MS-13 GANG MEMBERS HEARTENED, ENCOURAGED BY TRUMP-SESSIONS “GONZO” TACTICS — “They [MS-13] feel like they can do whatever they want, ’cause Trump himself has made everybody fear,” Alex said. “He’s helping them.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/28/us/ms-13-gang-long-island-trump/index.html

CNN reports:

“Long Island, New York (CNN)The first time members of the MS-13 street gang attacked Margarita’s teenage son in suburban New York, they beat him with a baseball bat.

The young man had immigrated from El Salvador three months earlier to join his mother in Nassau County, Long Island. The gang had harassed him in El Salvador because he refused to join them. Now, in his new home, they were upping the stakes.

The second time, they attacked the 19-year-old as he was on his way to work. They slashed him in the stomach with a machete, the gang’s weapon of choice. He survived and has been in hiding for the last few weeks, but his mother is terrified.

“I think it’s worse (in the US) because over there they hadn’t tried to kill him. But here they have,” said the woman, who is undocumented and asked to be called only “Margarita” for her safety. She witnessed the first attack on her son, on the street outside their home, and says she’s too afraid to go to the police for fear of deportation.

The violent gang known as Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, originated decades ago among Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles and has since built a criminal network that extends across the US, with thriving pockets in the Washington, D.C. suburbs and here on Long Island, just an hour or so east of New York City. It’s estimated to have 10,000 members nationwide.

President Trump has vowed to wipe them out and will visit Long Island Friday to discuss his plans. But the FBI says the gang is growing.

Investigators comb woods where the mutilated bodies of four young men were discovered in late April in Central Islip. Authorities believe MS-13 was behind the killings.

And several people familiar with MS-13, including two gang members themselves, told CNN they think Trump’s crackdown on immigrants is actually making MS-13 stronger because witnesses are more reluctant to come forward for fear of being deported.

“It’s not like before, where … they (the gang) were more hidden,” said Margarita, adding that a decade after fleeing violence in El Salvador she has never felt more afraid. “People can get deported, so they don’t call the police. So they (MS-13) feel more free.”

“I think it’s emboldening them, because this gives them the opportunity to tell immigrants, ‘What are you gonna do? Are you going to report us? They’re deporting other innocent people … (so) they’re going to associate you with us by you coming forward,'” said Walter Barrientos, Long Island coordinator with Make the Road, an immigrant advocacy group.

“‘So what are you going to do? Who’s going to protect you?’ And that’s what really strikes many of us.”

But a senior Trump administration official disputed that thinking.”

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

Read the complete article at the link.

REALITY CHECK: Ever since the 1920’s, the U.S. has made major efforts to deport organized crime figures. Indeed many “line” Mafiosi and dozens of leaders have been deported over the years. Has it stopped or inhibited the growth of organized crime? The answer is pretty obvious. No way!

In fact, deportations merely forced some adjustments in organizational structure and actually internationalized, “professionalized,” and increased the power of the organized crime families. I suspect that these gangs suffered far more damage from their internal wars than they ever did from the Feds (“Untouchables” myths notwithstanding).

Likewise, deportations merely force some MS-13 (and rival) gang members to assume positions in “overseas operations.” Imprisonment in countries of the Northern Triangle gives them a chance to run the gang operations that control the prisons and to develop new criminal skills.

After all, there was no MS-13 in El Salvador until a waive of deportations from the U.S. (primarily the L.A. area) got it off to a running start in the 1980s and 1990s. And gang members won’t have too much difficulty coming back into the U.S. when they choose. The idea that they are going to be stopped by a wall, or by denying due process to their victims at the border is a joke. How dumb do we think these guys are? I’m sure somewhere down in the Northern Triangle, the leaders are laughing at the Trump-Sessions idle threats and literally licking their chops right now.

I’m certainly not saying gang members who commit crimes shouldn’t be deported. Unlike most of the other participants in the debate, and certainly unlike Trump and Sessions, I’ve actually sent detained gang members, associates, and even wannabes back to whence they came. I also know that some of them have ended up back in the U.S. So, the idea that deportations are a “durable solution” to gang problems is little short of preposterous.

Combatting gang problems in the U.S. will take a nuanced strategy that deals more constructively with the instability, lack of honest government, and other societal problems in the sending countries (for example, U.S. inspired “zero tolerance,” “iron fist,” and “peace treaty” programs in Central America have been dismal and proven failures). In the U.S., it’s going to take a combined approach of social workers, teachers, law enforcement, counselors, local political figures, and families to make inroads. All this takes building trust, confidence, and sound relationships with migrant communities, the very thing that the “gonzo” enforcement programs of Trump and Sessions, and their unwarranted attacks on so-called sanctuary cities (actually cities that are constructively trying to solve these problems and undoubtedly making more progress than the Trumpsters and ICE) are mindlessly destroying. Since bilingual members of the communities have the best chance of getting to the bottom of these problems, many of those recent arrivals fleeing gang violence that Trump, Sessions, & Kelly are so intent on removing are exactly the folks that we will need to solve these problems here and in the sending countries.

The problems are real. But, Trump’s solutions are bogus. The results won’t be pretty for anyone except the gangs, who will take us to the cleaners, chuckling all the way (perhaps with their checks for civil damages for police brutality inspired by Trump in hand).

