Sheriff's custody assistants will continue to interview suspected undocumented inmates and pass their findings on to federal immigration officials for possible deportation under a program that began in 2006.
By Robert Faturechi
The Los Angeles Times
October 13, 2010
Despite protests from immigrant rights advocates, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors extended a collaboration Tuesday with federal officials to identify illegal immigrants who wind up in county jails.
Several dozen protesters attended the meeting to oppose a program in which non-sworn Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department employees interview suspected undocumented inmates and pass on their findings to immigration officials for possible deportation. Many said the Sheriff's Department risks isolating the county's immigrant communities by continuing the 4-year-old program.
But sheriff's officials touted the collaboration as a way to remove criminals from immigrant communities. The department resisted an initial proposal from federal officials that would have forced sheriff's employees to take on even more responsibility in processing illegal immigrants for possible deportation, including interviewing inmates before they were convicted. That practice, sheriff's officials and activists alike agreed, could have resulted in the deportation of undocumented inmates who had been jailed for crimes they did not commit.
"The sheriff does not want local law enforcement to enforce federal law," department spokesman Steve Whitmore said.
Since the program began in 2006, sheriff's custody assistants have interviewed more than 52,000 inmates, about 20,000 of whom have had holds placed on them by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Whitmore said gang members, high-level criminals and inmates who have somehow indicated they might be foreign-born are targeted for post-conviction immigration interviews.
But in a report released last year, more than a quarter of the inmates sent from jail to immigration custody during a one-year period were found to have been jailed on minor crimes.
Merrick Bobb, a special counsel to the county who headed up that report, said the department's stated priorities with the renewed agreement are targeting violent and high-level offenders.
"How it will work out in practice will remain to be seen," Bobb said.
But Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a conservative nonprofit group, said illegal immigrants should be deported no matter how serious their crimes.
"There seems to be this idea that unless you commit a heinous crime, you should be immune from any consequence for having violated the immigration law," he said. "The county sheriff should turn them over to federal immigration authorities."
The extension unanimously approved Tuesday is set to last three years, but county supervisors asked for regular reports from the Sheriff's Department to help ensure that inmates do not face deportation through the partnership before being convicted of a crime.
robert.faturechi@latimes.com
Showing posts with label Continuation of immigration policies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Continuation of immigration policies. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Secret Deportation Quotas, Program Failures and High Budget Costs from Local Immigration Enforcement Revealed in Recent Reports
By Suman Raghunathan
Progressive States
04/08/2010
Recent reports have raised serious concerns about program failures, secret deportation quotas and the high costs of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)'s controversial 287(g) program, which trains and authorizes state and local police departments to enforce federal immigration law.
Reports Detail 287(g) Failures: Just this past week, the Department of Homeland Security's own Office of the Inspector General published a report detailing how the 287(g) program lacks federal oversight, is poorly managed by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), lacks consistent implementation guidelines in different jurisdictions, and has failed to take any action against law enforcement agencies that are clearly violating the terms of their agreements with ICE. This parallels a January 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that highlighted failures to meet the program's stated goals, leading to state and local police officers frequently detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants for traffic violations and other minor crimes.
Secret Memo Reveals Deportation Quotas: Even worse, the program appears to have been abused as part of a costly mass-deportation dragnet by federal officials to meet deportation quotas, according to an internal government memo leaked to The Washington Post on March 27th. In the memo, James Chaparro, head of ICE detention and removal operations, outlined annual deportation quotas of 400,000, bemoaned the low level of deportations in the current year, and directed ICE regional offices to redirect their attention toward rounding up undocumented immigrants who have not committed any crimes.
This memo directly contradicts pledges from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the head of ICE, John Morton, to focus immigration enforcement on undocumented immigrants with violent records. In the face of an outcry from immigrant rights advocates and calls for Morton's resignation, ICE almost immediately backpedaled and sought to distance itself from Chaparro's remarks by retracting the memo. Yet the next day, Chaparro issued another memo restating his previous strategy and goals for immigration enforcement.
287(g) Focus on Minor Infractions Hurting Local Budgets: In fact, evidence indicates that 287(g) efforts have been misused to target minor offenses rather than violent criminals, which has ended up increasing local budget costs for jurisdictions participating in the program. According to a University of North Carolina analysis, 87% of all individuals booked through 287(g) in the state were charged with misdemeanors, while only 13% were charged with felonies. In Gaston County, North Carolina, 95% of those charged and apprehended through the program committed misdemeanors - 60% of them for traffic violations that did not include drunk driving.
As an Immigration Policy Center analysis details, the 287(g) program operates in 67 jurisdictions in 24 states. The program has frequently increased costs for state and local police departments, since ICE does not provide funding for police departments to implement 287(g) programs and other immigration enforcement initiatives. In addition, the program has eroded more effective community policing practices and encouraged racial profiling - often sweeping immigrants with legal status and US citizens into immigration enforcement actions.
A University of North Carolina Latino Migration Project analysis notes the program's costs in Alamance County, North Carolina totaled $4.8 million the first year alone. Mecklenburg County, NC devotes an estimated $5.5 million annually to implement its 287(g) program. A Brookings Institute report found Virginia's Prince William County had to raise property taxes by 5 % and dip into its 'rainy day' fund to cover higher-than-anticipated costs for the 287(g) program, which totaled $6.4 million the first year alone, $1.4 million more than initial estimates. Maricopa County, Arizona's infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his draconian approach to implementing their 287(g) program created a $1.3 million budget deficit in just three months, according to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of investigative articles from the East Valley Tribune. States and localities who enter into 287(g) agreements also often incur indirect expenses such as litigation fees and reductions in local business revenues and sales taxes. For example, undocumented immigrants in the metropolitan Chicago area spend $2.89 billion annually on goods and services alone, creating an additional 31,908 jobs in the local economy. And North Carolina's Latino residents contribute an estimated $9.2 billion annually to the state's economy. Apprehending and eventually deporting undocumented immigrants means they are no longer consumers who contribute to state and local tax coffers every time they buy local goods.
State and Local Communities Turning to Better Approaches: A number of local communities have recently opted out of the program due to its high costs, including Morris County, New Jersey and Houston, Texas. The Board of Commissioners of Chatham County, North Carolina rejected adopting a 287(g) program in January 2009, citing "a lack of fiscal resources" and the "high risk of civil liability" stemming from possible lawsuits against the county. As PSN noted last fall, many states are instead focusing on community policing approaches that seek to collaborate with immigrant communities to lower crime at far lower cost than pursuing punitive anti-immigrant enforcement policies encouraged by the 287(g) program. Such an approach to criminal justice in immigrant communities is far more likely to be a success, especially in light of the 287(g) program's widespread failures.
http://progressivestates.org/node/24896
Progressive States
04/08/2010
Recent reports have raised serious concerns about program failures, secret deportation quotas and the high costs of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)'s controversial 287(g) program, which trains and authorizes state and local police departments to enforce federal immigration law.
Reports Detail 287(g) Failures: Just this past week, the Department of Homeland Security's own Office of the Inspector General published a report detailing how the 287(g) program lacks federal oversight, is poorly managed by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), lacks consistent implementation guidelines in different jurisdictions, and has failed to take any action against law enforcement agencies that are clearly violating the terms of their agreements with ICE. This parallels a January 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that highlighted failures to meet the program's stated goals, leading to state and local police officers frequently detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants for traffic violations and other minor crimes.
Secret Memo Reveals Deportation Quotas: Even worse, the program appears to have been abused as part of a costly mass-deportation dragnet by federal officials to meet deportation quotas, according to an internal government memo leaked to The Washington Post on March 27th. In the memo, James Chaparro, head of ICE detention and removal operations, outlined annual deportation quotas of 400,000, bemoaned the low level of deportations in the current year, and directed ICE regional offices to redirect their attention toward rounding up undocumented immigrants who have not committed any crimes.
This memo directly contradicts pledges from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the head of ICE, John Morton, to focus immigration enforcement on undocumented immigrants with violent records. In the face of an outcry from immigrant rights advocates and calls for Morton's resignation, ICE almost immediately backpedaled and sought to distance itself from Chaparro's remarks by retracting the memo. Yet the next day, Chaparro issued another memo restating his previous strategy and goals for immigration enforcement.
287(g) Focus on Minor Infractions Hurting Local Budgets: In fact, evidence indicates that 287(g) efforts have been misused to target minor offenses rather than violent criminals, which has ended up increasing local budget costs for jurisdictions participating in the program. According to a University of North Carolina analysis, 87% of all individuals booked through 287(g) in the state were charged with misdemeanors, while only 13% were charged with felonies. In Gaston County, North Carolina, 95% of those charged and apprehended through the program committed misdemeanors - 60% of them for traffic violations that did not include drunk driving.
As an Immigration Policy Center analysis details, the 287(g) program operates in 67 jurisdictions in 24 states. The program has frequently increased costs for state and local police departments, since ICE does not provide funding for police departments to implement 287(g) programs and other immigration enforcement initiatives. In addition, the program has eroded more effective community policing practices and encouraged racial profiling - often sweeping immigrants with legal status and US citizens into immigration enforcement actions.
A University of North Carolina Latino Migration Project analysis notes the program's costs in Alamance County, North Carolina totaled $4.8 million the first year alone. Mecklenburg County, NC devotes an estimated $5.5 million annually to implement its 287(g) program. A Brookings Institute report found Virginia's Prince William County had to raise property taxes by 5 % and dip into its 'rainy day' fund to cover higher-than-anticipated costs for the 287(g) program, which totaled $6.4 million the first year alone, $1.4 million more than initial estimates. Maricopa County, Arizona's infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his draconian approach to implementing their 287(g) program created a $1.3 million budget deficit in just three months, according to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of investigative articles from the East Valley Tribune. States and localities who enter into 287(g) agreements also often incur indirect expenses such as litigation fees and reductions in local business revenues and sales taxes. For example, undocumented immigrants in the metropolitan Chicago area spend $2.89 billion annually on goods and services alone, creating an additional 31,908 jobs in the local economy. And North Carolina's Latino residents contribute an estimated $9.2 billion annually to the state's economy. Apprehending and eventually deporting undocumented immigrants means they are no longer consumers who contribute to state and local tax coffers every time they buy local goods.
State and Local Communities Turning to Better Approaches: A number of local communities have recently opted out of the program due to its high costs, including Morris County, New Jersey and Houston, Texas. The Board of Commissioners of Chatham County, North Carolina rejected adopting a 287(g) program in January 2009, citing "a lack of fiscal resources" and the "high risk of civil liability" stemming from possible lawsuits against the county. As PSN noted last fall, many states are instead focusing on community policing approaches that seek to collaborate with immigrant communities to lower crime at far lower cost than pursuing punitive anti-immigrant enforcement policies encouraged by the 287(g) program. Such an approach to criminal justice in immigrant communities is far more likely to be a success, especially in light of the 287(g) program's widespread failures.
http://progressivestates.org/node/24896
Friday, April 9, 2010
Immigration Agents Are Going Rogue
Scandal over ICE-issued deportation quotas for field officers, calling into question whether Obama is truly focused on criminals and abusive employers.
By Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, Andrea Nill, and Alex Seitz-Wald
Alternet
April 8, 2010
Last Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a damning critique of the federal 287(g) program that deputizes local and state police to enforce immigration law after entering into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The OIG's report couldn't have come at a worse time for ICE officials. The week started with a leaked memo revealing that ICE issued deportation quotas for field officers, directly calling into question pledges made by the Obama administration to keep enforcement focused on criminals and abusive employers. Then, Texas Appleseed released a report indicating that the "incompetence" of mentally ill detained immigrants "is routinely ignored by immigration judges and deportation officers." Two days later, the New York Times revealed that over 30 Haitians had been languishing in immigration detention for months after being accidentally ushered onto a U.S.-bound plane by American Marines. For immigrants and immigration advocates frustrated by the lack of immigration reform, the OIG's report added "insulted to injury" at the end of an embarrassing week for ICE and left many to conclude that ICE is "more rogue than right."
BUSH-ERA DEPORTATION NUMBERS: Since coming into office, the Obama administration has shied away from the controversial work-site raids of the Bush administration. Instead, both President Obama and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano have promised to focus on pursuing undocumented immigrants who pose a danger to national security. Nonetheless, deportations have increased by 5 percent, reaching 387,790 removals in fiscal year 2009 -- two-thirds of which involved non-criminals. James Chaparro, head of ICE detention and removal operations, was upset that removals were still "well under the Agency's goal of 400,000," and said so in a memo that was eventually leaked to the Washington Post. Immigration advocates responded to the leaked deportation quotas with outrage. The Reform Immigration for America Campaign issued a press release stating, "ICE has a serious credibility problem as they continue to say one thing while doing another." The Immigration Policy Center issued a DHS "report card" stating, "[W]hile there is a policy shift at the top of DHS, it remains to be seen whether that shift will translate into a cultural shift throughout the agency." Frank Sharry of America's Voice urged the Obama administration to improve practices and performance by ICE, while other organizations called on the President to outright dismiss ICE head John Morton. Top ICE officials immediately denounced the leaked memo and clarified that it doesn't represent the agency's official policy. However, advocates remain largely skeptical of ICE leadership and the agency's capability to implement Obama's enforcement strategy.
287(G) BROKEN BEYOND REPAIR: In early 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report criticizing ICE for failing to provide local police participating in the 287(g) program with clearly defined objectives or a consistent system of supervision. "Contrary to the objective of the program," the GAO report found that participating local police were removing immigrants for minor violations amidst rampant allegations of discrimination and racial profiling instead of curbing serious crime committed by "removable aliens." Napolitano responded by announcing new objectives and guidelines aimed at "providing uniform policies" that prioritized the deportation of immigrants who commit serious crimes. The new OIG report indicates that, despite recent improvements, little has changed, and "significant challenges in administering the 287(g) program continue to exist." In fact, the report definitively stated that "ICE cannot be assured that the 287(g) program is meeting its intended purpose, or that resources are being appropriately targeted toward aliens who pose the greatest risk to public safety and the community." The report also found that little thought has been given to the protection of civil rights and civil liberties throughout the program's implementation, and "287(g) officers at several program sites were not knowledgeable about the asylum process, immigration benefits, and victim and witness protections." Although civil rights and immigration advocates weren't surprised by OIG's findings, the report was the last straw. Several organizations believe the program is "broken beyond repair" and are calling on the Obama administration to terminate the program once and for all.
ATTACKS FROM THE RIGHT: In the past, Morton has accurately pointed out that he "can get criticized on the same issue from both sides on the same day." Throughout the past week, Morton has probably felt the sting from both sides on a daily basis. The same weekend Chaparro's memo leaked, a prominent Arizona rancher was shot and killed while in his SUV near the Mexican border. The despicable act of violence immediately prompted anti-immigration hawks like former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo to describe the murder as having been committed by an undocumented immigrant, despite the lack of suspect and leads. Tancredo took his demands a step farther by calling for Napolitano's dismissal, accusing her of lying about border security in order to move immigration reform forward. However, Napolitano has never said that DHS's work at the border is done. What she has said is that over the past few years, the U.S. has seen "improve[d] immigration enforcement and border security within the current legal framework." Ultimately, the agency's inconsistent application of the Obama administration's promises isn't just the result of a few "ICE cowboys" carrying out their own priorities, it's also the natural result of an agency that is stuck enforcing bad immigration laws within a broken system. "We will never have fully effective law enforcement or national security as long as so many millions remain in the shadows," Napolitano has stated. Throwing more money and boots at the border might temporarily shut restrictionists like Tancredo up, but in the absence of immigration reform, the tragedies associated with the nation's defective immigration laws will continue to mount on both sides of the debate.
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/146358/immigration_agents_are_going_rogue
By Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, Andrea Nill, and Alex Seitz-Wald
Alternet
April 8, 2010
Last Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a damning critique of the federal 287(g) program that deputizes local and state police to enforce immigration law after entering into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The OIG's report couldn't have come at a worse time for ICE officials. The week started with a leaked memo revealing that ICE issued deportation quotas for field officers, directly calling into question pledges made by the Obama administration to keep enforcement focused on criminals and abusive employers. Then, Texas Appleseed released a report indicating that the "incompetence" of mentally ill detained immigrants "is routinely ignored by immigration judges and deportation officers." Two days later, the New York Times revealed that over 30 Haitians had been languishing in immigration detention for months after being accidentally ushered onto a U.S.-bound plane by American Marines. For immigrants and immigration advocates frustrated by the lack of immigration reform, the OIG's report added "insulted to injury" at the end of an embarrassing week for ICE and left many to conclude that ICE is "more rogue than right."
BUSH-ERA DEPORTATION NUMBERS: Since coming into office, the Obama administration has shied away from the controversial work-site raids of the Bush administration. Instead, both President Obama and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano have promised to focus on pursuing undocumented immigrants who pose a danger to national security. Nonetheless, deportations have increased by 5 percent, reaching 387,790 removals in fiscal year 2009 -- two-thirds of which involved non-criminals. James Chaparro, head of ICE detention and removal operations, was upset that removals were still "well under the Agency's goal of 400,000," and said so in a memo that was eventually leaked to the Washington Post. Immigration advocates responded to the leaked deportation quotas with outrage. The Reform Immigration for America Campaign issued a press release stating, "ICE has a serious credibility problem as they continue to say one thing while doing another." The Immigration Policy Center issued a DHS "report card" stating, "[W]hile there is a policy shift at the top of DHS, it remains to be seen whether that shift will translate into a cultural shift throughout the agency." Frank Sharry of America's Voice urged the Obama administration to improve practices and performance by ICE, while other organizations called on the President to outright dismiss ICE head John Morton. Top ICE officials immediately denounced the leaked memo and clarified that it doesn't represent the agency's official policy. However, advocates remain largely skeptical of ICE leadership and the agency's capability to implement Obama's enforcement strategy.
287(G) BROKEN BEYOND REPAIR: In early 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report criticizing ICE for failing to provide local police participating in the 287(g) program with clearly defined objectives or a consistent system of supervision. "Contrary to the objective of the program," the GAO report found that participating local police were removing immigrants for minor violations amidst rampant allegations of discrimination and racial profiling instead of curbing serious crime committed by "removable aliens." Napolitano responded by announcing new objectives and guidelines aimed at "providing uniform policies" that prioritized the deportation of immigrants who commit serious crimes. The new OIG report indicates that, despite recent improvements, little has changed, and "significant challenges in administering the 287(g) program continue to exist." In fact, the report definitively stated that "ICE cannot be assured that the 287(g) program is meeting its intended purpose, or that resources are being appropriately targeted toward aliens who pose the greatest risk to public safety and the community." The report also found that little thought has been given to the protection of civil rights and civil liberties throughout the program's implementation, and "287(g) officers at several program sites were not knowledgeable about the asylum process, immigration benefits, and victim and witness protections." Although civil rights and immigration advocates weren't surprised by OIG's findings, the report was the last straw. Several organizations believe the program is "broken beyond repair" and are calling on the Obama administration to terminate the program once and for all.
ATTACKS FROM THE RIGHT: In the past, Morton has accurately pointed out that he "can get criticized on the same issue from both sides on the same day." Throughout the past week, Morton has probably felt the sting from both sides on a daily basis. The same weekend Chaparro's memo leaked, a prominent Arizona rancher was shot and killed while in his SUV near the Mexican border. The despicable act of violence immediately prompted anti-immigration hawks like former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo to describe the murder as having been committed by an undocumented immigrant, despite the lack of suspect and leads. Tancredo took his demands a step farther by calling for Napolitano's dismissal, accusing her of lying about border security in order to move immigration reform forward. However, Napolitano has never said that DHS's work at the border is done. What she has said is that over the past few years, the U.S. has seen "improve[d] immigration enforcement and border security within the current legal framework." Ultimately, the agency's inconsistent application of the Obama administration's promises isn't just the result of a few "ICE cowboys" carrying out their own priorities, it's also the natural result of an agency that is stuck enforcing bad immigration laws within a broken system. "We will never have fully effective law enforcement or national security as long as so many millions remain in the shadows," Napolitano has stated. Throwing more money and boots at the border might temporarily shut restrictionists like Tancredo up, but in the absence of immigration reform, the tragedies associated with the nation's defective immigration laws will continue to mount on both sides of the debate.
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/146358/immigration_agents_are_going_rogue
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Obama administration targets employers, not illegal workers; ICE officials set new quotas to deport illegal immigrants
4/07/2010
Lexology
In an effort to curtail deep declines in deportations, U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) Chief John Morton has set new quotas for Office of Detention and Removal (DRO) agents. There has always been a push to outdo the previous year’s accomplishments—it is often how budgets are justified—and for the year ending September 30, 2010, deportations are on pace to reach 310,000, far below both last year’s total of 387,000 and the agency’s stated goal of 400,000. In addition, Morton and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have signaled a retreat from earlier pledges to concentrate enforcement efforts on the most dangerous immigrants and those involved in criminal activity outside of their own illegal status, likely due to the increased costs and protracted deportation process associated with such criminals. Given the current administration’s policy against immigrant raids, ICE’s enforcement strategy will ramp up efforts to investigate employers.
The Obama administration has publicly, as well as privately, announced that it is more interested in investigating and fining employers for I-9 violations, I-9 policy errors and worker infractions rather than simply removing illegal aliens. In the last eight months, there have been thousands of audits of U.S. companies—some random, some aimed at certain industries and some for cause—aimed at garnering evidence regarding problems with the work authorization and/or immigration status of employees.
Focusing on large, employer audits and investigations rather than individual, home, street and factory raids condoned by the Bush administration, potential investigative strategies may include using data from E-Verify to locate multiple uses of identifying information or documentation, or auditing companies with significant numbers of Final Non-Confirmations (FNCs) of employees’ work eligibility.
This increase in audits, coupled with the hiring of thousands of “forensic auditors” by ICE to review documents and assess fines, only continues to support the position that every employer must have an I-9 policy in place, proper training and procedures to support that policy, and the ability to produce evidence of compliance within a short time. Companies should be wary of viewing a Notice of Inspection (NOI) as a mere administrative request. As a matter of fact, the recent trend has been to require that vast amounts of documentation be produced within three business days and extensions of that timeframe are regularly being denied. Ultimately, an employer receiving an NOI or facing an audit may want to seek legal counsel prior to producing requested information or materials in order to take steps to identify potential issues and reduce exposure and liability.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=efe39ec4-163f-4817-813a-2eab40928d72
Lexology
In an effort to curtail deep declines in deportations, U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) Chief John Morton has set new quotas for Office of Detention and Removal (DRO) agents. There has always been a push to outdo the previous year’s accomplishments—it is often how budgets are justified—and for the year ending September 30, 2010, deportations are on pace to reach 310,000, far below both last year’s total of 387,000 and the agency’s stated goal of 400,000. In addition, Morton and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have signaled a retreat from earlier pledges to concentrate enforcement efforts on the most dangerous immigrants and those involved in criminal activity outside of their own illegal status, likely due to the increased costs and protracted deportation process associated with such criminals. Given the current administration’s policy against immigrant raids, ICE’s enforcement strategy will ramp up efforts to investigate employers.
The Obama administration has publicly, as well as privately, announced that it is more interested in investigating and fining employers for I-9 violations, I-9 policy errors and worker infractions rather than simply removing illegal aliens. In the last eight months, there have been thousands of audits of U.S. companies—some random, some aimed at certain industries and some for cause—aimed at garnering evidence regarding problems with the work authorization and/or immigration status of employees.
Focusing on large, employer audits and investigations rather than individual, home, street and factory raids condoned by the Bush administration, potential investigative strategies may include using data from E-Verify to locate multiple uses of identifying information or documentation, or auditing companies with significant numbers of Final Non-Confirmations (FNCs) of employees’ work eligibility.
This increase in audits, coupled with the hiring of thousands of “forensic auditors” by ICE to review documents and assess fines, only continues to support the position that every employer must have an I-9 policy in place, proper training and procedures to support that policy, and the ability to produce evidence of compliance within a short time. Companies should be wary of viewing a Notice of Inspection (NOI) as a mere administrative request. As a matter of fact, the recent trend has been to require that vast amounts of documentation be produced within three business days and extensions of that timeframe are regularly being denied. Ultimately, an employer receiving an NOI or facing an audit may want to seek legal counsel prior to producing requested information or materials in order to take steps to identify potential issues and reduce exposure and liability.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=efe39ec4-163f-4817-813a-2eab40928d72
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Firm Stance on Illegal Immigrants Remains Policy
By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
Published: August 4, 2009
After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor.
A recent blitz of measures has antagonized immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who have opened a national campaign against them, including small street protests in New York and Los Angeles last week.
The administration recently undertook audits of employee paperwork at hundreds of businesses, expanded a program to verify worker immigration status that has been widely criticized as flawed, bolstered a program of cooperation between federal and local law enforcement agencies, and rejected proposals for legally binding rules governing conditions in immigration detention centers.
“We are expanding enforcement, but I think in the right way,” Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said in an interview.
Ms. Napolitano and other administration officials argue that no-nonsense immigration enforcement is necessary to persuade American voters to accept legislation that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, a measure they say Mr. Obama still hopes to advance late this year or early next.
That approach brings Mr. Obama around to the position that his Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, espoused during last year’s presidential campaign, a stance Mr. Obama rejected then as too hard on Latino and immigrant communities. (Mr. McCain did not respond to requests for comment.) Now the enforcement strategy has opened a political rift with some immigrant advocacy and Hispanic groups whose voters were crucial to the Obama victory.
“Our feelings are mixed at best,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, immigration director of the National Council of La Raza, which has joined in the criticism, aimed primarily at Ms. Napolitano. “We understand the need for sensible enforcement, but that does not mean expanding programs that often led to civil rights violations.”
Under Ms. Napolitano, immigration authorities have backed away from the Bush administration’s frequent mass factory roundups of illegal immigrant workers. But federal criminal prosecutions for immigration violations have actually increased this year, according to a study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan group that analyzes government data. In April, there were 9,037 immigration cases in the federal courts, an increase of 32 percent over April 2008, the group found.
Ms. Napolitano said in the interview that she would not call off immigration raids entirely as some Hispanic lawmakers have suggested. “We will continue to enforce the law and to look for effective ways to do it,” she said. “That’s my job.”
Ms. Napolitano, who as governor of Arizona sparred with Republican legislators seeking tougher steps against illegal immigration, said she was looking for ways to make enforcement programs inherited from President George W. Bush less heavy-handed. She also wants to put the enforcement focus on illegal-immigrant gang members and convicts and on employers who routinely hire illegal immigrants so as to exploit them.
Immigration authorities have started audits of employees’ hiring documents at more than 600 businesses nationwide. If an employer shows a pattern of hiring immigrants whose documents cannot be verified, a criminal investigation could follow, Ms. Napolitano said.
She has also expanded a federal program, known as E-Verify, that allows employers to verify electronically the identity information of new hires. Immigrant and business groups have sued to try to stop the program, saying the databases it relies on are riddled with inaccuracies that could lead to American citizens’ being denied jobs.
But officials of the Homeland Security Department say technological improvements have enhanced the speed and accuracy of E-Verify. With 137,000 employers now enrolled, only 0.3 percent of 6.4 million queries they have made so far in the 2009 fiscal year have resulted in denials that later proved incorrect, the officials say. That, opponents note, still means false denials for more than 19,000 people.
In addition, Ms. Napolitano has expanded a program that runs immigration checks on every person booked into local jails in some cities. And she recently announced the expansion of another program, known as 287(g) for the provision of the statute authorizing it, that allows for cooperation between federal immigration agents and state and local police agencies.
In extending 287(g), federal officials also drew up a new agreement, which all of some 66 localities currently participating have been asked to sign, that is intended to enhance federal oversight and clarify the priority on deporting those immigrants who are criminal fugitives or are already behind bars.
But advocates for immigrants said the new agreement did not include strong protections against ethnic profiling. They were surprised, they say, that Ms. Napolitano did not terminate the cooperation agreement with the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., Joe Arpaio, who calls himself the “toughest sheriff in America.” Latino groups in Arizona have accused Mr. Arpaio of using the program to harass Hispanic residents.
“If they reform the 287(g) program and Arpaio doesn’t change, it won’t be reform,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a national immigrant advocacy group.
Ms. Napolitano said it would be up to Mr. Arpaio, like other current participants, to decide whether to sign and abide by the new cooperation agreement. Separately, the Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation of Mr. Arpaio’s practices.
The Obama administration has received support for its immigration position from a leading Democrat, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, who will be writing an immigration overhaul bill later this year.
In preparation for what is likely to be a furious debate, Mr. Schumer has called on Democrats to show that they are serious about immigration enforcement and is even asking them to stop using the term “undocumented” to refer to immigrants who are here illegally.
Democrats have to “convince the American people there will not be new waves of illegal immigrants” after an overhaul passes, Mr. Schumer said in an interview.
Republicans who oppose any legalization of the status of illegal immigrants say they remain unimpressed by the new enforcement measures.
“After 20 years of broken promises, it takes a lot more than token gestures,” said Representative Brian P. Bilbray, a California Republican who heads an immigration caucus in the House.
Michael A. Olivas, a professor of immigration law at the University of Houston, said Hispanic advocates were irked by the enforcement measures because they had seen scant sign that the administration was also moving deliberately toward an overhaul bill.
“We literally have the worst of all worlds,” Professor Olivas said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/us/politics/04immig.html
The New York Times
Published: August 4, 2009
After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor.
A recent blitz of measures has antagonized immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who have opened a national campaign against them, including small street protests in New York and Los Angeles last week.
The administration recently undertook audits of employee paperwork at hundreds of businesses, expanded a program to verify worker immigration status that has been widely criticized as flawed, bolstered a program of cooperation between federal and local law enforcement agencies, and rejected proposals for legally binding rules governing conditions in immigration detention centers.
“We are expanding enforcement, but I think in the right way,” Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said in an interview.
Ms. Napolitano and other administration officials argue that no-nonsense immigration enforcement is necessary to persuade American voters to accept legislation that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, a measure they say Mr. Obama still hopes to advance late this year or early next.
That approach brings Mr. Obama around to the position that his Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, espoused during last year’s presidential campaign, a stance Mr. Obama rejected then as too hard on Latino and immigrant communities. (Mr. McCain did not respond to requests for comment.) Now the enforcement strategy has opened a political rift with some immigrant advocacy and Hispanic groups whose voters were crucial to the Obama victory.
“Our feelings are mixed at best,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, immigration director of the National Council of La Raza, which has joined in the criticism, aimed primarily at Ms. Napolitano. “We understand the need for sensible enforcement, but that does not mean expanding programs that often led to civil rights violations.”
Under Ms. Napolitano, immigration authorities have backed away from the Bush administration’s frequent mass factory roundups of illegal immigrant workers. But federal criminal prosecutions for immigration violations have actually increased this year, according to a study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan group that analyzes government data. In April, there were 9,037 immigration cases in the federal courts, an increase of 32 percent over April 2008, the group found.
Ms. Napolitano said in the interview that she would not call off immigration raids entirely as some Hispanic lawmakers have suggested. “We will continue to enforce the law and to look for effective ways to do it,” she said. “That’s my job.”
Ms. Napolitano, who as governor of Arizona sparred with Republican legislators seeking tougher steps against illegal immigration, said she was looking for ways to make enforcement programs inherited from President George W. Bush less heavy-handed. She also wants to put the enforcement focus on illegal-immigrant gang members and convicts and on employers who routinely hire illegal immigrants so as to exploit them.
Immigration authorities have started audits of employees’ hiring documents at more than 600 businesses nationwide. If an employer shows a pattern of hiring immigrants whose documents cannot be verified, a criminal investigation could follow, Ms. Napolitano said.
She has also expanded a federal program, known as E-Verify, that allows employers to verify electronically the identity information of new hires. Immigrant and business groups have sued to try to stop the program, saying the databases it relies on are riddled with inaccuracies that could lead to American citizens’ being denied jobs.
But officials of the Homeland Security Department say technological improvements have enhanced the speed and accuracy of E-Verify. With 137,000 employers now enrolled, only 0.3 percent of 6.4 million queries they have made so far in the 2009 fiscal year have resulted in denials that later proved incorrect, the officials say. That, opponents note, still means false denials for more than 19,000 people.
In addition, Ms. Napolitano has expanded a program that runs immigration checks on every person booked into local jails in some cities. And she recently announced the expansion of another program, known as 287(g) for the provision of the statute authorizing it, that allows for cooperation between federal immigration agents and state and local police agencies.
In extending 287(g), federal officials also drew up a new agreement, which all of some 66 localities currently participating have been asked to sign, that is intended to enhance federal oversight and clarify the priority on deporting those immigrants who are criminal fugitives or are already behind bars.
But advocates for immigrants said the new agreement did not include strong protections against ethnic profiling. They were surprised, they say, that Ms. Napolitano did not terminate the cooperation agreement with the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., Joe Arpaio, who calls himself the “toughest sheriff in America.” Latino groups in Arizona have accused Mr. Arpaio of using the program to harass Hispanic residents.
“If they reform the 287(g) program and Arpaio doesn’t change, it won’t be reform,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a national immigrant advocacy group.
Ms. Napolitano said it would be up to Mr. Arpaio, like other current participants, to decide whether to sign and abide by the new cooperation agreement. Separately, the Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation of Mr. Arpaio’s practices.
The Obama administration has received support for its immigration position from a leading Democrat, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, who will be writing an immigration overhaul bill later this year.
In preparation for what is likely to be a furious debate, Mr. Schumer has called on Democrats to show that they are serious about immigration enforcement and is even asking them to stop using the term “undocumented” to refer to immigrants who are here illegally.
Democrats have to “convince the American people there will not be new waves of illegal immigrants” after an overhaul passes, Mr. Schumer said in an interview.
Republicans who oppose any legalization of the status of illegal immigrants say they remain unimpressed by the new enforcement measures.
“After 20 years of broken promises, it takes a lot more than token gestures,” said Representative Brian P. Bilbray, a California Republican who heads an immigration caucus in the House.
Michael A. Olivas, a professor of immigration law at the University of Houston, said Hispanic advocates were irked by the enforcement measures because they had seen scant sign that the administration was also moving deliberately toward an overhaul bill.
“We literally have the worst of all worlds,” Professor Olivas said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/us/politics/04immig.html
Tuesday, May 1, 2001
Files Suggest Profiling of Latinos Led to Immigration Raids
The New York Times
Published: Tuesday, May 1, 2001
Before immigration agents raided Al's Deli on Seventh Avenue in Midtown Manhattan four years ago, they considered several factors. One was an anonymous tip alleging simply that 10 of the 20 or so workers were illegal Mexican immigrants. Another was their own surreptitious observations about the employees.
An agent who conducted a surveillance of the delicatessen, between 34th and 35th Streets, reported that some workers appeared to be of South or Central American descent. Some spoke Spanish, the agent noted, and others spoke English "with a foreign accent."
That was enough to prompt a raid of the deli in search of illegal immigrants.
The raid was a modest law enforcement success for the Immigration and Naturalization Service's New York district, which covers New York City and Long Island. It netted three illegal immigrants from Mexico and one from India from among the dozen workers present.
But the operation also followed a familiar pattern in the New York district, one that senior immigration officials say may have violated the federal agency's guidelines for avoiding ethnic or racial profiling. In this and other cases, agents appeared to rely almost exclusively on Latino appearance or foreign accents ? common attributes in New York and other American cities ? to reach a conclusion that workers could be illegal immigrants.
A review by The New York Times of 37 I.N.S. work site raids in the district showed that agents frequently cited skin color, use of Spanish, foreign accents and clothing "not typical of North America" as primary evidence that workers were likely to be undocumented.
Agents are required to have specific facts in hand or a reasonable suspicion to question someone's legal status, like nervousness when confronted with the immigration agency or unfamiliarity with the surroundings. Appearance may be one factor, but courts and the agency itself have said it is discriminatory to stop and search a person based on foreign appearance alone.
The files reviewed represent 20 percent of the district's 187 work site cases during a 30- month period from January 1997 through June 1999. The Immigration and Naturalization Service itself selected the cases as a random sample and provided them to Unite, the garment workers' union, as part of a settlement of a lawsuit alleging selective enforcement. The union provided them to The Times.
All but a handful of the 37 raids did result in the arrests of illegal workers and, unsurprisingly considering the criteria used, nearly everyone arrested during that period was Latino. And while some investigations grew out of detailed accusations by an informed tipster, in 30 of 37 cases a raid was carried out after agents made observations as simplistic as those at Al's Deli.
"Obviously, mere nationality and mere ethnicity by themselves, unsupported by other facts, are absolutely no basis for us to determine a person is illegally in the United States," said Joseph Greene, the assistant I.N.S. commissioner for investigations in Washington. "There's a whole body of jurisprudence that has heightened everybody's sensitivity to that," he added.
As the nation has become more diverse, largely because of an influx of legal immigrants from Latin America and Asia, the role that ethnic profiling may play in the enforcement of immigration laws has become an issue of mounting concern for advocates and the agency itself.
Nationality is clearly an element to be considered when looking for illegal immigrants: all illegal immigrants, by definition, are foreigners. But simply looking or sounding foreign, civil rights groups have argued, is not a sufficient basis for suspicion in a country where illegal immigrants may not differ in race, ethnicity or national origin from everyone else around them.
And as in other instances of profiling ? whether on the New Jersey Turnpike or the streets of Harlem ? there are costs to the innocent people swept up. In the New York raids and others like them, fully legal people are subjected to the humiliation of proving their status, sometimes after being jailed.
That happened to Maria Espinoza, a worker from Ecuador who was arrested during an immigration agency raid on the SPD Molding factory in Long Island City, Queens, in September 1999. She told agents she was a legal permanent resident, but was detained with other Latino workers and told she would be deported.
"At that moment, I did not carry my green card, but the people did not believe me," Mrs. Espinoza recalled this week. "They handcuffed me and arrested me." A computer check eventually confirmed her innocence, and she was released after spending three hours in detention.
A number of legal challenges have been brought recently in several states, including Arkansas and California, accusing the authorities of singling out Latinos for questioning about their immigration status.
A federal judge in Ohio recently ruled that state highway patrol officers, acting as de facto immigration agents, violated people's rights by routinely pulling over Latino drivers to question their immigration status. In one instance, legal migrant workers were stopped and had their green cards taken by officers who said they were fraudulent.
Courts have generally given I.N.S. officers themselves greater latitude to stop people for immigration checks, particularly near the border, but still set constitutional limits. The Supreme Court has ruled, for example, that I.N.S. agents working near the Mexican border may use their suspicion of someone's Mexican ancestry as one of the grounds for stopping that person, although it legally cannot be the only grounds.
In three more recent cases in California, federal judges said immigration agents committed "egregious" violations of the Fourth Amendment when they stopped individuals solely on the basis of their Latino appearance or foreign-sounding name.
"There may or may not be an argument for using ethnicity or national origin as one of the predicates for enforcement actions along the border," said Charles Kawasaki, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino group in Washington. "But you just can't make that case in the interior of the country," he added.
In its own rules, the immigration service specifically warns its agents not to assume that illegal immigrants can be identified by foreign appearance, language or ethnic characteristics.
"This is not science," said Mr. Greene, the agency enforcement chief. "It is art."
Edward J. McElroy, the New York district director, would not talk about the enforcement program. The district issued a statement saying that all of its work site raids are based on a "reasonable suspicion" that an employer is violating immigration laws.
Reasonable suspicion, the statement said, "can include the officer's training and experience, information from reliable informants and other communications, and or any other factors that in their totality would validate the investigation."
The immigration service, however, arrested almost no one but Latinos during the 30-month period covered by the random sample. According to a summary released as part of the settlement, Mexicans, Ecuadoreans and others from Central and South America accounted for 96 percent of the 2,907 people arrested in the district's 187 work site raids. That is a far bigger proportion than Latinos represent in either the city's illegal or legal population.
The preponderance of Latinos stands out even more sharply when the type of company that was raided is taken into consideration. Most of the businesses were garment factories, where employers' groups, unions and the immigration service all say that about half the employees are Asian, some of them illegal.
Yet in two and a half years of enforcement actions, the New York district arrested only two Chinese people during any of its work site raids.
While it is not surprising that immigration officers found illegal immigrants from Latin America working in the kinds of low-wage businesses they raided, it is not clear why they found Latinos almost exclusively.
"They are playing a numbers game," speculated Wing Lam, director of the Chinese Staff and Workers Association, which represents many undocumented Chinese workers. "It's easier to arrest a Latino and send him back than it is to send someone all the way back to China."
The New York files provided by Unite afforded a highly unusual opportunity to analyze the conduct of the local Immigration and Naturalization Service district, which fights to keep its operations secret. The tip sheets, investigative memos and other documents ? with the names of agents and immigrants blacked out for privacy ? provide at least a written record of how agents built their cases.
In many files there is no evidence that agents based their decision to raid a particular business on anything other than nonspecific tips and their own deductions drawn from the workers' ethnicity.
Liverpool Industries in Brooklyn, for instance, was raided in August 1997. Documents in the file showed that the company caught the attention of the immigration agency when it applied for permission to hire foreign workers to take jobs as brake operators. During a surveillance, an agent noted seeing several "Latin individuals" speaking Spanish and wrote in a report that "it was determined that some of these individuals were most likely undocumented aliens."
Two of the 70 employees were arrested in a raid.
In another case, the district received an anonymous tip that 15 workers at a Midtown garment factory called BNA Fashion were illegal immigrants from Mexico and Korea. The agent who conducted a surveillance at the factory reported that some employees were heard speaking Spanish.
"Many individuals," the agent also wrote, "had dark black hair, medium skin color and wore clothing typical of Mexican and Ecuadorean descent."
The factory was raided. Seven of the 35 workers were arrested, 3 from Ecuador and 4 from Mexico.
An agent checking a tip about undocumented workers at H.C. Contracting, a Midtown garment factory, noted that Spanish music was playing on a radio and 40 to 50 of the 70 employees "appeared to be of Central or South American descent." Those workers, the agent added, may support the allegation of illegal immigrants.
"The I.N.S. seems to equate Latino physical and cultural characteristics with illegality ? that is, with being an undocumented immigrant," said Michael J. Wishnie, a director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the New York University Law School.
The clinic represents two union members who are fighting deportation on the grounds that they and other Latinos were improperly singled out for arrest during the H.C. Contracting raid in 1998.
In a few instances, agents made similar observations but hesitated to draw the same conclusions. Observing a Manhattan garment factory in 1997, an agent said that about 35 workers appeared to be of Mexican or Central or South American descent. "There was no way of determining," the agent wrote, "the legal status of any individual at this time."
Over the past two years, with labor shortages affecting many industries, the immigration service has largely abandoned workplace raids as a means of finding illegal immigrants.
Nationally, the number of raids dropped by half last year. In New York, only 125 work site cases were completed last year compared with 263 the year before. Arrests by the New York immigration district from raids also declined sharply, from 1,400 in 1997 to 166 in 2000.
Enforcement efforts, immigration officials said, are now focused on better sealing the border with Mexico, snaring immigrant smugglers and catching illegal immigrants involved in organized crime.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/01/nyregion/01IMMX.html?ex=990155201&ei=1&en=fde23a53ada5ab4b
Published: Tuesday, May 1, 2001
Before immigration agents raided Al's Deli on Seventh Avenue in Midtown Manhattan four years ago, they considered several factors. One was an anonymous tip alleging simply that 10 of the 20 or so workers were illegal Mexican immigrants. Another was their own surreptitious observations about the employees.
An agent who conducted a surveillance of the delicatessen, between 34th and 35th Streets, reported that some workers appeared to be of South or Central American descent. Some spoke Spanish, the agent noted, and others spoke English "with a foreign accent."
That was enough to prompt a raid of the deli in search of illegal immigrants.
The raid was a modest law enforcement success for the Immigration and Naturalization Service's New York district, which covers New York City and Long Island. It netted three illegal immigrants from Mexico and one from India from among the dozen workers present.
But the operation also followed a familiar pattern in the New York district, one that senior immigration officials say may have violated the federal agency's guidelines for avoiding ethnic or racial profiling. In this and other cases, agents appeared to rely almost exclusively on Latino appearance or foreign accents ? common attributes in New York and other American cities ? to reach a conclusion that workers could be illegal immigrants.
A review by The New York Times of 37 I.N.S. work site raids in the district showed that agents frequently cited skin color, use of Spanish, foreign accents and clothing "not typical of North America" as primary evidence that workers were likely to be undocumented.
Agents are required to have specific facts in hand or a reasonable suspicion to question someone's legal status, like nervousness when confronted with the immigration agency or unfamiliarity with the surroundings. Appearance may be one factor, but courts and the agency itself have said it is discriminatory to stop and search a person based on foreign appearance alone.
The files reviewed represent 20 percent of the district's 187 work site cases during a 30- month period from January 1997 through June 1999. The Immigration and Naturalization Service itself selected the cases as a random sample and provided them to Unite, the garment workers' union, as part of a settlement of a lawsuit alleging selective enforcement. The union provided them to The Times.
All but a handful of the 37 raids did result in the arrests of illegal workers and, unsurprisingly considering the criteria used, nearly everyone arrested during that period was Latino. And while some investigations grew out of detailed accusations by an informed tipster, in 30 of 37 cases a raid was carried out after agents made observations as simplistic as those at Al's Deli.
"Obviously, mere nationality and mere ethnicity by themselves, unsupported by other facts, are absolutely no basis for us to determine a person is illegally in the United States," said Joseph Greene, the assistant I.N.S. commissioner for investigations in Washington. "There's a whole body of jurisprudence that has heightened everybody's sensitivity to that," he added.
As the nation has become more diverse, largely because of an influx of legal immigrants from Latin America and Asia, the role that ethnic profiling may play in the enforcement of immigration laws has become an issue of mounting concern for advocates and the agency itself.
Nationality is clearly an element to be considered when looking for illegal immigrants: all illegal immigrants, by definition, are foreigners. But simply looking or sounding foreign, civil rights groups have argued, is not a sufficient basis for suspicion in a country where illegal immigrants may not differ in race, ethnicity or national origin from everyone else around them.
And as in other instances of profiling ? whether on the New Jersey Turnpike or the streets of Harlem ? there are costs to the innocent people swept up. In the New York raids and others like them, fully legal people are subjected to the humiliation of proving their status, sometimes after being jailed.
That happened to Maria Espinoza, a worker from Ecuador who was arrested during an immigration agency raid on the SPD Molding factory in Long Island City, Queens, in September 1999. She told agents she was a legal permanent resident, but was detained with other Latino workers and told she would be deported.
"At that moment, I did not carry my green card, but the people did not believe me," Mrs. Espinoza recalled this week. "They handcuffed me and arrested me." A computer check eventually confirmed her innocence, and she was released after spending three hours in detention.
A number of legal challenges have been brought recently in several states, including Arkansas and California, accusing the authorities of singling out Latinos for questioning about their immigration status.
A federal judge in Ohio recently ruled that state highway patrol officers, acting as de facto immigration agents, violated people's rights by routinely pulling over Latino drivers to question their immigration status. In one instance, legal migrant workers were stopped and had their green cards taken by officers who said they were fraudulent.
Courts have generally given I.N.S. officers themselves greater latitude to stop people for immigration checks, particularly near the border, but still set constitutional limits. The Supreme Court has ruled, for example, that I.N.S. agents working near the Mexican border may use their suspicion of someone's Mexican ancestry as one of the grounds for stopping that person, although it legally cannot be the only grounds.
In three more recent cases in California, federal judges said immigration agents committed "egregious" violations of the Fourth Amendment when they stopped individuals solely on the basis of their Latino appearance or foreign-sounding name.
"There may or may not be an argument for using ethnicity or national origin as one of the predicates for enforcement actions along the border," said Charles Kawasaki, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino group in Washington. "But you just can't make that case in the interior of the country," he added.
In its own rules, the immigration service specifically warns its agents not to assume that illegal immigrants can be identified by foreign appearance, language or ethnic characteristics.
"This is not science," said Mr. Greene, the agency enforcement chief. "It is art."
Edward J. McElroy, the New York district director, would not talk about the enforcement program. The district issued a statement saying that all of its work site raids are based on a "reasonable suspicion" that an employer is violating immigration laws.
Reasonable suspicion, the statement said, "can include the officer's training and experience, information from reliable informants and other communications, and or any other factors that in their totality would validate the investigation."
The immigration service, however, arrested almost no one but Latinos during the 30-month period covered by the random sample. According to a summary released as part of the settlement, Mexicans, Ecuadoreans and others from Central and South America accounted for 96 percent of the 2,907 people arrested in the district's 187 work site raids. That is a far bigger proportion than Latinos represent in either the city's illegal or legal population.
The preponderance of Latinos stands out even more sharply when the type of company that was raided is taken into consideration. Most of the businesses were garment factories, where employers' groups, unions and the immigration service all say that about half the employees are Asian, some of them illegal.
Yet in two and a half years of enforcement actions, the New York district arrested only two Chinese people during any of its work site raids.
While it is not surprising that immigration officers found illegal immigrants from Latin America working in the kinds of low-wage businesses they raided, it is not clear why they found Latinos almost exclusively.
"They are playing a numbers game," speculated Wing Lam, director of the Chinese Staff and Workers Association, which represents many undocumented Chinese workers. "It's easier to arrest a Latino and send him back than it is to send someone all the way back to China."
The New York files provided by Unite afforded a highly unusual opportunity to analyze the conduct of the local Immigration and Naturalization Service district, which fights to keep its operations secret. The tip sheets, investigative memos and other documents ? with the names of agents and immigrants blacked out for privacy ? provide at least a written record of how agents built their cases.
In many files there is no evidence that agents based their decision to raid a particular business on anything other than nonspecific tips and their own deductions drawn from the workers' ethnicity.
Liverpool Industries in Brooklyn, for instance, was raided in August 1997. Documents in the file showed that the company caught the attention of the immigration agency when it applied for permission to hire foreign workers to take jobs as brake operators. During a surveillance, an agent noted seeing several "Latin individuals" speaking Spanish and wrote in a report that "it was determined that some of these individuals were most likely undocumented aliens."
Two of the 70 employees were arrested in a raid.
In another case, the district received an anonymous tip that 15 workers at a Midtown garment factory called BNA Fashion were illegal immigrants from Mexico and Korea. The agent who conducted a surveillance at the factory reported that some employees were heard speaking Spanish.
"Many individuals," the agent also wrote, "had dark black hair, medium skin color and wore clothing typical of Mexican and Ecuadorean descent."
The factory was raided. Seven of the 35 workers were arrested, 3 from Ecuador and 4 from Mexico.
An agent checking a tip about undocumented workers at H.C. Contracting, a Midtown garment factory, noted that Spanish music was playing on a radio and 40 to 50 of the 70 employees "appeared to be of Central or South American descent." Those workers, the agent added, may support the allegation of illegal immigrants.
"The I.N.S. seems to equate Latino physical and cultural characteristics with illegality ? that is, with being an undocumented immigrant," said Michael J. Wishnie, a director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the New York University Law School.
The clinic represents two union members who are fighting deportation on the grounds that they and other Latinos were improperly singled out for arrest during the H.C. Contracting raid in 1998.
In a few instances, agents made similar observations but hesitated to draw the same conclusions. Observing a Manhattan garment factory in 1997, an agent said that about 35 workers appeared to be of Mexican or Central or South American descent. "There was no way of determining," the agent wrote, "the legal status of any individual at this time."
Over the past two years, with labor shortages affecting many industries, the immigration service has largely abandoned workplace raids as a means of finding illegal immigrants.
Nationally, the number of raids dropped by half last year. In New York, only 125 work site cases were completed last year compared with 263 the year before. Arrests by the New York immigration district from raids also declined sharply, from 1,400 in 1997 to 166 in 2000.
Enforcement efforts, immigration officials said, are now focused on better sealing the border with Mexico, snaring immigrant smugglers and catching illegal immigrants involved in organized crime.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/01/nyregion/01IMMX.html?ex=990155201&ei=1&en=fde23a53ada5ab4b
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