Border Security – immigrationcourtside.com

VAL BAUMAN @ DAILY MAIL: Stripped Of Its Toxic Rhetoric, Trump’s Plan To Send Asylum Applicants To Cities Where They Would Be Welcomed & Have Access To Opportunities Actually Seems Pretty Rational — That’s Why It’s Unlikely To Happen!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6955263/Trumps-bus-immigrants-sanctuary-cities-actually-HELP-migrants.html

Val writes:

EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s move to bus immigrants to sanctuary cities could actually HELP migrants by putting them in courts where judges are more likely to grant them asylum, experts reveal

Sanctuary cities, counties and states are regions where officials have passed laws to protect immigrants who are in the country illegally – for example by limiting cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement

Trump’s proposal to bus immigrants to sanctuaries could have an unintended effect by relocating migrants to immigration court districts where judges are statistically more likely to grant asylum, experts say

Trump’s idea could backfire because the likelihood of whether an immigrant’s asylum application will be successful varies dramatically depending on the state in which their case is heard, federal data shows

Many sanctuary cities are home to court districts that are statistically more likely to approve asylum claims

For example, New York – a sanctuary city – was the most likely to welcome asylum seekers, with only 34% denied in 2018, while immigration judges in North Carolina and Georgia had a 96% denial rate

By VALERIE BAUMAN SOCIAL AFFAIRS REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 14:44 EDT, 24 April 2019 | UPDATED: 18:15 EDT, 24 April 2019

Donald Trump‘s proposal to bus immigrants to sanctuaries could have an unintended effect by relocating migrants to immigration court districts where judges are statistically more likely to grant asylum, according to multiple immigration experts and attorneys.

One major reason Trump’s idea could backfire is that the likelihood of whether an immigrant’s asylum application will be successful varies dramatically depending on the state in which their case is heard – and many of the courts that tend to favor granting asylum are located in sanctuary cities, said former immigration Judge Jeffrey S. Chase.

For example, New York – a sanctuary city – was the most likely to welcome asylum seekers, with only 34 percent denied in 2018, while immigration judges in North Carolina and Georgia had a 96 percent denial rate.

‘It not only gets them to the districts that have better courts and judges, but it gets them to where the pro bono lawyers and (immigration assistance) clinics are,’ Chase told DailyMail.com.

This map, created by the Center for Immigration Studies using ICE data, highlights the locations of sanctuary cities, counties and states around the United States. Yellow markers represent sanctuary counties, while red ones represent cities and green represent states

‘A lot of times when people do bond out they head straight to New York and San Francisco anyway, so they’re saving them the bus ticket,’ he added.

A Department of Homeland Security official declined to comment to DailyMail.com.

Sanctuary cities, counties and states are regions where officials have decided to pass laws that tend to protect immigrants who are in the country illegally.

For example, some sanctuary cities refuse to allow local law enforcement to hand people over to ICE after the immigrants were arrested on minor violations.

They were largely established and gained traction under the Obama administration as local officials sought to assert their own authority on immigration issues.

Trump has proposed busing immigrants to sanctuary cities because he says the mostly Democratic safe havens for migrants should be ‘very happy’ to take in people who have entered the country illegally.

It remains unclear if the White House will go through with the proposal, which the president said the administration was still strongly considering in a series of tweets on April 12.

. . . .

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Thanks, Val, for your thoughtful analysis. Go on over to the Daily Mail at the link to read Val’s complete article.

One thing the Trumpsters never want to be caught doing is something reasonable that will help the immigration system work the way it is supposed to. That’s why facilitating the assistance asylum seekers need to get fair and timely hearings before fair and impartial U.S. Immigration Judges under a correct interpretation of U.S. asylum law has never been part of this Administration’s equation.

Too bad it isn’t. While perhaps not what “the base” had in mind, a program of working with localities and NGOs to get asylum applicants represented and before fair and impartial Immigration Judges on a timely cycle would certainly be much cheaper and easier to administer than mass detention, wall building, child separation, “Return to Mexico,” and endless crippling backlogs in the Immigration Courts.

Undoubtedly, it would result in more asylum grants. It also would require a much more robust, sensible, and realistic use of prosecutorial discretion (“PD”) by the DHS to “free up” earlier time slots on the Immigration Court dockets without touching off yet another mindless round of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling.”

But, it also should result in fairer, more timely, more humane removals of those who do not qualify for asylum or other protection under our laws as properly interpreted and fairly administered.

To the extent that such removals serve as a “deterrent” to future unqualified arrivals (something I doubt based on the evidence to date, but am willing to see what happens), the Administration would also have empirical evidence supporting at least part of its theory of “control through deterrence.”

A program such as I’ve outlined also could receive bipartisan support from Congress.

Won’t happen, at least under Trump. But, that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t.

PWS

04-25-19

POLITICS: SHUTDOWN COUNTDOWN: Legislators Say They Have A Deal – No Details!

Emily Cochrane & Glenn Thrush report for the NYT:

WASHINGTON — Top House and Senate negotiators said late Monday that they had reached an “agreement in principle” on border security that would avoid a second government shutdown that would begin this weekend. Lawmakers declined to offer details, but seemed confident that the agreement — if supported by leadership and signed by President Trump — could resolve an immigration dispute and allow the government to keep operating. It was unclear if Mr. Trump would go along with the deal, the specifics of which must still be worked by congressional staff members. The president has already accepted, reluctantly, far less money than he wanted for repairs and extensions of existing border barriers — and no new wall. Progress on the deal had been stalled by an impasse over Mr. Trump’s roundups and detention of undocumented immigrants. Yet, as the negotiations continued, but before the deal was announced, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the top member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said both he and Mr. Shelby thought it was preferable to find a resolution by the end of the night and not let the impasse languish. “We’re trying to be legislators,” he said. A specific point of contention has been the number of detention beds under the control of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Aides in both parties had warned that a final deal might leave the number of detention slots — or “interior beds” — unchanged, not reduced as Democrats want and not increased as Mr. Trump wants. House Democrats, urged on by immigration rights group, have pushed hard, hoping to leverage White House fears of another damaging shutdown into a softening of the president’s hard-line immigration policies that they say have torn apart families, wrenched productive citizens from the communities they have lived in for years and infused a heartlessness into official American immigration policy. The Democrats’ tool: limit the number of beds that ICE has to hold undocumented immigrants in custody to 16,500 from around 20,700. The Democrats’ ultimate goal is to cut the overall number of detention beds, including those occupied by asylum seekers and people caught at the border, from its current level of around 49,000 to 34,000, the number funded during the Obama administration, Democratic aides said. That, they say, would end sweeps and roundups, and force ICE to focus on pursuing hardened criminals. Last year, the Trump administration requested funding for 52,000. With their number, Democrats say they can seize the initiative on immigration from a president who has staked his political fortunes on the issue. “We started at zero on the wall, and we compromised a lot after that, and we are now asking them to change, too,” said Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, Democrat of California and a member of the 17-member House and Senate conference committee tasked with hammering out a compromise. Mr. Trump was catching on. When Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, presented him with the Democrats’ demand, he rejected it quickly, according to two people briefed on the exchange. “These are people coming into our country that we are holding and we don’t want in our country,” the president told reporters at the White House late Monday. “That’s why they don’t want to give us what we call ‘the beds.’ It’s much more complicated than beds, but we call them from ‘the beds.’” In private, Republicans responded with a plan that would exempt many detained immigrants from the cap, including those people either charged with or convicted of crimes, including misdemeanor drug offenses and violent felonies. That, in turn, was rejected by Democrats. “You have ICE agents picking up mothers and fathers and children in their own neighborhoods. That’s why the beds issue is so much more important than the wall,” said Ms. Roybal-Allard, whose Los Angeles-area district is 85 percent Hispanic, the highest percentage of any district in the country. The number of beds occupied by detainees fluctuates over time, influenced by a variety of factors, including ICE enforcement policies and the flow of migrants at the border with Mexico. The rate of that flow is unpredictable and determined by factors such as the performance of the economies north and south of the border, crime, gang activity and the business practices of coyotes paid to transport migrants from Mexico and Central America to California and the Southwest. The number of monthly apprehensions of migrants at the border has averaged 25,000 to 40,000 for most of the past decade, but has risen to about 50,000 over the past several months, according to statistics compiled by the Department of Homeland Security. If ICE does not have enough room to place individuals and family members they detain, they must loosen their enforcement actions, creating a powerful motive for new migrants to enter the country illegally, Trump administration officials say. “You cannot have border security, without strong interior enforcement, whether there is a wall there or not,” said Matt Albence, the deputy director of ICE, on Monday in a conference call with reporters. Republicans closed ranks to blast the plan. “This is a poison pill that no administration, not this one, not the previous one, should ever accept,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, said on the Senate floor. “Imagine the absurdity of this: House Democrats want to set a limit on how many criminal aliens our government can detain.” Earlier Monday, Democratic leadership aides said that there would be no deal without some concession on the bed issue — in part because immigrants rights groups and party liberals would revolt if they agreed to extend border barriers without getting something tangible in return. Last Friday, when word of a possible deal first leaked out, advocates for immigrants reached out to Democratic leadership offices, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, to say that they would oppose any deal that did not address their concerns about ICE. “For the last two years, we have been trying to limit the bad. We have taken a defensive approach, but now House Democrats have the power to start doing some good,” said Lorella Praeli, the deputy national political director of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that has pressed the Democratic leaders, Ms. Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, to reject any deal that does not include steps to reduce aggressive immigration enforcement. “It’s time for them to show that they are fighting for us,” Ms. Praeli added. “It means you have to do something more than a floor speech or a tweet supporting immigrants. It’s time to actually do something.”

