Squatter Syndrome: How The Inefficiencies Of Our Legal strategy Are Making A Mockery Of Our Immigration Laws

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

It was once said that possession is nine-tenths of the law, an acknowledgement that the possessor of property generally has the advantage in keeping it. This principle has been taken to absurd extremes in some squatter cases, where people invade homes and then demand the right to stay pending long legal challenges. Today, under both our housing and immigration laws, mere occupation often appears to be nine-tenths of our laws.

Obviously, unlawful immigrants are not the same as squatters. Some of these migrants have legitimate asylum and other claims. We have to separate those meritorious cases from the vast majority with no cognizable claims. Yet, our legal system is failing the public by allowing unlawful immigrants with no meritorious claims to game the system for years and then simply vanish into the nation.

In courtrooms across the country, the nation seems trapped in a type of Squatter Syndrome, a macro version of the housing cases. The slowness of the removal process is being used to keep millions in the country indefinitely. It may prove to be President Joe Biden’s most lasting legacy, a de facto residency by simply overwhelming the system by the sheer number of unlawful entries.

For years, residents in some major cities have expressed frustration as officials threw up their hands after their homes were occupied by squatters. Even though the owners could show officers that the squatters are home invaders (including their own family pictures on the walls), they are often told to seek other housing to let the courts sort it out. That can take months or even years and the squatters play out the litigation (often with the help of some public interest groups) – only to move on to another home when they run out of appeals.

There is a sense of the same helplessness in dealing with unlawful immigration. After over eight million unlawful immigrants entered the country under Biden, Democrats are again shrugging and saying that these immigrants must be allowed to remain for years as they raise asylum and other claims that are overwhelmingly rejected.

Most unlawful immigrants immediately seek out border agents after being led across the border by coyotes and gang members. They know that, upon arrest, they would be given “notices to appear” that are years in the future and then released.

They often come across the border with printed instructions on claiming asylum.

It may be the greatest political scam ever pulled on the American people. The polls show that an overwhelming percentage of the public favors the deportation of aliens with criminal records and roughly half support mass deportations of those here unlawfully. According to a new Associated Press-NORC poll, roughly half of the country still approves of Trump’s handling of immigration.

Knowing that the public opposes such unlawful entries, politicians mouth their concerns about open borders while doing nothing to seek any change that might meaningfully increase removals.

For years, the Biden Administration claimed that it could not close the Southern border without immigration reform, including the new pathways to citizenship. Donald Trump then effectively shut down the border in a matter of weeks with the same authority that Biden had for four years. Entries are down a breathtaking 97 percent under Trump.

The record conclusively shows that Biden and the Democrats could have closed the border at any time but chose to keep it open despite daily images of waves of migrants entering the country. These same politicians knew that, once in the country, it would be practically impossible to remove a significant number of these individuals due to a court system that takes years actually to deport an individual. They become de facto resident aliens and Democrats then insist that the length of their time in the country warrants a pathway to citizenship.

After he came into office, Biden fueled this migration by negating the immigration orders of the Trump Administration, including stopping the successful Remain in Mexico policy. (It was later reinstated after legal challenges.) The Administration also resisted every major effort of border states to fill the vacuum left by lax federal enforcement, even cutting state-constructed barriers along the border.

The result was a deluge of unlawful crossings. Some border agents complained that they felt like little more than travel agents asking immigrants where they would like to go on public expense.

Trump was elected to increase deportations and he has sought to use every possible means to do so. He has met opposition at every turn from the Democrats and the courts. I have criticized the Administration in some of these cases. However, Trump is right that we need to create faster and final avenues for removal for the millions who entered during the Biden Administration.

The Congress has sought to expedite removals without such prolonged litigation.

After his inauguration, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements” that ordered the increased use of “expedited removals” under a 1996 law. Prior administrations extended this law to include any apprehended person within 100 miles of the land border who cannot prove they were legally admitted to the country or have been present in the country continuously for more than 14 days.

The Trump Administration has expanded that law to anyone who cannot prove continuous presence for two years. Their removals are generally unreviewable by an immigration judge and dramatically limit judicial relief under asylum claims. These removals also come with a five-year ban on reentry or even a lifetime ban if the individual made false claims to immigration officers.

This same expedited process can be used for those who entered the country legally but overstayed their visa or who have been convicted of certain crimes.

Some 44 percent of removals were accomplished under expedited removal designations by circumventing the standard immigration hearing process. President Obama, who was called by critics “the Deporter in Chief,” expanded the use of this process.

The Trump Administration is also using the administrative removal process of anyone who is not a permanent resident who has been convicted of aggravated felonies. Such offenses actually go beyond such felonies as murder, sexual assault, and firearms offenses. They can include nonviolent misdemeanors as failure to appear in court, burglary, and document fraud.

The benefit of this process is that it does not matter how long the individual has been in the country. Only permanent residents under this system have the right to go before an immigration judge. However, there are still appeals allowed under the system. That is why more immigration judges are needed.

The Administration is also using a process called reinstatement of removal, which applies to anyone who has illegally reentered the United States. Many of these repeat offenders immediately claim asylum. While they are not entitled to an immigration hearing, they can appeal the reinstatement.

The public deserves a better system that can handle a crisis of millions of unlawful immigrants to avoid more expedited reviews and removals.

Otherwise, we become a type of squatter nation where our inefficient legal system is being used to make a mockery of our laws.

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Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage