Week of April 8–15, 2023

MEXICO CITY, April 12 (Reuters) - The head of Mexico's immigration agency, Francisco Garduno, is under investigation over a deadly fire last month at a migrant detention center in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday.

The Mexican attorney general's office said on Tuesday it had launched a probe against the heads of the National Migration Institute (INM), without giving their full names.

"There's an investigation which includes (Garduno) in the unfortunate case regarding the migrant lives lost in Ciudad Juarez, we still don't know how far-reaching it is, or what he is accused of," Lopez Obrador said in a regular news conference.

The fire, which authorities say began after one or more of the migrants set alight mattresses as a protest, claimed the lives of 40 male migrants, most of them from Central America.

"Today we discussed the possibility of some being accused of negligence, others of homicide," Lopez Obrador said, noting prosecutors have yet to give more details of the probe.

Lopez Obrador said Tuesday the migrants were unable to escape from the facility located near the U.S. border because the person holding the key to their cell was absent.

A number of arrests, including INM agents and a private security guard, have already been made over the blaze.

The prosecutors' statement Tuesday accused top immigration officials of failing to "watch over, protect and ensure the safety of the people and facilities in their charge."

One high-ranking INM official, Antonio Molina, as well as the agency's representative in the state of Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juarez lies, are also under investigation, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

INM did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Chihuahua official, Salvador Gonzalez, said he would cooperate with the investigation.

Reporting by Kylie Madry Editing by Dave Graham, William Maclean

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

In a March 28 post, I explained that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently forced the Biden administration to amend the 18-year-old “Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement” (STCA) to protect Canada’s well-calibrated asylum system from third-country migrants pouring over the border via the United States. The Biden administration has no such concerns about the U.S. asylum system — and it’s destroying our immigration courts. Reinvigorating the old “special inquiry officer” process may fix the mess Biden has wrought.

The STCA and Canada’s Asylum System. As the Council on Foreign Affairs has noted:

Canada’s geography — bordered by three oceans and the United States, which is itself a magnet for immigrants — has helped Ottawa limit flows of undocumented people. Its highly regulated immigration system, including some of the world’s strictest visitor-visa requirements, is designed to further curb this phenomenon.

On paper, at least, the United States has a “highly regulated immigration system”, too. But more than two years into the current administration, that system is, like movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn’s description of an oral contract, “not worth the paper it’s written on”.

That said, the STCA is key to the orderliness of the Canadian immigration system. As originally written, it barred asylum claims by third-country nationals who arrived at Canada’s ports of entry from this country (subject to family exceptions) unless they first applied for and were denied asylum here (and vice versa).

Given Canada’s “strict visitor-visa requirements”, however, nearly all the benefits of the STCA have accrued to Canada. I say “nearly all” because, as my colleague Todd Bensman has explained at length, His Majesty’s realm to the north began allowing visa-free travel to Canada for Mexican nationals in 2016, boosting the number of them both overstaying in Canada and headed to the United States.

Under the STCA as amended by Trudeau and Biden effective March 25, however, illegal entrants to either country are now barred from applying for asylum in their illicit destination in the other, not just the ones who show up at the ports.

Thus, third-country migrants released by the Biden administration at the Southwest border can no longer flood into Canada seeking the generous benefits that country offers to asylum seekers, as 40,000 did last year at just one “unofficial” (read: “illegal”) crossing point between New York State and Quebec.

Part of the reason that Trudeau strong-armed Biden into amending the STCA to cover illegal migrants, too, is fiscal and uniquely political.

The province of Quebec was on the hook for the generous benefits Canada offers to “asylum seekers”, and its premier — François Legault — wasn’t happy. As CBC News reported, the premier “claimed that the influx of people waiting to have their claims heard has put heavy pressure on the province's public services”.

Keeping Canada’s only francophone province from seceding has been a challenge for decades, and although Trudeau’s riding (electoral district) is Papineau in Montreal, Legault (head of the center-right Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) party) wasn’t interested in cutting Quebec’s favorite son any slack.

A closely related reason for the amendment to the STCA, however, has to do with Trudeau’s interest in preserving his country’s asylum system.

Although our northern neighbor prides itself on its humanitarian beneficence, it understands the limits of its capacity to adjudicate asylum applications and assimilate new arrivals.

Curiously, so do at least some in its immigrant advocacy community. As The Guardian reported on March 22, in connection with the migrant surge there:

“Asylum seekers on our borders is not something that Canada typically deals with,” said Abdulla Daoud, executive director of the Refugee Centre in Montreal. “This is in many ways a new issue. And while there’s been an uptick, there’s no denying that, we’ve seen that Canada’s immigration infrastructure can handle an increase in population — but the asylum system wasn’t ever built to accommodate this sort of issue.”

The U.S. population is more than 8 times as large as Canada’s, and as of the end of December 2022, the Canadian government had a backlog of 70,223 pending asylum claims. By comparison, there were nearly 1.566 million asylum claims pending in the United States at that time — 22 times as many claims in a country with eight times the population.

The U.S. Asylum System and Border Migrants. Trudeau understands the limits on his country’s ability to process asylum-seeking border migrants. Joe Biden, on the other hand, acts as if there are no such limitations on the U.S. asylum system or on the capacity of this country to accommodate millions of newcomers.

Aliens who enter the United States illegally are subject to expedited removal under section 235(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), meaning CBP can quickly remove them from the country without seeking an order of removal from an immigration judge.

One exception to that quick removal process, however, involves aliens who request asylum or assert a fear of harm if returned. Under that provision in the INA, CBP must refer such aliens to a USCIS asylum officer to determine whether they have a “credible fear” of return.

Credible fear is a screening standard, and as such the migrant’s burden of proof is low: “a significant possibility, taking into account the credibility of the statements made by the alien in support of the alien's claim and such other facts as are known to the officer, that the alien could establish eligibility for asylum”.

Because the standard is so low, between FY 2008 and the fourth quarter of FY 2019, 81 percent of migrants subject to expedited removal who claimed a fear of return received “positive credible fear determinations” from asylum officers, although just 14 percent were ultimately granted asylum.

Until recently, all aliens who received positive credible fear determinations were placed into removal proceedings before immigration judges to apply for asylum.

In May, the Biden administration amended the credible fear regulations to enable asylum officers to adjudicate those aliens’ actual asylum claims, as well. Just 383 cases in 2022, however, were referred to asylum officers for such “Asylum Merits Interviews” (AMIs) and, thus, most aliens subject to expedited removal who received positive credible fear determinations were sent to immigration court.

That said, the Biden administration has been loath to use expedited removal at all. Of the almost 563,000 illegal migrants apprehended by Border Patrol at the Southwest border who weren’t expelled under Title 42 in FY 2023, fewer than 52,000 — just over 9 percent — were subject to expedited removal.

Destroying the Courts. The rest were processed for removal proceedings before immigration judges under the INA, and consequently, the backlog of asylum applications pending before immigration judges has soared.

In FY 2022, nearly 254,000 new asylum claims were filed in the nation’s immigration courts (a yearly record), and through the first three months of FY 2023, more than 93,000 more asylum claims were added — meaning courts are on track to receive nearly 375,000 new asylum claims this fiscal year.

As of December 2022, just short of 750,000 asylum claims were pending before U.S. immigration courts. That’s a huge problem because — all told — there are fewer than 660 immigration judges to hear those claims, meaning each judge would be responsible for more than 1,135 asylum claims, even if illegal migration ended tomorrow (it won’t).

It’s actually worse than that, because the Biden administration has been actively hiding the true scope of the backlog. Some 588,000 illegal migrants who were apprehended at the Southwest border since February 2021 have been released, but haven’t actually been placed into removal proceedings yet, and it may be a decade or more before they appear on immigration judges’ dockets.

Nor are asylum claims the only cases that immigration judges must consider. As of December 2022, there were — get ready — more than 1.874 million pending cases of all kinds before those fewer than 660 judges, an average of more than 2,844 cases per judge.

During the eight years I served as an immigration judge, I completed around 13,500 cases — 1,687.5 cases per year, on average. That said, I was in a detained court, where both parties — the government and the alien respondents — were interested in getting the cases done as quickly as possible.

The vast majority of those 1.874 million-plus cases involve non-detained respondents, and hardly any want a final decision anytime soon. The longer their cases drag out, the more time they can live and work in the United States. Only non-detained aliens with valid asylum claims want to get to a decision quickly, but as the above statistics show, few border asylum claims are valid.

Three times in the last five years (April 2018, January 2020, and January 2022), I have testified before Congress on the state of the immigration courts, and each time a representative of the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ” — the judges’ union) appeared on the panel with me.

At each hearing, the NAIJ representative pushed creation of an Article I immigration court independent of DOJ (the courts are currently within the Executive Office for Immigration Review, “EOIR”, a DOJ component) as a solution to various issues that the courts were facing, including massive backlogs and long delays to reach decisions.

Those arguments made little sense to me then, and now make even less. Adding an independent gloss to the courts will bring them to a crushing halt given the ongoing border disaster, but the current system simply seems to be forestalling that inevitability anyway.

The immigration courts — which have long struggled to complete cases in a timely manner (GAO issued a report in June 2017 complaining about the backlog, when there were “only” just less than a third of today’s pending cases before half as many judges) — are being crushed into dust by the administration’s Southwest border “catch and release” policies.

A Possible Solution. The only solution to this burgeoning backlog problem — aside from a massive amnesty that’s highly unlikely to pass anytime soon or a border enforcement protocol Biden has thus far refused to adopt — is to create less formality in the removal adjudication process, not more, as an independent Article I immigration court would.

Prior to 1983, when President Reagan’s first attorney general, William French Smith, created EOIR and the current immigration courts and Board of Immigration Appeals, immigration judges were employees of the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) — the precursor to CBP, ICE, and USCIS — and had been since the INA was first promulgated in 1952 (when they were called “special inquiry officers”).

As section 101(b)(4) of the INA (1952) explained:

The term "special inquiry officer" means any immigration officer who the Attorney General deems specially qualified to conduct specified classes of proceedings, in whole or in part, required by this Act to be conducted by or before a special inquiry officer and who is designated and selected by the Attorney General, individually or by regulation, to conduct such proceedings.

The whole process was so informal that section 242(b) of the 1952 INA had to explain: “No special inquiry officer shall conduct a proceeding in any case under this section in which he shall have participated in investigative functions or in which he shall have participated (except as provided in this subsection) in prosecuting functions.”

That process worked perfectly fine for 29 years, and I will note that when the asylum provisions in section 208 were added to the INA in 1980, INS special inquiry officers cum immigration judges (the title was adopted in 1973 in a regulatory amendment that allowed the terms to be used interchangeably) could adjudicate such applications.

Granted, going back to the special inquiry officer scheme would require more than a few statutory amendments (Congress took the immigration court regulation and ran with it), but there’s no way that it would not work more smoothly than the current model, and more quickly.

This is not to say that the administration’s AMI proposal is a good one. When adjudicating an asylum application, the asylum officer only hears one side of the story — the alien applicant’s — and any parent knows that hearing both sides of any story is critical to gleaning the truth.

But a less formal process that focused on reaching the right decision in a timely manner would be a benefit, and that’s more or less what the special inquiry officer model provided.

Note that there is more recent precedent for such a proposal. Legislation implementing the Convention Against Torture (CAT) was passed in October 1998, and until regulations were adopted four months later giving immigration judges jurisdiction over CAT claims, INS officers — not immigration judges — withheld removal under CAT. Nothing suggests that they failed to do so diligently.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the immigration court system that has been in place since 1983. For that system to work, however, the executive branch must limit the number of asylum-seeking migrants entering illegally. That’s not happening, and it’s destroying the courts.

Canada has taken steps to limit migrant entries (by twisting Biden’s arm), but until the current administration follows suit, no proposal to adjudicate asylum applications expeditiously in a manner that protects the rights of both the applicants and the American people should be off the table.

Topics: Biden Border Crisis, Immigration Courts

The administration once promised to close privately run immigrant detention centers. Instead, it’s packing them full.

The last time Eduardo saw his best friend, Kesley Vial, a 23-year-old asylum seeker from Brazil, Vial was unconscious. He had been found hanging from a shelf in his cell at the Torrance County Detention Facility, a sheet tied around his neck. Seven days later, at a hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Vial died.

Eduardo, who is from Ecuador and was also being held at Torrance, a private Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center about an hour southwest of Albuquerque, was already depressed. But Vial’s death pushed him into a crisis that’s still difficult to talk about. Kesley “was a joyous person, a good person. He danced that morning. He danced almost every day,” said Eduardo, who asked to go by a pseudonym for safety. “But being locked up in there is hell.”

After Vial’s death, Eduardo attempted suicide himself. For at least two straight months, he reported having suicidal thoughts nearly every week. He was released from Torrance in December, once the detention center’s medical unit finally diagnosed him with suicidal ideation, said Sophia Genovese, supervising attorney at the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, a pro bono legal group that works with asylum seekers locked up in the state’s detention centers. In total, Eduardo was held at Torrance for nearly eight months.

That Torrance pushed Vial and Eduardo to such mental anguish does not surprise immigrant-justice advocates. In 2021, the facility, which is operated by the corporation CoreCivic, failed a government inspection performed by the third-party contractor Nakamoto Group. The inspection cited dangerous understaffing and squalid living conditions, including inedible food. Last year, the Homeland Security Department Office of Inspector General twice recommended Torrance’s closure. And in a September report, it noted concerns with the facility’s inadequate medical care. (ICE disputed the findings, and refused to respond to my repeated requests for comment.)

Torrance “exemplifies everything that is wrong with immigration detention and why the detention system must be abolished in its entirety,” said Luis Suarez, field advocacy manager at Detention Watch Network, in a statement. According to Genovese, by late December 2022, the number of people held at Torrance had gone down to just a handful.

President Joe Biden once promised to phase out the use of private immigration detention centers. But his government continues to jail asylum seekers, and in March reports emerged that the administration was considering detaining asylum-seeking families apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border, after largely stopping the practice over the last two years. Biden’s proposed budget for 2024 includes nearly $25 billion for ICE and Customs and Border Protection, an $800 million increase in funding compared to 2023. For all his claims to the contrary, Biden has built on Donald Trump’s legacy of intensified crackdowns on asylum seekers and ignored mounting evidence of the physical and mental harms—including death—triggered by detention. Between January 2021 and the first quarter of 2023, at least eight people died in ICE custody.

In fact, the Biden administration is not simply “willing to stand by and allow torture to take place”—it’s actually facilitating it, said Ariel Prado, co-director of Innovation Law Lab’s Anticarceral Legal Organizing program. Immigrants are being maltreated in places that aren’t “fit to hold any human beings, in order to cause fear.” In late December, ignoring the plentiful warnings about conditions at Torrance, the administration began transferring hundreds of immigrants into the facility.

Eduardo’s friend Vial, who was apprehended in El Paso, Texas, arrived at Torrance back in April 2022. He failed his “credible fear” interview, the initial screening that determines whether a person can apply for asylum in the United States, and in June an immigration judge ordered his deportation. The next month, Vial was transferred to a facility in Florence, Arizona, to prepare him for his removal to Brazil. But instead he was brought back to Torrance, according to ICE’s death review report. During mental health evaluations, he repeatedly said he was suffering from depression, anxiety, and insomnia, and explained that he was extremely frustrated by the lack of information he was receiving from ICE about his case.

One August morning, an ICE official told Vial that his deportation had been delayed again, this time until the beginning of September. Early that afternoon, he hit a wall with his hand and sat on the ground, crying, according to ICE’s death report. He was sent to another mental health evaluation. About 30 minutes later, he returned to his cell. He was found unresponsive later that afternoon, when officers entered his housing unit for count.

Advocates blame Torrance’s inhumane and abusive conditions for Vial’s death. The death report, said Ian Philabaum, co-director of Innovation Law Lab’s Anticarceral Legal Organizing program, “is the watered-down version of a young man crying out for help and receiving poor services while he’s being mistreated in this facility.” It’s also the end of the story for ICE and CoreCivic, which “get to wash their hands off it and continue modus operandi.”

Following Vial’s death, some of his fellow detainees went on a hunger strike, but the protest was broken up after about two weeks. ICE quickly deported most of the people involved, and advocates say conditions at Torrance—including serious due-process violations—have only gotten worse in the months since. There have also been several more suicide attempts, according to Innovation Law Lab, including, in November, that of Rafael Oliveira do Nascimento, an asylum seeker from Brazil.

The Biden administration is yet again turning to the Trump playbook as it tries to slap together a border crackdown to succeed the end of the Title 42 “public health” order next month. The latest revived Trump-era idea: keeping asylum seekers in Border Patrol custody for longer, and conducting asylum screening interviews in phone booths, so that those who fail the screening interview can be deported as quickly as possible.

The plan, which reportedly could be rolled out this week, is a successor to a pair of programs the Trump administration used in 2019 and early 2020. (They were suspended when Trump instituted the Title 42 order in March 2020, which used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to expel migrants without allowing them to ask for asylum.) Known as the Prompt Asylum Claim Review (PACR) and the Humanitarian Asylum Review Process (HARP), both programs sought to deport certain asylum seekers within 10 days of their crossing into the U.S.

Instead of being turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for further processing within 72 hours of their arrival in the United States—per federal detention standards—they were kept in Border Patrol custody for several days. Asylum officers conducted “credible fear interviews” from phone booths in the Border Patrol facility—just as the Biden administration plans to do now.

Any policy designed to deport people as quickly as possible is going to be secretive and opaque, with little opportunity for public observation or accountability. It took until early 2021 for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General to release a report on the Trump-era PACR and HARP programs. Its findings were damning: DHS had expanded these programs without assessing whether or how they were actually working, and that the programs had restricted immigrants’ legal rights while forcing DHS to routinely violate its own detention standards.

The OIG report confirmed that there were two fundamental problems with the phone-booth model. On one hand, any move to rush people through the asylum process risks violating their due process rights – and, ultimately, deporting people back to countries where they will be persecuted, was breaking U.S. and international law. While the Biden administration has stressed that migrants in the new program will be allowed to seek legal representation, it’s not clear how they would access attorneys – lawyers and other members of the public aren’t allowed to set foot in Border Patrol facilities—or when (and where) they would consult with them before an interview. And it’s easy to imagine that a single phone interview from a poorly-insulated phone booth in a Border Patrol holding center—or a venue with even less privacy—might not be adequate to judge the merits of an asylum claim.

At the same time, the phone-booth model ends up keeping asylum seekers in Border Patrol custody for longer than the normal process would. PACR and HARP were supposed to process asylum seekers within seven to 10 days, compared to the 72-hour standard in federal detention guidance. And often, asylum seekers in the PACR and HARP programs ended up in Border Patrol custody for even longer. The Government Accountability Office found that on average, PACR and HARP held asylum seekers in Border Patrol custody for 13 days. During a site visit in El Paso, the inspector general’s office found that the overwhelming majority of asylum-seekers in PACR and HARP—including families with children—were being held longer than 72 hours, and over a quarter had been held for more than one week.

Border Patrol facilities are dangerous places to hold large numbers of migrants. Under the Trump administration, several young children died in Border Patrol custody due to inadequate medical care; in 2019, horrendously overcrowded facilities led to asylum-seekers being denied basic hygiene needs.

The Biden administration’s secretive rollout of the new program raises more questions than answers. For one thing, it’s not clear who exactly is going to be subjected to phone-booth asylum screenings—and whether it will include families (as the Trump-era programs did) in addition to single adults. For another, it’s not clear how it will interact with the regulation that the Biden administration is expected to finalize before Title 42 ends, which would bar asylum to any immigrant caught by a Border Patrol agent who traveled through another country en route to the U.S. without applying for (and being denied) asylum there.

That secrecy undermines any effort to expand access to attorneys—after all, lawyers can hardly represent immigrants in a program they don’t even know is underway. And just like the first iterations of PACR and HARP, it raises the concern that abuses won’t be discovered until it is far too late.

The biggest question, though, is why the Biden administration is doing this at all.

The Trump-administration programs put migrants at risk both by keeping them in dangerous conditions in the U.S. and increasing the likelihood that they would be deported to danger at home. Conversely, it’s not clear that they had any upside: even by the cruel logic of border deterrence, by which increased suffering of asylum seekers is justified if fewer migrants come in future, there’s no evidence that phone-booth asylum had any effect on apprehensions or that the government even tried to measure whether it did.

The Biden administration’s plans for the end of Title 42—a Trump policy it extended well into its third year—are, so far, to reanimate older Trump border policies: the planned asylum transit ban; rumors of family detention; and now these. The impression it’s leaving is that it is more afraid of asylum seekers arriving in the U.S., and immigration hawks fearmongering about a “border crisis,” than it is of violating human rights and American values. As a candidate and a president, Biden has purported to reject the Trump approach to asylum and the border. But it’s increasingly unclear whether any actual lessons have been learned.

FILED UNDER: Biden Administration, border patrol, Trump administration

FILE - Sen. Lindsey Graham, center, speaks of immigration reform legislation outlined by the Senate's "Gang of Eight" that would create a path for unauthorized immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship, April 18, 2013, in Washington.

Share

Print

Editor's note: Here is a look at immigration-related news around the U.S. this week. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.

Immigration system problems linger

Ten years ago this month, Senator Chuck Schumer declared, “We all know that our immigration system is broken, and it’s time to get to work on fixing it.” Senator John McCain quoted Winston Churchill. But it was Lindsey Graham who offered the boldest prediction. “I think 2013 is the year of immigration reform,” the South Carolina Republican said.

It wasn’t. And neither has any year since those “Gang of Eight” senators from both parties gathered in a Washington auditorium to offer hopeful pronouncements. Reported by The Associated Press.

Immigration Reform Remains Stalled Decade After Gang of 8's Big Push

Relocation of Afghans continues

Inside a large building that was once used as a commercial guesthouse for foreign visitors in Kabul are numerous rooms occupied by families and individuals who are not allowed to go outside or disclose their exact location to anyone. Brought from different parts of Afghanistan, the residents are hosted in the facility before their flights to a third country where they will be processed for final relocation to the United States. Story by Akmal Dawi.

US Continues Relocating Afghans Even Under Taliban Rule

Venezuelan migrant family forges ahead

After her husband survived a fire that killed dozens of migrants at a detention center in northern Mexico, Venezuelan Viangly Infante crossed into the United States on Saturday, in search of new opportunities for her three children. Reuters reports.

Survivor of Mexico Detention Fire, His Family Cross Into US

Thousands head back to Puerto Rico yearly

Achieving economic stability is typically the main reason that many Puerto Ricans migrate to the U.S. mainland. At the same time, thousands return to Puerto Rico annually, describing their homecoming as "a dream come true." After 22 years abroad, married doctors Sheila Perez Colon and Lionel Lazaro Collazo decided to practice medicine in Puerto Rico. Story by Salome Ramirez.

Many Puerto Ricans Leaving US Mainland

Problems of undocumented in Sudan

More than 10 years after South Sudan split from Sudan, as many as 1.2 million ethnic South Sudanese could be living in Sudan without citizenship for either country, the U.N. refugee agency says. In this report from Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, reporter Henry Wilkins meets undocumented people and discovers they have problems accessing work, education and medical care.

Over 1M Undocumented Ethnic South Sudanese Thought to Be in Sudan

Women face junta's brutality in Myanmar, activist says

A Myanmar human rights activist told VOA in a recent interview that the ruling junta in Myanmar “is using rape and other violence against women as a bigger part of its campaign to crack down against opposition groups.” Story by Ingyin Naing.

Women Seen Targeted by Myanmar Forces With 'Rape and Other Violence'

In brief

— U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services updates guidance on administrative naturalization ceremony venues.

Summary

Despite oft-heard claims that immigration will bolster Social Security and Medicare, the reality is more complicated. Much of the confusion stems from conflating the impacts of different policies. Toleration of illegal immigration, amnesty for illegal immigrants, and legal immigration are distinct policy choices that require separate analyses. This article explains conceptually how each of these immigration policies would impact the financial health of Social Security and Medicare.

Key points:

Illegal immigration unambiguously benefits the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, but amnesty (legalization) would reverse those gains and add extra costs.

The impact of legal immigration depends largely on age of arrival and income. Immigrants who arrive young and have high earnings will be net contributors to the trust funds, while later-arriving and lower-earning immigrants will be net drains.

Recent declines in fertility imply that legal immigrants who are net drains in their own lifetimes will not have enough children to make up the difference in the next generation.

A continuous inflow of working-age immigrants could appear to have a positive effect on the trust funds even as the immigrants are lifetime net drains. However, this Ponzi-style funding strategy would be difficult to sustain.

This report concludes that immigration is not a practical means of avoiding tax increases and benefit reductions when addressing the future solvency of Social Security and Medicare.

Preliminaries

Before discussing the impact of each immigration policy, a few basic points about Social Security and Medicare are in order. First, they have progressive benefit structures. In the case of Social Security, participants contribute the same 12.4 percent tax on all earnings up to the maximum taxable salary, but their benefits increase at a slower rate as their earnings increase. In other words, low earners receive a greater return on their contributions than do high earners.

Importantly, years without work are included as zeroes in the calculation of a worker’s average earnings. This gives part-career workers a higher-return on their contributions than longer-career workers with the same salary. For example, if a worker earns $100,000 each year for 10 years and then retires, he would pay 50 percent of the taxes paid by a worker who earns $100,000 each year for 20 years. However, the shorter-career worker would receive a Social Security check that is about 58 percent as large.1

Medicare is even more progressive than Social Security because participants need to work for only 10 years at a minimal earnings level to become eligible for the full benefit. In the example above, the shorter-career worker would pay 50 percent of the Medicare taxes as the longer-career worker but would receive 100 percent of the Medicare benefits.

