Thread: Trump steps up deportation push

Trump steps up deportation push

By Jordan Fabian and Rafael Bernal
02/21/17 08:27 PM EST

The Trump administration on Tuesday released a pair of memos outlining aggressive enforcement of immigration laws, potentially resulting in millions of deportations if the White House puts muscle and money behind the policies.

The guidelines lay out sweeping changes from the narrower approach taken by former President Obama. The only Obama policy that survives is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that allows people who entered the country illegally as children to stay, usually for work or school.

But the White House said even *DACA could be ultimately eliminated, as President Trump looks to take a tough approach.

The memos, signed on Friday by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, vastly increase the number of immigrants who are considered priorities for deportation. Reflecting that reality, the memos direct immigration enforcement agencies to hire thousands of new agents to apprehend people living in the country illegally, with local police and sheriffs’ offices enlisted in the effort.

Immigrant advocates reacted with alarm to the memos, fearing they signal the start of a mass-deportation program that will tear families apart and deprive people of their due-process rights. They said the guidelines could affect up to 8 million people.

“In my many years of practicing immigration law, I have not seen a mass deportation blueprint like this one,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.

Administration officials insisted that the memos simply outline Trump’s own priorities for who should, and who should not, be deported.

“No,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said when asked whether mass deportations are the goal.

“Those people who are in this country and pose a threat to our public, or have committed a crime, will be the first to go, and we will be aggressively making sure that that occurs,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security guidelines do not change U.S. immigration law, which the president already has broad discretion to enforce.

Proponents of scaling back immigration celebrated the guidelines but cast them as an “interim solution” until Congress passes new laws.

“The number one thing is they’ve erased orders and policies and internal practice that’s built up over the past four administrations,” said Roy Beck, founder of NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for less legal and illegal immigration.

Beck said illegal immigration would persist until its underlying cause, the availability of jobs for people who immigrate without permission, is eliminated.

Under the Trump administration’s guidelines, any immigrant who is convicted, charged or suspected of a crime is considered a priority for removal.

That is a break from Obama administration policy, which focused its enforcement activities on serious criminals, recent border crossers and terrorism suspects.

Federal authorities will expand the use of “expedited removals,” which allow immigrants to be deported at a faster pace.

For the first time, agents in the interior of the country will be allowed to start expedited removal proceedings for immigrants who cannot prove they have been in the country for more than two years. The process does not require a court order.

That power was previously restricted to officers within 100 miles of U.S. borders, so they could quickly detain and remove immigrants as they entered the country.

“The memo contemplates a massive expansion of people being removed from the country without ever seeing the inside of a courtroom,” said Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration policy at the liberal Center for American Progress.

Trump is also restoring programs, halted under the Obama administration, that allow local law enforcement officials to collaborate with federal immigration authorities.

Those programs, known as 287(g) and Secure Communities, deputize local law enforcement officials as immigration agents and allow them to incarcerate immigrants suspected of criminal activity for longer periods before they are turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In another policy shift, the memos open up the possibility of deportation or criminal prosecution for adults who help children enter the U.S. illegally.

That change is meant to discourage Central American children who make the often-dangerous trek into the country. The number has surged over the past three years, with minors fleeing gang violence in countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

But the memos from Kelly say the system is being abused. They say 60 percent of unaccompanied minors are placed into the care of one or more parents living illegally in the U.S.

“Regardless of the desires for family reunification, or conditions in other countries, the smuggling or trafficking of alien children is intolerable,” one of the memos says.

The memos leave many questions unanswered, such as where officials will house the people swept up in raids.

Agencies are told to “allocate all available resources to expand their detention capabilities and capacities,” but Congress would likely need to appropriate more money to build new detention centers.

There’s also the future of DACA, which remains unresolved.

Trump last week said the future of the program is a “very, very difficult subject” that his administration will handle “with heart.”

Immigration hard-liners are pushing Trump to stick by his campaign promise to end the program.

“I’m very puzzled by the fact that he’s leaving DACA ... in place,” Beck said. “He promised so many times on the campaign trail that he would end those on day one.”

Faced with a flurry of questions Tuesday, Spicer stressed that the administration’s priority is to strictly enforce the law.

Immigration enforcement agents felt hampered by Obama’s guidelines, Spicer said.

Trump “wanted to take the shackles off individuals in these agencies and say, you have a mission, there are laws that need to be followed.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/administ...portation-push

Right now we have 5,000 ICE agents and 21,000 Border Patrol Agents. Trump is going increase the 5,000 ICE agents to 15,000 and increase the Border Patrol Agents to 26,000. But that's going to take some time to add the staff. Hopefully not too long. Reactivating the 287 (g) program and Secure Communities, plus his orders ending sanctuary cities and catch and release are also going to make a huge difference. It's a full bore attack on this problem with even more to come.

I realize many of us "hard-liners" are disappointed that he hasn't ended DACA 2012, but I understand the rationale of letting it expire and run its course versus more legal trauma, lawsuits, protests, riots and violence if he ended it now instead of simply letting Obama's order expire in June on its own.

The whole reason DACA was created was to exploit the "children brought here by their parents" and make the DREAMERS the poster people of illegal immigration.

Trump has actually called their bluff by not ending it and what appears to be a strategy to just let it expire. This way the focus is on the criminals and suspected criminals (no one can object to that), the visa-overstays and other immigration violators (no one can object to that), welfare and other government fraud (no one can object to that).

