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We cant reckon with the extreme inequalities and inherent injustices of immigration policy without an analysis of how borders, the state and capitalism function to create them.

Current liberal immigration news is often centered on reducing current harm resisting Trumps border wall and expansion of concentration camps, advocating for immigration reform and countering attacks on the asylum process. All of these efforts are critical to preventing more unnecessary death and suffering and should not be dismissed. We need more of them.

However, if we truly want to live in a world that is equal, just and inclusive to all, a more honest conversation is required about the politics of borders and migration.

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In order to understand immigration policy, it is important to acknowledge that we live in a world of global apartheid propped up by borders and nation states that exist to protect capital and territory, and restrict mobility. Border militarization is necessary in global capitalism in order to maintain a system of resource and labor exploitation that persists among nations, particularly in the NorthSouth Divide.

Nandita Sharma a professor of sociology at the University of Hawaii in Mnoa and an activist in feminist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and the autonomous worldwide No Borders movement told Truthout: Every immigration policy is designed to exclude. You can fine-tune it but at the end of the day, who are we to decide who gets to move and who doesnt get to move who gets to live and who gets to die?

Immigration policies will never be just or fair. Lets break it down.

For almost a century after the Declaration of Independence was signed, the United States had open borders. Restrictive immigration laws did not exist in the U.S. until 1875 when the Page Act was signed, which primarily targeted unfree Chinese laborers, or coolies, and women brought for lewd and immoral purposes.

The Page Act was a precursor to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which dramatically shifted immigration policy and laid the foundation for more restrictive mobility laws, and the U.S. grew into the contemporary nation state we know today.

There is a debate on what is meant by the nation state and when it emerged historically, but all states want to control peoples mobility, Sharma told Truthout. Nation states control mobility by preventing people from entering. They tend to be less concerned with people leaving.

The border controls migration materially and in our mind. It exists in one place and yet, the border is everywhere and is constantly shifting, said Marisa Holmes an activist filmmaker, graduate student at Rutgers University, and organizer with the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council (MACC) in New York City in an interview with Truthout. In other words, the border is pervasive, making its way into everyday life even well within the confines of the country: It exists at Border Patrol checkpoints, as agents on New York busses, ICE raids in Mississippi, migrant detention facilities in Philadelphia.

Alejandra Pablos an immigrant rights and reproductive justice organizer and a member of the migrant justice group Mijente told Truthout that in Arizona, its super militarized.

Theres always police, added Pablos, who has been in deportation proceedings since 2011. Theres always check points. Theres always soldiers.

With her Mexican passport, a paper that lets you cross borders, Pablos said she can travel easily into Mexico from Arizona, but she can just never come back again to this side of the wall.

According to Roberto Lovato, a writer and journalist working out of the San Francisco Writers Grotto who has worked or reported on Central American refugee issues for almost 30 years, the border is an illusion, a deadly, murderous, memory-destroying thing.

To create a border, states have to destroy the memory of what came before it.

Many of the memories destroyed by borders have to do with connection. Borders separate and rank people, helping to create and solidify hierarchies of identity. The creation of identities is woven into the fabric of national laws and ideology, and those laws and ideologies reinforce which identities belong (white, male, heterosexual, Christian), and which do not.

Nationalism is an ideology that legitimizes the idea of the nation and organizes a political community on that basis, said Sharma.

Whiteness is a sociopolitical construct, an American lie, as James Baldwin called it, that was created because of the necessity of denying the Black presence, and justifying the Black subjugation.

It is in The Naturalization Act of 1790, which stated that any alien, being a free white person, could apply for citizenship as long as they lived in the U.S. for two years and in the state where they filed for at least one year.

Whiteness has evolved in the U.S. over time and is inextricably attached to power and labor. It was essentially an adjective for the ruling class, said Sharma.

Whiteness, nationalism and immigration controls are systems of exclusion and hierarchy that the ruling class uses to maintain power. Solidarity among workers is fractured both within the state and across borders, as people imagine themselves to be divided by races and nations.

It is a strategy to dupe this part of the working class into thinking they were something other than working class people, Sharma added. That portion [which] imagines themselves as white continually falls for it over and over again.

Leftist migration scholars and activists point to two common misconceptions of the border. The first is that a wall, borders, or even the entire Department of Homeland Security can stop people from migrating when they need to move. All evidence and studies on this show that tougher immigration policies do not deter people from migrating.

The second, perhaps bigger fallacy according to Sharma, is believing that immigration controls are meant to stop people from entering. Theyre designed to weaken them once they get in, said Sharma. The whole system from start to finish is one that makes money off of all of this misery.

Billions have been spent on border enforcement, migrant detention and surveillance. From detention camp contractors like CoreCivic and the GEO Group to tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Dell, and data-mining companies such as Palantir, who all contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to the staffing of nearly 20,000 Border Patrol agents whose salaries start just above $55,000, to the private prison firms who lobby Republicans, the list of who profits from migration policing and surveillance goes on and on.

For Pablos, borders and capitalism go hand in hand. Were reproducing global mass displacement through our capitalism, said Pablos, who spoke about how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) fueled migration. Meanwhile, the criminalization of migrants ensures that at the same time, capitalism thrives.

Capitalists also profit off of those who make it across the border. When you have 11 million people with no legal status, who risked their lives to get here, who spent their life savings or went into debt in the process, you create a labor pool that is vulnerable, cheap and exploitable.

