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Increased immigration enforcement has been one of the hallmarks of the Trump administration, with federal agents directed to seek the deportation of just about anyone they find in the country illegally no matter how long the person might have lived here or how deep the ties to family and community. In the first 100 days after the presidents inauguration, immigration arrests climbed nearly 40% over the previous year, a pace that will almost certainly increase if Congress accedes to President Trumps request to hire an additional 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to be assigned to the nations interior, and another 5,000 Border Patrol agents to work within 100 miles of the border.

Those buying into Trumps view of illegal immigrants as rapists, murderers and job stealers have no doubt been cheered by the enforcement effort, and they probably arent bothered by the rush to expand detention space to house those facing deportation hearings. But even they should recognize that capturing and incarcerating people is only part of the equation.

While the government under President Obama and now Trump has been ramping up immigration enforcement and detention, it has not invested a parallel amount of money in expanding the immigration courts capacity to handle the cases. Spending on immigration courts increased only 74% from 2003-2015 while enforcement spending went up 105%. Trumps 2018 budget would increase the total number of judicial positions, but its not clear if that will become law and for the moment the backlog of cases is continuing to grow.

At the end of September, the number of pending immigration cases stood at 516,031, according to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. By the end of May, that backlog had jumped to 598,943 cases, which have been pending for an average of 670 days each. New York City has the biggest backlog (78,670 cases), followed by Los Angeles (57,090).

Making matters worse, the Trump administration has temporarily reassigned judges to detention centers in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to handle cases primarily involving recent border-crossers. The problem with that is that fewer people are getting caught at the border these days, so moving judges there makes little sense. Why then is it happening? The answer: Optics. Sending judges to the border looks like a commitment to stronger and more serious enforcement, when in reality its a Potemkin effort that exacerbates backlogs in the courts from which the judges are transferred. At the same time, immigration lawyers say government attorneys have lately become tougher in their cases, taking harder lines with immigrants and reopening cases that had been suspended, adding more drag on the system.

This enormous backlog has real-life consequences. People in detention centers or jails are spending more time incarcerated as they await hearings on whether they will be allowed to remain in the country. For those with legitimate requests for asylum or other relief from deportation, the delays prolong uncertainty about whether they have found a sanctuary.

This should not make the anti-illegal immigration folks happy. If people arent getting deported but are just stuck in limbo in the immigration system, then Trumps ramped-up enforcement program is a chimera. Those immigrants who should be found ineligible to remain in the country because of criminal pasts or other disqualifications wind up, in effect, with open-ended reprieves.

The system is not working well for anybody except, perhaps, the operators of private prisons and local jails with ICE contracts that handle most of the detained immigrants. For a president who prides himself on his business and managerial acumen, this is a grotesquely failed approach to management.

Instead of taking this piecemeal approach to immigration enforcement, the administration should work with Congress to develop comprehensive immigration reform legislation that would create a path to citizenship for those who have established roots in our communities while tightening up enforcement at the border and tackling visa overstays. The Republican Party controls the White House and Congress. It has no excuses for not getting this done.

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Trump's aggressive immigration enforcement is overwhelming an already taxed court system - Los Angeles Times

President Donald Trump on Wednesday highlighted what he called the dangers posed by illegal immigrants ahead of an important House vote on two bills aimed at cracking down on those who commit crimes and cities that refuse to help deport them.

Appearing with families that were victimized by immigrants, Trump called on lawmakers to "honor grieving American families" by sending the "lifesaving measures" to his desk quickly. The House action marks the first major legislative test of tougher immigration laws under Trump, who has tried to impose sweeping executive orders to limit immigration and ramp up enforcement.

"You lost the people that you love because our government refused to enforce our nation's immigration laws," Trump told the families in the Cabinet Room. "For years, the pundits, journalists, politicians in Washington refused to hear your voices but on Election Day 2016 your voices were heard all across the entire world. No one died in vain I can tell you that."

The president's focus on immigration, a day after Republican leaders in the Senate postponed efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, illustrated the White House's eagerness to get back onto comfortable footing. Trump has consistently employed strong rhetoric to paint immigrants - both those in the country illegally and some who arrive through legal channels - as potentially dangerous.

"The president's involvement has brought the pace of this up, and we're doing it this week because he wants it to happen," said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, a fierce advocate for strict immigration laws who co-sponsored the bills set to be passed Thursday. "The members are ready for it, too."

The House votes - coming six months into Trump's presidency - are also highlighting the limits of congressional action and the frustrations of conservatives who expected much more to have been done already.

