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Immigration: issues and policy

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#203

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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#204

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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#205

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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#206

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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#207

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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#208

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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#209

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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#210

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.

1 Like
#211

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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#212

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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#213

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

#214

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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#215

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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#216

The long and the short of this thread: Trump’s child kidnapping is causing high levels of fear, PTSD, and feelings of loss, abandonment, and anxiety, and hopelessness in children.

Here is a link to the full report about how the Trump regime zero tolerance child kidnapping program is causing massive, possibly permanent, mental health issues for children.

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#217

A federal judge in Oakland on Monday blocked a policy banning asylum for thousands of people who cross through Mexico to reach the southern border.

Judge Jon Tigar initially blocked the policy from being implemented across the border in July. Soon after, a three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said that the policy could only be blocked in the areas it oversaw, such as California and Arizona. As a result, US Citizenship and Immigration Services officials restarted the policy in New Mexico and Texas. Advocates, however, pressed Tigar to once again issue a nationwide injunction, and on Monday, he did that.

“The court continues to recognize the gravity of this situation and the reality that asylum-seekers face grave danger along the entire southern border,” said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney who argued the case in front of Tigar.

Tigar’s order means the Department of Homeland Security must suspend implementation of the policy, which barred asylum for anyone who crosses through a third country but does not apply there for protection before reaching the US.

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#218

Judge Promoted by Trump Administration Threatened a 2-Year-Old With an Attack Dog

“Want me to go get the dog?” the judge yelled at a Guatemalan boy. “Do you want him to bite you?”

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#219


NOW: The Supreme Court will let the Trump administration enforce, for now as litigation goes forward, a new policy effectively prohibiting asylum for thousands of people who cross through Mexico to the US. Here’s the order:

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#220

A startling two-post thread on how ICE does background checks to verify parent’s criminality in a weekly batch AFTER families were actually separated by CBP using that excuse.

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#221

Cross-posting. This is good work. Immigration is shaping up to be a big issue in 2020. This is a great place to for candidates to contrast with the President and his expensive cruel policies.

Immigration: Where 2020 Democratic Candidates Stand On Border Crossings And More

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#222

The Trump regime is deporting Cambodians who fled the Khmer Rouge, & its Cambodian genocide of the late 70s, as children in record numbers, back to a country most have never known.

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