dynamic of that will be. so we recognize that not all communities are going to have exactly the same priorities that the department does, so there is a negotiation that can go on. so it's a radically different process, but if done well, and i think we can do it well, it will allow us to maintain the need to enforce immigration laws against those who seek to do us harm. but at the same time ensure that we have a much better handle on creating that mechanism of grace and that mechanism of discretion that will allow us to ensure that people who aren't priorities aren't inadvertently caught in the system. i think i will end with that. >> let me turn to you, greg, when the secretary announced changes to secure communities he used the term he was going to "reboot" the program and announced a significant overhaul. i think of reboot like my computer, you know, and my frustration level at that point that i'm having to reboot is high. what was the reception within immigration community and looking beyond your membership

to the advocacy groups more broadly to the changes? are you still absorbing it? a wait and see approach? >> thanks for the question, lynden. the american immigration lawyers association ultimately opposed the secure communities program that mary described. there was so much controversy about the program. we opposed it largely based on the impact within the communities as well as the legality and the constitutionality of the detainer hold requests being used on a widespread basis where immigration customs enforcement would request that a local law enforcement agency would hold somebody for a longer period of time foreign a immigration purpose even though the local law enforcement agency was done with that purposes. ala ultimately opposed secure communities. and as lynden was flagging on november 20th when the memo came out we were pleased that the

secretary had signalled a need for a reboot of the program. the memo that the secretary issued specifically referenced conference that several federal courts had issued decisions considering the constitutionality of the secure communities program and the use of these detainers. we were glad that there was that recognition of the constitutionality of this being one of the issues. as for where we stand now, we haven't issued a specific formal position about p.e.p. the analysis that we are looking at the issue from specifically concerns the legality and the constitutionality of the program. as mary mentioned, the use of the detainers will no longer be the default mechanism, so we're pleased that there is at least some shift away from holding people, depriving them of their liberty without probable cause is the basic framework, it's the fourth amendment analysis drawing upon the constitutional law backgrounds from law school.

that's the basic framework. at least it won't be the default practice. but the memo itself on november 20th was not crystal clear about what circumstances it will still be done and it uses language such as in special circumstances detainers will be issued. what are special circumstances? we don't know yet. from a.l.a.'s perspective the way detainers had been issued without a requirement of probable cause, without a judge reviewing a decision, which is the typical way it's done in criminal justice, that a judge issues a warrant for somebody to then be held. that has never been the practice for i.c.e. and that should be the practice. we are waiting to see how it is done, and one of the challenges that we know i.c.e. and dhs are now proactively, aggressively going out, meeting with law enforcement, sheriffs and police to try to in a sense sell the program to gain the collaboration. we think those conversations are important. but there hasn't been any transparency yet from the federal agency itself as to what

is the baseline for what will be acceptable from a constitutional perspective. because there are certain cities that new york or chicago that we know will think thoughtfully about how to protect all its community members. others jurisdictions there is no concern whatsoever for the constitution, quite frankly and there is a possibility that they would allow for detainers to be issued by i.c.e. and respect those detainers without making sure to protect the constitutional rights of those who apply to them. i would say that would be our concern. the last thing i'll mention since, lynden, you mentioned the issue of sanctuary cities is a tragic murder which happened in san francisco which is my home town of a young woman shot while walking on a wharf by somebody who was undocumented. this opened up the issue in the

media and caused the congress to look at this in the month of july. i think we'll face similar conversations throughout the month and when congress returns they'll look at it again. the big-picture perspective as it applies to this specific program is some kind of coordination is going to be helpful between states and localities and federal immigration enforcement. the question is how do you do it without -- this is probably the broader issue -- how do you do it without scaring communities to think that, if they work with, if they report crimes and go to the police for protection that they themselves aren't going to end up being deported. a woman from washington state, domestic violence advocate who worked in washington for years came to testify before the senate in july. one example that sticks in my mind is a 5-year-old girl in colorado who was apparently sexually assaulted by somebody. and the parents were undocumented. and the parents, in talking with

other immigrants, decided we're not going to report this crime to the police because you're going to get deported if you even go to the police. not only was that tragic in itself, but i guess a year later that same perpetrator sexually assaulted another young child. it was only then that the families came forward and reported it. i think both families were undocumented. that's the other side of this question of how do you keep the communities safe? if there is too much collaboration viewed from the perspective of the community between immigration enforcement and local law enforcement, because local law enforcement's main task is community safety, not necessarily immigration enforcement, which is typically seen as civil. if there is too much collaboration then the community gets afraid. that doesn't help anybody in terms of community safety. >> mary, you want to chime in? >> yeah, just because i think it's really important to recognize and understand that people are taking these issues very seriously been dhs and that that effort to try to find the

