High rate of deportations continue under Obama

In an interview with Telemundo’s Jose Diaz-Balart on Tuesday, President Obama said that it would be difficult to halt the deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally without the approval of Congress.

Immigration rights advocates have pushed the president to halt deportations through an executive order, especially of immigrants who haven’t committed any serious crimes.

Last summer the administration did just this for young unauthorized immigrants brought to the country illegally as children with the creation of the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” program. Known as DREAMers, more than 500,000 young unauthorized immigrants have taken advantage of the administration’s program. Our 2012 survey of Hispanic adults found wide approval (89% approved of this new policy). A Pew Research Center survey of the general U.S. public found that 63% of U.S. adults approved of this program as well.

But deportations of unauthorized immigrants continue at record levels. In 2011 some 392,000 immigrants were removed from the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security. Among them, 48% were deported for breaking U.S. laws, such as drug trafficking, driving under the influence and entering the country illegally.

The Obama Administration has deported more immigrants annually than the George W. Bush Administration.

Most Hispanics disapprove. When asked about the Obama administration’s handling of deportations in a late 2011 Pew Research Center survey, 59% said they disapproved while 27% said they approved. According to the same survey, 41% of all Hispanics, and 55% of Hispanic immigrants, were aware that more immigrants had been deported under the Obama Administration than the Bush Administration.

The Latino vote played an important role in the 2012 presidential election. A record 11.2 million Hispanics voted, supporting the president over challenger Mitt Romney 71% to 27%, according to exit polls. For Latino voters, the issue of immigration ranks as an important issue (though in 2012 it trailed others such as the economy, education and health care).

California Assembly Bill Will Burden Immigration Attorneys With New Requirements 1159 (AB 1159)

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez recently introduced Assembly Bill 1159 (AB 1159) in February 2013, which has raised the ire of many immigration attorneys because of several drastic new provisions. The bill, initially introduced earlier this year, contained language on Education but was (entirely) amended instead in July 2013 to regulate immigration services in the State of California.

While controversial bills affecting immigration attorneys aren’t entirely new, it is the way in which AB 1159 (in its current incarnation) has evolved that raises many questions. The effect of this bill would be to encumber legitimate immigration practioners with regulatory burdens which would only raise the costs for those attorneys complying with the law, but would do little to deter people acting outside the law.

The national organization for immigration attorneys, American Immigration Lawyers Association, "AILA" has released a public statement in opposition, which is quoted below.

By contrast, gratuitous measures contained in the proposed legislation will only deplete the number of well-intentioned, competent professionals from one of the most humanitarian areas of the practice of law.

The misplaced focus on unprincipled lawyers already operating in violation of the existing regulatory scheme misses addressing the real threat: the victimization of vulnerable immigrants by notarios and unscrupulous immigration form-preparers (a fact which is of great concern to law enforcement and borne out by the Bar’s own reports). The bill places onerous business and procedural requirements on immigration lawyers far in excess of what is imposed on other attorneys in California. The attempt to micro-manage the attorney-client relationship impedes the immigration attorneys’ effective representation while the non-attorney perpetrators go undetected and continue to scam immigrants with impunity.

As noted above these requirements are at best redundant and at worst unnecessary, increasing the costs compliant attorneys will face. Rushing into short-sighted proposals to address very real concerns about the potential for large-scale immigration fraud will severely hinder the ability of the private bar and community-based legal assistance providers to serve the legal needs of immigrant communities. An inevitable result of the proposed requirements would make hiring qualified legal help so cumbersome and costly that it will actually drive people away from qualified lawyers and legitimate service providers and into the arms of fraudulent practitioners. Nonprofits who rely on outside attorneys to provide assistance will find fewer lawyers able or willing to provide pro bono and low bono services.

What concerns me the most personally, is the fact that the immigration courts are a federal court, meaning that any attorney licensed in any state has the right to practice before the court. The regulation proposed in this bill would only apply to California licensed attorneys and anyone from outside the state would not be subject to these news rules.

Sponsoring a Legal Immigrant by Signing an Affidavit of Support, USCIS Form I-864, Could Leave You Vulnerable to Support the Immigrant Indefinitely

Great story out of Texas as reported by Bret Crandall of valleycentral.com. A Lawful Permanent Resident ("LPR" or "Green Card" Holder) sued her former husband for spousal support. The former husband was the person who signed the USCIS Form I-864 Affidavit of Support agreeing under a binding contract with the U.S. government that he would support his intending immigrant.

