Author: beesquared

In charging the the state of California with interfering with  immigration enforcement, the Trump administration may rely in part on a ruling by the Supreme Court during the Obama administration that upheld the power of the federal government to regulate immigration

In 2010, the state of Arizona passed a law that aimed to ease the ability of officials there to identify, prosecute and deport immigrants who were in the country unlawfully. The Obama administration sued to block enforcement of the measure, which the administration contended interfered with federal enforcement.

A majority of the court agreed. Federal law trumped the Arizona measure, which required that aliens carry proof of registration with the federal government, barred unauthorized immigrants from seeking employment in the state, and allowed state police to arrest someone without a warrant based on suspicion they should be deported.

All conflicted with federal law, the court found. Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy noted that the federal government has broad authority over immigration.

“With power comes responsibility, and the sound exercise of national power over immigration depends on the nation’s meeting its responsibility to base its laws on a political will informed by searching, thoughtful, rational civic discourse,” he wrote. “Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that process continues, but the state may not pursue policies that undermine federal law.”

In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, the Trump administration accused California of undermining federal immigration enforcement by enacting a series of laws that promote so-called sanctuary policies.

In a speech on Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions accused the state of intentionally using “every power the legislature has to undermine the duly established immigration laws of America.”

California officials responded that the state’s legislation does not interfere with federal law enforcement. Governor Jerry Brown accused the administration of attempting “to further divide and polarize America.”

He pointed to a statement he made last October when he signed the measures. “In enshrining these new protections, it is important to note what the bill does not do,” he wrote. “This bill does not prevent or prohibit Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Department of Homeland Security from doing their own work in any way.  They are free to use their own considerable resources to enforce federal immigration law in California.”

Legal experts agreed. The laws in Arizona and California differ, with the legislation in the Golden State unlikely to interfere with federal enforcement, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a professor of law at Santa Clara University who studies state regulation of immigration, told the Associated Press.

Arizona created a “parallel immigration enforcement system” with its own laws, while California is setting standards for cooperation with federal immigration officials,”  Gulasekaram said.

The Trump administration is suing the state of California, charging the state with undermining the ability of the federal government to enforce immigration laws.

At issue in the lawsuit filed Tuesday are three laws enacted last year by California that reinforce so-called sanctuary policies, which aim to protect immigrants who are in the state without documentation from deportation.

One statute bars employers in California from cooperating voluntarily with immigration agents. The second authorizes the state’s attorney general to monitor immigration enforcement by federal agents. A third relieves local officials of an obligation to inform federal agents about immigrants who may be living in the country illegally.

Taken together, the laws “violate the Supremacy Clause, by, among other things, constitution an obstacle to the United States’ enforcement of the immigration laws and discriminating against federal immigration enforcement,” the Justice Department charged in court papers filed in the U.S. District Court in Sacramento.

I do not regret sharing this information. It is Oakland’s legal right to be a sanctuary city and we have not broken any laws. We believe our community is safer when families stay together. pic.twitter.com/ng13yq431L

— Libby Schaaf (@LibbySchaaf) February 28, 2018

The lawsuit comes amid a crackdown by the Trump administration on sanctuary policies and follows the arrests by federal agents of 232 people in Northern California as part of the administration’s intensifying  enforcement in the region.

Libby Schaaf, the Democratic mayor of Oakland, warned of imminent raids by federal immigration agents in the San Francisco Bay area. The warning helped about 800 people avoid arrest, said federal officials, who blasted the mayor and said they would investigate her for obstructing justice.

“I do not regret sharing this information,” Schaaf said. “It is Oakland’s legal right to be a sanctuary city and we have not broken any laws.”

In my last post, I noted the inability of the Trump administration and Congress to agree on changes to the nation’s immigration laws.

One of four measures – which came closest to passages failed by seven votes in the Senate last Thursday – would have protected hundreds of thousands of young immigrants (a priority of Democrats and some Republicans), provided funds to bolster security along the border with Mexico (a priority of the president), and curbed family-based migration (but not to the extent sought by the administration).

Now thanks to the Washington Post, we know that the administration “worked frantically into the night” to defeat the bill. “We’re going to bury it,” a senior administration official told a reporter on Wednesday night.

According to the Post:

“The assault was relentless — a flurry of attacks on the bill from DHS officials and the Justice Department, and a veto threat from the White House — and hours later, the measure died on the Senate floor.

The Trump administration’s extraordinary 11th-hour strategy to sabotage the bill showed how, after weeks of intense bipartisan negotiations on Capitol Hill, it was the White House that emerged as a key obstacle preventing a deal to help the dreamers.”

The attack on the measure killed what might have been a path to a deal that would have provided relief for so-called Dreamers and a wall along the border that the president has championed.

Meanwhile, a measure backed by the White House that would have slashed legal immigration garnered just 39 votes in the Senate.  “That’s a telling total, one that mirrors the percentage of Americans who still support [the president],” the Post editorialized. “Of the four immigration measures voted on in the Senate last week, the Trump bill had the least support.”

Senators from both parties came together on Thursday to reject a series of proposals to overhaul the nation’s policies on immigration amid signs that a deal that Republicans and Democrats can agree on remains far off for now.

A proposal put forth by a bipartisan group of senators that fell six votes short of passage would have granted legal status to young immigrants, provided $25 billion over the next decade for security at the border with Mexico and curbed family-based migration but not to the extent sought by the Trump administration.

Before voting began, the administration attacked Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican who helped to craft the measure.  Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a White House official accused Graham of being “an obstacle” for immigration reforms and charged him with “being part of the problem.”

1) The President ended DACA unilaterally.
2) He then said: work out a bi-partisan bill I’ll sign anything you bring me.
3) He was promptly brought a bi-partisan deal. He rejected it.
4) He was then brought a *second* bi-partisan deal with even more support. He rejected *that*

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) February 15, 2018

A response by Graham suggested that the official was Stephen Miller, a White House aide and immigration hard-liner who has lobbied for strict limits on the number of people who can come to the U.S. “As long as the president allows Steve Miller and others to run the show down there, we’re never going to get anywhere,” Graham said.

Prospects for an immigration overhaul look no better in the House, where far-right Republicans are pressuring Speaker Paul Ryan to do no more than grant temporary work permits for so-called Dreamers. The conservatives also aim to clamp down on security at the border and restrict legal immigration beyond what the White House has proposed.

The difficulty of resolving differences over immigration by legislation ups the likelihood that the fate of Dreamers will be decided by the courts.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Brooklyn blocked the Trump administration from ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), saying the government had not offered legally adequate reasons for doing so.

In a 55-page ruling, Judge Nicholas Garaufis noted the inconsistency between the administration’s decision to wind down the program with its “stated rationale for ending the program (namely, that DACA was unconstitutional).”

The ruling marked the second by a federal judge to order the administration to keep DACA in place as legal challenges to the rollback continue.