right balance is one of the reasons why i think the know fication component of p.e.p. is so important and offers the sweet spot for many communities. but i think that we also have to sort of step back and recall that one of the reasons why this sort of ongoing issue of trust is so great is, again, part of this systemic problem that we don't have comprehensive immigration reform. and i -- occasionally people are like, you're just going back to the poly annaish this would solve everything. it wouldn't. if we got comprehensive immigration reform, there are still a whole series of other things that need to be fixed. but it would recalibrate the balance between enforcement and benefits issues that exist in the law. as long as we have a system where, even with our best efforts, there really are very few alternatives for people once they're in the removal process, those fears that greg is

identifying will be very real. and even in the most perfect of worlds we're not going to be able to fix all of those problems. but we can make, i think, a great advancement toward it if we actually start looking at the p.e.p. program and some of the other initiatives that the administration is trying to do as a way to reach some levelve consensus. >> so we've heard what the administration has done, a bit of a wait-and-see approach. gary, you're new on the hill, but in the prioritization of what you see happening in the fall, is that -- is the emotional energy on this issue translating into legislative activity or are there other priorities stacked up right now? >> thanks, lynden, before i start i am supposed to say i am here not speaking on behalf of the house judiciary committee or its members. i guess that leaves me free to say almost anything. >> let me rephrase my question, then. [ laughter ] >> so, working for the ranking

democrat in the immigration subcommittee who was a vocal opponent of secure communities. we believe that p.e.p. is heading in the right direction. to greg's point we continue to have concerns with the constitutionality of detainers. so we will be monitoring p.e.p. as it is implemented. in terms of legislative action, the house mercifully prior to my arrival. not the passage but prior to my arrival did take action on a bill, hr 3009, the house democrat -- democrats were nearly unanimous in opposition to the bill. it would have taken money away from local law enforcement for those jurisdictions that did not cooperate, either because of the constitutional issues or because of the community trust, law enforcement issues that greg

talked about. the senate is -- has a markup scheduled for september to look at its own legislation. we'll see how that comes down. i think we'll maintain our opposition to legislation, legislative proposals that undermine community law enforcement and don't deal with the constitutional issues out there. i also think, you know, we'll see what happens as we get through the august recess and whether anything else trumps this issue. pun intended. [ laughter ] >> and just to follow up on the legislative, at the end of the fiscal year there are expiring authorizations in the immigration realm. are folks already looking at those and those have their own issues in terms of if they sunset and impact on the immigration program. >> right. we have four programs set to n

sunset september 30th. the eb 5 immigrant investor program where people can invest a million or $500,000 in a targeted employment area to get a green card for their individual spouse and family members, children. we have a conrad state 30 med -- for a medical doctor program for doctors who serve in medically underserved areas, religious worker bill. there are discussions going on right now, robust discussions to extend the programs. i think eb 5 has been a real focus around new needed integrity measures, making sure that these projects, the offerings around the projects are subjects to securities laws, and also the -- addressings making sure that targeted employment areas meet the spirit of the law and we don't have sort of gerrymandering and

crazily drawn teas. we're looking at that right now. i guess as the term is cautiously optimistic that the programs will be extended before the september 30th sunset. i suppose another option or possibility out there is that we have a continuing resolution and the programs get a short-term extension if we don't have a deal to extend them otherwise. >> great. all right. let's turn to the challenges, particularly during the summer, with unaccompanied minors. i know this chart is a little bit tough to read here up on the screen. but you'll see there was nothing short of a significant increase in the number of unaccompanied children who were apprehended or encountered on the southern border really beginning in the end of 2013 and into 2014. just to clarify, we're really focused on children from el

salvador, guatemala and honduras. the numbers from mexico did not see a similar spike as you saw from the central american countries. so i think we're going to turn to greg now to give us a little insight about what's going on, what have been the challenges for the administration on this issue. >> thanks, lynden. so, if there is an issue that has really placed the administration in a difficult spot, both in terms of its policies and the grand picture of what's happening with border and imbrags policy and the humanitarian responsibility for people seeking asylum in the united states, what happened in central america that is partly on the board in terms of the statistics is probably what most captures a difficult moment now. what we saw happen in 2014 was not just an increase in the numbers of unaccompanied children coming here to the united states from primarily those three countries, el salvador, guatemala and

honduras, but adults as well and family units in much larger numbers. the approximate number is 70,000 unaccompanied children and families and family units, about the same number of families. you're talking a sizable but not a huge number. not hundreds of thousands. we're talking tens of thousands of people coming here. over 100,000. the spike was anticipated by those working in the state department or those who work in international crisis areas. largely due to the crisis that's happening in central america from inability of the state to respond to gang violence, domestic violence, and the murder rates now in honduras and el salvador are higher than they've ever been. the capitals of the cities are in the top two or three of the murder capitals of the world. domestic violence. there is very little capacity for those governments to be able to respond to incidents of domestic violence and typically

