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Arizona Sheriff: Illegal Border Crossings May Be Underreported By 300%
Authored by Stacey Lennox via PJMedia.com,
On March 19th, the President of the Arizona Sheriff’s Association, Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, wrote an open letter on the border crisis and posted it to Facebook. It lays waste to the narrative that the current policies that encourage migration are a kinder, gentler approach. Dannels also directly confronts the hypocrisy of our public health bureaucrats remaining silent on the COVID risks posed by the current crisis while restricting the movement and activities of American citizens.
Dannels details how the Mexican cartels, which he correctly labels transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), use their significant increases in human trafficking to cover for drug smuggling. He also talks passionately about the dangers of placing children in these criminal organizations’ care, which control the southern side of the border entirely. Dannels also believes the number of border crossers is grossly underestimated due to monitoring on the Arizona border:
In Cochise County, Arizona they have a sophisticated camera system along migrant routes across the border. These cameras detect significantly more traffic than our federal partners report capturing. In fact, our estimates are that only about 28% of the people crossing illegally are taken into custody. While the scope of the known crisis is enormous, we believe it may be underreported by close to 300%.
Leveling significant criticism at the Biden administration, Dannels notes:
Due to what we believe is misdirected policy from Washington, DC undocumented persons are being released into our communities. This is overloading our NGOs and nonprofits. Once released we have an affirmative responsibility to provide some standard of care for these people. Our local community resources are no longer able to provide social services to our own citizens. We have no meaningful assistance from the federal government. The appearance is of washing their hands of a mess they alone created and leaving it to border communities to struggle through. This is completely unacceptable.
Dannels’s assessment is similar to that of the mayor of Del Rio, Texas, who said his city’s resources are exhausted due to caring for migrants. This morning Sheriff Dannels spoke to Glenn Beck, and the situation has only gotten worse. Dannels, a 37-year veteran of law enforcement at the border, talked openly about the progress made during the Trump administration that President Biden dismantled. Dannels called President Biden’s executive order on immigration, signed on day one of his presidency, politically and ideologically driven.
“What he [President Biden] did that the first day, it sent a message to the cartels and those vulnerable people that hey, we’re coming across, we’re opening up the border. He stopped the construction on the border which stopped the perennial technology revenue, resources, and the physical barrier. My three checkpoints are shut down in my county. I’ve got a border patrol station shut down in my county for responding to help my deputies. I’ve got my aerostat shut down and I just learned Friday they removed me from the Homeland Security Council.”
When Secretary Mayorkas removed people from this advisory council, it was the first time members were released since its formation after 9/11. A total of 32 members were relieved of their advisory positions. The letter said the group would reconvene using a new model. All of the members were volunteers who advised the secretary on national security issues using their frontline experience and expertise.
The cartels use roads and physical elements that were part of the border wall construction to improve their smuggling operations. With no proper closure to the project, it has made patrolling the border more difficult. Dannels says Arizona has chaos on the border just taking into consideration the technology and physical barrier problems.
He also detailed how the cartels operate. He talked about the recycling of children who cross the border with multiple adults to gain easier entry. Dannels said the crossing price in his Arizona county is $6,000. When individuals cross and are indebted, illegal migrants become involved in the sex trade, drug smuggling, and gangs due to these debts. This pattern affects the safety and security of small towns along the border:
“It seems like nobody can fix this problem. We had the most powerful leader in the country and that’s our president. Excluding President Trump, who put a lot of effort on this border. I’ve gone through a lot of presidents in my 37 years and I’m telling you it’s rather disgusting. Because it’s like we’re left out of the U.S. when it comes to security, being American, our Constitutional rights are on the southwest border.”
Dannels closed with a warning encouraging Americans to reject the open borders policies of the Biden administration:
“Everything coming over the southwest border, whether it’s drugs, whether it’s a national security issue, whether it’s a health pandemic issue, COVID, whatever it may be it’s coming into your neighborhood. We might be the gate to all, but it’s coming into your neighborhoods. They’re not staying in my community. Until they can find the means the non-governmental programs can get them out of here. Right now, we see charter buses all the time. $1500 a hit to take kids out of our county. $1500 and almost every day you’re seeing them pull out of my county.”
