Thanks to an ongoing Center for Immigration Studies Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the public now knows that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has approved secretive flights that last year alone ferried hundreds of thousands of inadmissible aliens from foreign airports into some 43 American ones over the past year, all pre-approved on a cell phone app. (See links to prior CIS reports at the end of this post.)

But while large immigrant-receiving cities and media lay blame for the influx on Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing program, CBP has withheld from the Center – and apparently will not disclose – the names of the 43 U.S. airports that have received 320,000 inadmissible aliens from January through December 2023, nor the foreign airports from which they departed. The agency’s lawyers have cited a general “law enforcement exception” without elaborating – until recently – on how releasing airport locations would harm public safety beyond citing “the sensitivity of the information.”

Now, though, CIS’s litigation has yielded a novel and newsworthy answer from the government: The public can’t know the receiving airports because those hundreds of thousands of CBP-authorized arrivals have created such “operational vulnerabilities” at airports that “bad actors” could undermine law enforcement efforts to “secure the United States border” if they knew the volume of CBP One traffic processed at each port of entry.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://cis.org/Bensman/Government-Admission-Biden-Parole-Flights-Create-Security-Vulnerabilities-US-Airports

The post Government Admission: Biden Parole Flights Create Security ‘Vulnerabilities’ at U.S. Airports first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A memo from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas outlines a more robust effort to enforce U.S. immigration law without the use of Title 42, which was invoked at the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

“When the Title 42 public health Order is lifted, we anticipate migration levels will increase, as smugglers will seek to take advantage of and profit from vulnerable migrants,” Mayorkas warns in a memo that comes a day before he is to testify to Congress on an issue that has become a potent element in Republican political messaging.

The plan includes increasing the number of personnel in the border region from Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies, expanding detention capacity with the use of temporary facilities and aggressively deploying a process known as expedited removal to deport migrants who do not qualify for asylum or some other relief under U.S. law.

It also relies on new Department of Homeland Security initiatives intended to streamline the evaluation of migrant claims, such as the deployment of asylum officers to the border to help determine whether someone should be granted temporary legal residency until an immigration court rules on their case.

Unmentioned is the fact that a court could soon order the government to reverse course and halt plans to lift Title 42 on May 23 because of lawsuits filed by Republican-led states.

On Monday, a federal judge in Louisiana said he would issue an order limiting the administration’s ability to prepare but left specifics of the settlement to the federal government and the states.

U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays, a Trump appointee, has scheduled a hearing on May 13 in the lawsuit by Louisiana and 20 other states seeking to keep Title 42 authority in place. Republicans and some Democrats in Congress have also urged the Biden administration to continue the order for now.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday that Republicans “are going to insist” on a vote on keeping the public health order in place, likely as an amendment to a compromise $10 billion package of pandemic aid. That demand has put Democrats on the defensive ahead of fall elections in which congressional control is in play and some moderates face competitive races.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., conceded that the GOP effort is forcing Democrats to try finding a position they can rally behind. “There’s divisions there now,” he said. And Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., took the unusual step of criticizing the administration for sending conflicting signals on the issue.

“We’re puzzled by the administration, some mixed messages around. Is the emergency over or isn’t it over?” Kaine told reporters. “We’re confused about it. And that leads different people to be in different spots until we get questions answered.”

Migrants have been expelled more than 1.8 million times under the rule, which was issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under former President Donald Trump.

Advocates for asylum-seekers support the end to the rule, which they say endangers people fleeing persecution back home and violates rights to seek protection under U.S. law and international treaty. The states challenging the administration say the U.S. is not ready for a likely influx of migrants resulting from the rule’s end, straining public services.

It comes amid what the administration concedes are historic numbers of migrants attempting to cross the border due to factors that include economic and political turmoil in Latin America, as well as a backlog of people hoping to seek asylum.

The increase in migrant encounters is also due in part to Title 42 itself.

Immigration authorities stopped migrants 221,303 times along the Southwest border in March, a 33% increase from a month earlier, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

But many of those encounters were people coming back after being removed under the public health authority. CBP said the number of unique individuals encountered nationwide in March came to 159,900, still high but significantly below the total.

Biden administration officials argue that the use of expedited removal is more of a deterrent because people subjected to it are inadmissible for five years and can be charged with a felony if they attempt to return to the country. Under Title 42, there are no legal consequences and many people simply turn around and come back.

Associated Press writer Alan Fram contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.lmtonline.com/news/article/US-preps-for-even-busier-border-amid-lifting-of-17128394.php

The post US preps for even busier border amid lifting of health order first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

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.

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/

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.

TUCSON — Two senior Homeland Security officials traveled to southern Arizona Monday to decry censorship and tout the Trump administration’s achievements on border security and immigration, just hours before polls opened in Arizona.

Homeland Security Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan took an aerial tour of border wall construction near Sasabe on Monday morning ahead of a news conference at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.

Cuccinelli defended his decision to travel for the first time to Arizona, which is considered one of the key battleground states in this presidential election, on the eve of Election Day. He dismissed the idea that his visit served to prop up President Donald Trump and sway voters.

“We don’t stop doing our job because there’s an election coming or going, and this is part of that whole effort,” Cuccinelli said, adding that it was similar to other visits he had undertaken as acting deputy secretary to other border communities.

“I make no apologies for being here. This is my job. It’s part of the commissioner’s job and we’re proud to do it, proud to trumpet what’s been accomplished and recognizing fully there’s plenty more to do,” he added.

During his remarks following the border wall tour, Cuccinelli said the Trump administration’s achievements on border security and immigration can be summed up in three words: “stop, detain and deter.”

The news conference focused mainly on two areas: the construction of physical barriers and the reduction of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

President Donald Trump has been campaigning on the construction of nearly 400 miles of border wall that has gone up under his administration as an example of him keeping the promises he made four years ago. Cuccinelli said an additional 50 miles will be completed by the end of the year.

Arizona is the epicenter of border wall construction. More than 200 miles have been completed or are under construction in the state. That includes about 100 of the 128 miles planned for the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which covers the eastern two-thirds of the Arizona border, according to Roy Villareal, the chief patrol agent for the Tucson Sector.

The sun sets over newly built sections of the border wall east of Sasabe, Arizona on 16 September 2020. Rafael Carranza/The Republic

Cuccinelli and Morgan also talked about policies that have reduced the apprehension of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. They cited an end to the “catch and release” policy, referring to the process of detaining and then releasing potential asylum seekers into the interior of the U.S. with a notice to appear in court at a later date.

But Morgan acknowledged the policy has not ended completely. In 2019, when a surge in migrant families seeking asylum in the U.S. overwhelmed border agents and officers, CBP released 230,000 migrants from their custody. This year, the number is down 1,000 migrants he said.

They attributed the large reductions in apprehensions to the Trump administration’s agreements with the Mexican government to crack down on the flow of migrants through that country, and to accept more than 68,000 U.S. asylum seekers under the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as “Remain in Mexico.”

Since March, CBP has been immediately expelling migrants detained at the U.S.-Mexico border during the pandemic under an emergency health order known as Title 42 and ground nearly all asylum processing to a halt.

Morgan warned about the consequences of repealing those policies in a not-so-veiled jab at Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

“If you remove MPP, prematurely end Title 42, and take other actions to stop building the wall, I wanna be clear, it will drive another massive illegal immigration crisis, one that will make last year’s crisis pale in comparison,” he said.

Both Morgan and Cuccinelli decried what they called censorship at the hands of “big tech” companies, with especially pointed words for Twitter, which they accused of arbitrarily suspending Morgan’s account last week for sharing information about border wall construction and arrests of migrants with criminal backgrounds.

“Not everyone trying to enter the country illegally are good. It’s why we need the tools like the wall,” he said. “This is exactly what Twitter didn’t want the American people to hear. Yes, Twitter, walls work, borders matter.”

Despite their claims that their visit was not meant to influence the upcoming election, Monday’s tour was the second time in two weeks that senior DHS officials have traveled to Arizona to tout Trump’s achievements on immigration and the border.

The acting Homeland Security secretary delivered similar remarks Oct. 22 from Phoenix during a meeting with local law enforcement groups in the state. He did not travel to the border on that occasion.

Trump himself has visited the state seven times this year, underscoring Arizona’s significance as a battleground state in the election. Two of those visits in June and August were to the Arizona-Mexico border in Yuma.

Monday’s visit was also Morgan’s second to Tucson in the past month. He traveled here Oct. 14 for a news conference on CBP’s enforcement statistics for Fiscal Year 2019.

Have any news tips or story ideas about the U.S.-Mexico border? Reach the reporter at rafael.carranza@arizonarepublic.com, or follow him on Twitter at @RafaelCarranza.

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Source: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2020/11/02/top-homeland-security-officials-swing-arizona-before-election/6131914002/

The post On the day before election, Homeland Security officials decry big tech censorship, tout Trump border achievements first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

When voters cast their ballots in the Nov. 3 presidential election, they will choose between two strikingly different plans for the border wall in Arizona and border security in general.

On one hand, the Trump administration plans to spend $15 billion to build hundreds of miles of 30-foot-tall wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, which includes filling gaps in the wall already standing in Arizona. On the other hand, Joe Biden plans to stop building the wall and focus instead on beefing up screening technology at ports of entry and building surveillance towers in remote areas.

The border wall played a central role in President Trump’s campaign in 2016, and he continues to tout the wall at rallies across the country. He tells crowds, “It’s like magic” and is “working beyond our wildest expectations.” In response, they chant: “Build that wall!”

While Trump claims Biden and other Democrats want open borders, Biden accuses Trump of being obsessed with a wall he says “does nothing to keep Americans safe” and won’t stop smugglers from digging tunnels or flying drones across the border.

Biden told reporters in early August, “There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.” Instead, he would put his efforts toward “making sure we use high-tech capacity to deal with it at the ports of entry; that’s where all the bad stuff is happening.” He has not said he would tear down the wall, but he likely would face intense pressure to do so if he is elected.

For voters in Wisconsin, Virginia, and other states far from the U.S.-Mexico border, the presidential candidates’ comments may amount to little more than political rhetoric that prompts either cheers or groans, depending on the listener’s political perspective.

For Southern Arizona residents, the vote on Nov. 3 will determine the future of the border wall and set the tone for how federal agencies spend billions of taxpayer dollars to address drug smuggling and illegal border crossings for at least the next four years.

To analyze what’s at stake, the Arizona Daily Star spoke with border residents and Customs and Border Protection officials, reviewed court records and CBP statistics, and made two dozen trips to border wall projects since construction started in the summer of 2019.

WALL RAISES NO SHORTAGE OF OPINIONS

Standing next to the wall, you have to crane your head back to see the top of it. The wall is made of steel poles, known as bollards, that extend 30 feet up from the ground. Each bollard is 6 inches wide and filled with concrete and rebar. To allow Border Patrol agents to see into Mexico, the bollards are separated from one another by 4 inches of space.

A wide steel plate is fitted to the top of the wall to make it more difficult to climb over. To deter tunnel digging, the concrete foundation of the wall extends 6 to 10 feet into the ground. Lighting and sensors help agents detect activity near the wall, and new roads will help them respond faster.

Most of the 190 miles of wall built so far in Arizona replace head-high vehicle barriers or fencing that stands 10 feet to 18 feet tall. When construction is completed, Arizona will have more than 230 miles of wall, at a cost of roughly $4.5 billion.

As the election nears, there is no shortage of opinions about the wall among residents of border towns, despite the wall taking a backseat to the coronavirus and other issues in the election season.

“Build the Wall and Crime will Fall,” proclaimed an electronic billboard near Wellton, a small town near Yuma about 25 miles north of where contractors built the 30-foot-tall wall behind a much shorter metal-mesh fence. In Tucson, yard signs demand “No Border Wall,” and Tohono O’odham protesters carried banners calling for “No Wall on O’odham Land” after briefly stopping wall construction southwest of Tucson last month.

