Texas Immigration Lawyer Blog

Know Your Rights in Texas: Preparing for SB 4

From Immigration Impact

After debate rocked the Texas State Capitol, Governor Greg Abbott signed the controversial Senate Bill 4 (SB4) in May, which purports to ban sanctuary city policies and gives local police the authority to inquire about the immigration status of anyone they detain. Though the law won’t go into effect until September, it’s crucial to know your rights now in relation to SB4.

SB4 allows police officers to question an individual’s immigration status during any and all detentions—even for something as simple as a traffic violation. The law also pushes local law enforcement to comply with federal requests to detain individuals and threatens them with fines, firing, and jail time if they don’t comply.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the cities of Austin, Dallas, El Cenzizo, and San Antonio are currently challenging the constitutionality of SB4, hoping to stop the legislation before it goes into effect. In addition, the American Immigration Lawyers Association recently pulled their major conference from the state, calling the law “unjust, unfair, and unreasonable.”

There is no doubt about the law’s anti-immigrant intent. It clearly encourages racial profiling, jeopardizes community safety, and puts law enforcement officials at risk of violating the constitution.

If SB4 goes into effect, it’s important the community understand their rights. To that end, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center provides these know your rights tips:

• You have the right to remain silent. You do not have to tell anyone your immigration status or place of birth.
• You have the right to not be stopped or detained without reasonable suspicion of a crime. If you fear that an officer has violated this right, try to record the incident and speak with an attorney.
• You have the right to not be discriminated against on the basis of your ethnicity, race, or national origin. This is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.
• You should contact an attorney for help if a school or school official asks about your immigration status, or the status of a parent or family member.
• Don’t sign anything you don’t understand, especially without an attorney present.
• Contact an attorney if you are held past your scheduled release time.

This anti-immigrant legislation hides behind the guise of public safety. Communities are safest when local governments determine how to deploy their law enforcement resources. SB4 goes in the opposite direction and will do nothing to build trust between immigrant communities and Texas law enforcement. Photo

Waco Immigration Information Session

Immigration Information Session

Come hear Susan and other attorneys speak about:

• Current removal priorities and activities
• Your rights if you have an encounter with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 
• DACA going forward
• Family Safety planning

March 7, 2017, 7PM

El Calvario Presbyterian Church -- 2222 Dutton, Waco, Texas

Speakers:

Susan I. Nelson, The Nelson Law Firm, P.C. and Baylor Law Immigration Clinic

Anali Gatlin, American Gateways

Michelle Tuegel, Hunt & Tuegel, PLLC

Kent McKeever, Greater Waco Legal Services (formerly Mission Waco Legal Services)

Understanding the Dangerous Implications of President Trump’s Immigration Executive Order

From the American Immigration Council by Walter Ewing

On January 25, President Trump signed a pair of immigration-related executive orders, one dealing with border security and the other with immigration enforcement in the interior of the country. The order on border security has received the most public attention—particularly the “great wall” that Trump is so anxious to build. But it is the other order that presents the greatest danger to unauthorized immigrants.

The order, Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States, effectively makes all unauthorized immigrant in the United States an “enforcement priority,” regardless of whether they entered the country without inspection or overstayed a visa, and irrespective of whether or not they have a criminal record. And the order ramps up efforts to find and remove unauthorized immigrants from the country by expanding the ranks of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and transforming more local police into immigration agents.

This order is flawed at a number of levels. To begin with it is based on a false premise; that immigrants pose some kind of threat to native-born Americans. The order actually says:

“Many aliens who illegally enter the United States and those who overstay or otherwise violate the terms of their visas present a significant threat to national security and public safety.”

In reality, an enormous amount of evidence has accumulated over the past century demonstrating that high rates of immigration are associated with lower crime rates, and immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education. In other words, the overwhelming majority of immigrants are not “criminals” by any commonly accepted definition of the term.

A second major flaw in this order is that it treats unauthorized immigration as if it were exclusively a law-enforcement issue and nothing more. It calls for 10,000 new ICE agents; agreements between the federal government and local police that would enable the police to act as immigration agents, and consider withholding federal funding from so-called “sanctuary cities” in which police don’t ask people about their immigration status so as to maintain trust with the communities they serve. This fails to recognize that unauthorized immigration is a symptom of a larger problem: an immigration system in which avenues for legal immigration are out of sync with the economic and social forces which drive immigration.

A third key problem with this order is that it fails to establish any priorities for determining which immigrants to detain and deport first. The order states that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should prioritize the removal of any and all “aliens” who have been convicted of a crime, charged with a crime, or committed an act which could be construed as a chargeable crime—not to mention anyone who has crossed the border without permission or overstayed a visa. These priorities are defined so expansively as to be meaningless. Real enforcement priorities would zero in on violent criminals first—not unauthorized immigrants driving in a car with a broken tail light.

In the final analysis, this executive order is little more than a crass form of immigrant-bashing. Unauthorized immigrants are stereotyped as criminals and treated as such. No consideration is given to the financial costs of new enforcement measures, the social costs of tearing apart U.S. families and communities in order to deport non-violent individuals, and the undermining of community policing by turning police into immigration agents. No matter how you look at it, this order is a disaster.

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.

 

 

 

DHS Secure Communities Priorities Off Target

In August 2011, AILA released a report, Immigration Enforcement Off Target: Minor Offenses with Major Consequences, highlighting cases submitted by members wherein local law enforcement questioned individuals about their immigration status.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has warned that federal immigration enforcement priorities will be taken off track by individual state laws requiring police to check the immigration status of people on the streets. In briefs challenging Alabama's "show-me-your-papers" law, DOJ states that federal
officers will be compelled "to address the work that Alabama will now create for it-verification of individuals who are caught driving without a license or jaywalking."

Bravo, one might say. However, another federal agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seems to have missed that message. On its own, without any state "papers" laws in effect, DHS is pushing tens of thousands of low-priority immigrants through its deportation machinery.

A report by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) has found that frequent referrals from state and local police are causing federal immigration officials to deport many people who pose no threat to public safety or our national security. In one case, an elderly man was taken into police
custody after the car his son was driving was pulled over for having a broken turn signal. The man committed no crime, but the police asked him for identification and then reported him to immigration officials - and though the man had no criminal history, DHS incarcerated and then sought to deport him.

Should federal agents be responding to calls in these kinds of cases? When federal agents deport harmless people in response to police requests, they are diverging from DHS's primary mission of keeping Americans safe. "[T]he federal government will be required to divert resources from its own, carefully considered enforcement … priorities-aliens who pose a threat to national security and public safety," DOJ wrote in the Alabama case. Earlier this year, DOJ lawyers also challenged an Arizona law for compelling federal officers to verify the immigration status of "any and all suspected aliens without regard to dangerousness," and thereby leaving less time for federal agents to "provide
timely responses … on serious criminal aliens."

By DHS's own statements, the agency's resources would be better spent pursuing individuals who pose a danger to our communities or our national security. John Morton, Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency within DHS, acknowledged that limited resources must be used to "promote the agency's highest enforcement priorities, namely national security, public
safety, and border security." Why then are federal immigration agents pursuing thousands of undocumented people who should be low on the priority list?

Should the laws passed in Arizona and Alabama go into effect, they would distort federal enforcement even further. But DHS is already doing that. DHS needs to push the "reset button" to make sure it's not wasting finite resources going after people who pose no threat to our communities.

Immigration Enforcement Off Target: Minor Offenses With Major Consequences

AILA has issued a report titled Immigration Enforcement Off Target: Minor Offenses With Major Consequences, that challenges the claim made by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that it is focusing its finite resources on the "highest enforcement priorities" - namely those who
present threats to public safety and national security.

The report's anecdotal accounts, 127 case examples from AILA members covering incidents in 24 states and the District of Columbia, are consistent with DHS's own data showing deportation of tens of thousands of individuals who have been picked up for minor infractions and who pose no threat to our communities.

The report questions whether federal immigration agents should respond to individual roadside calls by local law enforcement unless there are indications that the person poses a risk to public safety Immigration enforcement must be targeted, and by responding to referrals from local law enforcement in a largely indiscriminate manner, DHS is being diverted from its own stated priorities. In addition, the report raises concerns about the erosion of community trust, hindrances to community policing, and racial profiling.

Eleven of the 127 cases in AILA's report took place in Texas. In six of those 11 cases, no criminal charges were pursued. In the remaining five cases, drivers were only convicted or ticketed for minor offenses like driving without a license, having a broken light, or having unpaid parking tickets. In two cases, police officers called ICE from the roadside, and held individuals until immigration officers arrived at the scene to take them into custody. Several cases include facts that suggest racial profiling, including some of those discussed below. In five cases, individuals were pulled over or questioned for no reason whatsoever, and two other cases involve traffic stopfor violations so trivial as to suggest the real reason for the stop was assessing immigration status. Five of the cases involve people with U.S. citizen children, spouses, or parents; atleast ten involve people with no previous criminal history.

:: In June 2011, a man was pulled over, and a sheriff's deputy immediately asked him for his passport. When the man asked why he had been pulled over, the deputy said it was because his lights were not on, even though it was already light out. The deputy wrote a ticket, recording the time 6:45am, even though the time of the stop was actually 7:15am. The officer held the man at the roadside until CBP officers came to pick him up. He is now in removal proceedings. The man's wife is a U.S. citizen, and he has lived in the U.S. for 15 years.

:: In June 2010, a man was leaving a convenience store when he was stopped by a sheriff's deputy and asked for identification. Since he could not produce any, he was arrested. Although he was not charged with any crime, he was taken to the sheriff's office and held until CBP picked him up. Later, he accepted voluntary departure.

:: In March 2011, a man was side-swiped by another driver who was making a turn. However, when the police arrived 15 minutes later and discovered that he did not have a license, they accused him of being at fault and questioned him about his immigration status. The other driver was let go, but he was arrested for driving without a license. ICE was contacted and he is now in removal proceedings. He is a longtime resident of the U.S., graduated from high school in the U.S., and is a leader in his church's youth group.

:: In June 2010, a man was driving with his family when a sheriff's deputy pulled him over because the light on their license plate was out. The deputy asked for a driver's license and proof of immigration status, both of which the man provided. The deputy then asked for identification from everyone in the car and ordered everyone out of the car, including the driver's wife and their three children. The driver's wife showed a valid Texas ID card, and the deputy then asked for proof of her immigration status. When she could not provide it, the deputy arrested her without charging her with any crime. She was held by the sheriff's office until CBP could pick her up. She has no criminalhistory and is a stay-at-home mom who has never driven in the United States. She is currently in removal proceedings.

 

The Cost of Failure: The Burden of Immigration Enforcement in America’s Cities

Immigration Prof Blog 

The Drum Major Institute’s latest report, “The Cost of Failure: The Burden of Immigration Enforcement in America’s Cities,” finds that our fiscally strapped cities are bearing too much of the cost. From Nashville and Raleigh to San Francisco and Las Vegas, local immigration enforcement advances the federal enforcement agenda at the expense of local goals. Focusing on the federal immigration programs known as 287(g), the Criminal Alien Program and Secure Communities, the report finds that:

• Local immigration enforcement is costly for city budgets and local economies. The federal government reimburses cities for less than a quarter of the costs incurred jailing immigrants who have committed crimes. Immigration enforcement also undercuts the vital contributions immigrants make to urban economies. When enforcement programs push immigrant consumers underground, business suffer and tax revenue is lost.

• Local immigration enforcement is counterproductive to public safety. Enforcing civil immigration laws diverts police time and resources away from criminal investigations. The unchecked growth of Secure Communities destroys successful policies that keep city authorities from inquiring about federal immigration status.

• Local immigration enforcement is misguided as a crime control strategy. ICE’s partnership programs consistently fail to focus on serious criminals, instead identifying thousands of undocumented and legal permanent residents who have committed minor offenses, or none at all. Support for local enforcement programs is based on a misguided understanding of the relationship between immigration and crime—immigrants are not more crime-prone than other groups.

Rather than the burden of immigration enforcement in tight fiscal times, local governments instead should embrace community policing strategies and include immigrants in crime-fighting efforts. Ultimately, immigration enforcement won’t be fully effective without a comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration policies that begins with the legalization and integration of immigrants and their families. Failing these and other needed immigration reforms, our local enforcement system will continue to burden our cities and sweep up immigrants who are supporting urban economies.

Rights Group Faults U.S. on Detained Immigrants

New York Times by Kirk Semple

Immigration enforcement in the United States is plagued by unjust treatment of detainees, including inadequate access to lawyers and insufficient medical care, and by the excessive use of prison-style detention, an international human rights group said Thursday.

The group, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued those findings in a report that also criticized a federal program that allows county and state law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws. The report said the government had failed to ensure that local police were not singling out people by race or detaining illegal immigrants on the pretext of investigating crimes.

The commission, an arm of the Organization of American States, recommended that the federal government cancel the program, known as 287(g).

Study Shows 287(g) Program Fails to Prioritize Serious Criminals

Immigration Impact 

This week the Migration Policy Institute released a new study on ICE’s 287(g) program, Delegation and Divergence: A Study of 287(g) State and Local Immigration Enforcement. The study, which assesses the implementation, enforcement outcomes, costs, community impacts of the program generally, and provides an in-depth study in seven jurisdictions: Cobb County, GA; Frederick County, MD; Gwinnett County, GA; Los Angeles County, CA; Prince William County, VA; Las Vegas, NV; and the state of Colorado, found that 287(g) program is not living up to its promise. In fact, the study finds that ICE’s allows jurisdictions to “operate the 287(g) program in fundamentally different ways across the country.”

Among the many issues analyzed in the report, MPI questioned whether local police are using the 287(g) program to prioritize serious criminals who pose a threat to the community or whether they are using the program to remove as many undocumented immigrants as possible. Not surprisingly, MPI found that nationally, the program is not targeted toward serious offenders. Only about half of the program activity involves people who have committed felonies or other serious crimes (Levels 1 and 2). The other half is people who committed misdemeanors or traffic offenses.

At the local level, some jurisdictions’ programs are highly “targeted” toward serious offenders, but others are “universal”—designed to identify and deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible. Considering that minor traffic violations can result in arrest and deportation, these universal models result in fear, distrust of police, the avoidance of public spaces and changed driving patterns among immigrant communities.

* * *

According to the report:

In sum, the statutory language of section 287(g), the Obama administration’s statements and guidelines, and ICE’s implementation practices allow jurisdictions to operate the 287(g) program in fundamentally different ways across the country. We find that the 287(g) program has had more significant negative impacts on immigrant communities in jurisdictions where a universal model is used and traffic offenders comprise a large share of persons channeled through the program than in targeted jurisdictions

* * *

The report also contains a list of recommendations to improve the 287(g) program, which include adopting a post-conviction policy so that detainers will only be issued after an immigrant is convicted of a crime, prioritizing noncitizens convicted of Level 1 crimes, conducting a cost-benefit analysis of the 287(g) program to determine whether the program should be expanded, and improved dialogue between ICE field offices and local communities. Let’s just hope that the Obama Administration and local jurisdictions take MPI’s report and recommendations seriously.

 

287(g) Program targeting dangerous immigrants falls short

USA Today by Alan Gomez

WASHINGTON — An immigration enforcement program that trains local police officers to enforce federal immigration laws has not been used to target illegal immigrants who commit the most serious crimes, according to a report released Monday.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said the federal government will focus on catching and deporting dangerous illegal immigrants. Yet half of the roughly 27,000 illegal immigrants deported in fiscal year 2010 through the 287(g) program, where federal immigration agents train and supervise local police officers, were initially arrested on misdemeanor or traffic offenses, according to the report published by the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan research group.

Some viewed those figures as proof that the program is being abused by local authorities who are simply trying to rid their communities of growing numbers of legal and illegal immigrants.

"Nobody disputes the need to get rid of dangerous people, of drug dealers," said David Leopold, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "But when the effect is to split up families and to chase people out of the country who might otherwise help the country, you've got to scratch your head and wonder 'What is the point of this program?' "

* * *

The report also found that law enforcement agencies in the Southeast had the highest percentage of deportations that started out as traffic arrests. In nine agencies, more than 50% of deportations started as traffic offenses. Eight of those nine agencies were in Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina.