DHS, DoJ Slam Judge’s Order to Let Illegal Migrants Apply for Asylum
Nov. 20, 2018
Neil Munro
The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are promising to appeal President Donald Trump’s asylum reform after a San Francisco judge intervened to help illegal economic migrants get catch and release into the nation’s job market.
“Our asylum system is broken, and it is being abused by tens of thousands of meritless claims every year,” said the joint statement by DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman and DOJ spokesman Steven Stafford:
As the Supreme Court affirmed this summer, Congress has given the President broad authority to limit or even stop the entry of aliens into this country. Further, asylum is a discretionary benefit given by the Executive Branch only when legal conditions are met and a favorable exercise of discretion is warranted. It is lawful and appropriate that this discretionary benefit not be given to those who violate a lawful and tailored presidential proclamation aimed at controlling immigration in the national interest.
And it is absurd that a set of advocacy groups can be found to have standing to sue to stop the entire federal government from acting so that illegal aliens can receive a government benefit to which they are not entitled. We look forward to continuing to defend the Executive Branch’s legitimate and well-reasoned exercise of its authority to address the crisis at our southern border.
The appeal will likely be decided at the Supreme Court.
District Judge Jon Tigar, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, argues that the president’s authority over the border is insufficient to limit migrants’ right to be allowed into the United States to ask for asylum — even when the migrants are simply seeking jobs and illegally cross the border carrying children to trigger catch-and-release laws.
According to USA Today:
The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act states that any foreigner who arrives in the USA, “whether or not at a designated port of arrival,” may apply for asylum. But on Nov. 9, Trump tried to overrule that law, signing a presidential proclamation ending the ability of migrants to request asylum if they enter the country illegally.
“The rule barring asylum for immigrants who enter the country outside a port of entry irreconcilably conflicts with the INA and the expressed intent of Congress,” wrote Tigar, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama. “Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden.”
Tigar declared that the agencies cannot implement Trump’s border reforms until at least Dec. 19, when he is expected to deliver his final decision.
In response, the DoJ and DHS officials noted that the same 1965 act gives the president broad authority to exclude people from the United States:
Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act states plainly: “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”
Section 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act similarly states: “Unless otherwise ordered by the President, it shall be unlawful . . . for any alien to depart from or enter or attempt to depart from or enter the United States except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may prescribe.”
Trump’s November 9 reform allows all migrants who arrive at the ports of entry to apply for full asylum. But the policy penalizes illegal migrants by preventing them from applying for a full asylum once they are caught sneaking over the border.
Trump’s plan allows illegal migrants to apply for a limited asylum, dubbed “withholding of removal.” Officials say the reform follows the law by providing asylum-like protections to illegal migrants, but it does not allow the migrants to become citizens It also helps border officials quickly deport the migrants.
The ACLU and its allies argue that all migrants who enter U.S. territory must be allowed to make a request for a full asylum — even if the U.S. territory is on the Mexican side of the border wall or is in the U.S. half of the Rio Grande.
This ACLU’s one-foot-asylum policy would help large groups of economic migrants — such as the progressive-backed caravan of several thousand Hondurans — legally overwhelm U.S. border defenses. For example, on November 12 and 13, coyotes delivered 654 migrants, most of whom are parents with children, or youths traveling alone, to the U.S. side of the border near Yuma Arizona, according to a DHS statement. Once on U.S. territory, the illegal migrants ask for asylum — and often get catch-and-release if the local border officials do not have enough detention space.
Overall, Trump’s asylum reform curbs the caravan by pressuring the migrants to wait in line at the official “ports of entry,” rather than by just walking over the invisible borderline in the sand or the river to claim amnesty.
At the same time, officials are also limiting the number of migrants who can apply for asylum each day at the official ports of entry.
The waiting process, dubbed “metering,” allows officials to begin processing roughly 100 migrants per day. The complex legal process takes at least 40 days to accomplish, so an intake of 100 people per day adds up to roughly 4,000 people in detention from one entry point.
The metering process allows officials to keep a manageable number of people in the process, and to perhaps sharply reduce the number of migrants who are being released into the United States via the catch-and-release loopholes.
Ending catch-and-release is vital because it would stop migrants from getting the U.S. jobs which fund the migration process. Without access to jobs, migrants cannot pay their smuggling debts to the cartels, and cannot hire the cartels to bring their spouses and children up to the United States. If the migrants cannot pay their smuggling debts, the cartels’ labor-trafficking business will shrink.
The catch-and-release rules are enforced by a 2015 decision by an Obama-appointed judge who declared that migrants with children must be released from detention after 20 days — or three weeks before border officials can complete the deportation process.
The ACLU and its allies filed the lawsuit against Trump’s asylum reforms. They are also asking a different judge to stop the metering process.
The establishment’s economic policy of using migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees.
The policy also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least five million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.
Immigration also pulls investment and wealth away from heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations living in the coastal states
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/20...ly-for-asylum/
