Operation Legal Entry is a blueprint for the operational and regulatory infrastructure for maintaining legal entry into the country. It presents a comprehensive and coordinated set of executive actions that will culminate in a secure border.
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The Border Crisis
The United Sates invites more than a million immigrants a year to become Americans. No other country comes close to matching this rate of immigration. Our economy and culture is enhanced by these legally arriving, law-abiding, and assimilation-seeking peoples of the world. However, there are grave problems with our immigrant entry and border security systems. They have been destroyed by corrupt politics creating severe problems for the United States.
Thousands of foreign nationals from around the world are entering the United States illegally across the southern border each week undeterred and unobstructed. Millions of others have violated the terms of their visas and remain present. Currently, between 12 million and 25 million foreign nationals are present in the United States illegally.[1] More than 1,000,000 orders of deportation issued by immigration judges have never been executed.[2] The recipients of these orders remain in the United States with their locations unknown. Today, if a non-detained alien is ordered deported from the United States, he or she exits the courtroom with order in hand, unimpeded and untracked, and disappears into the city, never to be seen again. This scene is repeated hundreds of times everyday across the country. Drug cartels and crime syndicates routinely use the southern border as a base of operation and entry point. More than 100 billion dollars of taxpayer dollars are directed as welfare payments, redistributions, and other government benefits to these illegal aliens[3], and 1.9 billion taxpayer dollars are drained off in criminal justice costs due to crimes committed by those who have entered illegally.[4] Thirty-six per cent (36%) percent of all federal criminal sentences in 2014 were given to illegal aliens.[5] The Rule of Immigration Law and southern border security in the United States has, for all practical purposes, collapsed under tacit approval from the federal government. Operation Legal Entry presents a course action that will re-establish the law, ensure national security, enhance legal immigration, and reclaim full sovereign status for the United States.
Securing the Border
Security and sovereignty in the United States depend on securing the border from illegal entry. Without establishing this security, serious harm to the country will continue. Our unguarded and easily violated border is creating a dangerous level of vulnerability, debilitating drains on public revenue[6], and increasingly high levels of violent crime[7].
I worked at the crossroads of illegal entry for thirty years. This plan is based on that experience. There are ten key elements that must be in operation to secure the border. Each element is briefly summarized below.
Ten Steps to Strategic Border Security
1) Presidential implementation and oversight of Operation Legal Entry
2) Build tactical and physical infrastructure that prevents illegal
entry
3) Improve and re-vitalize immigration legal infrastructure
4) Reduce financial incentives for illegal entry
5) Implement productivity improvements and simplify the
immigration bureaucracy
6) Engage in assertive foreign relations with Mexico and Central America
7) Establish cooperation and joint immigration operations between the
states and the federal government
8) Increase interior immigration enforcement
9) Begin substantive public-information campaigns promoting legal
immigration and discouraging illegal entry
10) Enforce employer sanctions against those knowingly hire job seekers
who are illegally present.
Securing our borders requires comprehensive action in all ten areas. This paper outlines the key legislative and administrative actions necessary in each of these areas.
1) Presidential Oversight:
Presidential management, oversight, and coordination are critical to securing the border. Effective synchronized implementation of Operation Legal Entry can be accomplished by having the President establish an Office for Border Security and appoint a White House Border Security Advisor. The Office for Border Security will act as liaison between the President and border-security managers in the government, and will coordinate implementation of the operational elements described below. The Border Security Administrator will have responsibility for overseeing Operation Legal Entry and reporting to the President on progress toward a secure border. He or she will ensure coordination between all elements of the bureaucracy, appropriate congressional committees, and contractors. He or she will lead and inspire those responsible for the mission. Where cooperation is not forthcoming, the Administrator will have the delegated authority to compel action.
2) Tactical and Physical Infrastructure Elements of Border
Security:
- a) The Fence Line: Creation of a Federal Security Zone
The most effective mechanism for securing certain segments of the border is the fence line similar in design to the illustration above. Sixty-five countries currently deploy fence or wall barriers resulting in significant reductions in illegal entry. These structures enhance legal-entry enforcement and can be quickly reinforced in the event of national security emergencies.
