ICE agents, via ICE.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration appears to have made victims of domestic violence less likely to report the incidents because of fears of deportation.

Reports of domestic violence fell by as much as 18% in California’s Latino community in the first six months of 2017, according to data compiled by the Los Angeles Times. 

The reports fell 18% in San Francisco, 13.3% in San Diego and 3.5% in Los Angeles.

By comparison, the drops in domestic violence reporting among non-Latinos dropped less than 1%, “prompting fears among professionals working in the domestic violence field that the declines are linked to a fear of deportation,” the LA Times reported.

One U.S. official said the fears are grounded more in perception than reality.

“ICE still has a policy that we don’t pursue removal proceedings against victims or witnesses of crime, and I haven’t seen any documented instances where that actually happened,” Claude Arnold, who oversaw ICE in Los Angeles between 2010 and 2015, told the Times. “To a great degree, we facilitate those people having legal status in the U.S.”

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Hopes of a bi-partisan measure to protect younger immigrants, known as “dreamers,” from being deported may have been dashed after President Trump’s administration released a list of hard-line crackdown on immigration.

In exchange for protecting hundreds of thousands of younger undocumented immigrants in the U.S., the administration said it wants funding for a border wall, a crackdown on Central American children and punishment for “sanctuary cities,” the Washington Post reports. 

Democratic leaders quickly rejected the Trump’s wish list.

“The administration can’t be serious about compromise or helping the Dreamers if they begin with a list that is anathema to the Dreamers, to the immigrant community and to the vast majority of Americans,” Schumer and Pelosi said in a joint statement Sunday evening. “We told the President at our meeting that we were open to reasonable border security measures … but this list goes so far beyond what is reasonable. This proposal fails to represent any attempt at compromise.”

The Post reported:

About 690,000 immigrants are enrolled in DACA, but their work permits are set to begin expiring in March. Trump had met last month with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and agreed to try to strike a deal, worrying immigration hawks who feared that Trump would support a bill that would allow dreamers to gain full legal status without asking for significant border security measures in return.

The list released by the administration, however, would represent a major tightening of immigration laws. Cuts to legal immigration also are included. And, while Democrats have called for a path to citizenship for all dreamers, a group estimated at more than 1.5 million, a White House aide said Sunday night the administration is “not interested in granting a path to citizenship” in a deal to preserve the DACA program.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Homeland Security has rolled out a plan to deal with the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The agency won’t accept new DACA applications for deferments or two-year work permits unless they are already in the pipeline, the New York Post reports. For those that have been submitted already, Homeland Security will consider them on a case-by-case basis.

DACA recipients may apply for renewal if they submit the application by Oct. 5.

By March 6, 2020, the federal government will phase out the program.

The Post wrote:

Once a permit expires, a person will not be “considered lawfully present in the US” and will be subject to deportation, the DHS said.

Their “removal will no longer be deferred and they will no longer be eligible for lawful employment,” the agency said.

The law as it stands now does not grant DACA recipients, also known as “Dreamers,” any legal status — unless Congress amends the existing immigration laws.

But the DHS said persons whose permits have expired will not be targeted, and federal immigration enforcement agencies will continue to focus on people who are known criminals or national security threats.

“Our enforcement posture has not changed. We still are prioritizing criminal aliens, illegal re-entrants — in other words persons who have been previously removed — and those persons with standing orders for removal,” a senior DHS official told reporters. “There is no plan at this time to target persons outside those parameters. Persons who are currently in (DACA), their DACA remains in effect if encountered during law enforcement operations.”

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Authorities are warning flood victims in Houston that Homeland Security impersonators are telling residents to evacuate before burglarizing their homes.

In response, Houston officials are urging residents to ask for officials’ badges and credentials before taking orders, the Associated Press reports. 

The city also notified residents that ICE won’t be conducting immigration enforcement operations in the area, including at shelters.

