Balance the Number

[Migrant Health Promotion]

MHP Immigration News Service

April 18, 2011

Immigration News Service is a project of Migrant Health Promotion. Its purpose is to educate members of the farmworker health community about trends in immigration policy and empower them to become involved in the immigration policy debate.  This bi-weekly news service features articles from mainstream, national, local, and alternative news sources and presents links and excerpts, without editorializing.

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Table of Contents

1. Mission creep. Chicago Tribune. Editorials. April 1, 2011.

2. Disparity in border security under review. Alan Gomez. USA Today. April 3, 2011.

3. Tea Party Senators Target Birthright Citizenship for Immigrant Children. Devyn Dwyer. ABC News. April 6, 2011.

4. Immigration court: A 'maddening' system with stressed judges, long waits, lives in limbo. Sharon Cohen. AP National Writer. April 9, 2011.

5. U.S. Immigration System Making Changes, But Are They Enough? Hispanically Speaking News. April 11, 2011.

6. Immigration official agrees to probe alleged abused by local agents. Niraj Warikoo. Detroit Free Press. April 16, 2011.
   

1. Mission creep. Chicago Tribune. Editorials. April 1, 2011.

Excerpt: The Department of Homeland Security has not made much of a dent in the illegal immigrant population in the U.S., now estimated to be 11 million people. So the feds have turned to local police and county sheriff's departments as partners. This relatively new tactic for enforcing immigration law is known as Secure Communities.

Here is how it works: When people are arrested and booked by a participating city or county, their fingerprints are shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigration authorities check for hits in their database, perhaps a deportation order that had been ignored. If there is a match, federal authorities can proceed with deportation after the criminal case is resolved.

Most local and county authorities do not want to be immigration cops. Many have cooperated with Secure Communities because the Obama administration touted it as a way to remove violent criminals from U.S. soil..

Kane County Sheriff Pat Perez says this is not what he signed up for. Many Hispanics in his community are already wary of working with law enforcement. Perez worries that Secure Communities does more to hamper law enforcement than help it.

"We want to focus on the guys running guns or bringing kilos of cocaine into our community," Perez said. "But that's not what the program became."

This is reaching a critical moment because Homeland Security wants to expand Secure Communities nationwide by 2013, and essentially compel cities and counties to cooperate. Some law enforcement agencies are resisting this, including those in Cook County and Chicago.

2. Disparity in border security under review. Alan Gomez. USA Today. April 3, 2011.

Excerpt: WASHINGTON — As the battle over illegal immigration has intensified in recent years, the federal government has responded by flooding the nation's southwest border with Border Patrol agents and National Guard troops.

Some, such as an interest group on the border and some members of Congress, are questioning whether those efforts to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country have come at the expense of the U.S.'s ability to stop the drugs, guns and cash that also flow across the border.

Up to 90% of the cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin that cross from Mexico to the U.S. goes through the dozens of land ports of entry along the border, according to the Texas Border Coalition, a group of mayors, judges and city officials from the border region.

From 2006 to 2010, the number of Customs and Border Protection officers who inspect people and cargo crossing through the ports of entry along the southwest border increased by 15%, while the number of CBP Border Patrol agents who patrol the rugged terrain between those ports increased by 59%, according to CBP figures.

Some believe that focus on the regions between the ports — where human smuggling is the biggest concern — has been a knee-jerk reaction to the loud calls in recent years to stem the tide of illegal immigration..

Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., will use her House Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security on Tuesday to study the distribution of manpower along the border. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, sent a letter Friday to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee asking for a hearing on the issue.

Miller says she wants to determine whether there is a shortage of funding and manpower at the ports of entry.

"It is a concern that we've all recognized," Miller says. "We'll focus on some issues that perhaps the agencies are not reacting to appropriately."..

Janice Kephart, director of national security policy for the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that wants to restrict immigration, says Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has done a better job than her predecessors to balance the number of agents and officers working along the border. Kephart says more bodies alone won't solve the problems of human or drug smuggling.

Napolitano "is putting more bodies out there because Congress has told her to, but it is without an overall operational strategy for the border," Kephart says.

3. Tea Party Senators Target Birthright Citizenship for Immigrant Children. Devyn Dwyer. ABC News. April 6, 2011.

Excerpt: A posse of Tea Party Republicans in the U.S. Senate this week opened a new front in the crusade against birthright citizenship with draft legislation that would bar children of illegal immigrants from becoming citizens.

Checking claims that people come to U.S. so their babies will be citizens.

Sens. David Vitter of Louisiana, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas say their bill requires the federal government to limit automatic citizenship to children born to at least one parent who is a citizen, legal resident, or member of the military.

The senators say a misinterpretation of the Constitution, which grants birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment, has led to tens of thousands of "anchor babies" -- children of illegal immigrants or foreign tourists, born in the U.S., who can in turn sponsor legal residency for their parents and extended families.

"It's astounding that the U.S. government allows individuals to exploit the loopholes of our immigration system in this manner," said Vitter during debate on the Senate floor. "It's obvious that Congress has the authority and the obligation to put an end to it."..

The Republican senators' draft legislation released this week takes a different tact to the birthright citizenship issue than Vitter and Paul pursued earlier this year when they unveiled a plan to change the Constitution itself.

But with two thirds of both chambers of Congress and three-fourths of all the states needed top amend the document, the change was deemed highly unlikely to pass.

Waslin said the latest attempt to change application of the 14th Amendment in practice is also unlikely to pass muster in either Congress or the courts.

"The Supreme Court has upheld birthright citizenship several times," she said, "and the leading constitutional scholars agree you would have to change the Constitution, not just the Immigration and Nationality Act as they're trying to do here."

