Federal judge blocks Alabama illegal immigration law

By JAY REEVES - Associated Press

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of Alabama's new law cracking down on illegal immigration, ruling Monday that she needed more time to decide whether the law opposed by the Obama administration, church leaders and immigrant-rights groups is constitutional.

The brief order by U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Blackburn means the law — which opponents and supporters alike have called the toughest in the nation — won't take effect as scheduled on Thursday. The ruling was cheered both by Republican leaders who were pleased the judge didn't gut the law and by opponents who compare it to old Jim Crow-era statutes against racial integration.

Blackburn didn't address whether the law is constitutional, and she could still let all or parts of the law take effect later. Instead, she said she needed more time to consider lawsuits filed by the Justice Department, private groups and individuals that claim the state is overstepping its bounds.

The judge said she will issue a longer ruling by Sept. 28, and her temporary order will remain in effect until the day after. She heard arguments from the Justice Department and others during a daylong hearing last week.

Similar laws have been passed in Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Georgia. Federal judges already have blocked all or parts of the laws in those states.

Among other things, the law would require schools to verify the citizenship status of students, but it wouldn't prevent illegal immigrants from attending public schools.

The law also would make it a crime to knowingly assist an illegal immigrant by providing them a ride, a job, a place to live or most anything else — a section that church leaders fear would hamper public assistance ministries. It also would allow police to jail suspected illegal immigrants during traffic stops.

Finding a way to curtail public spending that benefits illegal immigrants has been a pet project of Alabama conservatives for years. Census figures released earlier this year show the state's Hispanic population more than doubled over a decade to 185,602 last year, and supporters of the law contend many of them are in the country illegally.

Isabel Rubio, executive director of the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama, which is among the groups that sued over the law, hopes Blackburn will block it entirely but was happy with the temporary reprieve."

We are pleased that Judge Blackburn is taking more time to study the case," she said.

Republican Gov. Robert Bentley said he would continue to defend the law, and GOP leaders in the House and Senate praised Blackburn — a Republican appointee — for taking time to fully consider the law."

We must remember that today's ruling is simply the first round in what promises to be a long judicial fight over Alabama's right to protect its borders," said House Majority Leader Micky Hammon of Decatur. "To put it in sports terms, it is the first half-inning of the first game of a seven-game World Series."

While the Obama administration contends the state law conflicts with federal immigration law, state Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, contends the federal government isn't doing its job enforcing immigration laws. Beason said that he spent years researching immigration law to help write the 70-plus page law, and that it's unrealistic to expect a judge to go through it all in a few days."

You just can't do that," he said.

DHS Announces Expansion of Prosecutorial Discretion Guidelines, Signals Opportunity to Regain Common Sense

August 18, 2011

Washington D.C. - Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it would put guidelines in place across all immigration agencies to ensure that its enforcement priorities are focused on removing persons who are most dangerous to the country.

In a letter to Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and other senators who had requested that DHS consider deferring the removal of all DREAM Act eligible students, DHS announced that it would not categorically defer removal, but that persons who were not high priority targets for removal would have the opportunity to request prosecutorial discretion on a case by case basis. Low priority cases-previously identified in a prosecutorial discretion memo issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton on June 17-include persons who are not criminals and have been in the country since childhood, have strong community ties, are veterans or relatives of persons in the armed services, are caregivers, have serious health issues, are victims of crime or otherwise have a strong basis for remaining in the United States.

DHS announced the creation of a joint committee with the Department of Justice that will review nearly 300,000 cases currently in removal proceedings and determine which cases are low priority and can be administratively closed. In addition, agency-wide guidance will be issued to ICE, USCIS and CBP officers to ensure that they appropriately exercise discretion when determining whether a low priority case should be referred to immigration court.

Mary Giovagnoli, Director of the Immigration Policy Center, stated:

The American Immigration Council welcomes DHS's announcement today that it will attempt to put muscle behind new guidelines on prosecutorial discretion. We have long advocated for using the tools of the executive branch to do effective immigration enforcement that does not cripple families and our economy. The creation of an interagency working group and the expansion of prosecutorial discretion guidance is a critical step toward slowing down the deportation of immigrants who have so much to give to this country. However, only comprehensive immigration reform can permanently address the problems of our immigration system.

According to Melissa Crow, Director of the Legal Action Center:

Today's announcement clearly indicates the Obama Administration's commitment to implementing the expansive use of prosecutorial discretion authorized by the June 17th Morton Memo. As we closely monitor how these new announcements are implemented, DREAM students, military families, victims of crime, and many other individuals who pose no threat to public safety may receive a reprieve from removal. We hope that the forthcoming guidance will help to ensure that DHS field offices across the country use their enforcement resources in a way that meaningfully advances the agency's priorities and prevents low priority cases from continuing to clog the court system.

Federal Policy Resulting in Wave of Deportations Draws Protests

August 16, 2011

By JULIA PRESTON

A program that is central to President Obama’s immigration enforcement strategy has drawn protests by Latino and immigrant organizations in six cities in the last two days, as those groups stepped up their confrontation with the administration over the fast pace of deportations. In Los Angeles, about 200 immigrants and their supporters walked out of a stormy hearing Monday evening that was called by a task force advising the enforcement program, known as Secure Communities. Bearing signs that said “Stop Ripping Families Apart,” the protesters called for an end to the program, which they said had led to the deportation of victims who reported domestic violence to the police, and to parents of American citizen children.

On Tuesday in Chicago, several dozen protesters delivered thousands of petitions calling for an end to the program to the headquarters of Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign. Petitions were also delivered by small groups of protesters to Democratic Party offices in Miami, Atlanta, Houston and Charlotte, N.C.

About two dozen prominent immigrant advocacy organizations issued a report denouncing the program and calling on the administration to halt it.

Organizers said the protests were a response to an announcement on Aug. 5 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency that runs Secure Communities, that the program would continue to expand to meet its declared goal of covering the whole country by 2013. Clarifying doubts about whether states and cities could choose whether to participate, John Morton, the agency’s director, said that agreements with state and local officials were not required for the agency to proceed.

President Obama has made no headway in a divided Congress toward an immigration overhaul that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. At the same time, in each of the last two years immigration authorities have deported nearly 400,000 people. Under Secure Communities, fingerprints of anyone booked into jail by the state and local police are sent to the F.B.I. for criminal checks — long a routine practice — and also to the Department of Homeland Security, which records immigration violations. Immigration agents decide whether to detain noncitizens signaled by fingerprint matches.

The ferment on Tuesday exposed vastly differing views of the program between immigrant advocates and Obama administration officials. In an interview, Mr. Morton said the program was working effectively to carry out his agency’s focus on deporting immigrants convicted of serious crimes.

“It’s the law, and we think it is very good policy, to focus our resources on people who are here unlawfully and also committing crimes,” Mr. Morton said.

He said agency figures showed that about 90 percent of those deported under Secure Communities since it was started in 2008 were either convicted criminals or foreigners who had failed to obey a court order to leave the country or who had returned to the United States illegally after deportation.

Immigration officials pointed to the arrest in January in Los Angeles of a Mexican man on charges of driving with a suspended license. After a Secure Communities match, the police learned that he had been convicted of drug trafficking and burglary and deported six times. Another Mexican arrested in Los Angeles was found to have been convicted in the killing of a child in 1997. Mr. Morton said he had created the advisory task force, which went to work in June, to recommend fixes that would lower the numbers of deportations of illegal immigrants who did not have criminal convictions.

Also on Tuesday, the American Immigration Lawyers Association published a report that cast light on how Secure Communities and other enforcement programs have stirred tensions in immigrant communities. The association, which includes 11,000 immigration lawyers, polled its members to see how many were handling cases of immigrants facing deportation after being stopped by local police officers for minor offenses, like traffic violations. Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the lawyers’ association, said his office was deluged with responses.

“Department of Homeland Security practices have ushered in a sea change in who is being deported, and our attorneys have literally been flooded with people coming in to their offices who have been picked up by local police for small time stuff,” Mr. Chen said. The report, which presents a sample of 127 cases from 24 states, was the “the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

The lawyers’ report includes the recent case of an immigrant in New Mexico detained for deportation after the local police questioned him about burning leaves in the front yard. A woman in Minnesota was held by federal agents after the traffic police stopped her saying she failed to signal a right turn. An immigrant facing deportation from Florida was a passenger in a vehicle pulled over in a traffic stop; the vehicle was driven by his wife, a United States citizen.

In 87 cases, the report found, the illegal immigrants facing deportation had no criminal history, and 79 of them were close relatives of American citizens or legal permanent residents. Many had lived for more than a decade in the United States.

“Fundamentally, D.H.S. is saying one thing but doing another,” Mr. Chen said, arguing that the lawyers’ findings contradicted figures provided by immigration officials. He said the agency, by detaining large numbers of immigrants after minor offenses, was “distorting its own mission of focusing on public safety and national security risks.”

Eleanor Pelta, the president of the lawyers’ association, urged Mr. Morton to improve screening procedures so that arrests by local police did not lead automatically to federal deportation.

Cecilia Muñoz, the White House official who oversees immigration policy, said Mr. Obama strongly favored Secure Communities because he does not have the option of saying, “While I’m waiting for Congress to come forward, I am not going to bother to enforce the law.” The program is “the best tool we have,” she said, “to enforce the law in the best possible way.”

Fear and frustration about Secure Communities spilled over during the hearing on Monday in Los Angeles, one of five organized by the task force. One speaker, Isaura Garcia, 20, said she had been reported to immigration authorities by the Los Angeles police after she called 911 when she was beaten by her boyfriend.

The program drew praise from a representative of a Los Angeles County supervisor, Michael D. Antonovich, a Republican. But an official from the office of Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, a Democrat, echoed immigrants’ criticisms.

Shouting erupted after one citizen, Julio Giron, yelled from the crowd to defend the program, which he said was needed because Mr. Obama had failed to secure the border. Soon after, most of the opponents, who significantly outnumbered the supporters, marched out, calling on the task force to resign.

Ian Lovett contributed reporting.

Shelve Secure Communities

The Obama administration should stop making matters worse by tinkering with a failed program to identify and deport dangerous illegal immigrants.

August 12, 2011

Lawmakers in California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York have sought for several months to withdraw from Secure Communities, a supposedly voluntary federal fingerprint-sharing program designed to identify and deport dangerous immigrants. The Obama administration is now trying to make the states' opposition moot — a tactic that may provide the legal basis for expanding Secure Communities but does nothing to improve the program's damaged credibility.

Launched in 2008 and due to be in effect nationwide in 2013, Secure Communities requires the FBI to share with the Department of Homeland Security the fingerprints of everyone booked into local jails. The department then checks the prints against its immigration database. But some state officials balked at the program, citing fears that it might hinder public safety more than it helps it.

This month, the Department of Homeland Security abruptly announced that it was canceling agreements with all local officials. It explained that it would no longer invite them to opt into the program because local police already send the FBI the fingerprint data of every detainee.

States signed up for Secure Communities because they thought it would make their neighborhoods safer by getting serious criminals off the streets. But the government's own data indicate that more than half of those deported under the program were undocumented immigrants with no criminal record or only minor ones — not violent felons.

Moreover, the program's staggering failure to prioritize deportation efforts may actually result in more harm than good. Law enforcement officials in San Francisco, Santa Clara County and elsewhere want out of the program because they say it has a chilling effect on immigrants' willingness to report crimes or assist authorities. Police must now persuade immigrants that officers are interested only in preventing crimes, not deporting them.

The Obama administration says it already has taken steps to fix that problem, creating a task force and issuing new guidelines instructing agents and prosecutors to focus on criminals. The states, however, are growing increasingly tired of the administration's mixed signals on immigration.

The president has publicly called for an overhaul of the nation's broken immigration system to give those who work hard but are illegally in the country a chance to remain here legally. Yet his administration has failed to curb a program that deports many of the very people he says deserve a chance to stay.

The president's leadership on immigration has been anemic. He can't solve the problem alone, but he has done little beyond delivering speeches blaming Congress. At the very least, Obama should shelve Secure Communities and stop making matters worse.

Board of Immigration Appeals Guts Legal Protections for Immigrants Under Arrest

August 15, 2011

Washington, D.C.—The American Immigration Council strongly condemns last week’s ruling from the Board of Immigration Appeals holding that immigrants arrested without a warrant are not entitled to certain Miranda-like warnings prior to questioning by immigration officers. In a precedent decision, the Board held that noncitizens need not be informed of their right to counsel or warned that their statements can be used against them until after they have been placed in formal deportation proceedings.

For decades, immigrants placed under arrest have been entitled to these critical advisals. Like “Miranda” warnings for criminal suspects, such notifications help to ensure that statements made during questioning are not the product of coercion. As a result of last week’s ruling, noncitizens under arrest will now be even more vulnerable to pressure from interrogating officers, and immigration judges will face greater difficulty determining whether statements made during questioning were truly voluntary. “

This decision epitomizes the substandard system of justice that’s been created and imposed on immigrants in the United States,” said Melissa Crow, Director of the American Immigration Council’s Legal Action Center. “The Board’s ruling renders the advisals practically meaningless and makes immigrants less likely to remain silent when questioned and less likely to assert their right to counsel.”

The Board of Immigration Appeals is the highest administrative tribunal on immigration and nationality matters in the United States. Decisions of the Board may be subject to review by federal courts or by the Attorney General. The ruling came in Matter of E-R-M-F- & A-S-M-, 25 I&N Dec. 580 (BIA 2011).

Mexican Migration Patterns Signal a New Immigration Reality:

Fewer Coming, Fewer Leaving, and 3/5 of Unauthorized Have Been Here for a Decade or Longer

August 1, 2011

Washington D.C. - Today, the Immigration Policy Center releases a summary of recent data on Mexican migration to and from the United States. This data provides an important reminder that as migration patterns change over time, so too must U.S. immigration policies. Fewer Mexicans are migrating to the United States, fewer Mexican immigrants in the United States are returning home, and immigrants from Mexico are parents to a new generation of Mexican Americans who are U.S. citizens.

New reports from the Pew Hispanic Center and the RAND Corporation provide useful information about the state of immigration today. Although this data deals with Mexican immigrants as a whole and not just the unauthorized, it is a useful indicator of what is taking place in the unauthorized population. More than half (55 percent) of Mexican immigrants in the United States are unauthorized, and roughly three-fifths (59 percent) of all unauthorized immigrants are from Mexico.

The data reveals an emerging new reality: fewer immigrants are coming, fewer are leaving, and a majority of the unauthorized population has been here for a decade or longer. These trends suggest that our immigration policies must transition away from the current efforts to drive out unauthorized immigrants with deep roots in this country. We need a more nuanced set of policies that help immigrants who are already living here and contributing to the U.S. economy to more fully integrate into U.S. society.

To view the fact sheet in its entirety, see:

Mexican Migration Patterns Signal a New Immigration Reality (IPC Fact Check, August 1, 2011)