"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Matter of Castillo Angulo, 27 I&N Dec. 194 (BIA 2018)
BIA HEADNOTE:
“(1) In removal proceedings arising within the jurisdiction of the United States Courts of Appeals for the Fifth and Ninth Circuits, an alien who was “waved through” a port of entry has established an admission “in any status” within the meaning of section 240A(a)(2) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(a)(2) (2012). Tula-Rubio v. Lynch, 787 F.3d 288 (5th Cir. 2015), and Saldivar v. Sessions, 877 F.3d 812 (9th Cir. 2017), followed in jurisdiction only.
(2) In removal proceedings arising outside the Fifth and Ninth Circuits, to establish continuous residence in the United States for 7 years after having been “admitted in any status” under section 240A(a)(2), an alien must prove that he or she possessed some form of lawful immigration status at the time of admission.”
CONCURRING/DISSENTING OPINION: Judge Roger A. Pauley
KEY QUOTE FROM DISSENT:
“I concur in the result, which the majority only reaches because it acknowledges that the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Saldivar v. Sessions, 877 F.3d 812 (9th Cir. 2017), which holds that a wave through constitutes an “admission in any status” for purposes of section 240A(a)(2) of the Act, is binding on the Board since this case arises in that circuit. However, unlike the majority, I conclude that both the Ninth Circuit and the Fifth Circuit, whose similar holding in Tula-Rubio v. Lynch, 787 F.3d 288 (5th Cir. 2015), the Ninth Circuit followed, arrived at the correct result, even though, like the majority, I disagree with some aspects of those courts’ reasoning.
. . . .
I therefore respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusion otherwise and would find that, in any circuit, an alien is eligible to seek cancellation of removal if he or she establishes an admission via a wave through, even if the alien cannot demonstrate the particular lawful status under which admission was authorized, and even if it is later found that he or she had no lawful status at that time.”
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Gee, to me, “any status” means “any” status. But, hey, I’m just an old retired trial judge who in ancient time was Chair of the BIA. What would I know about “modern” concepts of statutory interpretation at the BIA?
For a quasi-judicial body that 1) often gets carried away with obtuse linguistic analysis, and 2) claims to see its role as maintaining nationwide consistency, it seems odd that the BIA has gone out of its way to a) rewrite the statute to its own liking, and 2) create a Circuit conflict where none previously existed.
The best way of understanding it is probably “doing what’s necessary to get to ‘no” for respondents not fortunate enough to be in the 9th or 5th Circuits.
My compliments to Judge Pauley for 1) having the backbone, and 2) caring enough to file a separate opinion that better follows the statutory language, produces a much better practical result, and, not surprisingly, is much closer to what the only Article III Courts to address this particular issue already have decided.
Just happened to be reading this item about trying to combat gangs in our local newspaper, the Alexandria Gazette Packet:
Carr said one of the biggest challenges facing the police department’s anti-gang work is backlash from the national level rhetoric on immigration. “Whenever we show up in Arlandria, people worry we’re there to enforce immigration law,” said Carr. “Having difficulty building up that trust. We’re a local police department looking for people breaking local law.”
Seldom, if ever, do I read or see a TV report on gang violence where the victim is Anglo or Black. No, virtually 100% of the victims of gang violence in this area are Hispanic.
It wouldn’t take a “rocket scientist” — just somebody other than a 70-or-so-year-old Anglo White Nationalist with a history of anti-Hispanic racism — to understand that you can’t effectively combat or prevent gang violence without the trust of the local Hispanic community — in Alexandria, VA or anywhere else. It also doesn’t take much “smarts” to recognize that combatting gang violence with threats to arrest law-abiding, productive members of the community who happen to be without documents is going to discourage victims and witnesses from cooperating, destroy trust between the local community and the local police, and make enforcement ineffective.
No wonder gang leaders, particularly recruiters, literally “jump for joy” every time Gonzo opens his mouth to utter another anti-Hispanic , anti-immigrant rant. Not only does that give the gangsters “a free shot” at their victims in the Hispanic community, but it’s also is a prime recruiting tool. It demonstrates that Sessions and his restrictionist cronies in the Anglo community aren’t going to give any respect to “Dreamers” or any other law-abiding undocumented individuals. So, why not join up with the folks who wield some power and demand respect — and who obviously have been able to create a climate of fear in the Anglo community just by victimizing Hispanics?
“Message to Republicans: You can be pro-growth. You can be anti-immigration. But, honestly, you can’t be both.
Now, within the immigration debate, there are a lot of questions with no obvious right answers.
What’s the right balance of immigrants admitted for their skills and those allowed in because they have relatives here?
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How much effort should be devoted to tracking down the undocumented, and how much to punishing companies that hire them?
What should we do about the millions of immigrants who came here illegally a decade or more ago and have become established members of their communities?
And — what is the right number of legal immigrants every year from now on?
Big, complicated questions — which is why Congress shouldn’t try to solve them all between now and Feb. 8, its self-imposed deadline for resolving the issue of the “dreamers.” In the few days that remain, the best it could do would be to, well, resolve the issue of the dreamers — the undocumented immigrants who were brought here as young children through no fault of their own, who obey the law and who go to school or work or serve in the military.
They are American in all but legal status. Give them a path to citizenship, as President Trump has proposed. Give Trump the money for his wall (until he gets that check from Mexico). Punt on the big, complicated questions, something Congress certainly knows how to do. Everyone declares victory, and the government doesn’t shut down.
Of course, that would leave us still facing the big questions. Ideally, Congress would schedule a serious debate on them for the spring. Ideally, it would be conducted in a constructive spirit — acknowledging, for example, that reasonable people can disagree on skills vs. family.
But ideally, also, it would also be conducted with an understanding that those who favor a drastic, absolute drop in the level of immigration, as many Republicans do, would be making a choice about America’s future.
They would be turning us into Japan.
Now, to be clear, Japan is a wondrous nation, with an ancient, complex culture, welcoming people, innovative industry — a great deal to teach the world.
But Japan also is a country that admits few immigrants — and, as a result, it is an aging, shrinking nation. By 2030, more than half the country will be over age 50. By 2050 there will be more than three times as many old people (65 and over) as children (14 and under). Already, deaths substantially outnumber births. Its population of 127 million is forecast to shrink by a third over the next half-century.
Japan is a pioneer and an extreme version of where much of the First World is headed as longevity increases and fertility declines. The likely consequences are slower economic growth, reduced innovation, labor shortages and huge pressure on pensions. If you think our entitlement politics are fraught, think about this: In Japan in 2050, the old-age dependency ratio — the number of people 65 and over as a percentage of the number who are 15 to 64 — is projected to be 71.2 percent.
The comparable figure for the United States is 36.4 percent, up from 25.7 percent in 2020. Still high, but if it proves manageable, we will have immigration to thank. America still attracts dynamic, hard-working people from around the world, and they and their offspring help keep our population and our economy growing, as recent Pew Research Center and International Monetary Fund papers explain.
The wave of immigration over the past half-century also has changed the face of the nation, reducing the share of the white population from what it would have been and increasing the share of Asians and Hispanics. It’s not surprising that some people find this disorienting.
