‘Border Kids’ Immigration Influx Is Once Again On The Rise

November 24, 2015 By
As reported by NPR: Detainees sleep and watch television in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed at a U.S. Customs facility in Nogales, Texas.

As reported by NPR: Detainees sleep and watch television in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed at a U.S. Customs facility in Nogales, Texas.

A Texas newspaper reports that the number of unaccompanied children being apprehended at the southern United States border – I’ve dubbed them “border kids” – is once again on the increase. Reporter Dylan Baddor at the Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune writes that in the Border Patrol’s Big Bend sector of Texas, “the number of unaccompanied children apprehended trying to enter the country during that period averaged 24 between 2010 and 2014. This year agents tallied 319.”
 
Statewide, says the report, 7,390 unaccompanied children were caught crossing in those two months, and 85 percent increase over the same period last year. The newspaper quotes Marc Rosenblum, a deputy director at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington D.C., saying that“… we’re clearly seeing a significant uptick.”
 
The Border Kids crisis became a national focus last year and prompted the Obama Administration to fast-track the cases, sometimes moving them to the “front of the line” in a backed-up immigration court system. Current estimates are that more than 450,000 cases are backlogged in the courts, which are actual civil procedures held as part of the U.S. Justice Department.
 
See the Daily Tribune story here: http://www.dailytribune.net/site/about.html
Filed Under: Border Kids Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Obama Immigration Case Has Implications For Presidential Race

November 12, 2015 By
The Christian Science Monitor, or a we call it around here “the other Monitor,” has an excellent analysis of how President Obama’s executive action case might influence the 2016 presidential race. You may have noted that a federal court sided with a lower court that the president over-reached in his actions that effected about 5 million of the estimated 11 million undocumented folks in the United States.
 
The CSM notes the timing: “If the Supreme Court opts to hear the case, it would likely issue a decision next June – just as the 2016 presidential race is heading into the home stretch. And the implications for the Latino vote could be big, not only for the top of the ticket but also in key Senate races in states with large Latino populations, such as Nevada, Florida, Colorado, and Illinois.”
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

President’s Immigration Action Headed To Supreme Court?

November 10, 2015 By
As reported by Reuters on 11/10/15: "U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks at an Organizing for Action event in Washington November 9, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas"

As reported by Reuters on 11/10/15: “U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks at an Organizing for Action event in Washington November 9, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas”

In a move that seems likely to bring the U.S. Supreme Court into the legal fray over President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans decided 2-1 to uphold a May injunction against the measure. Reuters notes that the decision “… deals a blow to Obama’s plan, opposed by Republicans and challenged by 26 states. The states, all led by Republican governors, said the federal government exceeded its authority in demanding whole categories of immigrants be protected.”
 
Millions of immigrants are effected by the court decision but “discretion” in law enforcement is expected pending further legal appeals, most likely to the Supreme Court.
 

Read more at Reuters.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Immigration Backlog Shows Need For More Lawyers

December 29, 2014 By
This photo was part of an NBC News report, "Demand Intensifies for Nonprofit Immigration Lawyers" discussing how the US immigration system is seriously lacking in how it represents the poor.

This photo was part of an NBC News report, “Demand Intensifies for Nonprofit Immigration Lawyers” discussing how the US immigration system is seriously lacking in how it represents the poor.


NBC News is among those taking a look back at 2014 and finding the country’s immigration system seriously lacking in how it represents the poor. Says NBC, “… the past summer’s flocking of children and families to the U.S.-Mexico border, the president’s impending executive action on immigration and the two-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA, have intensified demand for immigration attorneys, particularly those who charge little to nothing. With each success, they amplify the difference good legal help can make in the lives of immigrants.”
 
NBC has this quote in it’s Storyline report: “We’ve long known that results in immigration court, in particular, vary widely depending on whether you have legal representation or not,” said Crystal Williams, American Immigration Lawyers Association, AILA, executive director. She adds that “… what we are seeing quite honestly, is the people who are getting asylum and are getting bonded out of (the immigration detention center in) Artesia, had the attorneys not been there, they would have been removed already.”
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,