border

Although a homemade raft overloaded with desperate people is the most enduring image of the decades-long migration to the U.S. from Cuba, that is not the way most Cubans without visas now arrive.

Most walk across the Mexican border.

"It is surprising. And it is surprising that we are now seeing those numbers officially reported," said Jorge Duany, a Florida International University professor who studies migration patterns.

During the last three months of 2014, nearly 6,500 Cubans arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That figure is up from 4,328 from the same period the previous year, an increase of 50 percent.

The number of Cubans without visas processed through the agency's Miami field office more than doubled over that same period, rising from 893 to 2,135. Many flew directly to Miami aboard flights from Spain, South America, the Bahamas or the Cayman Islands, using passports from Spain and other third countries.

The 1,900-mile long Southwest border, for years the main entry point for undocumented migrants from Mexico and Central America, was also ground zero for a recent spike in Cuban migrants...

The surge in Cuban migrants triggered by the announcement may be most evident in the number of Coast Guard interdictions at sea. In December 2014, 331 Cubans in boats and rafts were stopped before they could reach the U.S. All were taken back to Cuba.

During the last three months of 2014, 132 Cubans made it to shore in Florida, up from 105 during the same period in 2013, according to Border Patrol figures.

Unknown is the number who landed without being detected and did not report to U.S. officials, or who perished at sea...

Once in the U.S., those arrivals then "refresh the source of income" to Cuba by sending money home to relatives on the island, Sanchez said.

Cubans also enter the U.S. with visas issued by the Interest Section in Havana. Current accords call for a minimum of 20,000 visas a year, but Duany said that recently the number of visas issued has averaged 32,000 annually.

Regardless of any changes to the Cuban Adjustment Act, or the lifting of the embargo, Duany predicts migration from Cuba will increase over the next decade. "The economic conditions, the living conditions in Cuba, don't seem to improve, and the force of family ties remains strong," he said. "I don't see any indication that will change."

David Abraham, a University of Miami law professor and expert in Cuban migration, agrees. "Change in Cuba comes slowly," he said. "What's driving people to come here doesn't change. That's economic opportunity." Read more about Mexican border now a major entry point for Cuban migrants

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)

A federal judge in Medford made sure that a Mexican drug dealer, deported six times for criminal convictions, spends a longer stretch of time in the U.S.

...sentenced Zeus Apolo Guzman-Aguilar to nearly five years in prison -- 57 months -- for illegally reentering the U.S. after his most recent drug conviction.

Guzman-Aguilar's latest series of troubles began on June 17, 2013, when the U.S. deported him back to Mexico after his release from an Oregon state prison.

Precisely six months later, on Dec. 17, 2013, Medford police got a tip he was back in town dealing drugs...

On Feb. 5, 2014, he was convicted again in Oregon for delivery of heroin...

...sent back to Mexico six times after drug convictions, Assistant U.S. Attorney Byron Chatfield reported.
  Read more about Mexican drug dealer deported six times gets to stay in U.S. for 57 additional months

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

A California newspaper will continue to use the term "illegals" to describe people who enter the U.S. without permission, despite an attack on its building by vandals believed to object to the term.

The Santa Barbara News-Press's front entrance was sprayed with the message "The border is illegal, not the people who cross it" in red paint...

The attack came amid wider objections to a News-Press headline that used the word "illegals" alongside a story on California granting driver's licenses to people in the country illegally.

"The vandalism and the damage speak for itself, as well as the motivation behind it," Santa Barbara Police Officer Mitch Jan said...

In addition to the writing on the building, graffiti espousing a no-borders mentality was scribbled on the walkway through Storke Placita and the sidewalk near Santa Barbara City Hall. Police were braced for a protest in front of the paper later this week...

"There is a plan underway," he said. "There is extra staffing on board for it."

In a statement, the newspaper said it has no plans to drop its style in describing illegal immigrants.

"It has been the practice for nearly 10 years at the Santa Barbara News-Press to describe people living in this country illegally as “illegals” regardless of their country of origin," the statement read.

"This practice is under fire by some immigration groups who believe that this term is demeaning and does not accurately reflect the status of “undocumented immigrants,” one of several terms other media use to describe people in the Unites States illegally.

"It is an appropriate term in describing someone as “illegal” if they are in this country illegally," the statement added.

