US law entitles immigrant children to an education. Some conservatives say that should change

BOSTON (AP) — At a sparsely attended meeting last year, the Saugus Public School Committee approved a new admissions policy, it said, to streamline the process of enrolling students. But critics say the policy — including stringent requests for proof of “legal” residency and “criminal and civil penalties” for violators — has another goal: keeping immigrants out of the small school district outside Boston. The debate over welcoming immigrant children into America’s schools extends far beyond the Boston suburbs. Advocates fear it could figure more prominently into a national agenda if Donald Trump wins a second term in the White House. Conservative politicians in states such as Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee are questioning whether immigrants without legal residency should have the right to a public education, raising the possibility of challenges to another landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision. Advertisement For decades, children of families living in the country illegally have had the right to attend public school based on a 1982 Supreme Court decision known as Plyler v. Doe. In a 5-4 vote, justices held it is unconstitutional to deny children an education based on their immigration status. Related Stories Asylum-seeker to film star: Guinean's unusual journey highlights France's arguments over immigration Asylum-seeker to film star: Guinean's unusual journey highlights France's arguments over immigration Image Supreme Court opens door to Texas online journalist’s lawsuit over her 2017 arrest Image Ted Cruz and Colin Allred to meet in the only debate in the Texas Senate race The new Saugus policy requires new students to share immigration records and says children must be “legal residents whose actual residence is in Saugus,” where the share of students who are learning English has nearly tripled to 31% over the last decade. Families must also complete a town census, sign a residency statement and provide occupancy and identity documents. Civil rights attorneys say the requirements are onerous and violate federal law by disproportionately harming students from immigrant families, who may lack many of the required documents, regardless of whether they’re living in the country legally. The chairman of the Saugus school committee, Vincent Serino, said during the meeting the policy is “tightening up” of existing residency rules and is not intended to keep out immigrants. Advertisement But a Nicaraguan woman said it took six months for her to enroll her 8-year-old child because of the document requirements. The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear her child would face retaliation, said the town wouldn’t accept her lease and her complaints to the school were rebuffed. Growing attempts to undermine Plyler v. Doe should be taken seriously, immigration experts say, pointing to the conservative-dominated Supreme Court’s readiness to overturn longstanding legal precedent, notably on abortion rights and affirmative action in higher education. Trump, a Republican, has made immigration a central part of his 2024 campaign, vowing to stage the largest deportation operation in U.S. history if elected. He refers to immigrants as “animals” and “killers” and has spoken of immigrant children bringing disease into classrooms. A photo displayed at a recent Trump rally showed a crowded classroom with the words “Open border = packed classrooms.” There is no disputing immigrant populations have strained schools in many communities, contributing to crowded classrooms and forcing teachers to adapt to large numbers of Spanish-speaking students. Advertisement But until recently, the idea of denying children an education would have been considered “too far to the right and too far fringe,” said Tom K. Wong, director of the U.S. immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego. “But now we are seeing a political climate where previously fringe policies are becoming mainstream.” Earlier this year, the conservative Heritage Foundation urged states to pass legislation requiring public schools to charge tuition to families living in the country illegally. Doing so, it said in a policy brief, would provoke a lawsuit that likely would “lead the Supreme Court to reconsider its ill-considered Plyler v. Doe decision.” Over the summer, Oklahoma’s education superintendent, Ryan Walters, announced his agency would be issuing guidance to districts about gathering information on the “costs and burden” of illegal immigration to school districts. Advertisement “The federal government has failed to secure our borders. Our schools are suffering over this,” Walters said. Several school districts have pushed back, saying they will not check students’ immigration status. “Federal law is quite clear on this topic, as it prohibits districts from asking students or their families about their immigration status or to request documentation of their citizenship,” said Chris Payne, a spokesperson for Union Public Schools in Tulsa, outlining a common interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling. In Tennessee, a proposal for universal school vouchers by Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, led to debate over whether immigrant students should be excluded. The idea appealed to many of the Legislature’s conservative members, but some worried the exclusion would spark legal challenges. Ultimately, Lee abandoned his voucher proposal after several aspects of the plan failed to gain support. Advertisement The Saugus school committee in Massachusetts approved its admissions policy at a committee meeting in August 2023, two days after Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency over the state’s migrant crisis. At the time, Healey said nearly 5,600 families — many of them immigrants from Haiti and Venezuela — were living in state shelters, up from about 3,100 families the year before. Serino, the school committee chairman, said the group began considering updating its residency policy more than a year before migrants became an issue in the state. He said the policy requires documents like a signed landlord affidavit or property tax bill, “simple stuff that everyone has.” “We haven’t hurt anyone and no one has come to us — no migrant, no parent has come to us to complain about the policy,” Serino said. Local legal advocates say the policy has been a hurdle for at least two immigrant families trying to enroll in Saugus schools. Lawyers For Civil Rights and the group Massachusetts Advocates for Children said it took their intervention to get the students into the school. “The policy itself is illegal,” said Oren Sellstrom, litigation director for Lawyers for Civil Rights. “Schools should be welcoming (all) children who are in the district and educating them.” In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said in 2022 that Plyler v. Doe should be challenged and the federal government should pay for the public education of students who are not legal residents. He drew backlash from immigrant advocates and the White House. The following year, Republican lawmakers in Texas introduced several unsuccessful bills aimed at limiting non-citizen children from enrolling in public schools. In June, the idea also was included in the Republican Party of Texas platform. The party’s priorities for the upcoming Legislative season include “ending all subsidies and public services, including in-state college tuition and enrollment in public schools, for illegal aliens, except for emergency medical care.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Federal appeals court to hear latest Texas-led challenge to DACA

WASHINGTON — The future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program remains uncertain with another federal appeals court hearing scheduled for Thursday. DACA has allowed hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, to live and work in the country. After more than a decade, those Dreamers are no longer kids. What You Need To Know The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday will consider oral arguments in the latest Texas-led challenge to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program In 2012, President Barack Obama announced the DACA program, which has offered protection from deportation to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, and ever since it has been the subject of major legal battles Attorney General Ken Paxton argues the federal government overstepped its authority and has put a burden on states like Texas In September, at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., Juliana Macedo do Nascimento attended a panel that discussed the importance of creating safer communities for Latinos. Later in the month, Macedo do Nascimento expressed support for new legislation to address the root causes of migration and work on building relationships with staff members on Capitol Hill. Macedo do Nascimento is the deputy director of federal advocacy for the group United We Dream. She is dedicated to enhancing the rights and dignity of immigrants in the U.S., a cause that holds personal meaning for the 38-year-old. “I am originally from Brazil, and came to the U.S. at 14-years-old in 2001 so, and I grew up undocumented,” Macedo do Nascimento told Spectrum News 1. “It was so much easier to make a living out here than it was back home. So, my mom and my dad decided that we should come even, you know, if that meant they left everyone that they knew behind,” she continued. “They did that for us.” Macedo do Nascimento and her family moved to Orange County, California. “It was a really difficult transition. I don’t know many 14-year-olds who want to move countries where they don’t speak the language, or they don’t know anybody,” she said. In 2012, when Macedo do Nascimento was 26 years old, President Barack Obama announced the DACA program. It offered protection from deportation to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. “This morning, Secretary (Janet) Napolitano announced new actions my administration will take to mend our nation’s immigration policy, to make it more fair, more efficient and more just specifically for certain young people,” Obama said on Jun. 15, 2012 when he announced the program from the White House Rose Garden. “It was life changing, possibly lifesaving,” Macedo do Nascimento said. “I could see myself working in the fields that I was passionate about. I didn’t have to clean houses anymore. I didn’t have to, you know, work in the kitchen at a fast food place anymore.” For nearly a decade, Macedo do Nascimento worked to put herself through college in California. It was during that time that she established a connection with student organizers and persuaded a financial aid director to make tuition requirements more lenient. “We changed policy, and it was amazing to me. It was like I had lived 26 years of my life being quiet and keeping my head down, scared, and all of a sudden I didn’t have to be and I didn’t get in trouble, and I didn’t get deported,” Macedo do Nascimento said. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is amazing.’ This is what I want to do.” For the past 12 years, DACA has been the subject of major legal battles. Texas has led a coalition of Republican-led states attempting to end the program. Attorney General Ken Paxton argues the federal government overstepped its authority and has put a burden on states like Texas. In a statement from 2022, when Paxton renewed efforts to dismantle DACA, he said, “The Biden Administration is once again attempting to ignore the rule of law by abusing executive authority to implement its own version of mass amnesty.” DACA’s long legal saga continues on Thursday when the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans hears Texas’ latest challenge. Attorneys arguing in favor of DACA say Texas cannot show any injury because DACA recipients pay taxes and contribute to their communities. “DACA recipients only bring benefits to states in which they live, and if a state is not injured, then it lacks what we call, ‘standing,’ to sue,” said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Meanwhile, Congress has failed to agree on providing permanent protection or pathways to citizenship for DACA recipients. “I have a lot of sympathy for these young people, because we don’t hold children responsible for the mistakes their parents made, but this is directly a result of President Obama doing something he knew he didn’t have the authority to do, and the consequences are pretty predictable,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Spectrum News. With Congress deadlocked and the legal uncertainty looming, DACA recipients like Macedo do Nascimento have been reapplying to renew their status every two years. She said it has been stressful to feel like she has been living in a “two-year increment.” “We are your neighbors. We are part of your communities. We are your family, and even if you don’t know that we are, you should realize that, that there’s no way to send us all away,” Macedo do Nascimento said. “This country needs us, too. We are part of it now.” “We really need Congress to act, because it’s the only way that we’ll have a real solution to this problem,” she said. A 5th circuit ruling could take months and, depending on what the judges decide, the ruling could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Illegal crossings at U.S. southern border reach lowest point of Biden presidency

