There are dreamers demanding it did return to the country. The issue of what has really happened with border and Immigration Enforcement is really the single most important topic, and we are really pleased to have with us three experts from across the political spectrum, people who are well regarded by people on all sides, independent thinkers who have done a lot of work. There are no newbies here. We have a lot of new data. Dhs has not always been the most transparent institution. They have put out new data that has helped give a brandnew window into many of the issues we have been talking about to give us a fresh perspective and a new look at old topics. Any of you who worked on this issue knows mark well. He has been a longtime thinker and leader in this arena. Next week they are publishing what will probably become the definitive take on this. Mark is going to preview a little bit of that but not all. He has to save some for next week. Mark is going to lead us off. Ted has been working on this issue and has been a great collaborator. Whenever we have questions we call ted to make sure we are getting things right. Ted published this pamphlet last year on illegal migration to the border. He will offer some thoughts complementing what mark had covered. Finally, tamar jacoby and a great friend of ours who comes from a different perspective, a leader from the centerright for Immigration Reform. I want to applaud her for her courage and steadfastness and trying to bring along a part of our politics that is not always anxious to move in some of the directions we want to go in. Immigration works as a network of Small Businesses we have been advocating for a solution to our broken immigration system. We are glad she is here today. Then we will open it up for q a to all of you. Mark, want to take it away . Thanks. Thanks for having me and everyone for being here. I will give a preview of the findings and encourage you to check out the full version later. Im going to focus on the three key trends in the deportation system. The first is that u. S. Deportations, the system has moved from one that focuses mostly on informal returns to one that mostly employs formal removal. Let me explain what that means. When an unauthorized immigrant is apprehended they can be deported in two main ways. One basically means the person is put on a plane and sent home. The alternative is a formal removal. It has more significant longterm consequences. It means they become ineligible for a visa. It also means if they get apprehended for the u. S. In the future they can be subject to criminal charges as a result of that removal. Previously, 95 of everybody apprehended in the u. S. Was supported through informal return, put on a bus and sent home. Last year that was 33 . Thats a big change. There is a lot of confusion about whether this administration is setting new records for enforcement. We are talking about deportations on one hand and formal removal from the other hand. In terms of deportations the overall numbers are down. There are a lot fewer unauthorized immigrants coming to the United States. There are fewer people apprehended at the border and fewer deportations, but because such a higher share are getting removed they are setting alltime records. More than ever but not more deportations. The difference matters a lot. It is significant. Focusing on those removals, previously, almost all formal removers involve a judge, involves going before an immigration judge in having a chance to seek relief. Now most are handled exclusively by dhs. In 1995, 97 of the people removed went to a judge and had a chance to seek relief. Last year 25 went before a judge. It went from three percent nonjudicial to 75 nonjudicial. A lot more unauthorized immigrants are being charged with criminal offenses. There has been a law on the books since 1952 that crossing the border without permission is a crime and being in the United States following the order is also a crime, but those were rarely prosecuted in the past. I think very rarely in 1997 about one percent of people apprehended at the border faced charges. Last year the number is 25 . Those criminal charges matter because when you are convicted of a crime you go to jail. You have a criminal record. You become for the rest of your life a convicted criminal, so thats a big change also. Let me recap quickly. We have gone from informal returns to mostly formal removal. We have gone from mostly judicial removal to mostly nonjudicial. We have gone from mostly not facing criminal charges to increasingly facing criminal charges. Those are all longterm trends that go back to the mid90s. The Obama Administration inherited programs and funding that supported those, and he kept all those in place. All of those trends have continued. All three of them have accelerated under the Obama Administration. Thats a broad sense in which the administration has been very tough on Immigration Enforcement. The other thing the Obama Administration has done is create new, explicitly articulated enforcement priorities and guidelines for prosecutorial discretion. What that has done is while keeping in place enforcement tools, this administration has focused on priority cases. Cutting to the bottom line, that has resulted in enforcement. The priorities, there are three priorities. One is recent, illegal entrants and repeat immigration offenders. As the third is convicted criminals. The main reason it has produced differences as the border and within in the interior, they are not getting these guidelines. They are apprehended at the border. Most everybody at the border is pipelines. E of these formally removed or Face Criminal Charges or both. Interior, many people bit identified through programs are not viewed as priorities. They are not getting put in a these tough type lines. This set of priorities and the tools for discretion have really play out very differently as of the border where naturally everybody gets apprehended as the book thrown at them. Is this is our broad overview. I can talk a lot more. [no audio] [applause] is good