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U.S. News Lawrence Hurley Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared reluctant to block a vaguely defined plan by President Donald Trumps administration to exclude immigrants living in the United States illegally from the population totals used to allocate congressional districts to states.

The courts conservatives, who hold a 6-3 majority, signaled such a ruling might be premature based on the administrations admission that it does not yet know how or if it will be able to implement the proposal, a facet of Trumps hardline policies on immigration being pursued in his final weeks in office.

Challengers led by New York state and the American Civil Liberties Union have argued that Trumps proposal would dilute the political clout of states with larger numbers of such immigrants, including heavily Democratic California, by undercounting state populations and depriving them of House seats to the benefit of his fellow Republicans.

The administration has yet to disclose what method it would use to calculate the number of people it proposes to exclude or which subsets of immigrants may be targeted. Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall told the justices the administration could miss a Dec. 31 statutory deadline to finalize a Census Bureau report to Trump containing the final population data including the number of immigrants excluded.

The number of House districts in the 50 states is based on a states population count in the decennial national census, which was conducted this year. Democrat Joe Biden is set to become president on Jan. 20 and could reverse course if the apportionment numbers have not been finalized by then.

We dont know what the president is going to do, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts said. We dont know how many aliens will be excluded. We dont know what the effect of that will be on apportionment. All these questions would be resolved if we wait until the apportionment takes place. Why arent we better advised to do that?

The U.S. Constitution requires apportionment of House seats to be based upon the whole number of persons in each state. Until now, the governments practice was to count all people regardless of their citizenship or immigration status.

The justices were expected to decide the case on a expedited basis, with a ruling before the end of the year. The court potentially could dismiss the current legal challenge, a move that would leave open the possibility of subsequent lawsuits after the administration actually takes action.

Lawyers for the challengers urged the court not to toss out the lawsuit now, asking the justices to wait for a few weeks until more information is available on what data the Census Bureau intends to submit to the president.

There are an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally. The challengers have argued that Trumps policy violates both the Constitution and the Census Act, a federal law that outlines how the census is conducted.

The justices focused less on the underlying question of whether Trumps plan was lawful but conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, noted that the government during the entire history of the United States has included illegal immigrants in the population count.

A lot of the historical evidence and longstanding practice really cuts against your position, Barrett told Wall.

Barrett also challenged Wall on the administrations position that an immigrant in the country illegally cannot be considered an inhabitant for the purposes of House apportionment.

By statute, the president is required to send Congress a report in early January with the population of each of the states and their entitled number of House districts.

Wall told the justices that it is very unlikely the administration will amass data to exclude all immigrants in the country illegally. Instead, Wall said, it may propose excluding certain groups, such as the fewer than 100,000 in federal detention, and the total number may not be high enough to affect apportionment.

The administrations lack of detail on whether it could implement Trumps plan prompted justices including Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to wonder if was premature to rule on the issue because the harm alleged by the challengers is speculative.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito said that for the administration to exclude all of the immigrants living illegally in the United States from the population count seems to me a monumental task.

I would think you would be able to tell us whether that remains a realistic possibility at this point, Alito told Wall.

The challengers have argued that Trumps plan could leave several million people uncounted and cause California, Texas and New Jersey to lose House seats.

A three-judge panel in New York ruled against the administration in September.

Reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington and Andrew Chung in New York; Additional reporting by Ted Hesson; Editing by Will Dunham

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Link:
Conservative justices wary of blocking Trump immigrant census plan - Reuters

There are infinite ways that liberals in the news media try to convince people that what they see with their own eyes isn't what's actually happening, never more so than when it pertains to illegal immigration.

A new report at Axios purports to show that there's not much crime at all coming across the Southern border. What's that silly president been talking about these last five years?

The evidence to back up that absurd claim: "U.S. communities along the Mexico border are among the safest in America," the report said, "with some border cities holding crime rates well below the national average, FBI statistics show."

The report said that the information "contradicts the narrative by President Trump and others that the U.S.-Mexico border is a 'lawless' region suffering from violence and mayhem."

This is like when the leaders of Iran claim that they have no gay citizens. Well, no, they have plenty of gay citizens, just like everywhere, but the fact that it's illegal to be gay there might have something to do with the lack of drag shows.

Similarly, as Axios acknowledges in its own report, the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents has grown nearly three-fold between 1998 and 2018, the latest year of available data from the Customs and Border Protection. What a coincidence! More law enforcement, less crime!

But more importantly, while it's true that border cities have higher Latino populations by nature, it's not the case that illegal immigrants cross the Rio Grande, hit soil, and then find the nearest hotel. No, they continue moving and spread throughout the rest of the country. What sense would it make to know you're illegally entering the country, along with thousands of others on a daily basis, only to halt just on the other side? That's not what they do. They go to Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities along the East and West Coasts.

That's why there are Latin-born gangs in public schools in Maryland.

Cities on the border aren't even what we should be looking at. We should be looking at the border itself. I went there twice in 2019 to tour the physical border and to visit the migrant detention and processing centers, and, of course, it's lawless. There technically are "laws" that govern the physical space, but they were never intended to cope with Mexican and Central American human traffickers pushing floats of migrants by the dozen across the Rio Grande onto U.S. soil, where they then seek asylum protection. They were never intended to cope with drug mules crossing the river in jeeps with hundreds of pounds of drugs, dodging authorities who are otherwise tied babysitting unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors.

Convicted rapists, child molesters, drug dealers, and human traffickers are apprehended at the border all the time, which isn't to say that all of them are caught. They're not, which is why they have prior convictions in states all across the country. (Quick, someone tell Axios.)

Illegal immigration and the crime that comes with it is devastating to the country, even if the media still pretend that it's not.

See the original post here:
Low crime rates in border cities say nothing about the chaos caused by illegal immigration - Washington Examiner

Amid rising violent crime rates in Texas cities, at least one alleged gang member illegally in the country has been removed from Houston streets and returned to his home country.

In November, officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Houston arrested and deported 24-year-old Erick Giovanni Portillo-Ayala, an El Salvadoran national and documented MS-13 gang member who had been in the country for more than six years.

The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) had issued a Red Notice for Portillo-Ayala as a member of a terrorist organization at the request of El Salvador.

According to ICE, Portillo-Ayala had entered the U.S. illegally on April 6, 2014, and although he was immediately taken into custody near Sarita, Texas, he was released a few months later after posting bond set by an immigration judge with the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

After he failed to attend his immigration hearing, in October of 2018 an immigration judge ordered Portillo-Ayala deported, but it took more than two years to locate and arrest him.

Portillo-Ayalas deportation came during the same month that five other MS-13 gang members, also illegal immigrants from El Salvador, were indicted for a brutal murder in which the men are alleged to have used a machete to hack a police informant to death in Houston.

According to Ryan K. Patrick, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, MS-13 often uses violence to terrorize the community.

MS-13 uses brutal killings, often by machete, to prove their worth to the clique and send a message to others, Patrick noted on announcing the indictments.

Another El Salvadoran national illegally residing in Houston, Elmer Rolando Manzano-Martinez, is being held on capital murder charges after allegedly shooting to death Houston Police Sergeant Harold Preston and wounding another officer. Although Manzano-Martinez had a criminal history including a conviction and jail time, he had not been identified for possible deportation until the October murder.

This week, Houston Police reportedly rescued 29 individuals from a possible human smuggling operation who were being held hostage in a home on the southwest side of the city. According to police, the victims had been stripped of all clothing except for briefs, and were from various Latin American countries, including El Salvador. ICE will be taking over the investigation of the incident, in which suspects may have tried to blend in with victims by removing their own clothing when police arrived.

Texas law specifically prohibits so-called Sanctuary City or Sanctuary County policies, but an estimated 412,000 illegal immigrants reside in the Houston and Harris County area according to county Judge Lina Hidalgo.

On Thursday, Houston Police reportedly rescued 29 individuals from a possible human smuggling operation who were being held hostage in a home on the southwest side of the city. The victims were from various Latin American countries, including El Salvador, according to police.

Last month on a party-line vote, the Harris County Commissioners Court approved spending more than $2 million over the next two years to provide legal services for illegal immigrants residing in the county. The county is also seeking to join the Vera Institute for Justices Safety and Fairness for Everyone Network, consisting of cities and counties nationwide allocating taxpayer funds to provide a public defender system for all immigrants regardless ofhistory with the criminal legal system.

At one time the county sheriffs department participated in the 287(G) program under which deputies were trained to identify suspects with deportation orders, but after taking office in 2017Sheriff Ed Gonzalez (D) announced that his department would opt out of the federal grant.

ERO Houston arrested Portillo-Ayala on November 5, 2020, and ICE Air Operations flew him from Alexandria, Louisiana, to the El Salvador International Airport on November 20 where he was turned over to Salvadoran authorities.

Disclosure: Unlike almost every other media outlet, The Texan is not beholden to any special interests, does not apply for any type of state or federal funding, and relies exclusively on its readers for financial support. If youd like to become one of the people were financially accountable to, click here to subscribe.

A free bi-weekly commentary on current events by Konni Burton.

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Houston MS-13 Gang Member Deported to El Salvador - The Texan

Editors note: A federal judge has struck down two Trump administration rules designed to drastically curtail the number of visas issued each year to skilled foreign workers in the latest battle over the issue. Steve Rao is a Council Member and Former Mayor Pro Tem for the Town of Morrisville and a Board Member of the New American Economy, a bi-partisan coalition of Mayors and Business Leaders, Committed to Comprehensive Immigration reform. This organization compiles research from economists to reveal the economic impact of immigration in the United States and in NC among a number of industries. He also serves as Of Counsel to State Federal Strategies, where he advises them on the Technology Practice.

MORRISVILLE Now that the election is over, President Elect Joe Biden has a chance to deliver on what President Trump had promised four years ago: more American Jobs, through an immigration policy that values global talent to meet the workforce needs of our state and nation.

The Trump administrations restrictions for H1-B highly skilled immigrants has hindered our global competitiveness, and does have an impact on a number of industries in NC, including the tech, manufacturing, seafood and hospitality industries. Let us also remember the 35,000 Dreamers in North Carolina, who bring in over $500 million to our economy, whose DACA status remains after a recent Federal Court ruling struck down recent Trump Administration restrictions on the program.

John Chambers, left, with Steve Rao

As the U.S. works towards economic recovery, these immigrants are vital to supporting industries and communities when they need it the most. In fact, H-1B visa holders, one of the newly banned groups, are job creators NAEs research shows that every H-1B holder creates about 1.83 American jobs.

Our recent Space X missions to the International Space Station would never have happened if Elon Musk had not received an H-1B, Zoom would not exist, and many companies, like Google, Yahoo, would have been founded in other nations if we closed off immigration of highly skilled immigration to the United States.

I do believe that we are encouraging the best and brightest in the world to start companies in other nations with such a closed immigration policy coming from the White House.

While many Americans continue to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, immigrant IT workers play an essential role in helping the U.S. economy move activities online and maintain the digital infrastructure so that businesses can keep running and people stay connected.

In North Carolina and much of the Triangle, I am still seeing firsthand, many Indian Americans and South Asian families affected by restrictions in the H-1B Program. These hard working, tax paying citizens are among the 300,000 H-1B holders in the US are in line for a green card.

Some families are being separated, spouses of the H-1B visa holders are not able to work, and I am hearing from many constituents, who have been waiting over ten years, for a green card. These are hard working tax payers, who are contributing immensely to supporting and creating the growing tech economy of North Carolina and the new jobs of the new economy.

Recently, I received a call from Anu Penenganti, a technologist at SAS Software, who pays twice the tuition for her daughter at NC State since her H4 visa in in backlog. Sometimes, she wonders if she should eventually move to Canada, a nation where it is easier to experience the benefits of citizenship.

Thousands in NC are in this situation, most in the Triangle and Charlotte region. Not only are they driving innovation and jobs at Technology companies, but also among the ranks of the 56,000 immigrant owned companies, employing over 151,000 citizens in our state.

Finally, Consider our universities. Theyre a critical part of our economy, producing wealth, innovation, and skilled workers our state urgently needs. But in recent months the Trump administration had considered blocking international students whose colleges switch to online teaching; to make it impossible for foreign students to complete PhDs; and to undermine the visas that allow U.S. businesses to hire foreign graduates with critically needed skills.

This type of action would have been a disaster for North Carolina. Our states 21,954 international students inject $722.3 million a year into the local economy, supporting over 9,000 jobs. International students also make college affordable for Americans: though they account for just 4.6% of the student population, foreign students pay 28% of all college tuition. By hurting international students, President Trump is depriving our colleges of vital revenues, and ultimately hurting all North Carolinians.

Some statistics worth noting from New American Economy:

As we face huge public health and economic challenges, immigrants are on the front lines helping us respond to both. Yet even as they fight alongside Americans, they are excluded from federal relief efforts (as are their U.S. citizen spouses), they are at risk of deportation if they are undocumented, and now legal workers that drive essential industries wont be able to enter the U.S. to spur additional job creation and help drive the economic recovery.

Let North Carolina be an example to both President Elect Biden and Vice President Elect Kamala Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, that comprehensive immigration reform can ensure that the United States is a destination for the best and brightest in the world to create more jobs now and in the future.

I strongly encourage President Elect Joe Biden to present an immigration proposal to the 117th Congress that accelerates the path to citizenship for highly skilled immigrants, extends protection for our Dreamers, and continues to address illegal immigration and border security in a reasonable fashion.

Continued here:
Guest opinion: Immigration means more jobs for NC and the US - WRAL Tech Wire

With President-elect Joe Biden's new administration taking office on 20 January 2021, there will be an opportunity for the US administration to renew its commitment to human rights, not only by ending its own egregious human rights violations but also by re-engaging with the international community through the United Nations and multilateral institutions.

For four years the Trump administration has implemented policies that have time and again demonstrated its disregard for human rights and its desire to suppress the rights of specific groups for political gain. We have seen executive orders and federal policies passed, along with divisive and hateful rhetoric directed at women and girls, the LGBTQI+ community, Black and Latino people, migrants and refugees, among others.

One of the Trump administrations flagship issues, since his 2016 presidential campaign, has been migration and asylum. His promises to build a wall along the border with Mexico and to destroy the asylum system soon became public policy. His administration has devoted significant time and effort to punishing those who arrive in the United States seeking safety and protection, including families and children. This has affected people fleeing levels of violence comparable to war zones, coming from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, those fleeing political repression in Cuba and massive human rights violations in Venezuela and Nicaragua, as well as a growing number of people forcibly displaced from countries outside the continent due to persecution and conflict.

Instead of offering shelter to people in need, the Trump administration devised a series of policies to criminalize them and deny them protection. It did this by claiming that there were insufficient resources to respond to these cases, all the while spending billions of dollars on militarizing the countrys borders.

In 2018, thousands of parents seeking asylum were charged with crimes under a zero tolerance policy that resulted in thousands of children being forcibly separated and detained, literally held in cages or flown to other facilities thousands of miles away, without consent and with no information as to their whereabouts. The US authorities have clearly and deliberately inflicted deep and lasting mental suffering on these families in an attempt to deter other desperate people from seeking asylum.

