called the Dream Act that would have offered them a path to citizenship failed in the Senate in 2010. Several new proposals have been put forward, including the Bridge Act, a bipartisan bill with 25 co-sponsors that would allow extend DACA protections for three years to give Congress time to enact permanent legislation.

But the White House and conservative Republicans could hold out for additional provisions to boost border security, such as funding for Trump’s proposed border wall or new measures to restrict legal immigration.

If DACA is shuttered next year, more than 1,000 immigrants stand to lose their work permits each day once the program is rescinded, according to a recent study by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. Business leaders from major companies, including Apple, Facebook and Google, had lobbied the White House not to terminate the program, citing the economic consequences.”

* * ****************************************

Gee, advance concern that a Federal Court might shut down a program is a new one for Gonzo and the Trumpsters. Didn’t seem to inhibit him from arguing some pretty off the wall positions in defense of the Travel Ban, Sanctuary Cities, or why the Voting Rights Act doesn’t protect voting rights.

And we all know how statements like “they aren’t an enforcement priority” work out in practice. The majority of this Administration’s removals are folks who aren’t “priorities.”

And, notably, neither Kelly nor Duke at DHS had the courage and backbone to rein in arbitrary, wasteful enforcement by immigration agents. So, in the end, it makes no difference what the DHS “fake priorities” are; the line agents will bust anybody the feel like busting — because they can. And, after all, busting law abiding members of the community, often when they show up at DHS to check in or seek relief, is easier than tracking down real criminals. Makes the numbers look good, particularly when you obscure the fact that behind each number is a human face that belongs to a real person. Mostly ordinary people, just like the rest of us.

Also, sticking them on the already overwhelmed Immigration Court dockets without some realistic court reform aimed at restoring due process and wise use of “prosecutorial discretion” to keep cases exactly like the Dreamers off the court dockets? It’s “gonzo!” Big time!

There was a time when the Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Justice stood up for justice for all Americans, including the most vulnerable. But, that was then, this is now. Liz was “right on.”

PWS

09-05-17

THE HILL: RAPPAPORT ON TEXAS INJUNCTION OF PARTS OF SB 4 — City of El Cenizo v. State of Texas

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/immigration/349103-texas-courts-pro-sanctuary-cities-decision-can-cripple

Nolan writes:

“At the end of August, a federal district court in Texas ruled against that state, halting an immigration enforcement law shortly before it was to go into effect.

The court issued a preliminary (temporary) injunction to halt the implementation of five allegedly unconstitutional provisions in Texas’ anti-sanctuary city law, Senate Bill 4 (SB 4), including one that would require law enforcement agencies in Texas to “comply with, honor, and fulfill” any immigration detainer issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This means that the court found a substantial likelihood that the plaintiffs (in this case, the parties opposing the state of Texas) will succeed in establishing that those provisions are unconstitutional when a decision is rendered on the merits of the case.

If the decision on ICE detainers is correct, which seems to be the case, it could cripple ICE’s ability to prevent removable criminal aliens from absconding when they are released from custody by state and local law enforcement agencies.

. . . .

When Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 4 into law, he said that denying detainer requests can have deadly consequences. This is illustrated by the case of Kate Steinle, who was shot dead by a criminal alien while she was walking with her father on a busy pier in San Francisco.

The alien was a repeat felon who had been deported five times, but the police department that had been holding him released him in disregard of a detainer request because San Francisco is a sanctuary city that does not honor detainer requests.

Preventing the use of detainers could have unintended consequences. If other federal courts agree with the decision’s disposition of the detainer issue; state and local police in every part of the country may have to stop honoring detainer requests, and ICE could use the time that would have been spent following up on detainers to go after noncriminal aliens.

ICE can encourage state and local police departments to participate in the federal 287(g) Program, which allows participants to enter into a partnership with ICE on the basis of a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). They would receive training on immigration enforcement and delegated immigration authority, which includes the option of being able to detain aliens on the basis of detainers.

But ICE does not have the resources to train and supervise police in all of the state and local law enforcement agencies in the country.

The only solution is for Congress to grant state and local police the authority to detain aliens on the basis of an ICE detainer.”

***********************************

Read Nolan’s complete analysis over at The Hill at the link.

I agree with Nolan that the Chief District Judge Orlando L. Garcia’s analysis of SB 4’s constitutional infirmities appears to be correct. I also agree that rationale should eventually require DHS to change its detainer policy nationwide to meet constitutional standards.

That means that a battery of DHS and DOJ attorneys, of which there is no shortage, will have to work with the enforcement branches to come up with effective enforcement methods that comply with our Constitution. Stuff like that happens all the time. That’s why the Government needs good lawyers.

I don’t agree with Nolan that the only way for DHS to function is for Congress to pass legislation turning untrained local cops into immigration officers for the purpose of honoring detainers. Seems like you end up with the same problem, just “dressed up” differently.

I spent over a decade working for the Legacy INS on immigration enforcement matters. Nobody ever doubted that immigration officers could effectively carry out their duties 1) in full compliance with the U.S. Constitution, and 2) without relying on state and local officials. Indeed, the “mantra” of INS Enforcement in those days was “we’re the immigration pros, leave enforcement to us.” I guess times must have changed; but not that much. And, the Fourth Amendment hasn’t changed at all.

I also don’t buy the claim that Abbott was interested in protecting Texans from dangerous crime. No, this was about a White Nationalist agenda designed to put down minorities, particularly in the Latino community, and prevent them from getting their fair share of political power. That’s why, although Latinos make up a large proportion of Texas’s population, Latino leaders generally opposed the GOP’s and Abbott’s racially divisive action.

A bill really aimed at protecting all Texans, regardless of ethnicity or status, from violent crime would have received support from about 98% of residents (who really wants to be a victim of violent crime — almost nobody, as the BIA has observed on a number of occasions) including the overwhelming number of Latinos. That it didn’t, and that a majority-Latino jurisdiction like El Cenizo is the lead plaintiff opposing the bill says all you need to know about the SB 4’s White Nationalist intent.

There will come a day when the Abbotts, Paxtons, and other denizens of the Texas White GOP will have to share power equitably with Latino and other minority Texans. When that happens, they can only hope that Latino leaders and politicians will have short memories, forgive the racism of the past, and move on to the future treating them with greater respect and consideration than they deserve based on their recent “sharp stick in the eyes” words and actions.

Until that happens — well, as I’ve said before, lots of work for lawyers and judges.

PWS

09-04-17

JENNIFER RUBIN IN WASHPOST: “Trump’s Most Evil Act” — “an act of uncommon cowardice.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/09/04/trump-ending-daca-would-be-cruelty-wrapped-in-a-web-of-lies/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.340f3e8f292a

Rubin writes in her “Right Turn” column:

“First, let’s not think Trump — who invites cops to abuse suspects, who thinks ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio was “doing his job” when denying others their constitutional rights and who issued the Muslim ban — cares about the Constitution (any of the “twelve” articles). Trump says, “We love the dreamers. … We think the dreamers are terrific.” But in fact he loves the applause he derives from his cultist followers more than anything. Otherwise he’d go to the mat to defend the dreamers and secure their legal status.

. . . .

No, if Trump cancels DACA, it will be one more attempt to endear himself to his shrinking base with the only thing that truly energizes the dead-enders: vengeance fueled by white grievance. And it will also be an act of uncommon cowardice. (“Should Trump move forward with this decision, he would effectively be buying time and punting responsibility to Congress to determine the fate of the Dreamers,” writes The Post.) Dumping it into the lap of the hapless Congress, he can try evading responsibility for the deportation of nearly 800,000 young people who were brought here as children, 91 percent of whom are working. (And if by chance Congress should save DACA, it will be Trump who is the villain and they the saviors, an odd political choice for a president who cares not one wit about the party.)

As for Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan, who talks about sparing the dreamers, will be sorely tested to overcome the objections of the hard-line anti-immigrant voices in his conference. Does he have the nerve to bring to the floor a bill that lacks majority support among Republicans? Tie it to a must-pass bill (e.g., Harvey funding, the debt ceiling, funding for the government)? In the Senate, will opportunistic right-wingers such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) grandstand, perhaps filibustering a measure into order to out-Trump Trump?

However this turns out, the GOP under Trump has defined itself as the white grievance party — bluntly, a party fueled by concocted white resentment aimed at minorities. Of all the actions Trump has taken, none has been as cruel, thoughtless or divisive as deporting hundreds of thousands of young people who’ve done nothing but go to school, work hard and present themselves to the government.

The party of Lincoln has become the party of Charlottesville, Arpaio, DACA repeal and the Muslim ban. Embodying the very worst sentiments and driven by irrational anger, it deserves not defense but extinction.”

******************************************************

“Cowardice” is the hallmark of an Administration that glories in picking on and bullying the poor, the most vulnerable, minorities of all types, and even our foreign allies whose help and support we need. And, the GOP has firmly established itself as the party of cowards.

Trump’s glaring character flaws, naked prejudices, and obvious unsuitability for office, by nature of lack of knowledge, lack of experience, and lack of Presidential temperament, have been out there on display for all to see since the day he announced his candidacy. Yet, notwithstanding some “tisk-tisking” by a few “old timers,” the GOP again and again has in the end united behind Trump and his divisive agenda, preferring to flounder around attempting to govern within its own unruly caucus rather than reaching across the aisle to the Democrats (who, after all, did get the majority of the Presidential votes cast) to form a “union of the middle” to govern the country in a responsible, bi-partisan manner in the absence of Executive competence.

Yes, that would mean sacrificing large parts of the rightist “GOP agenda” in favor of saving the country from Trump’s excesses. But, it’s pretty clear by now that the “GOP agenda” is not going to be enacted into law any time soon anyway. So, why not just do something decent for a change and see how it plays out?

PWS

09-04-17

BREAKING: Trump Punts DACA To Congress — Will End Program In 6 Mo. Unless Congress Acts!

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/03/trump-dreamers-immigration-daca-immigrants-242301

Eliana Johnson reports for Politico:

President Donald Trump has decided to end the Obama-era program that grants work permits to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as children, according to two sources familiar with his thinking. Senior White House aides huddled Sunday afternoon to discuss the rollout of a decision likely to ignite a political firestorm — and fulfill one of the president’s core campaign promises.

Trump has wrestled for months with whether to do away with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA. He has faced strong warnings from members of his own party not to scrap the program and struggled with his own misgivings about targeting minors for deportation.

Conversations with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who argued that Congress — rather than the executive branch — is responsible for writing immigration law, helped persuade the president to terminate the program, the two sources said, though White House aides caution that — as with everything in the Trump White House — nothing is set in stone until an official announcement has been made.

In a nod to reservations held by many lawmakers, the White House plans to delay the enforcement of the president’s decision for six months, giving Congress a window to act, according to one White House official. But a senior White House aide said that chief of staff John Kelly, who has been running the West Wing policy process on the issue, “thinks Congress should’ve gotten its act together a lot longer ago.”

*********************************

Read the complete article at the link.

This could be one of Trump’s shrewder political moves. He doesn’t really have to do anything right now, while getting the issue off his desk and putting pressure on the Dems and those more responsible Republicans who have urged him to retain the program to get their collective act together and legislate.

Now it depends on whether Trump can disengage without the usual barrage of xenophobic White Nationalist race baiting truth-challenged rhetoric that tends to accompany all of his immigration moves. That might be hard for Trump, given his normal need to pander to the basist biases of his base.

There is also the problem of what happens if Congress fails. There is no practical way of removing 800,000 American young people. It’s simply beyond the capacity of the system, not to mention that it would destroy our economy and rip apart our society.

REALITY CHECK: Many U.S. Immigration Courts are already setting “new” non-detained cases out to Individual Hearing dates in 2020 & 2021. As Judge Burman’s remarks in the preceding post suggest, those courts that claim not to be out as far might well be using ADR (“Aimless Docket Reshuffling”) techniques to mask the true extent of the backlog and docketing problem.

A few Dreamers got DACA after the entry of a final order of removal. But, the vast majority either 1) applied before being placed in Removal Proceedings; or 2) had their Removal Proceedings “Administratively Closed” (thereby removed from the Immigration Court’s “active docket”) after DACA was granted. All of these cases would have to be initially docketed or re-docketed upon DHS motion.

The US Immigration Courts’ docket already extends beyond the end of Trump’s current term in 2021. By the time “Dreamer” cases get to Individual Hearings the next Presidential term likely will have expired. After all, even without Dreamers on the docket, and with additional US Immigration Judges on the bench, backlogs have continued to rise as a result of the Administration’s “gonzo” approach to immigration enforcement.

So far, the Administration has addressed the impracticality of unlimited enforcement of a broken immigration system with a pattern of “random acts of cruelty” intended to spread fear, create unease, and keep ethnic and migrant communities on edge.

Let’s hope Congress can get its act together and solve the problem in a bipartisan manner. If not, more disruption, dislocation, disorder, and just plain downright arbitrary meanness are likely to follow.

“Bad things will happen” to a country that allows a xenophobic, racist, White Nationalist minority (two-thirds of Americans favor some type of relief for Dreamers) to overrule the majority and attack our country’s most precious asset: the young people who are America’s (and the world’s) future. It’s time for those of us in the majority who aren’t part of the “Trump base” to stand up and be heard in opposition to those who would destroy our country’s future and trash the lives of fine American young people in the process! And, politicians who oppose relief for Dreamers need to be removed from office through the electoral process.

PWS

09-03-17

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