enforcement

The fate of the recipients of Obama’s “Deferred Action” program, referred to as DREAMers, is still up in the air as Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King made it very clear that he is opposed to any effort to keep the program in place.

  Read more about Rep. Steve King holds hard line against Obama DREAMers, despite Trump’s concession

The night Donald Trump was elected, the future of millions of residents nationwide was called into question. In Oregon, an estimated 130,000 people living in the state without proper authorization likely wondered what would happen next.

Trump called for the deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants during his presidential campaign. He recently pivoted and said two to three million people would immediately be deported, which is how many were deported during Obama’s tenure.

The uncertainty of what Trump will do once he take office prompted hundreds of cities across the country to announce or re-affirm their status as sanctuary cities.

Sanctuary cities, however, may not provide the protection the word “sanctuary” suggests.

A sanctuary city does not mean the community has become a refuge for people who are not living there legally. It does not provide more homes for people, nor does it guarantee shelter. And some cities, like Portland, have declared themselves sanctuary cities without enacting any laws to back up that claim.

Still, for leaders to assert their city a sanctuary is a politically risky maneuver as Trump and his pick for Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, have threatened to cut federal funding to sanctuary cities.

So what does a “sanctuary city” mean?

There is no hard-and-fast definition and each sanctuary city is different. In Portland, it mainly means that local law enforcement has been asked not to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to help deport undocumented immigrants.

“ICE would like local jails to hold folks who have immigration violations for an additional 48 hours, so ICE can process them,” said Michael Cox, spokesman for Portland’s mayor-elect Ted Wheeler. “Many cities feel like those actions impair their ability to police their own city.”

The ICE request has been criticized because it may make people less likely to report crimes.

Portland already had an informal commitment to deny ICE’s 48-hour hold requests when Mayor-elect Ted Wheeler reaffirmed Portland’s status as a sanctuary city in November.

But there are no laws that prohibit the city from at any point changing its mind.

That doesn’t sit well with many in Portland. On Nov. 21, hundreds of people, led by a group called Latino Milenios (translation: millennials), demonstrated in front of city hall and demanding legal action to back up the city’s sanctuary declaration.

“We’re in a very difficult moment here. There are Latino families that don’t even want to take their children to school,” said Francisco Lopez, political director for the immigrant-rights group Voz Hispana Cambio Comunitario. He says he’s received more than a dozen phone calls daily since the election from people worried about deportation.

Hate crimes have also increased nationwide, and Oregon has landed at the top of the list. Many crimes are targeted at immigrants and people of color.

Lopez and others want Portland to implement a bevy of protections, similar to other sanctuary cities such as San Francisco, which has dedicated millions to its immigrant protection efforts.

San Francisco has been criticized for being over-protective. President-elect Trump blasted the city after a woman was shot to death by a Mexican man with a criminal record who had been deported several times.

Most undocumented immigrants in the U.S. do not have criminal records. Two-thirds have lived in the country for more than a decade and 70 percent contribute to the workforce.

Lopez says many are part of families that include U.S. citizens and legal action is a necessary step to protect people in Trump’s America, which he calls “a very different world.”

Voz Hispana and Latino Milenios want Portland to provide legal services to immigrants who have been victims of racism or face deportation, formally declare the city will not cooperate with ICE or allow raids of immigrant families, lobby the state to create safeguards to protect immigrants, and launch a campaign against hate crimes.

“These laws will not prevent things from getting worse,” Lopez said. “We are talking about being prepared to protect and defend our undocumented immigrant families.”

He likens the idea to a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote: "It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me."

Mayor-elect Ted Wheeler’s office said he will consider the requests once he takes office.

“The phase we’re in now is analyzing the legal framework that exists and determining whether it’s adequate given the incoming administration,” said Wheeler’s spokesman, Michael Cox.

Wheeler’s office is adamant that protecting Portland's immigrants is paramount, even if that means losing federal funding.

“Our values as a community, when it comes to being a place that is safe and welcoming for all people, are more important than the federal funding that would be attached to violating them,” Cox said.

Portland received $48.9 million in federal grants last year. It’s unclear how much Trump would drain from sanctuary cities as punishment for not working with federal immigration officials.

“It’s unknown what that federal funding would be,” Cox said. “We don’t know what he’s talking about withholding. The president-elect has made many commitments during the campaign, some of which he’s backed off of already. It’s hard to say.”

Trump has indeed backed off his pledge to deport immigrants, to some extent. He has not yet backed off his threat to defund sanctuary cities.

Lopez says the uncertainty of what a Trump administration could do is all the more reason for Portland to act.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen. There are people who are afraid of being on the streets,” he said. “These human beings are part of the socioeconomic fabric of our community and we need to do something about it.”
  Read more about What is a sanctuary city and what does it mean in Portland?

SALEM — With concerns that are based on fear, rather than proof, that voter fraud exists in Oregon, a conservative duo is proposing a solution: put a clause in the state constitution that requires all voters to prove they’re U.S. citizens before they can vote.

Two Republicans have already filed a proposed constitutional amendment well ahead of the 2018 election that would require each of the state’s 2.5 million voters to register again within two years, this time proving to the state they are eligible U.S. citizens using approved government documents.

That way, says Mike Nearman, a Republican representative from Polk County, there’s proof that only eligible citizens are voting.

“I’ve heard rumors of what went on in House District 22, which is Woodburn and north Salem, that there was heavy recruiting and voter registration drives among populations of Latinos that are likely to have a lot of illegal aliens,” Nearman said last week in a phone interview. “I don’t have my doubts that it is going on at least at some level.”

Woodburn, in the Willamette Valley, is majority Hispanic or Latino, according to 2010 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

“We have online registration that has the little check box that says I am a U.S. citizen. That’s all there is,” Nearman said. “If I’m a citizen of Germany or Switzerland I can just go check that box and do that.”

The policy, which hasn’t gained popularity in Oregon politics, is picking up some steam nationally following the presidential election, despite being viewed as voter suppression by civil liberties groups.

After Republican Donald Trump upset Hillary Clinton in the election, there have been unfounded accusations of large-scale voter fraud. Trump fueled the fire by alleging on Twitter he didn’t actually lose the popular vote by over 2.4 million votes. Instead, he said, without citing any evidence, he won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

Kris Kobach, a Republican and Kansas secretary of state, is considered a prominent supporter of the concept Nearman is pitching for Oregon. Kobach has been an ardent defender of a law that seeks to require Kansans to prove their citizenship before registering to vote.

A federal court this year struck down the Kansas proof of citizenship law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 against a similar law in Arizona, saying the National Voter Registration Act, also called Motor Voter, which allows voters to register without proving citizenship, pre-empted the state laws.

“We know this kind of requirement stopped tens of thousands of people from registering in Kansas,” said Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Project from the American Civil Liberties Union. “People aren’t interested in having an intellectually honest debate about it because there’s no evidence to back up their assertions about widespread registration of noncitizens.”

Kobach may have plans to address the court ruling, and as a member of Trump’s transition team, he has the ear of the incoming president.

A photo taken by an Associated Press photographer as Kobach met with Trump on Nov. 21 showed a document Kobach was holding that included plans for Trump’s first year as president. Much of the document was obscured by Kobach’s hand and arm but includes a reference to voting:

“Draft Amendments to National Voter—” the rest of the sentence is covered by Kobach’s arm, but elections experts believe it refers to the National Voter Registration Act, the federal law that allows voters to register by attesting to their citizenship.

Kobach didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“Here’s the bottom line: courts have ruled that the current version of the (Motor Voter Act) pre-empts a proof-of-citizenship requirement and that trying to have a separate registration system for state elections is unlawful,” said Josh Douglas, associate professor of law at the University of Kentucky College of Law.

If Kobach wanted proof-of-citizenship laws to be implemented on a wider scale, he could suggest amending the Motor Voter Act to put in place a national requirement for prospective voters to prove citizenship before voting, or allow states to enact their own laws with that requirement, Ho said.

Under Nearman’s proposal for Oregon, everyone seeking to participate in elections would have to register using a U.S. passport, certificate of naturalization from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, original or certified birth certificate or other government document.

Some Republicans have sought that level of proof for registering to vote in Oregon long before Nearman became chief petitioner of the proposed amendment.

Some Republicans in the state House and Senate have pitched the idea every session since at least 2005. The closest it’s come to the governor’s desk is when it passed the Republican-controlled House in 2005 before dying in the Senate.

Nearman didn’t say there was proof that voters in House District 22 illegally registered to vote — a felony in Oregon. The Bulletin also spoke with Jaime Arredondo, director of Accion Politica PCUNista, a group that organizes Latino voters, who helped run a voter registration drive in the district.

“Our groups have been doing voter registration in this area for over 20 years,” Arredondo said. “We cover every step of the way, checking on citizenship, on age and so-forth. Our folks know when they go out there what their requirements are to do that.”

Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins, a Democrat tapped in 2015 to replace Kate Brown when she became governor, said in an interview Friday there hadn’t been accusations of voter fraud in Oregon this year. She said she heard of one ineligible voter who registered but later contacted the county clerk and unregistered.

“It’s not that we couldn’t investigate a complaint. We could, if people actually had evidence of voter registration drives where people were being encouraged to ignore the legal responsibility involved or downplay it or anything like that,” Atkins said. “Evidence of that happening would be something that we would probably in partnership with the Department of Justice go after pretty severely.”

Still, without a law requiring voters to take the step to show the state or county clerks that they’re in the country legally, of age and not a felon serving an ongoing sentence, those pushing for a law that would require that level of proof maintain that Oregon’s elections are vulnerable to fraud.

“I think it’s not just 2016; I think it’s been happening for a long time,” said James Buchal, a Portland attorney and co-chief petitioner of the 2018 initiative who also ran for attorney general in 2012.

Rather than require the secretary of state’s office or county clerks to take steps to verify that residents on the voter rolls weren’t registered illegally, Buchal and Nearman’s measure would require each of the 2.5 million — and rapidly climbing — voters in Oregon to register again, this time proving citizenship with an approved government ID.

Buchal thinks that may hurt their case if the two collect the 117,578 needed signatures and move forward with a campaign in the 2018 election.

“People are lazy,” Buchal said. “If they find out they would have to re-register, they might not like that.” Read more about Oregon measure calls for proof of citizenship to vote

State Rep. Sal Esquivel said he has hit a temporary roadblock with a ballot initiative that seeks to repeal Oregon's 1987 sanctuary city law that prevents local law enforcement from enforcing federal immigration law. But he says the hurdle won't derail the effort.

After the petition attracted 1,000 signatures to qualify for a draft ballot title, the Oregon Department of Justice decided on Oct. 28 that the petition wasn't clear enough in explaining its purpose to voters.

"We had enough signatures but they wouldn't give us a ballot title," said Esquivel, a Medford Republican.

Undaunted, Esquivel and Rep. Mike Nearman, R-Independence, have revised the language on the petition to comply with the Department of Justice, but may seek other legal means to get the ballot title or collect another 1,000 signatures.

Nearman said he was disappointed in the justice department because the Oregon secretary of state had allowed the ballot petition to collect the initial batch of signatures.

"They're the justice department and they owe us justice," he said.

The state sanctuary city law prevents local law enforcement from arresting people solely on the grounds they are in the country illegally.

Michelle Glass, regional director of Unite Oregon, said that repealing the sanctuary city law would make members of the community feel less safe and less inclined to call the police in emergency situations. Unite Oregon is an organization devoted to racial justice and other social issues, with a regional office in Medford.

Glass said she fears a repeal of the law would increase the rate of profiling.

"It's bad public policy," she said. "We're rural law enforcement areas that should be concerned with things that put our community at risk. We don't need to make the police's job more difficult."

Esquivel said he's been criticized for trying to repeal the law, but he doesn't think the effect of his initiative would lead to mass roundups of those in the country illegally. He said it would give police the ability to investigate someone further during a traffic stop to determine immigration status.

"Some people say I'm a racist, but I'm half-Mexican," Esquivel said. "People are getting tired of progressives calling other people names because they believe differently."

Esquivel said his family members also include someone who is gay and transgender. His own father came to the U.S. under the 1942 Bracero program that provided a legal means to work in the country. The program ended in 1964, but Esquivel said he thought it was a useful way to bring people into the country on a temporary legal basis.

Esquivel said he objects to the idea that people can remain in the country without any legal immigration status.

Making immigration arrests would further fill the Jackson County Jail, which now routinely releases prisoners early due to overcrowding. Esquivel said he wasn't sure where immigration offenders in Jackson County would be placed before being turned over to federal officials.

"That would be a local decision," he said. "I'm leaving it up to local people to make decisions on it."

Esquivel said the issue of sanctuary cities has been in the spotlight recently because of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to deport millions of Mexicans who aren't in the country legally.

"I think the Trump administration will come down on cities that are sanctuary cities," he said.

