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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Guilty Until Proven Innocent in Immigration Detention
Not only are immigrants in detention "dying for decent [medical] care," a recent report by Amnesty International blasts the federal government for violating their human rights by allowing tens of thousands of people -- including U.S. citizens -- to "languish" in custody for months to years without receiving hearings to determine whether their detention is warranted. Amnesty's Western regional office Director, Banafsheh Akhlaghi, says: "It's easy to lock up someone, throw away the key and then make him prove that ICE is wrong." Read More
Hillary Clinton’s Two-Day Visit to Mexico Begins Today
Today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Mexico to discuss a wide range of issues, including immigration, trade and security. Clinton’s visit is paving the way for high-profile visits from Atty. Gen. Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, culminating with President Barack Obama’s first trip to… Read More
A Comprehensive Solution to Order on the Border
As the national spotlight turns toward U.S. border activity, local border town police face a difficult challenge in balancing their role as both police officers and immigration officers within a broken immigration system. In a recent Washington Post editorial, Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris asserts that focusing his attention on real criminals rather than economic migrants has not only lowered the city’s crime rate, it has also enabled police to maintain a closer relationship with the communities they serve. For Harris, who likened border enforcement to bailing an ocean with a thimble, "the answer is not in Phoenix. The answer is in Washington." Don’t give me 50 more officers to deal with the symptoms. Rather, give me comprehensive immigration reform that controls the borders, provides for whatever seasonal immigration the nation wants, and one way or another settles the status of the 12 million who are here illegally — 55 percent of whom have been here at least eight years. For those whose profession it is, law enforcement sometimes seems like bailing an ocean with a thimble. Read More
Immigration Reform Makes Sense for U.S. Economy
This week the President sent a clear signal that immigration reform is still in the queue for his first year in office. Meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, he did not waver in his commitment to fixing our broken immigration system. In the context of a weakened economy, immigration reform would actually have a positive impact in contrast to the costly enforcement-only policies of the last administration. This week, the Immigration Policy Center released a synthesis of economic data showing the economic benefits of immigration reform. Some of the data is produced by our government's own Congressional Budget Office, which has declared the benefits of putting workers on a path to legalization. Read More
CIS Inadvertently Makes the Case for Legalizing Undocumented Workers
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) today released a report which, quite inadvertently, makes an excellent case for comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes undocumented immigrants already living and working in the United States. The report analyzes the high-profile federal immigration raids that were conducted on December 12, 2006, at six Swift & Co. meatpacking plants in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, and Utah. According to the report, wages and working conditions for Swift & Co. workers improved in the aftermath of the raids as more lawfully present immigrants and U.S. citizens joined the company's labor force. The report rightly concludes from the example of Swift & Co. that wages and working conditions improve "when illegal immigrant labor is removed from the workplace." Read More
Border Patrol Deploying Mexican Folk Music as Enforcement Tactic
While funneling more than $1.4 billion into barricading the U.S.-Mexico border with electric fences, vehicle barriers, and 6,000 National Guard troops under the purview of the Bush administration, the U.S. Border Patrol also began a more artistic approach to intercepting the flow of job-seeking nannies and busboys from Mexico in to the U.S. The agency is now doubling as an international record company, producing corridos [up-tempo Mexican folk songs] about tragic border crossings and distributing them to Mexican radio stations in a weak -- albeit creative -- attempt to dissuade their listeners from crossing the border without documents. Read More
Secure Communities and 287g: A Tale of Two Counties
Due to its growing immigrant population and local responses to demographic changes, Northern Virginia has become a hot spot in the national immigration debate. A growing participation in the Secure Communities Program suggests that Virginia isn't going to cool down until immigration enforcement is back in the federal government's hands. While Prince William County is known nationwide for its attempts to crack down on undocumented immigration -- Fairfax County, on the other hand, has always been associated with a welcoming attitude toward its immigrant population. Read More
A Taste of Real American Justice for Sheriff Arpaio
Even immigration hardliners have to shake their heads at Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose anti-immigrant publicity stunts have angered countless across the nation. The Arizona Sheriff's latest immigrant exploit, which reads like something out of a super villain's Do It Yourself manual, involved rounding up immigrant detainees, shackling them and forcing them to march to a segregated tent city surrounded by an electric fence-something even Lex Luthor might think twice about. Read More
Pelosi Joins the Hispanic Caucus’ Call for Reform, Not Raids
This past weekend, House Speaker Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took a stand on immigration raids and met hundreds of families Saturday evening at a church in San Francisco's Mission District to demand an end to deportations and the separation of families. Pelosi's stop was part of a larger, 17-city national "Family Unity" tour led by leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in response to immigration raids. An estimated 3.1 million US citizen children have at least one parent who is undocumented. Many others have at least one parent who is a permanent legal resident who can be subject to deportation for minor legal infractions or errors while filing for a change of immigration status. Every year thousands of children are either separated from a parent who has been deported, or forced into exile. Read More
CIS’ Dubious Data Deflects Rational Immigration Debate
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), as well as the Heritage Foundation, have recently claimed that up to 300,000 construction jobs created by the economic stimulus bill could be filled by undocumented immigrants. CIS arrives at this scary number by using a job-creation formula designed for highway expenditures in 2007, and then tacking on an estimate of the undocumented construction workforce from 2005—before the mass layoffs that have plagued the construction industry. Read More
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