• DHS asks judge to cancel contempt hearing over immigration executive order

    When President Barack Obama last year issued his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order, applicants covered by the order received a three-year work permit, or EADs (Employment Authorization Documents). On 16 February 2015, Brownsville, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen temporarily blocked Obama’s immigration action. After the temporary injunction was in place, the federal government mistakenly issued the approximately 2,500 three-year permits. On Friday, DHS secretary Jeh Johnson asked Judge Hanen not to find him and other Obama administration officials in contempt, telling the judge that DHS had recovered all but 22 of the 2,500 offending permits. Johnson also advised the judge that DHS had corrected federal computer databases to invalidate those permits not turned over by their owners.

  • DHS begins collecting invalid work permits mistakenly issued after a judge’s injunction

    When President Barack Obama last year issued his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order, applicants covered by the order received a three-year work permit, or EADs (Employment Authorization Documents). On 16 February 2015, Brownsville, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen temporarily blocked Obama’s immigration action. After the temporary injunction was in place, the federal government mistakenly issued the approximately 2,100 three-year permits. The government is calling on those who received the three-year work permit after 16 February to swap them for two-year permits.

  • Ascribing “criminality” to immigrants defies the factual record, distorts U.S. policy

    A just-published report by the American Immigration Council says that many studies have confirmed two simple but compelling truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education. These facts notwithstanding, the report says, immigration policy is frequently shaped more by fear and stereotype than by empirical evidence, leading to the stigma of “criminality” ascribed to immigrants by an ever-evolving assortment of laws and immigration-enforcement mechanisms. The result is an immigration policy which “is cruel, pointless, shortsighted, and counterproductive. And it is not an effective substitute for immigration reform which makes our immigration system responsive to the economic and social forces which drive migration in the first place,” the report concludes.

  • Feds to curtail use of family detention centers

    By Alexa Ura

    After visiting a family detention center in Texas, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced Wednesday that families who enter the country illegally to seek asylum will no longer be detained after they’ve established legitimate claim for relief. Johnson said that the Department of Homeland Security is making “substantial changes” to its detention practices so that families with children are not unnecessarily kept locked up.

  • New technologies developed to deal with growing illegal migration

    Mass migration driven by climate change is pushing the global demand for border security solutions. It is not just that climate change displaces people through floods, storms, and rising sea levels; it also displaces them through scarcity of food and water, and by the conflicts that are in turn sparked by scarcity and migration. Companies specializing in border solutions are developing new technologies to help border agents track and identify illegal migrants.

  • Immigrants held for days in freezing, unsanitary cells file class-action lawsuit

    Tucson Sector Border Patrol holds men, women, and children in freezing, overcrowded, and filthy cells for extended periods of time in violation of the U.S. Constitution, a group of legal organizations allege in a class-action lawsuit filed Monday. The class-action suit, which was filed on behalf of two people detained in the Tucson Border Patrol Station as well as a Tucson man detained multiple times in that facility, describes Border Patrol limiting or denying access to beds, soap, showers, adequate meals and water, medical care, and lawyers, in violation of constitutional standards and Border Patrol’s own policies.

  • Divided court denies emergency stay of injunction stopping Obama's immigration executive order

    In a disappointing decision for immigration advocates, a divided panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday denied the federal government’s request for an emergency stay of a preliminary injunction which has temporarily stopped President Obama’s deferred action initiatives from being implemented. The court’s order keeps in place the hold on implementation of these initiatives while the Fifth Circuit considers the appeal of the preliminary injunction itself. The Fifth Circuit will hear argument on the appeal in early July.

  • California group blames immigrants for state’s historic drought

    Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), an anti-immigration environmentalist group, has made a splash with provocative advertisements which feature a young child asking, “If Californians are having fewer children, why isn’t there enough water?” The ad is part of a broader media campaign by the organization which blames immigrant populations for the historic drought in the state. CAPS is calling for stricter enforcement of immigration laws on environmental grounds: it argues that the state’s natural resources cannot sustain the high levels immigration-driven population growth of recent decades. Drought experts and climatologists dismiss CAPS’s claims about the connection between immigration and drought as laughable.

  • Improving the legal status of undocumented immigrants beneficial to U.S.: Expert

    In 2012 the administration announced two executive orders — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) — aiming to facilitate the legalization of status of certain groups of undocumented immigrants. An immigration scholar believes that if Obama’s proposed expansion of DACA and the creation of DAPA survive current legal challenges, they could form the foundation for permanent immigration reform. She also says that decades of research show that easing consequences for people in the United States illegally will not encourage more people to come here illegally. Contrary to public opinion, welfare levels and benefits in the United States do not affect migration flows, which are more influenced by economic conditions in the United States and the migrants’ home countries.

  • EU to launch Mediterranean military operation to end human trafficking

    As soon as 25 June, the EU will launch a sea and air mission aiming to stop human traffickers from bringing more African migrants into Europe. The operation will include the destruction of vessels used by the traffickers, and may involve operations on Libyan territory against traffickers’ targets. So far this year, more than 1,800 migrants have lost their lives crossing the Mediterranean on their way from Libya to Italy. The EU operation, which will initially be authorized for one year, will be run out of Rome and will be under the command of an Italian rear admiral, Enrico Credendino. Refugee rights groups have expressed concern over the EU plan.

  • ICE to review conditions in detention centers housing women, children

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), pending a judge’s decision on the legality of immigration detention centers, will appoint an in-house official to review living conditions at three detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania used to house women and children who illegally crossed the southern border. Immigrant rights advocates, who have sued to end the detention of families, called the announcement made last Wednesday insufficient.

  • DHS implements new deportation scheme to replace Secure Communities

    After months of working to improve Secure Communities, the Obama administration recently announced the Priority Enforcement Program, under which jails will be asked to notify ICE agents when a deportable immigrant will be released — so agents can be waiting — instead of holding him or her in jail until ICE agents arrive. This new approach is a response to criticism of Secure Communities from local law enforcement units that said the program strained local budgets as jails became overbooked with nonviolent criminals.

  • DHS deportations undermine efforts to get immigrants to provide leads on radical suspects

    DHS counterterrorism teams rely on cooperation from immigrant communities to obtain leads on radical individuals and pending terrorism plots, but many of these communities are becoming more wary of federal law enforcement as the number of deportations increase. “It’s ironic that you’ve got them coming in and trying to get information from our communities even as they’re detaining and deporting us at an alarming rate,” says one immigration activist. “That trust is just not going to be there. You can’t have it both ways.”

  • EU planning military attacks on trafficking networks in Libya to stop migrant boats

    The European Union (EU) is planning military attacks on trafficking networks in Libya to try and stop the influx of migrants across the Mediterranean. Today (Monday) several EU member states will try to secure a UN mandate for armed action by NATO in Libya’s territorial waters. Britain is drafting the UN Security Council resolution to authorize the mission in Libya’s territorial waters, and Federica Mogherini, the EU’s chief foreign and security policy coordinator, will be briefing the UN Security Council today (Monday) on the plans for a “chapter seven” resolution authorizing the use of force. Military experts say such action would require EU vessels to operate in Libyan territorial waters, accompanied by helicopter gunships to “neutralize” identified traffickers’ ships used to send tens of thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East on the perilous voyage from the Libyan coast to southern Italy.

  • Spanish “kebab laws” worry, upset Muslim immigrants

    Withy persistent unemployment and worries about radicalization, more Spanish cities are placing limits on businesses typically owned and operated by immigrants from North Africa. In the city of Terragona, for examples, these regulations – informally called “kebab laws” — disallow commercial licenses to any kebab shops, dollar stores, or Internet cafes within 500 yards of existing ones. Additionally, these businesses would have to comply with stricter hygiene standards and business hours. Muslim leaders in Spain and civil rights advocates say these laws are a thinly veiled effort to discourage Muslim immigration.