The Star regularly receives calls and emails from readers who support or oppose the border wall, including a SaddleBrooke resident who said completing the wall can’t come soon enough, along with fully funding the Border Patrol. A Tucson resident called the wall a blight on the landscape paid for with money stolen from the military. An Oro Valley resident said he was pleased to have the wall in place and that open borders were bad for America.

Brad Finn, a Vietnam veteran who has lived next to the border near the San Pedro River in Cochise County since the late 1990s, said the border fence installed a decade ago “keeps us safe,” but he worried the new wall would block wildlife migrations.

“I’m not sure how the Mexican jaguars are going to get through, unless they get a key to the gate,” Finn said as he stood on a dusty road and watched a crane replace an 18-foot-tall wall panel with a 30-foot-tall panel.

The vehicle barriers being replaced closer to the San Pedro River let animals, and humans, easily cross the border. The new wall projects in the area will connect with fencing in Douglas and Naco to create a roughly 75-mile long barrier that will be virtually impossible for deer, bear, bobcats, mountain lions or any animal larger than a jackrabbit to cross.

“It isn’t like it was 20 years ago,” Finn said. Back then, only about four Border Patrol agents worked in the area each night, trying to catch large groups of people looking for work or hauling marijuana loads. Now, it’s closer to 40 agents each night looking for small groups in camouflage.

Standing in a hangar on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base surrounded by Customs and Border Protection helicopters and surveillance planes, Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott said the new wall will prove effective.

“Any place we’ve ever installed border wall, it’s actually improved the ability of every individual agent to cover more border, to secure more border in their shift than they could without it,” Scott said.

Rather than an impenetrable barrier, the new wall intimidates some people from trying to cross the border and slows down those who take the risk, Scott said.

“It stopped most older people and most younger kids. When they walk up and they see a 30-foot-high wall, it stops them,” Scott said. “It doesn’t always stop the 22-year-old. It doesn’t always stop the super-agile. But you know what? Now it’s one (person),” instead of large groups crossing together.

Melissa Owen, who lives on a ranch near Sasabe where new wall is going up, said she supports border security, but the new wall is a “monstrosity” that is unpopular with her neighbors.

“Anyone who actually knows the situation here knows that heightened security at ports of entry, where most illegal substances come into the U.S., a sensible program of surveillance technology, and a sane and equitable immigration policy are the best answers to the ‘crisis on the border,’” Owen said.

During the last year of wall construction, far fewer families and children were stopped while crossing the border in remote areas, according to CBP statistics. That trend began before wall construction started in Arizona, due largely to Trump administration policies cracking down on asylum seekers and the Mexican government stopping asylum seekers from reaching the U.S. border.

Border Patrol agents are catching more single adults trying repeatedly to cross the border, including 8,000 in September when 170 miles of wall had been built in Arizona. CBP officials say this is the result of pandemic-related policies that involve quickly expelling Mexican migrants, who then turn around and try repeatedly to cross the border.

As for drugs, most hard drugs like meth, fentanyl and heroin are smuggled through ports of entry rather than through the desert where the wall is being built, as has been the case for decades, CBP statistics show. Marijuana, far and away the most common drug smuggled through the desert, plummeted in the last decade as the legal marijuana industry expanded in Arizona and other states.

THE STAKES

Arizona has been at the center of the Trump administration’s wall-building efforts since construction started last summer, due in part to the accessibility of federal land along Arizona’s border with Mexico.

The wall now crosses the San Pedro River in Cochise County, much to the disappointment of bird-watchers and nature enthusiasts who enjoy one of the last free-flowing rivers in the Southwest. Contractors are plowing through mountainsides a few miles west of the river on the Coronado National Memorial, as well as in Guadalupe Canyon in the county’s southeastern corner and the mountains west of Nogales. The wall runs along most of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge southwest of Tucson.

Near Yuma, only a few areas remain without a new wall, most notably a stretch along the Colorado River that the Cocopah Indian Tribe considers sacred. Near Tucson, the wall will run along most of the border except for a few mountains, the San Rafael Valley east of Nogales, 62 miles on the Tohono O’odham Nation, and urban areas like Nogales and Douglas.

The head of Customs and Border Protection, Mark Morgan, told the Star on Wednesday that officials are considering building more wall in Arizona, including a second layer of wall in urban areas and in the “open gap” on the Tohono O’odham Nation.

“Wherever we don’t have a wall system, that’s where the cartels are exploiting. We’re already seeing that on the Tohono O’odham Nation,” Morgan said.

“We’re going to continue to have an ongoing dialogue with the leaders of the Tohono O’odham Nation to come up with a viable solution there,” Morgan said.

Tribal officials have opposed the idea of replacing head-high vehicle barriers on the reservation with new wall, saying last week that the wall was “destroying our environment, desecrating sacred places, and physically separating our people.”

Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris Jr. said Morgan was “either misinformed” or “purposely misleading the public” about dialogue between CBP and the Tohono O’odham Nation.

“There is no ongoing dialogue, nor has CBP ever had required consultations with the Nation regarding the ongoing destruction of sacred O’odham sites along the border,” Norris said. “CBP has never offered a wall proposal to the Nation and has repeatedly stated in meetings when asked that they have no plans to build a wall on the Nation’s lands.”

“The Nation continues to expend extraordinary resources to protect the U.S. border, and has already agreed to viable solutions such as vehicle barriers, Integrated Fixed Towers, and other measures,” Norris said. “The Nation’s position on a fortified wall is clear and we agree that consultations on this issue need to start immediately.”

The reservation has long been a site of illegal border crossings and drug smuggling, federal court records in Tucson show. Those records also show O’odham police working with federal agents on task forces and busts made with the help of sensors and cameras on the reservation and Border Patrol checkpoints that ring the reservation.

With regard to building a second layer of wall in urban areas, Morgan did not cite any plans for specific cities in Arizona. A second layer of wall already is going up along about 1 mile of the border in downtown Naco, but no plans have emerged for Nogales or Douglas.

A border fence has run through downtown Nogales for several decades, evolving from chain-link fence to Vietnam War-era landing mats, and now the current version made of 18-foot-tall bollards built nearly a decade ago. Camera towers run by CBP are positioned on either side of the downtown port of entry.

“Honestly, I think that’s overkill,” Nogales Mayor Arturo Garino said of the possibility of building a second layer of wall. “I can’t see a 30-foot wall going through downtown Nogales.”

Garino said he supports border security and pointed out that Nogales police and Santa Cruz County sheriff’s deputies regularly work with the Border Patrol to combat cross-border crime.

If CBP were to decide to build a second layer of wall in downtown Nogales, it likely would block off the road that runs along the border fence, which is the main access point for several neighborhoods, he said.

“As a city, we would have to have a serious conversation with CBP,” Garino said.

THE WALL IN ELECTION SEASON
Despite the importance of the wall to border communities, it has faded somewhat in the presidential election as other issues took center stage.

The wall is a mainstay at Trump rallies, but it usually only takes up a minute or two of hourlong speeches. Trump told crowds in Nevada, Wisconsin, Ohio, and elsewhere that the wall is working, it will be finished soon, and Democrats want open borders.

Biden talks about it even less. His views on the wall and border security are described in detail on the campaign website, but most of his public comments on the wall came during an interview with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists in early August.

Neither campaign answered questions from the Star about the wall in Arizona. Instead, they provided general background information and referred the Star to their campaign websites.

“It seems to feature less prominently in this campaign than it did in the 2016 campaign,” said Jessica Bolter, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

Public concern about immigration also has been dwarfed by the coronavirus pandemic and the poor state of the economy, she said. The Trump campaign also sees “internal threats to dwell on,” she said, such as protests that Trump opposes.

At the same time, the administration has sped up border wall construction, she said. More than half of the 360 miles of wall built during the Trump administration were built since April.

If Trump is elected, Bolter expects he will continue building nearly 740 miles of border wall. If Biden wins, she expects he will adopt the “mainstream Democratic position” on border security and invest in technology.

Biden said he would stop wall construction, but he has not been clear about whether he would cancel wall contracts or just not award any new ones.

Given the high visibility of the wall, “I suspect that this is something that Biden will try to deliver on pretty quickly,” Bolter said.

Cal Glover, a member of the People Helping People group that advocates against the militarization of the border in Arivaca, just north of where about 40 miles of wall are being built, said he is voting for Biden, but “I’m not happy about it.” Biden may not build more wall, but he has not said he would tear it down, Glover said.

“It seems to feature less prominently in this campaign than it did in the 2016 campaign,” said Jessica Bolter, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

Public concern about immigration also has been dwarfed by the coronavirus pandemic and the poor state of the economy, she said. The Trump campaign also sees “internal threats to dwell on,” she said, such as protests that Trump opposes.

At the same time, the administration has sped up border wall construction, she said. More than half of the 360 miles of wall built during the Trump administration were built since April.

If Trump is elected, Bolter expects he will continue building nearly 740 miles of border wall. If Biden wins, she expects he will adopt the “mainstream Democratic position” on border security and invest in technology.

Biden said he would stop wall construction, but he has not been clear about whether he would cancel wall contracts or just not award any new ones.

Given the high visibility of the wall, “I suspect that this is something that Biden will try to deliver on pretty quickly,” Bolter said.

Cal Glover, a member of the People Helping People group that advocates against the militarization of the border in Arivaca, just north of where about 40 miles of wall are being built, said he is voting for Biden, but “I’m not happy about it.” Biden may not build more wall, but he has not said he would tear it down, Glover said.

Customs officers at Arizona’s ports of entry intercepted 1,100 pounds of fentanyl in the first 11 months of fiscal 2020, five times as much as Border Patrol agents in the Tucson and Yuma sectors caught in the deserts and highways. Customs officers also caught five times as much heroin, seven times as much cocaine, and three times as much meth.

In Arizona, that pattern shifted slightly in the past year as Border Patrol agents saw more meth smuggled in backpacks through the desert. Federal officials told the Star that smugglers likely were trying to replace revenue lost from a sharp decline in marijuana smuggling in recent years. Seizures of marijuana by Border Patrol agents in Arizona dropped steadily from 1.25 million pounds in fiscal 2013 to 48,500 pounds in the first 11 months of fiscal 2020.

The Star asked Morgan whether the administration had a measure to show the public whether the wall was a success, such as a drop in illegal border crossings.

“When we have that multilayered strategy at effective levels in strategic locations, we will see that output: Seizures go down, illegal immigration goes down, assaults on agents go down,” Morgan said.

Success should be measured in terms of how CBP interacts with drug cartels to “shape their behavior and guide them where we want them to go,” Morgan said.

In terms of stopping people from crossing the border in Arizona, the effect of the wall is unclear so far.

Apprehensions of people crossing the border illegally, which is used as a proxy for total illegal crossings, in Arizona fell fairly steadily from 616,000 in fiscal 2000 to 51,500 in fiscal 2017. That period saw more Border Patrol agents stationed in Arizona and vehicle barriers, fencing, and surveillance towers installed along much of the border, as well as economic growth in Mexico that lessened the need to head to the United States.

For fiscal 2020, agents in Arizona reported nearly 75,000 apprehensions, including more than 54,000 single adults. That total was a sharp decrease from the previous fiscal year when agents made 132,000 apprehensions. Many of those apprehensions were of asylum-seeking families and children who generally sought out Border Patrol agents, rather than tried to evade them.

Last month, when 170 miles of new wall had gone up in Arizona, agents stopped more than 8,000 single adults, compared to about 1,100 members of families and unaccompanied children.

The wall will cut down on the number of migrants agents apprehend at any one time, Scott said, which will give agents more time to interview them and gather information about smuggling organizations.

Scott said he had seen people climb over the wall and cut through it, which “takes about 20 minutes, depending on the tools.” But if they climb over the wall, they will be easier to catch than “somebody that stood there and said ‘go’ and sprinted north.”

If smugglers manage to cut through one of the bollards, “you can squeeze one person through at a time,” rather than large groups that would rush through openings in metal panel fencing years ago.

A “PERPETUAL” EMERGENCY
One key difference between the Biden and Trump campaigns involves the emergency declaration that allowed Trump to pull $10 billion from the Defense Department to build the border wall.

The Biden campaign says his administration would “end the so-called National Emergency that siphons federal dollars from the Department of Defense to build a wall.”

President Trump signed the declaration in February 2019. The declaration came after a dispute with Democrats in Congress over wall funding led to a partial government shutdown.

Trump’s rhetoric about the border wall often conjures up images of violent gang members, and the emergency declaration briefly cited the border as a “major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics.”

But the formal justification for funding the wall, as well as the wall’s apparent effects, were aimed at stopping asylum-seeking families from crossing the border.

“In particular, recent years have seen sharp increases in the number of family units entering and seeking entry to the United States and an inability to provide detention space for many of these aliens while their removal proceedings are pending,” the declaration read.

If smugglers manage to cut through one of the bollards, “you can squeeze one person through at a time,” rather than large groups that would rush through openings in metal panel fencing years ago.

A “PERPETUAL” EMERGENCY
One key difference between the Biden and Trump campaigns involves the emergency declaration that allowed Trump to pull $10 billion from the Defense Department to build the border wall.

The Biden campaign says his administration would “end the so-called National Emergency that siphons federal dollars from the Department of Defense to build a wall.”

President Trump signed the declaration in February 2019. The declaration came after a dispute with Democrats in Congress over wall funding led to a partial government shutdown.

Trump’s rhetoric about the border wall often conjures up images of violent gang members, and the emergency declaration briefly cited the border as a “major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics.”

But the formal justification for funding the wall, as well as the wall’s apparent effects, were aimed at stopping asylum-seeking families from crossing the border.

“In particular, recent years have seen sharp increases in the number of family units entering and seeking entry to the United States and an inability to provide detention space for many of these aliens while their removal proceedings are pending,” the declaration read.

If smugglers manage to cut through one of the bollards, “you can squeeze one person through at a time,” rather than large groups that would rush through openings in metal panel fencing years ago.

A “PERPETUAL” EMERGENCY
One key difference between the Biden and Trump campaigns involves the emergency declaration that allowed Trump to pull $10 billion from the Defense Department to build the border wall.

The Biden campaign says his administration would “end the so-called National Emergency that siphons federal dollars from the Department of Defense to build a wall.”

President Trump signed the declaration in February 2019. The declaration came after a dispute with Democrats in Congress over wall funding led to a partial government shutdown.

Trump’s rhetoric about the border wall often conjures up images of violent gang members, and the emergency declaration briefly cited the border as a “major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics.”

But the formal justification for funding the wall, as well as the wall’s apparent effects, were aimed at stopping asylum-seeking families from crossing the border.

“In particular, recent years have seen sharp increases in the number of family units entering and seeking entry to the United States and an inability to provide detention space for many of these aliens while their removal proceedings are pending,” the declaration read.

The Star asked Morgan if border residents should expect to live under a perpetual state of emergency, despite the rationale for the declaration disappearing.

“Here’s when the emergency ends, in my opinion: When we have Congress step up and pass meaningful legislation to end the crisis,” Morgan said. “To once and for all send a message to anyone that is even anticipating illegally entering: You are not going to be allowed in and there will be consequences. Until we have statutory reform, I think we’re going to be in perpetual crisis.”

Federal judges are pushing back on the Trump administration’s pulling of money from the Defense Department after Congress rejected his request. The administration is likely to appeal to the Supreme Court, which previously let stand the administration’s funding decision.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in early October that the Trump administration overstepped its authority when it moved billions of dollars from the Defense Department’s construction fund to build the border wall. Those funds were used to build sections of wall in Yuma, California, and Texas. The appeals court judges said the Trump administration failed to show how the wall projects were “necessary” for the Defense Department.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Sept. 25 that the House of Representatives had standing in a lawsuit alleging the Trump administration violated the House’s constitutional power over funding federal activities.

“To put it simply, the Appropriations Clause requires two keys to unlock the Treasury, and the House holds one of those keys. The Executive Branch has, in a word, snatched the House’s key out of its hands,” the D.C. judges wrote.

While those lawsuits play out and voters consider how to cast their ballot, Morgan warned that the coronavirus pandemic would lead to more waves of immigration from Mexico and Central American countries.

Border wall details

The border wall built during the Trump administration in Arizona

• 30 feet tall
• Made of steel bollards that are six inches wide and filled with concrete and rebar
• The bollards are separated from each other by four inches of space, which allows Border Patrol agents to see into Mexico
• The wall is topped with a steel, anti-climbing plate
• The foundation extends six to 10 feet into the ground
• Fiber-optic cable buried in the ground is designed to detect digging
• LED lights were installed near the wall to allow agents and cameras to see illegal activity
• Access roads were built or improved for the wall project to help agents respond quickly
• In most cases, the new wall replaces a variety of head-high barriers, which were designed to stop smugglers from driving across the border
• Expected to last 30 years
• Funded by $10 billion from the Defense Department and $5 billion from Congress

Source: https://tucson.com/news/local/future-of-border-wall-about-to-be-handed-over-to-voters/article_be2bcd7c-7b53-51bc-a9e9-8b4e8cd2d0e1.html

The post Future of border wall about to be handed over to voters first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this story.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/12/politics/trump-administration-continues-expel-migrants/index.html

The post Trump administration continues to expel most migrants at southern border, May data shows first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A construction worker (left) helps move a section of reinforcing grid into place while a trenching machine (right) digs a new footing and other construction workers assemble a 30-foot-high bollard style wall at a construction site south of Yuma, Ariz., near the border between the United States and Mexico.(Randy Hoeft / AP)

COLUMBUS, N.M. — Efforts are fully underway around the country to slow the spread of coronavirus, with Americans under stay-at-home orders, allowed out only for essential work.