Ashland City Councilor Pam Marsh, who will replace state Rep. Peter Buckley in January, noted that both Ashland and Portland are sanctuary cities.

"We are taking the most compassionate, pragmatic approach to welcoming people into our communities," she said.

She said repealing the sanctuary law would deprive local residents of the ability to direct how their police officers enforce laws.

"I think this ballot measure would meet a tremendous amount of resistance," she said. "To eliminate a community's ability to be a sanctuary city would meet a lot of opposition." Read more about Esquivel will keep trying to repeal sanctuary law

Hidden Ipsos Poll: Public Strongly Backs Donald Trump’s Plan To ‘Pause’ Legal Immigration

AP/DAMIAN DOVARGANES

A just-released poll shows that Donald Trump’s campaign-trail immigration and labor policies have overwhelming public support, and strong opposition from just one-sixth of voters. 

The Ipsos poll shows that only about one-in-six Americans strongly oppose Trump’s policies towards immigrant labor, repatriations, sanctuary cities, Islamic migrants, employer oversight and his ground-breaking proposal to reduce legal immigration.

Trump’s labor and immigration policies are “strongly” backed by .... an average support of almost 60 percent, versus strong opposition of just 15 percent. Roughly 10 percent did not answer the questions.

Ipsos is a highly rated polling firm, but conducted the poll in September and hid the pro-Trump answers until Nov. 16, a week after the election....

Trump’s promise to start “immediately deporting” illegals who have committed crimes gets 75 percent strong and somewhat support, and only 7 percent strong opposition. That’s 10-to-one support.

Sixty-two percent support and 13 percent strongly oppose, “detaining or immediately deporting all people who enter the U.S. illegally.”

Sixty-seven percent of respondents support, and only 9 percent strongly oppose, the implementation of current laws that levy fines on employers who hired illegals instead of Americans...

The poll shows that Trump’s revised plans to minimize the danger of immigrant Islamic terrorism is backed by 59 percent, and strongly opposed by 12 percent. That result echoes the public’s strong opposition to Islamic doctrines.

The most significant result in the poll, however, is the strong support for reductions in legal immigration, which amounted in 2015 to roughly one new immigrant for every two Americans entering the workforce, or one immigrant for every two American births... 57 percent, back reductions in legal immigration, while 13 percent did not take a position.

On the campaign trail, Trump called for a two-year pause in legal immigration....

Any significant reduction in immigration would raise Americans’ salaries and wages, cut welfare spending, reduce housing costs and drop unemployment, according to recent studies by a Wall Street advisory group that backed Hillary Clinton, and by the National Academies of Sciences.

More importantly, a major reduction in immigration would force Democrats to give up their 20-year strategy of gaining political dominance by importing government-dependent poor workers and voters...

 Many polls show that most Americans do like immigrants, and they want to be seen liking immigration — but they also want a reduction in the annual immigration of 1 million people, which cuts salaries for the 4 million Americans who enter the job market each year. ...

This same outspoken response is also visible in a pre-election poll of the midwesterners who gave Trump his election-winning state victories, and of Latinos, who mostly prioritize the economy over additional immigration of their ethnic group. On Nov 8, “actual election results from counties with large Latino populations suggests that Trump probably did no worse than [Gov Mitt] Romney among Latinos, and probably did better,” said Harry Enten, a data analyst at Fivethirtyeight.com.

These disparate views of Americans are highlighted in the IPSOS poll by unusually strong opposition to Trump’s campaign-trail promise to extend the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Overall, 42 percent strongly or somewhat supported building a wall, while 32 percent strongly opposed a wall, said the poll.

But this response from the 1,005 adult respondents is likely influenced by party solidarity because it was conducted Sept. 1 to Sept. 2, 2016, during the political campaign where Trump’s main theme was construction of a border wall...

Similarly, 23 percent of the poll’s respondents strongly opposed cancellation of the Obama’s 2012 quasi-amnesty for younger illegals, who are called ‘Dreamers” by Democratic advocates. When asked if they support or oppose “Ending the executive orders that protect people who were brought to the US illegally when they were children,” 23 percent said they were strongly opposed, and 23 percent said they “strongly” support the proposal. Overall, 43 percent of Americans support an end to the amnesty, while 45 percent somewhat or strongly oppose ending the amnesty.

But when the same question is asked without any reference to “children,” support for repatriations spikes and opposition crashes. Sixty-two percent support — and only 13 percent strongly oppose — “detaining or immediately deporting all people who enter the U.S. illegally.” That’s four-to-one support for enforcing immigration laws. 

The public’s conflicting answers may also be caused by the poll’s lack of information about the scale and economic impact of current immigration. Read more about Hidden Ipsos Poll: Public Strongly Backs Donald Trump’s Plan To ‘Pause’ Legal Immigration

Donald Trump says one of the first things he'll do when he becomes president is deport up to 3 million undocumented immigrants. It would be one of the largest such roundups in American history.

Here are answers to many questions about how he will accomplish that.

How many "criminal" undocumented immigrants are there?

In a post-election interview with CBS' 60 Minutes, Trump said he would deport 2 million to 3 million of the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are "criminal and have criminal records." The actual number depends on how one defines "criminal."...

The Department of Homeland Security puts the number of "removable criminal aliens" at 1.9 million...

Many are already in custody, making them the easiest to identify....

How will the government track down those undocumented immigrants?

Trump could ask Congress for more funding to increase the size of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but a quicker solution would be redirecting the current 14,000 ICE officers, agents and special agents to concentrate on arrests.

But only 1,000-1,100 agents currently down fugitive undocumented immigrants who are criminals or gang members....    The rest work on detention operations, screening visa applicants in foreign countries, conducting immigration audits of U.S. businesses and investigating crimes that include money laundering, import and export fraud, and human trafficking.

Sandweg said several core functions must be maintained because of congressional mandates, but an ICE director could easily refocus more people to finding undocumented immigrants.

"There would be a lot of flexibility for an ICE director to re-calibrate the agency," said Sandweg, now an attorney with Frontier Solutions.

How quickly can undocumented immigrants be deported?

Before they can be deported to their home country, immigrants have the right to a hearing before an immigration judge. But the nation's immigration courts are already overburdened.

That has led to a huge backlog of 521,676 cases waiting nearly two years on average to be heard, ...

The only way to speed up those cases is to hire more immigration judges....

Yet, even if Trump filled all 374 posts and added 150 more judges over the next two years, they could not clear out all the currently pending immigration cases until 2023, according to a review by Human Rights First, a non-profit advocacy group.

Which undocumented immigrants will be targeted?

Trump's emphasis on criminals may leave millions of other undocumented immigrants in the clear.

One such group: the 740,000 young undocumented immigrants granted deportation protections under President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. To qualify, they had to register with the federal government, have a clean record and work or go to school.

Trump has vowed to end the program and rescind their deportation protections, leaving them fearful of being targeted.

Mexican nationals would be the most heavily targeted, because they account for 52% of undocumented immigrants, according to the Pew Research Center. Another 15% come from Central America, 13% are from Asia, and 6% come from South America.

Deported Mexicans are usually sent home by bus, while those from other countries are put on flights.

What will happen to those who remain?

As a candidate, Trump often hinted that some undocumented immigrants could remain in the U.S. During the 60 Minutes interview, he said that after the border is secured, his border wall is completed and "everything gets normalized," he would "make a determination" on how to handle those who remain.

Trump has not elaborated, but Republican proposals in recent years provide some possibilities.... Read more about How Trump can ramp up deportations

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — A man who was adopted from South Korea almost four decades ago by Americans has been deported to his native country, his attorney and a government official said Thursday.

Adam Crapser's supporters say he doesn't know the language or the culture of South Korea.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered Crapser deported because of criminal convictions, including assault and being a felon in possession of a weapon.

His Seattle attorney, Lori Walls, told The Associated Press in an email Thursday: "Adam got deported last night. I just heard from him."...

Crapser was brought to the United States when he was 3, but no one ever sought U.S. citizenship for him. He and his older sister were adopted by Americans, who later abandoned them. The siblings then were separated and sent to live in foster and group homes.

When Crapser was 12, he moved in with an abusive family. ...  Crapser himself later got into trouble with the law, which made him liable for deportation. He had come under the scrutiny of federal immigration authorities only after he applied for a Green Card.

Richeson said Crapser was arrested by ICE on Feb. 8 after serving a 60-day sentence for menacing...

The New York Times reported recently that his birth mother in South Korea, who had put her son up for adoption because she couldn't afford to keep him, was learning English so they could communicate when they were reunited. Read more about Adam Crapser deported: Man was adopted from South Korea at age 3