By Ashley Portero
Business and Law
November 1, 2011
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit on behalf of 15 residents of a Tennessee apartment complex who had their homes illegally raided by immigration officials on Oct. 20, 2010, an act the suit claims was the result of a conspiracy to rid the complex of its Hispanic residents.
Multiple Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, in addition to officers from the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department and the employees for the private security company Crime Suppression Services, forced their ways into multiple residences in South Nashville's Clairmont Apartments without a search warrant, ultimately arresting 20 people, according to the lawsuit. The ACLU of Tennessee reports ICE officials broke into apartments, harassed residents with racially-charged slurs and even held guns to the heads of some unarmed individuals.
When one of the residents asked the law enforcements agents if they had a search warrant, one agent reportedly replied, "We don't need a warrant, we're ICE." He then gestured to his genitals and made an explicit reference, saying the warrant was "coming out" of that area.
It is unclear as to whether the agent in question has been identified. Lindsay Kee, the communications director of ACLU Tennessee told the International Business Times the office did not have any additional information about the incident beyond what is listed in the legal complaint.
ICE officials did not return a request for comment. The agency told The Tennessean it does not comment on pending litigation.
Did Law Enforcement Officials Violate 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendments?
The lawsuit argues law enforcement officials violated the plaintiffs' -- who are all U.S. citizens -- rights under the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and federal civil rights laws.
In particular, the Fourth Amendment strictly prohibits law enforcement from intruding into private homes without a judicially authorized search warrant. In the absence of a warrant, citizens' must offers their voluntary and knowing consent.
The plaintiffs include a child who the ACLU claims was detained and interrogated while playing soccer on a playground because he appeared to be of Latino descent.
The lawsuit names several ICE agents, officers from the Nashville police department as well as the apartment complex's owner, manager and security company. The apartment complex is managed by Greystar Real Estate Partners and owned by TriTex Real Estate Partners.
In a statement released shortly after the incident, the Nashville Police Department said the raid was in response to reports from Clairmont Apartments' employees who said there was a threatening gang presence at the complex, The Tennessean reports. Police said they were concerned gangs were preying on undocumented immigrants that were hesitant to report robberies and other crimes because of their immigration status.
The department statement, according to the newspaper, said officers merely conducted "knock and talks" and did not illegally force their way into their homes.
The statement does not appear on the police department's Web site.
The lawsuit claims Greystar manager Tracy Hall told police she intended to "clean house, and get the Hispanics gone." As a result, the management company reportedly allowed building conditions to deteriorate. In addition, in the course of one rental cycle Greystar abandoned its on-site offices, began demanding Social Security numbers in order to sign lease agreements, and coordinated immigration raids that led to 20 detentions and resulted in scores of apartment vacancies.
Some of the 20 people arrested during the Oct. 2010 raid were placed into deportation proceedings, while others were released. No criminal charges were pursued.
In an Oct. 19 news conference where ACLU officials announced the lawsuit -- just one day before the year-anniversary of the incident -- Megan Macaraeg of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition said many Hispanic residents are leaving Clairmont Apartments out of fear.
"I was just there today chatting with residents," Macaraeg said. "There are still apartments that stand vacant, and most Hispanic residents who were there are gone, have fled the site of terror."
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/241396/20111101/aclu-lawsuit-warrantless-raid-tennessee-apartment-complex.htm
Showing posts with label Criticism of ICE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Criticism of ICE. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
Editorial: ICE Age Thaw Results In Improved Deportation Policy
The Connecticut Law Review
Monday, September 12, 2011
The Editorials on this page are the product of the Editorial Board. The views expressed are not necessarily those of any individual Board Member or of the Law Tribune’s management. The Editorial Board has no role in the management of the Law Tribune.
In the wake of mounting concern over its detention and deportation practices, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) in June announced policy guidelines regarding the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in removal cases. Critics argue that ICE enforcement programs, designed to target and deport illegal immigrants identified as dangerous felons, instead have fostered community insecurity by seizing and deporting thousands of non-citizens with no criminal records or evidence of dangerousness. Indiscriminate enforcement actions are seen as deterring victims, witnesses, and plaintiffs from calling police and pursuing justice for fear of coming to the attention of ICE.
A notable local example occurred early on a June morning in 2007, when armed ICE agents descended on a primarily Latino neighborhood in New Haven. Without warrants or consent and without notice to local authorities, the agents raided numerous private residences and arrested 29 of the occupants. Eleven of those arrested, who were held in custody for days and, in some cases weeks, subsequently sued, alleging that the agents forced their way into their homes illegally, thereby violating their rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and 10th Amendments.
The 11 plaintiffs are represented by Yale Law School’s Jerome Frank Legal Services Organization. The plaintiffs, none of whom are fugitives, argue that the raids were not part of routine immigration enforcement. Instead, citing e-mails between federal officials as evidence, they claim that the raids were in retaliation against the City of New Haven for its decision to issue optional “Elm City Resident Cards” to all residents regardless of their legal status.
Washington Colala is one of those arrested in the 2007 raids. Although he posed no criminal or national security threat, and had a 15-year work history with the community, he was swiftly put into immigration proceedings and a removal order was issued. While he was appealing the removal order, his civil rights case was filed, naming him as one of the 11 plaintiffs. In addition, Colala is the primary witness for his roommate, also a plaintiff. After Colala lost his last appeal and deportation was imminent, his lawyers obtained a temporary stay so they could make their arguments before the federal judge assigned to the civil rights action.
Colala’s bid to stay in the country was denied last December by a sympathetic judge, Judge Stefan Underhill, who could find no basis in the law to forestall deportation orders issued by an immigration court and upheld by an appeals court. Clinic lawyers appealed to ICE Director John Morton to exercise discretion to allow Colala to remain in the country until his civil rights case is concluded. Ultimately, ICE consented to postpone Colala’s deportation for the duration of the lawsuit.
In June of this year, Director Morton issued a new policy regarding the use of prosecutorial discretion in similar situations. In a memo entitled “Certain Victims, Witnesses, and Plaintiffs” he directs that: “Absent special circumstances, it is … against ICE policy to remove individuals in the midst of a legitimate effort to protect their civil rights or liberties.”
A second memo calls on ICE officials to refrain from pursuing non-citizens with close family, educational, military, or other ties to the U.S. and instead focus on persons who pose a serious threat to public safety or national security. It establishes that ICE employees are to consider prosecutorial discretion on a case-by case basis, “without waiting for an alien or alien’s advocate or counsel to request a favorable exercise of discretion.”
Director Morton’s memos make ICE policy clear that prosecutors have, and should exercise, discretion to refrain from pursuing low-priority targets and victims of crime or civil rights violations. However, we note that prosecutorial discretion is a central feature in law enforcement generally, and should not be viewed as extraordinary in the immigration context. Furthermore, the memos establish no guidelines for discretionary review, and include no reporting requirements. At a minimum, ICE employees must be trained to apply the discretionary factors to each case, and to be held accountable when the policies set forth in the memos are not followed.
Unfortunately, even the minimal protections outlined in the Morton memos have already drawn the wrath of some members of Congress. Texas Rep. Lamar Smith immediately introduced a bill titled “Hinder the Administration’s Legalization Temptation Act” (or HALT), which would suspend discretionary enforcement until Jan. 21, 2013 — the day after the first Obama Administration ends.
This type of enforcement-only legislation is exactly the wrong way to address the overwhelming problems in our broken immigration system. We need comprehensive immigration reforms that account for current labor needs, end racial profiling, and provide immigrants with the rights expected under a civilized system of justice. Detaining more immigrants — as would happen if prosecutors had no discretionary authority under the HALT bill — diverts scarce enforcement resources away from the pursuit of dangerous criminals and exacts a needless human toll. A humane and rational system of justice would give eligible undocumented migrants some sort of official status — such as the New Haven Resident Cards and the Dream Act provide — that will bring them out of the shadows, into the workforce, and onto a path towards citizenship.
http://www.ctlawtribune.com/getarticle.aspx?ID=41560
Monday, September 12, 2011
The Editorials on this page are the product of the Editorial Board. The views expressed are not necessarily those of any individual Board Member or of the Law Tribune’s management. The Editorial Board has no role in the management of the Law Tribune.
In the wake of mounting concern over its detention and deportation practices, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) in June announced policy guidelines regarding the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in removal cases. Critics argue that ICE enforcement programs, designed to target and deport illegal immigrants identified as dangerous felons, instead have fostered community insecurity by seizing and deporting thousands of non-citizens with no criminal records or evidence of dangerousness. Indiscriminate enforcement actions are seen as deterring victims, witnesses, and plaintiffs from calling police and pursuing justice for fear of coming to the attention of ICE.
A notable local example occurred early on a June morning in 2007, when armed ICE agents descended on a primarily Latino neighborhood in New Haven. Without warrants or consent and without notice to local authorities, the agents raided numerous private residences and arrested 29 of the occupants. Eleven of those arrested, who were held in custody for days and, in some cases weeks, subsequently sued, alleging that the agents forced their way into their homes illegally, thereby violating their rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and 10th Amendments.
The 11 plaintiffs are represented by Yale Law School’s Jerome Frank Legal Services Organization. The plaintiffs, none of whom are fugitives, argue that the raids were not part of routine immigration enforcement. Instead, citing e-mails between federal officials as evidence, they claim that the raids were in retaliation against the City of New Haven for its decision to issue optional “Elm City Resident Cards” to all residents regardless of their legal status.
Washington Colala is one of those arrested in the 2007 raids. Although he posed no criminal or national security threat, and had a 15-year work history with the community, he was swiftly put into immigration proceedings and a removal order was issued. While he was appealing the removal order, his civil rights case was filed, naming him as one of the 11 plaintiffs. In addition, Colala is the primary witness for his roommate, also a plaintiff. After Colala lost his last appeal and deportation was imminent, his lawyers obtained a temporary stay so they could make their arguments before the federal judge assigned to the civil rights action.
Colala’s bid to stay in the country was denied last December by a sympathetic judge, Judge Stefan Underhill, who could find no basis in the law to forestall deportation orders issued by an immigration court and upheld by an appeals court. Clinic lawyers appealed to ICE Director John Morton to exercise discretion to allow Colala to remain in the country until his civil rights case is concluded. Ultimately, ICE consented to postpone Colala’s deportation for the duration of the lawsuit.
In June of this year, Director Morton issued a new policy regarding the use of prosecutorial discretion in similar situations. In a memo entitled “Certain Victims, Witnesses, and Plaintiffs” he directs that: “Absent special circumstances, it is … against ICE policy to remove individuals in the midst of a legitimate effort to protect their civil rights or liberties.”
A second memo calls on ICE officials to refrain from pursuing non-citizens with close family, educational, military, or other ties to the U.S. and instead focus on persons who pose a serious threat to public safety or national security. It establishes that ICE employees are to consider prosecutorial discretion on a case-by case basis, “without waiting for an alien or alien’s advocate or counsel to request a favorable exercise of discretion.”
Director Morton’s memos make ICE policy clear that prosecutors have, and should exercise, discretion to refrain from pursuing low-priority targets and victims of crime or civil rights violations. However, we note that prosecutorial discretion is a central feature in law enforcement generally, and should not be viewed as extraordinary in the immigration context. Furthermore, the memos establish no guidelines for discretionary review, and include no reporting requirements. At a minimum, ICE employees must be trained to apply the discretionary factors to each case, and to be held accountable when the policies set forth in the memos are not followed.
Unfortunately, even the minimal protections outlined in the Morton memos have already drawn the wrath of some members of Congress. Texas Rep. Lamar Smith immediately introduced a bill titled “Hinder the Administration’s Legalization Temptation Act” (or HALT), which would suspend discretionary enforcement until Jan. 21, 2013 — the day after the first Obama Administration ends.
This type of enforcement-only legislation is exactly the wrong way to address the overwhelming problems in our broken immigration system. We need comprehensive immigration reforms that account for current labor needs, end racial profiling, and provide immigrants with the rights expected under a civilized system of justice. Detaining more immigrants — as would happen if prosecutors had no discretionary authority under the HALT bill — diverts scarce enforcement resources away from the pursuit of dangerous criminals and exacts a needless human toll. A humane and rational system of justice would give eligible undocumented migrants some sort of official status — such as the New Haven Resident Cards and the Dream Act provide — that will bring them out of the shadows, into the workforce, and onto a path towards citizenship.
http://www.ctlawtribune.com/getarticle.aspx?ID=41560
Friday, June 3, 2011
First priority is deportations
By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
The San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
How in the world was the Obama administration able to round up and deport nearly 1 million people over the past 2 1/2 years?
Two words: Secure Communities. When first unveiled in 2008, the program was marketed to local governments and law enforcement agencies as an effective tool to allow U.S. immigration officials to identify and deport illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes who were already in jail. And, in a point that has caused controversy, local and state officials were led to believe that participation in the program was voluntary.
It turns out, almost none of this is true. Many of the illegal immigrants who have been deported under the program were not hardened criminals or even criminals at all. (Being in the United States without proper documents is not a crime but a civil violation.) The catch of the day might include anyone from a drunk driver to a shoplifter to a battered wife hauled in along with her spouse after a domestic quarrel.
What a mess. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, has requested an investigation into who is being deported under Secure Communities and whether federal officials misled local governments into thinking that participation was voluntary. The Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security recently announced plans to conduct an inquiry into the program. And the California Assembly recently passed a bill requiring the state to renegotiate its agreement with ICE so that only convicted felons would be handed over and participation by the counties would be optional; if passed by the state Senate, the bill would go to Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature.
I called John Morton, director of ICE.
"It is designed to go after criminal offenders," Morton said. "And that's exactly what it does. And it's why we think it's good policy and it's a good program."
Yet, I pointed out, not everyone who winds up in the clutches of Secure Communities committed a crime.
"The vast majority of people identified and removed through Secure Communities - over 70 percent - are people who are here unlawfully and have a criminal conviction," he said.
But those convictions could go back a decade or two. Are those the folks this program was designed to protect us from?
"We do identify and remove certain non-criminals," Morton acknowledged. As many as a third of the "non-criminals" removed under Secure Communities were previous deportees who came back, he insisted.
"What would you have the agency do when presented with someone who has been previously removed from the country and they've illegally re-entered again?" Morton asked.
That's easy. Deport that person. What troubles me is that this administration cares so much about appearances that it can't admit what it is doing and why. It should just be honest about the fact that its real goal is to rack up as many deportations as possible.
