enforcement

Woman at center of landmark immigration case settles suit that changed jail holds in state, nation

The woman at the center of a lawsuit that changed the way jails across Oregon handle people suspected of immigration violations has settled a lawsuit against Clackamas County.

Maria Miranda-Olivares sued the county in U.S. District Court claiming she was unlawfully imprisoned at the county jail in 2012...

The settlement, reached last week, marks the final chapter of a case that changed immigration hold policies in Oregon and nationwide.

Miranda-Olivares was arrested on March 15, 2012, on an allegation that she violated a restraining order that her husband had taken out against her. The next day, a judge set bail at $5,000...

Miranda-Olivares was there for two weeks...

But U.S. Magistrate Judge Janice M. Stewart ruled in April 2014 that Miranda-Olivares' detention was illegal and violated her constitutional rights...

The ruling had a ripple effect. Jails throughout the state immediately stopped complying with ICE's Secure Communities detainers.

"This was a landmark case," said Miranda-Olivares' attorney, Benjamin Haile of the Portland Law Collective.

"ICE policy has pretty much changed across the board" on its use of immigration detainers, Haile said Monday.

President Obama announced last November that he was ending the Secure Communities program...

In her statement, Miranda Olivares said the county "forced me to endure two weeks of degrading, humiliating treatment."

Her immigration case is still pending.
  Read more about Woman at center of landmark immigration case settles suit that changed jail holds in state, nation

DHS caught busing in illegal Somalis from Mexican border

The U.S. is bringing in 100,000 Muslims every year through legal channels such as the United Nations refugee program and various visa programs, but new reports indicate a pipeline has been established through the southern border with the help of the federal agency whose job it is to protect the homeland.

They are coming from Somalia and other African nations, according to a Homeland Security official who was caught recently transporting a busload of Africans to a detention center near Victorville, California.

Somalia is the home base of al-Shabab, a designated foreign terrorist organization that slaughtered 147 Christians at a university in Kenya just last month. It executed another 67 at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2013, and has put out warnings that it will target malls in Canada and the U.S. Dozens of Somali refugees in the U.S. have been arrested, charged and convicted of providing support to overseas terrorist organizations over the past few years.

Libya is also awash in Islamist terror following the death of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. ISIS beheaded 21 Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach in February.

So when Anita Fuentes of OpenYourEyesPeople.com posted a video of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security bus pulling into a Shell station in Victorville, on the night of May 7, admitting he had a busload of Somalis and other Africans who had crossed the southern border, it raised more than a few eyebrows among those concerned with illegal immigration and national security.

A man who appeared to be a Customs and Border Patrol agent was filmed at the gas station at 10:30 p.m. When questioned by Fuentes, he informed her that his large touring bus was full of Somalis and other Africans being transported to a nearby detention center.

The tour bus had the U.S. Homeland Security logo, and the agent appeared calm and professional.

The windows to the bus were covered. When asked if he was transporting illegal immigrants, the driver said, “No, we ended up taking some people to a detention facility. Somalis and all the Africans.”

Watch video clip of border officials admitting they are bringing in Somalis and other Africans from the southern border.

             “A detention center over here?” Fuentes asks.

“Yeah,” he said.

Victorville is about 161 miles from the Mexican border.

“Is that because they’re crossing the border?” Fuentes asked.

“Well they’re coming in asking for asylum,” he said.

“That’s what it is, that special key word huh? That’s a password now?” Fuentes said.

“That’s what the password is now,” he responds.

The flow of information stopped when Fuentes asked about the presence of ISIS near the border, a story which the watchdog agency Judicial Watch reported last month.

“ISIS being at the border?” she asks.

“I’m not going to talk to you when you’re recording me, ma’am,” the agent says. “Any information you want ma’am, go ahead and look it up online.”

A small part of a larger story

More than 100,000 Somalis have been brought to the United States legally since 1991 through the U.N. refugee resettlement program. Close to half of them have been resettled in Minnesota, with the rest dispersed throughout Ohio, Maine, California, Texas, Idaho, Tennessee, Colorado, Georgia and several other states.

The Somali community in Minnesota has had well-documented problems assimilating, running up a troubling record of crime and radicalization. Scores of Somalis have been arrested and charged with providing material support to overseas terrorist organizations such as al-Shabab, al-Qaida and ISIS.

Others have left the country to fight for al-Shabab and ISIS, including six from Minnesota last month who were arrested after making repeated attempts to leave the country to join ISIS. That prompted the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Andrew Luger, to admit in a April 20 press conference that “we have a terror recruitment problem in Minnesota.”

At least two Somalis in Columbus, Ohio, have also been arrested on terrorism charges.

While most of the Somalis have been brought into the U.S. by the U.S. State Department in cooperation with the United Nations, exactly how many Somalis may be entering the country illegally and applying for asylum is difficult to ascertain.

According to official DHS data, 688 Somalis entered the U.S. as asylum seekers between 2004 and 2013.

Asylum seekers from other African countries with radical Muslim populations are also showing up at the border. According to DHS data, 139 Libyans crossed into the U.S. between 2011 and 2013, while only 20 had made the risky trek between 2004 and 2010 when dictator Moammar Gadhafi was in power.

The number of Eritreans and Ethiopians showing up at the U.S. border and seeking asylum is also growing: 1,495 came from Eritrea between 2004 and 2013, and 5,863 came from Ethiopia.

The Washington Times, among other publications, has published stories about the harrowing journeys some Somalis have been willing to endure to get to the U.S. They make their way across the Horn of Africa, cross the Atlantic by stowing away in cargo ships before landing at a port in Brazil or Argentina. From there they travel by land through Central America and Mexico to arrive at the U.S. border. Until last year, at least some of them were deported. Now, word is spreading that U.S. border policy has changed so more are showing up with the one word they know of English – “asylum.”

Numbers likely higher

A Customs and Border Patrol agent, who asked not to be identified, told WND that many more Africans and Middle Easterners are likely crossing over the Mexican border than what DHS is willing to admit.

“You’re not going to get an honest number, because they all want to look good and get promotions from the people in D.C.,” the border agent told WND. “I’m absolutely confident that is happening.”

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/05/graphic-on-border-crossings.jpg

graphic on border crossings

That’s why the video is raising eyebrows, because the agent appears unfazed, as though transferring busloads of Somalis and Africans to detention facilities is a routine task.

Once at the detention facility, asylum seekers are often asked to fill out legal documents, given a court date and set free.

“There’s an ICE facility up that way, so that’s where that bus was likely heading,” the Border Patrol agent said. “That doesn’t surprise me. My guess is those are probably coming through Arizona because Arizona is still the biggest pure hole in the southern border we have. The Casa Grande area of Arizona is just the wild West. It’s on an Indian reservation, and they’ve been battling the Border Patrol forever. There are no barriers, not even a barbed-wire fence. But this administration’s done everything they can do to shut down ICE from doing its job.”

Asylum seekers are required to show they belong to a group of individuals who are suffering from a “pattern and practice” of persecution, either from their native country’s government or from non-government entities that the government is unable or unwilling to control.

The Obama administration has decided to spend $2 million to hire attorneys for alien minors seeking asylum in the U.S. this year, Judicial Watch reported.

After filming the busload of African asylum seekers in Victorville, Fuentes posted on her YouTube account that they were being taken to a detention center in the high desert, thumb printed, and let go.

“My friends, many Somalians are Muslim and many Africans especially in the northern region of Africa are radical Islam terrorists. Lord have mercy,” wrote Fuentes, whose husband, Ignacio, is a pastor.

William Gheen, president of the Americans for Legal Immigration, or ALIPAC, said the word “asylum” has indeed become the password for foreign nationals showing up at the border. They will be taken to a detention center to be processed and given a court date along with contact information for an asylum attorney and a religious charity that will help them find housing, food and clothing.

“And they will even be given instructions on how to get their Obamaphone,” he said.

“And that video is further clear evidence that Obama and his administration is involved in a conspiracy to overthrow America’s defenses, laws, borders and republic by flooding America with as many people as possible who will be dependent on the system and the socialists who helped them,” Gheen told WND. “He’s going for broke because he knows that (Mitch) McConnell, (John) Boehner and the other sell-out Republicans won’t stop him.

“In fact, many of those Republicans are now voting for his Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and trying to get him more bodies, more non-Americans, into America. The name of the game is to get as many non-Americans with alien perspectives and principles into America so that America’s condition becomes terminal.”

After announcing his plans on Nov. 20 to unilaterally grant amnesty to more than 5 million illegals, Obama created the White House Task Force on New Americans. The task force released its long-awaited report last month. It contained 70 pages of goals, guidelines and strategies that involved using 16 federal agencies, including DHS, to build “welcoming” communities across the U.S. that would work to “integrate” the record numbers of new immigrants and refugees.

“We’re fighting against every avenue we can, but our fight right now is to try to slow them down and try to save every life we can and every job we can,” Gheen said. “Tens of thousands more lives and jobs will be lost if we lose this fight.”

The U.S. allows 1.1 million immigrants into the country annually through legal channels, and another 486,000 crossed the southern border illegally in 2014, according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Taken together, that’s 1.6 million new immigrants each year, which is at historically high levels even for the U.S., which is known as a “nation of immigrants.”

“That’s more than any other nation on earth,” Gheen said.

  Read more about DHS caught busing in illegal Somalis from Mexican border

US: Work Permits Issued After Immigration Action Delayed

The U.S. government says it "erroneously" awarded three-year work permits to 2,000 people under President Barack Obama's executive immigration action after a judge had put the plan on hold....by a Feb. 16 injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Texas.

Hanen had criticized Justice Department lawyers after they acknowledged that more than 108,000 people had received three-year deportation reprieves as well as work permits when the lawyers had previously told the judge that no action would be taken prior to the injunction.

A decision from an appeals court is pending on whether to lift the injunction.
  Read more about US: Work Permits Issued After Immigration Action Delayed

Obama Admin. Admits to Huge Immigration Error That Led to Three Deaths in North Carolina

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has admitted that [they] made a grave error in 2013 when it agreed to spare a known gang member from deportation — a man who is now charged with the USCIS Director Leon Rodriguez said in a Friday letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that his agency has a process for checking the criminal background of applicants for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. But he admitted that in the case of Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez, that process was not followed.

“Based on standard procedures and protocols in place at the time, the DACA request and related employment authorization should not have been approved,” he wrote.

Rodriguez explained that under policies in place in 2013, known street gang members should be denied DACA benefits “as a matter of discretion.” He also wrote that at the time he applied for DACA, Rangel-Hernandez was in removal proceedings — those proceedings ended when he was approved under DACA.

“Given the fact that the individual was identified as a known gang member, his request should have been denied by the adjudicator,” he wrote. He added that if an adjudicator found a reason to accept a known gang member into the program, that request would have to be elevated to higher level officials at USCIS.

Grassley said the error shows USCIS doesn’t have a good grip on how to review people under DACA.

“It’s no secret that USCIS staff is under intense pressure to approve every DACA application that comes across their desk, and based on this information, it’s clear that adequate protocols are not in place to protect public safety,” he said. “The fact is that this tragedy could have been avoided if the agency had a zero tolerance policy with regard to criminal aliens and gang members.”

“The fact is that this tragedy could have been avoided if the agency had a zero tolerance policy with regard to criminal aliens and gang members,” he added.

“The USCIS needs to immediately start performing detailed criminal background checks to prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future,” added Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). Another Republican, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), said USCIS’s admission is “chilling,” and said the incident shows that the government can’t carry out Obama’s immigration plan “without compromising the safety of Americans.”

Rodriguez said USCIS was taking steps to ensure similar errors would not happen again, including “refresher training” for USCIS officials on how to handle DACA requests.

“Officers received DACA refresher training regarding disqualifying public safety and criminality concerns, including but not limited to gang membership, significant misdemeanors, and three or more misdemeanor criminal offenses,” he wrote.

Grassley asked the Department of Homeland Security in February whether Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez was spared from deportation even though he was a known gang member, after which he was later charged with murdering three people in North Carolina.

The Obama administration has admitted it erred by sparing Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez from deportation. The known gang member is now a suspect in the murder of three people in North Carolina. Image: AP Photo/Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office

Read the USCIS letter here:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/21/obamas-tragic-immigration-error-three-dead-at-the-hands-of-a-known-gang-member-who-was-spared-from-deportation/
  Read more about Obama Admin. Admits to Huge Immigration Error That Led to Three Deaths in North Carolina

Many immigrants may be released without bond after judge’s ruling

In a move that could affect tens of thousands of detainees, a federal judge in Seattle has ordered the Department of Justice to obey a law that allows for the release of some undocumented immigrants without posting a bond.

Immigration-rights leaders say the law is routinely ignored in Washington and elsewhere in the United States because of a conflicting Department of Justice (DOJ) policy that requires immigrant detainees to post at least a $1,500 bond regardless of whether they pose a danger or flight risk.

“People should not be locked up while they are in immigration proceedings simply because they do not have money to pay a bond,” said Matt Adams, the legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NIRP).

In ordering that the DOJ follow the law, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik on Monday also certified a lawsuit filed on behalf of one such detainee by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and NIRP as a class-action, sweeping in hundreds of plaintiffs who are being detained on immigration holds solely because they cannot post bonds.

Adams said that while Lasnik’s ruling now only affects undocumented immigrants held in Western Washington — he estimates there are about 500 people in the Seattle and Tacoma areas who fit that scenario — the DOJ’s policy impacts tens of thousands of detainees nationally.

“We are hopeful this ruling will have an impact,” on a practice that has been in place for 15 years, he said. “This is a national problem.”

Nicole Navas, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., said the DOJ was “reviewing the judge’s order.”

The lawsuit was filed in October on behalf of Maria Sandra Rivera, a Honduran woman who said she was fleeing torture and domestic slavery when she illegally entered the United States on May 29, 2014. She was picked up by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that same day and sent to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, according to the lawsuit.

Rivera sought asylum and passed a “credible fear interview” with an asylum officer, who referred her case to Tacoma Immigration Court, the lawsuit said. In the meantime, ICE determined she posed no flight risk or threat to the community and recommended bond, which was eventually set by an immigration judge at $3,500, according to court documents.

Rivera could not afford that amount and asked that she be released on her own recognizance — a process called “conditional parole” — which is allowed for in the Immigration and Nationalization Act.

However, conditional parole is routinely denied in Seattle, Tacoma and elsewhere in the country, Adams said, because of a conflicting DOJ policy that requires an immigrant detainee post at least $1,500 bond regardless of whether he or she poses a danger or flight risk, according to court documents.

Rivera had been detained more than four months when the suit was filed in October. She has since been granted asylum and released, according to the court docket.

Adams said hundreds of other immigrant detainees are in the same situation when it comes to posting bond.

“The result of this policy is that Immigration Judges require individuals such as Ms. Rivera to post bond even after determining that neither danger nor flight risk require their detention,” according to the lawsuit. “Thus, indigent or low-income individuals like Ms. Rivera … routinely suffer continued and unnecessary detention, of, if it is even possible, are forced to strain personal, family and community resources in order to gain their release.”

Adams wrote that the policy “unquestionably violates” the immigration act.

The government has fought the lawsuit, attacking the court’s jurisdiction and arguing the case is moot because Rivera has since been released.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Erez Reuveni of the DOJ’s Civil Division in Washington, D.C., argued in pleadings in the Rivera case that the Board of Immigration Appeals is poised to address a similar case on its own and argued that Lasnik should hold off on any decision and let that process play out.

But Lasnik, in the order issued Monday, said that the immigration court’s blanket refusal to consider conditional parole for immigrant detainees potentially impinges on a detainee’s due-process and liberty interests, and that Rivera had standing to challenge the policy.

The government also argued that Lasnik was barred from second-guessing the immigration judge, but Lasnik said the application of the policy wasn’t the point.

