Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Summary............................................................................................................................................... 2
Glossary ...................................................................................................................................... 3-5
1AC ........................................................................................................................................... 5-15
Inherency
Answers To: Deportations Decreasing Now .............................................................................. 15-8
Economic Hardship Advantage
Answers To: Illegal Immigration Hurts the Economy ............................................................... 18-21
Solvency
Answers To: ICE improving now ............................................................................................... 21-3
Answers To: State laws deter immigration ................................................................................ 23-6
Answers To: Ending surveillance causes am inefficient system ................................................ 26-9
Answer To: Ending surveillance fuels the smuggling crisis ..................................................... 28-30
Human Rights Advantage
Human Rights Advantage ....................................................................................................... 30-37
Answers To: ICE reducing rights violations ............................................................................. 37-39
Answers To: States have a right to deport............................................................................... 39-42
Answer To: Curtailing surveillance makes immigration courts worse ...................................... 41-43
Answers to: Curtailing surveillance leads to violent militias ..................................................... 43-45
Answers To: Security should be prioritized over human rights ............................................... 45-47
Answers to Crime Disadvantage
Immigration enforcement increases crime ............................................................................... 47-50
Immigration Surveillance makes fighting crime harder .............................................................. 50-2
Data linking Immigration to Crime Misleading .............................................................................. 52
Answers to Terrorism Disadvantage
Immigration Enforcement does not prevent terrorism ................................................................... 53
Immigration funding trades off with terrorism prevention ......................................................... 54-59
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
Summary
Introduction to the Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
The Immigration Surveillance Affirmative seeks the end of the surveillance of millions of
undocumented immigrants in the United States. Currently, federal immigration officials and local law
enforcement agencies track down undocumented immigrants because they have violated the law by
staying in the country illegally. The issue is that many of these undocumented immigrants have
already lived in the country for a long period of time, contribute to the economy through employment
and paying taxes, and have children who are citizens. Despite the benefit that immigration brings to
the United States, the Obama administration (following in the footsteps of the Bush administration)
has attempted to increase the number of undocumented individuals deported each year and has
done so using advanced surveillance techniques and tactics.
Thus, the affirmative tries to reverse this trend of deportation by ending the surveillance programs
that are used to track down undocumented immigrants. The two advantages to the 1AC are (1) The
U.S economy and (2) Human rights abuses.
The U.S Economy Advantage Summary
The U.S economy advantage argues that the process of finding and deporting millions of
undocumented immigrants is bad for the U.S economy. The reason this is true is that millions of
dollars are spent every year deporting undocumented immigrants. Furthermore, most of the people
that we end up deporting are critical to their local economies because they have a job, they pay
taxes, and many start their own businesses. Immigrants are the economic backbone of this country
because they supply the economy with workers and they contribute to the economy like other
Americans by buying houses, going to restaurants, and engaging in the every day economic activities
that keep the U.S economy afloat. By deporting immigrants we make communities poorer and cause
the economy to decline.
The affirmative is able to solve for this by ending the surveillance programs that are used to find and
deport undocumented immigrants. When we no longer waste money trying to find undocumented
immigrants we allow those individuals to contribute to our economy and make the country stronger
The Human Rights Advantage Summary
The Human Rights advantage argues that the federal government is currently violating the rights of
people by using surveillance to track them down and deport them. Individuals who are tracked down
and deported often have little access to legal resources and are treated in gross and unethical ways.
Human rights activists have found that some people have been detained and left in prisons with
horrible conditions, others have been deported even though they are actually citizens!
The affirmative is able to solve for this by ending the surveillance programs that lead to the
deportation of undocumented immigrants.
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Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
Glossary (1/2)
Department of Homeland Security (DHS): Is an agency of the United States federal government
that was formed in 2002 from the combination of 22 departments and agencies. The agency is in
charge of various tasks related to making the United States homeland safe including customs, border,
and immigration enforcement; emergency response to natural and manmade disasters; antiterrorism
work; and cybersecurity.
U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): is an agency within the Department of
Homeland security that enforces federal laws governing border control, customs, trade and
immigration to promote homeland security and public safety.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (U.S.C.I.S.): The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services is responsible for processing immigration and naturalization applications and establishing
policies regarding immigration services.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.): Customs and Border Protection prevents people
from entering the country illegally, or bringing anything harmful or illegal into the United States.
Secure Communities Program: is a program of the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) that uses information shared between ICE, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and local
law enforcement agencies to find whether individuals who have a criminal record have also violated
immigration law by entering the United States illegally.
Non-governmental organizations (NGO): an organization that is not a part of the government. For
example, Doctors Without Borders is an NGO.
Undocumented Immigrant: refers to a foreign nationals residing in the U.S. without legal
immigration status. It includes persons who entered the U.S. without inspection and proper
permission from the U.S. government, and those who entered with a legal visa that is no longer valid.
Undocumented immigrants are also known as unauthorized or illegal immigrants.
Border Patrol: is the agency in charge of watching and monitoring the border in order to prevent
people from entering the United States illegally.
Immigrants Detention Center: is a facility used by the federal government to house undocumented
immigrants who have been detained and subject to deportation.
Consular Consolidated Database (CCD): is a database used by U.S consular officials that records
data from visa applications such as photographs and democratic information of applicants.
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Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
NAUDL 2015-16
Glossary (2/2)
Arizona v. United States: a legal case brought to the Supreme Court of the United States that dealt
with whether the State of Arizona could make its own immigration law independent of the federal
government. On a 5-3 decision the court found that Arizona could not make it a crime to be in Arizona
without legal papers, making it a crime to apply for or get a job in the state, or allowing police to arrest
individuals who had committed crimes that could lead to their deportation because those laws
infringed upon the federal government’s authority in immigration law.
Federal expenditures: spending by the federal government.
Attendant: occurring with or as a result of; accompanying.
Dataveillance: Surveillance of someone’s personal data.
Duress: describes a range of symptoms and experiences of a person's internal life that are
commonly held to be troubling, confusing or out of the ordinary.
Alterity: the state of being other or different; otherness.
Yielded: produce or provide.
Human Rights: a right that is believed to belong justifiably to every person.
Civil Rights: the rights of citizens to political and social freedom and equality.
Nonjusticiable: If a case is "nonjusticiable." a federal court cannot hear it.
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Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
First Affirmative
1AC (1/10)
Contention One: The Current State of Immigration Policy
1. The federal government has been spending vast amounts of money on surveillance
programs.
Kalhan, Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University, 2014 [Immigration Surveillance, 74 Md. L.
Rev. 1 www.digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr/vol74/iss1/2]
Federal expenditures on border and immigration control have grown fifteen-fold since 1986
and now substantially exceed expenditures on all other federal law enforcement programs
combined.5 These activities have been supplemented by a dizzying array of initiatives, often
administered by state, local, and private actors, that indirectly enforce immigration law by regulating
access to rights, benefits, and services—including employment, social services, driver’s licenses,
transportation services, and education—based on citizenship or immigration status.6 Increasingly,
immigration control objectives also are pursued using criminal prosecutions.7 These initiatives have
yielded a staggering, widely noted increase in the number of noncitizens formally removed
from the United States.8 Much less widely noted, however, has been the full significance of that
growth—including an attendant sea change in the underlying nature of immigration regulation
itself, hastened by the implementation of transformative new surveillance and dataveillance
technologies. Like many other areas of contemporary governance, immigration control has
rapidly become an information-centered and technology-driven enterprise. At virtually every
stage of the process of migrating or traveling to, from, and within the United States, both noncitizens
and U.S. citizens are now subject to collection and analysis of extensive quantities of personal
information for immigration control and other purposes. This information is aggregated and
stored by government agencies for long retention periods in networks of interoperable
databases and shared among a variety of public and private actors, both inside and outside the
United States, with little transparency, oversight, or accountability.
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Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
First Affirmative
1AC (2/10)
2. Deportation of people without a criminal record is increasing.
Barrera and Krogstad, researchers at the Pew Research Center, 2014 [ANA GONZALEZBARRERA AND JENS MANUEL KROGSTAD, U.S. deportations of immigrants reach record high in
2013, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/02/u-s-deportations-of-immigrants-reach-recordhigh-in-2013/]
The Obama administration deported a record 438,421 unauthorized immigrants in fiscal year
2013, continuing a streak of stepped up enforcement that has resulted in more than 2 million
deportations since Obama took office, newly released Department of Homeland Security data
show. President Obama today is scheduled to address members of the Congressional Hispanic
Caucus, a group that has recently criticized the president on immigration. Last month, the caucus
urged the president to take executive action on immigration by extending deportation relief to certain
groups of unauthorized immigrants, such as parents of U.S.-born children. Some immigrant
advocates have dubbed Obama the “deporter in chief” over the fact that his administration
has deported about as many immigrants in five years as the George W. Bush administration
deported in eight years. During his speech, Obama is expected to reiterate his pledge to make
changes to immigration policy on his own, something he said he will do after the November midterm
elections.
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Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
First Affirmative
1AC (3/10)
Contention Two is the Economic Harm of Deporting Immigrants
1. Deportation is expensive and cost billions of dollars over time.
Uwimana, an editor and senior researcher at Media Matters, 2014 [Solange, Media Matters,
Deporting Longstanding Undocumented Immigrants Would Cost U.S. Billions,
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/04/10/deporting-longstanding-undocumented-immigrants/198845]
A 2010 study by the Center for American Progress (CAP) estimated that the United States would
need to spend at least $285 billion over five years to deport all 11 million undocumented
immigrants currently in the country. That figure includes the cost of apprehending immigrants,
detaining them for an average of 30 days, legally processing them, and transporting them back to
their birth countries. CAP explained: In these challenging economic times, spending a king's ransom
to tackle a symptom of our immigration crisis without addressing g root causes would be a massive
waste of taxpayer dollars. Spending $285 billion would require $922 in new taxes for every man,
woman, and child in this country. If this kind of money were raised, it could provide every
public and private school student from prekindergarten to the 12th grade an extra $5,100 for
their education. Or more frivolously, that $285 billion would pay for about 26,146 trips in the private
space travel rocket, Falcon 1e. Put another way, $285 billion is a little more than what the federal
government spent to maintain the Medicaid health program in 2013. However, that cost to the
federal government would be compounded by the loss of economic activity generated by
undocumented immigrants. In a 2010 CAP study, UCLA political scientist Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda
found that enacting a mass deportation policy -- which he described as "not a realistic policy option"
-- would reduce economic output by 1.46 percent per year. He added: "This amounts to a
cumulative $2.6 trillion in lost GDP over 10 years."
2. Undocumented immigrants and their families hold trillions of dollars of purchasing power
that drive economic growth.
Nowrasteh, the immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and
Prosperity, 2013 [Alex, CATO Institute, Deporting Customers Hurts the Economy,
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/deporting-customers-hurts-economy]
Those critics of immigration forget that immigrants aren’t just workers, they are also consumers of
products made by Americans. Hispanic and Asian Americans have around $1.9 trillion in annual
purchasing power — about 16 percent of total purchasing power, according to a recent report
from the Selig Center of Economic Growth from the University of Georgia. Hispanic and Asian
immigrants have dominated both lawful and unlawful immigration in recent decades, while
their Americanized descendants are responsible for much of American population growth.
Without that $1.9 trillion in purchasing power, Americans will have lower wages and fewer
employment opportunities. Immigrants and their descendants did not take that $1.9 trillion in
wealth from Americans — they made it by working, creating businesses, and making the
goods and services that people want to buy. In turn, they spend much of it here.
7
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
First Affirmative
1AC (4/10)
3. Undocumented immigrants help the economy grow by purchasing houses and renting
apartments
Nowrasteh, the immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and
Prosperity, 2013 [Alex Nowrasteh, received his Bachelor of Arts in economics from George Mason
University and Master of Science in economic history from the London School of Economics, CATO
Institute, Deporting Customers Hurts the Economy,
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/deporting-customers-hurts-economy]
Immigrants, for example, demand an enormous amount of real estate. Whether through renting
apartments or buying houses, immigrants pay a lot to landowners, who are overwhelmingly
American citizens. Those American landlords and homeowners then see the value of their
property increase. Removing immigrants would therefore lower the value of real estate —
understood to be one of the biggest drivers of long-term wealth of any sector. During the
housing bust, Arizona passed two laws that forced businesses and the police to target
unlawful immigrants. As a result, around 200,000 of them left the state, mainly from the Phoenix
area, and took their purchasing power with them. The jobs they left behind in construction and
agriculture remained unfilled along with their vacated apartments and houses. In the six years
after April 2006, the home price index for the 20 largest metropolitan areas in the nation
declined by 32.9 percent. In the Phoenix area, the price index declined by a whopping 51.29
percent. The housing bust, caused by myriad other factors, was exacerbated in Phoenix by
forcing 200,000 consumers of real estate out of the region. After those laws were passed, home
and rental vacancy rates in Arizona were consistently above those in California and New Mexico.
Years after the Arizona laws were passed, Albuquerque and Los Angeles recorded vacancy
rates that were 50 to 75 percent lower than those prevailing in Phoenix. For our service
economy, where the most valuable asset many Americans own is their home, importing more
consumers will be a blessing while removing the ones here will be a curse.
8
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
First Affirmative
1AC (5/10)
4. Immigrants reduce unemployment by creating new jobs
Russel, reporter at the Washington Examiner, 2015 [Jason Russel, How immigrants boost your
local economy, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/how-immigrants-boost-your-localeconomy/article/2563678]
Immigrants create jobs for native-born American workers, according to a new working paper
published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The paper says every immigrant
creates 1.2 local jobs for local workers, raises wages for native workers, and attracts nativeborn workers from elsewhere in the country.
The paper was authored by Gihoon Hong, with Indiana University South Bend, and John McLaren,
with the University of Virginia. Hong and McLaren used Census data from 1980-2000 to reach their
conclusions.
The arrival of immigrants increases the combined income of a local area, boosting demand for
workers in local service jobs, part of the non-traded sector. Hong and McLaren found that these
types of local service jobs create more than four-fifths of total income, so immigration to a local area
requires more service workers. "We find that new immigrants tend to raise local wages slightly
even in terms of tradeables for jobs in the non-traded sector while they push wages down slightly in
the traded sector, and that new immigrants seem to attract native workers into the metropolitan
area," Hong and McLaren wrote. "Overall, it appears that local workers benefit from the arrival of
more immigrants. “Immigration opponents sometimes claim that immigrants crowd out native workers,
who lose jobs and move away from immigrant-heavy areas. To the contrary, Hong and McLaren's
research shows native-born American workers are attracted to areas with more immigrants and
native-born wages rise as well. "U.S. workers are actually moving from elsewhere in the
country into the city that receives the immigrant inflow," Hong and McLaren wrote. "Immigration
appears to be raising the real wage through increased product diversity in the service
industries."
9
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
First Affirmative
1AC (6/10)
There are multiple benefits to maintaining economic growth and minimizing unemployment
1. Times of high unemployment and slow growth hurt families and society
Baker and Hasset, 2012 [Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Kevin Hassett is director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. The Human
Disaster of Unemployment,.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/the-human-disaster-ofunemployment.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0]
Unemployment is almost always a traumatic event, especially for older workers. A paper by the
economists Daniel Sullivan and Till von Wachter estimates a 50 to 100 percent increase in
death rates for older male workers in the years immediately following a job loss, if they
previously had been consistently employed. This higher mortality rate implies that a male worker
displaced in midcareer can expect to live about one and a half years less than a worker who keeps
his job. There are various reasons for this rise in mortality. One is suicide. A recent study found
that a 10 percent increase in the unemployment rate (say from 8 to 8.8 percent) would increase the
suicide rate for males by 1.47 percent. This is not a small effect. Assuming a link of that scale, the
increase in unemployment would lead to an additional 128 suicides per month in the United States.
The picture for the long-term unemployed is especially disturbing. The duration of unemployment is
the dominant force in the relationship between joblessness and the risk of suicide.
Joblessness is also associated with some serious illnesses, although the causal links are poorly
understood. Studies have found strong links between unemployment and cancer, with unemployed
men facing a 25 percent higher risk of dying of the disease. Similarly higher risks have been found for
heart disease and psychiatric problems. The physical and psychological consequences of
unemployment are significant enough to affect family members. The economists Kerwin Charles
and Melvin Stephens recently found an 18 percent increase in the probability of divorce following
a husband’s job loss and 13 percent after a wife’s. Unemployment of parents also has a negative
impact on achievement of their children. In the long run, children whose fathers lose a job when
they are kids have reduced earnings as adults — about 9 percent lower annually than children
whose fathers do not experience unemployment. We all understand how the human costs can be
so high. For many people, their very identity is their occupation. Few events rival the
emotional strain of job loss.
10
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
First Affirmative
1AC (7/10)
2. Economic growth is good for everyone - Growth increases life expectancy, education and
quality of life while allowing the government to fund programs for the public good
Furchtgott-Roth senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, 2013 (Diana, former chief economist of
the U.S. Department of Labor, “Only Growth Can Sustain Us” New York Times
nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/01/16/when-growth-is-not-a-good-goal/only-growth-cansustain-us)
Economic growth raises standards of living for rich and poor countries alike. The more
growth, the better. In developing countries, higher G.D.P. growth results in lower infant
mortality, running water, sewer systems, electricity, better schools and education for children,
as can be seen from comparative World Bank data. As electric power plants replace wood stoves, the
air is cleared of smog. As girls receive more education, birth rates naturally decline as women choose
to make use of their human capital by entering the labor force. In developed countries, economic
growth gives us the tax revenue for cleaner air and water, for missile defense, for health and
education programs. Stringent Environmental Protection Agency regulations do not come cheap.
Republicans and Democrats both have extensive wish lists for favorite government programs,
and the only way to pay for these is from the tax revenue from economic growth. Here in
America, we have all the food we can eat, and more clothes than we can fit in our closets. At the
same time, we’re seeing deteriorating family structures that reduce educational performance.
About three-quarters of poor families with children are headed by a single parent. Poor children may
have cellphones, but they need competitive schools (like KIPP) to make sure they do not fall
behind. Our parents and grandparents are requiring more support as their life expectancies
increase.
11
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
First Affirmative
1AC (8/10)
In order to solve the economic harms of unfairly deporting undocumented immigrants
my partner and I present the following plan:
The United States federal government should substantially curtail its domestic
surveillance by ending its surveillance of undocumented immigrants.
12
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
First Affirmative
1AC (9/10)
Contention Three is how curtailing immigration surveillance ends the economic damage of
deportation
1. Ending immigration surveillance solves for this new trend in inhumane immigration
enforcement.
Kalhan, Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University, 2014 [IMMIGRATION SURVEILLANCE,
74 Md. L. Rev. 1 (2014), http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr/vol74/iss1/2]
These four sets of migration and mobility surveillance functions— identification, screening and
authorization, mobility tracking and control, and information sharing—play crucial but
underappreciated roles in immigration control processes across the entire spectrum of migration
and travel. In the growing number of contexts in which immigration control activities now take place,
enforcement actors engage in extensive collection, storage, analysis, and dissemination of
personal information, in order to identify individuals, screen them and authorize their activities,
enable monitoring and control over their travel, and share information with other actors who bear
immigration control responsibilities. Initially deployed for traditional immigration enforcement
purposes, and expanded largely in the name of security, these surveillance technologies and
processes are qualitatively remaking the nature of immigration governance, as a number of examples
illustrate. 1. Border Control Despite implementation challenges, Congress and DHS have placed
new surveillance technologies at the heart of border control strategies.
2. The United States federal government is key to solving for bad immigration policy. Only
congress has the authority to alter our enforcement policies.
Legal Information Institute, Cornell University School of Law, 2015 [Immigration law: an
overview, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/immigration]
Federal immigration law determines whether a person is an alien, the rights, duties, and
obligations associated with being an alien in the United States, and how aliens gain residence or
citizenship within the United States. It also provides the means by which certain aliens can become
legally naturalized citizens with full rights of citizenship. Immigration law serves as a gatekeeper
for the nation's border, determining who may enter, how long they may stay, and when they
must leave. Congress has complete authority over immigration. Presidential power does not
extend beyond refugee policy. Except for questions regarding aliens' constitutional rights, the
courts have generally found the immigration issue as nonjusticiable.
13
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
First Affirmative
1AC (10/10)
3. Stopping surveillance for deportation makes our immigration system fair and reduces strain
on our legal system.
Fitz and Wolgin, Center for American Progress, 2014 [Marshall is the Director of Immigration
Policy at the Center for American Progress. Philip E. is Senior Policy Analyst for Immigration
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/ news/2014/11/18/101098/enforcementoverdrive-has-overloaded-the-immigration-courts/]
But simply increasing resources will not solve the overarching problem of roughly 200,000
immigrants needing to appear before the courts each year in the first place. It is past time to
reduce the volume of deportation actions. President Barack Obama’s expected executive action
on immigration will hopefully begin that process by ensuring that low-priority immigrants who have
been living in the country for years can get deferred action—a temporary reprieve from deportation.
The executive action should also focus enforcement resources on tracking down and removing
serious criminals, rather than on putting otherwise-law-abiding immigrants into the
overburdened deportation system. By resourcing the courts commensurate with their inflated
caseloads and curtailing the number of people put into the system in the first place, the nation
can work toward a more functional immigration court system.
4. Curtailing immigrant surveillance will allow immigrants to live without fear.
Broeders and Engberson, in the Journal of American Behavioral Scientist, 2007 [Dennis, Dutch
Scientific Council for Government Policy and Godfried, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Fight
Against Illegal Migration Identification Policies and Immigrants’ Counterstrategies, American
Behavioral Scientist, Volume 50 Number 12, August]
Information and identification are vital for the control of populations, and this goes double for the
irregular population. The keywords for the internal control on irregular migrants are surveillance
and identification. The development of the “surveillance state” is of course a much broader
phenomenon, but it has made an important mark on the fight against illegal immigration.
Registration, cross-referencing, and surveillance have become prime instruments of control. The
computerization of surveillance and administration has been a revolutionary shift in the administrative
power of the state system (Lyon, 2003, 2004). Filing cabinets and card indexes have been, or are
being, transformed into searchable digital databanks that can potentially be linked into networks.
Whether or not governments connect and combine different bodies of information will increasingly
become a matter of legal constraints, as the technological constraints are quickly losing their
relevance. Surveillance can be used to locate irregular migrants but can also be a means to
exclude irregular immigrants from the formal and informal institutions of society. The link
between the exclusion of irregular migrants and policies of surveillance can follow two separate
logics. Surveillance may be deployed to exclude irregular migrants from key institutions of society,
such as the labor market and the housing market, and even from informal networks of fellow
countrymen and family. The state raises a protective wall of legal and documentary
requirements around the key institutions of the welfare state and “patrols” it with advanced
identification and control system.
14
Answers To: Deportations Decreasing Now
(__)
(__) Deportation of undocumented immigrants under the Obama administration is still
increasing.
Ewing, Senior Researcher at the American Immigration Council, 2014 [Walter, Ph.D., is Senior
Researcher at the American Immigration Council, The Growth of the U.S. Deportation Machine,
Immigration Policy Center, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/growth-us-deportationmachine]
Despite some highly public claims to the contrary, there has been no waning of immigration
enforcement in the United States. In fact, the U.S. deportation machine has grown larger in
recent years, indiscriminately consuming criminals and non-criminals alike, be they
unauthorized immigrants or long-time legal permanent residents (LPRs). Deportations under the
Obama administration alone are now approaching the two-million mark. But the deportation
frenzy began long before this milestone. The federal government has, for nearly two decades, been
pursuing an enforcement-first approach to immigration control that favors mandatory detention and
deportation over the traditional discretion of a judge to consider the unique circumstances ofevery
case. The end result has been a relentless campaign of imprisonment and expulsion aimed at
noncitizens—a campaign authorized by Congress and implemented by the executive branch. While
this campaign precedes the Obama administration by many years, it has grown immensely
during his tenure in the White House. In part, this is the result of laws which have put the
expansion of deportations on automatic. But the continued growth of deportations also reflects the
policy choices of the Obama administration. Rather than putting the brakes on this non-stop drive
to deport more and more people, the administration chose to add fuel to the fire.
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: Deportations Decreasing Now
(__)
(__) The Obama administration’s actions have failed at reducing the deportation of
undocumented youth.
Merina, reporter at Southern California Public Radio, 2015 [Dorian Merina, Despite being given
priority, migrant youth still face high rate of deportation in LA's immigration courts,
http://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2015/05/14/42823/despite-being-given-priority-migrant-youthstill-f/]
Nine months after the Justice Department announced a policy to speed up cases for migrant
youth, more than half the juveniles in Los Angeles' immigration courts have nevertheless
been ordered deported, according to data obtained by KPCC. None were granted asylum. The
data, acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request from the Department of
Justice, also show that more than half of the migrant youth faced a judge without an attorney
– the single most important factor in determining the outcome, according to a 2014 study by
Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The FOIA data are from July
18, 2014, through April 20, 2015, and cover 471 completed unaccompanied minor cases in the Los
Angeles jurisdiction. All of the children were processed through a priority docket, a designation
that the Justice Department made in 2014 in response to the surge of child migrants. Of those
cases in L.A., 287 juveniles were ordered removed. Nationwide, unaccompanied minors rose to
68,541 in fiscal year 2014, prompting a debate over the workings of a complex and overwhelmed
immigration court system.
16
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: Deportations Decreasing Now
(___)
(___) The deportation process is increasing in the status quo and continues to tear families
apart, often leaving children in foster homes
Ceceña, contributor to the San Diego Free Press, 2014 [Vanessa Ceceña received her Master of
Social Work from the University of Southern California, Immigration, Deportation, and Family
Separation, http://sandiegofreepress.org/2014/09/immigration-deportation-and-family-separation/]
While the numbers are astonishing, I am more shocked at the number of people deported that have
not committed a crime. Out of the 151,834 people removed without a criminal history, 23,436 of
them were already in the U.S. when deported. ICE does not track how many of these individuals
have family in the U.S., but I imagine that it is a significant number. The increase in deportations
over the years has had an adverse effect on immigrant families, on communities and countries
of origin, as well as on communities. Deportations cause economic hardship, emotional
distress, and family separation. In addition to economic hardship (and in many times intensified
economic hardship), deportations can destroy the family structure. Families are separated; children
are left without a parent or without both parents, in some cases. What happens to a family when the
father, the primary breadwinner, is deported, or when both parents are deported? What happens if
the parents are detained during a raid while the children are at school? As a graduate student I
researched this very topic, focusing on child welfare policies and system that control the future of
some of these children. In November 2011, the Applied Research Center (now known as Race
Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation) published a report, Shattered Families: The
Perilous Intersection of Immigration Enforcement and the Child Welfare System, that explored in
great depth the effects of deportation and the increasing number of immigrant children from mixed
status families entering the foster care system. Mixed status refers to a family whose members have
different immigration status. For example, the parents and the oldest child may be undocumented,
whereas the youngest children are U.S. citizens. According to the ARC’s report, there are at least
5,100 children in foster care due to a parent being deported or detained. It estimates that
another 15,000 children will enter the foster care system within the next five years. The
likelihood of these children being reunified with family is slim.
17
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: Illegal Immigration Hurts the Economy
(__)
(__) Undocumented immigrants are good for the economy because they are essential to labor
force, agriculture, and bring in millions in tax revenue.
