1. Amnesty begins to take effect
2. Sec. Comm. meeting in VA
3. Judge hears AL Law suit
4. AL law will require proof
5. TX deports 11,000 criminals

1.
Immigration attorneys: U.S. deportation policy shift starting
By Catherine E. Shoiche
CNN.com, August 26, 2011

Judy Flanagan's phone rang Tuesday with a call the Arizona immigration attorney wasn't expecting.

A federal prosecutor suggested one of her clients -- a 22-year-old university student with no criminal record -- should ask to have her deportation case dismissed.

"That's never happened before," Flanagan said.

Immigration lawyers around the country hope those types of calls from federal officials will become more common under new deportation guidelines the Obama administration detailed a week ago.

The Department of Homeland Security said the government would review about 300,000 deportation cases pending in federal immigration courts. Lower-priority cases -- those not involving individuals considered violent or otherwise dangerous -- would be suspended under the new criteria.

Federal authorities are still hashing out the details of how the cases will be reviewed, a senior Department of Homeland Security official said Thursday.

"Because the working group is in the midst of designing the process for reviewing cases, no individual cases have been administratively closed or otherwise affected by the policy announced last week," said the official, who asked to remain anonymous per departmental policy.

But some immigration attorneys say they're already starting to see a difference in how their clients are treated.

A day after the guidelines were announced, Georgia attorney Charles Kuck argued in court that his clients' cases should be dropped under the new guidelines.

The clients -- two teens with no criminal records who police arrested during traffic stops -- were released from a detention center on Tuesday, Kuck said.

"These kids were detained for months. We had previously asked for their release numerous times," he said. "It was only after the memo came out that they were released."

But how widespread the policy's impact will be on the local level remains unclear.

"We are seeing different things in different places," said Eleanor Pelta, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Some attorneys say they're seeing more cases administratively closed, Pelta said, but others say local immigration officers have told them they need more guidance from the federal government before they can change course.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's letter announcing the case-by-case review last week followed a June memo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton, which also urged prioritizing cases through "prosecutorial discretion."

"The spirit of the announcement (last week) was, 'We're really serious about this,'" Pelta said.

Administration officials call it a matter allocating scarce resources more efficiently. Critics call it backdoor amnesty, a way to push through policy changes that conservatives in Congress would never agree to.

The Obama administration "has resorted to implementing its plans via executive fiat," Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said last week.
. . .
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which favors stricter immigration control, said the guidelines showed the Obama administration was abusing its power and shirking its responsibility to enforce immigration laws.

"This does, in fact, increase the incentive for states to try to act on their own," he said.
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http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/08/26/deportation.policy/

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2.
Meant to Ease Fears of Deportation Program, Federal Hearings Draw Anger
By Julia Preston and Sarah Wheaton
The New York Times, August 25, 2011

A task force set up by the Obama administration to ease political tensions over a deportation program has held the last of four public hearings, which instead served largely to galvanize vocal protests against the policy.

Immigrant, labor and church groups walked out halfway through the session Wednesday in Arlington, Va., banging drums and denouncing the hearing as a “sham” intended to gloss over deep problems with the program, known as Secure Communities.

Immigrant and Latino groups also marched out of hearings this month in Los Angeles and Chicago, calling for a halt to the program. In Chicago, six illegal immigrants, all students, were arrested after briefly stopping traffic outside the hearing. The students were later released. The first hearing, in Dallas, drew heated debate but less militant protests.

With a series of initiatives since June, the Obama administration has sought to tighten the focus of its deportation strategy on illegal immigrants who also have been convicted of crimes, especially serious violent and drug offenses. Officials say the rapid expansion of Secure Communities to cover the whole country by 2013 is part of that plan.

At the same time, senior administration officials announced measures last week to cancel deportation proceedings against many noncitizens who are charged with immigration violations (which generally are civil offenses), but who had not committed crimes.

A 21-member Secure Communities task force was established in June by John Morton, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency running the program, in response to resistance from states and cities. Mr. Morton assigned the group to examine narrow issues concerning the program’s impact that had drawn complaints from immigrant leaders.

But the task force soon decided to hold hearings, concluding they needed to hear directly about the groundswell of discontent stirred by the program. The task force includes local law enforcement officers, immigration lawyers and representatives of immigration agents’ unions.

In a letter Thursday, more than 160 immigrant rights organizations said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was a “rogue agency,” and they called on the members of the task force to resign.

Under Secure Communities, the fingerprints of everyone booked into jail are checked against the F.B.I.’s criminal databases — long a routine police practice — and also against Department of Homeland Security databases, which record immigration violations.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/us/politics/26immig.html

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3.
Judge questions AL Law
By Brian Lyman
Gannett, August 25, 2011

Birmingham - A federal judge Wednesday expressed doubts about two key provisions in Alabama's strict new immigration law, most of which is sched­ uled to go into effect next week.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn, hearing a motion to block the law while a challenge to the statute's constitutionality goes forward, questioned the purpose of a requirement for school districts to collect information on the immigration status of newly-enrolled students.