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

I hope it happens. But, as I always say, “the devil is in the details,” and we don’t have any yet. Stay tuned.

PWS

02-11-19

NY TIMES: How Trump’s Toxic Use Of “The Wall” Has Destroyed Bipartisan Dialogue & Compromise On Border Security

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/12/us/politics/trump-wall-border-security-debate.html

Michael D. Shear reports for the NYT:

Washington used to know how to have a serious debate about border security.

Republicans demanded more money for Border Patrol agents and necessary fences. Democrats argued for better surveillance technology and more resources at the ports of entry. The two parties squabbled over how much to spend, how to pay for it and how it all fit into the broader struggle to overhaul the nation’s broken immigration system.

But President Trump has demolished the decades-old, bipartisan understanding about how to bargain over the border. In Mr. Trump’s world, there are no alternatives that can form the basis of a legislative give-and-take, much as his allies and adversaries might hope for them. For the president, the only way to stop what he calls an “onslaught” of illegal immigrants is to erect a massive, concrete or steel barrier across the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

“Drones and all of the rest are wonderful and lots of fun, but it is only a good old fashioned Wall that works!” he tweeted last month.

By conjuring images of a towering stone edifice around a medieval fortress — and branding those on the outside as invaders threatening to bring crime, drugs and disease to the United States — Mr. Trump has transformed what used to be a complicated, nuanced negotiation into a take-it-or-leave-it demand, laced with xenophobia, that has shuttered nearly a quarter of the government for weeks.

“He turns a debate that is fundamentally about more or less, measured in dollars, and makes it a debate that is wall or not,” said Frank Sharry, a pro-immigration activist who has battled over border security for decades in the nation’s capital. “It’s become cartoonish.”

For decades, immigration has been an emotional and bitterly fought battle in Washington and around the country. But even so, there has been a consensus among most Republicans and Democrats that securing the southern border requires a mix of costly strategies. That included a large number of Border Patrol agents posted at key points along the vast stretch of land from San Diego to Brownsville, Tex., fences in urban areas and barriers to stop vehicles from crossing and high-tech surveillance gear to alert the Border Agents to the presence of migrants and drugs.

Until Mr. Trump was elected, the sticking points had largely been about other parts of the broader immigration debate — cracking down on people who stay longer than their visas allow; preventing companies from hiring illegal immigrants; expanding opportunities for legal immigration; and providing status to those already in the country illegally, including immigrants brought to the United States as children.

Such a comprehensive deal is completely out of reach now. But Mr. Trump’s behavior during the past several weeks suggests that even reaching a smaller, more targeted agreement on security arrangements at the border is more elusive than ever before.

The current government shutdown, which began just before Christmas, is now the longest one ever in United States history. In the 22 days since the government shut down, there have been virtually no negotiations by congressional lawmakers or the White House. There have been no marathon, pizza-fueled sessions in back rooms at the Capitol. Lawmakers have not traded detailed proposals with each other. Mr. Trump refused to give an inch in his Oval Office speech, and has spent more time in an extended photo-op at the border than he has at the negotiating table.

It has all left veterans of past border debates exasperated and frustrated.

“We know how to secure borders,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who was a top aide to Senator Marco Rubio in 2013 when the Republican senator from Florida helped lead the last major, bipartisan effort to overhaul immigration. “The 2013 immigration plan had what everybody agreed was the most effective way possible to secure borders and other points of entry.”

With the backing of President Barack Obama, a bipartisan group of eight senators that year succeeded in passing a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration system. But the legislation, which passed with 68 votes, prompted fierce opposition from conservative Republicans, who condemned it as amnesty for 11 million undocumented immigrants. It was never brought up for a vote in the House.

Still, the Senate legislation was an indication of where the two parties could agree on border security. It doubled the number of Border Patrol agents, from 19,000 to almost 40,000, an increase that even the authors of the proposal agreed was overkill but was designed mostly as an enticement to win Republican support.

