There are currently 540,000 people in deportation proceedings somewhere in the United States. Most will make their final stance against forced separation from their families and homes without an attorney. This is a shameful mark on our nation’s commitment to justice that should stop. Earlier this month, New York officials took a significant step in that direction by funding a state-wide network of attorneys to represent people undergoing immigration court proceedings while detained. More cities and states should follow New York’s lead. Despite what politicians frequently suggest, deciding [...]
Attorney General delivers fiery speech in defense of the status quo
Visiting the southwest border for the first time since becoming Attorney General, today Jeff Sessions delivered a campaign-style speech promising to bring the federal criminal justice system to bear against immigration law violators. Standing before Customs and Border Protection officials in Nogales, the Attorney General described beheadings, machete attacks, and gang violence. “Criminal aliens, and the coyotes and the document-forgers seek to overthrow our system of lawful immigration,” he claimed. In response, the Justice Department that he leads will “take our stand against this filth” [...]
Colorado Republicans target sanctuary cities—again—in pursuit of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda
By César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández and Christopher N. Lasch After suffering a party-line defeat in a state House committee last month, Republican state legislators in Colorado are once more attempting to coerce cities, counties, school districts, and law enforcement agencies to entangle themselves in immigration enforcement. The “Colorado Citizen Protection Against Sanctuary Policies Act” (Senate Bill 281), like the Republicans’ earlier failed bill, is a wrong-headed effort to solve a largely nonexistent problem. Perpetuating the myth of immigrant criminality Following the Trump [...]
Scaring migrants from legal processes
President Trump has made it known that he is no fan of the judiciary. Only one month into the Trump Administration, it appears that ICE is taking its cues from the president. Judging from recent actions, the nation’s lead immigration law enforcement agency seems intent on scaring migrants away from legal processes. In the course of one week, four incidents, seemingly unrelated, might make a reasonable observer think twice about engaging with immigration law authorities. On February 8, ICE arrested several men across the street from a Virginia church where they had taken shelter from the [...]
Beyond Rhetoric: “Sanctuary” in Practice
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents apprehended 680 people over the last week, pointing to the increased role of federal agencies in immigration detention under the Trump administration. While this is still a lower number than the weekly average detained under the Obama administration, it does represent a much larger share of detentions for ICE specifically. Three recent cases of ICE overreach stand out as examples: Guadalupe García de Rayos, an Arizona mother who had checked in with ICE regularly since 2013 to review her status, arrived for her scheduled meeting last week [...]
Constitutional collision in Colorado anti-immigrant bill
By César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández and Christopher N. Lasch The virulent tone of immigration rhetoric that propelled Donald Trump to the presidency has come to Colorado. A Republican state legislator proposes to bar cities or local governmental units from limiting their cooperation with ICE. And then he goes where even President Trump hasn’t dared: criminalizing the very act of voting in favor of limiting cooperation with ICE. The proposal, House Bill 17-1134, titled the “Colorado Politician Accountability Act,” is a constitutional train wreck. If our students submitted this for a course, [...]
Recalcitrant countries and possible diplomatic riffs
Much has been written about the executive orders that President Trump signed last week. Missing from those discussions has been acknowledgment of the potential diplomatic fray President Trump seems willing to bring on by threatening immigrant and nonimmigrant visas to countries that don’t take back United States deportees as quickly as we would like. Section 12 of the executive order titled “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” provides, in full: The Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of State shall cooperate to effectively implement the sanctions [...]
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 [...]
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