The number of migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally at the southern border reached the lowest point of President Biden's administration in September, three months into his crackdown on asylum claims, according to internal Department of Homeland Security statistics obtained by CBS News. In September, U.S. Border Patrol agents recorded nearly 54,000 apprehensions of migrants who crossed into the country between legal entry points along the border with Mexico, the government figures show. It's a smaller figure than the previous Biden-era low in July, when Border Patrol processed roughly 56,000 migrants who crossed the border without authorization. Border Patrol's tally of migrant apprehensions in September is the lowest number recorded by the agency since August 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions countries enacted in response to it led to a sharp decrease in migration to the U.S. southern border. It's also a 78% drop from a record high in December, when illegal border crossings soared to 250,000. U.S. immigration officials processed another 48,000 migrants in September at legal border entry points, known as ports of entry, according to the internal federal data. Most of them secured appointments to enter the U.S. via a phone app the Biden administration has transformed into the main gateway into the American asylum system. Illegal crossings along U.S. southern border over the past year The numbers denote Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants who entered the U.S. between official ports of entry along the southern border. Line chart showing the number of illegal crossings along the southern border in the past year. Jul ’23 Oct ’23 Jan ’24 Apr ’24 Jul ’24 0 20K 40K 60K 80K 100K 120K 140K 160K 180K 200K 220K 240K 54,000 Aug ’23181,054 Aug ’23181,054 Note: September figure is preliminary. Chart: Taylor Johnston / CBS NewsSource: U.S. Customs and Border Protection September's numbers show migration to the U.S.-Mexico border has plateaued following a precipitous drop at the start of the summer, when President Biden invoked sweeping presidential powers to disqualify most of those entering the country illegally from asylum. In July, August and September, Border Patrol agents at the southern border recorded between 54,000 and 58,000 migrant apprehensions each month. The video player is currently playing an ad. Designed to be temporary, Mr. Biden's move to sharply restrict asylum is likely to remain in place indefinitely after his administration made the policy's deactivation threshold harder to meet last week. Vice President Kamala Harris has also vowed to continue the strict measure if elected president and make it even more difficult to lift. The Biden administration's support for drastic limits on asylum reflect a broader rightward shift on border policy by Democrats that would have been unthinkable in 2020, when the party faced pressure to reverse the Trump administration's hardline immigration rules. It's a shift that has occurred amid a marked increase in support for tough immigration measures among the American public. The dramatic reduction in illegal border crossings this year, however, has given Democrats a much-needed political win on immigration ahead of the presidential election next month. Former President Donald Trump, who is pledging to carry out mass deportations if voters return him to the White House, has sought to make immigration a defining issue of the 2024 race for the president. With September's tally, fiscal year 2024 saw the lowest level in unlawful border crossings under the Biden administration. Border Patrol recorded over 1.5 million migrant apprehensions in fiscal year 2024, compared to a record high of 2.2 million in fiscal year 2022. While the Mexican government's efforts to interdict those trekking north have also played a major role in the lower number of migrant arrivals along the U.S. border this year, American officials have credited Mr. Biden's stringent asylum rules in June for the current four-year low in illegal immigration levels. During its first three years in office, the Biden administration struggled to respond to an unprecedented migrant influx that was, in great part, fueled by arrivals from far-flung countries, including nations like Venezuela where the U.S. cannot deport migrants on a regular basis due to frosty diplomatic relations. In many cases, migrants were released into the U.S. with notices to appear in immigration court simply because the government did not have the resources and personnel to vet their asylum claims at the border. But since Mr. Biden's partial ban on asylum claims took effect, there has been an 80% drop in migrant releases, a senior Customs and Border Protection official told CBS News, requesting anonymity to speak candidly about migration trends. The U.S. government has long viewed migrant releases as a "pull" factor that fuels migration to the southern border, alongside economic conditions and other "push" factors in migrants' home countries. More than 70% of migrant adults and families apprehended by Border Patrol have been deported from the U.S. since Mr. Biden's asylum crackdown began, up from 25% in May, according to DHS data. Since the policy took effect, the U.S. has carried out over 121,000 returns and deportations of migrants. The asylum restrictions do not apply to unaccompanied children or those with acute medical conditions. It also exempts more than 1,000 migrants who enter the U.S. at legal border entry points each day under the phone app-powered appointment system. The Biden administration has paired that process and other legal migration channels, including a program that allows migrants from four countries to fly to the U.S. if they have American sponsors, with its asylum restrictions to deter unlawful crossings through a carrots-and-sticks strategy. While it has arguably been responsible for ending, at least temporarily, large-scale illegal crossings and chaotic images at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Biden administration's asylum crackdown has been derided as an election gimmick by Republican lawmakers and a draconian policy by migrant advocates, who are challenging the policy in court. In a conference hosted by the Migration Policy Institute last week, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas challenged those critical of the asylum restrictions to find an "alternative proposal," calling the situation at the border before the policy change "unworkable." "We have to understand the fact that the American public does want, does expect and does demand the delivery of order," Mayorkas said, adding later, "And I would respectfully submit that, at least in particular times over the past three years, we haven't had order." For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Immigrants brought to the US as children ask judges to keep protections against deportation

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Immigrants who grew up in the United States after being brought here illegally as children were among close to 200 demonstrators who gathered Thursday outside a federal courthouse in New Orleans, where three appellate judges heard arguments over the Biden administration’s policy shielding them from deportation. At stake in the long legal battle playing out at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the future of about 535,000 people who have long-established lives in the U.S., even though they don’t hold citizenship or legal residency status and they could eventually be deported. “I live here. I work here. I own a home here,” said María Rocha-Carrillo, 37. She traveled from her home in New York to join the demonstration and was on the front row of a packed courtroom as the hearing started. She said she was brought to the U.S. at age 3 when family members immigrated from Mexico, where she was born. She could not get a teaching certificate until the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program allowed her to build a career in education. Advertisement Opponents of DACA weren’t in evidence among the demonstrators. But opponents, chiefly Texas and eight other Republican-dominated states, have said in court arguments and legal briefs that they incur hundreds of millions of dollars in health care, education and other costs when immigrants are allowed to remain in the country illegally. Related Stories An appeals court has revived a challenge to President Biden's Medicare drug price reduction program An appeals court has revived a challenge to President Biden's Medicare drug price reduction program A Texas county has told an appeals court it has a right to cull books on sex, gender and racism A Texas county has told an appeals court it has a right to cull books on sex, gender and racism Young climate activists ask US Supreme Court to revive their lawsuit against the government Young climate activists ask US Supreme Court to revive their lawsuit against the government As the hourlong hearing opened, Brian Boynton, arguing for the Biden administration, said the states have no standing to sue because they have demonstrated no harm caused by DACA. He said his argument is bolstered by Supreme Court decisions made since the 5th Circuit heard and rejected that contention in 2022. Judge Jerry Smith pushed back. “I don’t understand how you get anywhere with that argument,” Smith said, stating that the Supreme Court precedents don’t contain unequivocal language that would require the appeals court to back off its previous finding. Advertisement Judge Stephen Higginson seemed more willing to consider the argument. “A dramatic or sea change in analysis allows us to follow the Supreme Court instead of errant 5th Circuit law?” Stephenson asked. “That’s correct,” replied Boynton. Judges on the panel gave no indication when or how they will rule. The case will almost certainly wind up at the Supreme Court. Former President Barack Obama first put the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in place in 2012, citing inaction by Congress on legislation aimed at giving those brought to the U.S. as youngsters a path to legal status and citizenship. Years of litigation followed. President Joe Biden renewed the program in hopes of winning court approval. But in September 2023, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Houston said the executive branch had overstepped its authority. Hanen barred the government from approving new applications, but left it intact for existing recipients, known as “Dreamers,” during appeals. Boynton asked the 5th Circuit judges to keep that policy while appeals continue if they rule against DACA. Advertisement Defenders of the policy argue that Congress has given the executive branch’s Department of Homeland Security authority to set immigration policy, and that the states challenging the program have no basis to sue. “They cannot identify any harms flowing from DACA,” Nina Perales, vice president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said at a news conference this week. The Texas Attorney General’s Office did not respond to an emailed interview request. The other states challenging DACA are Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas and Mississippi. Among those states’ allies in court briefs is the Immigration Reform Law Institute. “Congress has repeatedly refused to legalize DACA recipients, and no administration can take that step in its place,” the group’s executive director, Dale L. Wilcox, said in a statement this year. The panel hearing the case consists of Smith, nominated to the 5th Circuit by former President Ronald Reagan; Edith Brown Clement, nominated by former President George W. Bush; and Higginson, nominated by Obama. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Calls for Clarity From Harris Campaign on Future of Migrant Protections

