1. Deportation loophole
2. Deaf apply for asylum
3. Sheriff Arpaio launches PAC
4. Ads target CA E-Verify push
5. Murderer had prior arrest

1.
Deportation Loophole Lets Thousands Live and Work in US Indefinitely
By Elizabeth Llorente
Fox News Latino, September 28, 2011

John has been slated for deportation -- for the last 20 years. The U.S. government renews his work permit annually. He has a driver’s license, and has started a family and set down roots here, a place he calls home.

But he does not have a green card, or permanent U.S. residency, because the U.S. government says John, who has lived here for about 30 years, is ineligible to call this country his home.

John lives in an indefinite legal limbo, with the threat of arrest by immigration agents ever-present. But he hasn’t been expelled because his removal is on hold.

And his attorney, Jerard González of New Jersey, says his client sees it as preferable to the alternative – permanent expulsion.

“It’s better than being in Russia or Lebanon,” said González, a former federal immigration prosecutor. “He’s here with his wife.”

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deportations are delayed every year.

Delayed deportations – known by various names, including “deferred action” – have been part and parcel of U.S. immigration policy for decades, routinely granted under both Democrat and Republican administrations. A work permit and the ability to obtain a driver’s license – two essential things that otherwise are off-limits to undocumented immigrants -- often are part of the deal.

This loophole in immigration law has allowed tens of thousands of foreign nationals --whom the United States has rejected for permanent legal residency, commonly referred to as a “green card”-- stay in the country for years. Sometimes, like in John's case, the delay is so long that immigrants marry, have children here, buy homes, and even start businesses.

The loophole has benefited immigrants such as José Humberto and Hilda Jauregui of Peru, whose deportation immigration authorities agreed to suspend for a year on humanitarian grounds -- they are the guardians and caretakers of their granddaughter, a 17-year-old U.S. citizen who has leukemia.

And it has helped others with far more controversial cases, such as people whom the U.S. government slated for deportation on grounds that they were involved in terrorism.

Most immigrants trapped in the deportation web never get a delay. Rather, the delay often is granted to those who can afford top attorneys, or those who get the support of, say, members of Congress or the Senate, or who become the subject of a media campaign.

Although González supports the system of delaying deportations in certain cases, he says he has been troubled by some of the people he has seen dodge deportation.

An example, he said, is a Northern Ireland man who served jail time because of activities linked to his membership in the outlawed paramilitary group Irish Republican Army, or IRA.

“I thought about the disparity,” González said. “He gets to stay, but the others are gone – deported -- because they didn’t have the pull, didn’t have the political connections.”

How many have benefited is hard to discern. The power to put a deportation on hold is a tool available to, and used by, a variety of agencies and courts with a say on immigration matters, and the practice is marred by inconsistency, gaping holes in data, and cases that languish in suspension for years.

"Deferred action" is part of a parallel immigration universe that has not been part of the national debate, and about which everyday Americans know little, if anything.

From The Shadows to Official Policy

Now, the issue of deferred deportation is moving to the front burner, on the heels of the recent announcement by the Obama Administration that it is suspending removals while it makes a top priority removing immigrants who are criminals or who pose a threat to national security.

Some 300,000 deportation cases that are pending will be reviewed case by case, administration officials say. Low priority deportation cases – those involving undocumented immigrants brought here by their parents, relatives of U.S. citizens, and those with relatives who served in the U.S. military – will be put on hold and perhaps closed.

How it will work, exactly, is still unclear.

The announcement drew the ire of activists and groups who favor strict immigration enforcement. They said the Obama Administration is sidestepping immigration laws and unilaterally granting amnesty.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said the shift is the administration's "plan to grant backdoor amnesty to illegal immigrants."

House Republicans plan to hold hearings within a month challenging the new Obama Administration deportation policy.

Smith introduced a bill called the Hinder the Administration’s Legalization Temptation (HALT) Act, which prevents deferring deportations until January, 2013, the end of Obama’s first term.

"The Obama administration should enforce immigration laws, not look for ways to ignore them,” Smith said in a statement. “The Obama administration should not pick and choose which laws to enforce."

But Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the ranking Democrat on the House immigration subcommittee, said the outrage over deferred deportations ignores the fact that “Deferred action has been a tool used by every president.”

Those who defend delaying deportations view the practice as a necessary antidote to a broken immigration system.

“By and large the [new deportation] priorities are accurate,” Lofgren said. “The resources should be targeted at people who endanger society, and not people who have longstanding ties to the United States and relatives of Americans.”

“How guilty is the six-month-old kid who came here [illegally]?” Lofgren asked. “They did what they were supposed to, they obeyed their parents.”

The Deportation System Has Lacked Transparency

The system of deferred deportations long has been a largely opaque one, with the delays granted by different agencies using different criteria and employing different terms for the action (or lack thereof). Comprehensive data is hard to come by, making it difficult to assess the whole practice of suspending deportations.

DHS data for one category, “deferred action,” shows that an average of slightly over 600 people a year have received this reprieve under the Obama Administration. An average of more than 750 people a year got it in former President George Bush’s last term.

Another category, “cancellation of removal,” shows that nearly 10 years ago, the U.S. cancelled deportation proceedings for roughly 24,000 immigrants, according to the DHS Office of Immigration Statistics.

That number increased for several years after that – to 29,000 in 2003, and peaked at 32,700 in 2004. But deportation cancellations dropped sharply in 2007, from nearly 30,000 in 2006 to just shy of 15,000.

The drop continued steadily under the Obama Administration –which has presided over more deportations than any other-- with 8,100 cancellations of deportation cases in 2010.

The longer a person stays in the United States illegally, ironically, the better the chance of getting deportation rescinded.

To qualify for cancellation of deportation, for example, immigration laws require an undocumented immigrant to have lived in the United States no less than 10 years.

Laws also require that the immigrant have no record of problems with police, and that deportation would pose “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to a spouse, parent or child who is a U.S. citizen or legal immigrant.

Those who defend delaying deportations say they’re important in a system that is rife with flaws, and in which many immigrants do not get a fair shot to make their case because of a lack of legal counsel.

Proving extreme hardship, for example, said González, the attorney, is difficult.

“It’s the highest standard,” he said.

Groups on different sides of the immigration debate say the way the U.S. has managed deferred deportations has been problematic.

The gaps in the data that is available to the public doesn’t sit well with Lofgren.

The congresswoman said she ran into roadblocks when she tried to find out why deferred action approvals had declined under the Obama Administration.

“I couldn’t get an answer,” Lofgren said of her attempts to get more information. “It’s down, and I have a problem with that.”

There long has been no formal national procedure for handling deferred action requests, said a July memorandum by the Office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, repeating concerns it had raised in 2007 about the USCIS’s system of delaying deportation.

“Stakeholders lack information regarding the number and nature of deferred action requests submitted each year,” the memorandum said, “and they are not provided with any information on the number of cases approved and denied, or the reasons underlying USCIS’ decisions.”

“Currently, there are no official, national standard operating procedures for how to process a deferred action request,” it said. “Tracking submissions and releasing the data to the public would improve management of the deferred action process and provide transparency to the public.”

A Valid Reprieve, or Back-Door Amnesty?

Proponents of strict immigration enforcement said deferred deportations undermine respect for immigration laws.

“There’s clearly a need for flexibility in any area of law that people are enforcing,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors strict immigration policies. “The law is a blunt instrument, providing for a little wiggle room is just prudent."

“The problem is when that wiggle room, the loophole, becomes the policy,” Krikorian said. “These various means of avoiding deportation is the policy itself.”
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http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2011/09/28/deportation-loophol...

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2.
Inland: Deaf immigrants apply for asylum
By David Olson
The Press Enterprise, September 27, 2011

Sixty deaf immigrants, most from the Inland area, are applying for asylum because of alleged persecution in their homelands.

The cases could be groundbreaking, because experts say no one has been granted asylum in the United States for persecution based upon deafness.

But they carry risks for the applicants. All are in the country illegally or were before asylum applications gave some the temporary right to stay in the United States. By filing asylum claims, they are put on the government's radar screen as illegal immigrants.

Their Moreno Valley attorney, Hadley Bajramovic, said she is convinced that by filing dozens of cases at once, the government will recognize the repression that many deaf people face abroad.

"These people have come to the United States to avoid persecution and torture," she said. "The stories corroborate each other. When you have (everyone) saying the same thing, and they're from different countries and regions, it adds strength."

The applicants tell harrowing stories of sexual abuse, of being hit for not being able to talk, of remaining illiterate because their schools did not have sign-language interpreters and of being locked in their homes when their parents were gone.

Hector Figueroa, one of the applicants and a Riverside resident who has lived in the United States for 20 years, said he realizes no one has received asylum because of deafness-based persecution. But Figueroa, 37, said the risk is worth the chance for certainty that he and his family will not be forced to live in Mexico, which he said is an unbearable place for the deaf.

"I don't want my children to suffer like I did in Mexico," he said through a sign-language interpreter.

Figueroa is one of 18 applicants who have been interviewed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum office in Anaheim over the past few weeks, Bajramovic said. Others will be interviewed soon, she said. In addition to the 60 people who have filed for asylum, a few dozen others are planning to do so, she said.

All but a few are from Mexico. Several are from Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Lebanon and the Philippines. Most live in the Inland area, many so their children can attend California School for the Deaf, Riverside, Bajramovic said. Applicants found out about the filings primarily through Facebook and word-of-mouth, she said.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors greater restrictions on immigration, said even though life is difficult in many countries for the deaf and other people with disabilities, deafness shouldn't be grounds for asylum. If it were, a large chunk of the world's population would qualify for asylum, he said.