“While an [Immigration Judge’s] discretionary judgment in how it applies the statute is not subject to review, this Court has found no authority supporting the notion that [an immigration judge] has the discretion to misinterpret the statute under which he operates,” Lasnik wrote.

He ruled that the Immigration and Nationalization Act “unambiguously states that an immigration judge may consider conditions for release beyond a monetary bond,” and found that the agency’s policy violates the law.

“The court thus finds that aliens who are detained following defective bond hearings … may immediately challenge their hearings for legal error on the grounds that their continued detention is an unnecessary harm,” Lasnik wrote.
  Read more about Many immigrants may be released without bond after judge’s ruling

U.S. immigration agents arrest 976 gang members in sweep

Nearly 1,000 gang members and associates from 239 different gangs were arrested across the United States in an operation headed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the agency said on Wednesday.

The sweep, dubbed "Project Wildfire" and led by ICE's Homeland Security Investigations unit, was aimed at criminal gangs that work across international borders, ICE said in a statement.

During the operation, 976 gang members and associates were arrested in 282 cities. Most of those arrested were U.S. citizens, but 199 foreign nationals were also arrested, from 18 countries in South and Central America, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean, the statement said.

Two hundred and thirty-one other people were arrested for federal or state criminal violations and immigration violations, it said. The operation ran from Feb. 23 to March 31.

Of the 976 gang members or associates, 913 were charged with criminal offenses and 63 were arrested administratively for immigration violations.

Most of those arrested were affiliated with gangs including the Sureños, Norteños, Bloods and Crips, the statement said.

HSI agents also seized 82 firearms, drugs, U.S. currency, counterfeit merchandise, and vehicles, the statement said.
  Read more about U.S. immigration agents arrest 976 gang members in sweep

Rasmussen Poll: Majority Continues to Reject Obama Amnesty Plan

Most voters continue to believe federal government policies encourage illegal immigration.

Most voters in nearly every demographic category agree that the federal government is not aggressive enough in its deportation policies. Most also believe very strongly that someone should have to prove they are a U.S. citizen before obtaining government benefits.

Most women and men agree that a child born to an illegal immigrant in this country should not automatically become a U.S. citizen.

Voters under 40 are only slightly less supportive than their elders of more aggressive deportation policies. But they are much more likely than those 40 and over to think that a child born to an illegal alien in this country should automatically become a U.S. citizen.

Sixty percent of whites oppose automatic citizenship; 51 percent of blacks and 56 percent of other minority voters favor it.

Eighty-one percent of Republicans and 68 percent of voters not affiliated with either major party think the government is not aggressive enough in deporting illegal immigrants. Just 40 percent of Democrats agree. But then Democrats are far more concerned than the others that deportation efforts may end up violating the civil rights of some U.S. citizens.

Democrats by a 51 percent to 33 percent margin believe illegals who have American-born children should be exempt from deportation. Sixty-two percent of GOP voters and 60 percent of unaffiliated voters disagree.

Most voters continue to believe that securing the border is more important than legalizing the status of undocumented workers already here and think plans to offer legal status to such individuals will just encourage more illegal immigration.

More than half of voters remain opposed to Obama’s new plan that will allow nearly five million illegal immigrants to remain in this country legally and apply for jobs. Forty-seven percent (47 percent) think Congress should try to find ways to stop the president’s plan, while 41 percent believe Congress should allow this decision to stand.

Voters also continue to strongly support voter ID laws and don't consider them discriminatory. Read more about Rasmussen Poll: Majority Continues to Reject Obama Amnesty Plan

Detentions put counties, ICE at odds

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say that refusal by jails to cooperate with so-called “detainers” is resulting in unauthorized immigrants with violent criminal pasts – including alleged rapists, child abusers and drug traffickers – being released in New Mexico before federal authorities can take them into custody.

But the counties being asked to hold those individuals are pushing back, citing lawsuits and costs, among other objections.

