Hundreds of American citizens end up in deportation proceedings each year, immigration data shows

The newly released information on 1,714 citizenship claim cases shows that only about two dozen people with citizenship cases nationwide were resolved quickly. One out of every six people with citizenship cases spent more than six months behind bars…

By Lise Olsen, Houston Chronicle

July 30, 2017

Emilio Blas Olivo, a 69-year-old Texan born in Weslaco, ended up in a deportation cell for three months after he returned home from a visit with relatives in Reynosa in the summer of 2014.

He presented both his birth certificate and a social security card to U.S. border officers but was detained anyway and then deported to Mexico.

In a lawsuit filed this year in the Southern District of Texas, Olivo claims immigration authorities lacked the right to arrest him and violated his rights by failing to give him due process after he repeatedly told them he was an American.

Olivo is not alone.[...]

Read the full article:

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Hundreds-of-citizens-end-up-in-deportation-11719324.php

The Political Class’s Hypocrisy on the San Antonio Deaths

Officials and politicians naturally expressed shock and horror at the deaths of 10 migrants crammed into a sweltering tractor-trailer in San Antonio the night of July 22. The political class blamed human traffickers; the truck’s driver, who appears to be African American, may face the death penalty. But of course these deaths were just among the latest in the thousands that these same officials and politicians have caused through stepped-up border enforcement dating back to the Clinton administration.

Frank Fuentes

The death of Frank Fuentes is a case in point. Fuentes, a young man who has lived in Virginia and Maryland since the age of two, was one of the “gang members” and “bad hombres” Trump and Sessions have targeted for removal from the country. Deported to Guatemala, the recent high school graduate and DACA recipient was trying to return to his family in Maryland. Friends said he was pursuing a degree a local community college.—TPOI editor

Human smuggling is a deadly problem—and hardline immigration policies will make it worse

By Marie Solis, Mic

July 26, 2017

Sunday’s discovery that between 30 and 40 people had been smuggled across the border in the back of a tractor-trailer — and the subsequent reports that 10 of those people died from the sweltering heat — was a startling one. But historically speaking, it’s not too unusual.

Deadly human smuggling has been a problem for decades. Aggressive anti-immigration policies and rhetoric have only made the practice more commonplace, with smugglers or “coyotes” making millions off of immigrants desperate to enter the United States.

With President Donald Trump in office, experts said the problem may only grow worse.[…]

Read the full article:

https://mic.com/articles/182849/human-smuggling-is-a-deadly-problem-and-hardline-immigration-policies-will-make-it-worse - .72fSzeSaM

Victim of Hot Tractor-Trailer in Texas Was Va. High School Graduate

"Frank learned from his mistakes, but he was robbed at a shot to fulfill his dreams. A broken immigration system within a broken, less than fortunate community. Frank was on his way to receiving an associate's degree at Nova. Do you know the positive impact that would have had on the Fuentes family?"

By Jackie Bensen, NBC4 Washington

July 25, 2017

Two years before he suffocated to death in the sweltering cargo area of a tractor-trailer in Texas, Frank Guisseppe Fuentes graduated from J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Virginia.

At least 100 people were found crammed inside a big-rig trailer Sunday morning at a Walmart parking lot in San Antonio, 10 of whom died, including 19-year-old Fuentes. Many more were taken to the hospital to be treated for dehydration and heat stroke.

The driver of the tractor-trailer has been charged with transporting immigrants into the United States illegally. Eight people were found dead inside the broiling truck's trailer and two others died later at local hospitals from extreme dehydration and heatstroke.

Fuentes migrated from Guatemala to the U.S. with his parents when he was just 2 years old, according to the Washington Post.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Victim-of-Hot-Tractor-Trailer-in-Texas-Was-Va-High-School-Graduate-436642513.html

At Least 14 Border Deaths in Three Days

The deaths of 10 migrants in San Antonio this week have gotten plenty of media attention, and there’s been some for the four deaths at the Rio Grande. Despite these stories, people continue to mouth the anti-immigrant mantra: “they should just wait their turn in line.” Can anyone seriously believe that migrants would risk gruesome deaths like these if there was actually a line for them to wait in?—TPOI editor

San Antonio death toll in 'horrific' human trafficking reaches 10

By Guillermo Contreras and Emilie Eaton, My San Antonio

July 23, 2017, updated July 24

A 10th person has been confirmed dead after immigrants were trapped inside a tractor-trailer at a Walmart parking lot, officials confirmed Monday morning. Several people are still in critical condition at local hospitals.

Eight immigrants initially were found dead inside the closed trailer just after midnight Saturday. More than two dozen others, the only ones left of the estimated 100 travelers who started the trip, were taken to area hospitals, many in serious to critical condition due to the heat.

A ninth person died Sunday afternoon and the U.S. Attorney's Office stated on Monday morning that a 10th person died following the incident.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/San-Antonio-death-toll-in-horrific-human-11308288.php - photo-13290061

Photo: Jerry Lara, San Antonio Express-News

Four Migrants Die Trying to Cross Rio Grande Into the U.S.

By Matthew Haag, New York Times

July 25, 2017

At least four people have died since Monday trying to cross the Rio Grande into Texas, the authorities said Tuesday, another deadly sign of the extremes to which migrants will go to reach the United States.

Heavy rains have transformed the usually slow-moving stream near El Paso into a treacherous torrent, engulfing people trying to make the already-dangerous journey. Members of the city’s water rescue team pulled the first victim from the water around noon Monday, a 37-year-old woman who died a short time later at a hospital.

Early Tuesday, firefighters retrieved three other victims — two teenagers, a boy and a girl, and an adult woman. Seven people were rescued, the authorities said.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/us/migrants-die-el-paso-rio-grande.html

A Deportation at M.I.T., and New Risks for the Undocumented

Immigration is one area where the President can deliver, to a substantial extent, on his incendiary words, without Congress. …And the more Trump fails at other parts of his agenda, and the more he doubles down on a strategy of pleasing his core supporters, the more unconscionable cases, like that of Francisco Rodriguez, there will be.

By Steve Coll, New Yorker

July 20, 2017

On Tuesday, the Boston Globe published a letter from Francisco Rodriguez, who had written it from a jail in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, where he has been held for the past week. Rodriguez, who is forty-three, has lived in this country for a decade. For the past five years, he has worked as a custodian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he belongs to a labor union. He pays taxes and runs a carpet-cleaning business on the side. He is married, with two children, and his wife is pregnant with a third. Prior to his current incarceration, he wrote, he had never been arrested for any crime.

Rodriguez is from El Salvador, where he worked at an engineering firm, but he left the country in 2006, fearing for his life, after gangsters murdered one of his colleagues. He reached Boston without documentation and applied for asylum but was denied. His appeals ended in 2011, and he became subject to deportation. Each year since, however, officials at the Department of Homeland Security have granted him a stay against removal, after he has met with them to insure that he has remained a resident in good standing. This spring, however, following the election of Donald Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who are part of D.H.S., sent a different message: Rodriguez needed to buy himself a ticket to El Salvador and volunteer to surrender for deportation. An invitation that had been a routine check-in in previous years suddenly became an order to leave the country. “I was told that if I did what ice said, I would not have to be in jail,” Rodriguez wrote in his letter. “I believed them. I came when they told me and did what they said, but they took me. I do not understand why I am here.”[...]

Read the full article:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-deportation-at-mit-and-new-risks-for-the-undocumented

The Dark History of Defining ‘Family’

…[E]fforts to define and manipulate the definition of “family” in immigration matters are not new. For more than 100 years the government has done so, often reflecting political exigency and racial bias rather than the real needs and desires of families.

By Mae Ngai, New York Times

July 19, 2017

The Trump administration lost another round on Wednesday in its continuing legal battle over its travel ban against people from six majority-Muslim countries and all refugees. The Supreme Court let stand — pending full review of the ban in October — a Federal District Court ruling in Hawaii that included grandparents and other close relatives of those in the United States within the scope of exemptions to the ban.

