• Tag Archives immigration
  • Appeals court deals crippling blow to President Obama’s immigration plan

    A federal appeals court dealt a potentially fatal blow Monday to President Obama’s immigration plan, leaving more than 4 million undocumented immigrants in legal limbo and setting up a possible Supreme Court battle at the sunset of his administration.

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a challenge to the deferred deportation program brought by Texas and 25 other states with Republican governors, who argued that Obama lacked the authority to protect about one-third of the nation’s undocumented immigrants by executive fiat.

    The authority that the administration claimed, the court said in a 2-1 ruling, would allow it “to grant lawful presence and work authorization to any illegal alien in the United States.”

    The White House said in a statement that it strongly disagreed with the court and that the departments of Justice and Homeland Security will review the ruling to determine the “next steps” in the case.

    “The Supreme Court and Congress have made clear that the federal government can set priorities in enforcing our immigration laws,” the statement read. “This lawsuit is preventing people who have been part of our communities for years from working on the books, contributing to our economy by paying taxes on that work, and being held accountable.”

    The decision had been anticipated by the administration and immigration rights groups, who have hung their hopes on the Supreme Court rather than the conservative appeals court with jurisdiction over Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. But the four-month wait for a ruling, since oral arguments were held before the three-judge panel, could mean that the justices won’t get the case during their current term — and won’t decide it before Obama leaves office.

    Under that scenario, the 4.3 million undocumented immigrants deemed eligible for the program would be at the mercy of the next president — either a Democrat who favors giving them temporary protection from deportation, or a Republican who most likely would have campaigned against it.

    That makes the panel’s decision a major blow to Obama, who has hoped to overhaul the nation’s immigration system before leaving office even if Congress won’t go along. And it’s a crushing defeat for millions of immigrant families who hope to win protections that would make them eligible for three-year work permits and a host of health care, disability and retirement benefits.

    Source: Appeals court deals crippling blow to President Obama’s immigration plan


  • Census: Record 42.1 million immigrants in U.S., Mexicans drive latest surge

    A new analysis of legal and illegal immigrant counts by the Census Bureau revealed Thursday that there is a record 42.1 million in the United States, an explosion that is being driven by Mexicans flooding across the border.In a report provided to Secrets by the Center for Immigration Studies, the total immigrant population surged 1.7 million since 2014. The growth was led in the last year by an additional 740,000 Mexican immigrants. The 42.1 million tabulated by Census in the second quarter represent over 13 percent of the U.S. population, the biggest percentage in 105 years.

    Source: Census: Record 42.1 million immigrants in U.S., Mexicans drive latest surge | Washington Examiner


  • Endless wave of illegal immigrants floods Rio Grande valley

    McALLEN, Texas — Life jackets of all sizes and the occasional punctured raft are strewn along the banks of the Rio Grande, just south of Mission, Texas, where a relentless onslaught of illegal immigrants eagerly surrender to beleaguered Border Patrol agents around the clock.

    It’s a cycle for which there is no end in sight.

    “You’re going to be out here a long time,” Fernando, an El Salvadoran child, told FoxNews.com shortly after surrendering to Border Patrol authorities after midnight Saturday. “There are thousands of us.”

    With most of the men and women charged with securing the Mexican border busy processing some of the 60,000 illegal immigrants who have made the harrowing – and sometimes deadly -journey to the American border in the past nine months, only a handful of Border Patrol agents drive the riverside loop in a small town called Granjeno just south of Mission, in the Rincon peninsula.

    Illegal immigrants of all ages, including many unaccompanied children, run to them to surrender. They are piled into the back of Border Patrol vehicles and taken to a makeshift staging area in Rincon Village, where a large Border Patrol bus waits to transport them to McAllen’s Border Patrol facility.

    FoxNews.com accompanied Texas lawmaker Louie Gohmert, a former judge and current Republican Congressman, to the site in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday. Gohmert, whose district lies some 550 miles northeast of what has become the most heavily-trafficked people-smuggling route in the world, has been to the location many times, but has never seen it so understaffed and overwhelmed.

