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Well written explanation: What Will Happen to DACA?

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Regulatory Review

What Will Happen to DACA?

Despite notching several critical legal victories this year, including one at the U.S. Supreme Court, supporters of a federal program that protects Dreamers—immigrants brought to the United States as children—must put the celebrations on hold yet again.

In the latest chapter of a nearly decade-long legal battle, the fate of that program—called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)—now lies in the hands of a federal judge in Texas who immigration advocates fear will terminate the program.

DACA began in 2012 when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a memorandum making Dreamers eligible to obtain legal status that would defer potential immigration proceedings. This relief, which can be renewed every two years, shields Dreamers who meet stringent criteria from deportation and allows them to obtain work authorization among other benefits. Since its enactment, DACA has protected 800,000 noncitizens from deportation and more than 1.3 million other immigrants remain eligible for the program.

For years, DACA had enjoyed wide bipartisan support. But in 2017 the Trump Administration attempted to rescind the program, claiming that it was “an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the Executive Branch.” In response, multiple plaintiffs challenged the rescission as “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. This summer, the Supreme Court agreed with the plaintiffs, upholding the program against the Trump Administration’s effort to disband it—a major victory for the program’s beneficiaries and immigration advocates.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision, a federal judge ordered DHS to restore the program to its original form after the agency refused to do so. The judge specifically required DHS to resume reviewing and approving new DACA applications and work permits immediately, marking another victory for the program’s supporters.

But ongoing litigation in Texas threatens DACA supporters’ winning streak.

This case began in 2018 when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and several other states filed a lawsuit arguing that DHS exceeded its authority by creating DACA without the consent of Congress. Because this case is the only one that directly challenges DACA’s legality, an adverse decision in this litigation could permanently end the program—an outcome that became more likely when the case was transferred to Judge Andrew S. Hanen, according to some advocates.

Appointed by President George W. Bush, Judge Hanen is perhaps best known for his 2015 decision to enjoin two other Obama-era immigration initiatives closely related to DACA. The first initiative sought to expand DACA to include an additional 330,000 people. The second initiative aimed to offer DACA-like protections to undocumented parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

In that litigation, 26 states challenged the two initiatives in Southern Texas, knowing they were likely to come before Judge Hanen, whose earlier rebukes of President Obama’s immigration policies “made him an inviting decision-maker.” When the case was indeed assigned to Judge Hanen, one commentator concluded that the plaintiff states had “already won the first round in court.”

As predicted, Judge Hanen enjoined the two initiatives, holding that President Obama exceeded his authority when he enacted them. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit—perhaps the most conservative federal appeals court in the country—upheld Judge Hanen’s decision. On further appeal, the Supreme Court—with only eight justices after Justice Antonin Scalia’s untimely death—was evenly divided on the issue, which meant Judge Hanen’s initial injunction remained in place. Although the ruling had no effect on DACA itself, it effectively terminated the two related initiatives.

When the Texas attorney general and other plaintiff states mounted the 2018 challenge to DACA’s legality, they relied heavily on the reasoning Judge Hanen employed when he enjoined the two DACA-related programs. But, in a decision that surprised some observers, Judge Hanen declined to halt DACA at the outset of litigation. Although the judge believed the program was likely illegal, he explained, “the egg has been scrambled,” and thus it did not make sense to “put it back in the shell,” at least until he could consider the parties’ arguments in full.

In 2020, shortly after the Supreme Court rejected the Trump Administration’s rescission attempt, Judge Hanen directed the parties to bring their claims before him once more, suggesting he might be prepared to put the eggs back in the shell….read the rest here.

Georgia Gets in Ballot Trouble with Rule Changes – IAG

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Photo: IAG

“Previously, the signature on the absentee ballot had to match the signature on eNet, a computer database that maintains Georgia’s voter registration and absentee ballot information. If the signature on the ballot didn’t match, it was thrown out.”

Insider Advantage Georgia

November 11, 2020

By Phil Kent

Criticism of poor management and decision-making by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger continues, coupled with GOP voter fraud lawsuits that have been filed or will be filed. The controversy and lawsuits are partially spurred by changes in state election laws. One change, agreed to by the Republican secretary of state last March, is especially stunning. And it leads to a big question: Why did he agree to a settlement that smuggled in a major change to mail-in voting?

