James Pittman: Welcome to Immigration Uncovered, the Docketwise video podcast. I'm James Pittman, co-founder of Docketwise. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I am back from sabbatical and I want to take today as sort of an update of obviously the major thing on the mind of everybody involved in the immigration system is the fact that we're going to have a new administration coming in in January as a result of the election. And, you know, there are going to be major changes in immigration, in the immigration system and in immigration law. And I'm just going to talk today about what some of those changes might be short medium and you know, project what might happen long term.

James Pittman: So let's talk about what the potential immediate changes could be expected. Starting January 20, 2025. The incoming Trump administration may take a number of executive actions immediately that could reshape portions of the policy. And these would probably be done on day one. There might be a raft of executive orders signed on day one. And that could include terminating certain discretionary programs like temporary protected status. I mean, if you watch media appearances from the last several months, it's not a secret that Mr. Trump, President Trump or incoming President Elect Trump is, you know, not a huge fan of TPS. And you know, we could see TPS rescinded for Haitians and for others who have been granted TPS.

James Pittman: Another thing would be the Biden administration's expansion of the parole in place, which happened over the summer, which made many thousands of people eligible for parole. That could be rescinded by executive action. Also DACA, which is also not liked by the incoming administration, that is something which also we could see go away. So now there could be policies that the Trump administration used in its first term, such as the Remain in Mexico policy. We could see that coming back. The Remain in Mexico policy, as I'm sure you remember, requires asylum seekers to wait outside the US While their cases are processed. And that was something which was seen in his first term. And the Biden administration attempted to reverse it, but it was blocked by the courts from discarding it completely.

James Pittman: And also we could see the disabling of the CPB1 app, which has been used by people on the Mexican side of the border to Schedule appointments at ports of entry so that they could have a credible fear interview. You know, that was intended to bring order to the process of people going to the border and requesting asylum. Right. So they could make an appointment through the app, go to a POE and in an orderly way on a specific date, you know, make their claim of asylum. It has been indicated it's probably going to go away pretty soon after the, after the president takes office.

James Pittman: Now, we could see a reinstitution of the family separation policy. I mean, there was an interview on Fox the other day with Tom Homan, who's going to be the sort of the border czar or advisor to the President on immigration matters, talking about, you know, you know, deporting families together. But, you know, it's, it's not to say that they won't reinstate the family separation policy. I think that it's bad optics, very bad optics. But, you know, we, we have to see because that is something which was hugely unpopular but did scare a lot of people. And it may very well come back if they feel that that's, you know, that's something that they could do to advance their goal of increasing removals. Significantly increasing removals.

James Pittman: Another thing that we could see is stricter enforcement in the interior of the country, including work site raids. So this is something that I in past years did more of. And it's sort of, my sense is it's become less over the years. But, you know, looking at employers, used to be that they would look at employers who really had a pattern in practice of violation people, you know, companies that just were not checking to make sure that all their employees were authorized to be employed and who made a practice out of not complying with the law. Those people were targets for enforcement. And we could see an increase, a significant increase in workplace rates.

James Pittman: And what typically happens in the workplace trade is that the employees get rounded up and put in detention or otherwise put into removal proceedings may be detained, maybe released on bond. One way or the other, they end up in removal proceedings and the employer is usually fined or if it's particularly egregious, there could be, you know, criminal, criminal charges laid. But typically it's, you know, a civil, civil matter.

James Pittman: So that's what we can expect right away on January 20th and in the weeks and let's say within a few months following medium term, we could see and, you know, increased use of section 287. So section 287 is a, is a section of the immigration law which allows ICE to deputize state and local law enforcement to carry out certain immigration functions. And there's two ways that they currently do that. One is like the jail based program and the other is the just the warrant based program.

James Pittman: In the jail based program, the deputized local law enforcement officers, when they encounter someone that they, you know, who is a non citizen or they believe is a non citizen, they can ask certain questions to ascertain the person's immigration status and you know, ask them for documents and so on. And if they believe the person to be unlawfully present in the U.S. they would then contact ICE and inform ICE of that fact and ICE would then generate, you know, a charging document or if they want to pursue it.

James Pittman: So that's like the jail based program. And then sometimes I doesn't ask the state and local law enforcement to actually ask immigration questions or you know, they, they may not train them on that part of it, but they may do the interrogation themselves but allow local law enforcement to serve, you know, paperwork, serve warrants that ICE itself draws up. So that's, those are the two ways that that's currently done. It's possible that there could be other, you know, other methods that could be created as well.

James Pittman: But we could, we should expect to see 287g used and the state and local law enforcement used as a force multiplier being recruited into. And if, you know, that should be, if that should be resisted by local officials, probably they'll come under some level of pressure from the federal government, whether that might be, you know, threats to withhold federal funds from the Department of Homeland Security or the Justice Department that are given to, usually the Justice Department that are given to state and local law enforcement. But we would expect to see federal pushback and attempts to, you know, to force them to comply.

