Texas Immigration Lawyer Blog

Defendent accused of sexual abuse of student alleges crime victim visa motive for undocumented mother reporting crime

KWTX.com 

The state rested Tuesday afternoon in the trial of a former local kindergarten teacher, Fernando Campos, accused of sexually abusing students.

Under defense examination, Campos’ attorney, Stan Schwieger, asked the girl’s mother about her legal status in the U.S.

She is not a U.S. citizen.

The defense asserts that there could be some advantage to the woman if her daughter were actually a crime victim and suggested that a new visa or possible citizenship was a motive for her testimony, even if she wasn’t aware of the possible benefits of having a child who was a victim of a crime.

Outrageous.

USCIS: Provisional Waiver Is Not In Effect

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a release warning that the provisional waiver is not yet in effect:

USCIS is considering changes that would allow certain immediate relatives (the spouse,children or parents of a U.S. citizen) who can demonstrate extreme hardship to a U.S.citizen spouse or parent to receive a provisional waiver of the unlawful presence bars before leaving the United States.

These procedures are not in effect and will not be available to potential applicants until USCIS publishes a final rule in the Federal Register specifying the effective date. USCIS plans to publish a notice of proposed rulemaking in the coming months and will consider all comments received as part of that process before publishing a final rule.

• Do not send an application requesting a provisional waiver at this time. USCIS will reject any application requesting this new process and we will return the application package and any related fees to the applicant. USCIS cannot accept applications until a final rule is issued and the process change becomes effective.
• Be aware that some unauthorized practitioners of immigration law may wrongly claim they can currently file a provisional waiver application (Form I-601) for you. These same individuals may ask you to pay them to file such forms although the process is not yet in place. Please avoid such scams. USCIS wants you to learn thefacts about protecting yourself and your family against scammers by visiting uscis.gov/avoidscams.

If you already have an immigrant visa interview with the U.S. Department of State, we strongly encourage you to attend. The Department of State may cancel your immigrant visa registration if you fail to appear at this interview.

PolitiFactTexas TRUE: Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz opposes DREAM Act; 85% of Latinos support it

Politifact Texas

In a Feb. 3, 2012, press release, a Texas Democratic Party spokeswoman charged Republicans with using the Latino community "as a wedge to gain support from the extreme wing of their party."

Among the examples of what the release sarcastically calls "GOP Latino-outreach efforts" is this statement: "Ted Cruz forcefully opposes the DREAM Act, which is supported by 85% of Latinos."

* * *

Let’s start with how Cruz, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, stands on the cited act.

We didn’t have to look far. In a transcribed interview with blogger Sonja Harris of Conservatives in Action that Cruz has on his campaign website, the candidate says: "I do not support the DREAM Act and categorically oppose amnesty. I categorically oppose amnesty, and I strongly support legal immigration for those that have followed the rules and come here to pursue the American dream."

* * *

In its 2011 National Survey of Latinos, the Pew Hispanic Center found that 91 percent favored the DREAM Act when asked this question: "Thinking about immigrants whose parents brought them to the United States illegally when they were children … would you favor or oppose a law that would let these young adults become legal residents if they go to college or serve in the military for two years?"

The most recent national poll from Latino Decisions, conducted in January 2012 with Univision News and ABC News, asked: "Do you support or oppose the DREAM Act, which would provide undocumented immigrant youth a path to citizenship if they attend college or serve in the U.S. military?" It found that 66 percent strongly supported the law and an additional 19 percent somewhat supported the law, for a total of 85 percent.

In each poll, the margin of error was about 4 percentage points.

When we asked the Texas Democratic Party for backup information, spokeswoman Rebecca Acuña also pointed us to a February 2011 national poll by Latino Decisions, with impreMedia, publisher of Spanish-language newspapers in Texas, California, New York and other states. Respondents were asked about the DREAM Act in a section of the survey that began: "In December 2010, Congress considered a number of different policies. For each policy that I read, please tell me whether you approve or disapprove and how strongly."

The poll described the DREAM Act as providing "undocumented immigrant children a path to citizenship if they attend college or serve in the U.S. military." The results: 67 percent of respondents said they strongly approved of the legislation and 18 percent said they somewhat approved, for a total — again — of 85 percent. (The margin of error was about 4 percentage points.)

Our ruling

Cruz said in an interview that he does not support the DREAM Act, and three polls over the past 13 months have shown at least 85 percent of Latinos favoring the legislation. We rate the Texas Democratic Party’s statement True.

 

 

Is This Alabama? Anti-Immigration bill consequences

Is This Alabama? 

In June 2011 Alabama enacted H.B. 56—the most extreme state-level anti-immigrant bill passed to date—which went into effect in September. Now Hollywood director Chris Weitz has turned the camera on Alabama and is asking “Is This Alabama?”

