dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

White House Sets Asylum Reform to Block Economic Migrants

President Donald Trump’s administration posted a new regulation to deter economic migrants from seeking asylum in the United States.

The draft was immediately slammed by pro-migration groups, who object to Trump’s closure of the southern border to economic immigrants since early 2020, and insist that the United States is a nation for immigrants. “The Trump Administration’s renewed efforts to dismantle our nation’s asylum system are abhorrent, un-American, and illegal,” said a statement by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). “This President is attempting to rewrite our immigration laws in direct contravention of duly enacted statutes and clear congressional intent … We can and must continue to be a beacon of hope and freedom across the world.” Since roughly 2011, more than two million migrants — plus roughly 500,000 “Unaccompanied Alien Children” — from Central America have moved into the United States. They have rationally used loose asylum rules and loopholes to migrate into the United States in search of work, safe neighborhoods, and decent K-12 schools. Few have been sent home because the courts are clogged and underfunded by Congress.

That massive migration has been great for the migrants — and for white-collar employers, real estate owners, landlords, government aid workers, and immigration lawyers. But it has been a disaster to blue-collar Americans. They have lost jobs and wages, cheap housing, K-12 opportunities for their kids – as well as political support from pro-migrant, white-collar Democrats, and college-graduate progressives. The migration has also caused much turmoil in Central American countries because the exit of many young men and women deflate the political and economic reforms needed to grow their nation’s economies. Trump used a variety of diplomatic threats and legal reforms to block the migration in early 2020. Democrats and business groups have fought Trump at every step, partly because almost 150 million people around the world who want to become workers, renters, and consumers in the United States said a 2017 Gallup survey.

The Justice Department explained the new policy: [The Departments] submitted to the Federal Register for publication a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that would amend multiple provisions of the Departments’ regulations to create more efficient procedures for the adjudication of claims for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) regulations. According to the department, the draft regulation would: Amend the regulations governing credible fear determinations so that individuals found to have such a fear will have their claims for asylum, withholding of removal, or protection under the CAT adjudicated by an immigration judge in streamlined proceedings, rather than in immigration court proceedings conducted under section 240 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA); Permit immigration judges to pretermit asylum applications without a hearing if the application does not demonstrate prima facie eligibility for relief; Clarify standards for the adjudication of asylum and withholding claims including amendments to the definitions of the terms “particular social group,” “political opinion,” “persecution,” and “firm resettlement”; Raise the burden of proof for the threshold screening of withholding and CAT protection claims from “significant possibility” to a “reasonable possibility” standard;

The new rules would largely bar migrants who traveled through various safe countries to get to the United States. The rule would also narrow the categories of people who could claim membership of a persecuted “particular social group”: Economic migrants have claimed membership in those groups to win entry, work permits, and residency in the United States. That new policy reverses the trend set by President Barack Obama’s deputies. For example, those deputies widened the rules to provide asylum to Central American women who said their husbands physically abused them. The new regulation “does not ‘close loopholes’; it’s not ‘legally focused’, ‘technical’, or ‘somewhat vague’. It explicitly & unambiguously shuts off asylum to the vast majority of people who deserve it under current law,” said a tweet from a California immigration lawyer.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/11/white-house-sets-asylum-reform-to-block-economic-migrants/

https://twitter.com/NeilMunroDC/status/1263635464663240705

Procedures for Asylum and Withholding of Removal; Credible Fear and Reasonable Fear Review

https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2020-12575.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

Clinton-Appointed Judge: ‘Illegal’ to Arrest Criminal Illegal Aliens at New York Courthouses

A federal judge, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, says federal immigration agents arresting criminal illegal aliens at New York state courthouses is “illegal.” United States District Court Judge Jed Rakoff ruled on Wednesday that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) must not arrest criminal illegal aliens as they are leaving court in New York. He wrote: pecifically, the Court declares ICE’s policy of courthouse arrests … to be illegal, and hereby enjoins ICE from conducting any civil arrests on the premises or grounds of New York State courthouses, as well as such arrests of anyone required to travel to a New York State courthouse as a party or witness to a lawsuit.