But as so often with such debates, perceptions lag reality. Nearly half (48 percent) of immigrants these days have college degrees, as a fact sheet from the Migration Policy Institute last year showed. A quarter of technology company start-ups between 2008 and 2012 included at least one foreign-born founder. As incomes and education levels rise around the world, in other words, the skills mix of U.S. immigration is already changing, without any changes in our laws.
Here’s the bottom line: I think we should remain open to immigrants because it’s part of who we are as a nation, because every generation of newcomers — even, or maybe especially, the ones who come with nothing but moxie and a tolerance for risk — has enriched and improved us.
But you don’t have to buy into any of that Statue of Liberty stuff to favor immigration, because naked self-interest leads to the very same conclusion. A vote to choke off immigration is a vote for stagnation and decline.”
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Hiatt clearly “gets it!”
But, maybe the GOP restrictionists do too. Their opposition to legal immigration is grounded in racism, White Nationalism, and xenophobia — none of which have anything to do with rationality, facts, the common good, or even “enlightened self-interest.”
Therefore, neither an appeal to “who we are as a nation” nor “naked self-interest” is likely to change their highly emotional, but essentially irrational anti-immigrant views.
“A few times a week, I visit the 7-Eleven in my mid–city neighborhood to pick up a six-pack or a bag of snacks. What I see there looks to me like a pretty pure portrait of America. The place is open all hours and it serves all kinds: Parents buying after-school snacks for their children, laborers getting cold drinks on hot afternoons, neighbors stopping in for a few items before the evening meal. A family from India owns the franchise — mother, father, son and daughter, all of whom work long hours in the store.
On Jan. 10, U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agents descended on 98 7-Elevens in 17 states, including California. It was a show of force that must have played well with the president’s anti-immigrant base. Although my mid-city outpost wasn’t targeted, a store in Culver City and three in Koreatown were. ICE didn’t detain anyone in Los Angeles, but 21 workers suspected of being in the country illegally were arrested nationwide.
“Today’s actions,” declared acting ICE director Thomas D. Homan, “send a strong message to U.S. businesses that hire and employ an illegal work force: ICE will enforce the law, and if you are found to be breaking the law, you will be held accountable.”
Oh, come on. The raids were nothing but political theater, intended to terrify the most vulnerable.
I’ll keep supporting my local 7-Eleven, and any other franchise that gets raided.
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According to news reports, 7-Eleven owners will be “audited” for immigration offenses, but such audits don’t require dramatic predawn raids and rarely result in successful prosecution anyway. Business owners have access to lawyers, and it’s hard to prove they knowingly hired undocumented workers. Workers, on the other hand, can be deported with little or no due process.
It’s not that 7-Eleven owners and the company’s corporate leadership are without their issues. During the Obama administration, several franchisees in New York and Virginia were indicted for running a scheme in which, according to then-Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch, “immigrant workers were routinely forced, upon threat of job loss or deportation, to work upwards of 100 hours a week.”
Closer to home, a group of Southern California franchise owners sued 7-Eleven in 2014 for “aggressive and discriminatory” practices, which included taking away stores for minor violations and turning them over to new owners for higher fees. Late last year, the National Coalition of Associations of 7-Eleven Franchisees filed another suit in California alleging additional coercive attempts at corporate control.
Still, 7-Eleven stores have long offered a positive vehicle for immigrants — especially South Asians — to ascend into the middle class. Franchise costs are relatively affordable, and in 2013, the National Minority Franchising Initiative reported that 57% of the chain’s stores were minority-run. The result — as my neighborhood store illustrates — can be a vivid demonstration of the American dream.
It seems incredible to have to remind ourselves, at this point in the history of the Republic, that immigration and immigrants — with and without papers — are the backbone of the American economy. Again and again, research shows immigration’s net positive economic effect. “Immigrants, we get the job done,” Lin-Manuel-Miranda exults in the musical “Hamilton,” whose hero emigrated from the Caribbean island of Nevis on his way to helping found the United States.
Just two days before the 7-Eleven raids, the Trump administration announced it would do away with Temporary Protected Status for 200,000 Salvadorans in the U.S. — “part of what appears an effort …,” argued a Baltimore Sun editorial, “to go nationality-by-nationality to show the door to Latino and Latina immigrants, legal or illegal.”
The day after the raids, the president made his blatantly racist comments denigrating Haiti, El Salvador and countries in Africa while torpedoing a fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
That none of this is particularly surprising — the president, remember, kicked off his campaign by calling Mexicans criminals and rapists, then began his presidency with the Muslim “travel ban” — makes it no less troubling, especially in California, which is, as of Jan. 1, a sanctuary state. The California Values Act prevents police from asking about immigration status or cooperating with federal immigration authorities, with some exceptions. A related law allows employers to be prosecuted if, in state Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra’s words, they “voluntarily start giving up information about … or access to their employees” without a warrant.
When Gov. Jerry Brown signed the laws, Homan responded that “ICE will have no choice but to conduct at-large arrests in local neighborhoods and at worksites, which will inevitably result in additional collateral arrests.”
We have every reason, then, to see the recent raids as a signal of what’s to come — ICE agents swooping down on restaurants, car washes, convenience stores and construction sites.
Indeed, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week that “U.S. immigration officials have begun preparing for a major sweep in San Francisco and other Northern California cities in which federal officers would look to arrest more than 1,500 undocumented people while sending a message that immigration policy will be enforced in the sanctuary state.”
Theater again, although not for those who are arrested. For them, this is all too real.
I never thought going to a convenience store would become a political act, but here we are. I’ll keep supporting my local 7-Eleven, and any other franchise that gets raided. It would be un-American — or un-Californian — to do otherwise.
David L. Ulin is a contributing writer to Opinion.”
When your policies are based on latent racism and White Nationalism, common sense, economic reality, and human decency cease to matter. That’s why ICE is well on its way to becoming America’s most hated and least trusted police force. That’s going to be a problem for the ICEMEN long after Trump, Gonzo, and the White Nationalist Gang have been removed from power.
“In 2006, Arizona passed a ballot initiative that barred students without legal immigration status from receiving in-state tuition rates at public universities and colleges.
Dulce Matuz, an electrical-engineering major at Arizona State, ran to find her professor.
Bursting into tears, she told him something she had only ever shared with her closest friends. She was undocumented.
“It felt good to tell my story,” she told the Guardian this week. “It was like a weight had been lifted.”
The law meant Matuz would have to pay the out-of-state tuition rate, which she could not afford. But the next day, her professor gave her a flier advertising scholarships for “people in your situation”.
Matuz had thought she was the only undocumented student on one of the largest campuses in the country. She was wrong.
At an informational meeting, she met dozens of young people with stories similar to hers. Their discussion grew into a statewide coalition, the students rallying with organizations across the US to declare themselves “undocumented and unafraid”.
One by one they shed their anonymity, in effect daring law enforcement to target them.
It was a risky move, especially in a state which was then a cauldron of anti-immigrant sentiment. But the students weren’t alone. Thousands of young immigrants came forward to demand a future in the country where they were raised. Each had a name and a story.
Collectively, they are known as Dreamers, young people without immigration status who were brought to the US as children. Over the last decade, they’ve gone from the “shadows” to the center stage of US politics, and their fate now dangles before an irascible president and a gridlocked Congress.
‘Trump Dreamers’
In September, Donald Trump ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), an Obama-era program that lifted the threat of deportation for Dreamers.
The administration argued that Obama had overstepped his authority. But Trump did give Dreamers a six-month grace period and called on Congress to pass legislation.
“If the Dreamers are able to lead a fight that results in a radical, nativist administration signing into law their freedom, it would be a testament only to how much moral and political power the Dreamers have built,” said Frank Sharry, a long-time advocate of immigration reform and executive director of America’s Voice.
Conservatives suggest Trump is uniquely qualified to succeed where predecessors have failed, to achieve immigration reform, precisely because of his credibility among fierce opponents of illegal immigration.
At a meeting earlier this month, for example, Trump promised to “take the heat” if Republicans passed legislation.
“President Obama tried and couldn’t fix immigration, President Bush tried and couldn’t do it,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who is pushing bipartisan immigration reform.
Timeline
Donald Trump and Dreamers: a timeline of mixed messages
“I believe President Trump can. Today’s Daca recipients can be tomorrow’s Trump Dreamers.”
Polling has consistently shown that a large majority of Americans – 87% in one recent survey – support protections for Dreamers. But general anti-immigrant fervor has stalled efforts to pass legislation and conservatives remain divided over whether Dreamers should ever be allowed to be citizens.
Rounds of negotiations have yielded no solution, only a brief shutdown of the federal government during which Democrats tried to force lawmakers to extend legal status to the Dreamers.
Depending on the day, lawmakers and the president are either on the verge of striking a deal or as far apart as ever. Trump was elected after championing hard-line immigration policies but he has demanded both a “bill of love” and a border wall.
This week, the White House released a proposal that offered a pathway to citizenship for up to 1.8 million undocumented young people – in exchange for a $25bn “trust fund” for a border wall, a crackdown on undocumented migrants and changes to the migration system.
The offer did not go down well, either with Trump’s base or with progressives ranged against him. Immigration hardliners crowned Trump “Amnesty Don”. Advocates for reform rejected the offer as an attempt to seal America’s borders.
In a statement issued on Friday, Chris Murphy, a Connecticut senator, called the offer “a total non-starter” that “preyed on the worst kind of prejudice”, using Dreamers “as a bargaining chip to build a wall and rip thousands of families apart”.
Trump, meanwhile, tweeted that Daca reform had “been made increasingly difficult by the fact that [Senate minority leader] Cryin’ Chuck Schumer took such a beating over the shutdown that he is unable to act on immigration!”
Dreamers say the fight is only beginning.
Matuz became a US citizen in 2016, a decade after she “came out of the shadows”. But she still identifies strongly with her fellow Dreamers.
“We still haven’t achieved what we set out to achieve,” she said.
’They’re speaking up’
The Dreamer movement came of age during the Obama administration. But legislation to build a path to citizenship was introduced to Congress in 2001.
Two senators – Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican – introduced the first Dream Act in August that year, a month before 9/11.
But after the attacks, as concerns over national security and terrorism dominated public life, the immigration debate shifted sharply. The bill stalled. It was reintroduced several times, without success.
Nonetheless, the Dreamers continued to galvanize public support. They escalated their tactics, staging sit ins and actions that risked arrest.
“There was a time when they used to be very quiet,” Durbin said recently at a rally. “Not any more. They’re speaking up and we’re proud that they are.”
The Dreamers’ fight for citizenship, Durbin has said, is the “civil rights issue of our time”.
In December 2010, the Dream Act was brought to the floor. It failed again. In 2012, months before the presidential election, Barack Obama established Daca.
Recipients had to have entered the US before their 16th birthday, which means the oldest beneficiaries are now 35.
The most common age of entry to the US was three while the median age was six, according to a report by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.
Quick guide
What is Daca and who are the Dreamers?
Eight hundred thousand people qualified, the vast majority of them Latino, according to data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Nearly 80% were born in Mexico.
The largest numbers of recipients now live in California and other border states such as Texas and Arizona. They are more likely than their ineligible counterparts to hold a college degree and a higher-skilled job, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute.
“What you’re seeing in the Dreamers is a reflection of the American ideals,” said Daniel Garza, president of the conservative Libre Institute, a free-market Latino advocacy group founded by the Koch brothers.
“When one breathes freedom it manifests itself. And now that these kids have a shot at directing their own future or setting a path toward their own future, let’s remove those barriers and allow them that opportunity.”
‘I’m not alone’
Over the last several months, Dreamers have been in Washington, walking the halls of Congress.
They wear light orange shirts with a comic book POW! bubble with the words: “Clean Dream Act Now.”
They sleep on church floors and friends’ couches; a few missed final exams to join protests in December, when there was a flicker of hope that legislation might receive a vote.
Greisa Martínez Rosas, 29, has been among them, leading members in song at rallies on the lawn in front of the capitol building, in between meetings with members of Congress.
She was eight when she and her father staked out a spot on the Rio Grande river and crossed from Mexico into Texas. She laid seashells to mark the place. The next day, her family swam into the United States.
Profile
Who are the Dreamers?
Martínez Rosas grew up in a Hispanic neighborhood of Dallas and attended Texas A&M University. But the life she was building begin to unravel when her father was deported. Her mother died in 2016.
Fighting for a Dream Act has given her purpose, she said, and she is now advocacy and policy director at United We Dream, a national organization that campaigns for migrant rights. She has three younger sisters, one of them also undocumented.
“I am really lucky to be doing this,” she said. “It gives meaning to a lot of the pain and helps me deal with a lot of the trauma growing up undocumented.
“The reality is that I’m not alone. My story isn’t special. That’s why it’s so important that we wage this fight.”
The Dreamers rejected Trump’s latest proposal, even though it would allow a pathway to citizenship for more than twice the number of Daca recipients.
“We are not willing to accept an immigration deal that takes our country 10 steps back no matter how badly we want reprieve,” Martínez Rosas said. “That’s how much we love this country.”
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The problem isn’t the Dreamers. It’s the 13% of so of White Nationalist citizens who have forgotten their own immigrant heritage and have abandoned human decency, compassion, and common sense in the process. Unfortunately, this minority has, and continues to wield, a disproportionate share of political power.
“At his inauguration, President Trump promised to renew the unity of the American people, claiming that “through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.” Then, Trump seemed intent on creating a reborn civic and social consciousness, and on empowering ordinary people against big government and big money.
And yet, Trump’s administration has ushered in a virulently antisocial politics that dissolves the most basic bonds and leaves individuals powerless against both market and state. Trump, like many populists of the right, gained a foothold by promising that a resurgent nationalism could make people feel cohesive, trusting and strong again. But like his right-leaning populist predecessors, he has offered only the imaginary bonds of nationalism — the illusion of fellow-feeling and homogeneity — even as his policies destroy the real and foundational bonds of family and community in the arenas of health care, immigration, labor and more.
