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This Is What Trump’s Deportation Campaign Really Looks Like

Mother Jones

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Since February, dozens of deportation raids have been carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as Donald Trump has kicked his immigration crackdown into high gear. Immigrants—many of whom have lived and worked in the country for decades—have been arrested at home, at work, and at routine check-ins with ICE officials. Some arrests have sparked protests, while others have gone relatively unnoticed.

Here are some of the most outrageous arrests ICE has made so far this year:

The DACA recipient arrested after speaking out against ICE

Twenty-two-year-old Daniela Vargas was arrested by ICE officers in Jackson, Mississippi, earlier this month—shortly after giving a speech in which she publicly criticized ICE for detaining her brother and father. Vargas, who arrived in the United States from Argentina with her family when she was seven, was one of thousands of young immigrants protected from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was started by President Obama in 2012. (Trump has been reluctant to criticize the program or so-called Dreamers, leading to criticism from immigration hardliners.)

Vargas was granted DACA status in 2014, but her status expired in November. In February, she applied to renew her status, and not long after her father and brother were detained at their home. Weeks later, Vargas spoke out about her relatives’ arrest at a news conference. Shortly afterward, ICE agents pulled over the car Vargas was riding in. “What we know they said is, ‘You know who we are, you know why we’re here,'” said Greisa Martinez Rosas, the director of United We Dream, an immigrants’ rights group. They arrested Vargas. “Because her DACA was expired,” Martinez Rosas said, “ICE agents played a game of ‘gotcha’ with her life.” Vargas was released from ICE custody last Friday, after a week in detention.

The brain tumor patient detained at the hospital

There are several places that immigration officials consider sensitive—schools, churches, hospitals, and ceremonies like funerals and weddings—where they typically refrain from conducting enforcement actions. In the case of Sara Beltrán Hernández, ICE agents skirted this informal policy in late February by arresting her in the Texas hospital where she was receiving treatment for a brain tumor. Beltrán Hernández was transferred to a detention facility in Alvardo, Texas, where she had previously been held after spending 16 months while waiting for a judge to rule on her asylum request. Beltrán Hernández claimed she had fled El Salvador in late 2015 to escape domestic abuse and the gang violence that has devastated the country.

Earlier this month, after a petition from her attorney and a social-media campaign led by Amnesty International, she was granted bond, allowing her to reunite with her family and seek medical attention while her case is resolved.

The transgender woman detained at her domestic-abuse court hearing

Ervin Gonzalez, an undocumented transgender woman from Mexico, was arrested in a courthouse in El Paso, Texas, in mid-February, just minutes after leaving a hearing in her domestic-violence case. Gonzalez, who had filed police reports for three incidents of alleged abuse, had been granted a protective order against her accused abuser. “We were stunned that ICE would go to these lengths for someone that is not a violent criminal,” Jo Anne Bernal, the county attorney, told a local news station after the arrest. “I cannot recall an instance where ICE agents have gone into the domestic-violence court, specifically looking for a victim of domestic violence.” An ICE spokesperson said the agency had been tipped off about the woman’s whereabouts by another law enforcement agency, and that she had already been deported six times. She is currently being held in a local detention facility under a federal ICE detainer.

The father whose arrest was filmed by his sobbing daughter

In another side step of ICE’s sensitive-location policy, immigration officials arrested Rómulo Avelica-González just a block away from his daughter’s school in Los Angeles. Avelica-González and his wife were headed there to drop off their daughter for the day when ICE officials pulled over their car. His 13-year-old daughter, who cried through the ordeal, captured the arrest on video. Avelica-González came to the United States from Mexico in the early 1990s and has since raised four daughters here, all US citizens. He is the sole financial provider for his family, according to his supporters. His family has attained a stay on his deportation from an appeals court.

In a statement, the union that represents teachers in Los Angeles slammed ICE for the arrest, saying it would “lead to students staying home, disrupting their education,” and that children had a right to an education “free from fear and intimidation.” Avelica-González was detained because he had “multiple prior criminal convictions,” ICE officials said, including a DUI from 2009, and an outstanding order of removal from 2011.

