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President Trump vowed during the campaign to deport millions of illegal immigrants, but his plans could be short-circuited by a massive backlog and looming judge shortage that threaten to slow deportation cases to a crawl.

While the administration is tackling the case backlog that built up during the Obama administration, the problem wont be easy to fix, according to a recent government audit. The report found it takes almost a year to bring a deportation case; more than a third of immigration judges are eligible to retire; and the process of hiring a new immigration judge takes nearly two years.

The findings also suggest the recruitment of new judges is not keeping pace with the increase in caseload.

Unless more court slots are filled, those individuals will not be removed from the United States, said Art Arthur, a former federal immigration judge who oversaw cases in York Immigration Court in York, Pa.

HOUSE PASSES KATE'S LAW AS PART OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT CRACKDOWN

The Government Accountability Office released the report on June 1 and two weeks later, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a third round of new immigration judge appointments, bringing the total to 326 immigration judges currently serving. Expediting the appointment process would be key, since 39 percent of current judges are eligible to retire -- and the GAO found it took an average of 742 days to hire new judges from 2011 through 2016.

Trumps proposed fiscal 2018 budget also would provide $80 million, a 19 percent hike from last year, to hire 75 new immigration judges.

But thats still not enough to cover the cost of the judges needed, argued Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, a pro-border enforcement advocacy group.

Amal Hana, of Warren, Mich., holds a photo of Donald Trump on Friday, June 16, 2017, outside the Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building during a protest in Detroit (Tanya Moutzalias/MLive.com via AP)

The Trump administration still has to deal with a lot of what it inherited from the Obama administrations catch-and-release policy, he said. Instead of catch and release, it should have been detain or send across the border. To do that, you need more judges and more courtrooms.

The Justice Departments Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which is responsible for conducting immigration court proceedings and appeals, already has begun to address many of the problems outlined by the audit, Justice Department spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly said.

For example, on April 11, 2017, the Attorney General implemented a new, streamlined hiring plan for immigration judges that requires just as much vetting as before, but reduces the timeline, Mattingly told Fox News.

She said the office is also working with its federal partners to make the immigration process more efficient, and ensuring that its resources are allocated in the most effective manner, while reviewing internal practices, procedures, and technology in order to identify ways in which it can enhance immigration judge productivity without compromising due process.

The GAO report looked at the challenges facing the immigration review agency between fiscal 2006 and 2015 and found:

There are so many layers of review and a long vetting process, said Arthur, who also previously served as a Justice Department attorney.

Arthur, now a resident fellow in law and policy for the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News the problem with the backlog is that there is generally no downside for judges who grant a continuance of a case, since thats fewer cases to deal with on a given day.

Continued here:
Trump deportation push could get jammed in bureaucratic mess - Fox News

The United States government may force Gurmukh Singh to leave the country.

Singh works as a taxi driver in Southern California. The government denied his request for asylum 18 years ago. Since then, he has been trying to persuade U.S. immigration officials to overturn the expulsion order.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE detained Singh in early May. His wife and two daughters are American citizens.

Alan Lowenthal represents a part of Southern California in the U.S. House of Representatives. Shortly after Singhs detention, Lowenthal offered a private immigration bill to the House for consideration. If approved, the measure would give Singh the legal right to stay in the country.

However, the Trump administration recently changed the way immigration officials deal with such cases.

What is a private bill?

Private bills are pieces of legislation that create a law that affects only one person or a small group of people. Private bills can stop a law from affecting someone, provide special help, or remove legal responsibility for some wrongful act.

Often, members of Congress write private bills to help people who been unsuccessful in dealing with the U.S. immigration system.

How often does this happen?

Private bills are rare. Between 1986 and 2013, Congress approved such measures just 94 times.

Jill Marie Bussey is the director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. She says about 300 private bills have been proposed in Congress since 2010. That number could fall because of changes in the way ICE deals with private bill cases.

What are the changes to private bills?

Until last month, ICE delayed expulsions of undocumented immigrants named in private bills in Congress. The agency says there were about 70 such cases over the past six years.

But in May, ICE told Congress it would only delay expulsions for up to six months -- and only after receiving a written request from the chair of the House and Senate judiciary committee or one of their subcommittees.

Committee chairs are usually members of the majority party. Republican lawmakers now control the House and Senate.

ICE says most private bills are designed to give people permanent resident status by circumventing the normal immigration law network.

