The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, principally responsible for immigration and customs enforcement, with additional responsibilities in countering transnational crime.
California Proposition 187 was a 1994 ballot initiative to establish a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibit undocumented immigrants from using non-emergency health care, public education, and other services in the State of California. Voters passed the proposed law at a referendum on November 8, 1994. The law was challenged in a legal suit the day after its passage, and found unconstitutional by a federal district court on November 11th. In 1999, Governor Gray Davis halted state appeals of this ruling.
Immigration reduction refers to a social movement in the United States that advocates a reduction in the amount of immigration allowed into the country. Steps advocated for reducing the numbers of immigrants include advocating stronger action to prevent illegal entry and illegal immigration, and reductions in non-immigrant temporary work visas. Some advocate a tightening of the requirements for legal immigration requirements to reduce total numbers, or move the proportions of legal immigrants away from those on family reunification programs to skills-based criteria. What separates it from others who want immigration reform is that reductionists see immigration- or one of its forms- as being a significant source of social, economic, and environmental problems, and wish to cut current immigration levels.
Immigration reform in the United States is a term used in political discussion regarding changes to current immigration policy of the U.S.
Illegal immigration to the United States is the process of migrating into the United States in violation of federal immigration laws. This can include foreign nationals who have entered the United States illegally, as well as those who entered legally but then remained after the expiration of their entry visa or parole documents. Illegal immigration has been a matter of intense debate in the United States since the 1980s.
Illegal immigration refers to the migration of people into a country in violation of the immigration laws of that country, or the continued residence of people without the legal right to live in that country. Illegal immigration tends to be financially upward, from poorer to richer countries. Illegal residence in another country would create the risk of being detained and deported, or facing other sanctions.
Elvira Arellano is an international activist who works to defend the human rights of immigrants living in the U.S. without legal authorization.
Sanctuary city refers to municipal jurisdictions, typically in North America, that limit their cooperation with the national government's effort to enforce immigration law. Leaders of sanctuary cities say they want to reduce fear of deportation and possible family break-up among people who are in the country illegally, so that such people will be more willing to report crimes, use health and social services, and enroll their children in school. In the United States, municipal policies include prohibiting police or city employees from questioning people about their immigration status and refusing requests by national immigration authorities to detain people beyond their release date, if they were jailed for breaking local law. Such policies can be set expressly in law or observed in practice, but the designation "sanctuary city" does not have a precise legal definition. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated in 2018 that 564 U.S. jurisdictions, including states and municipalities, had adopted sanctuary policies.
The United States government holds tens of thousands of immigrants in detention under the control of Customs and Border Protection and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Immigrants are detained for unlawful entry to the United States, when their claims for asylum are received, and in the process of deportation and removal from the country. During Fiscal Year 2018, 396,448 people were booked into ICE custody: 242,778 of whom were detained by CBP and 153,670 by ICE's own enforcement operations. A daily average of 42,188 immigrants were held by ICE in that year. In addition, over twelve thousand immigrant children are housed by facilities under the supervision of the Office of Refugee Resettlement's program for Unaccompanied Alien Children. Prior to referral to these other agencies, the CBP holds immigrants at processing centers; between mid-May and mid-June 2019, it held between 14,000 and 18,000 immigrants.
Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387 (2012), was a United States Supreme Court case involving Arizona's S.B. 1070, a state law intended to increase the powers of local law enforcement who wished to enforce federal immigration laws. The issue is whether the law usurps the federal government's authority to regulate immigration laws and enforcement. The Court ruled that sections 3, 5(C), and 6 of S. B. 1070 were preempted by federal law, but left other parts of the law intact, including a provision that allowed law enforcement to investigate a person's immigration status.
Alabama HB 56, titled the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act is an anti-illegal immigration bill, signed into law in the U.S. state of Alabama in June 2011.
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a United States immigration policy that allows some individuals with unlawful presence in the United States after being brought to the country as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a work permit in the U.S. To be eligible for the program, recipients cannot have felonies or serious misdemeanors on their records. Unlike the proposed DREAM Act, DACA does not provide a path to citizenship for recipients. The policy, an executive branch memorandum, was announced by President Barack Obama on June 15, 2012. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting applications for the program on August 15, 2012.
On July 1, 2015, 32-year-old Kate Steinle was shot by José Inez García Zárate, while walking with her father and a friend along Pier 14 in the Embarcadero district of San Francisco. Zárate claimed a gun had fired accidentally while he was picking it up. He claimed he had found the gun moments before, wrapped in cloth beneath the bench on which he was sitting. The shot ricocheted off the concrete deck of the pier striking the victim in the back. Steinle died two hours later in a hospital as a result of her injuries. On November 30, 2017, after five days of deliberations, a jury acquitted García Zárate of all murder and manslaughter charges. He was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm but that conviction was overturned on appeal on August 30, 2019.
A sanctuary campus is any college or university, typically in North America and Western Europe, that adopts policies to protect members of the campus community who are undocumented immigrants. The term is modeled after "sanctuary city", a status that has been adopted by over 30 municipalities. Proposed policies on sanctuary campuses include:
Thomas Douglas Homan is a former American police officer and government official who served as Acting Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from January 30, 2017 to June 29, 2018. Since his retirement from public service, he has been a Fox News contributor.
Executive Order 13768 titled Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States was signed by U.S. President Donald Trump on January 25, 2017. The order stated that "sanctuary jurisdictions" including sanctuary cities that refused to comply with immigration enforcement measures would not be "eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes" by the U.S. Attorney General or Secretary of Homeland Security.
As of December 2019, 15 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico issue driver's licenses or permits to some or all of the population residing illegally in the United States. State laws permitting this are on the books in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington. Oregon now issues such licenses with the passage of the Equal Access To Roads Act in the Oregon legislature; governor Kate Brown signed the bill into law on August 9, 2019, becoming effective immediately. Oregon previously issued such licenses in 2008 and briefly from 2013 until the 2014 Oregon Ballot Measure 88.
Ronil Singh was a Fijian-born American police officer who was shot and killed on the morning of December 26, 2018, in Newman, California, by a driver he had pulled over on suspicion of driving while drunk. A 31-year-old Paulo Mendoza, was arrested three days later. Prior to his arrest for the murder of Singh, Mendoza was found guilty of multiple offences.
A shooting spree began in farming country near Exeter, California on December 16, 2018, when a man with a gun began shooting at random people, and continued to do so throughout Tulare County for 24 hours. Three people, including the shooter, died, and seven others were injured.
The issue of crimes committed by Illegal immigrants to the United States is a topic that is often asserted and debated in politics and the media when discussing Immigration policy in the United States. According to many studies, undocumented immigrants in the United States are less likely to commit crime than native-born citizens and have no impact on violent crime rates.