Attorneys for New York state and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez had filed suit against ICE for arresting criminal illegal aliens at courthouses. In 2019, ICE agents took 173 illegal aliens into custody at courthouses. In 2018, they arrested 107 illegal aliens at courthouses. The attorneys and Gonzalez complained that illegal aliens had become stricken with fear. “According to plaintiffs, not only do these immigration arrests make certain parties and witnesses fear coming to court, but the temporary chaos they create disrupts court proceedings and makes it impossible for judges to do their jobs effectively,”

The court ruling could have widespread implications on ICE’s already limited ability to arrest and deport illegal aliens. Last year, ICE agents arrested more than 143,000 illegal aliens and deported nearly 268,000 illegal aliens. There remain anywhere between 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York. The case number is 19-cv-8876.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/11/clinton-appointed-judge-illegal-to-arrest-criminal-illegal-aliens-at-new-york-courthouses/

U.S. Immigration and Customs EnforcementFiscal Year 2019 Enforcement and Removal Operations Report

https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2019/eroReportFY2019.pdf

19-cv-8876(JSR) OPINION AND ORDER

https://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/State%20of%20New%20York%20et%20al%2C%2019-cv-8876%20%28JSR%29.pdf

Fired State Department IG Sent Confidential Info to His Personal Email Accounts

The State Department inspector general whose recent dismissal ignited a political firestorm sent copies detailing a sensitive investigation to his personal email account, according to a probe into his conduct run by the Defense Department's inspector general. The inquiry report, dated March 17, confirms that fired State Department inspector general Steve Linick was the subject of a broad investigation related to the leaks of politically charged materials to journalists, specifically a draft evaluation report into Brian Hook, the State Department’s top Iran official. The report, which was provided to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, concluded that while Linick was permitted to send information to his personal email account to facilitate access while traveling, he was the only official in that office to have done so. The disclosure is likely to raise new questions about Linick’s suspected role in leaking sensitive information to the press. Linick’s firing generated harsh criticism from Democrats and many in the media, with opponents of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo alleging the former IG was canned for his efforts to investigate allegations of impropriety related to Pompeo and his staff. The Trump administration, however, has maintained that Linick’s firing was justified. Details of the highly sensitive investigation into Hook—involving unsubstantiated allegations that Hook fired officials he saw as insufficiently hawkish on Iran—were leaked to the media without authorization, according to the DOD investigation. The DOD investigation into Linick found that between March 2019 and September 2019 Linick sent 23 emails containing confidential work products from inside the State Department email system to his personal Gmail account. Eight of the emails Linick sent to himself, which were forwarded over a six-day period, contained copies of the incomplete probe into Hook. Linick was the only State Department employee from the IG’s office to email drafts of the evaluation outside the department, according to the report. The DOD IG did not find evidence that Linick leaked the evaluation to journalists. Nevertheless, the revelation is likely to fuel criticism of Linick’s conduct.

State Department officials close to Pompeo said that Linick was fired in part for refusing to allow an independent probe to be conducted into his actions. Linick was ordered by superiors to report the unauthorized leaks to the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, according to Brian Bulatao, the undersecretary of state for management and a close ally of Pompeo’s. Bulatao alleged that Linick did not obey this order, instead selecting his own peer reviewer. Additionally, Linick allegedly refused to share the results of this investigation with the State Department. A Republican congressional staffer familiar with the investigation said there is increasing evidence that Linick was the source of the unauthorized leaks about Hook. "They used official and unofficial channels to make sure the report into Hook was flagged for multiple parties on and off the Hill, guaranteeing that it would eventually leak," according to the source, who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon on background about the investigation. "They used private accounts that ensured they could cover their tracks. This was a hit job."

Federal employees are generally prohibited from moving official documents into their personal email accounts for security concerns and the potential for unauthorized leaks. The State Department investigated similar claims about former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who violated department rules by using a homebrewed server to store sensitive and confidential information. Parts of the DOD’s IG report, including the names of over a dozen officials interviewed in connection with the investigation into Linick, remain redacted.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/fired-state-department-ig-sent-confidential-info-to-his-personal-email-accounts/