President

NOTE:  DHS issued ten memorandums to implement Obama's executive amnesty.

As we enter the last two years of the Obama Administration, the outlook on immigration issues is as bleak as it is complex and potentially overwhelming.

No, there is no Executive Order for amnesty for illegal aliens. The media coverage of President Obama’s “executive order on amnesty” has been loud, repetitious, and wrong. Many news organizations have used the terms “Executive Order” and “Executive Action” and “Executive Memorandum” interchangeably, and incorrectly.

As of January 23, the White House website for Executive Orders¹ shows no amnesty for illegal aliens.

What is being done is far worse for our country and our culture.

On the day of the President’s supposed Executive Order, November 20, 2014, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson issued ten memorandums.²

The timeline of what happened: The news reported President Obama’s impending announcement on “executive order amnesty” for over a week.

At 8:00pm ET on November 20, 2014, President Obama did give a speech³ that was filled with lies and misinformation. He lied about border security and the number of illegal aliens entering our country. He repeated the idiocy about how our immigration system is “broken.” He made the same claim in his January 20 State of the Union address to Congress. (Just how the system is broken, nobody has ever honestly or accurately described.)

Obama surrendered on enforcement:

…tracking down, rounding up, and deporting millions of people isn’t realistic.

He also called it, “impossible.” But, nobody could know what is possible or “impossible” because real enforcement hasn’t been tried in decades.

No “Executive Order Amnesty” was announced on November 20, only the usual shibboleths about immigration.

However, earlier in the day Secretary of DHS Jeh Johnson issued ten memorandums dealing with legal and illegal immigration, immigration enforcement, prosecutorial discretion, DACA, etc.⁴

On Friday, November 21, President Obama traveled to Las Vegas, gave a speech, and signed two Presidential Memorandums, not Executive Orders as the media, once again, erroneously reported.⁵

In the first memorandum, “Modernizing and Streamlining the U.S. Immigrant Visa System for the twenty-first century,”⁶ Obama twice invokes the “broken” lie and says;

We have worked to simplify an overly complex visa system, one that is confusing to travelers and immigrants, burdensome to businesses, and results in long wait times that negatively impact millions of families and workers. But we can and must do more to improve this system.

Translation: “Even though the United States lets in more legal immigrants per year than almost all the rest of the countries in the world added up…we are going to accelerate the process.” In the second memorandum, “Creating Welcoming Communities and Fully Integrating Immigrants and Refugees,”⁷ Obama provides an overview of the plan to accelerate legal immigration and to naturalize over 13 million Legal Permanent Residents before the 2016 Presidential election....

[Read the original article for an explanation of each of the ten DHS memorandums] Read more about There Is No Executive Order for Amnesty! - It Is Far Worse

President Obama’s temporary deportation amnesty will make it easier for illegal immigrants to improperly register and vote in elections, state elections officials testified to Congress on Thursday, saying that the driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers they will be granted create a major voting loophole.

Prominent immigration advocates have all but conceded that federal judge Andrew Hanen – a staunch critic of the Obama administration’s immigration policies – will block the president’s executive actions just weeks before the measures are slated to kick in.

Advocacy groups are bracing for Hanen, a U.S. district court judge, to decide this week on a lawsuit that could unravel the president’s unilateral measures to shield as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation....

“We all think the judge is going to rule in favor of the plaintiffs here. That much is almost assumed at this point.”
Marshall Fitz, Center for American Progress

...Advocates remain confident that the law is on the administration’s side...

Hanen did not mince words in a scathing court opinion in 2013 when he accused the Department of Homeland Security of engaging in a “criminal conspiracy” ...

If Hanen decides against the Obama administration, he could block the implementation of the executive measures, which are scheduled to kick in Feb. 18...

...With an unsympathetic judge on the bench, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002, immigration reform advocates are bracing for the worst...

Pro-immigrant groups point out that scores of legal experts, elected officials and law enforcement authorities support President Obama’s executive actions, which would provide a shield from deportation and grant temporary work permits to millions of undocumented immigrants...

... the White House has remained steadfast in asserting that the president has the discretion to prioritize which people should or should not be deported.

“Presidential use of executive discretion has been pretty consistent in the last 20 or so years,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, associate professor of political science at the University of Houston. “I don’t think the court would overturn that.”

Karen Tumlin, managing attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, hoped the decision will not deter undocumented immigrants from coming forward to take advantage of the executive action once enrollment opens – either in a few weeks or further down the road.

“People have been waiting so long for a chance to come forward and be able to work with authorization and not be looking over their shoulder all day long,” she said. “We’re really trying to send the message that this should be business as usual.”

  Read more about Activists prepare for the worst in lawsuit to block immigration actions

For the first time, Immigration Customs and Enforcement has released new numbers on the number of violent convicted criminals ordered deported in the Pacific Northwest.

ICE says there are 701 "Level 1" offenders tracked by the Seattle field office. This includes Washington State, Oregon and Alaska.

According to ICE, "Level 1 offenders are those aliens convicted of “aggravated felonies,” as defined in § 101(a)(43) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, or two (2) or more crimes each punishable by more than 1 year, commonly referred to as 'felonies'."

There are a total of 870 convicted criminals in the area ordered deported. (Click here to see a map of the countries least responsive to ICE request.)

One of the violent criminals ordered deported is Tra Young. He's serving a seven-year prison sentence for an unprovoked attack on a 58 year old man last March in Beacon Hill.

"It was like a horror movie," said Maura Whalen, who witnessed the attack.

The man was getting off a bus to go to Church.

"It was very very violent and horrific," Whalen added, "No weapons but repeatedly punching kicking and kicking in the face."

Whalen didn't know at the time the federal government has tried to deport Young, a Vietnamese national, for nearly a decade.

But Vietnamese authorities refuse to take him back.

Young has victimized people in our neighborhoods and has a long criminal history, from assault, drugs and burglary.

The most infamous incident was at this 2013 Susan G. Komen race, when he was arrested for trying to kidnap a 4-year-old boy.

Young's crimes are the real-life consequences of global political and diplomacy failures.

Immigration expert Steve Miller says right now there's no solution.

"In order to be able to put a person on an airplane out of the United States they've got to have permission from the place where it lands to let them in," Miller added, "almost all the countries in the world will abide by that but some countries we don’t have relations with or have only had recent relations with or some countries which have ceased to exist makes it more complicated."

Because of the 2001 Zadvydas v. Davis supreme court ruling, convicted criminals ordered to be deported can only be held for six months after serving their time - then they have to be released.

"I think that's what's disturbing and worries people that this is still possible and imagine how the families feel that the person who committed this crime is not even supposed to be in the country," said Paul Guppy, Washington Policy Center.

In Young's case, he arrived before 1995, when the U.S. had no diplomatic relations with Vietnam.

Vietnam believes the current treaty it shares with the U-S does not require it to accept people who left Vietnam before 1995.

That's also reason ICE can't deport Binh Thai Luc, who is awaiting trial in San Francisco for murdering five people in 2012.

ICE says these 23 countries have had the slowest response in taking back convicted criminals.

Vietnam, Cambodia, and Somalia have been identified as the most "recalcitrant" with Somalia taking an average of 344 days to issue travel documents.

In Yury Decyatnik's case, he was ordered to go to the Ukraine back in 2002 for a domestic violence conviction.

The problem is he was there when the Ukraine was the USSR so the Ukraine won't take him back.

"I want to leave should be simple right?" said Decyatnik.

He even admitted resorting to threats at the Homeland Security Building in Tukwila to bolster his case.

"When you have a dangerous person and the government is forced to release them into the community that doesn't make any sense to me," said Guppy.

Congress debated a bill that would allow indefinite detention for dangerous foreign nationals, but the measure died last year.

Which leaves us with the status quo and 701 violent criminals in our region who aren't supposed to be here - -just like Tra Young.

He's currently locked up in Walla Walla for assault, but his crimes continue to impact the community.

"It's a horrific thing I’d like to block out of my own memory," said Whalen.

