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President Donald Trumps hard line on illegal immigration may come back into sharper focus during the final weeks of his re-election campaign.

For months, Trump has been at the center of disputes over his response to peaceful social justice protests and violent demonstrations, handling of the coronavirus pandemic, efforts to raise doubts about the validity of the November election, and reluctance to condemn White supremacy.

Now his own COVID-19 diagnosis and his nomination of federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court have overshadowed all of that.

Meanwhile, the crackdown on illegal immigration, Trumps signature policy and political prescription, had lost its high profile, at least temporarily no doubt in part because of all the other controversies.

But also, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency ratcheted back its operations in March due to safety concerns amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Though the deadly virus is continuing to spread, ICE is ramping up its activity.

U.S. immigration officials quietly announced they would resume regular apprehension and detention practices, an apparent reversal from an earlier temporary suspension of non-criminal enforcement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Miami Herald reported in late September.

The effort isnt so quiet anymore. ICE is openly targeting sanctuary jurisdictions, which generally prohibit local law enforcement agencies from coordinating with federal immigration enforcement actions.

Last week, ICE announced 128 arrests have been made in California under Operation Rise with 24 of them in San Diego County, according to Kristina Davis of The San Diego Union-Tribune. The operation spanned the region, from Encinitas and Escondido to San Diego and Spring Valley.

Other areas targeted included Los Angeles and San Francisco. Some 80 percent of the arrests involved people with prior criminal convictions or pending criminal charges beyond immigration violations, including sex acts with a minor, domestic violence, drug possession, vehicle theft, burglary and DUI, authorities said.

A state law prohibits local law enforcement from notifying ICE when people arrested for certain crimes are about to be released, although notifications are allowed when it comes to about 800 serious crimes. That means ICE must pick up many of those people elsewhere.

When you make arrests out in public, things can go wrong, Gregory Archambeault, director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in San Diego and Imperial counties said Thursday.

Neither the city nor county of San Diego has declared itself an immigration sanctuary, as Los Angeles, San Francisco and other California jurisdictions have. However, San Diego must abide by sanctuary laws passed by the state.

Davis noted that San Diego law enforcement leaders over the years have said they do not intend to enforce immigration laws, in part because that could shake the trust of immigrants, making investigations of crime and keeping communities safe more difficult. But she added some local agencies, including the Sheriffs Department, have said the state laws have gone too far.

Earlier, ICE said it was confident its officers can conduct operations safely amid the continuing pandemic, and no longer talked about using more discretion about arresting non-criminal undocumented migrants, according to the Miami Herald.

The Washington Post said the so-called sanctuary op is a nationwide effort aimed at more than immigration enforcement.

Two officials with knowledge of plans for sanctuary op described it as more of a political messaging campaign than a major ICE operation, the Post said.

ICE may have downshifted some since the spring because of COVID-19, but the agency said it continued to focus on immigration violators with criminal records.

At the beginning of September, ICE announced it had arrested 46 people around San Diego County as part of a monthlong, nationwide operation.

A New York Times review of government data of that operation found ICE arrested a large number of immigrants who had committed minor crimes or no crimes at all other than immigration violations.

Overall, Trump has continued his pursuit of restrictive immigration policies during the pandemic. He greatly limited asylum, blocked refugees from entering the country, closed borders for most nonessential crossings and built hundreds of miles of border wall, though most of it to replace existing fencing.

How hard the administration will target sanctuary jurisdictions is unknown. Last year, an operation aimed at those jurisdictions came up short of administration expectations. Trump actually mentioned the raids ahead of time on Twitter.

Some ICE officials privately attributed the operations underwhelming results to Trumps boasting and indiscipline, the Post said.

The president also has threatened to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities, similar to the subsequent threat he made to large Democratic-run cities over civil unrest. His lawsuit to overturn Californias sanctuary law, which was supported twice by a divided San Diego County Board of Supervisors, was unsuccessful.

The lawsuit was largely dismissed by a federal judge and the ruling was upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case.

For years, Trumps policies have been accompanied by the presidents harsh rhetoric about undocumented immigrants, which has further inflamed passions.

Layered on top of that are his broader views and actions regarding issues affecting people of color. Among other things, he has called the words Black Lives Matter a symbol of hate, criticized a federal housing rule that seeks to do away with racial segregation, and declined to strongly condemn White supremacists and other extremist groups.

Whether all of this has reached a critical mass that will affect his re-election prospects is an open question. And it remains to be seen if rebooted immigration enforcement will rise to the top of the issues involving the president.

Theres a lot of competition.

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Column: Trump expands crackdown on illegal immigration as early ballots are cast - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Judging by the news reporting about the freshly released U.S. Department of Homeland Security's first annual "Threat Assessment", the most important takeaway was that white supremacists pose the "most persistent and lethal" domestic terrorism threat to America.

That may well be true, as I testified before Congress last year, and it is worth noting that no one has attacked the credibility of the DHS report that pegged white supremacy as such a prominent threat, coming as it did from the Trump administration. However, traditional media overlooked what this same very credible report said about other important homeland security threat matters that Americans also care about, such as the increasing likelihood of another swamping mass-migration crisis at the southwest border in 2021.

The DHS outlook is as dire as it is newsworthy. The collaborative intelligence community assessment, written by career analysts, sees an increasing likelihood that a new mass migration wave will come out of the Caribbean and Central and South America, especially Cuba and Haiti, next year. Two main push-pull factors will converge to cause this: A) lifting of pandemic-related border restrictions among Latin American countries, which will release postponed, pent-up plans to cross the U.S. border; and B) economic distress from the pandemic coupled with a resurgence in the American economy. Here's how DHS puts it, on p. 25:

Since 2014, DHS has experienced repeated illegal immigration surges at the Southwest Border. DHS anticipates that the number of apprehensions at the border will significantly climb post-pandemic, with the potential for another surge as those who were previously prevented from seeking entry into the United States arrive at the border and as poor economic conditions around the world fuel migration. This high volume of illegal immigration, including unprecedented numbers of family units and unaccompanied alien children arrivals, stretch government resources, and create a humanitarian and border security crisis that cripples the immigration system.

It also predicts surges in migration from outside the Western Hemisphere, among them unspecified national security "threat actors", a likely reference, in part, to terrorist travelers who would stand a better chance of disappearing in a huge, smothering crowd. (See CIS's video report on "extra-continental migration".)

"Although the majority of migrants do not pose a national security or public safety threat, pathways used by migrants to travel to the United States have been exploited by threat actors," the DHS report states. "As a result, surges of migrants could undermine our ability to effectively secure the border."

Most interestingly, the report names a third factor likely to drive the next mass migration event along with economic and pandemic ones: migrant "perceptions of U.S. and Mexican immigration and enforcement policies" due to ongoing "inter-governmental division and inconsistent messaging".

This last factor, left unexplained but repeated elsewhere in the document, probably references the coming election where the likely outcome is a rise in Democratic Party power over immigration policy that would be viewed by aspiring migrants around the world as a green light to largely unimpeded passage over the southern border and then successful resettlement.

As I have explained recently in predicting a new mass migration, a phenomenon I call "The Biden Effect", aspiring border-crossers around the world will rush the border if Biden wins because they have heard his promises to end deportations, limit detentions, reopen the asylum system and its loopholes to all comers, end all Trump-era asylum initiatives, provide free healthcare, and prioritize a "pathway to citizenship" for millions of illegally present people already in the country or who can get here in time to get it.

The DHS report issues a general observation about the present state of political affairs as a contributing factor the coming crisis:

DHS projects that until fundamental changes are made to the immigration enforcement process, including legislation that addresses current legal loopholes that incentivize high levels of illegal immigration, the United States will periodically experience additional humanitarian and border security crises.

In predicting the next one, DHS describes the consequences of past crises where mass migration events overwhelmed immigration enforcement agencies and systems, the most critical of these being the asylum and detention systems. The report predicts that the coming wave of illegal immigrants who will claim asylum will once again swamp U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency charged with processing credible-fear-of-return claims, which are prerequisites for asylum applications.

The report says the crush of people would exacerbate an already vast backlog of cases, which, coupled with filled-up detention centers, in the past resulted in mass releases of border-crossing strangers, criminals among them.

Continuing disagreement about whether illegal immigrants should be detained has prevented investments in bed-space expansions needed to cope with mass migration events, leading to mass releases into the public when they happen. The DHS report noted this ominous consequence:

Lack of bipartisan support of detention measures continues to lead to the release of dangerous criminal aliens and absconders who may then commit additional crimes when they might otherwise have been expeditiously detained and removed from the United States.

Alluding to the probable next mass migration event in 2021, the DHS report reminds its readers of past times when "record migration" distracted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from their duty to arrest fugitives and criminal aliens and "resulted in decreased interior arrests".

White supremacy is a serious threat and deserves time in the spotlight, as well as resources. But in terms of priorities, the nation need not be forced to choose one over any other threat problem. The U.S. homeland security establishment is big enough to handle more than one threat at any given time.

The American media is, too.

Excerpt from:
New DHS Threat Assessment: Expect a Mass Illegal Migration Crisis Next Year - Immigration Blog

Border Patrol made 405,036 apprehensions of approximately 324,029 unique individuals in the 2020 fiscal year, down from 859,501 apprehensions of approximately 799,336 unique individuals in 2019. In 2020, Border Patrol arrested 2,438 criminal aliens convicted of 3,150 crimes. Of those 3,150 convictions, 40 percent were for immigration offenses while the remainder were for more serious crimes. Thus, approximately 1,463 of the 2,438 criminal aliens arrested for Border Patrol had committed nonimmigration crimes. Of the 324,029 unique individuals apprehended by Border Patrol, the 1,463 criminal aliens with nonimmigration crimes accounted for about 0.45 percent of all aliens apprehended by Border Patrol in 2020. In other words, less than onehalf of one percent of the illegal immigrants apprehended by Border Patrol had committed nonimmigration crimes and about 0.75 percent had committed acrime including immigration crimes (Figure 1).

Criminal aliens apprehended as apercent of all apprehended illegal immigrants are up slightly in 2020 because the number of all people apprehended has roughly halved in the last year, but the total number of criminals apprehended is the lowest recorded. The number of criminal aliens apprehended is 43 percent lower than in 2019 and 87 percent lower than in 2015. In 2015, each Border Patrol agent apprehended one criminal alien on average. In 2020, only 1in 8Border Patrol agents apprehended acriminal alien on average. Either criminal aliens found away to cross the border undetected, which is unlikely, or many fewer are coming.

By comparison, about 8percent of the U.S. adult population had been convicted of afelony. Although its not an applestoapples comparison as the U.S. adult felony conviction rate includes immigrants who have alower criminal incarceration and conviction rate, we can confidently estimate that nativeborn Americans have arate of felony conviction about 10 times higher than that of illegal immigrants apprehended by Border Patrol in 2020.

In 2020, convictions for driving under the influence accounted for about 12 percent of the convictions , drug crimes accounted for 12 percent, 7percent for assault, battery, or domestic violence, 5percent for property crimes, 5percent for sexual offenses, 2percent for weapons charges, 18 percent for other crimes, and 0.1 percent for homicide and manslaughter (Table 1).

The difference above between the number of apprehensions and individuals apprehended is due to the recidivism rate. Many illegal immigrants get caught, are returned or removed from the United States, and try again. That recidivism rate has trended downward over time because the government imposed harsher penalties on illegal border crossers. However, the government has been quickly returning illegal immigrants apprehended along the border without consequences since March 2020in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As aresult, the recidivism rate has shot up in 2020 for the reasons Istated here.

How much has the recidivism rate shot up? It was 7percent in 2019 and 20 percent for the entire 2020 fiscal year. In September 2020, the recidivism rate was ashocking 37 percent.

Nick Miroff of the Washington Post wrote an excellent piece about the skyrocketing recidivism rate wherein he quotes Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott as saying: Were returning people very, very quickly, but our ability and willingness, if you will, to prosecute people, to have aconsequence to the illegal activity of crossing the border, has been reduced. Most of those being apprehended are single Mexican adults, adramatic turnaround from 2019 when only 20 percent were Mexicans.

Returning illegal border crossers immediately combined with other restrictions on asylum and Mexican enforcement policy may have dissuaded many Central Americans from trying to enter unlawfully or to seek asylum, but it has helped shift it back toward Mexicans. The Trump administrations cancellation of H-2B visas for seasonal nonagricultural work, primarily used by Mexicans, has likely also contributed to the surge of Mexicans.

Read more:
Criminal Border Patrol Apprehensions Are Down Along the Border - Cato Institute

By Jim Sonneville| The Hawk Eye

Most Iowans are focused on the presidential election but the outcome of our U.S. Senate race may prove even more influential.

Joe Biden has a commanding lead in most nationwide polling. If those polls are correct, and Biden triumphs on Nov. 3rd, his administration will push for the largest amnesty and the biggest expansion of legal immigration -in U.S. history. And if his party controls the Senate, his push will likely prove successful.

Iowans who want to block those policies can do so by sending Sen. Joni Ernst back to Washington for a second term and keeping the Senate under GOP control.

The Biden/Harris ticket is shaping up to be the most open-borders, pro-mass-migration ticket in modern American history. Not only would a Biden administration be bad news for Hawkeye State workers, it could mean higher taxes and more strain on local hospitals and schools. If left unchecked by the Senate, Biden's stances on immigration would threaten Iowans' way of life.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris support no-questions-asked amnesty for all 11 million illegal aliens in the United States. According to his campaign website, Biden plans to create "a faster-track to a green card" and increase the number of temporary visas available to foreigners. The Democratic ticket also favors allowing as many as 125,000 refugees into America annually, up from 18,000 this year.

Those policies would be disastrous for Iowa.

Despite recovering a bit from its pandemic-battered highs, the state's unemployment rate still clocked in at 6% in August. Ernie Goss, a respected Creighton University economist, believes that number doesn't account for a large portion of out-of-work Iowans. He estimates about 9% of state residents are unemployed. If Biden has his way, those unemployed Iowans will have to compete for jobs with a huge influx of immigrants.

Mass migration also harms Iowans in other ways too. An Iowa State University study at the turn of the century concluded immigration was exacerbating the state's housing shortage. The National Conference of State Legislators found providing a K-12 public education for one illegal immigrant costs more than the typical family of illegal workers pays in state taxes for more than 50 years. Providing health care for illegal immigrants costs American taxpayers $17 billion per year.

Fortunately, a harmful expansion of immigration isn't inevitable. A Republican Senate could effectively block Biden's agenda, just as the Republican-controlled House blocked Democrats' attempts at amnesty in the early 2010s. If Iowans value their jobs, their schools, and their health care, they'll send Joni Ernst back to Washington.

Jim Sonneville is a citizen activist who previously served as the County Chair of Des Moines County for the Ted Cruz for President Campaign. He lives in Burlington.

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Jim Sonneville: Protecting Iowans' health, safety, and economic security - Burlington Hawk Eye

Womens Rights Under Attack Photographed on January 19, 2018

Scene from the Women's March in Washington, D.C. Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times

There have been moments when its felt like the backlash to electing a man whos been credibly accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women and who has in fact bragged about assaulting women has been so profound, so righteous, that it could be harnessed to overhaul society as we know it.

The raw fury of the Womens March the day after President Trumps inauguration and the flourishing of the #MeToo movement were promising. Some men were held accountable for their abuses. A record number of women ran for office, and many of them won. The Equal Rights Amendment lurched back to life.

Nearly four years on, its clear that the patriarchy, while jostled on its pedestal, stands tall. Some people think it unmanly to wear a mask during a deadly pandemic, for goodness sake.

More troubling: Roe v. Wade, which is already so hobbled, could soon be overturned or gutted, leading to the further criminalization of pregnant women.

Since Mr. Trump took office, more women have come forward with credible sexual assault allegations against him including one that surfaced just last month. One of Mr. Trumps legacies will be whatever damage has surely been done to the national psyche for these claims to be buried by so many other disturbing events.

The bodies of Oscar Alberto Martnez Ramirez, a Salvadoran migrant, and his nearly 2-year-old daughter, Valeria, after they drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande from Mexico to Brownsville, Texas. Julia Le Duc/Associated Press

The Trump administration has worked to reduce the number of legal and illegal immigrants to the United States with a fanaticism and attention to detail that are notably absent from almost any other area of policymaking, save packing the courts with conservative judges.

The administration deliberately separated thousands of children from their parents to deter immigration. It cut the number of refugees admitted each year to the lowest level on record, denying sanctuary to thousands of people fleeing domestic and political violence. It has pursued the deportation of people brought to the country as small children, who have never known another country. It has prevented the immigration of scientists, engineers and other specialists whose talents might help to revitalize the American economy.

The president also is obsessed with building a wall along the Mexican border an inane idea his advisers first suggested because they wanted him to talk about immigration, and they knew he liked to talk about building things. The wall became such a fixation for Mr. Trump that he shut down the federal government in late 2018 in an attempt to wring funding from Congress. When that failed, he sought funding by declaring a national emergency. And when that failed, too, he took money from the defense budget to build a little bit of a wall.

If America once shone as a beacon of hope to the world, Mr. Trump tried his best to extinguish it.

At least 10,000 people protest in Los Angeles. The protest was organized by activists from Black Lives Matter as well as from an anti-fascist group calling for President Trumps immediate removal from office. Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Some of the most consequential moments of the Trump era thus far were the roughly eight minutes that a police officer knelt on George Floyds neck, suffocating him to death.

Mr. Floyds death at the hands of a police officer an appallingly common occurrence for Black people in the United States prompted one of the countrys largest social movements almost overnight. Millions of Americans, mostly masked to prevent coronavirus transmission, took to the streets in cities from coast to coast, outraged by police violence.

Adding to the righteous fury this year: the killing of Breonna Taylor in her home by the police for which no officer has been charged.

Mr. Floyd and Ms. Taylor became some of the most recognizable victims of police violence in recent memory. But this years uprisings were a supercharged continuation of the Black Lives Matter movement, which had been growing since the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. Those who march do so not just for the names we know but for all the names we dont.

Correction: An earlier version of this article described incorrectly the killing of Breonna Taylor. She was shot in a hallway of her home, not in her bed.

A fire burns 36,000 acres and 113 structures in California, forcing 68,000 residents to evacuate. Max Whittaker for The New York Times

For anyone who cares about the health of the planet, the Trump years have been, to say the least, profoundly discouraging. Barely two months in office, Mr. Trump ordered his cabinet to review and remove any regulatory obstacles to the production of oil, gas and coal; shortly thereafter, he renounced Americas support of the landmark Paris climate agreement, thus shedding any claim to American leadership on a global crisis.

It was more or less downhill from there. He methodically decapitated Obama-era rules aimed at limiting emissions from power plants and oil and gas operations and mandating increases in fuel-efficient vehicles. He also opened public lands hitherto shielded from exploration to mining and drilling.

There were other assaults large and small on environmental protections, but the most damaging were those that undermined rules to diminish greenhouse gases while enabling the industries that produced them. All this despite the climate-related carnage in front of his own eyes, conspicuously the fires in California and despite authoritative studies warning that failure to wrench emissions drastically downward over the next decade will bring irreversible damage.

Emissions in America, pre-Covid, declined slightly, thanks partly to the switch to cleaner fuels and the determined efforts of states and cites to do the job Mr. Trump wont do. Globally, however, theyve been rising, and the seas with them.

