Center for Immigration Studies - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

Immigrants from Afghanistan – A profile of foreign-born Afghans

Michael Armstrong — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 21:08:53 +0000

The crisis in Afghanistan and the decision to admit tens of thousands of people from that country, with plans to admit more, has raised interest in Afghan immigrants already in the United States. This report uses the latest Census Bureau data to examine where Afghan immigrants live and their education levels, income, employment, fertility, poverty, welfare use, and other sociodemographic characteristics. The findings show that the number of Afghans in this country has grown dramatically in the last decade and that they tend to be concentrated in a relatively few states and cities. It also shows that Afghan men, but not women, have relatively high rates of work. However, reflecting their much lower levels of education, a large share of Afghans live in or near poverty. Although the share with low incomes has not worsened in recent years, their use of non-cash welfare has risen sharply.

Among the findings:

The number of Afghan immigrants (also referred to as the foreign-born) was 133,000 in 2019, more than triple the 44,000 Afghans in 2000, and nearly 2.5 times the 55,000 Afghans in 2010.
The states with the largest Afghan-immigrant populations are California (54,000), Virginia (24,000), and Texas (10,000). The metropolitan areas with the largest Afghan populations are Washington, D.C. (26,000), San Francisco, and Sacramento, both with 16,000.
Since 1980, 79 percent of Afghan immigrants have been admitted for humanitarian reasons — as refugees, asylees, or, since 2008, on Special Immigrant Visas.
Afghan immigrants have high rates of citizenship, with 81 percent who have lived in the country for more than five years having naturalized, compared to 61 percent of all immigrants.
The educational level of Afghan immigrants has fallen both in absolute terms and relative to the native-born. The share of Afghans (25-64) with at least a bachelor’s degree fell from 30 percent in 2000 to 26 percent in 2019, while increasing from 27 percent to 35 percent for natives.
In 2019, the share of all Afghans (18 to 64) employed was only 64 percent, compared to 75 percent for the native-born. This reflects low rates of work among Afghan women. Among Afghan men, 84 percent were employed, higher than the 78 percent for native-born men.
Many Afghans have low incomes. Of persons in households headed by Afghan immigrants, 25 percent live in poverty — twice the 12 percent for people in native-headed households.
Although the share of Afghans with low incomes has not worsened in recent years, their use of welfare has increased significantly. In 2019, 65 percent of Afghan households used at least one major program (cash, food stamps, or Medicaid) compared to 50 percent in 2010, while use for native households increased from 22 percent to 24 percent.
Food stamp use by Afghan households increased the most, from 19 percent to 35 percent between 2010 and 2019, while falling from 11 percent to 10 percent for native-born households.
The share of Afghan households with one or more persons on Medicaid increased from 47 percent to 62 percent over this time period, while increasing from 19 percent to 22 percent for native households.
The high rates of welfare use reflect the large share of Afghans who live in or near poverty and the success of refugee resettlement organizations in signing them up for programs, helping many assimilate into the welfare system.
While many Afghans are poor and access welfare, a significant share also have high incomes. Of full-time Afghan-immigrant workers, one out of nine earned at least $100,000 a year in 2019; this compares to one out of seven for the native-born.
The birth rate of Afghan women (ages 15-44) was 155 per thousand in 2019 — nearly three times the 56 per thousand for native-born women.
At 35 percent, the share of children in Afghan households who live in poverty is more than twice the 16 percent for children in native-born households.

Introduction

The collapse of the Afghan government after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from that country has prompted many Afghan nationals to attempt to leave their homeland and settle in the United States. The U.S. State Department reported that 123,000 people were evacuated from Afghanistan, including 6,000 American citizens; the rest were Afghan nationals. It’s not clear if all of these Afghans have come or will be coming to the United States. Toward the end of the evacuation operation, the New York Times reported that at least a-quarter-million Afghan nationals remained in the country and could be eligible for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) due to their associations with the U.S. government. Absent a change in U.S. policy, it seems certain that for many years to come thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, family-sponsored immigrants, and others will be coming from Afghanistan to the United States, as has been the case after other conflicts in which the U.S. was involved, such as Vietnam and Korea.

Given the rapidly growing population of Afghan immigrants, their integration and incorporation into American society is increasingly important. The best insight we have of how they are faring and their impact on American society comes from Census Bureau data. This report uses the public-use files of the American Community Survey (ACS) and the 2000 decennial census to examine Afghan immigrants already in the United States. (The 2019 ACS being the most recent available.) We use the terms “immigrant” and “foreign-born” synonymously in this report to mean all persons who were not U.S. citizens at birth, which includes naturalized citizens, permanent residents, illegal immigrants, and temporary visitors such as foreign students and guestworkers. We also use the terms “native”, “native-born”, and “U.S.-born” interchangeably for those who were U.S. citizens at birth, which includes those born to American citizen parents abroad and those born in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories.

Overall Numbers

Figure 1 shows that the number of immigrants from Afghanistan has grown dramatically since 2010. The number of Afghan immigrants in the United States grew modestly from 2000 to 2010, but nearly tripled from 2010 to 2019. Figure 2 shows the increase in the number of foreign-born Afghans, reflecting a significant increase in the number of permanent residents in the country since 2010. Most Afghan immigrants admitted since the 1980s have been admitted for humanitarian reasons — refugees, asylees, or, since 2008, on the Special Immigrant Visa program. The SIV program is for individuals who worked for the U.S. government in Iraq or Afghanistan and are now in danger because of this association. The share coming on humanitarian grounds has fluctuated from year to year, but since 1980, 79 percent of all green cards for Afghan nationals have been for humanitarian reasons.

Table 1 shows the number and share of all Afghan immigrants living in the top five states and metropolitan areas of settlement. California has by far the largest population of Afghans, with 41 percent living in the Golden State. While California is also the top state of settlement for all immigrants, in 2019 it accounted for only 24 percent of all immigrants. The top five states of Afghan settlement account for 80 percent of all immigrants from that country in the United States. This is also much more concentrated than the 54 percent living in the top five states of settlement for all immigrants (not shown in Table 1). Clearly, Afghans are much more concentrated than is the immigrant population overall. Table 1 also shows the largest metropolitan areas of Afghan settlement, with the Washington, D.C., area having more immigrants from Afghanistan than any other U.S. metro area. In terms of growth, all of the cities and states shown in Table 1 have seen dramatic increases in the number of Afghan immigrants just since 2015.

Average Age, Time in U.S., Citizenship, and Education

Table 2 provides a profile of immigrants from Afghanistan. The top of the table shows that immigrants from Afghanistan tend to be recent arrivals, are somewhat younger than native-born Americans, and have high rates of marriage and citizenship relative to other immigrants. They also tend to have high fertility rates. A large share of Afghans have not graduated from high school (22.1 percent), compared to 6.9 percent of the native-born. The share with at least a bachelor’s degree is less than that of the native-born. Education is perhaps the single best predictor of the socioeconomic status of immigrants in the United States. The relatively large share of Afghans with very modest levels of education almost certainly helps explain their high rates of poverty and welfare use discussed later in this report.

Despite being significantly less educated than the native-born, Afghan men ages 18 to 64 are more likely to work, though this is partly because relatively fewer Afghans are ages 18 to 24 compared to the U.S.-born, as most arrived at older ages. Those ages 18 to 24 tend to have lower rates of work as many are still in school. Focusing only on “prime-age” men (25 to 54) shows that Afghan men and natives have very similar rates of employment.

Poverty and Welfare Use

Poverty. Table 3 shows that a much larger share of Afghans live in or near poverty than do the native-born. This is true whether we focus only on adults or include all members of their households. (In 2018, the official poverty threshold for a family of 3 was $20,780. Poverty statistics reflect incomes in 2018 — the year prior to the survey.) Of all persons in Afghan households, 25.4 percent live in poverty and 50.8 percent live in or near poverty, with near poverty defined as less than 200 percent of the poverty threshold. (Those with incomes of less than 200 percent of poverty often qualify for welfare programs and typically pay no federal income tax.) Of children in Afghan households, 35 percent live in poverty, more than twice the share of children in households headed by the U.S.-born. Perhaps equally troubling, 64.3 percent of children in Afghan-immigrant households live in or near poverty. In short, Afghans have high fertility rates, as shown in Table 2, and a very large share of their children live in or near poverty.

As Table 2 shows, a large share of Afghans are newcomers to America. So this partly explains why so many have low incomes. However, poverty is not simply a problem among new arrivals. Of persons in households headed by an Afghan immigrant who arrived from 2000 to 2009, Table 3 shows that 24.2 percent live in poverty and 46.6 percent live in or near poverty. These rates are not that different from Afghan-immigrant households overall; these households are headed by a person who is 42 years old on average who has lived in the United States for 15 years on average. So the large share with low incomes is not simply due to their being young immigrants who just arrived in America.

Income. Table 3 shows that the median income of full-time, year-round Afghan workers is about 16 percent less than native-born workers. So at least when we focus on full-time, year-round workers, the income of Afghan immigrants is not that much lower than the native-born. The average full-time, year-round Afghan worker has been in the country for almost 17 years, so they are not all newcomers by any means. Table 3 also shows that the median earnings of Afghans who arrived between 2000 and 2009 are also about 16 percent less than the median earnings of U.S.-born workers.

Turning to household incomes, we see a much larger difference between Afghans and native-born Americans. Table 3 shows that, overall, households headed by an Afghan immigrant have a median income that is about 32 percent less than natives, which is also a good deal less than the median household income of all immigrants. This may in part reflect the low rate of work among Afghan women (see Table 2). Although Afghan households are 62 percent larger on average than native households (see Table 3), and they have significantly more adults on average as well, they have only about the same number of workers as native households — a little over one on average. The low incomes of Afghan households are even more apparent when we divide the much larger average number of persons in Afghan households by the median household income. The per capita median income of Afghan households is just over $11,000 a year, compared to nearly $27,000 for persons living in households headed by the U.S.-born.

Welfare Use. Table 3 shows that Afghan immigrants have very high rates of use for all three types of welfare that can be measured using the ACS — cash, food, and Medicaid. Given the large share of Afghans who have low incomes, it is not surprising that many Afghan households access the welfare system. Moreover, refugees, unlike other legal immigrants, are immediately eligible for all welfare programs. The fact that Afghan immigrants have high rates of citizenship, which similarly allows access to all programs, likely also has an impact on welfare use. Of course, being a refugee or citizen does not make a person or family use the welfare system per se; to enroll in these programs it is necessary to have an income that allows one to qualify. One also has to be willing to sign up for these programs. (It should be noted that the ACS tends to understate welfare use, which means that the actual level of welfare dependence is higher than reported below.)

Table 3 shows that the 35 percent of Afghan-immigrant-headed households using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), colloquially known as food stamps, is more than three times higher than the 10.4 percent for households headed by the U.S.-born. Afghan use of Medicaid by household is also about three times that used by native-born households. The ratio is also about three to one if we look at individual use of Medicaid. Afghan households’ use of cash programs is nearly five times that of households headed by the U.S.-born. Overall, 65.2 percent of households headed by Afghan immigrants use at least one major welfare program, dramatically higher than the 24.5 percent of native-headed households. These high rates of welfare use would almost certainly be much higher if other programs were included, such as the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition program, free school lunch, public housing, and the Earned Income Tax Credit. But these programs are not included in the ACS.

It is important to understand that working does not preclude use of welfare if one’s income is low enough. The bottom of Table 3 shows that 64.7 percent of Afghan households with at least one worker access one or more welfare programs, compared to 21.5 percent of working U.S.-born households. Overall, Afghan households are more likely to have at least one worker than households headed by the U.S.-born, but, as already discussed, many of these households access the welfare system anyway. Work and welfare often go together and this is true for immigrants and the U.S.-born alike.

Change Over Time

Educational Attainment Over Time. Figures 3 and 4 show that the educational level of Afghan immigrants has fallen, especially relative to the native-born. The share of Afghans (25-64) with at least a bachelor’s degree fell from 30 percent in 2000 to 26 percent in 2019, while increasing from 27 percent to 35 percent for natives (Figure 3). Figure 4 shows that the share of Afghan immigrants with less than a high school education has not increased significantly since 2000, but the gap with the U.S.-born has widened substantially as the share of those born in America who have completed high school increased over time. Given the importance of educational attainment in determining economic outcomes, the deterioration in the education level of Afghans relative to the native-born is likely to have important implications for how they do in the United States.

Poverty and Near Poverty Over Time. Figures 5 and 6 show that the share of persons in Afghan households living in poverty or near poverty has not changed dramatically in the last two decades, though there have been fluctuations. Nor has it changed much relative to the native-born. This is certainly good news in light of the fact that the education level of Afghans has fallen, especially relative to the native-born. Of course, Figures 5 and 6 do indicate that the share of persons in Afghan-headed households with low incomes has been roughly double the rate of those in native-headed households for nearly 20 years, and the differences have not really narrowed.

Welfare Use Over Time. Although the share of Afghans with low incomes has not worsened in absolute terms or relative to the native-born in recent years, Afghan use of welfare has increased for food stamps, Medicaid, and overall, while use of cash programs shows no clear trend. Figure 7 shows that use of SNAP has exploded among Afghan immigrants, from 18.8 percent in 2010 to 35 percent in 2019, while declining slightly for the native-born. Figure 8 shows that the share of Afghan-headed households with one or more persons on Medicaid increased from 47.4 percent in 2010 to 61.8 percent in 2019, while increasing from 18.8 percent to 22.2 percent for households headed by the U.S.-born. Figure 10 shows that use of at least one of the major welfare programs has increased much more for Afghan-headed households than households headed by the U.S.-born.

This rise in welfare use is somewhat puzzling since the share of Afghans with low incomes has not increased significantly. This means that their use of such programs was not caused by some deterioration in their position. Of course, the share of Afghans who are in or near poverty is very high; however, this has been true for decades. The increase in welfare use, both in absolute terms and relative to the U.S.-born, almost certainly reflects the increased success of refugee agencies in the United States in signing up low-income Afghans for programs. It may also reflect the fact that a much larger Afghan-immigrant concentration creates the critical mass necessary in many parts of the country to disseminate information through the immigrant community about how to navigate the welfare system.

Conclusion

It seems very likely that the number of Afghan immigrants arriving the United States in the coming years is going to be significant, assuming no change in U.S. immigration policy. With the takeover by the Taliban of that country, many are likely to want to leave. The large and growing population of Afghan immigrants in the United States will facilitate this process as immigrants are able to sponsor relatives in Afghanistan for permanent residence under the current immigration system. Moreover, the social networks that help drive migration are likely to play a large role in increasing awareness of conditions in the United States and the desire to come to America among people in Afghanistan. Given the oppressive nature of the new Taliban regime, the Biden administration will also be under political pressure to admit more Afghans on humanitarian grounds as refugees, asylees, parolees, and on Special Immigrant Visas. The Census Bureau data analyzed in this report indicates that a large share of Afghans in this country have modest levels of education, with many living in or near poverty and dependent on the welfare system. It seems likely that a large share of Afghans allowed into the United States in the future will also struggle in a similar manner.

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Tucker obtains whistleblower report on military flying illegal immigrants

Fox News — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 11:35:49 +0000

The post Tucker obtains whistleblower report on military flying illegal immigrants first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Catch-and-Bus: Thousands of Freed Border-Crossing Immigrants Are Dispersing Across America

Todd Bensman — Sun, 04 Apr 2021 09:14:42 +0000

Lorenzo Ortiz, a volunteer with the El Buen Samaritano Migrante church, loading a van to drive Haitian immigrants in Del Rio, Texas. Photo by Todd Bensman.

DEL RIO, Texas — On a recent evening with the night ahead-looking long, an idling charter bus parked on a lot prepared to disperse a new kind of import throughout the American landscape.

The bus and a small van nearby were packed with 60 or so mostly Haitian families fresh out of the Rio Grande from their illegal crossings.

After testing negative for Covid and other processing, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had given them legal documents and released them to a local nongovernmental organization, the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition, just blocks from the river in this south Texas border town.

For another day or so, coalition volunteers helped them arrange to wire in money for bus tickets and lodging in the cities to which the buses will take them. Like at least 20 other buses that had each carried 50 people in just the first three weeks of March, this one soon rumbled onto the long road from this Texas border town carrying happy, chattering passengers to new American lives in Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach in Florida, as well as Newark, N.J.

“They feel happy because they’re in the United States,” said Lorenzo Ortiz of the El Buen Samaritano Migrante church, who helps coordinate the daily bus rides from Del Rio to where the new immigrants say they want to go. “They want to get as soon as possible to their destination. They’re all going to apply for asylum. They’re all good people.”

A Vast Unseen Conveyor Belt from Border to Interior America

Photo by Todd Bensman.

The buses rolling in a steady daily succession out of Del Rio — one charter a day, seven days a week, and before that weeks of filling Greyhound buses — represent a microcosm of a much broader aspect of the unfolding mass-migration crisis at the southern border that has attracted limited media coverage and occurs largely outside public view. Tens of thousands of immigrants caught illegally crossing the border and then released under the new leniency policy of President Joe Biden are now dispersing to four corners of the United States on buses, with some of the more moneyed ones taking passenger jets.

As best as the Center for Immigration Studies can determine from interviews and scattered media reporting, the buses are leaving regularly from Del Rio, the Texas Rio Grande Valley communities, and Laredo, but the busing also appears to be going on in Arizona, as well as in California.

Where are the buses going? They often drop their Haitian, Venezuelan, and Cuban passengers in Florida and New Jersey. Those from Nicaragua and other Central American nations have been delivered to Tennessee, Massachusetts, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and to large cities in Texas such as Dallas and Houston.

Origin and Scope

The population importation by Greyhound and charter buses began in earnest here in Del Rio and from all major crossing points along the southern border shortly after President Biden took office. That is no coincidence, given that the new president’s first moves were to undo his predecessor Donald Trump’s Mexico Covid-protection push-back-to-Mexico policies for minors and family units and to end a deterring deportation machine that had been flying thousands home to Central America.

Haitian families on a chartered minibus in Del Rio, Texas, taking them to a local hotel to await a charter bus the next day. Photo by Todd Bensman.

In their place came a policy that, for the sake of descriptive simplicity, might be termed “catch-and-bus”. It appears for now to mainly be limited to families, though not always exclusively.

Catch-and-bus developed when a flood of migrants began crashing over the border in Texas and Arizona in the expectation that the new Biden administration would follow through on campaign promises to let almost all illegal entrants into the country, end most deportations, and provide a path to full citizenship.

Immediately overwhelmed and unwilling to return children with their parents, Biden’s DHS began handing out legal permission slips to pursue more permanent legal status later and put them on outward-bound buses. This practice, in turn, only propelled the crisis because, naturally, its satisfied beneficiaries passed on word of the new catch-and-bus practice on social media networks and calls home. A kind of gold rush began over the frontier that has only gathered volume and intensity by the day.

“Jump to the switch of administrations and we saw an immediate surge of 340,” recalled Tiffany Burrow, operations director of the Val Verde County Border Humanitarian Coalition of one particularly busy day, compared to the norm of about 25 a week. “It’s been a steady climb to where we are 100 or 150 a day now. They’re all going into the U.S.”

The initial spike in apprehensions of families and minors has attracted media attention, but much less so about their numbers, where in the country they are showing up, how they are getting there, and on whose dime.

Some with resources take special American Airlines flights out of this town’s small “international” airport, according to Ortiz of El Buen Samaritano Migrante. But buses like the ones in Del Rio carry the vast majority in a non-stop conveyor belt that is transporting a seemingly endless foreign population from their border town spigots throughout the nation’s interior.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection data provides some indication of how many immigrants in family units — at this early stage of the crisis — might have benefited from catch-and-bus. The government has not disclosed the number of those granted the catch-and-bus privilege. But an early bench-marking number can be extrapolated from the CBP data that is public.

