Expert: Trump's Immigration Efforts 'Backfiring'...No 'Coherent Policy'

Matt Kwong, CBC News, Apr. 9, 2019

"[F]or Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration-law professor at Cornell University, Nielsen was far from soft on immigration.

"Secretary Nielsen will be perceived as the most hardline [Homeland Security] secretary we've ever had on immigration issues," Yale-Loehr said.

According to Yale-Loehr and other immigration advocates, Trump's tactics aren't reducing the number of illegal border crossings. As they see it, his hardline policies could, in fact, be inflaming an already sensitive border crisis.

"I think Trump sees immigration from a political perspective and as key to winning re-election in 2020. But in terms of actually working as immigration policy, it's backfiring," Yale-Loehr said. 

"We're shooting ourselves in the foot."

Tom McCarthy, The Guardian, Apr. 10, 2019

"Without action by Congress, which has declined to join Trump in most every one of his immigration initiatives, the administration’s legal options for altering policy are limited, said the Cornell University Law School professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, co-author of a 21-volume immigration law treatise.

Yale-Loehr said: “This administration doesn’t seem to have a coherent policy.

“It seems that the president simply wants to score political points by seeming to be tough on immigration without really thinking through the best way to get to the root cause of why people are fleeing violence in Central American countries to come to the United States.

“The rules are already stacked against immigrants in trying to stay in the United States, and this administration is trying to make it even harder but without thinking through the consequences.”