PWS

07-28-17

ILYA SOMIN IN WASHPOST: Sessions’s Gonzo Attack On America’s Cities Is Unconstitutional!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/07/27/jeff-sessions-attack-on-sanctuary-cities-is-also-an-assault-on-federalism-and-separation-of-powers/?utm_term=.dadc10264ba1

Somin, a Professor of Law at George Mason, writes:

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently announced a new Justice Department policy seeking to pull federal grants from “sanctuary cities” – jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with some federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. Much like President Trump’s earlier executive order targeting sanctuary cities, which was blocked by a federal court decision, the Justice Department’s new policy is unconstitutional. If allowed to proceed, it would create a dangerous precedent for both federalism and separation of powers.

. . . .

The major constitutional problem with all three requirements is exactly the same as the main flaw in the earlier order: Longstanding Supreme Court precedent indicates that only Congress can impose conditions on grants given to states and localities, and that those conditions must be “unambiguously” stated in the text of the law “so that the States can knowingly decide whether or not to accept those funds.” Neither compliance with Section 1373 nor the other two conditions the DOJ seeks to impose are included in the authorizing legislation for the Byrne grants. Sessions and Trump may be at odds on other issues right now. But they are united in their desire to make up new grant conditions and impose them on states and localities after the fact.”

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

Read the entire article at the link.

Sessions is a “Constitutional relativist.” One day he’s for states’s rights to deny minorities the vote or to shoot or beat them to a pulp in law enforcement operations. The next day, he’s for the Feds interfering with local law enforcement’s ability to work with the entire community (not just the white guys) to enforce local laws. The only consistency in Sessions’s positions: the White Nationalist agenda. Look for the worst outcome for folks of color or non-Christians and that’s where you will find Sessions and his minions. Every time.

PWS

07-27-17

UNFAZED BY HUMILIATION FROM TRUMP, SESSIONS MOVES FORWARD ON GONZO AGENDA — PICKING UNNECESSARY FIGHTS WITH “SANCTUARY CITIES” — DIVIDING AMERICA!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/politics/trump-admin-sanctuary-cities/index.html

CNN’s Tal Kopan reports:

“Washington (CNN)The Trump administration opened up a new salvo against sanctuary cities on Tuesday — moving to make immigration enforcement a pre-condition for receiving key law enforcement grants.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday evening that applicants for Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants will be required to certify that they’ll cooperate with federal immigration enforcement more extensively than in the past, a move that is likely to generate court challenges quickly from advocates and state and local jurisdictions who have opposed President Donald Trump’s efforts.

Among the requirements: Letting federal authorities access detainees in jails to inquire about immigration status and giving the federal government 48 hours’ notice before any inmate they’re interested in is released.

The term sanctuary city loosely refers to jurisdictions that in some way do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Localities have a variety of justifications for doing so, from protecting undocumented immigrants to preserving law enforcement’s ability to gain the trust and cooperation of communities. Some jurisdictions have also been barred by the courts from complying with certain federal requests.

Trump himself railed against sanctuary cities during a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Tuesday. He drew out a long and graphic description of violent gang members torturing and killing young women.

“These are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long,” Trump said. “Well, they’re not being protected any longer folks. And that is why my administration is launching a nationwide crackdown on sanctuary cities.”

He hailed legislation in Congress targeting sanctuary cities and Kate’s Law, named for a woman allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant. He called on the Senate to vote on the bills now that they had passed the House.

“We’ve got to get it passed,” he said.

Sanctuary cities have been a key focus of the Trump administration and Republicans in Washington. The President signed an executive order in January that threatened to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities, which immediately prompted a court challenge.

A federal judge this spring blocked the administration from enforcing that order broadly — limiting them to restricting the Edward Byrne grants based on a piece of law that requires localities to communicate immigration information about individuals to the federal government when asked.

. . . .

The Justice Department, however, stopped short of requiring compliance with “detainers” — requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold individuals suspected of being in the country illegally an extra 48 hours beyond when they would otherwise be released from custody. The administration has made complying with detainers a key piece of their efforts on sanctuary cities, although nothing in law requires local law enforcement to comply.

In fact, the latest slap from the courts came on Monday, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that it is a violation of state law to ask local law enforcement to comply with detainer requests without a criminal warrant, based on the fact that immigration violations are a civil crime — and thus Massachusetts law enforcement cannot arrest a person and hold them based on a civil infraction.”

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

Read Tal’s complete report and watch the accompanying video at the link.

Let’s see, we’ll promote law enforcement by cutting off grants to law enforcement. That makes lots of sense. We’ll promote cooperation with local law enforcement by insulting and threatening them rather than by sitting down and discussing common solutions.

White Nationalists should be concerned about Trump’s vendetta against Sessions. No future Attorney General could possibly match Sessions’s enthusiasm for and commitment to the White Nationalist agenda and his racial, cultural, and ethnic insensitivity. Yet, Trump seems far less interested in an Attorney General who will continue to advance the White Nationalist racially divisive platform that he ran on than in finding an Attorney General who will “see job number one” as protecting Trump and his family from the legal and political consequences of their own actions. And, loyalty to the Constitution and the People of the U.S. — not even concepts that Trump understands, much less accepts.

