Tag Archives: immigration law

U.S. top court to hear Trump bid to revive law against encouraging illegal immigration

By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to resurrect a federal law that makes it a felony to encourage illegal immigrants to come or stay in the United States after it was struck down by a lower court as a violation free speech rights.

In a case involving a California woman named Evelyn Sineneng-Smith convicted of violating the law, the justices will review a ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidating it for infringing on rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

Federal prosecutors in 2010 brought charges against Sineneng-Smith, a U.S. citizen who ran an immigration consultancy in San Jose, accusing her of making money by duping illegal migrants into paying her to file frivolous visa applications while remaining in the country indefinitely. Her business primarily served Filipinos who worked as home healthcare providers.

Sineneng-Smith was convicted in 2013 of violating provisions of the federal law that bar inducing or encouraging an illegal immigrant to “come to, enter or reside” in the United States, including for financial gain. She also was convicted of mail fraud and was sentenced to 18 months in prison and three years of supervised release.

The 9th Circuit in 2018 ruled that the law must be struck down because it is overly broad and criminalizes even simple speech that is protected by the First Amendment. For instance, a grandmother could theoretically be charged under the law for telling her grandson whose visa has expired, “I encourage you to stay,” the 9th Circuit noted.

The court begins its next nine-month term on Monday.

(Reporting by Andrerw Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

Appeals court allows U.S. to keep sending asylum seekers to Mexico

FILE PHOTO - A general view shows a temporary facility for processing migrants requesting asylum, at the U.S. Border Patrol headquarters in El Paso, Texas, U.S. April 29, 2019. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration may continue sending asylum seekers to wait out their cases in Mexico while the government appeals a lower court ruling that found the policy violated U.S. immigration law.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco found that a preliminary injunction barring the government from returning asylum seekers to Mexico was “unlikely to be sustained” on appeal in its present form and stayed the lower court ruling.

The Department of Homeland Security “is likely to suffer irreparable harm absent a stay because the preliminary injunction takes off the table one of the few congressionally authorized measures available to process the approximately 2,000 migrants who are currently arriving at the nation’s southern border on a daily basis,” the judges said in issuing the stay.

While asylum seekers may fear substantial injury upon being returned to Mexico, the judges said, “the likelihood of harm is reduced somewhat by the Mexican government’s commitment to honor its international law obligations and to grant humanitarian status and work permits to individuals returned.”

The U.S. government was appealing an order by a U.S. District Court in early April that enjoined the policy, known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).

The program, launched in January, was one of many policies aimed at slowing rising numbers of immigrants arriving at the border, many of them families from Central America, that has swelled to the highest in a decade.

Since the policy went into effect on Jan. 29, through May 1 more than 3,000 Central Americans have been sent back to Mexico, according to Mexican officials.

The government argues that the MPP is needed because so many asylum seekers spend years living in the United States and never appear for their court hearings before their claim is denied and an immigration judge orders them to be deported.

Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, criticized the ruling. “Asylum seekers are being put at serious risk of harm every day that the forced return policy continues,” he said.

Jadwat noted that two of the three judges who heard the appeal found “serious legal problems with what the government is doing, so there is good reason to believe that ultimately this policy will be put to a halt.”

In recent years, there has been a shift in border crossings from mainly single, adult Mexicans trying to evade capture to Central American families and unaccompanied minors turning themselves in to border agents to seek asylum. Because of limits on how long children can be held in detention, most families are released to pursue their claims in U.S. immigration courts, a process that can take years.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City; Editing by G Crosse and Leslie Adler)

Trump says he will not sign moderate ‘Dreamer’ immigration bill

Children interact with members of the Presbyterian church in Sunland Park, U.S. at a new section of the border wall on the U.S.-Mexico border after a liturgy to commemorate the religious dimensions of migration, in this picture taken from Anapra neighborhood in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico May 3, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday he would not sign the more moderate of two bills under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives that are meant to address the threat of deportation hanging over the United States’ “Dreamer” immigrants.

“I’m looking at both of them. I certainly wouldn’t sign the more moderate one,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Channel in front of the White House. “I need a bill that gives this country tremendous border security. I have to have that.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan plans to bring up the two bills for votes in the Republican-controlled House next week, moving to break a long-standing stalemate on Capitol Hill over immigration law. But Ryan said on Thursday he could not guarantee passage of either measure.

Up to 1.8 million young Dreamers, mostly Hispanics who entered the country illegally years ago as children, could qualify for protection under the more moderate of the two Republican bills.

It would allow the Dreamers to apply for temporary “non-immigrant” visas to remain in the United States. It would also provide $25 billion to strengthen security at the U.S.-Mexico border, including funding construction of a border wall that the Republican president wants to build.

The other bill is a conservative Republican measure that would build the border wall and deny Dreamers the chance of citizenship.

(Reporting by Justin Mitchell; editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Tim Ahmann and Jonathan Oatis)

Sessions blasts California after filing U.S. immigration suit

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks to the National Association of Attorneys General 2018 Winter Meeting in Washington, U.S., February 27, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, escalating the Trump administration’s rhetoric against the most populous U.S. state, accused California on Wednesday of obstructing federal immigration enforcement efforts and vowed to stop the state’s defiance.

Sessions made the remarks to a law enforcement group a day after Republican President Donald Trump’s Justice Department sued Democratic-governed California over so-called sanctuary policies that try to protect illegal immigrants against deportation.

“California is using every power it has – and some it doesn’t – to frustrate federal law enforcement. So you can be sure I’m going to use every power I have to stop them,” Sessions, the top U.S law enforcement officer, said in prepared remarks.

“In recent years, California has enacted a number of laws designed to intentionally obstruct the work of our sworn immigration enforcement officers – to intentionally use every power it has to undermine duly-established immigration law in America,” Sessions added.

Sessions said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents carry out federal law and that “California cannot forbid them or obstruct them in doing their jobs.”

The lawsuit, filed late on Tuesday in federal court in Sacramento, takes aim at three state laws passed last year that the Justice Department contends violates the U.S. Constitution and the supremacy of federal law over state law.

Trump has made fighting illegal immigration and cracking down on illegal immigrants already in the United States a signature issue, first as a candidate and now as president.

“Immigration law is the province of the federal government,” Sessions said.

“I understand that we have a wide variety of political opinions out there on immigration, but the law is in the books and its purpose is clear,” Sessions added. “There is no nullification. There is no secession. Federal law is the supreme law of the land.”

Sessions, who was speaking at a California Peace Officers Association conference in Sacramento, has made combating illegal immigration one of his top priorities since taking over the Justice Department in February 2017. A key part of that effort involves a crackdown on primarily Democratic-governed cities and states that Sessions calls “sanctuaries” that protect illegal immigrants from deportation.

Democratic California Governor Jerry Brown in October signed into law a bill that prevents police from inquiring about immigration status and curtails law enforcement cooperation with immigration officers.

“Jeff Sessions has come to California to further divide and polarize America,” Brown said in a statement late on Tuesday.

Brown and Democratic California Attorney General Xavier Bacerra are scheduled to speak in Sacramento on the issue after Sessions’ speech.

Leading California Democrats blasted the Trump administration.

“The president has now desperately decided to brazenly abuse the legal system to push his mass deportation agenda,” Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, said in a statement.

“The Trump administration’s attacks on California are unacceptable in the federal system of government our Founders created,” she added. “We have a system of checks and balances – not a system in which the executive branch can unilaterally bend states to its will.”

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Ben Klayman and Will Dunham)

Trump scraps ‘Dreamer’ immigration program

Demonstrators protest in front of the White House after the Trump administration today scrapped the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that protects from deportation almost 800,000 young men and women who were brought into the U.S. illegally as children, in Washington, U.S., September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday scrapped a program that protects from deportation almost 800,000 young men and women who were brought into the United States illegally as children, giving a gridlocked Congress six months to decide their fate.

Trump’s action, announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, rescinds a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The program, created by Democratic former President Barack Obama, is supported by Democrats and many business leaders. The Trump administration said no current beneficiaries of the program would be affected before March 5.

Sessions said the action does not mean the DACA recipients are “bad people.”

“To have a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest, we cannot admit everyone who would like to come here. It’s just that simple. That would be an open-border policy and the American people have rightly rejected that,” Sessions said.

The move marked the latest action by Trump that is sure to alienate Hispanic Americans, a growing segment of the U.S. population and an increasingly important voting bloc. Most of the immigrants protected by DACA, dubbed “Dreamers,” came from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Trump’s action, deferring the actual end of the program, effectively kicks responsibility for the fate of the Dreamers to his fellow Republicans who control Congress. But Congress has been unable since the president took office in January to pass any major legislation and has been bitterly divided over immigration in the past.

Obama bypassed Congress and created DACA through an executive order.

Trump appeared determined to pressure U.S. lawmakers to act. “Congress, get ready to do your job – DACA!” the president wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning before the policy announcement was made.

There were some signs that Congress might be willing to act, with a number of senior Republican lawmakers coming forward to express an interest in protecting the Dreamers.

The president’s decision may have been forced by nine Republican state attorneys general, led by Texas, who had threatened a legal challenge in federal court if Trump did not act to end DACA. A number of Democratic state attorneys general have threatened legal action to defend the program.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Tim Ahmann, Leslie Adler and Frances Kerry)

Supreme Court invalidates gender inequality in citizenship law

FILE PHOTO - The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, DC, U.S. April 7, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down a gender distinction in U.S. immigration law that treats mothers and fathers differently when determining a child’s citizenship, calling such inequality “stunningly anachronistic.”

The high court, in a 8-0 ruling authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, found that a provision in federal law that defines how people born overseas can be eligible for U.S. citizenship violated the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection guarantee.

The ruling, however, may not help the man who brought the case, New York resident Luis Morales-Santana, who was seeking to avoid deportation to the Dominican Republic after being convicted of several offenses.

The law requires that unwed fathers who are American citizens spend at least five years living in the United States – a 2012 amendment reduced it from 10 years – before they can confer citizenship to a child born abroad, out of wedlock and to a partner who is not a U.S. citizen.

For unwed U.S. mothers in the same situation, the requirement was only one year.

In the ruling, the Supreme Court said that until Congress revises the law, both women and men will be covered by the five-year requirement.

Ginsburg, known for her work on gender equality before she became a jurist, wrote for the court that in light of the Supreme Court’s various rulings regarding the equal protection guarantee since 1971, having separate “duration-of-residence requirements for unwed mothers and fathers who have accepted parental responsibility is stunningly anachronistic.”

The arguments made in defense of the law by former President Barack Obama’s administration before he left office in January “cannot withstand inspection under a Constitution that requires the government to respect the equal dignity and stature of its male and female citizens,” Ginsburg wrote.

Morales-Santana’s deceased father was an American citizen, while his mother was not. His father failed to meet the law’s five-year requirements by 20 days.

His lawyer, Stephen Broome, said he is reviewing how the ruling affects his client.

Morales-Santana, 54, was born in the Dominican Republican and has lived legally in the United States since 1975. He was convicted of several criminal offenses in 1995, including two counts of robbery and four counts of attempted murder. The U.S. government has sought to deport him since 2000.

The high court split 4-4 on the same issue in 2011.

In July 2015, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York sided with Morales-Santana and struck down the law at issue, saying it applied “impermissible stereotyping” in imposing a tougher burden on fathers. The U.S. Justice Department sought to defend the law and asked the high court to take the case.

The case is one of several with immigration-related themes that are before the justices at a time when President Donald Trump’s administration is pursing efforts to strengthen immigration enforcement.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. says Trump order will not undermine data transfer deals with EU

U.S. President Donald Trump walks after speaking during the Governor's Dinner in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 26, 2017.

By Julia Fioretti

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – An executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump to crack down on illegal immigration will not undermine two data transfer agreements between the United States and the EU, Washington wrote in a letter to allay European concerns.

An executive order signed by Trump on Jan. 25 aiming to toughen enforcement of U.S. immigration law rattled the European Union as it appeared to suggest Europeans would not be given the same privacy protections as U.S. citizens.

The order directs U.S. agencies to “exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information.”

Securing equal treatment of EU citizens was key to agreeing the Umbrella Agreement which protects law enforcement data shared between the United States and the EU.

And the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield – which makes possible about $260 billion of trade in digital services – was only clinched after Washington agreed to protect the data from excessive surveillance and misuse by companies.

In the first written confirmation since the executive order stoked uncertainty over transatlantic data flows, the U.S. Department of Justice said the executive order did not affect either the Umbrella Agreement or the Privacy Shield.

“Section 14 of the Executive Order does not affect the privacy rights extended by the Judicial Redress Act to Europeans. Nor does Section 14 affect the commitments the United States has made under the DPPA (Umbrella Agreement) or the Privacy Shield,” Bruce Swartz, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, wrote to the European Commission in a letter seen by Reuters.

EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova, who will travel to the United States at the end of March, said she was “not worried” but remained vigilant.

The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield is used by almost 2,000 companies including Google, Facebook and Microsoft  to store data about EU citizens on U.S. servers.

Its predecessor was struck down in 2015 by the EU’s top court for allowing U.S. agents unfettered access to Europeans’ data, forcing an acceleration of difficult talks to find a replacement.

(Reporting by Julia Fioretti; Editing by Mark Potter)