A federal court blocks Trump’s January executive order seeking to punish jurisdictions that divorce local policing from federal immigration enforcement.

By Tanvi Misra

On Tuesday, a federal judge in California blocked President Donald Trump’s January executive order seeking to withhold federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities—jurisdictions that limit cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in some way. In essence, U.S. District Judge William Orrick of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the executive order is overly broad and constitutionally fraught.

“The bottom line is that the federal court has dealt a major setback to President Trump’s attacks on sanctuary cities,” says César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an associate professor at University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law. “I imagine that the federal government will appeal, but, for now, the Trump Administration cannot go forward with its hope of punishing cities and counties for limiting their cooperation with ICE.”

The Trump order was based on a statute (U.S. Code 1373) that forbids local governments from withholding information about immigration status of an individual from federal authorities. Promptly after he signed it, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed a lawsuit, arguing, among other things, that the 10^th Amendment limits the power of the federal government to “commandeer” states and localities—a claim backed up by many legal experts. California’s Santa Clara County followed.

While the federal government can technically pull funds, they can’t do it in the slapdash way put forth in the order.

Judge Orrick’s decision affirms the local governments’ case that the Trump’s order amounts to a loaded gun pointed at the head of local governments. It “threatens to deny sanctuary jurisdictions all federal grants, hundreds of millions of dollars on which the Counties rely,” the decision reads. “The threat is unconstitutionally coercive.” The ruling also questions the extent of the president’s control on the federal purse strings: “The Constitution vests the spending powers in Congress, not the President, so the Order cannot constitutionally place new conditions on federal funds,” the court decision reads.

President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have made many public pronouncements about punishing sanctuary cities by stripping billions of dollars in federal funding, but during the hearings, the administration’s lawyers tried to sell the judge on a narrower interpretation. They argued that it would only apply only to a limited number of Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice grants. Judge Orrick didn’t buy it. The lawyers’ reading “renders the Order toothless,” he writes in the ruling, and is quite different from the language Trump signed off on. Peter Mancina, an immigration scholar at Vanderbilt University, explains that distinction further on Twitter:

The court ruling comes days after Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent out letters to nine cities, asking for proof on their compliance with U.S.C. 1373. One of San Francisco’s arguments was that this statute itself is unconstitutional, but the judge didn’t address that specifically. What it did say was that, while the federal government can technically pull funds, they can’t do it in the slapdash way put forth in the order, at the whim of the president. George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin explains in The Washington Post:

In this case, none of the federal grants given to sanctuary cities were conditioned by Congress on compliance with Section 1373 or any other form of cooperation with federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. The president cannot impose such conditions on his own.

This order, and the one banning the entry of people from seven Muslim majority countries and suspending the entry of refugees, share a key feature: They’re both unable to veil the administration’s legally dubious intentions in court. That’s why, for local governments opposing Trump on immigration, Trump’s first 100 days have amounted to a series of victories. And per Judge Orrick’s reading, their case is good enough that they’re likely to retain that winning streak.

By Rafael Bernal, The Hill

House Hispanic Democrats said Thursday that Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly is shunning their concerns on violations by immigration enforcement agents.

Kelly met members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) on Capitol Hill Tuesday, initially softening the Democrats’ tone: CHC chairwoman Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.) said Kelly “tried much harder to hear us and to be more respectful that this is a meeting of a collective group about these issues.”

But members said Thursday that Kelly has been reluctant acknowledge their claims of wrongdoing by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

CHC members said Kelly was pursuing a policy of “mass deportation,” rather than his stated goal of going after dangerous criminals.

“Now that we have factual evidence we can put the secretary in an interesting position, because he’s been rebutting, ‘These are the same policies as the Obama administration,’” said Lujan Grisham.

“Well, guess what?” she added. “We now have data that’s been published out of February that shows it is so negligible the number of individuals that have been picked up, detained, and deported for dangerous felonies, that it’s exactly the opposite.”

Lujan Grisham was referring to tracking data released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) that showed that only five immigrants were charged with firearm or other dangerous criminal acts in February, out of 4,301 immigration cases nationwide.

“Given this new data, I’m really ashamed that any Cabinet member would continue to meet with members of Congress and just demonstrate and say over and over again that these are the same policies. They are not,” said Lujan Grisham.