"ICE only has so much resources. I think the real emphasis has got to be who are the priorities to get off the streets to keep off the streets for purposes of public safety," said MIller. Read more about U.S. can't deport 701 violent convicted criminals in Pacific Northwest

No discussion of immigration reform in Washington gets very far without some politician boldly declaring, “The first thing we must do is secure the border,” as if that were a novel idea and panacea for illegal immigration.

Once and for all: The border is a red herring. It’s not our border that’s out of control; it’s the Obama administration that’s out of control and the border is just one of many casualties in the president’s assault on immigration enforcement.

What we have on our hands is an immigration meltdown engineered by the president and his political appointees. Our immigration courts have ceased to function, and virtually every illegal alien has been exempted from removal, even if they were operating. Work permits are being handed out to illegal aliens like lollipops on Halloween – about 5.5 million since Obama came to office in 2009.

Of course our borders out of control!

In recent days, the Department of Justice announced that because immigration courts are so overwhelmed, most people with cases pending will not have them heard until 2019 at the earliest. These courts are not overwhelmed because they’re busy deporting so many people who shouldn’t be here. Rather, they are overwhelmed by the number of people who have no business here seeking legalization and the tens of thousands of Central Americans who surged across the border last summer.

In reporting the story, AP cited as a “victim” of the delay the story of Maximiano Vazquez-Guevarra, an illegal alien from Mexico who recently won his appeal to become a legal permanent resident, but needs to make one more court appearance to make it final. Vasquez managed to tie up the courts for three years successfully fighting deportation (and gaining legal status) after coming to the attention of authorities when he was charged with his second DUI.

While the courts have ceased to function because, under the Obama administration, illegal aliens can spend years petitioning for legal residency because they get caught driving while intoxicated (and win), millions more are being given work permits because…well, because the administration just feels like it.

According to a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies, the Obama administration has been ignoring statutorily mandated limits on immigration (big shocker) and handing out Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) at will. Since 2009, 1.2 million people who were admitted on temporary visas that explicitly bar them from working got – you guessed it – EADs. Almost a million illegal aliens also received work authorization, despite the inconvenient law that bars them from being employed in the U.S. Another 1.7 million EADs were parceled out to folks whose status in this country was unclear. But, what the heck, the administration has no interest in finding out and no intention of doing anything about it anyway.

And all this is before they have even begun carrying out the president’s massive executive amnesty, which could grant give legal status and EADs to an additional 5 million illegal aliens, which is likely to trigger an even greater surge of illegal immigration.

First let’s secure the border? No, first we have to stop the president from rendering our entire immigration law meaningless.
  Read more about The Obama Engineered Immigration Meltdown (and Why Securing the Border is a Red Herring)

On Wednesday, the House Homeland Security committee rubber-stamped Rep. Michael McCaul's flawed border security bill (HR399) without meaningful improvements. The barely-tweaked bill reportedly is scheduled to be considered by the full House next Wednesday, January 28. In its current form, the bill will preserve the current catch-and-release policies, which were expanded even further by the executive actions announced in late November, rendering pointless much of the new spending and metrics-crunching mandated in this bill.

The main change to the bill made in the committee mark-up process was to increase the number of miles of new double fencing from 27 to 48, adding an additional ten miles in the Del Rio sector and another mile in the Tucson sector. This would bring the total length of double fencing up to 84 miles (over 600 miles less than the 700 miles mandated by the Secure Fence Act of 2006).

The amended product is still obsessed with attaining full Situational Awareness and Operational Control in five years, and oblivious to the fact that the current catch-and-release policies and newly expanded "prosecutorial discretion" policies that spare most illegal aliens from deportation would remain in place. Not only that, it gives oversight authority to an appointed commission that has little accountability to anyone.

To address catch-and-release, the bill should have heeded the recommendations of career Border Patrol and ICE personnel to specify and toughen the penalties that should generally ensue for illegal border crossers and authorize the tools, such as detention space, to enable this to be implemented. But the bill is silent on what kinds of consequences illegal crossers should face.

At a minimum, it would have been easy for the committee to tack on language from the Carter-Aderholt bill passed by the House last summer to address the border surge (analyzed by my colleague Dan Cadman here). GOP leaders seem to have completely forgotten this successful exercise in sound policymaking and party unification in response to a crisis. That was good governing that was well received by the public, and should have been a no-brainer to resurrect, along with the Goodlatte-Chaffetz bill on asylum reform.

