President Trump issued three more executive orders on Thursday, this time focusing his attention squarely on crime. Immigration occupies a central position in this latest EO trilogy, illustrating the Trump Administration’s immigration mindset. I printed the orders at random and didn’t make it through the first section before “illegal immigration” made an appearance. The EO titled “Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety” states that it is the Trump Administration’s policy to “enforc[e] the law and develop[] policies that comprehensively address illegal immigration, drug trafficking, [...]
Immigration policing in the age of Trump–early signs
Donald Trump was still standing on the Capitol’s steps waiting to be sworn in as the nation’s forty-fifth president when the White House website announced its plans for immigration. Squarely positioned as a law enforcement matter, President Trump views immigration, the website suggests, as equivalent to rioting and homicides. Much has been written about the White House website shedding all references to climate change. At the same time, the Trump Administration’s digital home launched six issue areas that presumably we can expect to occupy the Administration’s early days. Among those is a [...]
New detention facility opens
Customs and Border Protection recently opened a new detention center in South Texas equipped to hold as many as 1,000 migrants. The facility, located outside the small town of Donna and adjacent to a bridge connecting Texas to the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, consists of a large canvas structure resembling a tent. CBP officials explained that they need additional confinement capacity to hold migrants, especially those coming from Central America. Officials claim that migrants will be detained at the Donna site for no more than 72-hours. News reports peg the facility’s cost at approximately [...]
Narratives of criminalization and resistance
“Immigrants are not criminals.” This was a frequent refrain of the mass mobilizations of 2006 that put a stop to the harshest immigration legislation to win widespread congressional support in a decade. Many immigrants’ rights advocates continued using a form of this narrative frame in the years that followed. So too did Obama Administration officials. Under his watch, ICE repeatedly touted its prioritization of “criminal aliens.” Indeed, President Obama famously described his Administration’s immigration law enforcement focus as “felons, not families.” Whatever the rhetoric’s value, the [...]
Reflections on a Donald Trump Presidency
By Linus Chan Bearing witness to sorrow, pain and injustice has always been part of the package deal of being an immigration attorney. Immigration law is diverse, rich and an example of how to define what our country's values are. Deciding who can be our neighbors, co-workers, teachers, and family often requires us to articulate our vision of the United States and how it is to remain a shining light on a hill. I represent non-citizens detained by immigration officials and who face removal from our country and exile from their homes and family. Many of my clients are those people [...]
Making the invisible visible inside Canada’s immigration detention regime
By Carrie Dawson In December 2013, Lucia Vega Jimenez, an undocumented Mexican national who worked as a chambermaid in Vancouver, was caught paying less than the full fare for a train ticket. The transit police turned her over to Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA), the government body responsible for border security, who took her into custody. The day before she was scheduled to be deported, Jimenez hanged herself from a shower rod in the immigration detention center. She died one week later. In a newspaper interview, Yasmin Trejo, a friend of Jimenez’s, said, “Lucia ended up being [...]
Private prisons: boom or bust?
What does the future hold for the private prison industry? There is no doubt that this a pivotal moment for this critical enterprise in the nation’s policing regime. The Justice Department’s August 2016 announcement that it will reduce its reliance on private prison operators has spurred a bevy of discussions about the utility and morality of profiting off human bondage. None is more prominent than Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson’s statement that DHS has launched an internal review of its private prison operations to see whether it ought to follow the Justice Department’s lead. Make [...]
Bipartisan Immigration Imprisonment
Top Obama administration officials have made much of their concern about the country’s outsized prison population. In 2015, President Obama famously visited a federal penitentiary, the first sitting president to ever do so. In 2013, then-Attorney General Eric Holder championed sentencing reforms targeting low-level drug offenders. And Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates recently announced that the Justice Department would substantially reduce its reliance on private prison operators. But at the same time, the Obama administration has arrested and imprisoned a historically unprecedented [...]