Border bill fails Senate test vote as Democrats seek to underscore Republican resistance
By STEPHEN GROVES, MARY CLARE JALONICK and REBECCA SANTANA
1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans again blocked a bill meant to clamp down on the number of migrants allowed to claim asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sought Thursday to underscore GOP resistance to the proposal.
The legislation, negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators, was already rejected by most Republicans in February when it was linked to a foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies. But with immigration and border security becoming one of the top issues of this year's election, Democrats are looking for an answer to the barrage of GOP attacks, led by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“We gave Republicans a second chance to show where they stand,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said after the vote. “Do they want to fix this so-called emergency or do they want to show blind allegiance to the former president even when they know he's wrong?”
Schumer is trying to defend a narrow Senate majority in this year's election and sees the Republican's rejection of the deal they negotiated as a political “gift” for Democrats. Seeking to highlight Republican resistance to popular measures, Schumer is also planning to push forward a bill in June that would protect access to contraception.
The Democratic leader said it would “show the public who’s on what side and in June we’re going to spend a significant amount of time talking about reproductive rights.”
On Thursday, most Senate Democrats again supported the procedural vote to begin debate on the border bill, but it failed to advance 43-50 after all but one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against it. When the proposal was brought up in February, the test vote failed 49-50 — well shy of the 60 votes needed to advance.
This time, not even some of the bill's primary authors, Sens. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, voted for Schumer's move.
“Today is not a bill, today is a prop,” Lankford said on the floor ahead of the vote. “Everyone sees it for what it is.”
Sinema called the vote “political theater” that will do nothing to solve problems at the border.
“To use this failure as a political punching bag only punishes those who were courageous enough to do the hard work in the first place," she said.
Republican leaders spent much of the week decrying the vote as a bald-faced political maneuver and amplifying a well-worn criticism of President Joe Biden: That he bears responsibility for the historic number of migrants who have made their way to the U.S. in recent years.
“We're nearing the end of President Biden' s term, and the American people's patience for his failing to secure the southern border is running thin,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday.
Earlier in the week, McConnell told reporters, “The president needs to step up to it — do everything he can do on his own because legislation is obviously not going to clear this year."
Since the collapse of the Senate's legislation in February, the Biden administration has been considering executive orders on border policy and immigration. It has already made some changes to the asylum system meant to speed up processing and potential removal of migrants. Yet the Senate's test vote this week was widely seen as part of a lead-up to Biden issuing more sweeping border measures, potentially as early as June.
Following the failed vote, Biden in a statement said that he was “committed to taking action to address our broken immigration system.”
He also slammed Republicans for blocking the bill, saying, it showed they “do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system.”
The Democratic president has considered using a provision in federal immigration law that gives leeway to block entry of certain immigrants into the U.S. if it would be “detrimental” to the national interest of the United States. The authority was repeatedly tapped by Trump when he was in the White House, but some of those actions faced legal challenges.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters Monday that legislation to address problems at the border — as opposed to executive actions by the president — would be more effective. The Senate legislation would provide more money for Customs and Border Protection officials, asylum officers, immigration judges and scanning technology at the border — all things that officials have said the underfunded immigration and border protection system needs.
“The legislation provides tools that executive action cannot,” Mayorkas said.
The Senate bill is aimed at gaining control of an asylum system that has sometimes been overwhelmed in the last year. It would provide faster and tougher enforcement of the asylum process, as well as give presidents new powers to immediately expel migrants if the numbers encountered by border officials exceed an average of 4,000 per day over a week.
Even before the bill was fully released earlier this year, Trump effectively killed the proposal by labeling it “meaningless” and a “gift” for Biden's reelection chances. Top Republicans soon followed his lead and even McConnell, who had initially demanded the negotiation over the border measures, voted against moving forward.
A significant number of Democrats have also criticized the proposal, mostly because it does not include any broad relief for immigrants who have already established lives in the United States. On the left, four Democrats, as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent of Maine, voted against advancing the bill.
“It fails to address the root causes of migration or to establish more lawful pathways,” said Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus said in a statement this week that the Senate's bill “fails to meet the moment by putting forth enforcement-only policies and failing to include provisions that will keep families together.” They have urged executive actions that would provide protections from deportation for immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years or who have family ties to U.S. citizens.
Amid the tension, Biden's reelection campaign met with CHC leadership Wednesday to discuss outreach to Latino communities, and Biden spoke on the phone with Rep. Nanette Barragán, the chair of the group. She discussed the reasons for the group's opposition, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation.
Schumer said that if Democrats win majorities in the Senate and House next year, he wants to advance “comprehensive immigration reform."
Still, for Democratic senators facing tough reelection battles this year, the vote Thursday provided another opportunity to show they were supportive of stronger border measures as well as distance themselves from Biden's handling of the border.
As Sen. Jon Tester attempts to hold a Democratic seat in the red-leaning state of Montana, he said in a statement, “This common sense bill would push back on the Biden administration’s failed border policies by forcing the president to shut down the border, strengthen our asylum laws, and end catch and release.”
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Ummm, about that border crises and blue cities being overrun and collapsing and Tejas and Flo Rida deputizing national guard troops and building walls and deportations and………
Border mayors heading to DC for Tuesday's immigration announcement
BY VALERIE GONZALEZ
1 hour ago
McALLEN, TEXAS (AP) — At least two Texas border mayors are headed to Washington on Tuesday when President Joe Biden is expected to announce an executive order that will mark his latest and most aggressive plan to curtail the number of migrants allowed to seek asylum in the U.S.
Brownsville Mayor John Cowen and Edinburg Mayor Ramiro Garza both confirmed they were invited by the White House for an immigration announcement on Tuesday. Cowen told the Associated Press that he plans to attend, while Garza said he would have more details on Monday about his plans.
Notably, the Democratic mayor of Eagle Pass, the Texas-Mexico border town where the number of migrants led to a state-federal clash over border security, had not received an invitation as of Sunday. The mayor from McAllen said he was invited, but could not attend because of a prior commitment.
A White House spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment on other mayors who were invited to the announcement.
The AP reported last week that the White House was finalizing an executive order that could shut off asylum requests and automatically deny entrance to migrants once the number of people encountered by U.S. border officials exceeded a new daily threshold.
The unilateral action is expected even as the number of border crossings at the southern U.S. border has declined since December, due in large part to Mexico's escalated enforcement efforts. But Biden wants to head off any potential spike in crossings that could occur later in the year, as the fall election draws closer, when the weather cools and numbers tend to rise.
Immigration remains a concern for voters ahead of the November elections, with Republicans eager to punish Biden electorally over the issue. Democrats have responded that Republicans, at the behest of Donald Trump, killed a bipartisan border deal in Congress that would have led to the toughest legislative restrictions on asylum in years.
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Donald Trump promised Thursday he would reverse President Biden’s latest executive order on border security on his first day in office if returned to the White House.
The former president, during a campaign event in Phoenix, called the order “outrageous.” He also referred to it with a vulgarity that the crowd then chanted.
The order, announced Tuesday, puts a new cap on asylum seekers in hopes of deterring illegal crossings. Trump previously encouraged GOP lawmakers to oppose border legislation because, he said, it would politically benefit Biden.
Dem chaos agents at it again. From A Letter From An American:
Trump had counted on using immigration against Biden and ordered his loyalists to scuttle the bipartisan immigration measure the Senate hammered out in February in order to keep the issue alive. Swing voters took notice: in March a focus group showed that 9 out of 13 Wisconsin swing voters blamed Trump for killing the bill.
As soon as that measure failed, the administration began to talk of what Biden could do through an executive order, despite believing that such an order would be challenged in the courts. At the same time, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris continued their pressure on the Mexican government to increase its own immigration enforcement. That process worked, and undocumented migration has dropped sharply at the southern border. Meanwhile, the administration’s parole program for people from Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cuba has cut undocumented migration from those countries by almost 90%.
Then on Tuesday, June 4, likely trying to get ahead of the usual summer rise in immigration, and after Senate Republicans once again killed the bipartisan border measure, Biden issued an executive order permitting him to seal the southern border temporarily when undocumented crossings surge to more than 2,500 a day, a restriction stricter than that negotiated in the Senate measure Trump scuttled. This order looks more like Trump’s effort to curb migration—one that courts blocked—at least in part because without legislation, there is no new funding to provide the additional courts the administration wants in order to move asylum cases faster.
As predicted, the order is likely to face legal challenges. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), who worked with Senator James Lankford (R-OK) on the Senate immigration bill, wrote in a statement: “I am sympathetic to the position the administration is in, but I am skeptical [that] the executive branch has the legal authority to shut down asylum processing between ports of entry on its own. Meaningful asylum reform requires a bipartisan solution in Congress.”
Nonetheless, while Trump continues to demagogue immigration issues, the charge that Biden wants “open borders”—which was always disinformation—is now harder to make.
President Joe Biden faces first lawsuit over new asylum crackdown at the border
FILE -
Migrants seeking asylum from India walk towards a staging area before
being transported and processed, Wednesday, June 5, 2024, near Dulzura,
Calif. President Joe Biden has suspended asylum processing at the U.S.
border under a new policy unveiled this week. But the proclamation has
an exception for “operational considerations.” The Homeland Security
Department said in a detailed document outlining the ban that
“demographics and nationalities encountered at the border significantly
impact” its ability to deport people. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A coalition
of immigrant advocacy groups sued the Biden administration on Wednesday
over President Joe Biden’s recent directive
that effectively halts asylum claims at the southern border, saying it
differs little from a similar move during the Trump administration that
was blocked by the courts.
The lawsuit — filed by the American
Civil Liberties Union and others on behalf of Las Americas Immigrant
Advocacy Center and RAICES — is the first test of the legality of Biden’s sweeping crackdown
on the border, which came after months of internal White House
deliberations and is designed in part to deflect political attacks
against the president on his handling of immigration.
“By enacting
an asylum ban that is legally indistinguishable from the Trump ban we
successfully blocked, we were left with no choice but to file this
lawsuit,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the ACLU.
The order Biden
issued last week would limit asylum processing once encounters with
migrants between ports of entry reach 2,500 per day. It went into effect
immediately because the latest figures were far higher, at about 4,000
daily.
The restrictions would be in effect
until two weeks after the daily encounter numbers are at or below 1,500
per day between ports of entry, under a seven-day average. But it’s far
from clear when the numbers would dip that low; the last time was in
July 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The order went into effect June 5, and Biden administration officials have said they expected record levels of deportations.
But
advocates argue that suspending asylum for migrants who don’t arrive at
a designated port of entry — which the Biden administration is trying
to push migrants to do —- violates existing federal immigration law,
among other concerns.
Biden invoked the same legal authority used
by the Trump administration for its asylum ban, which comes under
Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. That provision
allows a president to limit entries for certain migrants if their entry
is deemed “detrimental” to the national interest.
Biden has repeatedly criticized Trump’s immigration policies as he
campaigns, and his administration argues that his directive is different
because it includes several exemptions for humanitarian reasons. For
example, victims of human trafficking, unaccompanied minors and those
with severe medical emergencies would not be subject to the limits.
“We
stand by the legality of what we have done,” Homeland Security
Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on ABC’s “This Week” before the
lawsuit was filed, saying he anticipated legal challenges. “We stand by
the value proposition.”
Under Biden’s directive, migrants who
arrive at the border but do not express a fear of returning to their
home countries will be subject to immediate removal from the United
States, within a matter of days or even hours. Those migrants could face
punishments that could include a five-year bar from reentering the U.S.
or even criminal prosecution.
Meanwhile, those who express fear or an intention to seek asylum will
be screened by a U.S. asylum officer but at a higher standard than
currently used. If they pass the screening, they can pursue more limited
forms of humanitarian protection, including the U.N. Convention Against
Torture, which prohibits returning people to a country where they’re
likely to face torture.
Santana covers the Department of Homeland Security for
The Associated Press. She has extensive experience reporting in such
places as Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The
Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to
factual reporting. Founded in 1846, AP today remains the most trusted
source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats and the essential
provider of the technology and services vital to the news business.
More than half the world’s population sees AP journalism every day.
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Welp, here's Ken Coocoonellie's opinion on immigration. Guess where? Hint, if you add the two, two digit numbers, you get 45. Fancy that Q! And what was in that bi-partisan immigration bill that POOTWH had his cult members vote no on? Anyone?
U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION (CBP)
If all immigration agencies are not merged, including USCIS and ORR, then
an appropriate third alternative would be to consolidate ICE and CBP to form
a combined Border Security and Immigration Agency (BSIA). This would integrate critical interdiction, enforcement, and investigative resources, enhancing
coordination and refocusing collective efforts on the vast and complex cross-border threats impacting our nation’s health, safety, and national security. It would also simultaneously add efficiencies to our nation’s capacity to facilitate lawful
trade and travel.
The BSIA should establish clear mission requirements, responsibilities, and
mandates under existing law regarding the persistent need for and utilization of
U.S. military personnel and resources to assist BSIA with increasing whole-of-government efforts and long-term strategy to secure our nation’s borders effectively.
In addition, appropriate elements within the newly created BSIA should be designated as part of the U.S. National Security and Intelligence Community.
A conservative Administration should eliminate any prohibitive guidance,
direction, or mandate from DHS or the Administration that curtails or limits CBP
from publishing detailed border security and enforcement data not impacting
intelligence, interdiction, and investigative operations, methods, or sources. DHS
should issue a regulation mandating that CBP publish accurate and timely border
security data, readily available to the public, on a regular basis that avoid White
House and DHS leadership review and approval.
The White House should grant the authority for CBP and DHS executives to
utilize component aviation assets under the Office of Air and Marine (OAM). CBP
and DHS have worldwide missions with personnel and facilities that are deployed
across the globe and in every state in the U.S. With a CBP workforce alone of more
than 60,000 people (240,000-plus for DHS) encompassing more than a thousand
sea, land, and airports, it is essential that the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner,
Secretary, and Deputy Secretary can travel efficiently to facilities to maintain
appropriate situational awareness across the department’s vast mission set and
interact with the expansive workforce. Although CBP operates one of the largest
aviation components of any domestic U.S. law enforcement agency, executives are
prohibited from utilizing the agency’s aviation assets to facilitate official travel.
Executives are required to fly on commercial airlines, and this requirement significantly limits their ability to have classified communications and takes them
offline for extended periods of time.
Border Patrol (BP) and OAM should be combined within CBP. BP has more than
20,000 personnel, and OAM has approximately 1,800. OAM’s assets are dedicated
in support of BP operations the vast majority of the time, yet redundant approvals, strategies, and independent hierarchal commands serve as impediments to
efficient and practical resource deployments.
CBP should restart and expand use of the horseback-mounted Border Patrol. As
part of this announcement, the Secretary should clear the records and personnel
files of those who were falsely accused by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of whipping migrants and issue a formal apology on behalf of DHS and CBP.
The Secretary should combine the Office of Trade (OT) and Trade Relations
with the Office of Field Operations (OFO). The OT is the smallest of CBP’s components, and its operational counterpart, OFO, has a workforce of more than 30,000.
OT’s function is interwoven with that of its OFO operational counterpart. Combining OT with OFO would achieve streamlined operations and increase OT’s capacity
and capability by leveraging OFO’s expansive resources.
CBP, ICE, and USCIS all have authority to issue Notices to Appear (NTA) to
removable aliens in their presence, which begins removal proceedings. In most
instances, CBP should turn illegal aliens over to ICE for detention, and ICE can
then issue any needed NTA. CBP should issue NTAs only in limited situations
for humanitarian reasons, such as medical emergencies. In addition, CBP should
eliminate use of Notices to Report (NTR) altogether.
CBP’s established national standards of Transport, Escort, Detention, and
Search (TEDS) have been widely interpreted and expanded by lower courts. This
has resulted in unrealistic and differing detention standards for CBP facilities based
on the jurisdiction within which they fall, negatively impacting operations. ICE has
suffered similarly. A single nationwide detention standard should be codified that
prevents individual states from mandating that federal government agencies adhere
to widely expansive and ever-changing sets of standards. Such standards should allow
the flexibility to use large numbers of temporary facilities such as tents.
The annual costs associated with establishing and maintaining temporary facilities to address the flow of illegal migration and associated care, transportation,
and processing are prohibitive, and CBP’s budget is inadequate. CBP is forced to
forgo critical mission-essential endeavors to fund the additional associated costs.
Often, this requires the reprogramming of funding at the DHS level, which has a
negative impact on other DHS components’ operations. This predictable cost that
has to be paid from existing CBP and DHS funding levels reduces CBP’s operational
readiness and ability to accomplish its diverse and critical missions to protect the
American people. The next President should request a realistic budget that fully
pays for these costs.
Increased funding is needed for BP to hire additional support personnel, which
would relieve uniformed BP agents from administrative duties associated with
processing aliens and allow them to return to their national security mission.
Congress should increase funding for facility upgrades at strategic land Ports of
Entry (POEs), including expanding state-of-the-art technology such as Non-Intrusive Inspection equipment. Today, the cartels exploit the aging facilities and lack
of adequate technology to smuggle illicit drugs, contraband, and more successfully
through our nation’s POEs.
Congress should mandate and fund additional bed space for alien
detainees. ICE should be funded for a significant increase in detention
space, raising the daily available number of beds to 100,000.
Don't have to educate your populace if you import the brain power. Don't need unskilled labor when you create your own. Its a beautiful plan.
The incoming Administration should spearhead an immigration legislative
agenda focused on creating a merit-based immigration system that rewards highskilled aliens instead of the current system that favors extended family–based and
luck-of-the-draw immigration. To that end, the diversity visa lottery should be
repealed, chain migration should be ended while focusing on the nuclear family,
and the existing employment visa program should be replaced with a system to
award visas only to the “best and brightest.”
Don't have to educate your populace if you import the brain power. Don't need unskilled labor when you create your own. Its a beautiful plan.
The incoming Administration should spearhead an immigration legislative
agenda focused on creating a merit-based immigration system that rewards highskilled aliens instead of the current system that favors extended family–based and
luck-of-the-draw immigration. To that end, the diversity visa lottery should be
repealed, chain migration should be ended while focusing on the nuclear family,
and the existing employment visa program should be replaced with a system to
award visas only to the “best and brightest.”
You may want to boohoo this idea but it is happening in other countries.. Australia doesn't want aging people coming in and sucking off the system so their visas are given to younger adults. I understand we aren't other countries too.
I wasn't allowed to work in other countries unless I had a skill that wasn't available to them locally, which I had.
It's not a bad way of thinking unless you want to be able to take in everyone which I'm sure is the reasoning for this.
Our current immigration policy won't allow this to happen though could it? I mean that is some serious overhauling.
More Brownshirt creation. Let me know who is going to pick the lettuce and ground the beef.
Internal efforts to limit employment authorization should be matched by congressional action to narrow statutory eligibility to work in the United States and
mitigate unfair employment competition for U.S. citizens. The oft-abused H-1B
program should be transformed into an elite program through which employers
are vying to bring in only the top foreign workers at the highest wages so as not to
depress American opportunities. Additionally, Congress should:
l Improve the integrity of the temporary work visa programs;
l Repeal Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations;
l Permanently authorize and make mandatory E-Verify;
and
l End parole abuse by legislating specific parole standards.
USCIS should make it clear that where no court jurisdiction exists, it will not
honor court decisions that seek to undermine regulatory and subregulatory efforts.
Finally, USCIS still requires access to all relevant national security and law enforcement databases in the same vein as any other agency in the intelligence space. This
is a key concept that should be addressed as USCIS is returned to functioning
primarily as a vetting agency.
Budget
USCIS is primarily fee-funded, operating on revenue derived by those who are
seeking immigration benefits, work permits, and naturalization. The total agency
budget requested for fiscal year (FY) 2023, including both fees and a small appropriation, is slightly less than $6 billion.8
The bulk of funds are derived from application
fees through the Immigrant Examinations Fee Account. As a general principle, adjudication of applications and petitions should be paid by applicants, not American
taxpayers. It is critical that any changes in the budget, even in the wake of a realigned
agency combined with ICE and CBP, should retain a fee-funded model.
Given the Obama and Biden Administrations’ lack of will, fees should be
increased agencywide to keep in step with inflation and the true cost of the adjudications. The incoming Administration should immediately submit a fee rule
that reflects such an increase. Aside from an increase in all fees, the rule should
drastically limit the availability for fee waivers and should implement a fee for
asylum applications. Additionally, Congress should allow for a 10 percent acrossthe-board increase in all fees for all fee rules to account for the fact that new fee
rules always lag behind budget requirements.
USCIS should strive to increase opportunities for premium processing, a benefit by which applicants can expedite their processing times. While this places
time burdens on adjudicators, it provides an opportunity for a significant influx
of money into the agency, which is not currently available. While simply raising
fees to the necessary levels to make the agency run efficiently would be preferable, without the need for expanded premium processing, this short-term measure
should be utilized, particularly if longer-term fee rules are unsuccessful.
At least until USCIS is caught up on all case backlogs, all applicants rejected for
any benefit or status adjudication should be required to leave the U.S. immediately.
Ordinary process can resume once all case backlogs have been adjudicated.
Finally, USCIS should pause the intake of applications in a benefit category
when backlogs in that category become excessive. Once USCIS adjudicators can
decrease that caseload to a manageable number, application intake should resume.
Personnel
USCIS should be classified as a national security–sensitive agency, and all of
its employees should be classified as holding national security–sensitive positions. Leaks must be investigated and punished as they would be in a national
security agency, and the union should be decertified. Any employees who cannot
accept that change and cannot conform their behavior to the standards required
by such an agency should be separated. USCIS’s D.C. personnel presence should
be skeletal, and agency employees with operational or security roles should be
rotated out to offices throughout the United States. These USCIS employees
should live and work in the communities that are most affected by their daily
duties and decisions.
Is this the kind of country 'Murica wants to be? Is this how the richest nation on earth and ever created wants to treat those less fortunate? "Give us your poor and tired and spit on them, that's what the staute of bigotry says." And yet, they call themselves Christians. And notice, if you will, there are few if any citations or embedded data in a lot of the claims being made to "justify" the authoritarianism. Is GITMO still available?
Unaccompanied minors
1. Congress should repeal Section 235 of the William Wilberforce
Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA),9
which provides numerous immigration benefits to unaccompanied
alien children and only encourages more parents to send their children
across the border illegally and unaccompanied. These children too often
become trafficking victims, which means that the TVPRA has failed.
2. If an alternative to repealing Section 235 of the TVPRA is necessary,
the section should be amended so that all unaccompanied children,
regardless of nationality, may be returned to their home countries in a
safe and efficient manner. Currently, the TVPRA allows only children
from contiguous countries (Canada and Mexico) to be returned while
every other unaccompanied minor must be placed into a lengthy
process that usually results in the minor’s landing in the custody of an
illegal alien family member.
3. Congress must end the Flores Settlement Agreement by explicitly
setting nationwide terms and standards for family and unaccompanied
detention and housing. Such standards should focus on meeting human
needs and should allow for large-scale use of temporary facilities (for
example, tents).
4. Congress should amend the Homeland Security Act and portions of
the TVPRA to move detention of alien children expressly from the
Department of Health and Human Services to DHS.
Executive Orders
l Pathways for border crossers
5. Mandate that ICE use all detention space in full compliance with
Section 235 of the INA, issue weekly reports on detention capacity, and
provide authority for low-level temporary capacity (for example, tents)
once permanent space is full.
Enforcement
4. Rescind all memoranda limiting enforcement of immigration laws
including those identifying sensitive zones.
Welcome to ‘Murica. Did Dana tell him what a sick fuck he was or laugh and go along with it? How low is low and what does this really say about ‘Murica?
Trump spreads violent rhetoric by suggesting migrants should fight for sport
At two different events Saturday, the former president said he proposed a migrant league of fighters to the head of the UFC.
Former president Donald Trumpexpanded his portrayal of migrants as violent with a suggestion that they could be pitted in fights for entertainment.
During a speech to Christian conservatives on Saturday afternoon, and again at a rally in Philadelphia that evening, Trump claimed that he told his friend Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, that he should start a spinoff competition featuring migrants, as part of his riff on restricting immigration.
“Did anyone ever hear of Dana White,” Trump asked during his speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Washington. “ … I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.’ I think the migrant guy might win, that’s how tough they are. He didn’t like that idea too much.”
The remarks are part of Trump’s broader pattern of using dehumanizing language when discussing immigrants, which during this election cycle has included broadly portraying migrants as violent criminals andsaying that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
The
tandem actions — the first to help immigrants illegally in the U.S.,
the second to prevent others from entering at the border — give the
president a chance to address one of the biggest vulnerabilities for his
reelection campaign.
While
the White House said its most recent actions aren’t meant to
counterbalance each other, the election-year policy changes offer
something both for voters who think border enforcement is too lenient
and for those who support helping immigrants who live in the U.S.
illegally. They echo the White House’s overall approach since Biden took
office, using a mix of policies to restrict illegal immigration and
offer help to people already in the country.
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Border arrests plunge 29% in June to the lowest of Biden’s presidency as asylum halt takes hold
Updated 8:30 PM EDT, July 15, 2024
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Arrests for
illegally crossing the border from Mexico plunged 29% in June, the
lowest month of Joe Biden’s presidency, according to figures released
Monday that provide another window on the impact of a new rule to
temporarily suspend asylum.
Arrests totaled 83,536 in June, down
from 117,901 in May to mark the lowest tally since January 2021, U.S.
Customs and Border Protection said.
A seven-day average of daily arrests fell more than half by the end of June from Biden’s announcement on June 4
that asylum processing would be halted when daily arrests reach 2,500,
which they did immediately, said Troy Miller, acting Customs and Border
Protection commissioner.
“Recent border security measures have
made a meaningful impact on our ability to impose consequences for those
crossing unlawfully,” Miller said.
Arrests had already fallen by more than half from a record high of 250,000 in December, largely a result of increased enforcement by Mexican authorities, according to U.S. officials.
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NBC faced backlash on Friday for a story that appeared to draw a comparison to Usha Vance, the wife of Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance and mass deportation.
"Making her RNC debut, Usha Chilukuri Vance spoke with pride about her Indian immigrant parents—in front of a convention floor peppered with signs reading "Mass Deportation Now,’" the outlet wrote on X.
The tweet linked to a story that suggested her RNC speech against the backdrop of signs drew "claims of hypocrisy" and cited experts who claimed her appearance reaffirmed the GOP’s "good immigrant, bad immigrant" narrative.
The NBCNews.com story by Sakshi Venkatraman claimed that a "heavily anti-immigrant sentiment" pervaded the convention audience.
Pawan Dhingra, a professor of American studies at Amherst College, told NBC that Vance’s Indian American wife will support the Republican Party’s rhetoric that they are not anti-immigrant.
"They just want to make sure that immigrants come and ‘adapt’ to the country properly and that they don’t threaten certain ways of life," he said.
Usha grew up in San Diego. Her parents are both legal immigrants from India.
"Good thing her parents came here legally then. You don’t hate the media enough," one X user wrote.
"You’re missing the point about the call for deportations—but you already knew that," another user chimed in. "Disgraceful. Misleading what remains of your audience on purpose. Shame on you."
One X account user named Katie, who claims she is the daughter of immigrants, called the NBCNews.com headline "absurd" and accused the outlet of deliberately conflating people who are legally entering the United States and those who cross illegally.
John Bachman, an anchor at Newsmax, called the article "clickbait" and claimed "no one" is talking about deporting legal immigrants.
Usha spoke out about her upbringing during her RNC speech.
"My background is very different from JD’s. I grew up in San Diego, in a middle-class community, with two loving parents, both immigrants from India, and a wonderful sister," she said. "That JD and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry, is a testament to this great country."
Usha noted that her husband has worked to accommodate her vegetarian diet and has also learned to cook Indian food for her parents.
"It’s hard to imagine a more powerful example of the American dream," she said.
0
mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 36,901
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Thanks POOTWH. Like everything else you touched. And like he reads reports. But it is yet another mess made by a repub that has to be cleaned up by a dem.
Trump White House was warned sanctions on Venezuela could fuel migration
The internal debate over the policy underscores how U.S. financial measures can sometimes lead to unintended consequences.
The Trump White House was warned that harsh sanctions on Venezuela could accelerate that country’s economic collapse and speed an exodus of millions of migrants to neighboring nations, according to three current and former U.S. government officials.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis delivered the classified assessments — part of a broader examination of how Venezuela’s economic implosion could affect migration in Latin America — to the White House National Security Council and the top two DHS officials in at least four reports between 2017 and 2019, the people said.
The Trump administration nevertheless imposed some of the harshest economic penalties in U.S. history on Venezuela in response to documented human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings and corruption by the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro. The sanctions are fiercely defended by proponents, who say they were a necessary response to one of the most brutal crackdowns on civilians in two decades.
Today, however, Maduro remains in power, and a surge in Venezuelan immigrants has emerged as a flash point in the U.S. presidential election. Though Venezuelan mass migration to the United States only began after President Biden took office, concern among Trump officials about the sanctions’ potential effects, including on migration, was more extensive than previously known, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former U.S. officials.
“This is the point I made at the time: I said the sanctions were going to grind the Venezuelan economy into dust and have huge human consequences, one of which would be out-migration,” said Thomas Shannon, who served as undersecretary for political affairs at the State Department under President Donald Trump.
“The sanctions clearly helped generate faster out-migration,” Shannon said. “And you knew it was only going to be a matter of time before these people decided to migrate north.”
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans again blocked a bill meant to clamp down on the number of migrants allowed to claim asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sought Thursday to underscore GOP resistance to the proposal.
The legislation, negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators, was already rejected by most Republicans in February when it was linked to a foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies. But with immigration and border security becoming one of the top issues of this year's election, Democrats are looking for an answer to the barrage of GOP attacks, led by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“We gave Republicans a second chance to show where they stand,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said after the vote. “Do they want to fix this so-called emergency or do they want to show blind allegiance to the former president even when they know he's wrong?”
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Schumer is trying to defend a narrow Senate majority in this year's election and sees the Republican's rejection of the deal they negotiated as a political “gift” for Democrats. Seeking to highlight Republican resistance to popular measures, Schumer is also planning to push forward a bill in June that would protect access to contraception.
The Democratic leader said it would “show the public who’s on what side and in June we’re going to spend a significant amount of time talking about reproductive rights.”
On Thursday, most Senate Democrats again supported the procedural vote to begin debate on the border bill, but it failed to advance 43-50 after all but one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against it. When the proposal was brought up in February, the test vote failed 49-50 — well shy of the 60 votes needed to advance.
This time, not even some of the bill's primary authors, Sens. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, voted for Schumer's move.
“Today is not a bill, today is a prop,” Lankford said on the floor ahead of the vote. “Everyone sees it for what it is.”
Sinema called the vote “political theater” that will do nothing to solve problems at the border.
“To use this failure as a political punching bag only punishes those who were courageous enough to do the hard work in the first place," she said.
Republican leaders spent much of the week decrying the vote as a bald-faced political maneuver and amplifying a well-worn criticism of President Joe Biden: That he bears responsibility for the historic number of migrants who have made their way to the U.S. in recent years.
“We're nearing the end of President Biden' s term, and the American people's patience for his failing to secure the southern border is running thin,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday.
Earlier in the week, McConnell told reporters, “The president needs to step up to it — do everything he can do on his own because legislation is obviously not going to clear this year."
Since the collapse of the Senate's legislation in February, the Biden administration has been considering executive orders on border policy and immigration. It has already made some changes to the asylum system meant to speed up processing and potential removal of migrants. Yet the Senate's test vote this week was widely seen as part of a lead-up to Biden issuing more sweeping border measures, potentially as early as June.
Following the failed vote, Biden in a statement said that he was “committed to taking action to address our broken immigration system.”
He also slammed Republicans for blocking the bill, saying, it showed they “do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system.”
The Democratic president has considered using a provision in federal immigration law that gives leeway to block entry of certain immigrants into the U.S. if it would be “detrimental” to the national interest of the United States. The authority was repeatedly tapped by Trump when he was in the White House, but some of those actions faced legal challenges.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters Monday that legislation to address problems at the border — as opposed to executive actions by the president — would be more effective. The Senate legislation would provide more money for Customs and Border Protection officials, asylum officers, immigration judges and scanning technology at the border — all things that officials have said the underfunded immigration and border protection system needs.
“The legislation provides tools that executive action cannot,” Mayorkas said.
The Senate bill is aimed at gaining control of an asylum system that has sometimes been overwhelmed in the last year. It would provide faster and tougher enforcement of the asylum process, as well as give presidents new powers to immediately expel migrants if the numbers encountered by border officials exceed an average of 4,000 per day over a week.
Even before the bill was fully released earlier this year, Trump effectively killed the proposal by labeling it “meaningless” and a “gift” for Biden's reelection chances. Top Republicans soon followed his lead and even McConnell, who had initially demanded the negotiation over the border measures, voted against moving forward.
A significant number of Democrats have also criticized the proposal, mostly because it does not include any broad relief for immigrants who have already established lives in the United States. On the left, four Democrats, as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent of Maine, voted against advancing the bill.
“It fails to address the root causes of migration or to establish more lawful pathways,” said Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus said in a statement this week that the Senate's bill “fails to meet the moment by putting forth enforcement-only policies and failing to include provisions that will keep families together.” They have urged executive actions that would provide protections from deportation for immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years or who have family ties to U.S. citizens.
Amid the tension, Biden's reelection campaign met with CHC leadership Wednesday to discuss outreach to Latino communities, and Biden spoke on the phone with Rep. Nanette Barragán, the chair of the group. She discussed the reasons for the group's opposition, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation.
Schumer said that if Democrats win majorities in the Senate and House next year, he wants to advance “comprehensive immigration reform."
Still, for Democratic senators facing tough reelection battles this year, the vote Thursday provided another opportunity to show they were supportive of stronger border measures as well as distance themselves from Biden's handling of the border.
As Sen. Jon Tester attempts to hold a Democratic seat in the red-leaning state of Montana, he said in a statement, “This common sense bill would push back on the Biden administration’s failed border policies by forcing the president to shut down the border, strengthen our asylum laws, and end catch and release.”
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https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4L9OrQvunA/?igsh=ZXV5cTc4YzJlcXI0
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McALLEN, TEXAS (AP) — At least two Texas border mayors are headed to Washington on Tuesday when President Joe Biden is expected to announce an executive order that will mark his latest and most aggressive plan to curtail the number of migrants allowed to seek asylum in the U.S.
Brownsville Mayor John Cowen and Edinburg Mayor Ramiro Garza both confirmed they were invited by the White House for an immigration announcement on Tuesday. Cowen told the Associated Press that he plans to attend, while Garza said he would have more details on Monday about his plans.
Notably, the Democratic mayor of Eagle Pass, the Texas-Mexico border town where the number of migrants led to a state-federal clash over border security, had not received an invitation as of Sunday. The mayor from McAllen said he was invited, but could not attend because of a prior commitment.
A White House spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment on other mayors who were invited to the announcement.
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The AP reported last week that the White House was finalizing an executive order that could shut off asylum requests and automatically deny entrance to migrants once the number of people encountered by U.S. border officials exceeded a new daily threshold.
