Executive Order 13768: Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements

Section 4 of this order states that the administration will do everything possible to detain, deport, and otherwise punish immigration violations under U.S. law, and section 5 states that Homeland Security will prioritize prosecuting immigrants who have committed crimes (whether or not they have been convicted) or have already been ordered to leave the U.S. Section 6 addresses the collection of fines for immigration violations. In conjunction with these new priorities, Section 10 replaces the Priority Enforcement Program of the Obama administration with the Secure Communities program which existed previously; both programs facilitated systematic coordination between ICE and law enforcement agencies.

Section 7 asks the Secretary of Homeland Security to hire 10,000 more ICE agents. We went over some of the effects of a Border Patrol hiring surge in discussing Executive Order 13767; it’s likely that the effects are the same here, but it’s more difficult to find information on the status of ICE operations. It is clear that immigration courts don’t have nearly enough resources to handle the massive number of immigration cases. Section 11 asks the DOJ to work on improving prosecutions in these cases; in conjunction with the Trump administration’s directive to immigration judges to complete one case every 12.5 hours, this provision may heavily impact immigration courts.

Several cities in which local leaders do not allow ICE to deport or detain undocumented immigrants are called “sanctuary cities”; leaders within these cities have pointed out, among other things, that having a population of people afraid of calling the police for fear of deportation generally results in lower safety within these cities. The Trump administration responded to these decisions in Section 9 of this executive order, which stated that sanctuary cities are ineligible for all federal grants “except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes”. This provision would have deeply defunded massively populous cities such as San Francisco and established that the federal government can set how states and municipalities enforce the U.S. criminal code. It was declared unconstitutional in court because federal grants are based in federal law passed by Congress, and the President cannot simply decide to ignore federal law. Currently, due to state law, the entire state of California is a sanctuary region.

Section 13 creates VOICE, the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office. VOICE’s toll-free line allows anyone who has had a crime done to them by an undocumented immigrant to report it and receive updates on whether that person has been deported. Ironically, other undocumented immigrants can call the line to report crime done to them by another undocumented immigrant, and, like sanctuary jurisdictions, VOICE will not report their information to ICE. Since section 5 states that immigrants can be slated for priority removal without conviction of a crime, and VOICE has been created specifically to allow people to report undocumented immigrants for crimes, this executive order allows you to call the government and have an undocumented immigrant slated for expedited removal, and check if they have been removed yet.