After eight years of being accustomed to the Obama Administration’s compassionate and humanitarian immigration policies, we’re now witnessing a 180-degree. Enforcement of immigration law will soon be heightened not only against aliens with criminal convictions, but to practically all who are violators of immigration law, including those who have overstayed their visas and those who have committed acts that are considered misdemeanors.
The Executive Order signed on January 23, 2017 relate to border security, admission of refugees and immigration enforcement. Building a physical border wall that extends 2,000 miles along the border with Mexico will cost taxpayers billions. While President Trump says that Mexico will pay for the wall, the pronouncements of Mexico’s President show otherwise. How will this be feasible? Also with a provision in the Executive Order barring political asylum seekers, what will America do with those women and children escaping persecution?
More agents
On immigration enforcement, the hiring 10,000 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to arrest non-citizens who have violated immigration law, detain and remove undocumented immigrants already ordered removed in the past are also part of the Executive Order.
ICE together with CBP at the border will be turned into a deportation force with the power to remove any non-citizen without due process, who in the “judgment of the immigration officer” (not an immigration judge) is a risk to public safety or national security.
For the Filipino immigrant who has already fallen out of status, there is grave concern about this aggressive immigration enforcement. There is a marked distinction between former President Obama’s Executive Action and that of President Trump.
In former President Obama’s Memorandum on Prosecutorial Discretion, he categorized certain immigrants that should be subjected to removal. There is a list of priorities that were enumerated emphasizing that those with strong family ties in the U.S. are to be accorded deferred action and will be the last on the list of priorities for removal. ICE was instructed to prioritize those with serious criminal offenses, resulting in record high removal of immigrants with criminal offenses at the same time preserving family unity.
Broad range of targets
On the other hand, Trump’s Executive Order lists a broad range of individuals that are subject to enforcement. The list includes those who (1) have been convicted of any criminal offense; (2) have been charged with any criminal offense, where such charge has not been resolved; (3) have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense; (4) who have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or application before a government agency; (5) Have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits; (5) Are subject to a final order of removal, but have not departed. There is no ranking or prioritizing in this list and no reprieve from removal is mentioned to those with strong family ties in the U.S.
The effectivity date of Trump’s Executive Orders is uncertain. It is possible that ICE is already immediately acting on it. A day after President Trump signed the Executive Order, a group of ICE Officers were spotted at a non profit child care center in San Francisco, to apprehend a criminal offender. The children and workers at the center were all taken aback and eventually the ICE officers left without arresting anyone. This is alarming considering that there is an existing 2011 ICE Memorandum instructing ICE officers to stay away from sensitive places like churches and schools.
Whether the presence of ICE officers in our cities will be a common sight in the coming days is horrifying to all of us not only to undocumented immigrants. But this is just the beginning. There are concrete steps we can take. We start by writing our legislators and urge them to oppose Trump’s immigration policies of indiscriminately prosecuting and removing immigrants. Legal challenges in court will be filed to attack the constitutionality of Trump’s Executive Actions. We stand in solidarity with all immigrants and stay firm with our principles and values that made America a strong nation of immigrants.
(Atty. Lourdes S. Tancinco is a San Francisco based immigration lawyer and may be reached at law@tancinco.com, tancinco.weareph.com/old, facebook/tancincolaw, or at 1 888 930 0808 or 415 397 0808)
