TASK FORCE NEWS

Mark your calendar:  Our next Zoom meeting will be held on Monday September 14 at 7:00PM
Food for thought:  Constitution and Citizenship Day is celebrated on Feb 17th.  What should we do during that week? A guest speaker?

ADMINISTRATION ACTIONS


>>IMPACT OF FILING FEE INCREASES: On July 29, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that as of Oct. 2, the fee for naturalization applications will rise by more than 60%, to $1,170, and fee waivers will no longer be available to most immigrants. Fees for adjustment of status and DACA will also rise, and for the first time, asylum-seekers will be charged $50, making the U.S. one of only four countries to levy a fee on affirmative asylum claims.
>>Trump administration can’t get anything right!:  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found  (https://www.gao.gov/products/B-331650 ) that, under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, current Acting DHS Secretary, Chad Wolf, and current Senior Official Performing the Duties of DHS Deputy Secretary, Kenneth Cuccinelli, were named to their positions by reference to an invalid order of succession. The Washington Post reports that their appointments violated federal law and GAO is referring the matter to the DHS inspector general for review. Further, according to a press release from CLINIC, late last night, the Trump administration dismissed its appeal of a federal court’s March ruling that Ken Cuccinelli was illegally appointed as Acting Director of USCIS.

>>EOIR announced (https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1272731/download )the appointment of three new appellate immigration judges in EOIR’s BIA. Sirce E. Owen was a longtime ICE prosecutor who was hired as an immigration judge in 2018. Michael P. Baird has served as an immigration judge since 2009 and TRAC analysis found he had a 77 percent asylum denial rate. Sunita B. Mahtabfar has served as an immigration judge since 2013 and TRAC analysis found she had a 98.7 percent asylum denial rate. The notice includes additional biographical information on the judges.   [You will recall that Immigration Judges are appointed by, and serve at the pleasure of the Attorney General. They are part of the Executive Branch, not the Judicial Branch and are not conformed by the Senate.]>>The Trump administration is using major hotel chains to DETAIN CHILDREN AND FAMILIES  taken into custody at the border, a practice that has ballooned in recent months under an aggressive border closure policy related to the pandemic. Because the hotels exist outside the formal detention system, they are not subject to policies requiring that migrants be provided access to medical care and healthy food, recreation for the children, etc. For children who arrived at the border alone, parents and lawyers often have no way of finding them or monitoring their well-being. “A transportation vendor should not be in charge of changing the diaper of a 1-year old, giving bottles to babies or dealing with the traumatic effects they might be dealing with,” said a former ICE employee. 

LITIGATION NEWS

>>Reuters reports  (www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/08/10/business/10reuters-usa-immigration-court.html?searchResultPosition=9&utm_ ) that U.S. tech firms including Amazon and Facebook filed an amicus brief yesterday backing a challenge to President Trump’s temporary ban on the entry of certain foreign workers. In the brief, filed in a lawsuit brought in California by major U.S. business associations, the companies argued the visa restrictions would hurt American businesses, lead employers to hire workers outside the United States, and further damage the struggling U.S. economy. According to Forbes, the brief raises the question: “If Trump administration policies are good for business and the economy, then why do U.S. companies strongly oppose Trump’s immigration policies?://
>>Advocates challenging the existence of the immigration courts recently prevailed on the government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which is pending in federal court in Oregon. In their complaint, the advocates contend that the immigration court system as a whole violates the U.S. Constitution because it fails to provide an impartial forum for adjudicating immigration cases and seeks to effectuate mass deportations rather than issue fair decisions. Advocates allege that the attorney general has engaged in widespread, persistent, and egregious mismanagement of the courts, as evidenced by vast, “asylum-free zones”—entire immigration court jurisdictions in which few asylum claims survive. 
>>REFUGEE PROCESSING TO REOPEN:  Refugee admissions to the US are starting up again after a five-month pause due to the coronavirus pandemic. The administration’s decision to halt refugee admissions in March came after the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations refugee agency announced a temporary suspension of resettlement travel. Now, the State Department says refugee admissions will come with “significant COVID health measures in place.” Meanwhile, 52 large companies including Apple, Facebook and Microsoft have signed a court filing criticizing the Trump administration’s recent restrictions on visas that let immigrants temporarily work in the United States. The administration says the restrictions were the result of high unemployment from the pandemic. The companies say the limits keep businesses from finding the best talent.
>> Chalk up one for the good guys!  The Federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s order, on summary judgment, denying qualified immunity to defendants alleging that plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when he was stopped and arrested without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.Plaintiff was arrested after a witness in a courtroom testified that plaintiff, who had accompanied his wife to the hearing to serve as a witness, was not a legal citizen. On the basis of this statement, defendant Pedro Hernandez, the Justice of the Peace presiding over the hearing, requested that plaintiff be “picked up” by the local Sheriff’s Office. Defendant, Deputy Sheriff Derrek Skinner, subsequently detained plaintiff to question him regarding his immigration status, placed plaintiff in handcuffs, searched his person, and escorted him to a patrol car outside the courthouse. The Court first noted that, unlike illegal entry into the United States—which is a crime  illegal presence is not a crime.  Therefore, “because mere unauthorized presence is not a criminal matter, suspicion of unauthorized presence alone does not give rise to an inference that criminal activity is afoot.” (citations omitted)  

NEWS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY


>>The NY Times reports:  The Trump administration is using major hotel chains to detain children and families taken into custody at the border, a practice that has ballooned in recent months under an aggressive border closure policy related to the pandemic.Because the hotels exist outside the formal detention system, they are not subject to policies requiring that migrants be provided access to medical care and healthy food. For children who arrived at the border alone, parents and lawyers often have no way of finding them or monitoring their well-being.“A transportation vendor should not be in charge of changing the diaper of a 1-year old, giving bottles to babies or dealing with the traumatic effects they might be dealing with,” said a former ICE employee.The Trump administration is using major hotel chains to detain children and families taken into custody at the border, a practice that has ballooned in recent months under an aggressive border closure policy related to the pandemic.Because the hotels exist outside the formal detention system, they are not subject to policies requiring that migrants be provided access to medical care and healthy food. For children who arrived at the border alone, parents and lawyers often have no way of finding them or monitoring their well-being.“A transportation vendor should not be in charge of changing the diaper of a 1-year old, giving bottles to babies or dealing with the traumatic effects they might be dealing with,” said a former ICE employee.
FREE LECTURE that may be of interest:PROF. Douglas Massey will present the 2020  DeJong Lecture entitled New Realty at the Mexican-US Border.  Undocumented migration from Mexico ended in 2008 and has been zero or negative for 12 years. Along the southern U.S.  border undocumented Mexicans have been replaced by unauthorized Central Americans.  What in the year 2000 was a massive inflow of single adult male Mexican workers traveling to jobs in the U.S. has been replaced by a much smaller inflow of Central American families and unaccompanied children seeking not jobs but refuge. Dr. Massey will explain how and why this transformation occurred, and what it portends for the U.S. in the coming decade. For more information and to sign up go to:  https://pop.psu.edu/events/15th-annual-de-jong-lecture-social-demography

Well that is it for this edition.
Stay well
Gerry Rovner