Trump himself has historically benefitted from undocumented labor and even admitted this is a common hiring practice among employers as a way that people did business.

A cutoff of undocumented labor could well cause a recession and lead the economy to contract.

Entire sectors of the American economy would effectively cease to exist were it not for undocumented immigrants, Sharma said.

Transcending borders and nation states is a revolutionary project. The institutions that sustain them will not be taken down by politicians in our current political system, no matter how progressive that person may be, although the most left candidate might create the political conditions to expand our horizons in terms of challenging borders, according to Sharma.

Like any revolutions in our past, dismantling these systems would require massive mobilization, direct action, organizing, political education, and drastic shifts in consciousness across all borders.

When I talk about abolition, Im talking a lot about creation, Pablos said. Organizers like myself do have that new vision, and were ready to have these conversations. And again, if people created the structures, we can create new things. We can create new values, new principles.

Note: Both Roberto Lovato and Nandita Sharma have books that will be released in 2020. Lovatos reported memoir about the Salvadoran diaspora will be released in the fall. Sharmas Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants will be released by Duke University Press in February.

This story was produced with support from the Freedomways Reporting Project, a fellowship program for journalists in the U.S. South whose reporting advances justice.

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We Can't Obtain Immigration Justice in a World of Borders and Nations - Truthout

Practical obstacles to implementing policy illustrate how agencies assess their own constitutional authority.

Since 2017, the Trump Administrations successive executive orders and administrative actions have relentlessly assaulted the asylum process, dismantled foundational refugee protections, and distorted the immigration admissions system. A new administration must address the damage inflicted on individuals, institutions, and the rule of law. Because legislation is only a remote possibility, reversing recent policies and restoring a semblance of integrity will depend on decisive and effective executive actions

This essay offers personal reflections on some of the bureaucratic barriers to achieving change that a new administration must anticipateregardless of whether its most immediate efforts are merely restorative to return to the 2016 status quo ante or more ambitiously reformative to pursue new normative immigration policies. Although the threshold challenge for an administration is to determine its policies and priorities, the key to actually achieving meaningful reform will depend on the harder task of overcoming bureaucratic inertia and implementing new policies. That will be even more difficult than usual because of the norm-breaking practices of the current administration and the whiplash effect of reversing recently adopted measures.

I write based on my experience as a political appointee in the Obama Administration during the adoption of a series of immigration reform measures in 2014. For two years, I participated in the development and implementation of many of those reforms and in the day-to-day operation of the immigration adjudication apparatus as senior counselor to the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and then as the senior immigration counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security. My background is atypical for someone in these positions. I spent most of my career litigating cases against federal immigration agencies as the founder and director of the ACLU Immigrants Rights Project, and I had neither the benefit nor the encumbrance of any prior executive branch experience. My discussion reflects on my experiences and elaborates on some of the real-world hurdles to implementing policy pronouncements, such as bureaucratic inertia, resistance to delegating discretion, cumbersome internal legal and policy processes, and the U.S. Department of Justices review of agency action.

Preference for Stasis. One embedded bureaucratic instinct I encountered firsthand is the well-known resistance to change, or perhaps more accurately preference for stasis. Although this might be explained by adherence to predictability, I experienced it as driven more by the entrenchment of the status quo independent of any purported normative valuesat least when the proposed changes were designed to move in a more immigrant-friendly direction.

An especially revealing experience arose from efforts to modify a categorical disqualifying factor in the adjudication of certain immigration benefits. The goal was to dial back just slightly a new ground for disqualification and to authorize adjudicators to exercise case-by-case discretion based on individual circumstances. After considerable intra-departmental discussion, I presented a proposed consensus approach to senior career managers. To my surprise, they opposed the change despite their earlier reported opposition to adopting the disqualification in the first place. I asked if they had supported the bar that we now proposed softening, thinking navely that confronting them with their own earlier views might diminish their current opposition. But that was not the case. Oh no, said one. Instead, the rule was wrong to begin with and a big mistake when it was adopted. But now that its the rule, we dont want to change it.

The preference for the status quo could be motivated by the burden of implementing changes, the risk of never-settled policy, the instinct that future cases should not be treated differently than those already completed, a general opposition to expansion of discretion, and perhaps a shift in normative preferences. But whatever the reason, a new administration intending to reverse recent policies must anticipate substantial bureaucratic resistance to abandoning any entrenched practices, no matter how recently adopted, and even if the career civil servants themselves strongly objected to adoption of the recent policies in the first place.

Resistance to Broad Discretion. A second experience was the bureaucratic resistance to conferring discretionary authority on adjudicators. This phenomenon arose in the context of trying to ameliorate some of the especially harsh consequences of particular immigration provisions where the law conferred greater discretionary authority than was being exercised, and some of us at USCIS sought to expand it.

Contrary to my expectations, I discovered a general opposition from many senior career public servants to expanding the authority of adjudicators to exercise discretion. The managers resisted because they viewed discretion as inviting arbitrary and inconsistent outcomes. Like cases should have like results, they insisted. If individual adjudicators were vested with substantial discretion, then similarly situated individuals would receive different results. Although not expressly framed in constitutional values, the resistance seemed rooted in the due process norms of equality, fairness, and consistency. Invoking the related value of transparency, career managers also explained that outcomes should appear legitimate to the applicant and to the public and thus should be based on identifiable criteria that cash out similarly in similar circumstances.

