Immigration at the Border
Fear Mongering via Mexican Asylum Cases
Here’s how an immigration rumor gets started. Take one local Fox news station, mix in a bunch of undisclosed sources complaining about asylum seekers at the Otay border crossing, add in some inflammatory comments from the chairman of the board of the Center for Immigration Studies, and just wait for the story to get blown up and out of proportion by anti-immigrant-fed media sources. For added zest, make sure the story airs shortly after a highly publicized event, like the detention and release of the DREAM9 at the Mexican border, which can be easily mixed up and conflated into some kind of threat to the country’s integrity and security. Read More
New Orleans Latest Locality to Shift Costly Immigration Enforcement Burden Back to Feds
New Orleans has stopped honoring detainer requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials—the first Southern city to do so—now that the Orleans Parish sheriff’s office will no longer detain people who are suspected of being undocumented immigrants. According to The New York Times, the sheriff’s office will “decline all ICE detention requests except when a person is being held on certain specific serious charges.” For individuals with those charges, the sheriff will defer to the recommendation of the criminal court. The parish sheriff will no longer investigate an individual’s immigration status. ICE may not conduct investigations into civil violations of immigration law in the jail. If ICE wants to conduct a criminal investigation in the jail, ICE must provide reasonable notice and opportunity for the individual’s attorney to be present at any interview. Read More
Turning up the Heat on Congress Over Summer Recess
August recess is in full swing, and the plans to show Congress how badly Americans want immigration reform “back home” are well under way. While August is always a time to remind Members of Congress about crucial issues, this year’s immigration events, meetings, and rallies are occurring at a time when Members of Congress, particularly House Republicans, are seriously re-examining their positions on immigration. This may be the most critical month for capturing the hearts and minds of House Members. Read More
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer Still Cannot Connect the Dots Between Immigration Reform and Border Security
Anti-immigrant politicians suffer from a chronic inability to understand that immigration reform must be truly comprehensive if it is to be effective. That is, all facets of the extremely complex U.S. immigration system must be fixed at the same time if the system as a whole is to function properly—everything from border enforcement to family reunification to visas for high-skilled and less-skilled workers to legal status for unauthorized immigrants already living in the United States. Yet politicians like Arizona Governor Jan Brewer continue to repeat the same meaningless mantra when it comes to a systemic overhaul of U.S. immigration laws and policies: “secure the border first.” Which, roughly translated, means “make the broken system work, and then we can fix it.” Read More
Courts Continue to Reject Arizona Style Laws, Even as House Embraces SAFE Act
Last year, in Arizona v. United States, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the federal government, rather than the states, has both the responsibility and the authority to enforce immigration law. Leaving immigration enforcement to the whims of individual state legislatures and law enforcement officers was, according to the Court, likely to undermine the federal framework and interfere with U.S. foreign relations. Despite this resounding rejection of state immigration enforcement, or perhaps because of it, the House Immigration Subcommittee passed the Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement (SAFE) Act (H.R. 2278), which attempts to make an end run around the Supreme Court’s decision by empowering states and localities to enforce immigration law as they see fit. At the very time the country is pushing for a comprehensive federal overhaul of the immigration system, the presence of the SAFE Act threatens to cripple the success of those efforts. Read More
ICE Agrees to Release Thousands of Previously-Withheld Records
Washington, DC – Yesterday, a U.S. District Court in Connecticut approved a settlement in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit challenging the refusal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release tens of thousands of documents about the Criminal Alien Program (CAP), one of the agency’s largest enforcement… Read More
The Criminal Alien Program (CAP): Immigration Enforcement in Prisons and Jails
The Criminal Alien Program (CAP) is an expansive immigration enforcement program that leads to the initiation of removal proceedings in many cases. While CAP has existed in one form or another for decades, there is still much to be learned about the program, how it is organized, and how it works. What is known is that CAP extends to every area of the country and intersects with most state and local law enforcement agencies. For years, the CAP program has operated with little public attention and many of its elements have only recently come to light following FOIA litigation against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The information obtained through the lawsuit regarding CAP’s current organization and staffing suggests CAP is not a single program, but a loose-knit group of several different programs operating within ICE. Other than a small number of staff responsible for the administration of CAP at ICE headquarters, there is no dedicated CAP staff. Rather, ICE pulls personnel and resources from across the agency to perform CAP-related functions. The ICE declarations and deposition also explain how CAP functions within prisons and jails. There appears to be little consistency in, and little or no policy governing, how CAP cooperates with state and local law enforcement agencies in different regions and in how CAP interacts with detainees in different facilities. Instead, CAP appears to function as an ad hoc set of activities that operate differently across the country and across penal institutions, raising questions about the adequacy of oversight, training, and accountability of the personnel implementing CAP. This information confirms that there is still much about CAP that remains unknown or unclear. Given the breadth of CAP, the centrality of its role in immigration enforcement, and its large impact on the immigrant community, it is critical that ICE clarify how CAP operates. Read More
The Immigration Debate Could Use a Healthy Dose of Facts
Immigration is sure to be a hot topic when Members of Congress meet their constituents face-to-face during the upcoming summer recess. The full Senate has passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes a controversial “border surge” as well as a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants already living in the United States; the House Committee on Homeland Security has passed an enforcement-only border bill that doesn’t even acknowledge the other components of immigration reform; and there continues to be much heated public debate about what the House will do next and whether the reform effort will survive the vagaries of partisan politics. As politicians and voters attempt to wade through all of the thorny issues that are raised by the topic of immigration reform, and as journalists attempt to report on these many complex issues, there is something which should be kept front and center: facts. Read More
How States And Local Economies Benefit From Immigrants
Detroit usurped Jefferson County, Alabama’s place last week as the largest municipality in the United States ever to file for bankruptcy. And as signs increasingly pointed toward the city’s financial issues, local leaders in Southeast Michigan have been exploring ways in which to stabilize or strengthen Detroit’s economy. One way to do that is to encourage more immigrants to settle there. New restaurants, shops, and residents already have helped to revitalize one area in Southwest Detroit called Mexicantown. And there is no doubt that immigrant entrepreneurs and innovators play an important role throughout Michigan as well. Immigrant entrepreneurs create jobs, bring in additional revenue, and contribute significantly to the state’s economy. Highly skilled immigrants are vital to the state’s innovation activities, spurring further growth. As such, local leaders and advocates recognize the importance of immigrants in their communities and support immigration through local “welcoming” and integration initiatives. Read More
Steve King’s Tall Tales About Immigrants and Crime Don’t Add Up
There is no denying that Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has a vivid imagination. As he sits in Border Patrol vehicles at night, he apparently sees hundreds of DREAM Act-eligible drug mules with muscular calves hauling heavy loads of marijuana across the border. How does he know these drug mules would meet the rather stringent criteria for legalization under the DREAM Act? Hard to say. How does he know these drug mules outnumber their valedictorian counterparts by a ratio of one hundred to one? No one can say. What is certain is this: when it comes to the topic of immigration and crime, nativists like King have no need for facts when there is so much fear and innuendo at their disposal. Perhaps this is because the facts are so stacked against them. Read More
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