Immigration in the US

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security had planned nationwide raids to target 8,400 undocumented immigrants later this month, according to three law enforcement officials and an internal document that described the plan as “the largest operation of its kind in the history of ICE,” an acronym for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But after NBC News reported the plans late Thursday, the agency issued a statement saying it had cancelled nationwide enforcement actions due to Hurricane Irma and the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey.

“While we generally do not comment on future potential law enforcement actions, operational plans are subject to change based on a variety of factors,” ICE spokesman Sarah Rodriguez said in a statement. “Due to the current weather situation in Florida and other potentially impacted areas, along with the ongoing recovery in Texas, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had already reviewed all upcoming operations and has adjusted accordingly. There is currently no coordinated nationwide operation planned at this time. The priority in the affected areas should remain focused on life-saving and life-sustaining activities.”

A Phoenix New Times review of court records found that between February and August, ICE agents made at least 20 arrests at Motel 6s, showing up roughly every two weeks. (Since many of the documents we reviewed contained only vague details about where ICE encountered an individual, the actual number is likely even higher.)

All took place at one of two Motel 6 locations: 4130 North Black Canyon Highway or 1530 North 52nd Drive. Both are in predominantly Latino neighborhoods. New Times was unable to find records indicating that ICE conducted arrests at other local motels during this same time period.
[…]
Naturally, rumors run rampant. Denise Aguilar, a Chandler-based immigration attorney, said that one of her clients is currently being held in ICE custody alongside several others who were detained at the same Motel 6.

“They have heard (no telling how valid the info is) that ICE is paying $200 per person for the front-desk clerk to report,” she wrote in an email.

Both locations are corporate-owned, dispelling one of the other popular theories: That a local franchise owner is collecting a week’s rent in advance, then calling ICE so that they can rent out the room to someone else.

Story forthcoming.

https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/908146833180020737
https://twitter.com/AP_Politics/status/908146175211134976
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/schumer-pelosi-announce-deal-with-trump-to-protect-young-immigrants-will-include-border-security-but-no-wall/2017/09/13/514c7b5c-98ef-11e7-af6a-6555caaeb8dc_story.html

WASHINGTON — Schumer, Pelosi announce deal with Trump to protect young immigrants; will include border security, but no wall.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Mind you, Pelosi and Schumer probably can’t do squat to pass this legislation, because Ryan and McConnell can probably kill any bill they might propose. Donnie may think he’s outflanked the GOP on this, but he’s gonna end up going to the exact same two people with his hat in his hand to actually make it happen. (Either that, or he’ll have to proactively organize a revolt to replace them.)

Of course Donnie is too dumb to realize this. He’s gonna be mystified when it doesn’t just magically happen. He had dinner! They agreed! What more could there possibly be to it?

He’s lost Steve King.

https://twitter.com/SteveKingIA/status/908160999756312576

I’m going to really enjoy watching the remaining Trump supporters defend this. I mean this is a triple back flip, with 720 degrees of twist.

More on that Motel 6 story. It’s even worse than I thought.

At least 20 people have been arrested by US Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at two Phoenix area Motel 6s, the Phoenix New Times reported Wednesday. According to motel guests and employees, workers would call ICE to report checked-in customers who were believed to be undocumented immigrants.

“We send a report every morning to ICE — all the names of everybody that comes in,” one front-desk clerk told the Phoenix New Times. “Every morning at about 5 o’clock, we do the audit and we push a button and it sends it to ICE.”

Motel 6 spokesperson Raiza Rehkoff told Business Insider that the practice “was implemented at the local level without the knowledge of senior management.”

“When we became aware of it last week, it was discontinued,” Rehkoff said in an email.

The backlash against Motel 6 was swift after the Phoenix New Times’ story was released.

So ICE buttons are a thing. (Probably an email/webform “Send” button.)


One problem though is that the work is truly migratory. Farm workers are hired on a seasonal need to work basis, and when that work is gone so is their employment. So many farmworkers move from place to place, following the available work. This is also a problem for school districts and trying to educate the kids of farmworkers in that they are often on the go as well.

That’s true but it would be true if the workers were native born or immigrants. Again, if the wages were sufficient, that could offset the costs of relocation. IMO it all comes down to wages.

Don’t worry, they totally WON’T do it anymore …promise!!

A federal judge in Chicago issued a nationwide order on Friday that temporarily blocks the US Department of Justice from requiring cities to comply with new federal grant requirements aimed at so-called sanctuary cities.

US District Judge Harry Leinenweber found that Chicago was likely to succeed in arguing that Attorney General Jeff Sessions exceeded his authority in imposing rules that require cities applying for a law enforcement grant program to notify federal agents about suspected undocumented immigrants before releasing them and to give agents access to detention facilities.