Yet interestingly, these due process-like concerns for limiting discretion did not seem to generate support for other fairness-enhancing improvements to the adjudication process, such as greater in-person applicant participation, a more active role for counsel, or increased explanation of outcomes. Some reforms of this type might, of course, impose costs that do not arise when restricting the exercise of discretion. But it is noteworthy nonetheless that asserting a fairness norm in one setting did not translate into concern for improved procedures across the board.

Another reason for resisting broader discretionary authority that was less explicit but that I strongly sensed is what political scientist Christopher Hood has called the blame game. Civil servants understandably fear they will be blamedby the public, the media, agency leadership, or their immediate superiorsif favorable exercises of discretion later lead to negative publicity or outcomes. Restricting discretion or choosing to exercise it negatively avoids that risk of blame. The goal of blame avoidance leads to an obvious asymmetry whereby negative decisions denying benefits or relief are safer than granting relief, especially in the immigration context where the subjects of government action are nearly invisible and powerless andunlike powerful regulated industriesrarely able to impose any consequences or costs on an agency that takes negative action.

In a related manifestation of the blame game, it appeared to me that career civil servants were also likely to view with skepticism or suspicion political leaders who sought to delegate discretionary authority to career employees. Such delegation was perceived not as an expression of confidence in the career bureaucrats but as a tactic by senior leaders to deflect accountability or to avoid blame if a decision later became controversial or turned out badly.

The resistance to conferring discretion led to a bureaucratic insistence on rules over standards, for bright lines over multi-factor tests, and for clear guidelines and prescriptive instructions governing any exercises of discretion. In my experience, when such direction is not articulated in some formal policy, the pressure for clarity shifts downstream to insistence on greater specificity in training materials, operating instructions, internal FAQs, or similar, less visible directives. But that, in turn, leads to diminished transparency if lower-level instructions are less subject to public disclosure. In any case, expanding individual discretion as a mechanism for injecting greater flexibility into harsh substantive provisions or prohibitions will encounter bureaucratic resistance.

The Review and Approval Process. The agencys deliberation and approval process is a further hurdle to overcome. One aspect, especially relevant to issues of administrative constitutionalism, is how agencies assess their own legal and constitutional authority.

At the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), primary responsibility for legal analysis lies with the chief counsel of the respective agencies who manage hundreds of career lawyers and report to the DHS Office of the General Counsel. Agency counsel and their staff decide in the first instance whether a proposed policy is legally authorized, requires formal rulemaking, meets constitutional criteria, and satisfies other legal requirements.

As part of that internal review processwhether for drafting proposed regulations, policy memos, field guidance, or new training materialsworking groups are composed of subject matter experts, operational representatives, members of the policy department, specialist lawyers from counsels offices, perhaps representatives of the agencys political leadership, and any other unit that has equities in the policy. The members work together over considerable time to craft and review draft documents until rough consensus is reached. Logjams are broken by elevating disagreements to more senior career managers or to the political leadership of an agency. This process is enormously time-consuming and subject to foot-dragging if any of the participating members raise objections or insist on consulting more widely. In my experience, the processthough working largely as intended to build consensuswas agonizingly slow and open to interminable delay and potential manipulation by those who opposed change.

Moreover, if a significant legal objection arises during this process, the issue must be resolved for the working group to continue, either by satisfying the lawyer who raised it or by elevating the issue through the legal chain of command. Very occasionally, in matters of great importance and where competing persuasive views among senior lawyers or advisors exist, DHS leadership might adjudicate the issue to make a policy choice after considering a range of legal advice. Although the General Counsels Office receives great deference, during my tenure the leadership of DHS was itself composed of enormously accomplished lawyers who actively engaged with legal issues, invited detailed presentations and debate, and exercised judgment to resolve divergent views.

The Department of Justice. The Justice Department plays a prominent role in assessing the legality of potential policies, most formally through the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). The OLC process was striking to me because of the absence of a mechanism akin to the intense adversarial briefing and argument that I was accustomed to in litigation. During my time, I observed OLC publish a major opinion on the legality of the Obama Administrations Deferred Action for Parents of Americans initiative. The OLC process seemed intensely insular indeed what I would call bureaucratically monasticin that OLC considered and resolved legal questions through its own internal analysis and deliberations. Although expertise may be invited by soliciting the views of agency counsel, there appeared to be no institutional mechanism by which differing views from outside OLC could be openly presented, interrogated, and tested against each other.

The OLC process seems especially risky when dealing with a statute like the massively complex and convoluted Immigration and Nationality Act where the OLC approach is in danger of omitting or overlooking important perspectives and insights. OLCs role as the quasi-adjudicator of legal questions would be enhanced if its procedures recognizedas judges understandthat the crucible of adversarial testing is crucial to sound judicial decision-making and will yield insights (or reveal pitfalls) we cannot muster guided only by our own lights.

Lastly, the Justice Department may assess the litigation risk that a new policy could present. But doing so reinforces a status quo bias. Although assessing potential exposure to lawsuits is valuable, litigation risk is not the same as legal impermissibility. A judgment as to whether a policy might reasonably face some legal challenge should not be conflated with the range of permissible agency actions under the law. Otherwise, risk-averse assessments will preemptively constrain lawful agency initiatives.