Vehicles fill a stadium parking lot before the start of a San Antonio Food Bank distribution. William Luther/The San Antonio Express-News, via Associated Press

Across America people are waiting for food, sitting in their cars in endless lines that stretch down streets or bend back and forth across blacktop parking lots. The scenes are reminiscent of the Great Depression: Images from a grim past come suddenly to life.

The coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the nations economy in the spring and, because the virus continues to spread, millions of people remain out of work.

At first, the Trump administration worked with Congress to provide aid to Americans in need. The Cares Act included one-time payments to most households coupled with an expansion in unemployment insurance.

Then the stock market began to recover, and Mr. Trump lost interest. As the federal funds ran out, the number of Americans living in poverty has grown by eight million since May, according to recent research. That increase happened even as the job market improved, a troubling sign that the economy isnt recovering fast enough to make up for the shrinking social safety net.

Job losses have been concentrated among low-wage workers, many of whom now need help to feed their families. The result: In the wealthiest nation on earth, hunger is on the rise, and overwhelmed food banks are struggling to help those whom the government has failed.

President Trump held a reception for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, his nominee for the Supreme Court, in the Diplomatic Room of the White House. Doug Mills/The New York Times

American conservatives made a bargain in rallying behind Donald Trump: Theyd turn a blind eye to his malevolence and incompetence in exchange for judges more than 200 federal judges and most likely three Supreme Court seats, as it turned out. Their eye was on numerous prizes: Destroy abortion rights. Expand religious freedom. Protect Americans nearly unfettered access to firearms. Cripple the federal governments ability to regulate the environment, interstate commerce and more.

This strategy has worked out pretty well for them. But it has come at a cost. This was made clear with the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett especially when the White House ceremony that was held to honor her in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic turned into a super-spreader event because most participants went unmasked and many mingled and shook hands indoors.

Still, conservatives will almost surely get their third seat on the court, affecting its makeup and very possibly eroding many Americans civil rights for a generation. Indeed, the bigger cost of the Republican Partys bargain with Mr. Trump will take many more years to calculate.

Armed protesters massed at the State Capitol in Lansing, Mich., in opposition to coronavirus-related orders. Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Guns sales in the United States typically rise under Democratic presidents and fall when a Republican is in the White House. That was true during the Trump presidency until the coronavirus pandemic hit and racial justice advocates began exercising their right to protest. Then, Americans armed up.

There may be no more iconic image of the Trump years than that of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the white St. Louis couple who were charged with unlawful use of a weapon for brandishing their guns at a crowd of demonstrators outside their gated home.

Far more alarming, though, was the sight of groups of men armed with semiautomatic military-style rifles, calling themselves militias, who appeared at protests around the country over the past year. President Trump has called for their ilk to stand by, and many have said theyll show up at polling places. Its a tense moment, with too many fingers resting on too many triggers.

A rally near the Brooklyn Museum and a silent march to call attention to police violence against transgender people, especially women of color. Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

In June, some 15,000 people encircled the Brooklyn Museum wearing masks and dressed in all white, forming one of the largest demonstrations for Black transgender lives in history.

Two days before that gathering, the Trump administration finalized regulations dismantling protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals and insurance companies protections that were urgently needed in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Last fall, the American Medical Association declared the killings of transgender women of color its own epidemic. Violence against the L.G.B.T.Q. community has spiked under the Trump administration, emboldened by a president who has barred transgender people from the military, rejected plans to add questions on sexual orientation to the census, prohibited embassies from flying flags for Pride Month, condoned discrimination at home and turned a blind eye to attacks on gay communities abroad.

The Obama administrations years were marked by signs of progress for L.G.B.T.Q. communities, but for every cautious step that had been taken forward, Mr. Trump signaled his intent to take running leaps backward. In the first week of his administration, all mentions of L.G.B.T.Q. rights on the White House website disappeared.

In what could be his final months in office, Mr. Trump nominated a jurist to the Supreme Court who has refused to say whether she supports the courts ruling protecting same-sex marriage. It appears that Amy Coney Barrett and Mr. Trump agree: No progress is too deeply rooted to be undone.

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Opinion | A Nation Adrift - The New York Times