IMMIGRATION REPORT: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is more or less shut down for a while. Our Chair, Catherine Lhamon, resigned on Inauguration Day to take a position at the White House as Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council for Racial Justice and Equity. Given that Trump had appointed two new commissioners in the last year, that has made our normally eight-member Commission majority conservative (4-3). Nevertheless, since a quorum is five and the progressive caucus is determined not to allow us to conduct a business meeting at which they could be out-voted on something, nothing is likely to happen before Biden fills the vacant seat.

Our state advisory committees are, however, still in business. Recently, our California State Advisory Committee released a report entitled, “Understanding the Impact of Immigration Enforcement on California Children on K-12 Schools.” The interesting thing about this report is that it contains a vigorous dissent from the three conservatives on the committee—Maimon Schwarzschild, Nancy Eisenhart, and Velma Montoya. Here are some comments from the dissent:

“The Committee document dwells largely, if not primarily, on an emotionally inflammatory claim that children are victimized by immigration law enforcement.”

“Regrettably, many of the Committee’s ‘findings and recommendations’ are based on dubious and controversial academic research and exaggerated testimony from politically-motivated advocacy groups—testimony that was challenged by other official and expert testimony as well as by thoughtful and cogent statements at the SAC Community Forum … only to be virtually ignored by the Committee.”

“Nearly 90% of the public comments to the SAC supported consistent and effective enforcement of the immigration laws, and expressed deep concern about the erosion of public order, and of the rule of law itself, from failure to enforce the law, and in particular from ‘sanctuary’ policies which obstruct enforcement of the law.”

This is a new (and healthy) Commission policy to permit state advisory committee members to file dissents that are longer than one page.