Immigration advocacy groups, fighting two lawsuits from Republican states over protections for Dreamers and undocumented relatives, called for clarity and reassurance from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris Tuesday. Speaking ahead of a hearing on a challenge to DACA scheduled for Thursday, the groups said Biden and Harris had shown support for two of the biggest steps forward in immigration reform in recent years, but needed to be more vocal on opposing the GOP-backed suits. Another case, over Biden's program to offer a clearer path to green cards of undocumented spouses and children, will not be heard until at least November 5, which happens to be election day. "What binds these cases together is they are both a malicious effort to end programs that provide a legal path for long-settled immigrants in the U.S.," Vanessa Cardenas, executive director at America's Voice said. "It is a cynical and cruel effort to ensure as many people as possible are deportable, if and when Donald Trump takes office and when the elements of Project 2025 and his mass deportation efforts begin to be carried out." Kamala Harris with a Dreamer in 2020 In this June 14, 2019, file photo, then-Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., left, speaks with Dreamer Astrid Silva, right, at an immigration roundtable at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in Las Vegas.... More AP Photo/John Locher, File Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign for comment via email Tuesday afternoon. Sponsored Content Equinox gives you the room to do what you like when you like By Chevrolet Ongoing fight to reinstate DACA Over one million people could be affected by the outcome of two suits, litigators, advocates, and impacted individuals told reporters Tuesday, ahead of a hearing in the case Texas v. United States in New Orleans. A hearing in a similar case, Texas v. DHS, arguing against Biden's Keeping Families Together program, was due to take place on Thursday as well. Read more Immigration Donald Trump Misses Deadline to Participate in CNN Debate Donald Trump Closing Gap on Kamala Harris in Top Election Forecast Kamala Harris Gets '60 Minutes' Grilling She Has Avoided Elsewhere Donald Trump Says There Are 'a Lot of Bad Genes' Among Migrants in America Republican Attorneys General from nine states have been locked in a battle to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects those brought into the U.S. illegally as children from deportation. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has been called the "Trumpiest" court in America, is now set to hear arguments from both sides, again, after a block on the program was approved in a Texas court in 2021. The groups on the call Tuesday said they would seek to get the case thrown out, arguing a lack of evidence that Dreamers were adversely affecting state finances. President Biden with lawmakers and Dreamers US President Joe Biden speaks at an event marking the 12th anniversary of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) at the White House in Washington, DC, on June 18, 2024. DREW ANGERER/AFP via Getty Images Around 300 Dreamer families are expected to attend the hearing in Louisiana, one of the states suing the Biden administration. "DACA has been under litigation risk for longer than it hasn't been," Todd Shulte, president of FWD.us, told reporters, praising those who have kept the program going. "Every day that DACA is open is hundreds of thousands of bedtimes for kids, hundreds of thousands of meals, and hundreds of thousands of being able to look over at a partner and just being bale to feel a little better when going to bed at night." The hearing comes as GOP states have also sued over plans to offer healthcare to DACA recipients. Wait goes on for mixed-status families Those affected by the stay in place on Keeping Families Together (KFT) will have to wait a while longer, with future hearings now pushed back until after the election. The program, which would allow around half a million undocumented spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens to apply for permanent resident status without leaving the country, was due to begin late August but was blocked almost immediately when 16 GOP states sued the Department of Homeland Security. The program was initiated by the Biden administration, with the president speaking out after the initial pause. "That ruling is wrong," Biden said in a statement. "These families should not be needlessly separated. They should be able to stay together, and my Administration will not stop fighting for them." Despite that message, calls came Tuesday for clarity from Vice President Harris on what she would do, should a judge rule in favor of the plaintiff states after the election. Ad Choices Sponsored Content Boost Supply Chain Productivity with Orchestration and Advanced Analytics By DHL Supply Chain "Families are just in limbo again, like they have been for decades," Ashley DeAzevedo, president of American Families United, said, adding that the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the campaign season had not helped with anxieties felt by mixed-status families. Greisa Martinez Rosas, a DACA recipient and executive director of United We Dream Action, added that families had been left confused. "We know exactly what future is outlined in Project 2025 under Trump," she said, referring to plans for mass deportations and the end of programs like the two targeted by these suits. DACA protest in 2019 Protesters hold signs supporting dreamers and TPS outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. The court was hearing arguments on the Trump administration's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood... More Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images "There is no proactive vision from the Harris campaign now on how to keep families together, if the DACA program ends," Rosas added. "This is a crucial moment for clarity, and explicit commitments to our community, that are not being met in this moment." Newsweek reached out to the Harris campaign and the White House for comment via email Tuesday afternoon. When speaking about immigration on the campaign trail, Harris has said she is committed to reintroducing the Bipartisan Border Bill, which would include provisions for speeding-up adjudications of immigration cases and ease pathways to citizenship for those who have called the U.S. home for several years. Current DACA recipients can still renew their status, but new applications are closed while legal action is underway. For KFT, applications are still being accepted but decisions will not be made. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Diaz v. Garland - filed Oct. 8, 2024

Immigration Law The harms that an asylum-seeker and her family suffered—including murder, physical assault, kidnapping, a home invasion during which petitioner was beaten unconscious, and specific, years-long death threats—clearly rise to the level of persecution; the record evidence compelled a conclusion that the asylum-seeker experienced past persecution committed by forces that Mexican authorities are either unable or unwilling to control where she provided police with information regarding her attackers’ identities, but was told that authorities could not ensure her safety and that she should therefore flee the country. Diaz v. Garland - filed Oct. 8, 2024 Cite as 2024 S.O.S. 23-973 Full text click here >http://sos.metnews.com/sos.cgi?1024//23-973.

California ‘Dreamer’ to attend DACA hearing that could determine program’s fate

SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Irving Hernandez became part of the DACA program as he was about to enroll at San Diego State University where he would receive a degree in aerospace engineering in 2017. He arrived in California as a six-year-old who was brought to the U.S. by his undocumented parents. DACA, short for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, offered young people like Hernandez a chance to work and live in the U.S. without fear of deportation. But it never became law as the Trump administration failed to support it. Immigrants prepare for new Biden protections with excitement and concern When President Biden took office, Hernandez became optimistic that a path toward citizenship would finally become a reality. Instead, in June 2021, the Southern District Court in Texas ruled DACA was unlawful. It said the program had wrongly been implemented by the executive branch. Irving Hernandez has been part of the DACA program since 2012. (Salvador Rivera/Border Report) The court did allow for people like Hernandez, who were already enrolled, to remain part of the program while appeals were heard, but it blocked first-time applicants from signing up for DACA. In October 2022, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals based in New Orleans, agreed with the lower court, putting the program’s future in limbo. “The underlying tone is that ‘We don’t want you here.’ They don’t see us as Americans,” Hernandez said. Currently, Hernandez works for a law firm that helps people with immigration issues. His ultimate goal is to go to law school and become an attorney. Later this week, he plans on traveling to Louisiana to be part of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ latest DACA hearing. “About 300 DACA members are going to be there,” said Hernandez, adding he will be in the courtroom when the arguments are made. Half a million immigrants could eventually get US citizenship under a new plan from Biden “The tone has never been ‘Let’s compromise, let’s meet in the middle, let’s help these kids, let’s help this talent, so they can further help this country,'” Hernandez said. “It has always been ‘You are unlawful, you are illegal, you are an alien.’” Hernandez hopes the court changes its mind. “These judges from the appeals court have the power and capacity of not destroying this program,” he said. If the court doesn’t change its decision, DACA’s future will likely end up in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. “We’re fighting for equal, and we know this country has a problem with giving people equal. I was a kid, I was a child when I got DACA, now I’m a man, I can fight for myself, and we will continue fighting,” Hernandez said. According to the National Immigration Forum, approximately 530,000 people are enrolled in DACA. Categories: Border Report Correspondents, California, Hot Topics, Immigration, Mexico, News For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

