Tag: Somali deportations

Unlikely aborted deportation flight to Somali will ever be rescheduled, as court steps in

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A federal judge in Florida has blocked the government from deporting the 92 Somalis who made it to West Africa before some yet-to-be-explained glitch caused their deportation flight to return to the US.  See previous posts here and here.
The usual argument is being raised that we can’t possibly return migrants who have committed crimes in the US back to S***hole countries. It would be inhumane, immigrant activists claim.

So, what this says to me is, if we will be barred from sending lawbreakers back, then we must vigorously keep them out of the US in the first place through robust screening. 

Otherwise, taxpayers will be expected to pay for their incarceration for years!

From Courthouse News:

Darrin-P-Gayles
Judge Gayles:   https://ballotpedia.org/Darrin_P._Gayles

MIAMI (CN) – A federal judge temporarily blocked the government from deporting a group of Somali immigrants who say they were shackled and handcuffed for two days by immigration officials during a failed deportation attempt last month.

In a ruling issued Friday in Miami federal court, U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles said that the 92 Somali immigrants have the right to reopen their removal orders because they are looking “to apply or re-apply for asylum or withholding of deportation based on changed circumstances arising in the country of nationality or in the country to which deportation has been ordered.”

[….]

For decades, Somali nationals were rarely deported from the U.S. mainly because their country lacks a “functioning central government,” according to Gayles’ 14-page ruling, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement began deporting Somalis more often after changes to U.S. policies last year under the Trump administration.

Of course they blame it on Trump, but Obama was deporting Somalis as we told you here in 2013, and in 2005 the US Supreme Court said the US can send aliens back to where they came from—even to hellhole countries.
The botched deportation is now used as a further excuse about why they face threats in Somalia:

The immigrants argue that the international media attention surrounding the botched deportation has made it unsafe for them to return to Somalia because they would be targets of the extremist group Al-Shabaab, which believes that people returning to Somalia after living in Western nations for a long period of time are enemies of their cause.

[….]

U.S. law prohibits the deportation of individuals to countries where they could face political persecution or torture.

I bet those sneaky immigration lawyers never told the Judge that the Supreme Court said in 2005 that such deportations were legal, see here.   The fact that the Bush Administration didn’t do it, doesn’t make it a law!

Lisa Lehner, a senior litigation attorney with Americans for Immigrant Justice, said in a statement that “the court’s thorough review of what it termed the ‘exceptional circumstances’ of this case reveals a depth of understanding of the plight of these individuals.”

The Somali immigrants are represented by Americans for Immigrant Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union, University of Miami Law Clinic, University of Minnesota Law School’s Center for New Americans and Broward Legal Aid.

More here.
My prediction: This batch will be released back into your towns and cities.  Minnesota here they come!

VOA: Deportations of Africans up in 2016; very cool data base

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You’ve been hearing the news here and at other news outlets about the stepped-up deportations of Somalis back to their homeland. Many failed asylum seekers are in the mix.
Asylum, for new readers, is, in a way, the other side of the same refugee coin.  Either ‘refugees’ are chosen abroad (usually by the UN these days) and are flown to your towns after supposedly proving that they are persecuted people, or one gets in to the US either illegally or through some temporary legal way and then applies for asylum.

It is difficult (impossible I think) to find photos of Somalis being deported from the US, but there are an unending supply of the Saudi deportations in 2014. Saudi Arabia deported as many as 12,000 Somalis that year. I wonder did Trump ask the Saudis why they don’t take any refugees, including their fellow Muslims?

When the wannabe ‘refugee’ cannot prove his or her case—that they will be persecuted if sent home—then they are supposed to go home!
Conversely, if granted asylum, the migrant is then given all the rights of a ‘refugee’ who was chosen abroad and flown here and will be put on track for US citizenship.
Now, under the Trump Administration, more of those who failed in their asylum bid are being found, detained and sent home.
By the way, this up-tick in deportations is news that should be sent far and wide so as to discourage even more illegal entry and flimsy asylum claims that clog up the courts.
DHS should actually promote an ad campaign around the world trumpeting the news of stepped-up deportations!
Here is Voice of America on the news about Africans, but more importantly I learned about a new and very cool data base.

The United States has expelled about 326 Somali nationals since January.

That number is greater than the total for all Somalis expelled from the country in 2016.

