The “border crisis” numbers don’t add up

 ...[T]he “border crisis” narrative ignores several important differences between 2000 and 2021—the number of successful border crossings, the legal situation of the migrants who arrive, and the impact of a global pandemic.

By David L. Wilson, MR Online

October 29, 2021

In July, environmental activist Laiken Jordahl tweeted out a short video featuring what he called “the almighty border wall,” a section of fence at the Coronado National Forest in Arizona. The fence there includes several gates that need to be kept open at times of heavy rain. Without them, explained Jordahl, a staffer at Tucson’s Center for Biological Diversity, debris would accumulate behind the structure and floodwaters would eventually knock the wall down.

The gates were wide open. The only barrier was a few strands of barbed wire: anyone could easily have clipped the wire and walked through. No Border Patrol agents were in sight; neither were any would-be migrants.[…]

Read the full article:

https://mronline.org/2021/10/29/the-border-crisis-numbers-dont-add-up/

The Border Wall. Photo: David Bacon

What’s the Relation Between Border Apprehensions and Unauthorized Entries? Part 4

Now we can return to our original questions: does this year’s increase in border apprehensions mean that more undocumented migrants are settling here? Is it comparable to the border crossings in years like 2000?

Encounters and Admissions

On October 22 Customs and Border Enforcement (CBP) released fiscal 2021’s final number for migrants apprehended or expelled at the southwestern border: 1,734,686. This breaks down into 75,480 arriving at ports of entry and 1,659,206 crossing the border between ports of entry. The number is historically high, surpassing the 1,643,679 apprehended at that border in 2000. Still, there’s no reason to think that 1,734,686 migrants have been added to the U.S. undocumented population.

 

In fact, 1,063,526 of the migrants were immediately expelled under Title 42 of the U.S. health code, and another 128,851 were sent back through expedited removal, reinstatement of removal, voluntary return, or the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).

 

This leaves 542,309 border crossers admitted to the country, but the actual number is probably lower: 47,671 of these migrants still didn’t have a final disposition when CBP collected the data at the end of September, so some had probably been deported. The migrants admitted were almost all members of family units or as minors without their parents who were allowed to seek asylum: a total of 479,728 family unit members and 149,033 children without their parents were apprehended at the border. Note that seeking asylum is specifically protected by U.S. law, so it’s inaccurate to refer to asylum seekers’ entry as “illegal.”

 

Many thousands of the 542,309 migrants admitted to the country are undoubtedly now in immigration detention. The government doesn’t seem to have made the number available at this time.

 

The “Gotaways” and Overstays

There’s also a certain number of migrants who entered by crossing the border without being apprehended.

 

In Part 3 we estimated that the current apprehension rate was something like 80 percent. Applying this rate to the 1,659,206 migrants encountered at the border, we estimate that 414,802 migrants may have crossed the border without being apprehended, more than double the estimated numbers in 2016. But CBP seems to have a lower estimate: three anonymous CBP officials told the Washington Post in April that about 1,000 were crossing each day without being apprehended—which would come to 365,000 for the fiscal year.

 

Depending on how we count these “gotaways,” the total number of migrants joining the undocumented population through the southwestern border would be at most between 907,309 and 957,111.

 

But not all undocumented immigrants enter through the border. In Part 2 we cited estimates that as many as 66 percent of the new arrivals in 2016 were overstays. But this year’s number of overstays can’t be anything like the 306,000 to 320,000 we calculated for 2016.

 

Just as the pandemic has undoubtedly disrupted other migration patterns, it has dramatically changed the number of possible overstays. The US government has restricted travel from the areas that provided the most visitors in the past—China, the Schengen zone, the UK, India, Brazil—while much land entry from Mexico and Canada is also restricted. The result, according to 2021 policy brief from the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), is an 80 percent drop in the number of visitors with non-immigrant visas.

 

Source: AILA 2021 Policy Brief

Applying the reduction in visas to the number of overstays from 2016, we get an estimate of just 61,000 or 62,000 overstays for all of fiscal 2021. But this is probably an underestimate, since more than 200,000 of the visas were presumably for H-2A temporary farmworkers; these are largely Mexicans, who have a high rate of overstays. To compensate for this, we round the overstays up to 120,000.

The Final Numbers

If we add overstays to the projected successful border crossers through September, we get between 1,127,309 and 1,177,111 migrants entering the undocumented population this fiscal year.

 

This is definitely higher than the unauthorized entries in recent years 2016, but still in line with the entries in each year from 1994 to 2006, and despite the media’s comparisons to 2000, below the estimated 1,389,322 entries for that year. As Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey, an expert on immigration patterns, noted earlier this year, the current increase could be a return to the pattern that characterized most of the last five decades, or it may show the effects of the COVID pandemic, which created economic hardships pushing more Mexican workers to cross the border and more people coming from relatively distant countries to seek asylum.

 

And we don’t yet know how the pandemic may have affected the number of migrants leaving the undocumented population. CMS’s estimate for 2016 was 771,000. If that number left this year, the total increase in the undocumented population would be less than 500,000.

 

In other words, despite ominous warnings about “illegal aliens” and a “border crisis,” this year’s the rate of unauthorized entry is probably less than it was in the early 2000s and may just represent a temporary effect of the global pandemic.

 

Part 1: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2021/08/whats-relation-between-border.html

Part 2: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2021/08/whats-relation-between-border_24.html

Part 3: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2021/08/whats-relation-between-border_26.html

What’s the Relation Between Border Apprehensions and Unauthorized Entries? Part 2

In Part 1 we considered the official numbers for apprehensions at the Mexico-U.S. border and how the meaning of those numbers fluctuates over time. Now we’ll consider ways to estimate the number of unauthorized border crossers who become part of the general U.S. population—that is, the ones who either evade apprehension or are allowed to remain after apprehension.

For these numbers we need to use estimates based on various sources. As with the apprehension numbers, the metrics for the data in these sources aren’t necessarily consistent over time. Adding to our difficulties, most government data uses the U.S. fiscal year, which begins in October, while other sources may use the calendar year, or even comparisons between certain months.

We will note these discrepancies but won’t try to adjust for them. All estimates will be rounded to the nearest thousand.

 

Calculating Changes in the Undocumented Population

One way to estimate the number of successful border crossers is to study changes in the size of the undocumented population.

 

The traditional approach to determining this population’s size is the residual method. Demographers start from the estimated number of immigrants in Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey (ACS), subtract the number of naturalized citizens and green card holders, make adjustments for underreporting, and come up with an estimate for the undocumented population in that year. (Note: the ACS is based on the calendar year.)

 

Conservatives frequently claim this method undercounts the undocumented population, but it has proved itself in a real-life test: the “amnesty” of 1986. The number of migrants applying for legalization was within the range the residual method predicted. Since then a number of refinements have led to more detailed ACS-based estimates.

 

A further refinement of the residual method is presented by demographers Robert Warren and John Robert Warren in a 2013 paper. In addition to estimating the size of the undocumented population from 1990 to 2009, they break out estimates for the number of unauthorized migrants that entered the country each year and the number that left the count—by emigrating, adjusting their status, being deported, or dying. The year of entry is provided by the ACS, and DHS supplies the number of those who adjusted status or were deported; mortality is based on standard mortality rates for Latino males based on age.

 

The Warren and Warren estimates, which run from 1990 through 2009, form a pattern not too far from that of border apprehensions. The growth rate for the undocumented population reached a high point in 2000 and then declined; by 2008 the number of people leaving the undocumented population exceeded the number that entered.

 

Source: ProCon, based on Pew Research reports

Two other studies show that the decline continued for at least the next decade: a summary of estimates through 2017 by Pew Research, and unpublished data supplied by the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) extending the Warren and Warren estimates to 2016.

 

But What About the Overstays?

However, estimates of the undocumented population don’t tell us how many of these migrants entered by crossing the southwestern border. Many undocumented migrants enter with a visa but overstay the visa’s expiration date; if they stay permanently, they become part of the undocumented population.

 

In recent years this group may have surpassed border crossers as a share of new undocumented arrivals.

 

The main source for an overstay count is an annual “entry/exit overstay” report from DHS. The report for fiscal 2016  shows 50,437,278 entries by foreigners who were issued visas for limited stays or were allowed to enter through the Visa Waiver Program. The department subtracts the number of visa holders who adjusted their status—received new visas or applied for permanent residence—and estimates the number of visa holders who exited the country before their visas expired. The result is what DHS calls 739,478 “overstay events.” Subtracting people who simply overstayed by a few months or less, DHS comes up with a 628,799 “suspected overstays.”

 

But these numbers are educated guesses, as is shown by the term “suspected overstays.” The government has a system for tracking people entering with visas, but tracking people leaving is more difficult. Most enter and leave by air, along with some who travel by sea, so it’s possible to track exits by consulting passenger manifests, but matching the tens of millions of visa holders with the tens of millions of manifests is a monumental task. And tracking is even more difficult for the visa holders who enter and leave by land—mostly Canadians and Mexicans.

 

There are other hurdles to estimating overstays. People who receive more than one visa in the course of a year can overstay more than one time in a year, thus getting counted more than once, and visa holders who die while in the US—elderly parents visiting their children, for example—might be counted as overstays.

 

Correcting the Overcount

DHS’s estimate is a significant overcount, according to demographer Robert Warren, who is Senior Visiting Fellow at CMS. Warren uses the ACS data, including a breakdown by national origin, to adjust the DHS overcount and provide a new estimate. Warren and CMS Executive Director Donald explain the method in a 2018 article, and Warren describes the results in an accompanying article. The number Warren comes up with for 2016 is 306,000, less than half the DHS number.

 

Source: Center for Migration Studies

If we take this 2016 overstay estimate in conjunction with CMS’s 623,000 estimate for that year’s unauthorized arrivals, then these 306,000 overstays would account for 49 percent of the arrivals, while 317,000 migrants had presumably entered the U.S. population by crossing the border without authorization.

 

Warren gives somewhat different figures in a 2019 CMS report, estimating arrivals at 515,000 arrivals and overstays at 320,000, or 62 percent. By this estimate, only 195,000 migrants—or 38 percent of total arrivals—had entered the U.S. population in 2016 by crossing the border without authorization.

Part 1: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2021/08/whats-relation-between-border.html

Part 3: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2021/08/whats-relation-between-border_26.html

Part 4: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2021/08/whats-relation-between-border_28.html

What’s the Relation Between Border Apprehensions and Unauthorized Entries? Part 1

Politicians and the media have spent much of this year creating panic over the number of border apprehensions, which have now reached their highest level in two decades. Very few ask the obvious question: do more border apprehensions mean that more people are now living in the United States without authorization?

It’s true that the number of border apprehensions tends to mirror the number of unauthorized entries, but the relation between the two numbers—that is, the apprehension rate—is complicated and is constantly changing. A million border apprehensions now may not mean the same thing as  miallion border apprehensions meant in 2000. This year they clearly don’t.

 

Understanding Border Apprehensions

There’s an easy way to determine the number of apprehensions at the Mexico-U.S. border: the government keeps records, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), makes them available on the web. But the nature of these apprehensions keeps changing.

 

In 2000, for example, Border Patrol agents would frequently just ID the migrants they had apprehended and then release them; the official name for this is “voluntary return.” As a result, an apprehended migrant might simply attempt a second crossing the next day and be apprehended again. This recidivism meant that the number of apprehensions was significantly higher than the number of individual migrants apprehended.

 

The “voluntary return” approach was largely dropped during the administration of George W. Bush. The policy was now to put as many migrants as possible through the deportation process, and many were also criminally prosecuted under a section of the immigration code—rarely used in the past—that made unauthorized border crossing a misdemeanor with a six-month sentence for first offenders; there are harsher penalties for second offenses. These measures made it less likely that an apprehended migrant would make a second attempt and reduced the recidivism rate.

 

Other changes also affected the number of apprehensions at the southwestern border. The Border Patrol has more than doubled in size since 2000, and some 650 miles of barriers were installed on the southwestern border during the century’s first decade. These factors made migrants significantly more likely to be caught if they tried to enter, while the increased likelihood of getting caught presumably discouraged people from making the attempt.

