HuffPost: GOP Senators Seek To Halve Legal Immigration — Mount Attack On American Families, Refugees, Africans, Asian Americans, Latinos!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cotton-perdue-legal-immigration-bill_us_589a4f4ee4b04061313a3090?425ff5si0vd9uow29

Elise Foley and Dana Liebelson write in HuffPost:

“WASHINGTON ― For decades, a central tenet of U.S. immigration policy has been that American citizens should be able to reunite with their siblings, parents and grown children who live abroad. The government doesn’t make this easy. But now, emboldened by President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant stance, two Republican senators want to make it almost impossible.

Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) introduced a bill on Tuesday that would bar immigrants from bringing almost anyone but their spouses and minor children to the U.S. Latino and Asian Americans, who are more likely to be recent immigrants with family living abroad, would be disproportionately affected by this change.

The bill would also eliminate diversity visas, which many recent African immigrants rely on to get to the U.S., and cap refugee resettlement at 50,000 people per year. The bill doesn’t affect the millions of Irish, German and Italian Americans whose families came to the U.S. in earlier waves of immigration and no longer have close relatives abroad.

The senators predict the bill would cut legal immigration per year by half. They also think it stands a chance of passing.

“Once you get here, you have a green card and you can open up immigration not just to your immediate family, but your extended family, your village, your clan, your tribe,” Cotton said of ending the diversity lottery. “I don’t think it works for American workers.”

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

The new GOP “family values?” Would we even be having this discussion if most recent immigrants were “white guys” from Canada, Australia, and the UK? My guess is no. It’s not about protecting American workers. The GOP doesn’t give a hoot about them. That’s why they are anti-union, anti-minimum wage, anti-universal health care, anti-safety net, anti-Medicare, anti-consumer protection, anti-financial regulation, anti-pension, anti-equal pay for equal work, anti-environment, anti-science, anti-public workers, anti-education and anti just about everything that doesn’t directly or indirectly help their fat cat friends get fatter and their business buddies get bigger — more profits, more money for upper management, more tax breaks for the rich, less money, fewer benefits, and no chance at a comfortable retirement for workers. No, something else is at work here.

PWS

02/07/17

Grossman Law LLC Analyzes Impact Of Exec Orders On Migrants, Families!

Trump’s Executive Orders on Immigration
Yesterday, January 25, 2017, President Trump signed two Executive Orders on immigration, demonstrating that he will take a hard-line, no compromise, and enforcement only approach to handling our nation’s already broken immigration system. Through these Orders, the Trump Administration communicated the following priorities:
Border Wall: The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must immediately begin planning, designing, and constructing a physical wall along the nearly 2000-mile southern border. The U.S. (not Mexico) will pay for this wall at an estimated price tag of $6.5 million per mile. This is an unconscionable expenditure at a time when statistics show that the southern border is more secure than ever and illegal border crossings are at a 40-year low!

Increased Detention of Asylum Seekers and immigrants at the southern border: DHS is authorized to hire an additional 5000 Border Patrol Agents and build new detention facilities. DHS will no longer release asylum seekers on bond or electronic monitoring; instead, asylum-seekers will remain in jail while their cases are pending, and will have to gather evidence, prepare legal arguments, and present their cases while in detention. Not only will this be expensive ($125 per adult per day, or in the case of family detention, $343 per person per day), but it is inhumane. An estimated 88% of Central American women, children, and families crossing the Southern border have valid asylum claims. Subjecting them to prolonged detention further traumatizes them and violates this country’s proud tradition of welcoming those fleeing persecution.

Revised Removal Priorities: DHS is authorized to hire up to 10,000 additional immigration officers who will prioritize for removal individuals convicted of any criminal offense whatsoever, no matter how minor or insignificant. They will also prioritize for removal individuals who have open charges pending against them, even if they have not been found guilty by a judge or jury, and individuals who have never been charged or convicted of a crime, but whom an immigration officer believes may have committed a criminal act or may otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security. This vague and overbroad policy opens the door for rampant constitutional and civil rights violations. It also has the potential to expose both federal and deputized state and local agencies to frequent and protracted litigation.

