In today’s immigration news: More Republican lies about non-citizen voting; another Republican Congressional attack on immigrants, documented and undocumented; the 1,400 children separated from their parents under Trump—and still separated now; more.
Republicans continue to lie about non-citizen voting. Every single investigation, every bit of evidence says this is not happening, has not happened in the past, and is not likely to happen in the future.
What do Republicans say when asked for evidence to back up their slanderous lies about non-citizen voting? House Speaker Mike Johnson: “”We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections.”
That’s their “evidence:” Republican intuition.
[Brennan Center] “For starters, let’s say it as clearly as possible: it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote. They are prohibited from voting in federal elections and state elections in every state. It is very, very illegal. There are strong penalties in the law. And states have strong systems in place to ensure that noncitizens don’t vote — whether on purpose or, as may be more likely, because they are misinformed about their eligibility.
“Those existing legal protections are one reason why, as research from the Brennan Center and numerous other experts confirm, voting by noncitizens is vanishingly rare. In 2017, my colleagues Myrna Pérez (now a federal appeals court judge) and Douglas Keith conducted an exhaustive study of 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election. They found that ‘election officials in those places, who oversaw the tabulation of 23.5 million votes, referred only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution. In other words, even suspected — not proven — noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast.’”
The latest attack on immigrants: make them non-persons by refusing to count them in Congressional and legislative apportionment, against the clear language and intent of the U.S. Constitution and the 14th Amendment.
The racist compromise included in the 1787 U.S. Constitution required that apportionment be based on “the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” In 1868, the 14th Amendment repealed this language, but continued to exclude “Indians not taxed.” That language was finally invalidated by the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act.
[NPR] “A growing number of Republican lawmakers are making a renewed push for an unprecedented change to the country’s election maps.
“Their proposals call for excluding millions of non-U.S. citizens from the census results that determine each state’s share of House seats and Electoral College votes. …
“Some have notably proposed broadening the excluded group to cover all noncitizens — including green card and visa holders living in the country. …
“[Congressional Representative Jamie] Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, argued that the Equal Representation Act — which the committee ultimately advanced along party lines — ‘dishonors the Constitution.’
“‘For all of you textualists out there, the plain reading of the text of the Constitution is clear. For all of the constitutional originalists out there, the original purposes have been carefully articulated and never rebutted,’ said Raskin, who added that for members of Congress ‘who like to follow precedent,’ every congressional apportionment has ‘included every single person residing in the United States, not just those lucky enough to have been given the right to vote at different points.'”
And in other news
As a teenager, Claudia González crossed the border without authorization. Fifteen years later, she got DACA status and a work permit. She wanted permanent legal residence in the country she calls home. She tried to do everything right, but ended up stranded in Mexico with an order barring her from the United States for 10 years.
[Texas Tribune] “Because her husband is a U.S. citizen — citizens can sponsor a spouse for a green card — she hired an immigration attorney and paid about $6,000 in fees to apply for permanent legal residency in 2018. For González, it meant freedom from her greatest fear, being deported and separated from her family. And it meant ‘being legal in a country I call home,’ González said.
“In June, she traveled from Houston to Ciudad Juárez, where an American consulate officer interviewed her — she had to do this in Mexico because she didn’t have a legal entry into the U.S. But in August, five years after initially applying for her green card, she was hit with a 10-year ban from reentering the U.S.
“’It was really hard to receive that message; I was heartbroken,’ she said. ‘I thought about my son. He just started high school, so my thought was that he’ll be 24 by the time I can return and he probably already will have graduated college. …
“[T]he current system can be fickle and unforgiving even for those who want to do it the right way. And unlike the criminal justice system, there is no way to appeal the 10-year ban…”
How should immigration officers speak to refugees and asylum seekers? DHS hopes that AI training has the answer.
[Reuters] “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is piloting artificial intelligence to train officers who review applicants for refugee status in the United States, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Tuesday.
“The work addresses what Mayorkas said is “labor-intensive” instruction that typically involves senior personnel. In this pilot, he said, DHS is training machines to act like refugees so officers can practice interviewing them.”
As Mexico continues ramped-up border enforcement, the number of migrants crossing the border has dropped by 40 percent. Tens of thousands of migrants waiting for a chance to enter the United States have fewer and more dangerous options. CBS News talked to migrants near Ciudad Juarez.
[CBS] “Desperate and exhausted, the migrants gathered around a tree that offered them some shade from the unforgiving sun. …
“‘They’re trying to kill us,’ one of the migrant men said in Spanish, showing CBS News cameras how sharp the wire could be. …
“They said they had been sleeping near that tree for days, some as long as two weeks, braving the elements for a chance to enter the U.S. “We don’t have food. We don’t have water,” one Venezuelan woman carrying a small child said in Spanish.
“Rene, a migrant from Honduras, said he had been sleeping outside for 15 days, after traveling to Mexico with his young daughters, ages 3 and 9. He pointed to an area filled with brushes where they slept, using blankets to shield themselves from the cold temperatures at night and in the morning.”
The Trump administration intentionally took children away from their parents as a strategy to deter migration. They did not keep records that would allow reunification of the families. Hundreds of parents were deported while their children remained in U.S. custody. Six years later, some 1,400 children still have not been reunited with their families.
[Washington Post] “Joe Biden made reunification a part of his 2020 campaign for president and, upon taking office, instantiated a task force that aimed to figure out how to get kids back to their families.
“Last month, the task force published its most recent set of data on the reunification efforts. More than 3,200 children have been reunited with their families, about 800 of them thanks to the task force’s work. An additional 1,400, though, have not been — at least through the auspices of the task force. Of the 1,400, about 300 are either in the process of being reunified or have had their families contacted.”
What happens when an asylum seeker enters the United States and applies for asylum? At that point, they do not have “legal status” but they may remain here awaiting their hearing. NPR’s Steve Inskeep gets answers from Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute.
[NPR] “Chishti: …What she and most people who are arriving at the border are doing is that they are arriving without authorization to enter the United States. She’s certainly showing up at a port of entry, which makes it different than between ports of entry. But she has an appointment. At the appointment, she is basically telling a Customs and Border Protection official, “I have fear of returning to my country.” So she’s being placed in what we call removal proceedings and given a date with a notice to appear at her removal proceeding.
“During that time, she doesn’t have any real status, but she can’t be removed because she is showing up for an appointment to contest her removability. At that hearing — when she will be asked, “Do you have a remedy against removal?” — she’ll say, “Yes, I’m seeking asylum,” and that’s when the asylum application kicks in.
“Inskeep: Was the United States obliged to let her in at the port of entry when she showed up without a visa?
“Chishti: Yes. Anyone on U.S. soil who expresses a fear of returning to their country on the basis of five protected classifications of U.N. protocol, we have the obligation to let them in to pursue their asylum applications.” …
“Inskeep: You’re saying there is a legal process. It can be followed. It plausibly even could work. But the number of people arriving has overwhelmed it.
“Chishti: That’s right. The only thing I would add is we have rules, regulations, resources and staffing for a border challenge of the 2008 era.”
Immigration news 