Tag Archives: immigration

A Federal Judge’s Mistakes

Posted on by
Reply

US District Judge John Bates has ruled that President Donald Trump’s Executive Order rescinding the DACA program initiated by DHA memorandum under ex-President Barack Obama (D) is illegal.  He’s gone beyond that: he’s ordered the Trump administration to process new DACA applicants, not just renew existing ones.

Bates’ mistakes are two.  One is his ruling that, in effect, it’s illegal to rescind a Department Memorandum by Executive Order.  Of course, this is erroneous.  A Department Memorandum is not statute; it’s not even a Regulation.  It has no legal force beyond being a Cabinet-level equivalent of an EO.  As such, it’s subordinate to Executive Orders and available to cancelation by same.  At worst, the issue is a quibble, easily correctable by an EO instructing the subordinate DHS to rescind its Memorandum.

Bates’ next mistake is claiming the EO is illegal because it offered insufficient support to its claim that the DACA program is illegal.  This is simply irrelevant.  See above: it’s sufficient for the President to instruct a subordinate Cabinet to do a thing, so long as the thing itself is legal.  There are no statutes barring a President from instructing the rescission of a Department Memorandum; such a statute would be unconstitutional, anyway, trampling on the separation of powers as one would.  No explanation for why a Memorandum should be rescinded is necessary, however useful one might be.

A Mistaken Argument

Posted on by
Reply

The Supreme Court heard oral argument earlier this week on the legality of President Donald Trump’s Executive Order producing a moratorium on entry into the US from certain selected nations.  Neal Katyal, representing those arguing to keep Trump’s EO blocked,

says Congress previously has rejected exactly the kind of nationality-based ban that Mr Trump has implemented.

Whether or not that’s true, though, is irrelevant.  All that the Court can consider (aside from what is in the Constitution, which is always before the Court, and what’s in the Executive Order before the Court today), is what Congress has done this time.  Past actions are irrelevant, particularly since what Congress does today that differs or outright contradicts what Congress did yesterday overrides yesterday’s action.

The “Muslim Travel” Moratorium Case

Posted on by
Reply

The Supreme Court is hearing this case as it pertains to the current Executive Order that imposes a moratorium on entry into the US by persons coming from certain specified nations.  (In aside, I emphasize that calling the EO a “Muslim ban” is dishonest. It presents an impermanent moratorium on entry from nations representing a bare 10% of the world’s Muslims, and it presents the same impermanent moratorium on non-Muslim countries, like northern Korea.)

Lower courts have invoked campaign rhetoric, the clumsiness of the rollout of the first EO on the matter, a made-up permanence of the moratorium, and on and on, to create a court-manufactured policy determination that the EO was somehow prejudiced in some way.  With that fantasy, those lower courts have struck the EOs, one after another.

The lower courts have been imposing their own prejudices.

What’s in the text of the Executive Order? Is the EO itself legal? These are the only questions legitimately before the Justices. Campaign rhetoric is not in the EO, and so cannot be considered. The clumsiness of the rollout of the first EO had nothing to do with the EO—or with the one presently before the Justices—and so cannot be considered by the Justices.  The duration of the moratorium is a political decision, and so cannot be considered.

In Connecticut National Bank v Germain, the Supremes held

…time and again that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there.

The concept plainly holds for EOs as well.  If it’s not in the EO, the EO doesn’t say it.

Whether the EO’s moratorium on entry into the US from a selected set of nations is good or bad policy is certainly worthy of debate, but it’s strictly and solely a political debate to be had by We the People, and through us, our elected representatives. Politics and associated policy decisions are beyond the ken of courts.

Counting US Citizens is Illegal

Posted on by
Reply

That’s what California’s Attorney General, Xavier Bacerra (D), says.  The Commerce Department has said the 2020 census form will include a question asking whether the respondent is an American citizen, and Bacerra doesn’t like it.  In the op-ed he co-wrote with California’s Secretary of State Alex Padilla (D) for the San Francisco Chronicle, he wrote

Including a citizenship question on the 2020 census is not just a bad idea—it is illegal[]

and he repeated that claim in one of his tweets.

Never mind that there’s plenty of precedent: the Census Bureau asked this question during its decennial census-takings every time from 1820 through 1950, and every year through today on its annual census sampling.

The two politicians claim further that

California, with its large immigrant communities, would be disproportionately harmed by depressed participation in the 2020 census.  An undercount would threaten at least one of California’s seats in the House of Representatives (and, by extension, an elector in the electoral college).

The second part of that claim is true—undercounting the eligible folks would reduce legitimate representation.  The first part of that claim is patently false.  Here’s what the 14th Amendment says on the matter [the 19th Amendment broadened the franchise to include women]:

…when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced….

Citizens of the United States (who also are citizens of California, as the 14th Amendment also makes clear) and legally resident non-citizen immigrants have no fear of answering the Census’ question.  The only folks who might be hesitant are the illegal aliens.  Since they’re not citizens, and so not eligible to vote, their “undercounting” can have no effect on California’s apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives or in the Electoral College.  Bacerra, especially, as the highly educated, trained, and talented lawyer that he is, knows this full well.

It’s plain that these Progressive-Democrats, in the expectation that illegal immigrants would vote Progressive-Democrat, want the illegals to dilute the votes of American citizens, not all of whom do vote Progressive-Democrat—even in California.

It’s also true that “undercounting” can have the effect of depressing Federal funds transfers to the States that are undercounted.  Here, though, it’s the responsibility of those States allowing illegal residents to stay—even actively protecting them—in violation of Federal law to pay the costs of those illegalities.  No Federal funds should be transferred for those costs.  These Progressive-Democrats, though, are anxious to keep the spigot of OPM wide open for their own spending imperatives.

Violent Illegal Aliens

Posted on by
Reply

Recall Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s warning to illegal aliens in the city for which she’s responsible that ICE officers were coming.  Recall further the litany of violent crimes for which many of those warned were previously convicted or accused, and that many of those violent illegals escaped ICE as a result of Schaaf’s warning.

Now we see an outcome of Schaaf’s concern for violent non-citizen criminals.

Three illegal immigrants, who avoided capture after Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf blew the whistle on a raid by federal immigration authorities last month, have since been re-arrested for new crimes including robbery and spousal abuse, ICE officials said.

They were these:

One was a Mexican national arrested for robbery and gun crimes, who was released back into the community for a prior offense despite an ICE detainer request in November.
Another Mexican national was arrested for a DUI, despite having been deported three times and prior convictions for false imprisonment, DUI, and battery of a spouse.
The third was a Mexican national who was arrested for corporal injury of a spouse, despite being deported twice and criminal convictions including drug possession, hit-and-run, DUIs, possessions of narcotics equipment, and a parole violation.

Others of this ilk remain on the loose.

This is how the Oakland Mayor seems to prioritize drug abuse and the safety of women relative to her city’s legal residents.

Side note: the gun crimes charges demonstrate the degree of effectiveness of gun control laws in keeping firearms out of the hands of those with no respect for law.