The number of apprehended family unit aliens leapt from 4,464 in pre-election October 2020 to 18,945 in February 2021, for a total of 39,061 for that early-crisis time period.

Photo by Todd Bensman.

Limited reporting suggests that some 87 percent of all immigrants caught in family units during that time were not returned to Mexico, according to an Axios report based on leaked CBP data showing that only 13 percent were returned during one week in March.

If, say, 87 percent are not returned, then the number of illegal entrants bused around the United States during these months would come to about 34,000.

That’s probably just a start. There are strong indications, from data leaked to CIS and from anecdotal interviews on the border, that CBP’s March figures will show a dramatic escalation on a skyward trendline that shows little sign of leveling off so long as word that catch-and-bus is still happening spreads across the globe and inspires many more to exploit it.

What Catch-and-Bus Looks Like

Del Rio and its environs offer a representative glimpse into how the process works on the ground, based on recent CIS reporting in the area.

According to Ortiz, Burrow, Border Patrol agents, and several migrants, many turn themselves into Border Patrol voluntarily after their illegal crossings, knowing well the good things that will follow.

They are taken to a Border Patrol processing facility on the outskirts of town, where their fingerprints and identifiers are registered.

In the first months of November, December, January, and February, no one was getting tested for Covid. But after a public outcry, DHS contracted a private company to conduct Covid-19 tests inside the Del Rio area Border Patrol facility. Every immigrant is now tested, Burrow said.

DHS then provides many immigrants with an administrative document titled “Order of Release on Recognizance”, which grants them the legal right to be present inside the United States, according to two such documents that immigrants on the buses agreed to share. These require the immigrants to self-report to a deportation officer in their destination cities by a specific date provided.

One Nicaraguan migrant showed CIS a DHS document titled “Interim Notice Authorizing Parole”, which grants him a renewable one-year term to live legally inside the country.

Most will likely use their time to apply for asylum, a lengthy, back-logged process that allows for work authorization and Social Security cards during an adjudication process that can drag on for years.

In Del Rio, at least, the immigrants are then dropped off at Burrow’s Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition. She and her staff of unpaid volunteers help the immigrants contact relatives or friends, figure out how to get bus fare paid or money wired in, and then the transportation part. Organizations like hers operate in other border towns doing the same work.

The immigrants have to pay the entire bus fare, Burrow said, and receive no government assistance for travel. Some arrive with some money. Almost everyone seems to know someone, a relative or friend, willing to wire money or buy bus tickets and incidentals.

Photo by Todd Bensman.

In the hectic early days, the Del Rio group tried to arrange for Greyhound buses to take the immigrants to bigger city bus stations in San Antonio, Dallas, or Houston, where the travelers could transfer to other buses going their way. But there weren’t enough guaranteed bus seats in the local commercial fleets here and in San Antonio, 130 miles away, to meet demand, Ortiz said. So at least in Del Rio, dedicated charter buses were arranged after enough immigrants declared an interest in traveling to a particular region.

In other, bigger border cities, like Laredo and Brownsville, Greyhound buses are still the main option, although recently the company’s CEO rebelled against the practice because the immigrants were not being tested for Covid-19.

Some even in Del Rio still catch Greyhound buses to bigger cities like San Antonio and transfer to other buses going where they want.

In San Antonio’s Greyhound bus station recently, for instance, CIS found several Venezuelans, a Nicaraguan man with two teenaged sons, and several Guatemalan mothers with small children. Some had arrived from Laredo; others from Del Rio. All were waiting for transfer buses to Boston, Tennessee, and Dallas.

Photo by Todd Bensman.

Inside, a volunteer whose name tag identified her as Minerva represented a group called the Interfaith Welcome Coalition. She said the group rotates shifts among the volunteers, because so many immigrants were coming through, making sure they knew which bus to board, at what time, and where. At one point, Minerva wrote “Dallas” on a sticky note and planted it on the shirt of a Nicaraguan who told CIS he had tested negative for Covid three times.

On the bank of the Rio Grande in Del Rio recently, CIS happened across a family of four who had just crossed and turned themselves in to a Border Patrol agent. They were seated on the ground next to his agency truck. Asked where they were from and where they expected to go next, the parents answered that they were from Venezuela and were on their way to join relatives in Florida.

They should be there inside of a week.

Source: https://cis.org/Bensman/CatchandBus-Thousands-Freed-BorderCrossing-Immigrants-Are-Dispersing-Across-America

[Disclaimer]

The post Catch-and-Bus: Thousands of Freed Border-Crossing Immigrants Are Dispersing Across America first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Migrants Chanting ‘Biden! Biden!’ Attempt to Rush Border

Todd Bensman — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 06:53:29 +0000

Almost lost in the distractions of the holiday weekend, on the night of December 29 up to 400 mostly Cuban migrants forced their way past Mexican immigration and overpayment turnstiles on the Paso del Norte Bridge from Ciudad Juarez with a desire to force their way into downtown El Paso, Texas, according to news reporting. (Some video of the attempted incursion is here and here.)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Mobile Field Force officers met them in riot gear and used concrete blocks tipped by concertina wire to block the onslaught mid-bridge as many of the migrants chanted “Biden! Biden!” Many demanded they be let in to live in the United States while they pursue asylum claims, instead of waiting in Mexico as required under various policies of President Donald Trump.

But with Trump still presiding, the blocked migrants with Biden on their minds were forced to listen to a recorded message broadcast over loudspeakers in Spanish and English warning that any further trouble would be met by force, arrests, and prosecution. That went on until the crowd dispersed at about dawn on December 30.

A source told the Center for Immigration Studies that CBP and Mexican authorities on the international bridge to the Del Rio, Texas, port of entry broke up another, smaller migrant formation demanding U.S. entry. Otherwise, the extent to which the attempted incursions occurred elsewhere along the southern border remains unclear at this time. But a question naturally arises from these events.

Do attempted mass incursions like these foreshadow a new flashpoint and tactic whereby untold tens of thousands of migrants inside Mexico can quickly test the new Biden administration on its many campaign promises of a kinder and gentler approach toward them? It bears watching.

Broader Implications of the Mass-Incursion Tactic for Incoming President Biden

This was not the first time CBP under Donald Trump has forcefully responded to surging migrants hoping to overrun the port of entry at El Paso and will almost certainly not be the last there or elsewhere.

Especially not now, judging by the chants and media interviews on the Paso del Norte Bridge this time about Biden’s many immigration promises heard widely throughout the Americas and beyond, including an amnesty bill, an end to deportations, and reversal of Trump immigration policies during his first 100 days in office. While sharp analysts like my CIS colleague Mark Krikorian judge that Biden is likely to slow-boil the frog on some of his immigration promises for pragmatic political reasons, what was said on the international bridge during the recent confrontation confirms that migrants don’t necessarily pay close attention to in-the-weeds political timing so much as big, broad, and directional messages.

The migrants on that bridge showed up with high expectations that the coming Biden administration somehow had already managed to swing open the gates as promised, never mind that Trump still has a few weeks to go.

The Mexican newspaper El Sol de Parral quoted Enrique Valenzuela, head of the Chihuahua State Council for Population and Migration, who was at the bridge last week, as saying a false social media rumor that the Americans would start letting migrants pass through that night easily sparked the event. He said that happened because “there is expectation, there is hope and there is enthusiasm in them [sic] who believe that with the change of administration comes new measures and that they will immediately enter and there will be new conditions that will allow them to request asylum.”

Raul Pino Gonzalez of Havana was quoted at the bridge saying: “They should let us pass. We are calling out to Mexico and the U.S. and to Biden, the new U.S. president, to remind him of the presidential campaign promises he made. To make him aware we are here.”

While events like this have happened before, time and place make these fresh mass-entry attempts very different. At issue with the mass-incursion tactic is whether the new administration will show similarly stiff, riot-gear resolve toward follow-on attempts, or let them pass to avoid the look of forceful confrontation.

In this Hobson’s choice, the Biden administration would face the politically bitter prospect that violent confrontations would be among its first interactions with migrants. Should the administration choose the obvious alternative of letting such groups pass on the bridges or elsewhere, it would naturally follow that any successful breach would only inspire more, which could quickly spiral into a nationally hurtful border crisis, given the vast populations of frustrated, angry migrants in Mexico and far beyond at the moment.

A Large Reservoir of Frustrated Migrants in Mexico Pulsing with Biden Hope

While the exact number of migrants pooled up in Mexico is not clear, the reservoir of people who would enter through any first breach is clearly vast and deep.

Several Trump policies that Biden promises to reverse have forced economic migrants who’d use the asylum system to attain American prosperity to wait in Mexico since the summer of 2019. One of those policies, the Migrant Protection Protocols (also known as the “Remain in Mexico” program), has returned some 70,000 mostly economic migrants to Mexico to wait for their mostly meritless asylum claims to process, preventing them from disappearing inside the United States after judges inevitably decline those claims.

The Trump administration has required other migrants to remain in Mexico under a separate policy known as “metering”, whereby they are individually invited over to lodge an asylum claim so as to avoid swamping processes at the ports of entry. More than 5,500 Cubans entered that line in 2019 in Juarez alone. Some of those on the bridge last week appeared to still be in the metering program but under the additional burden of a third policy.

The third policy is pandemic-related, where new asylum claims have been slowed to a crawl, and Border Patrol agents who apprehend migrants immediately return most to Mexico so that detention centers cannot become Covid-19 incubators. (These are known as Title 42 expulsions.)

As many as an additional 100,000 more — beyond the 70,000 migrants in the MPP “Remain in Mexico” process — have chosen to apply for Mexican asylum as their means to wait for Democratic Party relief.

Under new Mexican requirements resulting from the U.S. blockages, migrants were compelled to apply for Mexican asylum to avoid deportation, while waiting for a kinder and gentler Democratic administration. The Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (Comar) reported that 36,454 migrants had applied for Mexican asylum during the first 11 months of 2020, mostly from Honduras, Haiti, Cuba, El Salvador, and Venezuela. That’s in addition to more than 62,000 who applied after Trump’s policies went into effect during only the latter half of 2019, COMAR officials told CIS in January 2020.

