WashPo: Trump Will Announce Anti-Caravan Plan on Tuesday

President Donald Trump will announce Tuesday how he will use his extraordinary powers over legal immigration to block the caravan and other asylum-seeking economic migrants, according to the Washington Post.

“A draft of the proposal reviewed by The Washington Post says the president can use his authority under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to declare certain migrants ineligible for asylum for national security reasons,” the Post reported.

The little-used powers are in Section 212(f) of U.S. law, at 8 U.S. Code § 1182:

Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

But pro-migration advocates say that 212(f) clause cannot stop illegal migrants from jumping over the border wall into the United States and then use U.S. and international law to apply for asylum.

These advocates say migrants — even those with invalid cases — are protected by U.S. asylum law and the constitution’s Fith Amendment once they get onto U.S. territory. The clause — “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” — allows migrants to get court hearings, despite Presidential opposition, the advocates say.

However, U.S. law does not require that asylum applicants be allowed to stay in the United States while their legal claims are considered by the courts, countered Christopher Hajec, the litigation director for the Immigration Law Reform Institute.

President Trump has the legal authority to deport classes of migrants to an outside location where they can safely live until their appeals are heard, he said. Migrants would be allowed to appeal for asylum in court cases conducted via video, he told Breitbart News. “Some might get asylum,” he added.

A 1903 decision by the Supreme provides allows officials with authority to deport migrants who set foot on U.S. territory, he said. The decision is titled Yamataya v. Fisher, and it covers migrants who arrive legally at a border station and those who sneak over the line in between the border stations.

In April, IRLI argued that border-jumping migrants are not formally” admitted” to the United States, even if they are on U.S. territory when arrested:

“Admission” means that the alien has entered our territory through a port of entry or other legal means, and been “inspected” by an immigration officer, who can only “authorize” an alien who is “clearly and without doubt” in compliance with our immigration laws. For example, generally only aliens who have been admitted are eligible to apply for green cards and ultimately to naturalize, and cannot be excluded from the U.S. like illegal aliens. Since admission was made the key requirement for legal entry in 1996, aliens can no longer claim immigration benefits merely by crossing our sea or land borders.

In June, the Supreme Court agreed that 212(f) in8 U.S. Code § 1182 gives the president broad authority over who is allowed into the United States. The decision in Trump v. Hawaii said:

By its terms, §1182(f) exudes deference to the President in every clause. It entrusts to the President the decisions whether and when to suspend entry, whose entry to suspend, for how long, and on what conditions. It thus vests the President with “ample power” to impose entry restrictions in addition to those elsewhere enumerated in the INA.

Migrants will protest their removal from the country, but the fact that they are neither citizens nor legal residents does reduce their ability to block Trump’s extraordinary power, Hajec said.

Also, migrants who are seeking jobs are not eligible for asylum, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has reversed President Barack Obama’s policy of granting asylum to people who declare a fear of criminal gangs. These rules will narrow the number of migrants who are awarded asylum.  

The U.S. can get a safe location in Mexico or Central America to move the asylum applicants by using its economic power and its control over visas for foreign elites, Hajec said. For example, the President’s 212(f) power allows him to block the entry of any travelers, including the business owners and family members of Mexican elites, he said.

The President’s 212(f) declaration can protect normal travel and business between the two countries. For example, he can block the entry of migrants while allowing quick passage by Mexicans with border-crossing documents, he said.

A wide ban would allow the president to shut down the inflow of Central American migrants in the caravan and the cartels’ much larger labor-trafficking networks, Hajec said.

The successful shutdown of the caravan migrants could also greatly damage the cartels’ labor-trafficking business, said Hajec.

The business now works because it can smuggle migrants into the United States where they can get underground jobs to pay for the smuggling services. For example, Obama’s 2015 Flores legal decision allows the migrants who bring children and asks for asylum, to be released from detention after 20 days so they can get jobs to pay off the debt to the labor-trafficking cartels. Also, the court system is so clogged that asylum-seeking migrants can work legally for two or three years.

Even when they get a deportation order, migrants can simply abscond and become illegal immigrants, and hide in the huge resident population of 11 to 22 million illegals.

But if Trump prevents asylum-seekers from being released into the United States, and are instead holds them at a camp outside the United States, they cannot get jobs to pay the smugglers. Without the promise of payment, the smugglers will not try to sneak people into the United States.

Sessions is also running a fast-paced legal process to prosecute most of the cartel-smuggled single adults who cross the border illegally without children. This zero-tolerance policy will deter migration because it allows officials to detain the migrants for several years once they are caught for the second time.

 

Overall, the Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via immigration shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor.