After Trump broke his promise and unconstitutionally administered Obama’s illegal amnesty, I warned that although the border crossings had dipped during the first few months of his presidency, at some point word would get out that he’s a paper tiger. Last week, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported an 11 percent increase in illegal border crossings during the month of June. Does this portend a trend to come, and does it reflect a change in perception among potential illegal immigrants as to how strong the president really is on immigration? The answer to those questions is likely in the president’s own hands.

One of the greatest accomplishments of Trump’s presidency has not come from a specific policy change, but from the universal anticipation of a policy change. Illegal immigration has plummeted to 17-year lows during the first few months of this administration, a clear sign that, as many of us have argued for years, illegal immigration is all about perception. Merely projecting a tough image and protecting our sovereignty will go a long way toward dissuading illegal aliens from making a trip that will likely end with no amnesty and no benefits.

However, the levels of illegal immigration have been climbing the past two months and showed that 11 percent increase in June. While the overall level of illegal immigration is still well below what it was last June, the trend is concerning, because illegal immigration always dips during the hotter months of the year. For example, last year, the level of illegal immigration dropped by 17 percent from May to June. The oppressive weather in the desert along the border is one of the biggest deterrents for illegal immigrants during the summer months.

While the June numbers could be a mere aberration from a broader positive trajectory, if the numbers continue to climb despite the hot weather, it is very likely that the promise of “Dream amnesty” and the Trump administration’s continuing, illegal DACA program is the culprit. White House spokesman Sean Spicer has defended Trump’s amnesty as reflective of the president’s “heart.” Just in the first three months of this year (data from April through June is not out yet), Trump’s DHS renewed or issued 125,000 amnesty cards.

There is a lot of evidence that the promise of amnesty so long as you migrate here with children stokes the incentives for illegal immigration. In 2014, the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) drafted a memo asserting that 95 percent of the border-crossers interviewed cited the promise of amnesty as the primary factor behind their migration, not violence back home. This promise turned out to be correct, as only four percent of the Central American teenagers have been deported (as opposed to Mexico, which deported 90 percent of its Central American migrants). The rate of border crossings by unaccompanied minors and family units skyrocketed immediately after Obama announced DACA.

Is it possible that potential migrants were initially dissuaded by Trump’s campaign rhetoric but are now returning because of the promise of amnesty? It is important to note that while the overall rate of illegal immigration rose 11 percent in June (despite the hot weather), the number of unaccompanied minors rose by 31 percent, and the number of family units apprehended spiked by 48 percent from the previous month.

This is why it’s so essential for conservatives to speak out now about the need to build the wall, pass comprehensive interior enforcement legislation, and telegraph the message that we are done with Obama’s illegal DACA amnesty.

According to Rosemary Jenks, a leading immigration policy expert, we now stand at a crossroads in terms of policy and messaging to potential illegal migrants. Jenks told CR via email, “There is no question that the election of President Trump sent a clear message to thousands of would-be illegal border crossers that they would no longer be welcome in the United States, so the number of illegal crossers dropped precipitously.”

However, Jenks warns that the perception of toughness from Trump will not last forever if it’s not backed up by action: “And while there has been a steady uptick in enforcement activities, the continuation of DACA under President Trump, as well as the administration’s failure to implement effectively the changes the president called for in handling unaccompanied minors who cross illegally, have caused illegal immigration to begin to increase. There should be no question that illegal immigration will surge again if the president fails to follow through on his campaign promises to end DACA, build the wall, and mandate E-Verify.”

We have laid out over a dozen policy ideas for Trump to protect our sovereignty and security, but those bills will not pass the House and Senate unless the president takes a leadership role in demanding that McConnell and Ryan act upon them. Moreover, he must terminate the amnesty program and threaten to veto any budget bill that does not contain requisite funding for the border wall — if he wants to secure the gains he’s made in combating illegal immigration.

Finally, as Rosemary Jenks referenced, the administration does not appear to be following up on its promise to stop catch and release of the so-called unaccompanied minors. There is a dangerous misconception of the “Wilberforce” human trafficking law that has led past administrations to reflexively release all unaccompanied minors traveling to this country. But almost all of them are not “severely trafficked,” as defined by the statute, and in fact, most of them are self-trafficked and are therefore not entitled to special treatment. And 30 percent of them have ties to gangs. Section 11(e) of one of Trump’s first immigration orders promised to end this practice, but there is no evidence that it has changed. Is this the reason behind the initial downtick and recent spike in unaccompanied minors?

Unlike with other policies, when it comes to illegal immigration, words actually speak as strongly as actions to deter illegal immigration. There is a wealth of history to demonstrate this point, most recently with the precipitous drop in border crossings following Trump’s election. However, it won’t last forever if the actions contradict the words. It’s the job of conservatives to ensure those words are buttressed by actions, not countermanded by them. (Read more from “CONFIRMED: Another “Suicide” Connected With DNC Emails, Alleged Russian Hackers” HERE)

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If you thought executive amnesty was bad, wait until you get a taste of judicial amnesty. A new order from a federal judge issued a week from last Friday will prevent ICE from placing detainers on many illegal aliens held in local jails in six states. This radical violation of American sovereignty — judicial tyranny on steroids — will have the effect of creating a judicial sanctuary for sanctuary cities and prevent the Obama administration from detaining even the few illegal aliens they are pursuing. You heard that correctly, a federal judge wants to grant de facto amnesty to those even the Obama administration wants to deport!

For the past decade, ICE has issued detainers on those suspected of being in the country illegally who have been arrested by local officials, but are about to be released. ICE asks local police to hold the individual for 48 hours if they have probable cause an individual is an illegal immigrant so they can apprehend any criminal alien without them being released into the population. Remember, in almost every case where an illegal is arrested, they were never apprehended for simply being an illegal alien. They have usually committed an additional crime. These are not your lovely housekeepers Democrats nostalgically speak of when stereotyping illegal immigrants.

On September 30, Judge John Lee of the Northern District of Illinois issued an order voiding out thousands of such detainers in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Kansas, Missouri, and Wisconsin, the states where plaintiffs filed a class action suit. In a pattern of interpreting statutes in the most stringent manner for American sovereignty and in the most lenient manner for illegal aliens (in other cases they downright overturn statutes), Judge Lee asserted that ICE is required to obtain a warrant for every individual before issuing a post-release detainer unless they can verify that each individual suspected alien is a flight risk. This ruling will essentially take the policy of Cook County and the City of Chicago of “we will not enforce the law” and expand it to six states, ensuring that the Feds can’t enforce the law, even when local officials want to cooperate.

To begin with, the Obama administration has reduced the number of monthly detainers from nearly 30,000 in 2011 to under 10,000 since announcing the DAPA amnesty. That part of DAPA has not been halted by the courts, and this latest court ruling will likely void out most of the remaining detainers. Keep in mind, for the Obama administration to issue a detainer, that individual has to be a pretty nefarious character, given the fact that he has declined to deport even most criminal aliens.

As has been the case throughout the Obama administration, there is a bit of kabuki theater between the DOJ attorneys and the liberal judges. While the DOJ has to defend the laws and practices of the federal government, the Obama administration has not put up a rigorous defense for immigration enforcement, and that was evident in this case. As Judge Lee noted, the DOJ essentially agreed with the Soros-funded immigration groups that there is no ubiquitous flight risk among illegals. That is scandalous. By definition, illegal aliens with no documentation are the consummate flight risk, which is exactly why the relevant statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1357(a)(2), calls upon ICE to apprehend illegal aliens without a warrant when the suspected alien “is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest.”

For example, we know that 84 percent of family units from Central America that received a notice to appear before an immigration judge absconded and disappeared into the population before the final decision in 2014-2015, yet this judge feels that none of them can be detained. Among young illegal aliens who have crossed over in recent years, 90% failed to show up for their hearings, according to data from the House Judiciary Committee. The notion that illegals who have been arrested for crimes but never apprehended by the feds in the first place are not a flight risk is insane.

The consequences of this decision are devastating because it will codify sanctuary city policies into law everywhere, even where local law enforcement actually follows federal law. As CIS’s Jessica Vaughn reported, during a nine-month period in 2014 alone, local sanctuaries released 9,295 alien offenders ICE was seeking to deport. Of these illegals, 62% had significant prior criminal histories and 2,320 of them were subsequently rearrested for new crimes. There is no telling how many have committed crimes and were never caught. This is just a nine-month snapshot of the devastation from sanctuary policies. As of last year, 69% of them were still at large. So much for not being a flight risk.

While the lead plaintiff in this case was a U.S. citizen and obviously had standing to bring the suit against ICE, it is astounding that illegal aliens could piggyback on this lawsuit and secure a carte blanche order from a judge to suspend detainers in six states. In all cases of law enforcement actions, even pertaining to U.S. citizens, police operate based on probable cause. There are times that they make mistakes. In this case, the U.S. citizen, Jose Jimenez Moreno, can file a civil suit against the government if he wants to get revenge. But how do illegals get standing for relief when they are not even allowed to be in the country and how can a judge legislate immigration policy from the bench?