Rep. Nanette Barragan (D-Calif.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, pointed to the protests at airports after President Trump’s first travel ban was issued in January as an example of Kelly’s rapport with members.

“He in my face said there was no chaos at the airport,” said Barragan, who visited constituents at Los Angeles International Airport during the protests.

“He ended with, ‘My people told me there wasn’t, therefore it didn’t happen, trust me,'” she said.

But Kelly’s relationship has seen some improvement. He rescheduled the previously canceled meeting with the group and they said he appeared more open to their suggestions.

“I’m seeing his demeanor with members in group setting improve,” said Lujan Grisham.

Kelly appeared before a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday, where he defended his immigration enforcement policies, saying they’ve served to dissuade migrants from attempting to enter the United States.

According to DHS figures released Wednesday, border apprehensions — generally accepted as the best measure of illicit border crossing attempts — dropped 64 percent in March compared to the same period in 2016.

Kelly clashed with Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) at that hearing, as she questioned him on why he had not issued written policy directives to DHS agents on treatment and targeting of migrants.

Asked by Harris whether he was willing to issue a directive stating that border agents should not separate children from their parents, Kelly replied, “I have already done that, through my leadership.”

CHC members pointed to that exchange as an example of Kelly’s unwillingness to collaborate with Congress, both by sharing agency information and by investigating accusations of malfeasance levied by members.

At issue are reports that ICE agents have used their presence to wrongfully intimidate immigrant communities and scare them away from sensitive areas such as schools, churches or community centers.

Kelly has denied the accusations, touting the training received by agents of the several DHS law enforcement agencies.

But Lujan Grisham said she is “incredibly disappointed and bordering on anger” at Kelly’s blanket defense of agents under his command, regardless of the secretary’s personal intentions.

“My problem is the department in and of itself is doing exactly the opposite, and we cannot get the secretary to tell us that he will stop that,” said Lujan Grisham.

By Anzish Mirza

Why Refugees Are Ditching Their American Dream For A Canadian One

The American dream has been an aspiration for immigrants and citizens alike for decades. The idea that anyone — regardless of race, religion, or socio-economic background — could advance and have a better life is one of the hallmarks of living in America.

Or at least it used to be.

Recent reports indicate that the American dream may be moving north of the border. Put it another way, the American dream no longer exists, but the Canadian dream does.

“No matter how you cut the American dream or no matter how you describe the American dream, whether it’s life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness or a car, a job and a degree, it’s now become easier in Canada,” Scott Gilmore told CNN. Gilmore is a former Canadian diplomat who has written about Canadian mobility.

A major element of the American dream is social mobility. A study published at Washington Center for Equitable Growth in 2016 said that a person in America only had a 6 percent chance of reaching the top third wage earners in the next 15 years if they were in the bottom 10 percent, in 1993, making this rags-to-riches dream a rarity.

U.S. News and World Report recently came out with its Best Countries Ranking and placed Canada at No. 2, while the United States lagged behind at No. 7. In this study the countries were ranked in the following categories, adventure, citizenship, cultural influence, entrepreneurship, heritage, movers, open for business, power and quality of life.

Gilmore, whose recent essay “The American Dream has moved to Canada,” was published in Macleans, a weekly current affairs magazine in Canada, delved deeply into the topic, said factors such as health care costs and access to cheaper education help Canada flourish in areas ahead of its neighbor to the south.

“Where do you go now for ‘Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?’ Canadians live 2.5 years longer than Americans. They are six times less likely to be incarcerated. And the World Economic Forum ranks Canadians as the 6th happiest people in the world, while Americans lag behind at 13th,” Gilmore wrote.

While Canadians have highlighted their superiority for years, the country garnered more attention in the weeks and months leading up to Election Day in the U.S. Many Americans took to Twitter announcing their plans to move to the neighboring country depending on the results. The Canadian immigration website crashed on Election Day, and many have wondered how easy it would be to move to Canada now that Donald Trump is president.

Analysts worry an immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump would be bad news for the economy.

By Andrew Soergel

Though only a little more than a month into his tenure as commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump has made quick work of directives and executive orders aimed at curbing immigration into the U.S. – both legal and otherwise.

