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At the end of August, a federal district court in Texas ruled against that state, halting an immigration enforcement law shortly before it was to go into effect.
The court issued a preliminary (temporary) injunction to halt the implementation of five allegedly unconstitutional provisions in Texas’ anti-sanctuary city law, Senate Bill 4 (SB 4), including one that would require law enforcement agencies in Texas to “comply with, honor, and fulfill” any immigration detainer issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
This means that the court found a substantial likelihood that the plaintiffs (in this case, the parties opposing the state of Texas) will succeed in establishing that those provisions are unconstitutional when a decision is rendered on the merits of the case.
If the decision on ICE detainers is correct, which seems to be the case, it could cripple ICE’s ability to prevent removable criminal aliens from absconding when they are released from custody by state and local law enforcement agencies.
Detainers ask the state or local law enforcement agency that is detaining a removable alien to (1) notify DHS as early as practicable before the suspected removable immigrant is scheduled to be released from criminal custody; and (2) maintain custody of the subject for up to 48 hours beyond the time he would otherwise have been released so that DHS can assume custody of him.
The decision’s rationale.
Read more at
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blo...on-can-cripple
Published originally on The Hill.
About the author.
Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an executive branch immigration law expert for three years; he subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.
During its short lived publication of crimes that various immigrants had allegedly been charged with or convicted of under the president's VOICE program, it became clear that the overwhelming majority of these alleged offenses were relatively minor ones such as DUI, trespassing, or the like, with some attempted assaults, etc. also thrown in.
If the short-lived VOICE program shed any light at all on the use of federal detainers, it was to show that they were essentially just one more tool to try to catch and deport immigrants who were in the US without authorization in support of the president's mass deportation agenda against both "criminal" and non-criminal immigrants, not as protection against "dangerous criminals" as Nolan claims above.
I will not even get into a discussion of studies showing that all immigrants, both legal and otherwise, commit crimes at a lower rate than native born US citizens.
Roger Algase
Attorney at Law
The president's reported decision to end DACA, which has nothing to do with "criminal aliens", but everything to do with deserving young students who came here through no fault of their own, but are preparing themselves to contribute to society through their skills and education, is a case in point.
As a staunch Republican columnist, Jennifer Rubin, writes in the September 5 Washington Post:
"However this [ending DACA] turns out, the GOP under Trump has defined itself as the white grievance party - bluntly, a party fueled by concocted white resentment aimed at minorities. Of all the actions Trump has taken, none has been as cruel, thoughtless or divisive as deporting hundreds of thousands of young people who've done nothing but go to school, work hard and present themselves to the government."
Certainly, people who are being charged with crime or have finished serving their sentences may be less sympathetic or deserving than the nearly 800,000 Dreamers (and their families) whose lives would be devastated by terminating DACA, but Trump has himself emphasized that his enforcement policies are not aimed at prioritizing criminals, but at deporting as many immigrants as he possibly can.
In this sense, his detainer policy and ending DACA are directly related: they are part and parcel of the same policy of the ethnic cleansing of America through mass deportation of mainly Latino and other non-white immigrants that the president appears to be adopting as his core immigration agenda - and legacy.
Roger Algase
Attorney at Law
Instead, Trump is using enforcement resources which everyone concedes are not unlimited to go after every unauthorized immigrant in America, even those who have no criminal records at all. This, obviously, means fewer resources are available to go after the really dangerous people.
That may be helpful in reducing the non-white population of America, which, very arguably, is the real goal of the Trump administration and its enthusiastic white nationalist base supporters, but can Nolan explain how this dilution of immigration enforcement resources protects the public against the really dangerous criminals among America's immigrant population?
Roger Algase
Attorney at Law