But not everywhere.

Construction of President Donald Trump’s massive border wall is continuing here along a barren stretch of the border between Mexico and its namesake U.S. state to the north. And the work is being carried out with a sense of urgency.

A government contractor is building a “mancamp” to house as many as 80 workers. Groups of men are working side-by-side at a site near Columbus, erecting sections of barrier with no pretense about the White House’s social-distancing guidelines. And much of the traffic along New Mexico State Road 9 is wall-related: massive trucks ferrying steel, concrete, and other material to keep the project moving.

“I guess I should be grateful to have a job,” said trucker Juan Rosas, who leaves his home in El Paso each day to haul loads of steel bollards to the site. “But truth is, I’m nervous. Maybe it’s time we put the money into things like medical supplies, like face masks, ventilators. But we’ve been told to show up every day, nonstop because we have to get this wall built by the end of the year.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the workforce is considered “essential” and incorrectly claimed that workers are following White House and CDC guidelines about safe distancing. At the White House, Trump has been unapologetic about wall construction continuing through the crisis.

With the pace of border wall construction lagging behind President Donald Trump’s goal of completing 500 miles by year’s end, new fencing is slowly replacing old barriers, with gaps in between, near Highway 9 near Columbus, N.M.(Alfredo Corchado / Staff Photo)

“The entire world is shut down,” he marveled at a briefing on the pandemic earlier this week — even as he made clear that he doesn’t intend to scale back the wall effort.

“The wall is up to about 160 miles already and … any place where you have that wall, other than walking around the edges, it’s stopping everybody cold,” he said.

“As the wall gets bigger, that really helps us a lot” on drugs, unauthorized migration and, he claimed, contagion. “We’ll have a tremendous impact on drugs. But one of the other things we’ll also have an impact, we think, on the virus.”

Public health experts dispute that. Mexico has only a fraction of the COVID-19 cases reported in the U.S., although testing is more limited south of the border. Regardless, the virus is spreading fast on both sides.

“It’s unacceptable that any industry in any part of the state would be carrying on without taking into account the serious hazards posed by the ongoing public health emergency,” New Mexico’s governor, Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, said in a statement.

New Mexico is one of 19 states that list construction as one of the “essential” activities exempt from stay-home restrictions. But what counts as “essential” is being interpreted in many different ways around the nation and the world.

On Thursday, Columbus Mayor Ezequiel Salas told The Dallas Morning News that the city is sending the company overseeing the mancamp and wall construction a letter asking them to delay the project for at least “two weeks, maybe longer” to comply with the CDC’s social-distancing policies.

That company, Galveston-based SLSCO, was awarded a $789 million contract in 2019 for border replacement wall construction.

Construction of President Donald Trump’s border wall continues as workers defy safe-distancing guidelines set by the White House to halt the spread of coronavirus. Here, clusters of workers toiled on April 1, 2020, just across the Texas border along Highway 9, between El Paso and Columbus, N.M.(Alfredo Corchado / Staff Photo)

The wall project is in the El Paso Border Patrol Sector, which includes all of New Mexico. An agency spokesman, Jay Field, wouldn’t say how many people are working at the site but said no furloughs are planned. He added that any questions about the health of the workers, or medical personnel on-site, or whether workers have been tested for coronavirus, “should be referred to contractor/sub-contractor for response.”

An SLSCO official at the site declined to comment and referred all questions to the Army Corps of Engineers.

At Trump’s side during his Wednesday briefing, acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf boasted that construction is still underway.

“We continue to build miles of the wall every day,” he said. “We see a lot of benefits from the border wall system … and we’re still well on track to meet 400, 450 miles by the end of the calendar year.”

For lawmakers and border advocates who opposed the project before the pandemic, the relentless construction — active work along about 197 miles, according to Customs and Border Protection — is appalling.

“This is unconscionable. We should use the billions of dollars for medical devices like ventilators, not to build a wall,” said Kevin Bixby, director of the Southwest Environmental Center. “By continuing to build the wall, the government is continuing to spread the virus.”

The Las Cruces, N.M.-based organization joined the Southern Border Communities Coalition, American Civil Liberties Union and Sierra Club in a lawsuit that seeks to halt construction by asking a court to find Trump’s national emergency declaration an unconstitutional attempt to circumvent Congress.

While the wall is usually framed as an immigration issue, Bixby’s wildlife group had focused on its impact on endangered species, including Mexican wolves and jaguars. Until now.

“We don’t need a wall, much less in a time of federal emergency,” Bixby said. “All the workers are engaging in a high-risk activity. Patronizing restaurants. Putting residents at risk, and their families. These workers come from all over the country,” making them likely vectors for infection if COVID-19 emerges in the workforce.

But jobs are increasingly scarce, and workers are willing to take the risk.

“I’m just glad to have a job, thanks to the wall. It’s a job,” said a trucker who identified himself only as Guillermo, also hauling a load of steel bollards near Columbus.

4 new miles of barrier so far

According to CBP, 147 miles of barrier have been installed since Trump took office in January 2017. Nearly all of that has been to replace lower, less sturdy fencing.

Just 2 miles of barrier have been installed where none previously existed. Another 2 miles involve secondary fencing where only one fence had stood.

The cost so far has been $15 billion, although Congress authorized just $5.1 billion of that.

The White House cobbled together most of the rest by diverting funds intended for the Pentagon in 2019 — including $6.3 billion for counternarcotics efforts, and $3.6 billion earmarked for military construction projects such as housing and schools for military families, a training facility for drone pilots and a warehouse for hazardous material.

In 2020, the administration plans to shift $3.5 billion to the border wall from military counterdrug programs and $3.7 billion from the military construction budget, according to congressional aides and news reports.

On March 27, House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson and Rep. Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., chair of the subcommittee on border security, wrote to Wolf, Attorney General William Barr and the general in charge of the Army Corps of Engineers urging immediate suspension of wall construction.

