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Beyond shameful…
Lawyers say they can’t find the parents of 545 migrant children separated by Trump administration
Lawyers appointed by a federal judge to identify migrant families who were separated by the Trump administration say that they have yet to track down the parents of 545 children and that about two-thirds of those parents were deported to Central America without their children, according to a filing Tuesday from the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Trump administration instituted a “zero tolerance” policy in 2018 that separated migrant children and parents at the southern U.S. border. The administration later confirmed that it had actually begun separating families in 2017 along some parts of the border under a pilot program. The ACLU and other pro-bono law firms were tasked with finding the members of families separated during the pilot program.
Unlike the 2,800 families separated under zero tolerance in 2018, most of whom remained in custody when the policy was ended by executive order, many of the more than 1,000 parents separated from their children under the pilot program had already been deported before a federal judge in California ordered that they be found.
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US Ice officers ‘used torture to make Africans sign own deportation orders’
Cameroonians say officers choked, beat and threatened to kill them, as lawyers tell of pre-election removal drive
US immigration officers allegedly tortured Cameroonian asylum seekers to force them to sign their own deportation orders, in what lawyers and activists describe as a brutal scramble to fly African migrants out of the country in the run-up to the elections.
Many of the Cameroonian migrants in a Mississippi detention centre refused to sign, fearing death at the hands of Cameroonian government forces responsible for widespread civilian killings, and because they had asylum hearings pending.
According to multiple accounts, detainees were threatened, choked, beaten, pepper-sprayed and threatened with more violence to make them sign. Several were put in handcuffs by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, and their fingerprints were taken forcibly in place of a signature on documents called stipulated orders of removal, by which the asylum seekers waive their rights to further immigration hearings and accept deportation.
Parents of 545 children still not found three years after Trump separation policy
Lawyers and human rights advocates said there had been a significant acceleration of deportations in recent weeks, a trend they see as linked to the looming elections and the possibility that Ice could soon be under new management.
“The abuse we are witnessing, especially right now against black immigrants, isn’t new, but it is escalating,” said Christina Fialho, executive director of an advocacy group, Freedom for Immigrants (FFI). “In late September, early October of this year, we began to receive calls on our hotline from Cameroonian and Congolese immigrants detained in Ice prisons across the country. And they were being subjected to threats of deportation, often accompanied by physical abuse.”
“The reality is that Ice operates in the shadows. They thrive in secrecy,” Fialho added. “We know that the US government is deporting key witnesses in an effort to silence survivors and absolve Ice of legal liability.”
A plane carrying 60 Cameroonian and 28 Congolese asylum seekers was quietly flown out of Fort Worth Alliance airport in Texas on 13 October to deliver them to their home countries. The charter plane did not release a flight plan, but it was tracked by immigration rights group Witness at the Border, which said it stopped in Senegal, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and then Kenya before flying back to Texas.
The Cameroonian deportees were from the country’s English-speaking minority, which has been the target of widespread abuses, including extrajudicial killings, by government security forces seeking to crush a separatist movement. The Trump administration cut the country’s trade privileges at the beginning of this year because of the persistent abuses.
Most of the deportees on the flight had testified that they had suffered detention without charge and torture at the hands of the Cameroonian military, and had relatives who had been killed. They were detained for questioning on arrival in Douala, but some were freed after their families paid bribes, and have since gone into hiding.
As for the others, the lawyer Evaristus Nkongchu said: “We have no knowledge of what happened to those that were deported. We know they arrived, but we haven’t heard what happened after they arrived at the airport.”
The Cameroonian embassy in Washington did not reply to several requests for comment.
Detainees and their lawyers have been told there will be another deportation flight in the coming days, possibly as early as Friday.
‘I kept telling him, “I can’t breathe”’
Cameroonians are routinely denied asylum or parole in the US immigration court system, which is run by the justice department.
Victims, family members, lawyers and human rights activists have described a range of coercive measures used by Ice on Cameroonian detainees at the Adams county correctional centre in Mississippi to make them sign their own deportation orders.
A complaint filed by FFI and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) cites eight cases of forced signatures or fingerprints on stipulated orders of removal.