The unilateral action is expected even as the number of border crossings at the southern U.S. border has declined since December, due in large part to Mexico's escalated enforcement efforts. But Biden wants to head off any potential spike in crossings that could occur later in the year, as the fall election draws closer, when the weather cools and numbers tend to rise.
Immigration remains a concern for voters ahead of the November elections, with Republicans eager to punish Biden electorally over the issue. Democrats have responded that Republicans, at the behest of Donald Trump, killed a bipartisan border deal in Congress that would have led to the toughest legislative restrictions on asylum in years.
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Donald Trump promised Thursday he would reverse President Biden’s latest executive order on border security on his first day in office if returned to the White House.
The former president, during a campaign event in Phoenix, called the order “outrageous.” He also referred to it with a vulgarity that the crowd then chanted.
The order, announced Tuesday, puts a new cap on asylum seekers in hopes of deterring illegal crossings. Trump previously encouraged GOP lawmakers to oppose border legislation because, he said, it would politically benefit Biden.
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Trump had counted on using immigration against Biden and ordered his loyalists to scuttle the bipartisan immigration measure the Senate hammered out in February in order to keep the issue alive. Swing voters took notice: in March a focus group showed that 9 out of 13 Wisconsin swing voters blamed Trump for killing the bill.
As soon as that measure failed, the administration began to talk of what Biden could do through an executive order, despite believing that such an order would be challenged in the courts. At the same time, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris continued their pressure on the Mexican government to increase its own immigration enforcement. That process worked, and undocumented migration has dropped sharply at the southern border. Meanwhile, the administration’s parole program for people from Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cuba has cut undocumented migration from those countries by almost 90%.
Then on Tuesday, June 4, likely trying to get ahead of the usual summer rise in immigration, and after Senate Republicans once again killed the bipartisan border measure, Biden issued an executive order permitting him to seal the southern border temporarily when undocumented crossings surge to more than 2,500 a day, a restriction stricter than that negotiated in the Senate measure Trump scuttled. This order looks more like Trump’s effort to curb migration—one that courts blocked—at least in part because without legislation, there is no new funding to provide the additional courts the administration wants in order to move asylum cases faster.
As predicted, the order is likely to face legal challenges. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), who worked with Senator James Lankford (R-OK) on the Senate immigration bill, wrote in a statement: “I am sympathetic to the position the administration is in, but I am skeptical [that] the executive branch has the legal authority to shut down asylum processing between ports of entry on its own. Meaningful asylum reform requires a bipartisan solution in Congress.”
Nonetheless, while Trump continues to demagogue immigration issues, the charge that Biden wants “open borders”—which was always disinformation—is now harder to make.
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President Joe Biden faces first lawsuit over new asylum crackdown at the border
WASHINGTON (AP) — A coalition of immigrant advocacy groups sued the Biden administration on Wednesday over President Joe Biden’s recent directive that effectively halts asylum claims at the southern border, saying it differs little from a similar move during the Trump administration that was blocked by the courts.
The lawsuit — filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others on behalf of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and RAICES — is the first test of the legality of Biden’s sweeping crackdown on the border, which came after months of internal White House deliberations and is designed in part to deflect political attacks against the president on his handling of immigration.
“By enacting an asylum ban that is legally indistinguishable from the Trump ban we successfully blocked, we were left with no choice but to file this lawsuit,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the ACLU.
The order Biden issued last week would limit asylum processing once encounters with migrants between ports of entry reach 2,500 per day. It went into effect immediately because the latest figures were far higher, at about 4,000 daily.
The restrictions would be in effect until two weeks after the daily encounter numbers are at or below 1,500 per day between ports of entry, under a seven-day average. But it’s far from clear when the numbers would dip that low; the last time was in July 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The order went into effect June 5, and Biden administration officials have said they expected record levels of deportations.
But advocates argue that suspending asylum for migrants who don’t arrive at a designated port of entry — which the Biden administration is trying to push migrants to do —- violates existing federal immigration law, among other concerns.
Biden invoked the same legal authority used by the Trump administration for its asylum ban, which comes under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. That provision allows a president to limit entries for certain migrants if their entry is deemed “detrimental” to the national interest.
Biden has repeatedly criticized Trump’s immigration policies as he campaigns, and his administration argues that his directive is different because it includes several exemptions for humanitarian reasons. For example, victims of human trafficking, unaccompanied minors and those with severe medical emergencies would not be subject to the limits.
“We stand by the legality of what we have done,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on ABC’s “This Week” before the lawsuit was filed, saying he anticipated legal challenges. “We stand by the value proposition.”
Under Biden’s directive, migrants who arrive at the border but do not express a fear of returning to their home countries will be subject to immediate removal from the United States, within a matter of days or even hours. Those migrants could face punishments that could include a five-year bar from reentering the U.S. or even criminal prosecution.
Meanwhile, those who express fear or an intention to seek asylum will be screened by a U.S. asylum officer but at a higher standard than currently used. If they pass the screening, they can pursue more limited forms of humanitarian protection, including the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which prohibits returning people to a country where they’re likely to face torture.
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U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION (CBP)
If all immigration agencies are not merged, including USCIS and ORR, then an appropriate third alternative would be to consolidate ICE and CBP to form a combined Border Security and Immigration Agency (BSIA). This would integrate critical interdiction, enforcement, and investigative resources, enhancing coordination and refocusing collective efforts on the vast and complex cross-border threats impacting our nation’s health, safety, and national security. It would also simultaneously add efficiencies to our nation’s capacity to facilitate lawful trade and travel.
The BSIA should establish clear mission requirements, responsibilities, and mandates under existing law regarding the persistent need for and utilization of U.S. military personnel and resources to assist BSIA with increasing whole-of-government efforts and long-term strategy to secure our nation’s borders effectively. In addition, appropriate elements within the newly created BSIA should be designated as part of the U.S. National Security and Intelligence Community.
A conservative Administration should eliminate any prohibitive guidance, direction, or mandate from DHS or the Administration that curtails or limits CBP from publishing detailed border security and enforcement data not impacting intelligence, interdiction, and investigative operations, methods, or sources. DHS should issue a regulation mandating that CBP publish accurate and timely border security data, readily available to the public, on a regular basis that avoid White House and DHS leadership review and approval.
The White House should grant the authority for CBP and DHS executives to utilize component aviation assets under the Office of Air and Marine (OAM). CBP and DHS have worldwide missions with personnel and facilities that are deployed across the globe and in every state in the U.S. With a CBP workforce alone of more than 60,000 people (240,000-plus for DHS) encompassing more than a thousand sea, land, and airports, it is essential that the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, Secretary, and Deputy Secretary can travel efficiently to facilities to maintain appropriate situational awareness across the department’s vast mission set and interact with the expansive workforce. Although CBP operates one of the largest aviation components of any domestic U.S. law enforcement agency, executives are prohibited from utilizing the agency’s aviation assets to facilitate official travel. Executives are required to fly on commercial airlines, and this requirement significantly limits their ability to have classified communications and takes them offline for extended periods of time.
