Image published under Fotolia license
Extreme vetting is still on the table, with the plan calling for private contractors to mine social media and “generate at least 10,000 investigative leads a year that would be forwarded to federal agents.” Even putting aside privacy and constitutional concerns, the plan is plain stupid.
Two groups wrote to Acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke last week to ask that the administration scrap the vague and dangerous extreme vetting plans – a coalition of 56 civil rights, civil liberties, government accountability, human rights, immigrant rights, and privacy organizations and a group of 54 computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and other experts in the use of machine learning, data mining and other advanced techniques for automated decision-making. The Brennan Center published a resource page that includes these and dozens of other links to both official documents and critics.
Like the physical border-wall-paid-for-by-Mexico, the virtual-extreme-vetting plan would fail utterly to achieve its stated objectives, would pay billions of public money to private contractors, and would cause damage far beyond any imagined benefits.
Federal ‘extreme vetting’ plan castigated by tech experts (CNBC, 11/16/17)
“The technology experts, who hail from both academia and big tech firms such as Google and Microsoft, warned that current AI methods aren’t capable of evaluating the traits that the government seeks to measure.
“’Neither the federal government nor anyone else has defined, much less attempted to quantify, these characteristics,’ the technologists wrote. ‘Algorithms designed to predict these undefined qualities could be used to arbitrarily flag groups of immigrants under a veneer of objectivity.’…
“This isn’t something that anyone should be willing to build,” said [David Robinson, a Georgetown University law professor], who signed the technologists’ letter. “Whatever you think about what the immigration rules ought to be, this is just nuts. And it’s nuts dressed up as science.”
ICE Extreme Vetting Initiative: A Resource Page (Brennan Center for Justice, 11/16/17) Brennan’s resource page is full of valuable information and links – one to bookmark for future reference, as the extreme vetting debate continues.
- “President Trump’s January 2017 executive ordeknown as the Muslim ban included a little-noticed provision calling for every traveler to the U.S. to be screened to determine if they would be “a positively contributing member of society” and “make contributions to the national interest” – and if they intended to commit a crime or terrorist act.
- “The Extreme Vetting Initiative is Immigration & Customs Enforcement’s plan to monitor much of the internet, including social media, to automatically flag people for deportation or visa denial based on those broad criteria.
- “ICE wants to award a company the contract to run the Extreme Vetting Initiative by September 2018. The launch may be accelerated, as Pres. Trump recently announced that he had ordered DHS to “step up” extreme vetting programs.”
DACA and Dreamers
Immigrant Who Had Prosthetic Leg Mocked by Trump Officials to be Freed After ‘Inhumane’ Detention (Newsweek, 11/15/17) Felipe Abonza-Lopez, a 20-year-old DACA recipient with only one leg, was ordered freed on Friday on $7500 bond. ICE initiated deportation proceedings against Abonza-Lopez and said he has lost his DACA status. He was held in detention for more than a month, without charges, after being arrested in a car with three undocumented relatives. The Border Patrol said his relatives appeared dirty and that was reason to believe they had walked across the border and that Abonza-Lopez was therefore involved in human smuggling because he was in the car with his relatives.
OPINION: Nation stands to lose if it loses Dreamers (San Antonio Express-News, 11/12/17)
“There is a myth about our immigration system — that there is a right way to come to the United States, and if you just fill out the right paperwork and get in line, your time will come. With very few exceptions, there is no line to permanently immigrate to the U.S. if you are poor and brown. There are lines for investors, professional athletes, engineers, doctors and a host of other sought-after professionals. But there is no line for the 18-year-old daughter of a bricklayer who was brought here when she was 7, even if she is valedictorian of her high school class.”
Oops, we lost your DACA application (NPR, 11/16/17)
“The administration now says it will reconsider some applications that incorrectly were rejected, even though they were mailed before the deadline….
“Lawyers representing DACA applicants say deadline snafus weren’t the only problem. They say there were clerical mistakes, too — including one application that was rejected because a bureaucrat thought the applicant wrote 2012 on her check instead of 2017.”
DACA lawsuit plaintiffs lodge complaint with Brooklyn federal judge after applications fail to meet deadline (Newsday, 11/16/17)
“In Brooklyn on Thursday, the three plaintiffs — NILC, Make the Road-New York and the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic — appealed to expand their lawsuit to include such delivery issues in front of Judge Nicholas Garaufis.
“Rosenthal said Garaufis told the plaintiffs to cooperate with the government, look for solutions with officials and “walk and chew gum at the same time.”
“If a solution cannot be agreed upon between the advocates and the government to fairly consider renewal applications, the plaintiffs will be able to amend their complaint by Jan. 5, Rosenthal added.”
Trump to take fight for DACA documents to Supreme Court (The Hill, 11/17/17)
“The decision to seek relief from the nation’s highest court comes after a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to stop a federal judge’s order to release emails, memos and other documents considered part of Trump’s decision to end the program.”
And in other news
‘Sanctuary families’ to help parents facing deportation (WNYC, 11/16/17) They hope they will never be needed – but they are preparing to host children if parents are deported.
After 37 Years as an Undocumented Immigrant, Queens Man is Being Deported, Leaving Family Behind (NY1, 11/17/17)
“Riaz’s attorney, Michael Campise, who is asking ICE to exercise discretion, says it makes no sense to uproot a man who has lived here without incident for 37 years, and send him back to a country where he has no close relatives or friends, and separate him from his family.
“’What’s the big picture? Are we going to cause more harm in this country by leaving children destitute without their father by leaving a mother who has cancer without her husband?’ Campise said.”
A new bill would allow all TPS recipients to apply for permanent residency (Miami Herald, 11/14/17)
“The bill, dubbed the ASPIRE Act, would let every person covered by TPS on Jan. 1, 2017, apply for permanent residency by proving before a judge that they would face extreme hardship if forced to return home.
“‘The Temporary Protected Status program was created with bipartisan support to protect human life,’ said Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who plans to introduce the legislation with Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal. ‘It advances American interests and values and we must work in a bipartisan manner to do the right thing and protect hardworking immigrants from being sent back to countries where their physical well being could be cast into doubt.’”
Federal Prosecutors Are Using Plea Bargains as a Secret Weapon for Deportations (The Intercept, 11/15/17)
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions is pushing federal prosecutors to bypass immigration courts as part of the Trump administration’s hard-line strategy on deportation. Behind closed doors, prosecutors are pressing noncitizens to sign away their rights to make a case for remaining in the country.
“In the most dramatic cases, immigrants charged with crimes are signing plea agreements in which they promise they have “no present fear of torture” on returning to their home country. The pleas can block them from seeking asylum or protection from persecution….
“‘They’re using the hammer of threat of prosecution and a long prison sentence to give up the rights in an immigration case,’ she said.”
These Wall Street Companies Are Ready to Cash In on Trump’s Border Wall (The Intercept, 11/16/17)
“All but one of the companies that built prototypes are privately held, but a close look at Sterling Construction Company, a publicly traded company based in Texas, suggests that even investors who have distanced themselves from the president’s immigration policies are eager to cash in should the wall actually come to pass.
“BlackRock, Renaissance Technologies, Dimensional, JPMorgan, and Wells Fargo all own stock in either CoreCivic or GEO Group. In May, Dimon promised investors he would “look into” JPMorgan’s involvement with private prisons, but since then the bank has increased its stock in both companies.”
U.S. Illegally Denying Immigrants Their Right to Seek Asylum at the Mexican Border, According to Lawsuit (The Intercept, 11/16/17)
“Building on a complaint filed in July, the suit argues CBP officials at numerous ports of entry, or POEs, throughout the southwest have displayed a similar set of ‘unlawful practices’ designed to deny individuals their right under the law to apply for asylum.
“‘Since at least June 2016,’ the motion reads, ‘CBP officers at POEs along the U.S.-Mexico border have been consistently turning away — through an identifiable set of tactics including, misrepresentations about U.S. asylum law and the U.S. asylum process, threats and intimidation, verbal and physical abuse, and coercion — significant numbers of individuals who express an intent to apply for asylum or a fear of returning to their home countries.’”
Should a jury know a person’s immigration status? Washington’s high court says no with groundbreaking rule (Seattle Times, 11/15/17)
“After carpenter Alex Salas slipped from a ladder on a construction site about 15 years ago, suffering 10 fractures, he sued the site’s scaffolding subcontractor because the ladder did not meet code requirements.
“A jury in 2006 decided the company was negligent, but did not award Salas any money. Nearly a decade later, after appeals, a new King County jury awarded Salas $2.6 million in the case.
“The two juries heard the same case — with a critical difference. The first jury knew he was in the country illegally; the second did not.”
Visa Bulletin for December 2017 (USCIS, 11/16/17) Want to know how long the wait for a visa is for the spouse of a permanent resident from Mexico? For the Mexican brother of an adult U.S. citizen? The monthly visa bulletin gives information on the wait time for visas in various family and employment categories.
Visas currently are authorized for issuance for spouses of Mexican permanent residents whose priority date is earlier than November 15 2015. Visas currently are authorized for issuance for a Mexican sibling of an adult U.S. citizen whose priority date is earlier than October 8 1997.
Immigration news 