“Contrary to the President’s own recommendations to reduce person-to-person contact, your agencies are continuing to direct border wall contractors, surveyors, appraisers, cultural and historical assessors, and other non-essential employees to leave their homes to work on the President’s border wall project,” they wrote.

Trump has all but abandoned his campaign promise to force Mexico to pay for the wall he envisioned.

Construction work is so plentiful that SLSCO Ltd., a government contractor, is building a mancamp for at least 80 workers in the historic district of Columbus, N.M. (Alfredo Corchado / Staff Photo)

And the project has hit legal obstacles, especially in Texas, where much of the land along the Rio Grande is privately owned. Many landowners have refused to sell, and the Department of Homeland Security has deployed lawyers to pursue eminent domain cases.

Democratic lawmakers have demanded a halt to that activity, too, during the outbreak.

‘Putting families at risk’

In the midst of the Great Depression in 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration to put millions of idled Americans to work building roads and other public infrastructure. Border wall construction has been under way for most of Trump’s three years in office.

But in an era of mass unemployment — 10 million jobless claims in just the past two weeks — it’s a visible sign of Washington’s ability to provide paychecks when the private sector cannot, even if the exact number of jobs tied to the wall project isn’t clear because the federal government isn’t forthcoming with details.

Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee sent a letter Thursday to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, demanding a halt to wall construction and adherence to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “clear guidance on social distancing and other precautions … to blunt coronavirus impacts.”

The letter noted that Esper had already curtailed troop movements and suspended training exercises, and asked him to show “appropriate restraint” by “halting non-essential projects, such as construction of the border wall, that put personnel and communities at risk.”

“President Trump is putting families at risk. He’s putting workers at risk. He’s putting businesses at risk. He’s adding insult to injury to our community,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, one of the lawmakers who signed that letter. “On top of every threat that this poses, it’s a symbol of this president’s narcissism.”

Last week, Congress sent Trump a $2.2 trillion recovery package that boosted jobless benefits, helped airlines and other businesses, and provided vast sums for medical equipment and emergency response.

The package includes over $10 billion for the Pentagon to use for pandemic response — with an explicit prohibition barring any of the funds to be shifted to wall construction.

Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, had a hand in that provision.

“Rather than fund an ineffective border wall … we must put all our resources into rapid response against this pandemic,” said Cuellar, vice-chair of the homeland security subcommittee on appropriations, which controls billions in spending for border security.

Double standards

The unrestrained construction efforts reflect double standards in the pandemic era.

Four states hit hard by the outbreak have banned construction. A half-dozen states have no restrictions.

In El Paso, about 80 miles away, Mayor Dee Margo announced measures Wednesday to slow the virus. Construction can continue, with limits. Distancing is required. Shifts must be staggered. Workers are prohibited from gathering for meals or breaks.

The rules require access to hand sanitizer and soap. Workers must remove gloves before meals and restroom breaks if they’ve shared tools. Employers can’t retaliate against workers who need to be quarantined because of potential exposure.

Pancho Villa rode at the head of his rebel army in Mexico in 1916. American soldiers pursued Villa into Mexico after the raid on Columbus, N.M., but he eluded capture. He was assassinated by political enemies in Mexico in 1923.(Anonymous / ASSOCIATED PRESS)

In Columbus, Salas, the mayor, described his village of about 3,000 as an “industry city” because of the wall-related economic boom. Salas said Columbus signed the contract with SLSCO about 30 days ago.

The company “assured us that they are going to take all kinds of precautions to ensure everyone’s safety. They’re human beings, too,” he said, defending SLS. “They’re not here to contaminate and kill people off.”

He said some of the workers are natives of Columbus, men with families in the town.

At the Borderland Café in Columbus, takeout orders have increased in recent days as wall construction gets closer to town.

“We are running out of equipment in hospitals and that money can be used for that,” said owner Adriana Zizumbo. “Businesswise, I feel good [about the mancamp] and I will be able to feed them good food and stuff, but right now with the coronavirus it doesn’t make sense that they will be in one unit together.”

Columbus is known for the epic March 9, 1916, raid by Pancho Villa’s Division of the North, which escalated into a full-scale battle between Villistas and the U.S. Army. Locals have since used the raid as a teaching lesson for cooperation, working as one community. They’re proud of their connection to Palomas, Chihuahua, across the border. Many revile the wall, which they view as an ugly scar.

Cindy Varnhugen, municipal clerk, shrugged aside concerns about the workers’ temporary housing going up in the middle of the town’s historic district. “I don’t see any health concerns,” she said, pointing to the camp where workers were putting their last touches. “The men will be isolated there.”

Laura Gomez, a civic leader who helps organize the annual Cabalgata Binacional parade to promote friendship between two countries, said, “I presume they have a clean bill of health to be working out there in groups. I’m more concerned about how ugly the camp looks.”

She said Columbus and Palomas have been careful about the virus, especially on the Mexican side. Travelers into Mexico are greeted by health officials who check their temperatures and ask about health concerns.

Still, she said, “What does this say about America, about our president? It’s all about the money. Even in coronavirus, the wall keeps going up, the chili and onion pickers will pick the fields. That’s America.”

Truckers lined up near the wall construction site April 1 near Columbus, N.M. Truckers and other workers expressed mixed feelings about wall construction amid the coronavirus pandemic.(Alfredo Corchado / Staff Photo)

Back with his truck, behind him, the ubiquitous presence of Border Patrol vehicles, Rosas, the El Pasoan, made ready for his next haul. He reflected on why Trump might be so insistent about continuing work on the wall while most of the country stays home to blunt the wildfire spread of the virus.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Obsession, maybe?”

Border correspondent Alfredo Corchado reported from New Mexico and El Paso. Washington Bureau Chief Todd J. Gillman reported from Washington.

04.01.20 Letter to Sec Esper Re Accelerated Wall Construction During COVID-19 by The Dallas Morning News on Scribd (click on the link to see letter).

Source: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2020/04/02/crews-still-hard-at-work-on-trumps-border-wall-despite-stay-home-orders-and-coronavirus-pandemic/

The post Crews still hard at work on Trump’s border wall, despite stay-home orders and pandemic first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have been tasked since January with fingerprinting teens in child migrant shelters who entered the country without their parents, BuzzFeed News reported and Axios confirmed.

Why it matters: ICE says the data collection is for the children’s protection, but it also comes as immigration agencies have ramped up their collection of migrant biometric data.

More than 7,800 child migrants released from shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to family members or other “sponsors” have not shown up for immigration court hearings and have “disappeared,” a senior ICE official told Axios in a statement.

• The agency’s move is intended, at least in part, “to mitigate and prevent the risk of their victimization by human traffickers and smugglers, and to reduce misidentification,” according to the senior official. Immigrant registration and fingerprinting are also required by law.

The big picture: Over the last year, the Trump administration has taken multiple steps to ramp up the amount of biometric data they collect on migrants — enabling them to more carefully track and, when necessary, quickly deport unauthorized immigrants.

• In April 2019, Border Patrol began collecting biometric data, including fingerprints, from more migrant children under 14 years old who crossed the border with their parents, AP reported.
• Last month, Customs and Border Protection began a pilot program to collect DNA from some migrants in its custody, CNN reported. Immigrants in any federal immigration agency’s custody could ultimately be subject to having their DNA collected and stored in the FBI’s criminal database.

Between the lines: The trend points to immigration enforcement officials’ frustration at how little information HHS collects — or verifies — before releasing a migrant child to a sponsor.

• “HHS is basically rushing to get kids out of custody,” a White House official told Axios. “When a child goes missing, we have nothing on the child.”
• The senior ICE official called HHS’ current information collection practices “dangerous and irresponsible,” accusing the department of “willfully” relying on suspect documents “for the sole purpose of increasing the speed of placement and ignoring the obvious risks to child welfare and safety.”

The other side: HHS told Axios in a statement that it has extensive vetting processes that do not allow migrant minors to be released to “known fugitives” and that they provide ICE with the address and name of each released child’s new caretaker.

• “These are vulnerable children in difficult circumstances, and HHS treats its responsibility for each child with the utmost care,” it added.

Source: https://www.axios.com/ice-fingerprinting-teen-migrants-immigration-e2544f97-0ce4-499b-a292-a52f486bc328.html

The post ICE is fingerprinting teen migrants first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The US administration wants to allow Customs and Border Protection to collect genetic material from undocumented immigrants in government custody, according to a leaked draft policy.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told BuzzFeed News – who broke the story – that they are ‘working closely with the Department of Justice on a path forward for DNA collection’.

Voluntary DNA tests have been performed in migrant centres for over a year already in an attempt to reunite children with their families and identify fraudulent familial claims at the US-Mexican border (see BioNews 997). Issues were raised concerning what the genetic information may be used for after testing, and whether informed consent can be obtained, particularly from young children. The operation was considered a success, according to the DHS.

‘[The programme] has identified dozens of cases in which children had no familial relation to the adults accompanying them. In the first operation – Operation Double Helix 1.0 – 16 out of 84 family units were identified as fraudulent based on negative DNA results. And in the second – Operation Double Helix 2.0 – 79 of 522 family units were identified as fraudulent based on negative DNA results, to date,’ the DHS told Buzzfeed News.

However, this new draft is likely to provoke greater outrage regarding the civil liberties of the immigrants as the testing appears to be involuntary, and answers have still not been received regarding the use of the genetic information. Furthermore, the draft does not state that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be prevented from accessing their results.

The DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005 allows federal agencies to collect DNA from any person in their custody. The Trump administration argues that testing would help officials at the border processing immigrants. They believe that the DNA results could be pooled into a nationwide database which can be accessed when looking for matches for potential previous criminal activity.

Many civil liberty groups argue that genetic material should only be obtained when trying to solve a specific crime.

‘It would, for the first time in this context, treat undocumented immigrants more like criminals in that DNA testing of this type is used only in a pure criminal context,’ said Jonathan Meyer, a former deputy general counsel at the DHS.

‘DNA testing is considered one of the more invasive actions that the government can take. You are obtaining a physical substance from a person’s body, with the potential to learn an almost infinite amount of information about the person.’

The post Trump plans to ‘extract’ DNA from undocumented immigrants first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Agents encountered 1,036 people, primarily from Central America, near El Paso, Texas, early Wednesday morning. The arrest marks the largest group of unauthorized immigrants that Border Patrol has ever taken into custody at once.

The group included 63 children traveling without a parent or guardian. Another 39 people were single adults, and the remaining 934 claimed to be traveling with a family member, according to a report. Guatemalan citizens made up just over half the detainees. The rest are primarily from other Central American countries, including Honduras and El Salvador.

It’s not clear if the group came from Northern Triangle countries as part of a caravan, though it’s not likely, given no news of a convoy traveling through Mexico. Border Patrol has said human smugglers often oversee the movement of migrants at the border and use the groups to distract federal law enforcement while they move narcotics or people hoping to avoid arrest over unmanned parts of the border. Smugglers charge migrants an average of $5,000 to $8,000 each to get to the United States.

Border Patrol said in late March its agents on the southern border had since October apprehended 100 groups that contained 100 or more people. In its 2017 fiscal year, CBP documented two groups of 100 people or more. That jumped to 13 groups in 2018.

Until Wednesday, the biggest group of people to arrive at once consisted of more than 430 individuals. That apprehension took place Monday in the same region of the southern border. Memorial Day marked the busiest day in history for Border Patrol’s El Paso region as 2,200 people were taken into custody.

President Trump told reporters at the White House earlier Thursday to expect a major statement about the border in the next day or two. Wednesday’s apprehension has not been publicly shared by Customs and Border Protection or its parent, the Department of Homeland Security.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

The post 1,036 migrants, with 63 unaccompanied children, become largest single group ever taken into custody at southern border first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.