Articles Posted in Immigration in the News

Texas officials are reportedly refusing to release a young immigrant woman in dire need of medical attention for her schizophrenia, this despite warnings from her family about her condition.

Tania Silva, a woman born in Mexico who has been living in the U.S. for years, went missing after being dropped off at an Austin community college, where she studies veterinary medicine. Upon realizing that their child had disappeared, Silva’s parents immediately filed a missing persons report only to discover that she had been arrested by immigration officials.

According to Pamela Silva, Tania’s younger sister, Tania is a student who has been helping community, volunteering at the high school that she went to. She adds that when she’s not ill, she’s a normal person and acts calmly, something her friends and family know.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a memo on July 5, 2018 requiring its officers to issue a Notice to Appear (NTA) to foreign nationals deemed “not lawfully present” in the United States upon the denial of their immigration benefit.

The government issues NTAs to foreign nationals found to be removable from the country. NTAs of this nature mark the commencement of the removal proceedings of a foreign national, thereby requiring them to appear before an immigration judge for such proceedings.

These new guidelines are expected to influence the proceedings of a wide range of immigration cases, particularly nonimmigrant workers and students.

A panel of legal experts met with a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee to raise concerns over the constitutionality of Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) agents stationed at the northern and southern borders being able to search cellphones without warrants. For years, CPB’s policy has allowed border agents to force travelers and immigrants stopped at the border to unlock their electronic device without first obtaining a warrant—the only condition is that there is “reasonable suspicion” to do so.

But Georgetown University law professor Laura Donahue testified in Washington last Wednesday, arguing that CPB’s warrantless searches are not only a violation of civil rights, they also lead to racial profiling. The tremendous increase in searches, Donahue claims, pose a complete breakdown of the constitutional rights that both migrants and U.S. citizens crossing the US border still enjoy.

The CPB reports that its agents have searched over 8,500 devices in 2015 alone. That number doubled to more than 16,000 searched in 2016 and soared “to more than 30,000 searches in 2017,” this according to data Donahue presented to the Senate subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management.

The fate of President Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration, which has resulted in massive backlash over its separation of immigrant children from their guardians at the border, will be decided in the Los Angeles federal court this month. U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee will be presiding over arguments on July 27.

Critics of the administration’s immigration policy will be presenting their case against the President’s recent executive order ending the practice of separating immigrant children from their guardians. The dissent stems from the order being used as a springboard for another problematic immigration policy involving the extension of the detention periods of these immigrant families.

The order states that “alien families” will be detained “together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings” in the effort to maintain “family unity.” President Trump additionally clarifies that unlawfully present families will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, consistent with his hardline approach to immigration.

An increasing number of Democrats have joined in calling for the termination of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), an advocacy once championed by the far-left parts of progressive politics and now front and center in democratic politics.

The call to shut down the agency picked up steam weeks ago in Washington, beginning with a demonstration against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who was spotted by protesters dining at a Mexican restaurant. The group urged her to take action against the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance approach to unlawful immigration resulting in the separation of immigrant children from their guardians at the border. The demonstration climaxed with a call to action that now resounds with other immigration rights advocates: “Abolish ICE.”

Two weeks after the incident, a growing roster of prominent democrats adopted the movement and brought it to the mainstream when once not even the most liberal lawmakers gave it the time of day.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of the federal government in Trump v. Hawaii, upholding the President’s travel ban on Muslim-majority countries and overruling a lower court’s decision to put parts of the ban on hold. Deliberations led to a 5-4 split with the high court’s liberal justices as the dissenting minority. The decision effectively reverses the lower court’s ruling, which was already put on hold while the case was reviewed to prevent full implementation of the immigration ban. Chief Justice John Roberts authored the opinion.

With the third and latest iteration of Trump’s executive order banning travel from Muslim-majority countries now in full effect, travelers, immigrants, refugees, and even visa holders from Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen are now completely shut off from entering the country.

While critics of the policy have pointed out the discriminatory basis of the ban evident in the predominant religion in the blacklisted countries as well as the President’s own social media posts, Chief Justice Roberts sees things differently.