Messy legal process could challenge Trump's mass deportation plan

Donald Trump has made some controversial campaign promises lately – including vows to monitor certain mosques, track Syrian refugees and bring back waterboarding – but the debate is still raging over perhaps his biggest-scale proposal: mass deportation of the country’s illegal immigrants.
The plan remains short on specifics, yet the current state of the backlogged immigration enforcement system demonstrates just how difficult it could be. As it stands, deporting a relatively tiny fraction of the total illegal immigrant population has clogged U.S. immigration courts.
According to TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse), there are 459,219 cases pending, with most of them in California, Texas and New York. The vast majority are immigrants who either overstayed their permission to be here, or came into the country illegally. A smaller number involve criminal, terrorism or national security charges -- 25,561 as of September.
“To say you could just go and pick up 11 million or 12 million individuals and in just a couple of years deport them is just illogical, it’s just not possible,” said Maurice Goldman, an immigration lawyer in Tucson, Ariz., which according to TRAC has over 1,000 pending cases in its immigration court. TRAC is a project by Syracuse University that compiles up-to-date federal law enforcement records.
Politically speaking, Trump’s proposal continues to get mixed support, at a time when candidates and voters are focused largely on security issues in the wake of the Paris attacks.
In a recent Fox News poll, 52 percent said they favor Trump’s idea of deporting illegal immigrants, while 40 percent opposed it. But when specifically asked how they felt about “identifying and deporting millions of immigrants who are living in the U.S. illegally,” just 41 percent called it a “smart idea” that should be “seriously considered.” Thirty percent called it “silly” and “impossible,” while 24 percent said the idea is “wrong and shouldn’t be done even if it were possible.”
Trump may have mastered the art of the deal – but on the matter of mass deportation, the adage that politics is the art of the possible can’t be overlooked.
The government still is deporting thousands -- according to the latest DHS data, the government deported 438,000, 418,000 and 387,000 in 2013, 2012, and 2011 respectively -- but each case typically takes a long time to process.
Today, the average wait time for a case in the immigration court -- which can end in deportation -- is 643 days. In 2008, it was 438 days. Goldman, describing one of his own clients, a man who came to the U.S. illegally in 1992 and was brought before the court in 2010, said wait times can be much longer. It was five years before his client’s case was “administratively closed,” meaning he won’t be deported this time but his charge is still “pending.” He can be put back before a judge at any time.
The backlogs, too, have been steadily rising since 1998, the first year represented in the TRAC assessment. At that time, during the Clinton administration, there was a backlog of 129,505 cases. In 2008, a year before President Obama took the Oval Office from President George W. Bush, there was a backlog of 186,108.
Trump, though, has been resolute about not only building a U.S.-Mexico wall but the deportation plan. During the Nov. 10 presidential primary debate, Trump advocated mass deportations like those pursued by President Dwight Eisenhower, otherwise known as “Operation Wetback,” in 1954.
According to historians, hundreds of thousands of people were removed under that operation, including Mexican-American citizens, who were forcibly rounded up and sent over the border to Mexico. The months-long federal operation has been described as inhumane and generally ineffective in stopping the number of Mexicans coming over the border.
Still, Trump defends his plan, recently telling Fox News he would do it humanely.
"I've heard it both ways. I've heard good reports, I've heard bad reports," Trump told "The O’Reilly Factor" earlier this month about the mass deportations under Eisenhower. "We would do it in a very humane way."
Speaking with Fox News' Bret Baier, Trump dismissed the logistical concerns.
"If we do this job right, there shouldn't be a big court situation. Nobody knows legal situations better than Trump," he said. "They have to go back."
But critics say that while Trump could tweak federal regulations to streamline the process, he would have to change the law to pursue a strategy to avoid the immigration courts entirely. Currently, the government can fast-track deportations for violent criminals, but most immigrants, illegal and legal, have a constitutional right to due process as upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
There’s where the trouble lies in mass deportation. “The immigration courts are so underfunded, and that is why there is such a terrible backlog,” said Wendy Feliz, spokeswoman for the American Immigration Council. “[Judge positions] go unfilled, and even if they were filled, they still wouldn’t be sufficient.”
Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a fiscally conservative policy group that assessed the cost of mass deportation in a study earlier this year, told FoxNews.com that sending 11 million people home would “harm the economy in ways it would normally not be harmed.”
His group estimates it would cost upwards of $620 billion to apprehend, detain and deport every illegal immigrant. “We would need more courts, more detention facilities, more police -- it would change the climate of America.”
“I am 100 percent sympathetic with those who do not like illegal immigration,” he said. “But what strategy you have for dealing with illegal immigrants is important. I’m not a fan of this one.”

Fate of ObamaCare co-ops uncertain after half collapse

The fate of a network of alternative “co-op” health plans started under ObamaCare remains uncertain going into 2016, after half of them collapsed amid deep financial problems.
The co-ops are government-backed, nonprofit health insurers propped up with over $2 billion in taxpayer loans. Twelve of the 23 co-ops established under the Affordable Care Act, though, have gone or are expected to go under by the end of the year, leaving customers who used them scrambling for coverage and taxpayer money at risk.
But, as lawmakers on Capitol Hill demand answers on what’s being done, the Obama administration is offering few predictions on the program’s future other than to say no more money will go toward new co-ops. As to whether that future will crystallize next year, a top federal health official said: “It’s impossible to say right now.” 
Kevin Counihan, insurance marketplace CEO at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, described the co-op failures and other changes as simply “inevitable” in the health care industry.
“Things change,” Counihan told Fox News. “There is a natural ebb and flow to this business. You see this in start-ups in all industries, and it’s also true in health care.”
The answer may not satisfy lawmakers worried about the unrest caused by the co-op failures, and the taxpayer money at stake. But as for what comes next, analysts suggest it could take another year before anyone knows whether the remaining co-ops can survive or not.
“This was a fairly risky exercise to begin with,” Ed Haislmaier, senior research fellow in health policy at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News.
According to Haislmaier, it is possible other co-ops fail in the near term, but he doesn’t expect more announcements before next fall – since state regulators already moved against the weakest co-ops before the current enrollment season, giving consumers a chance to pick a new plan. 
“State regulators have gone through a process, to review and shut down co-op programs that were too weak to continue for another year,” he said. “… It explains why you saw a big bunch of them announce they were closing in October – because it was the drop dead [date]. If you’re going to pull the plug, October was the time to do it.”
The most immediate question may be whether the loan money – which was for start-up and reserve funds – will be repaid.
Tarren Bragdon, CEO of the Foundation for Government Accountability, said he doesn’t have high hopes for that. And he voiced concerns about consumers left seeking coverage on the exchanges.
“As the dust settles, we see the people who are being hurt the most are those whose health care was being provided by these artificially affordable plans,” Bragdon told Fox News. “Now, they will have to face the nightmare of HealthCare.gov or one of the crumbling state exchanges for a new plan for which premiums are averaging double-digit increases.”
Counihan, though, said they’re working to make sure consumers do not see a “coverage gap.”
“It is our primary importance that consumers are protected, consumers are given options, and consumers do not have a gap in coverage. That’s why you see these co-ops winding down in the fourth quarter – so the American people have coverage until the end of the year and new coverage starting on January 1^st,” he said.
According to CMS, nine of the closing co-ops will be operating under the federal HealthCare.gov, and the agency plans to help those consumers to “shop and compare” plans.
“It’s not like people don’t have the choice to shop and compare for the best deal,” he said.
But other states with closing co-ops -- like New York, Kentucky and Colorado -- all operate on their own state-based exchange, which would likely absorb the co-ops’ ex-customers.
In Colorado, for example, Connect for Health Colorado opened in October of 2013 as the state exchange and will now take the co-op customers. “We have a lot of options for them,” Luke Clarke, spokesman at Connect for Health Colorado, told Fox News, referring to the roughly 80,000 consumers who will need to shop for new insurance after the-co-op flop.
“We are proud to work with these people who need to shop for new coverage, and roughly half of the consumers are already existing customers of ours,” Clarke said.
Both Counihan and Haislmaier – though on opposing sides of the issue – agree that the creation of future co-ops does not appear in the cards.
“There isn’t any money left in the program to create new co-ops, but the co-ops that are succeeding will have expansion opportunities,” Counihan said. “These are businesses that are responding to the unique pressures of their respective markets.”
According to CMS, the co-ops were implemented to add more “choice and competition” for consumers. But while ObamaCare supporters blamed Congress for the failures to date, Haislmaier says the co-ops are at fault.
“I would place most of the blame on the management of the companies because they were counting on money that was uncertain to begin with,” Haislmaier said, referring to faulty enrollment estimates. “The companies that counted their chickens before they hatched got into trouble; the ones that did not, didn’t get into trouble.”