Only days after being sworn in as America’s 45th president, Trump signed an executive order designed to “deploy all lawful means to secure the nation’s southern border, to prevent further illegal immigration into the United States and to repatriate illegal aliens swiftly, consistently and humanely.”

Additional efforts to restrict travel from certain Muslim-majority countries and to rein in the issuance of H-1B visas to skilled immigrants have peppered Trump’s opening days in the White House – effectively stymieing options for those entering the U.S.

None of Trump’s immigration actions to this point veer very far from what he promised out on the campaign trail, when he at times advocated for a complete removal of all 11 million residents believed to be living in the U.S. without legal status.

The president appears to have backed off of this all-or-nothing strategy, saying in a November interview with “60 Minutes” that he hopes to “get the people that are criminal and have criminal records – gang members, drug dealers” out of the country first and to then “make a determination” on law-abiding immigrants without legal status “after the border is secure and after everything gets normalized.”

But he estimated he could still end up deporting between 2 million and 3 million immigrants – a move that would not be insignificant to the U.S. labor market. For comparison’s sake, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement estimates it deported a little more than 240,000 people in fiscal year 2016. Over the past eight fiscal years, ICE estimates fewer than 2,750,000 people were deported.

“The rhetoric suggests [a deportation uptick]. … I don’t think we’re going to be talking about mass deportations, but the momentum will likely shift over time,” says Andrew Selee, executive vice president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “Clearly, they will get somewhere by simply increasing the discretion that officers have to arrest people, to detain people. They should be able to increase the number somewhat.”

But Selee questioned Trump’s 2 million to 3 million benchmark, noting the numbers appears to have come from a 2013 Department of Homeland Security report indicating there were “1.9 million removable criminal aliens … in the United States today.”

That tally includes green card holders and those who are in the country both legally and illegally. Selee notes that Trump “can deport people of legal residency who commit criminal offenses.” But “if you’re talking about just going after unauthorized, you’re talking about 800,000” people, he said.

And if you’re looking to specifically target those without legal status who have committed felonies – the “bad dudes” Trump has railed against – the number to be deported is believed to be just 300,000, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

“I think there’s an actual limit to the number of people who can be deported over time, because there aren’t enough agents and there aren’t enough immigration judges,” Selee says. “The reality is that once you take out immigration specific offenses, immigrants commit many fewer crimes, obviously, because these are often people who don’t want to draw attention to themselves.”

However, Trump has expressed interest in putting a “big, beautiful door” on his border wall to allow for legal passage between the U.S. and Mexico. During a speech at an Indiana Carrier plant in December, Trump said he plans to “have doors in that wall, but they’re going to come through legally.”

“And people are going to come through on worker permits to work the fields,” he said, likely referencing the H-2A visa program designed for temporary foreign agricultural workers. “A lot of people are going to come through. But it’s going to be done through a legal process.”

Still, the deportation of 3 million or even 300,000 immigrants is likely to be felt in the U.S. labor market – whether doors are on the wall or not. The Pew Research Center believes there were 8 million immigrants without legal permission in the labor market in 2014 – representing about 5 percent of those working or actively looking for a job in the U.S.

Kathy Bostjanic, head of U.S. macro investor services at Oxford Economics, wrote in a research note Tuesday that “Trumponomics will likely boost aggregate demand in 2018” but that it “is unlikely to meaningfully lift the aggregate supply or significantly boost economic growth for very long.”

“This would require policies that accelerate the rather anemic pace of productivity growth and/or raise labor supply,” Bostjanic said. “On the latter, any steps to restrict immigration will lower that labor supply.”

A separate research note published last month by researchers at Oxford Economics estimates that, “assuming the Trump administration boosts deportations by 50 percent above the recent peak … the resultant smaller labor force could reduce real [gross domestic product] by up to 0.2 [percentage points] in the first year.”

But estimates of the immediate economic impact of deportation upticks vary. The Center for American Progress estimates “a policy of mass deportation would immediately reduce the nation’s GDP by 1.4 percent, and ultimately by 2.6 percent, and reduce cumulative GDP over 10 years by $4.7 trillion.”

Still, workers who are in the country without legal status are unevenly spread across occupations, with the group representing 26 percent of farming labor and another 15 percent of construction workers, according to Pew.