Relatedly, the President has also Deputized State and Local Law Enforcement Officials to act as immigrant agents in apprehending, investigating, and detaining immigrants. Local jurisdictions currently have no legal obligation to assist with civil immigration enforcement, as immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government alone. Forcing local police to act as immigration agents strains their already limited resources and reduces their ability to respond to and investigate crime. Importantly, this policy also deters immigrants who are victims of crime from coming forward and reporting criminal activity. By alienating our immigrant neighbors and over-taxing local police, this policy will make our communities even less safe.

Sanctuary Cities: President Trump pledges to end “sanctuary cities” (jurisdictions which protect the identity of non-criminal immigrant members of the community by refusing to share information about those individuals with federal immigration authorities). He has promised to end “sanctuary cities” by denying them Federal grants and funding. This move, too, jeopardizes the safety of all Americans. It undermines community policing efforts that encourage everyone to work with the police to prevent and solve crime. When immigrants distrust and fear local law enforcement, victims and key witnesses refuse to come forward out of fear of deportation.

Without a doubt, the impact of these directives will be substantial. Grossman Law is concerned that the President’s priorities skirt the long-established due process rights of all individuals, including immigrants, within our borders. Additionally, the attack on “sanctuary cities” will have the negative impact of further dividing our nation and the potential of increasing crime in our largest cities. Our nation’s history, prosperity and growth has been closely aligned with the prosperity and growth of immigrants. The executive orders, in large part, will work to destroy this proud history, and will have the consequence of instilling fear, rather than hope, into the hearts of deserving immigrants. This is “un-American” and misguided policy. Grossman Law will closely monitor the implementation of these Orders and will provide ongoing advice and counsel to our clients, and will continue organizing to ensure the protection of rights for all.

Grossman Law, LLC
4922 Fairmont Avenue, Suite 200
Bethesda, Maryland 20814
Phone: (240) 403-0913
Website: www.GrossmanLawLLC.com

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PWS

01/26/17

Sanctuary Wars: The Republic, And Its Cities, Strike Back!

Immigration beat reporter Beth Fertig of WNYC/NPR reports:

“There is no single definition of a sanctuary city, and policies vary tremendously across the country. But in New York City, immigration agents are not allowed in the jails. When immigrants without legal status are arrested, they can only be detained or turned over to federal agents for deportation if there’s a warrant and they’ve been convicted of a violent crime. A 2014 local law spells out nearly 170 different offenses that meet that definition. They include various forms of assault, arson and sex crimes.

Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito said these limits make sense.

“If you’re committing a nonviolent offense but you’re otherwise contributing positively to the city, why should you be torn apart from your family?”

Police Commissioner James O’Neill and Mayor Bill de Blasio joined the argument Wednesday, saying that immigrants will be less likely to cooperate with law enforcement if they’re afraid of deportation. “We build trust,” said O’Neill. “I wouldn’t want to do anything to put that at risk.”

Trump’s order changes enforcement priorities, too. In addition to aliens convicted of criminal offenses, the Department of Homeland security will also prioritize those who have been “charged with any criminal offense, where such charge has not been resolved.”

Avideh Moussavian, a policy attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, warned that this policy could lead to “gross infractions of due process protections.”

She said people could become enforcement priorities if “they have been merely charged with an offense, even if their charge is pending and turns out later to be dismissed.”

From a practical standpoint, it would be very difficult to deport more immigrants. The nation’s immigration courts have a tremendous backlog of cases. Judges who handle immigration cases estimate there are 75 vacancies among their ranks, and Trump has imposed a federal hiring freeze. However, the executive order means that the freeze on judges could be lifted in the name of national security.”

