Tag: Trump immigration policy

Homeland Security Blocks Congressional Visits To Migrant Detention Centers

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has barred staffers from the House Oversight Committee from conducting visits of detention facilities where migrants are being held.

The decision comes after migrants detailed actions and policies that could be considered abusive of detainees, particularly children.

Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD) sent a letter to Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan on Wednesday, objecting to the action.

View the complete August 30 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

ICE rule change on U visas sparks outrage

The Hill logoThe Trump administration has quietly altered its handling of visas granted to immigrants who cooperate with criminal investigations, allowing people to be deported even while they are waiting for their visas.

The change to U visas will make immigrants far less likely to report serious crimes, say immigration attorneys, who argue it also reflects the Trump administration’s efforts to deport as many immigrants as they can from the United States.

“This is going to have a chilling effect,” Eileen Blessinger, a Falls Church, Va.-based immigration attorney, told The Hill, because “by applying, you’re essentially reporting yourself to ICE but now there’s a risk that ICE might pick you up.”

View the complete August 30 article by Zack Burdryk on The Hill website here.

Immigration cruelty may be hurting Trump — but he can’t stop

AlterNet logoThe Trump administration has sought to implement its racist ideology without democratic consensus, a process that has increased with alarming haste this summer. Seemingly every week brings a new barrage of coordinated attacks of cruelty against immigrants, both documented and undocumented. From holding children in crowded detention facilities with no deadline for release to deporting 30-year residents who were brought to the U.S. as six-month-old children to jailing U.S. citizens suspected of appearing Hispanic, summer has brought an unprecedented crackdown on whole communities.

Whether such displays of cruelty are the cause of Trump’s plummeting polling on his signature issue — Trump is now deeply underwater on immigration, with even non-college-educated white voters, a large portion of his base, evenly divided at 47-48 on the issue — or its effect is still up for debate. But the brutality is no longer in question.

Already this week, Trump has followed up on his anti-immigrant campaign with attacks on U.S. service members, children receiving cancer treatments and congressional staffers attempting to engage in oversight. He’s also diverted disaster preparedness funds ahead of hurricane season to his pet project and dangled the possibility of a presidential pardon to incentivize lawlessness in fulfilling his campaign promise of building a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

View the complete August 29 article by Sophia Tesfaye from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Trump officials say children of some service members overseas will not get automatic citizenship

The Hill logoThe Trump administration said Wednesday that the children of some U.S. military members and government employees working overseas will no longer automatically be considered United States citizens.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a policy that in some cases rescinds previous guidance stating that children of U.S. service members and other government employees abroad are considered “residing in the United States” and automatically given citizenship under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

USCIS issued a clarification to the rule later Wednesday, explaining that the new rule would only affect three categories of people: Children of non-U.S. citizens adopted by U.S. citizen government employees or service members; children of non-U.S. citizen government employees or service members who were naturalized after the child’s birth; and children of U.S. citizens who do not meet residency requirements.

View the complete August 28 article by Rafael Bernal and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Trump admin pulling millions from FEMA disaster relief to send to southern border

Combined with existing space, the funding would allow ICE to detain nearly 50,000 immigrants at one time.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is pulling $271 million in funding from the Department of Homeland Security, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund, to pay for immigration detention space and temporary hearing locations for asylum-seekers who have been forced to wait in Mexico, according to department officials and a letter sent to the agency by a California congresswoman.

To fund temporary locations for court hearings for asylum-seekers along the southern border, ICE would gain $155 million, all from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, according to the letter from Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., which was seen by NBC News.

The allocations were sent to Congress as a notification rather than a request, because the administration believes it has the authority to repurpose these funds after Congress did not pass more funding for ICE detention beds as part of an emergency funding bill for the southwest border in June.

View the complete August 27 article by Julia Ainsley and Frank Thorp V on the NBS News website here.

19 states and D.C. sue Trump administration over family detention rule

Axios logoCalifornia Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with 18 other states and the District of Columbia, are suing the Trump administration over a new rule allowing migrant families to be kept in detention long-term, Becerra’s spokesperson confirmed Monday.

Why it matters: This is the California attorney general’s 13th immigration-related lawsuit against the Trump administration, the spokesperson told Axios. The case will ultimately be brought in front of California federal Judge Dolly Gee, who has already refused to grant President Trump’s request to change the decades-old Flores settlement to allow families to be detained together longer than 20 days.

View the August 26 article by Stef W. Kight on the Axios website here.

DOJ: Immigration facility shouldn’t have to pay minimum wage

SEATTLE (AP) — The Trump administration is opposing Washington state’s effort to make a privately run, for-profit immigration detention center pay detainees minimum wage for the work they do.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued The GEO Group in 2017, saying its Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma must pay the state minimum wage to detainees who perform kitchen, laundry, janitorial, maintenance and barbershop tasks. The lawsuit seeks to force GEO to turn over profits it gained by underpaying them — an amount that could reach into the millions.

U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan has already issued some key rulings in the state’s favor. But in a “statement of interest” filed this week, the Justice Department called the lawsuit “an aggressive and legally unjustified effort by the State of Washington to interfere with federal immigration enforcement,” and it urged Bryan to reject it.

View the complete August 23 article by Gene Johnson from the Associated Press on the SFGate.com website here.

The Memo: Dangers loom for Trump on immigration

The Hill logoPresident Trump is ramping up his rhetoric on immigration, but it may not be the political winner he thinks.

On Wednesday, Trump raised the idea of abolishing “birthright citizenship” — the concept, enshrined in the Constitution, that anyone born in the United States is automatically an American citizen.

This came on the heels of a move to indefinitely extend the period for which families can be held in immigration detention facilities.

View the complete August 23 article by Niall Stange on The Hill website here.

Scoop: Top Homeland Security aide resigns amid tensions with White House

Axios logoActing Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan’s top aide and spokesperson is resigning amid frustration in the White House over the Department of Homeland Security’s handling of major policy rollouts and White House distrust of McAleenan and his inner circle, sources familiar with his resignation tell Axios.

Why it matters: Andrew Meehan’s departure comes amid broader internal tensions between the White House and DHS leadership. President Trump is wary of McAleenan, whom he associates with the Obama administration, and his top aides, several current and former administration officials tell us. These sources say Trump has no intention of formally nominating McAleenan for a permanent position.

Continue reading “Scoop: Top Homeland Security aide resigns amid tensions with White House”

Kids in border camps are 9 times likelier to die of flu. Trump’s team won’t vaccinate them.

Customs and Border Protection will not distribute flu shots to detained children or adults and has yet to respond to medical professionals’ concerns.

More than two dozen immigrants, including children, have died in U.S. government custody since President Donald Trump took office.

The judicial branch has had to force Trump’s administration to provide basic hygiene tools like toothpaste to detained migrant children.

Now, his immigration officials are saying they will not act to prevent influenza from spreading in their cramped, overcrowded immigration jails at the U.S.-Mexico border.

View the complete August 21 article by Alan Pyke on the ThinkProgress website here.