John Daniel Davidson, writing in The Federalist, has researched and written about Raffensperger’s incredible cave-in involving a settlement in federal court with the Georgia Democratic Party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee which had sued the state over for absentee voting rules.

The settlement introduced “ballot curing” to Georgia law. Ballot curing, as Davidson describes it, is when voters whose mail-in ballots are rejected for some reason— the signature on the ballot doesn’t match the one on file, the ballot is missing certain voter information, etc.— are notified and given a chance to correct or “cure” their absentee ballot. “Under the settlement, state election officials agreed to contact voters whose ballots were rejected within three business days. If an absentee ballot is rejected in the 11 days before Election Day, officials agreed to contact the voter in the next business day,” Davidson writes.

But here’s where it gets worse. Because more than 8,000 absentee ballots were rejected in Georgia’s 2018 general election, this provision in the settlement got the most media play. Yet the most important one is a crucial change to the rules for accepting absentee ballots in the first place. Consider Davidson’s findings:

“Previously, the signature on the absentee ballot had to match the signature on eNet, a computer database that maintains Georgia’s voter registration and absentee ballot information. If the signature on the ballot didn’t match, it was thrown out.

“In a cleverly worded section of the settlement, Georgia election officials agreed to a subtle but profound change…, we hope you read the rest here.

 

Daniel Greenfield: American Coup

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Photo: Frontpagemag.com

Frontpagemag.com

Nov 9, 2020

Daniel Greenfield

This was not just voter fraud out of Philly. It’s a coup by the oligarchy

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

The plan was simple.

Saturate the media with polls showing a blue wave and an inevitable victory. Discourage people from voting in person. And then, after tabulating the paltry votes of those who defied the media to vote in person, dump all the tampered, altered, and harvested ballots for Biden in key cities.

Even before Election Day, the Democrats knew their plan was going awry. Suddenly, instead of urging their base to use mail-in ballots they were, just as loudly, telling them to vote in person.

Why? Too few Republicans were voting by mail and too many were going to vote in person.

If the Election Day numbers tilted too decisively to President Trump before suddenly going Biden’s way, the election would look rigged, and there would be an outcry from Republicans.

Despite last minute efforts urging Democrats to vote in person, that’s exactly what happened.

Once again, Democrats had overreached, committed a massive crime, and have been left with no choice except to ride the tiger. That’s what happened last time when the Obama administration allied with the Clinton campaign to eavesdrop on its political opponents. And then doubled down with investigations and indictments, not of the perpetrators, but the victims.

Despite the blatant irregularities in key battleground states, they’re doubling down again.

The American Coup is underway. In classic Leninist fashion, its initial goal is to control the propaganda and the process. The media has declared Biden to be the winner while mass celebratory gatherings cheer the new order. Big Tech censors any skepticism about the election.

And the same faction that declared four years ago that casting doubt on an election was patriotic and the best defense of democracy now claims exactly it’s treason.

The only Democrat rule is that it’s patriotic when they do it and treason when their opponents do. That’s not how ‘democrats think. It’s how dictators rule.

All of this is a sideshow. What really matters is the process, not the propaganda. The propaganda is meant to divert attention from how implausible the media’s numbers are.

Republican turnout rose, instead of falling, in in-person voting, and the GOP also went into Election Day with clear leads in mail-in ballots in key battleground states, including Wisconsin and Michigan. The tide of Biden ballots that arrived during the night resulted in implausible turnout figures. The photos, videos, and whistleblower accounts of poll and postal workers tampering with ballots didn’t take long to show up. And just as quickly to be censored.

The odd numbers mostly came out of urban areas run by notoriously corrupt political machines. And the race between those trying to steal and unsteal the election began with a power struggle. In Philly and Detroit, efforts were made to keep Republican observers out of view.

In Philly, it took a court order to even get the observers within sight of the ballots, while the city continued to fight the ruling. In Detroit, windows were covered up with cardboard, and Republican observers were locked out. Potentially tens of thousands of ballots were illegally transposed with no Republican observers. In Pennsylvania, Democrat operatives had been illegally given access to rejected mail-in ballots so that they could arrange for provisionals. And back in Detroit, workers were told to backdate ballots that had arrived after the election.

In Wisconsin, thousands of witness statements may have been illegally altered.

Meanwhile the glitches, errors, and irregularities began piling up.

In Antrim County, Michigan, a “glitch” turned over a county that President Trump had won to Joe Biden. The glitch was only noticed because the results didn’t match past trends. More than half of the state’s counties use the same software.

“Just last night in Oakland County, we found 2,000 ballots that had been given to Democrats, that were Republican ballots, due to a clerical error,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel announced at a press conference.

Oakland had been one of three counties that were crucial to the state being called for Biden.

And then there were the voting dead who went on voting and being registered after death. That allegedly included a woman who voted a week after she died.

The voting dead are not a new problem in Philly. If the dead didn’t vote, few elections would go on as usual. And yet the same media that spent four years falsely claiming that Russians had somehow rigged the previous election with a few thousand dollars in Facebook ads, have declared that accusing the incorruptible City of Brotherly Love of corruption is an outrage.

It’s no coincidence that the areas at the center of the vote fraud controversy, Philly, Detroit, and Atlanta, are also some of the most corrupt cities in the country with plenty of jailed officials. We hope you read the rest here on the Frontpagemag website and that you subscribe to their feed. It’s far undervalued at no-cost.

dak

 

FAST FACT: Almost 1.15 million aliens in the United States are seeking asylum — enough to make them the 43rd largest state

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Image: USCIS

Astounding Asylum Numbers in DOS Refugee Report for FY 2021

Center for Immigration Studies

October 28, 2020

Art Arthur

The Department of State (DOS) — with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — transmitted their Report to Congress on Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2021 on September 30. My colleague Nayla Rush broke down that report, and the changes that the Biden-Harris ticket has proposed to the number of entries, in an October 6 post, but three statistics stick out therein: the number of aliens seeking asylum from DHS, the number seeking asylum as relief from removal from the immigration courts, and the credible fear grant rate in FY 2020.

Aliens who are present in the United States may seek what is called “affirmative asylum” from asylum officers (AOs) in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency in DHS. AOs may grant or deny those aliens asylum.

If an AO opts not to grant the alien asylum, and the alien is removable (as most are), the AO can refer the alien to immigration court (part of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) within the Department of Justice (DOJ)), for the alien to renew that application as a defensive application (relief from removal) in removal proceedings.

In addition to adjudicating those affirmative asylum applications, AOs also consider “credible fear” claims for aliens in expedited removal proceedings under section 235(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Those AOs can find that the alien has credible fear (in which case the alien is referred to immigration court to file an asylum application before an immigration judge (IJ) in removal proceedings), or determine that the alien does not have credible fear (in which case the alien can ask an IJ to review the AO’s decision).

There were an average of 500 to 550 AOs at USCIS in recent years (USCIS is authorized for 745 AOs), but last year USCIS announced that it planned to hire 500 new employees in the asylum branch of the agency (half of whom would be AOs; the rest staff), and, as of October 2019, they were on track to meet that goal. In a February 2020 report, however, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was critical of USCIS’s efforts to train those AOs to perform credible fear screenings.

The number of such credible fear referrals skyrocketed in FY 2019, as almost one million aliens entered the United States illegally along the Southwest border or sought entry without proper documents at the ports of entry along that border. As GAO noted: “The number of referrals for credible fear screenings in the first two quarters of fiscal year 2019 alone was larger than the total number of referrals in each of fiscal years 2014 and 2015.”

In fact, AOs completed 5,523 credible fear cases in FY 2009, but in FY 2019, it completed 102,204 (out of 105,439 cases received) — a more than 1,750 percent increase. To help out, DHS assigned refugee officers, former AOs, and (in a controversial move), Border Patrol agents to handle interviews. A federal judge blocked that last effort in August.

All of which brings me back to the DOS report. As of August 31, according to the department, there were 598,692 asylum claims (in addition to credible fear claims) pending with USCIS. Assuming that there were the authorized 745 AOs on that date (the actual number — a moving target — is hard to find), that means that each AO is assigned almost 804 cases to adjudicate — not counting new cases that will be added.

In my experience, AOs generally take two hours to conduct interviews and complete about two per day, but USCIS’s statistics show a much lower completion rate. In September 2019, according to USCIS, AOs conducted 2,799 interviews and completed 6,286 cases. Assuming that there were 500 AOs at the time (likely on the low side), that means they each held 5.6 interviews each that month and completed 12.6 cases per capita — much fewer than one a day.

