Dream Act And DACA Policies Designed To Protect Dreamers

With the rescission of the Deferred Action for Children Arrivals (DACA) initiative, there has been renewed pressure on Congress to pass federal legislation known as the Dream Act to protect young immigrants who are vulnerable to deportation. This fact sheet provides an overview of the Dream Act and other similar legislative proposals, explains changes made to DACA on March 13, 2019, and provides information about policies at the state level that support Dreamers. 


History of the Dream Act

The first version of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act was introduced in 2001. As a result, young undocumented immigrants have since been called Dreamers. Over the last 18 years, at least ten versions of the Dream Act have been introduced in Congress. While the various versions of the Dream Act have contained some key differences , they all would have provided a pathway to legal status for undocumented youth who came to this country as children. Some versions have garnered as many as 48 co-sponsors in the Senate and 152 in the House. 

Despite bipartisan support for each bill, none has become law. The bill came closest to full passage in 2010 when it passed the House of Representatives but fell just five votes short of the 60 necessary to proceed in the Senate. 

In July 2017, versions of the Dream Act were introduced in the Senate by Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) and in the House by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). That year, members of the House of Representatives introduced several other legislative proposals to address undocumented youth, most of which were variants on the Dream Act. Although some of these bills drew significant support, none became law. 


Current Federal Legislative Proposals

The most recent version of the Dream Act, H.R. 2820, was introduced in May 2019 in the House by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA). H.R. 2820 was passed by the House Judiciary Committee on May 22, 2019, and the bill was subsequently combined with H.R. 2821, the American Promise Act of 2019, to form H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act of 2019. H.R.6 would provide permanent legal status for “Dreamers” as well as beneficiaries of two humanitarian programs: Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure. 


What Does the Dream Act do? 

The American Dream and Promise Act of 2019 allows current, former, and future undocumented high-school graduates and GED recipients a three-step pathway to U.S. citizenship through college, work, or the armed services. 


STEP 1: CONDITIONAL PERMANENT RESIDENCE

An individual is eligible to obtain conditional permanent resident (CPR) status for up to 10 years, which includes work authorization, if the person: 

• Entered the United States under the age of 18;
• Entered four years prior to enactment and has since been continuously present;
• Has been admitted to an institution of higher education, has graduated high school or obtained a GED, or is currently enrolled in secondary school or a program assisting students to obtain a high school diploma or GED.
• Has not been convicted of any "crime involving moral turpitude" or controlled substance offense, any crime punishable by more than one year in prison, or three or more offenses under state or federal law where the individual was imprisoned for 90 days or more. There is an exception for offenses which are essential to a person’s immigration status;
• Has not been convicted of a crime of domestic violence unless the individual can prove the crime was related to being the victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, child abuse, neglect in later life, human trafficking, battery, or extreme cruelty.

Under the terms of the bill, the Secretary of Homeland Security can issue waivers for humanitarian purposes, for family unity, or when the waiver is otherwise in the public interest. In addition, anyone who has DACA would be granted a swift path to CPR status. 


STEP 2: LAWFUL PERMANENT RESIDENCE

Anyone who maintains CPR status can obtain lawful permanent residence (LPR status or a “green card”) by satisfying one of the following requirements: 

• Higher education: Has completed at least two years, in good standing, of higher education or of a program leading to a certificate/credential from an area career and technical education school;
• Military service: Has completed at least two years of military service with an honorable discharge;
• Work: Can demonstrate employment over a total period of three years.

Individuals who cannot meet one of these requirements can apply for a “hardship waiver” if the applicant is a person with disabilities, a full-time caregiver of a minor child, or for whom removal would cause extreme hardship to a spouse, parent, or child who is a national or lawful permanent resident of the United States. 


STEP 3: NATURALIZATION

After maintaining LPR status for five years, an individual can generally apply to become a U.S. citizen through the normal process. 

According to the Migration Policy Institute, as many as 2.31 million individuals would qualify for conditional permanent resident status under the 2019 version of the Dream Act, putting them on a path to citizenship. The bill would also provide a path to citizenship for an estimated 429,000 people who are current or former beneficiaries of TPS or DED. 


Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

On June 15, 2012, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). DACA is an exercise of prosecutorial discretion, providing temporary relief from deportation (deferred action) and work authorization to certain young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. DACA has enabled almost 800,000 eligible young adults to work lawfully, attend school, and plan their lives without the constant threat of deportation, usually to an unfamiliar country. nlike federal legislation, however, DACA does not provide permanent legal status to individuals and must be renewed every two years. 

