Trump's New Deportation Goals: For National Security, Public Safety, Reduced Cost

Yeah, this Donald J. Trump

Rather long historical post, but timely: Starting July 23, 2019, any arrested unauthorized immigrant who has been in the U.S. for less than 2 years could be deported without a hearing in front of an immigration judge, according to a rule published in the Federal Register.

Why it matters: This expanded Trump policy is called “expedited removal.” It could make it easier for DHS to deport immigrants once they are arrested, thus avoiding a long backlog in the courts. It also could result in 20,000 more immigrants being placed in expedited removal every year, according to an analysis of 2018 enforcement data (ref: the Migration Policy Institute).

However, some 66% of unauthorized immigrants have been here for 10 years or more thus disqualifying them from expedited removal (ref: Pew Research Center).

Unauthorized immigrants who are arrested and placed in expedited removal proceedings, but have been in the U.S. for under a year, still have the right to claim asylum and go through the legal asylum process.

Reading between the lines: This new rule has long been in the works. 

The Immigration and Nationality Act (1965) allows DHS to modify the conditions for using this new expedited removal process, and the administration is still likely to face legal challenges.

Background follows with this from Reuters (October 10, 2018).

The U.S. Supreme Court took up a new immigration dispute as it ponders the circumstances in which the federal government can detain people awaiting deportation after they have completed their sentences for criminal convictions. Trump's administration does not favor immigrants that in that category saying it hampers their ability to deport people who have committed crimes.

The case: Two plaintiffs include two legal U.S. residents involved in separate lawsuits filed in 2013:

(1) A Cambodian immigrant named Mony Preap convicted of marijuana possession, and

(2) A Palestinian immigrant named Bassam Yusuf Khoury convicted of attempting to manufacture a controlled substance.

Currently under federal immigration law, immigrants who are convicted of certain offenses are subject to mandatory detention during their deportation process. They can be held indefinitely without a bond hearing after completing their criminal sentences.

But, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2016 that convicted immigrants who are not immediately detained by immigration authorities after finishing their sentences cannot later be placed into indefinite detention awaiting possible deportation.

They decided that immigrants who were later detained after completing their prison time - sometimes years later - could seek bond hearings to argue for their release.

With the administration's intensified immigration enforcement, growing numbers of people likely will be detained awaiting deportation. The administration also is locked in a fight with so-called sanctuary states and cities that offer protection to illegal immigrants.

At bond hearings, immigrants can argue that they should be released on the basis that they do not pose a danger to society or are not a flight risk. The high court agreed to take up the dispute in March after ruling in another immigrant detention case a month earlier.

The justices in that case curbed the ability of immigrants held in long-term detention during deportation proceedings to argue for their release, overturning another 9th Circuit ruling. The law states the government can detain convicted immigrants "when the alien is released" from criminal detention. Civil rights lawyers for two groups of plaintiffs argued that the language of the law shows that it applies only immediately after immigrants are released.

Just as former President Barack Obama's administration had argued, the Trump administration said the government should have the power to detain such immigrants at any time. Trump's biggest court victory on immigration came in June when the justices upheld his ban on people entering the United States from several Muslim-majority countries.

Update (the AP): By a 5-4 vote (March 2019) the high court ruled for Trump on this new policy.

Now, this new policy: “Trump’s immigration crackdown and detention policy out for implementation.”  How do we measure the incompetence of this?

Here – with the new DHS policy memos – they say:

1.  Direct Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to treat most unauthorized immigrants currently in the US as “priorities” for deportation.

2.  Direct the government to dramatically increase its capacity to detain immigrants, and dictate that it should detain nearly all immigrants caught near the US border.

3.  Instructs ICE to work aggressively deputize local law enforcement to act as Federal agents who can arrest unauthorized immigrants.

4.  Makes it much easier to deport children who come to the U.S. alone to reunite with their parents — or parents they are reuniting with.

Basically keep, or so they say they will keep, promises made under DACA (the so-called “Dreamer” law). But, we’ll have to wait and see how that plays out. Either allow the kids to stay, but boot out Mom and Dad … nice…!!!

Most of the policies laid out in the memos won’t change overnight. It’s the job of ICE, CBP, and USCIS, to do another round of interpretation and implementation based on these new memos.

I wonder how people will be identified: (1) On how they look, (2) what is their ethnicity, (3) how do they dress, (4) where they live or hang out, or (4) if they have an accent in their speech or not?

Possible process:

1.  Orders to “Show me your papers.” (Apparently coming back in vogue since Nazi Germany they used to track Jews).

2.  Then what? Tattooed control numbers on their forearms.

3.  Then load them on trains or buses to move them to a “detention center” where they will be held (but not concentrated, right) in areas until they are shipped out of the U.S. and back to the country of their origin (and of course at U.S. taxpayer expense (or unless Trump gets their native countries to reimburse their travel like Trump got Mexico to pay for the wall, right).

Also, assume they have a job and home and family in the U.S. for a few or longer years. What happens to that job once they are yanked from it? What about children born here. They would be Americans under Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment.  

Maybe the employers will follow this Trump example that I posted about earlier also as seen below and in this link:

Trump won approval in December 2016 to hire 77 foreign workers at his Mar-a-Lago resort and Jupiter golf course through the H-2B visa program, according to a review of data from the U. S. Department of Labor.

CNN reported July 2016 that Trump companies employed at least 1,256 foreign workers — most from Romania and South Africa over the past 15 years. His companies applied to hire 263 foreign workers even after Trump launched his presidential campaign in which he railed against the loss of U.S. jobs to foreign workers. (How ironic is that)?

Note: Some of those new Trump employees will receive less pay than they did the year before from the newly minted dealmaker-in-chief for example: Labor records show that 25 cooks hired at Trump’s Palm Beach County properties will earn $12.74 an hour, down from $13.01 an hour the year before. Some 15 house keepers and 37 wait staff, however, will see a modest raises. They will earn $10.17 an hour and $11.13 an hour, respectively, up from $10.07 an hour and $10.99 an hour last year.

And, also here re: More on Trump’s undocumented workers.

A big concern for many who are asylum-seekers. They can be released from detention if they can meet two tests:

(1) They have to prove to an asylum officer that they have a “credible fear” of persecution.

(2) They then must prove to an ICE agent that they are who they say they are and aren’t a security risk.

Depending on how those standards are set, and how ICE agents decide to implement them, that could result in the detention of tens of thousands of children and families?  Overall, immigrants in the detention centers will now have a much harder time getting a fair hearing, let alone getting a lawyer, or even having time to make their case. That means the government is more likely to send a person who should have qualified for asylum back to her home country, thus possibly putting them in mortal danger.

My 2 cents: It is a violation of international law for any country to return a person or persons to places they have escaped from when they say they were and will not be if they are forced to return. 

Stay tuned for more on this #1 continuing relentless topic for Trump which has been all along. 

Meanwhile, remember these racist and inflammatory statements from Trump?

Thanks for stopping by.