You be the judge. Watch and share the videos below.

Watch a replay of the “Is This Alabama?” launch event with director Chris Weitz and Jose Antonio Vargas at the Center for American Progress.

 

 

The Two Faces of Alabama

What Alabama Knows About Civil Rights

“Not the Kind of Alabama I Want”

An Alabama Mother Speaks

 

“Is This Alabama” is a project of:

 

ICE delivers hefty fines for immigration paperwork errors

Interesting article by Susan Carroll of the Houston Chronicle looking at Immigration and Custom Enforcement's current employer I-9 audit procedures. Often employers without any unauthorized employees are fined more than those who are found to have employed unauthorized workers.

An analysis of nearly 800 audit cases ICE completed since October 2010 shows that roughly half of the 117 companies fined were not specifically penalized for hiring illegal immigrants, but for problems with the employment verification paperwork required for new hires.

A third of the total $1.8 million in fines issued by the agency in those closed cases involved companies that auditors found had zero workers with "suspect documents," the records show.

Harris County Texas Sheriff Garcia leads fight to save 287(g) funding

Houston Chronicle by Susan Carroll

Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia is leading an effort to block proposed budget cuts in the controversial 287(g) program that has helped local law enforcements authorities identify more than 275,000 undocumented immigrants in their custody.

President Obama, in his 2013 budget blueprint released Monday, requested a $17 million reduction – or 27 percent – for 287(g) operations by law enforcement agencies across the country.

The Department of Homeland Security, which administers the Immigration and Customs Enforcement program, says it plans to discontinue “the least productive” 287(g) partnerships with local authorities in order to meet the funding cut.

In a hearing before the House Committee on Homeland Security on Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano argued that another immigration-status screening program, dubbed “Secure Communities,” can also meet the goals of 287(g), which is named for the 1990s immigration statute that created it. Napolitano said Secure Communities is more “consistent, efficient and cost-effective.”

But Garcia and Texas lawmakers led by Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Austin say Napolitano’s decision would be devastating to local law enforcement.

“Elimination of 287(g) would mean the failure to refer to ICE for possible removal many violent, dangerous, experienced criminals who had no previous contact with ICE before being charged with a state crime in Harris County,” Garcia said.

* * *

Nearly 31,000 convicted criminals have been identified and deported under this program in Texas, according to data issued by the federal agency this month.

The three Texas agencies that participate in 287(g) are the Carrollton and Farmers Branch Police Departments near Dallas and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.

Garcia’s office teamed with ICE in mid-2008 to run 287(g) at the county jail. Eighteen Harris County sheriff’s deputies have been trained by ICE agents on immigration law through this partnership.

The 287(g) program allows local deputies to question individuals – regardless of their crime – about their immigration status when they arrive at the jail. Deputies then can place holds, commonly known as detainers, on the inmates they deemed to be in the country illegally. Thus, when the suspected undocumented immigrants are released from jail, deputies can turn them over to ICE.

 

 

 

New Mexico Governor Martinez fails to repeal driver's licenses for undocumented again

Immigration Impact 

Yesterday, the New Mexico Legislature ended its 2012 session, leaving intact the 2003 state law that allows driver’s licenses to be issued to individuals regardless of immigration status. This marks the third unsuccessful attempt by Republican Governor Susana Martinez to repeal the state’s driver’s license law. HB103, the bill backed by Martinez, passed the House earlier this month but failed to make it through the Senate. An alternative Senate bill, SB235, which would have tightened residency requirements but not repealed the 2003 law, passed the Senate. Governor Martinez, however, vowed to veto that Senate bill. New Mexico and Washington are the only states that issue driver’s licenses regardless of immigration status (Utah issues a driving certificate that can’t be used for identification).

Republican Governor Susana Martinez has repeatedly tried (and failed) to repeal the state’s nearly decade old driver’s license law. Last year, a state district judge halted on constitutional grounds Gov. Martinez’s costly campaign to “certify” the driver’s licenses of foreign nationals. A spokesman for Gov. Martinez claims the current law “leads to fraud, human trafficking, organized crime and significant security concerns.” Supporters of the law, however, say the current policy aids cooperation between immigrant communities and local police as well as reduces the number of unlicensed drivers.

A Padilla victory (and some luck) brings immigration detainee home to wife and Waco

Photo: Jerry Larsen Waco Tribune-Herald

Waco Tribune-Herald by J. B. Smith

Efforts of wife, friends help free Waco man from immigration detention

For nearly a year, Nazry Mustakim woke at 4:30 each morning with a detention center guard banging on his bunk bed.

When he woke Wednesday next to his wife, Hope, in their North Waco home, he was astounded to realize he is a free man.