“None want to stay in Mexico,” Alma Delia Cruz, head of COMAR in Tapachula, Mexico, told me a year ago. “This is just their first chance to get into the United States, of course. The threats from Trump can’t deter them from eventually getting into the U.S.”

As I pointed out in a recent blog post, pandemic border closures south of Mexico have bottled up untold thousands more “extra-continental” migrants from a hundred countries around the world. These ones are pooling in Suriname, Guyana, Panama, and Costa Rica, likewise keeping a sharp eye and ear out for any wavering of American resolve further north.

The Havana Times newspaper quoted a Cuban migrant couple in the large “Por la Libertad” U.S.-bound caravan temporarily stopped in Suriname as saying they joined it when Joe Biden won the U.S. presidential election as their big chance to chase the American dream.

No matter how the arithmetic works out, a vast human reservoir is dammed up behind floodgates that will soon be under the control of a Biden administration. What the incident on the bridge between Juarez and El Paso showed most is that the Biden administration may well have to choose much sooner than expected between either the stick and status quo for a while or the carrot and a mass migration crisis at the border.

Source: https://cis.org/Bensman/Migrants-Chanting-Biden-Attempt-Rush-Border

[Disclaimer]

The post Migrants Chanting ‘Biden! Biden!’ Attempt to Rush Border first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Biden might need years to reverse Trump’s immigration policies on DACA, asylum, family separation, ICE raids, private detention and more

Alan Gomez and Daniel Gonzalez - USA TODAY — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 07:26:26 +0000

Family separations. The travel ban. The wall. Gutting the asylum and refugee systems. Pushing to abolish DACA.

Those policies implemented by President Donald Trump helped define his legacy, fulfilling some of his campaign promises while enraging many Americans and further isolating the U.S. from the world. President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to reverse most of those restrictionist policies, but it could take months, or even many years, to do so.

In all, the Trump administration enacted more than 400 policy changes that have shrunk legal and illegal immigration channels into the United States. The process of overturning many of them will be straightforward — Biden can sign executive orders and his agency heads can issue memos or directives overriding Trump policies. Some changes, however, could take much longer to unwind due to long bureaucratic processes or legal challenges in court from states or groups that oppose the policy shifts.

Untangling the moves will be even more difficult given that so many of them overlap, forcing the Biden administration to carefully peel them back one by one without overwhelming the immigration system or encouraging a new wave of migrants. That conundrum can be seen most clearly along the southern border.

One Trump policy requires migrants to request asylum in Guatemala or Mexico before they reach the United States. Another Trump policy limits the number of people who can legally request asylum each day at U.S. ports of entry. And yet another Trump policy requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their immigration case is decided.

The end result has been about 25,000 migrants currently living in dangerous, makeshift camps in Mexican border towns. If the Biden team rescinds all those Trump orders, it will have to develop a new plan to handle those asylum seekers.

“Detangling everything Trump did at the southern border may be Biden’s biggest headache on immigration,” said Sarah Pierce, policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based, non-partisan organization that researches immigration policy.

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden debate in September at Case Western University in Cleveland. Patrick Semansky, AP Images

The Biden team will also face intense pressure from immigration advocacy groups to grant entry to the tens of thousands of people who have been blocked from entering the U.S. by dozens of other changes made by Trump. His administration has blocked legal residents, relatives of U.S. citizens, refugees, asylum seekers, foreign workers, and others for a variety of reasons, including national security and public health throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You can come in on day one and…issue memos that will reset the world,” said Karen Tumlin, founder, and director of the Justice Action Center, a group that represents immigrants in court. “But can you unring the bell? Can you undo the damage?”

Biden will face a polarized nation when he’s sworn in, meaning he’ll likely face intense pushback in his attempts to reverse Trump’s immigration policies. And if Republicans maintain control of the Senate — which won’t be decided until two runoff elections in Georgia in January — he’ll likely be forced to act alone through executive actions.

“Some of (Trump’s policies) will remain in effect because the Biden administration will realize they are useful policies, or because they will not be able to undo them quickly because of wanting to avoid a political disaster of an influx at the border or because they receive so much push back in the form of litigation and just the fact that there is a certain amount of inertia with any government regulation,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favored many of the policy changes implemented by the Trump administration.

Here’s a look at some of the key immigration policy changes Biden could attempt in his first 100 days in office, and the documents he will have to strike down in the process:

Eliminating the travel ban

The policy: Sept. 24, 2017, executive order signed by Trump to implement a travel ban, his third attempt to enact the ban.

Demonstrators hold signs and chant in the baggage claim area during a protest against President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel to the United States by citizens of several countries Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017, at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Jeffrey M. Smith, AP

After vowing on the campaign trail to implement a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims from entering the United States,” the president signed an executive order that did just that, temporarily barring people from seven majority-Muslim countries and completely halting the refugee program.

The first version was shot down by several federal judges. Trump then signed a second travel ban that was also eventually blocked by federal judges, including the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which concluded that the order was “steeped in animus and directed at a single religious group.”

The Supreme Court was in the middle of considering multiple challenges to the ban when Trump signed a third version of the travel ban in September 2017 that barred people from eight countries, including North Korea and Venezuela. That version was initially blocked by federal judges but ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court and remains in force today.

The Trump administration maintained that the ban was needed to overhaul the process used to vet foreigners to ensure that the country isn’t allowing terrorists to sneak into the country through existing legal channels. But critics have continued fighting it through legal challenges and public pleas decrying what they still refer to as the “Muslim ban.”

Marielena Hincapié, who has fought against the travel ban in court as executive director of National Immigration Law Center, said rescinding the travel ban is not a “first 100 days” goal for a Biden administration but a “day one” move.

“It really is about restoring who we are as a nation and making sure that we once again see immigrants as a strength to the nation,” said Hincapié, who co-chaired the immigration section of a “Unity Task Force” created this summer by allies of Biden and his former Democratic challenger Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., to develop ideas and policies for a potential Biden administration.

How Biden could change it:

Biden can issue a new executive rescinding the ban and order the Department of Justice to stop defending the Trump ban in federal court.

Halting wall construction

The policy: Jan. 25, 2017, executive order Trump signed calling for the federal government to “plan, design, and construct a physical wall along the southern border.”

Building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and making Mexico pay for it was Trump’s number one campaign promise.

Trump signed an executive order five days after taking office calling for the planning, designing and construction of a border wall. But Mexico’s president repeatedly said Mexico would never pay for the wall. And Congress refused to fund the $13.2 billion the Trump administration requested to pay for border wall construction.

As of July, the Trump administration had secured $15 billion for border construction, according to the Migration Policy Institute. But only about $4.4 billion came from funding enacted by Congress, according to a Congressional Research Service report. The remaining 60% came from funds the Trump administration diverted from Pentagon accounts for military projects to construct new and replacement fencing along the southern border. In February 2019, Trump declared a national emergency over the border crisis to secure money from military projects to fund border barrier construction.

There were 653 miles of border barriers in place when Trump took office in 2017, which covered roughly a third of the length of the southern border. Of the 653 existing miles of barriers, about 350 miles was fencing designed to block pedestrians and about 300 miles was barriers designed to block vehicles.

Since then, the Trump administration has completed about 400 miles of new and replacement fencing as of the end of October, with plans to complete a total of 450 miles by the end of 2020. Most of the new fencing is 18- to 30-foot high “bollard” fencing — long steel slats filled with cement.

How Biden could change it:

Biden told NPR that although he would not tear down any of the border barriers already built “there will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration.” But some border construction projects may still get built after Biden takes office because contracts may have already been signed. Biden will likely direct the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency overseeing the border fencing project, to conduct an analysis to decide which projects are worth completing, scaling back or terminating from a financial and border security stand-point.

“President Trump may have boxed in Biden, which could require that Biden has to complete certain portions of the wall whether he likes it or not,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the nonprofit group Project on Government Oversight.

Reviving refugee system

The policy: Oct. 28, 2020, presidential determination signed by Trump capping refugee admissions at 15,000 for fiscal year 2021.

One of Trump’s first acts as president was to suspend the entire refugee program, and indefinitely block all Syrians from entering the United States, in the name of national security. The program was restarted in October 2017 but halted again in March in the name of public health as the COVID-19 pandemic spread.

All along, the president has warned about the dangers of refugees, who he views as national security threats and drains on the U.S. economy. “It’s a disgrace what they’ve done to your state,” Trump said during a campaign stop in Minnesota in October, referring to refugees living there.

Presidents have the power to set the number of refugees the U.S. will accept each year, and Trump has established record lows every year he’s been in office. The refugee cap has fallen from 110,000 in President Barack Obama’s final year in office to 50,000 during Trump’s first year in office, falling all the way to a 15,000 refugee cap announced by Trump in October, the lowest since the program was created in 1980.

The continuous reductions in refugee admissions have also led to layoffs and office closures at the nine humanitarian organizations that help relocate and assimilate refugees. Even if Biden raises the cap on refugees, it would take time for those organizations to rehire the staff needed to help refugees transition to the United States.

How Biden could change it:

Presidents usually set the refugee cap in the fall, just before the start of the new fiscal year. But Jacinta Ma, vice president of policy and advocacy for the National Immigration Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based group that advocates for immigrants, said Biden could immediately raise the refugee cap through an executive order. Trump set that precedent in March 2017 when he signed an executive order lowering the refugee cap to 50,000.

Protecting DACA

The policy: Sept. 5, 2017, memo signed by then-Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Demonstrators who marched from New York City to Washington, D.C., arrive in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 10, 2019, to support the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and Temporary Protected Status (TPS). JOSE LUIS MAGANA, AFP Via Getty Images

After expressing support for undocumented immigrants illegally brought to the country as children during his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump announced in September 2017 that he was ending the Obama-era DACA program. Nearly 650,000 undocumented immigrants participated in the program, which protected them from deportation and allowed them to legally work in the U.S.

The Trump administration said it would end the program and gave Congress six months to pass a law to permanently protect the so-called Dreamers. The ensuing congressional battle resulted in a political slugfest that culminated in a temporary government shutdown, but no deal was struck.

The Dreamers were saved at the last minute by a federal judge, who ruled that the Trump administration used a flawed process to terminate DACA. That legal battle reached the U.S. Supreme Court in June, where Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal wing of the Court in a 5-4 decision that allowed the program to endure. The court also ordered the administration to start accepting applications again.

That decision led to widespread relief for Dreamers who depend on the program to work, go to school and live without the constant fear of being detained and deported. Soon after the ruling, Trump threatened to try and end the program once again.

How Biden could change it:

Preserving the program would be simple: Biden’s Department of Homeland Security could issue a new memorandum rescinding the 2017 memo that attempted to terminate the program. But Biden will also be urged by some Democratic lawmakers and pro-immigration activists to grant protections for Dreamers who were denied the ability to apply for the program during the two-year legal fight under Trump. He will be urged to expand the number of people eligible for DACA and to push Congress to pass a law to put DACA recipients on a path to citizenship.

Restoring the asylum system

The policy: June 11, 2018, decision signed by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions limiting who can apply for asylum in the U.S.

An asylum-seeking boy from Central America runs down a hallway after arriving from an immigration detention center to a shelter in San Diego on Dec. 11, 2018. Gregory Bull, AP

The Trump administration has tried a variety of tactics to limit or halt asylum requests along the southern border, with federal judges striking down several of them. But they have been forging ahead on their goal of redefining, and limiting, who can apply for asylum in the United States.

Asylum is granted to people who fear persecution in their home countries based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or their political opinion. For years, that has included victims of domestic abuse and gang violence. But the Trump administration is trying to cut those groups out, which would be a particular blow to women and people in the LGBTQ community.

In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions intervened in the asylum case of a Salvadoran woman who had been repeatedly abused by her husband and could not seek help from the Salvadoran government. Sessions issued a 31-page order that claimed only victims of systemic repression by a foreign government, not “private” crimes committed by relatives or gang members, qualify a person for asylum.

“The asylum statute is not a general hardship statute,” he wrote.

Immigration attorneys challenged that memo in court and federal courts have responded with conflicting rulings, some bashing the Sessions directive and others upholding it. Blaine Bookey, the legal director for the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies who has represented the Salvadoran woman in court, said the memo has rendered asylum rulings in the U.S. a matter of chance.

“It still depends on the judge that you draw,” she said.

The Trump administration is trying to lock in Sessions’ directive through a new regulation, which has been moving through the rule-making process and could become a finalized federal rule in the coming weeks. Bookey describes the Sessions ruling, and the proposed rule, as “part of the administration’s larger web of cruel and unlawful policies that have resulted in denial of protections and a return to dangerous conditions and even death.”

How Biden could change it:

Biden’s attorney general could quickly rescind the Sessions memo, reverting U.S. asylum policy to how it stood before Trump took office. But if the regulation implementing that policy becomes final before Biden takes office, it would take months to propose a new rule and get it finalized because U.S. law requires new rules to go through a prolonged process of public comments, reviews, and final publication.

Allowing more migrants to request asylum

The policy: Customs and Border Protection policy that restricts the number of people who can request asylum each day at U.S. ports of entry.

Asylum seekers in Tijuana, Mexico, listen to names being called from a waiting list to claim asylum at a border crossing in San Diego on Sept. 26, 2019. Elliot Spagaf, AP

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials began limiting the number of undocumented immigrants requesting asylum at ports of entry in Southern California in 2016 under the Obama administration, said David Bier, immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based libertarian think tank.

The Trump administration continued the so-called “metering” policy in 2017 and then expanded it to ports along the entire southern border in 2018 after groups of mostly Central American migrants began traveling through Mexico in caravans and arriving at ports of entry. Under the metering policy, only limited numbers of migrants requesting asylum are allowed into the United States daily at each port to be processed. The number of asylum seekers allowed in each day is based on available space at U.S. holding facilities. The number varies daily from port to port, but generally fewer than 50 asylum seekers have been processed daily at each port and often less.

Those not allowed in are placed on informal waitlists and “turned back” to wait in Mexico. At times, the number of asylum-seekers waiting at ports has ballooned into the thousands. Some asylum seekers have reported waiting weeks and sometimes months.

The policy is intended to address an unprecedented rise in the number of migrants and migrant families arriving at the border seeking asylum. It’s also intended to address health and safety concerns resulting from overcrowding at ports of entry and CBP holding stations.

A class-action lawsuit filed in 2017 challenging the metering policy accused the Trump administration of trying to deter people from exercising their right to seek asylum under U.S. law. Critics also say metering pushes asylum seekers to cross the border illegally between official ports of entry, putting them in danger.

Under U.S. immigration law, people who arrive without legal authorization may seek asylum protections in the United States if they demonstrate a credible fear of persecution or torture if returned to their home country.

How Biden could change it:

Biden suggested during a Oct. 23 presidential debate with Trump that he would end the metering policy and return to allowing asylum seekers who arrive at the border to “make your case” based on the following premise, “why I deserve it under American law,” instead of “sitting in squalor on the other side of the river.”

To amend or end the policy, Biden would direct his U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner to issue a memo to CBP directors at ports of entry.

Ending ‘Remain in Mexico’ plan

The policy: Jan. 25, 2019, memo signed by then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen ordering asylum applicants to return to Mexico while their case is decided.

A woman reads a newspaper inside her tent as migrants camp out on the street outside an overflowing sport complex on Nov. 28, 2018, where more than 5,000 Central American migrants are shltering in Tijuana, Mexico. REBECCA BLACKWELL, AP

In late 2018, the number of Central American migrants reaching the southern border of the U.S. skyrocketed due to raging violence, food insecurity and misconceptions fueled by smuggling organizations that the United States was allowing in parents who arrived at the border with children. Many were requesting asylum, a claim that Trump administration officials repeatedly questioned.

To help stem that flow, administration officials tried to broker a deal with Mexico to house asylum seekers. When those talks faltered, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen forged ahead on her own, signing the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as the “Remain in Mexico” plan, which forces asylum seekers to return to Mexico while their asylum case proceeds in U.S. immigration court.

The result was chaotic: migrants began creating makeshift camps in Mexican border towns, straining local resources and fostering unsafe living conditions for more than 60,000 migrants at its highest point. With no protection and no formal government response from Mexico, migrants complained of robberies, kidnappings, and unsanitary living conditions.

Nielsen and other Trump officials defended the plan, saying it was necessary to slow the flood of asylum seekers trying to enter the country. And they claimed it was needed because migrants who are released into the United States while their asylum cases proceed rarely appear at their court appearances.

But immigration advocates — and immigration court data — refute those claims. More than 80% of migrants who requested asylum from September 2018 to May 2019 attended all of their court hearings, according to a report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research group at Syracuse University in New York. In the immigration plan that Biden pushed during his presidential campaign, Biden claimed he would end the Remain in Mexico plan within his first 100 days to “restore our asylum laws so that they do what they should be designed to do – protect people fleeing persecution.”

How Biden could change it:

The process to rescind the policy is simple — a Homeland Security official could simply issue a new memorandum rescinding Nielsen’s 2019 memo. But with tens of thousands of migrants waiting in Mexico because of the policy, the administration would need to develop a new system to allow them into the country and process their asylum requests.

Reopening the southern border

The policy: March 20, 2020, order signed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield suspending entry of people from countries where a communicable disease exists.

Dulce Garcia, right, carries a cup of coffee as she crosses the border from Mexicali, Mexico, to Calexico, Calif., on July 22, 2020. Like many in Mexicali, Garcia lives in Mexico but works in Calexico. “Everybody’s scared of the pandemic but we have to cross,” Garcia said. “We have to survive.” Gregory Bull, AP

After limiting international travel from sections of China in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration largely sealed off the northern border with Canada and the southern border with Mexico in March.

To do so, federal immigration agents relied on a law that allows the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to halt admission of foreigners if their home country is suffering from a communicable disease.

Through September, Customs and Border Protection agents have forced nearly 200,000 migrants — some requesting legal entry to the U.S., some trying to cross the border illegally — to return to Mexico by citing Title 42. Those expulsions affect all migrants — adults, unaccompanied minors, family units — and can be carried out in just a couple of hours.

During a trip to Arizona, CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan praised the order as a way of slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. He described the nearly 50,000 migrants caught along the southern border in August, as “50,000 potential carriers of a deadly disease.”

Immigration activists have objected to the blanket denial of would-be migrants, accusing the administration of using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to achieve its long-standing goal of cutting off legal and illegal immigration from Mexico, Central America and South America.

How Biden could change it:

The CDC order must be renewed every 30 days, meaning Biden’s CDC director could decide to simply let the most recent order sunset or could issue new guidance limiting the use of Title 42.

Pulling back ICE agents

The policy: Jan. 25, 2017, executive order signed by Trump allowing immigration agents to target all undocumented immigrants for arrest.

One of Trump’s first actions after taking office was to eliminate the “enforcement priorities” established under Obama, which ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to focus on undocumented immigrants with criminal records and to avoid so-called “collateral arrests,” or picking up undocumented immigrants who they happened to come across each day.

Trump’s order allowed ICE agents to arrest any undocumented immigrant they encountered, even if the person only had immigration violations on their record. The result was noticeable: in the final months of the Obama presidency, nearly 90% of undocumented immigrants arrested by ICE had a criminal record. That figure fell to 64% by 2019.

The Trump administration also resurrected the practice of large-scale work-site raids, used often by President George W. Bush but largely abandoned under Obama. Under Trump, the largest was a raid of seven poultry plants in central Mississippi in August 2019 that led to 680 arrests of undocumented workers, at least two who were still breastfeeding when they were arrested.

Overall ICE arrests increased from 110,000 in 2016 to 143,000 in 2019.