The Most Dramatic Shift in U.S. Public Opinion

America’s immigration debate has taken a restrictionist turn. Eight years ago, Donald Trump declared that “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” and promised to build a “big, beautiful wall” on the southern border. That rhetoric, extreme at the time, seems mild now. Today, he depicts immigrants as psychopathic murderers responsible for “poisoning the blood of our country” and claims that he will carry out the “largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” Democrats have shifted too. In 2020, Joe Biden ran on the promise to reverse Trump’s border policies and expand legal immigration. “If I’m elected president, we’re going to immediately end Trump’s assault on the dignity of immigrant communities,” he said during his speech accepting the Democratic nomination. “We’re going to restore our moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers.” That kind of humanitarian language is gone from Democrats’ 2024 messaging. So is any defense of immigration on the merits. When asked about immigration, Vice President Kamala Harris touts her background prosecuting transnational criminal organizations and promises to pass legislation that would “fortify” the southern border. Rogé Karma: The truth about immigration and the American worker The change in rhetoric did not come out of nowhere. Politicians are responding to one of the most dramatic swings in the history of U.S. public opinion. In 2020, 28 percent of Americans told Gallup that immigration should decrease. Just four years later, that number had risen to 55 percent—the highest level since 2001. (Other surveys find similar results.) Republican attitudes have shifted the most, but Democrats and independents have also soured on immigration. Although public opinion is known to ebb and flow, a reversal this big, and this fast, is nearly unheard-of. It is the result of a confluence of two powerful factors: a partisan backlash to a Democratic president and a bipartisan reaction to the genuine chaos generated by a historic surge at the border. Political scientists have long observed that public opinion tends to move in the opposite direction of a sitting president’s rhetoric, priorities, and policies, especially when that president is an especially polarizing figure—a phenomenon known as “thermostatic public opinion.” No president has kicked the thermostat into action quite like Trump. In response to his incendiary anti-immigrant rhetoric and harsh policies, including the Muslim ban and family separation, being pro-immigrant became central to Democratic identity. In 2016, only 30 percent of Democrats told Gallup they wanted to increase immigration; by 2020, that number had grown to 50 percent. In just four years under Trump, Democratic attitudes toward immigration levels warmed more than they had in the previous 15. But the thermostat works the other way too. When Biden took office, he immediately rescinded many of Trump’s border policies and proposed legislation to “restore humanity and American values to our immigration system.” This triggered a backlash. Right-wing media and Republican politicians sought to turn Biden’s policies into a liability. By mid-2022, the percentage of Republican voters who said immigration should decrease had risen by 21 points. And with Trump no longer in the White House to mobilize the opposition, Democratic immigration attitudes began by some measures to creep closer to their pre-2016 levels as well. “The paradox of Trump was that he inspired an unprecedented positive shift in immigration attitudes,” Alexander Kustov, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, told me. “But because it was a reaction to Trump himself, that positivity was always extremely fragile.” Trump is not the entire story, however. Public opinion continued to drift rightward long after Biden took office. From June 2023 to June 2024 alone, the percentage of Democrats who favored decreased immigration jumped by 10 points, and the percentage of Republicans by 15 points. That’s the single largest year-over-year shift in overall immigration attitudes since Gallup began asking the question back in 1965. Derek Thompson: Americans are thinking about immigration all wrong Voters may have been responding to the sharp rise in so-called border encounters—a euphemism for the apprehension of undocumented immigrants entering the country from Mexico. These reached a record 300,000 in December 2023, up from 160,000 in January of that year and from just 74,000 in December 2020. The surge overwhelmed Customs and Border Patrol, and scenes of overcrowded immigrant-processing centers and sprawling tent encampments became fixtures on conservative media outlets. Texas Governor Greg Abbott began sending busloads of asylum seekers (about 120,000 at this point) to cities such as New York, Chicago, and Denver, which were caught off guard by the influx. Suddenly blue-state cities across the country got a taste of border chaos in the form of stressed social services, migrants sleeping on streets, frantic city officials, and community backlash. “I don’t think the shift in attitudes is surprising, given what’s been happening at the border,” Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup, told me. “People are sensitive to what’s going on, and they respond to it.” Some experts call this the “locus of control theory,” or, more colloquially, the “chaos theory” of immigration sentiment. The basic idea, grounded in both survey data and political-science research, is that when the immigration process is perceived as fair and orderly, voters are more likely to tolerate it. When it is perceived as out of control and unfair—perhaps due to an uncommonly large surge of migrants—then the public quickly turns against it. Perhaps the best evidence for this theory is that even as Americans have embraced much tighter immigration restrictions, their answers to survey questions such as “Do you believe undocumented immigrants make a contribution to society?” and “Do you support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants?” and even “Should it be easier to immigrate to the U.S?” haven’t changed nearly as much, and remain more pro-immigrant than they were as recently as 2016. “I don’t think these views are contradictory,” Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan, a deputy director at the Migration Policy Institute, told me. “People can simultaneously have compassion for immigrants while also feeling anxious and upset about the process for coming into the country.” One implication of chaos theory is that leaders can mitigate opposition to immigration by introducing reforms that make the process less chaotic. That’s what the Biden administration tried to do in June of this year, when it issued a series of executive orders that would, among other things, bar migrants who cross illegally from claiming asylum and give the Department of Homeland Security the ability to halt the processing of asylum claims altogether if the volume of requests gets too high. Border encounters have fallen steadily throughout 2024, reaching about 100,000 in July and August—still a high number, but the lowest level since February 2021. Perhaps not coincidentally, the salience of immigration for voters has also been falling. This past February, 28 percent of Americans told Gallup that immigration was the most important problem facing the country; by August, that number had dropped to 19 percent. (It crept back up to 22 percent in September, for reasons that likely have more to do with the wave of disinformation about Haitian migrants than with crossings at the border, which continued to fall.) The very fact that Biden had to rely on unilateral executive orders, which are being challenged in court, illustrates a deeper issue. Even though most Americans want a more orderly and fair immigration system, the nature of thermostatic public opinion gives the opposition party strong incentives to thwart any action that might deliver it. Earlier this year, congressional Republicans killed a border-security bill—which had previously had bipartisan support—after Trump came out against it, lest the Biden administration be given credit for solving the issue that Trump has staked his campaign on. And if Trump is reelected, the pendulum of public opinion could very well swing back the other way, putting pressure on Democrats to oppose his entire immigration agenda. What’s clear is that the current hawkish national mood is not the fixed end point of American popular sentiment. Attitudes toward immigration will continue to fluctuate in the years to come. Whether public policy changes meaningfully in response is anyone’s guess. For more information, visit us at https://beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.blogspot.com/2024/10/fbi-arrests-afghan-man-who-officials.html.

FBI arrests Afghan man who officials say planned Election Day attack in the US

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI has arrested an Afghan man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State militant organization and was plotting an Election Day attack targeting large crowds in the U.S., the Justice Department said Tuesday. Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City told investigators after his arrest Monday that he had planned his attack to coincide with Election Day next month and that he and a co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs, according to charging documents. Tawhedi, who arrived in the U.S. in September 2021, had taken steps in recent weeks to advance his attack plans, including by ordering AK-47 rifles, liquidating his family’s assets and buying one-way tickets for his wife and child to travel home to Afghanistan, officials said. The arrest comes as the FBI confronts heightened concerns over the possibility of extremist violence on U.S. soil, with Director Christopher Wray telling The Associated Press in August that he was “hard pressed to think of a time in my career where so many different kinds of threats are all elevated at once.” Advertisement “Terrorism is still the FBI’s number one priority, and we will use every resource to protect the American people,” Wray said in a statement Tuesday. Related Stories Assassination attempt gunman searched for Trump and Biden events, FBI says Assassination attempt gunman searched for Trump and Biden events, FBI says The FBI is failing to report child sex abuse cases, watchdog finds The FBI is failing to report child sex abuse cases, watchdog finds Justice Department disrupts vast Chinese hacking operation that infected consumer devices Justice Department disrupts vast Chinese hacking operation that infected consumer devices An FBI affidavit does not reveal precisely how Tawhedi came onto investigators’ radar, but cites what it says is evidence from recent months showing his determination in planning an attack. A photograph from July included in the affidavit depicts a man investigators identified as Tawhedi reading to two young children, including his daughter, “a text that describes the rewards a martyr receives in the afterlife.” Officials say Tawhedi also consumed Islamic State propaganda, contributed to a charity that functions as a front for the militant group and communicated with a person who the FBI determined from a prior investigation was involved in recruitment and indoctrination of people interested in extremism. He also viewed webcams for the White House and the Washington Monument in July. Advertisement Tawhedi’s alleged co-conspirator was not identified by the Justice Department, which described him only as a juvenile, a fellow Afghan national and the brother of Tawhedi’s wife. After the two advertised the sale of personal property on Facebook, the FBI enlisted an informant last month to respond to the offer and strike up a relationship. The informant later invited them to a gun range, where they ordered weapons from an undercover FBI official who was posing as a business partner of the informant, according to court papers. Tawhedi was arrested Monday after taking possession of two AK-47 rifles and ammunition he had ordered, officials said. The unidentified co-conspirator was also arrested but the Justice Department did not provide details because he is a juvenile. After he was arrested, the Justice Department said, Tawhedi told investigators he had planned an attack for Election Day that would target large gatherings of people. Tawhedi was charged with conspiring and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State, which is designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization. The charge is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Advertisement He appeared in court Tuesday and was ordered detained. An email to an attorney listed as representing him did not immediately return an email seeking comment. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf. A for-sale sign stood in the yard outside a modest, two-story brick home listed as being connected to Tawhedi’s family in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore. A woman who identified herself as Tawhedi’s wife declined to discuss the case. “We don’t want to talk in the media,” said the woman, who did not give her name. Tawhedi entered the U.S. on a special immigrant visa in 2021 and has been on parole status pending the conclusion of his immigration proceedings, the Justice Department said. The program permits eligible Afghans who helped Americans, despite great personal risk to themselves and their loved ones, to apply for entry into America with their families. Advertisement Eligible Afghans include interpreters for the U.S. military as well as individuals integral to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. While the program has existed since 2009, the number of applicants skyrocketed after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Shawn VanDiver, the president of #AfghanEvac, a coalition of organizations dedicated to helping Afghans trying to leave Afghanistan, said that though the charges are serious, “it’s critical that we do not assign blame to an entire community for the actions of one individual. Thousands of Afghans who resettled in the United States are working to build new lives and contribute to our shared future.” “These are the same individuals who stood shoulder to shoulder with us in Afghanistan for over two decades, defending the values we hold dear,” he said in a statement. “Now, they are our neighbors, and we must support them as they seek safety and stability in their new home.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Trump's Apocalyse America tour heads to Colorado

