Thread: Judge halts government’s "No Bond" immigration detention policy

Judge halts government’s immigration detention policy

BY JASON BUCH : FEBRUARY 20, 2015 : Updated: February 20, 2015 4:00pm

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  The highly controversial executive order issued by President Obama caused a backlash from many in the GOP.See how the order, which has been blocked by a judge, would impact the nation if it's eventually enforced.
  

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued an order Friday that halts the Obama administration’s policy of holding women and children from Central America without bonds.

The lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the national law firm Covington and Burling on behalf of detainees held in Karnes County, challenged whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could have a blanket policy of detaining women and children from Central America without bond.

The government began the detention policy, citing national security threats, after tens of thousands of women and children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras flooded across the border in South Texas last spring and summer.

The preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg orders the government to stop detaining “for the purpose of deterring future immigration to the United States” women and children from Central America who are seeking asylum in the U.S.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/loc...on-6092341.php

http://www.alipac.us/f12/white-house...-moves-317664/

Court temporarily halts U.S. policy of detaining asylum-seeking mothers, children

WASHINGTON Fri Feb 20, 2015 7:55pm EST

(Reuters) - A federal court on Friday temporarily halted the Obama administration policy of detaining mothers and children seeking asylum in the United States.

The American Civil Liberties Union had filed a lawsuit in December against the so-called no-release policy by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on behalf of mothers and children who said they had fled violence in Central America.

ICE, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, had implemented the policy during a spike in illegal entries into the United States from Central America during the summer.

The ACLU said that by holding mothers and children who had fled violence and persecution, the administration had sought to deter other asylum-seekers from coming to the United States.

Judy Rabinovitz, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said the ruling by the court in Washington, D.C., "made clear that the government cannot deprive individuals of their liberty merely to send a message to others."

"This ruling means that the government cannot continue to lock up families without an individualized determination that they pose a danger or flight risk that requires their detention," she said in a statement.

The court's ruling said the mothers had shown "credible fear" of persecution in their homelands, meaning they would likely be granted asylum in the United States. In the past, most immigrants who had entered the country illegally but met the "credible fear" criteria were not detained while their cases were being decided.

On Monday a federal judge in Brownsville, Texas, had temporarily blocked President Barack Obama's executive orders to shield millions of people who are in the United States illegally from deportation, backing 26 states that argued Obama had overstepped his legal authority.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0LP00J20150221

by Lana Shadwick
21 Feb 2015
1689 comments

A federal judge appointed by President Obama has blocked detainment of Central American women and children on the U.S.-Mexico border who allege they are seeking asylum. The judge enjoined the government “from detaining class members for the purpose of deterring future immigration to the United States and from considering deterrence of such immigration as a factor in such custody determinations.”

The judge issued his preliminary injunction order on Friday, ruling that “[t]he policy causes irreparable harm to mothers and children seeking asylum.” The judge, James E. Boasberg, serves on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

A lawsuit was filed in December 2014 by ten mothers from Central America. They crossed the border in the fall of 2014. The women did not have documentation and were detained by agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The plaintiffs, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, sued U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, and officials in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department. The detainees were allegedly kept for several weeks or months at facilities in Karnes City and Dilley, Texas, and Berks County, Pennsylvania.

The judge issued a 40-page opinion which included a finding that this detainment was inappropriate and was done “to send a message that such immigrants, coming en masse, are unwelcome.”

The jurist rejected the government’s claims that the detainment was necessary to national security. He also opined that government officials have “presented little empirical evidence, moreover, that their detention policy even achieves its only desired effect – i.e., that it actually deters potential immigrants from Central America.”

Judy Rabinovitz, Deputy Director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, issued a statement saying “The court held that it was illegal to detain families based on deterrence. It made clear that the government cannot deprive individuals of their liberty merely to send a message to others.” She continued, “[t]his ruling means that the government cannot continue to lock up families without an individualized determination that they pose a danger or flight risk that requires their detention.”

Breitbart News reported last June that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Johnson issued an op-ed warning in Spanish-language news outlets to the parents of children illegally crossing the border. He wrote: “To the parents of these children I have one simple message: Sending your child to travel illegally into the United States is not the solution.” He continued:

“Rather, under current U.S. laws and policies, anyone who is apprehended crossing our border illegally is a priority for deportation, regardless of age. That means that if your child is caught crossing the border illegally, he or she will be charged with violating United States immigration laws, and placed in deportation proceedings – a situation no one wants,” he wrote. “The document issued to your child is not a ‘permiso,’ but a Notice To Appear in a deportation proceeding before an immigration judge.”

The Judge who issued the injunction on Friday received media attention in April of 2012 for his controversial ruling blocking public viewing access of a deceased Osama Bin Laden. Judge Boasberg also serves on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. He was appointed to that position by Chief Justice John G. Roberts in 2014.

A status conference on the case is scheduled for March 6, 2015 at 10:00 a.m.

http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/...ral-americans/

At some point we will have to acknowledge that illegals are learning that they just have to mouth a few phrases, and they're home free: "temporary" visas, public assistance, whatever. Rather than holding them at all, we should simply announce that we're being overrun by phony asylum claims and deport them the moment that we catch them. If don't do this, we will be overrun even more than we are now.

Illegals and the wealthy in their home countries treat us with contempt, because in their eyes we are contemptible weaklings.
***************************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

9:55 AM 02/23/2015
Neil Munro

A federal judge has ordered the federal government to grant U.S. civil rights to illegals who are caught at the border, and to release all migrants except for those who may endanger Americans.

The migrants “may have legitimate claims to asylum … [and] their presence here may become permanent … [so] that they are entitled to the protection of the Due Process Clause, especially when it comes to deprivations of liberty,” said the judge, who was nominated by President Barack Obama.

Under current rules, border-crossers who are released are also allowed to compete against Americans for jobs, and to attend U.S. schools and to receive welfare, until their cases are decided by immigration judges.

But immigration courts are already so clogged with asylum-seekers that many cases aren’t decided for several years. The slow process gives migrants many opportunities to find other legal avenues to become citizens, and full access to U.S anti-poverty programs for themselves, their parents and their children.

Unless reversed, the decision opens a huge hole in U.S. border security, and likely will dramatically increase illegal immigration and competition for jobs, partly because immigration enforcement has already been greatly reduced by President Barack Obama.

The judge’s decision was released late Friday, but political pushback is growing.

“If liberal federal judges and the president are determined to trash the rule of law in this manner, we are on the verge of a full-blown constitutional crisis,” said Jonathan Tobin, an editor of Commentary magazine, which generally favors large-scale immigration.

“As much as there is reason to grant many illegals a path to legality if not citizenship, without first securing the border, such proposals ought to be off the table,” he wrote in a short article titled “Immigration and the End of the Rule of Law.”

The decision comes amid a partisan standoff over the 2015 budget for the Department of Homeland Security.

Obama and his political allies are insisting the agency be allowed to implement his November amnesty plan, even though a court ruled Feb. 16 that Obama’s plan violated federal law. Unless the Democrats stop their filibuster of the 2015 agency budget, they will force a partial shutdown of the agency by Feb. 28.

The Democrats’ amnesty is so lawless that the GOP should change the Senate’s filibuster rules to allow the GOP majority to defund Obama’s November amnesty, columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote Feb. 19.

The judge’s decision requires border officers to go through a lengthy legal process if they want to keep a border-crosser in jail while a judge decides if the illegal is repatriated or put on a path to citizenship. “Such detention harms putative class members in myriad ways, and as various mental health experts have testified, it is particularly harmful to minor children,” the judge declared.

The government “maintains that one particular individual may be civilly detained for the sake of sending a message of deterrence to other Central American individuals who may be considering immigration,” the judge wrote. But the government’s “current policy of considering deterrence is likely unlawful … [and] causes irreparable harm to mothers and children seeking asylum.”

The anti-jailing decision increases the already huge incentive for millions of foreigners to fly, sail, walk or drive across the U.S. border, and then claim asylum from foreign criminal gangs, political oppression or domestic abuse. In March 2013, Gallup reported that at least 138 million foreigners want to migrate into the United States.

The decision was issued late Friday, Feb. 20, by Judge James Boasberg of D.C.-based Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. Boasberg was nominated by Obama, and was confirmed in 2011.

Obama is likely to appeal the decision, partly because it reduces his ability to manage the inflow of migrants.

Obama favors high levels of immigration but he knows the public is overwhelmingly opposed to greater immigration.

The American public — including most Latino voters — is strongly opposed to lax border controls.

The immigration issue has dominated federal politics since 2013, when Obama’s allies in the Senate tried to push through a bill that would have increased immigration and given an amnesty to all 12 million illegal immigrants now living in the United States.

Since then, Obama has lost the battle for public opinion, lost the congressional debate over immigration, lost his Senate majority, and in February lost the first round of a lawsuit that is trying to block his November amnesty for 5 million illegal immigrants.

But Obama has used his power over the immigration agencies to minimize enforcement of immigration laws. Since 2009, Obama’s senior deputies have repeatedly instructed his immigration agencies to reduce enforcement of immigration laws. For example, since 2009, his aides have given work-permits and temporary residency to 4.7 million migrants, including illegal immigrants, tourists, guest-workers and students.

That 4.7 million is in addition to the annual inflow of 1 million legal immigrants. Roughly 4 million American youths enter the workforce each year.

In November 2014, one in every five U.S. jobs was held by a foreign-born worker, up from one-in-six jobs in January 2010, according to federal data highlighted by the Center for Immigration Studies.

In 2014, 130,000 Central American asylum-seeking adults, youths and children crossed the border. Under Obama’s rules, a large percentage were immediately allowed to get work permits plus access to welfare programs and free schooling, ad were allowed to ask judges for permanent residency.

American’s hostile reaction to the inflow that killed Obama’s top second-term legislative priority — passage of a comprehensive immigration reform law that would have sharply increased legal immigration.

The public’s hostility also contributed to the Democrats’ crushing defeat in the November Senate elections, when the GOP gained nine seats and won a strong 54 vote-majority in the Senate.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/02/23/fe...t-be-released/

Given the status of the world, the corruption in DHS and the unreliability of our State Department, we need to repeal the asylum law, and withdraw from the UN treaties that established it. We don't need that any more. That was initially set up for the cold war and the aftermath of WWII which are both long over. Running from tribes, terrorists, gang violence, religious nuts, insurgents, discrimination and/or poverty does not meet the test for political asylum. These are just cultural and domestic issues, much of it by their own making, which all countries and their citizens must deal with domestically, and does not meet the definition of political asylum.

Congress can enact special case temporary very short term refugee status on a case by case basis if it should ever be warranted in the future, which I seriously doubt it will be and more over, it is doubtful that we as a country can afford to be the answer to any of them anyway. So, Congress, wake up and repeal all asylum laws. Tell the UN it was a good idea after WWII, but since then, the US is no longer able or willing to be the Shining Light on the Hill for those who are really just seeking a better life than what they chose to build in their own country.

We have our own people to worry about now, and based on the last reports, we're over $18 trillion short of being able to do that. So enough already. End this silly wasteful burdening "asylum" nonsense now.