PWS

07-25-17

WASHPOST: Sessions Earns “Three Pinocchios” For Bogus Claims About Sanctuary Cities!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/07/17/attorney-general-jeff-sessionss-claim-that-criminals-take-notice-of-cities-with-sanctuary-policies/

Michelle Ye Hee Lee reports in the Fact Checker column in the Washington Post:

“Sessions is being rather misleading by citing data from a study that doesn’t support his point.

Sessions says that “criminals take notice” when cities make it known that they have “sanctuary” policies that restrict local cooperation with federal authorities about people who may be in the country illegally. He cites data from a study by the University of California Riverside, to say that “cities with these policies have more violent crime on average than those that don’t.”

But he omits the other side of the research, which is that this data point is not statistically significant. The study by the researchers did not find that sanctuary policies had any effect on crime — a point that they have emphasized in the past and which Sessions appears to have willfully ignored for political purposes. We award Sessions Three Pinocchios for twisting the data out of context to make the opposite point that the researchers made.

Three Pinocchios

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It isn’t every day that the Attorney General of the United States can earn “Three Pinocchios” for intentional dishonesty. But, then, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions isn’t just “any” Attorney General.

PWS

07-17-17

N. Rappaport In The Hill: CAL Should Try A Different Approach For Helping Undocumented Residents!

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/immigration/342178-illegal-ca-sanctuary-state-bill-is-actually-an-ineffective-way

Nolan writes:

“Activist Dolores Huerta claims that California needs to enact the California Values Act, Senate Bill 54 (SB 54), as a counterweight to Texas’s draconian law banning sanctuary cities in that state and President Donald Trump’s “xenophobic agenda to deport millions of people.”

I disagree. While I can understand why Huerta dislikes Texas’s sanctuary city law, it is an exaggeration to call it “draconian.” And Trump is just enforcing immigration provisions that were written by Congress and signed into law by previous presidents. If those laws are xenophobic, the solution is to lobby Congress to change them.

Making California a sanctuary state will not stop Trump’s enforcement efforts. But it would violate federal law and make California ineligible for certain types of federal grants.

. . . .

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel found a better way to help. He established a Legal Protection Fund for undocumented aliens living in Chicago.

Once undocumented aliens are in expedited removal proceedings, they are subject to mandatory detention and cannot be represented by an attorney; but they can be helped by attorneys before they are in such proceedings.

When appropriate, attorneys can assist them in putting together the evidence they will need to establish that they have been in the United States for more than two years, or that they have a credible fear of persecution, if they find themselves in expedited removal proceedings.

This would help many undocumented aliens without violating any federal law or making California ineligible for needed federal funds.

Emanuel found a better way to help. He established a Legal Protection Fund for undocumented aliens living in Chicago.

This would help many undocumented aliens without violating any federal law or making California ineligible for needed federal funds.”

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

Go over to The Hill at the link for Nolan’s complete article.

PWS

07-15-17

“KATE’S LAW” — Steinle Family Didn’t Want Her Name Associated With Political Football!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/14/politics/kate-steinle-trial/index.html

CNN reports:

“San Francisco (CNN)One minute, Kate Steinle was walking with her dad on a San Francisco pier. The next, she fell to the ground, crying out for help after a bullet hit her in the back and pierced her aorta.

In a matter of hours, Steinle was dead, and police had arrested an undocumented immigrant who they accused of pulling the trigger.

On that summer day in 2015, Donald Trump had barely kicked off his campaign. But the case quickly became a rallying cry for Trump as he called for a crackdown on illegal immigration and railed against sanctuary cities.

In the two years since, candidate Trump has become President Trump, and Steinle’s name echoed in the halls of Congress this month as the House of Representatives passed Kate’s Law, a measure named for her.

But Steinle’s family has balked at her case becoming the symbol of Republicans’ immigration agenda. The attorney defending the suspect in the case says there’s more to the story than meets the eye.

And Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, the undocumented Mexican immigrant who’s accused of killing Steinle and of repeatedly entering the United States illegally, has yet to go on trial.

Lopez-Sanchez appeared in court on Friday, wearing an orange jumpsuit and a blank expression through most of the proceedings.

Here’s the latest on the case: . . . .”

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

Read the complete article and get detailed information on the current status of the case at the link.

No surprise that the Trump-Sessions crew and the GOP sponsors of “Kate’s Law” are more interested in scoring political points than the feelings of the family struck by this tragedy.

And, even “enhanced” deportation laws really would’t have prevented this tragedy. The suspect had already been deported five times.

Thanks to star CNN immigration beat reporter Tal Kopan for alerting me to this article to which she contributed.

PWS

07-14-17

SESSIONS DISTORTS STUDY ON SANCTUARY CITIES!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-sanctuary-cities_us_5967b870e4b0174186260c2b?ncid=

Elise Foley reports in HuffPost:

“WASHINGTON ― When Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Wednesday that a study had found so-called sanctuary cities have more violent crime than others, it came as a surprise to the people who conducted the research.

“When cities like Philadelphia, Boston or San Francisco advertise that they have these policies, the criminals are taking notice, too. They’ve got a good idea of where they might want to go, it seems to me,” Sessions said during a speech railing against jurisdictions that don’t fully cooperate with deportation efforts. “According to a recent study from the University of California, Riverside, cities with these policies have more violent crime on average than those that don’t.”

But that’s not what the study showed, according to one of its authors. In fact, it found that there’s no evidence of sanctuary policies having any effect on crime ― and researchers say they believe Sessions and the conservative media are twisting their study to fit their own narratives about the dangers of immigration.