3 dead, 9 injured in shooting at Colorado Planned Parenthood, gunman identified

A law enforcement official tells the Associated Press the gunman in a shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood Friday has been identified as Robert Lewis Dear.
The shooter is from North Carolina, the unidentified official told AP. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation.
Three people, including one police officer, were killed in Friday’s attack. The gunman was taken into custody after an hours-long standoff and shootout. Authorities have yet to determine a motive behind the shooting or whether the gunman had any connection to Planned Parenthood.
The University of Colorado in Colorado Springs police department identified the officer killed as Garrett Swasey, 44, a six-year veteran of the force. Nine other people, including five police officers, were shot and are in good condition, police said.
Colorado Springs Police have yet to confirm the identity of the shooter and said they will not confirm the identity of the gunman Friday night.

More on this...

• Officials: Planned Parenthood gunman in custody

• Report: Active shooter at Planned Parenthood in Colorado

• Police: Shooter took suspicious items to Planned Parenthood

Lt. Catherine Buckley of the Colorado Springs Police Department said the gunman, described as wearing a long coat and armed with a rifle, gave up after officers inside the building shouted at him. He previously had been firing at police who entered the facility.
Buckley also said the unidentified man had brought "items" with him inside the building and left some outside, meaning officers had to make sure they were not "any kind of devices."
The gunman apparently began his deadly spree at the Planned Parenthood building, although it was not clear if his motive was related to the organization.

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UCCS police officer, Garrett Swasey (University of Colorado Colorado Springs)

"We don't have any information on this individual's mentality, or his ideas or ideology," Buckley said.
After a brief lull, he began shooting again at police, who had gotten inside the building.
Buckley said there was no information indicating the gunman himself had been shot.
Multiple police vehicles and ambulances were parked outside the building in a snowstorm and 17 degree temperatures.
Police closed Centennial Boulevard in both directions and customers were locked down at a King Soopers grocery store and several nearby shops in the strip mall area. Buckley said officers were working through the process of releasing them.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene when the shooting first started.
Ozy Licano was in the two-story building's parking lot when he saw someone crawling toward the clinic's door. He tried to escape in his car when the gunman looked at him.
"He came out, and we looked each other in the eye, and he started aiming, and then he started shooting," Licano said. "I saw two holes go right through my windshield as I was trying to quickly back up and he just kept shooting and I started bleeding."
Licano drove away and took refuge at a nearby grocery store.
"He was aiming for my head," he said of the gunman. "It's just weird to stare in the face of someone like that. And he didn't win."
Denise Speller, manager at a nearby haircut salon, told the Gazette she heard 10 to 20 gunshots in the span of less than five minutes.
She said she saw a police cruiser and two officers outside near Chase Bank, not far from the Planned Parenthood facility. One of the officers appeared to fall to the ground and the other office knelt down to render aid, then tried to get the officer to safety behind the car, she said. Another officer told Speller to seek shelter inside the building.
“We’re still pretty freaked out,” Speller said by phone. “We can’t stop shaking. For now we’re stuck back here not knowing.”
Some people managed to escape the building and flee to a nearby bank. An armored vehicle was seen taking evacuees away from the clinic to ambulances waiting nearby.
With the immediate threat over, authorities swept the building and turned their attention to inspecting unspecified items the gunman left outside the building and carried inside in bags. They were concerned that he had planted improvised explosive devices meant to cause even more destruction. As of late Friday, police did not say what was found.

making fun of the new york times cartoon

Trump called out for appearing to mock disability

2016 Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump defended himself Thursday after being criticized for a speech in which he appeared to mock a reporter with a disability – although the business mogul says his mimicking had nothing to do with the reporter’s condition.  
Jay Ruderman of the Ruderman Family Foundation in Boston said the Republican presidential contender should apologize to Serge Kovaleski of The New York Times and the public.
Trump was challenging recollections by Kovaleski and many others about the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. Trump has been criticized for claiming that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey were seen celebrating the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.
Trump and his supporters have cited articles written at the time that appeared to back Trump’s claims, at least to an extent.
In 2001, Kovaleski, then with The Washington Post, and another Post journalist wrote a week after the 9/11 attacks about authorities in New Jersey detaining and questioning "a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks."
Trump has pointed to the Post story as backing up his claim and took issue with Kovaleski's recent statement that he did not remember anyone alleging that large numbers of Muslims were celebrating.
Kovaleski has a congenital condition that affects joint movement. In a speech Tuesday in South Carolina, Trump said: "poor guy, you oughta see this guy," and gestured in a jerky fashion as he imitated the reporter.
“‘Uh, I don't know what I said, uh, I don't remember.’ He's going like, I don't remember,’" Trump said, while shaking.
After Trump’s latest comments, The New York Times expressed outrage afterward that Trump would "ridicule the appearance of one of our reporters."
Ruderman said Trump would benefit from a "series of sensitivity training sessions" and offered to provide them.
"It is unacceptable for a child to mock another child's disability on the playground, never mind a presidential candidate mocking someone's disability as part of a national political discourse," he said.
However, in a statement released to Twitter, Trump denied that he had mocked Kovaleski’s disability.

