Thread by @ReichlinMelnick

🚨 New! The Trump administration's proposal to strip work permits from people that have been ordered removed but cannot be legally deported is out.

The explicit and stated purpose of the rule is to make those peoples' lives harder so they'll self-deport. public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2020-25473.pdf

https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1327257986490839042

Many people are ordered deported by an immigration judge but cannot BE deported. This is usually because their country of nationality will not take them.

For decades, these people have been able to get work permits, since they're not going anywhere. Now DHS wants to end that.

The proposal could affect tens of thousands of people who currently have these work permits, many of whom have lived in the United States for decades, working legally and paying taxes.

Every year, USCIS approves 20,000-30,000 of these work permit applications (inc. renewals).

DHS proposes that individuals ordered removed and released on an order of supervision would be denied work permits unless DHS finds that "removal is impracticable because all countries for whom DHS requested travel documents have affirmatively declined to issue such documents."

Notably, the requirement that countries "affirmatively" decline to issue such documents could mean that the exception would not protect people from countries which simply don't respond to DHS requests, or give DHS the runaround.

DHS admits later this exception is very small.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Stephen Miller proposal unless DHS really twisted in the knife.

Under the new proposal, even those "very low" number of people who CAN get a work permit would be banned from renewing their work permit unless they worked for an employer using E-Verify!

They would also limit the period of these work permits to one year only, meaning you'd have to be constantly renewing them (and with current backlogs in work permit authorization, be filing for a renewal around the same time as you got it).

Bizarrely, in order to renew a work permit, you would need to show that you still had "economic necessity" to work, pegged to the federal poverty guideline.

To get the work permit, you need to show you have no money. And to renew it... you still need to show you have no money?

DHS would also require that individuals released from ICE detention (where they can earn at max $1/day) be required to pay a new $30 fee to resubmit biometrics (which are already required, even though ICE already has them), and then DHS will... run another criminal record check?

DHS is also proposing that anyone who currently has one of these work permits would be subject to the new rules when they go to renew their work permit.

Considering that only a few hundred people each year would satisfy the first new requirement, that means most would be denied.

Taken together, this new rule would make it so that only a few hundred people a year, if that, would ever be able to get work permits.

To the thousands of other people, DHS offers a choice: work illegally to support yourself and risk being sent back to detention, or self-deport.

Those interesting in opposing the rule will have just 30 days to leave a comment, starting on Thursday, so all comments will be due by Monday, December 21st (b/c the 30th day falls on a weekend).

They'd have to finalize the rule in 29 days. Unlikely but not impossible.