This is part of the disturbing trend of granting citizen rights to illegal aliens I warn about in Stolen Sovereignty. It has long been settled law that non-citizens have no right to stay in this country, nor are they entitled to a judge reviewing their case for remaining in the country. That understanding has been changed as we allowed liberal lawyers to violate that precedent in recent years. As Justice Robert Jackson, the famous Nuremberg prosecutor who was a champion of due process rights (he wrote the dissent in Korematsu v. United States, the Japanese internment case) and regarded as one of the greatest writers of his time wrote, “Due process does not invest any alien with a right to enter the United States, nor confer on those admitted the right to remain against the national will.”

While all human beings obviously have a right to due process before being punished or indefinitely detained, a country acting to protect its sovereignty can apprehend any alien with the purpose of deporting them. They are not entitled to judicial review beyond an appearance before some administrative official to ensure the individual is indeed not a U.S. citizen. “As to such persons, the decisions of executive or administrative officers, acting within powers expressly conferred by congress, are due process of law, ” wrote the court in 1892. That was a decision that Justice Felix Frankfurter regarded as “about as firmly embedded in the legislative and judicial tissues of our body politic as any aspect of our government.

Yet, over the past number of years, the courts have overturned this settled law and have now made their supremacy over sovereignty its own form of “settled law,” a premise adopted, at least in part, by much of the conservative legal profession. This will not change with a Republican president. It will only get worse with an administration that is serious about enforcing our sovereignty because the illegal alien legal profession has the ability to use the lower courts to litigate every last deportation to death, even in the few instances where we get narrow victories at the Supreme Court.

This is why Judge Roy Moore’s fight against the usurpation of the federal judiciary is about more than marriage. The federal judiciary is crushing states from exercising the powers they’ve held since our founding with regards to defining marriage, (gender?!), proscribing methods and procedures for elections, protecting civil and religious liberty, and enforcing immigration laws. Yet, at the same time, the courts are defending the blue states that thwart federal immigration law, the one area where the feds legitimately have plenary power in order to protect the sovereignty of the entire union.

That Congress can just sit idly and watch lower courts — which are a complete creation of the legislative branch — grant citizen rights to dangerous illegal immigrants reflects the ultimate breakdown of our system of governance and is a gross violation of the social contract. (For more from the author of “Immigration Insanity: This Federal Judge Just Turned Six States Into Sanctuary States” please click HERE)

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The U.S. Department of Justice is refusing an order from a federal judge to release details of benefits provided to over 100,000 illegal immigrants under President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration.

U.S. District Court Judge Andrew S. Hanen ordered the Justice Department to produce a list of individuals who received deportation deferrals from the 2014 DHS directive in a decision made May 19. The decision was made after learning DoJ had not disclosed that approximately 100,000 illegal immigrants had received three-year deferrals from deportation between November 20, 2014 and March 3, 2015. The Justice Department urged Hanen to stay his order in a brief released late Tuesday.

The 2014 DHS directive expanded a program that allowed individuals who immigrated illegally to the United States as children to obtain work permits and renewable two-year deferrals from deportation. The 2014 directive expanded this program, allowing the parents of such individuals to obtain work permits. It also increased the deferral period from two years to three.

Judge Hanen says the Justice Department assured him the 2014 program would not be implemented until February 2015, affording him time to evaluate the case. However, the federal government began issuing deferrals months earlier, in November 2014.

“They knowingly continued to hide this conduct for months and only admitted it once they realized the number of violations exceeded 100,000,” Judge Hanen wrote in his order. He also ordered Justice Department attorneys to attend a legal ethics course.

Government lawyers claim that producing a list of individuals who received deferrals and other benefits before March 3 imposes an undue burden on the Department of Homeland Security and jeopardizes the privacy interests of individuals appearing on the list.

“Finally, the balance of equities and the public interest, including the interests of tens of thousands of innocent third parties whose personally identifying information DHS has been ordered to produce, also weigh in favor of a stay,” the Justice Department’s brief read.

Judge Hanen’s order instructs that the list, once produced, would not be available for public review.

“Obviously, this list, once filed, will remain sealed until a further order of this Court,” his order reads.

As Hanen is unlikely to rescind his own decision, the Department of Justice will almost certainly appeal the order to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

A three-judge panel from the Fifth Circuit previously ruled that the president’s executive action on immigration is unconstitutional. In January, the Supreme Court announced that they would review the case. No ruling has yet been issued. (For more from the author of “DOJ Defies Federal Judge to Protect White House’s Amnesty” please click HERE)

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