reports of those either go completely uninvestigated or are even sanctioned to a certain extent by law enforcement. so that is the crisis that fueled what was a large migration out of those countries. so that is the real root cause that needs to be looked at here. what happened with the spike last year, unfortunately, put the obama administration in a very difficult place. what we saw happening was increased border restrictions and tightening of apprehensions, placing of families in detention, also short-term detaining of the children in violation of a 2008 law that was designed to protect trafficking victims and unaccompanied children coming to the united states. i will just say that, for an association of about 14,000 immigration lawyers, we tend to be lawyers that are rather stodgy on any issue. we're not the rabble rousing crowd but i have never seen an issue galvanize an organization

more than this in the years i've worked where aila because of the depth of concern for in particular we've seen on a continuing basis families -- really mothers and young children, toddlers and infants who are still nursing -- being deta detained on the level of thousands of people in facilities that have been placed -- set up very quickly since last july. and there was one set up in new mexico that was shut down in november that had five or six hundred people. mainly because the conditions were not adequate. two are now operating in texas that total have about 1500 people, families, detained this. for some context, in 2009 a facility that was so used in texas also for family detention was shut down because of lawsuits brought against the conditions and the inhumane situation there of detaining families in a jail-like circumstance. so that continues now.

a.i.l.a. and several other -- few other non-profit organizations have been trying with volunteer efforts to provide some legal counsel for the families there. it's heart-breaking. i am on the phone regularly with volunteer staff working there in texas near san antonio. these are lawyers many of whom don't do immigration full-time or have decided to take vacation and go work with the families. these attorneys who are crying because the mothers' mental health is deteriorating. the children are losing weight. 12 or 15-pound babies who have lost a third of their weight. at risk of their health. it's tearing apart my own association, the gravity of the situation. the governments need to do this generates from political pressure, to demonstrate that it has the borders in control and that it has a tough border

policy and it's not going to let hundreds of thousands of people come across. that's in direct association with our asylum responsibilities. the rates at which these people are qualifying in initial interviews for asylum is extremely high. 70%, 80%, 90% of the people who are initially interviewed to see if they have what's called a credible fear demonstrated to qualify for asylum. that's much higher than the national average of 60% typically. these people are fleeing for their lives. where we stand now in -- to sum up, the administration has continued with this policy. i don't think it will change anytime soon in terms of the detention of the families. and the -- there have been two lawsuits that were filed that have reached kind of decisions, one in february, the court issued a preliminary injunction. the d.c. district court and more recently a few days ago, federal

court in los angeles issued a sd decision. i won't go into the details right now because of the time. he is nodding over here. but the summary is that there are real concerns about the practice of what the government is doing. the government needs to change how it is treating these families. it cannot hold them long term. it needs to release them on an expedited basis. it cannot be holding these families on the justification that it wants to deter more people from coming. detention has to be done on an individualized basis, whether the person poses a threat to the community or a flight risk. i'll stop there. that's kind of where the situation stands now. and feel free to take questions. >> i just want to quote on family detention. it's unacceptable, unamerican and will end.

>> i do think, though, it's important to point out that, throughout the entire issue there has consistently been an evolution of the government's approach and attention to these issues. the vast majority of people have not been detained but have either been released on their own recognizance, under a bond or otherwise, in some form of alternatives to detention. even in the categories of the folks who have been at issue in the lawsuit, as the lawsuits and other things were progressing the secretary was moving more and more towards using those facilities as processing centers to very quickly address, i think, a lot of the issues that greg was raising in terms of the high level of credible fear and reasonable fear that people were getting. these things are always difficult issues but there really is a great deal, i think,

to the way the government has attempted to continually reassess what the needs are down there. >> i just want to say, real quick, that i just want to commend a.i.l.a. and the attorneys who have gone and volunteered at these centers. i have been sort of following the process both as just an interested person but also as an academic. it's -- forget about immigration law for a second. they've really created a whole new model of providing pro bono service. as greg mentioned, attorneys instead of taking one case they're taking a week and going down and being on site. one of the reasons why they need to do that is because the detention facilities are often in the middle of nowhere, literally. and it's -- there is no lawyers around, period, let alone immigration attorneys. and i think, you know, thinker broader, i think this issue highlights the need for government appointed counsel and immigration proceedings, because immigration law is civil there is no right to government --

government-funded lawyers. that's moving a little bit in terms of mentally incapacitated individuals, but i think this crisis shows us that we need to work towards a broader right to government-funded counsel in immigration removal cases. >> and in closing on this topic, i want to point out what greg's comment was. this is a policy issue that the bush administration struggled with with hutto and the obama administration has struggled with. the criticism i think pretty striking. last question for you, greg. do you -- sometimes you see congress up here. congress has stepped in a couple of times and tried to move responsibilities around between agencies. there has also been disputes about what appropriate funding level would be and a question of right to counsel and paying for right to counsel for children.

is this just a multi-faceted issue? or is there a silver bullet that's out there for congress to deal with on a third try? >> there is the silver bullet. i can trumpet a couple suggested ideas. sorry. couldn't resist. [ chuckles ] >> i thought i would lighten the topic a little bit. a few things given what you mentioned. one, the congressional attention to this as gary mentioned is -- during the past summer there was a letter signed by about 160 or 170 members of the house and i think about 30 -- might be getting that a little bit wrong -- 30 senators calling attention to the concern about family detention. so i think there is a lot of pressure coming from congress and attention paid to that phenomenon. there was a set of rules and laws regarding how children who arrive here unaccompanied, without a parent or somebody to take care of them, how they should be treated and screened,

the idea being that, based on child welfare principles, children should be not held in jails but in a less restrictive environment that is more suitable. so there has been discussion about whether or not those rules or laws need to be improved. the most recent law was enacted in 2008, which lynden has up on the screen there. there was some sdudiscussion ab what the standards should look like. there is a double standard that treats mexican children differently from children from these central american countries and essentially accords less protection for mexican children. our recommendation is that those recommendations be improved to bring them on par. that's another issue. on funding, i'll just mention here that this debate brought up a lot of attention regarding not just handling on the borders. there is requests for more funding from the administration for detention facilities on the order of about $300 million. a.i.l.a. is concerned about

expending more money for detention for these kinds of families. there's also been more attention paid to the need for funding overseas -- not -- foreign aid to build capacity to improve conditions there. those are just a few of the things. >> all right. let's wrap up at the very end here on the reforms of the legalization. we'll cover this quickly. you heard on an earlier panel from the regulatory team at the department of homeland security about a few priorities. want to highlight that the visa modernization recommendation report included 50, that's 5-0 -- 50 different recommendations for enhancing legal immigration focusing on efficiency and accessibility, streamlining the legal immigration system and in particular helping people who are stuck in a green card backlog, making it easier for employees to change employers and strengthening the

humanitarian system through the use of parole and some of those authorities the speakers have talked about today. so final question for the panelists. when you look at the regulatory agenda, these are significant, major complex rule-making, many of which involve multiple agencies. there are at least a dozen immigration regulations alone teed up ready for the department here. let me start with you, gary. do you see, given that air traffic control situation, do you see congress looking to help them priorititize and weighing in on that process? >> legislatively do you mean, lynden? >> through just regular pressure on the agency to say prioritize this first, prioritize that? will they be watching? >> we certainly are. we have weighed in and will continue to weigh in. certainly around the employment issues, around other issues, the extreme hardship standard, for

example, for certain immigration waivers, which i think is nearing completion in the department right now as we speak. and on the employment side as well. so certainly. >> any final thoughts from the other speakers in terms of those priorities? do you see that list evolving as you go into the last year and a half based upon litigation or political campaigns, anything like that? or is this road map set and now it's implementation for the final year? >> well, what do you say in the government, right? you never say never or you never say yes. but, look, i think that these were very, very serious efforts to identify what we could really get done with the time remaining and sort of in the context of litigious society and various and sundry challenges that are posed by resources and just time. so we -- and we have spent a lot of time looking at the

implementation and framework for this very document that the white house issued. our goal right now is to get them done. and the -- the faster we can move on these, the better. but that's the plan right now is full steam ahead. >> okay. >> i would say that aila applauded so many of the different recommendations that came out on november 20th, the daca/dapa announcement has gotten the most attention in the media, but many of the other proposed reforms would have dramatic, mostly positive improvements to the way the system works. and i'll just mention two quickly. one is a program that will provide a parole for entrepreneurs, business entrepreneurs that want to invest or start up their business or who have businesses already operating here. the parole program is something that immigration lawyers and businesses have wanted for a long time. we're very pleased to see it come out. our hope is that it's

implemented in an expansive and effective and flexible way. we're still waiting to see those happen. we're hopeful that it will come soon because we see it as one real improvement. another program is a provision that would allow for waivers to be given to people who are already here in the united states that need to leave the country in order to obtain their visa to return to the united states because they have something called unlawful presence. a few years ago the government created a system for allowing somebody to get a waiver to the bar to come back here. and now the government is going to expand that to apply to a larger group of individuals. we're very much looking forward to seeing that kind of a change come forward because it will help probably tens of thousands of families. so that's another provision. and there is just a lot of work to be done. we're looking forward to working with the government. i think they've been -- dhs and the other component entities have been proactive in having stake holder conversations