Goodman, author and journalist, 2014 [H. A. Goodman is an author and journalist who studied
International Relations at USC and worked for a brief stint at the U.S. Department of State's Foreign
Service Institute, Illegal immigrants benefit the U.S. economy, http://thehill.com/blogs/congressblog/foreign-policy/203984-illegal-immigrants-benefit-the-us-economy]
According to the Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project, there were 8.4 million unauthorized
immigrants employed in the U.S.; representing 5.2 percent of the U.S. labor force (an increase
from 3.8 percent in 2000). Their importance was highlighted in a report by Texas Comptroller Susan
Combs that stated, “Without the undocumented population, Texas’ work force would decrease
by 6.3 percent” and Texas’ gross state product would decrease by 2.1 percent. Furthermore,
certain segments of the U.S. economy, like agriculture, are entirely dependent upon illegal
immigrants. The U.S. Department of Agriculture states that, “about half of the hired workers
employed in U.S. crop agriculture were unauthorized, with the overwhelming majority of these
workers coming from Mexico.” The USDA has also warned that, “any potential immigration reform
could have significant impacts on the U.S. fruit and vegetable industry.” From the perspective of
National Milk Producers Federation in 2009, retail milk prices would increase by 61 percent if its
immigrant labor force were to be eliminated. Echoing the Department of Labor, the USDA, and the
National Milk Producers Federation, agricultural labor economist James S. Holt made the following
statement to Congress in 2007: “The reality, however, is that if we deported a substantial number
of undocumented farm workers, there would be a tremendous labor shortage.” In terms of
overall numbers, The Department of Labor reports that of the 2.5 million farm workers in the U.S.,
over half (53 percent) are illegal immigrants. Growers and labor unions put this figure at 70
percent. But what about the immense strain on social services and money spent on welfare for these
law breakers? The Congressional Budget Office in 2007 answered this question in the following
manner: “Over the past two decades, most efforts to estimate the fiscal impact of immigration
in the United States have concluded that, in aggregate and over the long term, tax revenues of
all types generated by immigrants—both legal and unauthorized—exceed the cost of the
services they use.” According to the New York Times, the chief actuary of the Social Security
Administration claims that undocumented workers have contributed close to 10% ($300 billion)
of the Social Security Trust Fund. Finally, the aggregate economic impact of illegal immigration is
debatable, but any claim that they’ve ruined the country doesn’t correlate to the views of any notable
economist. An open letter to President George W. Bush in 2006, signed by around five hundred
economists (including five Nobel laureates) stated the following: “While a small percentage of
native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from
the contributions that immigrants make to our economy, including lower consumer prices.”
18
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: Illegal Immigration Hurts the Economy
(__)
(__) Immigrants boost U.S gross domestic product and reduce debt.
Fitz, Wolgin, and Oakford, Center for American Progress, 2013 [Marshall Fitz, Philip E. Wolgin,
and Patrick Oakford, Immigrants Are Makers, Not Takers, americanprogress.org/issues/immigration
/news/2013/02/08/52377/immigrants-are-makers-not-takers/]
Immigrants are a net positive to the economy Here are just a few examples of how immigrants
pay more into the U.S. economy than they take out. Large GDP gains and tax revenue from
legalization Research by UCLA Professor Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda shows that legalizing our
nation’s undocumented immigrant population and reforming our legal immigration system
would add a cumulative $1.5 trillion to U.S. GDP over a decade. These big gains occur because
legalized workers earn higher wages than undocumented workers, and they use those wages to buy
things such as houses, cars, phones, and clothing. As more money flows through the U.S.
economy, businesses grow to meet the demand for more goods and services, and more jobs
and economic value are created. Hinojosa-Ojeda found that the tax benefits alone from
legalization would be between $4.5 billion and $5.4 billion in the first three years. Big economic
boost from the DREAM Act Research by Notre Dame economists Juan Carlos Guzmán and Raúl
Jara finds that passing the DREAM Act would add $329 billion to the U.S. economy by 2030. The
DREAM Act provides a double boost to the economy: First, DREAMers will be able to work legally
(generally at higher wages), and second, because of the requirements to complete high school and
some college or military service, they will have more education and training, which translates into
better and higher-paying jobs. All of these extra wages circulate through the economy, supporting
new job creation for the native born as well. Naturalized citizens earn even more A large body of
literature illustrates that naturalized citizens are more economically beneficial than even legal
permanent residents. In the United States the University of Southern California’s Manuel Pastor
estimated that naturalized citizens earn between 8 percent and 11 percent higher wages after
naturalization. Pastor concludes that if even half of those who are currently eligible—the
Department of Homeland Security estimates that there are more than 8.5 million people in this
category—became citizens, it would add between $21 billion and $45 billion to the U.S.
economy over five years. Even undocumented immigrants pay taxes Immigrants—even the
undocumented—pay a significant amount of money in taxes each year. A 2011 study by the
Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy found that undocumented immigrants paid $11.2
billion in state and local taxes in 2010 alone, adding a significant amount of money to help
state and local finances. It is important to note that immigrants—even legal immigrants—are barred
from most social services, meaning that they pay to support benefits they cannot receive. Immigrants
help keep Social Security solvent According to the National Foundation for American Policy,
immigrants will add a net of $611 billion to the Social Security system over the next 75 years.
Immigrants are a key driver of keeping the Social Security Trust Fund solvent, and Stuart Anderson
of the National Foundation for American Policy finds that cutting off immigration to the
country would increase the size of the Social Security deficit by 31 percent over 50 years.
19
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: Illegal Immigration Hurts the Economy
(__)
(__) Immigrants create new jobs by creating businesses and spending money in the economy
Service Employees International Union 2015 ["They take our jobs" -- Debunking Immigration
Myths, http://www.seiu.org/a/immigration/they-take-our-jobs-debunking-immigration-myths.php]
"They take our jobs" -- Debunking Immigration Myths MYTH #1 "Immigrants take our jobs" THE
FACTS: The largest wave of immigration to the U.S. since the early 1900s coincided with our
lowest national unemployment rate and fastest economic growth. Immigrants create new jobs
by forming new businesses, buying homes, spending their incomes on American goods and
services, paying taxes and raising the productivity of U.S. businesses.¹ In fact, between 1990
and 2004, roughly 9 out of 10 native-born workers with at least a high school diploma
experienced wage gains because of increased immigration.² A legal flow of immigrants based on
workforce demand strengthens the U.S. economy by keeping productivity high and countering
negative impacts as the U.S. aging population swells. Of the twenty occupations that will see the
largest growth in the next seven years, twelve of them only require on-the-job-training--including jobs
in SEIU's core industries like home care, cleaning/janitorial services, child care, and hospitality
services.³ But as native-born workers seek higher education and move up the occupational ladder,
the number of native-born workers seeking employment in these industries has shrunk. The problem
with today's economy is not immigrants; the problem is our broken immigration laws that
allow big business to exploit workers who lack legal status, driving down wages for all
workers. If every immigrant were required to get into the system, pay their dues, and become
U.S. citizens, we could block big business' upper hand, eliminate the two-tiered workforce,
and build a united labor movement that raises wages and living standards for all workers.
(__) Immigrants are the backbone of innovation and are the biggest contributors to new
startups
Service Employees International Union 2015 ["They take our jobs" -- Debunking Immigration
Myths, http://www.seiu.org/a/immigration/they-take-our-jobs-debunking-immigration-myths.php]
MYTH #6 "Immigrants are Uneducated, Low-Skilled and Building a Permanent Underclass" THE
FACTS: In 2000, roughly 12.5 million legal immigrants in the United States had more than a
high school education, and accounted for half of all immigrants living in the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.14 Immigrants have had a
disproportionate role in innovation and technology and have fuelled growth of new
businesses. Half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants--including Yahoo,
eBay and Google. According to the U.S. Census and analysis by the Immigration Policy Center, "In
2002, 1.6 million Hispanic-owned firms provided jobs to 1.5 million employees, had receipts of
$222 billion, and generated payroll of $36.7 billion. The same year, 1.1 million Asian-owned
firms provided jobs to 2.1 million employees, had receipts of $326.4 billion, and generated
payroll of $56 billion."15
20
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: ICE improving now
(__)
(__) ICE has not improved – it continues to deport innocent individuals without a proper
hearing.
American Immigration Council 2014 [Misplaced Priorities: Most Immigrants Deported by ICE in
2013 Were a Threat to No One, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/misplaced-priorities-mostimmigrants-deported-ice-2013-were-threat-no-one]
As ICE’s own statistics make clear, the agency is involved primarily in the apprehension and
deportation of people who have committed immigration violations and minor crimes—not
terrorist operatives or violent criminals. But recognizing this is only the first step in understanding
the way ICE functions. The next step is to examine how ICE carries out deportations. For instance, in
FY 2013, 101,000 (or 27 percent) of the people whom ICE deported were summarily removed
from the country via an “order of expedited removal,” and 159,624 (43 percent) were removed
through a “reinstated final order of removal,” neither of which generally affords the deportee a
hearing in court. In other words, seven out of every ten deportees in FY 2013 never had the
opportunity to plead their cases before an immigration judge. Not only is ICE deporting people
who aren’t a threat, but it’s deporting many of them in ways that don’t respect the full range of
legal rights which form the basis of the U.S. criminal justice system.
21
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: ICE improving now
(__)
(__) Even with changes to ICE they have continued to monitor and deport undocumented
immigrants at an alarming rate.
Bernstein, NY Public Defender, 2013 [Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein,
http://mic.com/articles/22258/immigration-reform-a-record-409-849-deportations-happened-in-2012-aclear-sign-we-need-change]
A few administrative changes announced before the New Year also indicate a shift toward reform,
although they were met with some skepticism. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
said that its “detainer” policy would now focus on undocumented people with prior criminal
convictions. An immigration detainer mandates that local law enforcement hold an undocumented
immigrant in custody until ICE decides whether to begin deportation proceedings. Advocates have
long considered this program deeply flawed, as it can result in deportation — and the separation of
families — for such low-level offenses as a traffic violation. ICE also announced that it would be
greatly reducing the 287(g) program, which authorized local police to question people about their
immigration status. While the changes were welcomed by advocates, their excitement was
tempered by ICE’s release — on the same day — of startling figures on deportations in 2012.
Last year, 409,849 people were deported — a new record. Moreover, advocates recognize that
these changes won’t necessarily mean less enforcement: for example, by reducing the 287(g)
program, ICE will simply be concentrating more on immigration enforcement in local jails. (In
fact, a report by the Migration Policy Institute released this week found that the U.S.
government spends more on immigration enforcement agencies than on the other main
criminal law enforcement agencies — including the FBI and the DEA — combined.)
22
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: State laws deter immigration
(__)
(__) Federal action solves for state level immigration programs – States can’t monitor
immigrants without federal information.
Kalhan, Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University, 2014 [IMMIGRATION SURVEILLANCE,
74 Md. L. Rev. 1 (2014), http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr/vol74/iss1/2]
Interoperable databases now play a powerful role in federal programs to enlist state and local
law enforcement and corrections officers in the identification of potentially deportable
noncitizens by enabling automatic, routine, and effectively mandatory immigration status
determinations by these officers in the course of their day-to-day responsibilities. Under DHS’s
“Secure Communities” program, fingerprints that are recorded and transmitted to the FBI’s IAFIS
database (to obtain identification and criminal history information as part of the typical post-arrest
booking process) are now simultaneously transmitted to DHS for comparison against records in
IDENT. If the fingerprints match a record in IDENT—or even if there is no match, but the individual
has an unknown or non-U.S. place of birth—the system automatically flags the record for further
review. Based on enforcement priorities and other factors, ICE may decide to initiate removal
proceedings against the individual and issue a detainer requesting that the state or local
agency hold the individual for transfer of custody. A second automated immigration policing
program enables automatic identification of suspected immigration law violators by including
automatic searches of civil immigration records whenever state and local law enforcement
officers search the NCIC to obtain information on criminal history and outstanding warrants on
individuals who they encounter. Both programs have been implemented in a manner that makes
participation effectively mandatory for states and localities.195 Immigration Benefits
Applications. Just as the State Department does with individuals applying for visas and refugee status
from overseas, DHS, through USCIS, collects, stores, analyzes, and disseminates significant
amounts of personal information from individuals affirmatively applying for parole, adjustment
of status, asylum, employment authorization, lawful permanent resident status, naturalization,
and other immigration benefits within the United States. USCIS maintains and tracks benefits
applications using its Central Index System, which is able to access over fifty-seven million records
concerning the individuals who have applied for these immigration benefits in a variety of different
case management database systems.196 Collection of fingerprints from immigration benefits
applicants has become routine, and serious consideration has been given to routine collection of
other biometric data, most notably DNA.197 Officials conduct background checks against a variety of
other government databases.198 USCIS has even used social networking platforms to conduct
surveillance on individuals seeking to naturalize. The agency has instructed its officials to
“friend” petitioners for naturalization and their beneficiaries on social networks in an apparent
effort to detect potential grounds upon which those petitions might be denied, such as the
failure to meet the legal standard for a genuine marriage.
23
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: State laws deter immigration
(__)
(__) The federal government controls what immigration matters are delegated to the states.
Wong, Assistant Professor of Political Science, 2014
[The Politics of Interior Immigration Enforcement, California Journal of Politics and Policy, 6(3),
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/83c0g65q#page-2]
As the enforcement of federal immigration laws falls within the plenary powers of the federal
government, states and localities have mostly played a secondary role in contemporary
immigration law enforcement (state-level laws like Arizona’s SB 1070 and the Secure Communities
program are notable exceptions). However, in attempting to address what Coleman (2007) describes
as the “deter- ritorialized tangle of law enforcement practices” that characterizes interior immigration
enforcement in the US, local law enforcement agencies were given more authority over immigration
matters under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996.