On top of the AOs’ asylum workload, according to DOS, there were 549,724 asylum claims (as of June 30) pending with the nation’s 520 IJs (the latter as of October — 20 new IJs were on-boarded on October 9, meaning that the number in June was actually closer to 500).

Again, that means that each IJ is assigned 1,057 asylum cases. As a former IJ, I generally completed one to two asylum cases per day, and at best IJs can hear approximately four (assuming that the alien shows up and is ready to go at the merits hearing date, which does not always happen). Consequently, as the Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse (TRAC) reported, in 2019 asylum applicants in immigration court on average waited almost three years for their cases to be decided, time that they will spend in the United States — and a timeframe that does not count appeals.

And, again, the DOS report does not count any new asylum cases that have been filed in the interim in immigration court.

Combined, however, these statistics show that there were 1,148,416 pending asylum cases in the United States — at a minimum. If those applicants were a state, they would be the 43rd largest in the United States, ahead of Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware, the Dakotas, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming.

Plus, as the foregoing shows, an asylum applicant denied by USCIS can renew his or her claim with the immigration court. In September 2019, for example, AOs approved 34 percent of the asylum claims they adjudicated (1,501), and referred (for one reason or another) 66 percent (2,901). Those cases — assuming that the aliens actually appear in immigration court — will end up on the IJs’ dockets.

This is a hole that the AOs and IJs will not be able to dig themselves out of without a massive increase in resources.

The Trump administration has, in fact, increased the total number of IJs by 70 percent and, as noted, has at least tried to increase the number of AOs by 50 percent. Joe Biden vows to double the number of IJs (as well as the number of EOIR staff and interpreters), but that hiring will take time and a significant increase in resources — resources Congress, which is stingy when it comes to immigration, may not fund. Much more here.

 

ICE Is To Fast-Track Deportations Across The Country

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Image: Dustin Inman Society

The new policy will give agents the ability to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants without a hearing in front of a judge

BuzzFeedNews

October 7, 202

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have started to implement a policy that allows officers to arrest and rapidly deport undocumented immigrants who have been in the US for less than two years, according to internal emails and documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The Trump administration’s effort — to expand quick deportations to undocumented immigrants across the US who cannot prove they have been in the country continuously for two years before they are picked up — was blocked by a federal court judge soon after the policy was first announced in 2019. But in June, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit lifted the preliminary injunction, opening the door for ICE officers to use expedited removal across the country, a policy that will allow the agency to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants without a hearing in front of an immigration judge.

The previous policy only allowed officials to use expedited removal within 100 miles of the border and for those who have been in the country for up to two weeks.

Currently, officers typically arrest immigrants and place them into deportation proceedings. These include a hearing before an immigration judge — a process that can take years. In practical terms, the expanded policy gives ICE officers more power to determine who can be quickly deported, although it’s unclear exactly how fast the process will be.

The shift could allow the Trump administration to increase deportations while circumventing a court system that is severely backed up and short on resources, but advocates for immigrants have said it would destroy their due process rights…

More here.

 

Presidential election: Whatever Happened to Immigration?

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Photo: Reuters

Column: The issue driving the populist revolt has disappeared in 2020

Washington Free Beacon

Mathew Contineti – October 9, 2020

It is a sign of the times that immigration has not been mentioned in three hours of debate between the presidential tickets. A review of the transcripts of both the presidential and vice-presidential encounters finds no questions asked nor answers proffered about an issue that until only recently defined much of our politics and distinguished our two parties. Needless to say, both moderators wanted to know where the candidates stand on climate change, which routinely drifts toward the bottom of any list of public priorities.

Why the omission? It is tempting to say that immigration did not come up because the elites who manage the presidential debates are uncomfortable with the topic, are worried that the issue favors Republican border hawks, and are more interested in subjects relevant to their cultural coterie. But it is also true that presidential debates tend to focus on current events and pressing challenges, and that immigration just does not seem as great a concern today as the coronavirus, the economy, race relations and civil unrest, and California brushfires.