Social Security and Medicare do not establish 401k-style accounts for individual participants. Instead, both programs operate on a “pay-as-you-go” basis, in which today’s workers pay for the benefits of today’s retirees. Social Security and Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) are funded with payroll taxes paid into each program’s trust fund. All benefits paid by those two programs must flow from their trust funds. By contrast, other Medicare benefits that accompany Part A — such as the subsidized medical insurance provided under Part B, and prescription drug coverage under Part D — are funded with general tax revenue. Unless otherwise noted, all references to “Medicare” from this point forward will mean Part A specifically.

The Social Security and Medicare trust funds face a long-term fiscal imbalance, meaning that the future benefits owed to participants exceed the future payroll taxes that the government expects to collect. Without any further action, Social Security benefits will be automatically reduced starting in 2034, and Medicare benefits will be reduced in 2031. To close the gap, the Social Security trust fund is projected to require additional taxes equal to 3.6 percent of covered payroll over the next 75 years, while Medicare will require an additional 0.6 percent.2

Impacts of Different Immigration Policy Choices

Whether immigration will improve or worsen the fiscal imbalance described above depends on the specific policy under consideration.

Illegal Immigration. Illegal immigration improves the finances of Social Security and Medicare for a simple reason: Although illegal immigrants are generally not eligible to collect Social Security and Medicare benefits, many still pay taxes into the system.3 These taxes function as free contributions to the trust funds, as long as the illegal immigrants remain ineligible for benefits. (See the “Amnesty” section below.)

How do illegal immigrants who are ineligible for benefits still contribute payroll taxes? They do so with a Social Security Number (SSN) acquired one of several ways. They may have received a valid SSN via a temporary work permit but have since overstayed their visa or otherwise lost their status; they may have faked their identity to use someone else’s SSN or to acquire their own fraudulently; or they may use an entirely fake SSN.4

A 2013 report from the Social Security Administration estimated that roughly half of illegal immigrant workers use an SSN.5 Two subsequent developments suggest that figure is now higher. First, visa overstayers contributed more to the illegal immigrant population in the 2010s than did people who crossed the border without authorization.6 Second, although border crossings have surged to record levels in this decade, the Biden administration’s generous use of the “parole” power has granted temporary work permits to large numbers of migrants who will not be eligible for entitlement benefits when (and if) their parole expires. In any case, when the number of illegal immigrants who contribute payroll taxes increases, so does the benefit for the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.

Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants. Any policy that grants illegal immigrants amnesty — i.e., the right to live permanently in the U.S. — will likely include work permits and subsequent eligibility for Social Security and Medicare. That eligibility would impose steep costs on the trust funds for two reasons. First, as described above, many illegal immigrants are already paying into the system. Their contributions are in fact part of the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline budgetary forecasts. Amnesty would require the government to bear the added cost of these recipients’ status as new beneficiaries without the added revenue that would normally come from new contributors.7 Second, illegal immigrants tend to earn less and work fewer years in the U.S. than the average participant, meaning amnesty will provide them an above-average return on their contributions.

In short, illegal immigrants as a group are net contributors who partially pay into the trust funds while receiving little in return, but amnesty would transform them into net drains who receive more in benefits than they contribute in taxes. CIS has estimated the per-recipient cost of this dramatic change in status to be $129,000 in present value.8 If 10 million illegal immigrants receive amnesty, the total cost to Social Security and Medicare would be roughly $1.3 trillion, equivalent to a one-time transfer of 6 percent of GDP.9

Legal Immigration in the First Generation. The previous two cases were unambiguous. Illegal immigration increases tax contributions while costing little in new benefits. Amnesty increases benefits while adding little in new tax contributions. By contrast, welcoming new legal immigrants causes substantial increases in both tax contributions and benefit obligations. Determining the net fiscal impact in this case will depend largely on each immigrant’s income and career duration. Based on a CIS analysis of 2019 data from the American Community Survey (ACS), working-age legal immigrants earned an annual income of about $50,000, which is greater than the $46,000 earned by natives.10 However, because the average age of arrival for legal immigrants was 35, their career durations will be significantly shorter. As noted in the “Preliminaries” section above, the progressive benefit structures of Social Security and Medicare give shorter-career workers a higher return on their contributions.

A complete fiscal-impact calculation involving income, career duration, longevity, and other factors is beyond the scope of this report. Generally speaking, however, younger and higher-earning legal immigrants will be net contributors to the trust funds during their lifetimes, while older and lower-earning immigrants will be net drains.11

Legal Immigration Extended to the Second Generation. Up to this point, we have analyzed the impact of immigrants within their own lifetimes. If the present value of an immigrant’s taxes paid is less than the present value of benefits received, then that immigrant is said to be a net drain. But perhaps the entry of immigrants who are net drains within their own lifetimes could still ultimately benefit the trust funds if we consider the next generation. The theory is that the average low-earning immigrant will have several children who collectively pay more into the system than their parent took out.

Unfortunately, immigrant fertility tends to be too low for this theory to work, even among less-skilled groups. Analysis of 2019 ACS data shows that legal immigrants with no more than a high school diploma had a total fertility rate of 2.06 per woman, which is merely replacement level. This one-for-one population replacement (two children per couple) is insufficient to maintain the current ratio of approximately 2.8 workers for every retiree — even if, unrealistically, all of the immigrants’ offspring became working adults. (About 74 percent of Americans ages 18 to 64 are currently working.)

Continuous Legal Immigration. The Social Security trustees project that increasing immigration going forward will lessen the fiscal imbalance over the next 75 years.12 Keep in mind, however, that the trustees are estimating the impact of continuous immigration, not the marginal impact. The immigrants who arrive near the end of those 75 years have the most positive impact because their tax contributions are included in the projection period, while their retirements will occur beyond it. These later-arriving immigrants help to pay for the immigrants who arrive earlier in the period, but they will eventually become costly themselves as their retirements start to fall within the shifting 75-year window — which necessitates more immigration, and so on.

The assumption of continuous immigration can generate results that seem almost paradoxical. Even if every new immigrant imposes a lifetime net cost, a high-immigration policy could still appear to have a positive effect as long as the flow continues indefinitely. The term “Ponzi scheme” is sometimes seen as an epithet, but it accurately describes this funding strategy. Earlier participants are paid with the contributions from new participants, creating an ever-larger liability that would bankrupt the system if the supply of new participants were to ever falter.

Discussion

We have seen that the impact of immigration on Social Security and Medicare depends on the specific policy under consideration. Illegal immigration improves the solvency of the trust funds, but granting amnesty would reverse those gains and impose additional costs. The impact of new legal immigrants is less clear-cut, as the arrival age and earnings of those immigrants will generally determine their status as net contributors or net drains. Continuous immigration could theoretically keep the programs running even when the immigrants are net drains, but whether such a Ponzi scheme is sustainable is unclear.

Given these differential effects, could expanding immigration allow the U.S. to avoid tax increases and spending cuts when addressing the long-term fiscal imbalance faced by Social Security and Medicare? Not as a practical matter. While carefully selected legal immigrants can be net contributors, attempts to use mass immigration as a comprehensive fix for the trust funds would be fraught with risk. For example, although more illegal immigrants (or legal immigrants ineligible for benefits) would certainly bolster the trust funds, the presence of so many second-class residents would generate political pressure for regularization and subsequent benefit eligibility. Similarly, continually importing low-skill immigrants as part of a Ponzi scheme would result in a fiscal crisis if at any point the requisite number of immigrants could no longer be recruited.

Even leaving aside those risks, the sheer number of immigrants required to make Social Security and Medicare solvent is unrealistic. CIS has estimated that immigration would need to rise to five times its current annual level just to maintain today’s working-age share of the population through 2060.13 Even more immigration on top of that would be needed to raise the working-age share to a point where it generates a trust-fund surplus. Such a dramatic transformation of the U.S. population would cause economic, cultural, and political changes that transcend the impact on trust-fund solvency.

Rather than looking to immigration as an outside fix for the fiscal imbalances faced by Social Security and Medicare, policymakers should acknowledge that any practical solution will primarily involve a combination of tax increases and benefit reductions that encourage Americans to live within their means.

Press Release

PALO ALTO, C.A. – Today, U.S. Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA-16) led her Silicon Valley colleagues in writing to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ur Jaddou to inquire about the agency’s efforts to ensure high-skilled immigrants can remain in the U.S. after losing their jobs, and thus their employment-based visas, in the ongoing wave of tech sector layoffs. The letter was signed by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA-18), former Chair of the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, as well as Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA-17), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA-19), and Kevin Mullin (D-CA-15).

“This group of immigrants possesses skills that are highly valuable in today’s knowledge-based economy and forcing them to leave the U.S. is harmful to our nation’s long-term economic competitiveness,” wrote the Members. “This issue is of great importance to our constituents because layoffs in the tech sector have accelerated in recent months. The number of tech jobs lost since the beginning of 2023 has already surpassed the total number of layoffs in 2022.”