In addition, the bill should have included among the dozens of metrics that DHS agencies will be required to collect at least one or two metrics that would reveal to the public how it is handling new illegal arrivals such as information on case disposition, whether the alien is detained or released, whether the new illegal arrival appears for court hearings, and whether the new arrival is granted a work permit.

In fact, the bill should prohibit the issuance of a work permit to new illegal arrivals, or anyone in deportation proceedings.

The bill should restore and expand Operation Streamline, a highly effective program that significantly reduced illegal crossings in certain sectors by efficiently detaining and prosecuting new illegal arrivals for the criminal offense of entry without inspection.

The Homeland Security Committee accepted this weakening of the mandate that DHS establish a biometric entry-exit system, which has been on the laundry list of must-do national security improvements since the first World Trade Center attacks in 1993. For example, the bill's loose language calls for biometrics to be collected at land ports of entry, but fails to specify that biometrics should be collected from all foreign visitors who enter at the land ports of entry.

And, it fails to synchronize the deportation process for legal entry overstays with the way illegal border crossers are treated both are recent illegal arrivals, and there is no good reason that overstays should be harder to deport than those who came over the land border.

Finally, in the section that supposedly intends to give the Border Patrol access to federal land within 100 miles of the border, from which it is currently blocked, the language of the bill appears to actually reverse a critical provision in current law that provides agents with the authority to access and patrol on public and private lands within 25 miles of the border (Section 13(e)(2). This could be a drafting error, but it urgently needs to be examined.

The pace at which this bill is being rammed through the House suggests that the leadership is eager to pass a token bill and then inform the public that the border problem has been solved, while leaving the president's executive amnesty intact and his abuse of authority unchallenged. If the rest of Congress goes along, they will have squandered the political momentum gained from their response to the border surge crisis not to mention wasting an opportunity to restore some integrity to our immigration laws and their sole authority to craft them. Not only would this fulfill a key campaign promise, it would begin to ameliorate the fiscal and security burden that the current policies have imposed on American communities. But it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Contact: Marguerite Telford
202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org Read more about House Border Bill Advances Without Improvement

Brief submitted by 12 states counters lawsuit filed by 25 other states in federal court.

Oregon has joined Washington and 10 other states in defense of President Obama’s executive action shielding up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation...

The statement, initiated by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, was filed in connection with a lawsuit brought by 25 other states against Obama’s Nov. 20 action.

The case is pending in U.S. District Court in Texas. A hearing is scheduled Thursday.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum issued a statement Wednesday explaining her reasoning to intervene:

“The president used his full legal authority and discretion to address critical immigration issues facing our country...

Judges and courts can use arguments submitted in friend-of-the-court briefs to bolster their reasoning in writing their decisions.

The judge in this case, Andrew Hanen, is more likely to side with the challenge brought by Attorney General Greg Abbott of Texas — soon to be that state’s governor — and other states that filed the suit on Dec. 3. The initial list of 17 has grown to 25.

But it’s likely that the proceedings will end up in the federal appellate courts....

In addition to Oregon and Washington, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia have joined to defend Obama’s action.

Decisions to intervene in such cases are made by attorneys general, who are popularly elected in 43 states.

Of the 25 states challenging Obama’s action, 21 have Republican attorneys general; all 12 states supporting his action have Democratic attorneys general...

If Obama’s authority for executive action is upheld, Oregon and other states will consider whether work permits issued to these immigrants will constitute legal presence in the United States, a status enabling them to apply for driver’s licenses in many states.

Under a similar program created by Obama under a 2012 executive order, immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children qualified for work permits. Virtually all states, including Oregon, considered them proof of legal presence for issuance of licenses.

Oregon voters Nov. 4 rejected a 2013 law granting driver’s licenses to those who met driving knowledge and skills tests but cannot prove legal presence. Ten states have such laws, which are permitted under the federal Real ID Act if the licenses are clearly marked as invalid for federal purposes.

  Read more about Oregon joins legal support of Obama's immigration action