Fixing Our Broken Immigration System

Given the overwhelming evidence that the the Administration has made the border safer, and the immigration system better, today's misguided hearing in the House Committee on Homeland Security is out of sync with the reality of the current dynamic on the southwest border. The El Paso Times explores the political dimensions of the report at the heart of today's congressional hearing.

In other news, immigrants on the ground in Alabama speak out about the civil rights crisis they face.   A member of the Democratic Oversight Committee expressed his outrage over the subpoena of  Attorney General Eric Holder Committee's in the wake of the ATF Fast and The Furious scandal.

The El Paso Times - Report paints border of fear outside El Paso by Zahira Torres, 9/27/2011  

"Perry, who is running for president, has repeatedly said that Texans are living in fear because the federal government is doing a poor job of securing the border. Federal officials argue increased resources along the border have made it safer than ever before.
The authors of the mostly anecdotal report praised the state's border security efforts while criticizing the federal government. They commended Staples, who plans to run for lieutenant governor in 2014, and outlined Perry's involvement in Texas' border security efforts."

The Huffington Post - Alabama Immigrants To DOJ: 'The Situation Here Is Very Dire' by Elise Foley, 10/14/11

Department of Justice officials made a surprise appearance at a community forum in Birmingham, Ala. on Thursday evening, encouraging residents to report civil rights violations in the wake of the state's harsh new immigration law.

The Hill - Oversight Committee Dems call DOJ subpoena 'a political stunt' by Daniel Straus, 10/12/11

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Mo.), the ranking Democrat, called the subpoena "a political stunt." Cummings re: @thejusticedept subpoena: "Rather than legitimate fact-gathering, this looks more like a political stunt," the House Oversight Democrats's account tweeted.

Friday, the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security is holding a hearing, A Call to Action: Narco-Terrorism’s Threat to the Southern U.S. Border. The subject of the hearing is a flawed report entitled Texas Border Security:A Strategic Military Assessment. The Administration has made the border safer, the immigration system better. NDN-NPI and others have written extensively on the serious problems with this report, below please find some of our work on this, a letter from Congressman Silvestre Reyes to Governor Perry urging him to tone down his rhetoric on the border, as well as your usual clips from your daily border bulletin.

Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment

Congressman Silvestre Reyes - Letter to Governor Rick Perry on Calming Border Rhetoric 10/3/11

In this letter Congressman Reyes urges governor Perry to tone down his rhetoric on drug violence along the southwest border.

San Antonio Express News – Opinion - Staples Manufactures Border Fears 10/7/11

Article pushes back on an erroneous report on border violence noting: “USA Today recently did an analysis of border violence, drawing on ‘more than a decade of detailed crime data reported by more than 1,600 local law enforcement agencies in four states, federal crime statistics and interviews along the border from California to Texas.’

Veracity of Texas Border Report Called Into Question by Kristian Ramos 10/4/11

Jeremy Schwartz, of the Austin American-Statesmen noted: “During a news conference after the report was released, McCaffrey raised eyebrows when he spoke of “hundreds of people murdered on our side of the frontier,” a statistic that far exceeded the 22 killings between January 2010 and May 2011 identified by the Department of Public Safety as being related to drug cartels. When asked about the number, McCaffrey pointed to statements from a Brooks County rancher, who told reporters that hundreds of bodies had been found in the county in recent years.” When asked to substantiate these findings the authors of the report deferred to a veterinarian appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry to the Texas Animal Health Commission, Michael Vickers. Vickers, on top of being a veterinarian,  chairs the Texas Border Volunteers, “a group that conducts patrols of private property and reports illegal immigration to the border patrol.”

Focus on Texas Ag Border Report Erroneous Statement: Mexico’s Drug Violence is Spilling Over Into The United States - by Kristian Ramos 10/11/11

Despite incessant claims to the contrary there is little to no evidence of spillover violence from Mexico. NDN and The New Policy Institute has refuted such allegations many times. While the report never cites claims about spillover, it references a study by the Congressional Research Service that addresses spillover violence. Ironically, the COLGEN report blatantly ignored the main conclusion of the report it cites: “Currently, no comprehensive, publicly available data exist that can definitively answer the question of whether there has been a significant spillover of drug trafficking-related violence into the United States. {…] anecdotal reports have been mixed”

Alabama Immigration Law

The Birmingham News -Boycotts protest Alabama’s immigration law  -

Hundreds of Hispanic students were missing from classrooms in the Birmingham area on Wednesday, some Mexican restaurants were closed and workers did not show up at other businesses as Hispanics stayed home to protest the toughest immigration law in the country.

Eric Holder and Fast and The Furious subpoena

The Huffington Post – Republican Attack on Eric Holder – Let’s Stick to the Facts –

“Republican congressional leaders know that this is not the first time this type of ATF gun-tracking program has gone wrong. A similar program with similar problems began under the George W. Bush administration. As CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson reported, “Operation Wide Receiver” was implemented in 2007 during the tenure of then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. A source told Attkisson that during this program, hundreds of guns “walked” across the Mexican border. “

Our daily border roundup starts with a story about how the enhanced security cooperation between the US and Mexico in recent years payed real dividends this week. Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan tweeted that Mexico submitted an Amicus Curiae brief before 11th Circuit Court of Appeals vs HB87 in Georgia. Finally, Migration from Central Americans into Mexico has Dropped by 70%.

Los Angeles Times – Mexico says it helped U.S. foil plot to kill Saudi envoy -  “From the first moment, Mexico and the United States exchanged information and acted in a coordinated manner,” said Julian Ventura, Mexico’s assistant foreign secretary for North America.

Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan – Mexico & 13 additional countries submitted Amicus Curiae brief before 11th Circuit Court of Appeals vs #HB87 in Georgia – HB87 is Georgia’s harsh anti-immigration legislation which the Mexican government contends strain’s diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Mexico, “interfering with the strategic diplomatic interests of the two countries and encouraging an imminent threat of state-sanctioned bias or discrimination.”

The Associated Press - Mexico: Central America migration drops 70 percent Over Past Five Years – Immigration Commissioner Salvador Beltran del Rio said the estimate is based on the decline in the number of Central Americans detained for being in Mexico without proper documents. He said there were 433,000 such detentions in 2005 and 140,000 last year.

In the midst of running for Lieutenant Governor, Texas Agricultural Commissioner Todd Staples released a report claiming that the border between Mexico and Texas was an out of control war zone. The report's claims have already been confronted with skepticism. This week we will scrutinize highlight and debunk the most erroneous statements in the report.

From the Texas Ag Report: The spillover effect of increased violence in Mexico increases the violence on the U.S. side.

Despite incessant claims to the contrary there is little to no evidence of spillover violence from Mexico. NDN has refuted such allegations many times. While the report never cites claims about spillover, it references a study by the Congressional Research Service that addresses spillover violence. Ironically, the COLGEN report blatantly ignored the main conclusion of the report it cites:

“Currently, no comprehensive, publicly available data exist that can definitively answer the question of whether there has been a significant spillover of drug trafficking-related violence into the United States. {…] anecdotal reports have been mixed”

The writers themselves are hard pressed to substantiate these claims beyond anecdotal claims, Jeremy Schwartz, of the Austin American-Statesmen noted:

“During a news conference after the report was released, McCaffrey raised eyebrows when he spoke of “hundreds of people murdered on our side of the frontier,” a statistic that far exceeded the 22 killings between January 2010 and May 2011 identified by the Department of Public Safety as being related to drug cartels. When asked about the number, McCaffrey pointed to statements from a Brooks County rancher, who told reporters that hundreds of bodies had been found in the county in recent years.”

In fact  Brooks County, Tx Sheriff’s Department told the Austin Statesmen: “Most of the bodies were those of illegal immigrants crossing the brush trying to avoid the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in Falfurrias and not victims of direct assaults...”