pic.twitter.com/5ztxHpiCiV

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2015

“I have no idea who this reporter, Serge Kovalski [sic] is, what he looks like is his level of intelligence,” Trump said.
“In my speech before over 10,000 people in Myrtle Beach, SC, I merely mimicked what I thought would be a flustered reporter trying to get out of a statement he made long ago,” Trump said.
Trump went on to cite his respect for disabled people and how he has spent millions of dollars making his buildings handicapped accessible. He then went on to criticize the New York Times for attacking him on the issue.
“”This is just another example of the dishonest New York Times trying to make a story out of nothing. They should focus on the survival of their newspaper and not on dishonest and very bad reporting about me,” Trump said.

'Needless experiment': Cities weigh gov't-backed broadband, critics see tax $$ at risk

A push by cities across the country to get into the business of the Internet is raising concerns that local governments, with Washington’s blessing, are meddling where they are not needed -- and wasting taxpayer dollars in the process.
The push was fueled earlier this year, when President Obama in January introduced a plan for municipal broadband projects which, according to the administration, would encourage “competition and choice” while offering a “level-playing field” for high-speed Internet access.
But critics say municipal broadband projects – or Internet services provided at least in part by local governments -- are an example of government overreach, and a bid to compete with private service providers that have successfully operated for years.
“This is a case of local bureaucrats saying that this is a high-tech ‘sexy’ project that will win voters, but it’s actually a needless experiment,” Kevin Glass, director of policy and outreach at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, told Fox News.
Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission issued an order aimed at laws that restricted community broadband in two states, North Carolina and Tennessee. The FCC overturned those laws, and in the process created a framework for 20 states to break down other barriers restricting community broadband services. President Obama urged the FCC action, which passed on a narrow 3-2 vote.
The FCC’s ruling and the president’s policy are now encouraging local governments to expand these projects. Newark, Del., is one of the cities tapping into the idea of creating its own broadband Internet service for residents
“We’re certainly not looking to take anything away from the private sector,” Ricky Nietubicz, community affairs officer for the city, told Fox News. “It’s a huge project, so we want to make sure we’re going into this with eyes wide open.”
Newark’s City Council has implemented a feasibility study to look at the potential costs and subscription rates for the community.
“Within the next four-to-six weeks, we’ll make a decision whether or not to proceed,” Nietubicz said.
But Glass said that Newark already has some of the fastest Internet speeds in the nation.
“This is a case on how politicians are not going to be dissuaded, even in a situation where there is no need at all,” Glass said. “The only thing this is going to do is be a waste of taxpayer money, and when they fail, it’s an absolute disaster.”
Watchdog.org reports that the local council in Georgia’s Peachtree City also could vote next week on a $3.2 million bond to pay for a local broadband system.
And according to Glass, Provo, Utah already implemented a municipal broadband program that reportedly cost the city $39 million, and ultimately was sold to Google for a whopping $1.
“They built this massive project for millions of dollars, but sold it to Google to get out,” Glass explained. “They’re still on the hook to pay, but were willing to cut their losses.”
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who voted against the FCC plan earlier this year, told Fox News the projects are “expensive and difficult to maintain,” in reference to the attempt in Utah.
“From a federal level it is interesting, because we have a disagreement over whether or not the federal government can do anything one way or another,” he said.
Pai dissented on the FCC decision in February based on the rationale that there was no clear federal law allowing the agency to preempt state laws in this area.
The FCC order issued in February is currently being argued in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. According to Pai, the Department of Justice typically signs onto FCC briefs – but not this time.
Pai provided a letter written by a Justice Department attorney to the court notifying them that they wouldn’t take a position on these cases. The letter is dated Nov. 5, 2015. The Justice Department has not responded to a request from Fox News for comment.
“It is exceptionally rare to have the Department of Justice refuse to sign onto an FCC brief, but this says that the DOJ doesn’t trust that this is legal,” Pai said. “President Obama’s own Department of Justice implicitly is questioning whether or not this is government overreach. “
Colorado is another state considering a municipal broadband project, and Kevin Fellman, a Colorado-based attorney whose practice focuses on communications and broadband utility issues, said most local governments just want better and more affordable broadband Internet -- and the governments have the access to promote just that.
“These communities want to use this as an economic development tool,” Fellman told Fox News. “Anyone that wants to be involved in creating more broadband infrastructure should be able to do that.”
But Pai also raised privacy concerns: “How and to what extent can you restrict what activity and communications go on in these internets if the government is in control?”
FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, who also dissented on this year’s order, said it’s “dreadful public policy to encourage municipal governments to become communications carriers.”
“Municipal broadband networks have a track record of overpromising and under-delivering, wasting taxpayer money while also harming any current or potential private competitors,” he said in a statement to Fox News.