The Phoenix mother deported for working illegally

Guadalupe García de Rayos, a 35-year-old mother of two US citizens, was deported in early February. She had been detained during her annual check-in with ICE officials, which she was required to attend because of a years-old conviction for using a fake Social Security number to work. Because her felony conviction was nonviolent, García de Rayos was considered low priority for deportation under the Obama administration. But under ICE’s new prioritization guidelines, García de Rayos’ criminal record made her a priority for deportation. She was taken into custody at her check-in February and deported days later.

The Akron father who was forced to deport himself

Leonardo Valbuena, 43, was arrested at his regular check-in with immigration officials in Akron, Ohio, in February. He had traveled to the United States from Colombia with his wife and two children on a temporary visitor’s visa in 2006 and told local reporters that he had subsequently applied for political asylum. Valbuena, who worked as a carpenter in Cleveland, had been issued a Social Security number for tax purposes, a work permit, and a driver’s license as he awaited a decision—but in the meantime, he claimed, his visa expired. At his check-in in February, Valbuena was arrested and given the option to leave the country voluntarily in exchange for not being criminally prosecuted for overstaying his visa. He was given a few weeks to gather himself to go back to Colombia, and his wife and children decided to leave with him. In an interview with a local news station before he left for Colombia, Valbuena said, “It’s hard to explain how my life changed on that day.”

The pregnant mother of four

Lilian Cardona-Pérez, 33, came to the United States legally from Guatemala in 1997 at age 13. She seured a work permit, has been employed since—currently at a Mexican restaurant and as a housekeeper—and has raised four children with her husband. The couple is expecting a fifth. But earlier this month, Cardona-Pérez attended her regular check-in with ICE officials in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she was told she would be deported in 30 days. Cardona-Pérez’s family has not made public why she is being deported, but they said ICE made an allegation against her that, they claim, is untrue. She has an immigration hearing scheduled this week, but if deported, she’d leave behind her family and be left to raise her fifth child alone. “I have no family there. I have no home,” Cardona-Perez said of Guatemala at a prayer vigil last weekend. “There is no place I could go.”

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This Is What Trump’s Deportation Campaign Really Looks Like

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How Trump’s Deportation Plans Could Damage Our Economy

Mother Jones

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In 2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order establishing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allows undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children to apply for two-year work permits and exemptions from deportation. They initially were able to renew their DACA status for a second two-year period, which was later expanded to three years. The immigration plan that President-elect Donald Trump issued during his campaign for presidency calls for ending DACA, describing it as “illegal executive amnesty.” Now, a new report by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center outlines the possible economic effects that could occur if the Trump administration follows through on its proposed elimination of DACA.

As of June 2016, DACA has granted thousands of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children the ability to get jobs legally, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. Of the 741,546 people in the program, 87 percent are currently employed. A June 2015 survey of the economic and educational effects of DACA by a political scientist from the University of California-San Diego and the National Immigration Law Center showed that DACA both improved the lives of recipients and was good for the US economy. The higher wages that DACA recipients earn have translated into increased tax revenue and economic growth for the United States. According to a September 2016 study by the Center for American Progress, ending DACA would mean a $433 billion reduction of the nation’s GDP over a decade.

This week, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a national nonprofit resource center that provides legal trainings and other resources for immigrant rights, has published a report using data on the program until June, 2016 that outlines the possible economic effects on Social Security and Medicare, and the costs to employers, if DACA is completely abolished.

The total contributions to Social Security and Medicare would be reduced by a little more than $24 billion over a decade—$19.9 billion would be lost to Social Security and there would be a $4.6 billion drop to the overall contributions to the Federal Insurance Contributions Act. (FICA requires contributions from both employees and employers for Social Security and Medicare, so the reduction of a significant number of employees overall would also mean a drastic drop in contributions.) Also, employers could potentially suffer. About 645,145 DACA recipients would lose their employment authorization, and those layoffs would cost employers at least $3.4 billion in recruitment and training costs for replacing those employees.

Trump has not backed off the idea of ending DACA. But he told Time that he would have a plan for undocumented immigrants “that’s going to make people happy and proud.”

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How Trump’s Deportation Plans Could Damage Our Economy

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Conservatives Crippled Obama’s Plan to Help Undocumented Families. This Could Save It.

Mother Jones

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When a district judge single-handedly blocked President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration last year, the situation looked bleak for millions of immigrants across the country who faced deportation. Now, a new lawsuit seeks to challenge that judge’s decision.

Obama’s immigration actions, announced in November 2014, would have shielded up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, including parents of US citizens and green card holders, and granted them temporary work authorization. The orders also would have expanded a similar program for young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.

But last year, after 26 states challenged the executive actions in court, a district judge in Texas issued an injunction blocking their implementation across the country. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, whose justices remained deadlocked and failed to issue a ruling, which meant Obama’s immigration programs remained blocked and families could not use them to apply for relief from deportation.

In the new lawsuit, filed Thursday in a federal court in New York, lawyers from three immigrant rights groups argue that the Texas judge lacked the authority to suspend Obama’s new programs nationwide, including in states that were not party to the Texas lawsuit because they did not want to suspend the programs. “There’s no reason the injunction from Texas should block progress in New York and similar states,” Javier H. Valdes, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

The suit was filed on behalf of Martín Batalla Vidal, an undocumented 25-year-old medical student in New York who came to the United States illegally from Mexico when he was seven years old. In February 2015, Batalla Vidal received three years of work authorization under a program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that had been expanded by Obama’s executive actions. But because the Texas judge issued the injunction, Batalla Vidal’s work authorization was reduced to two years—the maximum period allowed by the DACA before Obama expanded it. The lawsuit argues that the injunction should not apply to residents in New York, a state that was never a party to the Texas lawsuit and that falls outside the jurisdiction of the district court in Texas. If the New York judge agrees, it could affect not only immigrants like Batalla Vidal who are applying to the DACA program, but also undocumented parents who are applying for relief under a different program.

“It’s hard to know at this early juncture what this lawsuit will achieve,” said Melissa Crow, legal director at American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration nonprofit in Washington, DC. “But the nationwide scope of the injunction…is way beyond the court’s jurisdiction.”

Batalla Vidal’s lawyers say the injunction has affected the academic and professional goals of thousands of immigrants across the country. “When I first filed for DACA, I was excited to get a three-year work permit and move forward with my life,” said Batalla Vidal. “That was taken away by one judge in Texas…I’m filing this lawsuit for myself and the thousands of others like me who have been wronged by this judge’s decision.”

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Conservatives Crippled Obama’s Plan to Help Undocumented Families. This Could Save It.

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3 Ways Obama’s Immigration Executive Action Changes Everything (and One Way It Doesn’t)

Mother Jones

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The details of President Barack Obama’s much-rumored, much-debated executive action on immigration have been leaked to the press, and the broad outline, according to Fox News and the New York Times, includes deportation relief for upwards of 5 million people.

Republicans are already lining up to block the White House’s plans, and Obama’s successor could go ahead and reverse course in 2017, anyway. Still, here are three reported provisions that could have a dramatic impact on the lives of the United States’ 11 million undocumented immigrants:

1. Expansion of DACA, the program for DREAMers: Back in 2012, a Department of Homeland Security directive known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) extended deportation relief to those young immigrants who came to the United States before their 16th birthday and went on to graduate from high school or serve in the US military. As Vox‘s Dara Lind has reported, the program has been a success for the roughly 600,000 immigrants who received deferred action by June 2014, although just as many are eligible but haven’t yet applied. According to the Fox News report, Obama’s executive action would move the cutoff arrival date from June 2007 to January 1, 2010, and remove the age limit (31 as of June ’12); a Migration Policy Institute (MPI) report from September detailed how changes to the initial plan could make hundreds of thousands of immigrants DACA-eligible:

“Executive Action for Unauthorized Immigrants,” Migration Policy Institute, 2014

2. Relief for the undocumented parents of US citizen children: According to the Times, a key part of the executive action “will allow many parents of children who are American citizens or legal residents to obtain legal work documents and no longer worry about being discovered, separated from their families and sent away,” a move that would legalize anywhere from 2.5-3.3 million people. The Huffington Post reported in June that more than 72,000 parents of US-born children were deported in fiscal year 2013 alone; of those, nearly 11,000 had no criminal convictions. (One 2013 report estimated that 4.5 million US-born kids have at least one undocumented parent.)

3. Elimination of mandatory fingerprinting program: Under Secure Communities, or S-Comm, immigrants booked into local jails have their fingerprints run through a Homeland Security database to check their legal status. (If they’re unauthorized, they can be held by local authorities until the feds come pick them up.) The program, which began under President George W. Bush and was greatly expanded under Obama, has long come under fire for quickly pushing people toward detention and potential deportation, as well as for contributing to racial profiling and even the detention of thousands of US citizens. According to one 2013 report, S-Comm led to the deportation of more than 300,000 immigrants from fiscal years 2009 to 2013.

