enforcement

Around 600 Oregon protesters rallied around the state capitol in Salem on Jan. 14, showing support for elected representatives and organizers vowing to protect undocumented immigrants and their families.

Residents from across Oregon filled the Oregon State Capitol fountain grounds at 2:00 p.m. They cheered to speeches from U.S. Senator Wyden, state and district representatives, along with immigrant’s rights advocates. The leaders expressed defiance to President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promises, which includes to overturn Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants.

“[Trump]’s policies lack empathy, lack compassion. They lack the understanding that undocumented workers and their families are key components of the American economy — and that they are Americans,” U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden said to the crowd, alongside a Spanish translator. Wyden told the Emerald that he will support the Bridge Act, a bipartisan legislation introduced to U.S. Senate last month to allow those receiving DACA to remain in the United States. DACA protects young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children from deportation, and provides them with temporary work permits.

Jeff Stone, Executive Director of Oregon Association of Nurseries, cited a report his group, along with business and civic leaders, released. According to the report, immigrants make up 10 percent of Oregon’s population and contributed $24.4 billion in taxes and earn 9 percent of state earnings.

“You are important,” Stone said. “In America, every immigrant class has come to our country and made it better. And one of our most enduring symbols — the statue of liberty — embodies the great torch of freedom that welcomes the world to our shores.”

The crowd became especially animated when newly-elected Oregon House of Representatives leader Teresa Alonso Leon was introduced. She became the first immigrant Latina to be elected to Oregon State Legislature.

The daughter of migrant workers, Leon described picking berries during summers to support her family. She eventually became the first person in her family to graduate from college, which she said was due to her hard-work, but not without the “kindness of dedicated educators.” One of Leon’s campaign goals was for increased college affordability.

“I remember years ago standing on these same steps as a young girl for the first time. When I was here then, I didn’t see anyone who looked like me,” Leon said in front of the capitol building. “Now, just days ago, my young niece Emma, was able to watch her tia be sworn in as state representative, and it brought tears to my eyes.” She said that Emma now aspires to be the first Latina president of the United States.

Fatima Preciado was the last speaker. Preciado is a DACA recipient, who was brought to America from Apatzingan, Mexico.

“As a four-year-old crossing the border, I did not understand the complexity, risk and sacrifice my parents were making by bringing me to this country,” Preciado said. “But now that I understand, I am not ashamed.”

Preciado was named 2016 Oregon Youth of the Year by Oregon’s Boys & Girls Clubs in her senior year, and then became the first in her family to attend a four-year university. But that could be taken away from her, if President-elect Trump follows through with his talk of repealing DACA.

“The threat is real and we need our state leaders to protect us from Trump’s dangerous and inhumane policies,” Preciado said.

The crowd then marched around the capitol — where two protestors held a banner with an image of the Statue of Liberty. It read “No Human Being is Illegal.”

Around 600 people from across Oregon rallied at the Oregon State Capitol, before marching around it. (Andrew Field / Emerald) Read more about Sen. Wyden and state representatives pledge to protect undocumented immigrants at Oregon capitol

Hundreds of illegal immigrants living in Oregon are expected to protest at the State Capitol against expected tighter immigration enforcement under President-Elect Donald Trump, just days before his Inaugural Address.

Over 500 Oregon residents and illegal immigrants are expected to attend the event, according to the Portland Tribune. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR) will also be in attendance at the rally.

The open borders organization One Oregon asked residents to “denounce Trump’s agenda of hate and exclusion” by joining the protest.

“We must unite to stop Trump’s first 100 days of hate,” One Oregon officials wrote in a news release. “We call on Oregonians, community organizations, and our local elected leaders to join us.”

The group objects to Trump’s immigration plans, which includes building a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico southern border, reducing legal immigration levels, and deporting criminal illegal immigrants.

During a recent news conference, Trump said the building of the border wall would “start immediately” after he takes office on January 20, Breitbart News reported.

I could wait about a year and a half until we finish our negotiations with Mexico, which will start immediately after we get into office,” Trump said during his recent news conference. “But I don’t want to wait. Mike Pence is leading an effort to get final approvals through various agencies and through Congress for the wall to begin.”

“I don’t feel like waiting a year or year and a half,” Trump continued. “We’re going to start building,”

In California, one of Oregon’s neighboring states, open border allies like Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom have already concocted plans that attempt to halt the border wall, though the plans seem unlikely to change anything, Breitbart Texas reported.

“There are all kinds of obstructions as it relates to just getting zoning approval and getting building permits,” Newsom said of trying to stop the border wall while being interviewed on a local podcast. “All those things could be made very, very challenging for the administration.”

John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. Read more about Oregon Illegal Immigrants to Protest Ahead of Trump Inauguration

Multiple nonprofits, including unions and immigrants rights groups, are traveling to Salem on Jan. 14 to participate in the United for Immigrants Rights Rally. Set a week prior to the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration...

Phil Carrasco with Grupo Latino de Accíon Directa is orchestrating a trip from Eugene to Salem...

“We do believe that a lot of these policies being proposed are really based in hate and funded by hate groups and xenophobic groups.” And, he says, they also believe that the right to be in this country and walk freely is an exclusive privilege.

Carrasco says there’s been a call to repeal the state’s sanctuary status, which would allow the federal government to use state resources to enforce immigration policy. He says the effort could possibly show up as a ballot measure.

This is not the first time a state law that affects immigrants would be addressed in the form of a ballot measure. In 2014, Measure 88 failed to garner enough votes to grant driver cards to all Oregon residents, though the Oregon Legislature passed Senate Bill 833, which permitted Oregonians to apply for driver cards, regardless of their immigration status.

Ultimately, SB 833 never went into effect.

Many people who do not have legal status in the U.S. pay taxes, funding roads, schools and other state resources, Carrasco says. “It’s important that it’s not just Latino-centric organizations participating,” he says.

Organizations representing health care, working families and labor unions are among the participants. Carrasco says these groups acknowledge that “an injury to one is an injury to all.”

Around 500 people are expected to attend, with 2,000 interested in the Facebook event. Carrasco invites anyone interested in attending and carpooling to contact him.

He adds that the event is “part of a national day of action to defend immigrant rights and to denounce Trump’s agenda of hate and exclusion in our state.”

The United for Immigrant Rights Rally is 11:30 am Saturday, Jan. 14, at the Capitol building in Salem. GLAD is on Facebook at latinocommunityactiongroup. And for carpool information contact Phil Carrasco at 541-337-6391. Read more about Salem Immigrant Rights Rally to denounce Trump agenda

WASHINGTON (January 12, 2017) – The Center for Immigration Studies new report analyzes the FY 2016 enforcement statistics from the Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS), released by Department of Homeland Security on the last work day of the calendar year, on the eve of a holiday weekend. The deportation numbers credited to ICE are the lowest since 2006.

Aliens removed from the interior in 2016 have declined 73 percent from 2009, the year President Obama took office; and, unfortunately for community safety, there has been a 60 percent decline from the peak in interior criminal alien removals in 2010.

Unlike in past years, the annual enforcement reports contain only a fraction of the important statistics that traditionally have been published on the work of the immigration agencies. Past numbers allowed observation of historical trends and comparisons that are more difficult to make now.

View the full report at: http://cis.org/ICE-deportations-hit-10-yr-low.

Jessica Vaughan, the Center’s director of policy studies and author or the report, lamented, “DHS discloses few actual statistics now, and even fewer trends. Instead they claim success because most of those removed were 'priorities,' not because the agencies made any headway on the illegal immigration problem. The new reports are of interest only to those who believe that enforcement should be constrained as much as possible. They are of no use to the rest of us who want to know what the DHS agencies actually did all year with taxpayer funds.”