On September 5, 2017, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke rescinded the 2012 DACA memorandum and announced a “wind down” of DACA. Effective immediately, no new applications for DACA would be accepted. DACA beneficiaries whose status was due to expire before March 5, 2018 were permitted to renew their status for an additional two years if they applied by October 5, 2017. Any person for whom DACA would have expired as of March 6, 2018, would no longer have deferred action or employment authorization. 

On January 9, 2018, a federal judge in California blocked the Trump administration’s termination of DACA and continued to allow renewal requests. Similarly, on February 13, 2018, a federal judge in New York issued a preliminary injunction preventing the administration from abruptly ending the DACA program. As of June 2019, individuals with DACA or those who have had DACA in the past can continue to renew their benefits on a two-year basis. However, first-time applications are no longer being accepted. 


State Policies that Protect Dreamers

States cannot legalize the status of undocumented immigrants, but they may address collateral issues that stem from being undocumented. Most notably, numerous states have enacted legislation that helps overcome barriers to higher education faced by many undocumented youth. Pursuant to some state laws and policies, undocumented students may be able to attend state universities and qualify for in-state tuition. 

Colleges and universities each have their own policies about admitting undocumented students; some deny them admission while others allow them to attend. Even when undocumented students are allowed to attend college, however, the tuition is often prohibitively expensive. If students cannot prove legal residency in a state, they must pay the much higher out-of-state or international-student tuition rates. Further, undocumented students do not qualify for federal student loans, work study, or other financial assistance. As a result, it is extremely difficult for undocumented students to afford to attend public universities. 

To help undocumented students afford college, at least 19 states have passed laws that provide them with the opportunity to receive in-state tuition. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington permit undocumented students who have attended and graduated from the state’s primary and secondary schools to pay the same college tuition as other state residents. The laws generally require undocumented students to attend a school in the state for a certain number of years and graduate from high school in the state. 

Source: www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4234-Dream-Act-and-DACA-in-United-States.html

More Immigrants Requesting To Return To Their Countries Of Origin Under Threat Of Deportation

Written by Kristin Macleod-Ball

More immigrants facing deportation are requesting “voluntary departure” from the United States instead of fighting their cases in court. 

Voluntary departure is a process though which certain immigrants who the government is trying to deport in immigration court leave the United States without receiving a removal order. The number of applications for voluntary departure in fiscal year 2018 doubled from the previous year, according to new U.S. Department of Justice data. The increase in immigrants applying for voluntary departure began shortly after President Trump’s inauguration. 

Immigrants who receive voluntary departure orders are required to leave the United States, just like those ordered deported. However, they do not face all the same legal consequences—like bars to returning to the United States and the risk of lengthy criminal sentences if they come back without government authorization. If someone with a voluntary departure order does not leave the United States in a set time, they automatically receive a removal order. 

While the data doesn’t explain why more people are asking for voluntary departure, the increase comes at a time the Trump administration is making it harder to get a fair hearing in immigration court. For example, Department of Justice officials want more people to stay locked up during their immigration court proceedings and have made it more difficult for people to show they are entitled to asylum. 

Faced with more and more obstacles, some immigrants may give up on strong claims to stay in the United States to avoid spending months or years incarcerated in immigration detention while fighting deportation. 

Notably, not all immigrants facing deportation are eligible for voluntary departure. Many people who have criminal convictions are barred from receiving voluntary departure orders. For others, it is unaffordable: voluntary departure generally requires individuals to post a bond and pay for their own travel to their countries of origin. Individuals in these situations face an even harsher choice: whether to accept a removal order to get out of immigration detention or stay incarcerated. 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4160-Immigrants-Requesting-to-Return-to-Their-Countries-of-Origin.html

Immigrants Are Regularly Kept Locked Up For Months After Deportation Orders

Written by Kristin Macleod-Ball

When the U.S. government orders that an immigrant in its custody must be deported, the person isn’t supposed to remain incarcerated for long. Yet the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) often does not deport people promptly. This means thousands of people suffer in detention for months after they’re ordered deported. 

This is what the DHS’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) found in a report earlier this month. 

The federal watchdog looked at the cases of everyone in DHS custody with removal orders on a single day. Immigration law generally requires that DHS deport people within 90 days after a final removal order. But DHS held 3,053—almost a quarter of the people in custody with final removal orders—for longer than that. When OIG checked back in on those people three months later, it found that 1,284 were still detained. 

More than 1,000 immigrants were still locked up more than 6 months after they received their final removal orders. 

Almost 20 years ago, in a case called Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court ruled immigrants with final removal orders can’t be forced to stay in detention for an unlimited period of time. Even if the government can’t physically deport someone from the United States, the person can’t sit in jail indefinitely just because of their removal order. 

If deportation is not foreseeable, it’s usually considered unreasonable to keep a person jailed for more than 6 months after a removal order. There is an exception for people who haven’t been deported because they are challenging a removal order in the courts. Many of the people described in the OIG report were still in detention for this reason. However, others stayed detained for months because DHS or foreign governments delayed getting necessary travel documents or flight arrangements. 