Bussey says that private bills are only used when there is no other way to resolve the immigration case under current law.

This is not about circumventing, she says. This is about providing protection in very unique ways.

Robert Law is the director of government relations at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. He said the changes will help make the process fairer.

But some members of Congress believe the changes give too much power to the president.

Dianne Feinstein is the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Dick Durbin is the top Democrat on the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee. In a joint statement, they described the change as a mean-spirited action that tramples firm, longstanding practice between two co-equal branches of government.

Can members of Congress intervene at all?

Members of Congress can also have an influence on immigration cases in other ways. Bussey says members can contact a local ICE office, or the State Department, when a case involves visa issues.

Theres human error in all of this stuff, says Bussey. Even doing everything the right way -- you know youve completed the forms properly, you know youve completed the case -- things can go wrong.

That is how Florida Representative Charlie Crist, a Democrat, was able to help the Huynh family. They are friends of his family and operate a jewelry store in his state.

Crist told VOA that he entered the store a few months ago and saw that Mrs. Huynh was sad.

She was telling me about her daughter Kim who had gotten married a year prior and yet her husband wasnt allowed to come to Vietnam to be with her in America, he said.

Crist began to work with Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who was already making telephone calls about the case to the State Department. State Department workers met with Kims husband at his home in Vietnam. They saw a photograph of the lawmaker and asked if he was a family friend.

Three days later, Kims husband was given a visa.

What role can Congress play?

Immigration powers are divided between Congress and the president. Finding a balance between them often means looking for areas where one of them has done something they are not permitted to do.

Law says there needs to be (a) clear line about what the letter of the law is and if there are problems with the law, then we have a legislative process to fix it.

Bussey says that when members of Congress get personally involved in immigration cases they learn more about what is happening in federal agencies and what people are facing day to day and hopefully they can learn from that.

Im Alice Bryant. And I'm Bryan Lynn.

VOAs Katherine Gypson wrote this story. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted it for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page.

_______________________________________________________________

expel v. to officially force (someone) to leave a place or organization

resident n. someone who lives in a particular place

status n. the current state of someone or something

circumvent v. to avoid being stopped by (something, such as a law or rule); to get around (something) in a clever and sometimes dishonest way

trample v. to treat other people's rights, wishes or feelings as if they are worthless or not important

practice n. the action of doing or using something

error n. something that is not correct; a wrong action or statement

stuff n. informal used to speak in a general way about something that is talked about, written about, etc.

allow v. to permit (something)

letter of the law expression the specific meaning of a law

Here is the original post:
How US Lawmakers Get Involved in Immigration Cases - Voice of America

Even as the U.S. moves to tighten border controls and regulate immigration in a way that provides greater benefits and fewer costs to current American citizens, lawmakers should look to address ways that the current system is too arbitrary and draconian. This is one: Children who came here legally and were formally adopted by American citizens should automatically become American citizens. The New York Times reportson the tragic saga of a Korean adoptee who committed suicide after being deported from the U.S.:

Phillip Clay was adopted at 8 into an American family in Philadelphia.

Twenty-nine years later, in 2012, after numerous arrests and a struggle with drug addiction, he was deported back to his birth country,South Korea. He could not speak the local language, did not know a single person and did not receive appropriate care for mental health problems, which included bipolar disorder and alcohol and substance abuse.

On May 21, Mr. Clay ended his life, jumping from the 14th floor of an apartment building north of Seoul. He was 42.

As theTimesnotes, a 2000 law grants automatic citizenship to youngsters adopted into American families after its passage. That law should be amended to apply retroactively.

Liberals and conservatives hold a range of positions on the way the U.S. immigration system should handle so-called Dreamerspeople whose parents brought them to the U.S. illegally as children. But while opponents of citizenship for Dreamers can point to the perverse incentives involved in legalizing children of illegal immigrants, there is no such case here. Parents who adopt children into their homes have done nothing wrong; their selflessness should be encouraged.

There are many thorny questions in immigration policy. This is not one of them. Congress should address it soon.

Read the original here:
Immigration Reform Should Fix This - The American Interest

Many supporters of installing true immigration reform have faulted the Trump administration for not ending the DAPA amnesty that was created illegally by the Obama administration. But there are other reforms that also have not been acted on.

While Trump has indicated he intends to take back some of Obamas actions normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba, there has been no mention of the administration undoing special immigration provisions for Cubans put in place by the Clinton administration at the same time that the wet-foot dry-foot policy was put in place by executive action. Clinton, at that time, agreed by executive action to accept a floor of 20,000 immigrant admissions of Cubans each year. This floor on the admission level does not exist for any other country and is a distortion of the overall immigration law.

Also with regard to Cubans, the United States has been allowing Cubans to apply for refugee status and permanent residence in the United States without ever leaving Cuba. That flies in the face of the international standard that a refugee is a person who has fled his country because of persecution or other factor. In part, this exceptional treatment for Cubans was adopted as a way to help meet the 20,000 floor on annual admissions.

Probably due to the in-country refugee processing for Cubans, The Obama administration instituted a similar program for Central Americans. Rather than having to get to the United States to make a claim for asylum, they could try for a refugee visa while still in their home country. That too was done by executive action.

The processing of refugees in their home country dates back well before the Clinton action for Cubans. A similar policy was already in place for Jews and other religious minorities attempting to leave the erstwhile USSR. That was different, however, because it was done by Congress, and has been perpetuated up to the present day despite evidence of significant fraud such as its use by members of the Russian mafia to enter the United States

While Congress should undo the refugee exception applied in Russia, the Trump administration should take action to terminate the exceptions for Cubans and Central Americans. The need to enact these reforms is not new, but the Obama administration turned a deaf ear to this need.

The rest is here:
Loose Ends in President Trump's Immigration Reforms - ImmigrationReform.com (blog)

This was a very significant and exciting week in the fight for immigration reform. I was named chairman of the House subcommittee with jurisdiction over immigration and border security issues; the House Judiciary Committee approved my bill to reform Americas refugee program; and I voted for, and the House passed two immigration enforcement bills.

As you know, immigration reform is an issue close to my heart and one Ive worked on for a long time. Thats why I am honored to be the new Chairman of the House Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee.

I was tapped for the position on Tuesday, and I will have the responsibility for the rest of the 115th Congress. As chairman, I will prioritize legislation that enforces our laws, secures our borders, and modernizes our immigration system for the 21st century.

Thats what the people of Idaho want, and thats what they deserve. I will do everything I can to deliver.

The very next day, the House Judiciary Committee approved my bill to reform Americas refugee program: The Refugee Program Integrity Restoration Act. As Americans, we have a long tradition of helping refugees who, through no fault of their own, are fleeing war and persecution and wish to become contributing members of our society.

However, our first priority when it comes to Americas refugee program is ensuring the safety and security of the American people. There are already documented cases of terrorists infiltrating the program, and with ISIS vowing to exploit it further, the time for congressional action is now.

My bill modernizes Americas refugee program to keep pace with todays security challenges. It enacts stronger vetting of refugees, gives states and communities the power to decline resettlement, and lowers the annual refugee ceiling and shifts to Congress the authority to make changes in that figure.

Overall, my bill will protect the integrity of the refugee program, reduce fraud, and improve national security. To learn more about my bill, please read my op-ed with House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte in the Washington Times here.

Then, on Thursday, I voted for and the House passed two immigration enforcement bills: Kates Law and The No Sanctuary for Criminals Act. Kates Law increases penalties for deported felons who return to the U.S., like the illegal alien who killed Kate Steinle in San Francisco two years ago. The No Sanctuary for Criminals Act combats dangerous sanctuary policies that shield illegal aliens from federal immigration enforcement. These bills include provisions from my immigration enforcement bill, H.R. 2431, the Davis-Oliver Act.

With Speaker Paul Ryan and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, I spoke at a press conference in support of these bills. I emphasized that governments at all levels have a basic responsibility to protect our citizens from those who are here illegally and especially from those who commit crimes. For too long, the federal government has looked the other way while sanctuary cities violate the law and undermine public safety. The bills I voted for this week bring common sense to an issue where common sense is desperately needed. To watch me speaking at the press conference, please click here.

This is just the beginning. I look forward to having a House vote on the Davis-Oliver Act and additional legislation that the House Judiciary Committee is working on, including mandatory E-Verify.

Fixing our broken immigration system starts, first and foremost, with enforcing the law. By completing that vital first step, we will be positioned to modernize our immigration system and bring it into the 21st century.

This column was submitted by U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Eagle.

See the article here:
Steps forward on immigration reform | Columns | idahostatejournal ... - Idaho State Journal