 

Southwest Border Apprehension and Border Patrol Staffing Levels, FY 1975-2017

 

Source: Migration Policy Institute, 2018

Factoring in Asylum Seekers

The number of border apprehensions declined dramatically during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and remained low for a decade, except for a significant increase in 2019. A number of factors contributed to this reduction—the lack of employment opportunities in the U.S., for example, a lower birth rate in Mexico, and the higher level of border enforcement.

 

There was another important change: a new group of migrants appeared on the scene. Throughout history, the people crossing the border had tended to be adult males, mostly Mexicans, who were looking for work. Starting in 2014, more and more of the migrants being apprehended were unaccompanied minors and family unit members, most of them Central Americans seeking asylum.

 

Unlike the single males, who often try to evade capture by entering through dangerous but less well patrolled sectors, these new migrants tend to enter in safer areas and turn themselves in directly to Border Patrol agents in order to start the process of establishing asylum claims. Immigration opponents talk about migrants “sneaking across the border,” but in reality, asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors often literally walk into the arms of waiting Border Patrol agents.

 

The ease with which asylum seekers and unaccompanied children can be apprehended naturally led to an increase in the apprehension rate.

The Title 42 Effect

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major new factor in apprehensions since March 2020. Apprehensions of asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors declined during the pandemic’s first months due to lockdowns in the sending countries. But the rate started to rise rapidly soon afterwards—largely as a result of a Trump administration policy of invoking Title 42 of the health code to exclude almost all non-citizens from entering the U.S.

 

Under Title 42, which the Biden administration has continued in part, many migrants apprehended at the southwestern border are simply IDed and then expelled back into Mexico. This is in effect a resumption of the old “voluntary return” policy, and although the returns are far from voluntary, the new policy has the same effect: expelled migrants keep repeating their attempts to enter.

 

Before Title 42 the annual recidivism rate averaged 15 percent. By June 2021 it had more than doubled to 38 percent, thus significantly increasing the number of apprehensions.

Part 2: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2021/08/whats-relation-between-border_24.html

Part 3: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2021/08/whats-relation-between-border_26.html

Part 4: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2021/08/whats-relation-between-border_28.html

Let’s Call the “Border Crisis” What It Is: Another Big Lie From the Right

GOP pols tour the border in March. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Undocumented immigrants aren’t actually a problem, but the Republican Party has framed them “as criminals and lawbreakers and a grave threat to the nation in order to motivate and mobilize the Republican base, to great effect,” Massey told Truthout. Up until now, the Democrats have failed to push back, he added.

By David L. Wilson, Truthout

July 20, 2021

Republican politicians and commentators spent the last week of June promoting their claim that this year’s increase in apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border constitutes — in the words of Fox News host Sean Hannity — “a crisis of a monumental scale.”

 

The campaign’s high point came on June 30 when former president Donald Trump visited a stretch of the border wall near Pharr, Texas, and delivered a number of “questionable statements” about his administration’s supposed enforcement successes.[…]

 

Read the full article:

https://truthout.org/articles/lets-call-the-border-crisis-what-it-is-another-big-lie-from-the-right/

 

It’s the US Government’s Immigration Policy That’s Illegal

“The violation of asylum seekers’ rights over the past three years under both Trump and Biden demonstrates how easily a president can ignore and even defy the law — especially when the victims are poor or marginalized and not enough of us speak out.”

By David L. Wilson, Jacobin
July 12, 2021
There’s a crisis on the imaginary line that separates the United States from Mexico, but it’s not the one politicians and media outlets have been talking about.

Earlier this year, the US political class was focused on a supposed “surge” in migration and on serious — but not unprecedented — failures in the treatment of unaccompanied minors. This distracted attention from two far more serious issues: the Trump administration’s misnamed Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), now discontinued, and the ongoing use of the US health code’s Title 42 to exclude asylum seekers from entering the country.[…]

Read the full article:
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/07/us-immigration-policy-legality-title-42-biden-trump-asylum-mpp-border-surge-human-rights/

Title 42 victims in Tamaulipas, Mexico. Photo: Paul Ratje/AFP via Getty Images

What Border Crisis?