Trump's executive actions have had limited success. His travel ban on refugees and immigrants from several majority-Muslim countries was held up in federal court until the Supreme Court ruled this week that some of the provisions could be enacted while the Justices prepare for a hearing on the ban in the fall.

Arrests of undocumented immigrants have spiked under Trump compared to the final couple of years under his predecessor, President Barack Obama, who had sought to shield more immigrants from deportations. Illegal border crossings have fallen significantly since Trump took office, which immigrant rights advocates have said could be an effect of Trump's harsh rhetoric about illegal immigrants.

But on the legislative front, there has been little activity. Trump had suggested in February that he would be open to a comprehensive immigration reform bill that eluded presidents George W. Bush and Obama, but gaining buy-in from Democrats, and even some moderate Republicans, is seen as unlikely unless Trump is willing to compromise by allowing many unauthorized immigrants to gain legal status.

The House bills, by contrast, aim to enact tougher enforcement policies. One bill known as "Kate's Law" is named after Kate Steinle, the 32-year-old woman who was shot and killed in 2015 by an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times. The bill enhances penalties for convicted and deported criminals who reenter the United States illegally.

The other bill, called the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, would bar some federal grants from so-called "sanctuary cities" that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement authorities and allow victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants to sue those cities.

"This is about protecting law-abiding citizens and getting criminals off of our streets, plain and simple," House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Tuesday.

But several House conservatives - already frustrated that Trump has not acted more quickly to undo Obama's executive immigration actions - lamented it took so long into Trump's presidency to get any immigration bills onto the House floor. And they quietly questioned why a more far-reaching immigration bill passed by the House Judiciary Committee in March was not being voted on.

Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., who beat the sitting House majority leader in a 2014 GOP primary after campaigning on immigration, said leaders were more interested in "a couple of the name-brand messaging pieces" than pushing for a more thorough bill.

"I won on those issues. Trump won on those issues," Brat said. "Hello - only in D.C. can you not hear outside of the bubble."

Democrats, meanwhile, cast the bills as a mean-spirited attempt to rally Republicans around legislation that would mainly harm undocumented but otherwise law-abiding immigrants at a time when other major parts of the GOP agenda are foundering.

"They're going to have a hard time figuring out the budget. They're going to have a hard time figuring out their tax cuts. They're going to have a hard time figuring out health care. The one thing they don't have a hard time figuring out is being mean and nasty to immigrants," said Rep. Luis V. Gutirrez, D-Ill.

The House bills have little chance of success in the Senate, where Republicans have only 52 seats and need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. A version of Kate's Law introduced last year by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, failed on a 55-42 vote.

Still, the White House made the legislation a centerpiece of its message on Wednesday. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., a hard-liner who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, joined Trump in the immigration meeting.

At the daily White House press briefing, Thomas Homan, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and John Huber, the lead federal law enforcement official in Utah, took the lectern to update reporters on the administration's efforts to arrest and deport immigrants.

Kate's Law, Huber said, would send a message that apprehending and punishing immigrants who repeatedly return to the country after being deported is a priority.

"It also sends a message to the judicial branch, to the judges that the more that these people commit crimes in their communities, the more often they come back, the more serious the penalties will be," Huber said.

Homan added that the other bill, focusing on sanctuary cities, would ban any municipal restrictions on cooperating with federal immigration agents or any restrictions on allowing law enforcement officers to inquire about a person's immigration status.

"If you enter this country illegally and violate the laws of this nation, you should not be comfortable," Homan said.

Some Democrat-controlled state legislatures and city governments, including in California, have vigorously opposed Trump's efforts to impose penalties on sanctuary cities. Some have passed statutes forbidding the jurisdictions from using public funds to support some federal immigration enforcement efforts.

Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have denounced such efforts. But a federal judge in April temporarily blocked the administration's effort to withhold federal grants from such cities, ruling that only Congress had such authority over spending matters.

An official with the American Civil Liberties Union said the House bills are "riddled with constitutional violations that completely disregard the civil and human rights of immigrants."

The Washington Post's Jenna Johnson contributed to this report.

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Trump immigration, sanctuary city policies face first big legislative test - Chicago Tribune

Wed., June 28, 2017, 4:32 p.m.

Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador, the new chair of a House subcommittee on immigration, told Idaho reporters this afternoon that he hopes to fix the broken immigration system between now and the end of his current two-year term, after which hes running for governor rather than seeking re-election. I dont think its limited time I actually think its the perfect time, Labrador said. This is what I came to Congress to work on, is to modernize and fix the broken immigration system. This is a golden opportunity for me to do this while Im also running for governor. I can walk and chew gum, I think Ive shown that, at the same time.

Labrador said, You have the first term of a new president, you have the House and the Senate, and we can make the major reforms to the immigration system that we need to do, we can bring the immigration system into the 21st Century have a system that puts Americans first and looks at the needs of the United States, not the needs of people that are here illegally. So Im excited about this, because its something Ive been working on, Im passionate about, and Im the person in the House who is the expert in this area.

Labrador, an immigration attorney, currently is sponsoring two bills, an immigration enforcement crackdown bill dubbed the Davis-Oliver Act, and a bill to limit refugee resettlement that cleared the House Judiciary Committee today. He said taken together, the two measures are major reforms to our current immigration system, and said, I think you guys have heard me talk about, for the last eight years, about how we need to do immigration reform in a step-by-step approach, we need to modernize the immigration system, make sure local law enforcement can work with the system, and make sure we vet refugees and other immigrants coming to the United States carefully. All of those things are being done by these two bills.

Asked whether that was the extent of his proposed reforms to immigration, Labrador said no. We have right now five bills, he said, that deal with interior enforcement. We are then going to move on to working on the guest worker program, and especially the H2A (visa) that deals with our farmers. That could include expanding that program, which currently doesnt cover year-round workers, to allow foreign dairy workers to fall under it and work in the United States for up to three years, if they return to their home country for a month a year, he said. Were also going to deal with visa entry, e-verify. We have a pretty big, broad agenda of all the things were going to do to modernize this immigration system.

He said his proposed expansion of the H2A visa program, which still is in draft form, likely wouldnt allow dairy workers who are already in the country illegally to apply. The way it should always be done, if you entered illegally, you should go back to your home country or at least leave the country in order to apply, he said.

Labrador said another reason he thinks this is the right time for immigration reform is that you get past this cycle, this next 18 months or so, then you get into the silly season, where youre talking about re-election of a president and things like that. So I think now is the time.

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Labrador says he can both reform nation's immigration system and run for governor: 'I can walk and chew gum' - The Spokesman-Review (blog)

Delaware 105.9's Dan Gaffney traveled to Washington D.C. to broadcast his show LIVE from Capitol Hill for "Hold Their Feet to the Fire," an immigration reform movement aimed at holding U.S. lawmakers responsible for illegal immigration.

Appearing on the Dan Gaffney Show was, Art Del Cueto, President of the Tucson Sector Border Patrol Agency in Arizona. Del Cueto provided a first-hand perspective on illegal immigration, as his sector in Arizona is responsible for over "50-percent of all drug seizures in the country."

"You're looking at drug cartels, you're looking at illegal immigration. You see a couple of individuals crossing the border, usually some of the media likes to throw the 'mom & pop situation' people trying to get a better life for themselves, but it is far from that," said Del Cueto. "The biggest group that I caught once I started working for the agency was a group eighty people, my first day out there by myself, eighty people."

Dan Gaffney asked Del Cueto what were the eighty people doing, was it the 'better life' narrative? Del Cueto said "you don't know" what their intentions are and therein lies the problem.

"You don't know, and that's where the problem is. They're already coming in illegally, they're trying to not be detected and I think that's a huge deal. So you don't know what these people are up to, and that's what a lot of people don't understand," Del Cueto explained. "Now as we move forward, we've seen is a lot more aggressiveness. I've been in situations where I've been shot at. I've been 'rocked,' which is where they use the big forty-ouncers of beer, and what they'll do is fill them with dirt and mud, so they'll pack them, and it's like a block of cement that is getting thrown at you. Not to mention the drugs."

Dan Gaffney asked Del Cueto what drugs specifically are being trafficked across the border, and if agents ever find documentation on the immigrant hopefuls? "You're looking at everything, anything you can think of. You're looking at marijuana, which is primarily what comes through that area, but I know at the checkpoints they've detected cocaine, heroin, and they're not staying in Arizona, this is something that is coming into the country," Del Cueto explained. "We catch false documents all of the time, especially with Central Americans. You catch a lot of Central Americans with false documents claiming that they're citizen of Mexico. I think it's two-fold, one they believe it's easier, once you apprehend if you send them back, to send them to Mexico that way they can make the trek back in, as opposed to going all the way back to Central America and having to make the trek back."

"We would turn them over to ICE and they'd give them a piece of paper, and let's use Delaware as an example, and ICE would say 'when you get to Delaware, find the nearest immigration court, and tell them about your case,'" said Del Cueto. "Well, I think it was somewhere around 1-percent that would show up, but the other 99-percent would never show up and I'm not sure that there is an actual list or a way to find out where these individuals are now."