Sessions, along with President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, has made a mission of forcing jurisdictions to cooperate with immigration enforcement.

“This narrative that sanctuary policies increase crime rates is one that has not been backed up by a single shred of evidence,” said Benjamin Gonzalez-O’Brien, one of the authors of the study and an assistant professor of political science at Highline College.

Gonzalez-O’Brien co-authored a study on sanctuary policies with Loren Collingwood, assistant professor of political science at University of California, Riverside, and Stephen El-Khatib, a graduate student at the same university. They looked at data from 55 cities and found that a sanctuary designation had no statistical effect on crime.

If the administration is so convinced that sanctuary cities breed crime we would encourage them to actually do some research … and to actually show that this is in fact the case.
Benjamin Gonzalez-O’Brien, assistant professor of political science at Highline College.”

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Read Foley’s complete article at the link.

Sessions, of course, has a history of playing fast and loose with the truth not only on the Russia Investigation but in putting together arguments in favor of his white nationalist “Gonzo Apocalypto” agenda. But, when you get your info from Fox News and other right wing shills, that’s going to be an occupational hazard.

PWS

07-13-17

TRUMP’S NEXT ATTACK ON AMERICA: LEGAL IMMIGRATION!

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/trump-legal-immigration-crackdown

Bess Levin writes in Vanity Fair:

“The most public components of Donald Trump’s nativist agenda are also, somewhat reassuringly, the most symbolic. Yes, the president wants to build an expensive wall along the southern border to keep “rapists” and “criminals” from Mexico from illegally entering the country, but as even Republicans have pointed out, building a wall is just about the least effective way to secure the border. Life will go on, regardless of whether the president adds an extra foot or two of barbed wire to the eyesore that already stretches across several hundred miles of Texas, Arizona, and California. Trump also wants a figurative fence around the country, in the form of his executive order banning travel from several Muslim-majority countries, but said ban was always designed to be temporary. The president’s long-term ambitions to curtail immigration, meanwhile, have mostly flown under the radar: a plan dreamt up by the White House’s resident nationalists Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller to crack down on legal immigration.

Now, Trump’s endgame appears to be moving into public view. According to a new report from Politico, Miller and Bannon—the latter of whom apparently keeps reminders to himself to restrict immigration “scribbled on the walls of his office” like other people keep reminders to order more ink for the printer—have been working on a bill with Republican Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue that would cut the number of legal immigrants coming into the U.S. by half, to 500,000, as of 2027. The bill is said to be a “revised and expanded” version of the RAISE Act that Cotton and Perdue presented in February and discussed with the president in March.

The lawmakers, along with Miller, Bannon, and Trump, argue that allowing lower-skilled immigrants into the country hurts job prospects and suppresses wages for American-born workers. In addition to wanting to restrict the overall number of legal immigrants, they want to shift to a merit-based system in which foreigners who are granted entry, for example, hold advanced degrees or demonstrate a particular “extraordinary ability” in their given field. That dovetails with the White House’s desire to “limit citizenship and migration to those who pay taxes and earn higher wages.” Last month, in a display of his infinite generosity, particularly toward those who haven’t “made a fortune,” Trump promised that legislation banning legal immigrants from coming into the U.S. if they were expected to rely on any kind of welfare would be coming “very shortly.”

The move will likely appeal to Trump’s base. Unfortunately, a restrictionist immigration policy could backfire for the same set of voters. In April, 1,470 economists wrote an open letter to the president explaining that, actually, the economy benefits from immigration, describing it as “not just a good thing” but “a necessity.” Senators like Lindsey Graham and John McCain have also argued that the economy gets a boost from cheaper labor. Mountains of evidence suggest native workers aren’t interested in the kind of grueling, seasonal, low-wage employment that is typically the domain of recent immigrants. Experts have warned that a crackdown on immigration could, for example, destroy the U.S. agriculture industry, whose workforce is disproportionally made up of foreigners.

Of course, wanting to drastically restrict legal immigration and actually getting a bill passed to do so are two very different things, and Team Trump faces a steep uphill battle, given that G.O.P. lawmakers like Graham and McCain are against it. There are also more pressing matters to attend to, including but not limited to: health care, tax reform, and avoiding a government shutdown in September. Building a border wall around the entire country might have to wait.”

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

The white nationalist agenda is a threat to America. Immigration is good for America. And, the real answer to the “immigration enforcement issue” is more, not less, legal immigration. This is particularly true with a declining birth rate and an expanding economy. Without the benefits of immigration, the U.S. economy is doomed to stagnate like the economies of Japan and some European countries.

PWS

07-13-17

POLITICS: WASHPOST OPINION: Harvard’s Danielle Allen Has Some Advice For Dems!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-should-democrats-be-trying-to-achieve-submit-your-ideas/2017/07/03/d1e06aa6-5ddc-11e7-9fc6-c7ef4bc58d13_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.90fd322b7995

Allen writes:

“By now, we should all be bored to death with despairing Democrats’ decrying the non-appeal of their “brand.” If they remembered that we were citizens, not consumers, they might bother to develop some ideas and propose to lead us somewhere, anywhere. Perhaps the anti-Trump resistance could tackle the challenge of building a positive vision. “Resist and rebuild” might be the mantra.