The hurricane’s death toll has reached at least 18 and is expected to climb.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Aware that some undocumented immigrants want call for help from flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said he would help any immigrant who faces deportation as a result of requesting assistance.

“There is absolutely no reason” why anyone shouldn’t call for help, Turner said at a press conference, The Hill reports. 

“I and others will be the first ones to stand up with you,” said Turner. “If you need help and someone comes and they require help, and then for some reason, then somebody tries to deport them, I will represent them myself, okay?”

Turner encouraged immigrants to call for help if they need it.

“If you are in a stressful situation, I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you’re religion is, I don’t care what your language is, you come and take advantage of every service that we have,” he said. 

“If you’re in a stressful situation and you need help, you call us for help. We want you to call. There is absolutely no reason why anyone should not call okay?”

U.S. Custom and Border Protection and ICE said its “highest priorities” will be saving lives.

“Routine noncriminal immigration enforcement operations will not be conducted at evacuation sites, or assistance centers such as shelters or food banks,” the agencies said. “The laws will not be suspended, and we will be vigilant against any effort by criminals to exploit disruptions caused by the storm.”

Tunnel used by Chinese and Mexican immigrants. Photo via CBP.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Border Patrol believe 30 immigrants used an underground tunnel to cross a Southern California border.

Agents arrested the immigrants on Saturday and found an opening in the ground with a ladder and tunnel north of the Otay Mesa border entrance shortly after 1 a.m., CBP wrote in a statement.

Seven Mexicans and 23 Chinese citizens were taken into custody.

No injuries were reported.

“While subterranean tunnels are not a new occurrence along the California-Mexico border, they are more commonly utilized by transnational criminal organizations to smuggle narcotics,” CBP said.

“However, as this case demonstrates, law enforcement has also identified instances where such tunnels were used to facilitate human smuggling.”

File photo of a Border Patrol agent.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Border Patrol agents in Ohio did not racially discriminate several Hispanic people who were stopped by the Sandusky Bay Station, according to a federal appellate court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati upheld a lower court’s ruling that the complainants failed to prove people were targeted because they look Hispanic, the Toledo Blade reports. 

the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and Immigrant Worker Project claimed in a lawsuit that agents targeted Hispanics for stops and detention and uttered racist terms.

The Blade wrote:

o prove that the agency has such a policy, the plaintiffs needed to show that there was a formal policy, that there was a policy of inadequate training or supervision, that decision makers allowed illegal actions, or that it has a custom of “tolerating violations of federal law.”

The plaintiffs didn’t argue that there was a formal policy or inadequate training. But the court also ruled that high-ranking decision makers testified that they do not allow racial profiling. A pair of agents testified that they could use race as a factor, but not the only consideration for a stop.

“Neither of these agents, however, testified that he ratified anyone else’s use of race as a factor in determining whom to approach,” the court wrote.

The court also ruled that four encounters by Hispanic persons with Border Patrol agents were allowable, because other factors were used besides race to initiate the stop. 

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By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

An Iowa federal judge allegedly conspired to profit from investments in private prisons by sending hundreds of immigrants to jail in one of the largest, more unusual immigration raids in U.S. history.

Judge Linda R. Reade and her husband Michael Figenshaw increased their shares in CoreCivic and CEO Group five days before a planned immigration raid at a meatpacking plant in Pottsville, Ia., in May 2008, Mother Jones reports. 

Reade presided over the mass trials of 400 undocumented prisoners during a brief nine-day period in trailers and even a dance hall at a fairground in Waterloo.

In similar immigration cases, defendants are usually charged with civic misconduct and then deported. But under Reade’s jurisprudence, the immigrants were charged with a more serious crimes – fraud. About 270 people were sentenced to five months in prison.

The prosecution also was accused of misconduct.

Before the raid, Reade met often with immigration officials about the impending arrests. 

In just five months, the judge and her husband watched their stock values increase from $130,000 to $215,000 before cashing out.