The debate over how to label people who are in the U.S. without permission has raged at news organizations across the nation in recent years. In 2013, both The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times banned the phrase after employing it for decades, saying it "lacked precision," according to Pew Research Center.

The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal all use the phrase, although only The Wall Street Journal uses “illegal immigrant” to refer to people who not only criminally enter the U.S. without the proper documentation, but also those who overstay their visas.

FoxNews.com's policy is to describe immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally as "illegal immigrants." Read more about California newspaper office vandalized over use of 'illegal' immigrant label

WASHINGTON, DC - Only a tiny fraction of the families and children who crossed in the border surge of 2012-14 are being returned to their home countries, despite Obama administration claims that the cases are a priority, according to a Houston television station's investigative report. Only a few of the illegal family or child arrivals are qualified to stay in the United States, and the vast majority (91 percent) have simply absconded from their proceedings after release and joined the resident illegal population, where they are no longer a priority for enforcement under the new, expanded "prosecutorial discretion" policies.

The station’s report focuses on statistics from the immigration courts for the family unit cases that were completed between July 18 and October 28, 2014, which are a sub-set of more than 65,000 total family unit arrivals in 2014.

View the entire CIS article at: http://cis.org/vaughan/contrary-administration-claims-only-tiny-fraction-surge-border-jumpers-deported

From these numbers the Center for Immigration Studies has determined that:
 

• The number of family units arriving illegally was larger than the number of UACs during this time period, although the administration, its allies, and the media typically described the surge as an influx of children.
• At least 92 percent of the family arrivals in this sample of cases were released after apprehension rather than detained in the border area.
• Nearly all of those released (5,575 out of 6,093 total families and UACs, or 91 percent) subsequently failed to appear at their immigration hearings and are now part of the illegal population.
• According to these figures, 43 percent of those family members classified as "detained" (nine people) also failed to appear for their hearings, suggesting that they actually were released at some point.
• Even under the current very generous interpretations of immigration law, only 3 percent of these illegal aliens were found qualified to stay in the United States (204 out of 6,093 completed cases).
• Only 314 of the 6,093 cases completed (5 percent) were present for their hearing and could actually be removed by authorities after receiving the order from the judge.

DHS year-end enforcement statistics show a continued steep drop in deportations, in direct contradiction to administration claims. Jessica Vaughan, the Center’s Director of Policy Studies, writes, “It's not clear to me what is smart or effective about a massive and costly catch-and-release scheme that has resulted in the illegal resettlement of tens of thousands of illegal aliens, with taxpayers now picking up the tab for schooling, health care, housing, public safety, and other expenses, and which has only increased the incentives for more people to try to enter illegally.” Read more about Contrary to Administration Claims, Surge Border-Jumpers Not Being Deported

ARTESIA, N.M. (AP) — The majority of an estimated 1,200 Central American immigrants held at a southeastern New Mexico detention center over the last six months have been released, authorities said Monday...

Those more than 800 people face follow-up court appointments before an immigration judge. An additional 370 immigrants were deported, and 15 remaining people will be relocated to a new family detention center in Karnes, Texas, ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa said.

American Civil Liberties Union officials in New Mexico say most of the immigrants plan to seek asylum, while some want to argue their cases in court.

Immigration advocates say immigrant families are often fleeing drug or gang violence in Central America and should be released to relatives already in the U.S. rather than being locked up. To qualify for asylum, immigrants must prove "credible fear of persecution" in an interview and before a judge.

...The number of families caught at the south Texas border this year spiked to more than 52,000. That is a 600 percent increase, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Stephen Manning, a Portland, Oregon-based attorney, organized more than 330 lawyers to represent detained families pro bono in Artesia last July.

  Read more about Majority of migrants at New Mexico center released

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California prosecutors said Tuesday they will seek the death penalty for a Utah man charged with killing two deputies during an hour-long rampage that also left a motorist and another deputy wounded.

Prosecutors in Placer and Sacramento counties decided after consulting with the victims' families that the death penalty is appropriate for defendant Luis Enrique Monroy Bracamontes, Placer County Supervising Deputy District Attorney David Tellman said...

No inmates have been executed in California since 2006, and no executions are currently scheduled because of ongoing legal challenges...

Bracamontes' wife, Janelle Marquez Monroy, also is charged in the case but does not face the death penalty. Prosecutors allege her husband fired the fatal shots.

Her attorney, Peter Kmeto, declined comment after a separate hearing. The pair is scheduled to return to court Feb. 4.

Neither has entered pleas to multiple charges of murder, attempted murder, carjacking and attempted carjacking. They also face counts involving weapons violations...

The couple appeared to be living quietly in the Salt Lake City area until their arrest in California.

Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones released a YouTube video last month chastising President Barack Obama and Congress for their lack of progress on illegal immigration, a problem Jones linked to Bracamontes because the Mexican national has a long criminal history and was in the U.S. illegally.

Jones said Bracamontes had been deported four times before he was charged with killing the two deputies.
  Read more about Death penalty sought in California deputy killings

Post updated at 9:38 p.m. ET.

A massive federal spending bill finally won the House's approval Thursday night, less than 3 hours before a midnight deadline that threatened a federal shutdown. The measure's fate had been in doubt after it narrowly survived a rules vote earlier in the day. The final tally was 219-206.

Faced with uncertainty over Congress meeting its deadline to approve a bill, the House's leadership scheduled a vote on both the long-term spending bill and a stop-gap continuing resolution. It passed a two-day resolution in order to give the Senate time to consider the spending bill.

The $1.014 trillion spending measure has been criticized for easing rules on campaign finance and the banking industry. But its supporters say it's also a bipartisan deal that would fund most of the U.S. government until next October.

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., called it a "hold your nose vote."

The final tally for the spending bill was starkly different from that in an earlier procedural vote.

Around mid-day, no Democrat voted in favor. But after the final vote was called shortly after 9 p.m. ET, more than 30 Democrats voted for the spending bill. In contrast, more than twice as many Republicans voted against it in the final tally than had earlier in the day.

We've updated this text; from our earlier post:

Disagreement over the bill forced the final vote to be delayed for hours Thursday. It also created unlikely alliances: The White House joined with House Speaker John Boehner to rally support for the measure, most House Democrats agreed with a small group of Republicans – including Rep. Michele Bachmann – that the bill should be rejected.

You can read the bill, broken down by government agency, on the House Appropriations Committee site.

The legislation was nicknamed "cromnibus" because it combines the traditional sweeping scope of an omnibus spending bill with a continuing resolution (CR). While it would fund most of the government until the next financial year, the Department of Homeland Security would only be funded through February, in a move that seeks to limit President Obama's recent executive actions on immigration.

Another part of the measure would vastly increase the maximum amount of money a contributor can give to a political party.

"Right now a person can give just under $100,000 a year to a party through its various committees," NPR's Ailsa Chang reports on All Things Considered. "And under this bill, that cap goes up to almost $800,000."

After no Democrats voted in favor and more than a dozen Republicans defected to vote against, the House was adjourned so Boehner could organize his support.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi spoke out against the bill in the House earlier Thursday, sharply criticizing it for altering rules in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law to let banks place both standard accounts and accounts that handle riskier derivative trades under the protection of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

"I was so really heartbroken ... to see the taint that was placed on this valuable appropriations bill from on high," Pelosi said. She told her colleagues that anyone voting for the legislation would be putting their name next to what she called "a ransom" and "blackmail" that would profit Wall Street.

Discussing the opposition, Boehner said the provisions were "agreed to in this bill on a bipartisan, bicameral agreement. So while some members may have objected to this issue or that issue, nobody did this unilaterally. We've done this in a bipartisan fashion, and frankly it's a good bill."

Others have criticized the bill for containing provisions such as one that seeks to block Washington, D.C.'s bid to legalize the recreational use of marijuana — as more than 65 percent of the federal district's voters decided to do last month.

The Hill tells us who voted with the Democrats against the spending measure earlier Thursday:

"The 16 Republican defectors were Reps. Justin Amash (Mich.), Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Dave Brat (Va.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Paul Broun (Ga.), Louie Gohmert (Texas), Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Tim Huelskamp (Kan.), Walter Jones (N.C.), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Steve King (Iowa), Raúl Labrador (Idaho), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Bill Posey (Fla.), Matt Salmon (Ariz.) and Steve Stockman (Texas)." Read more about 'Cromnibus' Spending Bill Passes, Just Hours Before Deadline