The original Independence Day was one of construction. By July 4, work on the Articles of Confederation and state constitutions was already well advanced. Maybe the thing to do is have a competition. Hear ye, hear ye, all Americans, what do you think Democrats should be trying to achieve? Submit your ideas!

I, for one, would love to see somebody stand up on some platform somewhere and say something like the following:

We are better than this, America. Better than this division, disdain and despair. We will chase away the clouds and let the sun shine through. The sun of honor and truth. The sun of freedom, fairness and equality.

We will connect, empower and emancipate Americans.

How? By transforming transportation, housing, criminal justice and health care.

We will get our fiscal house in order — achieving a new social contract across generations to rebalance Social Security and Medicare. With our own resources — and without Saudi infrastructure investments being arranged at the same moment that sales of arms to the kingdom are being hammered out — we’ll rebuild our transportation infrastructure. We’ll reconnect rural America to mobility and break the grip of deadening traffic on the lives of urban and suburban residents. By banishing remoteness, we’ll restore opportunity. With less time in cars, we’ll have more time for neighbors; parents will have more time for kids.

We will tackle the true housing crisis: the high cost of rent and the limited availability of affordable housing in places where there is economic opportunity. While real estate developers get rich on the tax treatment of commercial real estate losses, ordinary Americans keep taking hits. We will address underwater mortgages that continue to trap people in undesirable situations and make moving a threat to one’s retirement. An America on the move is an America empowered, firing up engines of opportunity now stalled out.

We will end the war on drugs, build universal health care and reinvest in education. Criminal justice isn’t the tool for the problem of addiction. Health care is. We can and should fight high-level traffickers, but we should emancipate those who suffer from addiction, by calling on the blessings of medicine. We can and should rally the international community against international trafficking, but we must emancipate young people entrapped as low-level employees in international cartels’ predatory distribution systems. They need pathways out — through education and jobs. And we must emancipate communities of color from mass incarceration’s devastation. We must liberalize our drug laws at last.

The time has also come for universal health care. Where Medicaid has expanded, states are better able to fight opioid addiction. When children go to school healthy, they learn better. As Thomas Paine, author of “Common Sense,” argued, everyone needs a starting kit for life. Congress has proved that our health-care system is a mess — too complicated, too byzantine — for any group of 535 honorable women and men to sort out. Let’s make it simple. Forty percent of the nation’s children are already on Medicaid. We can offer Medicaid to all.

With Medicaid for all, we can secure what most of us now recognize as a basic right: routine access to modern medicine. This should be, for all Americans, like access to our highway system. Sure, some will use toll roads for a superior journey. But the road to good health should be open to all. Empowered with a strong foundation of health and education, all Americans will at last have a shot at the American dream.

America is woven of many strands: religious and secular; black, brown and white; male, female; gay, trans and straight; rural and urban. We would recognize it and let it so remain. We will connect, empower and emancipate all Americans, new and old, the sons and daughters of ancestors who have been here for generations, the sons and daughters of those just arrived.

We ask in return that you begin to speak to each other again with civility and decency, whether online or off, and in the expectation of securing goodwill from one another. We didn’t get to be the richest, freest country in the world on a fuel of mutual disdain. What we have we’ve built with the mutual respect that makes working together possible. We ask that all Americans aspire to prove themselves trustworthy to one another, to stand beside each other, and to hope to guide one another generously, in a spirit of equality, upholding justice for all, with the grace of Lady Liberty.

We will also ask Americans to welcome a set number of new immigrants every year and another set number cycling through on work permits. We will bring order to our immigration system. But remember this: Families coming from distant lands seek us out because we are the country of good hope. This is our pride and joy. To see that hope reflected in the faces of newcomers is an honor indeed. By asking for entrance, new immigrants tell us that we have done well. We have built something of value to all humankind.

Connect. Empower. Emancipate. This is what we will do for the American people. This is what we ask you, the American people, to do for yourselves. Connect. Empower. Emancipate.

We will banish the dark. We will again lift the lamp of human dignity.”

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I wonder how many times the word “dark” has been used to describe various aspects of the Trump Administration?

PWS

07-05-17

HOUSE PASSES MORE UNNEEDED, DIVISIVE, ANTI-IMMIGRANT LEGISLATION!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/29/politics/kates-law-house-vote/index.html

Tal Kopan reports for CNN:

“Washington (CNN) The House Thursday is expected to pass bills that would hand President Donald Trump key pieces of his immigration agenda, especially efforts targeting sanctuary cities.

The bills, “Kate’s Law” and the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, would install harsher penalties for repeat illegal entry to the US, and expand US law on sanctuary cities to pressure localities to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
But it’s unlikely either would have enough votes to pass the Senate, which struggled with Kate’s Law last year.

Immigration and civil liberties advocates have also come out swinging against the bills, saying they bolster a “deportation force” and anti-immigrant agenda from the Trump administration.
Both bills come from the Judiciary Committee led by Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, a longtime proponent of strict immigration policies like Trump’s and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Another lead sponsor is Iowa Rep. Steve King, one of the most aggressive Republicans on immigration enforcement who has a history of controversial statements about immigrants.”

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Read Tal’s complete article at the link.

Looking at the folks pushing this ill-advised piece of legislation tells you about all you need to know about what’s really underneath the surface.

