News > Immigration In The United States

From extreme vetting to extreme prosecution and beyond, Trump administration rolls out anti-immigrant policies

Posted on Apr 14 2017

Since the campaign, “extreme vetting” has been one of the Trump immigration slogans. Now extreme prosecution means targeting every undocumented immigrant (and many permanent legal residents as well) for deportation, and making immigration an even higher priority for federal law enforcement.

Though the term is still undefined, extreme vetting now seems to include stepped-up social media searches of both immigrants and U.S. citizens. NPR reports that, in Congressional testimony, Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly emphasized increased scrutiny, likely including requirements that visa applicants:

• “Hand over their phones so that their contact list and photos could be examined by embassy or consulate staff
• “Provide their social media handles and passwords so that both private and public posts can be viewed. Previously, the Department of Homeland Security has requested handles only to review public posts
• “Provide 15 years’ worth of travel history, employment history and addresses.”

At the borders, U.S. citizens, as well as non-citizen visitors and immigrants, see escalating demands to turn over their cell phones and social media passwords. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and Republican senator Rand Paul have introduced legislation to require a judicial warrant to search digital devices. (Advice to travelers on protecting their information can be found here and here.)

Apart from digital devices and social media, refugees and immigrants already face lengthy and detailed investigations when they apply for visas. For refugees, vetting takes years and includes repetitive (“recurrent”) checking of personal information, as well as multiple interviews with multiple investigators.

Extreme prosecution, outlined in a three-page memo from Attorney General Jeff Sessions,  includes:

• appointing a “border security officer” in each U.S. attorney’s office;
• raising repeat border crossing to the level of a felony;
• increasing federal arrests for immigration-related offenses above the already-high level – half of all federal arrests in 2014 were for immigration-related causes;
• prosecuting those who “harbor” undocumented immigrants.

Prosecutions have already expanded to target almost any undocumented immigrant as a priority. Maribel Trujillo is a recent example – a 42-year-old mother of four U.S. citizen children, who has lived in the United States since 2002. She has no criminal history and has checked in with ICE annually under a withholding of deportation agreement – but was arrested at her last appointment and told she would be deported.

According to the Guardian article, when her lawyer asked why she is now being targeted for deportation:” an ICE agent grew angry and said to them both: “I don’t know if you are aware, but we have a new president, things are different now.”

In addition to prosecutions, DHS plans to greatly increase the number of detention beds available. To do so, it will weaken the standards for detention facilities and increase reliance on private prisons.

Besides the harsh measures that have been publicly announced, unannounced measures against visa applicants from Muslim countries appear to be in place. These look like attempts to implement some of the Trump Muslim ban, despite judicial bars to enforcement of the president’s executive orders. The Guardian highlights one case involving the family of Sanaz Karbazi, an Iranian national who will marry a U.S. citizen on April 15. Her mother and sister planned to attend the wedding, but have been refused visa interviews.

“Nikpour [the bride’s mother], 59 and a widow, was a professor of nursing and midwifery at the University of Tehran and is now studying for her second PhD. She has visited her daughter in the US every year for the past four years without incident. She put in her visa application with the US consulate in Dubai (there is no US embassy in Iran given the history of hostility between the two nations) as early as last summer.”

Sounds like a slam dunk – but wait. Nikpour was interviewed and cleared to visit in December, pending an FBI background check. Then Trump issued his first travel ban. Not only did that stop Nikpour’s visit – it also stranded her brother’s wife and one-year-old child in Iran, where they had been for a family visit. Her brother is a professor at Yale University.

After the travel ban was lifted, Karbasi’s mother and sister tried to get new consular interviews in Dubai. Phone call after phone call and even personal visits to the consulate got nowhere. Finally, they got an explanation:

The nadir came when Karbasi’s sister was told by a consulate worker what she had long been suspecting. He said: “If you were Spanish you could get an appointment in two days, but for Iranians appointments are closed.”

Despite State Department denials, that sounds like a Muslim ban being carried out in defiance of court orders.