Border Enforcement
Beyond A Border Solution
- Asylum
- May 3, 2023
America needs durable solutions. These concrete measures can bring orderliness to our border and modernize our overwhelmed asylum system. Read…
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Department of Justice Seeks Injunction Against Alabama’s Anti-Immigrant Law
Yesterday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed yet another lawsuit against extreme state-level immigration laws—this time against Alabama’s HB 56. Already the subject of a class action lawsuit filed by the ACLU and other immigrants’ rights groups, Alabama’s HB 56 would require local law enforcement to verify the immigration status of those stopped for traffic violations, public schools to determine the immigration status of students, employers to use E-Verify and makes it a crime to knowingly rent to, transport or harbor undocumented immigrants. In its motion for a preliminary injunction, however, the DOJ argues that Alabama’s law, much like Arizona’s, interferes with the federal enforcement of immigration laws and places undue burdens on local schools and federal agencies. Alabama’s law was signed into law by Governor Robert Bentley in June and slated to take effect September 1. Read More
Immigration Case Backlog Reaches All-Time High, Report Shows
As the U.S. continues to pour money into immigration enforcement and detention, the resources necessary for the immigration court system to keep up with enforcement have not been appropriated. In fact, a record number of immigration cases—275,316 as of May 2011—are in the Immigration Court backlog according to a recent report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). In four months, the case backlog grew 2.8%, and it has grown 48% since FY2008. Read More
Governor Brown Signs Only Half of California DREAM Act
BY CAITLIN PATLER, DOCTORAL STUDENT AT UCLA'S DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY This week, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill (AB) 130. This new law allows undocumented students enrolled in California’s public colleges and universities to receive privately-funded university scholarships from non-state funds.. While AB 130 is a significant step for the Golden State, it is only one of two bills known collectively as the California DREAM Act. Without its companion bill, AB 131, the legislation does little to address the systemic inequality facing undocumented students in California. Read More
Arizona’s Latest Border Fence Initiative Yet Another Obstacle to Fighting Crime
BY TERRY GODDARD, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL OF ARIZONA Over the years, Arizona has seen an exceptional number of frauds, consumer scams and rip offs. Maybe the heat stimulates the flimflam artists, but the sad fact is they come here and discover new and creative ways to take other peoples' money. As Arizona’s Attorney General for the past eight years, I was dedicated to exposing and prosecuting scams, large and small. Unfortunately, the latest ploy is perpetrated by one of Arizona’s own politicians, state senator Steve Smith, who has developed a new scheme for taking money from well-meaning Americans—building the border fence. Read More
Report Reveals Basic Misunderstanding of Deportation Process
As readers of this blog know, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) often issues studies that make us cringe. Earlier this week, however, the DC-based restrictionist organization issued a report that made us laugh. Pseudonymously written by a retired government employee, the report purports to explain the “basics” of the deportation process. At more than 10,000 words, the report contains too many false analogies, misleading statistics, and non sequiturs to individually refute. But a few of the more outlandish arguments are too good not to pass up. Read More
Prosecutorial Discretion and the Legacy of John Lennon
BY LEON WILDES AND SHOBA SIVAPRASA WADHIA Most remember John Lennon as a former Beatle, a brilliant musician, husband to artist Yoko Ono and target for deportation by the Nixon Administration. Less known is the story of how Lennon’s immigration saga enabled the first public discussion on prosecutorial discretion in immigration law. Read More
U.S-Mexico Border Residents Not Surprised by Falling Crime Stats
Listening to politicians, one would think that the border is rife with murder, arson, theft, kidnapping, and every other type of violent crime imaginable. Unfortunately, those who spread these images often conflate the violence associated with drugs and arms trafficking with immigration, unfairly painting immigrants as the perpetrators. This image of a violence-ridden, out-of-control border has been used to justify increasingly higher spending on enforcement along the border, increases in Border Patrol agents and the deployment of the National Guard. Immigration restrictionists have also used images of border violence and immigrants committing crimes to shut down attempts at serious comprehensive immigration reform. Read More
Boston Mayor Threatens to Withdraw from ICE’s Secure Communities Program
The saga surrounding ICE’s Secure Communities program continues this month as Boston Mayor Thomas Menino threatened to withdrawal Boston from the federal program unless the agency agreed to target serious criminals only. Not surprisingly, Boston is just the latest in a series of cities and states—including New York, Illinois, Colorado, DC, and parts of California—that have threatened to drop the program. Even ICE Director John Morton, who recently made a trip to Boston to smooth things over, couldn’t guarantee local police that Secure Communities would focus solely on “serious offenders.” Read More
Dear Mr. Smith, Our Broken Immigration System Requires Solutions that Embrace Discretion, Not Eliminate It
Over the last six months, Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), along with other members of the House Judiciary Committee, have engaged in an all-out effort to turn back the clock on our immigration laws through a series of bills that may tackle one issue at a time, but equal a comprehensive overhaul. This week, the restrictionists’ Comprehensive Immigration Reform package (RCIR, as we call it) became complete with the introduction of the “Hinder the Administration’s Legalization Temptation Act” (HALT Act), a bill that would suspend discretionary forms of immigration relief until January 21, 2013. Yes, until the day after the next inauguration. Read More
Agency Urges USCIS to Streamline “Deferred Action” Process
In a new report issued this week, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services’s (USCIS) Ombudsman’s office called on USCIS to create a standardized procedure for accepting and tracking requests for deferred action made to the agency. The timing of this report, following ICE’s memos on prosecutorial discretion last month, further reinforces the importance of understanding and applying the tools of executive branch authority in immigration law. It also gives USCIS an excellent opportunity to build on these new developments to offer its own contribution to the discussion over deferred action, prosecutorial discretion and executive branch power. Read More
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