PWS

06-29-17

Sessions Says DOJ Will Help Defend States (Like Texas) Seeking To Punish “Sanctuary Cities” — House GOP Pushes Bill Targeting Sanctuary Jurisdictions!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trump-administration-backs-texas-in-lawsuit-over-harsh-sanctuary-city-law/2017/06/23/327ba290-581f-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html?utm_term=.4c47afa58d76

Maria Sacchetti reports in the Washington Post:

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday that the Trump administration “fully supports” Texas’s harsh new ban on sanctuary cities, and the Department of Justice will help defend it against a federal court challenge next week.

Lawyers for the tiny border city of El Cenizo, the League of United Latin American Citizens and major cities such as Dallas and Austin say the law requiring them to detain immigrants for federal deportation agents is “patently unconstitutional” for a number of reasons. On Monday, they will urge U.S. District Court Judge Orlando Garcia in San Antonio to block the law from taking effect Sept. 1.

The state of Texas argues that the government is within its rights to bar localities from interfering with immigration enforcement. Under the law, officials could lose their jobs, police chiefs could go to jail, and governments could face fines of up to $25,500 a day if they adopt or enforce policies that prevent law enforcement officers from asking about a person’s immigration status or complying with requests to detain immigrants, a job that has been chiefly the responsibility of federal agents.

“President Trump has made a commitment to keep America safe and to ensure cooperation with federal immigration laws,” Sessions said in a statement. “Texas has admirably followed his lead by mandating state-wide cooperation with federal immigration laws that require the removal of illegal aliens who have committed crimes.”

Luis Roberto Vera, Jr. the national general counsel for the League of United Latin American Citizens, which is a plaintiff in the case, said the Texas law is discriminatory because it primarily targets Hispanics, one of the state’s largest groups.

El Cenizo Mayor Raul Reyes. El Cenizo is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that will seek to temporarily halt Texas’ sanctuary cities ban before it takes effect Sept. 1. (Matthew Busch/Matthew Busch For The Washington Post)
“It’s a continuation of Donald Trump’s war on Mexicanos,” Vera said. “That’s the sad part about this.”

The faceoff comes amid rising tensions nationwide over the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration and its relentless march forward despite a string of losses in federal courts.

On Friday, congressional aides said House Republicans are advancing a bill that would withhold some federal grant money from so-called sanctuary cities; give greater legal weight to immigration detainers, which are requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to local jails to hold immigrants who are being targeted for deportation; and shield local governments from lawsuits related to detainers. A second bill would increase penalties against deported immigrants who return illegally.”

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Yup, full employment for lawyers, on all sides.

Bad time to be an immigrant, refugee, or minority in America. Great time to be a lawyer!

PWS

06-24-17

Welcome To Jeff Sessions’s America — In 1957 Sessions Was 10 Years Old And His White Christian Fellow Alabamans Were Busy Perverting The “Rule Of Law” To Deny Their African American Fellow Citizens Constitutional Rights, Fundamental Justice, & Human Dignity!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-white-cop-dies-and-a-young-black-man-spends-years-in-jail-for-a-crime-he-didnt-do/2017/06/16/d771059e-4706-11e7-a196-a1bb629f64cb_story.html?hpid=hp_regional-hp-cards_rhp-card-arts%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.a94b2ba61075

Colbert I. king writes in the Washington Post:

“How is it possible in a country that prides itself on having a Bill of Rights, expresses reverence for due process and touts equal protection that a 17-year-old can be arrested, put on trial and sentenced to death, and then spend 13 years being shuttled among death row cellblocks in disgusting jails and prisons with his case under appeal, all for a crime he didn’t commit?

The answer contains some simple prerequisites: He had to be black, live in the Jim Crow South and be accused of committing, as one deputy sheriff put it, a “supreme offense, on the same level of a white woman being raped by a black man” — that is, the murder of a white police officer.

Teenager Caliph Washington, a native of Bessemer, Ala., was on the receiving end of all three conditions. And as such, Washington became a sure-fire candidate to suffer the kind of tyrannical law enforcement and rotten jurisprudence that Southern justice reserved for blacks of any age.

In “He Calls Me by Lightning,” S. Jonathan Bass, a professor at Alabama’s Samford University and a son of Bessemer parents, resurrects the life of Washington, who died in 2001 finally out of prison — but with charges still hanging over his head.

Bass, however, does more than tell Washington’s tale, as Washington’s widow, Christine, had asked him to do in a phone call. Bass dives deeply into the Bessemer society of 1957 where Washington was accused of shooting white police officer James “Cowboy” Clark on an empty dead-end street near a row of run-down houses on unpaved Exeter Alley.

Bessemer-style justice cannot be known, let alone understood, however, without learning about that neo-hardscrabble town 13 miles southwest of Birmingham.

Bessemer served as home to a sizable black majority, an entrenched white power structure and an all-white police department, consisting at the time of a “ragtag crew of poorly paid, ill-trained, and hot-tempered individuals” who earned less than Bessemer’s street and sanitation workers.

Bessemer was a town with its own quaint racial customs, such as forcing black men to “walk in the middle of the downtown streets, not on the sidewalks, after dark — presumably to keep them from any close contact with white women.”

Bessemer was a town where in 1944 the police forced black prisoners to participate in an Independence Day watermelon run. White citizens reportedly cheered as firefighters blasted the inmates with high-pressure hoses to make the race more challenging. Winners, it is said, received reduced sentences and the watermelons.