. . . . In its amicus brief in support of unions, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops points out that the destruction of unions based on the loose interpretation of money as speech will render workers weaker than ever before. “Ironically then,” the bishops observe, “a misguided effort to protect one individual from government coercion would leave only individuals to stand against government (or economic) coercion.”
If only that world were really so far away. In reality, it is already here. What unites workfare, the annihilation of DACA and the war on unions is a totalizing individualism — the belief that people are essentially isolated individuals. That we are alone before we are together. That we are more and not less ourselves in total isolation. From that view flow policies that disregard or deny that people are, in fact, embedded in families, communities and industries, and that their bonds and obligations are powerful and ought to be respected and protected by the state. No politics issuing from that view can ever cultivate unity.
What Trump offered as an answer to the aching aloneness of Americans was nationalism, the exchange of an imagined community for actual ones, the promise of a mystic bond with people you’ll never meet even while the ones you know and love are deported, abandoned, dying. It was supposed to bring us together, supposed to make us strong. But his policies stand to leave us more alone than we’ve ever been, and in our solitude, weak.
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Read the rest of Elizabeth’s op-ed at the link.
First, it was Mexicans, Muslims, and undocumented workers. Then came Legal Immigrants, Latinos, African-Americans, LGBTQ individuals, demonstrators, the sick, the poor, women seeking to exercise their constitutional right to abortion, unionists, Liberals, and Democrats. Don’t see YOUR GROUP on the “hit list.” Just wait. It keeps expanding, Folks like Trump and his White Nationalist buddies can’t live without an “enemy of the day” to rally their “base.”
When the GOP White Nationalists decide that YOU no longer fit their image of America, who will be left to stand up for YOUR rights. Harm to the most vulnerable members of our community, and failure to stand up for them, harms and ultimately diminishes the humanity of all of us. And, that’s how free societies are “deconstructed and destroyed.” Stand up for everyone’s rights! Just say no to Trump and his White Nationalist Cabal!
“Just a week ago, Harry Pangemanan was being honored for helping rebuild hundreds of homes along the Jersey Shore after the devastation of Superstorm Sandy. Now, the Indonesian is pleading for protection from deportation after narrowly escaping U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during a raid.
ICE agents swept through Central New Jersey on Thursday morning and arrested two other Indonesians, the Deportation and Immigration Response Equipo, which tries to intervene in ICE raids, told U.S.A. Today.
After managing to avoid arrest, Pangemanan, who has two U.S.-born children, was reportedly escorted to a local church near his Highland Park home, where he was joined by three other Indonesian Christians, to claim sanctuary, the newspaper reports.
Undocumented immigrants face deportation under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has since visited Pangemanan and other Indonesians seeking sanctuary at the Reformed Church of Highland Park to lend his support.
“Many of the houses that he worked on, in the lawn of the homes he was working on were big Donald Trump signs and yet he was still rebuilding those homes to get Jersey families back inside,” the church’s reverend, Seth Kaper-Dale told the governor.
Pangemanan’s plight is shared by many other undocumented immigrants who face deportation under the Trump administration’s crackdown.
Republicans and Democrats are expected to address immigration policy changes in Congress, with Democrats hoping to strike a deal to protect undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, known as Dreamers, from deportation before February 8.
That’s when a short-term extension on government funding is supposed to run out, after Congress voted to briefly restore the flow of funds following a three-day government shutdown with the promise that a vote would be held on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which had protected dreamers before President Donald Trump officially ended it in September.
A deal to protect Dreamers would not, however, help undocumented immigrants like Pangemanan, an Indonesian Christian who fled religious persecution in 1993.
While violent persecution has affected only a small percentage of Christians in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, Open Doors U.S.A. says on its website that the overall situation for the minority “has deteriorated in recent years.”
Pangemanan, who is married and has had two U.S. born children with his wife, has tried to gain legal status after overstaying his visa, according to U.S.A. Today, but has been unable to acquire the necessary support for his asylum application.
The undocumented immigrant was responsible for leading a team of volunteers who rebuilt more than 200 homes in Monmouth and Ocean counties after they were destroyed by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Just last week, Pangemanan received the 2018 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award from the Highland Park Human Relations Commission for his work.
“I’m working. I’ve worked hard for my family,” the Indonesian told an Asbury Park Press reporter. “I’m not dependent on somebody else.”
In 2012, during the Obama administration, Pangemanan was also reportedly forced to enter sanctuary in the same church, along with a number of other Indonesian Christians who feared they would be deported by ICE agents.
At the time, ICE agents decided to give him a temporary reprieve from deportation, allowing him a “stay of removal”.
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A nation of ingrates takes aim at its friends and supporters. Happy to accept their help and labor — but, not willing to recognize their humanity and their contributions to our society. Hmmm. Reminds me of some of the other worst parts about American history. In the end, mistreating the most vulnerable diminishes each of us. Maybe that’s how Thomas Jefferson shrunk from six feet to about six inches.
Professor Catherine Kerrison writes in the Washington Post:
“Many people know that Thomas Jefferson had a long-standing relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings. But fewer know that they had four children, three boys and a girl, who survived to adulthood. Born into slavery, Sally’s daughter Harriet boarded a stagecoach to freedom at age 21, bound for Washington, D.C. Her father had given her $50 for her travel expenses. She would never see her mother or younger brothers again.
With her departure from Monticello in 1822, Harriet disappeared from the historical record, not to be heard of again for more than 50 years, when her brother told her story. Seven-eighths white, Harriet had “thought it to her interest to go to Washington as a white woman,” he said. She married a “white man in good standing” in that city and “raised a family of children.” In the half-century during which she passed as white, her brother was “not aware that her identity as Harriet Hemings of Monticello has ever been discovered.”So how did we lose a president’s daughter? Given America’s obsession with the Founding Fathers, with the children of the Revolution and their descendants, why did Jefferson’s child disappear? As it turns out, America has an even greater obsession with race, so that not even Harriet Hemings’s lineage as a president’s daughter was sufficient to convey the benefits of freedom. Instead, her birth into slavery marked her as black and drove her decision to erase her family history.
Harriet Hemings passed as white to protect her fragile freedom. Jefferson had not issued her formal manumission papers, so until the abolition of slavery in 1865, by law she remained a slave, which meant her children also inherited that condition. But in a society that increasingly associated blackness with enslavement, Hemings used her white skin not only to ensure her children’s freedom, but to claim for them all the rights and privileges of whiteness: education, the vote, a home mortgage, any seat they chose on a streetcar. To reveal herself as the daughter of Jefferson and his slave would have destroyed her plans for a better life for her descendants.
Since Harriet’s time, science has proved there is no difference in blood as a marker of “race.” As a biological category, racial difference has been exposed as a sham. Even skin color is not a reliable indicator of one’s origins. As one study calculated, almost a third of white Americans possess up to 20 percent African genetic inheritance, yet look white, while 5.5 percent of black Americans have no detectable African genetic ancestry. Race has a political and social meaning, but not a biological one.