DNC deep in debt as RNC builds up $20 million war chest

The Republican National Committee keeps building its cash advantage over its Democratic rivals, strengthening the party’s position going into the election year – with the latest monthly reports showing the DNC with a major debt, while the RNC has accrued a $20M war chest.
The Republicans announced last week that they had raised $8.7 million in October, which they say broke a record for presidential off-year fundraising record.
“With just under a year until Election Day 2016 we’re seeing great enthusiasm for the GOP,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a press release.
Figures show the Republicans now have over $20 million cash on hand, with only $1.8 million in debts owed. The RNC has raised a total of $89.3 million to date in the current election cycle.
The figures stand in stark contrast to the DNC, that has only $4.7 million cash in hand, with $6.9 million in debts owed, putting the DNC in the red, according to FEC figures. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Democrats have so far raised $53.2 million this election cycle, significantly less than their Republican counterparts.
The DNC raised just shy of $4.5 million in October, but spent approximately $5.2 million.
The nearly $7 million in debt the DNC now has was in part due to a $2 million loan from union-owned Amalgamated Bank, The Washington Free Beacon reported.
The release of the numbers could increase pressure on DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and could hamper the DNC’s push to retake the House and Senate, while also keeping the White House in 2016.
The Democratic National Committee did not respond to a request for comment.
One Republican strategist said that the number show the DNC is simply unable to get its act together, and that Democrats will have to rely on other sources of support in 2016 as a result.
“What is clear is that the future Republican presidential nominee can count on strong support from its party while the Democrats will have to resort to only relying on outside resources because the DNC simply can’t get its act together,” Ron Bonjean, an unaligned GOP strategist, told FoxNews.com.

FBI using elite surveillance teams to track at least 48 high risk ISIS suspects

With as many as 1000 active cases, Fox News has learned at least 48 ISIS suspects are considered so high risk that the FBI is using its elite tracking squads known as the mobile surveillance teams or MST to track them domestically. 
“There is a very significant number of people that are on suspicious watch lists, under surveillance,"  Republican Senator Dan Coats said.  
Coats, who sits on the Select Committee on Intelligence, would not comment on specifics, but said the around the clock surveillance is a major commitment for the bureau. "The FBI together with law enforcement agencies across the country are engaged in this. It takes enormous amount of manpower to do this on a 24-7 basis.  It takes enormous amount of money to do this," Coats explained.
These elite FBI teams are reserved for espionage, mob violence and high priority terrorism cases, like a joint terrorism task force case last June, where a 26 year old suspect Usaama Rahim, was killed outside a Massachusetts CVS.  When a police officer and FBI agent tried to question him, the Boston Police Commissioner said Rahim threatened them with a knife, and was shot dead.
With at least a dozen agents assigned to each case, providing 24/7 coverage, this high level of surveillance reflects the severe risk associated with suspects most likely to attempt copycat attacks after Paris.
"It is a big resource drain.  Yes it is.  Almost overwhelming,"  Coats said when asked about the demand placed on the FBI.   "There will be a lot of people over the Thanksgiving weekend that will not be enjoying turkey with their family.  They'll be out there providing security for the American people and the threat is particularly high during this holiday period."
One of the lessons of Paris is that the radicalization process can be swift.  According to published reports, friends of the female suspect who was killed in the siege of Saint Denis, Hasna Ait Boulahcen, abandoned her party life only a month before joining her cousin, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the plot's on the ground commander.  He was also killed in the siege.
The FBI Director James Comey has consistently drawn attention to this phenomenon, calling it the "flash to bang," that the time between radicalization and crossing the threshold to violent action can be very short. Last week, in a rare public appearance with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Comey would only say that "dozens" of suspected radicals have been under "tight surveillance."
"Together we are watching people of concern using all of our lawful tools.  We will keep watching them and if we see something we will work to disrupt it,"  Comey said.
Contacted by Fox News, an FBI spokesman had no comment on the high risk cases, nor the use of elite surveillance teams.