President Donald Trump has issued several Executive Orders and Memos this week regarding immigration – below is our summary of the order regarding “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States”
- Recognizes that:
- Interior enforcement of our immigration laws is critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States.
- Sanctuary jurisdictions willfully violate Federal law by shielding aliens from removal.
- Tens of thousands of removable aliens have been released into communities because their countries refuse to accept their repatriation.
- We cannot faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States if we exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from enforcement.
- The purpose of the order is to direct executive departments and agencies to employ all lawful means to enforce the immigration laws of the United States.
- Establishes new enforcement priorities that prioritize the enforcement of immigration law against criminal aliens (subject to certain grounds of inadmissibility), aliens who commit crimes, aliens who abuse public taxpayer benefits, or are otherwise a national security concern.
- Trump’s enforcement priorities are a proper use of “prosecutorial discretion” compared to the Obama administration policies that exempted from enforcement all illegal aliens who did not meet their very narrow “enforcement priorities.”
- Orders an end to federal grants to sanctuary cities, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the DHS Secretary.
- Directs the DHS Secretary to hire 10,000 new ICE officers (subject to Congressional appropriations) and restores the 287(g) program which deputizes local authorities to perform immigration law enforcement functions.
- Reinstitutes the Secure Communities program, which helps identify deportable illegal aliens in U.S. jails.
- Repeals President Obama’s weaker Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) program that he put in place instead of maintaining Secure Communities.
- Charges the DHS Secretary to ensure the collection of fines and penalties from aliens unlawfully present in the United States and those who facilitate their presence in the United States (could be used against employers).
- Directs the DHS Secretary to publish weekly reports on crimes committed by illegal aliens, including those instances when a sanctuary jurisdiction released someone DHS wanted to deport.
- Orders sanctions (including denying visas) against countries that refuse to accept repatriation of their nationals.
- Establishes an Office for Victims of Crimes Committed by Removable Aliens.
- Ends the Obama-era practice of affording protections under the federal Privacy Act to illegal aliens
- Requires the Attorney General and DHS Secretary to report back to the President on the progress of the aforementioned directives within 90 days and again within 180 days.
Full text of Executive Order available here.