Annual Border Patrol Apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico Border, FY 1970 – FY 2020

 

Figure 1 from  "Rising Border Encounters in 2021"

On June 24 the American Immigration Council released an updated version of its indispensable fact sheet on this year’s border encounters. Like the previous versions, this one demonstrates that there actually isn’t a “border crisis”—at least not the one that the right wing and much of media have been hyping for the past five months.

 

Of course there are real crises at the border: the after-effects of the previous administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, the present administration’s maintenance of Trump’s expulsions under Title 42 of the health code, and the continuing failures, despite some improvements, to provide acceptable treatment to minors who have crossed the border. But the crisis of hundreds of thousands of foreigners rushing across an “open border” is simply a fiction.

 

The statistics do show that more immigrants are being encountered (or apprehended) by the Border Patrol than at any other time in fifteen years. But the fact of more encounters doesn’t necessarily mean more migrants are successfully entering the country.

 

The Border Crossings Have Declined…

The “border crisis” narrative ignores differences in the types of encounter, and in the types of people crossing the border. The Council’s fact sheet carefully breaks down these differences.

 

“For nearly a 35-year period beginning in the mid-1970s, the Border Patrol routinely apprehended at least 1,000,000 migrants a year,” the fact sheet notes. A still greater number of migrants succeeded in entering the country without authorization. For example, in fiscal year (FY) 2000 the Border Patrol reported 1.7 million apprehensions, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “estimates that there were an additional 2.1 million successful unlawful entries.”

 

The situation changed rapidly as the number of Border Patrol agents increased—from “11,264 in FY 2005 to 21,444 in FY 2011.” The result was that by fiscal 2012 DHS estimated that for the first time, more border crossers were apprehended than succeeded in entering. Moreover, by then the Great Recession and changing conditions in Mexico had reduced the number of Mexicans seeking work here: “migration from Mexico declined sharply, falling from 1,089,092 apprehensions in FY 2006 to 340,252 apprehensions in FY 2011.”

 

But 2014 brought a new phenomenon, an increase in migrants seeking asylum or arriving as unaccompanied minors. U.S. law has special provisions for asylum seekers, along with unaccompanied minors from countries other than Canada and Mexico. These migrants usually turn themselves in to the Border Patrol; they know that if they pass an initial screening for “credible fear,” they will allowed to remain in the United States temporarily to pursue their cases.

 

There have been a number of spikes in border crossings by these migrants—in 2014, 2016, 2019, and this year. Each of these spikes was treated as a “border crisis” by the media, although none approached the level of unauthorized entry in the years before the Great Recession.

 

…But Border Encounters Have Increased

Asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors aren’t the majority of the border crossers this year, however. What about the other border crossers?

 

One reason this group has grown large is the Biden administration’s continued use of Title 42 to push migrants back from the border without detaining and processing them. “In the first four full months of the Biden administration, 65.4% of all people encountered by the Border Patrol at the border were expelled under Title 42,” the Council notes. As a result, a migrant who has been pushed back can simply try again. For example, 38 percent of the migrants encountered in May had attempted to enter previously within this fiscal year.

 

Each of the migrant’s attempted crossings can result in encountering a Border Patrol agent, and this is then reported as a new border encounter—even though the migrant may never have succeeded in entering the United States.

 

Individuals Apprehended by the Border Patrol and Not Expelled, 10/12 – 5/21

Figure 4 from "Rising Border Encounters in 2021"

This results in border encounter statistics that only reflect attempts to enter this country, not actual entries. In fact, unauthorized entry has remained relatively low—significantly lower than it was fifteen years ago. As the Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick noted in a June 14 tweet, the number of migrants who get across the border without being apprehended is probably about five times lower than the number in 2006.

 

If the current situation is a border crisis, then the United States has been experiencing a border crisis at least since the 1970s, under eight different administrations.

Crediting Xenophobia—Rather Than Organizing—With Raising Workers’ Wages

 For years, the media narrative has been that repressive immigration policies—billions spent on immigration enforcement, families torn apart, thousands dying on the southwestern border—ill somehow lead to wage hikes. They haven’t, and they won’t.

By David L. Wilson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
February 19, 2021

The Economist (2/15/20) ran a brief article last year with a startling headline: “Immigration to America Is Down. Wages Are Up. Are the Two Related?” Maybe, the article’s anonymous author answered, at least for the short term.

