SB4, Unjust Laws, and LSC

This article picks up a conversation about how laws governing immigration affect our college students. You can read the other parts here [1, 2, 3].

Brief Updates with DACA and SB4

1. The Fifth Circuit of Appeals: A three-judge panel unanimously sustained Texas SB4. We address this as the main of our discussion, below.
2. Neither Democrats nor Republicans amassed willingness to pass a clean DREAM Act to protect hundred of thousands of young migrants affected by the loss of DACA.
3. ICE increases aggressive separation of families across the country, including separating parents from children; as part of their strategy, ICE continues consistent policies of disinformation to confuse local communities and institutions
4. Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions III, U.S. Attorney General -- never a friend of migrants -- has promised "using every power” in his suit against the State of California’s sanctuary laws, using rhetoric supporting Arizona’s HB 1070 (“Show Your Papers”), which has largely been shown to be unconstitutional.
5. On 26 February, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the president’s appeal of the Ninth Circuit Court Jan. 9 nationwide injunction that halted Trump’s move to rescind DACA. Therefore, Homeland Security resumed DACA renewals. The White House appeal now returns to the Ninth Circuit.

Source: Center for Law and Social Policy

The Fifth Circuit -- Abandoning the Fourth Amendment

The Fifth Circuit -- the most conservative of appellate courts -- held that SB4

• is not preempted under the federal Constitution’s Supremacy Clause;
• its section requiring local governments (including public colleges) to comply with ICE immigration detainer requests does not violate the Fourth Amendment; and
• its provision prohibiting local laws or policies that “materially limit” immigration enforcement activities is not so vague as to violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

Importantly, the Fifth Circuit clarified that local entities -- such as colleges -- are not required to collaborate with federal immigration enforcement; that is, the court identified how local entities may help federal officials and whether they must. Stunningly, the Fifth Court ignored the Fourth Amendment (“against unreasonable searches and seizures”) when it comes to immigration arrest authority. The Court announced that immigration arrests do not require evidence of criminality; instead, the Court claims: “we…disavow any district court decisions that have suggested the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause of criminality in the immigration context.” Remember that immigration courts do not require defense, and migrants often are un-represented before the bench.

Remember, too, that ICE does not require warrants for entering private residences or business … or colleges. ICE uses Form I-274A which is not a warrant requiring a judge’s determination of “probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation.” No warrants. No defense. No rights. Professor of Law Michael Kagan notes:

At issue here is the power of the government to detain a person, citizen or immigrant, without probable cause, and without immediate review. An autocrat would very much enjoy this power.

Texas and Unjust Laws and Why a College Matters

We start with the idealistic and often untrue assumption that we all have rights in our republic: specifically, The Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution give defendants the right to counsel — to be represented by an attorney in court proceedings. But recall that the Immigration Courts do not provide defense counsel if the defense cannot pay legal protection, like criminal courts do. Further, ICE has increasingly threatened all organizations — private and public—that oppose his hatred. Not surprisingly, the Texas axis of Abbott-Patrick-Paxton enthusiastically support Albence’s xenophobic stance. These two truths — the White House hunts undocumented migrants and immigration courts do not provide defense for indigent migrants — act as inhumane, uncivilized, immoral, and hostile against anti-American claims of a just system. Attorney General Paxton, again, conflates all immigrants as criminals:

Enforcing immigration law prevents the release of individuals from custody who have been charged with serious crimes. ... Dangerous criminals shouldn’t be allowed back into our communities to possibly commit more crimes.

Meanwhile, the current practice of ICE sees all undocumented migrants as targets for detention and deportation.

We see that already in our college. Our undocumented students or students with undocumented family members are increasingly stressed, absent from class, and withdrawing. I have had a student who withdrew because his undocumented family returned to Mexico; the student needed to work to support his nephews and nieces. Another student’s family has made her -- at age 21 -- the legal custodian of her little brother in case parents are deported. Other students in threatened families just disappear, without a conversation. A recent study by Kathleen Roche in The Journal of Adolescent Health shows that students in undocumented families are experiencing increased emotional stress under the current U.S. immigration policies.

With that context, we return to SB4 and the State of Texas’s insistent assault on our college students.