Read Beth’s complete article, including comments from Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute  in favor of the President’s crackdown at:

http://www.wnyc.org/story/why-sanctuary-city-dispute-about-safety/

Mollie Reilly, Deputy Politics Editor, and her colleagues write on HuffPost:

“Independent of the ultimate legality of the executive order, politicians from those sanctuary cities say they aren’t budging, and legal advocacy groups are gearing up for the coming legal fight.
The president is “in for one hell of a fight,” California state Sen. Scott Weiner (D), who represents San Francisco, said in a statement.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh (D) said his city “will not retreat one inch” from its policy against holding undocumented immigrants it otherwise would not hold based on requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said his city “will not be intimidated by the authoritarian message coming from this administration.” San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee (D) said “nothing has changed” in his city, noting the lack of specifics in Trump’s order.
“We are going to fight this, and cities and states around the country are going to fight this,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said at a press conference Wednesday.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) already began hinting at a legal challenge, releasing a statement that Trump lacks the constitutional authority for his executive order and that he will do “everything in [his] power” to push back if the president does not rescind it.
Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) also warned of potential legal challenges to come, saying in a statement that the order “raises significant legal issues that my office will be investigating closely to protect the constitutional and human rights of the people of our state.”
There’s no exact definition of “sanctuary city.” Places like San Francisco and New York use the term broadly to refer to their immigrant-friendly policies, but more generally the term is applied to cities and counties that do not reflexively honor all of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s requests for cooperation. Many of these localities do work with ICE to detain and hand over immigrants suspected or convicted of serious crimes, but they often release low-priority immigrants requested by ICE if they have no other reason to hold them.
“The reason that many local law enforcement officers don’t honor detainers is because courts have said that they violate the Constitution, and if they violate the Constitution, the localities are on the hook financially,” said Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez, a law professor at the University of Denver who teaches on the intersection of criminal law and immigration.
Just on Tuesday, a federal court in Rhode Island joined several others that have ruled in recent years that certain ICE detainers can violate people’s constitutional rights ― even those of U.S. citizens.
But Trump’s executive order seems to overlook this legal reality, and instead frames sanctuary cities with the alarmist rhetoric he used on the campaign trail.”

Read Mollie & co.’s complete report here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-sanctuary-cities_us_

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PWS

01/26/17

Vox Reports More Harsh Executive Actions On Migration May Be In The Offing!

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/25/14390106/leaked-drafts-trump-immigrants-executive-order

“On Tuesday, Vox was given six documents that purported to be draft executive orders under consideration by the Trump administration. The source noted that “all of these documents are still going through formal review” in the Executive Office of the President and “have not yet been cleared by [the Department of Justice or the Office of Legal Counsel].”

We were not, at the time, able to verify the authenticity of the documents and did not feel it would be reasonable to publish or report on them.

But on Wednesday afternoon, Trump signed two executive orders on immigration that word-for-word matched the drafts we’d received. Given that our source had early access to two documents that were proven accurate, and that all the orders closely align with Trump’s stated policies on the campaign trail, we are reporting on the remaining four.

The source cautioned that “there are substantive comments on several of these drafts from multiple elements of NSC staff” and “if previous processes remain the norm, there [are] likely to be some substantive revisions.” It is possible these orders will emerge with substantial changes, or even be scrapped altogether.

We sent the White House PDFs of the documents and left voicemails with aides, but did not receive a response.

The two orders released today by the Trump administration, and delivered yesterday by our source, start the process of building President Trump’s famous “wall,” and make it easier for immigration agents to arrest, detain, and deport unauthorized immigrants at the border and in the US. Those policies are explained in detail here.

The four remaining draft orders obtained by Vox focus on immigration, terrorism, and refugee policy. They wouldn’t ban all Muslim immigration to the US, breaking a Trump promise from early in his campaign, but they would temporarily ban entries from seven majority-Muslim countries and bar all refugees from coming to the US for several months. They would make it harder for immigrants to come to the US to work, make it easier to deport them if they use public services, and put an end to the Obama administration program that protected young “DREAMer” immigrants from deportation.

In all, the combined documents would represent one of the harshest crackdowns on immigrants — both those here and those who want to come here — in memory.”

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

See the full Vox story at the link for details on each of the “draft” orders.