A new administration can powerfully address the damage done to immigrants, the immigration system, and the rule of law since January 2017 by acting decisively and strategically. But effective implementation of change requires overcoming entrenched policies, anticipating bureaucratic realities, enlisting dedicated career civil servants, and streamlining baroque review processes. Appreciating these institutional realities is essential to overcoming them and to achieving reform when the opportunity comes.

Lucas Guttentag is the Martin R. Flug Lecturer in Law and Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School and Professor of the Practice of Law at Stanford Law School.

Lucas Guttentag is grateful for the encouragement and advice of Nicholas Parrillo and the excellent research assistance of Arjun Mody.

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Reflections on Bureaucratic Barriers to Immigration Reform - The Regulatory Review

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In the wake of every House Republican voting against impeaching Donald Trump, it's reasonable to see the GOP as the president's party, remade in his image. But to truly understand the transformation of the Republican Party during the Trump years, we actually should focus on someone else: Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Jordan's journey from gadfly loathed by party leadership to ranking committee member, presidential confidant, and party leader exemplifies how the GOP has changed in the Trump Era and how Trumpism won't be easily undone after the 45th president leaves office.

The ideological transformation of the Republican Party has been ongoing for more than a half century. What was once the party of moderates like Dwight Eisenhower and liberals like Nelson Rockefeller, dominated by figures from the two coasts and stalwarts in the Midwest, slowly became a staunchly conservative party centered in the South.

By the time Jordan was first elected to Congress in 2006, the highly conservative Texan George W. Bush was president. But Bush had a pragmatic streak. He cut bipartisan deals on education and immigration reform (which failed thanks to a revolt led by conservative talk radio), added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, and preached compassionate conservatism.

The story of the party's move towards total war politics and Trumpism is the story of how Jordan's breed of politics eclipsed Bush's brand of conservatism.

Jordan was one of the most conservative members of the House during his first two terms. But he was also insignificant with Republicans in the minority. Once the Tea Party wave swept his party to power, however, Jordan was flush with new hardline allies. He was elected to lead the Republican Study Committee, a large conservative group within the new Republican majority.

Within months, he had become a thorn in the side of House Speaker John Boehner, insisting that failing to raise the debt ceiling would not result in the United States defaulting, and opposing a leadership proposal for addressing the matter. His staff even conspired with outside groups to pressure Republicans to vote against Boehner's proposal. Two years later, Jordan was a key player in forcing a government shutdown because President Obama would not agree to delaying and defunding his signature health-care legislation for a year a tactic Boehner had warned would leave leading Democrats grinning because they "can't believe we're this f---ing stupid." Though Republicans were widely perceived to have lost the shutdown battle, Jordan was unrepentant.

He believed that Democrats could be compelled to capitulate through the use of hardline tactics, brinkmanship, and a total unwillingness to compromise.

In 2015, Jordan became the founding chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a smaller, even more hardline group that would come to fight against numerous leadership initiatives. By that fall, Freedom Caucus members against Jordan's counsel pushed Boehner into early retirement and helped scuttle the candidacy of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to succeed him.

While 70 percent of Freedom Caucus endorsed Paul Ryan to succeed Boehner, it was only after he made them numerous promises to secure their support. Even so, Jordan and his allies would make Ryan's life difficult as they had Boehner's. So much did leadership worry about Jordan that when House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz announced he would resign from Congress in 2017, leadership helped recruit Rep. Trey Gowdy to run for the position to ensure that it wouldn't fall to Jordan.

In an interview after retiring, Boehner called Jordan a "legislative terrorist" and an "asshole."

In an earlier era, a figure like Jordan who constantly picked fights with his own party's leadership would have faced serious repercussions. Banishment to the most insignificant and unpleasant committees, an inability to get things done for his home district, perhaps even a primary challenge.

But in an era with a proliferation of conservative media talk radio, cable news, and digital outlets someone like Jordan could instead become a star by picking the same fights. Conservative media is a business and the best radio and television comes from black and white content strongly voiced opinions, clear convictions, exhortations to principles, things that stir emotion and keep the audience tuned in. That meant that someone like Jordan preached what viewers and listeners the Republican base heard every day. Further, his style of politics made for far more compelling radio or television than a committee chairman or Republican leader explaining why divided government or Senate rules necessitated compromises.

This fit between the business interests of conservative media and his politics made Jordan one of the heroes on the conservative airwaves and a frequent guest. Stardom gave him too much of an independent power base by the mid-2010s for leadership to punish him meaningfully. He didn't need them for fundraising, and any attempt at discipline would've sent him scurrying to the airwaves to fight back. In the end, it might've been leadership who lost the fight because conservative media had the ear of exactly the sorts of voters who showed up in low turnout Republican primaries, the most critical elections in most Republican districts in an era of geographic polarization.

But while conservative media helped to make Jordan impervious to leadership criticism, it didn't make him part of that leadership. His elevation came thanks to Trump. Jordan caught the ear of Trump, and became a confidant and one of the president's fiercest defenders.