A few on the right were quick to cite this conclusion as support for former President Trump’s efforts to deter immigration.[…]

Read the full article:

https://fair.org/home/crediting-xenophobia-rather-than-organizing-with-raising-workers-wages/

                                                                                Photo: Magnum

Anti-Immigrant Policies Are Not Only Cruel, They Also Have an Economic Cost

Legalization and a fair work visa program would raise wages for many U.S.-born workers as well. This wage increase would in itself provide an important stimulus to an economy facing its worst crisis since the 1930s.

By David L. Wilson, Truthout

August 19, 2020

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the government agency that processes visas, green cards and citizenship applications, claims it’s going broke. USCIS officials are threatening to furlough some 13,400 employees as early as August 30, after itially planning the measure for August 3. The furloughs would add to what was already a huge backlog in application processing, creating a disaster for tens of thousands of immigrant applicants. As many as 126,000 people already approved for citizenship may not be naturalized in time to register for the November elections.

Trump administration officials blame the agency’s financial problems on the COVID-19 pandemic...

Read the full article:

https://truthout.org/articles/anti-immigrant-policies-are-not-only-cruel-they-also-have-an-economic-cost/

U.S.-Mexico border fence in Playas de Tijuana, BC. Photo: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images

How to Organize Against ICE Raids, and Why We Need to Do It

May 1, 2018 demo. Photo: Pioneer Valley Workers Center

Building a Rapid-Response Network to Defend Immigrant Workers

By Dan DiMaggio and Pioneer Valley Workers Center Staff, Labor Notes

August 16, 2018

As the Trump administration cracks down on undocumented immigrants, it’s urgent for worker centers and unions to organize to defend immigrant members.

In Western Massachusetts, the Pioneer Valley Workers Center has created a rapid-response network it calls “Sanctuary in the Streets” (SiS). The worker center, founded in 2014, organizes restaurant workers and farmworkers in the area. Worker committees set the network's priorities.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.labornotes.org/2018/08/building-rapid-response-network-defend-immigrant-workers

  

Immigration Raid in Nebraska Devastates Local Agriculture Industry and Families

By Melissa Cruz, Immigration Impact

August 13, 2018

A small town in Nebraska was rocked last week when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents raided multiple businesses, arresting 133 undocumented immigrant workers in an operation which has already created upheaval in the community and its local agriculture industry.

This raid is the latest amid a series of enforcement operations conducted by the Trump administration, including raids in Tennessee and Ohio. In addition to the workers, 17 employers were served arrest warrants last week for allegedly exploiting undocumented labor, among other crimes.[...]

Read the full article:

http://immigrationimpact.com/2018/08/13/immigration-raid-nebraska-agriculture-industry/

What Does It Mean to Abolish ICE?

Activists and politicians want a total overhaul of immigration enforcement—but do we have a real plan?

By Julianne Hing, The Nation

July 11, 2018

On July 4, when Therese Patricia Okoumou scaled the pooled drapes of the Statue of Liberty, fellow protesters below her held up cards that spelled out, “Abolish ICE.”

Four days earlier, at the more than 700 rallies against the separation and detention of families at the US border, those same words were echoed again and again on homemade signs, in chants, and on T-shirts. Encouraged by a groundswell of anger, even national-level politicians are endorsing the elimination of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a shadowy law-enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.thenation.com/article/mean-abolish-ice/

CQ Roll Call via AP Photo / Bill Clark

It’s Time to Decriminalize Immigration

Photo: US Customs and Border Protection via AP

Congress should repeal the law that allows for kids to be ripped away from parents and for migrants to be criminalized en masse at the border.

By Bob Libal and Judy Greene, Texas Observer

June 20, 2018

This week, the news has been dominated by horrifying scenes from the border of children being ripped apart from their parents who the federal government is criminally prosecuting. The best solution is to repeal the laws that allow for this injustice in the first place. That’s a far cry from the administration’s announcement today that families would be detained together in family detention centers during and following any criminal prosecution.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.texasobserver.org/its-time-to-decriminalize-immigration/

Escraches Come North: “Incivility” or an End to Impunity?

