Sanctuary State Under Attack

December 17, 2020

IRLI urges Third Circuit to overturn New Jersey's sanctuary order

 

WASHINGTON—The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) stepped up its battle against dangerous and unconstitutional sanctuary state policies yesterday by filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the Third Circuit Court of appeals urging the court to overturn an order by the Attorney General of New Jersey that directs state law enforcement officers not to cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement.

 

The order, known as the Immigrant Trust Directive, restricts the ability of law enforcement officers to cooperate with federal immigration officials. Pursuant to this order, officers in New Jersey may not even tell immigration authorities when criminal aliens in state prison will be released from state custody, or transfer custody of these aliens to federal immigration agents. These prohibitions have the intended effect of making it much more difficult for federal agents to apprehend, detain, and deport criminal aliens as they are required to do under federal law.

 

In a deeply-flawed opinion, the federal district court for the District of New Jersey upheld this order, claiming that it did not really operate as an obstacle to federal immigration law enforcement, but was only an inconvenience to that enforcement, and that the order was a valid exercise of New Jersey's police powers.

 

In its brief in the Third Circuit, IRLI shows that the Immigrant Trust Directive is an obstacle to federal immigration law enforcement because it is an action by the state that—as even the district court admitted in its opinion—makes that enforcement more difficult. State policies that are obstacles to the purposes of federal laws violate the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which makes federal law supreme over state law.

 

IRLI then shows that the district court misunderstood the Tenth Amendment, which only reserves the power to adopt a given policy to the states if that power is not prohibited to the states by the Constitution. The power to adopt sanctuary policies such as the Immigrant Trust Directive is prohibited to the states, because such policies violate the Supremacy Clause. Thus, the power to make sanctuary policies is not reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment.

 

IRLI further shows that the Immigrant Trust Directive also violates the Supremacy Clause (and the power to issue it thus is not reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment) in another way: it commands state officers to commit the federal crime of harboring illegal aliens.

 

"The Constitution does not give states power to interfere with federal law enforcement," said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. "By holding otherwise, the district court endorsed not states' rights, but chaos. About half of the nation's population now lives in one form of sanctuary jurisdiction or another," Wilcox added. "That extraordinary situation is not only a grave threat to Americans' safety, but a shocking affront to federal supremacy. We hope the Third Circuit brings New Jersey's non-enforcement zone to an end by vindicating the clear text and structure of our Constitution."

 

The case is Board of Chosen Freeholders of the County of Ocean v. Attorney

Supreme Court to Hear Wall Case

IRLI, Rep. Barr urge Court to reverse lower court's injunction

 

WASHINGTON—Last summer, the Supreme Court of the United States stayed—or suspended—an injunction a California federal district court had issued against the Trump administration's transfer of defense funds to build a border wall. That decision—and a like decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in a related case—has allowed the administration to keep building the wall while the cases against it wind their way through the courts. The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), on behalf of Congressman Andy Barr of Kentucky, had filed briefs in both courts in support of the stays.

 

Now the Supreme Court has accepted the case involving the injunction it stayed for review on the merits, and yesterday IRLI, again on Rep. Barr's behalf, filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Court to find that injunction unlawful.

 

In IRLI's brief, Rep. Barr shows that the plaintiff, the Sierra Club, lacks standing to challenge military spending decisions based on its aesthetic objections to the military construction projects being built. It is basic to the law of standing that, to sue under a given statute, a plaintiff must claim that a right conferred on him by that statute has been violated. Here, the military appropriations statute the Sierra Club is suing under does not confer on it, or anyone else, any rights to aesthetic enjoyment.

 

"It is beyond ridiculous that a group like the Sierra Club should be able to halt a military construction project because it doesn't like the way it looks," said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. "That may make sense under environmental protection laws, but not under the military appropriations statutes they are suing under. It is particularly ironic that the Sierra Club is bringing this suit, because illegal aliens cause far more environmental destruction—including massive amounts of trash in our national parks—than any border wall could. We hope the Supreme Court recognizes the major stretch this lawsuit is, and puts an end to this overreaching injunction once and for all."

 

The case is Sierra Club v. Trump, No. 20-138 (Supreme Court).

Should Temporary Protected Status Go on Forever?

December 14, 2020

IRLI shows TPS program recipients are not immigrants

 

WASHINGTON—On Friday, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) filed a friend-of the-court brief in the District of Columbia federal district court urging it to reject a case in which aliens in the United States under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program are seeking to use their TPS status to obtain permanent immigration benefits.

 

The aliens, who received permission to travel abroad while in TPS status, are challenging administrative guidance clarifying that following that travel, they are still in TPS status, and thus still ineligible for immigration benefits such as lawful permanent residence.

 

In its brief, IRLI shows that TPS was intended to be a temporary program to protect aliens from natural disasters in their home countries, and was never meant to be transformed into an immigration program. The administrative guidance at issue merely states the obvious: TPS recipients are non-immigrants, remain so even after traveling abroad, and are only supposed to be in the United States temporarily.

 

"As its name suggests, the Temporary Protected Status program is temporary," said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. "Congress never would have passed TPS if it had thought it would be made permanent through lawsuits such as this. By trying to turn TPS into an immigration funnel, the plaintiffs undermine the very program that protected them from natural disasters in the first place. We hope the court respects congressional intent and the clear text of the statute and dismisses this case."

 

The case is Central American Resource Center v. Cuccinelli, No. 1:20-cv-2363 (D.D.C.).

Election Integrity Under Threat in North Carolina

Election Integrity Under Threat in North Carolina

 

IRLI investigation puts spotlight on national crisis of non-citizen voting

 

WASHINGTON—An investigation by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) has found that some of the largest counties in North Carolina have identified non-citizens in their jury pools, raising questions about the state's election integrity and voter registration procedures.

 

With a growing population of about 10.5 million people, North Carolina is quickly emerging as one of the country's most pivotal swing states for presidential elections and the perennial battle for control of Congress. However, questions have lingered for years over how well state and county officials have acted to preserve the integrity of the election process, particularly in regard to the illegal participation of non-citizens.

 

In Mecklenburg County, the state's second most populous county which includes metropolitan Charlotte, a total of 51 individuals were removed from the jury pool list because of non-citizenship between October 28, 2019 to July 7, 2020, the county's Jury Office confirmed to IRLI. The Cumberland County Clerk of Superior Court, which operates in the state's fifth most populous county, revealed that 18 potential jurors were removed for non-citizenship between October 1, 2019 to July 7, 2020. And lastly, Forsyth – the state's fourth most populous county -- reported a total of 16 potential jurors removed for non-citizenship from December 19, 2019 to October 6, 2020.

 

"These results are a snapshot from a specific area over a specific time," said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. "While this data alone may not alter an election outcome, it is evidence of the larger crisis of non-citizen voting on the national level. Every vote by a legal or illegal alien cancels out the vote of an American citizen. It is a violation of the core principles of our constitutional republic. If we as a nation cannot remedy the problem of election fraud, then we have surrendered the right to choose our representatives and will instead live under the permanent rule of unaccountable political elites."

 

The relation between jury pools and the voting booth stems from how counties generate their list of potential jurors. A spokesperson for the North Carolina judicial branch confirmed that their jury pool is derived from two sources: The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and voter registration. While the spokesperson claimed that non-citizens manage to make it on the jury pool list via the DMV by using state IDs, driver's licenses, or vehicle registrations, the presence of non-citizens in jury pools creates the potential that state voter rolls include illegal voters.

 

The specter of election fraud in the Tar Heel State has been an ongoing concern. The Voter Integrity Project (VIP) of North Carolina, founded in 2011, was created with the intention of ensuring free and fair election to every lawfully registered voter in the state. Almost immediately after launching the organization, co-founder Jay Delancy uncovered major discrepancies in North Carolina's voting rolls.

 

Delancy and VIP co-founder John Pizzo began analyzing the state's voter rolls in 2012. The pair obtained jury records from the Clerk of Courts in Wake County, the state's second most populous county at that time, and discovered that, during a three-year window of time, roughly 6,000 prospective jurors disqualified themselves by notifying to the court that they were not U.S. citizens.

 

This was not the end of their discovery. Delancy and Pizzo then compared these names to the voter rolls, uncovering a total of 532 registered voters who had informed the court that they were not U.S. citizens. VIP's investigative work had found that, of this group, 130 participated in an election at least once before being disqualified.

 

The issue of non-citizens illegally participating in North Carolina elections has ostensibly persisted throughout the years. VIP, for example, uncovered more evidence in 2016 of malfeasance in relation to a Jamaican citizen who admitted to voting twice in the state.

 

Delancy told IRLI that this problem "runs deep" and that government leaders have done little to address it.

 

"The fact is that every state has mountains of evidence that would make it easy to get non-citizen voters off the rolls and possibly deported," he said. "But so far, all parties have lacked the political will."