Looks like Trump is planning to kick up a big PR storm over immigration to energize his base in the final weeks leading up to the mid-terms. No surprise here, but it will be interesting to see what stunts he comes up with. Of course his base always loves it when he crows about his mythical Wall so I’m sure that will figure in somehow.
And speaking of the Wall, check out the last three paragraphs. If you were harboring one remaining shred of a doubt that Trump is a sociopath, you can now rid yourself of that – there is no doubt whatsoever.
The president said he remains hopeful he can deliver on a border wall and that he found inspiration for the project while speaking at the Sept. 11 memorial in Pennsylvania.
“They built this gorgeous wall where the plane went down in Pennsylvania, Shanksville. And I was there. I made the speech. And it’s sort of beautiful, what they did is incredible,” he said. “They have a series of walls, I’m saying, it’s like perfect. So, so, we are pushing very hard.”
The Flight 93 National Memorial, two miles north of Shanksville in southwestern Pennsylvania, is the site where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after being hijacked by four al Qaida terrorists on 9/11. Forty passengers and crew died in the crash.
Trump spins the tragic death of a plane full of people into a promotion for his border wall. Astounding – yet quite consistent with sociopathic behavior.
(A nod to @ddale8 for drawing attention to these paragraphs.)
Looks like there was a FOIA to get at some documents for the Immigration’s issue harshest program, Zero Tolerance. Despite denials from DHS Sec K Nielsen that she claims she had no part in this, but it appears that she did sign off on the policies, allowing for the detention and separation of families.
Note: The signatures have been redacted…and this Open the Government group wants to get the documents unredacted.
@SecNielsen
We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.
2:52 PM - 17 Jun 2018
@SecNielsen
This misreporting by Members, press & advocacy groups must stop. It is irresponsible and unproductive. As I have said many times before, if you are seeking asylum for your family, there is no reason to break the law and illegally cross between ports of entry.
2:51 PM - 17 Jun 2018
Open the Government
@OpenTheGovNewly released memo obtained by OTG & POGO through FOIA reveals secretary of homeland security signed off on family separation policy http://www.openthegovernment.org/node/5713
Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen previously denied existence of policy
Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight have obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that provides new insights into internal decision-making behind the separation of thousands of parents from their children at the border earlier this year.
The biggest revelation in the documents is a memo dated April 23, in which top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials urged criminal prosecution of parents crossing the border with children—the policy that led to the crisis that continues today. The memo, first reported on by the Washington Post on April 26, but never previously published, provides evidence that Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen signed off on a policy of family separation despite her repeated claims denying that there was such a policy. The Post appears to have obtained a copy of the memo prior to its signature.
The memo states that DHS could “permissibly direct the separation of parents or legal guardians and minors held in immigration detention so that the parent or legal guardian can be prosecuted.” It outlines three options for implementing “zero tolerance,” the policy of increased prosecution of immigration violations. Of these, it recommends “Option 3,” referring for prosecution all adults crossing the border without authorization, “including those presenting with a family unit,” as the “most effective.”
The last page of the memo contains a signature approving Option 3, but the signature—almost certainly Nielsen’s, given that the memo is addressed to her—was blacked out by FOIA officers on privacy grounds. FOIA officials also appear to have redacted the date of the signature indicating approval.
Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight intend to appeal the redaction of the memo. The Secretary of Homeland Security is a high-level public official; using privacy exemptions to hide her role in major policy decisions is unacceptable.
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This is an opinion piece from 2007, back when we were still discussing immigration in a rational manner. The CADO Institute is a Libertarian Policy Think Tank, much like the Brookings Institute but on the other side of the aisle. Give this a read and comment if you feel like these a reasonable respectable policies that Democrats would be happy to agree with and co-sponsor legislation.
The Trump administration is considering charging immigrants a fee to apply for asylum protection in the United States, according to sources close to the administration.
The proposal, included in a not-yet-finalized draft regulation, would charge applicants, if they are already residing in the US, $50 to apply for asylum. Currently, there is no fee to enter an “affirmative asylum” application. The fee would not apply to those who claim a fear of persecution at ports of entry or those who apply for the protections while in deportation proceedings. There would be no waiver of the fee for those who cannot afford to pay the $50.
More than 300,000 such cases are pending with US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the process. Last year, more than 100,000 people applied for asylum protections through USCIS.
The proposed move, if instituted, would be the latest change in the asylum process pushed by the administration, which has long been critical of a process it says is too often abused. Advocates have said that the administration’s changes to asylum, including restricting who qualifies for asylum and a proposed ban on anyone who crossed the border without authorization from receiving it, are illegal and inhumane.
The vast majority of countries across the globe do not charge a fee for asylum applications.
The Trump administration is resuming its efforts to deport certain protected Vietnamese immigrants who have lived in the United States for decades—many of them having fled the country during the Vietnam War.
This is the latest move in the president’s long record of prioritizing harsh immigration and asylum restrictions, and one that’s sure to raise eyebrows—the White House had hesitantly backed off the plan in August before reversing course. In essence, the administration has now decided that Vietnamese immigrants who arrived in the country before the establishment of diplomatic ties between the United States and Vietnam are subject to standard immigration law—meaning they are all eligible for deportation.