Donald Trump plans to visit Aurora, Colorado, on Friday — not because his team thinks he can win Colorado, but because he wants another backdrop for his apocalyptic tale of an America overrun by undocumented immigrants. Why it matters: Despite being criticized for his misleading and false attacks on immigrants, Trump and his campaign see it as an effective strategy to blame immigration and border security problems on President Biden and Vice President Harris. In recent weeks Trump has made bogus claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio, and fueled misinformation about the federal government's storm relief efforts in the South. He's falsely said the government is short on disaster funds because of what Biden's administration is spending on undocumented immigrants. Zoom in: Now, as much of the campaign focuses on the seven swing states likely to decide the election, Trump will stop in mostly Democratic Aurora to highlight what local officials say are false claims about a violent Venezuelan gang "taking over the town." Last month, reports of the gang supposedly taking over an apartment complex spread across social media sites — and caught Trump's attention. He brought it up in his opening statement when he debated Harris last month, falsely claiming that migrants in Aurora "are taking over the town, taking over buildings ... they're destroying our country." Aurora officials say the gang activity there was dramatically exaggerated and involved a few people, most of whom were arrested. "TdA [Tren de Aragua] has not 'taken over' the city. The overstated claims fueled by social media and through select news organizations are simply not true," Mayor Mike Coffman and City Council Member Danielle Jurinsky, both Republicans, wrote in a joint statement. Between the lines: Some Republicans think his Aurora messaging could be more grounded in truth than Trump's claims about Haitians in Ohio and FEMA relief efforts in North Carolina. The Denver area has struggled to deal with an influx of more than 40,000 migrants, and Aurora police last month announced they'd arrested 10 members of Tren de Aragua on charges that included attempted first-degree murder, child abuse and domestic abuse. But there's no evidence that gangs are running apartment buildings or that Aurora is a "war-zone," as Trump claims. The bottom line: For Trump, any opportunity to talk about immigration is a good one. "The more he talks about immigration, the better chances he has to win," Justin Sayfie, a former spokesperson for ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, told Axios. "It honestly doesn't matter where he does it because voters across the country will see that he is with them on that issue," he added. What they're saying: "These claims [about Aurora] are not false. They were well documented by local and national news outlets," Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Axios. "President Trump will continue to highlight the concerns of American citizens about the dangerous impact of Kamala's open border crisis and migrant crime wave in their communities." The intrigue: In yet another departure from campaigning in swing states, this weekend Trump plans to head to Coachella, Calif. — a town that's 97% Hispanic — after campaigning and fundraising in the swing state of Nevada on Friday. The visit to heavily Democratic California — described by one GOP strategist as "way too cocky" of a strategy — will give Trump a chance to hammer Harris, a Californian, on what he's called the state's "radical liberal policies." For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

JD Vance Starts New Racist Lie to Attack Immigrant Children

For all his talk of being a family man, JD Vance went out of his way Tuesday to put a target on the backs of children during a speech in Detroit. But they’re the children of immigrants, so why would he care? Vance was speaking about undocumented immigrants when he turned his attention specifically to school-age children. “The other thing that is crazy about the border is that in the state of Michigan—I didn’t know this statistic until today—there are 85,000 students in Michigan public schools who are the children of illegal aliens,” Vance claimed. “Eighty-five thousand. Now think about that. Think about what it does to a poor schoolteacher, who’s just trying to get by with what they have, just trying to educate their kids, and then you drop in a few dozen kids into that school, many of whom don’t even speak English,” Vance said. “Do you think that’s good for the education of American citizens? No, it’s not.” Here, Vance seems to have widened his net beyond targeting undocumented immigrant children, a plainly heinous rhetorical step in itself, to children who may very well be U.S. citizens by nature of being born here. It’s also worth noting that Vance has a penchant for falsely describing immigrants with protected legal status as “illegal,” so it’s unclear whom exactly he would include in this statistic. It’s also unclear where Vance got “85,000” from, but when contextualizing this number, whatever its validity, things don’t quite seem to add up. In 2022, 1,433,914 students were enrolled in Michigan public schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That means that Vance is claiming that roughly 5 percent of all students in the state are such a gross drain on resources that it has somehow diminished the quality of education for the other 95 percent. Perhaps Vance is right to be concerned about the waning quality of American education. Vance’s blatant scapegoating makes no sense because it is not built on real concerns about the quality of education, or the “poor” teachers who might struggle to meet the needs of the classroom because of a lack of education funding. Rather, his claim is built on making racist distinctions between who “deserves” to have access to education and who should be kicked out as a cheap shot for votes in a battleground state. “Look, I think we’re a great country, we can be compassionate, and we ought to be compassionate, but our compassion has to start with our fellow citizens, the people that deserve to be in the United States to begin with,” Vance said. The Ohio senator touted Donald Trump’s plan for the largest mass deportations in the history of the United States as “the best way to be compassionate.” Vance has previously invoked compassion as a quasi-religious justification for the blatantly bigoted immigration policies. Neither of Vance’s rhetorical lines are particularly new for the Trump campaign, which has repeatedly stressed the strain influxes of immigration can have on schools. But this goes to show how the Republican ticket has normalized rhetoric that targets the most vulnerable in our society. Last month, Trump made a similar comment about non-English-speaking students in schools in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, which was promptly debunked by the Charleroi school district superintendent. In fact, reimbursement from the Department of Education had actually increased as student enrollment increased—the very same Department of Education Trump hopes to dismantle. Vance’s reckless targeting of school-age children and teenagers also happens to be in a state with the largest populations of Palestinian and Lebanese immigrants. For for more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Kamala Harris defends record on immigration: "Solutions are at hand"

Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning on a pledge to toughen border restrictions as Republicans hammer her over the Biden-Harris administration's record on immigration. Harris in late September visited the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time as the Democratic presidential nominee and embraced President Biden's recent crackdown on asylum seekers, which produced an almost immediate and dramatic decrease in the number of border crossings. Harris said she would take it even further. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Trump's Deportation Plan Would Cost Nearly $1 Trillion

Former President Donald Trump's promise to carry out "the largest domestic deportation operation in American history" would not only be a moral calamity requiring an enormous expansion of government—it would also be hugely expensive and ruinous to the American economy. The governmental infrastructure required to arrest, process, and remove 13 million undocumented immigrants would cost nearly $1 trillion over 10 years and would deal a "devastating" hit to economic growth, according to a report published last week by the American Immigration Council (AIC). The think tank estimates that a mass deportation plan would shrink America's gross domestic product by at least 4.2 percent, due to the loss of workers in industries already struggling to find enough labor. Trump has promised to create a "deportation force" to round up undocumented immigrants and eject them from the country. This would entail targeting two groups: the roughly 11 million people who lacked permanent legal status as of 2022 (that's the most recent number from the American Community Survey) and the estimated 2.3 million people who have entered the country without legal status since January 2023 (that figure come from the Department of Homeland Security). The AIC report estimates that a mass deportation effort would cost an average of $88 billion annually—four times the annual budget of NASA—and $967 billion over a decade. To carry out such a program, the government would have to spend huge sums expanding immigration detention facilities, courtrooms, and other infrastructure. That would include hiring thousands of additional federal employees. In short, a mass deportation plan would be costly to set up, expensive to operate, and difficult to undo once it becomes established. And for what? The costs of mass deportation would rebound into the economy in several ways. The economy would shrink and federal tax revenues would decline. The construction industry, where an estimated 14 percent of workers are undocumented migrants, would be particularly hard hit, but the effects would be felt throughout the economy. "Removing that labor would disrupt all forms of construction across the nation, from homes to businesses to basic infrastructure," the AIC notes. "As industries suffer, hundreds of thousands of U.S.-born workers could lose their jobs." That's an important point. Immigration restrictionists often assume that deporting millions of undocumented workers would allow more Americans to fill those jobs, but the economy is not a zero-sum game. A shrinking economy would be bad news for many workers who aren't directly impacted by Trump's deportation plan. The AIC's estimates are generally in line with the estimates made earlier this year by analysts at the Penn Wharton Budget Center (PWBM), a fiscal policy think tank housed at the University of Pennsylvania. "The costs of the former president's plan to deport the more than 14 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. today could easily reach more than $1 trillion over 10 years, before taking into account the labor costs necessary for such a project or the unforeseen consequences of reducing the labor supply by such drastic amounts over a short period," reported Marketwatch, which requested the PWBM estimate. Of course, there are fiscal costs that come from illegal immigration too. A recent study published by the Manhattan Institute estimates that undocumented immigrants who have crossed the southern border since 2021 will cost taxpayers about $1.15 trillion over their lifetimes. That same report notes that more immigration will generally boost the U.S. economy and help reduce future federal budget deficits—"the average new immigrant (lawful or unlawful) has a positive fiscal impact and reduces the federal budget deficit by over $10,000 during his lifetime," writes Daniel DiMartino, the Manhattan Institute report's author. It is younger, college-educated immigrants who pull up that average. Low-skilled immigrants who lack a college degree are generally a net negative for the federal budget. Both reports ought to make a case for fixing America's convoluted immigration system so more people can come here legally. That would be a better use of political resources than a costly and damaging deportation scheme. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Trump on immigrants: ‘We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now’

Former President Donald Trump used increasingly harsh rhetoric to attack immigrants, suggesting on Monday during an interview that immigrants commit horrendous crimes because “it’s in their genes.” “How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers, many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know now a murder, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. Trump also said Vice President Kamala Harris “wants to go into a Communist Party-type system” to “feed people governmentally.” Trump’s suggestion that immigrants are predisposed to violence is an escalation of his recent rhetoric against migrants, which he has used consistently on the campaign trail, assuring mass deportations if he wins the presidency. But Monday’s statement also reflects Trump’s previous anti-immigrant rhetoric, including comments last year that “they’re poisoning the blood of our country.” The White House condemned Trump’s statement for “echoing the grotesque rhetoric of fascists and violent white supremacists.” 'Disgusting': White House responds to Trump's 'genes' comment SharePlay Video Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the former president was “referring to murderers, not migrants” in the interview. “It’s pretty disgusting the media is always so quick to defend murderers, rapists and illegal criminals if it means writing a bad headline about President Trump,” she said in the statement. Last week, he promised to remove Temporary Protected Status and deport the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, after weeks of spreading baseless claims that the Haitian population there was eating pets with his running mate JD Vance. The national spotlight led to bomb threats at Springfield schools. Harris said Trump’s rhetoric against the migrants “has to stop” in an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in September. Immigration is an issue that resonates with voters, and it’s a vulnerability for Harris. In a September New York Times/Siena poll of registered voters across the country, Trump led Harris on the issue 53 percent to 42 percent. She recently made a campaign stop in Douglas, Arizona, to call for tougher border security. The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump, who has repeated the 13,000 figure before, pulled it from a letter from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales released last month. That letter showed that 13,099 non-citizens on ICE’s “non-detained docket” were convicted of homicide. However, that data only shows the individuals are not detained by ICE; they are more likely in state or federal prison. And the number of convicted criminals on that docket goes back decades. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Harris Dodges Question on Whether Lax Border Policies Were ‘Mistake’

Vice President Kamala Harris refused to answer whether the Biden administration’s lenient border policies since her first day in office were a “mistake” during the 60 Minutes election special that aired Monday night. Top Stories Canada Is Poor Dominic Pino NRPLUS The ‘Basement Campaign’ Isn’t Going to Cut It Jim Geraghty Butler Rally-Goers Wrestle with the Possibility of a Trump Loss Audrey Fahlberg NRPLUS Harris, whom Republicans continue to label the “border czar” to criticize her handling of the crisis at the southern border, has tried to project a tougher stance on illegal immigration since launching her presidential campaign. She even visited the U.S.-Mexico border late last month to improve her image on the issue, but that visit marked her first there in more than three years. The border crisis is arguably one of the Democratic candidate’s biggest vulnerabilities. Leading up to his question, 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker said the number of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. had “quadrupled” during the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration compared to the last year of the Trump administration. “Was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did?” Whitaker asked. 00:00 02:24 Read More “It’s a long-standing problem, and solutions are at hand,” Harris responded, defending her record on immigration. “And from Day One, literally, we have been offering solutions.” Moments before, she said the Biden administration proposed a bill to Congress “to fix our broken immigration system.” The bill “was not taken up,” she said. Unsatisfied with her answer on record immigration numbers, Whitaker pressed again. “Was it a mistake to kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?” “I think the policies that we have been proposing are about fixing a problem, not promoting a problem,” Harris said, as Whitaker tried repeating the question. “And the numbers today because of what we have done, we have cut the flow of illegal immigration by half. We have cut the flow of fentanyl by half, but we need Congress to be able to act to actually fix the problem.” More on Kamala Harris The ‘Basement Campaign’ Isn’t Going to Cut It Kamala Harris Doesn’t Even Know Her Own Stump Speech Kamala Goes on Sex Podcast to Lie about Georgia Abortion Law Harris wants to revive and sign the bipartisan border-security deal that failed in Congress earlier this year, according to her campaign website. Harris has also blamed former president Donald Trump for lobbying Republican lawmakers against passing the border deal that would have allocated $20 billion worth of federal resources to border security. She pinned the blame on Trump again during the 60 Minutes interview. “Donald Trump got word that this bill was afoot and could be passed, and he wants to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” Harris said. “So he told his buddies in Congress, ‘Kill the bill. Don’t let it move forward.'” While the Biden administration claimed it needed the border deal to secure the southern border, Republicans noted that the president could issue an executive order toward that same end. President Joe Biden ending up doing just that. In June, Biden signed an order to crack down on the record number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. At the time, it stipulated the restrictions of asylum access when official border crossings hit 2,500 per day. For the restrictions to be lifted, the daily numbers were required to average below 1,500 per day for seven consecutive days. The Biden administration unveiled new rules last week, ordering that the daily numbers must stay below 1,500 daily encounters for nearly a month before the restrictions can be lifted. The changes went into effect on October 1, making it tougher for immigrants to apply for asylum in the U.S. In addition to Harris, the 60 Minutes team requested to sit down with Trump. The Republican presidential nominee initially agreed to do the interview but backed out last week. During the first two minutes of Monday’s program, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley said Trump’s campaign gave “shifting explanations,” including concerns about fact-checking during the sit-down interview, for the candidate’s change of heart. Pelley said the program would go on without Trump. It has remained a tradition for 60 Minutes to interview both major-party candidates in October leading up to the general election. The election special was moved to Monday night due to CBS’s broadcast of the American Music Awards on Sunday night. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Donald Trump’s foul-mouthed migrant rant captured in private pitch to donors

Donald Trump’s foul-mouthed migrant rant captured in private pitch to donors Republican nominee claims Harris is threat to democracy in recording of top-dollar fundraiser in Colorado in August US politics – live updates David Smith in Washington Fri 4 Oct 2024 06.00 EDT Share Donald Trump unleashed a foul-mouthed tirade about undocumented immigrants and predicted that this “could be the last election we ever have” if Kamala Harris wins during a private fundraising dinner this summer. The Guardian obtained a 12-minute recording of a speech that the Republican presidential nominee gave at a dinner on 10 August in Aspen, Colorado, where attendees were required to donate anywhere from $25,000 to $500,000 a couple. Trump devoted most of his address to border security and immigration, recycling xenophobic claims now familiar from his rallies. “Radical leftwing lunatics” want people to come in from prisons, mental institutions and insane asylums, he asserted without evidence, adding that the US was harbouring “a record number of terrorists”. The former president insisted that “smart, very streetwise” leaders of Venezuela and other South American countries were sending murderers and drug dealers to the US to reduce their own crime rates, relieve the burden on their prisons and save money. Trump cited a false example of 22 people he claimed had come to the US after being released from prison in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “We said, ‘Where do you come from?’ They said, ‘Prison’. ‘What did you do?’ ‘None of your fucking business what we did.’ You know why? Because they’re murderers.” The candidate added, “I hate to use that foul language”, apparently recognising that his use of the F-word went further than his campaign rallies. The Congolese government has said there is no truth to Trump’s statements. The candidate went on: “These are the toughest people. These people are coming in from Africa, from the Middle East. They’re coming in from all parts of Asia, the bad parts, the parts where they’re rough, and the only thing good is they make our criminals look extremely nice. They make our Hell’s Angels look like the nicest people on earth.” Studies show that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native-born Americans. Trump flew to Aspen on a Gulfstream G-550 jet once owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, after his own private plane – a Boeing 757 known colloquially as Trump Force One – encountered engine trouble. The dinner was held at the $38m home of the investors and art collectors John and Amy Phelan. Guests included the casino mogul Steve Wynn, billionaire businessman Thomas Peterffy, Texas governor Greg Abbott, Florida congressman Byron Donalds, Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert and former Colorado senator Cory Gardner. Trump, who instigated an attempted coup on 6 January 2021 and has claimed that his Democratic rival Harris poses the true threat to democracy, used the exclusive event to warn of dire consequences if she becomes president. “Look, we gotta win and if we don’t win this country’s going to hell,” he said. “You know, there’s an expression, this could be the last election we ever have and it’s an expression that I really believe, and I believe that this could be the last election we ever have.” The ex-president was speaking a month before his first and probably only televised debate against Harris, of which opinion polls and pundits would widely judge her to be the clear winner. That was not what he predicted. “I’m telling you we have a radical left person that’s going be president – if she wins it’s going to be a disaster – she wants to be president very badly. Thank God she’s supposed to be horrible at debating, although she’s nasty, and she’s supposed to be really bad at interviews. She can’t do an interview.” skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to The Stakes — US Election Edition Free newsletter The Guardian guides you through the chaos of a hugely consequential presidential election Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion Trump also claimed that Harris supports the “defund the police” movement, suggesting that she was a typical politician who will revert to type once she is elected. “Her policy is defund the police. She wants to defund the police. She wants open borders. With a politician – and I’ve seen it because I’ve been on both sides of politics for a long time; now, a short time for this side but I was always a contributor – she wants to go out and she wants to defund the police. And they always go back to their original plot. They always do.” Harris, a former courtroom prosecutor, did voice support for the “defund the police” movement in a radio interview in June 2020 but later reversed her position after becoming Joe Biden’s running mate. Trump also reflected on surviving an assassination attempt at a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where 20-year-old Thomas Crooks opened fire from a rooftop, killing firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, and injuring two other Trump supporters. Trump told how members of his Florida golf club, Mar-a-Lago, asked to make a contribution to Comperatore’s family. “I said absolutely and they gave me a cheque for a million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Maybe even more impressively we put out a GoFundMe and we raised more than $6m for the group that got hurt, which is essentially three people.” Then, recalling a meeting with Comperatore’s widow, Helen, he made a risky attempt to find humour in the tragedy. “So they’re going to get millions of dollars but the woman, the wife, this beautiful woman, I handed her the cheque – we handed her the cheque – and she said, ‘This is so nice, and I appreciate it, but I’d much rather have my husband.’ Now, I know some of the women in this room wouldn’t say the same.” As dinner guests erupted in laughter, Trump quipped: “I know at least four couples. There are four couples, Governor [Abbott], that I know and you’re not one of them. At least four couples here would have been thrilled, actually.” The event is understood to have raised $12m for Trump’s campaign but was not enough to prevent Harris raising more than four times as much as her opponent in August, the first full month of her bid for the White House. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