"Jail for the Torturer!" Photo: Clarin/AFP

It’s hard to say now what direction the protests will take, but they could turn out to be the U.S. version of Argentina’s escraches. Someday members of our political elite may finally have to answer for their crimes in front of a judge and a jury.

By David L. Wilson, MR Online

June 29, 2018

Seven years of military dictatorship in Argentina ended in 1983, but the regime’s officers remained a powerful force. The newly formed democratic government tried to appease them by passing two laws that granted almost total impunity for the junta’s many crimes: the “disappearance” of as many as 30,000 people, systematic torture, the dumping of live detainees from airplanes, and the practice of seizing the children of murdered activists and handing them over to childless military couples.

In the mid-1990s many of the survivors began fighting back against the impunity.[...]

Read the full article:

https://mronline.org/2018/06/29/escraches-come-north-incivility-or-an-end-to-impunity/

Family Separations Inspire Fresh Resistance: Two, Three, Many Portlands?

There’s major pushback against Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting family units seeking asylum—protests at ICE offices, a new sanctuary action, public shaming of rightwing officials. The resistance doesn’t seem to be letting up, and street protests are planned across the nation for June 30.—TPOI editor

Mothers and babies occupy the New York City ICE Office to protest Trump administration 'zero tolerance' immigration policy

Inside the Manhattan Federal Building. Photo: ACT.tv

By Victoria Bekiempis and Janon Fisher, NY Daily News

June 21, 2018

Angry moms, some rocking infants in Baby Bjorns, crowded onto the ninth floor of the federal building Thursday in downtown Manhattan to air their grievances against the Trump administration’s “zero policy” toward border crossing.

Though the policy of separating children from their parents was reversed Wednesday with an executive order, the group of mad moms said they were still upset.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/ny-metro-mothers-children-babies-occupy-ice-office-20180621-story.html

Guatemalan-born mother Debora Barrios-Vasquez fights deportation from Upper West Side church

The 32-year-old has two children, who are U.S. citizens.

Debora Barrios-Vasquez. Photo: Abigail Weinberg

By Abigail Weinberg, amNewYork

June 21, 2018

A Guatemalan-born woman facing deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement is taking physical sanctuary in an Upper West Side church, the New Sanctuary Coalition announced at a news conference Thursday.

Debora Barrios-Vasquez, 32, fled Guatemala in 2005 and has been living in New York ever since. Her children, 10 and 2, are both United States citizens. She was pulled over for a traffic violation in 2011 and had regular check-ins with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since then, but in February, ICE ordered her deportation.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.amny.com/news/debora-barrios-vasquez-sanctuary-1.19345675

[Barrios-Vasquez denies that there was a traffic violation; she says she was racially profiled.—TPOI editor]

ICE Shuts Down Its Portland Office After Protest Camp Blocks the Entrance

The federal immigration agency closed its building because of "safety concerns resulting from the ongoing protests."

Photo: Icon Sportswire Via Getty Images

By Katie Shepherd, Willamette Week

June 20, 2018

The Portland demonstrators protesting the Trump administration's family separation policy have achieved a small victory.

After several days of protests blocking the front entrance, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has temporarily shut down its operations at its Portland office.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/06/20/ice-shuts-down-its-portland-office-after-protest-camp-blocks-the-entrance/

Kirstjen Nielsen Is Confronted by Protesters at Mexican Restaurant: ‘Shame!’

By Sarah Mervosh, New York Times

June 20, 2018

Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, got an earful while she was eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Washington on Tuesday night.

With tensions continuing to escalate over the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that separates children from their families after illegal crossings at the border, a group of protesters confronted her.[…]

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/kirstjen-nielsen-protesters-restaurant.html

Stephen Miller called 'fascist' by protester at Mexican restaurant

By Brooke Seipel, The Hill

June 21, 2018

White House senior adviser Stephen Miller was called a fascist earlier this week while dining at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C., according to the New York Post.

The encounter took place on Sunday at Espita Mezcaleria. The Post reports that a patron of the restaurant called out Miller — an immigration hard-liner — over the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy that separates migrant families caught crossing the border illegally.[…]

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http://thehill.com/homenews/news/393403-stephen-miller-called-fascist-by-protester-at-mexican-restaurant