2024 Border Legislation

[Ken]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68613083

Does the Mexican president truly consider deporting people from Texas to Mexico as dehumanizing? I can see ways that it is dehumanizing, (depending on a person's reason for crossing the border at places other than ports of entry) but I'm wondering if the Mexican president believes this in his heart of hearts.

I think it is not so much about deportations, and more about a new law in Texas that appears to target Hispanic people. And there are millions of Hispanics in Texas that are legal residents and citizens who could very well be subject to harassment under this new law by local law enforcement who do NOT necessarily have access to Federal immigration data to know whether someone they find on the street is a legal resident or citizen or not. We KNOW that sort of thing happened, because that is exactly what happened in Arizona when Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio did the same thing and started targeting immigrants in Phoenix a decade ago. Random Hispanic folks (legal residents and citizens) were getting snatched off the street by Maricopa County sheriffs and subject to days or more of detention until their identities could finally be sorted out. Most people don't walk around with their passports proving citizenship. Hispanic drivers were also being racially profiled by local sheriffs and all sorts of other things. The county ended up getting sued for racial discrimination and had to pay a huge settlement.

In exchange for deportations, Mexico might very justifiably ask Texas what Texas is doing in exchange to stop the flow of illegal weapons from Texas to Mexico. Which is an ENORMOUS problem in Mexico and how the cartels get most of their weapons. How is Texas going to answer that? Texas has been hell-bent on relaxing and eliminating firearms laws for the past decade. These sorts of things are quid-pro-quo.

Setting aside the rhetoric. Mexico actually has a very good point and they are well within their rights to refuse to interact with the state of Texas on deportations. Mexico has no immigration treaty with the State of Texas that deals with the myriad of issues that a nation-to-nation border treaty would involve from deportations to extraditions to everything else. They do so with the US and they are well within their rights to simply say that they are only going to deal with the United States Customs and Border Protection and other Federal agencies and not the Texas State Troopers or whomever when it comes to deportations.

Honestly I think Texas is the dog that caught the car on this one. What are they going to do with a whole bunch of detainees? Burn up tens of millions of local tax dollars housing these people in local county jails where they have to be housed, fed, given medical care, etc? They will just keep piling up.

Mexico isn't going to take them off Texas' hands. In fact, the majority aren't Mexicans anyway. And the US immigration service doesn't have detention space to house them all. So they will just go back into the system that is already broken and underfunded and get released back into Texas if they are asylum seekers. Because Republicans are refusing to increase funding for immigration courts and streamlining of the process. The obvious solution is to fix things at the Federal level which Republicans in Congress don't want to do.

[Josh]

In that case. Perhaps Texas could just build prisons to store illegal aliens in until they decide to voluntarily go back wherever they came from.

[Ken]

In that case. Perhaps Texas could just build prisons to store illegal aliens in until they decide to voluntarily go back wherever they came from.

No, actually they can't.

Under the 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments, Texas has no right to detain immigrants (or anyone) with without due process of law which includes, warrants, indictment by a grand jury, speedy trial by jury, right to a public defender, and so forth.

So they would have to fill up their criminal justice system trying these people in local and state courts before they could even get to the point of imprisoning them. And the entire Texas criminal justice system is already overburdened.

[Josh]

In that case. Perhaps Texas could just build prisons to store illegal aliens in until they decide to voluntarily go back wherever they came from.

No, actually they can't.

Under the 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments, Texas has no right to detain immigrants (or anyone) with without due process of law which includes, warrants, indictment by a grand jury, speedy trial by jury, right to a public defender, and so forth.

So they would have to fill up their criminal justice system trying these people in local and state courts before they could even get to the point of imprisoning them. And the entire Texas criminal justice system is already overburdened.

Trials can be done speedily. And until such time as a trial happens, they can be held in jail. Bond wound be unreasonable since the very nature of the crime is someone who can’t be trusted.

[Ken]

In that case. Perhaps Texas could just build prisons to store illegal aliens in until they decide to voluntarily go back wherever they came from.

No, actually they can't.

Under the 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments, Texas has no right to detain immigrants (or anyone) with without due process of law which includes, warrants, indictment by a grand jury, speedy trial by jury, right to a public defender, and so forth.

So they would have to fill up their criminal justice system trying these people in local and state courts before they could even get to the point of imprisoning them. And the entire Texas criminal justice system is already overburdened.

