United States and Mexico begin Interior Repatriation Initiative

United States and Mexico begin Interior Repatriation Initiative 
Tuesday, 02 October 2012 20:41 
Written by Imperial Valley News

El Paso, Texas - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Mexican Ministry of the Interior today announced the beginning of the Interior Repatriation Initiative (IRI), a new pilot to provide humane, safe and orderly repatriation of Mexican nationals to the interior of Mexico and ultimately to their hometowns, instead of returning them to towns on the U.S.-Mexico border.

ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) will provide air transportation via charter aircraft to Mexican nationals who emigrated from the interior of Mexico. Upon arrival in Mexico City, the Government of Mexico will provide them transportation to their places of origin. This initiative will allow the Government of Mexico to assist returning Mexican nationals in safely reintegrating into their communities.

"IRI reflects our commitment and ongoing bilateral effort with the government of Mexico to ensure strong, humane and effective enforcement of both nations' immigration laws," said ICE Director John Morton. "This initiative will better ensure that individuals repatriated to Mexico are removed in circumstances that are safe and controlled."

Gustavo Mohar Betancourt, Undersecretary of Mexico's population, migration and religious affairs said, "This initiative aims to collaborate and fully support border state authorities by reducing the number of Mexican nationals who are repatriated to the border region. The newly repatriated, often with no means to return home, are susceptible to becoming a part of criminal organizations as a means of survival."

The IRI will include Mexican nationals pending removal from all areas of the United States. Historically, a significant number of individuals are not from the northern border towns to which they are repatriated, leaving them in communities where they have no ties or family support. Removing Mexican nationals to the interior of Mexico is part of an effort to reduce repeat attempts to illegally enter the United States, avoid the loss of human life, and minimize the potential for exploitation of illegal migrants by human smuggling and trafficking organizations as well as other criminal organizations.

Individuals who participate in the pilot initiative are transferred from across the United States to the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, N.M., before departure on an IRI flight.

The first repatriation flight of 131 Mexican nationals departed El Paso International Airport Tuesday, Oct. 2 and flights are scheduled to continue this year through to Nov. 29. Mexican nationals participating in IRI are removed on charter flights via the ICE ERO Air Operations (IAO) Unit. Headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., IAO has supported ERO since 2006 by providing air transportation and removal coordination services to ERO field offices nationwide. Staffed by ERO officers, these air charters enable the agency to repatriate large groups of deportees in an efficient, expeditious and humane manner.

http://www.imperialvalleynews.com/index.php/news/latest-news/1840-united-states-and-mexico-begin-interior-repatriation-initiative.html

U.S. suspends immigrant flights back to Mexico

U.S. suspends immigrant flights back to Mexico 

Written by Bob Ortega 

The Arizona Republic 

8:46 AM; September 11, 2012 

PHOENIX —The U.S. government has temporarily stopped a voluntary repatriation program to fly home undocumented Mexican immigrants caught trying to enter Arizona during the summer because there aren’t enough illegal border crossers to fill daily flights.

There have been no flights this year under the 8-year-old program designed to reduce immigrant deaths by dissuading Mexicans caught crossing the Arizona border from trying again in the fierce heat of summer.

Attempts to keep them going and justify the costs of the $100 million program by filling planes with deported criminals have apparently been blocked by the Mexican government, which didn’t want violent male offenders mixed in with women and children.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials said they are still negotiating with the Mexican government to resume the program, though any agreement will likely be too late for any flights this year.

The U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have gone back to the practice of returning most immigrants directly across the Arizona-Mexico border.

The Mexican Interior Repatriation Program had operated each summer since 2004 under an agreement between Homeland Security and the Mexican government aimed at reducing deaths in Arizona’s harsh deserts by deterring apprehended immigrants from immediately crossing again.

By flying undocumented Mexican immigrants from Tucson more than 1,100 miles south to Mexico City, rather than simply forcing them to walk back across the border, it was believed fewer would make the trek back north and seek out smugglers to try to lead them across again. But, as The Arizona Republic reported last year, there have been questions about the program’s effectiveness.

From 2004 to 2011, the government spent $90 million to $100 million to fly 125,164 undocumented immigrants back to Mexico from Tucson. The program peaked in the summer of 2010, when 23,384 immigrants were flown back, according to the DHS.

But last summer, with a plunge in migration that officials attributed to the weak economy and tougher immigration enforcement, only 8,893 immigrants were repatriated. Flights carrying up to 146 people were cut to once from twice daily last year.

With the numbers dropping, the DHS and the Mexican government earlier this year began renegotiating the terms. Under the original deal, only first-time crossers and families from Mexico’s interior states were eligible for the voluntary flights.

On arrival in Mexico City, they were given bus tickets to their hometowns. The United States paid the full cost of the program. The Mexican Consulate in Tucson interviewed each person to make sure the return was voluntary.

But this year, according to an Associated Press report on Monday, Mexican officials balked at a plan by the DHS to add immigrants with criminal convictions to the planes to make the flights more cost-effective. DHS officials would not confirm that account.

Mexican diplomatic officials in Tucson, Phoenix and Washington, D.C., declined to answer questions about the disagreement. In a written statement, a spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington said the Mexican government continues to work with the U.S. government on “measures to prevent the loss of human life at our common border.”

Both governments have agreed to a separate program starting next month, called the Interior Removal Initiative, under which undocumented Mexican immigrants from across the U.S. could be flown back to Mexico. That program would not be voluntary.

More than 1,500 border crossers have died in Arizona’s desert over the past decade, with most of the deaths during the summer. Before the flight program, most undocumented immigrants caught in Arizona would simply be returned to the border, where officials would watch them cross back into Mexico, and where, officials acknowledged, most immediately sought the help of smugglers to try to cross again.

Critics have questioned the effectiveness of the flight program in reducing repeated crossing attempts by immigrants.

As The Republic previously reported, Customs and Border Protection records showed that, within months, hundreds of migrants flown south had been caught trying to cross illegally again.

Although it appeared that the rate at which migrants tried to cross did drop significantly, it was impossible to be certain because the Border Patrol would not provide complete recidivism data. From 2008 to 2010, 6 to 12percent of those flown home were rearrested that summer.

A 2010 review by the Government Accounting Office concluded that ICE failed to track data in a way that allowed it to accurately measure how well the repatriation program worked.

From 2004 to 2010, the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which accounts for most of Arizona’s border with Mexico, tallied 1,362 migrant deaths. The numbers peaked in 2010, with 249 deaths, but have dropped the past two years.

Through the end of August this year, there have been 150 deaths. However, immigrant groups argue that the numbers are still high given the huge drops in estimated immigration over the past couple of years.

“The people dying on the border, we’re seeing, are mostly people who are very poor. There’s many indigenous people who are walking over with ‘coyotes,’” said Juanita Molina, executive director of Border Action Network, a Tucson human-rights group focused on migrant issues.

Although she sees some potential issues with the flights, Molina said that simply dropping people off at the border, as is now happening again, “makes them extremely vulnerable to being victimized.”

http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20120911/NJNEWS18/309110014/U-S-suspends-immigrant-flights-back-to-Mexico 

Immigration officials back away from deportation program; Effort quickened process but raised rights issues

By Daniel González
The Arizona Republic
Nov. 6, 2011

Federal immigration officials have quietly backed away from a program in Arizona and other Western states aimed at quickly and efficiently deporting illegal immigrants rather than keeping them in costly detention centers.

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, including thousands from Arizona, have been deported under the program over the past several years. Called stipulated removal, it allows the government to quickly deport illegal immigrants held in detention centers as long as they forgo a hearing before a judge to review their legal rights and to determine if they want to fight their case.

The phaseout follows controversies and concerns.

Immigration officials hailed the program as cost-effective deportations for people who wanted to go home. Critics worried that the government was strong-arming immigrants to accept deportation without regard for their due-process rights.

Immigration officials changed course in September 2010 after a federal appellate court ruled that an immigrant held in an Eloy detention center had his rights violated. After that, speedy removals were offered only to illegal immigrants with lawyers, who could help them fight their cases. Lawyers are not provided at taxpayer expense in deportation proceedings.

Since then, immigration officials have not deported a single illegal immigrant through the program in Arizona, said Vincent Picard, a spokesman for ICE in Phoenix. Picard could not provide statistics for other states.

ICE officials did not publicize the dramatic policy change. Many immigrant lawyers and critics of the program were unaware the change had been made.

Time and money

In a deportation proceeding, an illegal immigrant has the right to appear in front of an immigration judge to decide whether to contest the case. The immigrant also has the right to hire a lawyer.

But under stipulated removal, an immigrant who doesn't want to fight deportation gives up the right to a hearing. The immigrant also gives up the right to an appeal. Once the immigrant agrees to those stipulations, the judge signs a deportation order, even if the immigrant is not in the courtroom.

Supporters of stipulated removal, which remains in effect in other parts of the country, say it benefits both the government and illegal immigrants. The program can save time and money.

The illegal immigrant is typically deported within a day or two. In comparison, an illegal immigrant facing deportation can spend weeks or even months in detention. In 2011, the average time was 29 days, according to ICE statistics.

The average daily cost of detention in 2011 was $112.83, said Virginia Kice, an ICE spokeswoman.

"Such agreements between ICE and the alien are advantageous to the government in that it relieves the immigration court of the need to have a hearing, saves ICE additional detention costs, and allows the alien to return to his/her country expeditiously," Picard said in an e-mail.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank that favors strict immigration enforcement, said the program should be expanded, not scaled back.

Offering stipulated removal only to immigrants who hire their own lawyers bogs down the judicial process and defeats the purpose of the program: to quickly remove illegal immigrants with no legal grounds to remain in the U.S. who want to go home, Vaughan said. It also clogs up immigration courts, making less room for immigrants with strong legal cases to remain in the U.S.

"I see the greater use of stipulated removal as expediting the inevitable, with the result being swifter access to hearings for the people who are more likely to benefit from them," she said.

Phillip Crawford, a former field director for ICE's enforcement and removal operations in Arizona, said it is a shame that stipulated removals have been curtailed.

The program, he said, had several levels of "safeguards" to ensure that the rights of illegal immigrants were protected and that participants understood what they were signing. Each case was reviewed by ICE officers during processing at detention centers, by ICE prosecutors and by an immigration judge who has the power to reject the deportation if the judge believes the immigrant had legal grounds to remain.

He also said the program targeted illegal immigrants from Mexico convicted of aggravated felonies with little chance of legally remaining in the U.S.

"It was an excellent program," Crawford said.

Rights protected?

Critics say stipulated removal circumvents immigrants' rights and largely targeted immigrants who had not committed crimes.

A 30-page report released in September by the National Immigration Law Center accused government officials of pressuring illegal immigrants to accept quick deportation by threatening long detention stays if they tried to fight to remain in the U.S. The government also often didn't provide adequate interpretation and translation to immigrants who didn't speak English, the report said.

The report found that 80 percent of those deported through the program hadn't committed crimes.

The report also found that 96 percent of those deported didn't have lawyers. Therefore, the report concluded, many of those without criminal records may have been eligible to remain in the U.S. if they had had a chance to fight their case.

Instead of deportation, the non-criminals also may have qualified for less-severe voluntary departure, which gives immigrants the chance to return to the U.S. if they qualify for a green card, said Karen Tumlin, managing attorney for the Law Center. Instead, by accepting stipulated removal, immigrants are generally barred from coming back to the U.S. for as long as 10 years and face felony charges for illegally re-entering the country.

The report was based on 20,000 government documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Tumlin said she was unaware that ICE had stopped offering stipulated removals to immigrants unless they had a lawyer. The Arizona Republic discovered the new policy in September, when it began examining the Law Center report.

"If that's true, it would be welcome news," Tumlin said.

The change, she said, alleviates concerns that the quick removals were violating the due-process rights of illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants placed in deportation proceedings can sometimes fight their case in court if they meet certain conditions, such as having resided in the U.S. for a long period of time, having no criminal record and having children born in this country.

Evolving program

Launched in 1995 to help alleviate overcrowding in federal, state and local detention centers, the stipulated-removal program was rarely used until President George W. Bush's administration began ramping up immigration enforcement in 2004. The high rate continued during the first two years of President Barack Obama's administration. According to ICE, 32,635 people were deported in 2010.

From 2004 to 2010, immigration officials deported more than 160,000 under the program, according to the National Immigration Law Center's September report.

The report found that more than 24,000 came from the detention center in Eloy, the highest number of any facility in the country.

Internal government e-mails obtained through the Freedom of Information lawsuit and posted online by the National Immigration Law Center show that in 2005 alone, 5,787 illegal immigrants from Mexico detained in Eloy were deported through the program and that stipulated removals accounted for more than 50 percent of all deportations at the center.

In September 2010, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that immigration officials at Eloy had violated the rights of Isaac Ramos. Ramos, an illegal immigrant from Mexico with prior criminal convictions, had agreed to stipulated removal while being detained in Eloy in 2006. The court ruled that the government failed to make it clear to Ramos that he was giving up his right to talk to a lawyer, who could have explained the process and the penalties. The court also ruled that the immigration judge who signed Ramos' deportation order failed to determine if Ramos had agreed to stipulated removal "voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently," as required.

Ramos, who is married to a legal permanent resident and has two U.S.-citizen children, had argued that he should be allowed to return to the U.S. since his rights to due process were violated. The court, however, denied that request.

Since backing away from using stipulated removal, ICE has worked out a different approach in Arizona, Picard said.

Illegal immigrants who do not have legal representation and do not want to contest their cases are given the option of attending "prompt hearings," Picard said.

Held in front of immigration judges, the hearings ensure that immigrants facing deportation are advised of their "full array" of rights under the law, he said. Immigration judges also confirm that the immigrants are aware of any possibility to legally remain in the U.S.

"Only if the judge is satisfied that the aliens are removable under the charges filed against them, and are making a knowing and intelligent waiver of their rights, will the judge order their removal," Picard said.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/11/06/20111106immigration-arizona-deportation-program.html#ixzz1cx6wDGx2

Transfer programs push deportations to record high

Written by Sandra Dibble
San Diego Tribune
Oct. 30, 2011

Deportations along the California-Mexico border rose sharply during the past fiscal year mainly because of U.S. efforts to disrupt smuggling routes and discourage migrants who keep making illegal crossings, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

During the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, the agency reported 33,006 removals in the region — an increase of more than 82 percent over the previous year. The latest figure is a record high for the California-Mexico region.

Deportations also reached an unprecedented level nationally, though the rise was far less steep. ICE this month reported 396,906 removals nationwide during fiscal 2011, an uptick of barely more than 1 percent over fiscal 2010.

Removals along the California-Mexico border are carried out through the agency’s San Diego Field Office, which covers San Diego and Imperial counties. That office’s newest annual deportation total ranked third nationally, after San Antonio (63,090) and Phoenix (56,198).

The dramatic boost in removals for the San Diego office was largely due to two “lateral repatriation programs” designed to deter persistent illegal border-crossers and thwart smugglers, said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for ICE in San Diego.

In February, a local program was launched to target undocumented immigrants who are repeatedly caught at the San Diego border and transfer them to other jurisdictions for removal from the country. The San Diego office handles about 400 of those cases in a typical month, Mack said.

Also contributing to the soaring total was a national program spearheaded by Customs and Border Patrol that last year brought thousands of illegal immigrants who were detained in Arizona and Texas to San Diego for deportation, and those numbers were added to the San Diego tally as well, Mack said.

A primary rationale for the transfer programs is that deporting people farther away from where they entered the United States will make it tougher — and more expensive — for them to reconnect with their smugglers and try to cross again.

The ICE figures have sparked renewed discussion about the Obama administration’s deportation policy, which has placed greater focus on undocumented immigrants with criminal records. The national ICE statistics show that 55 percent of deportees in fiscal year 2011 had been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor — compared with 31 percent in 2008.

About 43 percent of deportees handled by the San Diego Field Office in the most recent fiscal year had criminal records.

Nationally, the major crime categories were traffic offenses, led by drunken driving. These were followed by crimes involving dangerous drugs, including use, possession and distribution; immigration violations; and assaults.

Deportations across the country have skyrocketed over the past decade, though the rate of increase has dropped over the past three years. One factor driving some of the increases has been the Secure Communities program launched in 2008 under then President George W. Bush, through which the fingerprints of detainees — anyone from shoplifters to killers — are checked for immigration violations, said Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy at the Berkeley-based Warren Institute.

Andrea Guerrero, executive director of Equality Alliance San Diego, is among those challenging the administration’s immigration enforcement strategies.

“Increased deportations are not a fix to our broken immigration system,” she said. “Contrary to what the administration promised, the deportations are not focused on serious criminals. They are sweeping up misdemeanor offenders and non-criminals.”

Many immigrants are confused by the administration’s policy, said Lilia Velazquez, an immigration attorney in San Diego. “People tell me, ‘I was arrested, (but) didn’t the president say that people like us should not be arrested?’”

Others criticize President Barack Obama for being too lenient on border security and deportations.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., said the record-setting removal numbers for fiscal year 2011 are still too small to make a substantial impact.

“The administration refuses to ask for additional resources for deportations,” said Krikorian, who favors stronger limits on both legal and illegal immigration.

Peter Nuñez, a former U.S. attorney in San Diego who lectures at the University of San Diego, said it’s hard to argue against the administration’s official emphasis on deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records. “But we can’t send a message at the same time that all other illegal (immigrants) are essentially immune from being removed or deported.”

At the Warren Institute, Kohli said the ultimate solution is wide-ranging immigration reform.

“There are a lot of things that are broken with our immigration system,” she said. “The one entity that could fix it, Congress, has been unable to do that.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/oct/30/transfer-programs-push-deportations-record-high/

Federal immigration crackdown includes 18 arrests in Sacramento area

By Stephen Magagnini
The Sacramento Bee
Thursday, Sep. 29, 2011

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced the arrest Wednesday of more than 2,900 immigrants convicted of crimes, including 18 in the Sacramento area.

The weeklong raids across the country reflect ICE's focus "on the arrest and removal of convicted criminal aliens that threaten the public safety of our communities here in Northern California," said Timothy Aitken, field office director of ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations in San Francisco.

That office supervised the arrest of 186 immigrants in the Bay Area and the north state who are considered fugitives or have criminal histories.

The 18 arrested in the Sacramento region came from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, the Philippines and Uzbekistan, said Michael Vaughn, assistant field director for ICE in Sacramento. Only one was a legal permanent resident, Vaughn said, and all are facing possible deportation.

"They were convicted of crimes ranging from DUI to voluntary manslaughter," Vaughn said. "I've got drug cases, spousal abuse cases, transportation to sell narcotics, possession for sale, carrying a concealed weapon, willful cruelty to child, battery on a peace officer and theft."

Six of those arrested were ICE fugitives who had already been ordered removed by an immigration judge, but then disappeared, Vaughn said.

Seven others arrested in Sacramento are facing deportation for their convictions, but still will have their day in court before an immigration judge, Vaughn said.

Five more were previously deported criminal aliens who had returned to the United States and were apprehended again. They included a 52-year-old Mexican national who had been deported after being convicted of voluntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon. He was arrested by Sacramento's fugitive operations team in Stockton and faces federal prosecution for illegal re-entry after deportation, a crime which can bring up to 20 years in prison, Vaughn said.

Those arrested in the Central Valley were picked up as far north as Chico, as far south as Modesto and as far east as Roseville, Vaughn said.

ICE said it's targeting immigrants who present the greatest security risk to public, such as those charged with or convicted of homicide, rape, robbery, kidnapping, major drug offenses and threats to national security. The agency is also tracking those who have been previously deported and illegally re-entered the country.

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/29/3946874/federal-immigration-crackdown.html

Undocumented Immigrants Still Fearful of Deportation

By LaToya Dennis
WUWM, Milwaukee, WI
September 26, 2011

This summer, the Obama administration announced it was halting deportations of non-criminal undocumented immigrants, until it could review each case. Many advocates applauded the decision, calling it a first step toward allowing many workers and students living here illegally to remain. Critics voiced opposition to what they call - amnesty for law-breakers. A few years ago, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that Wisconsin is home to between 75,000 and 115,000 illegal immigrants. As WUWM’s LaToya Dennis reports, the change in White House policy is not easing the fears of some. For nearly two decades, Marco Espinosa and his wife have made a life for themselves in Milwaukee. They have two children - a 14 year old daughter and a son who’s 12. To help support his family, Espinosa works as a cook – he won’t say where. But he does say that the only difference between his family and most others is that he and his wife are in the U.S. illegally.

“I don’t feel bad about it,” Espinosa says.

…Because, Espinosa says, he’s never taken a handout or asked for help.

“They say illegal people, they’re coming here because we get benefits and stuff like that. Like I say, I don’t get no benefits. All the benefits I got is a job in this country. This is why I come into this country, I come looking for job. I got a job. I always do the job the best way I can. That’s why I don’t feel bad,” Espinosa says.

Espinosa says outside of being arrested a few years back for driving without a license, he has never been in legal trouble…but did have a scare. He says back in July, police and agents from the FBI and ICE - Immigration and Customers Enforcement- arrested him in front of his home. According to Espinosa, they suspected him of being a gang member.

“If I been involved in a gang member you know, I’ll tell everybody the truth. But I’m not involved in any gang or stuff like that,” Espinosa says.

Espinosa says he was held for nearly a month. He believes authorities targeted him because they know he’s here illegally and want to force him to leave. But he also has a common name, and a few others with the same, do have warrants out for their arrest.

“I’m living here for 18 years, you know. I got two kids, they born over here, they grew up over here, they are American citizens. I don’t see why I should have to leave my kids here or take my kids back to Mexico,” Marco says.

Espinosa is one of 300,000 undocumented immigrants whose deportation case is now on hold, at least temporarily. Primitivo Torres calls the new Obama administration policy ordering reviews of so-called low priority cases, a welcome change. Torres is president of the local immigrant advocacy group, Voces De La Frontera.

“What does that mean, a low priority case? It means you don’t have a criminal background, you have an extended stay here in the United States. If if you have children who are who are citizens of the United States that’s also a factor,” Torres says.

Torres says people have been contacting his organization daily, expressing fears about being forced to leave the U.S., if police pull them over, for say, a traffic violation. He hopes Washington eventually reforms its immigration laws so people who’ve come here to take jobs, can stay if they’ve been decent residents.

Wisconsin state Rep. Donald Pridemore also wants reform, but of a different variety. He’s introduced a bill similar to one in Arizona. The measure gives law enforcement the power to turn people over to immigration officials, if the person has broken the law and cannot provide identification.

“Our particular bill deals with the criminal element. It doesn’t go after employers or anything like that. It’s only about a six-page bill compared to Arizona’s bill which is about 43 pages,” Pridemore says.

Pridemore says his goal is to force the federal government’s hand to deal with people who have entered the country illegally.

“It was introduced in order to hopefully move the federal government toward enforcing the immigration laws we currently have on the books or address the issue from a national standpoint. We want the federal government to stop ignoring the situation,” Pridemore says.

Pridemore hopes legislative leaders schedule his bill for a hearing in upcoming months. Several other proposals may be forthcoming. Bills expected to be introduced in Wisconsin include one requiring proof of citizenship to receive public assistance, and another that would withhold from businesses tax credits, loans and public contracts if those firms hire undocumented workers. Meanwhile, Marco Espinosa awaits a ruling on his case.

“I don’t know. Obama, he make a lot of promises. I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Espinosa says.

Espinosa says if he is ordered out of the country, he only hopes he’s given enough time to get things in order and ensure his family will be OK.

http://www.wuwm.com/programs/news/view_news.php?articleid=9193

A second chance: Deportation policy changes allow students to stay in U.S.

By Rachel Brown
The Dalton Daily Citizen
Sep 17, 2011

It all started on Father’s Day.

Pedro Morales, 19, of the Eastside community, got a call from his father asking him for a ride home. Pedro’s father normally doesn’t indulge in alcohol, family members said, but on this occasion he’d had a couple of beers and wasn’t feeling well.

“I had to get him home so he could take his pill, and so I decided to drive,” said Morales, who does not have a driver’s license because he was illegally brought into the country when he was 7 and has lived here ever since.

Morales got stopped at a road block, and when a Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office deputy asked him for his license, he confessed he didn’t have one. He was put into the back of a car, and a friend with a valid license drove his father home.

That was the last time he would see his family until Aug. 23, when he was released from custody. In the intervening two months, he spent five days in the local jail and most of the rest of the time in the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, fighting not to be deported to his native Mexico, which he hasn’t been to since he was little.

Morales said he was depressed and ready to give up hope when a judge finally dismissed his case based on a new enforcement policy from the Obama administration that instructs officials to focus deportation efforts on illegals who have committed violent crimes or been convicted of crimes. The directive excludes most students from being priorities for deportation, particularly those who have lived most of their lives in the United States.

Caught in traffic

Morales and Gordon Central High School student Luis “Ricky” Hernandez, 18, were among the first youths in the nation to benefit from the new policy.

Hernandez also has ties to Dalton and, like Morales, was represented by Atlanta-based immigration attorney Charles Kuck. Hernandez participated in Dalton State College’s Steps to College program for high school students this summer and was in Dalton when he was arrested and nearly deported back to Mexico.

Like Morales, Hernandez had been brought to the United States at a young age — just 2. His only relative who still lives in Mexico is his grandmother, he said. It’s a country he doesn’t know.

Hernandez said it was mid-June when he was on his way to see the movie “Hangover II” with a friend. He was a passenger in the car his friend was driving, and the two were pulled over for a headlights violation. Hernandez said he was booked on a drug possession charge, which was later dropped after authorities found no proof the drugs, which were found in the car, belonged to him. Once officials discovered he was in the country illegally, he too was sent to the Stewart Detention Center.

The two cases are not uncommon.

Morales said he ran into a few Southeast High School and Whitfield Career Academy students at Stewart while he was there. He said they were likewise arrested on traffic violations and awaiting deportation. Southeast Principal Brian Satterfield, who could not be reached to comment on this story, said in a previous interview that the school’s expected graduation rate dropped slightly because five students were deported last year.

“There’s really not a whole lot we can do with that, although we have tried to work with the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in Atlanta to see if they can possibly graduate before the deportation,” he said last month.

Hernandez’s principal, Scott McClanahan, said another of the school’s students, an honors student who played football, was in JROTC and planned to enter the military, was deported to his native Guatemala in April.

“This happens all the time,” Kuck said. “You let these kids grow up here, you educate them and then you deport them to a country they don’t know. It’s insane. It’s an insane process.”

Staying in Stewart

The detention center houses anyone set to be deported. Morales said he was placed in a cell with 66 people. The men slept on bunk beds and shared three bathrooms and five showers, he said.

“I had never been in trouble for anything,” Morales said. “They put me with people from prison ... It was pretty awkward at the beginning.”

Morales’ father, who is also Pedro Morales, said he went to see eight lawyers in Atlanta, one of whom he lost $1,000 with. He didn’t want his son to return to the chaotic situation in Mexico where just last week three people were killed in his town and there is extortion, drugs and anarchy from the drug traffickers, he said.

“We took it for fact that my son was going to be deported back to Mexico,” said the father. “There were days of anxiety, not sleeping, not eating. It is something you do not wish on anyone.”

Morales’ mother, Veronica Arredondo, said the experience was “very hard,” and that she’d never been apart from her son for so long before. She said he’d never had problems in school or been in trouble with the law.

In Calhoun, teacher and assistant soccer coach Sean McKenzie said he advocated for Hernandez to be able to stay with his family in the United States, as did several other educators. McKenzie said he invited all his students to participate in Steps to College, a program which helps high school students or recent graduates prepare for high stakes tests and college entrance exams, but Hernandez was the only one who took him up on it.

“When I found out Ricky had been picked up, it was especially upsetting to me,” McKenzie said. “He had been working so hard to try to better himself.”

McKenzie said Hernandez had never been in any trouble.

“That wasn’t his marijuana,” he said. “He didn’t have anything to do with that.”

Hernandez said he always held out hope he would not be deported.

“I had a feeling I would (be released) because I didn’t do anything bad,” he said. “I was just in there wasting time when I could have been with my family.”

For two months, Morales stayed in Stewart as Kuck attempted to get him back home. When told he was getting released, he initially didn’t believe it.

“I was getting everything denied, and everything was getting worse,” Morales said. “My last court (date) was the decision if I was going to be able to stay or if I would have to leave. They told me my case was dropped because of what President Obama said, that people brought here as children or were students and trying to achieve a college degree, that immigration was going to have to leave them alone.”

There’s no guarantee, of course, that Morales or Hernandez can continue to live in the United States. Enforcement is conducted on a case-by-case basis.

“ICE moved to administratively close their case,” Kuck said. “ICE could move to administratively open their case.”

Looking forward

Both young men are working to get permission to stay here legally, they said. Kuck said they’re not eligible to become legal residents, but he will apply next week to allow them to continue to live in the U.S. under ICE supervision and get work visas. It could be months before they learn of the decision, he said.

“It (the appeal) is through ICE, and it’s very informal,” he said, adding he didn’t know how long the work permits would last if granted. “A lot of this is dependent on the current administration’s policies on this, and frankly they are at best vague.”

Morales applied to Georgia Northwestern Technical College last year to begin studying auto engine repair at the college’s Walker County campus. A 2010 graduate at the Whitfield Career Academy, he had planned to be in school this fall.

Instead, he spent his college savings on fighting deportation, he said. He said he’s hoping to begin classes in the spring.

Hernandez said he too hopes to go to college somewhere.

Asked what he learned from the situation, Hernandez said he’ll now be more careful who he hangs around with. He said he wishes he could have his own car so he’ll know what’s in it and what’s not.

Morales said he wishes officials would put more thought into who they’re arresting.

“They should look more into seeing what kind of people they’re arresting because a lot of people are not doing anything bad,” he said. “A lot of these people are honest people. They just want to work and make something out of themselves like I’m trying to do.”

Temple Black, an ICE spokesman based in Louisiana, said that without local sheriff and police departments holding illegal aliens, it would be harder to catch those who have committed crimes.

“The identification and removal of many criminal aliens would not be possible without the cooperation of our state and local law enforcement partners,” Black said in an emailed statement. “ICE detainers are an effective tool to ensure that individuals convicted of criminal charges or who have previously been removed, who are found to be in violation of U.S. immigration law, are not released back into the community to potentially commit more crimes.”

He did say using resources on cases that are no longer deemed high priority hurts the department’s goal of deporting those who are a threat to safety.

Teachers, McKenzie said, often find themselves in a delicate situation when it comes to working with children who, though they may have had no say in the matter, are illegal aliens. Schools are required to serve students regardless of their immigration status, meaning American taxpayers foot the bill for a majority of their education.

McKenzie said he would like lawmakers to create a clear path to legal residency for students like Hernandez. Others say there should be stronger border enforcement or even stronger efforts to deport everyone who is in the country illegally. They point out the difficulty of holding illegals accountable since they often don’t carry car insurance, and they lament the fact many undocumented residents take advantage of taxpayer-funded social service programs that are supposed to be reserved for legal residents.

Still others take a middle-of-the-road approach, supporting enforcement of the law but also advocating for leniency for at least some.

“I do think everybody has got to make up their mind how they handle things, but I certainly see it as my role to stand up for my students and be an advocate for them,” McKenzie said. “Ricky is a great kid, and I was honored to stand up for him.”

El Informador writer Jorge Perez contributed to this story.

http://daltondailycitizen.com/local/x1660695849/A-second-chance

US Still Working Out Deportation Details

By Amy Isackson
The World
September 15, 2011

A month ago, the Obama Administration announced a new policy that would suspend the deportation of undocumented immigrants who don’t pose a threat to public safety.

US officials said they’d review 300,000 pending deportation cases. However, they’re still working out the details of how they’ll wade through them and have yet to act on any case.

Across the country, the new policy has given hope to many undocumented immigrants, but has also caused confusion.

Juan, who asked not to use his real name out of fear, came to San Diego from Mexico illegally 24 years ago when he was only sixteen. He had quit school in Mexico and his family sent him to the United States with one of his brothers.

“So, really I never felt like it was my decision to come up here.” Juan tells his story sitting on the couch in his living room. His house is immaculate. So is he. His slacks and dress shirt are perfectly pressed.

Juan says they day after he arrived in San Diego, he began washing dishes at a tony restaurant. Juan says a cute hostess convinced him to enroll in high school. He learned English, moved up to busboy and became a statewide track star. Universities like UCLA courted him with scholarships.

“My goal always was to become a coach and a bilingual math teacher and it never happened,” he says. While Juan had the ability, he didn’t have the legal status to go to college. Juan has worked steadily for the last 25 years. He’s managing an upscale restaurant and raising a family. Juan’s 12-year-old son was recently assigned to the Gifted and Talented Education program at his junior high school.

Last January, Juan was detained at a major Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5. Juan doesn’t have a criminal record but the government began the process of deporting him.

Immigration Attorney Ginger Jacobs sees these kinds of cases all the time. “Folks who, a few years ago, would never be placed into proceedings. They don’t have a criminal record but are placed into proceedings anyway.”

She says the potentially good news for Juan is that it appears his case is just the kind that the federal government will put on hold. During the last two years, President Obama has repeatedly said he was after undocumented immigrants who’d committed crimes – “the worst of the worst,” he called them.

Yet, on Obama’s watch, the federal government has deported a record 800,000 people. Last year, more than half of those deported either had no criminal record or had committed a misdemeanor or traffic violation.

The White House says the new deportation policy’s goal is to target more serious criminals, but immigration attorneys say their phones are ringing off the hook with confused clients.

Jacobs says some ask if they should turn themselves in. Some say they want to apply for the new amnesty law. “Questions for me that indicate that they’ve received some misinformation about the policy. There is no new law,” says Jacobs.

Jacobs, along with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, warn their clients not to be tricked by unscrupulous attorneys or “notarios” who capitalize on the confusion, falsely claiming they can legalize undocumented immigrants.

Critics of the new policy accuse the Obama Administration of acting illegally.

“This is an extra-constitutional act. I mean, I don’t know how else to put it,” says Mark Krikorian, who directs the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors tighter immigration controls.

Krikorian says if President Obama wanted to stay these deportations he should have gone through Congress to make a new law. Instead, Krikorian says Obama did an end-run around Congress because he failed to get it to move in immigration reform. “It’s a bridge amnesty, like a bridge loan to legalize them legalize them long enough until the pro-amnesty people can prevail in Congress.”

Legal analysts say the new deportation policy is not amnesty.

Aarti Kohli, Director of Immigration Policy at the UC Berkeley’s Boalt Law School, says the policy has the potential to affect only a small minority of the undocumented immigrants in the US.

“We’re talking 300,000 people, not the estimated 11 million who are in the country. You don’t actually get legalized. You just don’t get deported.”

At any time, the federal government can re-open the deportation cases it stays.

An official with the Department of Homeland Security says they’ve convened a team of 20 lawyers to determine how the process will proceed. The official would not say when the first case would be put on hold or how long it will take to review 300,000 cases.

Meanwhile, Juan says he’s only heard snipits about the policy. He says he used to spend hours pouring over everything he could about immigration reform, the Dream Act, Obama’s campaign promises.

“And, at the end, everything went back to the same. Good old nothing. So, lately, I been like, you know what? I’d rather sit with my little baby girl and read a book with her even if we have to read it over and over again because that’s what she likes to do, than try to look up what’s going on, who’s saying what. For what? ”

Juan prays that immigration laws will change. He still dreams of going to a US college, teaching bilingual math and coaching track.

http://www.theworld.org/2011/09/immigration-deportation-policy/

A half-dozen ways in which 9/11 changed the immigration landscape

By Leslie Berestein Rojas
89.3 KPCC, Southern California Public Radio
September 9, 2011

Last May, after the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan, I published a short list of some of the most important ways in which the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that he masterminded radically altered the immigration landscape.

The legislative, policy and other changes that have occurred since are almost too numerous to list. Last month, the Migration Policy Institute released a report detailing some of the policy highlights, more than a dozen changes ranging from skyrocketing border and interior immigration enforcement costs to changes in the way we travel (for example, U.S. citizens must now present passports when returning by land, even if it’s from a quick day trip to Tijuana).

Beyond immigration policy, there have been legislative changes such as the still-active Patriot Act, along with less direct but powerful shifts in the nation’s immigration climate that have had led to enforcement-friendly policies and increasingly strict immigration measures at the state level. Less quantifiable, but important still, have been attitudinal changes, particularly toward Muslims, which continue to affect immigrants today.

I’ve updated this list detailing some of the key changes, taking in major post-9/11 shifts in immigration policy, legislation and beyond:

1) The end of INS, the beginning of DHS: The discovery that some of the 9/11 hijackers were in the country on visas that shouldn’t have been granted led to the end of the decades-old Immigration and Naturalization Service in early 2003. Until then, the agency had overseen all immigration functions from visas to border security. It was replaced by the much broader Department of Homeland Security.

Three sub-agencies within DHS were given authority over immigration matters: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (overseeing customs and border security, including the U.S. Border Patrol); U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, overseeing functions such as naturalization and the granting of legal residency; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, which is responsible for immigration enforcement in the United States, oversees immigrant detention and deportation, and is responsible for enforcement policies such as Secure Communities and 287(g).

2) The Patriot Act: Less than two months after the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001,” a controversial measure referred to as the Patriot Act.

This piece of legislation expanded the federal government’s ability to conduct domestic surveillance. Among other things, it allowed law enforcement agents greater ability to conduct wiretaps and to search telephone, e-mail, financial, medical and other records, as well as to conduct property searches without advising the owner. It also made it easier for law enforcement and immigration authorities to detain and deport immigrants suspected of being connected to terrorism and placed greater scrutiny on foreign students. The Patriot Act has long been criticized by civil rights groups, who have alleged misuse and constitutional violations and complain that Middle Eastern immigrants are singled out.

In late May, the Obama administration extended three key provisions of the Patriot Act, including the use of roving wiretaps.

3) The REAL ID Act: This 2005 national security legislation that followed the Patriot Act revolved around establishing national standards for driver’s licenses and identification cards, but it had farther-reaching provisions. The legislation also made it more difficult for immigrants to obtain asylum, and broadened the definition of terrorism-related activities that could lead to detention and deportation. There was also a border security component, most notably a provision that allowed the Department of Homeland Security to waive any laws, environmental or otherwise, and litigation standing in the way of border fence construction.

A precedent was set in the fall of 2005, when then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff exercised the waiver authority in San Diego. This allowed for lawsuits challenging the filling in of a deep canyon with dirt in order to build fencing to be thrown out of court, leading to the costliest stretch of fence on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Other waivers cleared the way for additional U.S.-Mexico border fencing (much more of it, including a failed “virtual fence,” funded under the 2005 Secure Border Initiative); one REAL ID Act waiver authorized a roughly 470 mile stretch of fence. Proponents of border fencing, which was limited before 9/11, say it has helped bring down the number of illegal crossings; immigrant advocates, meanwhile, have long criticized border fencing as driving human smuggling into rougher terrain, leading to border-crossing deaths.

4) Increased immigrant detention and deportations: Under the Obama administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has carried out a record number of deportations. Behind these numbers are a series of ICE policies that kicked in after the agency’s creation in the wake of 9/11, policies that after the attacks focused on weeding out immigrants thought to pose a danger to society. Among these has been a push starting in 2003 to track down “fugitive” immigrants, people who missed an immigration hearing or ignored a deportation order.

The embattled Secure Communities program, also intended to weed out people with criminal records (though many detained have lacked these) is another product of the post-9/11 focus on immigrants believed to present a security threat. In the intervening years, the number of ICE detainees has skyrocketed, as have government contracts with private detention contractors. While detention demand began ticking up in the late 1990s following policy changes, just between 2005 and 2008, the ICE detention budget tripled. In fiscal year 2010, which ended last Sept. 30, ICE deported more than 392,000 people, about half of whom had criminal records.

5) Cooperation between federal immigration officials and local police: The escalating controversy over Secure Communities comes out of a post-9/11 increase in cooperation between federal immigration authorities and state and local agencies. The most public examples of this cooperation are Secure Communities, which allows for the fingerprints of people booked into local jails to be shared with immigration officials. Initiated in 2008, the program is rooted in the post-9/11 drive for national security, but its critics say that while its intent is to net criminals, it lands far too many non-criminals in the deportation net. Cities and states that have tried to back out of the program have not been allowed to; the federal government recently rescinded all state contracts for the program staying participation is mandatory.

Another notable federal-local cooperation is a program known as 287(g), which provides local authorities with ICE training, is used by the county to identify deportable jail inmates. Unlike Secure Communities, agencies’ participation in this program is voluntary. As of late last year, there were 69 law enforcement agencies participating in 24 states; Secure Communities is by now operating in more than 1,500 jurisdictions, according to ICE, whichplans to continue rolling the program out nationwide.

6) Anti-Muslim discrimination: In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes jumped to a record 481 in 2001, according to one news report. The number of hate crimes against Muslims hasn’t been as high since. However, Middle Eastern immigrants in the United States, along with other groups, have since felt targeted for numerous reasons.

Some of the discrimination Muslims in the U.S. have felt since came from institutional sources: In 2002, the federal government launched the since-canceled National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), also referred to as “Special Registration.” Non-citizen men from predominantly Muslim special-interest countries were required to register with their nearest INS office, a program that landed thousands in deportation. Another temporary policy targeting Muslims was Operation Liberty Shield, which required the detention of asylum seekers from nations – again, mostly Muslim countries – where al Qaeda was known to operate. Civil rights advocates have also criticized the surveillance of mosques and Muslim groups by law enforcement officials, including the FBI and, most recently, the New York Police Department.

Overall anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States has spiked more recently, with protests against the building of mosques, from the heated protests that took place in New York City near Ground Zero last year to smaller protests in places like Temecula. Earlier this year, an angry mob shouted “Go back home!” to Muslims attending a fundraising dinner in Yorba Linda. Several non-Muslim Sikhs, who wear turbans, have also been targeted by mistake over the years. This year, two elderly Sikh men died after being shot in March by an unknown assailant as they went for a stroll in their Sacramento suburb.

http://multiamerican.scpr.org/2011/09/a-half-dozen-ways-in-which-911-changed-immigration/

Many deportees unwittingly waive rights, report says

More than 160,000 immigrants signed so-called stipulated removals, many of them without legal representation or understanding the documents, according to the National Immigration Law Center and legal experts.
By Paloma Esquivel
The Los Angeles Times
September 9, 2011

The U.S. has deported more than 160,000 immigrants, the vast majority of whom had no legal representation — and signed documents they may not have understood — under a program that carries severe penalties should they reenter the country, a report released Thursday said.

According to the National Immigration Law Center and professors at Stanford Law School and Western State University College of Law, immigrants often signed the so-called stipulated removals because they believed it was the only way to avoid prolonged detention. But by agreeing to the removal order, immigrants can be barred from returning to the U.S. and be subject to criminal prosecution for illegal reentry.

"All they hear is that they face more time in detention, often far away from family and friends, unless they agree to their own removal," said Jennifer Lee Koh, an assistant professor at Western State.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Nicole Navas said in a statement that the agency had not had a chance to fully review the study. But, she wrote, "an alien's decision to accept a stipulated removal is strictly voluntary. Before an alien agrees to such an order, ICE procedures require that the process be fully explained to the individual, through an interpreter if necessary."

However Karen Tumlin, managing attorney at the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles, said she interviewed more than a dozen detainees who signed stipulated removal orders at the Mira Loma Detention Center in Lancaster — none of whom understood what they had agreed to.

"They didn't know what a stipulated order of removal was," she said. "They had absolutely no idea what the legal consequences were."

Some, Tumlin said, thought they were waiting to take their cases before an immigration judge.

The report was based on interviews and a review of more than 20,000 pages of documents made public in a lawsuit filed under the federal Freedom of Information Act. According to those records, nearly 96% of the immigrants selected for stipulated removal in the last decade did not have lawyers. Immigrants who are unrepresented have to rely heavily on information made available to them by officers inside detention facilities.

One document, a two-page script to inform immigrants about stipulated removal, is written in ungrammatical Spanish and says inaccurately that only people who are married to a U.S. resident or citizen, or whose parents or siblings are residents or citizens, can fight deportation.

"Only these three groups can make an application to fix their papers!" the script reads. "You are completely within your right to see the judge but I want you to be aware that this process will take from 6 months to 3 years."

Claudia Valenzuela, an attorney representing an 18-year-old Florida man who recently was deported to Mexico after signing a stipulated removal order, said she was working to get the case reopened and the order rescinded.

The man, who came to the U.S. when he was 4, has a daughter who was born in the U.S. He might have been eligible for some type of relief had he not signed the removal, Valenzuela said.

"From the time he was detained to the time he was ordered removed and physically deported from the country, four days went by," she said. "He did not understand he was waiving away all his rights."

The authors of the report made several recommendations to improve due process protections for immigrants facing stipulated removal, including issuing protocols for using certified interpreters where needed and allowing detainees to attend legal rights presentations before they are offered the removal option.

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Immigration Shift Hasn't Trickled Down to Border Patrol

By Julian Aguilar
The Texas Tribune
7 September 2011

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced in June it was urging prosecutors to use discretion when placing illegal immigrants in deportation proceedings, skeptics urged caution. We’ve heard this before, they claimed.

People like Roxann Lara give them one more reason to say they were right.

Lara, originally from Delicias, Chihuahua, is five months pregnant and the mother of two U.S. citizen children. She is in the country illegally because she overstayed a visa. Her attorney says she’s the “poster child” for leniency under the June directive.

Instead, Lara was detained and processed by immigration authorities in Anthony, N.M., last week after she admitted to having expired documents when local police and U.S. Border Patrol agents came to the door looking for her sister.

It means the “left hand isn’t aware of what the right hand is doing,” said Carlos Spector, Lara’s El Paso-based attorney. "I think it’s important to note that this [directive] has not reached the lowest levels of ICE... because [Border Patrol agents] are still picking up pregnant women."

In the June directive, ICE Director John Morton told prosecutors to evaluate several factors when determining which illegal immigrants to place in deportation proceedings, part of a plan to concentrate ICE’s finite resources on removing the most dangerous criminal aliens. These factors included the immigrant’s health, their children’s immigration status, how long they had been in the country, and whether or not they were “low profile” — the government’s term for non-violent, non-essential deportees. That memo was followed last month by an announcement that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and Customs and Border Protection, would review the cases of the 300,000 people currently in deportation proceedings to determine if any should be released and subsequently allowed to apply for work authorization.

Lara was released from detention, but not until she was hospitalized after becoming panic stricken and physically ill during her stay. She says an agent threatened to deport her to Ciudad Juárez, where drug cartel violence is widespread.

“He said, ‘We have to go get your kids.’ I said ‘No, do what you want with me but leave my kids alone,’” a sobbing Lara told the Tribune by telephone from El Paso. “I told him I was sick and he said it didn’t matter to him.”

Spector said despite Lara's release, she has been issued a notice to appear before a judge. He said he intends to ask the judge to dismiss the case based on the Morton memo.

“The new policy says they shouldn’t pick up pregnant women or sick people," Spector said. "What we want to see and ask is, what does the Border Patrol think of the Morton memo?”

When asked if the Border Patrol has amended it’s policies since the Morton memo was issued, a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol El Paso sector told the Tribune agents are required to detain anyone who is unauthorized to be in the country. They can't give out warnings the way police officers can, he said; the immigration courts are the ones that ultimately make the decisions.

In Lara's case, Agent Ramiro Cordero said, Border Patrol "did exactly what we were supposed to do. If the courts grant that person some type of legal document, then the system works." Cordero added that the Morton memo was directed at federal prosecutors, who are overseen by ICE. U.S. Border Patrol, he said, is under the purview of Customs and Border Protection.

"Until there is policy and guidance from DHS, we still do what we have to do," he said.

“Not a revolutionary concept”

By the government’s own admission, internal policy changes can be slow-going. The agency's plan for reviewing deportation cases is still being crafted, so no individual cases have been closed, according to a Department of Homeland Security spokesman who asked not to be identified.

Immigration policy experts say they’re not surprised that there hasn’t been an immediate and sweeping change in policy. The Morton memo doesn’t reinvent the system, they say.

“Prosecutorial discretion is not new. It’s not a revolutionary concept," said Muzaffar Chishti, an attorney and director of the Migration Policy Institute at the New York University School of Law. "In an immigration context there have been guidelines about discretion for a very long time.”

A prosecutorial discretion memo issued in November 2000 by then-Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner Doris Meissner, now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said the agency had finite resources, and prosecuting all immigration cases was “not possible.” It instructed prosecutors to consider immigrants' criminal history, immigration history, cooperation with authorities, military service and humanitarian concerns, like conditions in the peron's home country and their health.

But when the Morton memo was issued in June, it still caused an uproar among Republican hardliners like U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, who called it “backdoor amnesty” and introduced a still-pending bill to dilute the administration’s immigration enforcement powers.

What's different about the agency's current policy, Chishti said, is that the government has stated it will review pending cases, not just use new standards for future ones. But he said it’s unclear how these policies will be implemented at the local level.

“The most critical part of this policy is going to be how they monitor it in the field,” Chishti said. “How are you going to notify people... and what is the accountability if an officer chooses not to exercise the discretion on the basis of the guidelines?"

Lara’s case indicates that, at least in certain Border Patrol sectors, the jury is still out.

http://www.texastribune.org/immigration-in-texas/immigration/despite-policy-shift-deportations-proceedings-cont/

Change to deportation policy draws mixed reaction in Greeley

By Nate A. Miller
The Tribune
Thursday, September 1, 2011

The recent Obama administration decision to allow many illegal immigrants who faced potential deportation despite having no criminal record to stay in the country will make an important difference for Weld County immigrants, University of Northern Colorado Hispanic studies professor Priscilla Falcon said.

“I think we went through a period there, maybe from 2006-2009, where there were many families that were deported,” she said. “If there is less of the workplace raids, then we won’t see so many families that are having one of the parents deported.”

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Aug. 18 that the department will focus on deporting illegal immigrants who have criminal records or pose a threat to national security or public safety.

Weld law enforcement officials, however, say the decision will not change much on the ground.

“It is a change in stated policy, or in formal policy, but it’s not a change in practical reality,” said Weld District Attorney and former U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck. “The feds have always focused almost exclusively on the jails and catching people who have a criminal record. They’ve done some workplace enforcement.”

ICE officials say it will allow for more efficient use of resources to prevent illicit trade from crossing the border and to focus on security, according to a fact sheet from Immigration and Customs Enforcement about the policy shift.

Buck, who made a name for himself with aggressive prosecution of immigration-related identity theft before running for the Senate in 2010, said even the 2006 ICE raid at the then-Swift meatpacking plant focused on identity theft and did not cast a wide net to simply catch anyone in the country illegally.

“There has always been this acceptance that the feds didn’t have the resources to deal with overall immigration issues,” he said. “Rather, they were going to focus their resources on those who were a threat to this country.”

In 2007, Brazil-based JBS purchased the meatpacking plant from Swift.

The decision to focus deportation efforts on high-priority cases comes amid protests primarily from immigrant communities that the authorities have been too focused on deporting people whose only offense is being in the country without the proper documents — usually a civil offense — or who have been arrested for traffic violations or other misdemeanors.

There also have been widespread complaints about ICE’s Secure Communities program, which uses fingerprints collected in state and local jails to identify illegal immigrants in a federal immigration database.

Some states have balked at the program, arguing it requires them to enforce federal laws. There have also been complaints that immigrants arrested for simple misdemeanors can end up in deportation proceedings.

Weld County Sheriff John Cooke said he supports the Secure Communities initiative, which would mean when local authorities arrest people their fingerprints are sent to the FBI and ICE, regardless of where they were born.

“I’m wholeheartedly behind the Secure Communities that ICE wants to do,” he said. “Right now what we do is we ask someone when they get booked in where they were born. If they’re foreign born, it doesn’t matter where, it could be Canada, and if they tell us that they are foreign born, then we send that information to ICE. Then ICE takes it from there, basically. Under the Secure Communities, everybody gets sent. If you were arrested, your fingerprints would get sent to the FBI and to ICE, which is a lot better because it’s not self-reporting.”

He has mixed feelings, however, about the decision to refocus deportation efforts.

“ICE has limited resources. They only have so many people. They only have so many agents. They only have so much they can do with so many illegal immigrants that are here, so you’ve got to prioritize. That’s on the good part. They’re prioritizing. They’re focusing on criminals that need to be taken out of our society.”

On the other hand, Cooke said, the policy change doesn’t really address the problem of illegal immigration.

“If somebody comes here illegally, we’re a nation of laws,” he said.” If they come and break our laws, they should be suffering the consequences of breaking our laws and be deported back. I guess my frustration is that the federal government needs to do a better job on the front end, securing the border.”

Buck also said it’s important to enforce the laws on the books and the federal government should do a better job of addressing illegal immigration.

“My first part of the answer would be to find a way to get more people into this country legally,” Buck said. “In other words we need to improve our system and then also create a disincentive for the people who do it the wrong way.”

This would include giving employers a better way to check on whether someone is in the country legally, like an expanded version of the system known as E-verify, which allows employers to check the immigration status of prospective employees.

“Right now E-verify just checks to make sure that someone’s name matches a Social Security number and matches a date of birth,” he said. “What we need is to have the various state databases communicating with each other so that same identity isn’t being used in 10 different states.”

Falcon said for the immigrant community, the policy shift will make a key difference by reducing the trauma that’s associated with events like the raid at Swift.

“I just think, upon reflection, that Swift raid really devastated the economic base of the Latino community in Greeley. It made a major impact,” she said. “What Janet Napolitano announced, my reading of that is that they’re stepping back from the workplace raids. They’re going after more of the criminal element. If that is the case, then that’s a positive thing.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report

http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20110901/NEWS/709019937/1002&parentprofile=1001