Section 287(g) of IIRIRA gave ICE the ability to train local law enforcement officers to enforce
federal immigration laws. More technically, it authorized DHS to enter into agreements (via
memorandums of agreement) with state and local law enforcement agen- cies permitting crossdesignated officers to perform immigration law functions, provided that they received the
appropriate training under the supervision of ICE.
24
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: State laws deter immigration
(__)
(___) Local cooperation with federal officials is what makes deportation possible
Sakuma, national reporter at msnbc, 2014
[Amanda, Safe haven keeps immigrant families together, http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/daniel-neyoysanctuary-keeping-families-together]
According to a report out by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
(TRAC), 47,249 of the total deportations last year were triggered by traffic violations, not violent
crime. A separate New York Times review of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
deportation statistics, found that two-thirds of the nearly 2 million deportations under the Obama
administration targeted people who committed minor offenses. Some had no criminal record at all. A
number of traffic-related arrests stem from a 2012 program called Secure Communities. Under
the program, local law enforcement shares any information on undocumented immigrants in
their communities, including fingerprints, with federal officials. That places anyone slapped with
a speeding ticket or fine on ICE’s radar. The effort was supposed to pinpoint undocumented
criminals in the system, but when congregants started disappearing from their church
communities, faith leaders began to take notice. The backlash to Secure Communities
spawned a new wave of what is known as the Sanctuary Movement – a collection of interfaith
organizations fighting for the rights of immigrant communities. “Folks came together in their
faith spaces because when undocumented people began being deported by police, the first thing they
did was turn to the church,” said Nicole Kligerman, a community organizer for the New Sanctuary
Movement based out of Philadelphia. Mirroring success stories from New Orleans, Newark and
Miami, the New Sanctuary Movement in Philadelphia worked to cut off a local law enforcement
pipeline to ICE agents. After organizers lobbied city officials for more than five years, Philadelphia
Mayor Michael Nutter issued an executive order in April mandating that city police would no
longer detain immigrants for ICE officials to take them into custody. Federal agents must now
present a warrant.
25
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: Ending surveillance causes am inefficient system
(__)
(__) The federal government mandate to monitor and detain undocumented immigrants is the
root cause of our immigration system’s inefficiencies
Robbins, reporter at NPR, 2013
[Ted Robbins, Little-Known Immigration Mandate Keeps Detention Beds Full,
http://www.npr.org/2013/11/19/245968601/little-known-immigration-mandate-keeps-detention-bedsfull]
Imagine your city council telling the police department how many people it had to keep in jail
each night. That's effectively what Congress has told U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement with a policy known as the "detention bed mandate." The mandate calls for filling
34,000 beds in some 250 facilities across the country, per day, with immigrant detainees. When NPR
visited the Department of Homeland Security's detention center in Florence, Ariz., hundreds of men
— nearly all from Latin America — were lining up for lunch. They were caught by the Border Patrol
or, if apprehended away from the border, by local police and Immigration and Customs
Enforcement. People can stay behind the razor-wire fences for days, weeks or years. NPR was
not allowed to talk with anyone in the detention center, but Francisco Rincon, who was recently
released from Florence on bond, says he was in the facility for three weeks. Every day he was in
detention cost taxpayers at least $120. Add up all the nation's detention centers and that's
more than $2 billion a year. The detention bed mandate, which began in 2009, is just part of the
massive increase in enforcement-only immigration policies over the last two decades. The last
time Congress passed a broad immigration law dealing with something other than enforcement —
such as overhauling visa or guest worker policies — was 1986.
26
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: Ending surveillance causes am inefficient system
(__)
(__) Spending on immigration enforcement won’t solve the problem – attempting to deport
undocumented immigrants is costly and grossly inefficient.
Immigration Policy Center 2009
[BREAKING DOWN THE PROBLEMS http://immigrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/docs/
Problem_Paper_FINAL_102109.pdf]
For more than two decades, the U.S. government has tried to stamp out unauthorized
immigration through enforcement efforts at the border and in the interior of the country, but
without success— and without fundamentally reforming the broken immigration system that
spurs unauthorized immigration in the first place. Missing has been a corresponding effort to
address the inevitable pull of jobs and family. The following five points discuss this “enforcement only”
strategy, which has merely deepened the crisis:
6. The United States has spent billions of dollars on ineffective border enforcement. At the
same time that spending on immigration enforcement has skyrocketed, the number of
undocumented immigrants in the United States has roughly tripled from 3.5 million in 1990 to
11.9 million in 2008 {Figure 2}.17 (Research has shown that recent decreases in the number of
unauthorized border crossings have little to do with enforcement, but are due primarily to the
downturn in the U.S. economy.) Furthermore, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that between
25 percent and 40 percent of all unauthorized immigrants do not sneak across the border, but
come to the United States on valid visas and then stay after their visas expire, meaning that
border enforcement is irrelevant to a large portion of the unauthorized population. Yet, since
1992, the annual budget of the U.S. Border Patrol has increased by 714 percent; from $326.2
million in FY 1992 to $2.7 billion in FY 2009 {Figure 3}.19 At the same time, the number of Border
Patrol agents stationed along the southwest border has grown by 390 percent; from 3,555 in FY 1992
to 17,415 in FY 2009 {Figure 4}.
27
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answer To: Ending surveillance fuels the smuggling crisis
(__)
(__) The federal government is solving the crisis now by targeting smuggling rings
Gonzalez, reporter at the Arizona Republic, 2014 [Daniel Gonzalez, Feds targeting smuggling
rings to combat border crisis, usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/23/feds-target-smugglingrings-combat-border-crisis/13033789/
As part of that campaign, the government has launched a three-month initiative to go directly
after the criminal organizations that charge migrants to be smuggled from Central America
through Mexico and into the United States, Johnson said. Since the start of the fiscal year on Oct.
1, the Rio Grande Valley Sector accounted for nearly three-fourths of the more than 57,000
unaccompanied children apprehended by the Border Patrol. About three-fourths of the children were
from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The Border Patrol also has apprehended more than
55,000 children and adults traveling in families; roughly 90 percent from those same three countries.
To help go after money-laundering operations, Johnson said the Department of Homeland
Security has deployed 60 additional special agents and support personnel to the Rio Grande
Valley. They are investigating organizations smuggling illegal immigrants from Central America and
other countries. Since the initiative started June 23, federal authorities have arrested 192 people
involved in smuggling operations and seized more than $625,000 in smuggling profits from
288 bank accounts, Johnson said. "We are interdicting the flow of money that goes to these
smuggling organizations," he said. Adam Isacson, a senior associate for regional security
policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, said targeting profits is one of the most
effective ways to combat smuggling. "It could certainly disrupt some of the traffic," Isacson
said. "Following the money is one of the best ways to really disrupt this practice." Seizing
smuggling profits makes it difficult for criminal organizations to continue operating, he said. It
also forces them to charge higher fees, which could deter some migrants by making the cost
of the trip to the U.S. unaffordable, he said.
28
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Solvency
NAUDL 2015-16
Answer To: Ending surveillance fuels the smuggling crisis
(__) Individuals will inevitably try to enter the United States because they are fleeing violence.
Davidson, the director of the Center for Health Care Policy at the Texas Public Policy
Foundation, 2014 [John Daniel Davidson, The Manufactured Immigration Crisis On The Texas
Border, http://thefederalist.com/2014/06/27/the-manufactured-immigration-crisis-on-the-texas-border/]
The first view is, of course, the one espoused by the administration. Homeland Security Secretary
Jeh Johnson told the Senate Judiciary Committee as much last week: “Violence, poverty—I
believe that is principally what is motivating the situation.” Johnson has a point. Most of those
apprehended at the border have traveled from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
According to U.S. Border Patrol stats, the number of “unaccompanied alien children
encountered” from those countries has dramatically increased in recent years, far outpacing those
coming from Mexico. It’s not hard to see why. Honduras has the highest homicide rate in the
world, while Belize, El Salvador, and Guatemala have the third, fourth, and fifth highest,
respectively. Although it can be difficult to get accurate English-language news reports from Central
America, some Spanish-language news outlets have noted a recent spike in gang-related
violence—and in this context, “gang violence” is akin to terrorist attacks or conflicts between
armed militias.
(__) The root cause of the smuggling crisis is poverty and gang violence and continuing to
deport people will do nothing to solve it.
Hing, reporter for Colorlines, 2014 [Julianne Hing, Three Myths of the Unaccompanied Minors
Crisis, Debunked, colorlines.com/articles/three-myths-unaccompanied-minors-crisis-debunked]
However, humanitarian groups like the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the
Women's Refugee Commission have noted the jump in unaccompanied minor border crossings
since late 2011 (PDF), long before Obama announced DACA in June of 2012. What's more, in
interviews with hundreds of detained youth, multiple agencies and researchers have found that
the vast majority have no idea about the existence of DACA, let alone the notion that they might
take advantage of it for themselves. Some have also theorized that smugglers are advertising DACA
or the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), a Bush-era law which allows
unaccompanied minors to be released into the custody of family or a sponsor while they await a
deportation hearing in front of a judge, as the U.S. laying out the welcome mat for migrant children. In
a House Homeland Security Committee hearing last week, Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Jeh Johnson gave credence to the theory that the influx is due in part to migrants swayed
by smugglers' false "promisos" of a free pass once they arrive in the U.S. Smugglers may be
using the falsehood to drum up business for themselves, says Michelle Brané, the director of the
Women's Refugee Commission's Migrant Rights and Justice program, but endemic gang violence
and abject poverty are the decisive motivating factors creating the demand for their services.
"People decide to leave first, and then they look for a way to leave," says Brané. "Just because
[migrants] think the U.S. is nicer than we actually are doesn't mean that they don't need
protection and don't qualify for protection," says Brané.
29
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Human Rights Advantage
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
Human Rights Advantage (1/7)
Advantage (__): Human Rights
1. Our deportation programs are ineffective because the primary targets of deportation are
innocent individuals, with no criminal record, who have already lived in the U.S for years
Ewing, Senior Researcher at the American Immigration Council, 2014
[Walter Ewing, Ph.D., is Senior Researcher at the American Immigration Council, The Growth of the
U.S Deportation Machine, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/growth-us-deportation-machine]
Many of the immigra nts now being deported are long-term legal permanent residents of the
United States who have run afoul of the 1996 laws. Yet even many of the unauthorized immigrants
being deported have strong ties to the United States, such as U.S.-citizen family members
(especially U.S.-born children), not to mention jobs and homes in the United States. Families
containing a member who is an unauthorized immigrant live in constant fear of separation. And the
burden of deportation is shouldered disproportionately by children. According to estimates from
the Pew Hispanic Center, there are 4 million U.S.-born children in the United States with at least
one parent who is an unauthorized immigrant, plus 1.1 million children who are themselves
unauthorized immigrants and have unauthorized-immigrant parents. Moreover, DHS estimates that
nearly three-fifths of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the United States for more than a
decade. In other words, most of these people are not single young men, recently arrived, who have
no connection to U.S. society. These are men, women, and children who are already part of U.S.
society.
2. The federal government’s policy of mass deportation overburdens our immigration courts
as thousands attempt to get in the United States each year.
Costa, EPI Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research, 2014 [Overloaded Immigration
Courts, Economic Policy Institute, http://www.epi.org/publication/immigration-court-caseloadskyrocketing/]
The immigration court system is severely underfunded and there are too few judges, especially
since caseloads began skyrocketing in 2009. Tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant
children fleeing from Central America and arriving at the Southwest border will be waiting for
years while their cases are being adjudicated. Rather than providing sufficient funding for new
immigration judges, multiple proposals in Congress would amend current law to eliminate the right
these vulnerable children have to a full hearing in court. The figure shows that in 1998, the
immigration court system had 202 judges who were responsible for 129,500 cases. The caseload has
increased dramatically since then but the number of judges has not kept pace: The immigration
courts now have a backlog of 375,500 cases and only 243 immigration judges to adjudicate
them. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including children, wait an average of 587 days
for a hearing, and it can take three to five years for their cases to be resolved. Each immigration
judge is responsible for an average of 1,500 cases, approximately three times more than the average
caseload for federal court judges. In busier courts immigration judges may be responsible for 2,500 to
6,000 cases, and some have only seven minutes to hear each.
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3. It causes over 11 million people to live in constant fear of deportation that destroys social
cohesion, throws children into poverty, and causes psychological trauma.
Immigration Policy Center, 2008 [Immigration Enforcement and Its Unintended Consequences,
Mon, Mar 31, 2008, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/immigration-enforcement-and-itsunintended-consequences]
The number of very young children affected by worksite raids is alarmingly high. On average, the
number of children affected by worksite raids is about half the number of adults arrested. Over
900 adults were arrested in the three study sites, and the parents among them collectively had just
over 500 children. A large majority of the children affected are U.S. citizens. Nationwide, there are
approximately five million U.S.-citizen children with at least one undocumented parent, and policies
that target their parents have grave effects on the children. The children included in the report were
very young. In two of the sites, approximately 80 percent were ages ten and younger. In one
site, more than half were ages five and younger. The raids resulted in immediate needs for
childcare and basic services. Many arrested parents were unable to arrange for alternative
childcare because they had limited ability to communicate with family members. Some were not
able to make phone calls, some were held in detention centers far from their homes, and
others signed voluntary departure papers and left the country before they could contact
lawyers or caregivers. Informal family and community networks took on significant caregiving
responsibilities and economic support of children. Many families faced severe economic instability
as their incomes plunged following the arrest of working adults. In all three sites, school districts
played an important role in ensuring that children were not dropped off to empty homes or left at
school overnight. However, some children were left without adult supervision, and others were
taken into foster care. The raids had a long-term economic and psychological impact on families.
Many families continued to experience significant economic hardship and psychological
stress because of the arrests and separations, as well as from the uncertainty of knowing if or
when an arrested parent would be released Following the arrest of a parent, children often
experience feelings of abandonment and show symptoms of emotional trauma, psychological
duress, and mental health problems. However, due to cultural reasons and fear of the negative
consequences of asking for assistance, very few affected families seek mental health care.
