Illegal immigrants & asylum - a primer

[Legion]

• Our border is open to anyone who is willing to cross it illegally. People who cross the border illegally have committed a crime.
• The most we can do is be to apprehend migrants after they have made an illegal entry.
• If illegals request asylum, they must be released to wait for an asylum hearing. The 351-judge immigration court had a backlog of 764,561 cases as of the end of August. The average wait for a hearing is two years.
• Over the past two decades, 37 percent of all illegal aliens released pending an immigration hearing fled and never showed up.
• Notwithstanding claims to the contrary, undocumented aliens do not have a "right" to apply for asylum in the United States. Asylum is a discretionary form of relief.
  
  The asylum provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act just states that eligible aliens “may” be granted asylum.
  
  The United States is a signatory to the UN’s Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. This means that it cannot return or expel “a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
  
  It does not mean that people who "want a job" or "fear gang violence" are eligible.

Something else to keep in mind when it comes to the credibility—or lack of credibility—of many asylum claims is that many aliens pass through countries with their own asylum laws on their way here—including Mexico.

If an alien doesn’t claim asylum before he gets to the U.S., that is a pretty good sign his reason for coming to the U.S. is more about economics than asylum.



https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/412761-caravan-will-prove-to-the-world-that-the-united-states-has-an-open-border

 

[Legion]

The "caravan" is packed with kids. They will be detained. Read this & understand why

For political reasons, liberals will blame Trump anyway, so read this and counter their shrill, emotional protests with the facts:



When aliens are caught illegally crossing the border and then claim asylum they put themselves into the situation of being prosecuted for illegal entry. They are then separated from their children because of a Clinton-era legal settlement.


There is a lot of blame to share.


That includes alien parents themselves, as well as the courts and immigration policies foolishly created by the Obama administration.


The perverse incentives in those policies have endangered the lives and safety of children and helped fund the Mexican cartels that run the trafficking networks on our southern border.


You would not know that based on the absurdly biased coverage and virulent protests that will occur shortly.


The Trump administration must do what it is constitutionally charged with doing—enforcing the law.


The president has already issued an executive order that directs the Department of Homeland Security to keep illegal alien families together “to the extent permitted by law.”


That is the crux of the problem: the extent to which the government is permitted to keep families together while they await removal proceedings.

• In 1997, the Clinton administration entered into a settlement agreement in Flores v. Reno, a lawsuit filed in federal court in California by pro-illegal immigration advocacy groups challenging the detention of juvenile aliens taken into custody by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
• The Clinton administration agreed to settle this litigation despite the fact the Supreme Court had upheld the Immigration and Naturalization Service regulation that provided for the release of minors only to their parents, close relatives, or legal guardians.
• The Flores agreement allows the agency to detain unaccompanied minors for only “20 days before releasing them to the Department of Health and Human Services which places the minors in foster or shelter situations until they locate a sponsor.”
• But in a controversial decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the most liberal in the country, has interpreted the settlement agreement to apply to “both minors who are accompanied and unaccompanied by their parents.”
• In other words, it is the 9th Circuit’s interpretation of the Clinton administration’s settlement agreement that doesn’t allow juvenile aliens to stay with their parents who have been detained for unlawful entry into the country.

Those who come here illegally with kids are to blame for their children being assigned to foster care. If those parents would return to - or stay in - their home countries, they would be immediately reunited with their children.


An executive order signed by President Trump directed the attorney general to file a request with the federal court in the Flores case to modify the settlement agreement to allow the government “to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.” The request for a modification was denied by the Court, which previously denied a similar request from the Obama Administration.


This issue should be kept in perspective. No justice system can refuse to arrest, prosecute, and jail criminals because they have children.


Of course, the administration’s critics know about the Flores settlement, and they know it limits the ability of the government to keep families together.


The goal of their propaganda war is to force the Trump administration to terminate its zero-tolerance policy of prosecuting aliens for illegal entry, stop all detentions, and return to the “catch and release” policies of the prior administration.



https://www.heritage.org/immigration/commentary/whos-responsible-separating-alien-kids-their-parents-many-people-not-trump