    “I’m more concerned than ever [that the border is] so seriously undermanned and I’ll be raising hell in Washington,” Gohmert, who invited FoxNews.com to see the situation first-hand, would later tell Border Patrol officials.

    The Border Patrol agents loaded and unloaded their vehicles packed with the newly-arrived illegal immigrants — including women pregnant or nursing infants, and small, unaccompanied children — throughout the evening and early morning hours. At first, they were mostly teenagers, ages 14 to 17, arriving with their mother or brothers or no one at all. Then came the pregnant women. A mother nursing her infant. A small girl with wide eyes clutching a doll.

    A total of 72 came in during the first dark hours of Saturday morning. A third were unaccompanied children.

    The life jackets helped many make it across the Rio Grande from Reynosa, the Mexican city across the water from Mission, just west of McAllen. Sources say they come over on rafts ferried by the so-called “coyotes,” the human smugglers whose means of transport are rendered useless whenever discovered by the Border Patrol. Many don’t make it across the river; multiple sources became emotional when recounting their discoveries of small, lifeless bodies washed up along the riverbank.

    Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants have flocked to the U.S. in recent months, believing the Dream Act, as well as a 2008 law that grants an asylum hearing to any child not from a border nation, and the White House policy known as “prosecutorial discretion” means once they arrive, they’ll never have to go back.

    The Obama administration has said many will be returned to their homelands, but thousands have been dispersed around the country, sent to military bases or one of the nearly 100 Health and Human Services shelters run by private contractors or faith-based organizations. From there, they are typically turned over to a parent or relative already in the U.S. or released to a sponsor organization and given a court date for their hearing.

    Many of the illegal immigrants tell Border Patrol and Texas state authorities they learned from the media in their home countries that if they crossed the border to the U.S. right now, they’d be given papers and allowed to stay, border sources who interview the immigrants told FoxNews.com.

    The number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the border in the past nine months is more than double last year’s total. Most come from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, traveling up through Mexico to the border aboard an infamous train known as “The Beast.” From there, coyotes help them traverse the hardscrabble Rio Grande valley, and the serpentine river that winds through it. In May 5,366 illegal immigrants were detained in the Rio Grande Valley Sector. Last month, that number skyrocketed to 30,380, according to a law enforcement document obtained by FoxNews.com.

    FoxNews.com witnessed the seemingly endless parade of illegal immigrants as they turned themselves in to agents and climbed into the vans. One mother teared up when telling FoxNews.com of her family’s perilous journey from Honduras. Some said the trip took as little as two days, others said they’d been traveling for months. In groups of 12 or more, they were then taken to the bus set up in a desolate area at the intersection of unlit dirt roads in Rincon Village along the river for initial processing under the full Texas summer moon.

    “They just keep on coming,” one Border Patrol source said.

    The same source noted that last week’s derailment of “The Beast” had temporarily stemmed the tide. Now that it’s up and running again, U.S. authorities here at the border are racing for even higher numbers.

    Agents normally accustomed to working in the field waited at the bus, donning blue latex gloves as they examined the incoming illegal immigrants. They asked questions, searched belongings for contraband and tried to determine if the immigrants need medical help.

    Most of the illegal immigrants appeared to be in clean clothes and good health — the biggest complaint FoxNews.com heard was from a child who had lost a shoe in transit. All looked very happy to have finally arrived on U.S. soil.

    But appearances are deceiving, one border source said.

    “Many of them have scabies, lice and sometimes serious infectious diseases that have not manifested themselves yet,” the source said.

    From the staging area, the illegal immigrants were taken to the McAllen Border Patrol headquarters a short ride away. Though it is technically a processing center, the sheer size of the current influx has rendered it something more akin to a detention facility. By Saturday morning, it held 480 immigrants, about 100 more than their capacity. A few weeks ago, it held 1,200, Gohmert and Border Patrol sources told FoxNews.com.

    Full article: http://www.foxnews.c … s-rio-grande-valley/