Border Patrol (BP) and OAM should be combined within CBP. BP has more than 20,000 personnel, and OAM has approximately 1,800. OAM’s assets are dedicated in support of BP operations the vast majority of the time, yet redundant approvals, strategies, and independent hierarchal commands serve as impediments to efficient and practical resource deployments.
CBP should restart and expand use of the horseback-mounted Border Patrol. As part of this announcement, the Secretary should clear the records and personnel files of those who were falsely accused by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of whipping migrants and issue a formal apology on behalf of DHS and CBP.
The Secretary should combine the Office of Trade (OT) and Trade Relations with the Office of Field Operations (OFO). The OT is the smallest of CBP’s components, and its operational counterpart, OFO, has a workforce of more than 30,000.
OT’s function is interwoven with that of its OFO operational counterpart. Combining OT with OFO would achieve streamlined operations and increase OT’s capacity and capability by leveraging OFO’s expansive resources.
CBP, ICE, and USCIS all have authority to issue Notices to Appear (NTA) to removable aliens in their presence, which begins removal proceedings. In most instances, CBP should turn illegal aliens over to ICE for detention, and ICE can then issue any needed NTA. CBP should issue NTAs only in limited situations for humanitarian reasons, such as medical emergencies. In addition, CBP should eliminate use of Notices to Report (NTR) altogether.
CBP’s established national standards of Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search (TEDS) have been widely interpreted and expanded by lower courts. This has resulted in unrealistic and differing detention standards for CBP facilities based on the jurisdiction within which they fall, negatively impacting operations. ICE has suffered similarly. A single nationwide detention standard should be codified that prevents individual states from mandating that federal government agencies adhere to widely expansive and ever-changing sets of standards. Such standards should allow the flexibility to use large numbers of temporary facilities such as tents.
The annual costs associated with establishing and maintaining temporary facilities to address the flow of illegal migration and associated care, transportation, and processing are prohibitive, and CBP’s budget is inadequate. CBP is forced to forgo critical mission-essential endeavors to fund the additional associated costs. Often, this requires the reprogramming of funding at the DHS level, which has a negative impact on other DHS components’ operations. This predictable cost that has to be paid from existing CBP and DHS funding levels reduces CBP’s operational readiness and ability to accomplish its diverse and critical missions to protect the American people. The next President should request a realistic budget that fully pays for these costs.
Increased funding is needed for BP to hire additional support personnel, which would relieve uniformed BP agents from administrative duties associated with processing aliens and allow them to return to their national security mission. Congress should increase funding for facility upgrades at strategic land Ports of Entry (POEs), including expanding state-of-the-art technology such as Non-Intrusive Inspection equipment. Today, the cartels exploit the aging facilities and lack of adequate technology to smuggle illicit drugs, contraband, and more successfully through our nation’s POEs.
Congress should mandate and fund additional bed space for alien detainees. ICE should be funded for a significant increase in detention space, raising the daily available number of beds to 100,000.
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The incoming Administration should spearhead an immigration legislative agenda focused on creating a merit-based immigration system that rewards highskilled aliens instead of the current system that favors extended family–based and luck-of-the-draw immigration. To that end, the diversity visa lottery should be repealed, chain migration should be ended while focusing on the nuclear family, and the existing employment visa program should be replaced with a system to award visas only to the “best and brightest.”
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I wasn't allowed to work in other countries unless I had a skill that wasn't available to them locally, which I had.
It's not a bad way of thinking unless you want to be able to take in everyone which I'm sure is the reasoning for this.
Our current immigration policy won't allow this to happen though could it? I mean that is some serious overhauling.
Internal efforts to limit employment authorization should be matched by congressional action to narrow statutory eligibility to work in the United States and mitigate unfair employment competition for U.S. citizens. The oft-abused H-1B program should be transformed into an elite program through which employers are vying to bring in only the top foreign workers at the highest wages so as not to depress American opportunities. Additionally, Congress should:
l Improve the integrity of the temporary work visa programs;
l Repeal Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations;
l Permanently authorize and make mandatory E-Verify;
and l End parole abuse by legislating specific parole standards.
USCIS should make it clear that where no court jurisdiction exists, it will not honor court decisions that seek to undermine regulatory and subregulatory efforts. Finally, USCIS still requires access to all relevant national security and law enforcement databases in the same vein as any other agency in the intelligence space. This is a key concept that should be addressed as USCIS is returned to functioning primarily as a vetting agency.
Budget USCIS is primarily fee-funded, operating on revenue derived by those who are seeking immigration benefits, work permits, and naturalization. The total agency budget requested for fiscal year (FY) 2023, including both fees and a small appropriation, is slightly less than $6 billion.8 The bulk of funds are derived from application fees through the Immigrant Examinations Fee Account. As a general principle, adjudication of applications and petitions should be paid by applicants, not American taxpayers. It is critical that any changes in the budget, even in the wake of a realigned agency combined with ICE and CBP, should retain a fee-funded model.
Given the Obama and Biden Administrations’ lack of will, fees should be increased agencywide to keep in step with inflation and the true cost of the adjudications. The incoming Administration should immediately submit a fee rule that reflects such an increase. Aside from an increase in all fees, the rule should drastically limit the availability for fee waivers and should implement a fee for asylum applications. Additionally, Congress should allow for a 10 percent acrossthe-board increase in all fees for all fee rules to account for the fact that new fee rules always lag behind budget requirements.
USCIS should strive to increase opportunities for premium processing, a benefit by which applicants can expedite their processing times. While this places time burdens on adjudicators, it provides an opportunity for a significant influx of money into the agency, which is not currently available. While simply raising fees to the necessary levels to make the agency run efficiently would be preferable, without the need for expanded premium processing, this short-term measure should be utilized, particularly if longer-term fee rules are unsuccessful.
At least until USCIS is caught up on all case backlogs, all applicants rejected for any benefit or status adjudication should be required to leave the U.S. immediately. Ordinary process can resume once all case backlogs have been adjudicated.
Finally, USCIS should pause the intake of applications in a benefit category when backlogs in that category become excessive. Once USCIS adjudicators can decrease that caseload to a manageable number, application intake should resume.
Personnel USCIS should be classified as a national security–sensitive agency, and all of its employees should be classified as holding national security–sensitive positions. Leaks must be investigated and punished as they would be in a national security agency, and the union should be decertified. Any employees who cannot accept that change and cannot conform their behavior to the standards required by such an agency should be separated. USCIS’s D.C. personnel presence should be skeletal, and agency employees with operational or security roles should be rotated out to offices throughout the United States. These USCIS employees should live and work in the communities that are most affected by their daily duties and decisions.
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Unaccompanied minors
1. Congress should repeal Section 235 of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA),9 which provides numerous immigration benefits to unaccompanied alien children and only encourages more parents to send their children across the border illegally and unaccompanied. These children too often become trafficking victims, which means that the TVPRA has failed.
2. If an alternative to repealing Section 235 of the TVPRA is necessary, the section should be amended so that all unaccompanied children, regardless of nationality, may be returned to their home countries in a safe and efficient manner. Currently, the TVPRA allows only children from contiguous countries (Canada and Mexico) to be returned while every other unaccompanied minor must be placed into a lengthy process that usually results in the minor’s landing in the custody of an illegal alien family member.
3. Congress must end the Flores Settlement Agreement by explicitly setting nationwide terms and standards for family and unaccompanied detention and housing. Such standards should focus on meeting human needs and should allow for large-scale use of temporary facilities (for example, tents).
4. Congress should amend the Homeland Security Act and portions of the TVPRA to move detention of alien children expressly from the Department of Health and Human Services to DHS.
Executive Orders l Pathways for border crossers
5. Mandate that ICE use all detention space in full compliance with Section 235 of the INA, issue weekly reports on detention capacity, and provide authority for low-level temporary capacity (for example, tents) once permanent space is full.
Enforcement
4. Rescind all memoranda limiting enforcement of immigration laws including those identifying sensitive zones.
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Trump spreads violent rhetoric by suggesting migrants should fight for sport
At two different events Saturday, the former president said he proposed a migrant league of fighters to the head of the UFC.
Former president Donald Trumpexpanded his portrayal of migrants as violent with a suggestion that they could be pitted in fights for entertainment.
During a speech to Christian conservatives on Saturday afternoon, and again at a rally in Philadelphia that evening, Trump claimed that he told his friend Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, that he should start a spinoff competition featuring migrants, as part of his riff on restricting immigration.
“Did anyone ever hear of Dana White,” Trump asked during his speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Washington. “ … I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.’ I think the migrant guy might win, that’s how tough they are. He didn’t like that idea too much.”
The remarks are part of Trump’s broader pattern of using dehumanizing language when discussing immigrants, which during this election cycle has included broadly portraying migrants as violent criminals andsaying that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/22/trump-christians-migrants-violence/
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Biden’s 2 steps on immigration could reframe how US voters see a major political problem for him
TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) — Over the course of two weeks, President Joe Biden has imposed significant restrictions on immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. while also offering potential citizenship to hundreds of thousands of people without legal status already living in the country.
The tandem actions — the first to help immigrants illegally in the U.S., the second to prevent others from entering at the border — give the president a chance to address one of the biggest vulnerabilities for his reelection campaign.
Americans give Biden poor marks for his handling of immigration and favor the approach of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, whose administration imposed hardline policies such as separating immigrant families and who now has proposed the largest deportation operation in U.S. history if elected again.
While the White House said its most recent actions aren’t meant to counterbalance each other, the election-year policy changes offer something both for voters who think border enforcement is too lenient and for those who support helping immigrants who live in the U.S. illegally. They echo the White House’s overall approach since Biden took office, using a mix of policies to restrict illegal immigration and offer help to people already in the country.
continues....
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2024/07/10/6-charged-with-stealing-300000-using-card-skimmers-in-rhode-island-massachusetts/
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Border arrests plunge 29% in June to the lowest of Biden’s presidency as asylum halt takes hold
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico plunged 29% in June, the lowest month of Joe Biden’s presidency, according to figures released Monday that provide another window on the impact of a new rule to temporarily suspend asylum.
Arrests totaled 83,536 in June, down from 117,901 in May to mark the lowest tally since January 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.
A seven-day average of daily arrests fell more than half by the end of June from Biden’s announcement on June 4 that asylum processing would be halted when daily arrests reach 2,500, which they did immediately, said Troy Miller, acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner.
“Recent border security measures have made a meaningful impact on our ability to impose consequences for those crossing unlawfully,” Miller said.
Arrests had already fallen by more than half from a record high of 250,000 in December, largely a result of increased enforcement by Mexican authorities, according to U.S. officials.
continues.....
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
NBC pummeled for ‘misleading’ story about ‘mass deportation’ and Usha Vance
NBC News writer claimed there was a heavy 'anti-immigrant sentiment' at the Republican National Convention
NBC faced backlash on Friday for a story that appeared to draw a comparison to Usha Vance, the wife of Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance and mass deportation.
"Making her RNC debut, Usha Chilukuri Vance spoke with pride about her Indian immigrant parents—in front of a convention floor peppered with signs reading "Mass Deportation Now,’" the outlet wrote on X.
The tweet linked to a story that suggested her RNC speech against the backdrop of signs drew "claims of hypocrisy" and cited experts who claimed her appearance reaffirmed the GOP’s "good immigrant, bad immigrant" narrative.
The NBCNews.com story by Sakshi Venkatraman claimed that a "heavily anti-immigrant sentiment" pervaded the convention audience.
Pawan Dhingra, a professor of American studies at Amherst College, told NBC that Vance’s Indian American wife will support the Republican Party’s rhetoric that they are not anti-immigrant.
"They just want to make sure that immigrants come and ‘adapt’ to the country properly and that they don’t threaten certain ways of life," he said.
Usha grew up in San Diego. Her parents are both legal immigrants from India.
"Good thing her parents came here legally then. You don’t hate the media enough," one X user wrote.
"You’re missing the point about the call for deportations—but you already knew that," another user chimed in. "Disgraceful. Misleading what remains of your audience on purpose. Shame on you."
One X account user named Katie, who claims she is the daughter of immigrants, called the NBCNews.com headline "absurd" and accused the outlet of deliberately conflating people who are legally entering the United States and those who cross illegally.
John Bachman, an anchor at Newsmax, called the article "clickbait" and claimed "no one" is talking about deporting legal immigrants.
Usha spoke out about her upbringing during her RNC speech.
"My background is very different from JD’s. I grew up in San Diego, in a middle-class community, with two loving parents, both immigrants from India, and a wonderful sister," she said. "That JD and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry, is a testament to this great country."
Usha noted that her husband has worked to accommodate her vegetarian diet and has also learned to cook Indian food for her parents.
"It’s hard to imagine a more powerful example of the American dream," she said.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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Pretty clear what the audience wants:
Trump White House was warned sanctions on Venezuela could fuel migration
The internal debate over the policy underscores how U.S. financial measures can sometimes lead to unintended consequences.
The Trump White House was warned that harsh sanctions on Venezuela could accelerate that country’s economic collapse and speed an exodus of millions of migrants to neighboring nations, according to three current and former U.S. government officials.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis delivered the classified assessments — part of a broader examination of how Venezuela’s economic implosion could affect migration in Latin America — to the White House National Security Council and the top two DHS officials in at least four reports between 2017 and 2019, the people said.
The Trump administration nevertheless imposed some of the harshest economic penalties in U.S. history on Venezuela in response to documented human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings and corruption by the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro. The sanctions are fiercely defended by proponents, who say they were a necessary response to one of the most brutal crackdowns on civilians in two decades.
Today, however, Maduro remains in power, and a surge in Venezuelan immigrants has emerged as a flash point in the U.S. presidential election. Though Venezuelan mass migration to the United States only began after President Biden took office, concern among Trump officials about the sanctions’ potential effects, including on migration, was more extensive than previously known, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former U.S. officials.
“This is the point I made at the time: I said the sanctions were going to grind the Venezuelan economy into dust and have huge human consequences, one of which would be out-migration,” said Thomas Shannon, who served as undersecretary for political affairs at the State Department under President Donald Trump.
“The sanctions clearly helped generate faster out-migration,” Shannon said. “And you knew it was only going to be a matter of time before these people decided to migrate north.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/07/26/venezuela-crisis-immigration-us-sanctions-trump/
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