Home / Sections / Latest On Immigration Topics / Dark Clouds on the Horizon –Proposed Immigration Legislation Emerging from One-Party Rule

Dark Clouds on the Horizon –Proposed Immigration Legislation Emerging from One-Party Rule

robert gard

By: Robert Gard

 

immig1

Between Jan. 22 and April 29, 2017, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) deportation officers administratively arrest-ed 41,318 individuals on civil immigration charges. Between Jan. 24 and April 30, 2016, ERO arrested 30,028. That’s a 37.6 percent increase over the same period last year (30,028 arrests). Despite Trump’s assertion in the executive orders that immigration efforts are primarily meant to remove “criminals who have served time in our federal, state and local jails,” that increase is dwarfed by the relative jump in arrests of people with no criminal records.

While 2016 saw the arrest of about 4,200 people with no criminal histories, that number jumped to 10,800 this year. That’s more than an 150 percent increase. Meanwhile, the increase in arrests of people with criminal convictions on their record was less than 20 percent (from 25,786 to 30,473), and fewer than 10 percent of arrests of “criminals” were because of violent or serious crimes, so ICE isn’t really prioritizing their enforcement activities. ICE is going for headlines by arresting and removing a few “bad hombres” and they are more aggressively pursuing low-hanging fruit by going after persons with existing removal orders who are under ICE supervision and picking up persons with Hispanic last names or appearances outside of courthouses and schools.

“ICE will no longer exempt any class of individuals from removal proceedings if they are found to be in the country illegally,” ICE acting Director Thomas
Homan said recently. “If we don’t take action on deportations, then we’re just spinning our wheels, aren’t we?” Still, removals since Trump signed the executive order have dropped to 56,000 from 63,600. Homan pointed primarily to a backlog at the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review for the deportation decrease. Trump has directed Justice to identify efficiencies in and devote more resources toward court proceedings for immigrants and asylum seekers. While ICE appears to be already overloading the system, it is working on a multi-year plan to triple the size of its Enforcement and Removal Operations staff as required by Trump’s executive order. At the same time, the Department of Justice is seeking to limit the availability of legal services available to immigrants facing removal by repeated transfers of detained immigrants among a number of remotely located facilities, and by restricting the type and scope of legal assistance that may be provided. In some areas of the country (and expected to be expanded nationwide) OCC (Office of Chief Counsel) attorneys (who prosecute removal cases for the Department of Homeland Security) have recently received orders to move to recalendar all prosecutorial discretion cases that had previously been administratively closed by the immigration courts.

According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice: “We believe that ICE is misleading the public in a deliberate attempt to cover up the fact that their roundups and arrests of ordinary, hardworking immigrants greatly outnumber their arrests of serious criminals. This matters because virtually all of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in America are, by the Trump Administration’s definition, considered ‘criminals.’ This is why we fear that the Trump Administration is not engaged in a serious effort to prioritize the use of law enforcement resources but is engaged in a serious effort to deport as many undocumented immigrants as they can arrest. Doing so is ripping families apart and causing millions to live in fear. And doing so may well catapult our nation towards an era in American history that we will regret for centuries.”

In mid-May, House Republicans quietly embarked on a plan to make Donald Trump’s dread-ed, well-armed, and costly “Deportation Force” a reality; considering several pieces of enforcement focused legislation that would facilitate both mass deportation and greatly expanded incarceration and detention at for-profit prisons primarily run by a company in which members of the Trump Administration, including the Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III, hold financial interests. Here is a run-down and current status report on several pieces of pending immigration legislation:

Senate S. 595: Boots on the Border Act (introduced March 2017 by Sen. Flake) [ANTI-IMMI-GRANT] A bill that would fast-track hiring and grow Trump’s deportation force by weakening Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hiring standards. This would eliminate critical polygraph requirements that are widely used in federal law enforcement. Eliminating these requirements will make it much easier for Trump to hire the additional 500 agents he has requested in his Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Request. This is on top of the existing 21,000 agents already authorized by Congress. Every time there has been a relaxation of hiring standards and a ramp-up in Border Patrol/CBP hiring, the results have been disastrous! These rapid and unrestrained hiring binges have resulted in surges in civil rights violations, improper use and discharge of weapons, illegal use of force, criminal and sexual assault, robbery, theft, bribery, and off duty offenses such as domestic violence charges against rogue Border Patrol/CBP Officers. The bill was passed out of the Homeland Security Committee on May 16, 2017 by a 9-3 vote. A House version (H.R. 2213) was scheduled for a floor vote the same day but was postponed.

House Davis-Oliver Act (formerly known as The SAFE Act) (introduced May 2017 by Rep. Labrador) [ANTI-IMMIGRANT] The act would amend section 275 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the provision which currently punishes entering the country with-out the federal government’s permission.