His immigration nightmare is over, almost as quickly as it had begun March 30, 2011, at the crack of dawn.

Also at an end is his wife's tireless campaign -- with wristbands, letter-writing chains and "Free Naz" T-shirts -- to keep him from being deported to his native Singapore because of 7-year-old drug charges.

"My wife woke up at 8 or 9 and tickled me," said Mustakim, who goes by Naz. "I jumped up, trying to make sure I was still at home, that it wasn't a dream. I felt relief. Thank God, there was my wife beside me."

Naz Mustakim, 32, was discharged Tuesday, after a North Texas prosecutor agreed to dismiss the 2007 felony drug case that seemingly earned him a one-way ticket to Singapore.

* * *

Mastakim has been a legal permanent resident of this country since he came here with his mother at age 13, settling in sem-rural Valley View in North Texas.

But when he got his green card renewed a couple of years ago, it tipped off federal authorities of his criminal record. He had been arrested in 2005 on charges of possessing and selling drugs and had pleaded guilty in exchange for 10 years probation.

It didn't matter that by all accounts he had turned his life around.

He had moved to Waco for rehab, gotten a degree at Texas State Technical College and married a Baylor University social work student. He became a devout Christian, served homeless men through his job at Mission Waco and dreamed with his wife of creating a charity for needy Waco children.

But federal law is clear: Naz Mustakim had an aggravated felony on his record which meant automatic deportation to his native country, where he is practically a stranger.

At 6:30 a.m. March 30, 2011 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in bulletproof vests knocked on the door of the new brick home the Mustakims had just bought on North 12th Street. Hope watched, bleary-eyed as ICE agents led her husband away in handcuffs.

"I was standing in the front yard holding the dog, saying "What the hell just happened?" she said.

Naz Mustakim was on his way to a detention facility in Pearsall. But neither he nor his wife realized the severity of his situation until Hope talked to attorneys and law enforcement officers.

A field officer from ICE told her that her chances of bringing her husband home were slim to none, she said.

"I started thinking, 'Am I going to have to go to college in Singapore?'" said Hope Mustakim, 26, a Baylor senior and native of southern Louisiana. "'Would we have to sell the house?' But I thought, 'We love Waco, and we want to stay in Waco, and we've got to fight this.'"

With that resolve, she hired a San Antonio immigration attorney and began organizing her "Free Naz" campaign.

Friends from Waco and elsewhere contributed to his legal defense and packed immigration hearings for Naz Mustakim in Pearsall. About 1,300 people from around the country signed a petition in support of his release.

* * *

A cheery, outgoing young woman, she said she was diagnosed with depression stemming from her situation.

In June, a judge denied "humanitarian parole" in the case. The only shot Naz had left was to challenge the criminal case that got him into trouble in the first place.

In late summer, his attorneys filed documents to challenge his original drug conviction, asking Cooke COunty prosecutors to reopen the case. They cited a 2009 Supreme Court ruling that defense attorneys must clearly spell out to their clients the immigration consequences of a plea.

They said Naz Mustakim didn't get that information and didn't realize that pleading to an aggravated felony would result in automatic deportation.

By the time of the 2007 plea dela, Naz Mustakim was well into recovery. He said he was thrilled to get probation and saw it as a fresh start.

In 2009, he fell in love with Hope while they were both working at My Brother's Keeper, Mission Waco's homeless shelter. The amiable Singapore immigrant and the outgoing Cajun woman found themeselves chatting and laughing almost instantly.

"We hit it off right away," Hope Mustakim said, "We joked about getting married at the end of the summer."

* * *
The couple married in 2010 and settled down in North Waco to spend the rest of their lives serving the poor and troubled.

* * *

Upon receiving the defense's challenge to the drug charges, Cooke COunty District Attorney Janice Warder agreed Mustakim had not been adequately warned of the immigration consequences. A former Dallas COunty district judge, she had become district attorney after the plea bargain and was not involved in it.

She agreed to reopen the case, but was not at first willing to dismiss it.

"When I first pulled up the case, I thought, 'This is one we need to retry,'" Warder said. "It was a bad offense and the person looked like a really bad person. But then I started hearing all the input, all the letters from people in Waco."

A little before Christmas Warder received a letter from Hope Mustakim describing her husband's transformation. Warder, who ran a drug court for six years, was moved to tears.

The same day, she got word from the county sheriff's department: The evidence in Nazry Mustakim's drug case could not be found.

Warder said she decided to drop the case not because of Mustakim's changed life but because there wasn't enough evidence left to take the case back to court. But she said the letters and calls assured her the outcome was both just and merciful

"Legally, my decision would have been the same, but I've got to say this was a case where I really, truly believed in his rehabilitiation," she said. "I saw so much evidence that I really believe he is a different man. This is one I don't feel bad about."