The apparent irrelevance of immigration and border security to the election might also be attributed to the achievements of the Trump administration. But these achievements are partial, tenuous, and dependent on events and relationships and court decisions. And they are easily reversed. What should worry the president is that the somnolence on the border deprives him of the very issue that propelled his rise to power, and that drove the populist revolt against the Washington establishment whose offshoots included the Ron Paul candidacies, the Tea Party, and Republican victories in 2014 and 2016. Immigration is next only to the economy and to the courts as a place where the president can contrast his record and agenda with Biden’s and appeal to national solidarity and historical tradition. His parlous electoral status may be related to the fact that immigration is not much of a factor in this most unusual campaign.

There is no gainsaying immigration’s importance to the Trump presidency. It was immigration that triggered the grassroots rebellion against the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, and against congressional supporters of amnesty for illegal immigrants, culminating in Trump’s 2016 primary victory. Immigration became the touchstone of Trump’s campaign on day one and served as the cudgel by which he defeated Jeb Bush and other Republicans for whom the Bush-Obama approach to legalization was correct. The border wall was not only a rallying cry but also a symbol of how a Trump presidency would privilege American citizens above all else. And Trump fused immigration to economics, by opposing H-1B visas; to crime, by highlighting gang activity; and to national security, by enacting his travel ban against countries that sponsor terrorism.

Read the rest here.

 

USCIS: Long standing basic principle of U.S. immigration law: Alien must be self-sufficient when admitted to United States

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Photo: Community Service Society.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services

Public Charge Provisions of Immigration Law: A Brief Historical Background

Historical Origins of the Likely to Become a Public Charge (LPC) Exclusion

Note: Related

Strong sentiments opposing the immigration of “paupers” developed in the United States well before the advent of federal immigration controls. During the colonial period, several colonies enacted protective measures to prohibit the immigration of individuals who might become public charges.[1] In the nineteenth century, before the existence of a federal agency responsible for overseeing immigration policies, eastern seaboard states such as New York and Massachusetts enacted state laws that restricted the immigration of aliens deemed likely to become dependent on public institutions such as poor houses. These states also charged steamship companies a “head tax” for each foreign passenger they landed in order to defray the cost of caring for, and sometimes removing, indigent immigrants who ended-up in state-funded facilities.[2]

Steamship companies, merchants, and others who favored open immigration challenged state head-taxes as impediments to free commerce. In response, state charity boards argued for the necessity of the head-tax in funding the care of foreign-born paupers and favored stronger protective laws to prevent additional influxes of destitute immigrants who could not support themselves.[3] The legal dispute over the state head-taxes reached a turning-point in 1875, when a lawsuit challenging the practice brought by a shipping company against the Mayor of New York reached the Supreme Court.[4] The Court decided that the state-imposed head-taxes interfered with Congress’s authority to regulate commerce and struck them down. Fearing the loss of funds needed to administer immigration policies and care for poor immigrants, eastern states began to lobby Congress for a federal immigration head-tax to replace the defunct state taxes.

The eastern states’ concerns about poor immigrants and the cost of caring for them found expression in the first general federal immigration statute of 1882.[5] The 1882 law excluded “any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.”[6] The 1882 Immigration Act also created a federal immigration head-tax, which was used to defray the cost of regulating immigration and to care for immigrants who arrived in the U.S., including those who fell into economic distress. However, the law did not create a federal immigration agency; instead it authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to enter into contracts with state immigration commissions to administer federal policies. Thus, in many ways, the 1882 federal law depended on state immigration commissions, who enforced the public charge exclusion policy and used money from the federal immigration head-tax fund to pay state and local charities that cared for immigrants.

While the 1882 federal law did not provide any definition of a “public charge” or any guidelines for determining who was likely to become one, state Immigration Commission reports suggest that officials took numerous factors into account, including an immigrant’s willingness to work, when making decisions in LPC cases. For example, in 1884 the Pennsylvania Board of Commissioners of Public Charities reported that a large number of Hungarians who were “poor, pecuniarily” were permitted to land because they were “strong, hearty people, and quite willing to work…”[7] In other cases the state boards landed questionable immigrants upon receiving guarantees from charitable organizations and/or bonds from the steamship companies that would be paid if the immigrants became public charges.