H.R. 2431 would add “knowingly violating the terms or conditions of the alien’s admission or parole” or “knowingly [being] unlawfully present in the United States” with up to six months imprisonment. Section 314. The first provision would criminalize knowingly staying in the United States after temporary permission has expired. The second provision would criminalize knowingly entering clandestinely.

This is no minor adjustment. It represents a radical trans-formation of United States immigration law. For over a century, unlawful presence in the United States has been a civil infraction of immigration law meriting, at most, removal. If enacted, the act would turn that civil infraction into a crime punish-able by as much as twenty years imprisonment. It is impossible to know how many of the 11 million or so people currently in the United States without the federal government’s permission could be prosecuted under H.R. 2431’s new crime, but it is safe to assume that the act’s sweeping language is meant to include a substantial percentage.

Already immigration crimes are, by far, the most frequently prosecuted type of federal crime. In fiscal year 2016, for example, 68,314 people were prosecuted for illegal entry and illegal reentry. Not surprisingly, immigration crime prosecutions also lead many people to time behind bars. In FY 2013, almost 100,000 people were held in pretrial detention pending prosecution for a federal immigration crime.

H.R. 2431 would throw this trend into overdrive. Federal law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and courts would be likely to see a substantial increase in the number of immigration criminal prosecutions. Without a major funding increase from Congress, the federal law enforcement agencies and courts would be hard-pressed to keep up. They would either have to deprioritize the other types of crime that they currently focus on or sim-ply put these new immigration crimes on the backburner. The fiery speech that Attorney General Sessions delivered in Arizona last month suggests that the Justice Department would prefer to see federal law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and courts go after immigration offenders—the “filth” as Sessions put it.

House H.R. 2407: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Reauthorization Act (introduced May 2017 by Rep. Goodlatte) [ANTI-IMMIGRANT] House H.R. 2406: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Authorization Act (introduced May 2017 by Rep. Goodlatte) [ANTI-IMMIGRANT] House H.R. 2407: “To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to establish United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and for other purposes.” (introduced May 2017 by Rep. Goodlatte) [ANTI-IMMIGRANT] House H.R. 2406: “To amend section 442 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to authorize United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and for other purposes.” (introduced May 2017 by Rep. Goodlatte) [ANTI-IMMIGRANT] These five bills are scheduled for markup in the House Judiciary Committee on May 18, 2017, though markup will not necessarily finish for all of them on that day.

They would facilitate mass deportations, give Trump more resources to deport immigrants, and make it easier to do so. They would: Require Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officers to have access to not just standard-issue handguns and stun guns, but also M-4 rifles or equivalents. Add 10,000 officers focused on deportation, 2,500 in detention, and 60 trial attorneys. Authorize officers to make arrests without a warrant if they had reasonable grounds to believe the person had committed a felony, and would allow ICE to arrest people for civil offenses without a warrant, even if they are not considered “likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained,” which is the case under current law. Codify the president’s new Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement, or VOICE, office, which frames all immigrants as being criminals. Restrict lawmakers’ ability to influence individual immigration cases by barring “preferential treatment” or sharing information with elected officials and stakeholders on individual cases. Authorize E-Verify, the pro-gram for employers to check whether their employees are eligible to work in the U.S. The program would be crippling to the US agricultural industry and the farm workers who work in it. Authorize state and local law enforcement to get more involved in detention and deportation efforts. The bill is broadly aimed at combating so-called sanctuary city policies restricting local law enforcement cooperation with ICE, which the Trump administration has promised to eliminate.

•House H.R. 2213: The Anti-Border Corruption Reauthorization Act (introduced April 2017 by Reps. McSally, McCaul, Hurd, Carter, Cuellar, Roe, Vela) [ANTI-IMMI-GRANT]

A bill that would fast-track hiring and expand Trump’s deportation force by weakening Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hiring standards. This would eliminate critical polygraph requirements that are widely used in federal law enforcement. Eliminating these requirements will make it much easier for Trump to hire the additional 500 agents he has requested in his Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Request. This is on top of the existing 21,000 agents already authorized by Congress. This bill was scheduled for a floor vote on May 16, 2017, but was postponed; the Senate version (the Boots on the Border Act) was passed out of committee on the same day. Read more here.

•Senate: Agricultural Worker Program Act (introduced May 2017 by Sens. Feinstein, Leahy, Bennet, Hirono, Harris) [PRO-IMMI-GRANT] A bill to create a “blue card” that would protect farm workers from deportation and put them on a pathway to legalization and citizenship. Employees must have worked a minimum of 100 days over the past two years to qualify for temporary residency. ##

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Scroll To Top