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The Justice Department is seeking to play a more muscular role in the Trump administrations immigration enforcement strategy, a move that is alarming immigrant rights advocates who fear Attorney General Jeff Sessions hard-line ideology could give Justice too much clout in determining policy.

To highlight the departments expanding role, Sessions is considering making his first trip to the southern border in mid-April to Nogales, Ariz., a busy border crossing region that features a major patrol station and already has miles of fencing and walls designed to keep out illegal immigrants from Mexico. Aides emphasized that his itinerary is still being developed and the stop in Nogales which would come as Sessions travels to a conference of state police officials from around the country 200 miles away in Litchfield Park is still tentative.

If he follows through, the border visit would come at a time when President Trump is asking Congress for billions of dollars to begin construction on a longer and larger wall between the United States and Mexico, a central campaign promise.

In recent weeks, Sessions has taken steps to increase his departments focus on immigration.

He signed on to a letter released Friday with Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly backing the practice of arresting undocumented immigrants at courthouses, saying officials had to resort to such measures when states wouldnt cooperate on immigration enforcement.

On Thursday, Sessions announced he is expanding a program to deport undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes after they serve their prison sentences, with the hope that the Justice Department can move more people straight from prison to their home countries rather than first moving them to immigrant detention facilities.

Justice said it would expand to 20 the number of prisons participating in the Institutional Hearing Program, which has immigration judges come directly to prisons or has the inmates participate in deportation hearings via video.

We owe it to the American people to ensure that illegal aliens who have been convicted of crimes and are serving time in our federal prisons are expeditiously removed from our country as the law requires, Sessions said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Sessions used the release of a Federal Justice Statistics report on arrests and prosecution to highlight cases involving immigration offenses and he also issued a statement in support of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement report that listed cities that fail to comply with enforcement orders.

Last week, Sessions appeared in the White House briefing room to issue a threat to those cities that his agency could withhold federal law enforcement grants if they do not start to cooperate.

Sessionss activism has alarmed immigrant rights advocates concerned the department will play too powerful a role in a policy area that is typically the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security.

I think we want clarity over whos running immigration policy, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said in an interview Thursday in Washington. Garcetti signed a directive two weeks ago prohibiting all city employees from using public resources to aide federal civil immigration actions.

DOJ can give some opinions, but its not primarily in their jurisdiction, Garcetti said. So I know Senator Sessions has been very engaged, interested and involved in this area, but is he empowered by this administration beyond his formal responsibilities?

Sessions, a former Republican senator from Alabama, was one of Congresss fiercest border hawks, and he helped scuttle former president Barack Obamas 2013 immigration reform effort on Capitol Hill that featured a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. One of his former Senate staffers, Stephen Miller, is Trumps senior policy adviser.

Kelly, a former Marine general with little experience in immigration issues, has also signaled that he will pursue a tougher stance on enforcement at DHS. He issued a pair of memos in February aimed at implementing Trumps executive orders to broaden the pool of undocumented immigrants prioritized for removal and beef up other border security measures.

But legal experts said Sessions could significantly restructure the Justice Department by ramping up the number of immigration judges sent to the border to speed up hearings and by pursuing more criminal prosecutions against immigrants in the United States beyond those associated with drug cartels and human smugglers that past administrations have focused on.

The Sessions Justice Department also could move to strip some protections from undocumented immigrants, such as how much time they have to find a lawyer; more robustly defend DHS enforcement policies that are challenged in court; and use the Office of the Special Counsel to aggressively prevent employers from discriminating against American workers by hiring undocumented workers, said Leon Fresco, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Obama administration.

I think they will be incredibly active, said Fresco, who helped draft the 2013 immigration bill while serving as an aide to Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). The only thing that could slow Sessions, he added, was finding enough individuals with expertise and the willingness to speed these issues along.

If Sessions follows through, it would represent a sharp break from the policies of his predecessors in the Obama administration. In 2010, the Justice Department, then led by Eric H. Holder Jr., sued Arizona over a state law that granted broad immigration enforcement powers to local law enforcement agencies. The Supreme Court in 2012 upheld a lower courts ban on key provisions in the law.

In January, Holder was hired by the California Legislature to represent the state in potential legal fights with the Trump White House.

I believe there is nothing wrong, legally, morally or intellectually, with a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest. Whats wrong with that? Sessions said in a speech to a conference of state attorneys general last month.

People who come here unlawfully, who commit crimes, are going to be out of here, he added, punching a finger in the air for emphasis. The law says that they have to be deported and were going to insist that that happens.

Trumps budget proposal outlines how Sessions could turn his rhetoric into action.

It calls for the Justice Department to hire 75 more immigration judge teams to speed removal proceedings, along with 60 more border enforcement prosecutors and 40 more deputy U.S. marshals to apprehend and transport those in the country illegally.

The budget also calls for an additional $171 million to buy short-term detention space, much of which will likely be used to house undocumented immigrants.

Immigration is one of their top priorities, permeating every part of their agenda, and every part of the federal government and agencies, Marielena Hincapi, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, said of the Trump White House.

Sessions is very much aligned with their ideology, she said. He is very knowledgeable. Hes worked on these issues for decades now and has very strong opinions. Hes finally in a position of power to use the department toward his vision and use the attorney general role as a bully pulpit.

In Nogales, Sessions would tour a border region that was once viewed as the most porous section, leading authorities to build the border walls and fences. In 2013, a bipartisan group of senators, led by John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Schumer, visited the area during the immigration reform deliberations.

During the tour, McCain wrote on Twitter that they saw a woman scale the 18-foot bollard fence and drop down to the U.S. side of the border before she was apprehended by patrol agents. Some advocates suggested that the event was staged to support Republican calls for additional border security spending.

The Nogales barriers have had mixed results, officials said. Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, emphasized that any single-layered fencing is defeatable.

Overall, Judd said, we do not think a 2,000-mile wall, a great wall of the United States, is necessary. But we 100 percent support a wall in strategic locations that allow us to dictate the crossing points.

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Sessions seeks greater role for Justice in immigration enforcement - Washington Post

It has been a hell of a week for free speech in the state of California.

First, the state's Attorney General leveled 15 felony charges against the pro-life activists behind the hidden camera investigation of Planned Parenthood's fetal tissue scandal.

Now California is set to pass a bill that would amend current state law to make it illegal to knowing engage in the distribution of so-called fake news if, "those news stories later have an impact on an election," conservative columnist Emily Zanotti writes.

In other words, the California Assembly would like to have the power to punish hoax reporting if said "fake news" is determined to have had an affect an election. The bill provides no details about who gets to determine what is and isn't "fake news." There are also no details regarding how a story would even qualify for that title.

Basically, it's a mess.

The bill is very real. Here is the relevant portion dealing with "fake news":

Section 18320.5 is added to the Elections Code, to read:

18320.5.

It is unlawful for a person to knowingly and willingly make, publish or circulate on an Internet Web site, or cause to be made, published, or circulated in any writing posted on an Internet Web site, a false or deceptive statement designed to influence the vote on either of the following:

(a) Any issue submitted to voters at an election.

(b) Any candidate for election to public office.

There are so many problems with the proposal, including that it raises several obvious questions about the First Amendment and free speech.

"Political advocacy is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court has been adamant that political advertisingeven when it involves smears, exaggerations and "poetic license"is included under the umbrella of 'political advocacy,'" Zanotti noted.

Also from the Washington Examiner

Bannon received a $191,000 salary for his work as Breitbart's chairman, a role he left in August.

03/31/17 8:31 PM

Then there's the separate issue that "fake news" doesn't even seem to affect elections, at least not on the presidential scale, according to a study by researchers at Stanford and New York University.

Anyway, good luck making it illegal to tell a lie during an election, California.

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California takes another swing at the First Amendment - Washington Examiner

NorthJersey 1:56 p.m. ET March 31, 2017

Visitors walk around the Liberty Bell at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia in this file photo.(Photo: JESSICA GRIFFIN/AP)

Press freedom in this country dates back to its founding. It is one of the bedrocks of democracy, and in these days it is as critically important as it has ever been.