A GOP rep asked ICE for an update. Then Trump ran with the number

A previously obscure immigration dataset entered the public lexicon over the past week, sparking a new attack line for Republicans and a deluge of fact-checking over an accurate, yet decontextualized, number. Last week, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) drew attention to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “non-detained docket,” one of the datasets that, for most people, is not just a few clicks away. “I asked [acting ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner], one, how many criminal aliens are in this country? What I mean by that, I’m not talking about your abuelita that came over years ago and may or may not be documented. I’m not talking about the guy that’s maybe building a house, or none of that, or 8-year-old — I’m talking about convicted criminal aliens. That’s what I’m talking about. That was the number I asked him. At the time he goes, ‘Tony it’s a lot,’” Gonzales told The Hill. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) publishes massive amounts of data, both on immigration and on border enforcement, though some databases are kept under wraps. “There has been extensive effort in the transparency community to get the U.S. government to produce more data about its operations, and the amount of information available about the immigration enforcement system today is unprecedented. Much of this is data that the U.S. government has had for generations but has not shared with the general public,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. Lechleitner opened up the books and sent Gonzales a letter with ICE criminal detainee numbers and the non-detained docket, an accounting of foreign nationals convicted of criminal charges or pending criminal charges who are known to be or have been in the United States and who are not in ICE detention. The raw numbers shocked Gonzales, who made the letter public. ICE’s non-detained docket reports more than 600,000 alleged or convicted foreign-national criminals likely in the United States and not in ICE detention, including about 13,000 convicted murderers. Former President Trump quickly grasped on that figure, claiming his election rival Vice President Harris was responsible for releasing 13,000 murderers onto the streets. “In total during her term, it’s not even believable, she let in 13,099 convicted murderers. Some of them had murdered 10 people, some murdered seven, one murdered six. I’m looking at these. These are stone-cold killers, and they let in people that are worse than any criminal we have,” Trump said at a rally in Erie, Pa., last weekend. Trump’s representation of the numbers was wrong: The vast majority of the non-detained docket has built up over decades, and it includes any deportable foreign national in the criminal justice system not in ICE custody, including criminals in jails and prisons. “It’s not just disingenuous. It’s an intentional misuse of information in order to further the dehumanization that we’ve seen cause so much harm and violence over the past few weeks. So it’s not accidental,” said Heidi Altman, director of federal advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center. So who is on the docket? It’s complicated, say experts. “We can’t know for certain, because they haven’t given out that information, but someone like [Joaquín] Chapo Guzman, so long as he had had an interaction with ICE while in the United States, which seems likely, he will probably be on ICE’s non-detained docket, because he is a non-citizen who is removable, who is not detained by ICE,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “Zacarias Moussaoui, sometimes called the 20th [9/11] hijacker, who’s been in federal detention since 2001 and is currently serving a life sentence at ADX Florence, the supermax prison in Colorado. He’s probably on ICE’s non-detained docket. Richard Reed, the British shoe bomber, the guy responsible for us having to take our shoes off at TSA. He is a removable non-citizen who is also serving a life sentence in Colorado. He also is probably on ICE’s non detained docket as a British citizen.” The docket is also likely to include people who have left the United States, and it includes any foreign nationals with a record, including those released after serving criminal sentences, who either interacted with ICE or left the country and returned. Not all crimes render all foreign nationals deportable, but in some cases decades-old citations or minor convictions have landed unsuspecting permanent residents in hot water with ICE — those permanent residents would count toward the docket shared in Lechleitner’s letter. “They just didn’t give any sense of time frame here. And I think that is a little bit suspect, knowing full well how this would play in our polarized media climate, that they would just put that out without any context. It’s just troubling,” said Adam Isaacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America. In the aftermath of Gonzales’s publication of the letter, DHS issued a statement delineating some of that context. “The data in this letter is being misinterpreted. The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this administration. It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners,” said Luis Miranda, a DHS spokesperson. Gonzales expressed frustration at the statistical debate, saying instead his intent was to shine a light on a public safety issue. “The reality is that number is somewhere in between zero and 13,199, right? I don’t know what that number is, but I guarantee you, the administration does know. Instead of saying the number is zero, once again, why can’t we just talk — or don’t even talk about the number, why don’t you just talk about what you’re doing in order to keep Americans safe?” he said. That approach has in the past infuriated border experts and immigration advocates, since it sets an unreachable goal for law enforcement. “What they’re gonna say is, you’re gonna start hearing this rhetoric: ‘If there’s one, it’s too many.’ It’s absurd from the policy perspective. There is no other public safety issue where the expectation is zero,” said Mike Madrid, a GOP consultant and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. And, unlike Gonzales, who says he’s “been singed” at times for bucking the party line, many Republicans are running with the 13,000 number. “They’re not trying to have an honest debate. They just want the debate about the issue, because they’re so far ahead in confidence and trust with the public. It’s why JD Vance said it doesn’t matter whether [they are] telling the truth or not about eating pets. ‘As long as we’re talking about the issue, we’re winning.’ They’re right,” said Madrid. For more informatiooin, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Trump Immigration Plan May End Deportation Safeguards For 2.7 Million

Up to 2.7 million people will lose protection from deportation in a second Trump administration if Donald Trump ends current immigration safeguards. New data show individuals in Temporary Protected Status and other immigration programs could see their legal protection expire in the next two years. Trump officials could add millions of people to potential deportation rolls by allowing immigration safeguards, such as TPS, to end. Immigration enforcement personnel in a second Trump administration could find targeting long-time residents and workers an advantageous way to boost deportation numbers. A Significant Number Of People At Risk “Protection from deportation may expire for up to 2.7 million people within the next two years,” according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis. “The vast majority face dismal prospects if forced to return to their birth countries, and obstacles in Congress mean legislation may not rescue even the most sympathetic groups.” NFAP gathered the data from the Department of Homeland Security and other sources. The immigration programs and categories include Temporary Protected Status, humanitarian parole programs for Cubans, Venezuelans and others and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA. Some individuals paroled into the United States, such as Ukrainians, could also hold TPS. The 2.7 million does not include individuals on Deferred Enforced Departure from Liberia, Hong Kong and elsewhere, participants in smaller parole programs or people who received parole at ports of entry. PROMOTED Donald Trump stated he intends to implement mass deportations of immigrants without legal status that include “sprawling camps.” Some have argued the plans will be difficult to implement. However, the existence and likely known whereabouts of millions of people who would lose protection from deportation during a second Trump administration adds credibility to the threat. Many of the up to 2.7 million people have lived in the United States for one to two decades or longer. Economists have warned that reducing the supply of available workers through deportations or new immigration restrictions will harm U.S. workers and the economy. According to an analysis for the Peterson Institute for International Economics by George Mason University economics professor Michael Clemens, it is likely that for every one million unauthorized immigrant workers removed from the United States, 88,000 U.S.-born workers will be “driven out of employment.” Deporting three million unauthorized immigrant workers per year “would mean 263,000 fewer jobs held by U.S. native workers, compounded each additional year that mass deportations continue.” Read More: African Immigrant Startups: From Student To Success In Global Economy Entrepreneurs will invest in fewer new businesses when “hit by sudden reductions to labor supply,” writes Clemens, and business owners will “invest their capital in other industries and in technologies that use lower-skill labor less intensively, reducing demand for U.S. workers too.” Fewer immigrant workers will also shrink the demand for U.S.-born workers due to less consumer spending on “grocery stores, leasing offices and other nontraded services.” According to the American Immigration Council, “Due to the loss of workers across U.S. industries, we found that mass deportation would reduce the U.S. gross domestic product by 4.2% to 6.8%.” Temporary Protected Status Today, 863,880 people live in the United States under Temporary Protected Status, notes the Congressional Research Service. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “During a designated period, individuals who are TPS beneficiaries . . . are not removable from the United States; can obtain an employment authorization document; [and] may be granted travel authorization.” TPS will expire in 2025 for 13 of the 16 countries, while the TPS designations for Haiti, Somalia and Yemen will end in 2026 unless extended. “The Trump administration is likely to terminate most if not all new TPS designations in addition to not renewing prior designations,” according to Elizabeth Carlson and Charles Wheeler, attorneys with CLINIC. Courts blocked attempts by Trump officials to eliminate TPS for at least 300,000 beneficiaries. However, the Ninth Circuit later vacated a lower court injunction, and legal avenues for helping people whose TPS designation has expired might prove fruitless in a second Trump administration. Donald Trump has denounced Haitians as pet eaters and Venezuelans among migrants “attacking villages and cities all throughout the Midwest,” so expect the 200,005 Haitians and 344,355 Venezuelans currently living in America with TPS to be high priorities for deportation. In an interview with NewsNation (October 2, 2024), Trump said he would “absolutely” revoke TPS for Haitians and “bring them back” to Haiti. “The Venezuelan government is unlikely to accept the return of its nationals, which would put the Trump administration in an unusual position if it ended the legal status of over 300,000 people but could not remove them from the United States,” notes the NFAP analysis. More than 180,000 Salvadorans have lived in America with TPS since February 2001. The video player is currently playing an ad. Skip Ad Humanitarian Parole Programs Trump has promised to end the humanitarian parole programs for several countries. According to data NFAP obtained from DHS, 528,000 individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela arrived in America after the Biden administration approved them for the CHNV humanitarian parole program. As of August 31, 2024, there are 110,000 approvals for humanitarian parole for Cubans, 210,000 for Haitians, 92,000 for Nicaraguans and 116,000 for Venezuelans. The numbers represent differing migration patterns. DHS has received more applications than the 30,000-monthly allotment, resulting in a selection process, which may have limited the program’s effectiveness in reducing illegal immigration. Still, even with these restrictions, after the humanitarian parole programs began, Border Patrol encounters declined by 92% for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans as a group between December 2022 (the month before the parole programs started) and November 2023 compared to an 18% increase for nationals of non-parole countries, according to an NFAP analysis. Illegal entry also declined for Venezuelans, although that was shorter-lived, likely due to the greater demand and other factors affecting Venezuelans. CEO: C-suite news, analysis, and advice for top decision makers right to your inbox. Email address Sign Up By signing up, you agree to receive this newsletter, other updates about Forbes and its affiliates’ offerings, our Terms of Service (including resolving disputes on an individual basis via arbitration), and you acknowledge our Privacy Statement. Forbes is protected by reCAPTCHA, and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Eliminating the humanitarian parole program will likely increase illegal entry, in part because of the expected response from Mexico. The Mexican government agreed to accept 30,000 migrants a month from the four countries if expelled after unlawfully entering America. “Normally, these migrants would be returned to their country of origin, but the U.S. cannot easily send back people from those four countries for a variety of reasons that include relations with the governments there,” noted PBS. After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden officials granted humanitarian parole to Ukrainians under a new program called Uniting for Ukraine. The United States also paroled Afghans following the fall of Kabul. According to DHS, 651,000 Ukrainians have been approved for humanitarian parole in the United States: 221,000 from Uniting for Ukraine and an additional 430,000 other Ukrainians. Under Operation Allies Welcome, 77,000 Afghans came to America and were approved for humanitarian parole, along with approvals for an additional 56,000 Afghans. If a future administration does not allow them to remain paroled in the United States, the 651,000 Ukrainians and 133,000 Afghans could be subject to deportation unless they can live legally in the United States through other means, such as TPS or asylum. The Biden administration provided a “re-parole” process for Ukrainians in February 2024 and Afghans in June 2023. If Kamala Harris wins in November, her immigration team could use a similar process for individuals in the CHNV program. DACA Voters have heard little lately about Dreamers, young people without legal status brought to America by their parents. According to DHS, there are 535,030 DACA recipients in the United States as of June 30, 2024. DACA recipients could be deported should the U.S. Supreme Court rule against them. The Biden administration has sought alternative ways for Dreamers to remain in the United States, such as qualifying for H-1B status. A Supreme Court ruling stopped Trump officials from removing current DACA recipients from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Criminal Aliens Unlikely To Be Prioritized In A Trump Deportation Plan During the vice-presidential debate on October 1, 2024, GOP candidate JD Vance said a second Trump administration would prioritize criminal aliens when attempting to deport millions of people living in the United States without legal status. Analysts point out that is unlikely to be the case and belies how bureaucracies work: Once numerical targets are set, immigration agents will go after the easiest people to find and deport. Shaul Schwarz, a filmmaker on the six-part Netflix documentary Immigration Nation, had unprecedented access to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during the Trump administration. “I think we repeatedly saw a desire to get numbers,” he said in an interview in 2020. “I think anybody who works in ICE knows it, because it was kind of everywhere we went. . . . We definitely saw a lot of agents wanting to hit numbers.” In other administrations, under normal practice, ICE agents focus on criminal aliens due to limited resources. Yet once an administration decides all undocumented immigrants should be deported, the priority on criminals will fade. “We thought a number of times during this administration that the priorities had shifted to be that it’s no longer just detaining egregious criminals, but there was a wider mandate to say that anybody here illegally could potentially be a target,” said Schwarz. Economists note that deporting individuals who have lived in America and worked for years will harm U.S. workers and the American economy. It would also upend the lives of millions of people who sought and were granted protection in the United States. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.