Warder filed a motion to dismiss the felony Jan. 19.

* * *

[Two misdemeanor marijuana convictions] held up his release from immigration custody until this week, when immigration authorities cleared him to leave.

When Hope Mustakim arrived Tuesday in Pearsall to pick up her husband, she saw him walking down the road with a trash bag full of his belongings, followed by three other men.

When they reunited, he explained that the men, from Nepal and India also were released but needed rides. The Mustakims dropped the men off in San Antonio and Austin.

* * *
Hope and Naz Mustakim long have dreamed of starting a ministry in Waco, perhaps offering a home for neglected teens. Now they also want to reach out to families facing immigration trouble.

In detention, Naz Mustakim became friends with immigrants from all around the world, including many good people who had no one to advocate for them. He said he will try to help some of them.

"It hit me today while I was driving around," he said. "The feeling came over me that I'm free but ther's still other people inside."

From the Bookshelves: LIFE AFTER COLLEGE: A GUIDE FOR UNDOCUMENTED STUDENTS

LIFE AFTER COLLEGE: A GUIDE FOR UNDOCUMENTED STUDENTS BRAND NEW FOR 2012! This 73-page guide contains valuable information, tips, and resources to help undocumented students navigate life after graduation. While initially it may seem as though undocumented students have limited options upon graduating from college, this guide is intended to shed light on the possibilities that do exist. The guide has been written to be as inclusive and comprehensive as possible by including personal narratives, student testimonials and advice from experts. We hope that undocumented students and allies read through this guide and walk away feeling encouraged and unafraid of the next steps. Author: Iliana Perez Download here

via lawprofessors.typepad.com

Houston Chronicle Opinion: Stop using amnesty as code in immigration debate

Houston Chronicle Opinion by Bill King

Interesting opinion by Bill King examining the use of the term "amnesty" as "code for any approach to dealing with immigrants living in the country without a valid visa short of deportation."

The word is misused in the immigration debate in two ways.

First, amnesty implies a complete forgiveness for an offense. In the recent debates over immigration reform, not one serious person has proposed complete forgiveness. Every proposal that Congress has seriously considered over the last decade has included substantial penalties in exchange for the illegal immigrant being granted permission to stay in the United States. Changing the penalty to be imposed for a violation of a law is not amnesty.

Second, for a person to be granted an amnesty, that person must be guilty of committing a crime. Immigration hawks widely believe, or would like for us to believe, that any foreign national living in this country without a valid visa has committed a crime. However, that is not the case. In fact, the overwhelming majority have not, at least, committed a federal immigration crime. Or if they have, they are likely already exempt from prosecution.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that as of 2009, there were slightly fewer than 11 million foreign nationals living in the U.S. without valid visas. It surprised me to learn that 3 million to 4 million of these individuals came to the U.S. on a valid visa, but have overstayed the time permitted in their visa.

However, overstaying a valid visa is not a crime under federal law. It does subject a person to being detained and deported; however, there is no penalty, such as a fine or jail term.

A person who enters the country without a visa does commit a crime. A statute known as 8 USC §1325 makes it a crime to enter the U.S. at a place or time not approved by immigration officials. A first-time offender is subject to a fine and a jail term of up to six months. Subsequent offenses can result in a two-year jail term. A person who enters the country illegally is also subject to a civil fine not to exceed $250.

As a result of this provision, the 6 million to 7 million illegal immigrants who entered the country without a visa committed an offense under 8 USC §1325 when they entered the country and are subject to prosecution under that law, provided they have no valid defense. However, as it turns out, most of them do have a defense.

First, there is the statute of limitations. Federal law provides that a person cannot be prosecuted after five years. DHS estimates that 90 percent of the illegal immigrant population entered the country prior to 2005. Therefore, the vast majority of illegal immigrants may be subject to deportation, but they cannot be prosecuted under 8 USC §1325 because of the statute of limitations.

Second, many of the foreign nationals who are in the U.S. illegally were brought here as children. Under federal law, a child under the age of 18 cannot, under most circumstances, be prosecuted for a crime. DHS estimates that 1.3 million of the current illegal immigrant population is under the age of 18. Another 1.4 million are between the ages of 18 to 24, and most of these were probably brought here by their parents as minors.

* * *

So whatever you want to call a procedure by which foreign nationals who are here illegally can apply for permanent residence status and, perhaps ultimately, citizenship, it is clearly not accurate to call it amnesty.

If you are one of those who still believe that the solution to our immigration problem is the deportation of 10 million people, then please just have the guts to admit that is your position and stop debasing the English language by using code words for a policy you are embarrassed to admit you support.