When Republicans lost control of the House in 2018 and Ryan and Gowdy retired, new House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the Republican Steering Committee installed Jordan, with encouragement from Trump, as the ranking member of the Oversight Committee. This was a significant change from 2017, when there was doubt the Steering Committee would choose Jordan given the animosity from many Republicans towards him. And then as impeachment hearings were about to begin in front of the House Intelligence Committee, McCarthy made the unusual move of temporarily removing another Republican to add Jordan to the committee. McCarthy saw great benefit in Jordan's trademark aggressive questioning and vigorous defense of Trump.

During those hearings, Elise Stefanik, long seen as the anti-Jim Jordan, a leadership ally, one of the most moderate Republicans in the House, and someone previously focused on solutions and bipartisanship, became an instant sensation with Jordan-like questioning and charges against Democrats, and even joined him for press conferences. Reporting indicates that this was a savvy move for Stefanik both in her Republican-leaning district and within the House GOP.

While it's unquestionably easier for leadership to be aligned with Jordan in the minority, when they have no responsibility for governing, it's also true that the onetime leadership antagonist is now the top Republican on a key committee and a major spokesman for the House GOP. Stefanik's move exposes how Jordan's tactics are what Republican voters want from their elected officials. Far from an outsider, Jordan is now part of the Republican establishment one that sees politics much more like he does than George W. Bush. And that's not likely to change even when Trump leaves office, be it in 2021 or 2025.

For better or worse, it's Jim Jordan's GOP now.

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How a 'legislative terrorist' conquered the Republican Party - The Week

The romance between American voters and the bodacious, burgeoning Trump economy has intensified. The political implications are many and none other than CNN spells things out.

As 2019 comes to a close, the U.S. economy earns its highest ratings in almost two decades, potentially boosting President Trump in matchups against the Democrats vying to face him in next years election, writes Grace Sparks, an associate producer for CNN.

Its not just loyal Republicans who are swooning over the economy, though. A new poll from the network found that 76% of Americans overall say the economy is good, That includes 97% of Republicans, 88% of conservatives, 75% of independents, 80% of moderates, 62% of Democrats and 56% of liberals. Everybodys pretty happy.

Another 68% overall say the economy will still be good a year from now. That includes 89% of Republicans, 84% of conservatives, 68% of independents, 69% of moderates, 52% of Democrats and 48% of liberals.

The CNN poll of 1,005 U.S. adults was conducted Dec. 12-15, right in the middle of the impeachment wars.

As perceptions of the economy have brightened, the poll also shows matchups between the top Democrats vying for the 2020 nomination and Trump tightening. In October, four Democrats tested in hypothetical head-to-head contests with Trump among registered voters lead by anywhere from six to 10 percentage points. Now, just two of those candidates hold edges, Ms. Sparks advises.

They are Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lead by five and four percentage points, respectively.

The tighter margins against the president come as favorability ratings appear to be sliding for the top Democratic contenders, Ms. Sparks writes.

IMPEACH-MESS

Merry Impeachmas remains the rallying cry of the moment among Democrats. The phrase, tweeted out by Washington Post reporter Rachael Bade, became a strategic social media hashtag.

And then there is Merry Impeach-mess.

The phrase was coined by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who says the mess part belongs to the Democrats.

This entire impeachment charade isnt serious and neither are its advocates. Think about it: This is the first modern impeachment without a scrap of bipartisan support. Not a single Republican voted in favor of the articles and worse for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, multiple Democrats voted against them, Mr. Perkins notes.

So when Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch goes on television and wishes people a Merry Christmas, the Left isnt upset about December 25th. Theyre upset about every other day of the year that President Trump is moving faith and the freedom of religion forward. When you get right down to it, liberals dont have many options. This impeachment is their last-ditch effort to preserve the Lefts secular domination of the culture. And they have everything to lose, Mr. Perkins explains.

THE BORDER EFFECT

The Federation for American Immigration Reform has revealed a potential effect of immigration on the U.S. House. Things could change.

The presence of all immigrants (naturalized citizens, legal residents, and illegal aliens) and their U.S.-born minor children will redistribute 26 seats in the House in 2020. To put this number in perspective, changing the party of 21 members of the current Congress would flip the majority in the U.S. House, the independent research organization says in a new report.

Of the 26 seats that will be lost, 24 are from states that voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Of states that will gain House seats because of immigration, 19 seats will go to the solidly Democratic states of California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois. Texas is the only solidly Republican state that gains, while Florida is a swing state.

Elsewhere, Ohio will have three fewer seats in 2020, Michigan and Pennsylvania two fewer seats. Those states predicted to lose one state each: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, California will gain 11 seats, New York and Texas four each, Florida three; New Jersey two. Illinois and Massachusetts each gain one additional seat. The findings are based on the patterns of new arrivals. Most of the immigrant populations take up residence in a limited number of states.

If immigrants were evenly spread throughout the country, they would have no impact on the distribution of House seats, the research said.

BOOKMAKERS: TRUMPS GONNA WIN

Despite officially being impeached, President Trumps odds of reelection have slightly improved, according to betting aggregators US-Bookies.com. Over the past week, Mr. Trump went from 1/1 to 10/11 to win the 2020 presidential election, the organization said.

Despite all the fanfare about the presidents impeachment, the reality is that this is highly unlikely to materialize into a conviction, says industry analyst Alex Donohue. The betting markets now suggest the upshot of this entire process is that Trump is more likely to win 2020.

The bookmakers live election tracker currently gives Mr. Trump a 47.6% chance of winning, up from 40% at the beginning of December.

The odds that Mr. Trump gets convicted by the Senate are currently 8/1. While this isnt a dramatic long shot, the 1/16 odds that he wont get convicted by the Senate suggest that its much more likely that the impeachment wont pass. Trump also has 1/10 odds to finish his first term in office, indicating that he should be here to stay, says Mr. Donahue.

POLL DU JOUR

33% of Americans are paying a lot of attention to the 2020 presidential election; 31% of Republicans, 28% of independents and 42% of Democrats agree.

27% overall are paying some attention to the election; 29% of Republicans, 25% of independents and 28% of Democrats agree.

24% say they are paying only a little attention to the election; 28% of Republicans, 23% of independents and 22% of Democrats agree.

15% overall say they are paying no attention at all to the election; 12% of Republicans, 24% of independents and 8% of Democrats agree.

Source: AN ECONOMIST/YOUGOV poll of 1,500 U.S. ADULTS conducted Dec. 14-17.

Kindly follow Jennifer Harper on Twitter @HarperBulletin.

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Inside the Beltway: 76% of Americans say the economy is good - Washington Times

The top San Antonio stories of the year included allegations of domestic violence involving a top mayoral candidate, the immigration crackdown at the border and its impact on the city, and repeated questions about the slow-moving $450 million makeover of Alamo Plaza.

Greg and Annalisa Brockhouse at the Brockhouse election night party at Violas Ventanas on June 8. The couple now says Annalisa Brockhouse filed a false police report and a 2009 domestic violence incident didnt happen. But evasions during the campaign make it difficult to know what to believe.

A top story prize goes to Greg Brockhouse, an ambitious former councilman who would have bested Mayor Ron Nirenberg at the ballot box if not for an unfortunate incident in his past that he thought he had nipped in the bud.

In 2009, Brockhouses wife, Annalisa, called 911 to report that her husband, who had recently lost his job and had been drinking a lot, grabbed her and threw her to the ground. She told police that Brockhouse was trying to hit her and she kept trying to push him off, according to a police report.

After the Express-News obtained the report and revealed its contents in March inconveniently, in the heat of the mayors race Brockhouse repeatedly denied to local media that he knew anything about it. Likewise, city officials insisted the report did not exist.

Story:Past domestic violence allegations emerge against mayoral candidate Greg Brockhouse

Amid the candidates evasions, a local movement sprang up dubbed Met: Diversity Defeating Violence, bringing renewed focus to the issue of domestic violence here, where at least 29 people were killed in family violence incidents last year.

Eventually, after Brockhouse lost the runoff election in June, he and his wife acknowledged in a television interview that she had called police and accused him of domestic violence. But Annalisa Brockhouse blamed herself and her postpartum depression for an argument that she said escalated to the point that she made a false police report against her husband.

Brockhouse admitted that he and his wife had arranged to have the report legally expunged: a process they initiated shortly before Brockhouse launched his first campaign for City Council.

Related:Annalisa Brockhouse says she called police on her husband in 2009 even though he never harmed her

This rendering shows the appearance of Alamo Plaza under a master plan that would include an interpretation of the south wall and historic main gate of the mission and 1836 battle compound, made of structural glass. Other features include a 135,000-square-foot museum; historic footings of the historic walls displayed under structural glass; and interpretation of an acequia, or water canal, on the west end of the plaza.

After years of planing and fundraising, the project finally got a green light for construction to begin, despite litigation involving historic cemetery claims, opposition to potential building demolitions and lingering concerns about pedestrian access to one of San Antonios most cherished public spaces.

The Texas General Land Office and nonprofit Alamo Trust now manage a portion of the citys Alamo Plaza that falls within the historic footprint of the Mission San Antonio Valero and 1836 Alamo compound. The $450 million, public-private renovation includes $100 million committed by the state and $38 million from the city.

Under the plan, much of the plaza that had been within the walls of the mission-fort will be lowered 18 inches and enclosed with a 42-inch-high wall. The projects first phase may start in February with the relocation of the 1930s Cenotaph from its current spot to the south end of the plaza.

Story:Legal battle looming over Alamo cemetery in downtown San Antonio

The Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation and Alamo Defenders Descendants Association have lawsuits pending against the Land Office, city and Texas Historical Commission that seek to force the project to include comprehensive studies on the location and boundaries of cemeteries at the Alamo, among other matters. Bones and partial skeletons have been found during excavatons in the Alamo church.

Another concern is possible demolition of the 1921 Woolworth Building for a museum to house a $15.5 million collection donated by rock singer Phil Collins. The building once housed one of several local lunch counters that peacefully integrated in 1960.

Related:After listening to intense criticism, San Antonio commission approves first phase of Alamo overhaul

A Border Patrol Agent rescues a seven year old boy from Honduras after he fell out of a make shift raft and lost hold of his mother as Border Patrol agents respond to three rafts crossing the Rio Grande River in Eagle Pass, on Friday, May 10, 2019.

The border was in turmoil all year. Immigration courts were closed due to the government shutdown and reopened, the citys migrant center opened and closed, and the fates of asylum-seekers after crossing the border altered drastically from getting released into the country as their court cases played out, to being detained and sent back to Mexico or Guatemala.

In the spring, the federal government proceeded with plans for more border wall, which was expected to slice through protected habitat, a butterfly center and the grounds of a small church. Environmentalists and indigenous groups began sounding the alarms, worried the steel bollards and 150-foot enforcement of the border wall would destroy their land. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, eventually added language in a budget deal protecting many, though not all, of the threatened areas.

By the end of March, tens of thousands of migrants were crossing the border and presenting themselves to the Border Patrol: the highest monthly arrest figures in years. They overwhelmed Border Patrol stations, and the Trump administration began releasing hundreds every day in communities all along the border.

Story:'No other solution': With children in tow, mothers' journey ends in death at the border

Meanwhile, San Antonios bus station downtown became a highly trafficked way station as migrants arrived from the border on their way to stay with family sponsors around the country.

To deal with the influx, the city ran an emergency Migrant Resource Center, where it provided food, clothes, toiletries, toys and medical services. The migrants slept at Travis Park Church. Overall, the city - in partnership with Catholic Charities, the Interfaith Welcome Coalition and the Food Bank - aided more than 32,000 migrants. Most were asylum-seeking families from Central America, though waves of Cuban, Haitian and African migrants also arrived.

The flow of migrants slowed down in the fall, and the Trump administration issued a new, controversial policy: Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as Remain in Mexico. Border Patrol agents stopped releasing migrants into the U.S. and instead began sending them back into Mexico to await their hearings. There, migrants are being kidnapped and extorted by gangs and have little to no access to legal representation.

Related:Kidnapped and attacked in Mexico, migrants are giving up their asylum claims

Julin Castro, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, carries a rose given to him by a supporter as he leaves a rally at Hemisfair Park in San Antonio April 10. His campaign should be measured with different yardstick.

Among the crop of Democratic candidates for president this year, arguably none was more fixated on the plight of undocumented immigrants than former Mayor Julin Castro, who visited an encampment of hundreds who were stranded by the Remain in Mexico program.

Castro has struggled to gain traction in the polls, but his ongoing candidacy is big news here, where he was born and raised and served as mayor for more than two terms.

Story:San Antonios Julin Castro aims at the rich with wealth inequality tax

Hes the only Latino whos running. He also was the first Democrat with an immigration plan. He called for decriminalizing border crossings, a proposal that transcended conventional arguments for immigration reform. He earned a burst of attention after the first debate when he lectured former El Paso Rep. Beto ORourke on a section of federal law that made crossing the border a criminal offense.

Long after ORourke dropped out, Castro remains in the race but didnt meet the polling threshold for the December debate.

Related:Julin Castro sees lift in polls despite being knocked off debate stage

Lake Dunlap property owners have created a model of collaboration with the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority that could work for other nearby lakes.

The Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority planned to drain lakes McQueeney, Placid, Meadow and Gonzales until more than 300 property owners sued to stop the agency from doing so.

Two other lakes on the Guadalupe River have disappeared after spill gates on the aging dams there collapsed without warning: Lake Wood in 2016 and Lake Dunlap in May. The GBRA, which owns the dams, ordered the four remaining lakes to be drained, saying the structures were old, unsafe and lacked funds for repair. The state agency also outlawed recreational activities at the lakes.

Story:End of an era: Imminent danger along the Guadalupe will force the drainage of four lakes

The legal action saved the lakes, and some of the bans on recreation have since been lifted. But the conflict is far from resolved. Those who are suing the GBRA argue the agency must repair or replace the six dams it owns, while the GBRA argues the law does not require replacing those structures.

Lake Dunlap property owners arent waiting for the courts. In October, they agreed to form a water control and improvement district and place it on a ballot, perhaps in November. If approved, the owners would tax themselves and the GBRA would kick in some money to repair the dam and refill the lake.

Related:Quest to limit GBRAs spending fails

Texas Organizing Project supporter Kevin Lemelle had his thoughts on his cape. Lemelle celebrated with fellow supporters after the San Antonio City Council voted 8-3 to pass a revised sick leave ordinance on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2019. City Council members Rebecca Viagran, Manny Pelaez and Clayton H. Perry voted against the ordinance.

Another seemingly endless court battle the fight over paid sick leave roiled the City Council.

An ordinance requiring San Antonio employers to provide paid sick leave to an estimated 354,000 workers who dont get the benefit was scheduled to take effect Dec. 1. But that was before state District Judge Peter Sakai sided with a coalition of local firms and business groups that wanted to stop the law from taking effect while they challenge it in court.

Story:Judge stops San Antonios paid sick leave ordinance from taking effect

The law would require all companies and nonprofits to give part-time and full-time employees one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. Progressive groups had gathered more than 140,000 signatures to put the matter to a vote in November 2018, but the City Council adopted the ordinance outright last August.

The coalition sued the city in July to invalidate it, arguing it violates the state constitution by requiring employers to do more than the states minimum wage law requires. The lawsuit was paused to allow a council-appointed commission to make revisions, but business groups revived their lawsuit in November.

Related:Over business leaders objections, San Antonio City Council approves revised sick leave ordinance

FILE PHOTO Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values, leads a press conference for Save Chick-fil-A Day for religious freedom in the central court outdoor rotunda at the Texas State Capitol.

Only slightly less controversial than paid sick leave was the City Councils decision in March to cut Chick-fil-A out of an airport concessions contract. Councilman Roberto Trevio led the charge to exclude the fast-food chain, citing its history of donating to faith-based organizations that oppose same-sex marriage.

