Pushing forward with the Trump mass deportation

McClatchy reports on other notions being considered at high levels of the Trump Family Business Administration on mass deportation and repression against immigrants, Exclusive: DHS chief proposes prosecuting parents of children smuggled into U.S. by Franco Ordoñez 02/18/2017. Some of the leaks we're seeing like this may be "trial balloon" tests of public and Congressional reaction.

The two leaked memoranda reported on in this piece are Enforcement of the Immigration Laws to Serve the National Interest and Implementing the President's Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements Policies, both dated February 17 and both signed by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

As of the writing of the article, neither had been officially adopted as policy by the Trump Family Business Administration. But given the credible reports of serious misconduct by ICE agents during the early weeks of Trump's mass deportation effort, it's also possible that leaking these memorandum could function as a kind of wink-and-nod to ICE as to what the Administration's intentions and desires are.

Ordoñez reports:

The draft orders also would affect thousands of children who arrived in the United States as “unaccompanied minors” and were subsequently reunited with a parent living in the country illegally. Those children would no longer be protected against deportation, and their parents would be subject to criminal prosecution if they had paid human traffickers to bring their children across the border – a common scenario now.

One of the memos said 155,000 unaccompanied children have been detained in the past three years, and that 60 percent of them were later reunited with a parent inside the United States.

“The surge of illegal immigration at the southern border has overwhelmed federal agencies and resources and has created a significant national security vulnerability to the United States,” Kelly wrote in the memorandums, copies of which were made available to McClatchy Saturday.

For the Trump Family Business Administration and its white supremacist supporters, five-year-old children being reunited with their parents are "a significant national security vulnerability."

Illicit diplomatic dealings with Russia? Not a problem. Family values in uniting minor children with their parents? Ha, you didn't think Republicans were serious with all that "family values" jabber, did you? This is how the Trumpists view threats to "national security." Some to kind in mind when the Trump Family Business Administration decides they can enrich themselves and their cronies by invading some other country.

Ordoñez also explains:

The memos were intended to implement two of Trump’s executive orders on enforcement of immigration laws inside the United States, but would go farther by wiping away several orders President Barack Obama issued to protect those in the United States who had not committed criminal acts beyond entering the country without permission.

“These memorandums represent a significant attempt to expand the enforcement authority of the administration in areas that have been heavily litigated,” said Leon Fresco, who headed the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation under Obama.

For what it's worth, both memoranda use identical language saying, "This memorandum implements the Executive Order entitled "Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements," issued by the President on January 25, 2017." The President said in his news conference last week that this EO would be withdrawn during this coming week and replaced by another.

The "Enforcement of the Immigration Laws" memo contains this language:

The Department no longer will exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement. In faithfully executing the immigration laws, Department personnel should take enforcement actions in accordance with applicable law. In order to achieve this goal, as noted below, I have directed ICE to hire I 0,000 officers and agents expeditiously, and to take enforcement actions consistent with available resources. However, in order to maximize the benefit to public safety, to stem unlawful migration and to prevent fraud and misrepresentation, Department personnel should prioritize for removal those aliens described by Congress in Sections 212(a)(2), (a)(3), and (a)(6)(C), 235(b) and (c), and 237(a)(2) and (4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

Additionally, regardless of the basis of removability, Department personnel should prioritize removable aliens who: (1) have been convicted of any criminal offense; (2) have been charged with any criminal offense that has not been resolved; (3) have committed acts which constitute a chargeable criminal offense; (4) have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter before a governmental agency; (5) have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits; (6) are subject to a final order of removal but have not complied with their legal obligation to depart the United States; or (7) in the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security.

I won't try to get into the weeds of all those categories. But I'll note here that wording like "have committed acts which constitute a chargeable criminal offense," i.e., not even charged much less convicted with no distinction of the kind of criminal offenses specified, and "in the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security" are broad enough to put hundreds of thousands or even millions in those detention center in which private for-profit prison companies are planning to detain the targets of this mass deportation. Especially since the same memorandum defines minors reuniting with their parents as "a significant national security vulnerability."

I'm not familiar with these kinds of immigration-enforcement policy documents, so it's hard for me to make a judgment as whether some of the statements in both memoranda are considered as necessary legal stipulations in such documents or whether they are propaganda statements to promote the Trumpist line about the scary, scary "criminal aliens." But I will say it's hard to tell the difference in some cases.