This is the third consecutive year in which the number of Somalis deported by the U.S. government has risen. The rising numbers have increased immigrants’ fears of raids, detentions and deportations.

The deportations of Somali citizens appear to be part of a larger movement, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse*** at Syracuse University. It found that in the first three months of 2017, the U.S. government ordered the deportation of more than 1,200 Africans. Citizens of Ghana, Nigeria, Somalia and Kenya have received the most removal orders.

Recent deportation orders are undoing a ten-year-long trend.

From 2006 to 2016, the number of Africans deported every year fell from 2,100 to about 1,000. If the trend continues, four times more Africans will be deported by the end of this year than during 2016.

Continue reading here.
***Now check out the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse!
Here is one page that I screenshot to show you what interesting stuff is archived there.
On this page we see that there were 19 deportations for reasons of national security in fiscal year 2017 (that fiscal year began on October 1, 2016). You can learn in what states and what courts those cases came from and the nationality of the person to be deported. From this screenshot page, we note that there was one, an Iraqi, ordered by the court in Detroit to be removed.
 

 
This post is filed in our ‘Where to find information’ category.
You can watch that 2014 video about Saudi deportations here: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Saudi+arabia+deports+Somalis&view=detail&mid=6490B0418567061F00636490B0418567061F0063&FORM=VIRE
 

(Only) 237 Somalis have been removed from US since last October; not thousands!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I was pretty excited to report here that we were stepping up deportations of illegal alien/criminal Somalis, that thousands would be removed. But, now I see that even that administration effort is really not much to write home about!
The news here, if it is accurate, is that ICE won’t arrest illegal Somalis (who are not in detention) at their homes or work places.  Already, “sensitive places” such as schools, places of worship and hospitals are off limits.

Trump’s ambassador to Somalia (Stephen Schwartz) gives Somalia’s new Prez a special gift. A better gift might be to give Somalia back its people instead of hauling them by the thousands to the US! We will see how many of their illegal aliens they will repatriate as well! Photo: http://tribunist.com/news/american-ambassador-gives-make-somalia-great-again-hat-to-somalian-president/

So are we expected to believe that federal agents are going to wait on the streets to nab them coming and going from home to mosque? Only, if we hire a lot more agents!
Over the many years I’ve written RRW there would be flurries of pronouncements that Somalis in the country illegally would be sent back to Somalia and each time there would follow squishy, mealy-mouthed discussions about how can we do such a thing (send people back) because Somalia is still a hellhole!
Is Somalia ever NOT going to be a hellhole? Is this administration headed that way (to weakness and squishy talk) again?
In case you missed it, Trump has admitted 1,359 supposedly persecuted (by whom?) Somalis since inauguration day.
According to Wrapsnet (as of today) the US ‘welcomed’ 5,167 Somalis in FY17 (so far).  And, we are supposed to be excited by the removal of 237 of them in that same time frame?  Net gain is 4,930 since October of 2016!

Here is the latest at Voice of America:

Somalia’s ambassador to the U.S., Ahmed Isse Awad, says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has informed his embassy the agency will no longer arrest illegal Somali immigrants in their homes or at their workplaces. However, federal authorities have not confirmed that there has been any shift in policy.

Awad said the agency reached the decision after his embassy expressed concern to immigration authorities regarding the recent arrests of 11 Somalis in Virginia, Minnesota and Georgia.

“Once we found out that 11 Somalis were arrested from their homes for removal, we thought the arrests looked [like] profiling and targeting Somalis. Then we submitted our concern to ICE and asked clarification,” Awad told VOA’s Somali service. “Fortunately, they came back to us tell us that they would no longer arrest Somalis from their homes or at their workplaces.”

[….]

However officials have previously said that ICE does not have specific exemptions in place for certain groups of people. The agency policy currently directs that anyone in violation of immigration laws may be subject to arrest, detention and removal from the United States.

Authorities say the agency’s policy directs personnel to avoid conducting enforcement activists at “sensitive places” such as schools, places of worship and hospitals, unless they have prior approval from a supervisor.

The U.S. government said almost 5,000 Somali nationals in the United States face deportation orders.

“As of April 1, 2017, there were 4,801 Somali nationals with final orders of removal,” ICE spokesman Brendan Raedy said last week. “As of that same date, 237 Somali nationals have been removed to Somalia in fiscal year 2017.”

[….]

