Homeland Security

Earlier Tuesday, a federal court in Pennsylvania declared aspects of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration policy unconstitutional.

According to the opinion by Judge Arthur Schwab, the president’s policy goes “beyond prosecutorial discretion” in that it provides a relatively rigid framework for considering applications for deferred action, thus obviating any meaningful case-by-case determination as prosecutorial discretion requires, and provides substantive rights to applicable individuals. As a consequence, Schwab concluded, the action exceeds the scope of executive authority.

This is the first judicial opinion to address Obama’s decision to expand deferred action for some individuals unlawfully present in the United States. [I've now posted the opinion here.]

This isn’t the only case...two-dozen states have filed suit challenging Obama’s recent immigration policy reforms. Led by Texas, these states claim that the president as exceeded the scope of executive authority in this area.... even if the states don’t have standing, the legality of the president’s actions could nonetheless be decided in federal court.

UPDATE: Here are some additional thoughts on the ruling.

It is quite unusual for a district court to reach this sort of constitutional issue in this sort of case. Indeed, Judge Schwab appears to have reached out quite aggressively to engage the lawfulness of the President’s actions...

On the merits, I understand the concerns that motivate Judge Schwab’s reasoning, but I am not persuaded... President Obama’s actions are broader in scope, but not clearly different in kind from what his predecessors have done and to which Congress has acquiesced.

It is true, as Judge Schwab notes, that the President’s announced policy identifies broad criteria for deferring removal of individuals unlawfully in the country. This would appear to make the action somewhat legislative, but I don’t think it’s enough to make the action unlawful. The new policy does not preclude the executive branch from revoking deferred action in individual cases and does not create any enforceable rights against future executive action...

President Obama’s action may be broader than many are comfortable with, and it is understandably hard to stomach given all the President’s prior statements disclaiming authority to take these steps — but such concerns are rooted in customary political norms, not judicially enforceable constitutional rules. Read more about District court declares Obama immigration action unconstitutional

The GOP’s draft 2015 “omnibus” spending bill reportedly includes $948 million to help poor and unskilled Central American migrants establish themselves in the United States, but includes no effective restrictions on President Barack Obama’s plan to provide work permits and tax payments to millions of resident illegal immigrants.

That new spending works out to $16,928 for each of the 56,000 youths, young adults and children who crossed the border during the 12 months up to October 2014.

Prior to October, Obama’s officials sent only 1,901 of the migrants back home to Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, according to a federal report.

Much of the $948 million may also be used to care for the next wave of illegals who could flood across the border during the summer. The influx in the summer of 2015 is expected to be large, because Obama is offering work permits and social security numbers to at least five million illegals already in the country.

The $948 million fund is part of the one-year, $1 trillion 2015 spending plan described in a late-night report from The New York Times.

The GOP leadership has given merely lip service to supporting the opposition among GOP legislators and much of the public to Obama’s welcome for foreign migrants, and is now refusing to direct the Department of Homeland Security not to spend any funds on implementing the Obama amnesty.

Instead, the leadership, led by House Speaker John Boehner, drafted a bill imposing a 60-day spending limit for Obama’s immigration agencies.

The planned 60-day spending limit is largely symbolic, because the most important immigration agency can operate on fees paid by the illegals.

“Leadership is basically giving in to every facet of Obama’s amnesty. We’re giving up an astonishing amount of leverage on every issue imaginable,” said one Hill aide.

The struggle between Boehner’s business wing and the populist conservative wing, has received little coverage in the established media, even though GOP legislators are calling for the public to protest their leadership’s policies. Top GOP officials have said they would like to pass their own amnesty and foreign worker bill in 2015.

Obama’s amnesty, announced Nov. 21, minimizes enforcement of immigration law against all 12 million illegals in the United States, and creates enforcement loopholes for new migrants coming over the border or flying into U.S. airports on temporary visas.

The plan also puts many illegals on a fast-track to citizenship, and increases the inflow of university-trained migrants who can gain citizenship if they compete for any professional jobs sought by U.S. college graduates.

The cost of Obama’s amnesty is expected to reach $2 trillion over 50 years, or roughly $22,000 per new U.S. college graduate.

In 2014, Obama’s agencies accepted the children, youths and adults delivered to them at the border by paid escorts, before providing them with health screenings and air transport to parents and family members throughout the United States.

Obama’s deputies are also spending at least $7 million to provide free lawyers to the migrants so they can win court cases to remain in the United States. Up to 1,901 were sent home by October.

The money likely will also be used to support family units of women and children that cross the border.

In fiscal 2014, roughly 66,000 people in family units crossed the border. Only 582 were repatriated before October. Nearly all were allowed to apply for residency, and either attend American schools or apply for work permits. Read more about GOP Spending Bill Gives Nearly $1 Billion To Aid Border Migrants

WASHINGTON — The federal judge assigned to rule in the lawsuit over President Barack Obama's changes to immigration rules last year accused the Obama administration of participating in criminal conspiracies to smuggle children into the country by reuniting them with parents living here illegally.

... Homeland Security Department should be arresting parents living in the U.S. illegally who induce their children to cross the border illegally...

"DHS has simply chosen not to enforce the United States' border security laws," the judge wrote. ...

Hanen was assigned through an automated system to be the judge who will preside over a lawsuit filed by 20 states trying to block Obama's expansive executive actions to spare nearly 5 million people living in the U.S. illegally from deportation...

Last December, Hanen wrote a 10-page order in an immigrant smuggling case in which he his frustration over four cases in a month in which a child who arrived in the U.S. illegally alone was reunited with a parent also in the country illegally.

"Instead of arresting (the child's mother) for instigating the conspiracy to violate our border security laws, the (Homeland Security Department) delivered the child to her — thus successfully completing the mission of the criminal conspiracy," Hanen wrote.

...The order highlighted the growing problem of unaccompanied child immigrants being caught at the border in South Texas. During the fiscal year that ended in September, the government apprehended more than 68,000 unaccompanied children at the border....

Texas is leading a coalition of states suing the government. It argued in the lawsuit filed last week that Obama's decision "tramples" key portions of the Constitution. The states, including Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana and the Carolinas, aren't seeking monetary damages but want Hanen to block the president's actions...

"Texas is uniquely qualified to challenge the president's executive order, and South Texas is at the epicenter of where border security is of concern for Texas and the entire nation," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said in a statement. Abbott was elected last month to be the next governor of Texas.

The Justice Department, which is defending the case, declined to comment on the case.

Obama announced the executive actions in November, saying lack of action by Congress forced him to make sweeping changes to immigration rules on his own.

The administrative actions don't provide legal immigration status or green cards to those in the country illegally, but millions of eligible immigrants will be able to apply for permission to stay in the country for up to three years and get a work permit.
  Read more about US judge ruling on Obama immigration changes criticized gov't leniency on kids crossing border

President Barack Obama will introduce 10 executive actions that could suspend deportations for and legalize more than 5 million illegal immigrants as early as next week, news reports say.

The plan was part of a draft proposal to a federal agency that was leaked to Fox News, the network reported on Wednesday.

Obama's announcement could come as early as Nov. 21 or shortly thereafter, a White House source told Fox.

The president was briefed on the plan by the Department of Homeland Security before he left on his trip to Asia and the Pacific last week, Fox reports. One of the architects of the plan was Esther Olavarria, the top immigration lawyer on the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's staff.

Among the plan's most controversial elements include orders that would expand deportation deferrals not only to illegals who came to the U.S. as children, but to the parents of U.S. citizens — those who were born in this country — and those who have become legal permanent residents.

The parental expansion could allow as many as 4.5 million illegal adults with U.S.-born children to remain in the country, Fox reports.

Obama's orders also would expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program he created in June 2012.

DACA affected millions of illegals who were brought to the United States as children before June 2007 and who were under 31 years old as of June 2012, when the program started.

With the new order, Obama would expand DACA to cover anyone who entered the United States before age 16 — and would move the cutoff date back to Jan. 1, 2010.

This is expected to affect nearly 300,000 illegal immigrants, Fox reports.

In addition, a State Department immigrant visa program involving technology jobs would offer another half-million immigrants a path to citizenship, according to Fox. Spouses also would be helped by the program.

According to Fox, the DHS plans to "promote" the new naturalization process by giving a 50 percent discount on the first 10,000 applicants who come forward, with the exception of those whose incomes are above 200 percent of the national poverty level.

Other planned executive actions would increase pay for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers — an effort to "increase morale" within the agency, Fox reports — and the administration would revise its priorities to target only serious criminals for deportation, while replacing its current "Secure Communities" program with a new effort.

The Fox report comes as Obama vowed last week to act unilaterally on immigration in the absence of congressional action.

He was attacked by House Speaker John Boehner, who said any such move would "poison the well" with Republicans, and by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who likened it to "waving a red flag in front of a bull."

McConnell, who will become majority leader when the new Congress convenes in January, reiterated his opposition to Obama's acting alone on immigration in a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

"President Obama has a duty to help build the trust we all need to move forward together, not to double-down on old ways of doing business," McConnell said. "That's why I think moving forward with the unilateral action on immigration he's planned would be a big mistake." Read more about Report: Obama Will Soon Announce 10-Point Plan for Illegals

GOP, President Obama deeply divided on immigration

President Obama repeated Sunday that he intends to change U.S. immigration law through executive action, over Republican leaders’ repeated requests to wait and dire warnings about the consequences of sidestepping Congress.

“I’m going to do what I need to do,” Obama told CBS’ “Face the Nation,” in an interview taped on Friday.

As he has said before, the president said he would prefer that reform legislation come through Congress, but that he has waited for more than a year for House Speaker John Boehner to pass a bill like the Democrat-controlled Senate has done.

“If a bill gets passed, nobody would be happier than me,” Obama said.

His remarks followed similar ones made Wednesday, which brought dire warnings from Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that were followed by more on Sunday.

“I believe [executive action] will hurt cooperation on every issue,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think it would be like the president pulling the pin out of a hand grenade and throwing it in as we are trying to actually work together. I am hoping that cooler heads at the White House can prevail."

The comments by Barrasso, chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, followed Boehner warning Obama that using executive action would “poison the well” and McConnell, who will likely be the Senate majority leader next year, comparing it to waving a flag in front of a bull.

“Their time hasn’t run out,” Obama told CBS, arguing that legislation passed by Congress would supersede his executive action.

To be sure, the president is under pressure to use executive action on immigration reform, after promising Americans that he would by the end of summer, then delaying any action until after the midterms, which upset Democrats’ strong Hispanic base.

Obama also said Sunday that inaction is a “mis-allocation of resources” and that the country cannot continue to deport people who should be allowed to stay and keep those who should leave Read more about Obama: 'I’m going to do what I need to do' on immigration

Conservative radio talk show host Lars Larson makes no bones about where he stands on Oregon’s Measure 88 – the driver card initiative.

The claim:

He recently sent us a series of emails, which he said verified one of his assertions about the cards: That the Transportation Security Administration will accept "driver privilege" cards as valid identification to board a commercial aircraft.

Could the ballot measure’s own language be wrong? PolitiFact Oregon decided to check.

The analysis:

Several newspaper opinion pieces, including one written by former Hillsboro Police Chief Ron Louie, say driver cards will not be valid for boarding an airplane.

Causa Oregon, a leading immigrant-rights group, agrees. "Ballot Measure 88 clearly states that it will be issued only to grant driving privileges, and prohibits use of the driver cards for anything other than the listed purposes," spokesman Erik Sorensen wrote us in an email...

A TSA spokesman in Oregon wrote to Larson, according to an email he shared with us: "Driver’s licenses are a valid form of ID for TSA."

We contacted a TSA official on our own, Nico Melendez, a Western Region TSA spokesman in California.

Melendez, after checking with Oregon officials and administration attorneys, said in a telephone interview: "State-issued driver cards would be acceptable forms of identification for our document-checkers at the airport. At this point, the understanding is that a card like this would be an acceptable form of identification."

Whether an air passenger shows a TSA representative a driver’s license or driver card doesn’t matter, he said.

"What we are doing is verifying that the person who shows the card is the person who is traveling," Melendez said. "It’s not an immigration check."

The ruling:

We rule Larson’s claim True. Read more about Lars Larson says Oregon drive card could be used to board a plane; is he right?

LUBBOCK, Texas -- Cops are on the hunt for a previously deported 14-year-old illegal alien suspected of trying to execute a teenaged human smuggler on the Texas border in an apparent cartel hit. The victim in the case had a lengthy criminal history that had already resulted in two deaths.

While details remain unknown....

...Breitbart Texas has learned that the teenager has a lengthy criminal history that includes several human smuggling arrests and deportations. In October, 2012 the victim drove a red Ford pickup filled with illegal aliens as he tried to elude authorities. The pursuit ended near the border town of La Joya when a Texas State Trooper in a helicopter fired several shots at the truck eventually blowing out its tires. The bullets struck three illegal aliens from Guatemala killing two of them. Since the shooting, DPS has changed its use of force policies.

Authorities have developed a person of interest in the case, however Breitbart Texas has learned that a possible suspect is a 14-year-old male who had been previously been arrested and charged in juvenile court and had been deported three weeks ago. Law enforcement sources have confirmed to Breitbart Texas that one of the leads that investigators are looking at is a possible cartel hit. Read more about Cops Searching for Teenage Illegal Alien for Cartel Assassination Attempt in Texas