Here Is the Story

Steve Summers is being sued in federal court by his ex-wife Evangelina Zapata de Summers.

After six years of marriage they divorced in 2009.

Now, she is taking her ex back to court for breaking his contract with her and the U.S. government.

Since the mid-90's the law has required U.S. citizens like Summers to sign the I-864 affidavit to bring a non-U.S. citizen, like a spouse, into the country.

To ensure immigrants do not become a burden on social welfare programs, the sponsor must sign the document in which they essentially agree to support the immigrant at 125 percent of the federal poverty level if they have no income. But if the two parties divorce --- the affidavit of support still stands.

“A U.S. citizen can really get screwed under these circumstances," Summers said.

Zapata is suing to obtain alimony for the rest of her life.

Summers' attorney Marcus Barrera tells Action 4 even though they are divorced, and she's lived in the U.S. for about a decade, he may still have to pay up.

"The problem is these permanent residents come back and sue their sponsors and they sit at home and do nothing and the law makes it pretty clear that you have to support them at 125 percent of poverty,” Barrera said. “There is no mechanism built into this situation that forces the person to get a job as a permanent resident and become a citizen or you will be deported."

According to Summers, his wife can work, but she doesn't.

The only way to nullify the I-864 affidavit is if the immigrant becomes a U.S. citizen, works for 10 years, fails to keep permanent residency status or dies.

Even though Zapata has remarried and divorced, the contract remains.

"There is no incentive for them to become a U.S. citizen, no incentive to work. There is nothing where I can get out of that contract,” Summers said.

"So they stay here in limbo and basically become a parasite to the original person that signs the affidavit of support,” Barrera said.

Summers says he is doing all he can to bring attention to this part of immigration reform that is rarely spoken about and often misunderstood by lawmakers and attorneys.

"I had a very hard time finding an attorney. I went to attorneys who specialize in immigration and I was told this was a figment of my imagination -- 'you don't have anything to worry, Steve' -- only to find out that it has started to happen,” Summers said.

“The law is fairly ambiguous and I think there is some clarification that could be made,” Summers said.

"Any immigration bill should have something in there that forces a permanent resident, if they aren't going to work to become a permanent, productive member of U.S society they need to be deported back to where they came from or the rest of the U.S. citizens, including the sponsor, will have to continue supporting them and we just can't continue that,” Barrera said.

The Constitution Has An Asterisk on It - The New War To Replace Iraq and Afganistan

The U.S. borderlands are today ground zero for the rise, growth, and spread of a domestic surveillance state. On June 27th, the Senate passed the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act. Along with the claim that it offers a path to citizenship to millions of the undocumented living in the United States (with many stringent requirements), in its more than 1 ,000 pages it promises to build the largest border-policing and surveillance apparatus ever seen in the United States. The result, Senator John McCain proudly said, will be the “most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

This “border surge,” a phrase coined by Senator Chuck Schumer, is also a surveillance surge. The Senate bill provides for the hiring of almost 19,000 new Border Patrol agents, the building of 7 00 additional miles of walls, fences, and barriers, and an investment of billions of dollars in the latest surveillance technologies, including drones.

In this, the bill only continues in a post-9/11 tradition in which our southern divide has become an on-the ground laboratory for the development of a surveillance state whose mission is already moving well beyond those borderlands. Calling this “immigration reform” is like calling the National Security Agency ’s expanding global surveillance system a domestic telecommunications upgrade. It’s really all about the country that the United States is becoming — one of the police and the policed.

Low-Intensity War Zone

The $46 billion border security price tag in the immigration reform bill will simply expand on what has already been built. After all, $100 billion was spenton border “enforcement” in the first decade after 9/1 1 . To that must be added the annual $18 billion budget for border and immigration enforcement, money that outpaces the combined budgets of all other federal law enforcement agencies. In fact, since Operation Blockade in the 1990s, the U.S.-Mexico border has gone through so many surges that a time when simple chain link fences separated two friendly countries is now unimaginable.

To witness the widespread presence of Department of Homeland Security agents on the southern border, just visit that international boundary 100 miles south of Border Security Expo. Approximately 7 00 miles of walls, fences, and barriers already cut off the two countries at its major urban crossings and many rural ones as well. Emplaced everywhere are cameras that can follow you — or your body heat — day or night. Overhead, as in Afghanistan, a Predator B drone may hover. Y ou can’t hear its incessant buzzing only because it flies so high, nor can you see the crew in charge of flying it and analyzing your movements from possibly hundreds of miles away.