PWS

01/25/17

Quartz Media Reporter Ana Campoy “Nails” The Obama Administration’s Failed Southern Border Strategy — “We like to advertise ourselves as a beacon of liberty and justice; it’s time we acted that way.” (Quoting Me)

THE LAW IS THE LAW
The US doesn’t have an immigration problem—it has a refugee problem
Ana Campoy January 18, 2017

http://trac.syr.edu/whatsnew/email.170117.html

Quote boxes:

“In fact, Trump’s fixation with blocking illegal immigration from Mexico, which has plummeted in recent years, obfuscates the problem. Yes, border patrol agents are apprehending thousands of people every month along the US-Mexico line, but many of them—around half, according to Claire McCaskill, a member of the US Senate’s homeland security and governmental affairs committee—turn themselves in voluntarily asking for help. Government statistics bear this out. The number of immigrants claiming fear of persecution or torture in their home countries is on the rise, and so are the findings that those claims are credible. In order to be considered for asylum by an immigration judge, immigrants first have to go through a “credible fear” screening, in which an asylum officer determines whether the claims they are making have a “significant possibility” of holding up in court.

More than 70% of those who claimed credible fear in the 2016 fiscal year hailed from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, places beset by rampant violence.

Under US law, individuals who are found to have credible fear have the right to due process to determine the validity of their claims in the court. Whether they are Syrians escaping civil war, or El Salvadorans fleeing from criminal gangs, what they have to prove is the same: that they face persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

But US authorities don’t always take Central American immigrants’ fears seriously, studies suggest. One, released by the American Immigration Lawyers Association in 2016, found that not all border patrol agents are asking immigrants if they’re afraid to return to their country, as they are required to do. Other agents refuse to believe them, per the report, which is based on immigrant testimony documented by the group. Another 2016 analysis, by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a government advisory body, noted, “outright skepticism, if not hostility, toward asylum claims” by certain officers, among other practices that may be resulting in deportations of refugees with a legitimate right to stay.

A US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesman said the agency “strives to treat every person we encounter with dignity and respect.” Anyone with concerns about the treatment doled out by its officers can call the agency, he added.”

. . . .

“The Obama administration’s response has already run up against the law. For example, several courts have shot down the government’s arguments and efforts to justify the detention of children and families while their cases wait to be resolved—a policy meant to convince would-be immigrants to stay home.

On Jan. 13, a coalition of immigrant rights groups filed a formal complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties accusing CBP officers of turning back people requesting asylum at ports of entry along the US-Mexico border. In what the groups called an “alarming new trend,” the officers have allegedly been telling immigrants that they can’t enter the country without a visa— contrary to US law—and referring them to Mexican immigration authorities.

Trump has framed his border policy as a choice between enforcing existing laws against illegal immigration or skirting them. But the decision facing US leaders is rather more complicated: Should the US continue providing refuge to those who are unfairly persecuted in their home countries?

If Americans are unwilling to do that, perhaps it’s time to do away with the nation’s asylum laws—and remove the famous poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty welcoming the world’s “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Recently retired immigration judge Paul Wickham Schmidt put it this way: “We like to advertise ourselves as a beacon of liberty and justice; it’s time we acted that way.”

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

In my view, Ana Campoy provides a remarkably clear and well-documented analysis of why the Obama Administration’s “get tough” border policies have failed, and why the Trump Administration would be wise to take a more “nuanced” approach that recognizes our obligation to provide due process and protection under our laws to individuals fleeing from the Northern Triangle.

As incoming DHS Secretary Gen. John Kelly has recognized, this problem can’t be solved just by (even more) enhanced enforcement on our end.  It will require addressing the systemic problems in the sending countries of the Northern Triangle, which certainly have most of the characteristics of “failed states,” as well as working with other stable democratic nations in the Americas to fashion meaningful protections, inside or outside the asylum system, for those who are likely to face torture, death, or other types of clear human rights abuses if returned to the Northern Triangle at present.

It’s not an easy problem to solve, and there are no “silver bullets.”  But, we know what doesn’t work.  So, it sure seems like it would be a good idea to try  different approaches (and I don’t mean repealing asylum protections as Ana, somewhat facetiously suggests near the end of her article).

PWS

01/19/17

 

“AYUDA — MAKING AMERICA REALLY GREAT, EVERY DAY” — Meet A Spectacular Nonprofit Legal & Social Services Organization That “Walks The Walk and Talks The Talk” In The DC Metro Area — Read My Recent Speech Here!

AYUDA — MAKING AMERICA REALLY GREAT, EVERY DAY

 

January 11, 2017

 

Verizon Building

 

1300 Eye St., N.W.

 

Washington, D.C.

 

Remarks By Retired United States Immigration Judge Paul Wickham Schmidt

 

Good evening. Thank you Christina,[1] for that wonderful introduction. Thank you, Michael,[2] for extending your hospitality in Verizon’s “state of the art” training center. And, of course, thank you Arleen[3] for inviting me, and for all that you and AYUDA do for our community and for our nation.

 

Even more important, thanks to all of you here for your continued support and promotion of AYUDA’s essential mission — to help hard-working individuals in our community help themselves, through legal assistance and a variety of educational and social support programs. You are AYUDA, and without your continuing support, encouragement, and active participation there would be no AUYDA and hence no place for those vulnerable individuals to seek assistance. Our community and our nation would be immeasurably poorer if that happened.

 

By coincidence, I began my professional career in immigration law in 1973, the year AYUDA was founded. On a personal level, and I know that this touches on only one narrow aspect of AYUDA’s ambitious program, I want to thank all of you for the unwavering support, assistance, and consistent professional excellence that AYUDA provided to the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia during my 13-year tenure as a judge, and, of course, continuing on after my retirement.

 

The sole role of an U.S. Immigration Judge is to provide fair, impartial hearings that fully comply with the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution to individuals whom the Department of Homeland Security (the “DHS”) has charged with being removable from the United States. Without competent legal representation of the individual before the court, known as a “respondent,” the job of insuring due process can be totally daunting. With dedicated professional groups like AYUDA coming to the defense, my task of conducting fair hearings magically went from “daunting” to “doable.”

 

Representation makes a real difference in the lives of individuals. Represented individuals succeed in securing relief in Immigration Court at a rate of at least five times greater than those appearing without representation. But, for some of the most vulnerable populations, such as “recently arrived women with children,” bureaucratic lingo to describe actual human beings seeking protection from rampant violence in Central America whose removal has been “prioritized” in Immigration Court, the “success differential” is simply astounding: 14 times!

 

I am honored tonight to be in the presence of two of the “real heroes – or, more properly, heroines,” of due process at the Arlington Immigration Court: your own “Hall of Famer,” the incomparable Anya Sykes,[4] and your amazingly talented newly appointed — great choice guys –Executive Director, Paula Fitzgerald. Both were “regulars” in my courtroom.

 

Quite simply, Anya and Paula save lives. Numerous hard working individuals and families in our community, who are contributing at the grass roots level to the greatness of America, owe their very existence to Anya, Paula, and AYUDA.

 

For example, last year alone, AYUDA helped a remarkable 1,900 individuals resolve more than 3,500 matters in our legal system. And, Immigration Court is just the “tip of the iceberg.” Much of the work was done with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, with domestic violence victims in local courts, and through AYUDA’s superstar Social Services and Language Services branches.

 

I know we all want to get back to main event – eating, drinking, and being merry. So, I’m going to limit myself to one “war story” about my time with Anya and Paula in court.

 

As some of you probably know, there is a wonderful law enacted some years ago known as “NACARA.” It really could be a model for future laws enabling earned membership in our national community. NACARA has allowed thousands of individuals in our community who decades ago fled violence in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and have lived law abiding, productive lives here for many years, often in valid Temporary Protected Status, to obtain green cards and get on the track for U.S. citizenship and full participation in the vibrant political life of our community and our country.

 

The basic NACARA criteria were fairly straightforward, and most individuals were able to have their applications granted at the Asylum Office of the USCIS.   But, as with any mass adjudication program, there was group of so-called “dog cases” left over at the end.

 

Most of those involved individuals who had served or were believed to have served with the Salvadoran military or Civil Patrol during the civil war that raged in the 1980s. If you remember, the U.S. supported the Salvadoran government during that civil war, and some of the individuals who served in the Salvadoran Army actually received training or instruction at military installations in the United States.

 

At that time, international human rights groups claimed that the Salvadoran government and military were engaging in large scale human rights violations, many directed against innocent civilians, in an effort to suppress guerilla insurgents. Our Government denied, downplayed, or outright ignored most of these claims and refused asylum to almost all Salvadorans on the grounds that no persecution was occurring.

 

Times change, however, and at some point somebody in our Government actually looked at the evidence and agreed, long after the fact, that the Salvadoran government and military had committed large scale “persecution of others,” even though many of the “others” had been denied asylum in the U.S. based on inability to establish that persecution.

 

By the time I arrived at the Arlington Immigration Court, the DHS was taking the position that nearly all individuals connected with the Salvadoran military were presumed to be “persecutors,” and therefore should be denied NACARA unless the individual could prove, by credible evidence, that he or she did not, in fact, engage in persecution decades earlier during the civil war. These cases were routinely declined at the Asylum Office and “referred” to our court for re-adjudication.

 

As you might imagine, such cases are extremely complicated, requiring the individual not only to have detailed knowledge of the structure and activities of the Salvadoran military during the civil war but also specific knowledge of what individual units and soldiers were doing at particular times, places, and dates, and to be able to coherently account for and corroborate their own activities at those times.

 

Most of those “referred” were hard working, tax paying, law-abiding individuals who had lived in the U.S. for decades, and supported their families, but did not have the necessary funds to pay for good lawyers familiar with, and willing to handle, this type of sophisticated case. The chance of an individual being able to successfully present his or her own case was approximately “zero.” Most were completely bewildered as to why service with the U.S.-supported government of El Salvador, once considered a “good” thing, was now a “bad thing,” requiring mandatory denial of their NACARA applications.

 

This is where talented NGO lawyers like Paula and Anya stepped in. With their help and legal expertise, notwithstanding the passage of decades, individuals were able to document, corroborate, and testify convincingly about their “non-persecutory” activities during the civil war. I recollect that every such NACARA case handled by AYUDA before me eventually was granted, most without appeal or with the actual concurrence of the DHS Assistant Chief Counsel.

 

As a direct consequence, hard working, productive, law-abiding, tax-paying individuals remained in the community, continued to support their families, and, with green cards in hand, could now find better work opportunities and get on the path to eventual U.S. citizenship and full participation in our national community. This is “Lifesaving 101” in action, and Anya, Paula, and AYUDA are the “lifesavers.”  If there were an “Arlington Immigration Court Hall of Fame,” they would certainly be in it. In addition to their outstanding services to AYUDA’s clients, Anya and Paula are inspiring mentors and role models for lawyers just entering the field.

 

In closing, I’ve always tried to keep five important values in front of me: fairness, scholarship, timeliness, respect, and teamwork. Dedicated individuals like Anya and Paula, and great organizations like AYUDA, embody these important values.

 

And, beyond that, these are your values. Your investment in AYUDA and its critical mission is an investment in social justice and the values that have made our country great and will continue to do so into the future.

 

Thanks for coming, thanks for listening, and, most of all, thanks for your investment in AYUDA and turning your values into effective action that saves lives, builds futures, and insures the continuing greatness of America.

 

 

 

 

[1] Christina M. Wilkes, Esquire, Partner, Grossman Law Firm, LLC – Chair, AYUDA Board of Directors.

[2] Michael Woods, Esquire, Vice President and Associate General Counsel, Verizon — Director, AYUDA Board of Directors.

[3] Arleen Ramirez Borysiewicz, Director of Program Initiatives, AYUDA.

[4] Unfortunately, Anya was unable to attend. But, almost everyone in the room was mouthing “Anya” when I said the word “heroine” so I realized that she was “there is spirit” and proceeded accordingly. Anya Sykes was inducted into the AYUDA Hall of Fame in 2013.

Conservative Latino Leaders Warm to Trump

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/latino-leaders-who-dumped-trump-now-hopeful-hes-their-guy_us_585fffd3e4b0de3a08f5a204

They doubt that he will carry out his harshest pronouncements on immigration.

“Massey Villarreal, a Republican businessman in Houston who denounced Trump’s Phoenix speech, told HuffPost he’s optimistic about the president-elect because it’s in everyone’s best interest if he succeeds.

‘It’s like getting on an airplane [where] I don’t like the pilot and hope he crashes,’ he said. ‘I’m on the plane too.'”

PWS

12/26/16