DHS Issues Guidelines on Dealing With Illegal Immigration
Steps include hiring more agents, ending catch and release, but will allow those under DACA to stay.
The Department of Homeland Secretary has issued memos that provide new guidelines for immigration. These include hiring more agents and ending “catch-and-release,” but kept Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) intact.
Due to security concerns, Secretary Kelly wants to hire 10,000 ICE agents and 5,000 border patrol agents.
From The Washington Post:
The new directives would supersede nearly all of those issued under previous administrations, Kelly said, including measures from President Barack Obama aimed at focusing deportations exclusively on hardened criminals and those with terrorist ties.
“The surge of immigration at the southern border has overwhelmed federal agencies and resources and has created a significant national security vulnerability to the United States,” Kelly stated in the guidelines.
Basically, Kelly has urged his department to follow the immigration laws America has on the books.
Kelly also pushed for a wall on the border with Mexico. He wants the government to “immediately begin planning, design, construction and maintenance of a wall, including the attendant lighting, technology (including sensors), as well as patrol and access roads.” He called the wall important and something the country needs “to deter illegal immigration” and a “critical component” to border security.
In his guidelines, Kelly has listed which aliens should be deported by importance. But the memos have spared those under DACA:
The changes would spare so-called “dreamers.” On a conference call with reporters, a DHS official stressed that the directives would not affect Obama-era protections for illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and others given a reprieve in 2014. But outside those exemptions, Kelly wrote that DHS “no longer will exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”
This means that no illegal immigrant is exempt from removal from the United States except for the “dreamers.”
The DHS will also bring back any programs that allows “local law enforcement collaboration with the federal authorities.” Former President Obama’s administration eliminated these programs “because of concerns they violated due process or were a hindrance to local authorities.”
Kelly did not include the National Guard in the memos. Last week, a document leaked from the White House that the administration wanted to use 100,000 National Guard troops to round up illegals. Instead of double checking the story, the MSM ran with it and ended up with egg on their face.
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If you know a young man looking for employment, with a good head on his shoulders, you should suggest this employment to him. Sooner the better.
Canada can expect a hhuuggee increase in illegal immigration, well, they asked for it.
They already see it. People are being dropped off near the border and walking across to claim asylum because they’re close to being deported from the US (ie have no real asylum claim to begin with but can’t mooch here anymore)
Get rid of the dreamers too.
In due time Trump can get to the Dreamers. At the moment there are bigger fish to fry. It’s best to choose your battles wisely. There’s little sympathy for any illegal who’s committed a felony. Start with them; get some steam into that program. Other illegals will see that the DJT means business, and some will begin to self-deport.
However, if a “dreamer” violates any laws, then they do not have any special privileges.
So, drink, drive and kill someone, murder, deal drugs, commit identity theft or whatever, you have lost your privilege. You are out of the US. Come back when you can behave and you can follow the rules.
And that is how Dreamers are going to be weeded out. Those who can avoid the pitfalls and trapdoors which are many and varied should be allowed legal status. And they should start working on citizenship instead of repaying their political enablers with continued self serving opportunism.
I went back to the EO and the Implementation Memo. I can’t find a reference to DACA in the EO – it states that the immigration law will be enforced.
The Implementation Memo references DACA which was a policy implemented by the DHS under the Obama Administration, but not a law passed by Congress. It seems to be a way to get a permission slip to stay in the country, go to school and work. But, it did not mean that you were a citizen or you could get benefits. You had to apply and you could be turned down. And, it had to be renewed every few years. So, you still had to be in compliance with the rules. Warning – reference is to Wikipedia, so ….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_Action_for_Childhood_Arrivals
So, my understanding is that DACA is only a subset of “Dreamers”. If you haven’t applied, you would be subject to removal. If you have the DACA permission card, then for the moment, you are lucky. However, it has been mentioned that the policy will be reviewed at a later time.
Dreamers must go. You’re right, their parents knowingly broke the law and not them. But then again, people who have children go to prison all the time for every kind of crime. Regardless of whether you have children or not, punishment and justice must be served. Worried about splitting up the family? Then send the kids back too.
A few years ago, I took some graduate history classes at the local university. A significant directive was “use the source documents.” Over the past few days, there have been posts and comments about words and the meaning of those words. So… I have a few issues with this post.
1. Thank you for changing the title of the post. When I first saw it, you used the word “pushes”. It is now “issues” which is an accurate and more neutral term.
2. Your first embedded link is to DHS. This is a wonderful link and is a primary source document. Use it to write your own analysis of the event.
https://www.dhs.gov/executive-orders-protecting-homeland
3. You include links to Washington Post, KTAR, Fox News and The Hill. These are secondary sources and some are known to be biased in their reporting. One has to assume that they are selecting which issues they want to emphasize.
4. I would prefer that you read & highlight the key points of the Executive Orders and the Implementation Memos and how they may impact future events.
5. If your interpretation of the primary documents differ from other interpretations, then link to those secondary sources and discuss the differences that you see. This creates a more interesting post.
6. If you think of the chain of command, Congress has written laws concerning immigration. A President has signed those laws. President Trump has signed Executive Orders saying to follow those laws and has established policies. Secretary Kelly has issued “implementation memos”. These memos are not “guidelines”, they are instructions. I see more “shalls” and not many “mays” in the implementation memos.
7. Concerning your point about the National Guard, you may want to read the implementation memo. The draft that is included in a previous LI post does specifically use the words “State Guards Units”. The DHS memo refers to the same Section 287(g) of the INA and says the Secretary is still authorized to enter into agreements with a state or political unit.
The implementation memo tells the directors of ICE and CBP to engage immediately with all willing and qualified …jurisdictions. So, if Texas or Oklahoma want to work with DHS, they can enter into those agreements to allow use of the state guard units. Austin or Oklahoma City may decide not to enter into agreements concerning the use of their police departments.
I may have sounded a bit harsh in the comments above, but there were some points mentioned in the article which conflicted with what I had read in the primary documents.
Secretary Kelly did not initiate the directive. He is following the Executive Order. President Trump is the person who specifically mentioned the 10,000 ICE and the 5,000 CBP staff. Trump also directed DHS to restart the border wall.
To give credit to Secretary Kelly is not correct.
The State Guard is NOT the National Guard. Texas, forex, has both. The specific purpose of the State Guard is to have the governor a force which cannot be federalized or deployed away from his control. Using the National Guard would raise a Posse Comitatus issue the State Guard avoids.
Good points – I returned to the “draft” which mentioned “State Guards” as well as “State National Guards”. That’s why it is a draft. Many of the press reports say that the memo was talking about National Guards. So, there was confusion all around.
The final implementation memos do not have that language but refer to establishing an agreement with a “state or political subdivision.” So, I would assume that a Governor could authorize state highway patrol or the state guard/ military to work with the national DHS on immigration issues.
I checked into the Oklahoma Military Department – we have a national guard and a state guard. In a national emergency, the President can federalize the OKNG and they then respond to him as CIC. Otherwise, the Governor has control and can authorize them to perform whatever duties. We normally see them in natural disaster situations. But, I think the Governor can authorize them to work with the CBP and ICE since she would still be their commander and not the President. By state law, the state guard cannot be federalized.
Nothing really new here, except that the current administration will “honor” the existing DACA EOs.
Under existing federal law, the administration really has no authority to refuse to enforce any immigration law. So, when an illegal alien is encountered, by a federal law enforcement officer, that alien is supposed to be detained. If a final order deportation exists, the administration is supposed to implement the execution of that order. If such an order does not exist, then the alien is entitled to a deportation hearing or exclusion hearing, which ever applies.
DACA is a continuing problem. In the first place, the President has no authority to refuse to enforce the existing immigration laws, none of which allow for an exemption for those in DACA. Neither does US law give the President the power to grant such an exemption. A temporary injunction has been in effect since February of 2015 which bans expansion of the DACA qualifications. It does not address the original DACA policy. The injunction was allowed to stand by a 4-4 vote of the SCOTUS. Which means that no decision as to the legality of the program has been made. It is probable that the SCOTUS will have to revisit the legality of DACA once Gorsuch is confirmed.