Instead of offering shelter to people in need, the Trump administration devised a series of policies to criminalize them and deny them protection

As if these incredibly cruel and illegal practices were not enough, the Trump administration then instituted the programme known as Remain in Mexico, which has forced tens of thousands of people seeking asylum at the Mexican border to wait in Mexican border communities in dangerous and insecure conditions. Under this programme, and with the agreement of the Mexican government, the Trump administration has forcibly returned nearly 60,000 people to Mexico while their US asylum applications are being processed, where they are at the mercy of organized criminal groups that extort, kidnap and assault them on a regular basis.

In 2019 the Trump administration also pressured the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to sign a series of safe third country agreements, enabling it to disregard its obligations to process asylum applications for people from third countries whose conditions may be far from safe and who are in need of protection.

The use of immigration detention has also soared in recent years. Tens of thousands of migrants, including thousands of asylum seekers and families with children, are currently being held in immigration detention centres up and down the country, under the supervision of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), while they fight for their right to remain in the United States. The Trump administration has used immigration detention as a way of punishing people solely on the basis of their immigration status and criminalizing those fleeing persecution and violence in their own countries.

These detention practices are exacerbating a crisis beyond the US borders: tens of thousands of people have been deported during the COVID-19 pandemic, including hundreds who tested positive after contracting the virus while being detained in unsafe and unsanitary detention facilities in the United States. Deportees have reported facing exposure to the virus, a quarantine system in their home countries that violates human rights, and stigma.

By March 2020, there was virtually no further possibility of seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext, the Trump government has illegally expelled tens of thousands of people, including families and unaccompanied children, under an order nominally issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that empowers border officials to summarily return people to Mexico or rapidly return them to their home countries.

Making the most of his last months in office, President Trump has introduced a number of new anti-asylum eligibility laws, including a ban on asylum for any persons transiting through a third country en route to the United States; a broad new regulation that radically redefines all elements of the definition of refugee; and a general prohibition on eligibility based on public health, which is rooted in xenophobia and discrimination rather than science.

It will be no easy matter to reverse the suffering these policies have caused. Joe Bidens incoming government has promised a radical change in migration and asylum policy. And yet many of the human rights violations suffered by migrants and refugees are neither new nor exclusive to the Trump administration; his government merely sped up the machinery and dramatically exacerbated its dire consequences. This forms an outstanding historical debt that requires urgent attention.

President Biden will be able to set a new direction for his administration by, for example, issuing executive orders in his first days in office that place the human rights of people in need of protection at the heart of his actions. The United States has an opportunity to end its practice of unnecessary, costly and punitive immigration detention, which has caused such enormous human suffering and led to a crisis of infection during the pandemic.

Many of the human rights violations suffered by migrants and refugees are neither new nor exclusive to the Trump administration; his government merely sped up the machinery and dramatically exacerbated its dire consequences

Among other things, the Biden administration should also establish a moratorium on deportations during the COVID-19 pandemic, while dismantling the architecture of the Trump eras illegal asylum and immigration policies. Restoring the asylum system and humanitarian protection must start by annulling the 20 March order automatically expelling asylum seekers and unaccompanied children without due process, as well as overturning the dozens of policies that unfairly limit access to the right to seek asylum, including at the US-Mexico border.

The new administration must ensure that people who are waiting in border communities in Mexico under the Remain in Mexico programme are immediately accepted into US territory to continue their asylum application processes. It is therefore essential that Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obradors government cooperates closely with President Biden to put an end to this cruel and illegal policy.

The Biden government must furthermore establish strong alternative avenues of protection for people whose evident risk in their home countries requires urgent attention, such as the designation of temporary protection status for Venezuelan nationals and other forms of protection for people arriving from countries in crisis situations.

The road will not be an easy one but the political will shown by the Biden government since the election will be crucial in reversing the dire legacy of the Trump administration.

Go here to read the rest:
Rebuilding from the ashes, Trump's heritage on immigration and asylum policy - Amnesty International