Considering agriculture products serve as significant exports for the U.S. economy and homebuilding and road and bridge repair depend on construction worker availability, both industries are expected to suffer in the event of widespread deportation.

“The situation with our labor continues to get worse because of the slowdown in foreign workers coming over here to work in the United States,” says Tom Nassif, the president and CEO of Western Growers farming advocacy group who briefly served in an advisory capacity to Trump during campaign season. “We’re hoping that agriculture is a low priority when it comes to enforcement and when it comes to the immigration laws.”

Indeed, Pew estimates there are slightly more than 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal status. That’s down from the 2007 peak of 12.2 million, driven primarily by a drop in such immigrants from Mexico. In 2014, Pew estimates there were 5.8 million Mexicans in the U.S. without legal status. Back in 2009, that number was 6.4 million.

“We’ve already seen a wave of Mexicans coming back to Mexico. Not as many Central Americans yet, but Mexicans started coming back about 10 years ago to Mexico, mostly voluntarily,” Selee says. “They felt the Mexican economy was doing better.”

And with fewer immigrants coming into the U.S. to work fields, Nassif says “we’re basically exporting [agriculture] jobs, because we don’t have a sufficient labor supply.”

“Believe me, those people who’ve been working for us have been invaluable for us to harvest our crops,” Nassif says. “If you shut down our ability to harvest our crops, you send more and more of our jobs to other countries. And that’s something I don’t think the president wants to see happen.”

Nassif says he spoke briefly with then-candidate Trump back in 2016 and discussed, among other things, “what do you do with those who are here illegally.”

“Even though they pay state and federal taxes and pay into Social Security, which they’ll never see, there has to be a penalty. That can be a number of things. It could be a probationary period. It could be a fine,” he says, though he noted that straight deportation was not a desirable outcome for the agriculture industry.

Meanwhile, Julie Taylor, the executive director of the National Farm Worker Ministry, says more readily available H-2A visas and possible paths to citizenship for law-abiding immigrants would go a long way toward helping agriculture workers who she says have at times been taken advantage of with threats of deportation.

“In some ways, [employers] have relied on what’s been cheap labor for them, and in some cases they have exploited those individuals with issues of wage theft and stuff like that with the threat of deportation,” she says. “But now, when it seems like perhaps they won’t have the human power to bring in their crops, they’re concerned about it. There’s a little bit of a dichotomy there.”

But Taylor and Nassif note the contribuions of immigrants in the country without legal status extend beyond the agriculture sphere. The Social Security Administration. for example, estimated in 2010 that these immigrants and their employers paid $12 billion into the trust funds that finance the Social Security system.

“Thus, our projections suggest that the presence of unauthorized workers in the United States has, on average, a positive effect on the financial status of the Social Security program,” the report said.

A separate report from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, however, estimated “illegal aliens pay in about $7 billion per year into the Social Security Trust Fund.” That same study projected immigrants without legal status were ultimately a net drain on government resources and that their presence in the U.S. costs federal, state and local governments $113 billion each year.

Still, deportation efforts don’t come free of charge. The American Action Forum in 2015 estimated the federal government “would have to spend roughly $400 billion to $600 billion to address the 11.2 million undocumented immigrants and prevent future unlawful entry into the United States.” Deportation costs alone were estimated to cost between $103.9 billion and $303.7 billion.

Selee also says the U.S. would lose out on “micro-businesses” and small business start-ups often founded by immigrants if deportation efforts increase significantly.

“There are a lot of people who move into entrepreneurial niches in the American economy who might not have done so in Mexico or Central America,” Selee says. “It doesn’t mean that everyone’s starting Google. A lot of people, including people who can’t work legally, are starting their own little micro shops. It’s the whole range.”

And although he says it’s often looked over, Selee notes more aggressive deportation efforts would throw an influx of potential workers into already stressed economies in Mexico and Central America – potentially exacerbating downturns abroad.

“There’s a lot of fear in Mexico and Central America about labor markets that are already pressured having more people looking for work. There’s a lot of concern about students coming in who need places at universities,” Selee says. “There’s a lot of fear about how increased deportations to Mexico and Central America would disrupt the economy and impact the school system.”

Andrew Soergel is an Economy Reporter at U.S. News. You can connect with him on LinkedIn, follow him on Twitter or email him at [email protected].