This is why the story of Harriet Hemings is so important. In her birth into slavery and its long history of oppression, she was black; but anyone who saw her assumed she was white. Between when she was freed in 1822 and the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865, she was neither free nor enslaved — yet she lived as a free person.
She does not comfortably fit any of the terms that have had such inordinate power to demarcate life in America. Her disappearance from the historical record is precisely the point. When we can so easily lose the daughter of a president and his slave, it forces us to acknowledge that our racial categories are utterly fallacious and built on a science that has been thoroughly discredited.
Yet as political, economic and social categories, racial difference and its consequences remain profoundly real. White privilege has been much on display in our own day, as armed white men proclaiming white supremacy marched unmolested in the streets, while unarmed black men are shot down by police who are rarely held to account. Politicians run successful campaigns on platforms of racial hatred.
This is why, by one estimate, between 35,000 and 50,000 black Americans continue to cross the color line each year.
As I poured through hundreds of family genealogies, searching for more details about the life of Harriet Hemings, I saw that all families have invented stories: details that have been embellished over time, or perhaps altered by accidental errors. Descendants of immigrants Anglicized their names; information in census records is inconsistent from one decade to another; genealogies are altered because of confusion with recurring favorite names over multiple generations.
Those families who pass as white most definitely have such invented stories. It is what they had to do to authenticate a white lineage, to be recognized as fully human and fully American, with all the rights and privileges thereto — rights and privileges not even a lineage as honored as Jefferson’s can match.
Nations, as well as families, invent stories about themselves. In both cases, we will run into characters we would rather not admit as being one of us, and stories we would rather not tell about ourselves. That the president’s daughter had to choose between her family and living a life with the dignity only whiteness can confer is one of those stories. But without them, we will never truly know where we’ve come from; and without them, we will never be able to chart out a path for a better family and national life.
FRIDAY ESSAY — FROM MONTICELLO TO TRUMP, MILLER, SESSIONS, AND THE GOP WHITE NATIONALISTS
BY PAUL WICKHAM SCHMIDT
Cathy and I recently visited Monticello. Unlike my first visit, decades ago, I found that the issue of slavery subsumed everything else. And, TJ as a person and a human being certainly got infinitely smaller during our time there.
How could someone like Jefferson, who understood human rights, actually “own” his common-law wife Sally Hemings and his own children as “property” — to be meticulously accounted for and “valued” (only in cash, not humanity) along with barrels of beer, cases of wine, hogsheads of tobacco, kegs of nails, books, and furniture?
What kind of “father” wouldn’t publicly acknowledge and show affection to his own children when they were living within a stone’s throw? How could a man who had a long-standing domestic relationship with a woman and fathered her children continue with the knowingly false narrative that African-American slaves were somehow “less than human” and therefore not entitled to freedom, dignity, education, fair compensation for their labor, or any of the other basic rights that Jefferson and his White upper class contemporaries took for granted?
Guys who got worked up about paying too much tax giving a “free pass” to their own exploitation of hundreds of thousands of enslaved individuals? (Remind you of any of today’s politicos of any contemporary party?)
And, no, Jefferson and the other slave-owning founding fathers don’t get a “free pass” as “products of their times.” That’s the type of “DAR sanitized non-history” we were fed in elementary and high school.
They were, after all, contemporaries of William Wilberforce who was speaking, writing, and fighting the (ultimately successful) battle to end slavery in England. We can also tell from the writings of Jefferson, Washington, Madison, and Monroe that they realized full well that enslavement of African-Americans was wrong. But, they didn’t want to endanger their livelihood (apparently none of them felt confident enough in his abilities to earn an “honest living”) or their “social standing” in a racist society.
Truth is that guys who had the courage to risk their lives on a “long shot” that they could win their political freedom from England, lacked the moral courage to stop doing what they knew was wrong. Yes, they founded our great country! And, we should all be grateful for that. But, we shouldn’t forget that they also were deeply flawed individuals, as we all are. It’s critical for our own well-being that we recognize, not celebrate, those flaws.
Those flaws also caused untold human suffering. Largely untold, because enslaved African-Americans were denied basic education, outside social contact, and certainly possessed no “First Amendment” rights. There were few first-hand written accounts of the horrors of slavery. Of course, there were no national news syndicates or “muckraking journalists” to expose the truth of what really was going on “down on the plantations.”
One of the things our guide at Monticello described was that “passing for White” wasn’t necessarily the “great boon” that “us White guys” might think it was. It meant leaving your family, friends, and ancestry behind and creating a new “fake” ancestry to appease White society.
For example, if Jefferson’s “White” daughter had a “not so White” husband and children at Monticello, they could never have accompanied her into the “White World.” Indeed, even if such family members were eventually “freed,” acknowledging them as kin would bring down the whole carefully constructed “Whitehouse of cards.”
For that reason, some light-skinned slaves who could have escaped and passed into White society chose instead to remain enslaved with their “dark-skinned” families and relatives.
The “Father of American Independence” only freed three slaves during his lifetime (none of them apparently family members). And he only freed five slaves upon his death.
The rest were sold, some “down the river,” breaking up families, to pay the substantial indebtedness that Jefferson’s irresponsible lifestyle had run up during his lifetime. Even in death, his enslaved workers paid a high price for his disingenuous life.
So, the next time our President or one of his White Nationalist followers plays the “race card,” (and that includes of course Latinos and other ethnic and religious minorities, not just African-Americans or African immigrants) think carefully about the ugly reality of race in American history, not the “sugar-coated version.”
While you’re at it, you should wonder how in the 18th year of the 21st Century we have elected a man and a party who know and acknowledge so little about our tarnished past and who strive so eagerly to send us backwards in that direction.
“The roughly 10-20 percent of Americans who do not support protecting the Dreamers in any way have long had a hugely outsized influence on our politics. Gerrymandered white Republican districts led to a wave of radical anti-immigration restrictionists in the House. That trend, of course, continued through the 2016 election, when hardline immigration opponents got perhaps their greatest champion in recent memory in the White House with President Donald Trump. While he has been very inconsistent on DACA, he has consistently elevated and empowered immigration hardliners in his administration — those who appeal to his white nationalist base.”
The Dreamers have won the hearts of most all Americans — across our political boundaries — whose country they joined when they were just children and who are clearly Americans too.
There is enormous public support for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) from the American people. According to a poll released by CBS News last week, “nearly 9 in 10 Americans (87%) favor allowing young immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children to remain in the U.S.” This number includes 79 percent of Republicans, 92 percent of Democrats, and 87 percent of independents who favor the policy.
The DACA program, which is designed to shield from deportation undocumented Americans who were brought to this country by their parents, was established by President Obama in 2012 and ended by President Trump in September. Congress has tried and failed for the last 17 years to pass legislation that would formally confer legal status on these young men and women.
Because of President Trump’s decision, about 800,000 Dreamers currently protected by DACA will be at risk of deportation in early March unless Congress passes legislation and the president signs it by then. That’s why Democrats and some Republican members of Congress have felt such urgency to finally pass permanent legal protection for the Dreamers. Until the issue is resolved legislatively, it is likely to dominate the political debates in Washington in the weeks to come.
