2016 Immigration Law Lecture Series (1 of 3) - Featured Speaker Charles Foster

It is my pleasure to introduce to you, if you don't know him already, Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan.

Welcome everybody to this event, and again, thank you Chicago for joining us. Today we are going to begin a 3-part series, and please thank Terry O'Rourke when you get a chance because he is the one who choreographed this happening about The Train to Crystal City. And as some of you know, I have a— besides a law degree, I have a master's degree in history from Rice University. And while my focus was on Latin America, Mexico particularly, the reality I've told people for years that only Americans think of history in terms of decades, the rest of the world in terms of centuries. And the reality is this is a story that even those of us who think of history in decades have to acknowledge, because this happened during World War II. And most of us in this room certainly have parents or grandparents who were actively involved because of World War II, either military, civilian support, or people back home. So this history, under any interpretation, was just yesterday. And the challenge that we have, and one of the reasons we're doing this, And when Terry brought us this as a project, we're doing it because the more we study history, the more we appreciate history, the more we will not repeat the bad history. And we, while we, I think, in both presidential campaigns will say we live in the greatest country in the world, doesn't mean that we're the most perfect country in the world. And one of the things I think this history in the next 3 weeks that we're going to present it will show is that yes, we need to remember history and not repeat it. So thank you all for attending. Thank you to those who are live Skyping from Chicago. This also will be on our video. Please go to our website if you want to view it or if you want to refer somebody else to it. And I look forward to today and the next 2 weeks. Thank you very much. And with that, Charles Foster is going to be introduced by John Odom.

Thank you again, Vince. And again, I emphasize what Vince mentioned, Terrence O'Rourke. Terrence made the recommendation of this to Vince, who obviously, as you can see, was all for the idea of the CLE program. If it wasn't for leadership of Terrence right here for that, taking it to Vince and Vince agreeing to do so, we wouldn't be having this program. Charles Foster. My wife, when I went through these notes about my good friend Charles Foster, I asked my wife, how did that sound? She said, TMI, too much information. And I thought to myself, particularly with this program of people with immigration law, how many people know Charles Foster? I want to see this. Maybe it helps. Hurts his feelings. How many of you in this room know Charles Foster? That's good. That's a lot of people know you. I bet they didn't know that he's a Galveston native. He received his law degree and undergraduate degree from the University of Texas. He's been on a number of national and international bar association committees pertaining to immigration law. He aided in the presidential. Elections in the past. George Bush, when he first ran for president, he was advisor on immigration law in the initial race. When George W. Bush became president, he was an advisor to President Bush on immigration law to balance the act. He was an advisor to President Barack Obama, and he's given immigration law advice to Hillary Clinton. So he is serving both sides in the political process. but is truly a gentleman that has more knowledge about immigration law than anybody I know. The Foster Global Law Firm is one of, if not the largest law firm in the United States. He's received numerous awards from the American Bar Association and from the Texas Bar Association, designated as a Super Lawyer. I could go on and on, but you came to hear Charles Foster, not to hear about him. My pleasure, really, to introduce to you, if you don't know him, Already my friend, Charles Foster.

County Attorney Ryan, thank you. Terry O'Rourke, thank you. John, thank you for the kind introduction. They're all a little biased. I've known them all for a number of years. Can you hear me with this mic and everything back there? So as was mentioned, this is Part of a 3-part series called The Train to Crystal City. And if you haven't done so, if you want to prepare, I noticed that the book is for sale out there. And it's really an extraordinary book. And as Vince indicated, many of us who thought we knew a lot about history in World War II, we were really unaware of the fact that Texas played a part in that. part in that, a sort of, in some ways, a questionable part, in that in the city of Crystal City, there was a large internment camp that was set up immediately following the commencement of World War II, after the bombing on December 7th, 1941. And this camp was one of the largest in the United States, and it held— it was the largest in terms of detaining families. Japanese, of which 62% were American citizens, as well as German nationals residing in the US, including German American citizens, as well. Again, Vince talked about his interest in Latin America. We went through with the cooperation of 13 governments in Latin America. We rounded up German, Italian, and Japanese nationals residing in 13 Latin American countries, and most of them were also interned in Crystal City. So I knew Crystal City. Well, first of all, as this slide says, the next 2 speakers will— I think it will get progressively better. I'm a good friend of Ambassador Chase Untermeyer, and he's never given a bad speech, and he's going to talk on the historical aspects. And then that's on October 11th. And then on October 18th, Jan Jarboe Russell, it's her book and she will talk about the book. So, and when I, when Terry asked me to do this, I thought I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time talking about the book itself because the next 2 speakers will, but draw some lessons from that book and how it applies to today because there are some parallels. And I've known Crystal City. I'm a product of South Texas. John said I was born in Galveston, but I grew up in South Texas, McAllen, and then later Corpus. But I was always traveling around. So I knew Crystal City as the spinach capital of the world. You go there, they have a very prominent— not a statue of Sam Houston, but of Pie Pie right in the town square symbolizing spinach. It was their green gold, spinach. But that's again where the US government established this internment camp. And this last reference is— there's a number of significant legal things that happened. One was just the act of interning without a trial. There was no trial. There was no due process. Large numbers of American citizens and legal residents. And that was— there were 2 separate Supreme Court cases that actually broadly interpreting the wartime powers of the President of the United States upheld that as constitutional. It wasn't until 1980 that Congress passed resolutions recognizing that, that the injustice that was done. Historically, there was not a single case of a Japanese American actually working for the Japanese. To the contrary, many young Japanese men were given the opportunity to volunteer for the US Army, provided that they served in the European theater. And many Japanese American men fought in— they were predominantly in the 442nd Regiment that at a key battle during the Battle of the Bulge actually fought through receiving the highest casualties of any unit in order to open a pathway to free another particular battalion that was Texas-based. So we have another Texas tie to that. And I've had the privilege of meeting subsequently many of those soldiers in the 442nd. Japanese Americans received the Congressional Medal of Honor. We had a program at the Asia Society, of which I had been chairman of, And there are many— several of them still reside here in Houston and their children. I don't know if any of you know Donna Cole. She is the daughter of one of those individuals who received the Congressional Medal of Honor. And as this overhead says, in 1980, Congress acknowledged the gross violation of civil rights, but it took 4 decades. We also, during the war— I'm going to be talking about refugees and asylum, so I thought I would also mention this. Not only were we interning people because of their suspected loyalties without any due process at all, including American citizens, but we— there was a great ambivalence during World War II about whether or not we should accept refugees. And many of those refugees were Jewish refugees coming from Europe at a time of extraordinary extreme circumstances. And there are noted cases, including the St. Louis, where those boats were turned away. And many of the refugees that went back wound up in Japanese concentration camps. So it's not a very pretty story. It was not until the war was over, nearly ended, when it became apparent to the public about the Holocaust that had been perpetrated, did Roosevelt allow more refugees to be accepted. One of the— why didn't we accept refugees at that time during World War II?

It was—

there was a strong— just like today, there was strong sentiment saying, no, we cannot accept refugees. It's going to take away jobs from US citizens. They're going to come here and take our jobs. And among those refugees, you know, they may not be loyal. They could be German spies included. So, as hard as it is to imagine, just like today, there's a great deal of ambivalence about taking refugees from the Middle East. Some will say on economic grounds, some will say on security grounds. Well, it was very similar during World War II. We were very ambivalent about accepting refugees. Even at the end of the war, of course, the President of the United States was Harry Truman. Congress repeatedly failed to enact any legislation. And Truman used an executive order to accept large numbers of displaced refugees, a good part of which were refugee— were Jewish refugees following World War II. And it was not until 1948, or essentially 3 years later after the war, did Congress get around to enacting the Displaced Persons Act. Again, there are parallels You don't want to overdo this. I think there's nothing— I was talking to Chase Untermyer specifically. If you make analogies and you make anything analogous to World War II or Hitler, you're overdoing it by definition. So we don't want to overdo it. But nevertheless, there are some issues today that we can draw parallels. Certainly how we accept— in terms of accepting refugees, and how we're treating asylum seekers in the United States, and particularly accepting refugees from the Middle East. Our state government— I'm, by the way, this is nonpolitical. John has indicated that in the area of immigration policy, I'm happy to work for a Democrat or a Republican. In fact, I would rather work for someone that has a hard time understanding immigration policy than working for someone that agrees with me, because that's not nearly as significant. So I have worked across the political spectrum, Republicans, Democrats alike. And I often tell— some people are confused, you know, how can you do that? But it's sort of like a doctor selling good medicine. I'm trying to sell good immigration policy. And it doesn't make any difference whether they're a Republican or a Democrat. A barber back there would say, well, probably the Republicans need it more than the Democrats.

Right, Barbara? Okay.

All right. So, I— again, with that sort of disclaimer that I'm not political, there are differences. I know this will come as a shock to a few of you between the 2 candidates, not only generally speaking in this election cycle, but in— but particularly in immigration. In fact, having worked in several campaigns on immigration, One of my biggest disappointments was I was working for Barack Obama in 2008 and we were all geared up and it turned out that the Republicans nominated John McCain, who just happened to have been a big sponsor of comprehensive immigration reform. So I immediately knew that my job in the Obama campaign had been greatly diminished because we were anticipating running against— or not we, but the press If you— if your memories go back to John McCain— to the 2000 Republican primaries, John McCain had been written off, and no one expected him to win that primary. So when he did win the primary, I knew that there wasn't— that wasn't going to be a big issue, because they're both, as senators, President Obama and John McCain had been on the same side of the issue supporting a big comprehensive immigration bill. But this time, there's a huge difference, as this overhead says. It couldn't be bigger. Secretary Clinton has promised to introduce a big comprehensive immigration bill in the first 100 days. This has not gotten the attention that it should be, but it's probably the most important thing that's occurred in this election in immigration, because I've learned the hard way, it's a big— as Congressman Washington knows, there's a big difference between being for something And saying— and when you do it, when you support it. So, for example, President Obama was for good immigration legislation. And in a speech, I actually had a little input into it with President Calderón in Guadalajara right after he got elected. He said, and he led, he said, I'm all for— my highest priority is the introduction and passage of comprehensive immigration reform. I thought, that's great. And then he paused and said, right after healthcare, financial reform, and cap-and-trade legislation. And my heart sang because I had gone through that before. And I sort of figured that maybe it might be hard to get around to that if healthcare became a big issue. And of course, it dominated his first 2 years. And after that, the Republicans took over the House and made it more difficult.

Right.

But Hillary Clinton has said she's going to, and I know she is working on a bill right now to introduce in the first 100 days, modeled after a bill that the so-called Gang of 8 passed in 2013 in the Senate. And of course, the Republican nominee, as he is himself likes to say, he's brought the issue of immigration to our attention, and without his candidacy, no one would have thought about it. He made it on his first day announcement. He came out and said— made it a big issue when he said that Mexico was sending their rapists and criminals to the United States. And he made— of course, he's promised a big, beautiful wall. But more substantively, he's promised to remove— that's in the code now. We don't deport people. We remove people from the United States.

Sounds better.

Sounds better. But he has promised to deport the large— estimated at 11 million, he says it's 30 million individuals from the United States within the first 18 months. And he'd create a special deportation force. He had— in fairness, he sort of equivocated a little bit, but he tried to back off of that, but it was a little bit— was unable to. And I've written some stuff on this and calculated that for him to do that in 18 months, to incarcerate, detain, incarcerate, and remove in 18 months, he would have to create a, quote, deportation force larger than all— currently than all the local, state, and federal law enforcement officials we have by a factor of 5. So it would have to be a pretty huge deportation force. And that's based upon the current rate of the total people incarcerated by the totality of all local, state, and federal enforcement agents. So it would certainly deal with, you know, our unemployment problem. Trump's also has— Donald Trump's also said, of course, he would ban people of a particular faith, Islamic faith. He's also, in fairness, modified that. He would ban people from certain countries. Where that faith was of a majority. And he has promised— this is a legal issue— to end birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship, the basis of that is in the 14th Amendment. It says in fairly black and white language, a person born in the U.S. is subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S., is a U.S. citizen. And it is that phrase, subject, and there are There are a number of Supreme Court cases that essentially held that if you're born in the US, as you would all surmise, you're a US citizen. But there have been— there has been a point of view different based upon those words, subject to the jurisdiction. And the argument goes, well, if your parents are here in undocumented status, they're not subject to the jurisdiction. Well, I'm speaking to a bunch of attorneys and county attorneys and officials. And everyone knows that someone, irrespective of their immigration status, they're in court all the time by choice and sometimes not by choice. They bring legal actions, they obtain divorces. And most scholars, I would say the overwhelming number of them, interpret the I think that's a good point. The phrase subject to the jurisdiction, I also— John didn't mention I've been the Honorary Consul General of Thailand for a number of years. I deal with diplomatic issues. It has long been, if you read the study of diplomacy, the person sent to another kingdom or country to represent that person, the fear was that a child born there during that person's reign would become a— would be subject to that king or country's laws and jurisdiction, and that would compromise the diplomat. Because let's just say you're a diplomat of the United States and you've been in Germany for a number of years and you have a child born there, and the government says, no, we're going to put— take your child and put him into the German army. or hold him here for— he cannot leave the country because he's a German citizen. So diplomats' children born in the United States are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States for that— for the purposes of the 14th Amendment. That's how it's been held. And it was also narrowly applied when we— at that time, the 14th Amendment, there were independent Indian nations within the jurisdiction of Jurisdiction the United States. And that's the case now? of the US, and there was some question about whether they were citizens of the US. But be that as it may, Senator, our own US Senator Ted Cruz, who of course is, he has said, and I have no reason to doubt him, that he's focused on the Constitution. Senator Cruz says, He's against birthright citizenship, but it would take an amendment to the 14th Amendment. But Donald Trump says no, it does not. That he thinks the plain meaning of this is that those individuals never acquired US citizenship. And at worst, it would require congressional action, which I think that is, is a unique and interesting interpretation. And I'm— It may come up in this race. Anyway, let's talk about the big issue in the campaign is we have a wide open border with people crossing, flooding across the border, and it's out of control. That's actually not factually true. All the statistics that have been maintained for decades, and you can question how those statistics are kept, but they're kept in a uniform way. Shows that we have the lowest rates of undocumented immigration from Mexico, or across our border in general, since Richard Nixon was president. And that's very significant because I grew up on the border, and the rise of large-scale undocumented immigration started about that time when Nixon was president because— and there's no time to explain this— we cut— we, for the first time, imposed quotas on Latin America. And we cut off a well-known temporary workers program called the Bracero Programs. We began in the early '70s to make it far more difficult for people to enter legally. And there was a direct relationship when that happened with the number of people that came illegally. And then as we increased more effective border enforcement, there was a direct relationship to the number who decided to stay here. Rather than going— what we call circular immigration, working, going back, working. As that border became harder and harder, they said, no, it's too dangerous to cross the border, and they stayed. And then they would smuggle in their family members on a one-time basis. So we now today have the lowest rates of illegal immigration since the '70s. Why? Well, one, you can't spend $20 billion or almost $20 billion a year without having some effect. Even the U.S. government can't be that wasteful. So we have every Border Patrol agent— the Border Patrol— every president can brag that they've doubled or tripled the number of Border Patrol agents. 30 years ago, we had 2,000. Today we have about 25,000 Border Patrol agents. And we have built the wall.

Yeah.

We have, on the 2,000-mile border, we have about 700 miles Yeah. Of pretty— I was on just 2 or 3 weeks ago, I was on the border. It's a pretty impressive fencing. Where that sector I went to, you couldn't have driven a Mack truck through it. It was very, very heavy steel fencing. Now, as the old joke goes, build a 20-foot wall and then you're a buy in a fence company that manufactures 21-foot fences. is on order. So no matter how high that wall is, people always say can go over it, under it, around it, or other ways. By the way, large— most people think people who are coming across the border have come across historically across the border between ports of entry, where actually large numbers always came across at points of inspection. They were smuggled in through cars or vans. as many as were coming through between the points of entry. So we have the lowest rates of illegal. Now, there's something else that's happened. Not only do we have better border enforcement, more effective border enforcement, but something has happened in Mexico that no one ever expected. And that is, it wasn't that many a decade or two ago, with the average person in— a woman in Mexico had something like 7 children per female. And today it has plummeted. No one ever expected that to happen, but it's plummeted in Mexico. So, the birth rate in Mexico is somewhere today comparable to the U.S., a little close to about 2.0. In the U.S., it's about 1.9. The replacement rate is 2.1. In other words, if we did not have immigration today in the United States, we would be like Japan and Russia. We would be shrinking and shrinking. There's the old— some joke, I can't remember what the punchline about Japan, about when the last person will be born in Japan. Because at the current rate, they're going to get smaller and smaller and smaller because they have a very, very strict policy about immigration. And they're not having enough— the women are not having enough children. So, You hear today about— when you hear today about immigration, it's often tied into— and this is what I'm going to speak a lot about— immigrants coming in from Central America. But that's really misleading. And I think it's very instructive. They're coming from 3 countries: El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

Yes.

Central America— Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. There's very, very low-skilled immigration. So what's the difference between those 2 countries? It's called the push factors. There are factors in those 3 countries that are pushing people out of those countries. And it's pretty clear what those are. Honduras and Guatemala have the highest— some of the highest murder rates. in the world. I can't— I don't know whether it's current, but I've read statistics not that long ago that the murder rate in El Salvador and Honduras in particular were greater, higher than in Afghanistan or in Iraq. We think of those 2 countries as inherently dangerous, but in fact, you had a greater chance of being killed in El Salvador or Honduras. You have— obviously you have economic factors, but one of the big factors was precisely the effectiveness of border enforcement. When I grew up, people would come into the United States. I would work with work crews on the Mexican border and in Corpus Christi. And I didn't know much about immigration law at that time, but I was always struck by the men I worked with that were going back and forth across the border. And they would tell me about this. And they would come in— their idea of coming in illegally seems quaint now. They would get close to the bridge and they'd look up and they would see the border guard. And when he was looking the other way, they would cross under the bridge. And then when I got older, they would hire the local coyote. That would have been the local entrepreneur who would take them down away from the bridge to a safer point. But those are sort of, you know, days that have long passed. Today, the cartels who are already in the business of bringing drugs across the border, they've gotten into the smuggling of human beings in a huge way to the point that they really not only dominate that, but it's very dangerous to try to cross the border without going through them. And they control the different plazas in different cities in Mexico where you go to, to make those arrangements. I don't know what the current fare is, but it used to be $2,000 or $3,000 for a Mexican male to be smuggled across and maybe $3,000 or $4,000 for a female. But when you got further down into— away from the border, like Central America or South America or from another country, In Asia, for example, the fees would get up to $10,000, $20,000 a person. So the cartels have branched out into that. I often joke that we've outsourced our temporary workers program to the Mexican cartels. But there's some truth to that because they have a big say in who gets into the country. And rather than coming through some sort of a legal program, people often say— even I hear Donald Trump say all the time, we're going to—

He's going to do it.

We're going to remove them all and then the good ones will get in line and come back in legally. And it dawned upon me, gosh, why didn't, you know, Jose, who spent 3 days walking across the Sonoran Desert just because he was unwilling to get into a line somewhere? The truth is there is no such thing as a line. If anyone goes back, there is no legal way to come in legally. We have no guest workers program.

Right.

Congressman Lamar Smith of San Antonio. If you go out, you're subject to a 10-year bar, prohibition from reentering, even if you have a perfect legal case. Let's say some of those people could qualify legally through an immediate relative, such as a spouse or an adult child, but if they did leave, there would be another law saying first you have to wait 10 years outside the country before you come back in. But of course the vast majority will not have a U.S. citizen spouse or child. So I got off my point. The point I'm trying to make is the cartels also stimulated this large number of entrants from particularly minor children because they actually went down to Central America and promoted the fact that they could get the children into the United States. And they were not just States for a certain price at a time when they had a ready audience because parents wanted to save their children from violence, or in some cases they had a breadwinner already in the U.S. and they wanted to reunite with that breadwinner. So what were they talking about? So it's interesting because today many people in the political class will talk about large-scale illegal immigration, and they'll refer to these children, unaccompanied minors coming in from Central America, but they miss 2 overwhelming points. If you took them all, those numbers are relatively small. We had large-scale illegal immigration through the '90s, really up in the early 2000s. What really brought— a combination of factors brought it to an end, the conditions in Mexico. But also, the conditions in the US, particularly when we had our Great Recession of 2008, there was a huge, dramatic drop-off. When there were no jobs— it was very simple. If there were no jobs here, or people didn't have a job, they left. They came here for a better life or a better job, and when there was no jobs— so following 2008, as we all know, our economy went into a hole. People were being laid off. Construction went down. And word got through the grapevine very quickly back to— by the way, patterns of illegal immigration isn't really— it's oversimplification to say, well, we have illegal immigration from Mexico. It's typically we have illegal immigration from very certain parts of Mexico, certain provinces of states of Mexico, and within that state, certain regions of that state where there have been patterns of illegal immigrations and families going back. So, if you would measure that and look at a map, you would see the people that have come in without inspection come from very specific areas of Mexico, and that'd be true of Central America. So, that grapevine of knowledge would go back. They'd say, hey, the economy's bad. No jobs. Don't come. And so, we actually had an outflow. So, if you've read about this, you'll see each year since 2008, 2009, we've had a net outflow of undocumented— meaning there are more people in undocumented status from Mexico that leave the country than are trying to come into the country by some significant number. But those that are coming in are relatively a smaller number. Many of them are unaccompanied, although some come with their mother or father or both in some cases. But a good percentage of those— it's also not only is it a smaller number, But it's hard to say that you have massive illegal immigration because why? A large number of these individuals are surrendering themselves. They're not actually coming in illegally. They actually are crossing at a port of entry or they— if they cross the Rio Grande itself, they're looking, hey, Border Patrol, here I am, come get me, I'm surrendering myself. And I was on— I was down in the— in the McAllen or Rio Grande Valley sector recently, and I was with a Border Patrol supervisor, and he had an interesting comment. I'm sure it was a slight exaggeration, but we were just talking. I spent the day. And he said, oh, the other day, we detained this Mexican national, and I wanted to go over there and give him a hug. And what he meant by that, or what he clarified, was it was so unusual for them to stop a Mexican male coming in that he felt like hugging him like the good old days because the vast, vast majority were younger children coming in from Central America and many with their parents but a lot coming in by themselves. So they would— they're surrendering themselves at the border. In fact, this Border Patrol agent said the only ones that are coming in without coming across the port of entry is where the cartels— remember, this is a cartel-driven enterprise, is taking them somewhere that is logistically significant because they want to create a diversion so that we all run over there so that they can bring in drugs somewhere else. Otherwise, they're taking them right to the border. And the only time they're taking them somewhere else is for diversionary purposes. Why? Because under legislation, and this is what's not recognized, I have here, Trafficking Victims Protection and Reauthorization of 2008, signed by President Bush and passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate. I mean, it's rare does anything ever get passed. It too, for very good reasons, to protect minors, they're giving a significant amount of protection to determine whether they'd be subject to— whether they're entitled to asylum, whether they'd be subject to abuse. And the Secretary of Health and Human Services plays a role. Unaccompanied minors are to go into his or her jurisdiction after a certain period of time. So basically what the cartels did and what the thought process was, and in fact the cartels over sold this was come to America because you're going to be admitted and given legal status. So they're actually being— it's really to a great extent a con game, but there's enough truth to it that you— that this— there are legal provisions that will allow some, and that's what we're going to get into, to acquire legal status, but it was oversold. The administration to stop that has gone— has had a massive campaign, a PR campaign in Central America saying, no, it's not true. You're not going to get any kind of automatic right. You can be deported. You can be detained. And furthermore, if you really have a valid claim for asylum, we're going to set up a refugee center in certain countries where you can apply here. You don't have to— But you're not going to do that. pay, you know, and take that dangerous journey all the way up.

5 minutes.

Okay, I'm getting the sign. So under the— that act, or in general, if someone gets in the United States, one can apply for asylum if they have a well-founded threat of— a credible fear of persecution, and that's the test. And by the way, the administration, the Obama administration is criticized for not doing enough. Those of us in this field, we are— we feel like they've almost done too much. If we want— if we have a file, an asylum case, an affirmative asylum case, that case may be set for a hearing in 2019. Why? Because all of these cases for these unaccompanied minors are coming first. And they're not putting them first out of gratitude. They're putting them first to send a message that, yes, we can deport you. And if we deport enough, maybe that will slow down. So the Obama administration has been criticized on the right for being wide open. On the left, President Obama, I think wrongly, has been called the deporter-in-chief. Okay. So time will not permit. There are a number of other benefits. Where one is— can avail themselves of. Battered women can qualify for relief under the Violence Against Women Act. There are temporary visas for persons that have suffered in trafficking or those who are going to give assistance in a prosecution, the U visa. While this is hard to do, even our district courts here in Harris County can take jurisdiction under certain circumstances to determine whether or not the child would be subject to abuse or abandonment. Cubans are still a privileged class. I don't think you can really distinguish, but I would have to say the conditions are far— I've been to Cuba, some of you have— far, far better in Cuba than they are in Central America. But under the Cuban Adjustment Act, if you get It's called the dry foot, wet foot policy. If you get here and you have many Cubans working their way up, they used to go to Ecuador or other countries. They get into Mexico, they work up, and they'll come here and they'll get into the US and they will— they can apply for— and there's a presumption that they're eligible for asylum. Until recently, I was also the chairman of Interfaith Ministries. And I always said, how many cases do we have from Syria? How many cases from Somalia? But I knew what they were going to say about Cubans. About 60%— 60% of all of our refugee cases would be from Cuba, maybe 1% from Syria, even though our governor tried to stop that. Still trying. All right. There— I want to make a real plug. There's a huge need for pro bono services. Thanks to our good county attorney, Vince Ryan, and John and Terry, over a year or so ago, we had a huge CLE program for attorneys that were interested in providing CLE— I mean, pro bono services. One of the reasons there's such a great need is specifically there's a legal provision in the Legal Services Corporation Act that prohibits any funding by the US government of pro bono services to anyone that's in undocumented status. We have a limited number of organizations, nonprofits that do provide pro bono services, and they are in desperate need for pro bono attorneys, volunteer attorneys. I'm going to go through this. Catholic Charities, the why. KIND, I'm going to really plug KIND because they're out here, Kids in Need of Defense. They specifically are focused on the representation of unaccompanied minors.

Okay.

There's a table there. They'd love to sign you up when you walk out, and you can pick up their literature. You'll get a paper, I believe, John, on the way out. I've got 2 minutes. And you can pick up a paper which has all the contacts that I'm showing here. And also, the Healy Justice Center is very good, right? And you can— website, neighborhood centers for people who want to help with naturalization, interfaith ministries. We need pro bono work in terms of applications for adjustment of status for refugees who are eligible. AILA has a website. There are other pro bono options. There is a pro se asylum workshop model, and I'm giving this to you so you can do this work from home without appearing in case, where you go online to volunteer to help someone prepare their asylum application. You can do this, no pressure, and if you like that, you can actually go to— I'm sorry, what's the website? court, but you can do this pro se, and it's an easy way to get your feet wet. I encourage it. The chief immigration judge said something the other day remarkably, that even a 3-year-old can represent themselves in an asylum hearing. So if they could, just think of the good work that you could.

Yeah.

That was a shocking— one of the worst things I've ever had anyone say that. Houston is a great international city. Did you know 24% of all Houston claims to be of foreign birth? How many people in this room are foreign birth? Raise your hands. See, about 20— I'd say about almost 24%. Okay, John's going to give me the hook. Thank you, volunteer. Glad to be here. And if you have any questions, can I answer?

Let me— 2 things very important. Let's give him applause.

Thank you.

Thank you. No matter what we've covered or not had the time to cover, Mr. Foster covered a lot of material and Kind of hit the high tops. Yes, ma'am, please.

Yeah, so I have a question. I think from a perspective of someone who's heard a lot of stories of mothers and children fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, I find it perplexing that the Obama administration has thrown so much priority and resources into incarcerating in family detention centers, prioritizing the hearings, And sometimes I know kids in need of defense lawyers, they were recruiting attorneys and there was 3 weeks to prepare a case.

Yeah.

You know, how do you explain that response?

You know, I, you know, to me this is a disconnect. The— you said just in more detail what I said earlier about how these kids are being put Why did you do it? My only— there's only 2 explanations. One, out of a heartfelt belief that there was a huge risk for these children getting involved with the cartels, crossing over such a great distance, being exploited— women raped, others robbed— thinking that that was a terrible way for people to come in and trying to send the message It was sort of a hard way to do it, but saying, look, what they're telling you down there is not true. We will deport people, so don't believe it that if you just pay them $10,000 that you're going to get up here and automatically be welcome to America. So I think that was to deter that. I think the failure— one of the failures of the Obama administration was they set up these refugee centers centers, and they haven't— I think they've been fairly narrow and restrictive. I think relatively few people have been granted that status, number one. Number two, I used to say the Obama administration would do that in order to show the Republicans, yes, we can enforce the law, we are enforcing the law, so therefore we can enact immigration reform. I think that was the least part of it, but that's even less so. But it does seem unusual.

Other questions? Let's take them rather than cards. Yes, sir, right here on the front row.

Buddy. I think there was also an effort— Buddy Steves, Houston here.

But the question would be, I understand the Obama administration paid the Mexican government to keep people from crossing their southern border.

Is that also part of the Public policy discussion? Well, I think that has not been fully recognized. Buddy said that the Obama administration is paying the Mexican government to stop people from entering across their southern border. I think that's been true. I mean, that is clearly true. There's no full appreciation of the recognition of the extent to which the U.S. government works with the Mexican government in many areas, one of which is they're saying, you plug up your southern border so that these people cannot easily flow across from Guatemala into the United States. And the Mexican government has done that to some extent. And we cannot be too critical, because they're still Numbers that get through. You've got corruption. It's harder than it sounds, just like the U.S. government cannot stop that. That's number one. They did stop La Bestia, the trains that were coming up where people— you had all those— I don't know if you saw the movies or anything where you would have literally hundreds of kids and families on this train. I think they brought that to an end. Equally important, What the Mexican government has done in cooperation with the U.S. is their visa issuing policy. It's very difficult if you're from the Middle East or certain other designated countries to get a visa to enter Mexico right now because of the concern that suspected third-party nationals would get into Mexico and then would try to get into the United States. So there's a lot of cooperation going on. Yes.

I saw another hand.

Yeah, yes. We hear a lot about individuals coming into the country at border crossings. Periodically, we hear about drugs coming in with tunnels.

Yes.

Do they use those for bringing the individuals into the country also? I believe they do. I think the drug— the tunnels are— they're remarkable engineering achievements. in their own right. So I think they've been used, I think primarily for drugs, but they also clearly use those for— have used those for human smuggling. The other thing that goes on is, and I grew up in the border so I know that, once you cross the border, the Supreme Court allows vehicles to be stopped within so many miles of the border. So you have these fixed checkpoints and roving checkpoints so that it's— so what would happen is that people would get— they would cross the border and they would get mixed into the local population and then they would try to move north. And then that's where sort of the ultimate line of defense was because it's sort of hard to get people in an urban area, but once you had them out on a highway, you could stop people and inspect them. So, you know, you're talking about a one by one. So this is not recognized. This— if you— you know, part of what goes on in Mexico is there's a huge amount of bribery. What do they say? Plata o plomo. Take the silver or the lead. And that's why there's so many corrupt law enforcement officials. They would rather take the money, plata, than the lead, the bullet. So that also works here in the U.S. So there have been— What about the It's not reported very much, but there's a lot of bribery going on. A Border Patrol agent, if he's on duty at 2 o'clock in the morning, all he's got to do is look the other way at a certain designated time, and people get through that way as well.

Yes, right up here, and then to the back of the room, and one over here. Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. With regards to the argument that they need to shore up the border even more before there's any What's the deal with that? Because we have the Dreamers that are out there just hanging on, not knowing what's going to happen to them.

Okay. Well— Can you repeat the question?

Yeah, the question is, what's the deal with— we need to shore up, make the border even more stronger in terms of enforcement, and we have the Dreamers out there waiting to see what's going to happen. So, under President Obama's executive— first executive action dealing with deferred action for childhood arrivals, DACA, in 2012, that was never successfully challenged in court. So, those individuals who qualify have— there's about 700,000 that have been put into a deferred action. They can get a temporary employment authorization card. card, and they've come up with a period of renewal, and that will— that can go on. President candidate Secretary Hillary Clinton has said that she would extend that, and Donald Trump has said— he hasn't really concentrated a lot, but he has said on day one he would abolish all executive actions, so presumably that would include that. That would put— theory, all of those individuals that I've met— I've met so many, and they've got so many great stories, and they've gone on to do so many great things. That would, in theory, put them all back into— revoke their work authorization, their travel permission, and put them back into a status that they're subject to deportation. Worse, if you're a— you really want to believe in conspiracies, the policy is of the government has never been to use that information for enforcement purposes. But if you took what Mr. Trump said to the extreme, that he wanted to deport everyone within a year and a half, and then that information— those individuals presumably would be more vulnerable. You're right, in the 2013 act that was passed by the Senate, the Republican Republican side, they always want as a condition more enforcement. So there were triggers in that legislation which required a certain level that we would have effective enforcement, 90% effective enforcement, before those provisions, certain provisions that would lead people along the path of so-called— the so-called path to citizenship before certain provisions like that one went into effect. So that was a tradeoff to get that legislation passed, and it may well be in the Senate bill. I mean, should Secretary Clinton be elected, that would— in order to get enough votes in the Senate, there would probably be other provisions like that. So it's a— it's wrong— I've heard it said that Hillary is for wide-open enforcement, borders wide open. Nothing could be truer. And even the most liberal Democrat supports— sort of like motherhood and apple pie— they support border enforcement. It's in every bill, more money for border enforcement. It's very hard not to vote for that because the American public just— you know, they just take that for granted. Do you think there would have been a different judicial result if the Obama administration had said that it was a selective enforcement based on scarce resources voted by Congress versus saying, I'm going to change the law? Is there anything that could have been done in retrospect? About the— Barbara, you're talking about President Obama's executive actions of 2013? I don't even know the date. Yeah. Excuse me. November 20th, 2014. They actually did. They— it was a pretty extensive document. They talked about that the President had the inherent authority to prioritize and put ahead of the line this group of individuals, people with known ties to terrorists, convicted felons, child molesters, and then just a whole list of deplorables. So that they— those came first. And many of you would know Judge Andrew Hennen.

Yes.

He actually— his decision that upheld the temporary injunction, one, he did not set aside the enforcement priorities. So most people do not realize this. If you're just plain John Smith undocumented worker here in Harris County, and you've never been— you don't have a conviction, you're not in that class. If you're stopped by an immigration official, he's supposed to cut you loose unless he can get the permission of a supervisor. There's some special circumstances. So we deal with that a lot. So those— so that part of the executive action is still in force. What was enjoined— What was enjoined? Was the part that gave the benefit— the so-called DACA beneficiaries the right to get a work authorization. That part was enjoined on the grounds that the administration failed to, to follow the Administrative Procedures Act, not because it was unconstitutional. Yet a lot of people, including our own Attorney General, says it was found unconstitutional. So, So the prioritization still remains? That still remains. The only thing that was enjoined was the work authorization part of that.

Mary Ann Sears is our librarian. We've done this in the county attorney's office along with the Harris County Library. When you leave out of this room, if you look right out here, you'll see a display case. They were responsible. I keep calling Joe's name. Assistant librarian in the back of the room, Joe Lawson. Kristen handled the lights. She was part of the staff and crew as well. Jacqueline Terrell. And with that, we thank you most of all for coming. Chase Untermyer, just like this gentleman, I mean, even if you're not interested in immigration law, come back next week to hear Chase speak. And then all this is a buildup to having the author of the book. And again, thanks to Terry for even bringing this up.

Thank you.

Most of all, thank you. Get your papers that have all of this information before you leave. Thank you again for coming.

Thank you.