It was in that town that Caliph Washington was born in 1939, the same year of my birth in Washington, D.C.

Bessemer’s racial climate was no different the year Washington was accused of killing Cowboy Clark. The town’s prevailing attitude on race was captured at the time in a pamphlet distributed by a segregationist group, the Bessemer Citizens’ Council. Black Christians, the white citizens’ council said, should remain content with being “our brothers in Christ without also wanting to become our brothers-in-law.”

If ever there was a place to not get caught “driving while black” — which is what Washington was doing on that fateful night in July 1957 — it was Bessemer. And that night’s hazard appeared in the form of Clark and his partner, Thurman Avery, who were cruising the streets in their patrol car looking for whiskey bootleggers.”

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Read the rest of King’s op-ed at the link.

So, when you hear Sessions and his White Nationalist buddies like Bannon, Miller, Kobach, and Pence extolling the virtues of a small Federal Government (except for the migrant-bashing mechanisms) state control of voting, civil rights, police conduct, gender fairness, environmental regulations, labor relations, filling the prisons with maximum sentences, a new war on drugs, etc., it’s just clever code for “let’s make sure that white-dominated state and local governments can keep blacks, hispanics, immigrants, Muslims, and other minorities from achieving power, equality, and a fair share of the pie.” After all, if you believe, as these guys do, that true democracy can be a bad thing if it means diversity and power sharing, then you’re going to abuse the legal and political systems any way you can to maintain your hold on power.

And, of course, right-wing pontificating about the “rule of law” means nothing other than selective application of some laws to the disadvantage of minorities, immigrants, and often women. You can see how selective Sessions’s commitment to the rule of law is when he withdraws DOJ participation in voting rights cases in the face of strong evidence of racial gerrymandering, withdraws support from protections for LGBT individuals, supports imprisonment in substandard prisons, targets legal marijuana, and “green lights” troubled police departments to prioritize aggressive law enforcement over the protection of minority citizens’ rights. Ethics laws, in particular, seems to be far removed from the Sessions/Trump concept of “Rule of Law.” And, sadly, this is only the beginning of the Trump Administration’s assault on our Constitution, our fundamental values, and the “real” “Rule of Law.”

PWS

06-18-17

FALLOUT FROM TEXAS SB4: AILA Moves 2018 Annual Conference (3,000 Attendees) Out Of “Unwelcoming” State! — Other Groups Likely To Follow Suit! SB 4 Could Cost Texas Businesses Millions In Lost Revenues!

http://www.aila.org/advo-media/press-releases/2017/sb-4-makes-texas-unwelcoming-for-annual-conference??utm_source=aila.org&utm_medium=Carousel%20-%20P

SB 4 Makes Texas Unwelcoming for AILA Annual Conference in 2018

AILA Doc. No. 17060700 | Dated June 7, 2017

CONTACTS:
George Tzamaras 202-507-7649 gtzamaras@aila.org	Belle Woods 202-507-7675 bwoods@aila.org

WASHINGTON, DC – The Board of Governors of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) has voted to move the Association’s 2018 annual conference from Grapevine, Texas, to another state. The AILA Annual Conference takes place over the course of three and a half days and is the largest yearly gathering of immigration lawyers and legal professionals in the United States.

AILA President William Stock explained, “It is no small matter to cancel the venue for a professional conference with more than 3,000 attendees. In the end, our Board decided it could not ask AILA members, and in many cases their families, to attend a conference in the state which has passed SB-4 into law. SB-4 serves no legitimate purpose and undermines our country’s principles of fairness, due process, and equal treatment under the law. By championing this bill and signing it into law, Governor Abbott has continued the scapegoating of immigrants and the communities that welcome them, rather than acknowledging the immense benefits that immigrants bring to our nation and the shared prosperity which follows.”

AILA Executive Director Ben Johnson added, “I am very proud to serve an organization and a community that is willing to stand up for its values and mission. For more than 70 years, AILA’s mission has been to promote justice and to advocate for fair and reasonable immigration law and policy. That’s not something to which we simply pay lip service, it’s what we and our 15,000 members do, day in and day out. SB-4 is unjust, unfair, and unreasonable and under these extraordinary circumstances, AILA has made the decision that it cannot bring its premier event to the state of Texas.”

###

The American Immigration Lawyers Association is the national association of immigration lawyers established to promote justice, advocate for fair and reasonable immigration law and policy, advance the quality of immigration and nationality law and practice, and enhance the professional development of its members.

Cite as AILA Doc. No. 17060700.

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At some point, Texas voters are going to have to ask themselves what price they are willing to pay to promote the “Gonzo-Apocalypto Restrictionist White Nationalist” Agenda being pushed by Abbott and the GOP. Sounds like something Democrats could “work with” at all levels. Economic issues often are a way to get traction. And, the lost business revenues doen’t even to begin to figure in all the money taxpayers are going to have to lay out to defend the inevitable lawsuits.