The letter requests that USCIS release data detailing the impact of the layoffs on affected immigrants; inquires about whether USCIS has issued guidance to adjudicators in response to the layoffs; and urges USCIS to extend the 60-day grace period for laid-off H-1B holders to secure a new job before losing their legal status.

This letter follows up on a letter Reps. Eshoo and Lofgren sent on December 22nd urging USCIS to extend the H-1B grace period from 60 to 120 days.

A PDF of the letter can be found HERE and the text of the letter is below:

Dear Director Jaddou,

As Members of Congress representing Silicon Valley, we write to inquire about the efforts of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to ensure high-skilled immigrants can remain in the U.S. after losing their jobs, and thus their employment-based visas, in the ongoing wave of tech-sector layoffs. This group of immigrants possesses skills that are highly valuable in today’s knowledge-based economy and forcing them to leave the U.S. is harmful to our nation’s long-term economic competitiveness.

This issue is of great importance to our constituents because layoffs in the tech sector have accelerated in recent months. The number of tech jobs lost since the beginning of 2023 has already surpassed the total number of layoffs in 2022. With the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank causing further disruptions in the tech sector, we fear this trend will continue.

Some of us wrote to you about this issue on December 22nd to urge USCIS to extend the grace period for laid-off H-1B holders from 60 to 120 days. In your January 25th response, you stated that extending the grace period would require a lengthy rulemaking process that would take too long to benefit immigrants who are currently at risk of losing their legal status. While we understand that such a change may take time, we nonetheless urge USCIS to pursue an extension of the grace period, either as a standalone regulatory change or as part of a broader effort to reform the H-1B program. We believe extending the grace period will strengthen our country’s ability to retain immigrant talent in the future.

In your letter you also highlighted a fact sheet, initially published by USCIS on December 19th and updated regularly thereafter, which lists options for laid-off H-1B holders. The fact sheet recommends that individuals who are unable to find a new employer to sponsor their H-1B visa should apply for other nonimmigrant visas, including B-1/B-2 visitor visas, H-4 dependent spouse visas, and F-1 student visas. While we’re grateful to USCIS for publishing this fact sheet, we’re concerned that individuals are still struggling to maintain legal status after losing their jobs due to layoffs.

To better understand the actions USCIS has taken to respond to recent layoffs, we respectfully request that you provide answers to the following questions by May 5, 2023. Your answers will inform our legislative efforts to ensure laid-off H-1B holders can remain in the U.S. and continue contributing their talents to our country.

Over the past six months, approximately how many H-1B visa holders have successfully maintained legal status after losing their jobs and how many have departed the country or accrued unlawful presence? We ask that you share any relevant data with us so we can better understand the impact of the layoffs.

What are the approval and denial rates, broken down by visa category, for newly unemployed H-1B holders who have applied for the nonimmigrant visas listed in the December 19th USCIS fact sheet? Considering unemployed H-1B holders only have a limited 60-day window to secure a new visa, we request that you release this data publicly so these individuals can make informed decisions about which visas to apply for.

Approximately how long does it take for USCIS to process visa applications submitted by newly unemployed H-1B holders? While individuals are legally allowed to remain in the U.S. as their visa applications are pending, we’re concerned about the potential consequences of processing times that exceed the 60-day grace period. In such cases, immigrants will be required to depart the country immediately if their visa applications are denied. This situation not only causes significant distress for the affected individuals but could also result in them accruing unlawful presence if it takes an extended period of time to get their affairs in order before departing the country. This could be held against them if they apply for a visa in the future.

What guidance, if any, has USCIS issued to adjudication officers in response to ongoing layoffs in the tech sector? We are specifically interested to know whether USCIS has instructed adjudicators to prioritize retaining immigrant talent when reviewing the visa applications of laid-off H-1B holders.

Are newly unemployed H-1B holders penalized when applying for B-1/B-2 visitor visas? Because B-1/B-2 visas are intended for short-term visits to the U.S., we’re concerned that adjudicators will deny visas to laid-off H-1B holders, many of whom have lived in the U.S. for years, on the grounds that these individuals do not have sufficient ties to their home countries to demonstrate that they intend to leave the U.S. once their visas expire.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation, and we look forward to receiving your timely responses to our questions.

Most gratefully,

###

Issues:Immigration

Immigrant rights advocates waited over 9 hours to testify against a proposed Border Protection Unit to “deter and repel” migrants

House Bill 20 introduced by Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, would create a unit whose officers can “arrest, apprehend, or detain persons crossing the Texas-Mexico border unlawfully,” and deter those attempting to cross the border.

It was still dark when Alexis Elicerio left the Rio Grande Valley at 3 a.m. to drive to Austin.

The day had scarcely begun by the time Elicerio and 10 others from San Juan arrived at the Capitol to speak directly to lawmakers about a border security bill — one that would create a state unit of officers and civilians empowered to “deter and repel” and arrest migrants if they were seen illegally crossing the border, then return them to Mexico.

Almost 20 hours after starting his day, Elicerio was still waiting for his chance to speak. He said he would tell the legislators that more policing along the border will not solve the most critical issues facing his border community, like unfunded schools and lack of health care.

Elicerio was one of more than 277 people who signed up Wednesday to speak against House Bill 20. He was testifying on behalf of LUPE, a decades-old community organization with roots in the Rio Grande Valley, as a civic engagement organizer.

“A lot of people in our communities will be living in even further fear and be further policed and militarized as a result of this type of legislation,” Elicerio said. “We come as a voice for the ones that can’t travel across the checkpoint.”

His community would be directly impacted, Elicerio said, adding, “We’ll stay here until 2 [a.m.] until they say stop.”

Immigrant rights advocates from across Texas, including El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley, waited over nine hours to be able to testify before the House State Affairs Committee against what is priority legislation for Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan. The committee chair, Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, allowed four hours of testimony for supporters and opponents of the bill, which started at 10 p.m.

Among those who testified against the bill was Asher Vargas, a 9-year-old boy, who said he volunteers at immigrant welcome centers to help immigrants like his grandmother and urged lawmakers not to support the proposal because it “would make it harder for them, which is not very kind. Do you want to be known as a hateful or unwelcoming state? I know I don’t.”

Jennefer Canales-Pelaez, the Texas policy attorney and strategist with Immigrant Legal Resource Center, an advocacy group that helps immigration attorneys, said Texas has misspent taxpayer money on immigration enforcement rather than other priorities such as public education.

“Let this be a reminder that when our state government actively works against the people of Texas, the people of Texas will not go quietly,” she said.

Roberto Lopez, with the Texas Civil Rights Project, said in a statement the proposal will not keep Texans safe but instead “only serve the governor’s interests.”

“We have already seen paramilitary organizations operating in border communities, and giving them the power to capture and detain people seeking safety and protection at our borders would create chaos that will endanger the safety of all Texans,” he said.

Nearly 300 people signed up to testify against the proposal, and about 30 people signed up to speak in support of the bill.

Joshua Treviño, the chief of intelligence and research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, testified in support of the bill. He said Texas needs to do what it can to keep residents safe.

“Texas must step up with its full constitutional powers brought to bear. HB 20 is a positive effort in that direction. It is a necessary first step and we, therefore, urge its passage,” he said.

Mark Morgan, a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who registered as a neutral party to testify to the panel of lawmakers, said “the concept is a good idea.” Morgan, a former U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner and Border Patrol chief, said he believed that HB 20 would serve as a deterrent to people attempting to cross the border illegally.

Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, who introduced the bill to the House committee at about 9 p.m., said his bill is meant to protect Texas from drug cartels smuggling fentanyl into the United States and from people smuggling immigrants across private land along the southern border.

“How many more people will die from fentanyl poisoning? How many more landowners suffer damage to property from trespassers and smugglers?” Schaefer said.

According to the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C., fentanyl seizures at the southern border rose over 500% between fiscal years 2019 to 2022. This fiscal year, immigration agents are on track to set a record for fentanyl seizures. However, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C., found that the majority of fentanyl is being trafficked into the country mostly through ports of entry by U.S. citizens.

House Bill 20 would create a “Border Protection Unit” whose officers can “arrest, apprehend, or detain persons crossing the Texas-Mexico border unlawfully, and deter persons attempting to cross the border unlawfully, including with the use of non-deadly crowd control measures.”

The bill says that in order to be an officer of the unit, that person must have a peace officer license. The bill also says the unit’s chief — who would be appointed by the governor — may employ civilians who could have arrest powers only if the state has trained them and either the state public safety commission or the governor has authorized it.

The size of the unit and the cost of forming and running it isn’t detailed in the bill. Its fiscal note says “the fiscal implications of the bill, while assumed to be significant, cannot be determined at this time due to the size and scope of the Border Patrol Unit being unknown.”