Mayor Nirenberg, meanwhile, said the chain was excluded because it doesnt open on Sundays, when a lot of travelers pour through the airport.

Story:Chick-fil-A Alamodome: New documents shed light on S.A. City Councils controversial vote and a never-before-seen proposal

Coming amid the mayors race, this put some wind in the sails of Brockhouse, who was looking to distract voters from that pesky, previously mentioned police report. It also inflamed conservatives across Texas and led the Legislature to pass a bill that prohibits government entities from taking adverse action against a person or business based on an affiliation with a religious organization.

But Chick-fil-A flipped the script in November when it announced its foundation would halt donations to three faith-based groups, causing formerly sympathetic conservatives to suddenly spit out their chicken nuggets.

Related:Brockhouse apologizes to Chick-fil-A for San Antonios decision to remove restaurant from airport plan

Another major story this year explored evictions San Antonios high rate of evictions. Between 2011 and 2018, the number of eviction lawsuits filed in Bexar County rose by more than one-third, the largest jump among Texas's five most populous counties.

Teresa Garcia says the couple can barely make ends meet on their monthly income from Social Security and disability checks for Joe, who lost a leg from diabetes complications.

During that time, almost 86,000 cases ended with families losing their homes.

Story: Kicked Out: An Express-News investigation into evictions

Experts say the figure could be low because its impossible to know how many tenants left before going to court. Records dont show why people were evicted, either. But housing advocates suspect the growing number of evictions can be blamed on a number of things, including rising housing costs that have placed more people in financial jeopardy in San Antonio, recently ranked as the poorest large city in the country.

Housing advocates say some landlords are driving and profiting from the city's eviction epidemic. One San Antonio landlord, Bexar Met Property Management, was behind more than 900 eviction filings last year. The company controls 21 properties in San Antonio and has been accused of failing to make repairs and keeping shoddy accounting practices, even though it receives millions of dollars in federal rental subsidies each year.

Related:Kicked Out: How we reported this series

Another bad-news story this year was that of King Jay Davila, an 8-month-old infant who was reported kidnapped by his purported father, Christopher Davila, in early January after Davila stopped at a gas station.

The maternal grandmother of baby King Jay Davila watches with sorrow as doves are released during a Feb. 2 ceremony to remember her 8-month-old grandchild.

Police immediately noticed that Davilas story was suspect. Moments before he went inside the gas station, Davila checked twice to make sure the driver door to the car was unlocked, according to surveillance footage. Moments later, a woman later identified by police as Davilas cousin walked directly to the vehicle without hesitation, opened the drivers door, entered the vehicle and drove away.

Several days later, Davila changed his story and claimed King had died after the car seat holding the boy fell off a bed and hit the floor. He said he did not call 911 because he panicked. He led police to a Northeast Side field, where he had buried King in a backpack.

Story: Family of missing S.A. baby slam SAPD as authorities search a West Side park

Davila was arrested and charged with injury to a child causing serious bodily injury by omission, a first-degree felony, and tampering with evidence, along with two other unrelated charges.

Police also charged Davilas mother, Beatrice Sampayo, 64, and his cousin, Angie Torres, 45, with tampering with evidence for their roles in allegedly trying to cover up the death by helping stage the fake kidnapping.

Related:'That's my blood': Stunned to learn of King Jay's death, San Antonio man says baby is his son

Yet another high-profile crime occurred Jan. 10, when San Antonio hairstylist Nichol Leila Olsen and her two daughters were found shot to death in a luxury home in a gated subdivision in North Bexar County.

The relationship between Nichol Olsen and her boyfriend, Charles Wheeler, has come under intense scrutiny since Olsen and her two daughters were found shot to death in Wheelers home near Leon Springs on Jan. 10.

The deaths remain shrouded in mystery because the case is still open as the Bexar County Sheriffs Office and the FBI continue investigating. Authorities havent yet released any findings on what provoked the violence or who was responsible.

Olsen, 37, and her daughters, Clark High School cheerleader Alexa Denice Montez, 16, and Leon Springs Elementary student London Sophia Bribiescas, 10, were found close together in an upstairs hallway at a million-dollar house in the Anaqua Springs Ranch development. At the time, the residence was owned by Olsens boyfriend, Charles Edward Wheeler, now 32, a former rodeo competitor turned business owner in the oil field industry.

Story:A single mother, her millionaire boyfriend and how their storybook romance ended in horror

The Bexar County Medical Examiners Office quickly ruled Olsens death a suicide and her daughters deaths as homicides. Autopsies found Olsen and Montez had each been shot once in the head. Bribiescas suffered a gunshot wound to her head and neck. A handgun was found near Olsens body.

Within days of the shootings, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar described Wheeler as a person of interest, but not a suspect. More than 11 months later, sheriffs officials havent publicly cleared Wheeler, but now say they cannot discuss who is or isnt a potential person of interest in the case.Wheeler has never been charged. His attorneys denied that he committed any crime and said they welcomed the FBIs involvement in the case.

Related:Mourners reject suicide ruling in triple shooting at gated San Antonio-area community

Staff writers Silvia Foster-Frau, Peggy OHare, Emilie Eaton, Scott Huddleston and Marina Starleaf Riker contributed to this report.

Design by Mark Dunphy.

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The Express-News Stories of the Year 2019 - San Antonio Express-News