• Immigrant “dreamers” fear deportation nightmare under Trump

    Of all the people worried about a Donald Trump presidency, few are freaking out more than the young undocumented immigrants who were granted relief from deportation under President Barack Obama’s 2012 executive order. Some undocumented immigrants brought here as kids were granted a sort of legal status by President Barack Obama. They are in a state of shock and panic now that Donald Trump has won the White House.

  • Hungary’s parliament fails to approve government-proposed ban on refugee resettlement

    The Hungarian parliament narrowly defeated a plan proposed by Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, to ban the resettlement of migrants in Hungary. Analysts say that the setback, coming on the heels of the failure last month of a similar proposal in a referendum, may weaken him as he tries to rally other EU members to adopt a tougher immigration policy.

  • Number of undocumented immigrants in U.S. unchanged over the 2010-2016 period

    The issue of undocumented immigration has been central to the campaign of Donald Trump — and major motivation behind the surge of Hispanic voters supporting Hillary Clinton. The number of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border may be too high than some Americans want, but experts point out that it has not risen in recent years. The numbers of unauthorized immigrant in the United States grew rapidly in the 1990s and early 2000s, but that trend changed with the onset of the financial crisis. The total number of Mexican immigrants in the United States is virtually unchanged over the 2010-2016 period.

  • Counting 11 million undocumented immigrants is easier than you think

    News organizations widely report that there are 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States. But where does this figure come from? Donald Trump has falsely asserted: “It could be three million. It could be 30 million. They have no idea what the number is.” In the third debate, Hillary Clinton said, “We have 11 million undocumented people. They [undocumented parents] have 4 million American citizen children. 15 million people.” The confusion is warranted – but demographers have figured out a simple and effective way to estimate the number of unauthorized immigrants.

  • Trump’s wall ignores the economic logic of undocumented immigrant labor

    Donald Trump portrays undocumented immigrants as invading “criminals” supported and abetted by the Mexican government is, and who pose a dire threat to the nation. Trump’s call for building a wall assumes that the cause of undocumented migration originates in Mexico, in the Mexican government, or in the criminal intent of migrants. A border wall makes intuitive sense if you assume the cause of undocumented migration is external to the United States. This is a belief that ignores not only the ease of breaching such a wall, but more fundamentally the economics of low-wage, undocumented labor migration that generated these flows in the first place.

  • First in-port insect discovery by CBP in San Juan

    An entomologist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed recently that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agriculture specialists made a first in port discovery of an insect within an imported air cargo shipment of cut flowers arriving from Bogota, Colombia. CBP says that the Guayaquila pallescens, commonly called treehoppers or thorn bugsis the first of its species intercepted in Puerto Rico.

  • Mexico fights illegal immigration on its own southern border

    The United States isn’t the only country — nor Texas the only state — with a long history of illegal immigration over a porous southern border. Where the Mexican state of Chiapas touches Guatemala, undocumented immigrants and smugglers don’t have to worry about a border patrol, customs agency, or immigration authorities of any kind.

  • Refugees and terrorism -- “No evidence of risk”: UN

    “Overly-restrictive migration policies introduced because of terrorism concerns are not justified and may in fact be damaging to state security,” warned the United Nations Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, at the UN General Assembly in New York. The perception that there is a link between to flow of refugees and an increased risk of terrorism “is analytically and statistically unfounded, and must change,” he said.

  • Trump’s union has long history of discrimination against female Border Patrol agents

    The union representing the agents of the U.S. Border Patrol, the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), is a direct reflection in many ways of the U.S Border Patrol’s unique institutional history and present culture. That the NBPC leadership endorsed Donald Trump during the primaries is not surprising, nor is NBPC’s continued strong support for Trump to be our next president.As I documented more than a decade ago, the Border Patrol and the NBPC are both run by masculinist and militaristic bureaucracies more self-interested in their own agendas than reflecting the needs of their employees or union membership. NBPC’s endorsement of Trump is nothing less than support from the leadership of a labor union that has always been much too busy with other issues to support their own female Border patrol agents when they are discriminated against and harassed in a hostile work environment.

  • Restoring border controls in Europe could cost up to €3 billion a year

    RAND Europe’s study shows the yearly operating costs from re-establishing border controls in Europe, with one-off costs of up to 20 billion euros. The study highlights decrease in levels of crime following the 2007 enlargement of the Schengen area where internal border checks have largely been abolished. Reform of EU asylum system is one of several policy recommendations to help Schengen area manage higher levels of migration.

  • U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear cross-border shooting case

    The U.S. Supreme Court announced Tuesday it would consider a controversial Texas case involving a cross-border shooting that ended with the death of a 15-year-old boy at the hands of a Border Patrol agent. Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca was killed in 2010 by agent Jesus Mesa Jr., who was patrolling the banks of the Rio Grande in El Paso during what was called a “rock-throwing incident.” Hernandez was on the Mexican side of the international boundary in Ciudad Juárez when Mesa fatally shot him from the Texas side.

  • Texas moves to end legal battle over Syrian refugees

    A week after the state officially withdrew from the nation’s refugee resettlement program, Texas has moved to end its legal battle over Syrian refugees. In a short, three-page motion, Texas on Friday asked the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss the state’s appeal of a federal judge’s June decision that threw out the state’s case after finding Texas did not have grounds to sue the federal government over the resettlement of refugees within its borders.

  • Security facts about the border wall

    During this 2016 election year, there are basic security facts about the wall between Mexico and the United States that every American should clearly understand before he or she considers the merits of the policy solutions offered by our political parties. Security facts about the border wall are not always intuitive, based upon what passes for common sense, or even easily available to the general public. In contrast, abundant myths and falsehoods, regardless of how often they are repeated, are rarely based upon documented evidence produced by serious researchers. Instead, these assertions may be of part of election motives and agendas throughout the ballot from top to bottom. Americans should continue to learn more about our entire border security system in this region. These facts about our border security matter, and will continue to matter, long after this election day.

  • Rich nations’ self-interest means refugee crisis will get worse, not better: Amnesty

    Wealthy countries have shown a complete absence of leadership and responsibility, leaving just ten countries, which account for less than 2.5 percent of world GDP, to take in 56 percent of the world’s refugees, said Amnesty International in a comprehensive assessment of the global refugee crisis published today. Amnesty says that the report sets out a fair and practical solution to the crisis based on a system that uses relevant, objective criteria to show the fair share every state in the world should take in in order to find a home for 10 percent of the world’s refugees every year.

  • Obama’s immigration action defeat: Supreme Court declines to re-hear case

    The Supreme Court handed to Obama administration a major defeat, saying the court will not reconsider President Barack Obama’s plan to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation. Back in June, the court deadlocked over whether or not to revive the Obama administration’s plan to protect about four million undocumented immigrants from deportation and allowing them to work legally while they pursue a path to legalization in the United States.