The general Immigration Act of 1891 completed the federalization of immigration regulation by creating the office of the Superintendent of Immigration and a federal Immigration Service to inspect all arriving aliens.[8] The 1891 law also retained the head-tax provision and the exclusion of “paupers or persons likely to become a public charge.”[9] In the Act of March 3, 1903 Congress added “professional beggars” as a class of exclusion.[10] A 1907 law then added additional language that excluded potential immigrants with a “mental or physical defect being of a nature which may affect the ability of such an alien to earn a living.”[11]  The Immigration Act of 1917 added “vagrants” to the LPC provision and this version of it remained substantially unchanged when it was incorporated into the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act.[12] The INA left the LPC policy substantively the same, but added language explicitly emphasizing the discretionary authority of administrative officers in the Department of State and the Immigration Service to determine the definition of “LPC.”[13] In sum, a version of the LPC provision has been part of federal immigration policy from its foundations and it consistently remained one of the most common grounds for immigrant inadmissibility.[14]

Brief History of Laws Providing for the Removal of Aliens Who Have Become Public Charges

In addition to providing for the exclusion of likely public charges, U.S. immigration law has long provided for the removal of immigrants who become dependent on public aid. The Immigration Act of 1891 established the federal government’s authority to remove aliens who entered unlawfully, a category that included immigrants who could be shown to have entered when they were LPC.[15] The 1891 Act also provided a deportability period of one year after arrival for immigrants who actually became public charges as the result of a condition that existed prior to their arrival. Congress extended this deportability period to two years in 1903 and three years in 1907[16]. The immigration Act of 1917 altered this provision, stipulating that aliens who became public charges “from causes not affirmatively shown to have arisen subsequent to landing” within five years of arrival were subject to deportation.[17] Additionally, the 1917 law removed the time limit on deportation: if an immigrant was shown to have become a public charge within five years of arrival they could be deported at any time, no matter how long they had resided in the U.S. The 1952 INA retained the provision that aliens who became public charges within five years of their arrival due to causes not affirmatively shown to have arisen since their entry could be deported at any time, and this has remained in the law since.

The Immigration Act of 1917 also provided for the removal at public expense of aliens who “fall into distress or need public aid from causes arising subsequent to their entry and are desirous of being so removed.”[18] Though not formal deportation, this law provided a means for the federal government to remove indigent aliens who desired to return to their home countries. During the Great Depression many aliens departed the United States under this voluntary provision.

There is much more here.

 

Jessica Vaughan: ICE Summer Surge Operation Takes 2,000 Criminal Aliens Off the Streets

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Photo: CIS.org

“Let’s hope that the next at-large criminal alien operation also includes arrests of drug dealers, drunk drivers, fraudsters, burglars, car thieves, illegal aliens in possession of dangerous weapons, illegal aliens who live or work with criminal aliens, unlucky non-criminal illegal aliens — and employers of illegal aliens.”

By Jessica Vaughn, Center for Immigration Studies

Jessica Vaughn. Photo: Twitter

 

ICE announced this week the results of a summer surge operation to arrest criminal aliens who were at large in communities around the country. ICE officers arrested more than 2,000 aliens with convictions or pending charges for “crimes involving victims”. Such operations are routine for ICE, but it is also routinely startling to see the litany of victimizations that occurred, and routinely infuriating that sanctuary jurisdictions continue to protect these offenders, making it necessary for ICE to take to the streets to arrest them, hopefully before there are new victims.

Interested readers can see the (scant) information on the operation here. ICE provides a breakdown of the crimes, but not of the cities or states of the arrests. The targets included a variety of types of cases, including criminal aliens released by sanctuaries, suspects wanted in their home countries, and aliens who skipped out on their proceedings. Some likely will be removed promptly, others will be detained for immigration court proceedings, and others might be released pending proceedings.

Reportedly, the operation initially was conceived to focus on domestic violence offenders in response to concerns in many communities of rising incidents of domestic violence due to the pandemic lockdowns. More than 500 of those arrested in this surge had convictions or charges for domestic violence, which was the second most common offense of those arrested, after assault.

The quarterly reports of ICE’s VOICE office, which provides services to victims of criminal aliens, are a reminder of the importance of this mission. In the first quarter of 2019 (the most recent available), the VOICE office fielded more than 250 calls for help and referred more than 230 callers to ICE field offices to receive services in their communities. For example:

A parent and their minor child, victims of domestic violence by an alien, requested case information and wanted to provide a victim impact statement. The parent feared for their family’s lives because the alien continued to evade a no-contact order while in state custody awaiting criminal proceedings. The VOICE Office referred the victims for victim assistance services and facilitated their request to provide a victim impact statement. The VOICE Office informed the victim the alien was ordered removed by an immigration judge and subsequently deported from the United States.