James Pittman: Another thing is we could see attempts to revamp the immigration system toward a merit based system. So this is something which was like the beginnings of it were attempted during the first Trump administration. This was with the Raise act that was first put into Congress during the Trump 1 administration. And the Raise act is a piece of federal legislation which wants to do several things. It wants to basically, let's say, halve the number of green card cases. So the thrust of this law is to move toward a so called merit based immigration system which would be based on points.

James Pittman: So family unity would not be as strong of a policy objective under the Raise Act. Right now family unity is a very important objective. Immigration law, we have a lot of provisions in the law and a lot of built up policies that strive to realize the goal of unifying families. The Raise act would do away with some of the family based categories. For example, parents of US Citizens. This is a category that people like Stephen Miller, people like Tom Cotton don't like. Their opinion is once people are grown ups and they're US Citizens, they don't need to bring their mother and father on a green card.

James Pittman: Instead, what they propose to do is have a non immigrant visa for parents of U.S. citizens. That would be a renewable non immigrant visa. And the sponsoring US Citizen would have to show that they had taken out health care coverage for their parents that they want to bring to the United States on the renewable non immigrant visa. That's their proposal. Other categories that they would like to get rid of would be the adult sons and daughters of permanent residents and the siblings of US Citizens.

James Pittman: So some of the family based categories would go away. But overall, the Raise act, at least in the incarnation that was introduced into Congress last time, the goal was to essentially cut legal immigration by half and then also impose a cap, we can expect refugee admissions to go way down. So in the Raise act as a provision that would impose a cap of 50,000 refugee admissions per year, which is far below what we currently have, and also end the diversity visa lottery, that's another feature of the current immigration system that people who sponsor the Raise act and people like Stephen Miller don't like.

James Pittman: So you know what, what there would be instead would be a point based system where the there would be points allocated for things like the level of formal education, whether it's high school, bachelor's degree, STEM degree, professional degree, etc. For English language proficiency. That would be a source of points for, you know, evidence of an extraordinary achievement, whether it's, you know, achieving, you know, high renown in a particular a job offer from a U.S. employer or evidence of a job offer with high salary.

James Pittman: Someone gets an offer which has a salary offer attached that's significantly higher than the average in the field. That would be something that would be a basis for giving points, creating a new enterprise, investment and active management of a new enterprise. So those would be some of the bases which would actually where the points would come from. So that's the shift that's proposed in the Raised Act.

James Pittman: So so far it hasn't come to a vote in the Senate and we're going to see, but I would expect that we're going to see significant push during the second Trump administration to advance the Raise act or a bill very much like it.

James Pittman: Oh, another development that we should expect to See is the public charge issue coming back. So you'll recall from the first Trump administration that there was a new form introduced which was I944 Declaration of Self Sufficiency. And this was a very expansive reading of the public charge ground of inadmissibility. Right. Section 212A of the Immigration Nationality act contains a clause which says that someone's inadmissible to the United States if they are likely to become a public charge.

James Pittman: It's 212 that's applied in specific ways in certain types of cases. But what happened during the first Trump administration was that the government attempted to really expand the usage of the public charge ground of inadmissibility and ask extensive questions on forms like the i129 on forms like the i485 and other forms, ask extensive questions about any receipt of public welfare benefits or and just ask for lots of personal data, personal economic data that they could use to make a determination as to whether the person would be inadmissible based on the public charge ground.

James Pittman: There was also, as I mentioned, the new form introduced, I944 Declaration of Self Sufficiency, which was a very long form. It was very, let's say, cumbersome for applicants and for their attorneys to complete, introduced a significant additional amount of work into applying for a green card and that ultimately was blocked. This expansion of public charge, Both using the i944 Declaration of Self Sufficiency and the specific addition of public charge related questions on many of the forms, these are things that were blocked by the federal courts during the first Trump administration.

James Pittman: But we can expect to see continued push to use that and possibly a slightly different version or slightly different angle pursued to try to get it back into the courts and maybe get it through so that it won't be blocked this time. But I would expect more movement on that.

James Pittman: I would also expect more movement on state immigration initiatives like Texas law, SB 6 or the Arizona, various state laws that have been introduced in Arizona. I would expect, you know, more state and local activity around attempting to legislate some immigration enforcement.

James Pittman: Well, we intend here at Immigration Uncovered to serve as, you know, a trusted source of information. And we're going to be bringing on people who are involved in each of these issues as it unfolds as, as things begin to change as these new policies come into play. We'll continue to have episodes of our podcast where we bring on leading people who are deeply involved in dealing with these changes and protecting and advancing their clients interests so that you will be informed and stay tuned because let's say, it's an exciting time to be covering the immigration law space and there's going to be no shortage of things to talk about for the next few years. So I look forward to seeing you again soon. On our next episode of Immigration Uncovered.