Thats why it was refreshing news this week when Superior Court Judge Lawrence DeBello ruled in favor of The Trentonian newspaper, and ordered that a previous censorship order against the publication be thrown out. DeBellos order is a reaffirmation for those who care about the First Amendment, and a victory for news organizations everywhere who remain committed to getting to the truth. DeBello had agreed to hear the case in January, saying he wished to weigh the propriety of the order.

We want to thank Judge DeBello for affirming and protecting important First Amendment values today, said David Bralow, an attorney for The Trentonian. From the time that the Trentonian learned of the unfortunate order, it has expended significant effort to protect its and its reporters' First Amendment rights. We are vindicated today.

The newspaper was hit with the highly unusual prior restraint order last October when, at the request of the state Attorney Generals Office, another judge, Craig Corson, issued a temporary injunction that prohibited The Trentonian from publishing articles based on a confidential child-abuse complaint obtained by one of its reporters, Isaac Avilucea.

Among other sensitive details, the document lays out how a 5-year-old boy from Trenton went to school carrying 30 packets of heroin in his lunchbox one day and crack cocaine in his school folder six weeks later. The newspaper has continued to publish stories about the case, questioning why the boy was allowed to remain with his family after the first incident was reported to authorities. The boy is now in foster care.

Some legal perspective is needed to realize how important this case was, not only for press freedom in New Jersey, but for journalists everywhere. Judicial orders imposing a prior restraint on a news organization prohibiting it from publishing information on a specific topic are extremely rare in the United States. Attorneys forTheTrentonianand one of its reporters argued in January that Corson did not take into account some oftheU.S. Supreme Court's most important rulings ontheFirstAmendment, which guaranteesthefreedom ofthepress.

One of the most famous of those cases is the landmark 1971 decision, New York Times Co. v. United States,where theU.S. Supreme Court declined a request from President Richard Nixons administration to prohibitTheNew York Times andTheWashington Post from publishing stories based onthePentagon Papers, a classified study oftheVietnam War.

Eli Segal, another attorney who argued the case for The Trentonian, argued back in January that censoring the press is more serious than a criminal penalty because it doesnt just chill speech; it freezes it altogether. Segal also citedthePentagon Papers case duringthehearing and argued thattheTrenton child-abuse case continued to be worththe publics attention. New Jersey state officials had not clearedthevery high bar required bytheU.S. Supreme Court for censorship ofthepress, he said.

Courts have allowed prior restraints on news organizations to prevent the publication of troop movements during wartime and when a magazine attempted to publish the secret to building a hydrogen bomb. Clearly, the case involving the Trentonian did not rise to that level.

Press censorship is serious business. History is littered with examples of how the censorship of the press leads, sooner or later, to the stifling of speech for all, and the limiting of basic freedoms of citizens.

We dont need to go down that road. We have come too far, and value our liberty too dearly, to start surrendering First Amendment rights now.

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Editorial: First Amendment victory in Trenton - NorthJersey.com

WASHINGTONCiting a climate of distrust and growing attacks on journalism, the Radio Television Digital News Association has announced it has created the Voice of the First Amendment Task Force. This task force, it said, will react to threats to the First Amendment as well as support journalists and educate the public about the importance of a free press to the U.S. democracy.

Among its first efforts, members of the task force are expected to meet with leaders from radio and TV station groups across the country at the upcoming 2017 NAB Show in Las Vegas. They will discuss recent threats and develop a plan to protect and promote the role of journalism.

If the public comes to believe the news media are the enemy of the people, one of our countrys most fundamental rights could be lost, said Task Force Co-Chair Sheryl Worsley. Freedom of the press helps ensure a check on government and helps America stay free.

Station groups interested in reaching out to the task force can contact them at pressfreedom@rtdna.org or call RTDNA Executive Director Mike Cavender at 770-823-1760.

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RTDNA Launches Voice of the First Amendment Task Force ... - TV Technology

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Planned Parenthood and the First Amendment - Wall Street Journal (subscription)