On April 21st, the pandemic health policies at the border that allow essential travel only will expire. Right now, that order enables Arizona to return border crossers to the Mexican state of Sonora. The state across the border from Texas will not allow border crossers to return. Dannels cautions if that restriction expires, additional migrants will flood the southwest border.
WATCH the full Interview with Cochise County, Arizona Sheriff mark Dannels:
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/31/2021 – 17:40
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3udKKSS Tyler Durden
After nearly 3 million deaths worldwide (and almost 600,000 in the United States), it looks like the end of the COVID-19 pandemic may be within sight as vaccines proliferate. In “The Last Pandemic,” the cover story of the new issue of Reason, Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey argues that technological breakthroughs and policy progress mean humanity may never again have to endure such a disaster.
“The greatly speeded-up biomedical innovation provoked by the current global scourge has provided future generations with tools to keep subsequent viral invasions at bay,” writes Bailey. “These include fast new vaccine production platforms, the development of better diagnostic and disease surveillance monitoring, and progress in the rapid design of therapeutics.”
The main potential sticking point? The role of governments, which continue to hamper the ability of scientists and medical providers to deal quickly and effectively with diseases. Bailey tells Nick Gillespie that while Operation Warp Speed—through which the United States government incentivized pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines with unprecedented speed—was wildly successful, bureaucratic inertia and turf wars still stand in the way of quicker, faster, more effective innovation.
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After nearly 3 million deaths worldwide (and almost 600,000 in the United States), it looks like the end of the COVID-19 pandemic may be within sight as vaccines proliferate. In “The Last Pandemic,” the cover story of the new issue of Reason, Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey argues that technological breakthroughs and policy progress mean humanity may never again have to endure such a disaster.
“The greatly speeded-up biomedical innovation provoked by the current global scourge has provided future generations with tools to keep subsequent viral invasions at bay,” writes Bailey. “These include fast new vaccine production platforms, the development of better diagnostic and disease surveillance monitoring, and progress in the rapid design of therapeutics.”
The main potential sticking point? The role of governments, which continue to hamper the ability of scientists and medical providers to deal quickly and effectively with diseases. Bailey tells Nick Gillespie that while Operation Warp Speed—through which the United States government incentivized pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines with unprecedented speed—was wildly successful, bureaucratic inertia and turf wars still stand in the way of quicker, faster, more effective innovation.
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In September 2017, St. Louis police officers sought to quell riots in the city after a jury acquitted former officer Jason Stockley for the 2011 killing of Anthony Lamar Smith.
On September 15, a group of police zeroed in on one protester in particular. According to an indictment filed against former officers Dustin Boone, Randy Hays, Christopher Myers, and Bailey Colletta, they proceeded to beat him severely, even though the man was not participating in the riots themselves. The cops allegedly shoved him to the ground, struck him with a baton, kicked him in the face, and assaulted him so brutally that he required multiple surgeries. Another officer, Steven Korte, who is still employed by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, was charged separately.
But the man, Luther Hall, was not actually a protester. He was an undercover police officer dispatched to take down information about property destruction in the city.
“I couldn’t believe it was happening,” he told the jury in reference to the unprompted beating. Hall, who had been with the department 22 years at the time of the attack, lost 20 pounds as he was unable to eat solid foods for several weeks. He underwent spinal fusion to repair his neck, and doctors stitched his lip closed after the incident left a hole.
A jury on Monday declined to convict the three officers—Korte, Myers, and Boone—who pleaded not guilty. Specifically, they acquitted Korte and Myers of deprivation of rights and deadlocked on that count as it pertained to Boone. They also failed to reach a verdict on a charge against Korte for lying to the FBI and on a charge against Myers for destruction of evidence after he allegedly smashed Hall’s cell phone.
Hays, who pleaded guilty to one count of deprivation or rights, testified that he hit Hall repeatedly with his baton and saw Korte kick him in the face. When asked twice if Hall was resisting, he said no. “After hindsight and reflection, I was in the wrong,” he said on the stand, according to the local CBS affiliate.
Colletta also pleased guilty to making false statements to the grand jury.
Text messages in the indictment show some of the officers expressing a mix of glee and satisfaction at the idea of assaulting protesters without consequence.
“It’s gonna get IGNORANT tonight!!” reads a message from Boone. “But it’s gonna be a lot of fun beating the hell out of these shitheads once the sun goes down and nobody can tell us apart!!!!” He later added that “we really need these fuckers to start acting up so we can have some fun” and that “it’s still a blast beating people that deserve it.”
“This shit is crazy ……. but it’s fucking AWESOME too!” Boone wrote the day after he allegedly attacked Hall. He added unironically: “Except for cops getting hurt. People on the streets got FUCKED UP!”
On October 5, with some civil unrest still ongoing, Hays tried to share some strategy with the overeager Boone. “Remember were [sic] are in south city,” wrote Hays. “They support us but also cameras. So make sure you have an old white dude as a witness.” Hall is black.
Hall settled with the city in February for $5 million after suing both the department and the individual officers, and St. Louis was required to deliver that payout within 45 days.
Reason covered this story as the charges unfolded in 2018. Joe Setyon wrote:
The Rev. Darryl Gray, who helped organize the demonstrations, hopes the alleged assault of an undercover cop will help people understand there’s a problem. “Maybe this police officer getting beat up by three of his own, who deliberately went out to hurt someone who was compliant and not resisting, maybe this is what is needed in this country and this city and this region to finally say, ‘We have not gone far enough to hold police accountable,'” Gray tells The Washington Post.
Gray was right in some sense: Perpetrators of police malfeasance often hide behind qualified immunity, the doctrine that makes it difficult to hold state actors accountable in civil court. In that vein, Hall’s settlement is, in some sense, progress. But if this week’s verdicts are any indication, it appears he’ll have a ways to go for justice.
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Police investigators say Michael Forest Reinoehl, a Portland, Oregon, activist wanted for killing another man during ongoing street battles in that city last summer, likely shot at police before he was killed by a fugitive task force in Lacey, Washington, last September.
The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) in Washington issued a press release today summarizing the findings of its seven-month investigation into the fatal shooting of Reinoehl. The TCSO says Reinoehl refused to comply with commands to surrender and reached for a gun.
“Witness statements indicate that there was an exchange of gunfire, which was initiated by Reinoehl from inside his vehicle,” the TCSO press release says. “During the exchange, Reinoehl was struck by gunfire, and he died as a result.”
— Thurston Co. Sheriff (@ThurstonSheriff) March 31, 2021
Reinoehl, a self-proclaimed anti-fascist, was charged with second-degree murder in the August 29, 2020, shooting death of Patriot Prayer supporter Aaron Danielson in Portland. Reinoehl had been wanted for five days when a federal fugitive task force caught up with him in Lacey. The circumstances surrounding Reinoehl’s shooting were murky. Task force agents said Reinoehl either pointed a gun or was in the process of drawing a gun when he was shot. However, civilian eyewitnesses said the police didn’t announce themselves before killing Reinoehl in a barrage of gunfire. None of the law enforcement officers in the task force were wearing body cameras.
In the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump frequently bragged about the killing.
Investigators found a .380 pistol in Reinoehl’s possession and a fired .380 shell casing in his vehicle. The casing in Reinoehl’s vehicle was fired from the pistol found in his possession, according to the TCSO.
“While it is very plausible and it does match up with the statements, we were not able to find the actual round from (Reinoehl’s pistol) to definitively say, ‘absolutely’ that he fired from that car,” TCSO Lt. Cameron Simper told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “Based on our investigation, based on the witness statements, the casing in the car, and officers’ statements, it is highly likely.”
Reason requested public records regarding the shooting last September, but a Washington state superior court judge issued a temporary restraining order against the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC), one of the agencies on the task force, to block their release until the TCSO completed its investigation. Reason is expecting to get those records shortly from the DOC and other agencies that participated in the task force.
The TCSO has referred its findings to the Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to determine if criminal charges will be filed.
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In September 2017, St. Louis police officers sought to quell riots in the city after a jury acquitted former officer Jason Stockley for the 2011 killing of Anthony Lamar Smith.
On September 15, a group of police zeroed in on one protester in particular. According to an indictment filed against former officers Dustin Boone, Randy Hays, Christopher Myers, and Bailey Colletta, they proceeded to beat him severely, even though the man was not participating in the riots themselves. The cops allegedly shoved him to the ground, struck him with a baton, kicked him in the face, and assaulted him so brutally that he required multiple surgeries. Another officer, Steven Korte, who is still employed by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, was charged separately.
But the man, Luther Hall, was not actually a protester. He was an undercover police officer dispatched to take down information about property destruction in the city.
“I couldn’t believe it was happening,” he told the jury in reference to the unprompted beating. Hall, who had been with the department 22 years at the time of the attack, lost 20 pounds as he was unable to eat solid foods for several weeks. He underwent spinal fusion to repair his neck, and doctors stitched his lip closed after the incident left a hole.
A jury on Monday declined to convict the three officers—Korte, Myers, and Boone—who pleaded not guilty. Specifically, they acquitted Korte and Myers of deprivation of rights and deadlocked on that count as it pertained to Boone. They also failed to reach a verdict on a charge against Korte for lying to the FBI and on a charge against Myers for destruction of evidence after he allegedly smashed Hall’s cell phone.
Hays, who pleaded guilty to one count of deprivation or rights, testified that he hit Hall repeatedly with his baton and saw Korte kick him in the face. When asked twice if Hall was resisting, he said no. “After hindsight and reflection, I was in the wrong,” he said on the stand, according to the local CBS affiliate.
Colletta also pleased guilty to making false statements to the grand jury.
Text messages in the indictment show some of the officers expressing a mix of glee and satisfaction at the idea of assaulting protesters without consequence.
“It’s gonna get IGNORANT tonight!!” reads a message from Boone. “But it’s gonna be a lot of fun beating the hell out of these shitheads once the sun goes down and nobody can tell us apart!!!!” He later added that “we really need these fuckers to start acting up so we can have some fun” and that “it’s still a blast beating people that deserve it.”
“This shit is crazy ……. but it’s fucking AWESOME too!” Boone wrote the day after he allegedly attacked Hall. He added unironically: “Except for cops getting hurt. People on the streets got FUCKED UP!”
On October 5, with some civil unrest still ongoing, Hays tried to share some strategy with the overeager Boone. “Remember were [sic] are in south city,” wrote Hays. “They support us but also cameras. So make sure you have an old white dude as a witness.” Hall is black.
Hall settled with the city in February for $5 million after suing both the department and the individual officers, and St. Louis was required to deliver that payout within 45 days.
Reason covered this story as the charges unfolded in 2018. Joe Setyon wrote:
The Rev. Darryl Gray, who helped organize the demonstrations, hopes the alleged assault of an undercover cop will help people understand there’s a problem. “Maybe this police officer getting beat up by three of his own, who deliberately went out to hurt someone who was compliant and not resisting, maybe this is what is needed in this country and this city and this region to finally say, ‘We have not gone far enough to hold police accountable,'” Gray tells The Washington Post.
Gray was right in some sense: Perpetrators of police malfeasance often hide behind qualified immunity, the doctrine that makes it difficult to hold state actors accountable in civil court. In that vein, Hall’s settlement is, in some sense, progress. But if this week’s verdicts are any indication, it appears he’ll have a ways to go for justice.
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Police investigators say Michael Forest Reinoehl, a Portland, Oregon, activist wanted for killing another man during ongoing street battles in that city last summer, likely shot at police before he was killed by a fugitive task force in Lacey, Washington, last September.
The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) in Washington issued a press release today summarizing the findings of its seven-month investigation into the fatal shooting of Reinoehl. The TCSO says Reinoehl refused to comply with commands to surrender and reached for a gun.
“Witness statements indicate that there was an exchange of gunfire, which was initiated by Reinoehl from inside his vehicle,” the TCSO press release says. “During the exchange, Reinoehl was struck by gunfire, and he died as a result.”
— Thurston Co. Sheriff (@ThurstonSheriff) March 31, 2021
Reinoehl, a self-proclaimed anti-fascist, was charged with second-degree murder in the August 29, 2020, shooting death of Patriot Prayer supporter Aaron Danielson in Portland. Reinoehl had been wanted for five days when a federal fugitive task force caught up with him in Lacey. The circumstances surrounding Reinoehl’s shooting were murky. Task force agents said Reinoehl either pointed a gun or was in the process of drawing a gun when he was shot. However, civilian eyewitnesses said the police didn’t announce themselves before killing Reinoehl in a barrage of gunfire. None of the law enforcement officers in the task force were wearing body cameras.
In the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump frequently bragged about the killing.
Investigators found a .380 pistol in Reinoehl’s possession and a fired .380 shell casing in his vehicle. The casing in Reinoehl’s vehicle was fired from the pistol found in his possession, according to the TCSO.
“While it is very plausible and it does match up with the statements, we were not able to find the actual round from (Reinoehl’s pistol) to definitively say, ‘absolutely’ that he fired from that car,” TCSO Lt. Cameron Simper told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “Based on our investigation, based on the witness statements, the casing in the car, and officers’ statements, it is highly likely.”
Reason requested public records regarding the shooting last September, but a Washington state superior court judge issued a temporary restraining order against the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC), one of the agencies on the task force, to block their release until the TCSO completed its investigation. Reason is expecting to get those records shortly from the DOC and other agencies that participated in the task force.
The TCSO has referred its findings to the Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to determine if criminal charges will be filed.
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The Yale Journal on Regulation has an online symposium on Adam Cox and Cristina Rodriguez’s excellent recent book, The President and Immigration Law. Contributors include a variety of constitutional law and immigration scholars. There are already contributions posted by Zachary Price, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Shalini Bargava Ray, and myself. Jill Family and David Rubenstein have posted an Introduction to the symposium, which provides an overview of Cox and Rodriguez’s book, and of the various commentaries in the symposium.
Over the next few days, the Journal on Regulation will post additional contributions by Daniel Farber and Eisha Jain. Then, Cox and Rodriguez will post a response to their commentators and critics.
Here is the publisher’s description of the book:
Who controls American immigration policy? The biggest immigration controversies of the last decade have all involved policies produced by the President policies such as President Obama’s decision to protect Dreamers from deportation and President Trump’s proclamation banning immigrants from several majority-Muslim nations. While critics of these policies have been separated by a vast ideological chasm, their broadsides have embodied the same widely shared belief: that Congress, not the President, ought to dictate who may come to the United States and who will be forced to leave.
This belief is a myth. In The President and Immigration Law, Adam B. Cox and Cristina M. Rodriguez chronicle the untold story of how, over the course of two centuries, the President became our immigration policymaker-in-chief. Diving deep into the history of American immigration policy from founding-era disputes over deporting sympathizers with France to contemporary debates about asylum-seekers at the Southern border they show how migration crises, real or imagined, have empowered presidents. Far more importantly, they also uncover how the Executive’s ordinary power to decide when to enforce the law, and against whom, has become an extraordinarily powerful vehicle for making immigration policy.
This pathbreaking account helps us understand how the United States has come to run an enormous shadow immigration system-one in which nearly half of all noncitizens in the country are living in violation of the law. It also provides a blueprint for reform, one that accepts rather than laments the role the President plays in shaping the national community, while also outlining strategies to curb the abuse of law enforcement authority in immigration and beyond.
