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I see activists who are well respected and seen as leaders in the community freaking out, and Im like, Thats not what we need right now, said Ms. Mateo, who was born in Oaxaca, Mexico. Your job doesnt allow you to be freaking out. What you need to do is reassure the community that were going to fight. At the end of the day we have no choice but to fight.

But others say that should not be her role. Youre taking the oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, while you are simultaneously breaking those laws, said John C. Eastman, a constitutional law expert and the former dean of the law school at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. Youre violating the oath of office from the moment you take it thats a real problem.

Ms. Mateo, 33, is among a very small number of undocumented immigrants in the country to receive a law license, and one of even fewer to work as an immigration lawyer. Another is her own lawyer, Luis Angel Reyes Savalza, who is fighting for her to stay in the country.

In 2014, California became the only state in the country to allow undocumented immigrants to practice law. The next year, New York courts reached a similar conclusion. There is no official count of how many undocumented immigrants are now working as lawyers, but Mr. Reyes Savalaza can name about a dozen.

When California first began to consider admitting undocumented immigrants to the bar, a lawyer from the Obama administration submitted a brief opposing the idea, arguing that federal law is plainly designed to preclude undocumented aliens from receiving commercial and professional licenses. But the administration backed off its opposition when Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation explicitly allowing it.

While there has been little public outcry over the issue in California, some argue that it is yet another sign of the states overreach on immigration.

Mr. Eastman said undocumented lawyers are putting their clients who are here under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, at risk because the Trump administration could rescind it at any moment, leaving them even more vulnerable to deportation. In January, the president signed an executive order vastly expanding the definition of who is considered a criminal to include offenses like using fake Social Security numbers.

Young people like Ms. Mateo began publicly identifying themselves as undocumented more than a decade ago, telling their own stories to try to force change.

National attention on the plight of young people taken to the country by their parents helped pressure the Obama administration to put DACA in place, allowing the so-called Dreamers to live and work in the United States. That program is now in limbo under President Trump. Several Republican attorneys general have threatened to sue the federal government if the program is not rescinded by this fall.

Mr. Reyes Savalaza and Ms. Mateo are pushing for a continuation of DACA, but they have other goals that are more extreme. They argue that immigrants who have served their time in prison for criminal convictions should not be targets for deportation. And they are pushing for local governments to set aside more money to pay immigrants legal fees.

We know they have said that everyone is at risk, period, Ms. Mateo said. They want us to be scared.

Actions that she calls necessary, however, others call reckless.

In 2013, Ms. Mateo traveled to visit her relatives in Oaxaca for several days, knowing she had no legal visa to return. She then showed up at the border with eight other undocumented students who demanded to be let into the United States and granted asylum. She was eventually granted entry and held in an Arizona detention center for several days. After some political pressure, she was allowed to pursue her case in immigration court while she began law school at Santa Clara University in California.

The protest was meant to call attention to the many people who had been deported before DACA was put in place, but many immigration activists criticized her for leading an irresponsible publicity stunt. Still, she became something of a celebrity in some immigrant rights circles.

The action jeopardized her own chance at legal status. The DACA program requires applicants to prove they have never left the United States since they entered as children. When Ms. Mateo applied for DACA last year, she was denied because of the trip to Mexico.

She plans to reapply and has enlisted help from members of Congress, university leaders and an army of immigration advocates.

If she is denied this time, Ms. Mateo will have few other legal possibilities. Regardless of the outcome, she said, she has no plans to leave the United States.

I keep struggling with what I planned for my life; what I still plan for my life versus what is my reality right now, she said. While she now has her law license, because she does not have legal status, no employer can hire her without the risk of sanctions. Instead, she will soon open her own law firm, because any undocumented immigrant can own a business.

For months, she has been working out of a day laborer center in Pasadena. She trains people in how to tell their stories to groups that have promised to defend immigrants against deportation, and helps them fill out forms for family members in deportation proceedings.

Anything you can say to show that you have a life established here, that you are working and contributing, that is helpful, she told a group of middle-age women gathered at the center one night. She added, We need them to know that we need their help and deserve it.

Ms. Mateo came to the United States with her family from Oaxaca as a teenager in 1998. When she began high school, she knew little English but already dreamt of becoming a lawyer.

As a student at California State University, Northridge, she began quietly meeting with other undocumented students. For months, they gathered in secret in the windowless office of a Chicano studies professor. Then they learned about a similar group in the journalism department. The groups merged and began to hold public events, calling themselves Dreams to be Heard. The students were among the first to press for the Dream Act, legislation in Congress that would grant a path to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States by their parents. The legislation failed, which led President Barack Obama to establish the DACA program administratively.

People say they are scared, but we dont have to be invisible anymore, Ms. Mateo told hundreds of students when she was honored by a Northridge student group this spring. Youre safer when you are out, when you are connected to people who will know if ICE comes for you in the middle of the night.

Those who advocate for a stricter crackdown on illegal immigration strongly disagree.

To say I am here illegally and I dont care about what the law says and I am just going to be here and I demand to be rewarded for it, that tends not to play well, said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates more immigration restrictions. If you are in the country illegally, there is no reason you should be able to practice law.

Mr. Reyes Savalaza, 29, who was also born in Mexico, knew about Ms. Mateo long before he met her. He had seen her speak at rallies and read about her protests for years. Her brand of activism inspired him while he was studying at New York University School of Law. When he was offered to take on her case, he did not hesitate.

As a child, Mr. Reyes Savalzas mother taught him to tell anyone who asked that he was born at OConnor Hospital in San Jose, Calif. When he began working as a teenager he used a fake Social Security number to get a job, as a vast majority of undocumented immigrants do. That is now considered grounds for deportation.

For the past two years, Mr. Reyes Savalza has worked at Pangea Legal Services, a nonprofit in San Francisco that helps defend immigrants from deportations. These days, as Mr. Trump moves forward with his vows to increase deportations throughout the country, Mr. Reyes Savalza, who has legal status through DACA, sees his job as more difficult.

He worries about his parents, anxious that any phone call could be the one to inform him that they were picked up by immigration officers. Like his clients, they want answers he does not have.

They want me to tell them everything will be O.K., but I cant, he said.

Between the two of them, Ms. Mateo and Mr. Reyes Savalza are working to help more than a dozen undocumented immigrants remain in the country. As her lawyer, Mr. Reyes Savalza plans to resubmit Ms. Mateos application for DACA in the coming weeks. Ms. Mateo will soon begin working on her two younger brothers applications for renewal.

Excerpt from:
A Defender of the Constitution, With No Legal Right to Live Here - New York Times

Officials are reportedly weighing a proposal that would give more freedom to expedite deportations. Video provided by Newsy Newslook

In this Feb. 9, 2017, photo provided U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE agents at a home in Atlanta, during a targeted enforcement operation aimed at immigration fugitives, re-entrants and at-large criminal aliens.(Photo: Bryan Cox, AP)

Arrests of undocumented immigrants by federal agents increased in June, but deportations fell to their lowest point this year as the nation's court system sees bigger backlogs, according to data released Monday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE agents arrested 13,914 people last month, following a trend since President Trump took office in January and his campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration.

In the final three months of the Obama administration, ICE averaged 9,134 arrests per month. That number has steadily increased under Trump, with the agency averaging 13,085 each month from February through June.

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The Trump administration has not turned those arrests into more deportations, however, as those numbers keep falling.

In the final three months of the Obama administration, the agency averaged 22,705 deportations per month. That number has consistently fallen under Trump, with the agency averaging 16,895 from February through June, reaching its lowest point in June.

ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan recently said the drop in deportations is because of the backlog in federal immigration courts and the lengthy time to process each case. The number of cases waiting to be completed has surpassed 610,000 through June, according to the TRAC research project at Syracuse University.

Immigration courts have long been overburdened, with regular deportation cases taking up to two years to complete because of the volume of cases. The Trump administration has added to that backlog by arresting more people and cutting back on the Obama administration policy of allowing undocumented immigrants to be free on bond as they await their court hearings.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has dispatched 25 more immigration judges to detention centers along the southwest border with Mexico and wants to addmore. The Justice Department's goal is to hire 50 immigration judges this year and 75 in the following year.

Read more:

Immigration arrests up 38% nationwide under Trump

Trump's immigration stance fuels opposition with millions in donations and volunteers

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Immigration arrests up, deportations down under Trump - USA TODAY

AUSTIN, Texas Several Texas counties have found a way to profit from working with federal immigration officials in tracking and detaining immigrants who are living in the country illegally.

Eight counties have joined a federal program that allows sheriff's deputies to become certified immigration officers. Four of those counties along with six others not in the certification program allow federal agents to stash detained immigrants in their jails, the Austin American-Statesman reported Sunday.

At least 16 counties nationwide participate in both programs. Lubbock County recently started having deputies certified as immigration officers under a program named 287(g) for the law that created it. It also collects $65 daily per immigrant it houses after detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

With federal pressure on illegal immigration growing, immigrant advocates worry that more counties will act to participate in both programs. The setup is a "perverse financial incentive," said Mary Small, policy director of the Washington-based Detention Watch Network.

Walker County, where Huntsville is located, responded to an embarrassing jail escape by issuing $20 million in bonds in 2012 to build a new jail. The county's sheriff department vowed to find new revenue sources to help defray the cost of the new lockup and locked onto working with ICE.

"It allows them to control the pipeline of people into the detention facility where they're then paid per day to detain people," Small said.

As far as ICE is concerned, though, the programs provide "an invaluable force multiplier" for immigration agents, said ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez.

"The two processes are distinct and governed separately," Rodriguez said.

The Texas counties participating in both are Lubbock, Walker, Montgomery and Smith counties. Participants in the intergovernmental service agreement under which ICE detainees are placed on ice in county jails are Randall, Johnson, Polk, Burnet, Maverick and Hidalgo counties.

At least one sheriff, Ed Gonzalez of Harris County, ended his office's 287(g) participation because of cost, noting that the 10 deputies who worked on the program had salaries totaling $675,000.

But Lubbock County Sheriff Kelly Rowe rejects the notion that his county's participation in both programs is a money grab.

"These conversations get a little frustrating with 287(g) having something to do with doing work site raids or plucking family members out of their homes," he said. "We ultimately catch a lot of guys in that net (of checking county jail inmates' immigration status), but that's not because we're out there looking for immigration. We're out there looking for the hundreds of pounds of narcotics that's entering our community weekly."

___

Information from: Austin American-Statesman, http://www.statesman.com

See the original post here:
Federal government pays Texas counties to track immigrants - Fox News

But two of his claims -- one broad defense of how the GOP bill would handle Medicaid, and one much more specific comment about waiting lists in Ohio -- have Pence facing criticism from his own party.

In both cases, Pence omitted critical context.

Those omissions go to the heart of the concerns about the bill among many within the GOP. In at least two cases, Republicans cited Pence specifically in voicing their displeasure with the bill in recent days.

Pence's broad defense of the bill included this line: "President Trump and I believe the Senate health care bill strengthens and secures Medicaid for the neediest in our society, and this bill puts this vital American program on a path to long-term sustainability."

Behind closed doors, Pence and top Trump health officials who met with governors stuck to the technically true claim that Medicaid spending would continue to increase under the GOP bill.

And starting in 2025, it would attach growth in Medicaid spending to the Consumer Price Index instead of tying it to medical inflation. Standard inflation has grown at a much slower rate than medical inflation.

The CBO projected this would force states to shrink their Medicaid programs -- leading to 15 million fewer Medicaid enrollees within the next decade. Many Republicans are preemptively discrediting the CBO's analysis, though, ahead of a new score expected this week.

The plan maintains many of Obamacare's subsidies to help people pay for individual insurance and provides money to stabilize the Obamacare market over the next few years. And, Pence and other top Republicans have argued, the Trump administration would grant states much more flexibility to make cost-saving changes to the traditional Medicaid program. Pence cited a plan he expanded in Indiana as one example.

"States across the country will have an unprecedented level of flexibility to reform Medicaid and bring better coverage, better care, and better outcomes to the most vulnerable in your states," Pence said.

However, Democratic governors mocked the notion that increased flexibility could make up for major cuts in federal spending.

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins also took issue with Pence's claims on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday.

"I would respectfully disagree with the vice president's analysis," Collins said. "This bill would impose fundamental, sweeping changes in the Medicaid program, and those include very deep cuts. That would affect some of the most vulnerable people in our society, including disabled children, poor seniors. It would affect our rural hospitals and our nursing homes. And they would have a very difficult time even staying in existence.

Pence cited by name another Republican who has criticized the GOP bill -- Ohio Gov. John Kasich -- while claiming his state, which is among the 31 states and the District of Columbia to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, now faces steep waiting lists for coverage.

Here's what Pence said: "Obamacare has put far too many able-bodied adults on the Medicaid rolls, leaving many disabled and vulnerable Americans at the back of the line. It's true, and it's heartbreaking. I know Gov. Kasich isn't with us, but I suspect that he's very troubled to know that in Ohio alone, nearly 60,000 disabled citizens are stuck on waiting lists, leaving them without the care they need for months or even years."

Experts from the Kaiser Family Foundation say that waiting lists for these services are longer in states that have not expanded Medicaid under Obamacare than they are in states that have expanded.

Kasich didn't attend the meeting. But back in Ohio, his aides lashed out, noting that the waiting lists are related to Medicaid's home and community-based services and have nothing to do with Ohio's decision to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.

Pence's office has not responded to CNN's request for comment on the Kasich camp's criticism.

See more here:
Mike Pence's two misleading Medicaid claims - CNN

What is Mike Pence thinking, I often ask myself.

That bespeaks a dull life, for sure. Still the more broken the Trump presidency, the more intriguing the question. The vice president is usually as loyal as a St. Bernard, sticking with a version of the platitude he uttered right after the Comey firing suitable for any scandal: Whatever Washington, D.C., may be focused on at any given time, rest assured, President Donald Trump will never stop fighting for the issues that matter most to the American people.

And so on. But last week, the vice-presidential veneer cracked at an event a few miles from the White House when whatever Washington, D.C., was focused on was Trumps eldest son emailing I love it about a meeting promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton delivered aspart of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump.

Whats not to love?

A day earlier Pence had already washed his hands of the latest debacle. Through his spokesman, Pence said,He was not aware of the meeting, or stories about it, especially those pertaining to the time before he joined the campaign.

He continued the distancing in the form of Pep Talk to Self before student leaders at American University the next morning as Time magazine wasrolling off the presses with the headline Red Handed placed over Don Jr.s face. He described good leaders as those in their physical lives and organizations who practice self-control and practice discipline, and have humilitystarkly at odds with you-know-who. Alluding to his own position, he described the attributes of servant leadership as requiring respect for authority, and listening and deferring to those who have been placed above you.

The good servant then asked the question, Whats it like to be the 48thvice president of the United States? And answered himself: You need to keep your arms and legs in the ride at all times. Pull the roll bar down, because you just got to hang on.

This is how it happens: One day youre spouting nostrums about the privilege of working every day to advance the presidents agenda, the next youre talking to portraits on the walls of the West Wing or comparing the job to the Banshee roller coaster at Kings Island in Ohio where you hang from the track with your body swinging wildly. You hire yourself a high-powered personal attorney and replace your chief of staff with a political whiz. And you prepare for the worst. While vice presidents usually focus on raising money for the top of the ticket, in an unusual move Pence formed his very own PAC. A token of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryans preference for Pence over his boss is that they are hosting a $5,000 a head event to fill his coffers later this month.

If the leader to whom he has to show respect werent such a disaster, Pence wouldnt be that different from other veeps. The job comes with a chunk of indignity written in to it: that the vice presidentwill eat a lot of crow, nod in approval like Nancy Reagan, and visit the rust belt while the president wings off for another handshake competition (and first lady ogling) with French President Emanuel Macron. Like others, Pences future is dependent on that of the principal but in his case theres a twist: Trump needed to balance the ticket character-wise. He needed a rock-ribbed, church going, once-married TV Dad with the hair God gave him.

The failing governor from Indiana filled the bill perfectly. Pences salvation now lies in Trump failing. Two terms of Trump and some of the muck is bound to trickle down so that Pence would most certainly not be measuring the drapes in 2024.

Right now, Republicans long for Pence. He not only knows how a bill becomes a law, he would end their torment of having to answer for the man-child in the White House. Democrats quietly say they want the pursuit of Trump to slow down so that they can defeat him in 2020, not face Pence whom the nation might elect in a spasm of gratitude. They also dont want a far more conservative replacement. Pence risked his governorship on a bill to ensure a bakery wouldnt be obligated to put a bride and a bride atop a wedding cake.

So far, Pence may be complicit but hes no co-conspirator. He used to call the Russia hacking a bizarre rumor because he was out of that loop. He luckily was asked to leave the Oval Office when Trump pulled Comey aside to ask him to go easy on former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Although as transition-head Pence failed to vet Flynn adequately, hes protected by Trumps ardent desire to have a Friend of Putin in that position no matter what. When Trump had a choice to keep his national security adviser or banish him immediately for lying to Pence, Trump chose the liar over his veep.

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Now Pence isnt just being sullied by the father but by Don Jr. and who knows what family members to come. Last week just before Trump took off for Bastille Day, Pence joined him in the Oval Office at a gathering of evangelists. Pence stayed on the periphery and did not participate in the laying of hands on the president.

As Trump was about to leave for Bastille Day in Paris, Pence bowed his head in prayer, in gratitude perhaps, that he would have the place to himself for a few days to ask himself the question: What is Mike Pence thinking?

Read the original:
Mike Pence's Prayer - Daily Beast