The US fence line will consist of two separate fences, creating an official off-limits vehicle-patrolled Federal Security Zone between them with electronic ground sensors and 24/7 surveillance-drones sending visual information to control centers. Ditches adjacent to each fence will protect the fences from penetration by speeding vehicles and would-be fence climbers.
Some sections of the border in California, Arizona, and Texas can be secured by this kind of strategically placed fence line. The fence line will be built at key crossing areas used by drug smugglers and deployed to protect rural ranches and farms of US citizens. The fence line will be put in place with specific timetables at well-defined locations. The purpose of the fence line and federal security zone is not to prohibit entry into the United States but rather to require legal entry at the ports while preventing all illegal entry. Robust legal entry will occur at all ports of entry facilitating an ongoing flow of legal immigration.
- b) Vehicle Enforcement Patrols
Border patrol vehicle units in sufficient numbers should be stationed at the border 24/7. These vehicle units will be supported and coordinated by manned and drone helicopter observers flying the fence line spaced approximately every twenty to fifty miles. Each vehicle unit will have the technology on board to access immigration, terrorist, and criminal-background records of all apprehended illegal entrants. The onboard hardware will include computers with fingerprint and biometric readers. Much of this technology is already owned by the DHS, but not deployed to effective use.
- c) Waterway Patrols
Waterways, particularly the Rio Grande River, should be patrolled by high-speed shallow-draft watercraft sufficiently armed and outfitted with high-tech communications equipment. Such craft are owned by the Border Patrol but not in sufficient numbers or deployed to maximum effectiveness. Mexican cartels use the Rio Grande and other waterways regularly to penetrate the border for drug distribution and human smuggling. A 2006 study by the House Committee on Homeland Security warns that the Mexican cartels have essentially wrested control of the border from the US government. The report says,
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reports that the Mexican drug syndicates operating today along our Nation’s Southwest border are far more sophisticated and dangerous than any of the other organized criminal groups in America’s law enforcement history. Indeed, these powerful drug cartels, and the human smuggling networks and gangs they leverage, have immense control over the routes into the United States and continue to pose formidable challenges to our efforts to secure the Southwest border. … The cartels operate along the border with military grade weapons, technology and intelligence and their own respective paramilitary enforcers. … This new breed of cartel is not only more violent, powerful and well financed, it is also deeply engaged in intelligence collection on both sides of the border. [8]
Smuggling enterprises use waterways to move people, including sex slaves, criminals, and anti-American terrorists. Sophisticated watercrafts are essential to stopping dangerous criminals from continuing to breach the border and establishing their criminal enterprises on American soil.
The Coast Guard should be more fully deployed to border security along the seacoasts and inland waterways. Joint Border Patrol and U.S. Coast Guard operations should be developed, and relations between the two institutions strengthened. Coast Guard rapid-response teams should be developed in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic Coast to prevent large-scale coastal invasions like the Mariel Bay invasion of 1980[9]. The Coast Guard is an effective resource that is currently under utilized in the area of border control
- d) Detention Facilities
Sufficient detention space for apprehended high-risk and criminal illegal entrants is a key component to a secure border. Currently there are approximately 34,000 beds available. The actual need, under the current flow of illegal entry is closer to 50,000[10]. An adequate detention setup would likely be 40,000 operational beds with one or two additional “flex” facilities that could quickly provide between 1,000 and 15,000 standby beds. These flex facilities will include plans for rapid increases and decreases in staff, utilities, and on-site immigration courts.
As the rule of immigration law is re-established and the world becomes cognizant of the improved security of the U.S. borders, the need for detention space will drop. The number of attempted illegal entries occasionally increases dramatically as the result of civil war and other political and economic events in Central America, South America, and elsewhere around the globe. Detention centers must be designed to adapt to these fluctuating demands. During these political events, safe-zones in the areas of conflict established and run by the United Nations and NGO’s should be established rather than allowing mass migration into the United States.
Management of most permanent detention facilities can be contracted out to private corrections-management companies. Permanent on-site government presence by the Department of Homeland Security would ensure proper real-time oversight. Contracting allows maximum management control while also providing the flexibility to rapidly increase or decrease detention infrastructure as needs dictate. The internal design and operation of detention centers will provide state-of-the-art health care, clean living space, exercise yards, and visitation and attorney access. The design phase of detention center construction will involve all key players in the enforcement and adjudication of immigration law. These facilities will be designed for detention not punishment.