Elon Musk’s nonsensical lies about immigrant voting, briefly explained

This past weekend, X owner Elon Musk elevated a false right-wing talking point about immigration, claiming Democrats were fast-tracking citizenship applications to rig elections in the party’s favor. “If even 1 in 20 illegals become citizens per year, something that the Democrats are expediting as fast as humanly possible, that would be about 2 million new legal voters in 4 years,” Musk claimed. “The voting margin in the swing states is often less than 20 thousand votes. That means if the ‘Democratic’ Party succeeds, there will be no more swing states!!” It’s a baseless allegation, and one that advances the far-right’s racist “Great Replacement Theory,” which suggests that Democrats are utilizing immigration policies to replace white Americans — in this case, white voters — with minorities. It’s also an argument that’s resonating broadly with Republicans, particularly on X, where lies about immigration have been given a large platform in recent weeks. These falsehoods are also being amplified by far more than just right-wing social media users. A myth about the prevalence of noncitizen voting briefly led to a government shutdown threat. Former President Donald Trump has been key to spreading these ideas, noting in the presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this year that “a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote.” These lies — given their focus on voting — could have serious consequences as the 2024 election approaches, sowing doubts about the legitimacy of election results. With Trump already priming his supporters for another round of election denialism in case of a potential loss, the GOP’s fixation on noncitizens and “illegal” immigrants voting is only helping him further lay that groundwork. Republicans are fixated on lies about immigrant voting Musk claims: His claims, however, don’t match up to the facts. Here’s what we know: Claim: Democrats are making unauthorized immigrants citizens to tilt the election in their favor. Reality: Unauthorized immigrants aren’t broadly eligible for naturalization — and have few paths to citizenship. To qualify for naturalization, someone generally has to have been a lawful permanent resident for five years, married to a US citizen and a lawful permanent resident for three years, or a member of the military. Additionally, the US is approving citizenship applications at its swiftest pace in years, but it’s not because regulators are trying to skew the election in Democrats’ favor. The government is doing so because there was already a backlog that got worse during the pandemic, the Los Angeles Times reports. Now, the Department of Homeland Security is effectively doing catch-up. The US naturalized 878,500 people in 2023 and is now processing applications in roughly 4.9 months – a pace that’s comparable to how quickly the government was approving applications in 2013. According to the New York Times, processing time for naturalization applications spiked during the Trump administration as the White House sought to reduce legal and unauthorized immigration. These new citizens also aren’t guaranteed Democratic voters. Polling has indicated that naturalized citizens lean Democrat, but both parties are likely to pick up some new voters as people undergo this process. According to a survey from the National Partnership for New Americans, 54 percent of naturalized citizens said they’d vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in November, while 38 percent said they’d back former President Donald Trump. It’s worth reiterating that naturalized citizens aren’t unauthorized immigrants, and that the bulk of them — roughly 83 percent, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services — have been lawful permanent residents for five years. Unauthorized immigrants have limited pathways to citizenship, and many aren’t eligible for naturalization. Claim: According to Musk, “the Biden/Harris administration has been flying ‘asylum seekers’, who are fast-tracked to citizenship, directly into swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Arizona.” Reality: This Republican talking point appears to refer to a “parole” program the Biden administration has approved for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans amid instability in their home countries. Under the program, people can temporarily enter the US for two years, pay for their own travel, and fly into the country. There is no evidence that people are being flown specifically to swing states, and as a US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesperson told Vox, DHS does not choose the airports that parolees fly into, and it also doesn’t control or choose where parolees settle down. Additionally, parolees do not have a path to citizenship and as a result would be unable to vote in future elections. As legal immigrants, asylum seekers do have a path to citizenship; according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), 3.3 percent of those naturalized in 2023 came to the US as asylum seekers — roughly 29,000 people. While that might be enough to swing a state as close as Georgia was in 2020, it’s not enough to affect the outcomes in all the states Musk listed, even if Democrats were flying people there. Which, again, they aren’t. In addition, most naturalized citizens have settled in states that are not swing states, with California, Texas, Florida, New York, and New Jersey topping the list, per USCIS. There’s one other key conservative falsehood when it comes to immigrants and voting, and it’s one that appears to have touched off Musk’s tweet. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) highlighted the claim in a tweet a user responded to; Musk then responded to that post. According to Lee, “thousands of noncitizen voter files are being discovered in state after state, Democrats are trying to stop those states from removing noncitizens from their voter files.” The senator went on to claim that this is why Republicans’ failed SAVE Act, which would have required proof of citizenship to vote, should have passed. Claim: Noncitizens are being allowed to vote and help Democrats win federal elections. Reality: It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and noncitizens have very rarely been found to be illegally voting. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning nonprofit that focuses on voting rights, election officials responsible for the counting of nearly 23.5 million votes in 2016 identified just 30 possible cases of noncitizen voting for investigation. Noncitizens are able to vote in some local elections for positions like City Council and school board in some jurisdictions in Vermont and California, but they aren’t able to vote anywhere in federal elections. Republicans are stoking immigration fears Republicans are taking this approach because of how salient the issue is once again proving this election cycle and because more voters have said they’d do a better job on border security than Democrats. As Vox’s Nicole Narea reported, a majority of Americans — 55 percent, the highest proportion in years — would like to see immigration levels decrease in the US. To capitalize on these sentiments, Republicans have positioned themselves as the party with solutions on this issue, framing Democrats’ so-called laxness at the border as the cause of immigration problems. The issue has gained new attention amid record-high border crossings in late 2023, which have declined since, and an influx of migrants in several major cities. By linking existing concerns about immigration with voting, Republicans are once again using misinformation to undermine trust in the election system. Already, there’s significant skepticism about election security, in part due to Trump and other prominent leaders’ emphatic election denialism. An August ABC/Ipsos poll found nearly 25 percent of Trump supporters aren’t prepared to accept the election results, regardless of outcome. Claims that something is amiss with who is voting could exacerbate these concerns, especially if they play on existing anti-immigrant biases. Since Republicans are coalescing around these lies about immigrant voting, it’s not far-fetched to believe Trump, if he loses, could try to claim that noncitizens swayed the election for Harris, especially since he blamed noncitizens for his loss in 2020 and his loss of the popular vote in 2016. Should he try to do so again, he’s poised to replicate the chaos and confusion that resulted from Republicans leaning into false concerns about election fraud during the last election. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.