Nearly every New Mexico county detention center, along with hundreds of other jurisdictions around the country, have in most circumstances stopped honoring ICE’s 48-hour “detainer” – a request to hold arrested persons whom the agency suspects are in the country illegally.

The detainers have become a flashpoint in the debate over how local law enforcement should aid federal immigration authorities and reveal a strain in that relationship after years of closer ties.

ICE provided the Journal with a half-dozen sample cases from 2014 “in which dangerous criminal aliens were released from New Mexico jails since they failed to honor ICE detainers.” Among them were:

- A 30-year-old Mexican male charged with two counts of criminal sexual penetration of a minor, released in December.

- A 28-year-old Mexican female charged with intentional child abuse resulting in great bodily harm, released in July.

- A 39-year-old Mexican male charged with two counts of trafficking a controlled substance, three counts of child abuse, receiving or transferring of stolen motor vehicles, tampering with evidence and possessing drug paraphernalia, released in March last year.

ICE did not say whether those individuals were convicted on those charges before their release.

But New Mexico counties say ICE has no business asking them to hold people without charge – especially since counties, including Doña Ana and San Juan, are increasingly facing litigation for doing so. U.S. District Court last month said the federal government must be a party to a lawsuit by three unauthorized immigrants who claim San Juan County wrongly detained them under an ICE hold.

Counties say ICE should be held to the standards of other federal law enforcement agencies and charge people with an immigration crime, seek a warrant for their arrest or arrest them upon their release.

“County jails can’t hold a person unless they are criminally charged,” said Matt Elwell, director of the Luna County Detention Center, which stopped honoring ICE detainers three years ago. “That is the difference between a detainer and charge. A detainer says ‘just hold this person,’ and legally we can’t. If (ICE agents) have enough time to put a detainer, I say why don’t you just charge them with a criminal act?”

Counties in a bind

Here’s how the detainer has historically been used: Police arrest someone on a criminal charge such as domestic violence or a serious traffic violation. While the person awaits a chance to post bond or complete a sentence, and ICE suspects he has also violated immigration laws, ICE places a detainer, asking the jail to hold him 48 hours to give ICE a chance to assume custody – on the county’s dime and without filing an additional immigration charge.

Counties say those requests put them in a bind.

The New Mexico Association of Counties reports that at least 24 of 28 county detention centers statewide no longer honor the detainer. ICE confirmed that “most of the jurisdictions in New Mexico do not honor ICE detainers.”

San Juan County Detention Center Administrator Thomas Havel, who is named in the lawsuit, offers this message to ICE: “Don’t put us in peril, give us a bona fide charge and we’ll hold an individual. That’s all it takes.”

Additionally, when a hold is in place, ICE doesn’t foot the bill, the county does. In Doña Ana County, that amounts to $62 a day. In Santa Fe, it’s $85 a day.

“I feel very confident in saying that the vast majority of law enforcement agencies would see the need and the benefit to cooperate with ICE,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors tougher immigration controls. “They don’t feel ICE has been abusing its authority. But the problem now is the threat of litigation.”

Detainers denied

ICE issued 600 detainers in New Mexico in fiscal year 2014 but said it does not routinely track the number of detainers that aren’t honored. However, The Associated Press reported that in the first eight months of 2014, localities nationwide declined 8,800 of the roughly 105,000 detainer requests filed by immigration officers.

“The release of serious criminal offenders to the community, rather than to ICE custody for removal, undermines ICE’s ability to protect public safety and impedes ICE from enforcing the nation’s immigration laws,” ICE said in a statement.

ICE declined to describe its current policy for taking custody of unauthorized immigrants in New Mexico, saying it “does not discuss specific operating methods.”

‘Constitutional’ issues

Jurisdictions across the country increasingly began to deny ICE detainers thanks to a U.S. Court of Appeals decision a year ago ruling that detainers are nonbinding requests and do not carry the force of a criminal charge or warrant.

Vicki Gaubeca, director of the ACLU’s Regional Center for Border Rights in Las Cruces, said ICE detainers “raise serious constitutional problems.”

“No right is more firmly ingrained in our Constitution … than the right not to be left in jail indefinitely without charges filed or an opportunity to post bail,” she said. “States and municipalities would open themselves to liability if they treated ICE detainers as if they were sentences imposed by a court.”

New Mexico counties have been faced with tort claims for wrongful detention.

Doña Ana County was one of the last New Mexico counties to stop honoring the detainers, ending the practice last May. The county got tangled in litigation when two Mexican women sued after the jail prohibited them from posting bond and imprisoned them for two months on the basis of a 48-hour ICE hold.

The women, sisters Hortencia and Maria Acahua Zepahua, had been living in New Mexico for 12 years and had applied for legal residency.

“We are under more scrutiny than ICE would be,” said Chris Barela, director of the Doña Ana County Detention Center. “There was a time when we used to ask the citizenship. That is no longer allowed.”

New priorities

Cooperation between local and federal law enforcement on immigration issues in recent years had been dictated by the Secure Communities program, under which detainers were issued until U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson discontinued Secure Communities in a Nov. 20 memo to ICE.

“The goal of Secure Communities was to more effectively identify and facilitate the removal of criminal aliens in the custody of state and local law enforcement agencies,” Johnson said in the memo. “But the reality is the program has attracted a great deal of criticism, is widely misunderstood and is embroiled in litigation; its very name has become a symbol for general hostility toward the enforcement of our immigration laws.”

Johnson instructed ICE to replace requests for detention with requests for notification. Rather than ask a county jail to hold individuals beyond their release date, Johnson told ICE to ask local law enforcement to inform the agency of a pending release.

DHS spokeswoman Marsha Catron said a transition is underway to replace Secure Communities with the “Priority Enforcement Program,” which reflects the administration’s focus on targeting unauthorized immigrants who are also convicted criminals.

“ICE will now only seek transfer under PEP of an individual in state or local law enforcement custody if that individual has a conviction for a criminal offense, is suspected of terrorism or espionage, or otherwise poses a danger to national security,” Catron said in a statement.

New reality

New Mexico counties describe varying degrees of communication with ICE, from solid working relationships to minimal interaction. Several detention centers said they provide ICE with a daily roster of inmates so that the agency can run the names and determine whether to bring immigration charges.

Elwell in Luna County described a good relationship with local ICE agents. On the other end of the spectrum, Barela said Doña Ana doesn’t communicate with ICE at all – not even emailing a daily roster – to protect itself from liability. ICE agents drop by “every couple of days” in person to review the list, he

“We don’t send them anything anymore,” he said.

Mark Caldwell, warden of the Santa Fe Adult Detention Facility, said, “Once the detainers were not honored, we really haven’t been in communication.”
  Read more about Detentions put counties, ICE at odds

ATTN: Yamhill, Clatsop and Columbia counties - Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Suzanne Bonamici will hold joint town halls soon.

According to a press release from Rep. Bonamici’s office, “They will update constituents on their work in Washington, DC and answer questions and invite suggestions about how to tackle the challenges facing Oregon and America.”

OFIR members, please attend if you can, and ask questions or make comments.  Below the schedule, we include suggestions for subjects to be discussed.

What: Joint town hall in Yamhill County

When: Wednesday, April 1, 2015, 3:30 pm

Where: PCC Newberg Center, Room 115 and 116, 135 Werth Blvd., Newberg, OR 97132

 _______________________________________________________________

What: Joint town hall in Clatsop County

When:  Friday, April 3, 2015, 10:00 am

Where:  Cannon Beach Chamber Community Hall, 207 N Spruce, Cannon Beach, OR 97110

 _______________________________________________________________

What:  Joint town hall in Columbia County

When: Friday, April 3, 2015, 2:00 pm

Where: Vernonia High School Commons, 1000 Missouri Avenue, Vernonia, OR 97064


1.  Talking point suggested by NumbersUSA:

Rep. Bonamici and Sen. Merkley, I am disappointed that you voted to fund the President's executive amnesties. These programs are not only unconstitutional, but will directly harm American workers by providing work permits and social security cards to over 5 million illegal aliens.