Forty percent of the people detained for at least 90 days after their removal orders were held because of this type of government-created delay. 300 of them were still in DHS custody 3 months after that. 

While the OIG report’s findings are disheartening, they are not surprising. Under the Trump administration, DHS has expanded its capacity to detain immigrants. Currently, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains 48,000 immigrants every day. President Trump has requested funding to increase immigration detention even more. 

 

Regardless of the reason for the prolonged detention, it should not be regular DHS practice to incarcerate immigrants for months after they are ordered removed. Immigration detention is a form of civil detention—meaning it is not a form of punishment for any unlawful conduct. Keeping people locked up because they are exercising their legal rights to challenge their deportation or because of government-created delays is unjust. 

Fuente: www.immigrationimpact.com/

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4080-Immigrants-Are-Kept-Locked-Up-After-Deportation-Orders.html

Asylum Seeker Files Lawsuit After CBP Officers Falsify Paperwork And Then Deport Him

Written by Kristin Macleod-Ball 

Time and time again, immigrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border are never given a meaningful opportunity by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers to explain why they fear returning to their country of origin. All too often CBP officers fail to follow the rules designed to protect asylum seekers at the border, and they sometimes insert untrue and nonsensical information into their deportation paperwork. 

An immigrant who was forced through a fast-track deportation at the border involving these unlawful practices sued CBP on Thursday. His deportation was based on paperwork that included fabricated answers, and he was never given the opportunity to apply for asylum. The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, seeks to hold CBP accountable for its negligence and unlawful practices. 

José Crespo Cagnant, a Mexican immigrant who has lived in the United States with his U.S.-citizen partner for more than a decade, was arrested by CBP agents after entering the United States in 2012. Although he was afraid of persecution in Mexico based on his sexual orientation, Crespo was rushed through an expedited deportation process by a Border Patrol agent who couldn’t communicate in Spanish. 

The agent never gave Crespo an opportunity to explain whether he was afraid of returning to Mexico. They also made up inaccurate information about Crespo’s reasons for coming to the United States and his family history. The agent included that fabricated information in the deportation paperwork, pretending that Crespo had provided it. As a result, Crespo was quickly deported without ever getting the opportunity to speak to an asylum officer, which is required by law. 

Still fearful of remaining in Mexico, Crespo eventually returned to his partner—now husband—and sought to legalize his status. As a result, he was arrested and criminally charged with reentering the United States after deportation. 

A federal district court judge later dismissed the criminal case against Crespo, finding that the agent who deported him did not testify credibly about his ability to communicate in Spanish and whether he meaningfully informed Crespo of the charges against him. 

Despite this finding, the Border Patrol agent remains on the job. 

Sadly, these abuses are not unique. In interviews with Mexican immigrants in 2016 and 2017, more than half of those deported from the border reported that they were never asked if they feared return, were not allowed to read their deportation documents before being forced to sign them, or both. 

With this case, Crespo seeks to hold ensure CBP is liable for its officers’ fabrication of evidence and unlawful treatment of asylum seekers. As advocates have documented , CBP rarely takes any action in response to even the most serious complaints of abuse by its officers. Those officers make life-or-death decisions when they turn away individuals seeking protection in the United States from persecution and torture, and their actions in cases like Crespo’s must not go unchecked. 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

http://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a3819-Asylum-seekers-file-suit-against-CPB.html

Pentagon May Deport Immigrants Who Have Served in the Military

Written by Melissa Cruz 

The Pentagon is considering halting a program that allows immigrants with urgently needed skills to serve in the military, putting the thousands of soldiers promised expedited citizenship in exchange for their service at risk for deportation.

According to an undated Defense Department memo, the Pentagon may terminate the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest program (MAVNI), an initiative that has allowed noncitizens with specialized linguistic and medical skills to enlist in the military and receive fast-tracked citizenship. Since the program’s launch in 2009, these immigrant troops have filled in the gaps for jobs deemed critical to the military’s operation, but are in short supply in American-born troops. 

The memo, however, cites the “potential threat” posed by these immigrant troops, referencing their “higher risk of connections to Foreign Intelligence Services.” Officials have now assigned threat level tiers to the 10,000 troops in the MAVNI program—the majority of whom serve in the Army—despite the rigorous vetting they endured to enter the military in the first place. 

Attorney and Retired Lieutenant Coronel Margaret Stock, the founder of the MAVNI program, told NPR that these security concerns were exaggerated: “If you were a bad guy who wanted to infiltrate the Army, you wouldn’t risk the many levels of vetting required in this program.” 