Most of the Somalis facing final orders of removal are not in detention centers and are unlikely to be removed in the near term because their cases are making their way through the system. [I thought they said most had failed their asylum bids?—ed]

Since Somalia’s embassy in Washington reopened in November 2015, the ambassador said, about 170 Somali immigrants who either ran afoul of U.S. law or had their asylum applications rejected have been deported to Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

Most of those previously deported had applied for, but been denied, political asylum in the United States, he added. Another group of Somali applicants whose requests for asylum have been denied are now in detention centers or prisons, awaiting deportation.

Big Whoop!

Fewer than 300 Somalis are scheduled to be moved out in the next couple of months, Awad told VOA, adding that his embassy was awaiting information from U.S. authorities on who the deportees were and when they would depart.

And, as soon as they get that information, they will tell those Somalis to head to Canada ASAP!
See our category ‘Trump Watch’ for more on what Trump has changed and what he hasn’t changed regarding refugees.

Somalis arrested in Clarkston, Georgia a long-time haven for refugee diversity

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

President Trump may be admitting new Somalis to the US every day, but at least the Administration is arresting those here illegally.
No time to say much about it, but want readers to see this story from Georgia (hat tip: Joanne):

Federal immigration authorities have started arresting Somali nationals in parts of DeKalb and Gwinnett counties that have long been havens for newcomers, including in Clarkston, according to African advocacy groups.

Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry welcoming new mosque!

The arrests came after Somalia’s U.S. ambassador recently told Voice of America his embassy has learned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to deport about 4,000 of his countrymen. ICE confirmed that, as of last week, there were 4,801 Somalis in the U.S. who have been ordered removed. The vast majority of them are not being detained.

Until about a year ago, according to ICE, U.S. authorities could not get travel documents to deport people to Somalia, which has endured persistent deprivation and violence. Since Oct. 1, ICE has deported 237 Somalis, according to federal figures through April 1.

[….]

Omar Shekhey, the executive director for the Somali American Community Center in Clarkston, said as many as 10 Somalis have been arrested in Clarkston, Stone Mountain and in Gwinnett this week alone. He worries they could be deported to Somalia, which is now in the grips of a deadly drought. Those who have been arrested have been in the U.S. for many years, Shekhey said.

[….]

Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry said he is looking into ICE’s activities in his city, adding he is worried how the arrests could impact the relationships between immigrants and refugees and local police.

See my previous post on Somali deportations, here.

We are deporting Somalis—4,000 are in the pipeline!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Although, much to my dismay, the Trump Administration is continuing to admit refugees (including hundreds of Somalis), I’m happy to see news like this about illegal alien Somalis being found and deported to Somalia.
For years we didn’t send Somalis back even when they committed one crime after another, but at least this portion of the Trump agenda is being carried out.
(BTW, the theory about not sending illegal migrants, even criminals, back to hellhole countries has been that it is too cruel for them and they will be in danger there.)
From the Voice of America:

Somalia’s U.S. ambassador says his embassy has learned that U.S. immigration agents are planning to deport about 4,000 Somali nationals now living in the United States.

Obama welcomes Somali Ambassador to US. See here in June 2016, Obama was beginning deportation of Somalis, or so he said. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/06/01/us-to-deport-illegal-alien-somalis/

“We learned through immigration sources that the total number of the Somalis that are in the books of [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to be removed are close to 4,000,” Ahmed Isse Awad told VOA’s Somali service Saturday. “Most of them are not in detention centers.”  [Good luck finding them! They are probably on the way to Canada!—ed]

Since Somalia’s embassy in Washington reopened in November 2015, the ambassador said, about 170 Somali immigrants who either ran afoul of U.S. law or had their asylum applications rejected have been deported to Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

Most of those previously deported had applied for but been denied political asylum in the U.S., he added. Another group of Somali applicants whose requests for asylum have been denied are now in detention centers or prisons, awaiting deportation.

Is Virginia a magnet for criminal aliens?

ICE agents recently arrested 82 people from 26 nations during a five-day operation in and around the U.S. capital.

According to a statement from ICE, 68 of those detained March 26-30 had previous criminal convictions, for crimes including armed robbery, larceny and drug offenses. All but three were arrested in the state of Virginia.

Be sure to see the whole story.  VOA reports on one Somali deported in the past who simply returned with a new name.  He has been here for decades.  How many more like him are out there?