Beyond sad and belief
The number of immigrant children being held in government custody has reached almost 15,000, putting a network of federally contracted shelters across the country near capacity.
The national network of more than 100 shelters are 92 percent full, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The situation is forcing the government to consider a range of options, possibly including releasing children more quickly to sponsors in the United States or expanding the already crowded shelter network.
Most of migrant children are teenage boys from Central America who travel to the border alone. Many are escaping poverty or gangs, and they plan to ask for asylum and ultimately find work or go to school in the U.S.
Waves of these so-called unaccompanied children have arrived in recent years, and the numbers are on the rise again. In November, according to Customs and Border Protection, an average of 175 unaccompanied children crossed the southern border every day.
The largest migrant youth shelter in the country is in Tornillo in remote west Texas. About 2,800 children live in heated, sand-colored tents set up on a patch of desert a few hundred yards from the Rio Grande.
A 7-year-old girl from Guatemala died of dehydration and shock after she was taken into Border Patrol custody last week for crossing from Mexico into the United States illegally with her father and a large group of migrants along a remote span of New Mexico desert, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Thursday.
—
According to CBP records, the girl and her father were taken into custody about 10 p.m. Dec. 6 south of Lordsburg, N.M., as part of a group of 163 people who approached U.S. agents to turn themselves in.
More than eight hours later, the child began having seizures at 6:25 a.m., CBP records show. Emergency responders, who arrived soon after, measured her body temperature at 105.7 degrees, and according to a statement from CBP, she “reportedly had not eaten or consumed water for several days.”
After a helicopter flight to Providence Children’s Hospital in El Paso, the child went into cardiac arrest and “was revived,” according to the agency. “However, the child did not recover and died at the hospital less than 24 hours after being transported,” CBP said.
Yes…I read all those very sad details…and heard them on the news.
Horrid
The Trump administration has made the construction of an “impregnable” 2,000-mile wall across the length of the US-Mexico border a centerpiece of its executive orders on immigration and its broader immigration enforcement strategy. This initiative has been broadly criticized based on:
Escalating cost projections: an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) study recently set the cost at $21.6 billion over three and a half years
Its necessity given the many other enforcement tools — video surveillance, drones, ground sensors, and radar technologies — and Border Patrol personnel, that cover the US-Mexico border: former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and other experts have argued that a wall does not add enforcement value except in heavy crossing areas near towns, highways, or other “vanishing points” (Kerwin 2016);
Its cost-effectiveness given diminished Border Patrol apprehensions (to roughly one-fourth the level of historic highs) and reduced illegal entries (to roughly one-tenth the 2005 level according to an internal DHS study) (Martinez 2016);
Its efficacy as an enforcement tool: between FY 2010 and FY 2015, the current 654-mile pedestrian wall was breached 9,287 times (GAO 2017, 22);
Its inability to meet the administration’s goal of securing “operational control” of the border, defined as “the prevention of all unlawful entries to the United States” (White House 2017);
Its deleterious impact on bi-national border communities, the environment, and property rights (Heyman 2013); and
Opportunity costs in the form of foregone investments in addressing the conditions that drive large-scale migration, as well as in more effective national security and immigration enforcement strategies.
The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) has reported on the dramatic decline in the US undocumented population between 2008 and 2014 (Warren 2016). In addition, a growing percentage of border crossers in recent years have originated in the Northern Triangle states of Central America (CBP 2016). These migrants are fleeing pervasive violence, persecution, and poverty, and a large number do not seek to evade arrest, but present themselves to border officials and request political asylum. Many are de facto refugees, not illegal border crossers.
This report speaks to another reason to question the necessity and value of a 2,000-mile wall: It does not reflect the reality of how the large majority of persons now become undocumented. It finds that two-thirds of those who arrived in 2014 did not illegally cross a border, but were admitted (after screening) on non-immigrant (temporary) visas, and then overstayed their period of admission or otherwise violated the terms of their visas. Moreover, this trend in increasing percentages of visa overstays will likely continue into the foreseeable future.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/233150241700500107
U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered only six immigrants at ports of entry on the U.S-Mexico border in the first half of fiscal year 2018 whose names were on a federal government list of known or suspected terrorists, according to CBP data provided to Congress in May 2018 and obtained by NBC News.
The low number contradicts statements by Trump administration officials, including White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who said Friday that CBP stopped nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists from crossing the southern border in fiscal year 2018.
100% this 
seriously have a listen! Spoiler: there is no crisis except the one Trump has created.
President Trump plans to address the nation tonight about what he calls “the humanitarian and national security crisis on our southern border.” But much of that chaos could be a result of the administration’s policies. Guest: Caitlin Dickerson, who covers immigration for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
If we can’t figure this out, we deserve the administration we have in office.
Boom. From the Libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.
So far, there have been zero people murdered or injured in terror attacks committed by illegal border crossers on U.S. soil. This includes those who entered as illegal immigrants and those who entered illegally and then applied for asylum. Only seven terrorists from special interest countries, all of whom entered prior to the government putting those countries on a list, even entered the U.S. illegally by crossing a land border. Two of them were arrested within hours of doing so, two other received asylum, and none of them crossed the Mexican border.