One of those involved, identified by the initials BJ, said that on 27 September, Ice officers “pepper-sprayed me in the eyes and [one officer] strangled me almost to the point of death. I kept telling him, ‘I can’t breathe.’ I almost died.”
“As a result of the physical violence, they were able to forcibly obtain my fingerprint on the document,” BJ said.
Another detainee, known as DF, said that he was ordered to sign his deportation order by an Ice agent on 28 September.
“I refused to sign. He pressed my neck into the floor. I said, ‘Please, I can’t breathe.’ I lost my blood circulation. Then they took me inside with my hands at my back where there were no cameras,” DF said. According to his account, he was then taken to a punitive wing of the Adams county centre, known as Zulu, and subjected to further assault.
“They put me on my knees where they were torturing me and they said they were going to kill me. They took my arm and twisted it. They were putting their feet on my neck. While in Zulu, they did get my fingerprint on my deportation document and took my picture,” he said. DF was one of the detainees on the 13 October flight to Douala. It is unclear what has happened to him since.
A third detainee, CA, said he was forced to the ground, sat on, handcuffed and pepper-sprayed. “I was crying, ‘I can’t breathe,’ because they were forcefully on top of me pressing their body weight on top of me. My eyes were so hot … I was dragged across the ground,” he said. “The officers told me to open my eyes. I couldn’t. My legs and hands were handcuffed. They forcefully opened my palm. Some of my fingers were broken. They forced my fingerprint on to the paper.”
CA was taken off the 13 October flight, but still faces deportation.
A brief reprieve
Two Cameroonians were taken off the 13 October deportation flight at the last moment after the intervention of human rights advocates through the office for civil rights and civil liberties in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but they have been told by Ice agents it will not save them from deportation.
Patrick, a detainee who has been told he is on the deportation list, said he has not been able to sleep knowing that Ice agents could come for him at any time, and that for him, deportation could well be a death sentence.
“I live in worry because I don’t know what awaits me. I don’t even know what the next day is going to look like, and will I be taken back home,” Patrick (a pseudonym) told the Guardian in a call from a detention centre. He did not want his name used because of the risk to his surviving family members.
His lawyer, Ruth Hargrove, said: “He actually has a very strong case for asylum, but the problem is he may die before he gets his hearing, because he was supposed to be on that plane that went out last week, and his Ice officer just guaranteed that he will be on the next flight.”
An Ice spokeswoman, Sarah Loicano, confirmed that a formal complaint over use of force against the Cameroonian detainees had been submitted to the DHS inspector general.
Loicano added: “That said, in general, sensationalist unsubstantiated allegations, particularly those made anonymously and without any fact-checkable specifics, is irresponsible, and should be treated with the greatest of scepticism.”
“Ice is firmly committed to the safety and welfare of all those in its custody. Ice provides safe, humane, and appropriate conditions of confinement for individuals detained in its custody,” she said.
For those who have already been deported, any reforms to Ice would be too late, and they are currently in no position to give evidence about their treatment in the US.
The Texas-based sister of one of the deportees who escaped into hiding after the 13 October flight to Douala, told the Guardian: “My brother ran away to America thinking that you will be safe here in another culture. But they sent him back and right now he has no life. He’s hiding in the bush. What can you do in the bush?”
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The members of this displaced community requested refuge in the United States but were sent back into Mexico, and told to wait. They came there after unique tragedies: violent assaults, oppressive extortions, murdered loved ones. They are bound together by the one thing they share in common — having nowhere else to go.
“Sometimes I feel like I can’t hold on anymore,” said Jaqueline Salgado, who fled to the camp from Southern Mexico, sitting outside her tent on a bucket as her children played in the dirt. “But when I remember everything I’ve been through, and how it was worse, I come back to the conclusion that I have to wait.”
Ms. Salgado is one of about 600 people stranded in a place that many Americans might have thought would never exist. It is effectively a refugee camp on the doorstep of the United States, one of several that have sprung up along the border for the first time in the country’s history.
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More proof that Stephen Miller is a paranoid whack-job.
An architect of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies claims that Biden is ‘a radical outlier.’
One of the key architects of President Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda, Stephen Miller, attacked Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Wednesday “as a radical outlier in the whole of human civilization” for his immigration policies.
Mr. Miller has been a driving force behind the Trump administration’s severely restrictive immigration policies, including one that led thousands of children to be separated from their parents at the southern border. (The parents of 545 migrant children still have not been found, according to court documents filed earlier this month in a case challenging the practice.)
In sometimes angry tones, Mr. Miller — who as top White House adviser on immigration is a federal employee but said he was speaking “in my personal capacity” — offered an apocalyptic vision of a Biden presidency in which he said terrorists would pour into the U.S. and America’s southern border would be overrun by migrants.
“Tens of millions will come from every single part of planet Earth,” Mr. Miller said. Noting that the Trump administration is maintaining a stringent cap on refugee admissions, he alleged that Mr. Biden would approve “a staggering increase on refugees from the most dangerous places in the world.”
The Trump administration had sharply reduced the level of refugees admitted to 15,000 per year, but Mr. Biden has said he would raise the level to 125,000, slightly above where it was by the end of the Obama administration.
Mr. Miller also claimed, without evidence, that Mr. Biden’s intention to reverse a sweeping Trump administration travel ban would allow potential terrorists to enter the U.S.
Four years ago Mr. Trump ran for the presidency vowing to crack down on immigration, promising to build a wall along the southern border and claiming that Mexico would pay for it. (It did not.)
Asked about evidence that immigration has played a relatively smaller role in Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign than it did in 2016 and 2018, Mr. Miller did not object, saying that Mr. Trump is “now campaigning on four years of success.”
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More Than 40 Immigrants Have Died In ICE Custody In The Past Four Years. Here Are Thousands Of Records About What Happened.
BuzzFeed News has obtained thousands of pages of documents from internal investigations of deaths of immigrants held in ICE custody.
Since January 2017, at least four dozen people have died while being held in detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Some were old, and some were young. Some had been in the US for years before being detained; others came here only recently, seeking refuge or better economic circumstances. Some were in terrible health upon arrival; others became ill while in custody.
One man from Jamaica, who had an aggressive but treatable form of cancer, was locked in solitary confinement for over a week without receiving medical care and died a month later. A Honduran transgender woman who sought asylum in the US was severely dehydrated, showed signs of starvation, and wasn’t given antiretroviral medication before she died, according to the local medical examiner, of complications from AIDS. And at least three people killed themselves even though they were supposed to be under close observation for mental health concerns.
In June 2019, BuzzFeed News filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the release of emails, investigative reports, medical records, and other documents related to 25 deaths in custody that ICE had publicly disclosed since President Donald Trump took office.
When the agency did not promptly provide records, BuzzFeed News filed a successful lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency. To date, DHS has produced more than 5,000 pages of documents related to deaths in ICE custody. Collectively, they tell the story of how ICE has in some instances failed to provide adequate care to detainees, some of whom are locked up for months or years before their immigration cases are resolved.
The agency is expected to hand over more records in the future; BuzzFeed News today is releasing all of the case files that have been turned over. Although there have been news reports and congressional investigations on many of these incidents, the full record behind these deaths has never before been made available.
ICE has publicly insisted that both the detention facilities it runs as well as those that are operated by private, for-profit corporations provide thorough and adequate medical care to all detainees. In response to a request for comment on this story, ICE said the agency takes the health and safety of detainees very seriously and while deaths are “unfortunate and always a cause for concern,” they are “exceedingly rare.”
But internal emails show that ICE’s own investigators raised serious concerns about the agency’s care of the people it detains, with one employee describing the treatment leading up to one death as “a bit scary.”
The documents show that:
- In multiple instances, guards who were supposed to observe detainees placed in solitary confinement for extra monitoring falsified records to hide apparent dereliction of duty. In at least two cases — at Eloy Detention Center in Arizona and Adelanto Detention Facility in California — people died while they were not being watched but should have been. “During the 51-minute period, the officer documented three welfare checks, none of which were supported by video surveillance,” one internal death review states. The guard resigned two days later, documents show.
After Roxsana Hernandez, a 33-year-old trans asylum-seeker from Honduras died in custody in May 2018, ICE initially blamed her death on cardiac arrest. But some investigators took issue with her treatment, noting that Hernandez lost 40 pounds in custody, and questioned why Customs and Border Protection had transferred someone in such a vulnerable medical state. A private consulting firm retained by ICE to review detainee deaths, Creative Corrections, appeared to offer to exclude potentially troublesome information about her care while in custody from its findings. “If you want me to back off,” one of the company’s analysts wrote, “I will modify the report accordingly. Let me know your druthers.”
Medical staff at some detention facilities — including a psychiatrist at Krome North Processing Center in Miami and nurses at Glades County Detention Center, also in Florida — at times did not use an interpreter when treating a detainee with limited English proficiency. The detainee was asked to sign documents related to his care in a language that he may not have understood. He later died while still in ICE custody.
Investigators found other failures that point to serious lack of care even if they did not lead directly to death. One man whom doctors noted had no lower teeth and was missing several upper teeth during a physical, for example, was not given a special diet to make sure his nutritional intake was adequate. In another instance, surveillance footage showed a detainee falling out of his wheelchair and struggling to move, but nurses told a guard who expressed concern that the detainee was faking or exaggerating his symptoms. Later that day, the detainee died.
CoreCivic, which operates several ICE detention centers through contracts with the agency — including Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, New Mexico, where Roxsana Hernandez was held before her death — said in a statement that it takes seriously its obligation to adhere to federal detention standards, though in the majority of its facilities it is not responsible for the healthcare services to detainees. (The company’s full statement to the media after she died is available on its website.) GeoGroup, another private firm running facilities for ICE, referred questions to the agency.
Under Trump, who has pushed for aggressive immigration enforcement, ICE has locked up people in record numbers. The population in custody peaked in the summer of 2019 when roughly 55,000 immigrants were being held in local jails and private prisons across the country, where ICE is responsible for their healthcare and safety.
Although ICE has maintained that it takes the well-being of its detainees seriously and spends hundreds of millions of dollars on their medical needs, immigrant advocates have repeatedly questioned the quality of care in ICE custody, concerns that grew this year as detainees began contracting COVID-19. Despite a dramatic dip in the detention population in recent months due to the pandemic, 21 immigrants died in ICE custody in the most recent fiscal year ending Sept. 30, the highest number of such deaths under the agency’s watch in 15 years. Several of those who died tested positive for the coronavirus.
As part of agency protocol, ICE reviews each death and also notifies the DHS Office of Inspector General. Death reviews can involve reviewing documents and interviews of representatives of detention center operators, outside healthcare providers, and third-party consultants, as well as senior agency leadership.
The documents themselves:
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Unconscionable and horrific situationb at this juncture…more children, now 666 and 1/3 UNDER 5 yo can not be returned to their parents.
WASHINGTON — Lawyers working to reunite migrant families separated by the Trump administration before and during its “zero tolerance” policy at the border now believe the number of separated children for whom they have not been able to find parents is 666, higher than they told a federal judge last month, according to an email obtained by NBC News.
About one third of those children were under 5 at the time of the separation, according to a source familiar with the data.
In the email, Steven Herzog, the attorney leading efforts to reunite the families, explains that the number is higher because the new group includes those “for whom the government did not provide any phone number.” Previously, the lawyers said they could not find the parents of 545 children after they had tried to make contact but had been unsuccessful.
I just can’t get past how horrifically appropriate this number is for this evil regime.
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Yeah, I noticed that too. 
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Something sneaky going down with ICE; their twitter account has disappeared.
Nothing good ever happens when the Trump regime gets more secretive…
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And now they are back claiming it was a “glitch” and not a soul believes them because twitter doesn’t work that way.
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US Officials Involved in Policy of Family Separation Must Be Investigated
Are more Trump-era family separations coming to California’s immigrant communities?
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article246486095.html
More than 54,000 U.S.-born children in California have Salvadoran and Honduran parents who are in the country under, Temporary Protected Status, a program in limbo as the Trump administration seeks to end it.
Families facing uncertainty worry what will happen to their children if parents are deported, according to attorneys who spoke with The Bee.
“A logical consequence for these kids is that they will be separated from their parents because the loss of status opens you up for the possibility of deportation,” Almas Sayeed, deputy director of programs for the California Immigrant Policy Center, said during a recent interview. “Overwhelmingly, that is actually going to be what happens to these children.”
White House killed deal to pay for mental health care for migrant families separated at border
Sources said the White House counsel’s office said no after checking with Trump adviser Stephen Miller. A White House official denied Miller had a role.
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ICE knew a judge was about to rule they couldn’t expel 33 immigrant children back to Guatemala, so they did it before the ruling could come down.
The plane was in the air as it did.
ICE Expelled 33 Immigrant Children Back To Guatemala After A Judge Said They Couldn’t
“It is unconscionable that they are leaving the kids there and that they did not immediately bring them back,” one immigration analyst said.
The Trump administration expelled 33 children who came to the US without a parent back to Guatemala after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the controversial practice that same day.
The injunction was issued Wednesday by US Judge Emmet Sullivan minutes before an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flight left for Guatemala City with the 33 children.
An ICE official confirmed that the flight left “shortly before ICE was informed of the court’s injunction” against Title 42, the public health provision used by the Trump administration to expel people from the US citing the coronavirus pandemic.
The official said that ICE officers on the ground did not become aware of the judge’s order until the flight had landed and Guatemalan authorities were greeting the children, who remained in Guatemala as of Tuesday.
“We are aware of the situation and are looking into it. Hopefully, no child is being denied the benefit of the ruling,” said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney who led the lawsuit that resulted in the preliminary injunction blocking the policy.
The expulsion of the 33 children happening on the same day of Sullivan’s order could force the agency to bring back the children because it violated the judge’s decision, legal experts said.
“It is unconscionable that they are leaving the kids there and that they did not immediately bring them back,” said Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. Even if the flight took off before ICE officials knew, she added, “the expulsion is not only putting kids on the plane and taking off, it is also placing them in another country.”
Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a professor at Santa Clara University Law School, said ICE’s repeated issues in court under the Trump administration could play a factor in this case if Sullivan assesses whether they violated his order. Federal court judges have complained that they were lied to by officials in cases involving immigration policy during the Trump administration.
“It is not out of the power of the district court, if someone could raise the matter, to order ICE to return the children that it removed on that flight,” he said, noting that ICE officials will likely say that there will be practical difficulties in tracking down and locating the 33 children.
The Trump administration has argued that the current policy is necessary to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the United States.
“If the Title 42 order were to be undone by the court or the next administration, especially in the midst of a surging pandemic, ICE will be obligated to increase transportation operations, conducting the escorts of individuals and unaccompanied children using commercial airlines and ground transportation, as appropriate,” the ICE official said. “This poses an increased risk to the general public aboard commercial airlines as the Title 42 order was enacted to mitigate the public health risks of aliens attempting to unlawfully enter the United States in the midst of the pandemic.”
Critics said the government was using public health orders from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an excuse to violate federal laws that govern the processing of unaccompanied children at the border.
BuzzFeed News previously reported that the Department of Homeland Security has expelled unaccompanied immigrant children from the US border more than 13,000 times since March.
Before the pandemic, unaccompanied children picked up by Border Patrol agents would be sent to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), where they would be housed in shelters as they started applying for asylum and waited to be reunited with family members in the US.
The ORR referral process was created by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which was signed by then-president George W. Bush in 2008. Under the law, Customs and Border Protection officials are generally required to refer the children within 72 hours to the US refugee agency. But those referrals dropped precipitously after the CDC’s coronavirus order.
Instead, unaccompanied children at the border are turned back immediately to Mexico or held in detention facilities until a flight can get them out of the country.
In late June, US District Judge Carl Nichols, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, blocked the deportation of a 16-year-old Honduran boy under the CDC’s order. While the ruling did not void the policy altogether, it was seen as a blow to the administration. Since then, the government has said it was no longer seeking to use the CDC’s order to remove the boy from the country.
ICE officials said four of the children on the flight to Guatemala had tested positive for COVID-19.
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Trump v. New York Oral Argument
Chief Roberts
GENERAL, MY FIRST QUESTION GOES TO THE FIRST POINT YOU RAISED. WE EXPEDITED THIS CASE IN LIGHT OF THE DECEMBER 31 DEADLINE FOR THE SECRETARY TO TRANSMIT THE CENSUS TO THE PRESIDENT. IS THAT DATE STILL OPERATIVE? DO YOU STILL NEED A DECISION BY THAT DATE?
Solicitor General (for Trump)
PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM DATA. THE DATA THE PRESIDENT REQUESTED TO POTENTIALLY BACK OUT ILLEGAL ALIENS FROM THE APPORTIONMENT BASE. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: THE STANDING QUESTION, IF THE COURT DOES NOT INTERVENE NOW BEFORE THE SECRETARY TRANSMITS THE INFORMATION TO THE PRESIDENT, I DON’T KNOW WHEN THE COURT WOULD BE ABLE TO INTERVENE EVEN ALL THAT WOULD BE LEFT AFTER THAT TRANSMITTAL IS THE TRANSMITTAL BY THE PRESIDENT TO THE HOUSE. SO, IF THE INJURY CANNOT BE REDRESSED AT THIS POINT, WHEN COULD IT BE?
PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM DATA. THE DATA THE PRESIDENT REQUESTED TO POTENTIALLY BACK OUT ILLEGAL ALIENS FROM THE APPORTIONMENT BASE. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: THE STANDING QUESTION, IF THE COURT DOES NOT INTERVENE NOW BEFORE THE SECRETARY TRANSMITS THE INFORMATION TO THE PRESIDENT, I DON’T KNOW WHEN THE COURT WOULD BE ABLE TO INTERVENE EVEN ALL THAT WOULD BE LEFT AFTER THAT TRANSMITTAL IS THE TRANSMITTAL BY THE PRESIDENT TO THE HOUSE. SO, IF THE INJURY CANNOT BE REDRESSED AT THIS POINT, WHEN COULD IT BE?
back and forth General Solicitor with Justice Sotomayor asking how can you differentiate residents (anyone living in US) vs ICE, Illegal aliens, DACA etc
THEY ARE TRY TO GET THE CATEGORIES OF ILLEGAL ALIENS THAT YOU COULD IDENTIFY BASED ON THE RECORDS WE HAVE. FINAL ORDERS OF REMOVAL FOR INSTANCE, PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN REMOVED ARE FOUND AGAIN AND HAVE NOT BEEN GIVEN ANY LAWFUL STATUS. IT IS NOT THAT WE CAN PICK UP EVERYONE. THEY WILL BE SOME UNDETECTED ILLEGAL ALIENS WHO WE ARE NOT ATTENDING TO SCREEN FOR BECAUSE THEY WOULD NOT BE PICKED UP ANY RECORD. IT IS THE CATEGORIES THAT WOULD BE SHOWN BY SOME SORT OF RECORD WE HAVE. THE QUESTION IS HOW FEASIBLE IT WILL BE TO CAPTURE LARGE NUMBERS WITHIN THOSE CATEGORIES. UNFORTUNATELY, WE DON’T KNOW AT THIS POINT. IT IS A FEATURE NOT OF THE GOVERNMENT’S CONDUCT, BUT A FEATURE OF THE FACT THAT APPELLEES BROUGHT A PRE-APPORTIONMENT CHALLENGE ON THE BASIS OF THIS INJURY THAT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO CEASE IN THE PAST – CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR? JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: MR. WALL, AS I UNDERSTAND READING THE PRESIDENT’S MEMO, HE SAYS HE INTENDS TO EXCLUDE EVERY ALIEN WHO DOES NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO BE HERE IN THE UNITED STATES. YES, HE LIMITS THIS TO WHERE IT IS FEASIBLE TO IDENTIFY THAT. BUT RIGHT NOW, HIS POLICY IS, IF I CAN IDENTIFY THEM, NO MATTER WHAT THE REASON IS FOR THEM BEING AN ILLEGAL ALIEN, I WILL EXCLUDE THEM FROM THE CENSUS. FOLLOWING UP ON JUSTICE ALITO’S QUESTION, AREN’T THOSE THE VERY CATEGORIES THAT YOU ALREADY SAY WE HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT SOME OF THEM IN ICE WILL COME BY DECEMBER 31, AND THEN BY JANUARY 11, THE CENSUS BUREAU SAYS IT INTENDS TO PROVIDE THE PRESIDENT WITH THE INFORMATION "NECESSARY TO FULLY IMPLEMENT THE PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM." I AM QUOTING THE CENSUS BUREAU. SO, IF I TAKE THAT AT ITS FACE, IT MEANS THAT THE NUMBER IS NOT GOING TO BE 60,000. THE NUMBER INTENDED IS SUBSTANTIALLY LARGE. AND I THINK THAT WAS JUSTICE ALITO’S POINT, WHICH IS THE CENSUS BUREAU HAS BEEN COLLECTING DATA ABOUT UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS FROM OTHER AGENCIES FOR OVER A YEAR. I DON’T SEE HOW YOU CAN REPRESENT TO US THAT YOU DON’T THINK IT WILL BE A SUBSTANTIAL NUMBER.
THREE QUICK POINTS. FIRST, I DON’T THINK THAT IS ACTUALLY AN ACCURATE STATEMENT AS A MEMORANDUM. YOU ARE RIGHT THAT IS THE POLICY BUT THERE ARE TWO BUILT-IN LIMITATIONS. ONE IS WHETHER IT IS FEASIBLE AND THE SECOND IS IF THE PRESIDENT DECIDES HE HAS THE LEGAL DISCRETION TO EXCLUDE THESE SUBSETS PAYMENT SUBSETS MAY HAVE DIFFERENT LEGAL ANALYSIS DEPENDING ON THE TIES THEY HAVE OR THE TYPE OF STATUS THEY HAVE. JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: MR. WALL, I AM A LITTLE BIT QUESTIONING OF THAT FOR THE FOLLOWING REASONS. THE CENSUS BUREAU ALREADY DEFINES WHAT RESIDENCY IS. WHERE YOU ARE LIVING, AS A SNAPSHOT OF APRIL 1, 2020. WHETHER YOU ARE IN A PRISON, IN ICE DETENTION, WE ARE TOLD BY ONE OF OUR PEOPLE THAT 50% PEOPLE IN THE TENSION WILL EVENTUALLY BE RELEASED IN THE UNITED STATES EITHER THROUGH ASYLUM OR ANOTHER MECHANISM. SO I’M NOT SURE HOW YOU CAN IDENTIFY ANY CLASS OF IMMIGRANTS THAT IS NOT LIVING HERE AND IS TRADITIONAL SETTING. THIS IS WHERE THEY ARE, THIS IS WHERE THEY WERE UNABLE FIRST – ON APRIL 1, AND WHERE THEY INTEND TO STAY IF THEY CAN DO IT.
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The American Civil Liberties Union is suing federal authorities over their alleged use of cellphone location data — particularly in immigration enforcement.
The nonprofit organization today filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to force the agencies to release records about purchasing cellphone location data for immigration enforcement and other purposes. The lawsuit follows multiple news reports earlier this year about the Trump administration buying access to commercial databases that track cellphone locations and then using that data to detect people who might be entering the country illegally.
“It’s critical we uncover how federal agencies are accessing bulk databases of Americans’ location data and why,” Nathan Freed Wessler, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a statement. “There can be no accountability without transparency.”
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DACA restored. A very good step in the right direction…Keeping our promise.
Thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children are immediately eligible to apply for an Obama-era program that grants them work permits, a federal judge in New York ruled Friday.
U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis in Brooklyn said he was fully restoring the eight-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program to the days before the Trump administration tried to end it in September 2017. He ordered the Department of Homeland Security to post a public notice by Monday to accept first-time applications and ensure that work permits are valid for two years.
Acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf had issued a memo in July reducing DACA recipients’ work permits to one year, but Garaufis ruled last month that Wolf had unlawfully ascended to the agency’s top job and vacated the memo.
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Watchdog: DOJ bungled ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy
Rosenstein: Zero tolerance immigration policy ‘never should have been proposed or implemented’
Sessions, top DOJ officials knew ‘zero tolerance’ would separate families, watchdog finds
Report: Management of Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy failed
Leadership fails to manage rules and fallout of the short-lived Trump policy that separated 3,000 families.
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