Senators from both parties also agreed on money for technological improvements along the border. The bill allocated $3.2 billion for drones, infrared ground sensors and long-range thermal imaging cameras to give Border Patrol agents advance notice when migrants cross illegally, especially at night. It also included money for an electronic employment verification system for all employers and upgrades at airports to catch immigrants who overstay their visas.

And the consensus included some physical barriers — what Mr. Trump might call walls and others would call fencing. Years earlier, the Secure Fence Act of 2006 allocated money to build about 650 miles of barriers along the border. The 2013 bill, had it been signed into law, would have increased that total to almost 700 miles, mostly along the eastern half of the border with Mexico.

Almost all of the fencing that Congress has approved has already been built. In populated areas, the fence is tall and steel or chain-link and designed to keep people out. In other places, the barrier is nothing more than short, metal poles spaced out to keep vehicles from driving through, or low, wooden fences that run alongside pedestrian paths.

In 2011, a Government Accountability Office report concluded that despite 649 miles of completed fencing, the “the southwest border continues to be vulnerable to cross-border illegal activity, including the smuggling of humans and illegal narcotics.”

The report recognized that barriers have mostly not been built in the vast, empty stretches in Texas, where rivers and mountains as natural borders have prevented cars from crossing into the United States and made the trek by foot difficult, if not impossible. But Mr. Trump seizes on conclusions like the G.A.O. report’s about the continued influx of illegal immigrants at the southern border as proof that he is right in demanding a continuous wall.

In remarks to reporters after a meeting with Democrats at the White House earlier this month, Mr. Trump insisted that the only way to prevent immigrants from crossing between the 25 official ports of entry is to erect fences everywhere else.

“We can’t let gaps. Because if you have gaps, those people are going to turn their vehicles, or the gangs — they’re going to coming in through those gaps,” the president said. “And we cannot let that happen.”

But there continue to be questions about the wisdom of building a wall from “sea to shining sea,” even from inside Mr. Trump’s administration.

A different G.A.O. report, released last year, examined the preliminary cost estimates by Customs and Border Protection of what it would cost to extend the wall along the entire border. The report criticized the border agency, saying that the cost estimates did not take into account that costs would vary depending on the kind of terrain where they were built.

In recent days, the rhetoric between the two sides has become more strident than ever. Mr. Trump and his Republican allies have pointed out that Democrats supported fencing in the past, though they purposefully ignore the context of those votes and the difference between the fencing that Democrats supported and the all-or-nothing wall that the president has demanded.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has called the wall “immoral,” cementing her position against it.

“At this point, the idea we could overlook the rhetoric and get a deal done is much harder,” Mr. Sharry, the pro-immigration activist, said.

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

No surprise that the “Clown in Chief” has turned the dialogue “cartoonish” in the words of Frank Sharry.

“The Wall” has become a symbol for racism, xenophobia, the White Nationalist restrictionist agenda, immoral Government expenditures, and pandering to Trump’s political “base.” That makes it difficult for the Dems to give Trump what he wants unless they get something equally big and symbolic in return (e.g., Dreamer relief).

And, what Pelosi says makes perfect sense: If Trump couldn’t get “the Wall” when the GOP was in change, it’s unrealistic to think that the Democrats, having finally regained control of the House, are going to give it to him. Not to mention that the Wall is unpopular with the majority of Americans.

PWS

01-13-19

THE HILL: NOLAN SAYS PACKAGE INCLUDING BORDER SECURITY & DREAMER SOLUTION IS KEY TO ENDING SHUTDOWN

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/423320-pelosi-could-get-tinkle-all-over-her-if-she-blocks-funding-for-trumps

Nolan writes:

. . . .

Strict enforcement of employer sanctions could create chaos within California’s employer class, the kind of personal and financial turmoil that elected representatives are expected to fix — and which puts them in bad odour if they don’t.

Instead of putting Trump in a position where he has to resort to such drastic action, Pelosi could offer him border wall funding in exchange for immigration reform legislation, such as a legalization program for DACA participants.

Previous negotiations with Trump on DACA legislation seemed promising when he offered a legalization program for 1.8 million DACA participants in his Framework on Immigration Reform & Border Security, but the Democrats would not agree to the concessions he was demanding.

The deal killer was a demand to end chain migration, but there is a way to compromise on that demand. Instead of a creating a regular legalization program for the DACA participants, create a place for them in the Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) program.

This little-known humanitarian program makes lawful permanent resident status available to undocumented alien children who have been abused, abandoned, or neglected by a parent and should not be returned to their own countries.

The SIJ provisions do not permit a participant to confer immigration benefits on his parents. INA §101(a)(27)(J)(iii)(II) states that, “no natural parent or prior adoptive parent of any alien provided special immigrant status under this subparagraph shall thereafter, by virtue of such parentage, be accorded any right, privilege, or status under this Act.”

Trump’s other demand was to end the Diversity Visa Program (DVP), but the Democrats have shown a willingness to end this program. Senator Charles Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) Gang of Eight bill would have repealed the DVPif it had been enacted.

. . . .

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I think that Nolan is on the right track for a compromise solution to end the shutdown: robust border security plus Dreamer relief seems like a logical package. But, as with everything in Washington, the Devil is in the details. And, Trump is always a “Wild Card” (in more ways than one).

If anyone can figure out a way to broker an agreement with Trump and Leader McConnell, it would be Speaker Pelosi. Whether you are a fan or not, she clearly will go down as one of the most effective and skilled legislators of her generation. Interestingly, Colby Itkowitz of the WashPost’s “The Fix” observed that Trump seems to have an unusual (and perhaps healthy) respect for Pelosi. https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/423320-pelosi-could-get-tinkle-all-over-her-if-she-blocks-funding-for-trumps

PWS

01-04-19

ROGUE! — Will Push To Hire More DHS Agents Weaken National Security With More “Bad Apples?” — “Haste Makes Waste” Governing Has Real Life Consequences!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/us/politics/border-patrol-immigration-trump.html?hpw&rref=politics&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

Ron Nixon reports in the NYT:
“BROWNSVILLE, Tex. — Joel Luna was just the kind of job candidate the Border Patrol covets. He grew up on both sides of the border, in Mexico and South Texas. He participated in the Reserve Officers Training Corps in high school and later served in the Army, seeing combat in Iraq.

Mr. Luna joined the agency as part of a hiring surge that began under the George W. Bush administration, patrolling a rural area about 100 miles north of Mexico. But six years later, his decorated career came to a shocking end: He was arrested and charged with helping to send illegal weapons to Mexico and ship drugs into the United States. He was convicted in January and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Now, as President Trump plans a similar hiring surge at the Border Patrol, Mr. Luna’s case is casting a large shadow. The president wants to make 5,000 new hires, under a streamlined process that critics fear could open a door to other rogue agents like Mr. Luna.

Agency officials, some members of Congress and the Border Patrol union say the current process has made it too hard to hire agents. It typically takes more than a year to vet candidates and get them on the job.

At the center of this notoriously slow and stringent process — which Customs and Border Protection, the patrol’s parent agency, put in place after a number of corruption cases — is a mandatory polygraph test. Officials are considering changing the test, and in some cases the agency would simply waive it.

“C.B.P. has a big problem in not being able to hire agents because of the polygraph test,” said Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, who has sponsored the legislation to make hiring agents easier and faster. “I’m not saying that we should get rid of the polygraph, but we want to make sure the process isn’t an overall detriment to good candidates.”

Three weeks ago, the agency began using a different lie detector test that takes less time than the current one and asks fewer questions. And legislation moving through Congress would grant the agency the authority to waive the polygraph for some former law enforcement officers and military veterans.
Top officials said the changes would allow the agency, which is losing agents faster than it can replace them, to compete for qualified candidates with other law enforcement agencies more effectively without sacrificing standards. Applicants would still undergo a background check in addition to the shorter polygraph test, officials said.

“No one wants corrupt agents inside the Border Patrol,” said Jayson Ahern, a former acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. “What C.B.P. is proposing is a sensible way to weed out corruption but speed up the hiring.”

But some current and former Department of Homeland Security officials said the proposed changes could expose the agency to corrupt individuals who could use their position to help drug cartels or human smugglers. Border Patrol agents work largely by themselves in isolated areas and are routinely targeted by criminal organizations.”

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How many times have we seen this pattern: scandal, followed by reform? Time goes by, and we forget the scandal. But, “best practices” can be burdensome. So someone proposes a “streamlined” process which recreates the conditions for scandal. And the cycle begins again.

Ironically, the risk to American security from corrupt DHS agents probably exceeds the risk from the undocumented entries that additional hastily hired agents are supposed to be preventing. The border today is probably under better control than at any other point in my lifetime. But, corrupt border agents can be co-opted by terrorists, narco traffickers, and human smugglers, all of whom “pay” much better than the USG. So, taking time to make sure the folks we’re hiring for these key jobs have the “right stuff” makes sense to me. Also, how about raising their pay to reflect their important, challenging (and dangerous) mission and to reduce turnover?

PWS

05-21-17

EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s move to bus immigrants to sanctuary cities could actually HELP migrants by putting them in courts where judges are more likely to grant them asylum, experts reveal

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