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4. U.S overspending on deportation has overwhelmed immigration courts, delaying hearings
for innocent people in jail.
Fitz and Wolgin, Center for American Progress, 2014 [Marshall Fitz is the Director of Immigration
Policy at the Center for American Progress. Philip E. Wolgin is Senior Policy Analyst for Immigration
at the Center.
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2014/11/18/101098/enforcementoverdrive-has-overloaded-the-immigration-courts/]
As increased enforcement has put more immigrants into the removal process, the nation’s
immigration court system has struggled to keep up. Over the past 15 years, the number of
cases pending in the immigration court system has more than tripled, and today, it takes an
average of 567 days for a case to be processed. Mismatched resources Funding levels
demonstrate the stark divide between the rise of the immigration enforcement system and the relative
stasis in immigration court capacity. Since the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began
operations in 2003, the combined budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and
Customs and Border Protection, or CBP—the primary agencies charged with enforcing immigration
laws—has soared, doubling from more than $9 billion in 2003 to more than $18 billion in 2014. In
contrast, overall funding for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, or EOIR—the
immigration court system—is stuck in the millions, rising from only $188 million in 2003 to $312
million today. (see Figure 2) The mismatch in resources comes into even starker relief when
considering the number of personnel in the immigration enforcement agencies compared with the
immigration courts. While the number of CBP agents has doubled over the past decade, there
are only 23 more immigration judges today than there were in 2003, an increase of only 10.5
percent. (see Figure 3) Unsurprisingly, with only 23 more judges than a decade ago and far more
people moving through the immigration court system, both the number of cases currently stuck in the
EOIR backlog and the amount of time it takes to complete a case have increased significantly. It now
takes an average of 567 days for a case to make its way through the immigration courts. (see Figure
4) Recent attempts by the Obama administration to accelerate adjudications of unaccompanied
children fleeing Central American violence will only increase these delays for others in the system.
These judges handle a crushing load of cases: The average immigration judge handles more
than 1,500 cases per year, compared with only 420 cases annually for U.S. District Court
judges. (see Figure 5) This increased administrative burden has real-life consequences: Court
hearings that drag on for years mean that some people—such as certain asylum seekers who
are subject to mandatory detention while their cases are processing—remain stuck behind
bars while their cases await adjudication. Even for those who are not detained, this limbo
imposes significant emotional and economic stress on individuals and their families. These
immigrants are generally not able to work legally—or, in the case of those who will ultimately
win the right to stay permanently—to begin to build their lives in the United States.
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5. Harsh deportation practices cause thousands of human rights abuses every year.
Amuedo-Dorantes & Pozo, The Institute for the Study of Labor, 2014 [Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes
San Diego State University and IZA Susan Pozo Western Michigan University and IZA, On the
Intended and Unintended Consequences of Enhanced Border and Interior Immigration Enforcement:
Evidence from Deportees, http://ftp.iza.org/dp8458.pdf]
While state-level omnibus immigration laws reduce the proportion of deportees intending to attempt a
new crossing, increased border enforcement has proven to be far less effective. In addition, we
ascertain human costs associated with these policies. Our findings are mixed in this regard.
Noteworthy is how the adoption of more stringent interior enforcement seems to result in a
“herding” or “ganging-up” effect whereby the incidence of verbal and physical abuse rises
with the number of states enacting such measures. Additionally, our estimates suggest that
deportees are more likely to respond that they have risked their lives to cross into the United
States as a result of enhanced border enforcement. I. Motivation, Objectives and Contributions
With the onset of the past recession, we observed a heighted sense of animosity toward
undocumented immigrants. The charged climate was due, perhaps, to the belief that undocumented
immigration was “out of control,” adding to the rising competition for scarce jobs. Fiscal and job
market pressures led, in turn, to the adoption of various measures intended to reduce the presence of
unauthorized immigrants. Broadly speaking, enforcement increased at both border and interior points
by federal and by state-level governments. For instance, at the federal level, programs like Operation
Streamline (OS) significantly raised the penalties for being apprehended while crossing the border.
Before the implementation of OS, it was typically the case that first time unlawful border crossers with
no criminal history were simply returned to Mexico. But OS changed that, making it mandatory that all
unauthorized crossers be charged with a criminal act and imprisoned (Lydgate 2010).
Simultaneously, state governments started to implement policies that dealt with unauthorized
migration. This began with the widespread adoption of employment verification (E-Verify) systems, a
free web-based program that employers can use to verify that job applicants are eligible to work in the
United States. E- Verify was soon followed by the enactment of state-level omnibus immigration laws
authorizing state and local police to check the immigration status of individuals they had probable
cause to arrest.1 In some instances, these laws went even further, as in the case of Alabama, where
the law required that public school officials check the immigration status of students. At the same
time, reports of abuses against immigrants were on the rise (Diaz and Kuhner 2007; Fernandez
2011). Migrant rights’ violations ranged from verbal and physical abuse to failure to return
personal belongings or inform migrants of their rights. These practices were documented and
denounced by the United Nations, the Organization of American States Special Rapporteurs,
the Mexican Human Rights Commission, and numerous NGOs (Organization of American States
2003; United Nations 2002). For instance, the Arizona humanitarian aid organization No More
Deaths issued two reports: “Crossing the Line” and “A Culture of Cruelty”, in which they
document more than 30,000 incidents of human rights abuses against undocumented
immigrants in short-term detention between fall 2008 and spring 2011
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6. Immigration surveillance causes a laundry list of impacts including racial discrimination,
the worsening of crime and public safety, sexual assault, and thousands of deaths
The Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network, An initiative of the National
Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NIRR), 2010
[Injustice for All: The Rise of the U.S. Immigration Policing Regime, The National Network for
Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) works to defend and expand the rights of all immigrants and
refugees, regardless of immigration status, http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/nnir.pdf]
Police collusion with ICE undermines community safety. Residents will not report crimes and
fires if they fear detection and deportation. Women are less likely to report domestic violence
if they or their partners have immigration status. Batterers are also more likely to threaten their
partners with turning them over to ICE to stop them from reporting an abusive relationship. s
Equally troubling, local law enforcement is not trained in immigration law and requires substantial
amounts of time and money to reach a satisfactory level of expertise. As a result, local police
departments, already strapped on resources and manpower, cut back other vital community
services, affecting community safety; and s Police cooperation with ICE encourages racial
profiling, already illegal, resulting in civil rights violations and abuses against immigrant and
refugee communities. Even where police departments have worked to end racial profiling,
such collaboration undermines the credibility of police departments to effectively serve all
communities. In some states and localities, local police and sheriffs can ask individuals for proof of
their immigration status—and turn them over to DHS officials—simply based on their perceived status
as undocumented immigrants.xiii These practices have fueled racial profiling and other forms of
discrimination.xiv The Western North Carolina 100 Stories Project reports specific cases where local
and county police deliberately used transit stops to arrest a Latino driver to turn over to ICE; see their
report on page 16. Immigration laws and policing have created an anti-immigrant atmosphere in
which some county hospitals, schools, and other public agencies as well as private citizens,
including landlords, employers, and even border vigilantes, have been emboldened to take the
“law” into their own hands—attempting to detect, report, and even detain undocumented
immigrants in their communities.
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7. Human rights are a moral obligation that outweighs all other concerns
Burggraeve, Emeritus Professor at KU Leuven, 2005
(Roger, 1/1/2005 “The Good and Its Shadow: The View of Levinas on Human Rights as the
Surpassing of Political Rationality”, Human Rights Review Vol. 6, Issue 2, pp. 80-101)//EM
And human rights fulfill this defense in different ways, in the sense that they both surpass as well
as correct and supplement every social, economic, juridical, and political system. The one
who thinks and acts from the basis of human rights--e.g., standing up for and committing oneself
to the fights of certain minorities or forgotten people--then does more in terms of humanization
than what the sociopolitical structures can achieve. This is so because these structures can
never take to heart completely the singular realization of the rights of the unique other. In our
ever more international and structurally constructed societal bonds, they precisely make it possible to
orientate separately every responsible person towards the necessary surplus of the good for each
and every other. In one of his three articles, which Levinas dedicated entirely to human rights, 4 he
ex- pressed the bond between the uniqueness of the other and human rights in a radical and
challenging manner (HS 176-78). Human rights, which in no way whatsoever must be attributed
from without because they are experienced as a priori and therefore as irrevocable and
inalienable, express the alterity or absoluteness of every human being (AT 151). Every
reference is annulled by human rights since it is acknowledged that every individual person
possesses those rights: they are inherent to their being-human as persons. In this regard,
human rights wrench every human person away from the determining order of nature and the
social body, to which everyone indeed obviously belongs. Herein lies, according to Levinas, a
remarkable paradox. Thanks to the belongingness of every person to the human kind -humanity--every person possesses an incomparable alterity and uniqueness, whereby
everyone likewise transcends the generalness of the human kind. The belongingness of every person
to the human kind does not mean a reduction to a neutral unity, but a presentation as a unique
person, who by means of that fact itself actually destroys humanity as an abstract idea. Every person
is unique in his or her genre. Every person is a person like every other person and yet utterly unique
and irreducible: a radi- cally separate other. Humanity exists only by grace of irreducible beings, who
are for each other utterly unique and non-exchangeable others. Levinas also calls it the absolute
identity of the person (HS 176). It is about a uniqueness that surpasses every individuality of the
many individuals in their kind. The uniqueness or dignity of every individual person does not depend
on one or the other specific and distinctive difference. It is about an "unconditional" uniqueness, in the
sense that the dignity of the person--over every individual person--is not determined by their sex,
color of skin, place of birth, moment of their existence, nor by the possession of certain qualities and
capacities. Every person possesses dignity that is to be utterly respected, independent of whichever
property or characteristic. It is about a uniqueness that precedes every difference, namely
understanding a radical alterity as an irreducible and Burggraeve 93 inalienable alterity, whereby a
person can precisely say "I." This leads Levinas to state that human rights reveal the uniqueness
or the absoluteness of the human person, in spite of their belongingness to the human kind or
rather thanks to this belongingness.
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8. Suspending surveillance for deportation can immediately halt human rights abuses and
bring security to millions of immigrants.
The Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network, 2010
[Injustice for All: The Rise of the U.S. Immigration Policing Regime, The National Network for
Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) works to defend and expand the rights of all immigrants and
refugees, regardless of immigration status, http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/nnir.pdf]
RECOMMENDATIONS Injustice for All urges the U.S. government to undertake a major shift in
immigration policies and address the patterns of human and civil rights violations. The U.S. must
provide access to the adjustment of immigration status, a process long held at bay by a lack of
political will and action at the federal level. Without such a shift, millions of men, women and
children residing in this country will continue to face lives of fear, uncertainty and economic
insecurity. There are significant steps that the Obama Administration can authorize, including:
The restoration of due process rights and other Constitutional protections, including access to the
courts; The suspension of detentions and deportations, other ICE enforcement operations and
high profile raids; a high-level investigation and hearings with impacted communities; An end to the
policy and practice of jailing persons solely for immigration status offenses, except in cases
where there is a high risk to public safety; The prohibition of ICE and local, county, state and federal
law enforcement from using all forms of racial, ethnic/nationality and religious profiling; A thorough
investigation of complaints of abuses in public and private corporate immigrant detention centers and
jails; a moratorium on the expansion of detention centers and privately run prisons; An end to all interagency and immigration-police collaboration programs; Prohibition of local, county, and state
governments from legislating immigration enforcement, such as Arizona’s SB1070; The roll back and
end to the militarization of immigration control and border communities; end Operation Stonegarden
and Operation Streamline. iv Finally, disturbed by the lack of congressional action to enact fair
immigration policies, and on our elected officials in the House and Senate to: Hold field hearings with
members of interior and border communities to document the impacts and abuses caused by U.S.
immigration policing and border security policies, measures and practices; Repeal employer
sanctions and stop all E-Verify programs; protect and expand the labor rights of all workers, native
and foreign-born; and increase Department of Labor inspectors; Repeal the 287(g) and “Secure
Communities” initiatives; Provide and expand options to legal migration, including access to legal
permanent residency and citizenship; Institute routine programs, including legalization, to adjust the
immigration status and provide “green cards” to immigrants, to ensure civil and labor rights, keep
families together and reinforce healthy communities. we call upon the Administration and members of
Congress: To address the root causes of displacement and involuntary migration, by promoting and
implementing fair trade and sustainable community development policies; To help lead a
nationwide condemnation of racial intolerance and xenophobia in keeping with our country’s
legal and moral commitment to equality for all. We further urge the United States to respect and
uphold international human and labor rights standards, including the ratification and implementation
of the U.N. International Convention for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and
Members of Their Families and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.
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Answers To: ICE reducing rights violations
(__)
(__) Despite reforms, current U.S immigration deportation and surveillance policies still
commit thousands of human rights abuses every year
Constable, reporter for The Washington Post, 2014
[Pamela Constable, Human Rights Watch, in report on world abuses, criticizes U.S. immigration laws,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/human-rights-watch-in-report-on-world-abuses-criticizes-usimmigration-laws/2014/01/23/95c3ec6a-8459-11e3-9dd4-e7278db80d86_story.html]
Ginatta: We see the intersection between human rights and immigration policy to be varied and vast.