"This really is a slippery-slope argument," Krikorian said. "If you make this argument for deaf people, it wouldn't be too much to argue that every woman in the Middle East, China and India would qualify for asylum, or all handicapped people, or all gay people."
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http://www.pe.com/localnews/morenovalley/stories/PE_News_Local_D_deafasy...

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3.
Arizona sheriff launches a political committee so he can donate money to federal candidates
The Associated Press, September 27, 2011

Phoenix (AP) — The self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America is trying to harness political powers beyond the boundaries of Arizona by launching a political action committee to raise money for federal candidates who share his views on immigration enforcement and other issues.

The formation of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s political action committee came as three Republican presidential hopefuls and other GOP candidates across the country seek his endorsement.

Chad Willems, chairman of Arpaio’s committee known as JoePAC, said the five-term sheriff wants to play a more active role in congressional and U.S. Senate races across the country. Election law prohibits him from pulling money out of his own re-election account to contribute to those candidates.

“He really wants to step it up in this coming election cycle,” Willems said, adding that the PAC will let Arpaio make direct contributions to federal candidates and pay for ads that advocate his views on any given issue.

Arizona Democratic Party spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson said Republicans seeking Arpaio’s endorsement should be aware that a federal grand jury is investigating allegations that he abused his powers and that the sheriff’s office is the subject of a civil rights investigation that Arpaio said is focused on his immigration efforts.

“Republicans who cozy up to Arpaio may get more than they bargained for,” Johnson said.

Willems responded, “You let the political market determine that, and it hasn’t stopped candidates from asking for his endorsement.”

GOP presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann have called Arpaio seeking his endorsement. Arpaio has said he hasn’t yet made up his mind, though he endorsed Romney over Sen. John McCain in Arizona’s 2008 Republican presidential primary.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ariz-sheriff-launches-a-political...

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4.
Ads target lawmakers who favor E-Verify
EFE, September 27, 2011

Washington – Activists supporting immigration reform on Tuesday launched a Spanish-language campaign in California against E-Verify, a federal employment eligibility program that critics say will destroy the U.S. agriculture sector.

During a telephone press conference, activists said that the campaign seeks to educate the public about the negative effects of a Republican bill approved in the House Judiciary Committee to make use of E-Verify mandatory for all U.S. employers.

The campaign will consist initially of 250 ads on multiple radio stations in Sacramento, Santa Barbara and the San Gabriel Valley and an ad in Los Angeles' La Opinion, the country's largest circulation Spanish-language daily.

Down the road, activists are weighing broadening the ad campaign to Texas and to districts of other GOP lawmakers who are backing E-Verify.

Frank Sharry, executive director of the America's Voice group, said that the bill proposed by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chair of the Judiciary Committee, would lead to the firing of "hundreds of thousands of workers," will undermine the labor rights of all Latinos and will encourage the "exploitation" of undocumented workers, in particular in the agricultural sector.

Meanwhile, Eliseo Medina, with the Service Employees International Union, said that Smith's bill will not resolve the shortage of cheap labor in agriculture and will end up hurting workers, employers and the economy.

Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers union, said that the viable solution is to "legalize" the workers who are already employed in the fields, instead of replacing them with "guest workers," as proposed by several Republican legislators.

Smith's bill is facing great opposition from the agricultural sector and, according to analysts, its chances of becoming law are remote.
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http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/09/27/ads-target-lawmakers-wh...

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5.
Illegal immigrant in murder case had prior arrest
By Maria Sacchetti
The Boston Globe, September 28, 2011

Scituate police arrested an illegal immigrant from Brazil for motor-vehicle violations three months before he allegedly stabbed his former girlfriend to death in a brutal attack this week, reigniting debate over whether Massachusetts should participate in the federal Secure Communities program.

Police arrested Marcelo Almeida, a 41-year-old laborer, on June 19 on charges of operating without a license and other charges after the black Nissan Maxima he was driving almost collided head on with a police car, according to documents from Hingham District Court. He was later found guilty of unlicensed driving and responsible for other charges. Almeida paid a fine and was released.

But US Immigration and Customs Enforcement had not heard of him until Monday, when he allegedly stabbed 24-year-old Patricia Frois to death in a Marshfield apartment building and questions emerged about whether Immigration and Customs had arrested him earlier. Almeida, who also suffered injuries, was in South Shore Hospital last night pending arraignment on murder charges.

Yesterday, immigration officials placed a detainer on Almeida and said that the Secure Communities program would have automatically checked his fingerprints and flagged him for possible deportation.

Secure Communities, a federal program intended to identify illegal immigrants if they are arrested by local law enforcement, has been a hot-button issue in Massachusetts, where Governor Deval Patrick has opposed it. Critics say the program is deporting immigrants with no criminal records and could lead to ethnic profiling. Supporters believe it is a valuable tool to detect dangerous illegal immigrants.

“Though Mr. Almedia was previously encountered by local law enforcement in Scituate, Mass., ICE was never notified of his arrest or his unlawful presence in the United States,’’ said agency spokesman Ross Feinstein.
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http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/09/28/illeg...