Bringing
Immigration Policy into Focus
By
Clarice
Feldman www.americanthinker.com
Wretchardthecat
has given us a sage analysis
of the MAGA agenda:
The
reason the MAGA initiatives looked so disjointed to the media is they were
component parts of a vast alternative worldview now coming into sight. Like the
five blind men and the elephant the progressives are only now realizing the aspects
of a single larger foe.
Immigration
control is a key feature of the MAGA initiatives: closing the border, removing
illegal immigrants, keeping non-citizens from voting, and stopping federal
funds from going to so-called non-government organizations that were bringing
in millions of immigrants who overwhelmed housing, welfare, and educational
budgets, committed crimes, and threatened national security.
This
week, the Administration obtained some substantial victories on this score.
The
Catholic Church, which was a huge recipient of federal funds fueling the
immigrant express, has finally
shut down refugee and migrant aid operations. Shutting off this spigot was
key to the Administration’s immigration policy.
The
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) had to make the gut-wrenching
decision this week to end our work with the federal government to resettle
refugees and coordinate support services on the government’s behalf for
unaccompanied children entering the United States. Our programs -- among
the nation’s largest and longest-serving refugee resettlement efforts -- will
shut down by the end of the fiscal year.
This
is a painful end to a life-sustaining partnership the Catholic Church in the
U.S. has had with our government and that has spanned decades across
administrations of both political parties.”
The
retreat comes after voters -- including many Catholics -- picked President
Donald Trump to end the federal government’s very unpopular policy of importing workers, renters, and consumers
into the nation’s communities.
That
ruthless economic policy had imposed poverty, lower wages,
higher rents, and chaotic diversity on many American communities which were
already suffering from the loss of jobs and investment. The church-backed
policy also led to the deaths of thousands of migrants.
The
Administration now requires illegal immigrants to register and will enforce a
law subjecting non-registrants to criminal penalties, fast-track deportations,
and permanent bars to adjust to legal status for those who refuse to leave. A
federal judge has determined
this policy shift is legal because the groups challenging it lacked
standing (a personal stake in the outcome) to do so.
The
Associated Press (AP) on Thursday said the registration requirements take effect on
Friday and also mandates those individuals carry documentation.
The
outlet continued:
Judge
Trevor Neil McFadden -- a Trump appointee -- sided with the administration,
which had argued that officials were simply enforcing a requirement that
already existed for everyone who is in the country but isn’t an American
citizen. McFadden’s ruling didn’t go into the substance of those arguments but
rested largely on the technical issue of whether the groups pushing to stop the
requirement had standing to pursue their claims. He ruled they didn’t.
Immediately
after the ruling, Department of Homeland Security officials
emphasized in a news release that the deadline to register for those who’ve
already been in the country for 30 days or more is Friday and that going
forward, the registration requirement would be enforced to the fullest.
In
February, Breitbart News reported that Trump was reviving the enforcement of a
1940 law requiring migrants to register their names and fingerprints with
federal agencies.
If
they fail to do so, those individuals could face criminal penalties resulting
in a possible fast-track to deportation. They could also be barred from
becoming legal.
Immigrants
ordered deported will now
face substantial fines and confiscation of property if they fail to depart
in a timely manner:
By Reuters
The
Trump administration plans to fine migrants under deportation orders up to $998
a day if they fail to leave the United States and to seize their property if
they do not pay, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.
The
fines stem from a 1996 law that was enforced for the first time in
2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. The Trump administration
plans to apply the penalties retroactively for up to five years, which could
result in fines of more than $1 million, a senior Trump official said,
requesting anonymity to discuss non-public plans.
The
Trump administration is also considering seizing the property of immigrants who
do not pay the fines, according to government emails reviewed by Reuters.
In
response to questions from Reuters, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that immigrants in the U.S.
illegally should use a mobile app formerly known as CBP One -- rebranded as CBP
Home under Trump -- to “self deport and leave the country now.”
“If
they don’t, they will face the consequences,” McLaughlin said. “This includes a
fine of $998 per day for every day that the illegal alien overstayed their
final deportation order.”