The status quo on immigration breeds human rights violation in so many circles. First we
highlight the importance of family unity. In the world of human rights, family is seen as the natural
and fundamental group that deserves protection, but [U.S.] immigration policy doesn’t focus
on family unity in the same respect. Immigration judges are not allowed to consider family
unity to the extent we think is needed to protect human rights. In the case of a very minor or very
old criminal conviction, family ties don’t matter. Even if someone has close U.S. citizen family
members, the removal still takes priority. We have documented situations where people who have
been outstanding members of society, with multiple U.S. citizen children, and who have lived
here for decades, still get deported. WP: What other kinds of immigration policies or practices
would you say fall into the category of human rights problems? Ginatta: One area is violations in
the workplace. Workers are incredibly vulnerable to exploitation because of their immigration
status. People working in dangerous industries may be afraid to report serious workplace violations
or women, such as farm workers, may be afraid to report sexual assaults, for fear they will be
reported to immigration authorities and deported. There is also the right to remedy. This is a key
human rights principle. You should have the right to access law enforcement, and policies that
create a fear or block between a person who witnesses a crime or is a victim of a crime and
the police are human rights violations. We have documented many situations where people are
afraid to contact the police because they fear a contact about a crime will become an inquiry into their
immigration status. WP: Do you see the deportation of illegal immigrants as a human rights abuse?
We are very worried about the growth of criminal prosecutions of illegal entrants into the U.S.. This is
a federal crime and now people who are trying to come into the U.S. to be reunited with their families
are facing federal prison time. These prosecutions have spiked to almost 100,000 a year. They
are changing the population within federal prisons. Immigration is becoming the most
prosecuted federal crime, and Latinos are becoming the number one ethnic group inside
federal prisons because of this.
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Answers To: ICE reducing rights violations
(__)
(__) ICE has only become more corrupt as their employees have been caught using
information obtained from surveillance to aid drug cartels.
McElhatton, reporter at the Washington Times, 2014
[Jim, Immigration agents accused of database abuse; cartels make corruption easy,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/6/i mmigration-agents-accused-of-database-abusecarte/print/]
At least a half-dozen federal immigration agents have come under investigation since 2012 for
snooping into law enforcement databases — computer misconduct ranging from "self queries" to
accusations that one of them tried to use the databases to warn drug smugglers if they were under
investigation. The information, gleaned from highly redacted records obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act, includes the investigation of one Customs and Border Protection officer tied to a "drugtrafficking organization that has utilized compromised law-enforcement officers in the past." Border
analyst James Phelps, a professor at Angelo State University, estimates that as many as 300 law
enforcement officers are under investigation for corruption near the border. He also said that having an
insider with access to a law enforcement computer makes it easier to lure the next corrupt officer. "How do you
corrupt someone like that? It's real easy," Mr. Phelps said. "You offer them more money in a weekend than
they make in an entire year." "If you can get a hold of a person's driver's license, you can find out everything —
the works," he said. "If the cartels can identify an agent by name and find out where they live, they can come
and make an offer," Mr. Phelps said. "Take our money and turn a blind eye, or we kill your mom. Down in
Mexico, the cartels have no problem doing that, and that's where you have a lot of agents fail." Customs and
Border Protection did not respond to messages seeking comment Wednesday or Thursday. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement officials were unable to discuss specific cases summarized in records obtained by The
Times. "ICE agents and officers are held to the highest standards of professional and ethical conduct," ICE
spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said. "The agency does not tolerate misconduct, and reports of any such
actions are swiftly investigated and dealt with appropriately." The Times obtained the information as part of an
investigation of computer misuse among federal employees. The majority of cases at other agencies reveal
misdeeds like looking at pornography in the office, but the computer misconduct at ICE and CBP largely
stemmed from improper access to electronic law-enforcement records. Several of the reports in the data
provided to The Times were almost entirely redacted, making it impossible to tell the true scope of the problem
— though the violations described involved "improper entry by alien," "bringing in or harboring certain aliens"
and fraud. Some of the snooping cases involved officers looking up their own names in law-enforcement
computers, which is prohibited, but other examples hinted at a larger corruption problem. In one case,
investigators were tipped off about an official — whose name and job title were redacted — using his
or her position to "conduct queries for friends and relatives engaged in criminal activity." The same
report included information from an FBI special agent who reported that a credible witness alleged the
official was accessing "sensitive law enforcement information in order to warn friends and relatives of
impending law enforcement activity." That accusation was deemed "substantiated." Insider threats
remain a concern at CBP, where officials say corrupt employees accessing databases and IT systems
can facilitate the flow of drugs across the border and even disclose gate codes, according to a
redacted audit by the Department of Homeland Security IG last year.
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Answers To: States have a right to deport
(__)
(__) Even if states have the right to deport there is no moral justification for the violent means
by which mass deportations are carried out.
Velasquez, The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, 2014 [Jean-Claude Velasquez, The Elie
Wiesel Foundation for Humanity Honorable Mention Recipient, The Invisible & Voiceless: The Plight
of the Undocumented Immigrant in America, http://business-ethics.com/2014/09/30/1944-theinvisible-voiceless-the-plight-of-the-undocumented-immigrant-in-america/]
Mass deportation of undocumented immigrants only instills terror in the immigrant community
and it is an expensive, impractical, and inefficient policy. Nevertheless, numerous politicians advocate
for such sweeping exclusionary measures. Deportation should only be limited to serious criminal
offenders; hardworking individuals must not be subjected to such harsh consequences for merely
pursuing a better life for themselves and for their children. As a nation of justice and fairness, what
do we have to say to the millions of children who have to worry every day about the fact that
their parents might not come home? And what do we have to say to the parents who face the
prospect of being torn from their children? As long as the United States is a free and prosperous
nation, immigrants will venture to pursue the American Dream, even if the cost is political nonexistence or, as Jorge Ramos says, “they become invisibles” for the sake of a better life.
A sweeping study conducted by The Center for American Progress revealed compelling evidence of
the extraordinary costs of mass deportation. The cost to apprehend the millions of undocumented
will require Gestapo-style raids at workplaces and homes ultimately costing $158 billion [8].
Housing these undocumented at detention centers will cost $29 billion and an extra $7 billion will be
accrued through legal proceeding costs [9].The transportation cost of all the undocumented to their
native country has a price tag of $6 billion [10]. Furthermore, the cost of continuing-enforcement over
a five-year period will be over $85 billion [11]. In other words, the “total cost over five years: $285
billion, would mean new taxes of $922 for every man, woman, and child in our country.”[12] These
calculations were conducted for the fiscal year of 2008; therefore, the present day cost will be
significantly higher due to inflation.
The monetary costs of mass deportation are mind boggling, but what should strike concern in the
heart of the citizen is how his or her tax dollars will be used: the persecution of every undocumented
child, woman, and man, rallied up like cattle to ultimately meet their fate of deportation. The world
would watch in awe as the greatest exemplar of freedom treats a portion of her population as
some kind of unwanted pest and as human rights violations occur. The most terrifying aspect of
mass deportation is the modus operandi: imagine immigration officers armed to the teeth raiding
meat packing factories, homes of the wealthy, and farms, all common workplaces for the
undocumented. The butcher, nanny, and grape picker would be punished for the sole reason of
working and being in the country illegally.
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Answer To: States have a right to deport
(__)
(__) The human rights of immigrants are a national security concern because abuses to
immigrants erode the very foundation of U.S democracy.
Jonas and Tactaquin, Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at UC-Santa Cruz and
Director of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights ,2004
[Susanne and Catherine, Social Justice Vol. 31, Nos. 1–2 (2004),
http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/archive/95_31_1-2/95_09Jonas.pdf]
Given these developments, U.S. citizens and U.S. society as a whole are beginning to suffer from
the ever-expanding logic that initially targeted the most vulnerable (immigrants and
noncitizens). Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres eloquently argue this point in their book, The Minerʼs
Canary : upon the death of the little (vulnerable) canary sent into the mine to detect noxious gasses,
miners know they too are vulnerable to being poisoned. Following this metaphor, even full-fledged
citizens of a society that institutionalizes violations of basic, constitutionally guaranteed civil
liberties against noncitizens (rollback of habeas corpus and due process protections,
proposals to repeal the 14th Amendment, etc.) cannot be fully “safe” from arbitrary,
antidemocratic abuses. Beyond citizensʼ obvious self-interest, the treatment of immigrants and
noncitizens affects the quality of democracy in the U.S. It is unhealthy for the fabric of a
society to have a rapidly and ever-increasing mass of undocumented or in limbo migrants who
are regarded with suspicion and excluded from its benefits. Many of them have lived and worked here
for 15 to 20 years; their children may be citizens and their labor (with or without legal papers) is
essential to sustaining our economy and that of their home country. Yet they are unable to participate
in U.S. public life, are politically unrepresented, and are denied a path to legalization and eventual
naturalization — a situation that would be perpetuated if the 2004 Bush initiative on guest workers
from Mexico were to be approved. As has been seen in other times in other countries, the exclusion
of immigrants based on racialization is an inherent affront to democracy. It was impossible to
consider South Africa a democracy (even for its white citizens) so long as it was an apartheid
regime. In the U.S. today, it is no longer possible to pursue punitive/repressive strategies against
Third World immigrants and noncitizens without damaging the quality of democracy for citizens. In
short, the challenge of reframing the issues of immigrant rights in the shadow of the national
security state is one that should be of concern to all U.S. citizens — and throughout the
Americas it will remain on our 21st-century public policy agenda.
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Answer To: Curtailing surveillance makes immigration courts worse
(__)
(__) Immigration courts are overwhelmed because there has been a surge of Central
Americans fleeing violence and the Obama administration is putting money to fix the
immigration court system now.
Kulkarni and Conrad, Public Radio International, 2014
[Here's an explanation about why there's a backlog of immigration cases,
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-13/heres-explanation-about-why-theres-backlog-immigrationcases].
The recent wave of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border tests any already overwhelmed
US judicial system. Many Central Americans crossing the southern US border are hoping to
avoid violence back home. According to the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which handles
immigration courts and receives these requests, courts are so backlogged, that some migrants are
waiting until 2018 to have their case heard. This means that immigration judges are working with
major caseloads — around 1,400 cases per judge. To solve this judicial crisis, the White House
recently proposed a $3.7 billion plan that tackles this influx of migrants, with funding to
various government departments. Pending Congressional approval, part of this funding would
allow the Department of Justice to hire more immigration judges to ease their case load and to quickly
go through these immigration cases.
41
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Human Rights Advantage
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
Answer To: Curtailing surveillance makes immigration courts worse
(__)
(__) Lack of federal action on hiring judges is the root of the problem
Mencimer, reporter for Mother Jones, 2014
[Stephamie, “Why Our Immigration Courts Can't Handle the Child Migrant Crisis”, Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/immigration-courts-backlog-child-migrant-crisis]
Immigration judges can expect to handle 1,500 cases at any given time. By comparison,
Article I federal district judges handle about 440 cases, and they get several law clerks to help
manage the load. Immigration judges have to share a single clerk with two or three other judges. (For
more, see Casey Miner's "Judges on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" from our
November/December 2010 issue.) The lack of staffing creates an irony that seems to be lost on
the current Congress: Too few judges means that people with strong cases languish for years
waiting for them to get resolved, while people with weak cases who should probably be sent
home quickly get to stay in the United States a few years waiting for a decision. That dynamic
is only getting compounded with the recent influx of unaccompanied juveniles, who usually don't have
lawyers to represent them in court. "It's ironic and counterintuitive that we should not give
enough money to the system to allow it to work more quickly," says Dana Marks, an
immigration judge in San Francisco and president of the National Association of Immigration
Judges. In 2010, the American Bar Association called on Congress and the White House to
immediately initiate the hiring of at least 100 new judges to help relieve the existing crisis in the
courts. Instead, Congress failed to deal with the budget of any agency, sequestration
happened, and the Justice Department started a hiring freeze that didn't end until December
2013, even though at least 100 sitting immigration judges are eligible to retire this year.
Meanwhile, the comprehensive immigration bill passed in the Senate last year would have added 225
new judges to the immigration courts over three years (along with clerks and support staff), but
Republicans killed the bill in the House. Today, there are 243 judges—just 13 more than in 2006
and 21 fewer than at the end of 2012—and more than 30 vacancies the government is trying to
fill. All this despite the fact that the immigration court backlog has increased nearly 120
percent since 2006. And that was before the kids started coming. Last week, TRAC reported that
the official immigration court backlog in June hit 375,503, up by 50,000 since the start of 2013.
Among the languishing cases: more than 12,000 kids each from Guatemala, El Salvador, and
Honduras. All told, more than 40,000 cases in the current court backlog involve children, and the
numbers are growing. The average time an immigration case has been pending is now up to 587
days.
42
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Human Rights Advantage
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Curtailing surveillance leads to violent militias
(__) Even during times of intense immigration the amount of militias has fallen.
Murphy, reporter for Mother Jones, 2014 [Tim, “The Meltdown of the Anti-Immigration Minuteman
Militia”, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/minuteman-movement-border-crisis-simcox]
During the past four years, the Minuteman groups that defined conservative immigration policy
during the mid-to-late-2000s have mostly self-destructed—sometimes spectacularly so. Founding
Minuteman leaders are in prison, facing criminal charges, dead, or sidelined. "It really attracted
a lot of people that had some pretty extreme issues," says Juanita Molina, executive director of the
Border Action Network, an advocacy group that provides aid to migrants in the desert. "We saw the
movement implode on itself mostly because of that." An analysis by the Southern Poverty Law
Center, which monitors right-wing extremist groups, found that the number of Minuteman
groups in the Southwest had declined from 310 to 38 between 2010 and 2012.
(__) Group infighting and law enforcement efforts prevent the rise of militias
Southern Poverty Law Center 2014
Intelligence Report, Spring 2014, Issue Number: 153, ‘Nativist Extremist’ Groups Decline Again,
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2014/spring/NativistExtremist-Groups-Decline-Again]
The movement of “nativist extremist” groups — anti-immigration organizations that go beyond
mere advocacy to confront suspected undocumented immigrants and those who hire or help them —
reached its vitriolic peak in 2010, when it counted some 319 groups. Since then, the movement has
declined rapidly, a trend that continued in 2013, when there were just 33 of the organizations.
The decline, like that seen in earlier years, was due to movement infighting, the adoption of
many of the movement’s goals by state legislatures like those of Arizona and Alabama, and criminal
scandals. The worst of those scandals was the 2011 Arizona murder of a Latino man and his 9-yearold daughter by a group led by Shawna Forde, the head of Minuteman American Defense who now
sits on death row. But in 2013, another important leader, Chris Simcox of the Minuteman Civil
Defense Corps, was arrested on charges of molesting several young children. The movement last
year also lost one of its shrillest voices with the August death of Barbara Coe, the racist
founder and longtime leader of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, which was
instrumental in passing 1994’s anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in California, although the measure
was killed later. Coe, who was also a member of the segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens
and a one-time board member of the border-patrolling Minuteman Project, was known for baseless
rants about immigrants like this 2005 keeper: “We are suffering robbery, rape and murder of lawabiding citizens at the hands of illegal barbarians who are cutting off the heads and appendages of
blind, white, disabled gringos.” Most of the patrolling of the borders carried out by the
Minutemen and related groups has now ended, but a border vigilante who identified himself as a
“militia Minuteman” was arrested last August after pointing a military-style assault rifle at a sheriff’s
deputy during a desert confrontation.
43
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Human Rights Advantage
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Curtailing surveillance leads to violent militias
(__)
(__) The biggest reason why violent militias increased was the recession not immigration
Bennet, Meredith Professor of History at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University, 2010 [David
H. Bennett, When Government Became the Enemy,
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/the-new-militias-vs-government/?_r=0]
In the 1990s, with the decline of nativism and the end of the cold war, the traditional
scapegoats for right-wing extremists facing difficult times — an unassimilatable horde of “unAmerican” peoples or a treasonous band of “un-American” ideologists — no longer were available. It
was the government itself that became the enemy within. Now, in 2010, with unemployment
hovering at 10 percent, with the hollowing out of America’s manufacturing base not only
eliminating millions of blue-collar jobs but creating anxiety about national decline, should it be
surprising that a new Democratic administration in Washington (led by an African-American
president) — calling for federal action on health care, the environment, energy and other matters —
would stimulate the re-emergence of right-wing fringe groups? Unable to deal with the
complex reasons for the economic collapse, certain that sinister forces are at work in
Washington undermining American power and selling out the nation to international enemies,
the revived militia movements look much like those that came before.
(__) An improved economy and crackdown by law enforcement has substantially reduced the
number of militias
Southern Poverty Law Center 2014 [SPLC Report: Far-right extremist groups decline but remain at
near-record levels, http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/splc-report-far-right-extremist-groupsdecline-but-remain-at-near-record-levels]
The SPLC found that the number of hate groups dropped by 7 percent – from 1,007 in 2012 to
939 in 2013. Hate groups reached a peak in 2011 with 1,018 groups. The more significant decline
came within the antigovernment “Patriot” movement, composed of armed militias, “sovereign
citizens,” and other conspiracy-minded organizations that see the federal government as their enemy.
These groups fell 19 percent – from 1,360 groups in 2012 (an all-time high) to 1,096 in 2013. The
decline followed an unprecedented rise that began in 2008, the year President Obama was elected,
when a mere 149 Patriot groups were operating.
The president’s 2012 re-election – unexpected by many on the right – appears to have drained
energy from the movement. Other factors that apparently are contributing to the decline are an
improving economy, crackdowns by law enforcement, and the adoption of far-right issues by
mainstream politicians.
44
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Human Rights Advantage
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: Security should be prioritized over human rights (1/2)
(__) In order to guarantee survival human rights must be protected
Balfour and Cadava, associate professor of English at York University and Lecturer in English
at Princeton, 2004
[Ian and Eduardo, “The Claims of Human Rights: An Introduction.” South Atlantic Quarterly
Spring/Summer 2004 pg. 279 Project Muse]
Human rights have become one of the most pressing and intractable matters of political life, and
perhaps even of life as such. We might even say that there could be no life without human
rights, without, at the very least, the right to live. This is why, from their very beginnings, human
rights have always been—with and beyond all the praxes that seek to secure them—a way to
think about what it means to be human, and what it means to have the right both to live and to
be human. If, from the earliest declarations of the French Revolution (the generally accepted origin of
human rights discourse) to the Declaration of Universal Human Rights that followed World War II,
human rights have been continually broadened, elaborated, clarified, and defined, it is because
they repeatedly have sought to include and address—often in response to the suffering,
dispossession, and displacement that accompany the injustices and violence that constitute so
much of the world's history—new rights. These rights include, among many others, women's rights,
minority rights, children's rights, gay and lesbian rights, human rights beyond citizens' rights, the right
to education, the right to work, the right to political participation, the right to resistance, the right to
development, and a wide spectrum of economic and cultural rights.
(__) Cost/benefit logic justifies moral atrocities – only prioritizing human rights protects those
moral horrors
Byron, Philosophy Professor at Kent State University, 2009
[Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XI, 2009, 1, pp. 470-494 Human Rights: A Modest Proposal*
Michael Byron Kent State University, http://www2.units.it/etica/2009_1/BYRON.pdf]
Human rights have become an enormously useful tool in the last century, and this for a variety of
reasons. Rights remain a moral bulwark against an overzealous utilitarianism: where the many
would sacrifice the one, rights give reason to protect the one. The logic of cost and benefit is
siren song to bureaucrats and administrators, promising an overly easy commensuration of
conflicting values, lives, and choices. Rights talk can prevent grave moral harms from being
swept under the rug of the ‘costs’ of some favored policy. In their political conception, human
rights help us understand and normalize legitimate relations between nation states and their citizens.
The language and logic of ‘collateral damage’ — a polite term for the allegedly unintended
destruction and murder that would pass for a side effect of modern military actions — threatens to
undermine a respect for persons, hiding them in blighted post-traumatic landscapes. Rights
talk helps us identify such violations. The growing literature on human rights serves also as a
guide to international relations, the cultivation of treaties, and the rhetoric of diplomacy. Concern
grows worldwide about the effects of pollution, child labor, and related harms to people and their
environments, in both developed and developing nations. Rights talk can be a useful propaedeutic to
the resolution of such disputes.
45
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Human Rights Advantage
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
Answers To: Security should be prioritized over human rights (2/2)
(__)
(__) All forms of violence can be justified in the name of security – only a human rights frame
that recognized the intrinsic value of human beings can prevent mass violence
Anderson, National Director of Probe Ministries International 2004
[Kerby, “Utilitarianism: The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number” http://www.probe.org/theologyand-philosophy/worldview--philosophy/utilitarianism-the-greatest-good-for-thegreatest-number.html]
One problem with utilitarianism is that it leads to an "end justifies the means" mentality. If any
worthwhile end can justify the means to attain it, a true ethical foundation is lost. But we all
know that the end does not justify the means. If that were so, then Hitler could justify the
Holocaust because the end was to purify the human race. Stalin could justify his slaughter of
millions because he was trying to achieve a communist utopia. The end never justifies the
means. The means must justify themselves. A particular act cannot be judged as good simply
because it may lead to a good consequence. The means must be judged by some objective
and consistent standard of morality. Second, utilitarianism cannot protect the rights of
minorities if the goal is the greatest good for the greatest number. Americans in the
eighteenth century could justify slavery on the basis that it provided a good consequence for
a majority of Americans. Certainly the majority benefited from cheap slave labor even though the
lives of black slaves were much worse. A third problem with utilitarianism is predicting the
consequences. If morality is based on results, then we would have to have omniscience in
order to accurately predict the consequence of any action. But at best we can only guess at
the future, and often these educated guesses are wrong. A fourth problem with utilitarianism
is that consequences themselves must be judged. When results occur, we must still ask
whether they are good or bad results. Utilitarianism provides no objective and consistent
foundation to judge results because results are the mechanism used to judge the action
itself.inviolability is intrinsically valuable.
46
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Answers to: Crime Disadvantage
NAUDL 2015-16
Immigration enforcement increases crime
(__)
(__) Deportation makes crime worse
National Council of La Raza, 2006 [State and Local Police Enforcement of Federal Immigration
Laws: A Tool Kit for Advocates, http://www.nilc.org/document.html?id=7.]
If police become immigration agents, word will spread like wildfire among newcomers that any
contact with police could mean deportation for themselves or their family members. Immigrants will
decline to report crimes or suspicious activity, and criminals will see them as easy prey,
making our streets less safe as a result. Experience shows that this fear will extend not only to
contact with police, but also with the fire department, hospitals, and the public school system.
The Legislation Undermines National Security Security experts and law enforcement agree that
good intelligence and strong relationships are the keys to keeping our nation and our streets
safe. Under this legislation, foreign nationals who might otherwise be helpful to security
investigations will be reluctant to come forward, for fear of immigration consequences. If
immigrant communities are alienated rather than embraced, local law enforcement loses
important relationships that can lead to information they might not otherwise have access to. The
Legislation Weakens an Important Criminal Database Police rely upon the FBI’s National Crime
Information Center (NCIC) database to give them timely and accurate information on criminals and
dangerous people. This legislation would undermine the usefulness of the NCIC by loading it with
information about millions of people with minor immigration violations. Poor data
management at the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has resulted in
numerous inaccurate records, further complicating matters for police who rely on the integrity
of the NCIC. Even if the data were correct upon entry, case statuses often change and would
have to somehow be updated in the FBI’s database. This mess would lead to many false “hits”
and unlawful detentions and arrests, wasting precious law enforcement resources.
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Answers to: Crime Disadvantage
NAUDL 2015-16
Immigration enforcement increases crime
(__)
(__) Focusing on immigration distracts law enforcement from dealing with crime
Nguyen and Gill, Phd’s at UNC-Chapel Hill, 2015 [Interior immigration enforcement: The impacts of
expanding local law enforcement authority,
planning.unc.edu/people/faculty/mainguyen/InteriorImmigrationEnforcement_UrbanStud2015Nguyen
0042098014563029.pdf
Some scholars argue that the inability of law enforcers to identify and track unauthorised
individuals exposes the country to homeland security and public safety risks. They con- tend
that broadening the authority of state and local law enforcers expands interior enforcement territory
and creates a ‘force multiplier’ effect, especially since state and local law enforcers are typically first
respon- ders to public safety and terrorist threats However, 287g may create competing
objectives for state and local law enforce- ment, detracting from their primary duties of
policing crime and securing public safety (Bolick, 2008; Nguyen and Gill, 2010; Waslin, 2010).
Questions have also been raised as to whether the focus on policing immigration violators distracts
agencies from their primary mission of protecting the public from crime (Hincapie, 2009; Nguyen and
Gill, 2010; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the American Civil Liberties Union, 2009;
Waslin, 2010). Furthermore, concerns have been raised about abuses of power among local law
enforcers because of a lack of program trans- parency and accountability (Hincapie, 2009;
Khashu, 2009; US General Accountability Office, 2009; US Office of the Inspector General, 2010).
Motomura (2011: 1856) notes that the degree of discretion involved when local police make
arrests is proble- matic, as these gatekeepers fill ‘. the enforcement pipeline with cases of
their choice for civil removal and possibly criminal prosecution as well.
48
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Answers to: Crime Disadvantage
NAUDL 2015-16
Immigration enforcement increases crime
(__)
(__) Deportations backfire and only produce more crime
Lopez, Connel, and Craul, Time Staff Writers, 2005 [ROBERT J. LOPEZ, RICH CONNELL AND
CHRIS KRAUL, Gang Uses Deportation to Its Advantage to Flourish in U.S,
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-gang30oct30-story.html#page=1
But a deportation policy aimed in part at breaking up a Los Angeles street gang has backfired
and helped spread it across Central America and back into other parts of the United States.
Newly organized cells in El Salvador have returned to establish strongholds in metropolitan
Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities. Prisons in El Salvador have become nerve centers,
authorities say, where deported leaders from Los Angeles communicate with gang cliques
across the United States. A gang that once numbered a few thousand and was involved in
street violence and turf battles has morphed into an international network with as many as
50,000 members, the most hard-core engaging in extortion, immigrant smuggling and racketeering.
In the last year, the federal government has brought racketeering cases against MS-13 members in
Long Island, N.Y., and southern Maryland. Across the country, more than 700 MS-13 members have
been arrested this year under a new enforcement campaign that U.S. immigration authorities say will
lead to more serious cases and longer sentences for gang members before they are deported.
"Ultimately, our job here is to enforce the immigration laws and then remove [criminal gang members]
from the country," said John P. Torres, the acting director overseeing detention and removals for the
Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But for a sizable
number of MS-13 members, deportation is little more than a taxpayer-financed visit with
friends and family before returning north. "I think most of the police departments will agree
that you're just getting them off the street for a couple of months," said FBI Assistant Director
Chris Swecker, who is coordinating investigations across North America, where the gang
operates in a loose network of cells. Deportations have helped create an "unending chain" of
gang members moving between the U.S. and Central America, said Rodrigo Avila, El Salvador's
vice minister of security. "It's a merry-go-round."
49
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Answers to: Crime Disadvantage
NAUDL 2015-16
Immigration Surveillance makes fighting crime harder
(__)
(__) Immigration surveillance and deportation decreases trust between immigrant
communities and law enforcement and this makes it more difficult to combat crime.
Ferrell Jr., Deputy Director of the Houston Police Department, 2004
[Craig E., Immigration Enforcement: Is It a Local Issue? www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/
index.cfm?f useaction=display_arch&article_id=224&issue_id=22004]
Immigration enforcement by state and local police could have a chilling effect in immigrant
communities and could limit cooperation with police by members of those communities. Local
police agencies depend on the cooperation of immigrants, legal and illegal, in solving all sorts of
crimes and in the maintenance of public order. Without assurances that they will not be subject to
an immigration investigation and possible deportation, many immigrants with critical information
would not come forward, even when heinous crimes are committed against them or their families.