Trials can be done speedily. And until such time as a trial happens, they can be held in jail. Bond wound be unreasonable since the very nature of the crime is someone who can’t be trusted.

That is what all the border counties are saying that the CAN’T actually do. They don’t have jail space or capacity to deal with a flood of migrants. Many rural counties where immigrants are actually found only have jails that can hold a few people max. And they don’t have law enforcement personnel or prosecutors who can actually do this sort of thing in any expeditious way. They are saying so: https://www.borderreport.com/immigratio ... under-sb4/

And no, trials CAN’T be done speedily. The local district attorneys will have to prove that the individual is in the country illegally. Which they may not be able to do if the person is claiming asylum. Which makes them legal. Until an actual immigration court holds and immigration hearing to determine that they don’t have an asylum case. That is something that Texas cannot adjudicate.

Texas seems to have the naive notion that they can just drive these people over to the border crossing with Mexico and just send them across. But the can’t if Mexico doesn’t take them. And perhaps 95% of them are not Mexican. Mexico is under zero obligation to take some Venezuelan or Somali refugee that Texas wants to send across the border. So all they would really be doing is driving them back to the border crossing to set them free back into the US. Oops.

[Josh]

Does Texas law recognise bogus asylum claims as being an excuse to cross illegally when a legal port of entry is 500 feet away?

[Ken]

Does Texas law recognise bogus asylum claims as being an excuse to cross illegally when a legal port of entry is 500 feet away?

It doesn't make the slightest bit of difference what Texas recognizes or doesn't recognize.

If you are going to try and prosecute and imprison someone for being in the country illegally, you will need to hold a trial in front of a jury and PROVE that they are in the country illegally (and therefore, in violation of Texas law).

All a wet-behind-the-ears public defender with 2 weeks of experience will need to do is simply claim as a defense that their defendant has a valid asylum claim and is therefore, in the country legally. And Texas won't be able to do anything about it since they will have no ability to prove otherwise. The determination of whether or not an asylum claim is valid is up to the US immigration courts. Checkmate, case dismissed.

The actual solution to this problem is to beef up the Federal immigration courts and streamline the asylum processes. Which is the very thing that Republicans in Congress refuse to do out of servile fealty to Trump. Who doesn't want to see any solutions.

[Josh]

“All a wet-behind-the-ears public defender with 2 weeks of experience will need to do is simply claim as a defense that their defendant has a valid asylum claim and is therefore, in the country legally.”

Or the TX law could limit this to requiring an actual asylum claim that has been reviewed, not just someone making a bogus one. The end.

Ken. This is sovereign citizen level nonsense. That one can speak a few magic words and suddenly get away with breaking any laws they want.

[Ken]

“All a wet-behind-the-ears public defender with 2 weeks of experience will need to do is simply claim as a defense that their defendant has a valid asylum claim and is therefore, in the country legally.”

Or the TX law could limit this to requiring an actual asylum claim that has been reviewed, not just someone making a bogus one. The end.

Ken. This is sovereign citizen level nonsense. That one can speak a few magic words and suddenly get away with breaking any laws they want.

No, you are speaking nonsense.

Under our Constitution, if Texas wants to imprison ANYONE whether citizen or immigrant. They must try them in a court of law in front of a jury and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that said person has broken the law. The burden of proof is not on the defendant. You know this. An asylum seeker is NOT in the country illegally until they have had their claim heard by an immigration court. And then they still aren't in the country illegally until they defy a deportation order. It would be up to Texas to prove that the defendant is in the country illegally and absent an actual Federal deportation order they would be unable to do so. Since it is the Federal government that makes such determinations, not some county judge or prosecutor in rural Texas.

Don't like it? change the law. Except, oops, Republicans refuse to do that. A bipartisan and rather conservative bill passed by the Senate that would actually fix some of those problems is stalled in the House because House Republicans would rather play fealty to Trump than fix problems. That is the actual subject of this thread.

[Josh]

Ken,

This is a state matter not a federal matter. State law applies. States have far more leeway to decide their own laws than the federal government does.

Federal immigration laws are essentially irrelevant. Texas could pass a law saying illegal aliens are trespassing, including ones who have not yet formally been granted asylum. The fact they say a few magic words does not magically make them legal aliens.

Most notably, Texas’s law simply says entering other than at a legal port of entry is a crime. How is this a problem? Why can’t they just enter at a legal port of entry?