As you walk, perhaps you step on implanted sensors, creating a beeping noise in some distant monitoring room. Meanwhile, green-striped Border Patrol vehicles rush by constantly . On the U.S.-Mexican border, there are already more than 18,500 agents (and approximately 2,300 more on the Canadian border). In counter terrorism mode, they are paid to be suspicious of every thing and everybody . Some Homeland Security vehicles sport trailers carrying All Terrain Vehicles. Some have mounted surveillance cameras, others cages to detain captured migrants. Some borderlanders like Mike Wilson of the Tucson-based Border Action Network, a member of the Tohono O'odham Nation (a Native American people and the original inhabitants of the Arizona borderlands), call the border security operatives an “occupying army .”

Checkpoints — normally located 20-50 miles from the international boundary — serve as a second lay er of border enforcement. Stopped at one of them, you will be interrogated by armed agents in green, most likely with drug-sniffing dogs. If you are near the international divide, it’s hard to avoid such checkpoints where you will be asked about your citizenship — and much more if any thing you say or do, or simply the way you look, raises suspicions. Even outside of the checkpoints, agents of the Department of Homeland Security canpull you over for any reason — without probable cause or a warrant — and do what is termed a “routine search.” As a U.S. Border Patrol agent told journalist Margaret Regan, within a hundred miles of the international divide, “there’s an asterisk on the Constitution.”

House Republicans Vote to Deport "Dreamers" Covered by Obama Amnesty in DACA

In a mostly symbolic vote, the Republican-controlled House voted Thursday to resume the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, a move in the first immigration-related vote in either chamber of Congress this year and a measure of the daunting challenge facing supporters of a sweeping overhaul of existing law on the subject.

The party-line vote of 224-201 was aimed at blocking implementation of President Barack Obama's 2012 election-year order to stop deportations of many so-called DREAM Act individuals. Democrats on the House floor reacted with boos when the provision was added to a routine spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

The administration has threatened to veto the overall legislation on budgetary grounds. It nevertheless stood as a stark warning from conservatives who dominate the ranks of the Republican House majority about attempts in the Senate to grant a chance at citizenship to an estimated 11 million immigrants residing in the country illegally.

And the White House reacted sharply, saying the House-passed measure would affect "Dreamers" who are "productive members of society who were brought here as young children, grew up in our communities, and became American in every way but on paper."

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said in a statement that the vote prohibits the administration "from implementing executive amnesty" without congressional action. "Bipartisan support for my amendment is the first test of the 113th Congress in the House of Representatives on immigration. My amendment blocks many of the provisions that are mirrored in the Senate's 'Gang of Eight' bill. If this position holds, no amnesty will reach the President's desk," he said. The vote took place as Senate leaders set Friday for the opening of debate on White House-backed legislation that would create a chance at citizenship for those in the country unlawfully, at the same time it takes steps to assure the borders are secure against future illegal immigration.

The measure was drafted by a bipartisan group of eight senators, then approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month on a vote of 13-8. It also creates a new low-skilled guest-worker program, expands the number of visas available for high-tech industry workers and reorders the system for legal immigration that has been in place for decades.

In the House, 221 Republicans and three Democrats voted for King's proposal, while 195 Democrats and six Republicans opposed it. "I can't believe they just did that," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a leading supporter of the DREAM Act. Ana Avendano of the AFL-CIO, said in a statement that King and his allies are playing to "a dwindling base of anti-immigrant Republican primary voters. We hope and expect that the leadership of the Republican party will understand that this is not only abhorrent policy but suicidal politics."

Speaking to a group of reporters, a White House official, Cecilia Munoz, said, "If part of what is driving this debate is a recognition, particularly on the Republican side, that they need to do better with the Latino community, this is really not the right way." Obama announced a new policy in June 2012 that puts off deportation for two years for many of those brought to the United States as children, specifically if they were under 16 at the time and are no older than 31 now. They also must be in school, graduated from high school or have served in the military and have no criminal record. The order offers relief from deportation from many young immigrants who would be covered by the so-called DREAM Act, which has repeatedly failed in Congress.

Democrats argued vociferously against King's proposal when it was debated Wednesday evening. "We should not hold children responsible for the actions of adults and their parents. We should give them an opportunity," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who has been involved in a sputtering attempt to produce a compromise immigration bill in the House.

For most Americans who thought some form on immigration reform was a shoe-in, this should serve as a wake-up call that the House Republicans are not going to roll over just because of the 2012 election results.

Recent Ninth Circuit en banc Decision on Social Groups Cited My Research

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals certified the case of an El Salvadorian national who filed a claim for asylum relief based upon her fear of persecution on account of her testifying against gang-members who killed her father. Under asylum law, her claim fell within the nebulous group of membership in a particular social group. The case was rehear en banc with the intention of clarifying how such a claim of membership would be adjudicated, especially since any formulation of a particular social group fearing gang violence, retaliation, of coercion into a gang has been held not to constitute a social group. (See Santos-Lemus v. Mukasey, 542 F.3d 738 (9th Cir. 2008).)[The presented social group of “a young man in El Salvador resisting gang violence unstoppable by the police,” did not have sufficient social visibility and particularity.]

In this case, the asylum seeker fled El Salvador after witnessing the murder of her father at the hands of M-18 street gang. She identified the two men who murdered her father and then testified in open court against them. At the conclusion of her Individual Hearing before the Immigration Judge, the IJ held that she had suffered past persecution and she did have a reasonable fear of future persecution if returned to her native country and that she was a member of a particular social group, "people testifying against or otherwise opposing gang members."

The government appealed the IJ's Oral Decision and the Board of Immigration Appeals reversed the IJ's decision. Henriquez-Rivas en banc review, which was granted.

In the decision, the Ninth Circuit rendered a very narrow opinion that held the BIA misapplied its own precedent in Matter of C-A-, 23 I&N Dec. 951 (BIA 2006) in holding that witnesses who testify against gang-members may not constitute a particular social group due to a lack of social visibility.

In the dissent, Chief Justice Kozinski, joined by Justice Bybee, cited my research on what constitutes membership in a particular social group. Defining a Core Zone of Protection in Asylum Law, 10 J.L. & Soc. Challenges 22 (2008) twice on page 11 of the decision.

Here is the full decision:

Henriquez-Rivas v. Holder -

A New Immigration Fraud Ring Busted in Los Angeles - Charges Include Fraud and Bribery

The Los Angeles Time reported yesterday that Attorney Kwang Man "John" Lee was arrested for being the ring leader of an immigration fraud ring. The authorities reported that he was a man who could make things happen — for a price. For a pound of marijuana and $44,000, the Koreatown attorney allegedly said, he could get an immigrant client a U.S. citizenship. "Price is OK for the risk," Lee told an associate, according to federal authorities.

Mr. Lee was a silver-Corvette-driving attorney, also a former Immigration and Naturalization Service agent. He allegedly had associates at various stages of the immigration process willing to take bribes and provide favors for his clients. At Los Angeles International Airport, he had Customs and Border Protection officer Michael Anders, according to prosecutors. At Citizenship and Immigration Services, they alleged, he had officers Jesus Figueroa and Paul Lovingood. At Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he had special agent James Dominguez, according to court documents.

And he apparently had a long list of clients from across the globe, from Japan to Morocco to the Czech Republic, willing to pay the tens of thousands to cut a corner or two in the process for a permanent residency or citizenship in the U.S.

On May 8th, federal prosecutors announced charges against Anders, Figueroa, Lovingood, Dominguez and a client of Lee's, Mirei Gia Hofmann. The current and former immigration officials were indicted May 7th on charges including conspiracy, bribery, fraud and misuse of government seals. Hofmann faces a single count of immigration fraud.

Lee, who became an attorney in 1997, was previously charged in a separate criminal complaint of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government.

According to affidavits filed in the case, Lee plied the officials with lavish gifts and cash bribes in exchange for immigration benefits including forged admission stamps with a false date of entry into the U.S. and rubber-stamping fraudulent permanent residency or citizenship applications. Anders, who at one point lived with Lee, provided the attorney with a specialized security ink used by Border Patrol officials to stamp passports at airports, according to court papers.

In exchange, Lee bought round-trip tickets to Thailand for Dominguez and a 47-inch flat-screen TV and a computer for Lovingood, and gave thousands of dollars in cash to Figueroa, authorities allege. Anders was paid $50 each time he falsified an entry record, according to the indictment.

Lee complained to a confidential informant that he gets "headaches entertaining them, taking them out to dinner," according to an affidavit. He secured illegal immigration benefits for at least several dozen clients over the years, prosecutors said.

"It looks like this goes back at least 20 years," Assistant U.S. Atty. Meghan Blanco said. "By and large, it involves people who entered the country legally and then overstayed their visa."