PWS

06-12-17

Lisa Rosenberg: Trump Administration’s Misinformation Campaign Targets Immigrants!

http://augustafreepress.com/trump-administration-using-campaign-disinformation-secrecy-target-immigrants/

Rosenberg writes in the Augusta (VA) Free Press:

“The Trump administration has yet to break ground for its promised border wall to keep the undocumented out of the United States, but by embarking on a campaign of misinformation and secrecy, it is rapidly moving forward with efforts to target and deport immigrants already here.
To advance the false narrative that the undocumented community includes an outsized and particularly dangerous set of criminals, the Administration ignores data that shows that high rates of immigration actually coincide with reduced crime rates, and that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than those born in the United States. As Alex Nowrasteh of the libertarian Cato Institute noted, “It is absurd to highlight the crimes committed by a small group of people without reporting on the crimes committed by everybody.” The misleading use of crime data not only results in questionable policy decisions, but also could lead to unwarranted fear of immigrants and an uptick in hate-crimes against them.
Such fear-mongering appears to be behind the new office for Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) recently launched by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). VOICE will share selective data about alleged criminals’ immigration and custody status, but will omit information on other crimes, including crimes in which immigrants are victims. VOICE stems from the President’s Executive Order on internal safety and immigration enforcement, which also decreed that Privacy Act protections do not apply to the undocumented. The result is that when VOICE shares information about immigrants, their right to legally challenge potentially erroneous disclosures may be curtailed. The implications could be devastating for individuals who are wrongly targeted, especially given administration’s track record with the facts.
The launch of the VOICE office comes on the heels other efforts by the administration to manipulate facts to support misleading conclusions about immigration enforcement. In an apparent effort to name and shame, the White House ordered ICE to release weekly reports highlighting jurisdictions it claimed did not comply with requests to keep undocumented individuals in custody for up to 48 hours beyond their scheduled release—so-called “detainer requests.” Law enforcement officials in counties nationwide described the data as “unfair and misleading” and openly disputed ICE’s claims. Because complying with detainer requests has been held to be unconstitutional, jurisdictions also objected to the reports’ mischaracterization that they were not complying with federal law. Responding to pressure, ICE has temporarily suspended publication of its misleading weekly reports, but is now concealing data about its own immigration investigations and enforcement with its illegitimate decision to withhold information previously released under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
To be sure, the immigration enforcement and deportation machine grew to new levels under a cloak of secrecy during the Obama administration, with serious policy consequences that resonate today. Rights groups litigated with ICE for years to obtain information about its controversial deportation and fingerprint program, known as Secure Communities, which required local law enforcement to forward the digital fingerprints of everyone they booked, regardless of citizenship. ICE then used the information to determine who could be deported. To this day, the FBI continues to expand the massive biometrics database that grew dramatically under the Secure Communities program, and ICE’s ability to issue detainer requests continues because local law enforcement still forwards biometric information about suspects in custody.”

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One of the biggest lies repeated by the Trump Administration and many GOP politicos is that the Obama Administration “didn’t enforce immigration law.” On the contrary, as those of us who served during that Administration know well, Obama enforced the heck out of immigration law — sometimes wisely, sometimes not. Most of today’s real immigration problems (such as the total mess in the U.S. Immigration Courts) stem from over enforcement, not any type of mythical “under enforcement.”

PWS

05-25-17

Only 6% Of Trump Immigration Arrests Involve “Violent Crimes!”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/trump_administration_arrests_noncriminal_immigrants_150_percent_20170523

Truthdig reports:

“For the most part, the Trump campaign was transparent in its xenophobia, playing to the anti-immigrant sentiments of Trump’s base with promises to increase deportations of the undocumented. But on one point, Trump pretended to care about nuance: He would not, he stated on multiple occasions, target undocumented immigrants indiscriminately, but would focus on those with criminal records—the “bad hombres,” to use the president’s own ridiculous words. Predictably, this has not been the case in practice. A new report shows that amidst a staggering increase in undocumented immigrant deportations overall, arrests of law-abiding undocumented immigrants shot up the most, by a whopping 150 percent.

A report by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement boasts that between January 29 and April 22, agents arrested 41,318 undocumented immigrants. That figure, which breaks down to roughly 400 arrests per day, represents an increase of 37 percent over arrests made during the same period under President Obama, who previously held the title of Deporter-in-Chief. Seventy-five percent of those taken into custody have criminal convictions, but even that notation is potentially misleading. As Vox notes, “it’s not clear how many of those were for crimes that might be considered minor, or for crimes that are the result of being an unauthorized immigrant in the U.S. (such as driving without a license in a state that doesn’t permit unauthorized immigrants to get drivers’ licenses).” In fact, as the outlet points out, just 6 percent of those arrested had been convicted of violent crimes such as “homicide, rape, kidnapping and assault.”

The number of non-criminal undocumented immigrants arrested more than doubled, going “from approximately 4,200 in 2016 to more than 10,800 in 2017.” The ICE reports highlights this statistic as a point of pride, stating that while “convicted criminals are an immigration enforcement priority, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly has made it clear that ICE will no longer exempt any class of individuals from removal proceedings if they are found to be in the country illegally.”

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Disrupting communities across America, pushing the U.S. Immigration Courts to the brink, burning through taxpayer dollars, without accomplishing much of anything useful. That’s the Trump way!

Contrary to the GOP fantasy hype, the Obama Administration was certainly no slouch at apprehending and removing serious criminals. So, the Trump enforcement charade has increased misery, deepened divisions, and created unnecessary commotion, while, by most reliable accounts, actually making us less safe by eroding years of hard-earned trust and cooperation between migrant communities and local police in reporting and solving crimes! Talk about a “built for failure” program!

PWS

05-23-17

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