Pres. Obama is demanding that Congress provide funding to resettle 110,000 refugees in FY2017. The request is an increase of 30% from FY2016 when Congress funded the resettlement of 85,000 refugees. In previous years, the United States resettled an average of 70,000 refugees per year.
A group of 41 “non-governmental organizations” that assist refugees worldwide, including four directly involved in U.S. refugee resettlement, urged President Obama to commit to accepting 200,000 refugee and humanitarian admissions in fiscal year (FY) 2017 – a 100 percent increase over the projected FY17 level he established last year. While the president has the authority to establish the yearly refugee target, Congress must decide whether to provide funds to resettle that or an alternative number.
Breitbart News reports a new Morning Consult poll found that 62 percent of voters, and 61 percent of new U.S. immigrants, support Donald Trump’s proposal to conduct ideological screening as part of immigrant vetting. First and second generation Americans registered slightly higher levels of support.
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., slammed the Department of Justice (DOJ) for refusing to investigate over 3,700 asylum cases in which the grantee was represented by attorneys convicted of perpetrating asylum fraud. He called the agency’s refusal “outrageous” and suggested it would embolden “aliens who already have an incentive to lie to obtain an immigration benefit.”
In a speech Monday Donald Trump outlined his proposal for increasing immigrant vetting, which the mainstream media immediately slammed as being “un-American” and “crazy.” But as several notable scholars point out, history and the law are on Mr. Trump’s side, not theirs. For example, as Professor George Borjas of Harvard’s Kennedy School recently quipped “If [they] just do a couple of minutes of googling before reacting, it would become very apparent very quickly that immigrant vetting has a very long tradition in American history.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said the Obama Administration is exposing the nation to danger by maximizing the intake of refugees from terrorist-producing countries. As evidence, Sen. Sessions cited examples of 20 refugees who were implicated in, or convicted for, terrorism or terrorism-related offenses in recent years. He said refugees should be supported in or close to their countries rather than resettled in the U.S.
The Obama administration is granting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Syrians who are currently living in the U.S. illegally. Under this program, the over 8,000 Syrians who illegally crossed the U.S. border or overstayed their visas can stay in the U.S. for another 18 months and gain access to work permits and other legal documents.
Yesterday the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) released a statement saying that Clinton’s immigration plan is extreme and puts Americans at risk. Hillary Clinton has pledged to expand Pres. Obama’s amnesty in her first 100 days in office.
A recent Syracuse University Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) report shows that federal immigration courts’ backlog of cases awaiting resolution has reached an all time high of 496,704. A third of those cases involve border surge minors (69,278) and family units (74,502) which have increased as a result of the Obama administration’s catch-and-release policies.
A recent ICE enforcement report, released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, shows that with 75% of FY16 over ICE is on track to complete only 230,000 deportations, the lowest number since 2006. The report showed a decline in all ICE enforcement activity meaning fewer aliens have been put on the deportation track in 2016.
The number of Syrian refugees entering the U.S. doubled from May to June 2016, from 1,060 in May to 2,381 in June. This brings the total number of Syrian refugees to 5,186 and means Pres. Obama only needs to bring in 1,604 refugees per month through September to reach his goal of 10,000 Syrian refugees for the fiscal year.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) has introduced legislation that would limit funds for jurisdictions with sanctuary city polices who refuse to work with immigration officials. The legislation was fast-tracked to the Senate’s calendar, which means it will skip the usual committee process. This makes is likely that the Senate will vote on the bill, though a date has not been set yet.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, Gil Kerlikowske, has named FBI assistant director, Mark Morgan, as the new chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, though he has no prior experience with the agency. This is the first time in the Border Patrol’s 92-year-old history that the chief has been chosen from outside the agency.
At the request of Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) DHS’ Office of Inspector General released a report showing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials “could have and should have done more to remove Jean Jacques from this country before he had the chance to brutally murder Casey Chadwick."
The Daily Caller reports that President Obama and his predecessors on multiple occasions issued executive orders that banned groups of potentially-dangerous people from entering the United States. Obama and others have claimed Donald Trump’s proposed temporarily ban is unconstitutional and un-American but there is clear precedent and authority under current law, the report notes.
Paul Ryan continues to roll out his “Vision for a Confident America.” We discussed earlier the section outlining how the GOP leadership plans to alleviate poverty, though what that plan is or how they would implement it is unclear.
While updating the Senate intelligence committee today, CIA Director, John Brennan, said that ISIS is training operatives and attempting to enter the U.S. through “refugee flows, smuggling routes and legitimate methods of travel”.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., announced a House Republican national security strategy that highlights border security, overhauling the nation’s immigration system, interior immigration enforcement, and improved screening of admissions. Among other things the plan calls for developing the means to track illegal aliens within the U.S., detaining and removing criminal aliens and restoring overall immigration enforcement. The plan also slams President Obama for “utterly false claims that security is improving.”
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker issued a new policy that allows state police to detain certain removable aliens at the request of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau. The move reverses a sanctuary policy imposed by former Gov. Deval Patrick that barred State Police from honoring ICE detention requests and limited communication between agencies.
At least a dozen men from terrorist hotspots in the Middle East have been apprehended after using smuggling rings to illegally enter the U.S. through the southern border. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) obtained documents that confirmed the fears that terrorists are using the southern border and lenient immigration enforcement polices to infiltrate the U.S., contrary to what the Obama administration has claimed.
The Obama Administration continues to work towards reaching its goal of accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees before the end of the fiscal year, but a top U.N official said last week that most of those fleeing Syria are not refugees at all. Michael Møller, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, said most Syrians are fleeing to pursue educational opportunities.
A new chart released by the Senate Subcommittee Immigration and the National Interest, headed by Chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), shows that deportations have declined by 43% in the last three years while the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) budget for the detention and removal of aliens has grown by 25%.
Sen. Sessions (R-Ala.) released a statement opposing the criminal justice reform bill that would release many criminal illegal aliens onto the streets. Sen. Sessions explained that the bill would shorten mandatory minimums for repeat drug traffickers that are being held in federal prison.
At a hearing today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said “In a three-year period, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has released more than 86,000 criminal aliens into the American public…These are people that were here illegally, got caught committing a crime, were convicted of that crime and instead of deporting them, they were just released back out in the United States of America.” Chairman Chaffetz said the released aliens had been convicted of over 231,000 crimes.
Sheriff Charles Jenkins of Frederick County, Md. told a House panel that “(o)pen borders, reckless sanctuary policies, and failure to enforce our immigration laws have greatly impacted public safety and national security throughout every jurisdiction of this country. He linked the surge in unaccompanied alien minors crossing the border to a rise in alien gang crime, including attempted murder, armed robbery and the rape and sexual assault of children.
Bono (aka Paul David Hewson), one of rock music’s most recognized figures, has long been a political activist working towards the eradication of poverty, hunger, and disease throughout the developing world, focusing much of his effort on raising money to combat the AIDS pandemic in Africa. His work has brought him into contact with some of the world’s most powerful political leaders, including the last two U.S. Presidents.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, introduced an amendment on Monday to the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act that would restrict funds from being used to modify existing airports or to build new ones without an agreement with DHS that the new facility would install and implement a biometric entry-exit system within two years of completion.
U.S. prisoner data clearly shows two things. One, the majority of low-level drug offenders are serving their sentences in state, not federal prisons. Two, most of those incarcerated in federal prison for drug charges are non-citizens. While it may be worthwhile to pursue reform at the federal level, it will do very little to address the problems identified by proponents of sentencing reform, and it would do almost nothing to reduce sentences for U.S. citizen drug offenders.
Thursday on a FOX News “O’Reilly Factor” segment, Border Patrol Agent and union spokesman Shawn Moran warned that the Obama Administration’s “Catch-and-Release” policy is forcing Agents to let illegal aliens “walk out the front door” without knowing “who we’re releasing, and…what they’re capable of.” The National Border Patrol Council has said Agents are under orders from top Homeland Security officials to release illegal aliens without a Notice to Appear (NTA) before a deportation judge, a claim the Obama Administration has denied.
To reach President Obama’s goal in bringing in at least 10,000 additional Syrian refugees to the U.S. this year the Obama administration has opened up a new resettlement center and has shortened the processing time from around 18-24 months down to just three months.
In the aftermath of the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks the European Union’s own border agency, Frontex, has admitted that there is no way to effectively screen or track refugees coming across the border. The report also admitted that the large number of refugees pose a security threat for the EU countries.
A day after Pres. Obama’s visit to Cuba, two Texas congressmen Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) and Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) introduced the Correcting Unfair Benefits for Aliens (CUBA) Act, which would repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 that grants Cubans automatic permanent residence if they set foot on U.S. soil. The congressmen say that this wet foot/ dry foot policy is a relic “of a bygone era” and that the preferential treatment of Cubans “no longer makes sense”.
On March 15, John Roth, the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security, testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs regarding the security of U.S. visa programs.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement released 90,000 illegal aliens back onto the streets that were deemed as criminal threats in 2015. The massive release was a result of Pres. Obama’s Priority Enforcement Program that puts the focus only on criminal aliens who pose a "serious" threat.
A lawsuit has been filed against South Carolina Governor, Nikki Haley, The State Department of Social Services, and two other private organizations responsible for resettling refugees in South Carolina. The lawsuit asks for a halt in the refugee resettlement program in South Carolina “until a full accounting of any and all federal money used in this program and specifically where it was allocated and how allocated (and) in which counties.”
Breitbart News reports on Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo’s interview with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., during which he admitted immigration limitations are not part of the 2016 Republican job-centric “pro-growth” agenda. “We’re not going to be talking about visa caps in our agenda,” Ryan said. This runs contrary to recent Pew polling which found that 67 percent of Republican voters want immigration reduced while only seven percent want more.
This week Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), Chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department, wrote Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, and warned her that if she did not pull federal funding for sanctuary cities he would remove her ability to move money around within the department for the entire 2016 fiscal year.
Key Republican leaders accused President Obama of creating “non-statutory exemptions” from the travel restrictions imposed under the new Visa Waiver law for people who had visited certain countries lined to terrorism. In a letter to the President they said the exemptions are “contrary to the plain language of the statute” and were “discussed, at length, during negotiations [on the legislation] and were explicitly rejected by Members of Congress.
Two Iraqi refugees in the U.S. were arrested on Thursday for supporting terrorist groups in the Middle East. These arrests take place as concern about the ability of the federal government to thoroughly screen refugee applicants gained national attention after the Paris terrorist attack.
Officials from Central American countries met in Guatemala City this week to create a plan to help around 8,000 Cubans who are stalled in Costa Rica reach the U.S. The countries have decided to provide flights for the Cuban migrants from Costa Rica to El Salvador then bus them to Mexico where they can cross the U.S. border.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is planning a nationwide campaign to locate and deport illegal aliens who have illegally crossed the border since last year. This move comes after a recent DHS report shows that deportations have declined by 25% since 2014.
Deportations of illegal aliens declined by 25% in 2015 according to an annual report released by the Department of Homeland Security earlier today. In 2014 DHS reported 315,943 deportations compared to 235,413 in 2015.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., yesterday warned that the omnibus appropriations bill would quadruple a foreign worker program replacing Americans, expand the refugee program amid serious national security threats, and ignore the existence of dangerous Sanctuary Cities.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has announced plans to begin collecting biometric data from non-U.S. citizens entering and exiting the country in early 2016. CBP will install six new kiosks at San Diego’s Otay Mesa port across the border from Tijuana, Mexico and hope to be collecting both entry and exit data by February.
Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), and Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) have introduced legislation that would halt the refugee resettlement program until its impacts on the country can be further examined. H.R.4218 would not only examine the budgetary impacts of refugee resettlement, but also require the Department of Homeland Security to produce a report identifying past refugees who have committed criminal acts in the United States.
Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), said he has been told by intelligence officials that ISIS has already targeted the refugee program as a way to enter the U.S. This news comes as Congress is set to vote this week on the omnibus spending bill, which could include funding to increase the number of refugees brought into the U.S.
Assistant Homeland Security Secretary, Sarah R. Saldana, testified to Congress on Wednesday that ICE had given away $113 million designated for deportations to other departments, because there were not enough illegal aliens to deport while also admitting that more than 179,000 illegal aliens who have committed crimes are roaming free in the United States.
