Source: http://ilw.com/articles/2011,1214-kolken.shtm
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 06:17:24+00:00

Document:
NY Times Report: "Growing Number" of American Citizens being Detained by the Obama Administration's "Immigration Crackdown"
Julia Preston of the New York Times reports that the Obama administration is detaining an increasing number of United States citizens as "illegal immigrants" as a result of "flawed information" from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) databases. The databases instruct local police to hold the individual for investigation for possible deportation.
The article gives examples of citizens that are being caught up in the Secure Communities deportation program that requires the fingerprinting of every individual booked at local jails. The fingerprints are then cross-checked against DHS immigration databases. If a check returns positive an immigration hold is placed on the individual, enabling local law enforcement to detain the individual for up to 48 hours. A false positive can be triggered in a Secure Communities fingerprint check because of "flukes" in the databases.
It is unknow how many American citizens have been erroneously detained because, conveneintly, the Obama administration does not keep statistics on false positives. One study has been conducted, however, that reveals that 82 citizens were held in Arizona immigration detention centers for as long as a year before an immigration ultimately determined that they were United States citizens.
Click here to read more of the article. It is worth your time.
The Arizona State Attorney General received an early Christmas present yesterday. The United States Supreme Court agreed to review the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision relating to four provisions of the highly controversial Arizona immigration law known as S.B. 1070.
The four enjoined provisions direct state law-enforcement officers to cooperate and communicate with federal officials regarding the enforcement of federal immigration law and impose penalties under state law for non-compliance with federal immigration requirements.
The requirement that police when making a stop to attempt to determine an individual’s immigration status should an officer have a “reasonable suspicion” that the individual is in the United States in violation of immigration laws. If arrested, an individual is precluded from release until immigration status is verified by the federal government.
A provision requiring that criminalizes the act of intentionally failing to obtain and carry proof of lawful immigration status while in Arizona.
The inclusion of a misdemeanor offense for the act of applying for employment, publicly soliciting employment, or working in Arizona without authorization.
Permission for a probable cause warrantless arrest of any person should a police officer reasonably believe that the individual has committed any crime, anywhere, that would subject them to removal from the United States.
The question is presented before the Supreme Court is "whether the federal immigration laws preclude Arizona's efforts at cooperative law enforcement and impliedly preempt these four provisions of S.B. 1070 on their face."
Justice Kagan took no part in the consideration or decision of the Court to review the case, and has recused herself. As a result, only 8 members of the Court will render a decision.
Amicus brief of Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence et al.
The United States Supreme Court rendered an immigration related decision today. The unanimous 9-0 opinion was delivered by Justice Kagan. See Judulang v. Holder, No. 10–694, December 12, 2011.
The case involved the application of Section 212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) in the deportation context. Prior to its repeal in 1996, §212(c) gave the Attorney General the authority to grant discretionary relief to an individual charged with being excludable from the United States, where the alien had lawfully resided in the United States for at least seven years prior to a temporary departure so long as the individual was not excludable on one of two specified grounds.
To determine continuing eligibility for §212(c) in a deportation context the BIA used a test called the “comparable grounds” rule, which evaluates whether a charged ground for deportation is analogous to the list of exclusion grounds contained in the INA.
The rule works as follows. If a conviction that subjects an individual to a ground for deportation is “substantially equivalent” to a conviction that constitutes a ground for exclusion, an individual is eligible for §212(c) relief. Conversely, if the deportation ground covers "different or more or fewer offenses than any exclusion ground", the individual is ineligible for §212(c) relief, even if the particular conviction is a ground for exclusion.
The Supreme Court held that the comparable grounds rule is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. §706(2)(A), reversing and remanding the decision below rendered by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Court used particularly strong language in rendering its decision calling the Board's current approach fundamentally flawed because it doesn't even rest on factors that are relevant to whether an individual should be deported, characterizing the test as a “sport of chance” that circumvents the protections established by the APA. The Court further ruled that the Board's approach has no connection to the purposes of the immigration laws or the appropriate operation of the immigration system, and eligibility is tied to "irrelevant comparison between statutory provisions."
The Government attempted to argue that the test is valid because it saves time and money, but the Court dismissed this argument stating that "cheapness alone cannot save an arbitrary agency policy."
It has been reported that Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill. has stated that the Obama administration is not implementing the prosecutorial discretion memo that is supposed to prioritize the deportation of immigrants with criminal conviction over individuals who are only subject to deportation for immigration violations.
Congressman Gutierrez cites an example of a 19-year-old girl that was held in an Alabama jail for three days for a traffic violation. She has no prior criminal record, is a young mother, and is married to a United States citizen who is the father of her child. Moreover, she did not intentionally break our immigration laws as she was brought to the United States as a 12-year-old. Gutierrez called her the "the gold standard for prosecutorial discretion."
I'm sure that now that the Administration has been embarrassed in the media action will be taken. Par for the course.

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