Immigration Policy Under Trump
You may have been hearing about immigration in the news lately and wondering what is happening. Let me try to quickly bring you up to speed on several different issues that have been and are currently happening under this administration. First, it is important to note that many of the cruelties of the immigration system and the mistreatment of immigrants, while recently exacerbated by the Trump administration, began long ago and have been perpetuated by presidents from both parties. Carly Goodman puts some of these recent developments in historical context here. This summary, however, covers only the events that have occurred during the past 18 months of the Trump administration. This summary doesn’t include much information about either the efforts Congress has and has not made to address these issues or relevant cases decided or pending in the courts. It’s still long, so if you just want to know the latest, scroll down to about March 2018.
The Trump administration has consistently implemented various immigration policies that are extremely harsh on immigrants and highly disruptive to immigrant families. It has become clear that this administration is not just concerned about reducing “illegal immigration,” but is implementing policies across the board that are aimed at reducing immigration to the United States altogether.
Refugees
It started with the travel ban in January 2017, also referred to by Trump himself as the “Muslim ban.” Three different times, the Trump administration tried to limit all travel from several countries with majority-Muslim populations. All three were struck down by lower courts as unconstitutional. The Supreme Court’s final decision on the third version is expected from the Supreme Court this month.
Not only was this policy discriminatory, but it also was implemented in a way that was either incredibly careless or deliberately disruptive. Many people have been unnecessarily stranded mid-journey and separated from their families both temporarily and indefinitely, including many refugees who had been scheduled to be resettled here after waiting years to have their cases be processed.
In addition to a 7-month pause on refugee admissions, the Trump administration implemented new “extreme vetting” procedures that effectively halted refugee admissions altogether and left hundreds of refugees in legal limbo. Experts mostly agreed that “extreme vetting” was unnecessary because refugees were already subject to a thorough and grueling vetting process that takes 18–24 months on average.
Internal Enforcement
In February 2017, Trump replaced the Obama administration’s Priority Enforcement Program with a “No Exemptions” immigration enforcement policy. This means that while the Obama administration used prosecutorial discretion to focus immigration enforcement resources on deporting criminals, the Trump administration reversed course and set out to deport anyone and everyone who is deportable. The practical implications are that ICE is now focusing on deporting people who were previously determined by DHS to pose no threat, offered “deferred action” by DHS, and who continue to dutifully show up for their periodic ICE check-ins. These are mostly people with strong community ties, US citizen family members, and authorization to work in the United States who are being deported without even receiving another hearing. Meanwhile, Trump continues to publicly call immigrants criminals, murderers, rapists, gang members, and threats to society, all while directing what are limited enforcement resources toward the opposite types of immigrants. The White House even created a database to track crimes committed by immigrants, though its new policies were in no way designed to reduce crime and the database itself has been implemented problematically. These sudden deportations of people with long histories in the United States and close family and community ties continue to devastate families and communities throughout the country.
Dreamers
In September 2017, Trump announced he was rescinding DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — the program that permitted those who were brought here as children and who met certain qualifications to receive work permits and be granted indefinite reprieve from deportation. This decision caused widespread outrage since 78% of Americans favor granting protections to Dreamers. Congress has spent the past 9 months failing to agree on any solutions.
Refugees Again
On September 29, 2017, the administration drastically lowered the cap for refugee admissions for 2018 — down to 45,000 from 110,000 in 2017 — which also resulted in cutting the budgets for Refugee Resettlement Agencies by 60%. Not only was this the lowest admissions cap since the resettlement program began in 1980, but actual refugee admissions were further reduced by enhanced screening procedures (despite the fact that refugees were already the most thoroughly vetted of all travelers and immigrants), and additional partial travel bans from “high risk” countries — the exact countries refugees are most likely to be fleeing.
Temporary Protected Status
In November 2017, it was reported that the White House was putting pressure on then acting-Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Elaine Duke, to refuse to renew Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of people, not based on changed conditions in their home countries, but rather based on changed political priorities. Since September 2017, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) has been terminated for more than 300,000 people from Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti, El Salvador, Nepal, and Honduras. The administration also declined to redesignate Syria for Temporary Protected Status, despite the devastating civil war still raging there. It has since been reported that these decisions were made despite the warnings of senior US diplomats that such actions would further destabilize the regions.
Children and Families
In December 2017, the Trump administration continued its efforts to roll back special legal protections for children who cross the border without their parents. The new policies included withdrawing special help previously offered to unaccompanied minors applying for asylum, opting not to renew funding for a program that provided attorneys to immigrant children, and removing guidelines for judges in deportation proceedings that ensured the use of age-appropriate questioning and sensitivity to factors like post-traumatic stress, age, race, gender and cultural sensitivity issues.
In January 2018, the same week that Trump said he couldn’t understand why we would want immigrants from “shithole countries,” the White House released its Immigration Framework, which demanded a $25 Billion border wall, elimination of the diversity visa lottery, and removal of 5 of the 7 family-based visa categories, all of which would serve specifically to keep out immigrants from the very countries Trump denigrated.
On March 5, 2018, it was reported that a 7-year-old child had been separated from her mother in immigration detention centers 2,000 miles apart for 4 months. They were reunited later that week after the ACLU intervened.
Threat to Judicial Independence
On March 30, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a memo to all immigration judges setting a quota of 700 cases per year in order to receive a “satisfactory” performance evaluation in an attempt to reduce the backlog of over 600,000 immigration cases. The National Association of Immigration Judges opposed the quota system because it could undermine judicial independence and put the due process rights of immigrants at risk.
Border Enforcement
On April 6, 2018, Trump sent National Guard troops to the border, which the Pentagon says will cost $182 million.
On April 20, 2018, the New York Times reported that in the preceding six months, over 700 children, more than 100 of which were younger than 4, had been taken from adults claiming to be their parents at the southern US border. These children were then treated as unaccompanied minors and handed over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement with no clear procedures for reunification with their parents.
On April 30, 2018, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) refused to admit a caravan of 150 asylum seekers — including families and young children — for processing at the San Ysidro port of entry (a possible violation of international law) after Trump repeatedly tweeted about the caravan being a threat to the safety of the United States.
Family Separation
On May 7, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions explained the DOJ’s new “Zero Tolerance” policy in which 100% of unauthorized border crossers will be criminally prosecuted before being referred to the immigration court for removal proceedings. This change requires a major reallocation of prosecutorial resources toward prosecuting primarily misdemeanors and some felonies that result in minor fines and some jail time at taxpayer expense. Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen also implemented an official policy of separating children and adults at the border to deter illegal border crossings.
On May 10, 2018, an audio transcript was recorded of a criminal sentencing hearing in which neither the judge nor the prosecutor could tell the defendants who were being turned over to ICE to be deported whether or how they would be reunited with their children.
On May 11, 2018, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said family separation is not cruel, though he acknowledged that it is intended to be a “tough deterrent” for asylum seekers.
Dehumanization and Propaganda
On May 17, 2018, Trump called immigrants “animals” at a White House event about sanctuary cities, to which there is great public outrage. Four days later, the White House doubled down on Trump’s “animals” rhetoric with an official statement on the White House website detailing horrors committed by MS-13 gang members. They failed to acknowledge the fact that many of the gang members they described are actually US citizens who cannot be deported.
Immigration Court Backlog
On May 17, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ended the practice of administrative closure, a mechanism for allowing immigration judges to temporarily remove cases from their dockets while immigration applications are pending, thus severely limiting immigration judges’ discretion and increasing the backlog in immigration proceedings.
Attack on Children and Families
On May 22, 2018, it was reported that family separation policies were in full force. NBC News reported:
“When parents are held for prosecution, their children are turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The children are then designated as ‘unaccompanied minors,’ and the government tries to connect them to family members who are already in the U.S. Until then, children wait in shelters or are sent to federally contracted foster homes, often without parents being told exactly where they are, immigration advocates said.
“It may soon become even more difficult to place children with relatives. The Department of Homeland Security is proposing immigration checks be done on all people in a household who may take in these ‘unaccompanied’ children, which means relatives who are undocumented may be less likely to come forward.
“In the meantime, space in shelters and foster homes is limited; The Washington Post reported the administration plans to open facilities at military bases to house some of the separated children.”
In legal affidavits, “parents tell of months long separations without knowing where their children are or how they’re faring. A woman identified as Ms. G said in an April 23 affidavit that she was separated from her blind 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son after crossing at Nogales, Arizona, where the family requested asylum. Her children are living in a shelter more than an hour away from where she’s being held. ‘I worry about them constantly and I don’t know when I’ll see them,’ she said.”