Key Findings

• Deportations credited to ICE in 2016 increased by two percent. All of the increase was in cases of aliens arrested by the Border Patrol, not interior enforcement.
• Interior deportations fell from 69,478 in 2015 to 65,322 in 2016, out of a population of illegal aliens now estimated at 12 million.
• Deportations of criminal aliens fell from 63,127 in 2015 to 60,318 in 2016, out of an estimated population of 2 million criminal aliens.
• The number of deportations under the Obama administration is not easily comparable to prior administrations because of the number of border cases included, but it certainly is not record-breaking, as Obama has claimed. The most deportations occurred under the Clinton administration.
• DHS maintains that CBP arrests have always been a large share of ICE deportations, but in fact this is a new development under the Obama administration. In prior administrations only one-third of deportations credited to ICE were border cases; now about two-thirds are border cases.

...President-elect Donald Trump's transition team asked the Department of Homeland Security last month to assess all assets available for border wall and barrier construction.

The team also asked about the department's capacity for expanding immigrant detention and about an aerial surveillance program...

The requests were made in a Dec. 5 meeting between Trump's transition team and Department of Homeland Security officials...  for securing the U.S. borders and reversing polices put in place by the Obama administration. 

Trump's transition team did not comment in response to Reuters inquiries. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to comment.

In response to the transition team request, U.S. Customs and Border Protection staffers identified more than 400 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, and about the same distance along the U.S.-Canada border, where new fencing could be erected, according to a document seen by Reuters.

Reuters could not determine whether the Trump team is considering a northern border barrier. During the campaign, Trump pledged to build a wall and expand fencing on parts of the U.S.-Mexico border but said he sees no need to build a wall on the border with Canada.

One program the transition team asked about, according to the email summary, was Operation Phalanx, an aerial surveillance program that authorizes 1,200 Army National Guard airmen to monitor the southern border for drug trafficking and illegal migration.

The program once deployed 6,000 airmen under President George W. Bush but was downsized by Barack Obama...

POLICY SHIFT

The transition team also asked for copies of every executive order and directive sent to immigration agents since Obama took office in 2009, according to the memo summarizing the meeting.

Trump has said he intends to undo Obama's executive actions on immigration, including a 2012 order to allow children brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents to remain in the country on temporary authorizations that allow them to attend college and work.

The program, known as DACA, collected information including participants' addresses that could theoretically be used to locate and deport them if the policy is reversed. Another request of the transition team was for information about whether any migrant records have been changed for any reason, including for civil rights or civil liberties concerns, according to the internal memo seen by Reuters.

A Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency interpreted the request to mean the transition team wanted to make sure that federal workers were not tampering with information to protect DACA recipients and other migrants from deportation.

On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to deport more undocumented immigrants...

The internal memo summarizing the meeting between Trump's transition team and U.S. Customs and Border protection said the team had requested a comprehensive picture of border security as well as resources available for walls and barriers...

Reuters reviewed a copy of the report, which estimated the cost of building fencing along the northern border fence would be $3.3 billion and cover 452 miles along border of Canada and the states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

Adding 413 miles of fencing on the southwest border would be more expensive, according to the estimate of $11.37 billion, because it would be aimed at keeping pedestrians as well as vehicles from crossing.

Pedestrian fences require more staff and would cost $11.2 million per mile versus $4.1 million per mile to build to build, according to the report.

In fiscal year 2015, the latest year for which data is available, border patrol agents apprehended 2,626 illegal migrants on the U.S.-Canada border compared to 331,333 apprehended on the U.S.-Mexico border. Read more about Trump team seeks agency records on border barriers, surveillance

The chairman of Portland Community College's board resigned from his elected position to protest what he called a political decision to classify the school a "sanctuary" for undocumented students.

Gene Pitts, who represented eastern Washington County and Southwest Portland on the board, submitted his resignation letter...

PCC, the state's largest post-secondary institution, had voted to adopt the sanctuary campus label at the urging of its student body, and with the support of first-year president Mark Mitsui.

The board held a special meeting Dec. 20 at its Sylvania campus to consider the largely symbolic gesture....to publicly declare the schools would not help enforce federal immigration laws.

Pitts did not attend the meeting, according to vice-chair Kali Thorne-Ladd...

"I have spoken to each of you, so it should not be a surprise that I was not aligned with the College's decision to deem itself a 'sanctuary college,'" Pitts wrote in his resignation letter sent on the same day as the special meeting.

"As I've shared with you, I felt that the decision to use the term 'sanctuary college' politicizes the college, places risk on the backs of the 40+ percent of the college's students that receive Pell grant monies (and ultimately on the college's Federal funding), and alienates a percentage of voters as we approach the college's next bond campaign."...

"I have a lot of respect for Gene," she said in an interview. "He's had great service and dedication to the college...

Kate Chester, a PCC spokeswoman, said school did not release information about his resignation over the holidays...

The board will vote to appoint Pitts' replacement when it meets Jan. 19... Read more about PCC's board chair resigned in protest over 'sanctuary college' designation

Some of the dust has started to settle from the rush late last year for various local entities to declare their jurisdictions as sanctuaries.

In short order after the election of Donald Trump, Oregon State University, Benton County, the city of Corvallis and the Corvallis School District all adopted resolutions or issued statements in which they embraced, at least to some extent, the idea that they will not assist with federal government efforts to deport people who are not U.S. citizens.

We don't mean to underestimate the importance of these declarations, especially as they recognize and try to ease the fears among some people that they might be targeted by the actions of a Trump administration. That in itself makes these declarations worthwhile.

But let's not fool ourselves: We are hard-pressed to find, in any of the declarations, anything that wasn't already a matter of policy in these governmental jurisdictions, although the declarations might serve a useful purpose by clarifying existing policies.

Again, there is importance in that, especially if the goal is to quell fear and, even better, to reassure immigrants that they won't have to stand alone through uncertain times.

But we shouldn't be fooled into thinking that these sanctuary declarations, in this community, at this time, are acts of great courage. And let's remember this: It might be unwise to assume that approving the declarations marks the end of the story.

As The Atlantic noted in a recent story on sanctuary campuses, Trump promised on the campaign trail that sanctuary cities (and, presumably, other entities that receive federal money) would "not receive taxpayer dollars."

So, potentially what's at stake here are the millions of federal dollars that flow to entities such as OSU, the city, the county and the school district.

In theory at least, Trump can't do that by himself. It would require approval from Congress, and it could very well be that the entire pool of federal funds is not at risk: The Atlantic story noted that the reason for withholding federal funds from governments likely would have to be somehow linked to the proposed use for the money.

In the past, Democrats have stopped attempts by Republicans to strip away federal funding, but guess what: Republicans are running Congress these days, and the early indications are that GOP senators and representatives are going to give Trump wide sway, at least initially.

Now, that could change as members of Congress get bombarded by calls of protest from cities, counties and universities in their district that stand to lose millions in funding. Members of Congress, regardless of political affiliation, like to be able to bring federal bucks back to their districts, and that could prove more potent than even a series of nasty tweets from the president.

It also could be that there's safety in numbers: For example, some 400 universities, including OSU, have signed onto a petition supporting the idea of sanctuary campuses. And other communities in Oregon and across the nation have embraced the notion of sanctuary.

It could also be that Trump didn't mean what he said during the campaign about immigration. But that seems like a long shot.

So it's not at all out of the question that the administration, with assistance from a compliant Congress, will start to push on this issue. It could be, in fact, that local entities have put millions of dollars at risk by taking this stand.

In short, the time for great courage on the issue of sanctuary may yet come. It's worth asking these questions now: If that time comes, where we will stand — and what are we prepared to sacrifice? (mm) Read more about True test for sanctuary yet to come