Troubling the Waters…
If you are even remotely keeping up with the news, you are
aware that the Trump Administration has started its term with a swarm of
Executive Orders, tweets and announcements that affect the millions of
immigrants presently in the U.S. and those dreaming of one day entering our
country.
This is just the beginning of what we expect to be a long
and turbulent period of changes to the immigration system as it now exists and
challenges to the law, regulations, policies and memoranda that immigration
attorneys use to try to help guide clients to secure the benefits that the law
offers to them.
The early waves of the expected sea-change in immigration
policy began with a series of Executive Orders issued on Wednesday, January 25,
2017.
We will endeavor to process these developments as soon as
they occur so that we can help explain how these changes affect all of us. We
will therefore be regularly providing blogs at this site to help you remain
fully informed as to the actual substantive actions that are taken, as well as
some context for understanding their significance.
PART I – Executive Order
of January 25, 2017:
Executive Order 1: “Enhancing
Public Safety in the Interior of the United States”
The basic purpose of this Executive Order is to tighten the
enforcement of those immigration laws relating to unlawful presence and to more
aggressively pursue foreign nationals who are unlawfully present for
removal.
Here are the provisions intended to do this:
1.
Prioritize for removal noncitizens who are
present in the U.S. and who are inadmissible on the basis of criminal, national
security, fraud, misrepresentation and other related grounds of
inadmissibility.
2.
Promulgate new regulations to collect penalties
from noncitizens who are unlawfully present… as well as “those who facilitate
their presence” in the U.S.
3.
Hire 10,000 additional Immigration & Customs
Enforcement, (‘ICE’) Officers
4.
Resurrect a Program known as the ‘287(g)’
Program that authorize state and local law enforcement officials to
investigate, apprehend and detain noncitizens who are unlawfully present in the
U.S.
5.
Declare the authority of the Attorney General to
take enforcement actions against ‘Sanctuary Cities’ by challenging their
eligibility for certain federal grants.
This provision also directs the Department of Homeland Security to
publicize any criminal acts committed by ‘aliens’ in those communities where
they are not detained for ICE enforcement.
6.
Pressure other countries that do not accept
their nationals who have been removed from the U.S. by suspension of visas from
those countries; this also threatens these countries with their acceptance of
removed nationals as a ‘condition precedent’ to diplomatic negotiations.
7.
Creation of an ‘office’ to assist victims of
crimes perpetrated by ‘removable aliens’.
8.
Exclude non-U.S. citizens from the protections
of the Privacy Act.
9.
Direct the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security and
the Attorney General to provide quarterly reports on the immigration status of
all noncitizens incarcerated by the Bureau of Prisons, state and local prisons
and jails.
These are the basic provisions of this Executive Order. Please stay-tuned for a context-driven
analysis of these provisions in the days ahead.
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