The
sight of foreign students harassing their classmates, leading anti-American and
anti-Israeli demonstrations at colleges, and disrupting speakers and classroom
work there is being met with not only clampdowns on funding for schools that
have tolerated this, but cancellation of visas for 300 students who were
engaged in such actions. The most notorious of these campus disrupters has been
Columbia University’s activist Mahmoud Khalil, for whom the usuals have drummed
up support from those who know no better. A federal court this week ruled that he
can be deported.
Columbia
University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil can be forced out of the country as a
national security risk, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled Friday after
lawyers argued the legality of deporting the activist who participated in
pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The
government’s contention that Khalil’s presence in the U.S. posed “potentially
serious foreign policy consequences” satisfied requirements for deportation,
Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans said at a hearing in Jena.
Comans
said the government had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he
is removable.”
Perhaps
the cases that have received the most media attention are those involving
Kilmar Garcia and the deportation of Tren de Aragua members, because these
cases were considered by the Supreme Court. As Bill Shipley (publishing on X
and in his substack as Shipwreckedcrew)
so ably notes, the media (on both sides of the aisle) have garbled the rulings
and unfairly characterized the work and rationales of Justices John Roberts and
Amy Coney Barrett. There’s nothing terribly unusual about this. Unless you are
a lawyer or, perhaps, a law student, the details of hard-fought cases are less
dramatic than reporters would like -- after all, they want to hold your
interest and fire you up. I’ll link to his
work here, but on the assumption you may not want to wade through so much
detail, I’ll summarize what I consider his most accurate reporting and analysis
of these cases.
Kilmer
Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang, which operates in Mexico, the U.S., and
Central America. He had been ordered deported after a hearing before an
immigration judge but he had received a withdrawal of removal preventing his
deportation in 2019 on the grounds that if he returned to his home country of
El Salvador, he’d be killed by rivals (the 18th Street Gang) of the MS-13
gang. The Administration overlooked this order when, with others, he was
deported to El Salvador and placed in their maximum detention jail. The District
Court ordered his return by a date that had passed during a stay of the
proceedings, which had been granted (and the stay thus made ineffective) by
Chief Justice Roberts. The Supreme Court found unclear the Judge’s order that
the government “facilitate and effectuate” Garcia’s release from El Salvadoran
custody. It’s clear, however, that no matter what you’ve heard or read, it was
not an order requiring that he be returned to the U.S.
Shipley
suggests the government has two options available to it: Garcia is no longer in
danger from MS-13 in El Salvador as Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele has
already rounded them up, so the government should move to reopen the case in
the immigration court and get the withdrawal of removal order deleted, or it
can send a U.S. immigration judge to our embassy in El Salvador, have the
hearing there, and delete the order. After that order is no longer in effect,
Garcia can then be released into El Salvador as he would have been in 2019, but
for the immigration court then accepting his fear of assassination.
The
second most publicized immigration case is Judge James E. Boasberg’s case
involving the deportations of members of Tren de Aragua. The Supreme Court
halted Boasberg’s efforts to stop the removal of these gang members. The issues
before the Court were where and how individuals ordered removed under the AEA
(Alien Enemies Act) may challenge the deportation. The majority vacated two
restraining orders by the Judge, which prevented the U.S. from using the AEA to
remove any person in its custody. Instead, the Court said these cases must
proceed as habeas corpus proceedings, which must be filed where the claimant is
in custody, and that any individual subject to an AEA proclamation as an alien
enemy has a “due process” right to a habeas hearing before removal. Lest you
envision this being a long-drawn-out O.J. Simpson-type criminal trial, Shipley
sets you straight. These are simple, everyday-type matters, often decided on
pleadings alone. The only issues are whether these men are Venezuelan citizens,
whether they are at least 14 years old, and whether or not they are members of
this gang.
“Due
process” in these cases consists of no more than a right to notice and an
opportunity to be heard before deportation.
I
said a while ago that the President will win most, if not all of these
immigration cases, and that prediction seems to be holding up.