Dreamers are essential members of our communities. As politicians play games with their futures, it’s important that we share their stories. They are Dreamers like Mauricio Lopez-Marquez, who is 28 years old and was able to become a social worker after receiving DACA. In that role and as a dance instructor for an after-school program, he works with 180 young people in New Mexico. They are Dreamers like 22-year-old Teresa Rivera, who is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a part-time child facilitator at an organization that supports women and children who have experienced domestic violence. They are Dreamers like Zabdi Samuel Olvera, 18, who was brought from Mexico to Charlotte, N.C., at 6 months old, and is currently majoring in computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Zabdi’s work with underprivileged children in South Charlotte and his excellence on his varsity wrestling team earned him a Golden Door Scholarship, which provides a full-tuition scholarship that is making it possible for him to earn his degree. If Congress does not pass legislation to protect the Dreamers by early March, these young men and women and so many more will be unable to work legally in the United States and could be vulnerable to deportation.
In 2012 many Dreamers had the opportunity to step out of the shadows and participate fully in the economy in ways that were previously impossible. They have done so, however, at great risk: In exchange for legal protection, they had to provide their personal information to the government. And now, unless Congress acts, the government could use that information to find and deport them. This is not a tenable moral or political position, and the public support for a permanent DACA fix reflects that. Americans understand that the Dreamers are our children’s teachers, they work in our communities, and they serve their country in all kinds of ways, including the military.
It is also undeniable that churches across the theological and political spectrum of American Christianity have been steadfast in support for the Dreamers. Even among white evangelicals, the base of Donald Trump’s support, 57 percent favor protection for Dreamers. This support comes from biblical commands about how we should treat “the stranger” among us, a religiously inspired sense of what is moral and just, and the fact that many Dreamers and their families are members of our church communities —and even our pastors. As I’ve written many times before, the biblical command to protect immigrants is unambiguous, and that certainly informs how many Christians approach this issue. But the human stories are perhaps even more influential in changing minds and hearts. Indeed, many churchgoers have discovered over the last five years that people they know well and care for deeply are undocumented because DACA gave them the incentive to step out of the shadows. Now, congregations all over the country are facing the possibility that many families in their midst will soon be torn apart. That is justifiably causing righteous outrage and determination for Christians all over the country to stand beside Dreamers and demand a solution from Congress.
Yet the problem, as it has been for many years, is to translate the strong public support for protecting Dreamers to actual policy change. The roughly 10-20 percent of Americans who do not support protecting the Dreamers in any way have long had a hugely outsized influence on our politics. Gerrymandered white Republican districts led to a wave of radical anti-immigration restrictionists in the House. That trend, of course, continued through the 2016 election, when hardline immigration opponents got perhaps their greatest champion in recent memory in the White House with President Donald Trump. While he has been very inconsistent on DACA, he has consistently elevated and empowered immigration hardliners in his administration — those who appeal to his white nationalist base.
We don’t know how this fight will ultimately turn out, but we do know two things. First, we know that the right thing for Christians to do is to fight — and fight hard — for Dreamers until they get the permanent protection they need, and continue fighting for their parents and the many other undocumented people living among us. These are the people Jesus literally commands us to treat as we would treat him.
Second, we know that since an overly influential group of hardline anti-immigration White House officials and politicians in Congress are blocking both the will of the overwhelming majority of the American people and what God wants, we must defeat them at the ballot box. There are fundamental Christian issues that cause Christians to vote against political candidates — and being opposed to immigrants should become one of those issues. We need to ensure that the fate of the Dreamers and other undocumented Americans is a voting issue for Christians this November and beyond.
Jim has nailed it! Our public immigration policy has been taken over by a group of White Nationalist GOP restrictionists who represent a minority of Americans, but are now driving the debate and the policies.
Guys like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose racially tinged White Nationalist views on immigration as a Senator were so extreme that he was once marginalized within his own party, and his White Nationalist strategist/protégée Steven Miller, are now in charge of the Government’s immigration policies. They and others in the GOP with similar restrictionist views have made overtly racist immigration policies “fashionable” again.
We now “debate” things like “should we reduce African immigration, deport long-term law abiding Hispanic residents, and bar Muslims” as if these immoral minority proposals were a legitimate “other side” of the immigration issue. The real issues often get shoved aside.
The minority might have seized control. But that doesn’t mean that they are entitled to ram their anti-immigrant, basically anti-American policies down the throats of the rest of us.
The resistance is going to take a prolonged and energetic effort — at the ballot box, in the courts, and in the arena of public opinion. But, eventually, human decency, true American values, and having our “nation of immigrants” treat current and future migrants as human beings whose contributions we recognize and value will be restored!
Tom Cotton’s lies make him a dangerous prospect to head the CIA.
By WILLIAM SALETAN
Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas, is becoming President Trump’s right arm in the Senate. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and Cotton, a right-wing ideologue, is helping to steer the president. Either way, Trump’s behavior in the immigration debate—turning against a legislative compromise after Cotton was summoned to a White House meeting to oppose it—illustrates the young senator’s influence. In fact, Trump is said to be considering him as the next CIA director.
Cotton’s emergence is alarming. In part, that’s because what endears Cotton to Trump—and makes them particularly dangerous together—is Cotton’s unflinching willingness, in pursuit of an agenda, to say things that aren’t true.
Cotton is a veteran. He served with honor in Iraq and Afghanistan. But when he came home, he brought back the psychology of war. He treats liberals and moderates as the enemy. In 2015, he blocked one of President Obama’s ambassadorial nominees over an unrelated issue—she eventually died waiting for approval—because Cotton knew she was Obama’s friend. He depicts Obama as a traitor. Last month, Cotton said of the Iran nuclear agreement: “Barack Obama was willing to give away anything to get that deal.”
On immigration, Cotton takes a hard line, and he savages anyone who doesn’t. He calls senators who seek an immigration compromise “the Gang of Amnesty.” He labels their ideas “preposterous” and “utterly ridiculous.” Last week, he scoffed that fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, an immigration moderate, “didn’t even make it off the kiddie table in the debates” during the 2016 Republican presidential primaries. On Tuesday, after the government shutdown, Cotton crowed that Democrats had “capitulated entirely.”
Cotton is quick to charge others with lying. Two weeks ago, he accused colleagues of floating a “disingenuous” immigration compromise. He said Democrats had “misrepresent[ed]” immigration talks. On Friday, Cotton accused Graham of conspiring with Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin: “Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin are not adversaries in negotiating. They are allies strategizing.” That line has been used exactly once before, by an anonymous member of Congress—presumably Cotton—who accused House Speaker Paul Ryan of treachery on the same issue. Tucker Carlson reported the accusation last fall:
As one of their colleagues told us just this morning, when Nancy Pelosi and Paul Ryan sit down to talk immigration, they aren’t opponents negotiating, they are allies strategizing … Earlier this year we had Speaker Ryan on this show and he assured us Congress would be working hard on funding the border wall. That was a lie.
In the war at home, Cotton fights for Trump. Each time he’s faced with a choice between Trump and the truth, Cotton protects Trump. Two months ago on Face the Nation, John Dickerson asked Cotton about unresolved sexual misconduct allegations against the president. Cotton brushed the allegations aside, arguing that “the American people had their say on that” when they elected Trump. Last month, when an AP reporter asked Cotton about collusion between Trump and Russia, Cotton dismissed the question, claiming that Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein had “said she’d seen no evidence of collusion.” Actually, what Feinstein had said was, “It’s an open question because there’s no proof yet that it’s happened, and I think that proof will likely come with [Special Counsel] Mueller’s investigation.”
Now Cotton is protecting Trump again. On Jan. 11, during an Oval Office meeting, Trump said he wanted fewer immigrants from “shithole” countries in Africa and Haiti and more from Norway and Asia. The president’s comments were leaked, and Durbin, who had witnessed the exchange, publicly recounted them the next day. Cotton, who had also attended the meeting, went on TV to defend Trump. He portrayed Durbin as a liar, saying Trump had never used the expletivereported by Durbin. Dickerson asked Cotton whether Trump, in the meeting, was in any way “grouping people based on the countries they came from.” Cotton denied it. He insisted that Trump had “reacted strongly against” such thinking and that “what the president said he supports is [to] treat people for who they are,” not “where they’re from.”
I’ve seen Cotton at least twice on “Meet the Press.” Each time I was impressed by the number of lies, distortions, misrepresentations, and evasions he could pack into a relatively short interview with Chuck Todd. You could tell that even the perennially affable Todd was having a hard time keeping a straight face at some of Cotton’s antics and facially absurd answers.
That this is what passes for “leadership” in today’s GOP should give us all pause.
I focus specifically on how TPS recipients can potentially adjust their status within the United States through either a family-based I-130 petition or an I-140 employment-based petition for permanent residency. A September 2017 practice advisory from the American Immigration Council points to two decisions from the Ninth and Sixth Circuit, Ramirez v. Brown, 852 F.3d 954 (9th Cir. 2017) and Flores v. USCIS, 718 F.3d 548 (6th Cir. 2013), holding that TPS constitutes an admission for purpose of establishing eligibility for adjustment of status under INA 245(a).”
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Go on over to Dan Kowalski’s fabulous LexisNexis Immigration Community at the above link to get the rest.
Given the sad saga of the “Dreamers” — whose legalization should have been a “no brainer” for any group other than Trump and the GOP restrictionists — we can’t count on Congress coming to the Haitian and El Salvadoran TPSers “rescue” before their “final extension” expires. So, it’s critical for lawyers to help as many as possible of these great, hard-working folks achieve legal status under existing law before the window closes!
Sadly, one of the key cases cited by Cyrus in his full article, the BIA’s very helpful precedent decision in Matter of Arrabelly and Yerrabelly, 25 I&N Dec. 771 (BIA 2012) is rumored to be on AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions’s restrictionist “chopping block.” So, there’s no time to lose!
“The Justice Department on Wednesday escalated its attempt to crack down on so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions, threatening to subpoena 23 states, cities and other localities that have policies the department suspects might be unlawfully interfering with immigration enforcement.
President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have long promised to target places with policies friendly to those in the country illegally — warning they might withhold federal money from some and trying to tie grant eligibility to cooperation with federal authorities on immigration matters. The Justice Department had previously contacted the 23 jurisdictions threatened Wednesday, raising worries they might be in violation of a federal law barring places from enacting policies that block communication with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In a new letter, Bureau of Justice Assistance Director Jon Adler said officials remained “concerned” that the places had policies that violate the law, even after their previous responses. He asked for a new bevy of documents — including “any orders, directives, instructions, or guidance to your law enforcement employees” — and said the department would subpoena the materials if necessary.
. . . .
Among those jurisdictions in the crosshairs are Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles and the states of California, Illinois and Oregon. In total, the 23 jurisdictions received more than $39 million in fiscal year 2016 money from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program — which Sessions is now threatening to put at risk.
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Local leaders criticized the move. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D), president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said he would skip a planned White House meeting on infrastructure because of it. “An attack on one of our cities mayors who are following the constitution is an attack on all of us,” he said. His city was not among those targeted Wednesday.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio similarly wrote on Twitter he would skip the gathering after Trump’s Justice Department “decided to renew their racist assault on our immigrant communities. It doesn’t make us safer and it violates America’s core values.”
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) said officers in his city endeavor to build trust with residents to reduce public safety threats, and “you cannot do that if you drive a wedge between any immigrant community and the law enforcement.” He said Sessions’s threats were “amazing” in that the attorney general seemed to “disregard what the court system has already said uniformly from coast to coast.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “The White House has been very clear that we don’t support sanctuary cities. We support enforcing the law and following the law, and that is the Department of Justice’s job is to do exactly that, and if mayors have a problem with that, they should talk to Congress.”
Much of this crackdown has been stymied by the courts. A federal judge in California last year blocked Trump’s executive order to cut funding to such places, and a federal judge in Chicago ruled that Sessions had exceeded his authority in imposing new conditions, such as requiring recipients to give immigration authorities access to jails and 48 hours notice when suspected illegal immigrants are to be released. A federal judge in Philadelphia also ruled that city was in compliance with the law and blocked the Justice Department from withholding money. The Justice Department has appealed all those cases.
. . . .
Sessions has long sought to tie crime to immigration — recently releasing data, which experts said was misleading, that said 73 percent of terrorism convictions in the U.S. involved individuals from other countries. Determining a link between illegal immigration and other crime is statistically difficult to do, though some research shows that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than those who are native born. Civil liberties and immigration advocates, too, note there is irony in Sessions threatening to withhold law enforcement grants in the name of fighting crime.”
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Read the complete article at the link.
On paper, Gonzo isn’t actually in charge of the DHS. That job is nominally in the hands of Lightweight Sycophant Kirstjen Nielsen.
Remarkably, what Sessions is actually supposed to be doing is administering a fair and unbiased U.S. Immigration Court System in a manner that guarantees the legal and Constitutional Due Process rights of each individual brought before those courts by the DHS. Yeah, right! Sessions never met a migrant he didn’t despise and want railroaded out of the country as part of his White Nationalist agenda. And, he’s clearly “in bed” with DHS Enforcement. That’s why the U.S. Immigration Courts under Gonzo Apocalypto are well on their way to becoming mere “Whistle Stops on the Deportation Railway.”
There was a time when what is now ICE worked hard to gain community support and be considered part of the “legitimate law enforcement apparatus.” But, those days are long gone.
Trump, Gonzo, and Tom Homan are well on the way to making ICE the most hated, distrusted, and despised police force in America — the “New American Gestapo” if you will. The aforenamed “nasty clowns” will be gone someday. But, I’m not sure that ICE will ever be able to undo the damage they are doing to its reputation and standing in the law enforcement community.
As one or more Federal Judges has noted in enjoining Gonzo’s illegal overstepping, “once lost, community trust is not easily, if ever, regained by the police.”
DHS makes the rounds on immigration, but senators frustrated with administration
By: Tal Kopan, CNN
The Homeland Security secretary made the rounds Tuesday on Capitol Hill as she continues to press the agency’s priorities in immigration talks — but she’s facing skepticism from senators about the administration’s reliability on the issue.
The conversations on the Hill come as the Department of Homeland Security is working on a new list of items it wants to see in an immigration deal, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions in Congress and the administration.
Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who was one of a handful of red-state Democrats to meet with Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Tuesday, said she had told Nielsen plainly that without a promise from President Donald Trump, it was impossible to negotiate on immigration with her.
Senate-House divide on immigration in spotlight after shutdown fight
“There’s things she wanted to talk about in terms of the priorities of the department in border security as we work on a bill, and I said, ‘Listen: Here’s the thing. I can’t commit to anything until you tell me you have the support of the President,'” McCaskill said. “Because, you know, I think somebody’s made the analogy of Lucy and the football. We’ve got to know if we’re going to compromise, we’ve got to know that compromise will in fact have the support of the President.”
McCaskill told reporters that Nielsen didn’t commit that she spoke for the President but didn’t say she wasn’t able to, either.
“She didn’t say she couldn’t,” McCaskill said. “She said, ‘I understand what you’re saying.’ ”
In addition to McCaskill, Nielsen met Tuesday with Sens. Jon Tester, D-Montana, Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota, Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, according to an official.
DHS is working off a document that was given to some negotiators in December and was passed out in the room when two dozen lawmakers met with Trump on the issue in a partially televised meeting earlier this month, according to two senior administration officials. However, after the cameras left that meeting, the President told lawmakers he hadn’t signed off on the document and instructed them to disregard it, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, told reporters.
McCaskill wasn’t alone in her frustration with the President’s equivocation. Asked Tuesday about the White House press secretary publicly trashing a bipartisan proposal he had put together, Graham hit back.
“One thing I would say to the White House: You better start telling us what you’re for rather than what you’re against,” the South Carolina senator said. “To my friends at the White House, you’ve been all over the board, you haven’t been a reliable partner and the Senate’s going to move.”
DHS working on new guidance
Based on multiple conversations with members of Congress and their feedback and questions on various pieces of the proposals, one administration official said, the hope with the new written guidance is to clarify further what DHS thinks is necessary in a deal and why. The document is focused on the four areas that the President laid out publicly in that meeting: a solution on the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, border security, curtailing family-based migration and ending the diversity visa lottery.
Within the border security category, Nielsen has spoken publicly about a desire for more than just infrastructure and resources at the border — and that the agency is pursuing legal overhauls to immigration enforcement that would give it greater power to remove undocumented immigrants from the country. Increasing enforcement authority has been a tough sell among Democrats.
DHS is also looking to add more depth on what the administration wants to replace DACA, which protected young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children but which the administration is ending. The official said that would be the “next big thing” for the administration to work through.
The official also noted DHS was “the only people who’ve put pen to paper so far” and was happy to clarify further but wasn’t interested in “negotiating against ourselves.”
And the official acknowledged lawmakers’ desire for greater clarity, especially from the President.
“We understand that some of these members are going to have to get out there, and we want to give them a bill that they can support and they’re not going to get their legs cut out from under them,” the official said. “We understand that. We’re working to get there.”
McCaskill argued, though, that Trump has put Nielsen in a tough spot.
“It puts her in a very difficult position to lobby for something when she can’t tell me the President supports what she’s lobbying for,” McCaskill said, adding that Nielsen told her the secretary “clearly supported the DACA protections,” but the senator reiterated her concern about where the President stood.
“Then she listed things she wanted to see in the bill,” McCaskill said, “and I said, ‘Some of those things I think I could work with you on. But not until I know the President will stand strong for this and make sure he lobbies the House of Representatives to pass whatever it is we end up with on a bipartisan basis in the Senate.'”
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No real surprise here. Being a sycophant might help you get the job, but it’s not a key to long term success. That’s what happens when folks “sell out” to Trump. In fact, its a pretty good example of what’s happening to the entire GOP.
Ed O’Keefe and Sean Sullivan report for the Washington Post:
“Hopes for a fresh start on immigration slammed into political reality Tuesday as the Senate’s top Democrat said he had rescinded an offer to President Trump on a border wall and the White House called an emerging bipartisan compromise “dead on arrival.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he had withdrawn an offer to Trump of $25 billion for new border security measures in exchange for permanent legal protections for some undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children.
“We’re going to have to start on a new basis, and the wall offer’s off the table,” Schumer told reporters. He said his proposal had applied only to a deal that was never realized.
News of his decision came as Schumer is facing a backlash from liberals that he had been too accommodating to the president.
Late Tuesday night, Trump reiterated that “if there is no Wall, there is no DACA.”
In a message on Twitter, the president said: “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer fully understands, especially after his humiliating defeat, that if there is no Wall, there is no DACA. We must have safety and security, together with a strong Military, for our great people!”
. . . .
Negotiators face a Feb. 8 deadline, leaving less than three weeks to sort out some of the most emotionally charged issues. Some moderate Republicans involved in the talks expressed optimism that a deal could be reached.
“I think the Democrats are willing to do quite a bit on border security,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), adding later: “They’ve been willing to put a lot on the table.”
Flake predicted there will be 20 Republican senators who will not agree to a bipartisan immigration deal but that “I think there are 30 Republicans who could go for a path to citizenship and do something broad.”
Josh Dawsey and Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.”
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Read the full story at the link.
I’m less optimistic than Sen. Flake and others that a deal can be reached in the Senate. But, even if that happens, anything acceptable to the Dems and the Dreamers would be DOA in the House. But, hey, what do I know? I’m just a retired judge.
“The difference between ‘DACA’ and ‘Dreamers’: A primer
The government shutdown ended Monday when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised to take up an immigration bill that would protect an estimated 800,000 Dreamers from deportation under an open amendment process, if the Democrats would agree to end the shutdown. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y) said that pledge was enough for his caucus to accept a three-week government funding bill, which passed on a vote of 81-18.
But what do the parties really intend to take up? A DACA-fix for the 690,000 current participants or a DREAM Act to provide a path to citizenship for 2.7 million undocumented aliens?
And who are the Dreamers?
. . . .
If the Senate passes the DREAM Act of 2017, it almost certainly will be dead on arrival in the House, which is what happened four years ago when Schumer, as part of the Gang of Eight, succeeded in getting an immigration bill passed in the Senate that was opposed by 70 percent of the Senate Republicans.
It would be more realistic to pass a bill that would just continue the DACA program for the current participants, but even that would fail if Trump will not sign it unless it includes a border wall, an end to chain migration, and an end to the Diversity Visa Program.”
In any case, the floor debates and their media coverage will be easier to understand if the senators are clear about who they are trying to help and how they want to help them.”
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Go on over to The Hill to read Nolan’s excellent explanations of “DACA” and “Dreamers.”
Along the lines mentioned by Nolan, I think an “indefinite DACA extension” for “The Wall” trade might still be a possibility. I actually don’t see Trump refusing to sign something along those lines. But, with Trump, nobody really knows. Might depend on the day.
As suggested by Nolan, a “full Dream Act” would likely be DOA in the House. And, I don’t see the Dems offering up the restrictions Trump wants on legal immigration in return for a narrow DACA extension.