And if Secure Communities helps meet that objective, then the administration will defend the concept with its last breath. Not because the program is right or just, but because it's useful.
This article appeared on page A - 16 of the San Francisco Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
How in the world was the Obama administration able to round up and deport nearly 1 million people over the past 2 1/2 years?
Two words: Secure Communities. When first unveiled in 2008, the program was marketed to local governments and law enforcement agencies as an effective tool to allow U.S. immigration officials to identify and deport illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes who were already in jail. And, in a point that has caused controversy, local and state officials were led to believe that participation in the program was voluntary.
It turns out, almost none of this is true. Many of the illegal immigrants who have been deported under the program were not hardened criminals or even criminals at all. (Being in the United States without proper documents is not a crime but a civil violation.) The catch of the day might include anyone from a drunk driver to a shoplifter to a battered wife hauled in along with her spouse after a domestic quarrel.
What a mess. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, has requested an investigation into who is being deported under Secure Communities and whether federal officials misled local governments into thinking that participation was voluntary. The Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security recently announced plans to conduct an inquiry into the program. And the California Assembly recently passed a bill requiring the state to renegotiate its agreement with ICE so that only convicted felons would be handed over and participation by the counties would be optional; if passed by the state Senate, the bill would go to Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature.
I called John Morton, director of ICE.
"It is designed to go after criminal offenders," Morton said. "And that's exactly what it does. And it's why we think it's good policy and it's a good program."
Yet, I pointed out, not everyone who winds up in the clutches of Secure Communities committed a crime.
"The vast majority of people identified and removed through Secure Communities - over 70 percent - are people who are here unlawfully and have a criminal conviction," he said.
But those convictions could go back a decade or two. Are those the folks this program was designed to protect us from?
"We do identify and remove certain non-criminals," Morton acknowledged. As many as a third of the "non-criminals" removed under Secure Communities were previous deportees who came back, he insisted.
"What would you have the agency do when presented with someone who has been previously removed from the country and they've illegally re-entered again?" Morton asked.
That's easy. Deport that person. What troubles me is that this administration cares so much about appearances that it can't admit what it is doing and why. It should just be honest about the fact that its real goal is to rack up as many deportations as possible.
And if Secure Communities helps meet that objective, then the administration will defend the concept with its last breath. Not because the program is right or just, but because it's useful.
This article appeared on page A - 16 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Lee Baca: Let us deport the bad guys; Critics are wrong: The Secure Communities program works
By Lee Baca
The Los Angeles Times
May 16, 2011
Consider the following case: In January, a local police agency arrested a man for driving with a suspended license. A subsequent fingerprint screening revealed that he was also a convicted felon illegally in the United States from Mexico. His record included three prior drug trafficking convictions and six deportations in 11 years.
Or consider this one: Recently, a 32-year-old man was booked into the Los Angeles County Jail on DUI charges. His fingerprints revealed not only that he was in the United States illegally but that he had previously been deported after his conviction for killing a child in 1997.
Both men were identified through the Secure Communities program. Under the program, local law enforcement agencies send the fingerprints of those they arrest to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, where they are cross-checked against Department of Justice records to identify criminal aliens. The program enables law enforcement agencies to identify criminals who are here illegally and allows the federal government to target those who have committed serious crimes for deportation so they no longer pose a threat to our communities.
In Los Angeles County, the Sheriff's Department also participates with ICE in a program known as 287g. Since 2006, that program has identified more than 20,000 criminal illegal immigrants here.
In both programs, it is not the Sheriff's Department that instigates deportation proceedings: That is the role of the federal government. We provide information; ICE decides whether to act on it.
Both programs have drawn fire recently from groups concerned that they infringe on civil rights and that people arrested but not ultimately charged could end up being deported. The groups have expressed concern that the programs might lead to racial profiling or intimidate law-abiding residents who would be reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement to solve crimes. In San Francisco, the sheriff has vowed to release low-level offenders back into the community at the end of their terms, even if ICE has placed a hold on them.
These concerns are misplaced, and they put communities at risk. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, working in conjunction with the Board of Supervisors, implemented the 287g program years ago, and we were also early adopters of Secure Communities; we have not had significant problems.
We did have a serious problem, however, before implementing the programs. We had a growing number of criminal illegal immigrants who were taken into custody and eventually had to be released back onto our streets.
Many other local police agencies have seen the same kind of success we have with the program. About 1,200 state and local law enforcement jurisdictions in 42 states are now participating in the Secure Communities program. Because of this, more than 72,445 aliens convicted of crimes have been identified and deported. That number includes 26,473 criminals convicted of aggravated felonies such as murder, rape, kidnapping or the sexual abuse of children. From October 2008 to October 2010, Secure Communities helped ICE increase by 71% the number of convicted criminals deported.
Arresting officials are not deputized to enforce immigration laws. They are simply doing what they have always done. The only difference is that under Secure Communities, the fingerprints they take during the booking process are run through FBI and Department of Homeland Security databases.
Across the United States, sheriffs and police chiefs have voiced their support for this program. As law enforcers, it is our job to use all available resources to protect citizens and uphold the rule of law. Like members of Congress and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, I see the removal of criminal illegal immigrants as a top priority in securing both the nation and our communities.
Lee Baca has been sheriff of Los Angeles County since 1998.
latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-baca-immigration-20110517,0,7647155.story
latimes.com
The Los Angeles Times
May 16, 2011
Consider the following case: In January, a local police agency arrested a man for driving with a suspended license. A subsequent fingerprint screening revealed that he was also a convicted felon illegally in the United States from Mexico. His record included three prior drug trafficking convictions and six deportations in 11 years.
Or consider this one: Recently, a 32-year-old man was booked into the Los Angeles County Jail on DUI charges. His fingerprints revealed not only that he was in the United States illegally but that he had previously been deported after his conviction for killing a child in 1997.
Both men were identified through the Secure Communities program. Under the program, local law enforcement agencies send the fingerprints of those they arrest to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, where they are cross-checked against Department of Justice records to identify criminal aliens. The program enables law enforcement agencies to identify criminals who are here illegally and allows the federal government to target those who have committed serious crimes for deportation so they no longer pose a threat to our communities.
In Los Angeles County, the Sheriff's Department also participates with ICE in a program known as 287g. Since 2006, that program has identified more than 20,000 criminal illegal immigrants here.
In both programs, it is not the Sheriff's Department that instigates deportation proceedings: That is the role of the federal government. We provide information; ICE decides whether to act on it.
Both programs have drawn fire recently from groups concerned that they infringe on civil rights and that people arrested but not ultimately charged could end up being deported. The groups have expressed concern that the programs might lead to racial profiling or intimidate law-abiding residents who would be reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement to solve crimes. In San Francisco, the sheriff has vowed to release low-level offenders back into the community at the end of their terms, even if ICE has placed a hold on them.
These concerns are misplaced, and they put communities at risk. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, working in conjunction with the Board of Supervisors, implemented the 287g program years ago, and we were also early adopters of Secure Communities; we have not had significant problems.
We did have a serious problem, however, before implementing the programs. We had a growing number of criminal illegal immigrants who were taken into custody and eventually had to be released back onto our streets.