Daphne Eviatar engages in some informed speculation about how the new version of the Muslim Ban Executive Order may approach the anti-refugee policies that Trump tried to implement with the January 25 EO, Travel Ban Could Let Repressive Regimes Decide Who Can Enter US Just Security 02/17/2017. As she notes, not every provision of the January 25 EO is covered by the federal court stay. And she explains:

The [Jan 25] order appears to envision the U.S. government seeking and relying on information from some of the most repressive and dysfunctional regimes in the world, about the citizens who are fleeing them, often because of that repression and dysfunction. Would the United States rely on the Iranian regime, for example, to vet the requests of Iranian political dissidents and fleeing religious minorities, and to provide the U.S. government reliable information about those dissidents or minorities so the US can grant them a visa? Would the United States rely on information from the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria — with which the US was not long ago on the brink of war — to vet leaders of opposition groups we’ve supported, or their family members?

And it's hard to argue with her characterization of it:

It’s a bizarre plan that would place the fate of the persecuted in the hands of their persecutors, and would rely on information provided by our proclaimed enemies to determine who we will allow in the United States. What’s more, if the United States were actually planning to provide these states with the names of individuals seeking to come to the United States, it would immediately endanger not only the individuals seeking to leave, but also their family members, who intend (or are forced) to stay behind.

Of course, the U.S. government should gather reliable information about refugees. And through a rigorous and often grueling vetting process, it already does.

... to insist that every applicant’s home country provide that information, even if it’s a country that the US routinely criticizes for prosecuting, imprisoning and executing people based on false charges and fabricated evidence, is beyond absurd. Since some of these countries are clearly not U.S. allies, and would likely either refuse or be unable to provide the requested information, the scheme could in effect – and perhaps by design – lead to a default ban on refugees from Muslim-majority countries.We would be turning our backs on precisely those refugees who need us the most.

And, on the family unification issue, she notes, "Within the US, the effect would be to deny established immigrant and refugee communities already here the ability of ever seeing their relatives again."

She also cites the legal opinion of federal District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema in Tareq Aqel Mohammaed Azis v. Donald Trump (Lawfare link), which says:

Defendants have maintained that the EO is necessary to protect the United States from terrorist attacks tobe carried out by nationals ofthe seven affected countries [Dkts. 31-1, 80]; however, they have not offered any evidence to identify the national security concems that allegedly prompted this EO, or even described the process by which the president concluded that this action was necessary.

And contrary to the national security concems recited in the EO, the only evidence in the record on this subject is a declaration of 10 national security professionals who have served at the highest levels of the Departinent of State, the Departinent of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council through both Republican and Democratic administrations, [Dkt. 57], and at least four of whom "were current on active intelligence regarding all credible terrorist threat streams directed against the [United States] as recently as one week before the issuance of the" EO. Id. at Ƣ  2. They write

We all agree that the United States faces real threats from terrorist networks and must take all prudent and effective steps to combat them, including the appropriate vetting of travelers to the United States. We all are nevertheless unaware of any specific threat that would justify the travel ban established by the Executive Order issued on January 27, 2017. We view the Order as one that ultimately undermines the national security of the United States, rather than making us safer. In our professional opinion, this Order cannot be justified on national security or foreign policy grounds.

Id.. at Ƣ  3. They also observe that since September 11, 2011, "not a single terrorist attack in the United States has been perpetrated by aliens from the countries named in the Order." Id. at Ƣ  4.

The Trump Wall and mass deportation program

From Elizabeth Drew, Terrifying Trump New York Review of Books 02/07/2017:

Then there was the Wall, which had begun as a political fantasy — an illusion of Trump’s creation to fire up his followers at rallies. The Wall was his metaphor for “getting tough with Mexico” for its ostensibly “sending us” criminals, drugs, and rapists, though Mexico has cooperated with the US government to prevent such immigration and drug running, as well as the transit of Central Americans trying to reach the US. In fact, immigrants have a lower crime rate than native-born Americans.

Trump’s case against illegal Mexican immigration into the US is counterfactual in still another sense: for years more Mexicans have been leaving the US than have been coming into the country. Trump and numerous congressional Republicans intone about the necessity for “border security,” but in fact the US has spent an estimated $132 billion since fiscal year 2005 on fences, additional agents, sensors, surveillance cameras with night vision, helicopters, drones, and radar — and illegal crossings have dropped dramatically.

Once elected, Trump had to at least act as if he was determined to build his chimerical but audience-pleasing Wall. If it happens to not be built, he can say he tried and pass the blame onto others for unwillingness to “protect our borders.” His second reckless, crowd-pleasing claim, that he’d get Mexico to pay for the Wall, plus his own inability to suffer a rebuke, got him into an unnecessary row with the president of Mexico, whose country of course has no intention of paying for the Wall. [my emphasis]

Reading this brought to mind John Steinbeck's introduction to a published collection of his Second World War articles as a reporter oversees, Once There Was a War (1958):

For what they are worth, or for what they may recapture, here they are, period pieces, fairy tales, half-meaningless memories of a time and of attitudes which have gone forever from the world, a sad and jocular recording of a little part of a war I saw and do not believe, unreal with trumped-up pageantry, so that it stand in the mind like the battle pictures of Crécy and Bunker Hill and Gettysburg. And, although all war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal, still there was in these memory-wars some gallantry, some bravery, some kindliness. A man got killed, surely, or maimed, but, living, he did not carry crippled seed as a gift to his children.

Now for many years we have suckled on fear and fear alone, and there is no good product of fear. Its children are cruelty and deceit and suspicion germinating in our darkness. And just as surely as we are poisoning the air with our test bombs, so are we poisoned in our souls by fear, faceless, stupid sarcomic terror. [my emphasis]

Trump's mass deportation continues and looks to get much nastier

Our new President, who was inaugurated four weeks ago today, gave a press conference yesterday that was historic, in that no one seems to know of a Presidential press conference that was so "unhinged," a word commonly used in the immediate reaction to it.

During it, he talked about his anti-immigrant Executive Order, whose implementation has been put on a "stay" by the federal courts (Scorning media, Trump denies reports of chaos during wide-ranging news conference PBS Newshour 02/16/2017):

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mr. Trump also defended his ban on travelers from seven mostly Muslim nations. It’s been blocked in federal court.

Today, the Justice Department announced that the order will be rescinded. The president said that a new one is coming, and he addressed the fate of immigrant children shielded from deportation under the so-called DACA program.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Let me tell you about the travel ban. We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban. But we had a bad court. Got a bad decision. We had a court that’s been overturned. Again, may be wrong, but I think it’s 80 percent of the time, a lot.

We had a bad decision. We’re going to keep going with that decision. We’re going to put in a new executive order next week some time. But we had a bad decision.

Now, what I wanted to do was do the exact same executive order, but said one thing. I said this to my people. Give them a one-month period of time. But General Kelly, now Secretary Kelly, said, if you do that, all these people will come in a month, the bad ones.

You do agree there are bad people out there, right, that not everybody that’s like you. You have some bad people out there.

So, Kelly said you can’t do that. And he was right. As soon as he said it I said, wow, never thought of it. I said how about one week? He said, no good. You got to do it immediately, because, if you do it immediately, they don’t have time to come in.

Now, nobody ever reports that. But that’s why we did it quickly.

LISA DESJARDINS: Can you give us more details on the executive order you plan for next week? Even its broad outlines?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yes.

LISA DESJARDINS: Will it be focused on specific …

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s a very fair question.

LISA DESJARDINS: ... countries? And, in addition, on the DACA program for immigration.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.

LISA DESJARDINS: What is your plan? Do you plan to continue that program or to end it?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to show great heart. DACA is a very, very difficult subject for me, I will tell you. To me, it’s one of the most difficult subjects I have, because you have these incredible kids, in many cases, not in all cases.

In some of the cases, they’re having DACA, and they’re gang members, and they’re drug dealers, too. But you have some absolutely incredible kids, I would say mostly. And they were brought here in such a way — it’s a very — it’s a very, very tough subject.

We’re going to deal with DACA with heart. I have to deal with a lot of politicians, don’t forget, and I have to convince them that what I’m saying is — is right. And I appreciate your understanding on that.

But the DACA situation is a very, very — it’s a very difficult thing for me, because, you know, I love these kids. I love kids. I have kids and grandkids. And I find it very, very hard doing what the law says exactly to do, and you know, the law is rough.

I’m not talking about new laws. I’m talking the existing law is very rough. It’s very, very rough. As far as the new order, the new order is going to be very much tailored to the — what I consider to be a very bad decision.

But we can tailor the order to that decision and get just about everything, in some ways more. But we’re tailoring it now to the decision, we have some of the best lawyers in the country working on it.

And the new executive order is being tailored to the decision we got down from the court. OK? [my emphasis]

That part on DACA sounds like he was briefed to sound sympathetic to the DACA kids while blaming the Obama Administration for the problem, saying he Trump was only enforcing the law the way he was required to do. Even stated well, that would be a pretty transparently silly argument. But stating such point with nuance doesn't seem to be one of the President's strong points.

The PBS reporters returned to the subject int heir commentary:

HARI SREENIVASAN: Now, one of the things I want to follow up on is something that you were asking the president today. What’s happening, what is the latest with the executive order?

LISA DESJARDINS: Right, such a critical piece of information.

The president, as we played for our audience, said he will have a new order out next week. It seems that this next order is an attempt to almost replicate the past order, but line it up so that it passes some kind of court muster.

And it also seems, reading between the lines — and I have one source indicating that they have not figured out exactly how to do that yet. That’s why it hasn’t been released yet, the White House still designing this executive order.

But pay attention to Mr. Trump’s words today, Hari. He also said that this is extreme vetting, that they had to move up more quickly because of the Ninth Circuit ruling. So this is something they were looking at more long-term that they seem to be incorporating into an executive order next week.

It doesn’t seem like it’s all the way fully baked, but it’s going to be significant when it comes.

The Associated Press is reporting today that John Kelly, Secretary of U.S. Homeland Security, has prepared a memo for ICE that is apparently not yet official policy proposing to nationalize up to 100,000 National Guard troops to participate in mass deportation of Latinos. "The 11-page document calls for the unprecedented militarization of immigration enforcement as far north as Portland, Ore., and as far east as New Orleans, La." (Trump considers mobilizing 100,000 National Guard troops for immigration roundups Los Angeles Times 02/17/2017)

We're looking a a major mass deportation in its early stages, if the Republicans get their way. Here's one example from Mississippi that Trump and the Republicans want to see replicated millions of times over: David Kenney, Two arrested in Jackson immigration raid Mississippi News Now 02/15/2017 . It's good to see active popular opposition to these moves. (Thousands take to streets of uptown for national immigrant strike WSOC Charlotte
02/17/2017)

Trump's Latino roundups have begun

The Trump Family Business Administration is expanding arrests of Latinos with the intent to deport them.

From the Young Turks, How Trump's Deportations Are Breaking Up Real Families 02/10/2017:

Pilar Marrero reports in Autoridades migratorias intensifican arrestos, reportan actividades en al menos diez estados La Opinión 02/10/2017 that apparently expanded ICE operations are being reported in the 10 states of "California, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Virginia, Georgia, Carolina del Sur, Carolina del Norte, Nueva York y Oklahoma."

Officially, the arrests are focused on people who have committed crimes. But Trump adviser Stephen Miller on Meet the Press today was cagey about whether those whose only crime is not strictly complying with the immigration laws are being prioritized among the alleged criminals. This was a policy change that Trump announced as part of his January 25 Muslim Ban Executive Order, which is legally on "stay." But it appears that ICE is enforcing the changed policy anyway.

Marrero describes reports from North Carolina and Texas of roadblocks in which people's immigration status is being checked.

She quotes Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro writing on February 10:

I am concerned about the ICE raids in Texas. I have been informed by ICE that the agency’s San Antonio field office has launched a targeted operation in South and Central Texas as part of Operation Cross Check. I'm asking ICE to clarify whether these individuals are in fact dangerous, violent threats to our communities, and not people who are here peacefully raising families and contributing to our state. I will continue to monitor this situation.

Dallas News reports (Trump praises ICE for immigration enforcement 02/12/2017):

As a candidate, Donald Trump vowed to take a hard line on immigration. Five days after taking office, he signed a sweeping executive order that made clear that just about any immigrant living in the country illegally could be a priority for deportation, particularly those with outstanding deportation orders. The president's order also said enforcement priorities would include convicted criminals, immigrants who had been arrested for any criminal offense, those who committed fraud, and anyone who may have committed a crime. ...

... immigrant rights groups say the actions are harsher than in the past.

Advocates began fielding calls Thursday from immigrants and their lawyers reporting raids at homes and businesses in the greater Los Angeles area. In one instance, agents showed up at the home of a 50-year-old house painter named Manuel Mosqueda in the Los Angeles suburbs, looking to arrest an immigrant who wasn't there. In the process, they spoke with Mosqueda, arrested him and put him on a bus to Mexico - though lawyers were able to halt his deportation and bring him back.

In all, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested about 160 people during a five-day sweep in Southern California aimed at immigrants with criminal histories and deportation orders, including a Salvadoran gang member wanted in his country and a Brazilian drug trafficker. Marin acknowledged that five of those arrested would not have met the Obama administration's enforcement priorities.