2.  Talking point suggested by NumbersUSA:

Rep. Bonamici, Please co-sponsor the following:

The Mulvaney Resolution declaring Obama’s amnesties illegal (H.Con.Res.28)

Rep. Gowdy’s interior enforcement bill (H.R. 1148)

The Legal Workforce Act (H.R. 1147)

Rep. Chaffetz’s asylum reform bill (H.R. 1153)

Protection of Children Act (H.R. 1149)

The Birthright Citizenship Act (H.R. 140)

3.  Other suggestions:

for Sen. Merkley:  Your voting record on reduction of unnecessary worker visas for foreign nationals is F- over your time in the Senate, from 2009-2015.  Citizens are being passed over for jobs in favor of lower-paid foreign workers, in STEM occupations and elsewhere, by companies that exploit weaknesses in the visa programs.  (See herehere and here.)

for Rep. Bonamici:  Your voting record on reduction of unnecessary worker visas for foreign nationals is F- over your time in Congress, from 2012-2015.  Citizens are being passed over for jobs in favor of lower-paid foreign workers, in STEM occupations and elsewhere, by companies that exploit weaknesses in the visa programs.  (See herehere and here.)

for both Sen. Merkley and Rep. Bonamici: 

4.  There have been 7 major amnesties passed by Congress from 1986 to 2000, each resulting in ever-increasing numbers of illegal immigrants. Now more, even larger amnesties are being pushed. We need enforcement of the immigration laws, not more amnesties. 

5.  Did you know that between the Censuses of 2000 and 2010, 80% of population growth resulted from immigration (immigrants plus the children of immigrants). The U.S. is already overcrowded.  After more than 4 decades of unprecedentedly high immigration, we need a pause, a moratorium on immigration, or we face a steep decline in the quality of life for everyone. If you are truly concerned about our environment, you should work for major reductions in immigration. Read more about ATTN: Yamhill, Clatsop and Columbia counties - Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Suzanne Bonamici will hold joint town halls soon.

Pew Researcher: Rate of Illegal Immigrant Males in Workforce 12 Percent Higher Than US-Born Males

WASHINGTON, DC — An illegal immigrant male residing in the United States  is more likely to be gainfully employed than a male who is a legal immigrant or U.S.-born citizen, a senior demographer at the Pew Research Center think tank told lawmakers.

In 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, an estimated 91 percent of illegal immigrant males were in the workforce. This compares to 84 percent of legal immigrant men and 79 percent of U.S.-born males, Pew Research Center demographer Jeffrey Passel in written testimony prepared for a March 26 hearing held by the Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee.

Put in a different way, legal and illegal immigrant males had a better chance to be in the workforce than U.S.-born men in 2012.

For women, the opposite is true. U.S.-born women are more likely to be in the labor force than immigrant females.

“Unauthorized immigrant men of working age [16 years of age and older] are considerably more likely to be in the workforce than U.S.-born men (91% versus 79%),” Passel declared in his written testimony.

“For women, the opposite is true; only 61% of unauthorized immigrant women are in the labor force, compared with 72% of U.S.-born women,” Mr. Passel continued.

The data provided by the Pew demographer shows that U.S.-born females are more likely to be in the workforce than illegal immigrant women (61%) and legal immigrant women (68%), respectively...

Overall, there were an estimated 8.1 million workers who are not legally authorized to work, both men and women, participating in the labor force in 2012 by either working or looking for work. Illegal workers made up about 5.1 percent of the labor force, which translates to nearly one-in-twenty U.S. workers, explained Passel...

“While there have been some modest changes in labor force participation rates over the past 20 years, the participation of unauthorized immigrant men and women, relative to the U.S.-born population and legal immigrants, has remained essentially unchanged since 2005,” he added.

The top three states with the highest share of illegal immigrants participating in the labor force are Nevada (10.2% of the workforce), California (9.4%), and Texas (8.9%), revealed the Pew Research Center.

Most work in either the service, hospitality, or construction industry. Read more about Pew Researcher: Rate of Illegal Immigrant Males in Workforce 12 Percent Higher Than US-Born Males

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