Here is an excerpt from my contribution to the symposium:
Adam Cox and Cristina Rodríguez have written what is likely to become the definitive work on presidential power over immigration. As they describe, the executive branch has come to wield vast discretionary authority over immigration policy, even though nothing in the text or original meaning of the Constitution grants it such authority….
Their diagnosis of the problem is sound, and so are many of their proposals for reform. But they understate the importance of eliminating constitutional double standards in immigration law. In addition, the issues they highlight cannot be properly addressed unless we make it easier for potential immigrants to enter the US in the first place, not just constrain deportation after the fact….
Some of this discretionary power is just one part of a broader problem with our legal system. There are far more laws than any administration can possibly enforce, and far more lawbreakers than can ever be caught and prosecuted. As a result, a large majority of adult Americans have violated federal criminal law (to say nothing of state law) at some point in their lives, and could potentially be prosecuted . Undocumented immigrants are far from the only people who remain free only because of resource constraints and the exercise of executive enforcement discretion. But the immigration situation is particularly severe, because of the grave consequences of deportation, and the weakness of due process protections in the immigration enforcement system…..
Cox and Rodríguez underestimate the importance of eliminating constitutional double standards under which immigration policy has largely been exempted from constitutional constraints that apply to nearly all other government policies….
Cox and Rodríguez contend that Trump v. Hawaii is an aberration and a “dramatic departure from the past.” In some respects, that is true, particularly in so far as it defends the immigration double standard much more blatantly than any other recent decision. But, unfortunately, the ruling is part of a much broader pattern in which both courts and executive branch officials refuse to apply rigorous constitutional constraints to immigration policy.
Among other things, immigration detention and deportation are not subject to anything like the same due process constraints as other severe deprivations of liberty. This results in such horrors as toddlers “representing” themselves in deportation proceedings, because there is no right to the provision of counsel to indigent migrants facing deportation…. Weak constitutional standards play a major role in the deportation and detention state that Cox and Rodríguez refer to as the “shadow system” of immigration law.
Ending such double standards would bring immigration policy more in line with the text and original meaning of the Constitution. It also would curtail some of the worst aspects of the immigration system – including some of the worst abuses of the shadow system….
But, ultimately, broad presidential discretion to exclude migrants can only be alleviated by making it easier for them to enter legally in the first place…..
If we restricted interstate movement in the same way as immigration, there would be massive enforcement discretion and associated abuses of power with respect to the latter, as well (as indeed occurred when state governments had greater power to exclude internal migrants in the nineteenth century)….
[T]here are many ways to make incremental progress by liberalizing immigration policy at the margin. Those who seek to reduce deportation, civil liberties violations, and excessive executive discretion associated with immigration policies would do well to focus on making it easier to make it easier for immigrants to legally enter the United States in the first place.
I discuss some of the issues raised in my contribution to the symposium in greater detail in my own recent book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom.
I would like to thank the editors of the symposium for opportunity to contribute, and Adam and Cristina for writing an outstanding book!
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via IFTTT
The Yale Journal on Regulation has an online symposium on Adam Cox and Cristina Rodriguez’s excellent recent book, The President and Immigration Law. Contributors include a variety of constitutional law and immigration scholars. There are already contributions posted by Zachary Price, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Shalini Bargava Ray, and myself. Jill Family and David Rubenstein have posted an Introduction to the symposium, which provides an overview of Cox and Rodriguez’s book, and of the various commentaries in the symposium.
Over the next few days, the Journal on Regulation will post additional contributions by Daniel Farber and Eisha Jain. Then, Cox and Rodriguez will post a response to their commentators and critics.
Here is the publisher’s description of the book:
Who controls American immigration policy? The biggest immigration controversies of the last decade have all involved policies produced by the President policies such as President Obama’s decision to protect Dreamers from deportation and President Trump’s proclamation banning immigrants from several majority-Muslim nations. While critics of these policies have been separated by a vast ideological chasm, their broadsides have embodied the same widely shared belief: that Congress, not the President, ought to dictate who may come to the United States and who will be forced to leave.
This belief is a myth. In The President and Immigration Law, Adam B. Cox and Cristina M. Rodriguez chronicle the untold story of how, over the course of two centuries, the President became our immigration policymaker-in-chief. Diving deep into the history of American immigration policy from founding-era disputes over deporting sympathizers with France to contemporary debates about asylum-seekers at the Southern border they show how migration crises, real or imagined, have empowered presidents. Far more importantly, they also uncover how the Executive’s ordinary power to decide when to enforce the law, and against whom, has become an extraordinarily powerful vehicle for making immigration policy.
This pathbreaking account helps us understand how the United States has come to run an enormous shadow immigration system-one in which nearly half of all noncitizens in the country are living in violation of the law. It also provides a blueprint for reform, one that accepts rather than laments the role the President plays in shaping the national community, while also outlining strategies to curb the abuse of law enforcement authority in immigration and beyond.
Here is an excerpt from my contribution to the symposium:
Adam Cox and Cristina Rodríguez have written what is likely to become the definitive work on presidential power over immigration. As they describe, the executive branch has come to wield vast discretionary authority over immigration policy, even though nothing in the text or original meaning of the Constitution grants it such authority….
Their diagnosis of the problem is sound, and so are many of their proposals for reform. But they understate the importance of eliminating constitutional double standards in immigration law. In addition, the issues they highlight cannot be properly addressed unless we make it easier for potential immigrants to enter the US in the first place, not just constrain deportation after the fact….
Some of this discretionary power is just one part of a broader problem with our legal system. There are far more laws than any administration can possibly enforce, and far more lawbreakers than can ever be caught and prosecuted. As a result, a large majority of adult Americans have violated federal criminal law (to say nothing of state law) at some point in their lives, and could potentially be prosecuted . Undocumented immigrants are far from the only people who remain free only because of resource constraints and the exercise of executive enforcement discretion. But the immigration situation is particularly severe, because of the grave consequences of deportation, and the weakness of due process protections in the immigration enforcement system…..
Cox and Rodríguez underestimate the importance of eliminating constitutional double standards under which immigration policy has largely been exempted from constitutional constraints that apply to nearly all other government policies….
Cox and Rodríguez contend that Trump v. Hawaii is an aberration and a “dramatic departure from the past.” In some respects, that is true, particularly in so far as it defends the immigration double standard much more blatantly than any other recent decision. But, unfortunately, the ruling is part of a much broader pattern in which both courts and executive branch officials refuse to apply rigorous constitutional constraints to immigration policy.
Among other things, immigration detention and deportation are not subject to anything like the same due process constraints as other severe deprivations of liberty. This results in such horrors as toddlers “representing” themselves in deportation proceedings, because there is no right to the provision of counsel to indigent migrants facing deportation…. Weak constitutional standards play a major role in the deportation and detention state that Cox and Rodríguez refer to as the “shadow system” of immigration law.
Ending such double standards would bring immigration policy more in line with the text and original meaning of the Constitution. It also would curtail some of the worst aspects of the immigration system – including some of the worst abuses of the shadow system….
But, ultimately, broad presidential discretion to exclude migrants can only be alleviated by making it easier for them to enter legally in the first place…..
If we restricted interstate movement in the same way as immigration, there would be massive enforcement discretion and associated abuses of power with respect to the latter, as well (as indeed occurred when state governments had greater power to exclude internal migrants in the nineteenth century)….
[T]here are many ways to make incremental progress by liberalizing immigration policy at the margin. Those who seek to reduce deportation, civil liberties violations, and excessive executive discretion associated with immigration policies would do well to focus on making it easier to make it easier for immigrants to legally enter the United States in the first place.
I discuss some of the issues raised in my contribution to the symposium in greater detail in my own recent book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom.
I would like to thank the editors of the symposium for opportunity to contribute, and Adam and Cristina for writing an outstanding book!
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