WTF Community

Immigration: issues and policy

Under the cover of Trump’s visit to Ohio to turn a tragedy into a campaign ad, ICE conducted a massive raid, arresting 680 people.

Where are Mom and Dad? School on standby to help children in aftermath of ICE raids

Jimmy Aldaoud, a 41-year-old Detroit man, spent most of his life in the U.S., but was swept up in President Donald Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement efforts. Aldaoud was an Iraqi national, but he was born in Greece and came to the U.S. as a young child; he had never lived in Iraq and did not speak Arabic.

#He died after an inability to obtain insulin in Baghdad to treat his diabetes.


:sob: Click link to watch video :point_down:

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A glimpse inside the Central Processing Center, at the heart of the border crisis

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-glimpse-inside-the-central-processing-center-at-the-heart-of-the-border-crisis/2019/08/12/5bbc576c-bd1c-11e9-a5c6-1e74f7ec4a93_story.html

Old story, but notable.

Massachusetts Judge Charged With Helping Undocumented Immigrant Escape ICE

State District Judge Shelley Richmond Joseph and a court officer allegedly allowed the man to sneak out the courthouse back door.




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UPDATE on ACLU fight to reunite children separated since BEFORE July 2018: 966 kids names handed over to ACLU so far by the government.

914 on the government’s list don’t appear to have parents’ contact info! When the ACLU raised this problem the government said they don’t have any more info!

Appeals court rules Trump admin must provide hygiene products in migrant facilities

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Stephen Miller is an immoral and irascible person. His stoking this fire with his Alt-Right, read White Nationalist positions and setting policy is reprehensible. The only thing more which needs to be said is he needs to go.

How Stephen Miller Rode an Anti-Immigration Wave to the White House

Behind Mr. Miller’s singular grip on the Trump anti-immigrant agenda are forces far bigger than his own hostility toward the foreign-born.

Arriving in Washington as these forces coalesced, Mr. Miller rode the tailwinds with zeal and skill. Warning of terrorism and disturbed by multicultural change, he became the protégé of a Southern senator especially hostile to immigration, Jeff Sessions of Alabama. And he courted allies in the conservative media and immigration-restriction groups.

Mr. Miller, who declined to comment for this article, affects the air of a lone wolf — guarded, strident, purposefully provocative. But he has been shaped by the movement whose ideas and lieutenants he helped install across the government as he consolidated a kind of power unusual for a presidential aide and unique in the Trump White House.

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Other suits have been filed on behalf of individuals in immigration detention and against conditions at specific facilities. But Monday’s lawsuit, filed in U.S District Court for the Central District of California, is one of the first arguing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is deliberately and systematically denying care to about 55,000 migrants in custody at county jails and at both privately and publicly run detention centers.

“We’re hoping that this lawsuit will shine attention on the severity of the problem across the country,” said Elissa Johnson, senior supervising attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the lawyers filing the suit. “The issues are so pervasive.”

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We call him #PutinsPuppet, but this is a chilling look at how Stephen Miller pulls Trump’s strings.

How Stephen Miller authors Trump’s immigration policy: With unswerving loyalty, Stephen Miller has singular control of an issue central to the presidency.

https://wapo.st/stephen-miller?tid=ss_tw

The #ICEraids in MS are still having horrifying results.

4-month old #BabyJaqueline’s mother has been held in an ICE facility for 12 days. When breastfeeding, women continue to produce milk that needs to be expressed or it can cause pain & swelling.

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The Trump Administration wants to get rid of the Flores Settlement Agreement, which prevents the US from detaining migrant children and their families longer than 20 days.

**The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it’s moving ahead with proposed new rules that would allow for the longer term detention of families traveling with children across the U.S.-Mexico border**.

The government’s detention of children has been limited to less than 20 days under a court-approved settlement known as the Flores Settlement Agreement. President Donald Trump and Republicans have repeatedly blamed the 20-day limit for encouraging undocumented migrants from arriving at the border with children, expecting to be released. Administration officials expect the new rule to act as a deterrent measure aimed at immigrant families.

If it withstands review by the judge overseeing the Flores agreement, the new rule change would allow families to be held together in detention throughout their immigration court proceedings. While cases for detained immigrants tend to move more quickly than those who get released, the process can still take multiple months, a DHS official acknowledged Tuesday.

More from NYTimes

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Adelante Alabama Worker’s Center Board Member Marcos Baltazar was taken into custody by ICE along with his son Juan during a routine ICE check-in. The immigrant rights group board member’s detainment seems like targeted harassment.

See The 20+ Immigration Activists Arrested Under Trump

ICE Keeps Arresting Prominent Immigration Activists. They Think They’re Being Targeted.

“We’re inclined to believe that this is an attack on the organizing we’re doing."

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Congress told ICE to detain fewer people. Instead it keeps adding private prisons.

For the seventh time this year, ICE has started using another for-profit jail in the Deep South, this time in Louisiana.

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The Trump Administration Plans To Deny Work Permits To Asylum-Seekers Who Cross The Border

The proposal would deny thousands of people who cross the border each year to seek asylum in the US the right to apply to legally work.

“Let’s not forget: People seeking asylum are legal immigrants,” said Doug Rand, a former immigration official under the Obama administration. “This proposed rule sounds like another rush job calculated to scare vulnerable people in advance of inevitable lawsuits.”

Adding to this, my thread on the history of denial of work to harass and keep people down.


A devastating thread. Read it all.

“I can’t go back,” my client told me as soon as he sat down at the table in ICE detention.

“They will kill me.”

I believed him.

The judge agreed that they probably would kill him, just before he denied his asylum claim.

He was deported.

They did.

I just found out today.

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NYTimes: The Immigration System Is a Mess. Trump’s Policies Are Making It Worse.

NYT Editorial Board

It has been an eventful few weeks in President Trump’s ever-escalating crusade to restrict immigration.

On Aug. 12, his administration announced a rule change making it more difficult for poor immigrants to obtain green cards by giving officials more leeway in assessing who is likely to become a “public charge,” meaning someone who relies on public services. On Aug. 21, it introduced a new rule jettisoning the existing 20-day limit on holding migrant children in detention. The next day, the president reasserted his interest in abolishing birthright citizenship, the constitutional guarantee that anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen.

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump’s summer maneuvers can survive the court challenges that so frequently attend his immigration agenda. On Monday, a group of 19 states and the District of Columbia filed suit against his family-detention rule. His “public charge” rule also drew a flurry of filings, including one by a coalition of 13 Democratic state attorneys general, led by Washington state, and one by a separate multistate bloc led by California. (California has thus far filed 13 lawsuits against the administration on immigration matters.)

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What’s going to stop him then…? Certainly not the R’s. Will the courts? The American public?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/take-the-land-president-trump-wants-a-border-wall-he-wants-it-black-and-he-wants-it-by-election-day/2019/08/27/37b80018-c821-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html?arc404=true&noredirect=on

President Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules, according to current and former officials involved with the project.

He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers built quickly, those officials said.

Trump has repeatedly promised to complete 500 miles of fencing by the time voters go to the polls in November 2020, stirring chants of “Finish the Wall!” at his political rallies as he pushes for tighter border controls. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed just about 60 miles of “replacement” barrier during the first 2½ years of Trump’s presidency, all of it in areas that previously had border infrastructure.

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CDC reports more than 900 mumps cases in immigrant detention centers

The cases have affected both detainees and staff.

These rampant epidemics are unnecessary and inhumane.

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https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/08/30/politics/ice-hurricane-dorian/index.html

Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Friday it does “not conduct immigration enforcement operations at hurricane evacuation sites or shelters, such as during and immediately after hurricanes,” as Hurricane Dorian barrels toward Florida.

Hurricane Dorian is expected to strengthen into a Category 4 hurricane before making landfall in Florida. Authorities are urging residents to stockpile a week’s worth of food and supplies as the hurricane gathers strength.

During or after hurricanes, it’s common practice for ICE, the immigration enforcement agency, to suspend operations. Still, fear often looms over undocumented immigrants who are concerned authorities may arrest them when checking into shelters due to their immigration status.

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Retired Lt. Col. Patrick Schreiber & his wife Soo Jin met during a deployment to South Korea in the 90s & took in Soo Jin’s niece Hyebin as their legally adopted daughter when she was 15 years old

The Trump regime wants to deport her. Winning?

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Labeling these people as felons is a callous, cynical move designed to maximize their torment.

Dozens of migrant workers were arrested in Mississippi. The Trump regime wants to turn them into felons before sending them to immigration court.

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Document reveals the FBI is tracking border protest groups as extremist organizations

https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-document-reveals-the-fbi-is-tracking-border-protest-groups-as-extremist-organizations-170050594.html

Trump and his lackey Ken Cuccinelli (Acting Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) are trying to make it impossible for anyone to seek asylum in the U.S. Instead of using legitimate means (i.e., legislation), they’re applying their tried and true method of just throwing a monkey wrench into the works – forget about the rule of law: just effing eff it up any way you can. In this case, they are simply slashing the Asylum Division into oblivion.

The long-serving head of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Asylum Division was pushed out this week by the agency’s hardline acting director, Ken Cuccinelli, according to a source with knowledge of the move, marking the latest shake-up at the Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration.

The reassignment of John Lafferty, who led the agency’s Asylum Division for six years, has caused consternation and fear among asylum officers and other USCIS officials, who worry that the administration is dead set on pushing forward with policies that may not always be legal or adequately researched. Lafferty will be reassigned to the role of deputy director of a USCIS service center in Virginia.

“This is just another attack on the asylum system,” said one USCIS official who was not authorized to speak to the media. “To remove someone with his knowledge of and history with the program will cause damage. The administration views him as just another loophole.”

Under his tenure, Cuccinelli has warned asylum officers to not allow some people seeking refuge passage into the country after an initial screening and sped up initial screenings of people seeking asylum, a move that advocates say gives immigrants less time to prepare for their interviews or recover from dangerous journeys.

“I’m scared. Wondering how we’ll make it through to next year,” said another asylum officer, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s all the more chilling because many of us saw Lafferty as a shield against this monstrous administration. He fell. What’s next?”

Cuccinelli has maintained an active Twitter feed where he has attacked the asylum officers union for criticizing a policy that forces immigrants to remain in Mexico, advertised his TV appearances, and shown continuous support for immigration policies pushed by the president.

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Wife of former Marine to be deported to Mexico Friday, after 20 years in U.S.

The 16-year-old American daughter of a former Marine held back tears as long as she could Friday before her family was split in two. Her mother, Alejandra Juarez, was finally leaving for Mexico, rather than be sent off in handcuffs, after exhausting all her options to stop her deportation.

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