Many other local police agencies have seen the same kind of success we have with the program. About 1,200 state and local law enforcement jurisdictions in 42 states are now participating in the Secure Communities program. Because of this, more than 72,445 aliens convicted of crimes have been identified and deported. That number includes 26,473 criminals convicted of aggravated felonies such as murder, rape, kidnapping or the sexual abuse of children. From October 2008 to October 2010, Secure Communities helped ICE increase by 71% the number of convicted criminals deported.
Arresting officials are not deputized to enforce immigration laws. They are simply doing what they have always done. The only difference is that under Secure Communities, the fingerprints they take during the booking process are run through FBI and Department of Homeland Security databases.
Across the United States, sheriffs and police chiefs have voiced their support for this program. As law enforcers, it is our job to use all available resources to protect citizens and uphold the rule of law. Like members of Congress and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, I see the removal of criminal illegal immigrants as a top priority in securing both the nation and our communities.
Lee Baca has been sheriff of Los Angeles County since 1998.
latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-baca-immigration-20110517,0,7647155.story
latimes.com
Friday, December 17, 2010
What Gets Lost in the Immigration Deportation Dragnet
By Braden Goyette
Campus Progress
December 14th, 2010
It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and the basement chapel of St. Brigid’s Church in Brooklyn is packed to capacity. The energy in the room is palpable. Spontaneous cries of “Si Se Puede!” echo through the hall. People break into chants in Spanish as they wait for speakers to address the audience: "Lucando creando poder popular!" and "Obama escucha estamos en la lucha!" It feels like the energy of President Barack Obama’s movement has moved on without him—okay, maybe he can’t, they seem to be saying, but we sure as hell can.
Everyone is here today to talk about immigration reform, though things look bleak on the congressional front. New York City councilors and national congressmen are there alongside the community activists who organized the event, headed up by the New York Immigration Coalition and Make The Road New York. Immigrant New Yorkers from all the five boroughs—Latinos, Asians, Caribbeans, and Arab Americans—fill the pews. They’re waiting for Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) to take the mic.
Gutierrez has been a fiery advocate for comprehensive immigration reform during his nine terms in Congress, and he’s stepped up his game over the past year, clashing with top Obama administration officials, and even getting arrested while protesting current U.S. immigration policy in front of the White House.
“There are four million American citizen children whose parents are undocumented,” he shouts. “We need to call for a moratorium on deportations."
He repeats it a few more times, like a new mantra: “Our movement is the moratorium. The moratorium is the movement.”
Even if comprehensive immigration reform isn’t coming through Congress, he says, it’s still time to act to keep American families together. “The President will tell us we need Republican votes in order to pass legislation, and he's correct. But let me tell you something. With the executive stroke of that pen, he can stop the deportation and the destruction of our families.”
The new (and old) SB 1070
For the past few years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been expanding its reach far beyond the capacity of its own personnel within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and has begun relying increasingly on partnerships with local police forces.
Gutierrez’s call for a moratorium on deportation comes at a time when ICE is deporting people in record numbers: 392,000 people were deported in the past fiscal year. These numbers are driven in part by the expansion of one of ICE’s newest partnerships with local police departments, the Secure Communities program (S-Comm), which has been implemented in close to 600 U.S. counties, and is on track to be nationwide by 2013.
On the community level, these programs are doing many of the things people feared Arizona’s SB 1070 would do—encouraging racial profiling and breeding distrust between police and the people they serve—but they’re less obvious in the ways they have this effect.
The main component of S-Comm is a data sharing program that ICE claims will help reduce instances of profiling.Under S-Comm, local police collect fingerprints from anyone they arrest and forward them to ICE to be checked against immigration and criminal databases. David Venturella, head of the Secure Communities Program, has testified that the program will help ICE focus their efforts on individuals who pose a real threat to public safety.
But critics are concerned it will provide incentive for police to target immigrants indiscriminately, knowing there’s a chance an arrest could put them on track for removal proceedings.AsRenée Feltz, a journalist who’s been covering S-Comm for the past several months for DeportationNation.org, recently put it: It’s true that “biometric information usually identifies people accurately, but this doesn’t keep police from racially profiling people and arresting them on charges that later get dropped but still feed them into detention.”
“What S-Comm is doing is both facilitating and concealing racial profiling,” says Hannah Weinstein of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law’s Immigrant Justice Clinic, which gives law students at Yeshiva University the opportunity to represent immigrants facing deportation in immigration court and the U.S. Court of Appeals. “There’s no provision in S-Comm that says the crimes for which an individual are picked up must be prosecuted.”
Before S-Comm, there was the Criminal Alien Program (CAP), which allows local police to hold arrestees in jail while ICE investigates their immigration status—even if they aren’t ultimately charged with any crime.
A study that tracked police stops of Hispanic residents in Irving, Texas before and after CAP was implemented in 2006 found the program dramatically increased arrests of Hispanic residents in the town for petty offenses [PDF]. The authors concluded that “these arrests represent one part of an implicit, but relatively clear logic: The higher the number of Hispanic arrests, the larger the pool of Hispanic detainees; the larger the pool of detainees, the more illegal immigrants that can be purged from the city via the CAP screening system.”
States where S-Comm hasn’t been activated are looking to CAP for signs of what S-Comm might do to their communities. On the whole, that means increasing the number of people who lead otherwise ordinary lives, aside from their lack of papers, who’ll be pulled into the deportation dragnet, including legal permanent residents.
The public cost of deportation
Deportation is an extreme punishment—it uproots a person from everything he or she has built in his or her life and rips that person away from everyone he or she knows.
Alina Das, a fellow at NYU’s immigration law clinic, is among those questioning whether the punishment of deportation in the case of unlawful immigration really fits the crime, and whether it really serves the overall need for public safety. “There's generally a misconception that some folks have about immigrants, this idea that most immigrants are recent newcomers to our cities and towns,” Das says, “but the reality is that many immigrants, regardless of their status—whether they're without status or refugees or greencard holders—are very engrained into families and communities across the country.”
“These are people the criminal justice system itself has gotten to the point where they recognize these individuals are better off returned to their families, given the treatment, the services, the tools they need to return to their communities as productive members of society.” Das adds. “By inserting deportation and detention policies at that point when a person would otherwise be released, the immigration system is creating all sorts of unintended consequences for community and public safety.”
The record deportation figures touted by ICE are more than just numbers—they are hundreds and thousands of families. According to the Pew Hispanic Center [PDF], at least 6.6 million American families were of mixed status as of 2005.Over the past ten years, the government has deported the lawful permanent resident parents of about 103,000 children. Of those, 88,000 are U.S. citizens.
Das describes a significant disconnect between an individual’s net impact on public life and the way the system treats him or her. “Once you're in the system it often does not matter if you've lived here since childhood, if you worked and paid taxes your entire life, if you gave back to the community and served in the military,” Das says. “The laws are so draconian that immigration judges are not able to consider these factors in many cases.”
Critics of immigration reform argue that undocumented immigrants are all hurting Americans by coming here without permission and putting strain on the economy. But a number of studies, including research coming out of U.S. Federal Reserve banks, have shown thatcreating more avenues for legal immigration would benefit the U.S. economy and create jobs.
Meanwhile, it is expensive to run detention facilities and to deport people. Aarti Shahani, a researcher for the prisoner advocacy group Justice Strategies, cites the increased detention costs CAP incurs by holding people in detention for 73 days longer than average.