In another:

A victim of domestic violence by an alien requested case information. The VOICE Office informed the victim that the alien was in ICE custody and helped the victim register for DHS-VINE [VINE is ICE’s automated victim notification service that enables victims to receive updates on the custody status of the offender]. The alien was eventually ordered removed by an immigration judge and deported from the United States. However, following the alien’s removal, the alien attempted to re-enter the United States, but was convicted of illegal re-entry and once again deported from the United States.

In another:

A first responder, who was a victim of assault by an alien, requested case information after receiving a state program notice of the alien’s release from state custody, where they were serving time for an assault conviction. The victim feared for their safety because the alien had made several death threats to them. The VOICE Office confirmed that an ICE detainer was placed on the alien that resulted in their transfer into ICE custody. The alien was removed from the United States.

ICE provided individual examples of criminal aliens arrested in the operation to news organizations. In the Washington, D.C., area, the targets included Edwin Nahun Mendoza-Santos, a 38-year-old Honduran man arrested in Alexandria, Va., who was wanted by Stafford County on a warrant for sexual battery of a child under 13; and Manuel De Jesus Rodriguez-Esperanza, 27, who was arrested in Hyattsville, Md., and wanted in his home country of El Salvador for aggravated homicide charges. The latter was ordered deported in 2016, and apparently is one of the approximately one million aliens living in the country ordered removed, but remaining here in defiance of those orders.

Fourteen aliens convicted of homicide were arrested in the operation, and 12 with homicide charges. I requested information on the locations where these aliens were arrested, but have not yet received a response.

This operation was a welcome reminder of the public safety value of immigration enforcement, and that there is a real human cost when ICE is not able to do its job, either because of lack of resources or lack of cooperation from sanctuary jurisdictions. But while it must be tempting to ICE leaders to focus only on the most obvious human interest cases, the front office must be careful not to foster the notion that “criminals with victims” are the only illegal aliens worthy of ICE attention. Read the rest here.

RNC Officially Repudiates Discredited Southern Poverty Law Center (finally)

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Photo: SPLC email alert, March 10, 2020.

 

The Republican National Committee (RNC) approved a resolution repudiating the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the purported “anti-hate” organization that has become a vehicle for smearing conservatives and critics of radical leftism.

The resolution commits the RNC to officially “Refuting the legitimacy of the Southern Poverty Law Center to identify hate groups.”

The RNC resolution notes that the SPLC’s smears “puts conservative groups or voices at risk of attack.”

Conservatives and critics of progressivism that have been smeared by the SPLC include the Family Research Council (which is currently part of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom), the Alliance Defending Freedom, White House speechwriter Stephen Miller, One America News reporter Jack Posobiec, moderate Muslim Maajid Nawaz, and Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Nawaz successfully sued the SPLC for falsely labeling him an “anti-Muslim extremist” in 2018, winning a $3.3 million settlement from the organization.

In 2012, far-left radical Floyd Corkins used the SPLC’s “hate map” to locate the offices of the Family Research Council.

He proceeded to the FRC’s offices with a loaded pistol, and opened fire on the office’s security staff before being stopped by an armed guard.

He later told authorities that he planned to kill “as many people as he could” at the FRC, and explained that his crime was politically motivated — he had seen the FRC on the SPLC’s list of “anti-gay” organizations.

Court records submitted by the FBI confirmed that Corkins, a former far-left activist, had indeed checked the SPLC website prior to his attack:

Corkins left and returned the next day, Friday, August 10th, to pick up the pistol. The selection and surveillance of the FRC and other targets. Consistent with his statement to the FBI, a subsequent search of Corkins’s family computer revealed that on the afternoon of Sunday, August 12th, Corkins used the computer to visit the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Website, as well as the Websites for the FRC and the second organization on his handwritten list.

Despite the fact that the SPLC has lost defamation lawsuits and has served as an inspiration for acts of domestic terror, major corporations continue to rely on it to identify “hate groups” and “hate speech.” In 2018, the Daily Caller revealed that Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter all work with the discredited far-left organization.

The full text of the RNC’s resolution can be found here, and is copied below:   Read the rest here.