to be following a mark. Thank you for having me. I want to focus on Border Control. The ability to prevent illegal entry especially at the southern border with mexico. Pretty much all of what i talk about comes out of the pipe paper that simon mentioned. There are copies. Was the head of criminal analysis for dhs and a second term of the bush administration. Ryan is an economist who was working on Border Security issues. These are people who have look at how do you measure the effectiveness of Immigration Enforcement . I want to make two points. There is no question that border enforcement today is more effective that it any other time in u. S. History. To enterple are trying illegally than in any other time. I higher percentage of those who and arebeing caught facing more serious consequences when they are caught. Point is that the numbers and measures needed to make that assertion are difficult to gather and explain which is why theres so much controversy. The problem is exacerbated because the administration tends to want to have it both ways. Gather andant to report credible measures of progress. On the other, they want to make progress. What did you do if the measures do not seem to show progress . That has been a real problem. The prostrate is actually one of progress. Fewer people trying to cross the border than any time except the early 1970s. Our Research Suggests the odds of being apprehended are much higher than in the recent past. If you go back to the 1980s and the 1990s, you have only had about a one in three chance of getting caught. You would get put on a bus and taken back to mexico. Today at least 50 , probably higher. Much of that is an economic story. A weaker u. S. Economy, fewer people trying to cross in the somewhat stronger mexican economy. There is little question that robust border enforcement is making a difference. It actually does better does matter that we have 21,000 compared to 10,000 a decade ago or that we have 700 miles of fencing, that we have aerial drones monitoring 24 hours a day. All that stuff does have a real impact. Why do they claim the border is hopelessly porous . Some of it is there are places along the border were there are still high levels of crossings. If you go to the crossing at texas, and if you are a landowner you dont feel secure. Successive administrations have done a poor job of gathering the evidence. When president obama came to office established effectiveness was operation and control. This was largely based on the judgment of Border Patrol. It measured capacity to respond effectively and to encourage them at different places along the border. It was a problematic measure for many reasons, partly because it relied on those subjective judgments. There are still very remote parts of the border where you see agents. They came out with a report that only 44 , and that became a nightmare statistic. Napolitano decided to stop using operational control methods. I supported that decision. I thought it was a good idea. Their effort to find a replacement was badly missing. Mishandled. It was designed to throw together real estate values along with traditional enforcement metrics and come up with an index. It never saw the light of day. The result was the administration didnt have measures to tell a story. What it fell back on was the apprehensions data. There is the number of arrests by the Border Patrol in any given year. There are individuals arrested multiple times. The data goes back to 1925. Border patrol has been taking fingerprints. We know there is recidivism. The apprehension is very good but hard to interpret. If they are making more arrests, is that a measure of enforcement . On the people side it is more logical to read it the other way, which is that enforcement is better because fewer people are trying. They may not be coming for economic reasons. They may also be deterred by enforcement. They are down dramatically. If you go back to 2000 over 1. 6 million apprehension at the border. That fell after 9 11, rose again after 2004 and fell in 2011. That was the lowest number since 1971. That has been a good news story that suggests the border is under more control than in decades. That small number of entries allowed them to get a lot tougher. The problem for the administration is that it darted to pick back up. The economy has gotten stronger. Most of that is Central Americans coming through the texas corridor, but it makes it harder to tell the story of progress they want to tell. Just to conclude, what we argued for is that this administration and future administrations should be gathering a larger range of data. Whats the apprehension rate at the ports of entry . People tried to get to the legal ports as well. What is the number of visa overstays . All this should be part of the report. There are challenges. It definitely could be done. Theres a pretty good model for how to do this. The Border Security result was passed last year. That bill sets out achievable goals for Border Security and lays out how the administration should assess and evaluate progress to those goals. Just in case anyone thinks its impossible to find a consensus, that bill passed the Homeland Security committee in the house unanimously. Every democrat. Every republican on the committee voted in favor of that bill. There is an approach we can agree on. Thanks very much. [applause] hello, everyone. Thank you for being here. These guys have done such a good job of talking about the numbers. Im going to talk a little bit about the political ramifications of the debate. The first thing to understand about this debate is you have one side saying we are not doing enough to enforce. The other side saying we are doing too much. The reason the debate can get resolved cant get resolved. I think of it as a riptide. In some ways the administration has gotten tougher. In some ways the Obama Administration has decided to use discretion. There is no way to tell which of the crosscurrents is what they are reading. On the one hand there is a big spending buildup. On the other hand there has been a calling off of workplace raids and calling off of the porting workers caught in raids and an important move for indiscriminate harassment to a much more targeted approach we have been hearing about. To me the most important theres this tightening, this loosening. What am i seeing . Whats the result of that data . Most important change is a change my predecessors have talked about, the change on the border from informal sending people back on the bus to apprehending people, fingerprinting them, putting them in the system, making it a formal offense so the next time they come this is the important thing. If you get caught the first time you get the same consequence but because you were sent back in a different way when you try the next time it looks much more serious, and you are committing a real crime and the consequences play out the way they are playing out. The ultimate point is there is more deterrent and the border is secure. We want a system where there are ample legal ways to come and go but its difficult to come in illegally. Thats what all these changes thats one of the consequences we are seeing. I want to take a minute and speak in defense of enforcement. As somebody who is a longtime immigration advocate and spend more than a decade working to advance Immigration Reform, im also somebody who really believes strong and effective enforcement is necessary. I think its maybe worth explaining my reason. We live in a globalized world where workers and families are coming and going. 10 of all mexicans work in the u. S. Silicon valley would never have happened without immigrants. People talk about a day without a mexican without a mexican. The economy would come to a screeching halt, but the point is the American People are not going to support that kind of coming and going, no matter how good it is for us in other ways unless there are rules. Unless people feel in control, and unless they feel the people are people we decided to let come in. We are not going to support immigration unless there is a system with integrity, and that means rules. Good rules are the foundation of a good system. Today we are living with bad rules. We are living with the consequences of a decade of bad rules. Today we are living in an era like prohibition where the rules are unrealistic and enforcement seems almost evil because we have these bad rules. We need to be aiming for a day when we have good rules and meaningful enforcement. Even in a climate like today you cant ask people to say a total flouting of the rules is ok. Reasonable people can disagree about where the lines are, where the discretion should the. Be. Should he decide to target criminals or should he try to arrest everyone . There are republicans who say there should be no discretion. We should be doing everything. I think thats an unreasonable position. Of course the government is going to allocate resources. I think more effective Border Control is a much more effective use of resources. But i also think there are murky situations where one side can say thats uncomfortable and the other can say that its acceptable. I think there are some circumstances it seems to me most of the American Public the agree deporting violent felons there are not many people who think thats a mistake. The situation on the border is important because once you have done something once, you have been sent back, and you do it again, most people think thats unacceptable. Its one thing to cross once but to make it a way of life to flout the law, a lot of people say no. Looking the other way doesnt really pass. Bottom line, if you think immigration is good for america and you want america to remain a nation of immigrants you have to believe in enforcement. I want to step back and talk about political ramifications in congress of these ideas i am talking about. Are republicans giving obama a enough credit for what i am saying in some ways is good improvement on the border . Simon says no, they are not getting enough credit. They are doing better on the border. Why cant they recognize that . I would like to put it in context. There is a difference between having priorities and making allocations of resources. That is one thing, having an allocation of resources. Its another to say the law doesnt matter, im going to do what i want to do. Just taking the law in his own hand and doing what he wants. We are seeing this not in immigration but in lots of areas. Republicans call it executive overreach. They see a pattern of it, and its not just about immigration. Its obamacare and labor and the epa and drug sentencing. They have a whole laundry list. I think mr. Cantor has 33 issues. The point is, and its something where senator rubio was proposing something much like what the president did and instead of going to senator rubio the president did it unilaterally. This is infuriating for Congressional Republicans and i think in some ways justifiably so. Its good to be here, but this is where i disagree. I dont buy that obamas record is really good and the problem is republicans dont appreciate it. I think there is some complexity to that. Even if i liked the outcome of the memo focusing on interior enforcement and criminals, that doesnt make obama trustworthy. It doesnt make him a trustworthy, appealing partner. Just to be clear in case anyone has any doubt, the road to a permanent fix on immigration runs through congress. There is no fix that doesnt include legislation. Obama cant do it alone. He cant do a real reform fix alone. Any further unilateral action, its going to be a kiss of death for getting bipartisan action. Passing legislation in a republicancontrolled house will be the kiss of death for the next two years as well. If obama acts alone on immigration its over. You have to try to see this from the Republican Point of view for a few seconds. They see this as a trade. They see they are going to accept legalization of some kind and get enforcement, but if they feel they arent really going to get enforcement, then they arent going to want to give up what they dont want to do anyway, and i suppose yo