There are other parts to Obama’s plan, including hundreds of thousands of new tech visas and even pay raises for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. Still, given this year’s border crisis, it’s notable that the president’s plan seems to make little to no mention of the folks who provoked it: the unaccompanied children and so-called “family units” (often mothers traveling with small kids) who came in huge numbers from Central America and claimed, in many cases, to be fleeing violence of some sort.

The administration has been particularly adamant about fast-tracking the deportation of those family unit apprehensions, whose numbers jumped from 14,855 in fiscal 2013 to 68,445 in fiscal 2014, a 361 percent increase. Meanwhile, ICE has renewed the controversial practice of family detention (a complaint has already been filed regarding sexual abuse in the new Karnes City, Texas, facility) and will soon open the largest immigration detention facility in the country, a 2,400-bed family center in Dilley, Texas—just as Obama starts rolling out what many immigration hardliners will no doubt attack as an unconstitutional amnesty.

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3 Ways Obama’s Immigration Executive Action Changes Everything (and One Way It Doesn’t)

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John Boehner May Plan to Sue Obama Over Immigration

Mother Jones

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Fine. Washington is consumed with trivia. So let’s talk trivia. A couple of weeks ago, when John Boehner announced he would sue President Obama over his refusal to “faithfully execute the laws of our country,” he listed several issues of particular concern:

On matters ranging from health care and energy to foreign policy and education, President Obama has repeatedly run an end-around on the American people and their elected legislators, straining the boundaries of the solemn oath he took on Inauguration Day.

At the time, I wrote that I was surprised Boehner didn’t include immigration in this list, since this is one of the tea party’s biggest hot buttons. Was this just an oversight, or was it deliberate? Well, on Sunday, Boehner wrote an op-ed for CNN that said this:

The President’s habit of ignoring the law as written hurts our economy and jobs even more. Washington taxes and regulations always make it harder for private sector employers to meet payrolls, invest in new initiatives and create jobs — but how can those employers plan, invest and grow when the laws are changing on the President’s whim at any moment?

I don’t take the House legal action against the President lightly. We’ve passed legislation to address this problem (twice), but Senate Democrats, characteristically, have ignored it.

Wait a second. Which problem? What is Boehner talking about here? Brian Beutler, who apparently reads tea leaves better than I do, suspected Boehner may have been signaling an interest in immigration, so he called Boehner’s office to ask about that:

Boehner didn’t name the two bills in the article. But his staff confirms that they are the ENFORCE the Law Act and the Faithful Execution of the Law Act, both of which were drafted with an eye toward reversing DACA. The former would expedite House and Senate lawsuits against the executive branch for failing to enforce the law. The latter would compel government officials to justify instances of non-enforcement.

DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals directive, which Obama signed in 2012. It instructs immigration officials to stop trying to deport children who arrived in the United States at an early age and are still undocumented.

This is potentially interesting. If you’d asked me, I would have said that Boehner’s best bet for the first couple of lawsuits would be Obama’s unilateral extension of both the employer mandate and the individual mandate in Obamacare. Politically it’s a winner because it’s Obamacare, and the tea party hates Obamacare. Legally, it’s a winner because Boehner has a pretty good case that Obama overstepped his authority.

But if Beutler is right, he may instead be targeting DACA, the so-called mini-DREAM Act. This is peculiar. True, the tea party hates it, so it has that going for it. However, it was a very popular action with the rest of the country. It was also, needless to say, very popular with Hispanics, a demographic group that Republicans covet. And legally, this puts Boehner on tricky ground too. Presidents have pretty broad authority to decide federal law-enforcement and prosecutorial priorities, so Obama will be able to make a pretty good case for himself. It’s not a slam-dunk case, and it’s certainly possible he could lose. But he sure seems to be on more solid ground than with the Obamacare mandate delays.

We’ll see. ENFORCE and FELA both cover more ground than just DACA, so we’re still in the dark about what exactly Boehner plans to sue Obama over. Mini-DREAM sure seems like a loser to me, though. Do Republicans really want to put a final nail in the coffin of their efforts to expand their reach in the Hispanic community? This would do it.

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John Boehner May Plan to Sue Obama Over Immigration

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