enforcement

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

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)

Illegal aliens may enjoy a free pass on identity theft due to a new investigative policy at California’s Department of Motor Vehicles  (DMV).

The policy, issued last year and effective as of Jan. 1, 2015, directs DMV investigators to overlook identity theft by applicants “who may have attempted to obtain or been issued a license or ID card previously through submission of false information.”

A DMV source who asked to remain anonymous provided Breitbart News exclusively with a copy of the newly enacted internal policy memorandum. The document informs DMV investigative officers that past identity theft is acceptable when the illegally acquired IDs were only used to obtain a driver license, and where the license or ID was not used to commit any other crime....

The policy seems to expect applicants to admit voluntarily to using a fraudulent driver license or ID for purposes other than driving a motor vehicle, if they did so.  Typically, identity theft may be prosecuted as a felony in California. The new DMV policy may be an attempt to protect illegal aliens from prosecution and conviction for a felony that could lead to their deportation, and disqualify them from President Barack Obama’s new “executive amnesty” policy.

... a naturalized or natural born U.S. citizen who attempted to obtain a driver license fraudulently would not receive the same consideration, and would be prosecuted as a criminal....

  Read more about California DMV ordered to overlook identity theft by illegals

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