Because many families with undocumented family members also include legal immigrant
members, this would drive a potential wedge between police and huge portions of the legal
immigrant community as well. This will be felt most immediately in situations of domestic violence.
In Houston, for example, the police department has been addressing the difficult issues
related to domestic abuse and the reluctance of some victims to contact the police. This
barrier is heightened when the victim is an immigrant and rightly or wrongly perceives her
tormentor to wield the power to control her ability to stay in the country. The word will get out
quickly that contacting the local police can lead to deportation or being separated by a border from
one's children. Should local police begin enforcing immigration laws, more women and children
struggling with domestic violence will avoid police intervention and help.
50
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Answers to: Crime Disadvantage
NAUDL 2015-16
Immigration Surveillance makes fighting crime harder
(__)
(__) Surveillance causes immigrants to distrust the police making it harder to investigate
criminal organizations.
Latino Daily News 2013
[New Study: Nearly Half of Latinos Less Likely to Report Crime Due to Immigration Fears,
http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latino-daily-news/details/new-study-nearly-half-of-latinosless-likely-to-report-crime-due-to-immigra/24339/]
Their report, Insecure Communities: Latino Perceptions of Police Involvement in Immigration
Enforcement, found that programs like Secure Communities that use local law enforcement
agencies as proxies for immigration enforcement, lead to a growing mistrust of the police—
and a disinclination to report crimes. Among the findings of the study: 44% of respondents reported
they are less likely to contact police officers if they have been a victim of a crime for fear they
or someone they know will be asked about their immigration status 45% of respondents
indicated they are less likely to voluntarily offer information about crimes they know have
been committed because they are afraid the police officers will ask them or someone they know
about their immigration status 43% of respondents feel “less safe because local law
enforcement is more involved in immigration enforcement” 38% of respondents feel afraid to
leave their home because local law enforcement officials are more involved in immigration
enforcement As Dr. Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois-Chicago professor and the author of the
study said: The decision to enlist police in immigration enforcement has driven a wedge
between police and Latino communities. The increased involvement of police in immigration
enforcement has significantly heightened the fears many Latinos have of the police, leading to
a mistrust of law enforcement authorities and a reduction in public safety.
51
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Answers to: Crime Disadvantage
NAUDL 2015-16
Data linking Immigration to Crime Misleading
(__)
(__) Statistics surrounding immigration and crime are misleading because they label those
who have gone to jail for an immigration violation as criminals.
Immigration Policy Center 2013
[From Anecdotes to Evidence: Setting the Record Straight on Immigrants and Crime,
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/anecdotes-evidence-setting-record-straight-immigrantsand-crime-0]
Immigration Violations, Not Violent Acts, Account for Most Immigrants in Federal Prison In an
attempt to get around low immigrant incarceration rates, many anti-immigrant activists turn to a
frequently cited estimate that over one quarter of inmates in federal prisons are “criminal aliens.” This
is highly misleading for two reasons:
Many of the immigrants in federal prison are being criminally charged with an immigration
violation and nothing more. In other words, they may be in federal prison even though they
have not committed a violent crime or even a property crime. Their only crime might be entering
the country without permission. The federal government has chosen to prosecute more and more
unauthorized immigrants for “unlawful entry” rather than simply deporting them, which means
that they end up in federal prison. The federal prison population is a small share of the total prison
population. One cannot make generalizations about the incarceration rates of immigrants
based on the immigrant share of the federal inmate population since, according to data from
the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only about 9 percent of the U.S. prison population was in
federal prisons as of 2011. At the state and local level, where most U.S. prisoners are held, the
incarceration rates for immigrants are lower than for the native-born.
52
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Terrorism Disadvantage Answers
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
Immigration Enforcement does not prevent terrorism
(__)
(__) Enforcing harsh restrictions on individuals who want to immigrate to the United States
does nothing to prevent terrorism.
Griswold, assistant director of trade policy studies at the Cato Institute, 2001[Danie Griswald,
Don’t Blame Immigrants for Terrorism, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/dont-blameimmigrants-terrorism]
Long-time skeptics of immigration, including Pat Buchanan and the Federation for American
Immigration Reform, have tried in recent days to turn those legitimate concerns about security into a
general argument against openness to immigration. But immigration and border control are two
distinct issues. Border control is about who we allow to enter the country, whether on a
temporary or permanent basis; immigration is about whom we allow to stay and settle
permanently. Immigrants are only a small subset of the total number of foreigners who enter
the United States every year. According to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 351
million aliens were admitted through INS ports of entry in fiscal year 2000 — nearly a million entries a
day. That total includes individuals who make multiple entries, for example, tourists and business
travelers with temporary visas, and aliens who hold border-crossing cards that allow them to
commute back and forth each week from Canada and Mexico. The majority of aliens who enter the
United States return to their homeland after a few days, weeks, or months. Reducing the number of
people we allow to reside permanently in the United States would do nothing to protect us
from terrorists who do not come here to settle but to plot and commit violent acts. And closing
our borders to those who come here temporarily would cause a huge economic disruption by
denying entry to millions of people who come to the United States each year for lawful,
peaceful (and temporary) purposes. It would be a national shame if, in the name of security, we
were to close the door to immigrants who come here to work and build a better life for themselves
and their families. Like the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center towers stood as monuments to
America’s openness to immigration. Workers from more than 80 different nations lost their lives in the
terrorist attacks. According to the Washington Post, “The hardest hit among foreign countries appears
to be Britain, which is estimating about 300 deaths … Chile has reported about 250 people missing,
Colombia nearly 200, Turkey about 130, the Philippines about 115, Israel about 113, and Canada
between 45 and 70. Germany has reported 170 people unaccounted for, but expects casualties to be
around 100.” Those people were not the cause of terrorism but its victims. The problem is not that
we are letting too many people into the United States but that the government is not keeping out
the wrong people.
53
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Terrorism Disadvantage Answers
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
Immigration funding trades off with terrorism prevention
(__)
(__) The money wasted on enforcing immigration laws trades off with money to combat
terrorism.
Open Borders, pro-immigration advocacy group, 2015 [Terrorism,
http://openborders.info/terrorism/]
The absence of legal migration channels is responsible for large scale illegal immigration,
which diverts law enforcement resources to combating it: This includes large scale illegal
immigration along the southern US-Mexico border. By allowing more legal migration flows,
security agencies could focus on genuine terrorist threats rather than trying to keep out
peaceful workers. Note that despite the large scale illegal immigration, there have been almost
no instances of terrorists smuggling themselves across the southern border of the United
States. All terrorist attacks in the US carried out by foreigners have been carried out by legal
immigrants, tourists, or people on non-immigrant visas, including some who overstayed their
visas.
54
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Terrorism Disadvantage Answers
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
Immigration Enforcement does not prevent terrorism- extensions
(__)
(__) There is no link between immigrants and terrorism; immigrants are less likely to commit
violent crimes than the general population.
Rumbaut et al, Migration Policy Institute, 2006 [Rubén G. Rumbaut, Roberto G. Gonzales, Golnaz
Komaie, and Charlie V. Morgan, Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality: Imprisonment Among
First- and Second-Generation Young Men, http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/debunking-mythimmigrant-criminality-imprisonment-among-first-and-second-generation-young]
This association flourishes in a post-9/11 climate of fear and ignorance where "terrorism" and
"losing control of our borders" are often mentioned in the same breath, if without any
evidence to back them up. But correlation is not causation. In fact, immigrants have the lowest
rates of imprisonment for criminal convictions in American society. Both the national and locallevel findings presented here turn conventional wisdom on its head and present a challenge to
criminological theory as well as to sociological perspectives on "straight-line assimilation." For every
ethnic group without exception, the census data show an increase in rates of criminal incarceration
among young men from the foreign-born to the U.S.-born generations, and over time in the United
States among the foreign born — exactly the opposite of what is typically assumed both by standard
theories and by public opinion on immigration and crime. Paradoxically, incarceration rates are
lowest among immigrant young men, even among the least educated and the least
acculturated among them, but they increase sharply among the U.S. born and acculturated second
generation, especially among the least educated — evidence of downward assimilation that parallels
patterns observed for marginalized native minorities.
55
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Terrorism Disadvantage Answers
MDL and NAUDL 2015-16
Immigration Enforcement does not prevent terrorism- extensions
(__)
(__) There is no link between terrorism and the crossing of the U.S border.
Stewart, special agent with the U.S. State Department for 10 years, 2014
[Scott, supervises Stratfor's analysis of terrorism and security issues, Examining the Terrorist Threat
from America's Southern Border, https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/examining-terrorist-threatamericas-southern-border]
However, an examination of all jihadist plots since the first such attack in the United States —
the November 1990 assassination of the radical founder of the Jewish Defense League, Meir Kahane
— shows that none had any U.S.-Mexico border link. Indeed, as we've noted elsewhere, there
have been more plots against the U.S. homeland that have involved the U.S.-Canada border,
including the 1997 plot to bomb the New York Subway and the Millennium Bomb Plot. But by
and large, most terrorists, including those behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the
9/11 attacks, have entered the United States by flying directly to the country.
There is not one jihadist attack or thwarted plot in which Mexican criminal organizations smuggled the
operative into the United States. There was one bumbling plot by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps in which Manssor Arbabsiar, a U.S. citizen born in Iran and residing in Texas, traveled to
Mexico in an attempt to contract a team of Mexican cartel hit men to assassinate the Saudi
ambassador to the United States. Instead of Los Zetas, he encountered a U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration informant and was set up for a sting. There is no evidence that an actual Mexican
cartel leader would have accepted the money Arbabsiar offered for the assassination.
Mexican criminal leaders have witnessed U.S. government operations against al Qaeda and
the pressure that the U.S. government can put on an organization that has been involved in an
attack on the U.S. homeland. Mexican organized crime bosses are businessmen, and even if
they were morally willing to work with terrorists — a questionable assumption — working with a
terrorist group would be bad for business. It is quite doubtful that Mexican crime bosses would
risk their multibillion-dollar smuggling empires for a one-time payment from a terrorist group.
It is also doubtful that an ideologically driven militant group like a jihadist organization would
trust a Mexican criminal organization with its weapons and personnel.
56
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Terrorism Disadvantage Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Immigration Enforcement does not prevent terrorism- extensions
(__)
(__) The individuals who committed 9/11 entered the country legally; deporting undocumented
immigrants would do nothing to prevent a terrorist attack.
Tutasig, Committee on U.S. Latin American Relation, 2014
[Albaro, IMMIGRATION: A NATIONAL SECUIRTY THREAT?,
http://cuslar.org/2014/09/08/immigration-a-national-secuirty-threat/]
Others claim that the connection between immigration and terrorism is a constructed and
perceived threat rather than a real, objective danger. John Mueller, author of Is There Still a
Terrorist Threat?: The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy, argues that the absence of terrorist
attacks in the United States is not a result of increased border control and stricter immigration
policies, and that the threat of immigrants as terrorists has been exaggerated. Daniel Griswold
of the Cato Institute argues that terrorist attacks by foreigners are not a result of liberal
immigration policies, but are a result of failure to keep out the small number of foreigners who
do pose a threat. In his analysis Linking Immigrants and Terrorists: The Use of Immigration as an
Anti-Terror Policy, Alexander Spencer argues that there is rarely a clear distinction between an
“immigrant” and a “foreigner,” noting that those responsible for the September 11 attacks
were not immigrants, but rather people who entered the United States with temporary visas.
Julia Tallmeister, author of Is Immigration a Threat to Security?, points out that politicians and
the media have managed to stir up hostility towards immigrants, legal and undocumented,
and therefore create a connection between immigration and terrorism—just as it has been
done with portraying immigrants as a threat to societal and economic security.
57
Immigration Surveillance Affirmative
Terrorism Disadvantage Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Terrorism Disadvantage: Impact Answers
(__)
(__) There is no link between terrorism and the crossing of the U.S border.
Stewart, special agent with the U.S. State Department for 10 years, 2014
[Scott, supervises Stratfor's analysis of terrorism and security issues, Examining the Terrorist Threat
from America's Southern Border, https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/examining-terrorist-threatamericas-southern-border]
However, an examination of all jihadist plots since the first such attack in the United States —
the November 1990 assassination of the radical founder of the Jewish Defense League, Meir Kahane
— shows that none had any U.S.-Mexico border link. Indeed, as we've noted elsewhere, there
have been more plots against the U.S. homeland that have involved the U.S.-Canada border,
including the 1997 plot to bomb the New York Subway and the Millennium Bomb Plot. But by
and large, most terrorists, including those behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the
9/11 attacks, have entered the United States by flying directly to the country.
There is not one jihadist attack or thwarted plot in which Mexican criminal organizations smuggled the
operative into the United States. There was one bumbling plot by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps in which Manssor Arbabsiar, a U.S. citizen born in Iran and residing in Texas, traveled to
Mexico in an attempt to contract a team of Mexican cartel hit men to assassinate the Saudi
ambassador to the United States. Instead of Los Zetas, he encountered a U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration informant and was set up for a sting. There is no evidence that an actual Mexican
cartel leader would have accepted the money Arbabsiar offered for the assassination.
Mexican criminal leaders have witnessed U.S. government operations against al Qaeda and
the pressure that the U.S. government can put on an organization that has been involved in an
attack on the U.S. homeland. Mexican organized crime bosses are businessmen, and even if
they were morally willing to work with terrorists — a questionable assumption — working with a
terrorist group would be bad for business. It is quite doubtful that Mexican crime bosses would
risk their multibillion-dollar smuggling empires for a one-time payment from a terrorist group.
It is also doubtful that an ideologically driven militant group like a jihadist organization would
trust a Mexican criminal organization with its weapons and personnel.
58