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Spring 2014 National Immigrant Solidarity Network Monthly News Digest and News Alert! National Immigrant Solidarity Network No Immigrant Bashing! Support Immigrant Rights! URL: http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org e-mail: Info@ImmigrantSolidarity.org Information about the Network: FLYER Washington D.C.: (202)595-8990 Los Angeles: (213)403-0131 Every Donation Counts! Please Support Us! Send check pay to: National Immigrant Solidarity Network/AFGJ National Immigrant Solidarity Network P.O. Box 751 South Pasadena, CA 91031-0751 (All donations are tax deductible)

2014: What’ll be Happen to the Immigration Reform?

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Obama’s 2015 Budget Adopts Contradictory Stance on Immigration

Walter Ewing - American Immigration Council

[March 7, 2014] The Obama Administration’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget proposal is of two minds about how to deal with the broken U.S. immigration system. On the one hand, the document calls for the creation of “a pathway to earned citizenship for hardworking men and women” who are in the United States without legal status. On the other hand, the budget would continue to devote significant sums of money to the detention and deportation of many of the same people for whom the administration would like to create a path to citizenship. In other words, the administration pledges that it will do its best to deport from the country the very same people it wants to help stay.





The budget’s commitment to continued deportations is evident from its proposed spending on immigration enforcement (found in the DHS Budget in Brief ). Although the budget does contain little nuggets of pro-immigrant spending—such as “ million to continue support for immigrant integration grants that assist lawful permanent residents in preparing for naturalization and citizenship”—the fact is that a few million dollars spent on integration pales in comparison to the billions spent on enforcement:

- .6 billion for Enforcement and Removal Operation within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

- 4 million to expand the E-Verify employment-authorization system.





- million for ICE’s 287(g) program, which deputizes local and state law-enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws.





- A reduction of only 10 percent—from 34,000 to 30,539—in the controversial “bed quota,” which specifies how many immigration-detention beds must be filled every day.





Just as troubling as the administration’s spending choices are the misleading comments that the budget document makes about the U.S. deportation system. For instance, the budget says that “ICE will continue to work with the Department of Justice to expedite removal of convicted criminal aliens, reducing costly stays in immigration detention prior to deportation.” What this statement glosses over is the fact that many “convicted criminal aliens” are non-violent individuals who have misdemeanors on their records or committed immigration offenses. The definition of “criminal alien” has been slowly expanding over the years, capturing more and more people who don’t come close to being “criminal” in the commonly understood sense of the word.

Likewise, the budget skims over the truth when it proclaims that it aligns ICE “capabilities with immigration enforcement priorities and policies so that mandatory and priority individuals, including violent criminals and those who pose a threat to national security, are kept in detention, while low-risk non-mandatory detainees are allowed to enroll in alternatives to detention programs, including electronic monitoring and supervision.” While the expansion of alternatives to detention is a noble cause, it is misleading to lump together “mandatory and priority individuals” with “violent criminals.” Most people on ICE’s priority list are not violent criminals. As with the term “criminal alien,” a “priority individual” is simply a person whom ICE defines as such.

In short, the administration’s budget simultaneously lauds immigrants while providing the funds needed to place hundreds of thousands of them in deportation proceedings over the coming year. The budget says that “we must fix our broken immigration system” and that “common sense immigration reform will also boost economic growth, reduce deficits, and strengthen Social Security.” It pledges its support for “the bipartisan Senate approach, and calls on the House of Representatives to act on comprehensive immigration reform this year.” Yet, ironically, it states that “While repairing the Nation’s broken immigration system will require congressional action, the Budget continues investments to streamline the current system while looking forward to comprehensive reform.”

While rightly blaming Congress for failing to pass immigration reform legislation, this statement glosses over the fact that the President has considerable authority to at least temporarily halt the deportations of men and women who do not have serious criminal records and do not represent a threat to public safety or national security. The President can and should act to lessen the needless human suffering of families being torn apart by a pointless campaign of mass deportation.

Link to the Article: http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/cgi-bin/datacgi/database.cgi?file=Issues&report=SingleArticle&ArticleID=1572

Washington Continues to Spend Billions on Immigrant Detention

Larry Benenson - National Immigration Forum

[March 05, 2014] On Tuesday, President Obama released his proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Regarding immigration, it’s a mixed bag.

While the budget underscores how we’ll benefit from commonsense immigration reform by accounting for savings the Congressional Budget Office has forecast, it continues our dysfunctional and illogical immigration detention system. As in past years, the budget includes billions of dollars for the detention operations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — part of the Department of Homeland Security — including funding for 30,539 detention beds.

Believe it or not, that’s a slight improvement: The current budget includes nearly billion for immigrant detention — or .46 million per day. That money pays for ICE to maintain 34,000 detention beds at a cost of just under 1 per bed per night.

The White House proposed budget for the upcoming year would fund these same operations at .808 billion in the next fiscal year, which amounts to just under million per day spent on immigration detention, around a 10 percent decrease. The president’s request for 30,539 detention beds for the incarceration of immigrants is less than the 34,000 mandated by Congress this year but still would require that we spend about million each day on detaining a largely nondangerous immigrant population.

As noted in the August 2013 update of our paper “The Math of Immigration Detention,” the costs of our current dysfunctional, illogical detention system are exorbitant. Simply by using alternatives to detention that cost between 17 cents and 17 bucks per individual per day, we could save billions of dollars. The budget includes a small increase in funding for such alternatives, but we can and should do more.

With our nation’s fiscal health and hundreds of thousands of lives in the balance, replacing our broken immigrant detention system remains a necessary and urgent component of commonsense immigration reform.

Link to the Article: http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/cgi-bin/datacgi/database.cgi?file=Issues&report=SingleArticle&ArticleID=1571

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1/29: San Francisco Board of Supervisors' Vote for Immigrant Rights Resolution Is Unanimous

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Tear Down the Walls Day of Action! Earth Day to May Day!

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Please download our latest

newsletter: http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/Newsletter/Spring14.pdf

Useful

Immigrant Resources on Detention and Deportation

Face Sheet: Immigration Detention--Questions and Answers (Dec, 2008) by: http://www.thepoliticsofimmigration.org

Thanks for GREAT works from Detention Watch Network (DWN) to compiled the following information, please visit DWN website: http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org

Tracking

ICE's Enforcement Agenda


Real

Deal fact sheet on detention


Real

Deal fact sheet on border

- From

Raids to Deportation-A Community Resource Kit


- Know Your Rights in the Community (English,

Spanish)


- Know

Your Rights in Detention


- Pre-Raid

Community Safety Plan


- Raids

to Deportation Map


- Raids

to Deportation Policy Map

More on Immigration Resource Page


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