On May 23, 2018, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said that she believes it is up to schools and local communities to decide whether teachers can report undocumented students to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She reversed that position a few weeks later.
On May 23, 2018, a Border Patrol Officer shot and killed 19-year-old Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez from Guatemala, who was caught crossing the border in Texas. He initially claimed she was one of multiple assailants who attacked him and was shot in the conflict, but later changed his story to identify her only as a member of the group.
On May 24, 2018, it was reported that a father from Guatemala was deported without his 18-month-old son, who was taken from him by ICE at the border. His case is not unique in that many asylum seekers from Central America struggle to find each other because of a lack of any procedures to ensure reunification. Michelle Brané, executive director of the migrant rights program at the Women’s Refugee Commission is quoted as saying, “We have seen children as young as 18 months deported without their parents and more commonly, parents deported without their children. Parents arrive in Central America with no idea of how to get their children back.”
On June 3, 2018, US Senator Jeff Merkley is denied access to a shelter for migrant children in Texas. He described the scenes he witnessed at two other immigration detention centers as having “cages that look like large dog kennels, with people jammed into them, with space blankets.” He described that a number of these exhausted and terrified people were holding babies and that children were held separately in an adjacent room of a huge warehouse in more very large cages each holding about 50 children from the approximate ages of 4 or 5 to 16 or 17, all lined up by height.
On June 5, 2018, the UN informed the United States that it was violating human rights and international law by separating children from their parents. Border agents were reportedly running out of space after placing roughly 550 children in holding stations. Of the nearly 300 who had spent more than the 72-hour legal limit there, almost half were under the age of 12.
On June 6, 2018, Business Insider reported there were over 10,000 immigrant children in US custody. The government reportedly was considering detaining children on military bases because they were running out of room for the children. US Senator Jeff Merkley tried to visit an immigrant children’s detention center run by a nonprofit in Texas and was denied entry. Researchers and legal experts compiled a report of rampant abuse of children by ICE and CBP during the Obama administration, which caused great concern for the welfare of these children, especially with even fewer protections currently in place.
On June 7, 2018, the comment period closed on an administrative rule change transferring responsibility for background checks of sponsors of unaccompanied minors from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Homeland Security, which would result in putting any undocumented family member who wants to sponsor an unaccompanied minor at great risk of deportation. A final decision has not been announced.
On June 7, 2018, it was reported that the US government plans to send 1,600 nonviolent, non-criminal immigration detainees to federal prisons, raising concerns about safety and oversight. This is the first large-scale use of prisons for that purpose and one more way in which the Trump administration links a lack of legal immigration status with criminality.
On June 9, 2018, it was reported that in May a man from Honduras died in an immigration holding cell by apparent suicide after ICE separated him from his wife and 3-year-old son.
Attack on Women and Children
On June 11, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued an administrative decision erasing an important legal development that was universally agreed to be correct when he announced that the United States will no longer offer legal protection to women seeking refuge from terrible forms of domestic and gang violence from which their home countries are unable or unwilling to protect them. Within hours, a group of retired Immigration Judges and former members of the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a public statement calling the move an “affront to the rule of law.”
On June 12, 2018, the British Independent reported that “Federal public defenders say that immigration enforcement officials in the United States have repeatedly deceived immigrant parents arriving in the US seeking shelter from violent conditions in their home country, telling those individuals that they are taking their children away for baths or other benign reasons only to never return with them.” CNN later reported that federal authorities took an undocumented woman’s daughter while she breastfed the child in a detention center where she was awaiting prosecution.
Also on June 12, 2018, it was reported that the Trump administration is planning to address the problem of full shelters for unaccompanied children by building tent cities on a military base in Texas to house between 1,000 and 5,000 children who have been separated from their parents.
Now that you are aware of the major policy changes that have occurred in the past 18 months, you are better prepared to advocate for a more ethical approach moving forward. Please review these Fifteen Declarations on Ethical Immigration Policy and contact your members of Congress today to share your thoughts about what an ethical path forward should look like. History is being written, and it is our duty as citizens to ensure that it is a history we can be proud to share with our posterity.