Properly designed court facilities should be incorporated into all immigration detention centers for the purpose of expediting removal (deportation) hearings. This expediting will minimize the length of detention for detainees and ensure a reasonable due process. Currently, several detention facilities have immigration courts onsite, but there are serious design deficiencies. These include an insufficient number of courtrooms and too few judges, insecure and convoluted transfer routes from cell block to courtrooms, public denial of access to the courts’ filing windows due to security concerns, organizational turf battles between the courts and the DHS. Additionally, federal contracting regulations and DHS policies prohibit court management and DHS from jointly planning court facilities. This must be corrected to allow operational personnel from all agencies to plan facility design. This will correct design errors and ensure proper architectural planning and reorganization of management structure.
- e) Redesign and Modernize Ports of Entry
Most current ports of entry at the southern border are under-built and under-staffed. Screening and processing of the millions of annual entries is too slow. Efficient and effective processing requires each port to operate up to 40 lanes simultaneously, with the ability to rapidly open and close lanes based on demand. Effective operation of each lane’s checkpoint booth is key to border security. Lane personnel should be carefully selected, trained, and supervised. Each lane’s checkpoint booth will be outfitted with rapid-identification technology to ascertain the immigration and criminal status of all persons in a vehicle.
Computer hardware should be supported with the latest software and sufficient bandwidth for quick access to multiple databases. Expert information technologists and engineers will be hired to manage these databases. Frequent border crossers should be able to apply for quick crossings as their vehicle approaches the entry point. After passing strenuous background checks, frequent crossers should be allowed to purchase transponders for their vehicles. Dedicated frequent-crosser lanes will have the technology to read the transponders and individual biometrics, including photo scans. The lane inspector will see an on-file photo of the frequent crosser appear on a screen as the crosser approaches. Such lanes exist now, but not enough of them to move traffic quickly. In addition, an adequate number of frequent-crosser pedestrian lanes similarly outfitted and staffed will be necessary. It is important to maintain a high level of organization, cleanliness, and professional friendliness in all lanes both vehicle and pedestrian.
Attribute profiling should be used to identify potential illegal entrants. A sufficient number of secondary inspection stations for both vehicles and individuals will be needed to accommodate thorough and possibly lengthy inspection of entrants whose profiles match specific attributes for suspicion of illegal entry. There are such stations and staff now, but not enough to ensure security and quick processing.
Observation towers and periodic helicopter surveillance are needed to monitor the conditions and operations at and surrounding these large complex ports of entry. Law-enforcement presence should be highly visible at all times. National Guard assistance should be available within hours if called on. Finally, the ports should be equipped with invisible belowground pop-up vehicle barriers to quickly go into lock-down mode in the event of an emergency or extreme national-security crisis.
Additional port-of-entry design elements should be explored through consultation with port management, law enforcement, the military, and architects. The Department of Homeland Security secretary should take the lead on port redesign and expansion. The Secretary should place particular focus on elements that will expedite legal entry as well prevent illegal entry.
3) Resurrection and Enhancement of the Rule of Immigration
Law:
a)Strengthen Return and Removal Laws
All persons apprehended trying to violate the border by going around inspection areas should be returned to their home country immediately, not brought into the United States. Alternatively, they must be held in mandatory custody pending quick-review of his or her case by an immigration judge.
- b) Change the Credible Fear Law
The Credible Fear Law allows any alien to appear at a border inspection station, utter the magic and almost always disingenuous words “I have a fear that I will be harmed if I return to my country,” then be immediately waived into the United States, often never to be seen again. The law should be rewritten so that a DHS inspector must ascertain that the claimant at the station meets a high and clear evidentiary threshold for proof of a genuine, legally defined fear of harm if turned back to his country. If, and only if, that threshold is fully met is a hearing before a judge scheduled, in which case the claimant would be mandatorily detained pending the hearing. This mandatory detention is current law but is not being enforced. The judge would base his or her decision with regard to credible fear on the same evidentiary threshold. If the judge’s decision is in the claimant’s favor, the claimant would then be scheduled for a full asylum hearing. If the judge’s decision is not in the claimant’s favor, the claimant would be taken into custody for removal. During the pendency of this hearing, the claimant would be detained or released at the discretion of the judge, based on the judge’s assessment of danger to the community or risk of a no-show. A no-show for a scheduled asylum hearing, absent evidence-supported good cause, would result in mandatory denial of asylum, immediate custody and removal. Credible Fear laws similar to this were passed in 1990, but have been slowly and steadily ignored and weakened until they are now, practically speaking, extinct.
Penalties and sanctions should fall on those who, based on a preponderance of the evidence, have knowingly made false claims for asylum. Once an alien has been found guilty of this, he or she should be barred from making future claims.
- c) Tighten Legal Requirements for Detention
Detention of illegal entrants has historically proved to be the most effective deterrent to illegal entry. Those apprehended and determined to be previously convicted criminals, including those convicted of any federal or state felonies or any serious misdemeanors and then entering in violation of a previous order of removal, should be mandatorily and without exception detained pending a criminal trial for re-entry after deportation. Re-entry by criminal aliens in violation of a removal order will carry mandatory five-year prison sentences. Entrants matching profiles of terrorists and border crossers with multiple voluntary returns[11] should also be mandatorily detained. Mandatory detention in these situations is to be short, measured in terms of a few days.
- d) S. Attorney Prosecution of Criminal Alien Re-entry (§1326)
Aliens previously deported on the basis having committed crimes who re-enter in violation of that order should be aggressively prosecuted for this felony. Currently the law is in place but routinely not enforced by US Attorneys.
- e) Timely Execute Removal Orders
Currently there are approximately more than a million unexecuted orders[12] of removal languishing in the file cabinets of the Department of Homeland Security. Behind every one of these orders is an illegal alien ordered deported but still present. This makes a mockery of the rule of law, and invites mass-scale illegal entry. Orders of removal issued by immigration judges should be mandatorily executed immediately, with the DHS taking the alien into custody upon his or her exiting the courtroom. The order of removal should, by legislative mandate, be executed within 30 days. Failure by the DHS to execute the order should carry with it the risk of a contempt order from the judge. It is important to understand that currently a non-detained illegal alien who is ordered deported at immigration court can exit the courtroom and walk into the city, with order in hand, never to be seen again. This situation exists because of executive-branch refusal to uphold the rule of law, and congressional abdication of constitutionally required oversight of the legislation it passes. Until orders of deportation are timely executed borders cannot be secured.
- f) Reform the Bases for Asylum
Asylum should be granted solely on a proven claim of significant political or religious persecution supported by a preponderance of evidence. Other bases of asylum, including arcane and politically correct social groupings, should be eliminated. The asylum laws were originally designed to offer refuge to foreign persons who were being abused, tortured or imprisoned for their verbal or written expression of a political or religious belief. Over the last 20 years, Congress, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the federal courts have greatly expanded the basis for asylum. They have opened the borders to a potpourri of “social groups.” It has even been suggested by one member of the Board of Immigration Appeals that the US accept as asylees Albanian nudists who are teased by their countrymen. These more absurd social-group sections of the asylum law should be removed, leaving only extreme political and religious persecution as the basis for asylum.
Evidence supports a conclusion that that US Courts have often and on a large scale sought to deconstruct valid immigration law based on an individual judge’s personal social and political visions rather than sound jurisprudence. Congress and the President must respond with corrective legislation.
- g) Reorganize the Immigration Courts and the Executive Office for
Immigration Review
- i) Increase the Number of Immigration Judges
The number of immigration judges should be significantly increased and brought in line with the number of pending removal (deportation) cases on the national docket. The average time it takes to conduct a removal hearing should be used as a divisor to determine the number of judges needed. If necessary in the opinion of the chief immigration judge, deploy judges pro tem to clear backlogs.
- ii) Establish Operational Work Rules for the Board of Immigration
Appeals
The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) reviews the decisions of immigration judges. Over the years, it has become dysfunctional, as demonstrated by several facts. First, many of the Board’s decision writers often fail to articulate an adequate legal basis for their decisions. Frequently they do not articulate any legal basis, but simply pack up the transcript and mail it back to the judge as a completely unarticulated remand. Second, they frequently fail to read the transcript thoroughly, seeming at times to have no idea what is in it. Too many Board decisions, more accurately pseudo-decisions, fail to cite relevant facts or material findings. Third, they remand cases telling the judge to reopen them for the alien to file for a legal relief that he or she is, based on the law and facts in evidence, statutorily ineligible to receive. Many cases that should have reached a final disposition years ago languish on docket for four, five, six, even seven years, often being remanded multiple times without prudent legal reason.[13] Fourth, the lawyers work from home, completely unsupervised. Some Board writers substitute their own agendas of political correctness for the law. A comprehensive and congressionally overseen set of work rules would correct these deficiencies. Legislation and executive orders should require: 1) that all board decisions include a fully articulated legal basis for every component, 2) that they should include a certification that the decision writer has read the hearing transcript in full, 3) that the content of decisions directly and in its entirety relate to the facts and issues articulated in the appeal, 4) that all legal work be supervised and carried out at government offices, 5) that there be a general policy of reasonable deference to the lower court, 6) that all Board attorneys and members serve no less than two weeks per year on an immigration-court bench in the field, 7) that de-novo review of a given case require a majority vote of the Board Members, and 8) that a prerequisite for Board membership be a minimum of two years on an immigration bench or similar direct judicial experience, and a demonstrated knowledge of immigration law as it applies to immigration-law jurisprudence.
iii) Re-design the Los Angeles, Miami, and NYC Immigration
Courts
The Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) has, for all practical purposes, lost control of the courts in these cities. The massive case backlogs, long lines, poor facilities design, and administrative chaos in these courts cripple the ability of immigration judges and court administrators to manage their dockets. EOIR SES administrators exacerbate the problem by using the misleading technique of overbooking cases to hide the staggering scope of the problem. Overbooking involves taking a backlog of four, five, or six years and “bringing them in” to within one or two years by scheduling each judge’s day with six or seven cases when it is known that only two or three can be completed. Overbooking impairs due process, and, more significantly, perpetuates a falsehood in order to mislead Congress and the American public.
Each of these courts should be split into three or four smaller, geographically separated courts. The Los Angeles court should be split into Los Angeles, Orange County, and Riverside courts. The Miami court split into Miami, East Dade, and Ft. Meyers courts. And the New York court split similarly.
- iv) Give Immigration Judges Limited Contempt Powers
Currently immigration judges do not have contempt powers. They should be given these powers to deal with courtroom misconduct, ethical misconduct, and government failures to prepare for hearings or failure to execute orders of removal.
- v) Build State-of-the-Art Immigration-Court IT Systems
More than a decade ago, Executive Office for Immigration Review contracted for the development of a comprehensive case-information system that is today known by the acronym CASE. The system has been a design catastrophe well hidden from the eyes of Congress, OMB, and the American public. One symptom that indicates the poor design is that the only way some courts can accurately maintain a docket is to ignore the 50-million-dollar system, and schedule cases by E-mail. Outside review and improvement of the system is clearly a necessary component of the border-security legal infrastructure.
- vi) Institute Enhanced Attorney Training and Performance
Requirements
When the immigration laws are enforced (currently they are not), illegal entrants are placed in removal proceedings before an immigration judge. A DHS attorney prosecutes the government’s case against the alleged violator. These attorneys are sometimes well trained, dedicated and competent, but far too many are ill trained, incompetent, and disinclined to do the rigorous work necessary to prosecute cases. Executive orders should be issued requiring periodic legal training for government immigration attorneys who prosecute in removal proceedings. Specific case-by-case performance metrics should be developed – metrics that address thorough hearing preparation, on-time arrival at court, and assigned specific responsibility for individual cases from initial filing to final appeal. Also needed are specific criteria for selecting supervising attorneys and SES managers to oversee legal operations. In the past, these positions have too often been filled by inexperienced, less than professional individuals.
4) Reduce Financial Incentives for Illegal Entry:
Tens of thousands of illegal entrants are coming not only to find work but also, and increasingly, to take advantage of the U.S. welfare system and to educate their non-English speaking children at US expense. Welfare agencies across the country dispense billions of dollars in federal welfare payments to millions of illegal aliens. This practice causes increasing structural budget deficits and an increasing national debt as a percentage of GDP. Illegal entrants should be ineligible for taxpayer-funded welfare assistance. Instead they should, pending removal back to their home country or legalization in this country, be directed to citizen-based charities, churches, and NGO’s.
5) Implement Productivity Improvements For Legal Immigration
Bureaucracy:
Modern expedited processes for would-be-entrants who obey the laws should be a first order of business for the federal government beginning in 2017. Legal immigration processing in the United States is an embarrassment to public administration. The backlogs are years long and applicant information is routinely lost. Lines at immigration offices are long, slow, and unpleasant. The response waiting when one’s turn comes is often misinformation, confusion, and rudeness.
Millions of foreign nationals are in the legal waiting queue to visit or immigrate to the United States. The reviews and investigations necessary to make a determination on these applications are a bureaucratic mess. Delay and loss of applicant information is rampant. A total redesign of the process, including staff increases and use of 21st-century technology, could transform this important function and make it efficient. One of the many drivers of illegal entry is the limitation on legal entry. Quotas for legal immigration should be reviewed with an eye toward dramatically increasing them for persons capable of assimilation, allegiance to the United States, and productive citizenship.
Comprehensive productivity studies are necessary including extensive analysis of wait-time problems. Slow inadequate databases, software and hardware need to be replaced with state-of-the-art high volume systems.
6) Foreign Relations with Mexico and Central America:
Large-scale illegal entry across our southern border is driven by many factors, including the Mexican government’s refusal to secure its own southern border, its disregard of cartel smuggling, its failure to develop a diversified job-rich economy, establish support systems for its poor, and its lack of interest in negotiating solutions with the Untied States. Our Departments of State, Commerce, and Justice led by the herein proposed White House Office of Border Security should form a joint task force to develop a plan of cooperation with Mexico that would discourage illegal entry into our country, improve Mexico’s economic conditions, reform its law enforcement, eliminate its government corruption, and require it to accept the return of all “other than Mexicans (OTMs)” who enter our country through Mexico. That country’s foreign aid and favored trading status would be contingent on its government’s cooperation in this mutual effort.
7) Cooperation Between Federal, State, and Local Governmental
Entities:
Active state and city government participation in border security, particularly by those states on the border, is critical. The common belief that Washington knows best in all matters of illegal immigration at all times is only partially true; state governments are in the best position to know the dynamics and impacts of illegal entry to their jurisdiction. Effective communication between the offices of the state governors, the Executive Office of the President, and the Department of Homeland Security should be established.
State and local law enforcement agencies should be given legal authority to arrest and detain suspected illegal aliens in the presence of probable cause. Those arrested under this authority should be allowed to appear before an immigration judge within seven days.
So-called sanctuary cities should be outlawed. Any sanctuary city violating federal law and knowingly harboring anyone who entered the country in violation of law should face loss of federal aid, criminal sanctions, and civil liability for injury and damage by harbored illegals. DHS should be given an executive mandate to timely and effectively cooperate with state and local authorities in responding to requests to take suspected illegal aliens into federal custody.
8) Interior Enforcement:
Many thousands of visa over-stays, visa frauds, and those using false papers are ensconced in the US interior far from the borders. Enforcement of immigration laws should be equally enforced in interior states and cities.
9) Public-Information Campaign on Legal Immigration:
The United States, in encouraging and accepting more than a million legal immigrants each year, is the world’s immigration leader. No other country in history has come close to welcoming that many foreign nationals into its midst annually. The government should publicize the opportunities for legal immigration that we offer, and explain the application procedure clearly. However, foreign nationals’ desire to become United States citizens far exceeds the number accepted. One could say that immigration is the sincerest form of flattery. But this desire on the part of tens of millions perhaps hundreds of million’s of the world’s population does not require that we acquiesce. Wide-open doors without wise entry criteria will result in bankruptcy, social chaos, and the destruction of national security. Legal entry criteria must be wisely determined based on the entrant’s economic self-reliance, ability and willingness to assimilate, and desire to positively contribute to American society.
10) Employer Sanctions:
Employer sanctions, i.e., legal repercussions for knowingly hiring illegal aliens, were passed in 1986. Like almost all immigration laws over the last thirty years, they were ignored, as if the rule of law and congressional mandate did not apply to immigration legislation. However, legal sanctions should be brought against employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. Guest-worker programs invite fraud, large-scale illegal presence, and future social problems. Guest-worker programs are necessary and beneficial. However, they must be monitored and their requirements enforced.
Summary
Border security and legal entry require a holistic well-coordinated, multi-faceted organizational effort. The organizational, technological, and legal elements described in Operation Legal Entry cannot operate uncoordinated, drifting as independent bureaucratic entities and separate programs. They must be synchronized, using modern management methods. For success, all the parts must function in concert with one another under the direct supervision of a newly created Office of Border Security in the Executive Office of the President.
It may come to pass that national security will be forced to yield to the relative few voices demanding that we abandon our borders even as we pretend that they are secure. Unobstructed illegal entry as a result of tacit government approval may continue for years to come. If this is the decision of Congress and the new President, the fiscal and cultural price will have to paid and the burdens borne. On the other hand, the majority voices in favor of national security, national sovereignty, fiscal prudence, and public safety through secure borders and robust legal entry may prevail. If they do, the inter-related elements of Operation Legal Entry will need to be implemented. This white paper is a general blueprint for that implementation.
[1] Accurate counts are not available as there is no precise counting mechanism in place and illegal entry is by definition an unrecorded event. The estimate range used here takes the 12 million estimate from the US Department of Homeland Security’s reports, news releases, and public statements. The higher end of the estimate is taken from private research organizations such as the Migration Policy Institute and Center for Immigration Studies. The fact that there is no reliable count of the number of illegal aliens present is evidence of the scope of the problem.
[2] Center for Immigration Studies, Built to Fail, Immigration Judge Mark Metcalf, May 2011
[3] Federation for American Immigration Reform, The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration On the American Taxpayer, 2011
[4] Costs for illegal alien crime is difficult to pin down. Incarceration costs are estimated by several sources to be slightly
more than a billion dollars.
[5] U.S. Sentencing Commission database
[6] Illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers about $113 billion a year at federal, state, and local level. The bulk of the costs – $84 billion – are absorbed by state and local governments. The annual outlay that illegal aliens cost U.S. Tax payer is a mean average amount per native-headed household of $1,117, Federation for American Immigration Reform, Fiscal Burden of Immigration on U. S. Taxpayer, Jack Martin and Eric Ruark
[7] During the last seven years 642,000 serious crimes have been committed on U.S. soil by illegal aliens – U.S. Border Patrol Report.
[8] “A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border,” Majority Staff of the House Committee on Home-
land Security, Subcommittee on Investigations (October 2006)
[9] In one week in 1980, some 300,000 Cubans fled Cuba and stormed into Miami, Florida. During the next year the streets
and neighborhoods of Miami were thrown into chaos as tent cities sprung up in the streets and the murder rate in
creased 300%. The Federal government response was virtually non-existing leaving an ill-equipped Metro-Dade local
government and its residents to struggle with the danger and chaos.
[10] It is difficult to determine precisely the number of beds needed. Currently, US immigration enforcement and adjudication is in a state confusion, chaos, and suspension making useful statistics difficult, if not impossible to obtain.
[11] Voluntary Return is a legal mechanism whereby an illegal entrant is allowed to return to his or her home country without any legal repercussions or punishment. Aliens awarded Voluntary Return are free to enter legally at any time. The Obama Administration deceived the American public by counting Voluntary Returns as actual Deportations. This gross disinformation was widely spread in the 2012 presidential election in a successful effort to falsely portray Obama as tough on illegal entry. In fact the opposite was the truth, his executive orders created de facto unsecured borders.
[12] 800,000 is a conservative estimate. Reliable statistics are difficult to obtain. There may be
As many as a million unexecuted orders of deportation maybe
[13] A three member Board panel remanded a case concluding that “…[alien] appellant Melanie Beaucejur-Jean’s crime “does not constitute a crime of violence and is not an aggravated felony subject to deportation guidelines.” The crime declared non violent by the Board is described in the aliens own words in her recorded confession, “I hit him [an infant under her care] two or three times with my fist on the top of his head. I did this to stop him from crying. It did not work. I do not know how long I shook him but I did not stop until he was unconscious.”
