Texas Immigration Lawyer Blog

What Does the Vitter-Paul Resolution to Amend the Constitution Solve, Exactly?

Immigration Policy Center

In the latest attack on the Constitution and U.S. citizenship, Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a resolution (S. J. RES. 2) last week proposing an amendment to the constitution to limit citizenship to children born in the U.S. if 1) one parent is a U.S. citizen, 2) one parent is a legal permanent resident residing in the U.S., or 3) one parent is on active duty in the U.S. military. Arizona State Rep. Kavanaugh also introduced two bills last week attempting to deny citizenship to children born in the state to undocumented immigrants and require state officials to issue distinctive looking birth certificates to those children the state does not consider citizens. While these bills might make for splashy headlines, they do nothing to end undocumented immigration. In fact, it would make life more difficult for every person in the U.S., who would then have to prove their citizenship status in order to determine the status of their newborns.

Read the excellent deconstruction of Sen. Vitter's rationale for the Resolution.

Employer fails to slash wrongful death award of undocumented employee

Houston Chronicle by Susan Carroll

After a Harris County jury awarded the family of a 21-year-old garbage collector more than $1.4 million in a wrongful death lawsuit, the penalized company filed an appeal based on an unusual legal argument.

Attorneys for Republic Waste Services argued that members of the jury should have heard evidence that Oscar Alfredo Gomez was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador before they calculated how much his family was due in compensation.

Specifically, the attorneys contend Gomez likely would have been deported in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid of the company's Houston office two weeks after his death. Consequently, the attorneys say, the family's compensation should be based on Gomez's projected future wages in El Salvador — some $1,000 annually — instead of his U.S. earnings at the time of his death, which were $33,000 annually.

The First Court of Appeals in Houston disagreed with the company's attorneys in an opinion issued Jan. 20, ruling that the trial court correctly used its discretion to exclude evidence about Gomez's immigration status. The appeals court called the company's argument that Gomez would have been deported in the ICE raid "speculative" and affirmed the judgment against the company.

"We believe this is a landmark decision because if undocumented workers are working and they get injured or killed, they deserve the same rights as anyone else," said Houston attorney Benny Agosto Jr., who represented the Gomez family in the lawsuit. "The issue of immigration is a separate issue. … That's why this case is so important."

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But attorneys for Republic Waste, which is weighing an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court, have interpreted the decision as a victory for employers sued by illegal immigrants for wrongful death or injury.

Although they lost the Gomez case, the appeals court ruled that immigration evidence can be a relevant factor in calculating the loss of future wages, which was the crux of the company's legal argument, said Connie Pfeiffer, the company's attorney.

Trina Realmuto, an attorney with the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyer's Guild, said she saw little in the appeals court decision for the companies to celebrate. Any thoughtful trial court judge will see immigration evidence like that in the Gomez case was inflammatory, she said, and will rule to exclude it.

"Companies can't kill someone and not be responsible for it," Realmuto said. "This decision holds the company responsible for the death of Mr. Gomez. That's the bottom line."

 

After Secure Communities Fails, Feds Call for More Immigration Enforcement by Local Police

via Deportation Nation 

A recent Washington Post article highlights how Virginia police are frustrated that Secure Communities has targeted non-criminal immigrants for deportation while letting dangerous offenders go free. The solution, they argue, is even more involvement of local police in immigration enforcement. Police dissatisfaction in Loudoun County, VA, focuses on the federal fingerprint database at the heart of Secure Communities, which allows police to run fingerprints of any suspect booked into jail against an ICE and FBI database. It automatically alerts ICE when it finds an undocumented immigrant. According to the Post, ICE’s immigration database failed to detect Salvador Portillo-Saravia, a suspect in a rape case who re-entered the country after he was deported in 2003. Portillo-Saravia, an MS-13 gang member, was arrested weeks before in Loudoun County for pubic intoxication but then released when the Secure Communities database did not identify him undocumented or as a gang member. A frustrated Loudoun Sheriff Stephen Simpson told the Post that ICE:

“…advertised the program as a way to electronically check all people arrested as soon as they are fingerprinted, eliminating the need for additional investigation… We had no reason to believe he was a gang member. There was no other reason for him to be on our radar screen.”

ICE’s solution? An agency spokesman told the Post that Loudoun County should have performed a manual record check and contacted ICE if they felt a person warrants further concern. He also said people deported before 2005 may not be in the electronic database because their prints were taken on paper. In a letter to ICE, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) picked up the call for “state and local law enforcement officers [to] pursue additional inquiries about immigration status beyond Secure Communities before release.” But one local police official said manual checks would be a drain on already busy personnel, while another said that continuing to investigate a person even if there is no “hit” could implicate them in racial profiling. Wolf’s letter to ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton also asks him to “promptly provide a report to the Congress on how the program could be improved and expanded to address pre-2005 detentions.” One of ICE’s most recent reports to Congress came in its FY 2011 appropriations justification for Secure Communities/A Comprehensive Plan to Identify and Remove Criminal  Aliens (SC/CIRCA), which noted that:

SC/CIRCA is  working to revolutionize immigration enforcement by using technology to share information between law enforcement agencies and by applying risk-based  methodologies to focus resources on assisting local communities in the removal of those  criminal aliens representing the greatest threat to community safety.

Currently, 998 jurisdictions in 37 states are enrolled in Secure Communities, and ICE expects the program to be fully implemented nationwide by 2013.

 

Texas Lawmakers Denounce Perry's 'Sanctuary Cities' Emergency Item Request

Texas Tribune by Julian Aguilar

Gov. Rick Perry’s request that lawmakers work to abolish “sanctuary cities” in Texas could potentially increase crime in spots across the border from Mexico, according to lawmakers who met in El Paso today to denounce the governor’s request.

“Instead of focusing on keeping crime off our streets, police will begin to focus more on a person's immigration status than catching criminals,” freshman state Sen. Jose Rodriguez, D-El Paso, said in a statement.

Perry made abolishing sanctuary cities an emergency item, telling lawmakers this month that “ immigration laws and their enforcement are the responsibility of the federal government ... but we cannot compound their failure by preventing Texas peace officers from doing their jobs.”

That job, according to Rodriguez, is to fight crime — not to invite legal threats that could drain resources.

“To allow officers, untrained in immigration laws, to become immigration officers is a recipe for disaster, which could lead to lawsuits placing more of a financial burden on local governments," said Rodriguez.

Joining Rodriguez were U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar, Mayor John Cook and members of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department. The group also questioned whether more enforcement is needed. According to the statement, data from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition shows that approximately 100,000 people were deported from Texas last year, which is about a quarter of the total deportations in 2010.

 

A call to action on immigration: Local religious leaders hopeful for reform, despite political climate

Houston Chronicle by Jeanne Kever

Just two days after President Barack Obama renewed a call for immigration reform, a group of Houston religious leaders said Thursday that despite a discouraging political climate, they see signs of change.

"I feel the people are shifting," said the Rev. Michael Rinehart, who as bishop of the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod oversees the region's Evangelical Lutheran churches.

But he and other leaders who spoke after an interfaith prayer service that was filled with symbols of unity — Iman Mustafa Yigit reading from the Quran in Arabic, Rabbi Mark Miller blowing a shofar, the Rev. Uriel Osnaya offering a prayer in Spanish - know the goal remains elusive.

"I'm not sure Washington is shifting," Rinehart said. "Politics trumps policy sometimes."

The interfaith coalition first began promoting immigration reform more than a year ago, both among their congregations and in public pronouncements.

"We know this is a long haul, and we want to maintain our focus," said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. "The work needs to continue."

The local effort is part of a broader call by religious leaders nationally, who say they have seen the toll taken by current policies on their parishioners.

ICE reveals cost for deporting each undocumented immigrant

 
AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini

Immigration Chronicles 

That estimate -- the cost for arresting, detaining and deporting someone from the U.S. -- comes from Immigration and Customs Enforcement deputy director Kumar Kibble -- $12,500.

Kibble said the U.S. spent $5 billion last year to deport a record 393,000 immigrants.

Immigrant advocates today are strategically calling the $12,500 cost a "deportation tax."

Department of Homeland Security estimates that there are roughly 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. If you do the math, that would mean it would cost $137 billion to deport all illegal immigrants. That's pretty close to the estimate we reported last month.

"D.W.U. Driving While Undocumented" - dramatic increase in removal cases for driving without license

VOICE excellent article by Elizabeth Ricci examining the rise in undocumented individuals in removal proceedings because of arrests for driving without a license.

St. Louis immigration and criminal defense attorney Raymond R. Bolourtchi has witnessed a drmatic increase in arrests of Hispanics by local and state police. "In some instances, the clients have not even been cited for any offense until after they are verbally 'warned' and questioned about their immigration status," Bolourtchi said. "We have noticed a dramatic increase in our removal cases with suspicious factual grounds leading to initial arrest and now find ourselves with over a hundred motions to suppress and terminate being filed over the past two months."

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Jay S. Marks, an immigration law practitioner in Arlington, VA, who formerly practiced insurance defense work in-house with a major auto insurer, believes that "society's interest in licensing for minimum driver competency and insuring undocumented drivers should be obvious to even the most hardened anti-immigrant advocate. ... Anti-immigrant advocates who favor a licensing and insurance 'exemption' for undocumented drivers are shooting the rest of us in the foot, and the wallet."

Texas Lawmakers File Far-Ranging Immigration Bills

 
Photo: Todd Wiseman

Texas Tribune by Julian Aguilar

The voter ID legislation passed by the Texas Senate on Wednesday night may be controversial, but it’s a familiar debate, as is the issue of “sanctuary cities.” Gov. Rick Perry has declared both to be “emergency items” that demand immediate attention by the Legislature.

Less well known but no less controversial are many of the provisions found in more than three dozen immigration-related bills filed so far in the early days of the 82nd legislative session.

State Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, has made national headlines for his “birther” bill that would require a candidate for president or vice president of the U.S. to show proof of natural-born citizenship to be placed on the ballot in Texas. He has also filed proposed legislation designed to provoke a legal challenge to the 14th Amendment, which bestows citizenship on anyone born in the U.S., regardless of the status of the child’s parents. House Bill 292, if passed, would prevent a county's local registrar from issuing a birth certificate to a child born to undocumented immigrants in Texas.

“Instead, they will be given a notice of birth, with instructions to take it to their own consulate or embassy to get citizenship papers or a birth certificate from the country of their parents,” Berman said, explaining his bill. “If it passes, we expect to be sued immediately, and that’s exactly what we’re looking for — we want to be sued in federal court so that federal judges will finally read the 14th Amendment.” After that, he said, it’ll only be a matter of time before the federal government realizes the amendment was ratified in 1868 only for those children born in the U.S. to black slaves.

Berman has also authored a bill — HB 294 — that would ban undocumented immigrants from suing legal Texans. They could not seek “equitable relief as a counter claimant or a cross claimant,” according to the legislation.

“If you have an accident with a car driven by an illegal alien, you are going to pay for your own car. But if you hit them, they are going to get an attorney, an abogado, and they are going to try and sue you for everything you’re worth,” he said. “I have asked several lawyers, and they said it is constitutional.”

State Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, an attorney, said lawmakers are entitled to file any bill they wanted, but he said the bill would likely be deemed unconstitutional by the courts.

“The Texas Constitution has an open-courts provision which has always been interpreted to be even stronger than the Bill of Rights,” he said.

Read the full article.

President Obama Expresses Support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and the DREAM Act During His Second State of the Union Address

MicEvHill links to a clip of President Obama's remarks on immigration and to the text of the speech.

President Barack Obama expresssed explicit support for comprehensive immigration reform and implicit support for enactment of the DREAM Act as he delivered his second State of the Union Adddress.

The President's remarks were made on Tuesday, January 25, 2011.  While it was only his second State of the Union Address, it was his fourth time addressing a joint meeting of Congress since he was sworn into office in January of 2009.  He has referenced immigration in three of those four appearances.

In his State of the Union remarks on January 25, President Obama said, "I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration.  I am prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows."  The President went on to say, "I know that debate will be difficult and take time.  But tonight, let's agree to make that effort." 

 

Teen in HBO documentary granted asylum

Immigration Chronicles 

Kevin Cassasola, the then-14-year-old Honduran boy in the Oscar-nominated HBO documentary "Which Way Home," was granted asylum in the United States earlier this month.

In the documentary, Director Rebecca Cammisa followed children and teenagers riding the trains through Mexico, frequently in search of family members in the U.S. Raed Gonzalez, the Houston immigration attorney who took Kevin's case pro bono, said he could provide few details about the asylum case, which was decided Jan. 13.

"We are thrilled and pray for Kevin's new beginning in the United States," Gonzalez said.

The Migration Policy Institute has a new report out that shows the number of children and teenagers traveling without their parents to the United States has increased during the past decade.