Overall violence along the Southwest Border has been in decline for some time:

The FBI report on Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime shows that nationally, including border states, all four categories of violent crime declined overall compared to 2008: robbery, 8.1 percent; murder, 7.2 percent; aggravated assault, 4.2 percent; and forcible rape, 3.1 percent. Violent crime declined 4.0 percent in metropolitan counties. The same report shows that in Texas, violent crime rates declined,by 3.5 percent to 123,668 incidents per 100,000 residents in 2009.  From 2009 to 2010 in the 4 Texas border states, El Paso, Laredo, Brownsville and McAllen all saw drops in violent crime. By contrast Dayton, Ohio part of Speaker of the House John Boehner’s is far more violent.

When compared to their respective state averages murder rates for cities within 50 miles of the border have been lower almost every year nearly every year from 1998 to 2009. For example, during that period, California’s lowest murder rate (5.3 people per 100, 000 residents in 2009) was still higher than the highest murder rate in border cities (4.6 people per 100, 000 in 2003).

Robbery rates for cities within 50 miles of the border were lower each year compared with the state average. In Texas, from 1998 t0 2009, the robbery rate ranged from 145 to 173 per 100,000 people in the state, while the robbery rate throughout Texas’ border region never rose above 100 per 100,000.

With thanks to Dante Perez for his help with research for this report.

Texas Ag Commissioner Todd Staples, has unveiled a report that sites a source, protectyourtexasborder.com, (which he created) that says that violence is out of control along the Texas border with Mexico. Many are skeptical of the report's veracity. In other news President Obama defends Department of Justice head Eric Holder over his handling of the ATF’s Fast and Furious program.

San Antonio Examiner – Staples Manufactures Border Fears -Article pushes back on an erroneous s report on border violence noting: “USA Today recently did an analysis of border violence, drawing on “more than a decade of detailed crime data reported by more than 1,600 local law enforcement agencies in four states, federal crime statistics and interviews along the border from California to Texas.””

Current – Texas Ag Commissioner Fueling Fronteirphobia - Article highlights Todd Staples use of “fronteirphobia” to score political points as he gears up for a lieutenant governor run in Texas.

President Obama defends attorney general regarding ATF tactics – “Obama says he and Holder didn’t know the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was allowing illegal gun purchases on the Southwest border as part of Operation Fast and Furious.”

I released the following statement this afternoon:

"Today, in a thoughtful speech at American University, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano reviewed the tremendous progress which has been made in recent years in making our immigration system better and our border safer.  The data she cited tells a powerful and indisputable story - our border region is safer, and our internal immigration enforcement system has become smarter and more effective.  

The Secretary's speech reinforced what is becoming increasingly clear -- that with sufficient resources and strong leadership the American government can improve a national immigration system long overdue for modernization and updating, and that characterizations of the border region as out of control are just plain wrong.  The leadership of DHS and its tens of thousands of employees should be congratulated on their success.

But of course there is much more to do.  Congress should build upon this significant progress and complete the job of fixing the immigration system. We need to rethink and redesign the system for determining the future flow of legal immigrants; and we need to provide a pathway to legal status and citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants already working and living in the United States.  

The Obama Administration has shown that with smart policies the American immigration system can be improved and modernized.  The Obama Administration has done its job - it is up to Congress to do theirs."

For the full speech please click here, and for more on immigration and the border please see our new 21st Century Border Website.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano gave a speech on immigration and border security today. While no new policy was announced, she sought to contextualize and cool much of the heated rhetoric surrounding enforcement of our broken immigration system and issues surrounding border security.

Secretary Napolitano speech got to the core of the current debate surrounding immigration: how does the federal government enforce an immigration system which is clearly broken?