I can object to DACA and DREAMERS and most of US here can, but from a strategy stand-point of gaining public approval for ending illegal immigration, letting DACA expire on its own, taking the DREAMERS Poster People narrative completely away from the debate while Trump ramps up enforcement and deports all the rest, is probably a wise and effective strategy. And a lot of those DREAMERS are going to over-lap with the priorities group because some are criminals and lawbreakers, some as welfare users, and some are probably visa-overstays. After the DACA expires and their work permits become useless due to the short time they could work legally, employers will stop hiring them.

And it's working in the media already. For example, the main narrative tonight from the DemoQuacks was pretty much reduced to trying to prove that both crime and illegal immigration are declining, which of course falls on deaf ears because everyone knows that's not true, so the left is losing credibility entirely on illegal immigration. Anyone can look at our population figures and know illegal immigration is not declining. Everyone knows that crime rates in our 50 largest cities where most illegal aliens live have had spikes in their violent crime rates. But that all aside, the issue of deporting illegal aliens isn't restricted to "violent crime", deporting illegal aliens is based solely on illegal presence in the United States.

Originally Posted by Judy

Right now we have 5,000 ICE agents and 21,000 Border Patrol Agents. Trump is going increase the 5,000 ICE agents to 15,000 and increase the Border Patrol Agents to 26,000. But that's going to take some time to add the staff. Hopefully not too long. Reactivating the 287 (g) program and Secure Communities, plus his orders ending sanctuary cities and catch and release are also going to make a huge difference. It's a full bore attack on this problem with even more to come.

I realize many of us "hard-liners" are disappointed that he hasn't ended DACA 2012, but I understand the rationale of letting it expire and run its course versus more legal trauma, lawsuits, protests, riots and violence if he ended it now instead of simply letting Obama's order expire in June on its own.

The whole reason DACA was created was to exploit the "children brought here by their parents" and make the DREAMERS the poster people of illegal immigration.

Trump has actually called their bluff by not ending it and what appears to be a strategy to just let it expire. This way the focus is on the criminals and suspected criminals (no one can object to that), the visa-overstays and other immigration violators (no one can object to that), welfare and other government fraud (no one can object to that).

Trump's plan has nothing to do with allowing the program to expire. He has said he's going to deal with this issue with his "heart". Trump is awaiting a legislative answer, which means amnesty, from the U.S. Congress.

Keep your promise, Mr. President, end DACA now!

Why are you worried about a Republican-controlled Congress doing an amnesty? Republicans are opposed to amnesty for illegal aliens. I'm pretty sure Trump knows that, so to me that's a pretty safe bet he's made.

Furthermore, 26 states filed the DACA lawsuit to stop it, those 26 states are 26 of the 30 states Trump won, he's not going to sign a bill that gives amnesty to people that these 26 Trump states filed court action to stop Obama handing out 2 year DACA work permits to. I don't think Trump would ever do that. He's not going to do that.

They're all going back where they came from, it's just a question of how you "manage" it. Remember during the campaign when a reporter asked him "how long will it take to deport 11 million illegal aliens" and Trump answers "less than 2 years" and the reporter then asked him "how are you going to do that" and Trump said "management".

“I’m very puzzled by the fact that he’s leaving DACA ... in place,” Beck said. “He promised so many times on the campaign trail that he would end those on day one.”

As are we all, Mr. Beck.

Keep your promise, Mr. President, end DACA now!

Roy is "puzzled". Really? Roy's been working at this for a really long time. If Hillary had won, where would we be? Trump won, and where are we now? Big difference. There's a point in time where you stop throwing rocks at your own quarterback and playing Monday quarterback when it's still Sunday, and instead count your blessings you've still got the ball.

This issue is too large to ignore and has huge negative implications associated with it. Perhaps you're only seeing the possible legalization of 800,000 so-called kid. Well, what some of us are seeing is the possibility of millions upon millions of folks eventually being brought here through the U.S. policy of family reunification as delineated in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

Ensuring DACA illegal never gain citizenship is huge, huge, huge! Oh, did I say it was huge?

Keep your promise, Mr. President, end DACA now!

There will be attempts by Congress to do that whether DACA 2012 is canceled today instead of dying on its own terms next month. Your argument is a straw man, MW. Just because he cancels DACA 2012 doesn't change the dynamics, it just focuses all the illegal aliens hating on him. Why do that?

It would appear as if we're carrying on the same topic of discussion on two different threads. Here is the response I give to a similar comment on the other thread:

You're dead wrong. DACA is not a straw man issue. To attempt to lessen its importance is not the way to go on this very important issue. I fully expect to see a new Dreamers Act bill pop in the U.S. Congress in the near future. We need to be setting our opposition groundwork right now, not wait it out as you would have us do.

You can bet the Dreamers and their supporters are busy preparing for the fight that's about to take place. Heck, I see them crying, praying, and whining all the time in network news media, printed press and social media. Would you leave them alone to make their argument while we sit here like a bunch of crickets? Sorry, Judy, that is not the way we're going to win this battle. It's imperative that we stay on our President and elected representatives on this very important issue.

I know it's easy to attack Trump right now, but he's working on bigger results, has a strategy and a plan to get them. I have no problem demanding an end to DACA, but I also see that if he does that, it actually weakens his ability to achieve his overall goals.

The attention on DACA 2012 is like chasing a mouse around the house while robbers are breaking in. Get the robbers out and catch the mouse later.

Just my opinion.