Last month, the Supreme Court authorized the administration to implement the ban but instructed the government to exempt people with “bona fide” relationships to relatives and institutions (like employers and universities) in the United States. The State Department issued guidelines that narrowly defined those family relations as spouses, parents and parents-in-law, children and siblings. It excluded grandparents, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, and brothers- and sisters-in-law. It also excluded all refugees.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/opinion/travel-ban-upheld-supreme-court.html

Photo: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters

MPI: As Many As 1.5 Million DREAMers Could Get Legal Permanent Residence Under Bipartisan Senate Bill

PRESS RELEASE

July 20, 2017

Migration Policy Institute

Contact: Michelle Mittelstadt

202-266-1910

mailto:mmittelstadt@migrationpolicy.org

MPI Estimates As Many As 1.5 Million DREAMers Could Get Legal Permanent Residence Under Bipartisan Senate Bill Unveiled Today

WASHINGTON — Bipartisan Senate legislation unveiled today could, if enacted, grant legal permanent residence to as many as 1.5 million unauthorized immigrants brought to the United States as children, according to Migration Policy Institute (MPI) analysis of key provisions outlined by the measure’s authors, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Durbin (D-IL).

A new fact sheet, Protecting the DREAM: The Potential Impact of Different Legislative Scenarios for Unauthorized Youth, examines the DREAM Act of 2017 proposed by Graham and Durbin as well as a House bill introduced in March by Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), the Recognizing America’s Children Act.

The fact sheet compares these two latest versions of the DREAM Act to the one that passed the House in 2010, offering estimates of who might qualify for initial conditional legal status as well as the subset who might fulfill the additional academic or professional requirements to obtain legal permanent residence later.

Using an innovative MPI methodology to assign legal status within Census Bureau data and to study attributes of the unauthorized, the researchers find that:

• 1.8 million people under the Senate bill and slightly more than 1 million under the Curbelo bill would be immediately eligible to earn conditional legal status because they already have the required high school education.
• Of those with conditional status, a smaller subset—1.5 million under the Senate bill and 938,000 under the pending House bill—would be likely to satisfy the college completion, military enlistment or other professional criteria to get legal permanent residence (aka a green card).
• While there is a maximum pool of 3.3 million unauthorized immigrants under the Senate legislation and 2.5 million under the House bill who meet the minimum age at arrival and years of U.S. residence threshold, in reality those who do not already have the required education are significantly unlikely to be able to re-enroll and thus qualify to apply for conditional status. 
• The experience of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program shows the limited ability of those without a high school degree to qualify for deportation relief by getting back into education because of limited English proficiency, high levels of poverty and family pressures.

The researchers suggest that given the significant overlap in qualifying criteria between the DACA program and the pending House and Senate bills, the vast majority of current DACA recipients would be able to apply for conditional status under either version.

Read the fact sheet:

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/protecting-dream-potential-impact-different-legislative-scenarios-unauthorized-youth

Supreme Court won't let Trump travel ban hit grandparents

Several analysts said the signals from the high court increase the possibility that the case may never be argued or decided on the merits. The 90-day period for the six-country ban is set to run out in late September and the refugee halt is scheduled to expire soon thereafter. The justices also said last month they want the parties to address in their briefs whether the dispute could be moot.

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By Josh Gerstein, Politico

July 19, 2017

The Supreme Court has rejected the Trump administration’s effort to subject foreigners who are grandparents or cousins of Americans to the president’s travel ban executive order, but the justices will allow the administration to block many refugees for now.

The Trump administration said grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts did not qualify for a travel ban exemption, which was required by the high court for foreign citizens with close ties to U.S. people or institutions. But a federal judge in Hawaii disagreed with the administration’s interpretation and ordered officials to exempt a broader set of relatives.

The Hawaii judge also said refugees assigned to a U.S. resettlement organization were exempt from the ban. However, the justices put that part of the decision on hold Wednesday pending an appeal.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/19/scotus-wont-let-trump-travel-ban-hit-grandparents-240719