Picking up more non-criminals
In October, Eligio Valerio, a middle-aged New York cab driver who’s been a legal permanent resident for the past 30 years, was picked up through CAP on old gun charge. He’d purchased an illegal gun to defend himself from stick ups when he ran a corner store back in the 1980s. He’d served his time, gotten probation, and thought he was done with the whole thing—until ICE came around to his house and he found they were threatening him with deportation just as his daughter was about to give birth.
Northatattan.com, a project by Columbia Journalism School students, reported that Valerio was well-known in the community, and that even the judge on his case was surprised to find him in court facing charges.Though Valerio was eventually able to avoid deportation, City Councilor Ydanis Rodriguez worried that with the increasing use of federal-local partnerships, we’ll be seeing more cases like this one.He stated the problem bluntly: “ICE is out of control.”
Other stories have been surfacing in recent months. People are getting picked up for deportation out of the blue, like Maria Bolanos, who was picked up through S-Comm after calling the police for help during a fight with her partner that had turned violent.
Though S-Comm director Venturella said that Bolanos’s case was not actually an S-Comm case when she confronted him about it at a public meeting, an ICE official later emailed a Washington Post reporter to say that it actually was. In a sense, the contradictions and mixed signals were in keeping with the way the program has been presented to the public thus far.
Though ICE has stated its top priority is to deport people who pose a threat to public safety, federal-local partnerships like S-Comm, CAP, and the 287(g) program, which allows local police to perform ID checks and detain immigrants at any time without criminal charge, are scooping up large numbers of non-criminals. In fact, 79 percent of people deported by S-Comm are non-criminals. These people tend to be picked up for minor offenses like traffic violations.
According to the University of Syracuse’s Transitional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), immigration courts have been backed up with a record number of cases, with average wait times of 459 days this past year. Thirty-one percent of cases that come before these courts are thrown out, often because they’ve been brought against people who are actually legally entitled to be in this country. In cities with large immigrant populations like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, more than half of cases have been thrown out in the past year.
ICE isn’t being forthcoming with information about why this is the case, either. TRAC filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in May to find out more, and ICE hasn’t complied. In a press release, TRAC said that the agency is “denying the American people concrete information about an important and controversial aspect of a key responsibility of the federal government: What is it doing and not doing to enforce the nation's immigration laws.”
The Irving CAP study suggests federal-local partnerships contribute to ICE bringing in the wrong people. The authors found “that ICE consistently issued detainers for fewer individuals than were referred by the local police, indicating that local officials were likely referring lawful residents to ICE.”
Shahani, who coauthored a report for Justice Strategies on immigration detainers issued in New York City jails, agrees. “We found that they're playing a numbers game—rather than having a strategy that reflects public safety concerns, DHS is just tagging people who show up in local facilities.”
San Francisco, Santa Clara, Calif., and Arlington, Va., recently tried to opt out of S-Comm. But ICE has been incredibly unclear about whether this is an option, issuing contradicting statements on the process for the past several months. In August, ICE released a statement that seemed to indicate it was possible to opt out. In October, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that S-Comm isn’t a voluntary program.Cordozo filed a FOIA request in April along with the National Day Laborers Organization Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights to get definitive information on whether S-Comm is in fact voluntary or mandatory.
Though ICE has been making it seem more and more like local communities must participate in S-Comm, Weinstein says ICE still hasn’t made a definitive statement, and the jury isn’t out until documents on their actual policy are made public.
And it’s vital that the public get this information, Weinstein says. This program hurts families, overburdens local police, costs a lot for the American taxpayer, and is still not transparent in its operations to those very taxpayers. “Until ICE releases these records to states and communities, the public can’t have an informed debate about what we believe is an incredibly dangerous program,” she says.
Since ICE failed to release the documents, the three human rights groups launched a lawsuit on October 28. Last Thursday, a New York judge ruled that ICE must turn over the requested documents by January 17.
Does deportation make American safer?
Back in St. Brigid’s church, Rep. Nydia Velasquez is convinced the answer to the question of whether deportation makes America safer is “no,” and that the buck has to stop here, regardless of the climate of the incoming Congress when it comes to immigration reform.
“In the ’60s, when people were fighting for human rights or civil rights, and were told so many times, this is not the right time? There is not a right or wrong time—there is a moral time,” Velasquez says.
She and Gutierrez are calling into question how much these programs actually serve the interest of public safety. They’re rejecting the overly simplistic moral equation that leads to the criminalization of immigrants, and struggling to regain the moral high ground.
“No man, not even the president of the United States, can divide what men and women and God have brought together,” Gutierrez shouts.
He asks everyone to remember a woman in the ‘50s, who got on a bus after a long day of work and took a seat in the front—claiming her place there made simple moral sense to her, even though the rest of society hadn’t caught up yet. “Do you think Rosa Parks said, 'I’ve got to call the Speaker before I act? I’ve got to see how many votes I have in the Senate before I act?'”
Time will tell if Obama knows the answer.
Braden Goyette is a staff writer for Campus Progress.
http://campusprogress.org/articles/what_gets_lost_in_the_immigration_deportation_dragnet/
Campus Progress
December 14th, 2010
It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and the basement chapel of St. Brigid’s Church in Brooklyn is packed to capacity. The energy in the room is palpable. Spontaneous cries of “Si Se Puede!” echo through the hall. People break into chants in Spanish as they wait for speakers to address the audience: "Lucando creando poder popular!" and "Obama escucha estamos en la lucha!" It feels like the energy of President Barack Obama’s movement has moved on without him—okay, maybe he can’t, they seem to be saying, but we sure as hell can.
Everyone is here today to talk about immigration reform, though things look bleak on the congressional front. New York City councilors and national congressmen are there alongside the community activists who organized the event, headed up by the New York Immigration Coalition and Make The Road New York. Immigrant New Yorkers from all the five boroughs—Latinos, Asians, Caribbeans, and Arab Americans—fill the pews. They’re waiting for Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) to take the mic.
Gutierrez has been a fiery advocate for comprehensive immigration reform during his nine terms in Congress, and he’s stepped up his game over the past year, clashing with top Obama administration officials, and even getting arrested while protesting current U.S. immigration policy in front of the White House.
“There are four million American citizen children whose parents are undocumented,” he shouts. “We need to call for a moratorium on deportations."
He repeats it a few more times, like a new mantra: “Our movement is the moratorium. The moratorium is the movement.”
Even if comprehensive immigration reform isn’t coming through Congress, he says, it’s still time to act to keep American families together. “The President will tell us we need Republican votes in order to pass legislation, and he's correct. But let me tell you something. With the executive stroke of that pen, he can stop the deportation and the destruction of our families.”
The new (and old) SB 1070
For the past few years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been expanding its reach far beyond the capacity of its own personnel within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and has begun relying increasingly on partnerships with local police forces.
Gutierrez’s call for a moratorium on deportation comes at a time when ICE is deporting people in record numbers: 392,000 people were deported in the past fiscal year. These numbers are driven in part by the expansion of one of ICE’s newest partnerships with local police departments, the Secure Communities program (S-Comm), which has been implemented in close to 600 U.S. counties, and is on track to be nationwide by 2013.
On the community level, these programs are doing many of the things people feared Arizona’s SB 1070 would do—encouraging racial profiling and breeding distrust between police and the people they serve—but they’re less obvious in the ways they have this effect.
The main component of S-Comm is a data sharing program that ICE claims will help reduce instances of profiling.Under S-Comm, local police collect fingerprints from anyone they arrest and forward them to ICE to be checked against immigration and criminal databases. David Venturella, head of the Secure Communities Program, has testified that the program will help ICE focus their efforts on individuals who pose a real threat to public safety.
But critics are concerned it will provide incentive for police to target immigrants indiscriminately, knowing there’s a chance an arrest could put them on track for removal proceedings.AsRenée Feltz, a journalist who’s been covering S-Comm for the past several months for DeportationNation.org, recently put it: It’s true that “biometric information usually identifies people accurately, but this doesn’t keep police from racially profiling people and arresting them on charges that later get dropped but still feed them into detention.”
“What S-Comm is doing is both facilitating and concealing racial profiling,” says Hannah Weinstein of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law’s Immigrant Justice Clinic, which gives law students at Yeshiva University the opportunity to represent immigrants facing deportation in immigration court and the U.S. Court of Appeals. “There’s no provision in S-Comm that says the crimes for which an individual are picked up must be prosecuted.”
Before S-Comm, there was the Criminal Alien Program (CAP), which allows local police to hold arrestees in jail while ICE investigates their immigration status—even if they aren’t ultimately charged with any crime.
A study that tracked police stops of Hispanic residents in Irving, Texas before and after CAP was implemented in 2006 found the program dramatically increased arrests of Hispanic residents in the town for petty offenses [PDF]. The authors concluded that “these arrests represent one part of an implicit, but relatively clear logic: The higher the number of Hispanic arrests, the larger the pool of Hispanic detainees; the larger the pool of detainees, the more illegal immigrants that can be purged from the city via the CAP screening system.”
States where S-Comm hasn’t been activated are looking to CAP for signs of what S-Comm might do to their communities. On the whole, that means increasing the number of people who lead otherwise ordinary lives, aside from their lack of papers, who’ll be pulled into the deportation dragnet, including legal permanent residents.
The public cost of deportation
Deportation is an extreme punishment—it uproots a person from everything he or she has built in his or her life and rips that person away from everyone he or she knows.
Alina Das, a fellow at NYU’s immigration law clinic, is among those questioning whether the punishment of deportation in the case of unlawful immigration really fits the crime, and whether it really serves the overall need for public safety. “There's generally a misconception that some folks have about immigrants, this idea that most immigrants are recent newcomers to our cities and towns,” Das says, “but the reality is that many immigrants, regardless of their status—whether they're without status or refugees or greencard holders—are very engrained into families and communities across the country.”
“These are people the criminal justice system itself has gotten to the point where they recognize these individuals are better off returned to their families, given the treatment, the services, the tools they need to return to their communities as productive members of society.” Das adds. “By inserting deportation and detention policies at that point when a person would otherwise be released, the immigration system is creating all sorts of unintended consequences for community and public safety.”
The record deportation figures touted by ICE are more than just numbers—they are hundreds and thousands of families. According to the Pew Hispanic Center [PDF], at least 6.6 million American families were of mixed status as of 2005.Over the past ten years, the government has deported the lawful permanent resident parents of about 103,000 children. Of those, 88,000 are U.S. citizens.
Das describes a significant disconnect between an individual’s net impact on public life and the way the system treats him or her. “Once you're in the system it often does not matter if you've lived here since childhood, if you worked and paid taxes your entire life, if you gave back to the community and served in the military,” Das says. “The laws are so draconian that immigration judges are not able to consider these factors in many cases.”
Critics of immigration reform argue that undocumented immigrants are all hurting Americans by coming here without permission and putting strain on the economy. But a number of studies, including research coming out of U.S. Federal Reserve banks, have shown thatcreating more avenues for legal immigration would benefit the U.S. economy and create jobs.
Meanwhile, it is expensive to run detention facilities and to deport people. Aarti Shahani, a researcher for the prisoner advocacy group Justice Strategies, cites the increased detention costs CAP incurs by holding people in detention for 73 days longer than average.
Picking up more non-criminals
In October, Eligio Valerio, a middle-aged New York cab driver who’s been a legal permanent resident for the past 30 years, was picked up through CAP on old gun charge. He’d purchased an illegal gun to defend himself from stick ups when he ran a corner store back in the 1980s. He’d served his time, gotten probation, and thought he was done with the whole thing—until ICE came around to his house and he found they were threatening him with deportation just as his daughter was about to give birth.
Northatattan.com, a project by Columbia Journalism School students, reported that Valerio was well-known in the community, and that even the judge on his case was surprised to find him in court facing charges.Though Valerio was eventually able to avoid deportation, City Councilor Ydanis Rodriguez worried that with the increasing use of federal-local partnerships, we’ll be seeing more cases like this one.He stated the problem bluntly: “ICE is out of control.”
Other stories have been surfacing in recent months. People are getting picked up for deportation out of the blue, like Maria Bolanos, who was picked up through S-Comm after calling the police for help during a fight with her partner that had turned violent.
Though S-Comm director Venturella said that Bolanos’s case was not actually an S-Comm case when she confronted him about it at a public meeting, an ICE official later emailed a Washington Post reporter to say that it actually was. In a sense, the contradictions and mixed signals were in keeping with the way the program has been presented to the public thus far.
Though ICE has stated its top priority is to deport people who pose a threat to public safety, federal-local partnerships like S-Comm, CAP, and the 287(g) program, which allows local police to perform ID checks and detain immigrants at any time without criminal charge, are scooping up large numbers of non-criminals. In fact, 79 percent of people deported by S-Comm are non-criminals. These people tend to be picked up for minor offenses like traffic violations.
According to the University of Syracuse’s Transitional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), immigration courts have been backed up with a record number of cases, with average wait times of 459 days this past year. Thirty-one percent of cases that come before these courts are thrown out, often because they’ve been brought against people who are actually legally entitled to be in this country. In cities with large immigrant populations like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, more than half of cases have been thrown out in the past year.
ICE isn’t being forthcoming with information about why this is the case, either. TRAC filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in May to find out more, and ICE hasn’t complied. In a press release, TRAC said that the agency is “denying the American people concrete information about an important and controversial aspect of a key responsibility of the federal government: What is it doing and not doing to enforce the nation's immigration laws.”
The Irving CAP study suggests federal-local partnerships contribute to ICE bringing in the wrong people. The authors found “that ICE consistently issued detainers for fewer individuals than were referred by the local police, indicating that local officials were likely referring lawful residents to ICE.”
Shahani, who coauthored a report for Justice Strategies on immigration detainers issued in New York City jails, agrees. “We found that they're playing a numbers game—rather than having a strategy that reflects public safety concerns, DHS is just tagging people who show up in local facilities.”
San Francisco, Santa Clara, Calif., and Arlington, Va., recently tried to opt out of S-Comm. But ICE has been incredibly unclear about whether this is an option, issuing contradicting statements on the process for the past several months. In August, ICE released a statement that seemed to indicate it was possible to opt out. In October, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that S-Comm isn’t a voluntary program.Cordozo filed a FOIA request in April along with the National Day Laborers Organization Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights to get definitive information on whether S-Comm is in fact voluntary or mandatory.
Though ICE has been making it seem more and more like local communities must participate in S-Comm, Weinstein says ICE still hasn’t made a definitive statement, and the jury isn’t out until documents on their actual policy are made public.
And it’s vital that the public get this information, Weinstein says. This program hurts families, overburdens local police, costs a lot for the American taxpayer, and is still not transparent in its operations to those very taxpayers. “Until ICE releases these records to states and communities, the public can’t have an informed debate about what we believe is an incredibly dangerous program,” she says.
Since ICE failed to release the documents, the three human rights groups launched a lawsuit on October 28. Last Thursday, a New York judge ruled that ICE must turn over the requested documents by January 17.
Does deportation make American safer?
Back in St. Brigid’s church, Rep. Nydia Velasquez is convinced the answer to the question of whether deportation makes America safer is “no,” and that the buck has to stop here, regardless of the climate of the incoming Congress when it comes to immigration reform.
“In the ’60s, when people were fighting for human rights or civil rights, and were told so many times, this is not the right time? There is not a right or wrong time—there is a moral time,” Velasquez says.
She and Gutierrez are calling into question how much these programs actually serve the interest of public safety. They’re rejecting the overly simplistic moral equation that leads to the criminalization of immigrants, and struggling to regain the moral high ground.
“No man, not even the president of the United States, can divide what men and women and God have brought together,” Gutierrez shouts.
He asks everyone to remember a woman in the ‘50s, who got on a bus after a long day of work and took a seat in the front—claiming her place there made simple moral sense to her, even though the rest of society hadn’t caught up yet. “Do you think Rosa Parks said, 'I’ve got to call the Speaker before I act? I’ve got to see how many votes I have in the Senate before I act?'”
Time will tell if Obama knows the answer.
Braden Goyette is a staff writer for Campus Progress.
http://campusprogress.org/articles/what_gets_lost_in_the_immigration_deportation_dragnet/
Monday, December 6, 2010
Unusual methods helped ICE break deportation record, e-mails and interviews show
By Andrew Becker
Center for Investigative Reporting
Monday, December 6, 2010; 12:08 AM
For much of this year, the Obama administration touted its tougher-than-ever approach to immigration enforcement, culminating in a record number of deportations.
But in reaching 392,862 deportations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement included more than 19,000 immigrants who had exited the previous fiscal year, according to agency statistics. ICE also ran a Mexican repatriation program five weeks longer than ever before, allowing the agency to count at least 6,500 exits that, without the program, would normally have been tallied by the U.S. Border Patrol.
When ICE officials realized in the final weeks of the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, that the agency still was in jeopardy of falling short of last year's mark, it scrambled to reach the goal. Officials quietly directed immigration officers to bypass backlogged immigration courts and time-consuming deportation hearings whenever possible, internal e-mails and interviews show.
Instead, officials told immigration officers to encourage eligible foreign nationals to accept a quick pass to their countries without a negative mark on their immigration record, ICE employees said.
The option, known as voluntary return, may have allowed hundreds of immigrants - who typically would have gone before an immigration judge to contest deportation for offenses such as drunken driving, domestic violence and misdemeanor assault - to leave the country. A voluntary return doesn't bar a foreigner from applying for legal residence or traveling to the United States in the future.
Once the agency closed the books for fiscal 2010 and the record was broken, agents say they were told to stop widely offering the voluntary return option and revert to business as usual.
Without these efforts and the more than 25,000 deportations that came with them, the agency would not have topped last year's record level of 389,834, current and former ICE employees and officials said.
The Obama administration was intent on doing so even as it came under attack by some Republicans for not being tough enough on immigration enforcement and by some Democrats for failing to deliver on promises of comprehensive immigration reform.
"It's not unusual for any administration to get the numbers they need by reaching into their bag of tricks to boost figures," said Neil Clark, who retired as the Seattle field office director in late June, adding that in the 12 years he spent in management he saw the Bush and Clinton administrations do similar things.
But at a news conference Oct. 6, ICE Director John T. Morton said that no unusual practices were used to break the previous year's mark.
"When the secretary tells you that the numbers are at an all-time high, that's straight, on the merits, no cooking of the books," Morton said, referring to his boss, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "It's what happened."
ICE declined to make any officials available for interviews. In selected responses to e-mailed questions, spokesman Brian P. Hale wrote that the agency did nothing different from previous years but did not deny that ICE had focused on voluntary returns when it faced a shortfall weeks before the fiscal year ended. Rather, field offices were reminded of the voluntary return option, he said.
"ICE offered eligible aliens . . . the opportunity to accept voluntary return," Hale said. "The decision to accept VR [voluntary return] was the aliens'."
Those efforts did not appear to result in a spike in voluntary returns. Statistics provided by ICE show that voluntary returns peaked at 8,960 in June, before dipping and then leveling off in the last two months of the fiscal year. A total of 64,876 immigrants were voluntarily returned to their home countries in 2010.
Chris Crane, president of the American Federation of Government Employees National Council 118, the union that represents ICE immigration agents and officers, said offering voluntary return was not common practice for the agency. The union has been at odds with Morton over what it calls lax enforcement and gave him a no-confidence vote in June.
"It's breaking the rules to break the record," Crane said. "You don't change the way you do business to meet some quota. Morton said we don't do quotas. But that's what this is."
New accountingOn Oct. 1 - the start of fiscal 2011 - Robin F. Baker, an acting ICE assistant director, cheered field directors on to the finish line in an e-mail obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting.
"We are just 1061 shy of 390,000. However, we still get to count closed cases through Monday, October 4th so . . . keep having your folks concentrate on closing those cases," Baker wrote.
Starting in 2009, ICE began to shut its books for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 in the first few days of October. Any deportations that take place in one fiscal year but are confirmed after Oct. 5 are added to the next fiscal year's statistics.
Based on the new accounting approach, the agency counted 19,422 removals from 2009 in the 2010 statistics. In 2010 itself, 373,440 other people were deported.
Current and former ICE employees also point to an expanded U.S.-Mexico partnership as another way the agency increased overall deportation numbers.
Known as the Mexican Interior Repatriation Program, the bilateral effort between the U.S. and Mexican governments focuses on reducing the deaths of migrants attempting to cross the border during the scorching Arizona summer. Mexicans caught by Border Patrol agents in the Sonoran Desert region and southern Arizona are turned over to ICE agents, who carry out the removals to Mexico.
In a February memo, James M. Chaparro, ICE's head of enforcement and removal operations, called on field directors to "maximize" participation in the program, which he outlined as one of the ways to increase removals and "move us into position to meet or exceed the fiscal year goals."
Since its launch in 2004, the program had never started earlier than July 7. This year, the first flight full of Mexicans departed June 1. By starting in June, ICE tallied 6,527 returns that in the past would have been handled - and counted - by the U.S. Border Patrol. Overall, a record 23,384 Mexicans between June and September accepted flights back to Mexico City, and then a bus ticket to their home town, at a cost of almost $15 million.
ICE spokesman Hale said the agency started the program early because of available funds and a timely agreement between the United States and Mexico. He acknowledged that some of the immigrants removed through the program were caught or detained hundreds of miles from Arizona.
"Select individuals from west Texas were offered an opportunity to volunteer for safe return to their place of origin in the interior of Mexico," Hale said.
He also confirmed that Mexican nationals detained near Seattle - possibly as many as 500 immigrants, according to one local officer - were also included on the flights.
A year-end scrambleThe surge to break the deportation record in the final weeks of the fiscal year consumed the agency, said a high-ranking immigration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
"They had everyone burning the candle at both ends to reach 390,000," the official said. "They were basically saying anything you can do to increase the overall removal number, that's what you should do - over everything else."
lIn the Seattle area, immigration officers were instructed to give the voluntary return option to immigrants who did not face mandatory detention and didn't have attorneys.
lIn the Atlanta area, ICE officers were told to persuade immigrants who had already asked to see an immigration judge to instead voluntarily leave the country.
lIn Chicago, officers were told to stop releasing eligible immigrants and monitoring them with electronic ankle bracelets, which might spur more to accept voluntary removals, according to a Sept. 22 e-mail.
"Due to our increase in funding for detention for the remainder of the fiscal year, do not release anyone on an order of recognizance at this time," James McPeek, an assistant field office director in Chicago, wrote in the e-mail to employees. "Another option is to offer a VR [voluntary return] and keep in custody - this will increase our removal numbers for the fiscal year."
An ICE employee in Louisiana, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, estimated that over a two-week period at least 100 to 150 Mexican nationals, some of whom had multiple drunken driving convictions, had their court cases reassigned as voluntary return, which was not common practice. ICE agents elsewhere reported similar numbers.
Several ICE employees said, however, that once the fiscal year ended, their offices reverted to infrequently offering the return option. In the Pacific Northwest, some employees received an e-mail stating just that.
"Effective immediately: do not offer V/Rs [voluntary returns] to aliens who have been convicted of or are pending DUI," ICE supervisor Elizabeth Godfrey wrote Oct. 4.
ICE's goal for 2011 is to remove 404,000 immigrants.
Andrew Becker is a reporter for the Center for Investigative Reporting. He can be reached at abecker@cironline.org. CIR is a nonprofit news organization based in Berkeley, Calif., dedicated to producing investigative journalism. Its stories have appeared frequently in The Washington Post and other newspapers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/12/05/ST2010120503239.html?sid=ST2010120503239
Friday, November 19, 2010
As Judges Reject Thousands of Deportation Cases, ICE Refuses to Share Enforcement Data
By Tara Tidwell Cullen
Change.Org
November 16, 2010
With growing evidence that the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is sweeping up thousands of people who should not be deported, it is not surprising that the agency is reluctant to reveal details of its overzealous enforcement of federal immigration laws. But under U.S. open records law, it shouldn’t have a choice in the matter.
Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) released data this week showing that during the last three months of fiscal year 2010, immigration judges found that nearly one-third of the people ICE brought before the courts for deportation proceedings should not be removed — a notable increase over recent years. The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Department of Justice, also shows that over the course of the full year, judges in New York City, Oregon, Los Angeles, Miami, and Philadelphia refused to order people deported in more than half the cases brought by ICE. TRAC credits that increase to a rise in the number of cases “terminated” by judges because the government could not prove that people actually were deportable under U.S. immigration law.
ICE celebrated a record-breaking 392,000 deportations in fiscal year 2010. The agency credits programs like Secure Communities for removing dangerous criminals from our streets. But TRAC’s findings are the most recent evidence that the agency is arresting thousands of people who should not be in federal custody at all. (ICE’s own data shows that only half of the people it arrested in 2010 had any criminal history.)
So how has the Obama administration’s pledge to rid our streets of dangerous criminal immigrants resulted in the arrest of so many people who immigration judges believe should not be deported?
TRAC and a coalition of families of detained immigrants have each asked the immigration agency for data that could help answer that question. But despite U.S. laws requiring that the government make this kind of information available, ICE has effectively refused to release it by demanding exorbitant processing fees. ICE imposed a $450,000 processing fee to fill TRAC’s FOIA request, ignoring TRAC’s status as an educational institution that should be exempt from any fees. When Families for Freedom requested statistics about nationwide increases in detention, deportation, and transfer of immigrants away from legal counsel, ICE demanded a $1.3 million processing fee.
ICE has been evading questions about its enforcement practices for months. The New York Times reported this week about confusion over whether or not communities can opt out of the Secure Communities program. That confusion has largely been the product of ICE’s refusal to provide clear answers regarding how the system will be — or already has been — implemented.
When President Obama entered office in 2009, he announced a new era of openness in which federal offices were encouraged to comply with FOIA requests. More recently, ICE has promised improved transparency of its own operations and even set up a “FOIA Reading Room” to post frequently requested documents. And in September 2010, ICE boasted that it had resolved all of its outstanding FOIA appeals. But the FOIA law is not meant to be applied selectively. ICE’s enforcement practices are unfairly criminalizing immigrants and tearing apart families—at a cost to taxpayers of $5.7 billion. Americans have a right to know what is really happening at ICE.
http://immigration.change.org/blog/view/as_judges_reject_thousands_of_deportation_cases_ice_refuses_to_share_enforcement_data
Change.Org
November 16, 2010
With growing evidence that the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is sweeping up thousands of people who should not be deported, it is not surprising that the agency is reluctant to reveal details of its overzealous enforcement of federal immigration laws. But under U.S. open records law, it shouldn’t have a choice in the matter.
Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) released data this week showing that during the last three months of fiscal year 2010, immigration judges found that nearly one-third of the people ICE brought before the courts for deportation proceedings should not be removed — a notable increase over recent years. The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Department of Justice, also shows that over the course of the full year, judges in New York City, Oregon, Los Angeles, Miami, and Philadelphia refused to order people deported in more than half the cases brought by ICE. TRAC credits that increase to a rise in the number of cases “terminated” by judges because the government could not prove that people actually were deportable under U.S. immigration law.
ICE celebrated a record-breaking 392,000 deportations in fiscal year 2010. The agency credits programs like Secure Communities for removing dangerous criminals from our streets. But TRAC’s findings are the most recent evidence that the agency is arresting thousands of people who should not be in federal custody at all. (ICE’s own data shows that only half of the people it arrested in 2010 had any criminal history.)
So how has the Obama administration’s pledge to rid our streets of dangerous criminal immigrants resulted in the arrest of so many people who immigration judges believe should not be deported?
TRAC and a coalition of families of detained immigrants have each asked the immigration agency for data that could help answer that question. But despite U.S. laws requiring that the government make this kind of information available, ICE has effectively refused to release it by demanding exorbitant processing fees. ICE imposed a $450,000 processing fee to fill TRAC’s FOIA request, ignoring TRAC’s status as an educational institution that should be exempt from any fees. When Families for Freedom requested statistics about nationwide increases in detention, deportation, and transfer of immigrants away from legal counsel, ICE demanded a $1.3 million processing fee.
ICE has been evading questions about its enforcement practices for months. The New York Times reported this week about confusion over whether or not communities can opt out of the Secure Communities program. That confusion has largely been the product of ICE’s refusal to provide clear answers regarding how the system will be — or already has been — implemented.
When President Obama entered office in 2009, he announced a new era of openness in which federal offices were encouraged to comply with FOIA requests. More recently, ICE has promised improved transparency of its own operations and even set up a “FOIA Reading Room” to post frequently requested documents. And in September 2010, ICE boasted that it had resolved all of its outstanding FOIA appeals. But the FOIA law is not meant to be applied selectively. ICE’s enforcement practices are unfairly criminalizing immigrants and tearing apart families—at a cost to taxpayers of $5.7 billion. Americans have a right to know what is really happening at ICE.
http://immigration.change.org/blog/view/as_judges_reject_thousands_of_deportation_cases_ice_refuses_to_share_enforcement_data
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