Julie Hirshfield Davis reports for the NY Times:
President Trump issued a memorandum on Friday directing his administration to move quickly to bring an end to “catch and release,” the practice by which immigrants presenting themselves at the border without authorization are released from detention while waiting for their cases to be processed.
The directive does not, on its own, toughen immigration policy or take concrete steps to do so; it merely directs officials to report to the president about steps they are taking to “expeditiously end ‘catch and release’ practices.” But it is a symbolic move by Mr. Trump to use his executive action to solve a problem that he has bitterly complained Congress will not.
It also caps a week that began with the president offering tough talk on immigration and ended with his ordering the National Guard to patrol the southwestern border, a move formalized on Friday night when Defense Secretary Jim Mattis signed orders to deploy up to 4,000 troops.
“The safety and security of the American people is the president’s highest priority, and he will keep his promise to protect our country and to ensure that our laws are respected,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said in a statement announcing the memorandum.
“At the same time, the president continues to call on congressional Democrats to cease their staunch opposition to border security and to stop blocking measures that are vital to the safety and security of the United States,” she added.
The memo appears intended to prod the administration to move more rapidly in cracking down on unauthorized immigrants at the border, a goal laid out in an executive order Mr. Trump issued last year during his first week in office.
The latest directive instructs the Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, Justice and Health and Human Services to report to the president within 45 days on their efforts to ensure that those immigrants are detained, including steps taken to allocate money to build detention facilities near the borders. The agencies must also detail efforts to ensure unauthorized entrants do not “exploit” parole and asylum laws to stay in the United States, including evaluating how they determine whether migrants have “credible fear” of returning to their country of origin — the legal bar that people claiming asylum must meet to avoid prompt removal.
The memo also orders a list of existing facilities, including military sites, that could be used to detain those violating immigration law, and detailed statistics on credible claims of fear and how they have been processed since 2009.
The directive gives officials 75 days to report to Mr. Trump on additional resources or authorities they need to end catch-and-release practices. And within 60 days, it asks the secretaries of state and homeland security to submit a report on actions they are taking against countries that “refuse to expeditiously accept the repatriation of their nationals,” including whether the United States has punished them by refusing to grant visas to their citizens — and if not, why not.
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The Trump Administration already stands credibly accused in at least one pending court case of violating its legal duty to consider asylum claims by individuals who apply at ports of entry on the Southern Border. Obviously, such legal violations by our Government promote illegal entry as the only way to vindicate statutory rights. Trump’s outrageous creation of a “false crisis” at the Southern Border should prompt the Article III Federal Courts to enjoin the Administration to comply with the asylum law.
Moreover, further attempts to manipulate the “credible fear” criteria against asylum seekers should also lead to Federal Court review and action against the Administration if, as appears likely, it uses biased criteria to deny the legal right of individuals in the U.S. or at the border to apply for asylum.
Moreover, asylum applicants who are “in the United States” whether legally or illegally and are in Removal Proceedings are entitled to an individualized bond consideration (unless they are serious criminals or security risks — the overwhelming number of asylum applicants are neither). Attempts to manipulate bond criteria (which have been undertaken to some extent by the last three Administrations) have almost uniformly been rejected by the Article III Federal Courts.
Therefore, the Administration’s legal options might be limited. However, the Administration arguably might have authority under current law to detain asylum applicants who arrive at ports of entry without providing any rational reasons for doing so. That’s likely to be a hotly contested issue in litigation.
Meanwhile, it’s critically important for those of us who support American values and see through the charade being put on by the Trump Administration to elect only U.S. Senators and Representatives who will “Just Say No” to the Administration’s bogus requests for: 1) more unneeded DHS enforcement personnel; and 2) more unneeded detention space in the “New American Gulag” being created by Trump and his White Nationalist reactionaries.
Harm to the most vulnerable is harm to all of us! Join the New Due Process Army and resist the Trump Administration’s contrived assault on America! Due Process Forever! Trump & Sessions Never!
PWS
04-07-18