The Obama administration has taking much political heat from both the right, for not enforcing our immigration laws and from the left for enforcing them too vigorously. This speech highlighted the paradox of these competing notions. It also engaged the idea that the Department of Homeland Security over the last 3 years had nearly completely overhauled how the federal government enforces immigration laws. The speech explored these consequences and directly confronted the confusion that these changes may have caused. In a time when Congressional legislative action on immigration reform is looking increasingly less likely, she was emphatic, that more then anything what was needed most was a more intelligent way of talking about our broken immigration system.

These in-congruent reactions make two things clear: First, two opposites can't simultaneously be true; and second, it's time for a reality check when it comes to talking about immigration enforcement.

In vigorously attacking the notion that the administration is not doing enough to enforce our immigration laws the Secretary pointed out that along the border there have been unprecedented resources allocated and that the American side of the border has never been safer:

The least we owe them is an honest appraisal of their hard work and that appraisal is that, thanks to them, the border is safer than it has been in decades. We have committed unprecedented resources to this effort and, this year, will see yet again a historic drop in illegal crossings and more and more contraband seized. So let's take the "border is out of control" myth out of the equation.

She was particularly frustrated by those on capitol hill who said that there could be no movement on immigration until the border situation was taken care of. However it was when she began speaking about the administrations interior immigration enforcement that her tone changed. The Secretary stressed that what needed to occur was a federal legislative overhaul and that from process standpoint DHS can only do so much to try to help the situation. In discussing DHS's Immigration and Custom Enforcement memo of discretion which would prioritize the deportation of criminal immigrants, she stated that while the number of immigrants deported would again be at record levels, the composition of those deported would be much different:

This year, I expect removals will again be at historic levels. When we announce these year-end removal numbers, some will undoubtedly say that DHS, and the Administration more broadly, are doing our jobs too effectively. What those critics will ignore is that while the overall number of individuals removed will exceed prior years, the composition of that number will have fundamentally changed. It will consist of more convicted criminals, recent border crossers, egregious immigration law violators, and immigration fugitives than ever before.

What this speech did an excellent job of is showing the flaws in the current immigration system which does not adequately deal with immigrants currently in the country but also does not find a way to process future immigrants. This is beyond DHS's control and while things are far from perfect, the administration and DHS are doing their best to enforce the current laws but to do so in a more humane way. As Secretary Napolitano has noted in the past, the status will have to do until Congress decides to act.

For Secretary Napolitano's full speech please check here

For a Department of Homeland Security fact sheet on borer security and enforcement please check here

For more from NDN/NPI's new 21st Cenury Border website please check here

Deported migrants are getting older and risking more to return to the United States, the country they consider home, Alabama's recently passed immigration law has resulted in an increase in absences from Hispanic's in Alabama schools, Texas Governor Rick Perry is open to sending American military into Mexico to fight the cartels.

New York Times -Crossing Over and Over - Men and Women migrants who have been deported are braving increasing risks as they struggle to return to their families in the United States.

USA Today - Alabama Immigration Law Marked By Hispanic School Absences - "In Montgomery, Al. the state capital, 231 Hispanic children were absent from school Thursday, the first day the law went into effect."

CNN - Perry open to sending troops to Mexico against drug cartels - Texas Governor Perry floats the idea of having the United States military work with the Mexican armed forces to fight cartels in Mexico.

This week's featured border video is Paul Teeple, Director of the A Ganar Project. A Ganar is a youth workforce development program wrapped up in a soccer ball. By utilizing soccer and other team sports to help youth in Latin America, ages 16-24, find jobs, learn entrepreneurial skills, or re-enter the formal education system.

For more on our work on the 21st Century Border, visit here and be sure to check out our Youtube site where you can see a collection of more than 50 videos of 20 leaders from both sides of the border talking about their experiences in improving the border region. Our videos include regional mayors and sheriffs, and US and Mexican government officials.

Paul talks about A Ganar and the importance of cross border community development.

Paul on the violence in Ciudad Juarez.

Paul on how much of the violence in Mexico is stopped at the border.

Paul on the reality of working in Ciudad Juarez