How Biden could change it:

He could sign a new executive order that voids Trump’s directives and re-institutes the “enforcement priorities” for agents to target undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

Ending private immigration detention centers

The policy: Jan. 25, 2017, executive order signed by Trump that orders Homeland Security to “allocate all legally available resources” to add more immigration detention centers.

California’s Adelanto U.S. Immigration and Enforcement Processing Center operated by GEO Group, a Florida-based company specializing in privatized corrections. California passed legislation last month that will stop the use of private prisons (including for the operation of detention centers) in the state by 2028. Chris Carlson/AP

The federal government has long used private prisons companies to operate immigration detention centers, but Trump dramatically expanded the practice, leading to a record number of migrants detained and record profits for private prison companies.

The stocks of GEO Group and CoreCivic — the nation’s two largest prison companies — doubled in the days after Trump’s election. And in the four years since, ICE has signed contracts to open 19 new immigration detention centers run by private companies.

Critics have pleaded with ICE to cut its relationship with private prison companies given the widespread reports of abuse against detainees and substandard care for them. Biden has vowed to halt that practice, arguing that “no business should profit from the suffering of desperate people fleeing violence.” But that could be one of the most difficult immigration policies to change due to contractual obligations and the government’s reliance on the industry.

Over the past year, ICE has begun signing long-term contracts with private prison companies, cementing the relationship through several future administrations. In California, for example, ICE signed 15-year contracts with private facilities in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, meaning it would be difficult for a Biden administration to sever those contracts.

A USA TODAY analysis in 2019 found that more than 75% of the detainees held by ICE are housed in privately-run facilities. ICE only runs five detention centers, relying on state and local jails for the rest.

John Sandweg, who headed ICE in the Obama administration, said those numbers show that it would be impossible to simply cut off the private companies because ICE wouldn’t have anywhere to put the tens of thousands of detainees usually housed there. Instead, Sandweg said Biden would have to completely rethink the idea of immigration detention, relying more on supervised release programs and less on long-term detention.

“You cannot just turn those off,” Sandweg said. “The better question is, ‘How do we end detention as we know it?'”

How Biden could change it:

Biden could sign an executive order rescinding Trump’s detention-expanding directive and banning any new private prison contracts. But terminating existing contracts would take far longer and could require systemic changes — and congressional approval — that limits the number of migrants detained by the federal government.

Speeding up family reunifications

The policy: April 6, 2018, memo signed by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordering a “zero-tolerance policy” to criminally prosecute all illegal border crossers.

Families with young children protest the separation of immigrant families with a march and sit-in at the Hart Senate Office Building, Thursday, July 26, 2018, on Capitol Hill in Washington. The Trump administration faces a court-imposed deadline Thursday to reunite thousands of children and parents who were forcibly separated at the U.S.-Mexico border. Jack Gruber, USA TODAY

Trump received so much bipartisan, international blowback for his family separation policy that in June 2018, after more than 5,000 migrant families had been separated at the border and Trump continued drawing fire from all sides, he signed an executive order halting the policy.

Trump didn’t invent the practice of separating migrant families. Separations occurred sparingly under Obama in cases where a parent was deemed a criminal or a threat to their child. And separations have continued over the past two years in similar, isolated situations.

What was different under Trump is that family separations became a blanket policy applied to all undocumented immigrants crossing the border. All adults would be charged with criminal immigration violations, leading to a separation from their child since children are not allowed to be detained in adult detention centers for prolonged periods of time.

Now, more than two years after Trump banned the practice and a federal judge ordered all the families be reunited, much work remains to be done. More than 600 parents who were deported have yet to be located. In court documents, the administration estimates it could take another two years before they can implement a system to fully track immigrants across all U.S. agencies.

But all of those issues could be sped up under a Biden administration.

“Stopping future unlawful separations and making previously separated families whole is politically and legally doable and morally imperative,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney who has been leading the lawsuit to reunite separated families.

How Biden could change it:

Trump already signed an order rescinding the family separation policy, so Biden doesn’t need to take any action. But Gelernt said Biden could do four things to right the enduring wrongs of the policy: grant legal status to families that were separated, allow parents who were deported to return to the United States, establish a fund to help separated families deal with the mental trauma they endured and put child welfare experts, not immigration agents, in charge of deciding whether future migrant families should be separated.

Reversing ‘public charge’ rule

The policy: On Oct. 10, 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services filed a public charge rule change notice in the Federal Register to make immigrants who receive public assistance ineligible to receive green cards.

Trump’s public charge rule will make it harder for immigrants to become legal residents. Getty

The Trump administration’s public charge rule change would have allowed immigration officials to consider the use of food stamps, Medicaid, public housing vouchers and other forms of public assistance to deny green cards to immigrants.

The rule was part of the Trump administration’s overall efforts to reduce legal immigration. Administration officials said the change would ensure that legal permanent residents could support themselves, and hence not become a “public charge” dependent on government assistance. Critics called it a wealth-test that discriminated against working-class immigrants.

The rule has faced legal challenges and has been winding through the courts.

A federal judge blocked the rule five days before it was to take effect on Oct. 15, 2019. But the Supreme Court ruled in January that the government could begin implementing the rule except in Illinois due to other court rulings. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the rule would take effect on Feb. 24, 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to hit the United States.

The new rule raised fears that immigrant families would avoid seeking medical attention because it could prevent them from getting green cards in the future. The Trump administration later amended the rule to say that COVID related medical care would not be considered by immigration officials when assessing green card applications.

In November, a federal judge struck down the public charge rule saying the Trump administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the law that governs the process for issuing new regulations. But an appeals court judge stayed the lower court’s decision pending an appeal. It’s possible that another court ruling could place the public charge rule on hold before the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration.

How Biden could change it:

Biden’s attorney general could drop the appeal, letting stand the federal judge’s ruling that the Trump administration unlawfully created the public charge rule, said Jesse Bless, director of federal litigation for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a group representing 15,000 law professionals. Biden’s Department of Homeland Security may also try to create a new public charge rule that replaces Trump’s version with one more favorable to immigrants, Bless said. That would require following the same bureaucratic rule-making process that Trump used. The downside is that the rule-making process could take six months or longer before the new rule is finalized. A new public charge rule also could face legal challenges, Bless said.

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/11/12/how-biden-reverse-trump-immigration-policies/6228892002/

[Disclaimer]

The post Biden might need years to reverse Trump’s immigration policies on DACA, asylum, family separation, ICE raids, private detention and more first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Trump Seeks to Stop Counting Unauthorized Immigrants in Drawing House Districts

Katie Rogers and Peter Baker — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 15:16:10 +0000

Critics described the move as unconstitutional and a transparent attempt to help Republicans.

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump directed the federal government on Tuesday not to count undocumented immigrants when allocating the nation’s House districts, a move that critics called a transparent political ploy to help Republicans in violation of the Constitution.

The president’s directive would exclude millions of people when determining how many House seats each state should have based on the once-a-decade census, reversing the longstanding policy of counting everyone regardless of citizenship or legal status. The effect would likely shift several seats from Democratic states to Republican states.

“There used to be a time when you could proudly declare, ‘I am a citizen of the United States,’” Mr. Trump said in a written statement after signing a memorandum to the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau. “But now, the radical left is trying to erase the existence of this concept and conceal the number of illegal aliens in our country. This is all part of a broader left-wing effort to erode the rights of Americans citizens, and I will not stand for it.”

The action directly conflicts with the traditional consensus interpretation of the Constitution and will almost surely be challenged in court, potentially delaying its effect if not blocking its enactment altogether. But it fit into Mr. Trump’s efforts to curb both legal and illegal immigration at a time when he is anxiously trying to galvanize his political base heading into a fall election season trailing his Democratic opponent.

“I think the Donald Trump view is: ‘I can look like I’m trying to do something by stoking anti-immigrant fervor, and if I lose in court then, I just stoke anti-court fervor too,’” Joshua A. Geltzer, the director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown, said in an interview. “It should be legally impossible as well as factually difficult to do.”

As a practical matter, Mr. Trump’s order could not be carried out even were it legal, because no official tally of undocumented immigrants exists, and federal law bars the use of population estimates for reapportionment purposes.

The move comes a year after Mr. Trump was blocked by the Supreme Court from adding a citizenship question to the census on the grounds that its ostensible reasoning “seems to have been contrived.” The administration has been trying ever since to collect information on undocumented immigrants through separate means like driver’s license files.

A study last year by the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that supports limits on immigration, found that excluding immigrants from the count for purposes of drawing congressional districts would take away seats from some states while giving more to others.

Excluding unauthorized immigrants in 2020 would redistribute three seats, the study found, with California, New York, and Texas all losing a seat that they would have had otherwise, while Ohio, Alabama, and Minnesota would each gain one. The study found even more sweeping effects if the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants were excluded, but the president’s directive made no mention of them.

Steven Camarota, the research director for the center, said the administration’s effort would be difficult administratively and likely tied up in court. “Nevertheless,” he said, “the president has done the country an important service by reminding us that tolerating large-scale illegal immigration creates a number of unavoidable consequences, including diluting the political representation of American citizens in Congress and the Electoral College.”

The White House separately asked congressional appropriators last weekend to include $1 billion into the next coronavirus relief package for the purpose of conducting a “timely census.” The Census Bureau had previously sought permission to extend the tally of the hardest-to-count people into October and delay delivery of reapportionment population totals to next year.

The $1 billion could allow the bureau to abandon that plan and accelerate the counting to deliver a reapportionment count to Congress in December, before Mr. Trump leaves office if he loses the election to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. It could mean that less time is devoted to counting the marginalized people than in a normal census, which experts believe would benefit Republicans.

The president’s directive on Tuesday amounted to his latest election-year effort to restrict immigration and immigration rights in the United States, lately predicated on the need to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

The administration decided last month to suspend new work visas and bar hundreds of thousands of foreigners from seeking employment in the United States, drawing immediate opposition from business leaders and several states.

But last week administration officials backed away from a separate plan to strip international college students of their visas if they did not attend at least some classes in person. Earlier this month, Mr. Trump told Telemundo that he would sign a “much bigger bill on immigration” through an executive order, although that has not come to fruition.

The president’s move to exclude unauthorized immigrants from congressional apportionment upends a long history. Even as he signed his memorandum on Tuesday, the Census Bureau’s own website continued to say in a question-and-answer section that undocumented residents are to be counted: “Yes, all people (citizens and noncitizens) with a usual residence in the 50 states are to be included in the census and thus in the apportionment counts.”

The president’s policy appeared at odds with the Constitution, which requires the government to conduct an “actual enumeration” of all people living in the United States without distinguishing whether they are citizens. But the memorandum signed by Mr. Trump argued that the government has always made distinctions like not counting foreign diplomats or temporary visitors even though they are in the United States physically. Therefore, the memorandum argued, the government can make the further distinction of not counting people who have no legal right to be in the country in the first place.

The argument that immigrants can be excluded from reapportionment counts also runs counter to legal opinions that the Department of Justice issued during the administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, when some in Congress sought to put that exclusion into law.

Critics said the administration’s efforts first to include a citizenship question and now to disregard undocumented immigrants from apportionment would lead to undercounts of even legal noncitizens and minority residents, resulting in less representation and federal funding in areas where they live, which tend to vote Democratic.

Marielena Hincapié, the executive director of the National Immigration Law Center Immigrant Justice Fund, said that regardless of whether Mr. Trump’s latest action was legal, it would discourage compliance with the census among Latinos, who already complete the survey at lower rates than people of other races.

“This is his go-to play every time that he’s feeling cornered or he’s feeling like he’s losing,” Ms. Hincapié said. “He uses immigrants and immigration to divide and distract, and at the same time he sends that chilling effect through all immigrant communities who have already been living in fear under his administration.”

Michael Wines contributed reporting.

Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent in the Washington bureau, covering the cultural impact of the Trump administration on the nation’s capital and beyond. @katierogers

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent and has covered the last four presidents for The Times and The Washington Post. He also is the author of five books, most recently “Impeachment: An American History.” @peterbakernyt • Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on

July 22, 2020

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/us/politics/trump-immigrants-census-redistricting.html

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Jared Kushner’s new assignment: Overseeing the construction of Trump’s border wall

Josh Dawsey and Nick Miroff — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 16:17:49 +0000

Jared Kushner speaks with President Trump during a signing ceremony for criminal justice legislation. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

President Trump has made his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the de facto project manager for constructing his border wall, frustrated with a lack of progress over one of his top priorities as he heads into a tough reelection campaign, according to current and former administration officials.

Kushner convenes biweekly meetings in the West Wing, where he questions an array of government officials about progress on the wall, including updates on contractor data, precisely where it will be built and how funding is being spent. He also shares and explains the president’s wishes with the group, according to the officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations.

The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser is pressing U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the process of taking over private land needed for the project as the government seeks to meet Trump’s goal of erecting 450 miles of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of 2020. More than 800 filings to seize private property will need to be made in the coming months if the government is going to succeed, officials aid.

Kushner has told other West Wing officials that he is in charge of the wall, according to aides, and that it is paramount to Trump that at least 400 miles be built by Election Day.

“The point is to get as much built in the next year or so, so the president can say in the face of intense, almost demented opposition he has made reasonable progress,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that seeks to restrict immigration and supports many of Trump’s policies.

Trump campaigned on a promise to construct a wall along the southern border and to make Mexico pay for the project as part of his plan to limit illegal immigration. But Mexico scoffed at paying for a barrier it opposes, and Trump has not been able to get Congress to provide the funding he has requested because of Democratic opposition over what they have called the symbol of the president’s anti-immigrant agenda. The result is that, while some existing barriers have been replaced with sturdier structures, only limited areas of new wall have been built.

Now Trump is banking on his son-in-law to turn what has been an intractable problem for his administration into a success.

Mark Morgan, the acting CBP commissioner, said Kushner had expedited decisions on land acquisitions and construction issues and was key to bringing everyone together in the same room.

“He doesn’t need to know the intricacies of the wall. He understands building stuff. He understands timelines,” Morgan said.

President Trump wants a border wall. He wants it black. And he wants it by Election Day.

But Kushner has clashed with the career officials who have questioned some of his ideas, such as installing web cameras to live-stream construction. He has blamed former chief of staff John F. Kelly and former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for not focusing enough on the wall, senior administration officials said. For their part, former officials have said Kushner displays a lack of knowledge of the policy issues and politics involved in the immigration debate.

The wall adds to Kushner’s growing portfolio of responsibilities, which some of his critics have said border on comical. Since the start of the Trump presidency, Kushner has been entrusted with striking a Middle East peace deal, taking a lead role on trade policy, overseeing criminal justice reform and modernizing the government, with mixed results. Kushner is also seeking to again push an overhaul of the legal immigration system after his first attempt failed to gain much support in Congress, and he has taken on a leadership role in the 2020 presidential campaign.

Some of Kushner’s critics say he can be tone-deaf when it comes to politics and does not understand or respect the value of having multiple agencies work through an official process on a project. And they snidely joke that it is ironic that an aide Trump occasionally mocks as a Democrat is in charge of the project, which has attracted significant criticism. But he remains the most influential adviser in the West Wing and enjoys a level of trust from the president that makes him unique within the administration, according to current and former administration officials.

“My hope is Jared can put a more laser focus on the project and the process. Maybe he can light a fire under the responsible agencies, but if recent history is any indication, he will get frustrated before he gets results,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican who has frequently talked with Trump about the project.

Officials closely involved with the border wall project said Kushner has become increasingly involved in the details related to acquiring needed properties and pushing government attorneys to gain control of the parcels as quickly as possible, acting on Trump’s directive to “take the land.”

The White House declined to comment, but Kushner’s defenders in the administration said he is bringing a private-sector approach to the project.

How President Trump came to declare a national emergency to fund his border wall

Army Corps leaders have expressed concerns about Kushner’s aggressive view of the government’s eminent domain authorities, which allow it to take over private land for public use, telling him they are committed to following established legal procedures.

During a recent meeting with officials at the border, Army Corps Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite told them to follow the law and not worry about politics, a person with knowledge of the meeting said.

One person involved in the construction of the wall, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly, said Kushner has annoyed officials involved in the process because they said he displayed a lack of knowledge about the government procurement process and the “realities” of the project.

“So he took a much more hands-on role in figuring out, mile by mile, how to get more wall up,” this person said. “It didn’t help put wall up faster and cheaper. His interventions actually just created more inefficiency in the process.”

The Trump administration has completed 83 miles of new barriers so far, according to the latest CBP figures, but nearly all of that is classified as “replacement wall,” typically swapping out older, smaller structures for a row of steel bars 18 to 30 feet in height.

Kushner insists the administration remains on target to meet the president’s goal of 450 miles by the end of next year, a pace that will require construction to accelerate at least fourfold, according to government data reviewed by The Washington Post. The president’s son-in-law has set a goal of 30 to 35 miles of new barriers per month by spring, requiring crews to average a new linear mile of fencing every day.

In recent months, the project has picked up momentum in Western states where crews are able to build on remote desert land already controlled by the government.

Administration officials acknowledge that building in those areas amounts to the lowest-hanging fruit for the border wall project. In Texas, the project is significantly more complex.

There, the border runs more than 1,200 miles along the sinuous course of the Rio Grande, and nearly all of the land where the government needs to build is privately owned.

The Trump administration’s plan includes 166 miles of new barriers in Texas, and nearly all of that will have to be built on private land. For Kushner to meet Trump’s timeline, the government will have to obtain hundreds of privately owned parcels and complete construction in the next 13 months.

The area presents engineering challenges to the administration, as well as real estate ones because the Rio Grande flood plain requires much of the structure to be installed along river levees, at a significantly higher cost.

Former officials closely involved with the project disputed that Kushner will have an easier time making progress than past officials who ran point on the issue and disputed the claim that Nielsen and Kelly lacked focus or urgency, insisting that the pace of construction has been determined by the availability of funding and the acquisition of private land.

One former Department of Homeland Security official said the administration, to date, has been careful to follow established guidelines for the use of eminent domain. “We weren’t taking people’s land willy-nilly,” said the official.

Lawmakers reach deal on spending levels, skirting — for now — fight over Trump’s border wall demand

Another official who defended Nielsen said she struggled to get former defense secretary Jim Mattis to view the wall project as a priority, and his frustration with the president’s plans to use military funding contributed to a lack of urgency at the Pentagon and the Army Corps.

The president’s frequently shifting design requests also sapped momentum, former officials said, and it usually fell to Nielsen to explain why some of his ideas were not feasible. Trump grew irritated at Nielsen’s naysaying and he fired her in April.

Trump regularly changes his mind about the project, according to current and former aides. Growing frustrated with contractors, he has at times encouraged aides to eschew the traditional contracting process — and just go with a firm he knows from New York — which has drawn resistance, these aides said.

Trump has called for irregular requests, like building large ditches, using pointy spikes or painting the wall matte black so it will be hot to the touch.

After Kushner took control of the project, he elevated the regular meetings to executive-level gatherings at the White House requiring the attendance of Cabinet-level officials. He also demanded a new project plan with timetables and construction targets. Kushner has talked with other officials about securing money for the wall — even mentioning using military construction funds again, a notion that is likely to attract resistance from Capitol Hill.

Morgan said Kushner asked detailed questions and “nitty-gritty details” about specific parts of the project in the meetings, which often stretch more than an hour.

“There are very real concerns,” Morgan said. “We’re being sued on a regular basis on multiple fronts. Land acquisition is a very, very challenging process. We’re trying to become more efficient and get more done. There are real challenges.”

In early January, Kushner asked then-acting CBP commissioner Kevin McAleenan whether closing border loopholes or building the wall would do the most to curb illegal immigration, and McAleenan said closing loopholes would do far more to curb immigration.

Still, Kushner has told others that a wall has to be built because his father-in-law promised it would be.

“Kushner said something to the effect of, ‘We’ve basically wasted two years,’ ” said a person with knowledge of the meeting with McAleenan.

Josh Dawsey

Josh Dawsey is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017. He previously covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal. Follow

Nick Miroff

Nick Miroff covers immigration enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security for The Washington Post. He was a Post foreign correspondent in Latin America from 2010 to 2017 and has been a staff writer since 2006. Follow

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/jared-kushners-new-assignment-overseeing-the-construction-of-trumps-border-wall/2019/11/25/b175cad4-0d63-11ea-a49f-9066f51640f6_story.html

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Rhetoric won’t fix border crisis

Debra J. Saunders / Las Vegas Review-Journal — Sun, 07 Apr 2019 18:43:43 +0000

Mounted Border Patrol agents ride along a newly fortified border wall structure on Oct. 26, 2018, in Calexico, Calif. President Donald Trump is visiting Calexico on Friday, April 5, 2019, to tour the recently-built portion of the border fence that bears a silver plaque with his name on it. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

WASHINGTON — During the two years when Democrats controlled the Oval Office, Senate and House, President Barack Obama squandered a major opportunity.

He failed to push for a vote on a Dream Act, which would have created a path to citizenship for qualified undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as minors. That matter was left for a vote in the lame-duck Congress — and that vote proved to be a gesture as the Democratic Senate failed to garner the needed 60 votes. America will never know how it might have ended if Obama had put his back into it.

Ever since, Obama’s failure to push for this key promise of his 2008 campaign remains an object of contempt among conservatives — who presume Democrats preferred to dangle the issue through the 2012 election and gin up resentment among Latino voters.

With President Donald Trump’s failure to push Republicans to change immigration law when they controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress in 2017 and 2018, Trump may find himself in that same corner of shame.

With 1 million or so undocumented migrants expected to cross the southern border this year, Trump’s commitment to building his signature border wall doesn’t seem to be doing the trick — and he hasn’t focused on measures that actually could improve the nation’s immigration machinery.

When Trump first got into office, a big drop in southern border apprehensions suggested his anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric had such a chilling effect that his promised wall might be superfluous. But then the numbers began to climb.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen recently argued that a law that prevents immigration officials from promptly returning minors from the so-called Northern Triangle countries and a court decision that limits how long the government can hold minors serve as loopholes that “create a functionally open border.”

That’s why Mark Krikorian of the pro-enforcement Center for Immigration Studies always has argued that changing immigration law and enforcement would be far more effective than building a wall — not that he’s opposed to spending on a wall.

Trump’s push for the wall shows that he is working to keep his 2016 campaign promise — but it really can’t do much to discourage economic migrants who ultimately would not qualify for asylum but nonetheless believe they will be able to get into the United States through a port of entry.

That’s the problem with Trump’s beloved wall. It may resonate with his base, but it won’t bring about the changes the base wants.

And it’s hard to get Republicans — many of whom do not share Trump’s view on illegal immigrants — to die on a hill for a big-ticket item that the public opposes and politicians doubt will work.

Krikorian doesn’t think it’s too late for Trump to switch his focus to changing the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act so that federal officials can send undocumented minors who don’t qualify for asylum back to noncontiguous countries the same way that they can return minors from Mexico and Canada.

Could such a measure make it through the Democratic House? Not now, but that could change if the flow of migrants through Mexico continues at such dangerous levels.

“Politically it is essential for the Republicans to make it clear that (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi and (Senate Minority Leader) Chuck Schumer are the reason we have this border disaster,” Krikorian said. “They are playing the part of (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel in inviting an unlimited number of people to come to the United States.”

Krikorian believes that the GOP Senate should put its efforts on reworking immigration law so that it doesn’t encourage border chaos.

It doesn’t help when Trump says, as he did Friday morning, that he wants to “get rid of the whole asylum system.” It was another act of verbal self-sabotage that showed an executive ready to bar not only economic migrants but also refugees fearing for their lives.

The week’s antics with the president’s since-retracted threats of closing the border with Mexico only reinforce a portrait of an executive who hasn’t focused on a goal — reducing illegal immigration — so much as on winning.

So Trump claimed victory Friday morning because Mexico has done a better job of enforcing its southern border under his threat. Does anyone think that will last when the mercurial president takes his eye off the ball?

I get how the Trump base cheers on the president’s ability to drive the left crazy with his rhetoric — but it’s not going to fix a humanitarian crisis.

Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.

Source: https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/debra-saunders/rhetoric-wont-fix-border-crisis-1635334/

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Thousands of U.S. troops to stop an “invasion” of migrants.

1 News Now New Zealand — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 10:57:51 +0000

Source 1 News

Thousands of U.S. troops to stop an “invasion” of migrants. Tent cities for asylum seekers. An end to the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

With his eyes squarely on next Tuesday’s elections, President Donald Trump is rushing out hardline immigration declarations, promises and actions as he tries to mobilize supporters to retain Republican control of Congress. His own campaign in 2016 concentrated on border fears, and that’s his final-week focus in the midterm fight.

“This has nothing to do with elections,” the president insists. But his timing is striking.

Trump says he will send more than 5,000 military troops to the Mexican border to help defend against caravans of Central American migrants who are on foot and still hundreds of miles away. Tent cities would not resolve the massive U.S. backlog of asylum seekers. And most legal scholars say it would take a new constitutional amendment to alter the current one granting citizenship to anyone born in America.

Still, Trump plunges ahead with daily alarms and proclamations about immigration in tweets, interviews and policy announcements in the days leading up to elections that Democrats hope will give them at least partial control of Congress.

Trump and many top aides have long seen the immigration issue as the most effective rallying cry for his base of supporters. The president had been expected to make an announcement about new actions at the border on Tuesday, but that was scrapped so he could travel instead to Pittsburgh, where 11 people were massacred in a synagogue during Sabbath services.

Between the shootings, the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, and the mail bomb scare targeting Democrats and a media organization, the caravan of migrants slowly trudging north had faded from front pages and cable TV.

But with well-timed interviews on Fox and “Axios on HBO,” Trump revived some of his hardest-line immigration ideas:

— An executive order to revoke the right to citizenship for babies born to non-U.S. citizens on American soil.

— And the prolonged detention of anyone coming across the U.S.-Mexico border, including those seeking asylum, in “tent cities” erected “all over the place.”

The administration on Monday also announced plans to deploy 5,200 active duty troops — more than double the 2,000 who are in Syria fighting the Islamic State group — to the border to help stave off the caravans.

The main caravan, still in southern Mexico, was continuing to melt away — from the original 7,000 to about 4,000 — as a smaller group apparently hoped to join it.

Trump insists his immigration moves have nothing to do with politics, even as he rails against the caravans at campaign rallies.

“I’ve been saying this long before the election. I’ve been saying this before I ever thought of running for office. We have to have strong borders,” Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham in an interview Monday.

Critics weren’t buying it.

“They’re playing all of us,” said David W. Leopold, an immigration attorney and counsel to the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice. “This is not about locking people up. This is not about birthright citizenship. This is about winning an election next week.”

Trump’s citizenship proposal would inevitably spark a long-shot legal battle over whether the president can alter the long-accepted understanding that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to any child born on U.S. soil, regardless of his parents’ immigration status.

Omar Jadwat, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, said the Constitution is very clear.

“If you are born in the United States, you’re a citizen,” he said. He called it “outrageous that the president can think he can override constitutional guarantees by issuing an executive order.

James Ho, a conservative Trump-appointed federal appeals court judge, wrote in 2006, before his appointment, that birthright citizenship “is protected no less for children of undocumented persons than for descendants of Mayflower passengers.”

Even House Speaker Paul Ryan, typically a supporter of Trump proposals, said on WVLK radio in Kentucky: “Well you obviously cannot do that. You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order.”

But Trump says his lawyers have assured him that the change could be made with “just with an executive order” — an argument he has been making since his early days as a candidate, when he dubbed birthright citizenship a “magnet for illegal immigration” and pledged to end it.

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States,” he said in an Axios interview excerpt released Tuesday.

Not so, according to a 2010 study from the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that supports immigration restrictions, which said at least 30 countries offer birthright citizenship.

Vice President Mike Pence said the administration was “looking at action that would reconsider birthright citizenship.”

“We all know what the 14th Amendment says. We all cherish the language of the 14th Amendment. But the Supreme Court of the United States has never ruled on whether or not — whether the language of the 14th Amendment, ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’ applies specifically to the people who are in the country illegally,” he said at a Politico event.

The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that more than 4 million U.S.-born children under the age of 18 have an unauthorized immigrant parent.

A person familiar with the internal White House debate said the topic of birthright citizenship has come up inside the West Wing at various times — and not without some detractors. However, White House lawyers expect to work with the Justice Department to develop a legal justification for the action. The person was not authorized to discuss the policy debate so spoke on condition of anonymity.

In Trump’s Monday interview with Fox, he said the U.S. also plans to build tent cities to house migrants seeking asylum, who would be detained until their cases were completed. Right now, some asylum seekers, particularly families, are being released as their cases progress because there isn’t enough detention space to house them.

“We’re going to put tents up all over the place,” Trump said. “They’re going to be very nice, and they’re going to wait, and if they don’t get asylum they get out.”

The country is facing a massive backlog of immigration cases — some 700,000 — and there are more and more families coming across the border from Central America — groups who cannot be simply returned over the border. But experts question the legality and practicality of what would amount to indefinite detention.

The options are just two of many possibilities currently under discussion, including asylum law changes and simply barring members of the migrant caravans from entering the country using the same mechanism as the president’s much-publicized travel ban for people from certain Muslim countries.

Administration officials say decisions are unlikely until after the midterm elections, in part because of the synagogue shooting and pipe-bomb scare.

But some supporters in Congress are rushing to cheer Trump on.

GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa, who has introduced legislation to end birthright citizenship, said Trump was deftly seizing on an issue that was sure to help in the midterms.

“That ability to move on instinct without hesitation, that’s why he’s president,” King said.

Source: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/thousands-u-s-troops-stop-invasion-migrants

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