Schaefer’s legislation would also make trespassing on private property in Texas by migrants entering from Mexico a third-degree felony punishable by a $10,000 fine.

Schaefer’s bill also states that if the federal government declared another national public health emergency over COVID-19, or issued COVID-19 vaccination requirements for U.S. citizens including government and health care workers, then the state would be allowed to remove migrants “as rapidly as possible.”

According to the proposal, the unit would be abolished on Dec. 31, 2030, unless the state Legislature approves funding the unit past that date.

Currently, under federal law, a person arrested for entering the country without permission could be charged with a misdemeanor. If Border Patrol agents arrest them a second time, the person could be charged with a felony and be banned from entering the country for a certain amount of years.

The proposal comes as Texas has spent more than $4 billion to slow the number of migrants crossing into the state and sent thousands of Department of Public Safety troopers and National Guard service members to the border. The state has also devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to erecting a state-funded border wall and prosecuting some migrants who have crossed the border in state court for offenses such as trespassing.

In the fiscal year 2022, which ended in September, U.S. Border Patrol agents made 2.4 million apprehensions — a record-breaking number — as an increasing number of people from Latin America and the Caribbean seek asylum in the United States after fleeing violent crime, oppressive governments and economic hardships.

During questioning, Schaefer was asked by Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, if the intent of HB 20 is to reverse a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that says the federal government has full responsibility over immigration enforcement, not individual states.

Schaefer refused to answer that question.

Disclosure: Texas Public Policy Foundation has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

April 10, 2023 DeSantis Pushes Toughest Immigration Crackdown in the Nation

The Florida governor is pushing an aggressive proposal to penalize those who aid undocumented immigrants and to track costs for providing them with health care.

TALLAHASSEE — Led by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican with presidential ambitions, the Florida Legislature is considering a sweeping package of immigration measures that would represent the toughest crackdown on undocumented immigration by any state in more than a decade.

Expected to pass within weeks because Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers, the bills are part of what Mr. DeSantis describes as a response to President Biden’s “open borders agenda,” which he said has allowed an uncontrolled flow of immigrants to cross into the United States from Mexico.

The bills would expose people to felony charges for sheltering, hiring and transporting undocumented immigrants; require hospitals to ask patients their immigration status and report to the state; invalidate out-of-state driver’s licenses issued to undocumented immigrants; prevent undocumented immigrants from being admitted to the bar in Florida; and direct the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to provide assistance to federal authorities in enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.

Mr. DeSantis has separately proposed eliminating in-state college tuition for undocumented students and beneficiaries of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, who were brought to the United States as young children. The tuition law was enacted by his predecessor Rick Scott, now a Republican U.S. senator, in 2014.

The new measures represent the most far-reaching state immigration legislation since 2010, when Arizona, a border state that was the nation’s busiest corridor for human smuggling at the time, passed a law that required the police to ask people they stopped for proof of immigration status if they had a reason to suspect they might be in the country illegally.

“We need to do everything in our power to protect the people of Florida from what’s going on at the border and the border crisis,” Mr. DeSantis said at a news conference on Feb. 23 during which he unveiled his proposals and spoke from a lectern emblazoned with the words “Biden’s Border Crisis.”

Backers of the new bills say they are not opposed to immigration but are trying to make sure that newcomers follow the law.

“There’s a right way and a wrong way to come here,” Debbie Mayfield, a Republican state senator, said during a hearing on one of the bills. “We have a process in this country. We’re not trying to hurt or harm people who are here legally.”

Stronger controls on illegal immigration have been a key issue for Republicans, including among many Hispanic voters in border regions who have expressed alarm over the large numbers of unauthorized border crossings, about 2.5 million last year. There has also been broad Republican support for increasing deportations of those who are in the country illegally, with eight in 10 Republicans saying that boosting deportations was “important,” according to a Pew Research Center survey last year.

Florida saw a wave of migrants landing by boat from Cuba and Haiti earlier this year, overwhelming local resources in the Florida Keys and adding to an undocumented population in the state that is already estimated at about 800,000.

But critics warn the proposed new legislation, by targeting some long-established residents of the state, will sow fear, promote racial profiling and harm Florida’s economy, and some Republican business leaders have come out against it.

The legislative push runs counter to a trend elsewhere in the country to integrate the nation’s existing population of undocumented immigrants, estimated at more than 10 million.

Over the last decade, and especially since the pandemic, even some Republican-led states have introduced policies to provide undocumented residents with health care, access to higher education, driver’s licenses and worker protections.

Arizona voters last year repealed restrictions on higher education for undocumented immigrants and adopted in-state tuition for everyone who attends high school in the state. The State Legislature is taking up a proposal to offer financial aid to such immigrants.

Editors’ Picks

At Glamorous French Festivals, Poverty Is Only Onstage

Ukraine Waits for a Tomorrow It Cannot See

Cottage Cheese Makes a Comeback

“There has been steady growth of inclusive policies across the country and the political spectrum,” said Tanya Broder, a senior staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center who tracks immigration legislation.

Governors Eric Holcomb of Indiana and Spencer Cox of Utah, both Republicans, recently called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform, citing the value of foreign workers to their states. In March, Mr. Cox signed a law extending health coverage to all low-income children in his state, regardless of immigration status.

Texas is moving in the other direction, at least on the border. Republican state lawmakers have proposed a significant expansion in the immigration control program pushed by Gov. Greg Abbott, who, like Mr. DeSantis, is a Republican.

Draft legislation presented in March calls for the state to take on some of the authority now exercised by the federal government, creating a border police force and making it a state felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to illegally cross the border into Texas.

Texas has already deployed National Guard troops on the border and, along with Arizona, has bused newly arriving migrants to cities around the country.

Both Republican governors have accused President Biden of losing control of the situation.

“When Biden continues to ignore his legal responsibilities, we will step in to support our communities,” Mr. DeSantis said in January.

Last year, the Florida governor commissioned two private planes to fly unwitting Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, fueling outrage and prompting lawsuits. In January, he declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard as vessels ferrying Cuban and Haitian migrants docked in the Florida Keys that month and in February.

Neither the state nor the federal government has data on how many undocumented immigrants reached Florida during the latest border surge last year, but there are signs that the state has been heavily affected.

As of March 31, the immigration courts in Florida had 296,833 cases pending, more than any other state, dwarfing New York’s 187,179 and Texas’ 184,867 cases.

Under the proposed new bills, a person could be charged with a third-degree felony for knowingly transporting, concealing or harboring undocumented immigrants, punishable by up to five years in prison. While sponsors have said the legislation is not intended to target ordinary Floridians in their day-to-day lives, its potential applications are broad, legal analysts said: An American adult child of an undocumented immigrant driving a parent, a lawyer driving a client to court or someone driving a sports team that had a player without U.S. legal status could be exposed to criminal charges.

Similarly, the law could also apply to a landlord who rents property to an undocumented family or someone who has an undocumented person living in their home, such as a housekeeper or caretaker.

“As the bill is written, there are no exceptions,” said Paul Chavez, a lawyer affiliated with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is preparing to challenge the legislation in court if it passes.

Enforcing these measures would open the door to racial profiling, critics said, as police officers are charged with determining who is documented and who is not.

“You are looking at a bill that creates an atmosphere where you could get targeted whether you are an immigrant, citizen or tourist,” said Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet, the executive director of Hope CommUnity Center, a nonprofit in Apopka, Fla., that provides immigrants an array of social services. “You don’t know people’s immigration status by looking at them,” he said.

One of the most heavily debated provisions is one that targets hospitals, which would be required to collect data on the immigration status of patients and to submit it to the state. The law would not prohibit treatment, but critics warn that it would discourage undocumented immigrants from seeking care.

The legislation calls for new state penalties to be imposed on employers who hire immigrants without work authorization, and it is drawing opposition from the business community in a state struggling with a labor shortage and where the unemployment rate was 2.6 percent in February.

More than one in five Florida residents are immigrants, and 722,000 American citizens in the state live in households with one or more undocumented immigrants.

The state is home to a large senior population that relies on care often provided by immigrants, many of them undocumented; its agricultural sector employs many undocumented immigrants; and its tourism industry draws millions of visitors from around the world to Florida beaches, restaurants and theme parks, where service workers are often immigrants.

“What might make DeSantis look good with the extreme right in a national presidential election bid is just about the most destructive and hurtful thing he could do to his own state,” said Mike Fernandez, who runs a private equity group in Florida and is a member of the American Business Immigration Coalition, a national bipartisan group of business leaders advocating a cohesive national strategy on immigration.

Felice Gorordo, an entrepreneur in Miami who is trying to attract companies to Florida and create a tech hub, said the proposal to eliminate in-state tuition for undocumented students was counterproductive.

“We would be driving these students to other states when we need to do everything possible to keep our homegrown talent,” he said.

Unlike New York, Washington and Denver, which at different times have struggled to find housing or shelters for flocks of newly arrived migrants, there has been little evidence in Florida of migrants lingering on the streets or crowded into homeless shelters.

The Florida legislation, introduced on the first day of the session that ends in May, is expected to be fast-tracked by the Republican leadership.

“I wholeheartedly thank and commend Gov. Ron DeSantis for having the courage to lead on this issue,” said Blaise Ingoglia, the state senator who sponsored the bill that passed the Senate Rules Committee last month. “This problem is now at our doorstep, and Florida will not stand for it anymore.”

After the Biden administration expanded Title 42, a pandemic authority that empowers agents to swiftly expel citizens of several countries back to Mexico, the number of migrants intercepted by U.S. authorities at the border has plunged in recent months to the lowest levels since Mr. Biden took office.

Some Venezuelans who crossed the border before the expulsion policy was applied to them have reached Tallahassee, renting apartments a short drive from the State Capitol.

Erika Rojas, a Venezuelan American who runs a nonprofit, Hola Tallahassee, that assists newly arrived Spanish speakers, said many had found jobs cleaning offices, working in restaurants or doing construction work.

She scrolled recently through a string of messages in a WhatsApp group where job seekers exchange tips and those who have been in the state longer share information.

A Venezuelan chef wrote in the chat that he had 15 years of experience but was willing to work as a dishwasher. “The main thing is to get my start,” he said.

Another Venezuelan in the group wrote, “I’m an expert welder, and I’m at your service.”

Maria Virginia, 32, a lab technician in her hometown, Maracaibo, Venezuela, said she had been working nights, mopping floors and emptying trash bins at a hospital in Tallahassee.

By day, she has been taking an online class to become a certified phlebotomist, having applied for asylum and received a work permit.

“If I accomplish my goals, I’ll stay in Tallahassee,” she said.

Contact:

Media Relations Division

(213) 257-2000

media@da.lacounty.gov

Assembly Member Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) joined Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California (AJSOCAL), Koreatown Youth & Community Center (KYCC), Thai Community Development Center and Chinatown Service Center (CSC) to announce the “Immigrant Rights Act” which is legislation that will help protect immigrant victims of crime. AB 1261 (Santiago, 2023) will help encourage undocumented Californians who are survivors and witnesses of crimes to come forward by protecting them from deportation. The crimes include (but are not limited to) stalking, extortion, and domestic violence. In order to fight anti-immigrant hate, California must reassure victims and witnesses that their livelihoods will not be threatened by coming forward to report a crime. Our collective public safety depends on all Californians feeling safe when they participate in our legal system.

“Californians should not lose their livelihoods simply because they came forward to report a crime,” said Assembly Member Santiago. “With AB 1261, we not only have a chance to reduce crime but also protect some of our most vulnerable community members. All Californians regardless of immigration status deserve to feel safe when participating in our legal system.”

“Far too often undocumented victims of crime and witnesses to crime are afraid to come forward because they are afraid of deportation. Your immigration status should never be a barrier to safety,” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said. “Public safety for everyone and equal access to the justice system is possible if we protect those that are most vulnerable. I am proud to sponsor this important piece of legislation. I will always advocate for policies and processes that increase access to justice for the undocumented members of our community while ensuring that people who cause harm are held accountable.”

“Justice, just like the American Dream, should be attainable for all, including our undocumented community members. Unfortunately, they are more likely to be victims and survivors of crime than their citizen counterparts. AB 1261 is a true test of our State’s commitment to justice for all,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis, First District.

"As an organization that provides legal services to the AAPI community, AJSOCAL encounters undocumented victims seeking help every day. We help victims of domestic violence obtain U Visas and victims of human trafficking obtain T visas, which can be thwarted or unduly delayed if the victim does not get a certification from a law enforcement agency. AB1261 removes hurdles for undocumented victims of crime who need these certifications and empowers them to come forward for help without the fear of deportation,” said Connie Chung Joe, CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California (AJSOCAL).

"KYCC commends Assemblymember Miguel Santiago on AB 1261 to uplift the most vulnerable members of our community,” said Steve Kang, Director of External Relations for KYCC. “As a leading organization focused on providing free tax prep services for low-income families, we continue to witness the positive contributions of undocumented workers in the growth of our economy. It is time that we provide assistance to our undocumented neighbors who are victims of violence to help facilitate visa applications to ensure justice for all."

"We are happy to see AB 1261, authored by Assemblymember Miguel Santiago and sponsored by Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, going into committee,” said Peter Ng, CEO of Chinatown Service Center. “This is good news and beneficial for the community and especially the API community. The "Immigrant Rights Act" protects undocumented immigrant victims from crimes of domestic violence, and human trafficking. With this bill, victims who help with the investigation can apply for a VISA for them and their family to remain in the country. If you are a victim of such hideous crimes, please do not be afraid to report it, this law can protect you.

"Often times, undocumented crime victims and witnesses are hesitant to seek assistance from law enforcement for fear of detection. Approximately 83% of the time undocumented folks are victims of a crime, they do not report them. Fears of detection, deportation, and dismissal prevent many undocumented victims to receive justice for the harm they have endured.

AB 1261 would promote California’s goal of protecting our most vulnerable residents by codifying the procedures for S visas and clarifying the procedures for U and T visas.

Assembly Member Miguel Santiago is the Chair of the Assembly Committee on Governmental Organization. He represents the 54th District composed of the cities of Los Angeles, Commerce, Montebello, and Vernon.

Redwood City – The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors today voted to restrict the use of County resources to assist federal immigration authorities, calling all residents “valued and integral members” regardless of their status.

The ordinance, which takes effect after a second reading at an upcoming Board meeting, specifically prohibits County departments, agencies, commissions, employees and other representatives from using County resources such as property, personnel, time, labor or money to assist or cooperate with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or other entities for immigration enforcement purposes. Sharing an individual’s personal information or otherwise communicating with immigration authorities and providing access to non-public County facilities like jails and courthouse holding cells is also restricted. Limited exceptions include responding to a warrant issued by a federal judge, court decision or statute. The restrictions do not apply when assisting in criminal investigations and enforcement that do not relate to immigration enforcement.

The Board said its action demonstrates its commitment to instilling trust in all residents and helping them feel safe working with County government.

“When local law enforcement agencies voluntarily assist ICE, such assistance can contribute to community distrust of local government, fear of accessing county services and reluctance to cooperate with local authorities,” said Supervisor Dave Pine, president of the Board of Supervisors. “Conversely, today’s ordinance prohibiting cooperation with ICE enhances community trust of our local law enforcement and of local government in general.”

The Board voted 4-1, with Supervisor Ray Mueller dissenting, in favor of the ordinance.

Mueller said his vote reflected his concern for public safety and how the ordinance is tailored rather than any lack of support for the county’s large immigrant population.

“I support the ordinance in most circumstances but ultimately voted against it because it did not contain an exception that allows the Sheriff’s Department to work with federal authorities to deport undocumented felons who were convicted of serious and violent felonies such as murder, rape or child molestation,” Mueller said.

The Board's actions today are the latest in several over the past several years taken to support the county’s immigrant community. In September 2018, the Board funded nonprofit legal services to help residents facing deportation defend themselves against removal. In November 2021, the San Mateo County Sheriff’s office adopted a policy of not aiding ICE in detaining and transferring residents without a valid judicial warrant.

The agenda packet for this Board item, and video of Board meeting when available, are posted here.

Stewart Detention Center is operated by the private corrections company CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America. The detention center can hold nearly 2,000 people. (Kate Brumback/Associated Press file)

Advocates are calling for federal intervention after another person died at Stewart Detention Center in southwest Georgia.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a 61-year-old man named Salvador Vargas who was in immigrant detention at Stewart died on Tuesday. They said he died at a nearby hospital due to complications from a stroke.

Vargas is the 11th person to die at Stewart Detention Center, making Stewart the deadliest detention center in the country. Nine of those people have died since 2017 and two were from suicide.

“I think the question at this point to the Biden administration is what is keeping them from shutting down Stewart Detention Center?” said Azadeh Shahshahani, the legal and advocacy director for the nonprofit Project South.

“We have been calling for this place to be shut down, repeatedly, time after time, then there’s another tragedy. And then there’s another tragedy and yet, another tragedy.”

The private prison corporation that runs the detention center, CoreCivic, has faced scrutiny for years over things like lack of access to proper mental health care, allegations of sexual abuse against women and forced, underpaid labor.

In a statement, ICE — which oversees the CoreCivic contract — said it is firmly committed to the health and welfare of those in its custody and is reviewing this incident.

This Deceptive ICE Tactic Violates the Fourth Amendment

There’s a knock at your door. It’s the police. They say they are investigating a crime and would like to ask a few questions. It’s alarming, but you want to help, so you let them in.

But what if these officers are not who they say they are?

For years, agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have impersonated the police and used other deceptive tactics to gain warrantless entry into people’s homes, or lure them out — a practice that the ACLU, in collaboration with others, has challenged in court as a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

ICE’s goal is to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants going about their daily lives — working, commuting, and spending time at home with family. In pursuit of this goal, ICE has used racial profiling and intimidation tactics that instill fear and confusion in communities and stoke mistrust in the police.

Examples of ICE’s ruses include:

Showing a photo of a random person unknown to the resident and claiming they must verify that no one in the residence fits that description.

Representing themselves as probation officers and claiming that they are conducting a probation check, or referencing a person’s probation status.

Tricking people into locating a family member so they can arrest them.

Pulling over drivers on the road and asking for their license and registration, as if writing a traffic ticket.

Posing as a civilian looking for a contractor to work on their house and making an appointment for an estimate.

Disguising themselves as day laborers by wearing bandanas and driving a vehicle carrying a ladder.

The ACLU and co-counsel partners have filed lawsuits to challenge these practices in California and Illinois. Below, two of the clients share their experience being trapped by ICE, and the repercussions that continue today.

ICE knocked on Alyssa’s door at 8 a.m. and pretended to be inquiring about her car registration.

Tara Pixley

ICE ruses often take place early in the morning, when they can catch people as they are waking up or getting ready for work. They wear shirts or vests with the word POLICE emblazoned across, and often announce that they are “police” at the front door, without informing community members that they are ICE. That’s what happened to Alyssa Lazo,a prior DACA recipient who lives in Los Angeles. Alyssa spent 21 days in immigrant detention after ICE tricked her into thinking they were inquiring about her car registration. The effects of the incident last to this day, impacting decisions about who to trust and when to call for help.

Below, Alyssa describes what happened when ICE came to her door, and how it’s still impacting daily life.

But the fear stays with me. I feel like I’m being watched and as if ICE could show up at any moment, disguised as the police again.

Alyssa Lazo

One morning, I woke up to the sound of banging on my front door. I was alarmed — it was only 8 a.m. Through the peephole, I could see three people in dark clothing on the other side of the door. They said they were the police, and they were looking for me.

“Are you Alyssa Lazo?” they asked.

I had no idea how they knew my name or why they would be looking for me, but when they said it was about my car, I thought there might have been some issue with my registration. I had just been to the DMV a couple of weeks prior. Maybe I had done something wrong with the paperwork. They asked to see my car registration, and I indicated it was in my car. When I stepped outside my home to get my car registration documents, they stopped me and told me they were ICE — not the police — that I was here illegally, and that I was now in federal custody.

I was shocked, scared, and confused, because I was a DACA recipient. My lawyer never mentioned that this could be a possibility. I’d seen it on TV — people getting handcuffed and taken away — but I never thought it could be a possibility for me because I was taking care of my paperwork. But they didn’t care about that.

At that point, we were on the landing of my apartment building, and I could see my neighbor listening from inside his apartment while the ICE agents handcuffed me and took me away to the detention center. I was called an “alien,” a “threat to society,” and ended up spending 21 days in custody.

Ever since that day, I’ve been afraid of talking to the police for anything. Not even when I really need help. Even if I was being abused, stalked, or just terrified, I still wouldn’t call the police. I would call my sister instead.

But the fear stays with me. I feel like I’m being watched and as if ICE could show up at any moment, disguised as the police again. That fear has slightly decreased under the Biden administration. But there’s always the possibility that it could happen again. ICE should not be disguising themselves as the police. Now, every time I see the police, I wonder if they are undercover. But until the Biden administration does something to stop ICE from doing that, all we can do is be aware, be prepared, and know our rights. No one should have to face what I faced that day, and the fear that continues.

In 2020, the ACLU of Southern California, UC Irvine School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic, and the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Osny Sorto-Vasquez Kid, the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. ICE tried to get the case dismissed, but the court denied the motion in April 2021. Early this year, a federal court granted class certification — recognizing that many people in Southern California share a similar claim against the deceptive practices by ICE.

Margarito wants to share his story to help others who may find themselves targeted by ICE.

Alex Garcia

Within just six days in May 2018, ICE arrested and detained more than 100 people across the Chicago area in “Operation Keep Safe.” As part of the operation, ICE agents saturated known Hispanic areas of the city of Chicago and surrounding communities accosting anybody who “looked” undocumented, and used unmarked vehicles to feign routine traffic stops. The ACLU has received reports from across the country of ICE agents barricading cars with their vehicles, approaching people with rifles pointed, and threatening to shoot.

Margarito Casta​​ñon Nava is among those who were unlawfully apprehended by ICE under the guise of a traffic stop, and was detained for 44 days before being released on bond.

The whole time I was in custody, I had very little information about when I would see a judge or what was going to happen to me. They never showed me an arrest warrant.

Margarito Casta​​ñon Nava

On my way home from work one evening, I noticed a black SUV behind me. It seemed to be following me. There were no lights and no siren, but its tinted windows made me think of the police.

Suddenly the SUV barricaded my truck on the side of the road, and three people stepped out. It seemed I was right: they were wearing vests that said POLICE in large letters across the front.

The officers were speaking mostly in English, so I couldn’t understand what they were saying. My boss, who was with me in the passenger seat, translated for me. But there wasn’t much information to translate, because they never gave a reason why we were pulled over. All they did was ask us where we worked, to see our driver’s licenses, and to take our photos.

When I handed them my driver’s license, they threw it on the dashboard, handcuffed me to the steering wheel, and took my thumbprints and my photo. I watched them return to the SUV through the rearview mirror. When they returned, they put me in their car and drove us away. The agents never said who they were or where they were taking us, or why. It was only when we arrived at the detention center that I found out they were not the police, but ICE.

The whole time I was in custody, I had very little information about when I would see a judge or what was going to happen to me. They never showed me an arrest warrant. I tried to call my wife, but she didn’t pick up since she didn’t recognize the number. I was worried that they were going to send me back to Mexico and I wouldn’t be able to see my family again.

In the end, I was detained for about a month and a half. I missed my daughter’s quinceañera and my other two children’s last days of school. I still can’t believe government agents are pretending to be the police and locking people in detention for no good reason. But that’s what happened to me. The only reason I could think of is because my coworker and I appear Hispanic. ICE shouldn’t be catching people just because of the color of their skin.

I think things are changing now that there is a new president. If President Biden really cares about immigrants, I would ask him to help us get our papers so we can be able to visit our families. I have a work permit now, but I haven’t seen my family in Mexico in 23 years. If we could get our legal documents, I would be very, very happy.

In 2018, Margarito joined a class action lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the National Immigrant Justice Center, along with other individuals swept up in Operation Keep Safe the immigrant rights organizations Organized Communities Against Deportation and Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. In 2022, the court approved a final settlement between the plaintiffs and DHS. Among other terms, the 3-year settlement requires ICE to adopt a nationwide policy barring many traffic stops and warrantless arrests, and allows ICE detainees to challenge detentions that violate the agreement in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, and Kentucky.

After achieving this victory, Margarito wanted to share his story to help others who may find themselves in similar situations.

Immigration arrests rose under the Trump administration, as did ICE’s use of ruses and its collaboration with police through the 287(g) program. The latter, while predating Trump, put more people under the threat of deportation by allowing local law enforcement to carry out duties normally reserved for federal ICE agents. That ICE itself is impersonating the police only foments confusion and fear of law enforcement in immigrant communities. As a result, many immigrants and their friends and family members are less likely to come forward as witnesses, provide crime tips, or seek police protection, even in emergencies.

Before taking office, President Biden pledged to roll back harmful immigration practices and hold law enforcement accountable for unlawful behavior. But ICE is still impersonating the police and misrepresenting its purpose and getting away with it. By allowing this practice to continue, the Biden administration is undermining its own efforts to repair Trump-era abuses.

The ACLU is urging Biden to reform ICE — particularly to prevent a future anti-immigrant administration from resuming Trump administration efforts to make the United States a hostile, dangerous place for our immigrant neighbors and loved ones. Necessary reforms include strict limits on any street arrests, dismantling programs that use local law enforcement to help deport immigrants, like 287(g), and prohibiting federal agents from impersonating local police.

Necessary reforms include strict limits on any street arrests, prohibiting federal agents from impersonating local police, and stopping ICE from tapping local police to do its bidding, including through the 287(g) program.

In the meantime, people in immigrant communities can defend themselves by knowing their rights. Anybody confronted by law enforcement — whether undocumented or not — can and should do their best to verify the officers’ identity and purpose, document the encounter, and report what happened. More information in English and Spanish can be found here.