Blackburn repeatedly asked Alabama Assistant Attorney General Misty Fair­banks as to whether the state was creat­ing a disparate classification of students based on national origin, a potential viola­tion of the 14th Amendment's Equal Pro­tection Clause.

"Why put that in there?" Blackburn asked. "Why is that in the statute?"

Fairbanks, who stressed that she did not have an authoritative un­derstanding of the Legisla­ture's motives, suggested the Legislature was gathering data on undocumented stu­dents "to request more mon­ey" from the federal govern­ment to deal with any burdens they created.

Blackburn also questioned attorneys from the state at­torney general's office about a provision that allows offi­cers with "reasonable suspi­cion" that a person is in the country without documenta­tion to detain the individual while checking their status.

An attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union argued earlier that the provision potentially violated the Fourth Amendment's protections against unrea­ sonable searches and sei­zures, in part because it was unclear how long someone could be detained under the provision.

Blackburn noted that im­migration violations are a civil offense, not a criminal one, and that the Immigra­tion and Naturalization Serv­ice does not go looking for all undocumented aliens, many of whom may be in the pro­cess of acquiring legal sta­tus. The judge appeared to be surprised Wednesday when attorneys for Alabama argued law enforcement offi­cers could detain individuals, even if the INS wasn't look­ing for them.

"Your interpretation is it's constitutional to hold them even if the INS says later they don't want to hold them?" Blackburn asked Fairbanks.

The assistant attorney general said it was a "hard area," but said there were "a number of applications" where it could be considered to apply.

'Cannot go back'

Besides those provisions, the state's immigration law makes it a state crime to b e an undocumented worker in the state; makes it a crime to harbor an undocumented alien or transport them to a work site; bans undocument­ed aliens from attending post-secondary institutions; makes contracts with un­documented aliens null and void and provides non-crimi­nal penalties for businesses that knowingly hire immi­grants.

A coalition of individuals and civil rights groups, rep­resented by the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Immi­gration Law Center sued the state July 8, charging the law was pre-empted by federal immigration law and would bring the state back to the era of Jim Crow. After the nine-hour hearing Wednesday, plaintiffs gathered on the steps of the Hugo L. Black U.S. Courthouse and invoked images from the state's segregation era.
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http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20110825/NEWS02/108250323/Judge-questions-parts-Ala-immigration-law?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Frontpage|p

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4.
Immigration law threatens tag renewals
By Jaine Treadwell
The Troy Messenger, August 25, 2011

If today were Sept. 1, the Pike County Probate Judge’s Office would have to temporarily suspend the mail option renewal of vehicle tags.

Pike County Probate Judge Wes Allen said his office was notified on Aug.1 to prepare for a mandate included in the state’s new immigration law that will force all residents to prove citizenship before buying tags or renewing licenses beginning Sept. 1, 2011.

“To prove citizenship, residents can show a valid driver’s license, passport or Social Security card,” Allen said. “Our office will be required to make a copy of each document provided and keep a file with that information.”

What this mandate means is the residents can no longer renew vehicle tags on line or by mail.

However, Allen said that the Pike County Probate Office doesn’t offer the online option.

“We began offering the mail option renewal in March 2010 and were moving toward online renewal before this mandate,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Justice and other organizations are suing the state to block the law.

Alabama’s immigration law mandates that residents will have to demonstrate United States citizenship when applying for or renewing a motor vehicle license plate, applying for or renewing a driver’s license or non-driver identification card or applying for or renewing a business license. Citizenship must be shown by presenting one of those documents.

Because the county’s mail option renewal is relatively new, Allen said only about 5 percent of the 36,000 to 38,000 annual tag renewals are through mail.

“As more people were becoming aware of the mail option renewal the percentage was rising,” Allen said.

If the state’s immigration law goes into effect as written, Allen said the Probate Office will temporarily suspend the mail option renewal.
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http://www.troymessenger.com/2011/08/25/immigration-law-threatens-tag-re...

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5.
Texas shipping out foreign prisoners
United Press International, August 25, 2011

Austin, TX (UPI) - About 11,000 foreign prisoners in Texas are being deported in a cost cutting move, state officials say.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles sought assurances from federal immigration officials that the released inmates are actually deported to their home countries and not allowed to stay in Texas, the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman reported Wednesday.

"We're concerned that they're not deported and they're just released to the street," Parole Board Chairwoman Rissie Owens told the newspaper. "We hear horror stories. With all of our votes, public safety is the main issue."

A state law set to take effect Sept. 1 allows the parole board to approve parole for convicts under the condition they are deported, regardless of whether they are serving time for violent or non-violent crimes. It wasn't clear how many inmates Texas might parole with the intent of deporting them, the American-Statesman said.
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http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/08/25/Texas-shipping-out-foreign-pri...