Other immigrants would not even be able to reach basic training—ending the MAVNI program would also cancel the contracts of recruits in the delay-entry program, a holding pool of recruits awaiting their assigned training date. 

As a result, 1,800 enlistment contracts for immigrant recruits would be cancelled, putting roughly 1,000 at risk for deportation. Those recruits’ visas expired while waiting for the military’s travel orders. An additional 2,400 part-time troops would also be removed from service. 

The Pentagon also plans to subject roughly 4,100 service members—most of whom are already naturalized citizens and have been deployed around the world—to “enhanced screening,” though the memo acknowledges the “significant legal constraints” of “continuous monitoring” of citizens without cause. 

Stock said the Pentagon’s proposal may violate the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. 

“They’re subjecting this whole entire group of people to this extreme vetting, and it’s not based on any individual suspicion of any of these people,” the former lieutenant colonel said. “They’ve passed all kinds of security checks already. That in itself is unconstitutional.” 

Though the program itself may have been an Obama-era initiative, immigrant troops have aided the U.S. military for centuries, dating all the way back to the Revolutionary War. To cut this essential program now—particularly as the Trump administration calls for a heightened military presence around the globe—may not only be unconstitutional, it is a disservice to centuries of American military tradition that has relied on the skills of foreign-born service members. 

Photo by MarineCorps NewYork

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 
http://inmigracionyvisas.com/a3666-Pentagon-Deport-Immigrants.html 

The Sad State of Atlanta’s Immigration Court

Written by Hilda Bonilla MARCH 10, 2017 in Immigration Courts

The Atlanta immigration court is known as one of the worst places to be in deportation proceedings. For years, the judges have been accused of abusive and unprofessional practices and the denial rate of asylum applications alone is 98 percent. 

The latest effort to document this phenomenon comes from Emory Law School and the Southern Poverty Law Center who sent a letter to the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) this month regarding troubling practices in the Atlanta immigration courts. The letter was based on court observations by Emory Law students, who attended 31 proceedings between August 31 and October 14, 2016. 

Observers found that the immigration judges made prejudicial statements, demonstrated a lack of courtesy and professionalism and expressed significant disinterest toward respondents. In one hearing, an attorney argued that his client should be released from detention because he was neither a threat to society nor a flight risk. In rejecting the client’s bond request, the immigration judge reportedly compared an immigrant to a “person coming to your home in a Halloween mask, waving a knife dripping with blood” and asked the attorney if he would let him in. 

When the attorney disagreed with this comparison, the immigration judge responded that the “individuals before [him] were economic migrants and that they do not pay taxes.” Another immigration judge reportedly “leaned back in his chair, placed his head in his hands, and closed his eyes” for 23 minutes while the respondent described the murder of her parents and siblings during an asylum hearing. 

Other critical problems include disregard for legal arguments, frequent cancellation of hearings at the last minute, lack of individualized consideration of bond requests, and inadequate interpretation services for respondents who do not speak English. The observers also reported that immigration judges often refer to detention centers as “jails” and detainees as “prisoners,” undermining their dignity and humanity and suggesting that the IJs perceive detained immigrants as criminals. Compounding this problem, detained immigrants who appear in immigration court in Atlanta are required to wear jumpsuits and shackles. 

Many of these practices stand in stark contrast with the Executive Office of Immigration Reviews’ Ethics and Professionalism Guide for Immigration Judges, which state, among other things, that “an immigration judge… should not, in the performance of official duties, by word or conduct, manifest improper bias or prejudice” and that immigration judge should be “patient, dignified, and courteous, and should act in a professional manner towards all litigants, witnesses, lawyers, and other with whom the immigration judge deals in his or her capacity.” 

EOIR has been previously criticized for its lack of transparency on providing the public with information about the complaints brought up against immigration Judges, raising questions about the department’s willingness to hold its judges accountable. For these reasons, the American Immigration Lawyers Association submitted a Freedom of Information Act request on December 2016 requesting records on all complaints filed against immigration judges and how the complaints were resolved. The released records showed that many immigration judges have been accused of abusive behavior towards immigrants. 

The letter concludes with recommendations that, if implemented, have the potential to significantly improve the fairness of immigration court proceedings in one of the most hostile jurisdictions in the country. These recommendations include: investigating and monitoring immigration judges at the Atlanta immigration court, requiring immigration judges to record all courtroom proceedings to ensure transparency and accountability for prejudicial statements, investigating the frequent cancellation of hearings, and ensuring high-quality interpretation and availability of sample translations of forms. It is time for EOIR to take these recommendations seriously. 

Photo by Tim Evanson.

Source: http://immigrationimpact.com 
http://inmigracionyvisas.com/a3560-Atlanta-Immigration-Court.html