Kavanaugh on immigration, labor

With help from Ian Kullgren, Andrew Hanna and Wesley Morgan

KAVANAUGH ON IMMIGRATION, LABOR: “Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, would likely lend strong support to the administration’s hard-line immigration agenda,” POLITICO’s Andrew Hanna reports.


“Immigration hawks praise two Kavanaugh opinions — both of them D.C. Circuit dissents — in particular,” writes Hanna. “In Fogo de Chao v. Department of Homeland Security , Kavanaugh opposed granting special visas for Brazilian workers when American workers could do the same job. And in Agri Processor v. NLRB, Kavanaugh said a union election should have been voided because it was ‘tainted’ by votes from undocumented immigrants.”

“Kavanaugh's nomination is unlikely to move the needle significantly on employment law,” Hanna writes, “because the high court's five-person Republican-appointed majority, including Kennedy, was already aligned strongly with management.” One Kavanaugh decision anticipated May’s Supreme Court ruling in Epic Systems v. Lewis allowing employers to require, as a condition of employment, that workers waive their rights to participate in class-action lawsuits. In 2016’s Verizon New England v. NLRB, Kavanaugh did Epic Systems one better and ruled that employers can require workers to waive their right to picket. After Kavanaugh’s nomination Monday night, the AFL-CIO said in a written statement that he has a “dangerous track record of protecting the privileges of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of working people.” More here.

GOOD MORNING! It's Tuesday, July 10, and this is Morning Shift, POLITICO's daily tipsheet on employment and immigration policy. Send tips, exclusives and suggestions to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter at @tedhesson, @AndrewBHanna, @IanKullgren and @TimothyNoah1.

DEADLINE TO REUNIFY SEPARATED CHILDREN: The Trump administration said Monday that it will reunify by today’s court-imposed deadline only about half the children under age 5 who were separated from their parents at the border. “DOJ attorney Sarah Fabian said at a district court hearing in San Diego that the administration has identified 102 children under 5 who were split from their parents,” Hesson writes. “Of those, 54 will be reunified by Tuesday, she said, pending completion of parental verifications.”

Both parties will submit a joint status report on the progress toward reunification by 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT) and meet with U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw at 2 p.m. (11 a.m. PT). More here.

GEE SLAPS DOWN FLORES REQUEST: Los Angeles-based U.S. District Court Judge Judy Gee rejected the Trump administration’s request to hold migrant children in detention indefinitely, POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein reports. Trump signed an executive order on June 20 that called for families to be detained together, but he also ordered the attorney general to seek to modify the 1997 Flores settlement agreement, which limits child detention to 20 days.

Gee, an Obama appointee, called the legal argument “tortured” and “a cynical attempt” to pressure the judiciary to deal with the issue in the absence of action from Congress, Gerstein reports. “Gee's order says some immigrant families could be detained together if the parents' consent, but suggests that without that consent immigration authorities must release the children.” More here.

DONALD TRUMP, WAGE THIEF?: “[Trump's] onetime personal driver sued the president Monday, alleging that Trump shorted him for thousands of hours in overtime pay,” POLITICO’s Ian Kullgren reports. “Noel Cintron, who was Trump's driver for the quarter-century that preceded his presidency, said Trump failed to compensate him for more than 3,000 hours of overtime during the past six years, according to a complaint filed with the New York Supreme Court.”

“Cintron worked as Trump's driver until candidate Trump received Secret Service protection in 2016,” Kullgren writes. “Cintron's attorney, Larry Hutcher, told POLITICO that Cintron wasn't dissatisfied while he worked for Trump, but that he recently discovered he was entitled to overtime pay that he never received.” Amanda Miller, a Trump Organization spokeswoman said Cintron “was at all times paid generously and in accordance with the law” and that the organization expects “to be fully vindicated in court.’” More here.

IVANKA HOLDS BACK ON RUBIO PAID LEAVE: Ivanka Trump won’t endorse Sen. Marco Rubio’s paid family leave bill when it’s introduced later this week, two White House officials told POLITICO’s Ian Kullgren. Her reluctance is part of a strategy to avoid cumbersome discussions about any single approach. “For her, it hasn’t been, ‘Let’s focus on this policy or this policy,’” one of the White House officials said. “It’s to make the case for why paid family leave is valuable to conservatives.”

But the White House aides said Ivanka considers Rubio’s bill — which would allow people to borrow from Social Security to pay for leave — a good option, and that she’d probably support it if it picked up support in Congress. Rubio is expected to introduce the measure later this week following a Senate paid leave hearing Wednesday at which Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) will testify. The First Daughter has met with members on both sides of the aisle, the officials said, including Ernst, Rubio, and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the three architects of the Social Security bill.

AILING GRANDMA FACES DENATURALIZATION: The Trump administration intends to strip citizenship from an ailing 63-year-old grandmother because of a previous criminal conviction related to a fraud scheme, Adiel Kaplan reports in the Miami Herald. “The United States government has long reserved its power to revoke citizenship for the rarest of cases, going after the likes of war criminals, child rapists and terrorist funders,” the Herald reports. “Norma Borgono is none of those. … As the secretary of an export company called Texon Inc., she prepared paperwork for her boss, who pocketed money from doctored loan applications filed with the U.S. Export-Import Bank.” Borgono “took a plea deal and was sentenced to one year of house arrest, four years of probation and $5,000 of restitution.” DOJ argues she didn’t disclose the criminal activity on her citizenship application, although she hadn’t been charged when she applied, according to the Herald. More here.

REPORT: ICE MISTREAT PREGNANT WOMEN: Pregnant women in ICE custody “are often denied adequate medical care, even when in dire need of it, are shackled around the stomach while being transported between facilities, and have been physically and psychologically mistreated,” according to a report by BuzzFeed’s Ema O'Connor and Nidhi Prakash. ICE announced in March that it would no longer as a matter of policy release pregnant immigrants from detention, but that it would still evaluate releases on a case-by-case basis. BuzzFeed cites interviews with and affidavits from five women who were pregnant in ICE and CBP custody who said they were “ignored when they were obviously miscarrying” and “described their CBP and ICE-contracted jailers as unwilling or unable to respond to medical emergencies,” O'Connor and Prakash report. More here.

ROLLOUT OF FEDERAL WORKFORCE ORDERS: Lisa Rein reports in the Washington Post that federal agencies on Monday began implementing three May executive orders (here, here, and here) about federal workforce and unions. The move is “likely to escalate tensions that have been building since the president took office,” Rein writes. “The administration wants agencies to reopen collective bargaining agreements to reduce the on-duty time union representatives spend representing employees,” Rein writes. “Managers are directed to ‘monitor and carefully report’ on the time and make the information publicly available. And agencies are directed to move swiftly to fire poor performers, renegotiating any contracts that allow for progressive discipline.” More here.

DOD UPDATE ON DETENTION FACILITIES: The Pentagon hasn’t moved forward with construction of migrant detention facilities on two Texas military bases, a Defense Department spokesman said Monday. In late June, DHS asked DOD to build facilities to house up to 2,000 migrant family members within 45 days, as part of a broader 12,000-bed request. Lt. Col. Jamie Davis told reporters Monday the clock won’t start ticking on that request until several hurdles get cleared. First, the Pentagon will need to complete an environmental assessment. After that, DHS and HHS must submit a memorandum of agreement that outlines what’s needed. Then the two departments must supply a “a statement of intent” that describes how the bases would be used.

ADVOCATES BASH NIELSEN OVER SEPARATIONS: Leaders of immigrant rights groups on Monday ripped Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen after she declined to speak about family separations during a meeting with them. “Today we attempted to engage the secretary to take seriously the harm this administration has caused thousands of families and were met with the same misinformation it has expressed since it first created this crisis,” Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, said in a written statement. DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton said the meeting was a “sincere attempt” to hear possible solutions to immigration issues. “While a few of the invited participants took the opportunity to share helpful ideas, several attendees showed no interest in discussing productive solutions,” he wrote.

ON THE ROAD: Nielsen travels to Guatemala City today to meet with Central America officials to discuss efforts to counter human smuggling, trafficking and illegal immigration.

D.C. COUNCIL MAY BLOCK BALLOT MEASURE: D.C. City Council Chairman Phil Mendelson will introduce legislation today to block Initiative 77, the voter-passed ballot measure to eliminate the city’s tipped wage credit for servers, WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle reports. A majority of city council came out against the ballot initiative, saying it would increase labor costs and cause businesses to cut hours and workers — so the counter-measure has a chance at passage. The ballot initiative gets rid of the system that allows employers to pay servers $3.33 an hour and count tips toward their minimum wage (if servers’ wages fall below the standard minimum, employers must make up the difference). Under Initiative 77, servers make the same base pay as other workers and collect tips on top of that.

EUSTACE TILLEY, SHOP STEWARD: “The New Yorker magazine is voluntarily recognizing the union of its editorial staff members, becoming the latest prominent media organization to do so even as the industry faces continued profit pressures,” Austen Hufford reports in the New Yorker. “In a Monday memo to editorial staff, New Yorker Editor David Remnick said the magazine had recently held productive conversations with the NewsGuild of New York and had agreed on a process to recognize the New Yorker Union as the collective bargaining agent for those workers.” More here.

PULLING A FAST ONE?: “Attorneys general in 10 states and the District of Columbia are launching an investigation of contracts at fast-food chains that prevent their workers from switching franchises, targeting a practice some economists say drags down wages for millions of Americans,” Jeff Stein reports in the Washington Post. “The group will send letters to eight fast-food companies — including Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts, Panera Bread and Wendy's — requesting information about ‘no-poaching’ agreements that bar or restrict managers from hiring workers at another store in the same chain.” More here.

SCOTUS SETS ARGUMENTS IN DETENTION CASE: The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Oct. 10 in Nielsen v. Preap, a case that examines whether an immigrant subject to mandatory detention becomes exempt if federal immigration authorities don’t take him or her into custody right away. Read more on SCOTUSblog here.

COFFEE BREAK:

—“Border Patrol’s last line of defense? It isn’t at the border,” from the New York Times

—“Migrant families who enter at legal ports are rarely separated, customs officials say,” from the New York Times

—“Trump referred to Mexico’s incoming leader as ‘Juan Trump,’ former White House official says,” from the Washington Post

—“Many states are likely unprepared for next downturn,” from the Wall Street Journal

—“Developing countries may need their own strategies to cope with job-taking robots,” from the New York Times

—“Illinois governor profits off ICE detention center contracts,” from POLITICO

— “More South Texas landowners getting letters on border wall,” from the Associated Press

—“No sign on how DHS plans to handle Guatemala's TPS request,” from the Washington Examiner

THAT’S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT.

Follow us on Twitter Rebecca Rainey @rebeccaarainey