Homeland Security chief says approach prioritizes ‘finite resources’
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that the government is poised to set another record for deportations in just-ended fiscal 2011, citing the numbers as proof that the administration is not pursuing a backdoor amnesty for illegal immigrants that critics charge.
“We cannot, on the one hand, be on the verge of removing, for the third consecutive year, a record-breaking number of unlawful individuals from this country, with the highest number of criminal removals in American history, and, at the same time, be abrogating our law enforcement responsibilities,” Ms. Napolitano said in a speech at American University, billed as a “reality check” on the state of immigration enforcement in the Obama administration.
President Obama has come under fire from both sides of the immigration debate: Hispanic advocates say he’s deporting too many people, while those who favor a crackdown say he unilaterally is imposing an amnesty.
Ms. Napolitano said both charges cannot be true, and said she has tried to chart a middle path that calls for focusing deportation efforts on those who have long criminal records that stretch beyond immigration violations.
The Obama administration has granted immigration authorities great latitude to halt deportation cases against broad swaths of illegal immigrants who meet criteria such as studying here illegally or having family members who depend on them for support.
Critics say that amounts to amnesty, but Ms. Napolitano said it is a prioritization of resources.
“It makes sense to prioritize our finite resources on removing a Mexican citizen who is wanted for murder in his home country ahead of a Mexican national who is the sole provider for his American citizen spouse,” she said.
She said she has “grown weary” of charges that the border is not secure, and she said that charge is a disservice to the immigration authorities in her department who enforce it.
Critics, though, point to measures that suggest the administration is leaving some tools unused.
Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, who is House Judiciary Committee chairman, said the Obama administration has severely curtailed raids on work sites to net illegal immigrants. And he pointed to statistics that showed only 44 percent of the Southwest border is considered under “operational control.”
“If we are going to have smart and effective immigration enforcement, we need to enforce all of our immigration laws and turn off the jobs magnet that encourages illegal immigration,” he said.
While there is near-universal agreement on the need for tighter border enforcement, a thornier issue emerges on enforcing the laws inside the interior of the country, where about 10 million illegal immigrants live, and many work.
Many in Mr. Obama’s political base want less enforcement targeting those living here already, and they cite the record deportation levels as evidence this administration is moving in the wrong direction.
Facing that charge, Mr. Obama last week in a round table with Hispanic reporters said the deportation numbers were artificially high because they include those caught at the border, thanks to enhanced enforcement.
“The statistics are actually a little deceptive because what we’ve been doing is, with the stronger border enforcement, we’ve been apprehending folks at the borders and sending them back. That is counted as a deportation, even though they may have only been held for a day or 48 hours, sent back, that’s counted as a deportation,” he said.
But the numbers show the number of people returned after being apprehended on the border is down substantially, while deportations of those caught in the interior has risen.
The ratio of those sent back with criminal convictions, however, has indeed risen significantly, from about a third of deportees at the beginning of the administration to about half in fiscal 2010. And more than two-thirds of the ones without criminal convictions were either recent border crossers or repeat immigration violators, Ms. Napolitano said.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/5/napolitano-us-will-set-record-deportations-2011/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS
Showing posts with label Napolitano. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Napolitano. Show all posts
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Napolitano's good words, short memory on immigration
By Ruben Navarrette
Special to CNN
February 3, 2011
San Diego, California (CNN) -- On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano gave a remarkable speech at the University of Texas at El Paso on immigration and border security. It was the kind of address where you take the good with the bad.
The "good" is that, in some parts, the speech was refreshingly courageous and honest about the deplorable scare tactics cynical politicians use to gin up public support. The "bad" is that the speech also showed chutzpah, and worked only if one had a short memory about the kind of president that Barack Obama promised to be when he was seeking support from Latinos to get elected.
Napolitano accused elected officials (read: Republicans) of overstating the threat of crime and illegal-immigrant crossings along the border to "score political points." And she slammed opponents for "misstating the facts and unfairly politicizing border issues" and urged all public officials to "be honest with the people we serve."
Bravo. You tell 'em, Madame Secretary. Napolitano is absolutely right that politicians (read: Republicans) are cruelly exploiting people's fears about the border for their own benefit. It happens in Congress, where uninformed lawmakers either demagogue the immigration debate or cheapen it with simple "enforcement only" solutions to a complicated problem.
Napolitano is also right about critics misstating facts. Despite the perception that crime along the U.S.-Mexico border is out of control, she said, FBI statistics show that violent crime rates in Southwest border counties are down 30% over the last two decades and are "among the lowest in the nation."
Recently, I was on the phone with an old friend and former journalist who has studied border security issues all over the world for more than a decade. He too insists that claims of rampant border violence on the U.S. side are the stuff of legend.
He explained that Mexican cartels are comfortable doing business on the Mexico side, where they can buy off or scare off law enforcement. But they're not eager to open up a satellite office on this side of the border, where they can be caught and pressured to flip on their associates -- something that would buy them a death sentence. So they use drug mules, and keep the violence on the U.S. side to a minimum.
That makes sense -- a lot more sense than the claims by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (which she later recanted) that authorities had found beheaded bodies in the desert. Brewer seemed to suggest that drug cartels were smuggling illegal immigrants into Arizona and then beheading them once they got there.
The scare tactics that Napolitano talked about aren't just meant to score political points. They are also intended to scare up public support for restrictive immigration policies intended to reverse the demographic changes of the last 20 years and give Americans what they want: a way to magically return their communities to the "Mayberry" of their youth.
By the way, good luck with that. In the Mayberry I remember, kids did chores for their allowance and teenagers had after-school jobs. Today, they spend their free time playing video games and posting on Facebook, helping to create the labor vacuum that winds up being filled by illegal immigrants.
But then, in her El Paso speech, unfortunately, Napolitano went off the rails. Put on the defensive by outlandish accusations that her department has been asleep at the switch on border security, Napolitano overcompensated and bragged about something that has stirred more criticism -- this time, from immigrant activists on the left: the administration's record number of deportations.
In the last two years, the Homeland Security Department has deported 779,000 illegal immigrants, she said. That is, Napolitano assured her audience, more "than ever before."
Personally, as a pro-enforcement advocate for comprehensive immigration reform who supports deportations when appropriate, I have no problem with that. But many on the left -- particularly many Latino Democrats -- see the issue differently. They're quietly fuming that the Obama administration is gung-ho on deporting illegal immigrants. And you can bet they did not appreciate Napolitano wearing those deportations as a badge of honor.
This is probably not what these folks expected in July 2008 when Obama addressed the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza. He marketed himself then as a kinder and gentler leader when he said things like this:
"The system isn't working when 12 million people live in hiding ... when communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing. When all that's happening, the system just isn't working."
Americans have the right to ask: Is the system working any better now? And now that Obama presides over an administration that is doing much the same thing that he used to condemn, is this what Napolitano meant by being "honest with the people we serve?"
If you're going to criticize people for playing politics with immigration and border security, it is best not to do the same.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/03/navarrette.napolitano.immigration/
Special to CNN
February 3, 2011
San Diego, California (CNN) -- On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano gave a remarkable speech at the University of Texas at El Paso on immigration and border security. It was the kind of address where you take the good with the bad.
The "good" is that, in some parts, the speech was refreshingly courageous and honest about the deplorable scare tactics cynical politicians use to gin up public support. The "bad" is that the speech also showed chutzpah, and worked only if one had a short memory about the kind of president that Barack Obama promised to be when he was seeking support from Latinos to get elected.
Napolitano accused elected officials (read: Republicans) of overstating the threat of crime and illegal-immigrant crossings along the border to "score political points." And she slammed opponents for "misstating the facts and unfairly politicizing border issues" and urged all public officials to "be honest with the people we serve."
Bravo. You tell 'em, Madame Secretary. Napolitano is absolutely right that politicians (read: Republicans) are cruelly exploiting people's fears about the border for their own benefit. It happens in Congress, where uninformed lawmakers either demagogue the immigration debate or cheapen it with simple "enforcement only" solutions to a complicated problem.
Napolitano is also right about critics misstating facts. Despite the perception that crime along the U.S.-Mexico border is out of control, she said, FBI statistics show that violent crime rates in Southwest border counties are down 30% over the last two decades and are "among the lowest in the nation."
Recently, I was on the phone with an old friend and former journalist who has studied border security issues all over the world for more than a decade. He too insists that claims of rampant border violence on the U.S. side are the stuff of legend.
He explained that Mexican cartels are comfortable doing business on the Mexico side, where they can buy off or scare off law enforcement. But they're not eager to open up a satellite office on this side of the border, where they can be caught and pressured to flip on their associates -- something that would buy them a death sentence. So they use drug mules, and keep the violence on the U.S. side to a minimum.
That makes sense -- a lot more sense than the claims by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (which she later recanted) that authorities had found beheaded bodies in the desert. Brewer seemed to suggest that drug cartels were smuggling illegal immigrants into Arizona and then beheading them once they got there.
The scare tactics that Napolitano talked about aren't just meant to score political points. They are also intended to scare up public support for restrictive immigration policies intended to reverse the demographic changes of the last 20 years and give Americans what they want: a way to magically return their communities to the "Mayberry" of their youth.
By the way, good luck with that. In the Mayberry I remember, kids did chores for their allowance and teenagers had after-school jobs. Today, they spend their free time playing video games and posting on Facebook, helping to create the labor vacuum that winds up being filled by illegal immigrants.
But then, in her El Paso speech, unfortunately, Napolitano went off the rails. Put on the defensive by outlandish accusations that her department has been asleep at the switch on border security, Napolitano overcompensated and bragged about something that has stirred more criticism -- this time, from immigrant activists on the left: the administration's record number of deportations.
In the last two years, the Homeland Security Department has deported 779,000 illegal immigrants, she said. That is, Napolitano assured her audience, more "than ever before."
Personally, as a pro-enforcement advocate for comprehensive immigration reform who supports deportations when appropriate, I have no problem with that. But many on the left -- particularly many Latino Democrats -- see the issue differently. They're quietly fuming that the Obama administration is gung-ho on deporting illegal immigrants. And you can bet they did not appreciate Napolitano wearing those deportations as a badge of honor.
This is probably not what these folks expected in July 2008 when Obama addressed the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza. He marketed himself then as a kinder and gentler leader when he said things like this:
"The system isn't working when 12 million people live in hiding ... when communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing. When all that's happening, the system just isn't working."
Americans have the right to ask: Is the system working any better now? And now that Obama presides over an administration that is doing much the same thing that he used to condemn, is this what Napolitano meant by being "honest with the people we serve?"
If you're going to criticize people for playing politics with immigration and border security, it is best not to do the same.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/03/navarrette.napolitano.immigration/
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Homeland Security chief backs DREAM Act
The Secretary of Homeland Security urged Congress to pass the DREAM Act as a way to improve immigration enforcement.
BY ALFONSO CHARDY AND LESLEY CLARK
The Miami Herald
Posted on Fri, Dec. 03, 2010
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano lobbied for the DREAM Act Thursday saying immigration enforcement will be improved if Congress approves the bill that would legalize hundreds of thousands of undocumented students brought here illegally by their parents when they were children.
In remarks to reporters from around the country during a conference call from Washington, Napolitano said passage of the DREAM Act would enable DHS to focus more aggressively on deporting foreign criminal convicts.
``It's important to point out that the DREAM Act fits into a larger strategy of immigration enforcement, and would actually complement the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to prioritize our enforcement resources on removing dangerous criminal aliens from the country,'' Napolitano said.
Napolitano's statements appeared aimed at convincing reluctant Republican lawmakers to view the DREAM Act as a complement to enforcement, not an ``amnesty'' bill for undocumented immigrants.
In answer to a question from El Nuevo Herald, Napolitano said categorically that her department will not consider a suspension of deportations while Congress debates the bill as has been requested by immigrant rights activists in South Florida and other parts of the country.
``Our job is to enforce the law and we are going to continue to do that,'' Napolitano told El Nuevo Herald.
Passage of the DREAM Act, she added, will allow Homeland Security to devote more resources to the ``criminals-first'' deportation program.
NOT AT FAULT
``The DREAM Act would take out of the calculus those young people who really . . . are not responsible, of their own will, for being in the country,'' said Napolitano.
Senate Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have indicated they will bring the DREAM Act to a vote during the lame-duck session, but it's unclear precisely when debate will begin.
To address enforcement concerns of some Republican lawmakers, the DREAM Act bill text in the Senate has been made more restrictive.
Napolitano acknowledged Thursday that her department had played a role in the toughening of the language.
``Some of the changes that have been made and incorporated in the current version of the bill are to, as far as I know, address some of the concerns that were raised, particularly on the Senate side,'' said Napolitano.
José Dante Parra, Reid's spokesman, took aim at Florida Republican Sen. George LeMieux for not embracing the DREAM Act even after prior concerns had been addressed.
`CRITICAL'
``It is unfortunate that Sen. LeMieux continues to move the goalposts on a bill as critical as the DREAM Act,'' Dante Parra said in a statement. ``He has raised concerns throughout the past months on border security and procedure around the DREAM Act, and all of those concerns have been addressed.''
Now, Dante Parra added, Lemieux has signed a letter, released by the Republican leadership, ``vowing to block all legislation in the Senate including DREAM, unless we first give tax cuts to the rich.''
LeMieux told The Miami Herald Tuesday that Republicans would not vote for anything until there is a vote on extending Bush-era tax cuts.
LeMieux issued a statement through a spokesman Thursday explaining why he is not embracing the DREAM Act.
FOCUS ON BORDER
``While I am sympathetic to the students impacted by current law, I cannot support consideration of the DREAM Act until we have taken substantial and effective measures to secure our borders,'' LeMieux said.
LeMieux's Democratic colleague, Sen. Bill Nelson, is a DREAM Act co-sponsor.
In a separate conference call with reporters Thursday, Florida state Rep. Juan Zapata urged LeMieux to change his mind and vote for the DREAM Act.
"I really hope that Sen. LeMieux does the right thing," said Zapata. "I understand his feelings on the issue, but I think this far outweighs any political interests."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/03/v-print/1954917/homeland-chief-backs-dream.html#ixzz173bTfanO
BY ALFONSO CHARDY AND LESLEY CLARK
The Miami Herald
Posted on Fri, Dec. 03, 2010
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano lobbied for the DREAM Act Thursday saying immigration enforcement will be improved if Congress approves the bill that would legalize hundreds of thousands of undocumented students brought here illegally by their parents when they were children.
In remarks to reporters from around the country during a conference call from Washington, Napolitano said passage of the DREAM Act would enable DHS to focus more aggressively on deporting foreign criminal convicts.
``It's important to point out that the DREAM Act fits into a larger strategy of immigration enforcement, and would actually complement the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to prioritize our enforcement resources on removing dangerous criminal aliens from the country,'' Napolitano said.
Napolitano's statements appeared aimed at convincing reluctant Republican lawmakers to view the DREAM Act as a complement to enforcement, not an ``amnesty'' bill for undocumented immigrants.
In answer to a question from El Nuevo Herald, Napolitano said categorically that her department will not consider a suspension of deportations while Congress debates the bill as has been requested by immigrant rights activists in South Florida and other parts of the country.
``Our job is to enforce the law and we are going to continue to do that,'' Napolitano told El Nuevo Herald.
Passage of the DREAM Act, she added, will allow Homeland Security to devote more resources to the ``criminals-first'' deportation program.
NOT AT FAULT
``The DREAM Act would take out of the calculus those young people who really . . . are not responsible, of their own will, for being in the country,'' said Napolitano.
Senate Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have indicated they will bring the DREAM Act to a vote during the lame-duck session, but it's unclear precisely when debate will begin.
To address enforcement concerns of some Republican lawmakers, the DREAM Act bill text in the Senate has been made more restrictive.
Napolitano acknowledged Thursday that her department had played a role in the toughening of the language.
``Some of the changes that have been made and incorporated in the current version of the bill are to, as far as I know, address some of the concerns that were raised, particularly on the Senate side,'' said Napolitano.
José Dante Parra, Reid's spokesman, took aim at Florida Republican Sen. George LeMieux for not embracing the DREAM Act even after prior concerns had been addressed.
`CRITICAL'
``It is unfortunate that Sen. LeMieux continues to move the goalposts on a bill as critical as the DREAM Act,'' Dante Parra said in a statement. ``He has raised concerns throughout the past months on border security and procedure around the DREAM Act, and all of those concerns have been addressed.''
Now, Dante Parra added, Lemieux has signed a letter, released by the Republican leadership, ``vowing to block all legislation in the Senate including DREAM, unless we first give tax cuts to the rich.''
LeMieux told The Miami Herald Tuesday that Republicans would not vote for anything until there is a vote on extending Bush-era tax cuts.
LeMieux issued a statement through a spokesman Thursday explaining why he is not embracing the DREAM Act.
FOCUS ON BORDER
``While I am sympathetic to the students impacted by current law, I cannot support consideration of the DREAM Act until we have taken substantial and effective measures to secure our borders,'' LeMieux said.
LeMieux's Democratic colleague, Sen. Bill Nelson, is a DREAM Act co-sponsor.
In a separate conference call with reporters Thursday, Florida state Rep. Juan Zapata urged LeMieux to change his mind and vote for the DREAM Act.
"I really hope that Sen. LeMieux does the right thing," said Zapata. "I understand his feelings on the issue, but I think this far outweighs any political interests."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/03/v-print/1954917/homeland-chief-backs-dream.html#ixzz173bTfanO
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Ideas for Immigrant Detention Include Converting Hotels and Building Models
By NINA BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
October 6, 2009
The Obama administration is looking to convert hotels and nursing homes into immigration detention centers and to build two model detention centers from scratch as it tries to transform the way the government holds people it is seeking to deport.
These and other initiatives, described in an interview on Monday by Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, are part of the administration’s effort to revamp the much-criticized detention system, even as it expands the enforcement programs that send most people accused of immigration violations to jails and private prisons. The cost, she said, would be covered by greater efficiencies in the detention and removal system, which costs $2.4 billion annually to operate and holds about 380,000 people a year.
“The paradigm was wrong,” Ms. Napolitano said of the nation’s patchwork of rented jail space, which has more than tripled in size since 1995, largely through Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts for cells more restrictive, and expensive, than required for a population that is largely not dangerous. Among those in detention on Sept. 1, 51 percent were considered felons, and of those, 11 percent had committed violent crimes.
“Serious felons deserve to be in the prison model,” Ms. Napolitano said, “but there are others. There are women. There are children.”
These and other nonviolent people should be sorted and detained or supervised in ways appropriate to their level of danger or flight risk, she said. Her goal, she said, is “to make immigration detention more cohesive, accountable and relevant to the entire spectrum of detainees we are dealing with.”
Several of the initiatives Ms. Napolitano described, to be formally announced on Tuesday afternoon, are steps on a road outlined in August, when John Morton, the assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, announced an ambitious plan to transform the penal network into a “truly civil detention system.”
But the corrections expert he had put in charge of the overhaul, Dora B. Schriro, quit last month to become the corrections commissioner in New York City, after delivering a report on her eight-month top-to-bottom review of the system. The report had remained under wraps until now.
Dr. Schriro’s departure, and the delay in making her report public, dismayed many of the dozens of immigrant advocacy groups she consulted. Her 35-page report, provided to The New York Times after the interview on the condition that it not be posted on its Web site until Tuesday afternoon, calls for prompt attention to individual complaints about a lack of medical care, and “a credible grievance process, sustained in an environment free from intimidation and retaliation.”
In her interview, Ms. Napolitano said little about medical care but promised that within six months the Department of Homeland Security would “devise and implement” a classification system to better place people with medical or mental health needs in the right detention centers.
That vow puzzled some immigrant advocacy groups that deal with seriously ill detainees, including some who have died in federal custody after not getting proper treatment. The groups said they were concerned about the gap between announced plans to improve medical care and the actions of immigration officials.
Cheryl Little, the director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, pointed to the case of a woman she called Rosemarie, who, while being detained at the Glades County Detention Center, has suffered severe daily bleeding as a result of a fibroid tumor in her uterus.
“This has gone on for more than the five months she has been in ICE custody,” Ms. Little said. “Since June, we have tried everything to get her proper treatment. We started the requests at the local level and escalated up to D.H.S. headquarters. Ultimately we’ve had to file a lawsuit, and Rosemarie still hasn’t had the surgery she needs.”
Ms. Napolitano noted repeatedly that some of the initiatives she was announcing were “easier said than done.” Plans to speed the implementation of an online system for families and lawyers to locate detainees, for example, have been complicated by privacy issues and by the fact that many detainees share names and some stay in the system for only a couple of days, she said.
Likewise, though alternatives to detention are much cheaper than the jails under contract — $14 a day at most per person, compared with more than $100 a day — the overall cost is more complicated to calculate, she said.
About 19,000 noncitizens are supervised daily using alternatives like electronic bracelets, but their immigration cases are moved to the back of the line for adjudication. Homeland Security is working with the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts, to modify that practice, she said, and this fall will submit a proposal to Congress to expand detention alternatives.
A request for proposals to build two model detention centers, one in California, will be issued within a year, said Mr. Morton, the ICE official. On Oct. 30, he said, he will solicit proposals and market research about converted hotels, nursing homes and other residential facilities that could serve as less expensive and less restrictive detention centers.
Mr. Morton said that on Sept. 18 the agency began housing nonviolent detainees, including new asylum seekers, at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Fla., near free legal help. But Charu al-Sahli, the statewide director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said the Broward center, run for profit by GEO, a large prison company formerly known as Wackenhut, had been housing asylum seekers since 2003.
A former work-release center now surrounded by barbed wire, it is being expanded to house 700, up from 530.
“Even though it’s a nicer environment than a jail,” Ms. al-Sahli said, “these are still the people we would hold up for release, not just nicer detention.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/us/politics/06detain.html?ref=us
The New York Times
October 6, 2009
The Obama administration is looking to convert hotels and nursing homes into immigration detention centers and to build two model detention centers from scratch as it tries to transform the way the government holds people it is seeking to deport.
These and other initiatives, described in an interview on Monday by Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, are part of the administration’s effort to revamp the much-criticized detention system, even as it expands the enforcement programs that send most people accused of immigration violations to jails and private prisons. The cost, she said, would be covered by greater efficiencies in the detention and removal system, which costs $2.4 billion annually to operate and holds about 380,000 people a year.
“The paradigm was wrong,” Ms. Napolitano said of the nation’s patchwork of rented jail space, which has more than tripled in size since 1995, largely through Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts for cells more restrictive, and expensive, than required for a population that is largely not dangerous. Among those in detention on Sept. 1, 51 percent were considered felons, and of those, 11 percent had committed violent crimes.
“Serious felons deserve to be in the prison model,” Ms. Napolitano said, “but there are others. There are women. There are children.”
These and other nonviolent people should be sorted and detained or supervised in ways appropriate to their level of danger or flight risk, she said. Her goal, she said, is “to make immigration detention more cohesive, accountable and relevant to the entire spectrum of detainees we are dealing with.”
Several of the initiatives Ms. Napolitano described, to be formally announced on Tuesday afternoon, are steps on a road outlined in August, when John Morton, the assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, announced an ambitious plan to transform the penal network into a “truly civil detention system.”
But the corrections expert he had put in charge of the overhaul, Dora B. Schriro, quit last month to become the corrections commissioner in New York City, after delivering a report on her eight-month top-to-bottom review of the system. The report had remained under wraps until now.
Dr. Schriro’s departure, and the delay in making her report public, dismayed many of the dozens of immigrant advocacy groups she consulted. Her 35-page report, provided to The New York Times after the interview on the condition that it not be posted on its Web site until Tuesday afternoon, calls for prompt attention to individual complaints about a lack of medical care, and “a credible grievance process, sustained in an environment free from intimidation and retaliation.”
In her interview, Ms. Napolitano said little about medical care but promised that within six months the Department of Homeland Security would “devise and implement” a classification system to better place people with medical or mental health needs in the right detention centers.
That vow puzzled some immigrant advocacy groups that deal with seriously ill detainees, including some who have died in federal custody after not getting proper treatment. The groups said they were concerned about the gap between announced plans to improve medical care and the actions of immigration officials.
Cheryl Little, the director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, pointed to the case of a woman she called Rosemarie, who, while being detained at the Glades County Detention Center, has suffered severe daily bleeding as a result of a fibroid tumor in her uterus.
“This has gone on for more than the five months she has been in ICE custody,” Ms. Little said. “Since June, we have tried everything to get her proper treatment. We started the requests at the local level and escalated up to D.H.S. headquarters. Ultimately we’ve had to file a lawsuit, and Rosemarie still hasn’t had the surgery she needs.”
Ms. Napolitano noted repeatedly that some of the initiatives she was announcing were “easier said than done.” Plans to speed the implementation of an online system for families and lawyers to locate detainees, for example, have been complicated by privacy issues and by the fact that many detainees share names and some stay in the system for only a couple of days, she said.
Likewise, though alternatives to detention are much cheaper than the jails under contract — $14 a day at most per person, compared with more than $100 a day — the overall cost is more complicated to calculate, she said.
About 19,000 noncitizens are supervised daily using alternatives like electronic bracelets, but their immigration cases are moved to the back of the line for adjudication. Homeland Security is working with the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts, to modify that practice, she said, and this fall will submit a proposal to Congress to expand detention alternatives.
A request for proposals to build two model detention centers, one in California, will be issued within a year, said Mr. Morton, the ICE official. On Oct. 30, he said, he will solicit proposals and market research about converted hotels, nursing homes and other residential facilities that could serve as less expensive and less restrictive detention centers.
Mr. Morton said that on Sept. 18 the agency began housing nonviolent detainees, including new asylum seekers, at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Fla., near free legal help. But Charu al-Sahli, the statewide director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said the Broward center, run for profit by GEO, a large prison company formerly known as Wackenhut, had been housing asylum seekers since 2003.
A former work-release center now surrounded by barbed wire, it is being expanded to house 700, up from 530.
“Even though it’s a nicer environment than a jail,” Ms. al-Sahli said, “these are still the people we would hold up for release, not just nicer detention.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/us/politics/06detain.html?ref=us
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Napolitano Focuses on Immigration Enforcement
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
The New York Times
August 12, 2009
EL PASO — A day after President Obama announced that legislation to overhaul immigration laws would have to wait until next year, the secretary of homeland security played down the need for change in a speech here and took a tough stance on enforcing current immigration laws.
The secretary, Janet Napolitano, defended the administration’s assertive strategy against illegal immigrants and companies that employ them, relying largely on programs started under President George W. Bush.
That strategy has drawn fire from immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who say the president has not lived up to campaign promises to ease the pressure on illegal workers and to seek changes in immigration laws that would give more workers visas.
But Ms. Napolitano argued that the Obama administration had changed Mr. Bush’s programs in critical ways, such as putting an emphasis on deporting criminals and holding more employers responsible for hiring illegal workers.
“Make no mistake, our overall approach is very, very different,” she said Tuesday at a conference on border security at the University of Texas, El Paso. “It is more strategic, more cooperative, more multilateral and, in the long run, more effective.”
Ms. Napolitano said security problems on the border were inextricably linked not only to the drug trade, but also to the problem of illegal workers in far-flung cities across the country. The government needs to address illegal immigration at the same time it attacks the Mexican mafias, she said.
Her remarks disappointed advocates for immigrants, who questioned whether increasing enforcement would improve security as much as overhauling immigration laws would.
“How many more millions if not billions of dollars are we going to put into the border without fixing the immigration system?” asked Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum.Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said of Ms. Napolitano, “She’s increasing enforcement of laws that President Obama and she have both said are broken, and the result is going to be a lot of human misery.”
Ms. Napolitano and other administration officials have argued that a tough stance on illegal immigration is necessary to convince American voters to accept a wider overhaul that would give legal status to millions of foreigners.
Still, the speech was notable for its lack of a single passage about the positive role many illegal immigrants play in society, a concession that has become standard in most political pronouncements from Democrats on the subject.
Ms. Napolitano pointed to the buildup of federal agents on the border as part of the fight against drug dealers, saying the nation must take advantage of a historic level of cooperation with Mexico under President Felipe Calderón to stamp out organized crime.
This year, she said, the government has seized more than $69 million in drug money, 2.4 million pounds of drugs, 95,000 rounds of ammunition and about 500 assault rifles, far more than last year.
“But border security will not itself stop illegal entrants into our country,” Ms. Napolitano said. “Our border strategy must be combined with better enforcement of the immigration laws within the United States.”
On that score, she pointed out that the Obama administration had outdone the Bush White House. Immigration agents have arrested 181,000 illegal immigrants and deported 215,000 people so far this year. Both figures are double what they were for the same period two years ago, she said.
But Ms. Napolitano said she had shifted the emphasis away from arresting immigrants who have not broken other laws.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/us/12border.html?_r=1&ref=us
The New York Times
August 12, 2009
EL PASO — A day after President Obama announced that legislation to overhaul immigration laws would have to wait until next year, the secretary of homeland security played down the need for change in a speech here and took a tough stance on enforcing current immigration laws.
The secretary, Janet Napolitano, defended the administration’s assertive strategy against illegal immigrants and companies that employ them, relying largely on programs started under President George W. Bush.
That strategy has drawn fire from immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who say the president has not lived up to campaign promises to ease the pressure on illegal workers and to seek changes in immigration laws that would give more workers visas.
But Ms. Napolitano argued that the Obama administration had changed Mr. Bush’s programs in critical ways, such as putting an emphasis on deporting criminals and holding more employers responsible for hiring illegal workers.
“Make no mistake, our overall approach is very, very different,” she said Tuesday at a conference on border security at the University of Texas, El Paso. “It is more strategic, more cooperative, more multilateral and, in the long run, more effective.”
Ms. Napolitano said security problems on the border were inextricably linked not only to the drug trade, but also to the problem of illegal workers in far-flung cities across the country. The government needs to address illegal immigration at the same time it attacks the Mexican mafias, she said.
Her remarks disappointed advocates for immigrants, who questioned whether increasing enforcement would improve security as much as overhauling immigration laws would.
“How many more millions if not billions of dollars are we going to put into the border without fixing the immigration system?” asked Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum.Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said of Ms. Napolitano, “She’s increasing enforcement of laws that President Obama and she have both said are broken, and the result is going to be a lot of human misery.”
Ms. Napolitano and other administration officials have argued that a tough stance on illegal immigration is necessary to convince American voters to accept a wider overhaul that would give legal status to millions of foreigners.
Still, the speech was notable for its lack of a single passage about the positive role many illegal immigrants play in society, a concession that has become standard in most political pronouncements from Democrats on the subject.
Ms. Napolitano pointed to the buildup of federal agents on the border as part of the fight against drug dealers, saying the nation must take advantage of a historic level of cooperation with Mexico under President Felipe Calderón to stamp out organized crime.
This year, she said, the government has seized more than $69 million in drug money, 2.4 million pounds of drugs, 95,000 rounds of ammunition and about 500 assault rifles, far more than last year.
“But border security will not itself stop illegal entrants into our country,” Ms. Napolitano said. “Our border strategy must be combined with better enforcement of the immigration laws within the United States.”
On that score, she pointed out that the Obama administration had outdone the Bush White House. Immigration agents have arrested 181,000 illegal immigrants and deported 215,000 people so far this year. Both figures are double what they were for the same period two years ago, she said.
But Ms. Napolitano said she had shifted the emphasis away from arresting immigrants who have not broken other laws.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/us/12border.html?_r=1&ref=us
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Immigration Raid Rules Echo Bush Era
Napolitano Reforms Worry Some Immigration Advocates
By Daphne Eviatar
5/6/09
When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials raided the Yamato Engine manufacturing plant in Bellingham, Washington in February, it wasn’t just the 28 workers they arrested who were taken by surprise. The Department of Homeland Security in Washington — of which ICE is a part — didn’t know the raid was going to happen, either.
“I didn’t know about it beforehand,” DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told the House Homeland Security Committee the next morning. “I want to get to the bottom of this as well.”
Napolitano quickly put a hold on the controversial workplace raids, promising to create a new policy.
Last week, she indicated that she’d done just that as DHS issued new guidelines designed to govern the worksite raids. In an accompanying public “fact sheet”, DHS promised to target employers who hire undocumented workers instead of the workers themselves. DHS did not, however, promise to stop raiding worksites or arresting the illegal workers found there, leaving many advocates to wonder if the shift is more than window-dressing for the same old policy.
After all, President Bush’s Homeland Security Department had similarly pledged to target employers who hire illegal workers. “The days of treating employers who violate these laws by giving them the equivalent of a corporate parking ticket - those days are gone,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in November 2007. “It’s now felonies, jail time, fines, and forfeitures.”
So how different are the new guidelines, and what do they signal about the administration’s support for a significant change in immigration policy?
“They’re saying they’re going to shift the focus from employees to employers,” said Jennifer Gordon, a law professor at Fordham University. “But they’re also explicitly saying they’re going to continue to carry out raids. If I were looking for guidance, I wouldn’t really know how to read that policy. Does it mean we’re not really doing raids, but not giving them up? I have a hard time reading into that.”
Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies which advocates cracking down on illegal immigration and opposes legalization, agrees that the guidelines don’t represent a major change. “The new enforcement guidelines weren’t as bad as the anti-enforcement advocates hoped they’d be,” he said. “It made clear that illegal immigrants caught up in an enforcement action directed against an employer would still be taken into custody and deported.” The emphasis on employers, he says, “is not that new. Previous management at ICE had pursued criminal prosecution of employers as well.”
The guidelines do expand the use of so-called humanitarian guidelines developed by the Bush administration — designed to prevent prolonged imprisonment or deportation of some undocumented immigrants who are sole caregivers for small children or sick relatives — by applying them to workplaces with 25 or more illegal workers, rather than using the previous threshold of 150 illegal workers. Still, it doesn’t say that even these workers won’t be arrested, imprisoned or deported.
Many critics argue that worksite raids should be abolished altogether. At a rally in March in Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, head of the archdiocese there, called on the government “to end immigration raids and the separation of families” and support an overhaul of immigration law. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus made similar calls a week earlier.
Under the Bush administration, arrests of undocumented immigrants grew 750 percent between 2002 and 2006, from 485 arrests to 3,667.
In addition to the humanitarian concerns, DHS critics complain that the raids deter workers from reporting employer violations of the labor and wage laws because employers can threaten to call ICE. They say workplace raids are also a failure if their goal is to target employers because they lead to the arrest of many more workers than bosses. In 2008, for example, large-scale raids resulted in more than 6,000 arrests, only 135 of whom were employers, according to DHS.
Krikorian calls that “political spin.” “There’s always going to be more employees than employers caught up in enforcement actions just because there are more workers than employers at a worksite. Also, it’s harder to make those cases against employers.”
Indeed, the law requires that the employer knowingly hired illegal workers. So long as the worker presents work authorization documents that “reasonably appear to be genuine and relate to the individual,” the employer is protected. Employers must record that information on what’s called an I-9 form, and submit that to the government. If a worker presents fake documents that look real, or that list a false social security number, the employer wouldn’t necessarily know that. So generally, only employers who don’t submit I-9’s for their workers at all, or fill them out fraudulently, or supply workers with the fake documents can be caught violating the law.
“DHS says they will target employers involved in smuggling undocumented workers or creating fake documents,” said Michelle Waslin, Senior Policy Analyst at the Immigration Policy Center, noting that her organization has had off-the-record conversations with DHS officials about the issue and says they’ve been receptive to advocates’ concerns. “But without a functioning immigration system, trying to go worker by worker or employer by employer doesn’t make sense.”
In fact, DHS could get much of the information it needs about employers simply by auditing their I-9 forms. “They can also question employees without arresting them, or give employees immunity from immigration consequences if they agree to testify against the employer,” said Gordon. “Any of these approaches is preferable to using raids as an investigative tool.”
Although Krikorian says on the one hand that “you need to have raids, just as you need to have speed traps or IRS audits,” he doesn’t disagree that they’re costly and not very effective. “It’s a question of prioritizing your resources. It is at least plausible to say that if you put the same resources into audits and prosecutions, you’ll get the same or maybe even better results. As long as you follow through to do that kind of enforcement.”
The new DHS guidelines make clear that the Obama administration is not prepared to give up on workplace raids anytime soon. Because they tend to get local media coverage, raids are an easy way for the government to call attention to its immigration enforcement efforts. “For an administration that wants to seem tough on immigrants, raids provide good theater,” said Gordon.
How ICE uses those raids going forward will depend in part on how much DHS headquarters in Washington tries to control the actions of local ICE offices. In the past, local ICE offices responded primarily to tips about a particular factory. The new guidelines suggest, and DHS officials have said, that Napolitano wants to use raids as part of more comprehensive and targeted investigations of employers. The new guidelines require ICE offices to “obtain indictments, criminal arrest or search warrants, or a commitment from a U.S. Attorney’s Office” to prosecute the employer before arresting employees for civil immigration violations, for instance.
Presumably, after the Bellingham incident, DHS will also require ICE to notify Secretary Napolitano’s office before raiding a workplace and arresting the dozens of undocumented workers they find there.
http://washingtonindependent.com/41963/immigration-raid-rules-echo-bush-era
By Daphne Eviatar
5/6/09
When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials raided the Yamato Engine manufacturing plant in Bellingham, Washington in February, it wasn’t just the 28 workers they arrested who were taken by surprise. The Department of Homeland Security in Washington — of which ICE is a part — didn’t know the raid was going to happen, either.
“I didn’t know about it beforehand,” DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told the House Homeland Security Committee the next morning. “I want to get to the bottom of this as well.”
Napolitano quickly put a hold on the controversial workplace raids, promising to create a new policy.
Last week, she indicated that she’d done just that as DHS issued new guidelines designed to govern the worksite raids. In an accompanying public “fact sheet”, DHS promised to target employers who hire undocumented workers instead of the workers themselves. DHS did not, however, promise to stop raiding worksites or arresting the illegal workers found there, leaving many advocates to wonder if the shift is more than window-dressing for the same old policy.
After all, President Bush’s Homeland Security Department had similarly pledged to target employers who hire illegal workers. “The days of treating employers who violate these laws by giving them the equivalent of a corporate parking ticket - those days are gone,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in November 2007. “It’s now felonies, jail time, fines, and forfeitures.”
So how different are the new guidelines, and what do they signal about the administration’s support for a significant change in immigration policy?
“They’re saying they’re going to shift the focus from employees to employers,” said Jennifer Gordon, a law professor at Fordham University. “But they’re also explicitly saying they’re going to continue to carry out raids. If I were looking for guidance, I wouldn’t really know how to read that policy. Does it mean we’re not really doing raids, but not giving them up? I have a hard time reading into that.”
Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies which advocates cracking down on illegal immigration and opposes legalization, agrees that the guidelines don’t represent a major change. “The new enforcement guidelines weren’t as bad as the anti-enforcement advocates hoped they’d be,” he said. “It made clear that illegal immigrants caught up in an enforcement action directed against an employer would still be taken into custody and deported.” The emphasis on employers, he says, “is not that new. Previous management at ICE had pursued criminal prosecution of employers as well.”
The guidelines do expand the use of so-called humanitarian guidelines developed by the Bush administration — designed to prevent prolonged imprisonment or deportation of some undocumented immigrants who are sole caregivers for small children or sick relatives — by applying them to workplaces with 25 or more illegal workers, rather than using the previous threshold of 150 illegal workers. Still, it doesn’t say that even these workers won’t be arrested, imprisoned or deported.
Many critics argue that worksite raids should be abolished altogether. At a rally in March in Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, head of the archdiocese there, called on the government “to end immigration raids and the separation of families” and support an overhaul of immigration law. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus made similar calls a week earlier.
Under the Bush administration, arrests of undocumented immigrants grew 750 percent between 2002 and 2006, from 485 arrests to 3,667.
In addition to the humanitarian concerns, DHS critics complain that the raids deter workers from reporting employer violations of the labor and wage laws because employers can threaten to call ICE. They say workplace raids are also a failure if their goal is to target employers because they lead to the arrest of many more workers than bosses. In 2008, for example, large-scale raids resulted in more than 6,000 arrests, only 135 of whom were employers, according to DHS.
Krikorian calls that “political spin.” “There’s always going to be more employees than employers caught up in enforcement actions just because there are more workers than employers at a worksite. Also, it’s harder to make those cases against employers.”
Indeed, the law requires that the employer knowingly hired illegal workers. So long as the worker presents work authorization documents that “reasonably appear to be genuine and relate to the individual,” the employer is protected. Employers must record that information on what’s called an I-9 form, and submit that to the government. If a worker presents fake documents that look real, or that list a false social security number, the employer wouldn’t necessarily know that. So generally, only employers who don’t submit I-9’s for their workers at all, or fill them out fraudulently, or supply workers with the fake documents can be caught violating the law.
“DHS says they will target employers involved in smuggling undocumented workers or creating fake documents,” said Michelle Waslin, Senior Policy Analyst at the Immigration Policy Center, noting that her organization has had off-the-record conversations with DHS officials about the issue and says they’ve been receptive to advocates’ concerns. “But without a functioning immigration system, trying to go worker by worker or employer by employer doesn’t make sense.”
In fact, DHS could get much of the information it needs about employers simply by auditing their I-9 forms. “They can also question employees without arresting them, or give employees immunity from immigration consequences if they agree to testify against the employer,” said Gordon. “Any of these approaches is preferable to using raids as an investigative tool.”
Although Krikorian says on the one hand that “you need to have raids, just as you need to have speed traps or IRS audits,” he doesn’t disagree that they’re costly and not very effective. “It’s a question of prioritizing your resources. It is at least plausible to say that if you put the same resources into audits and prosecutions, you’ll get the same or maybe even better results. As long as you follow through to do that kind of enforcement.”
The new DHS guidelines make clear that the Obama administration is not prepared to give up on workplace raids anytime soon. Because they tend to get local media coverage, raids are an easy way for the government to call attention to its immigration enforcement efforts. “For an administration that wants to seem tough on immigrants, raids provide good theater,” said Gordon.
How ICE uses those raids going forward will depend in part on how much DHS headquarters in Washington tries to control the actions of local ICE offices. In the past, local ICE offices responded primarily to tips about a particular factory. The new guidelines suggest, and DHS officials have said, that Napolitano wants to use raids as part of more comprehensive and targeted investigations of employers. The new guidelines require ICE offices to “obtain indictments, criminal arrest or search warrants, or a commitment from a U.S. Attorney’s Office” to prosecute the employer before arresting employees for civil immigration violations, for instance.
Presumably, after the Bellingham incident, DHS will also require ICE to notify Secretary Napolitano’s office before raiding a workplace and arresting the dozens of undocumented workers they find there.
http://washingtonindependent.com/41963/immigration-raid-rules-echo-bush-era
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Halting ICE raids shows progress
Metro International
April 8, 2009
By Mark Puleo
When Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano recently announced that the DHS would place a temporary halt on workplace immigration raids, most right-wing pundits portrayed it as an all-encompassing amnesty for undocumented workers.
In reality, Napolitano merely postponed immigration raids following the February 24 sweep of an engine-parts maker in Bellingham, Wash., which netted 28 arrests. Napolitano expressed concern that she was not properly notified in advance — the clear implication being that the first raid carried out under the Obama administration was planned and orchestrated by his predecessor.
But despite conservative claims that she is risking national security by postponing future raids, the review could change the focus of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the better.
Currently, ICE raids tend to disproportionately affect working immigrants with children while overlooking harsher criminal elements.
According to Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, the raids focus on the wrong people. “We’d rather see DHS spending tax dollars on finding drug smugglers, not harassing window washers,” Noorani stated.
The Bellingham raids follow the local case of an ICE raid barely two years ago at the Michael Bianco factory in New Bedford. Over 350 immigrants were detained and approximately 100 shipped thousands of miles away before Child Services casework managers could determine childcare needs. To date, dozens remain in detention centers.
Napolitano is right to analyze how ICE conducts its raids and determine if they are an effective use of department resources. Besides not addressing the underlying problems of illegal immigration, these raids divide families despite the myth that undocumented immigrants who have American-born children are somehow immune from deportation.
“It’s sad but true,” says Noorani, “that our antiquated immigration system does nothing to account for the fact that families are contributing to our economy and merely want to call America home.”
http://www.metro.us/us/article/2009/04/08/02/0445-82/index.xml
April 8, 2009
By Mark Puleo
When Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano recently announced that the DHS would place a temporary halt on workplace immigration raids, most right-wing pundits portrayed it as an all-encompassing amnesty for undocumented workers.
In reality, Napolitano merely postponed immigration raids following the February 24 sweep of an engine-parts maker in Bellingham, Wash., which netted 28 arrests. Napolitano expressed concern that she was not properly notified in advance — the clear implication being that the first raid carried out under the Obama administration was planned and orchestrated by his predecessor.
But despite conservative claims that she is risking national security by postponing future raids, the review could change the focus of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the better.
Currently, ICE raids tend to disproportionately affect working immigrants with children while overlooking harsher criminal elements.
According to Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, the raids focus on the wrong people. “We’d rather see DHS spending tax dollars on finding drug smugglers, not harassing window washers,” Noorani stated.
The Bellingham raids follow the local case of an ICE raid barely two years ago at the Michael Bianco factory in New Bedford. Over 350 immigrants were detained and approximately 100 shipped thousands of miles away before Child Services casework managers could determine childcare needs. To date, dozens remain in detention centers.
Napolitano is right to analyze how ICE conducts its raids and determine if they are an effective use of department resources. Besides not addressing the underlying problems of illegal immigration, these raids divide families despite the myth that undocumented immigrants who have American-born children are somehow immune from deportation.
“It’s sad but true,” says Noorani, “that our antiquated immigration system does nothing to account for the fact that families are contributing to our economy and merely want to call America home.”
http://www.metro.us/us/article/2009/04/08/02/0445-82/index.xml
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Obama sets new tone, but immigration action far off
by Daniel González
April 3, 2009
The Arizona Republic
President Barack Obama has begun refocusing some of the more controversial immigration practices of the Bush administration, delaying some worksite raids and shifting the focus of others from workers and onto business owners.
But with fixing the economy the top priority, Obama is not yet ready to tackle the major issue of comprehensive immigration reform, despite mounting pressure from Latino and immigrant groups.
"I think he knows that he has to keep some sort of semblance of forward motion, but in terms of actually getting something done, I think he's going to stall as long as he can," said Daniel Kowalski, an immigration attorney in Austin, who edits Bender's Immigration Bulletin, a Web site that tracks immigration news and policy developments.
In recent weeks, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has signaled a move from the high-profile immigration raids that had become a hallmark of the latter years of the Bush administration by:
• Directing federal agents to refocus worksite raids on businesses and executives.
• Delaying some worksite raids and ordering a review of a February raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that resulted in the arrest of 28 workers in Washington state.
• Asking Homeland Security officials to look at revamping a program, known as 287(g), that trains local police to enforce federal immigration laws.
Obama faces more pressure from Hispanic, immigrant and labor groups to follow through on his campaign promise to, during his first year in office, push for comprehensive immigration reform that includes a contentious legalization plan for the nation's 12 million undocumented immigrants.
The United Farm Workers announced Thursday that it plans to hold a series of nationwide marches this month, including one on April 19 in Phoenix, aimed at pressuring Obama to press the reform issue.
Obama told the Hispanic Congressional Caucus in March that he remains committed to comprehensive immigration reform and vowed to hold a meeting this spring at the White House to get the ball rolling, said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.
Obama also promised other immigration changes that don't require legislation, such as devoting more resources to reducing citizenship and naturalization backlogs, Grijalva said.
Latino lawmakers left the meeting confident, but during a trip to Costa Rica this week, Vice President Joe Biden told Central American leaders that this is not a good time to push for immigration reform.
"It's difficult to tell a constituency while unemployment is rising, they're losing their jobs and their homes, that what we should do is, in fact, legalize (illegal immigrants) and stop all deportation," Biden said.
After trying and failing in 2006 and 2007 to push through reform legislation that would have included a legalization plan, the Bush administration intensified immigration enforcement through stepped-up worksite raids and deportations of illegal immigrants.
The increased enforcement was designed to gain credibility after years of lax enforcement, said Steven A. Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that supports immigration reductions. However, Camarota said, any credibility could evaporate if the Obama administration returns to lax immigration enforcement, which will make it even harder to pass comprehensive reforms.
"The administration is in a box," Camarota said.
On the one hand, Obama needs to "appease" Hispanic and immigrant-rights groups angered by stepped-up worksite raids and deportations they say are breaking apart families, Camarota said. On the other, Obama needs to convince skeptics that he is serious about enforcement. Still, some conservatives are wary.
"The Obama administration is proving that they are not serious about immigration enforcement," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, citing the recent shift in worksite enforcement and other changes.
Doris Meissner, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., said that to be effective, worksite laws need to be combined with other laws that target human smuggling, labor violations and criminal enterprises, a strategy she expects the Obama administration to pursue.
"What I hear (Napolitano) saying is not backing off of worksite enforcement, but going after serious crimes, not the garden-variety crimes," Meissner said.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/04/03/20090403obamaimmig0403.html
April 3, 2009
The Arizona Republic
President Barack Obama has begun refocusing some of the more controversial immigration practices of the Bush administration, delaying some worksite raids and shifting the focus of others from workers and onto business owners.
But with fixing the economy the top priority, Obama is not yet ready to tackle the major issue of comprehensive immigration reform, despite mounting pressure from Latino and immigrant groups.
"I think he knows that he has to keep some sort of semblance of forward motion, but in terms of actually getting something done, I think he's going to stall as long as he can," said Daniel Kowalski, an immigration attorney in Austin, who edits Bender's Immigration Bulletin, a Web site that tracks immigration news and policy developments.
In recent weeks, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has signaled a move from the high-profile immigration raids that had become a hallmark of the latter years of the Bush administration by:
• Directing federal agents to refocus worksite raids on businesses and executives.
• Delaying some worksite raids and ordering a review of a February raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that resulted in the arrest of 28 workers in Washington state.
• Asking Homeland Security officials to look at revamping a program, known as 287(g), that trains local police to enforce federal immigration laws.
Obama faces more pressure from Hispanic, immigrant and labor groups to follow through on his campaign promise to, during his first year in office, push for comprehensive immigration reform that includes a contentious legalization plan for the nation's 12 million undocumented immigrants.
The United Farm Workers announced Thursday that it plans to hold a series of nationwide marches this month, including one on April 19 in Phoenix, aimed at pressuring Obama to press the reform issue.
Obama told the Hispanic Congressional Caucus in March that he remains committed to comprehensive immigration reform and vowed to hold a meeting this spring at the White House to get the ball rolling, said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.
Obama also promised other immigration changes that don't require legislation, such as devoting more resources to reducing citizenship and naturalization backlogs, Grijalva said.
Latino lawmakers left the meeting confident, but during a trip to Costa Rica this week, Vice President Joe Biden told Central American leaders that this is not a good time to push for immigration reform.
"It's difficult to tell a constituency while unemployment is rising, they're losing their jobs and their homes, that what we should do is, in fact, legalize (illegal immigrants) and stop all deportation," Biden said.
After trying and failing in 2006 and 2007 to push through reform legislation that would have included a legalization plan, the Bush administration intensified immigration enforcement through stepped-up worksite raids and deportations of illegal immigrants.
The increased enforcement was designed to gain credibility after years of lax enforcement, said Steven A. Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that supports immigration reductions. However, Camarota said, any credibility could evaporate if the Obama administration returns to lax immigration enforcement, which will make it even harder to pass comprehensive reforms.
"The administration is in a box," Camarota said.
On the one hand, Obama needs to "appease" Hispanic and immigrant-rights groups angered by stepped-up worksite raids and deportations they say are breaking apart families, Camarota said. On the other, Obama needs to convince skeptics that he is serious about enforcement. Still, some conservatives are wary.
"The Obama administration is proving that they are not serious about immigration enforcement," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, citing the recent shift in worksite enforcement and other changes.
Doris Meissner, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., said that to be effective, worksite laws need to be combined with other laws that target human smuggling, labor violations and criminal enterprises, a strategy she expects the Obama administration to pursue.
"What I hear (Napolitano) saying is not backing off of worksite enforcement, but going after serious crimes, not the garden-variety crimes," Meissner said.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/04/03/20090403obamaimmig0403.html
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
New Immigration Raid Policy
U.S. Says Agents Will Be Targeting Employers
By Josh Meyer and Anna Gorman
The Hartford Courant
March 31, 2009
Stepping into the political minefield of immigration reform, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will soon direct federal agents to target employers for arrest and prosecution rather than the laborers who sneak into the country illegally to work for them, Department of Homeland Security officials said Monday.
The shift in emphasis will be outlined in revamped field guidelines issued to agents of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, or ICE, as early as this week, according to several officials familiar with the change in policy. It is in keeping with comments President Barack Obama made in the 2008 campaign, when he said past enforcement efforts have failed because they focused on illegal immigrants rather than the bosses who hire them.
"There is a supply side and a demand side," said one Homeland Security official. "Like other law enforcement philosophies, there is a belief that by focusing more on the demand side, you cut off the supply."
Napolitano "is focused on using our limited resources to the greatest effect, targeting criminal aliens and employers that flout our laws and deliberately cultivate an illegal workforce," a department official said. "Worksite enforcements can address both of these priorities; while the review is taking place, our interior enforcement efforts will continue to operate consistent with immigration law."
Homeland Security officials emphasized that the department will not stop conducting sweeps of businesses and arresting those illegal immigrants who are caught working.
Michael Cutler, a retired senior special agent with 30 years working on immigration, sharply criticized the proposed change, saying the administration needs to go after workers and employers to send a message that it will not condone illegal immigration.
Cutler, now a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said it would be "dumb" to "go after employers and not the illegal aliens. That means they are going to make very few arrests. And the message that sends is that if you can make it across the border, you're home free, no one is going to be looking for you."
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-tc-nw-immigration-0331.artmar31,0,4823465.story
By Josh Meyer and Anna Gorman
The Hartford Courant
March 31, 2009
Stepping into the political minefield of immigration reform, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will soon direct federal agents to target employers for arrest and prosecution rather than the laborers who sneak into the country illegally to work for them, Department of Homeland Security officials said Monday.
The shift in emphasis will be outlined in revamped field guidelines issued to agents of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, or ICE, as early as this week, according to several officials familiar with the change in policy. It is in keeping with comments President Barack Obama made in the 2008 campaign, when he said past enforcement efforts have failed because they focused on illegal immigrants rather than the bosses who hire them.
"There is a supply side and a demand side," said one Homeland Security official. "Like other law enforcement philosophies, there is a belief that by focusing more on the demand side, you cut off the supply."
Napolitano "is focused on using our limited resources to the greatest effect, targeting criminal aliens and employers that flout our laws and deliberately cultivate an illegal workforce," a department official said. "Worksite enforcements can address both of these priorities; while the review is taking place, our interior enforcement efforts will continue to operate consistent with immigration law."
Homeland Security officials emphasized that the department will not stop conducting sweeps of businesses and arresting those illegal immigrants who are caught working.
Michael Cutler, a retired senior special agent with 30 years working on immigration, sharply criticized the proposed change, saying the administration needs to go after workers and employers to send a message that it will not condone illegal immigration.
Cutler, now a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said it would be "dumb" to "go after employers and not the illegal aliens. That means they are going to make very few arrests. And the message that sends is that if you can make it across the border, you're home free, no one is going to be looking for you."
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-tc-nw-immigration-0331.artmar31,0,4823465.story
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