4. Immigration court: A 'maddening' system with stressed judges, long waits, lives in limbo. Sharon Cohen. AP National Writer. April 9, 2011.

Excerpt: CHICAGO (AP) — Every morning, they don their black robes, take their seats and listen to the pleas of a long line of immigrants desperate to stay in America. The pace is fast, the pressure intense, the stories sometimes haunting. The work, these judges say, is exhausting:

"The volume is constant and unrelenting.' ... 'There is not enough time to think.' ... 'Nobody gives a damn about us!' ... 'I know I couldn't do this job if I were not on medication for depression or did not have access to competent psychological care myself.' ... 'I cannot take this place anymore. What a dismal job this is!'"

These are the voices of immigration judges who determine the fate of tens of thousands of people every year — illegal border crossers, visa violators, refugees who flee China, El Salvador, Iran and other countries, each making a case to remain here.

These judges are at the heart of a bloated immigration court system saddled by explosive growth, a troubled reputation and a record backlog, according to one estimate, of nearly 268,000 cases. The problems are drawing increased scrutiny of a little-seen world where justice can seem arbitrary, lives can remain in limbo for years — and blame seems to be in abundance..

"This has nothing to do with whether you think someone should be deported or not. What this boils down to is this — if you're going to have a court system, you have to do it right," says Malcolm Rich, director of Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, a legal research and advocacy group. "By doing it wrong — the way we're doing it now, we're wasting tens of millions of dollars."..

The federal agency that runs the courts — the Executive Office for Immigration Review — has responded by hiring 38 more judges — there are now 270 — and about 90 others, including clerks, in the last 18 months.

In congressional testimony last year, Juan Osuna, now acting director of the office, outlined measures being taken to improve the courts, including more staff and training and better hiring practices. The courts came under fire during the Bush administration when it was discovered some Justice Department aides were choosing judges based on their politics.

But there’s no magic wand to erase more than a quarter-million cases.

Judges handle, on average, more than 1,200 matters a year, leaving them so overwhelmed they mostly issue oral decisions “that sometimes are not fully researched or based in law or fact,” according to a 2010 report commissioned by the American Bar Association.

“You sit there, listen to a case, then there’s a five-minute break, and you render the decision,” says Dana Leigh Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “It keeps us up at nights as judges. You worry — are you making the right decision, particularly when someone has a criminal record.”..

A survey of courts in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York — based on interviews and observations — found “countless” incidents of immigrants treated in a “denigrating” way who couldn’t understand what they were asked or told. That report, published in 2009, by the Appleseed Foundation, also found frightening instances of poor translation.

One glaring example: An immigrant testified fire trucks were called to hose down political demonstrators. The interpreter just used the word “fire” when translating — leaving the judge with the disastrous impression the immigrant was setting fires.

5. U.S. Immigration System Making Changes, But Are They Enough? Hispanically Speaking News. April 11, 2011.

Excerpt: As many immigrants have learned, the court process is very slow. Between files being lost, background checks being delayed, overcrowded dockets, and overloaded judges, it is no wonder those seeking asylum or to become citizens often feel so hopeless. The good news is that changes are being made, and slowly but surely things seem to be on track to better futures for many.

With the push of lawyers like Judy London and Laura Wytsma of Los Angeles, as well as other members of the American Bar Association, Congress is starting to make changes to a very flawed system.

“So many things are wrong, it’s hard to know where to start,” said London.

So far 38 judges have been added, as well as 90 additional court workers, and they will set out to tackle the nearly 268,000 backlogged cases reported by the research group Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

However, though it is a step in the right direction, 38 is far from the 100 judges the American Bar Association called for in a study commissioned last year..

“There are too many other priorities for the federal government ... it’s so far down the totem pole,” said Wytsma, who was once a government immigration lawyer. “There are no politicians accountable to this constituency (the immigrants). They are not wealthy. They have no voting power. They have none of the things that put any pressures on the powers that be to make change. I’m not optimistic at all.”

6. Immigration official agrees to probe alleged abused by local agents. Niraj Warikoo. Detroit Free Press. April 16, 2011.

Excerpt: After a meeting today in Dearborn, the head of immigration enforcement agreed to review a dozen cases involving allegations of abuse by federal immigration agents in Detroit in recent months. And U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Detroit) sent a letter to government officials criticizing federal agents for their alleged mistreatment of Latinos and others.

The decision by John Morton, Director of Immigration Customs Enforcement, was made during a meeting today at the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services between him and several groups representing labor, immigrants, and the Archdiocese of Detroit.

The meeting came after two raids on elementary schools in Detroit over the past two weeks that advocates say violated ICE policies..

On March 31, ICE agents followed parents from their homes to Hope of Detroit Academy, a public charter school in Detroit, said Ryan Bates, director of the Alliance for Immigrants Rights & Reform Michigan. Afterwards, a national spokesperson for ICE said that Detroit agents may have violated ICE policies.

A similar raid was then carried out by agents at Neinas Elementary School in Detroit on April 7.

In a statement today, a union representing the agents said they acted appropriately in the incident at Hope Elementary.

"It was textbook law enforcement," said Chris Crane, President of the National ICE Council, the Union representing ICE Agents and Officers, "I'm proud of our Officers and the professionalism they displayed in conducting their duties."..

After today’s meeting with Morton, immigrant advocates and union leaders gathered at the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation to speak out against profiling. And U.S. Rep. Hansen Clarke (D-Detroit), a member of the Homeland Security Committee, spoke to Morton today about local concerns.

“Rep. Clarke could sense that the Director is serious about investigating the issue,” said Clarke spokeswoman Kim Bowan.