Leinenweber ruled that Chicago would suffer immediate harm absent a preliminary injunction from the court as the litigation moved forward. He made his order nationwide because he said there was no reason to think that the legal issues in the case were restricted to Chicago or that the attorney general’s authority would differ elsewhere.

“The harm to the City’s relationship with the immigrant community if it should accede to the conditions is irreparable. Once such trust is lost, it cannot be repaired through an award of money damages,” Leinenweber wrote. He said that the harm to the city outweighed any harm to the Justice Department in delaying conditions that hadn’t taken effect yet.

Representatives of the Justice Department and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel were not immediately available for comment.

Edit: Full text of decision (PDF)

The Border Patrol followed the ambulance, the night of May 24, as it raced to Corpus through desolate ranchland, carrying Oscar, Irma and tiny Isaac — with an IV in his arm and a tube in his stomach. Once they arrived at Driscoll Children’s Hospital, the green-uniformed agents never left the undocumented couple’s side. Officers followed the father to the bathroom and the cafeteria and asked the mother to leave the door open when she breast-fed Isaac.

“Everywhere we went in the hospital,” Oscar says, “they followed us.”

Customs and Border Protection says it is required to monitor subjects in custody “at all times” and tried to do so at the hospital “in the least restrictive manner possible.”

The next morning, agents took Oscar and Irma Sanchez, separately, from the hospital to the Corpus Christi Border Patrol station to be fingerprinted and booked. They were permitted to return. Oscar asked the surgeon if she could delay the operation until both parents could be in the waiting room. She agreed.

Get guns brown people.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-allow-refugees-from-all-countries-but-with-new-rules-1508837580

I suppose “extreme vetting” is the best we can hope for. At least it’s not a total refugee ban any more.

This is the 10-year-old girl whose ambulance the ICE agents followed as she rode to the hospital for emergency surgery.

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/358732-immigration-agents-release-10-year-old-girl-with-cerebral-palsy-after-aclu

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced Friday evening that the federal government released Rosa Maria Hernandez after the group filed a lawsuit seeking her release.

“Rosa Maria is finally free. We’re thrilled that she can go home to heal surrounded by her family’s love and support,” Michael Tan, an attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “Despite our relief, Border Patrol’s decision to target a young girl at a children’s hospital remains unconscionable. No child should go through this trauma and we are working to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/central-americans-and-haitians-no-longer-need-protected-status-state-dept-says/2017/11/03/647cbd5c-c0ba-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html

More than 300,000 Central Americans and Haitians living in the United States under a form of temporary permission no longer need to be shielded from deportation, the State Department told Homeland Security officials this week, a few days ahead of a highly anticipated DHS announcement about whether to renew that protection.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a letter to acting DHS secretary Elaine Duke to inform her that conditions in Central America and Haiti that had been used to justify the protection no longer necessitate a reprieve for the migrants, some of whom have been allowed to live and work in the United States for 20 years under a program known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Tillerson’s assessment, required by law, has not been made public, but its recommendations were confirmed by several administration officials familiar with its contents. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

A federal judge has blocked the federal government’s attempt to withhold law-enforcement money from Philadelphia over its so-called “sanctuary city” status.

U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson issued a massive 128-page ruling Wednesday, writing that after applying the appropriate legal standards, which include probability of success on the merits and the public interest, “the court will issue a preliminary injunction in favor of the city.”

“This is a very, very significant day for the city of Philadelphia,” said city solicitor Sozi Pedro Tulante at an afternoon news conference. Still, Mayor Kenney said: “This is not a time for jubilation. I’m very grateful to the court, but I’m angry we have to fight our own federal government when we have problems we could be addressing together that [the Trump administration] refuses to address because it doesn’t play to their base.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) kept 92 Somali immigrants chained on an airplane for 46 hours in “slave ship” conditions during a botched attempt to deport them back to Somalia earlier this month, detainees and advocates say.

The plane carrying the Somalis—chartered by the ICE Air Operations division—made a pit stop in Dakar, Senegal, 10 hours after taking off from Louisiana on December 7. But the plane never made it to Mogadishu. Instead, after parking the plane on the tarmac for nearly a day, ICE turned it around and made the 4,600-mile flight back to the United States on December 9.
[…]
“We were treated like slaves,” Rahim Mohamed, 32, told Newsweek. A diabetic truck driver and father of two, he has lived in the U.S. since 2002.

“We were shackled for nearly two days,” he continued. “We weren’t allowed to use the bathroom or get out of the plane. I was not given the medication I need. I peed into a bottle, and then I peed on myself. It was a horrible thing, man. I thought my life was pretty much over."

For Rebecca Sharpless, an immigration law professor at the University of Miami who has been following the situation, it was a gross violation of basic decency.

“If you shackle someone to a chair for almost 46 hours with very little food and very little water with no access to a bathroom, it’s a violation of their human rights. It’s reminiscent of a slave ship experience,” she said.

In an emailed statement, ICE denied the complaints were valid.