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EXCLUSIVE | Dan Gaffney interviews Border Patrol Agent on Immigration Reform Movement in DC - Delaware 105.9

Thousands attended a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for President Donald Trump on June 21, 2017, his first visit to the state since the election. (Getty Images)

President Donald Trump recently told supporters that he wanted to reduce the number of people receiving public assistance, and he wants to put in place new rules barring immigrants from receiving government benefits for at least five years.

"We want to get our people off of welfare and back to work. We also want to preserve our safety net for struggling Americans who truly need help," Trump said in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on June 21. "That's why I believe the time has come for new immigration rules which say that those seeking admission into our country must be able to support themselves financially and should not use welfare for a period of at least five years."

Trump said legislation for that purpose would come "very shortly." But several media outlets pointed out that a law on benefits for immigrants already exists, passed more than 20 years ago, though it had some exceptions.

Neither Trump or administration officials have detailed exactly what Trump would like to see in new legislation that would be different from the 1996 law. Here, we lay out whats already on the books and what weve heard so far from Trumps team.

1996 law restricts benefits

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 said immigrants who entered the United States on or after Aug. 22, 1996, (when the law was enacted) would not be eligible for federal "means-tested" public benefits for five years, starting on the date of their entry into the United States with a status that met the definition of "qualified alien."

The term qualified alien included lawful permanent residents, refugees and asylees. But the law outlined several exemptions and said certain groups were not subject to the five-year restriction, including refugees and asylees, military veterans, and active duty military members along with their spouses and unmarried dependent children.

Federal means-tested benefits offer assistance for health care, nutrition, education and other needs. The five major programs are: non-emergency Medicaid, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which was previously known as the Food Stamp program. (States provide some funding for Medicaid, CHIP and TANF.)

States such as California and New York fund some benefits for immigrants who are restricted by the five-year rule, said Randy Capps, director of research for U.S. programs at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

A December 2015 report from the National Immigration Law Center also noted that since the passage of the 1996 law, additional legislation has expanded access to SNAP for some individuals, including qualified immigrant children.

Also, in 2000, Congress allowed survivors of trafficking to become eligible for federal public benefits "to the same extent as refugees, regardless of whether they have a qualified immigrant status," the report said.

Individuals living in the country illegally and those who arrive on non-immigrant visas (such as students and tourists) are generally not eligible for federal public benefits, but are able to receive care for emergency medical conditions, short-term non-cash, in-kind emergency disaster relief, crisis counseling and select other services.

Trumps plans for legal immigration reform

Trumps spokesman Sean Spicer at a June 23 press briefing said the president was aware of the 1996 law already restricting federal public benefits.

"But that law, while on the books, has not been enforced and clearly either needs to be reexamined, enforced, or new legislation needs to be introduced," Spicer said.

Trumps fiscal year 2018 budget proposal said welfare and immigration were among the eight pillars Trump wanted to reform. The budget said the National Academy of Sciences found that in 2013 first-generation immigrants and their dependents may cost all levels of government $279 billion more than they paid in taxes. Trump said a variation of this in his February address to Congress. FactCheck.org and the Washington Posts Fact Checker noted that Trumps claim did not reference long-term contributions of the children of immigrants.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine issued a statement in response to Trumps claim, saying: "The report found that the long-term impact of immigration on the wages and employment of native-born workers overall is very small, and that any negative impacts are most likely to be found for prior immigrants or native-born high school dropouts. First-generation immigrants are more costly to governments than are the native-born, but the second generation are among the strongest fiscal and economic contributors in the U.S. The report concludes that immigration has an overall positive impact on long-run economic growth in the U.S."

Nonetheless, Trumps budget said some of the billions-of-dollars cost was driven by the nations refugee policy that allows them to be "instantly eligible for time-limited cash benefits and numerous non-cash federal benefits, including food assistance through SNAP, medical care, and education, as well as a host of state and local benefits."

The budget said it supports immigration reform in favor of merit-based admissions for legal immigrants, an end to illegal immigration and "substantial reduction" in refugee admissions.

Trump in March met with Republican senators who support his campaign promise to reform legal immigration. Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue introduced legislation in February seeking to cap refugee admissions per fiscal year to 50,000, to reduce the number of family-sponsored immigrants, and to eliminate the diversity visa program, among other restrictions.

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Trump says 'time has come' for law restricting federal assistance to immigrants. It already exists - PolitiFact