ImmPolitic

Welcome to ImmPolitic, the National Immigration Forum’s blog. Here we will comment on current developments in immigration policy and politics from the perspective of a Washington-based, national pro-immigrant organization.

Immigration Enforcement’s Moving Goalposts

July 28, 2010 - Posted by Maurice Belanger

 

There was a story in the Washington Post on July 26 that was yet another reminder of how one-sided the immigration debate has become.  Under the headline “Deportation of illegal immigrants increases under Obama administration,” the Post notes that the 400,000 persons expected to be deported this year is 10 percent above the Bush Administration’s 2008 total.

 

More than half of those being deported are non-criminals, despite ICE’s state focus on deporting criminal aliens. 

 

“The effort is part of President Obama’s larger project ‘to make our national laws actually work,’ as he put it in a speech this month at American University. Partly designed to entice Republicans to support comprehensive immigration reform, the mission is proving difficult and politically perilous.”

 

How successful has the focus on immigration enforcement been at “enticing Republicans to support” comprehensive reform?  A little later on in the story, there is this,

 

“Rep. Hal Rogers  (R-Ky.) … believes the administration is showing ‘apathy toward robust immigration enforcement.’ He said at a House hearing in March that the approach is nothing more than ‘selective amnesty.’

 

Last month, the Center for American Progress published a report written by C. Stewart Verdery, Jr., who is the former DHS Assistant Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Policy.  The report compares enforcement “benchmarks” written into the failed 2007 immigration reform law with what has been accomplished since then.  These benchmarks were inserted at the insistence of Senators who were more concerned about immigration enforcement. 

 

As the report notes, the benchmarks have largely been met.  For example, by the end of this year, there will be 22,000 Border Patrol agents (2,000 more than the 2007 benchmark); construction of the specified physical barriers is nearly complete; millions of dollars in technology has been deployed—unmanned aerial surveillance planes, remote-controlled cameras, mobile surveillance systems, sensors, and other surveillance technology; the government has capacity to detain 33,400 immigrants (1,900 more than the benchmark set in 2007); there is increasing use of electronic worker verification (still by law a voluntary program for most businesses).  The list goes on.

 

The CAP report also notes other areas in which immigration enforcement has become more sophisticated in the last few years.  The US-VISIT program, for example, collects fingerprints from persons entering the U.S. at 2,600 air, sea, and land inspection lanes, allowing the government to run the fingerprints through government databases and preventing the entry of criminals and immigration violators.  A new program requires persons coming to the U.S. from visa waiver countries to submit personal information over a web-based system prior to departure in order to gain travel authorization. 

 

In the interior, the report notes that the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement has nearly doubled in the last five years.

 

Yet, for all the growth in immigration enforcement, immigration restrictionists demand more: hundreds of millions of dollars for border enforcement; thousands more Border Patrol agents; National Guard deployment on the border.  The goalposts are always moving.

 

The CAP report notes that,

 

“Some have argued that there should not be any consideration of [comprehensive immigration reform] until the southern border is secure because the drug war in Mexico has escalated and led to incidents of violence on the American side of the border.  …  The question for policymakers is what the best strategy is to minimize violence and illegal immigration.  The compelling need to fix our broken immigration system has only grown as enforcement has increased to robust levels.”

 

For many of the immigrants who now cross illegally to take jobs we offer them, there is no legal option for entry. This drives them to enter illegally, and with enforcement tighter on the border, they are increasingly dependent on criminal enterprises to guide them across.  Those criminal enterprises are increasingly violent as they defend an increasingly lucrative business. 

 

Going forward, a strategy to minimize violence and illegal immigration will depend on a comprehensive overhaul of our laws.  A continuation of the same old enforcement-only strategies will not work to make the borders more secure.  They will also not work to gain political support for reform from individuals who are unalterably opposed to it.

Border Enforcement ICE Politics

Detention Reform: A Mixed Review (Part 1)

July 27, 2010 - Posted by Lena Graber

 

 

On August 6, 2009, DHS Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Morton announced plans for sweeping reforms of the immigration detention system. 

 

On the occasion of the fast-approaching one year anniversary of the announcement of major detention reforms at ICE, the agency and detention advocates have an opportunity to reflect on the progress to date.  Although there have been some accomplishments on detention reform, there is a long way to go before the system can be characterized as civil and humane.  (ICE lists its own perspective on its achievements here.)

 

One aspect of the promised reforms launched last week: ICE’s Online Detainee Locator System. 

 

For years, many immigrants taken into ICE detention have been whisked off and effectively disappeared, as family and attorneys struggled to find them in the maze of ICE’s vast detention system.  With the Online Detainee Locator System (ODLS), anyone can search for a detainee by name and country of birth, or Alien Registration Number and country of birth.  The locator will report whether the detainee is currently in ICE custody or not, and provides information about what facility the detainee is in.  If an individual has been released from ICE custody within the last 60 days, the locator provides the telephone number for the ICE field office with jurisdiction over the former detainee. 

 

The ODLS should result in significant improvements in detention management and transparency for the agency.  Given the huge proportion of detainees that are transferred between facilities, often multiple times, during their detention, advocates hope that the ODLS will greatly reduce the previously widespread problems of detainees functionally vanishing, leaving families desperate to know what has happened to their loved ones, and frustrating attorneys with hours of dead-end phone calls trying to locate their clients.  There are limits to the locator system.  One, for those searching by name, the spelling of the detainee’s name must exactly match ICE’s detention records.  ICE might not have entered the name correctly, especially in cases where a detainee has two last names that may or may not be hyphenated.  Hopefully, searchers will keep guessing alternative spellings if they don’t have a hit on the first try.  Secondly, ICE’s track record on the accuracy of detainee information has not instilled faith in the ability of the agency to keep track of all their detainees.  Third, the ODLS is inaccessible to anyone who lacks computer and internet access; there is no telephonic option.

 

Unfortunately, more people than ever before have a need to use the ODLS to locate a member of their family or community.  The Obama administration is detaining and deporting immigrants in greater numbers than ever before.  For the hundreds of thousands detained and deported in just the last two years, the ODLS comes too late to have helped their families find them in detention or try to find them a lawyer.  

 

A major problem with the detention system that has yet to be addressed is the incarceration of mentally disabled detainees.  Many of these individuals are held by ICE in unsafe conditions, while their cases are indefinitely continued because they are unprepared to represent themselves in immigration court.  As part of a large study on people with mental disabilities in the immigration system, Human Rights Watch (HRW) interviewed over 100 mentally impaired detainees, several of whom had been in detention for more than a year, although 2/3 of HRW’s interviewees did not even know when they had entered ICE detention.  Detainees with mental illness or cognitive disabilities, an estimated 15% of the entire detained population, often end up in segregation, the agency’s term for solitary confinement, as a result of their disability.

 

ICE recently directed its personnel against detaining individuals with medical or mental illness in some instances.   A June 30, 2010 ICE memo on civil immigration enforcement priorities stated that ICE field office directors should not “expend detention resources on aliens who are known to be suffering from serious physical or mental illness, or who are disabled, elderly, pregnant, or nursing, or demonstrate that they are primary caretakers of children or an infirm person, or whose detention is otherwise not in the public interest.”  It’s too soon to see what results this memo can bring.  We hope that de-prioritizing the confinement of nursing mothers and seriously ill immigrants will be an easily obtainable outcome.  It is long overdue.

 

Image by Flickr user 710928003.

Detention ICE

HELP Act Introduction– Protecting Vulnerable Children in America

July 02, 2010 - Posted by Katherine Vargas

 

**Blog post by Daniel Ostrovsky**

A little girl is dreaming, sleeping in her bed. There is some noise. It disturbs her slightly, but she doesn’t fully awaken. She has an innate, subconscious confidence that the noise must be nothing – her parents will take care of it.  But in the morning, when she wakes, it’s eerily quiet. She goes into her parents’ bedroom and it’s empty.  Kitchen – nothing. Bathroom – they are not there. The little girl is terrified and doesn’t know what to do. What happened to her parents? How does she find them?

Unfortunately, this little girl’s story is not borrowed from a plotline of a horror movie. It describes the all-too-real experience of countless children whose parents are taken into custody by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This was the experience of a seven-year old girl in Shakopee, Minnesota. In June 2007, neighbors found the little girl wandering alone through a park; she had been sleeping when her parents were taken into custody at their own home on suspected immigration violations.

In recent years, it’s become painfully clear that children are often the forgotten victims of America’s current immigration enforcement policies. A recent report by First Focus, a bipartisan advocacy organization concluded that “over 5 million children in the United States with at least one undocumented parent are at risk of unnecessarily entering the child welfare system when a parent is detained or deported.” It is a Herculean task for immigrant parents who have come in contact with ICE to reunite with their children. Detained parents are often not permitted to arrange for the care of their children and, upon deportation, are not provided with adequate time and resources to obtain proper documents and make travel arrangements to have their children join them. Reunification is also made more difficult, because these parents are often unable to communicate with child welfare agents.

All of this results in children – many of them U.S. citizens – entering the child welfare system while risking permanent separation from their moms and dads. Even when children don’t enter the system, examples of children like the Valeriano brothers, who sold their puppies to get money for food and rummaged their apartment for bus fare, after their father was detained, abound.

Senators Al Franken (D-MN.) and Herb Kohl (D-WI.) recently introduced the Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections (HELP) for Separated Children Act (S.3522 ) to prevent more innocent immigrant children from being separated from their parents. A House version of the bill (H.R.3531) has been introduced by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)

The bill aims to require ICE to take the interests of children and the risk of separation into account in its enforcement actions. There is no reason or justification for ICE, in enforcing our immigration laws, to create a trail of broken families and parentless children. The act is certainly a step in the right direction and should be supported by all those who care about protecting children – some of the most vulnerable members of our society.

But, in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, it is unlikely to ameliorate the broader impact of America’s current immigration policies on children. Although America has a policy of providing shelter to asylum seekers and refugees facing torture or persecution abroad, our broken immigration system routinely allows  families to be permanently torn apart, and forces children into what is often an equally chaotic child welfare system. While the HELP Act is a good first step to assist and protect children who are at risk of being separated from their parents, we need a permanent solution for the broader problem of immigrant family separation — which only comprehensive immigration reform can provide.

ICE Raids

Court Closes Door for Lawsuits to Hold Officials Accountable

May 19, 2010 - Posted by Lena Graber

On May 3, 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that government doctors are immune from personal liability for inadequate medical care of immigration detainees.  The bereaved family of deceased immigration detainee Francisco Castaneda can only win limited remedies by filing suit against the government itself, where no jury trial or punitive damages are available, even for egregious conduct.

Francisco’s case rests among the many horror stories of medical care for immigrant detainees.  Despite advanced penile cancer, he was held in detention without treatment for 10 months before receiving a biopsy.  He was abruptly released before the results came in, because the government did not want to pay for treatment.  Upon release from ICE custody, Francisco went to the emergency room, where his penis was amputated, but the cancer had spread and he died a year later, at age 36.

Under the Obama administration, DHS has promised an overhaul of immigration detention, but Francisco Castaneda’s case reminds us that promised reforms come too late for many.  Despite months and months of discussions, very little has changed for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants shunted through the system.  A pervasive attitude that immigrant detainees who complain are just “acting out” or “faking it” has contributed to many detainees not receiving the care they desperately need.  Since 2003, there have been over 100 deaths in ICE custody.  Detainees with physical or mental illness are often segregated, further exacerbating their condition.

Despite continued pressure from advocates that detention should be a measure of last resort, not a default decision, ICE continues to plan new and larger detention centers to hold more people.  Immigrants are held in jails despite being innocent of committing any crimes, face persistent obstacles to receiving adequate medical care in detention, are separated from family and loved ones, and are transported hundreds of miles, usually in shackles, to be held in isolated facilities while awaiting their fate. Meanwhile intended reforms of the detention system drag on with painfully small incremental changes. 

Francisco Castaneda’s case once again shows us exactly what is at stake when detention standards are not only inadequate but unenforceable, and when there is broad immunity enjoyed by the persons responsible for the treatment of immigrants in their charge.  With minimal accountability for how they treat people in their own custody, DHS continually fails to provide dignified or tolerable treatment of immigrant detainees. 

Photo from America’s Voice.

Court Cases Detention ICE

What’s Going On at ICE?

April 06, 2010 - Posted by Maurice Belanger

 

This post was written with Forum intern Vanessa Gutierrez

On April 2nd, there was more bad news from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General released a report looking at ICE’s 287(g) program, the program in which local law enforcement officers are authorized to conduct immigration law enforcement.  The IG report identified 24 problem areas in the program, making 33 recommendations for improvement. 

In brief, the report is pretty damning, identifying flaws in a program that is now several years old that should have been resolved before the program’s launch.  These flaws include (among others), failure to track information to measure how the program comports with stated program goals; a lack of personnel to supervise officers enrolled in the program; lack of consideration for complaints against local law enforcement agencies when considering whether to enter into 287(g) or extend agreements; lack of community input; lack of emphasis on civil rights in training of officers enrolling in the program and the lack of collection of information to identify civil rights violations.

The report notes that ICE’s stated objectives for the program, included in their Memoranda of Agreement (MOA) template, is to “remove criminal aliens who pose a threat to public safety or a danger to the community.”  However, when measuring it’s effectiveness, ICE looks at “the number of aliens encountered by 287(g) officers” as well as the number of subsequent removals.  This looks an awfully lot like the quota issue we wrote about last week.

One theme that runs through much of the report is the lack of emphasis on civil rights and lack of consideration for information regarding the potential misconduct of law enforcement officers enrolled in the program.  For example,

”…an emphasis on civil rights and civil liberties was not formally included in the 287(g) application, review, and selection process, or in draft procedures for modifying, extending, or terminating existing MOAs.”

ICE may revoke a law enforcement agency’s 287(g) agreement if the agency’s officers abuse their authority.  However, information concerning potential misconduct of 287(g) officers was not even tracked.

“ICE did not retain information regarding allegations and investigations of 287(g) personnel or non-287(g) personnel exercising federal immigration authorities in violation of MOAs.”

In fact, according to the report, the 287(g) agreements “do not require ICE or [law enforcement agencies] to collect information that would assist in addressing allegations of civil rights violations within 287(g) programs.”

Finally, the new 287(g) agreement template, adopted in July 2009, eliminated the requirement for steering committees, which had been the only local-level oversight bodies of the 287(g) program.  With the new agreements, there is no structure for community stakeholders to identify concerns about the program and have them resolved.

These were just a few of the issues identified in the IG’s report.  You can get the report here.  Although the first 287(g) agreements were entered into eight years ago, there are still so many fundamental problems with the program that advocates, including the Forum, are calling for the program’s termination.

The Inspector General’s report was released on the heels of three non-governmental reports on the program, two documenting problems in a local program.

The ACLU of Georgia documented the exacerbation of racial profiling that has taken place in Gwinnett County, Georgia, after the implementation of 287(g). The report concludes that because of the immigration enforcement power given to Gwinnett County officers and the way that power is being used, immigrant communities have learned not to trust the police. The report recommends that the program be done away with all together, in order to address the troubling and unconstitutional practices that 287(g) has allowed.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studied the impact that 287(g) programs have had in North Carolina communities.  One issue examined in this report is whether 287(g) has helped reduce serious crime.  (As noted above, the program ostensibly prioritizes persons committing serious crimes.)  The report found no evidence that greater rates of immigration have been associated with higher crime rates. In fact, the report notes, violent crime has decreased since 1993, during the time period in which the largest volume of immigrants entered the state.  Most of the immigrants processed through the 287(g) program are charged with minor offenses.  More than 55% of the charges leading to 287(g) incarceration were driving-related and more than 86% were misdemeanors.

The report authors recommend limiting existing 287(g) agreements to processing people convicted of felonies as opposed to misdemeanors or traffic infractions, in order to comply with the stated goals of the program and reaffirm the primary duty of local law enforcement, which is to serve and protect all residents from crime.  Alternatives to 287(g) should be considered, focusing on preventing and fighting crime without alienating communities (and thus jeopardizing public safety).

The Migration Policy Institute also recently released a report regarding the implementation challenges for 287(g) programs. The report compares the pre-2009 287(g) Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the Obama Administration’s new standard MOA template and provides an analytical framework for determining whether the 287(g) program generates greater costs than benefits. The report contains a set of research questions that will be used in a follow-up study to determine how the program is working on the ground.

The rash of reports critical of the 287(g) program are the latest in a series of reports and news stories that have highlighted serious problems at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  The agency has too many programs with too many opportunities for abuse, and it is not in the DNA of the organization to be mindful of civil rights, due process, and plain ordinary decency.  Perhaps it is inevitable: our immigration laws are broken, and so is our immigration enforcement.  Our immigration laws must be fixed.  In the short term, however, Congress needs to step in and ask what’s going on at ICE.

Image by Flickr user Daquella manera.

287(g) ICE State-Local Immigration Enforcement

A Peep at the Week’s Activities

April 02, 2010 - Posted by Maurice Belanger

After the massive immigration reform march in Washington a couple of weeks ago, what is happening to continue the pressure on Congress to pass immigration reform?  Here are a few items from around the country from this week’s news.

Last weekend, the Los Angeles Times opined that immigration activists should look to the tea party for lessons on getting attention.

A small but vocal, sign-wielding minority that insists on being heard can capture the nation’s attention. It’s time for immigration activists to take a leaf from the “birthers,” “tea partyers” and “death panel” fear-mongers. Going to Washington was important, as is Saturday’s march in Los Angeles. But it’s at least as important that supporters of reform go back to their own states, cities and neighborhoods to begin a grass-roots campaign to explain to their fellow citizens the positive effects comprehensive immigration legislation will have on their lives, labor, economy and communities.

Alma Aquino Aguilar, a student from the University of Northern Colorado, came by bus from Colorado to join the 200,000 who marched in Washington on March 21, and are now taking the fight back home.  She told the Greeley (Colorado) Tribune,

“My life has changed 360 degrees. … Sharing the bus with a bunch of strangers opened my eyes about how much easier it is for me as a United States citizen. And I’m now keeping in mind that if I don’t keep working for a better America, who is? Who’s going to be that voice for them?”

San Jose Mercury News contributing columnist Byron Williams wrote a column on the grassroots action that will be required for comprehensive immigration reform to get through Congress, including action from an unexpected ally.

There is a momentum, as indicated by last week’s protest in Washington, for humane immigration policy methodically making its way to Congress. It is a coalition that is as diverse as the nation, including what one might think to be a surprising group: African American pastors.

Concrete example: On Sunday, in Charlotte, North Carolina, one African American pastor worked with immigrant rights groups to protest Mecklenburg County’s participation in ICE’s 287(g) program. 

Little Rock [AME Zion Church] pastor Dwayne Walker said the church was there to live out the creed of “injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”

Faith groups are becoming increasingly active in pushing Congress to fix our broken immigration system.  In the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Wilton D. Gregory, Archbishop of Atlanta and Tom Evans, executive presbyter for the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, wrote,

As Christian clergy, we see the realities faced by many of the most marginalized in our communities; realities shaped by a broken federal immigration system and an increasing amount of local legislation, which create an adverse climate for immigrants, especially our Latino brothers and sisters.

We recognize the urgent need to educate our own congregations and the broader public about the complexities of immigration, with a view towards promoting balanced and fair immigration policy.

In St. Joseph, Missouri, there was a Holy Thursday vigil for immigration reform attended by about 40 persons, who delivered 1,400 post cards to the office of Representative Sam Graves.  This vigil followed a similar event in Kansas City at the office of Senator Claire McCaskill.

Finally for this week, another group that is getting organized around immigration reform is law enforcement.  On Tuesday, in Colorado Springs, there was a regional law enforcement conference to discuss how law enforcement should handle undocumented immigrants at the local level.  Afterwards, Colorado Springs Police Chief Richard Myers told the Colorado Springs Gazette that officers are looking for more guidance from Washington.

“It’s not our job to deal with all the social issues and the political/philosophical aspects, but there needs to be some differentiation between criminal aliens and those who are here undocumented with no other criminal offense,” Myers said.

Happy Easter, and don’t eat too many peeps.

 

Events ICE Immigration Reform

Update: ICE Clarifies It’s Priorities

March 31, 2010 - Posted by Maurice Belanger

 

On March 30, we wrote about a Washington Post story about a memo from a high-level Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official that appeared to be pressing ICE offices to bring their number of arrests up to meet a “goal” of 400,000 criminal and non-criminal arrests by the end of the fiscal year.

On Monday, DHS Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Morton met with a group of stakeholders to clarify ICE’s priorities.  In a follow-up letter, Mr. Morton underlined what he stated in an earlier press release re-acting to the Washington Post article.

“I cannot state strongly enough my opposition to quotas.  ICE does not, and on my watch will not, impose quotas that propel field officers to identify and arrest any particular number of non-criminal aliens.”  

Mr. Morton pledged to review the work plans of each ICE field office to make sure they incorporate this policy.

In a separate memo that went out to ICE field office directors on March 26 (and mentioned in the Post story of March 27), James Chaparro (author of the February 22 memo at the center of the controversy) “clarified” his earlier memo.  The March 26 memo also alludes to the tightrope the agency is forced to walk when it must enforce the rules of a dysfunctional system.  Here’s what I’d call an understatement:

“The balance between our priorities, the budget, and congressional expectations can be challenging…”

Chaparro asks his staff to “remain focused” on identifying and removing “aliens who pose a threat to national security or public safety…, aliens who are fugitives or otherwise obstruct immigration controls” (including those who re-enter the country illegally after removal and those who obtain admission through fraud) and “illegal entrants apprehended at and near the border…to stop the prior practice commonly referred to as ‘catch and release’.” 

Each of these categories is accompanied by a set of sub-priorities within them.  You can read the complete memo here. 

Beyond these priorities, though, the memo acknowledges that other immigrants unlawfully present can’t be ignored.

“To be clear, ICE employees should continue to enforce immigration laws and this memorandum should not be construed to prohibit the removal of other aliens unlawfully in the United States.”

In his letter to stakeholders, Morton also clarifies somewhat that, for purposes of ICE’s enforcement priorities, “criminal aliens” means “aliens convicted of crimes,” not “aliens charged with crimes.”  

Of course, my lawyer friends will say that more clarification will be needed on what is meant by “crimes.”  Especially in the separate reality of the immigration context, even a minor crime can be an “aggravated felony.” 

What remains unclear is the concern that, beyond the focus on fugitives and those who have been convicted of crimes, there is a perception that a certain level of detainees must be maintained.  In the memo by Mr. Chaparro, he says,

“We have an obligation to focus on our priorities while also adhering to Congressional mandates to maintain an average daily population and meet annual performance measures.” (Emphasis added.)

The conference language spelling out spending for ICE for Fiscal Year 2010 is somewhat more vague on the level of detentions.

“Provided further, That funding made available under this heading shall maintain a level of not less than 33,400 detention beds through September 30, 2010….”

In other words, we have to maintain a certain capacity in our gulags, but we do not have to keep them full to capacity.

On the other hand, the conference report is less vague about ICE priorities:

“That of the total amount available, not less than $1,500,000,000 shall be available to identify aliens convicted of a crime who may be deportable, and to remove them from the United States once they are judged deportable … Provided further, That the Secretary shall prioritize the identification and removal of aliens convicted of a crime by the severity of that crime….”

The bottom line, though, is that enforcing the rules of a broken system, for as long as Congress fails to act to fix it, will be a thankless task.  Since the quota story broke in the Washington Post, some advocates are calling for Morton’s dismissal.  If Morton does not steer his agency to focus on removing people who actually may be a threat, he will face growing criticism from immigrants and their growing number of supporters all across the country—criticism that may lead to the downfall of the Administration.  On the other hand, if he is successful in getting the agency to focus on his stated priorities, he is going to get beat up by members of the minority party who would rather see more families being torn apart and workers sent out of the country.  

There is no way to make everyone happy, and he shouldn’t try.  Until Congress acts to make the laws more sensible, Mr. Morton his going to have to pick his priorities, stick to them, and take the criticism that will come.

 

Detention ICE Raids

The Trouble with Enforcing Broken Immigration Laws

March 30, 2010 - Posted by Maurice Belanger

What happens when you go to shift paradigms, but your transmission fails?

Events of the past week have placed a spotlight on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws in the interior.  An article appearing in the Washington Post on March 27 reported on a memo sent on behalf of James Chaparro, Director of ICE’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations on February 22 that appears to endorse arrest quotas in contradiction to stated administration enforcement priorities.

Before I get into that, a little background. 

After the failure of immigration reform legislation in the Senate in 2007, the Bush Administration decided to drop the hammer on undocumented immigrants, regardless of whether they posed a threat to communities or were merely here seeking opportunity to provide for their families.  As former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff put it at a press conference with Senate supporters of the failed legislation,

“You will continue to see heart-wrenching examples of families being pulled apart.  In order to regain credibility with the American people, we’re going to have to be tough.”

Part of the effort to “regain credibility” was to be able to tout large numbers of deportations, and this necessitated a focus on immigrant workers at workplaces and non-criminal immigrants in their homes.  ICE’s Fugitive Operations Teams were set up to go after immigrants who had been ordered removed from the U.S., but failed to depart (the so-called “absconders”).  Last year, it was revealed that each team was assigned to make at least 1,000 arrests each year.  To boost numbers, teams abandoned a focus on absconders.  The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, reported that,

An internal ICE report released earlier this year showed that agents arrested two dozen Latinos at a Maryland convenience store in 2007 after their supervisor told them to boost arrests because they were behind reaching their goal.

A report by the Migration Policy Institute last year noted that in 2007, 40% of Fugitive Operations Teams’ arrests were neither criminal nor fugitives.

The new Administration stated that it would prioritize removal of immigrants who have committed crimes and posed a threat to their communities.  Indeed, Assistant Secretary John Morton, the new head of ICE told reporters in August 2007 that the agency was no longer using arrest quotas.

So, in February of this year, Mr. Chaparro writes his memo, which in part says,

“Current non-criminal removal projections put is (sic) well short of our FY10 goal. … The current non-criminal removal rate projections will result in 159,740 removals at the close of the fiscal year. Coupling this with the projections in criminal removals only gives us a total of just over 310,000 overall removals—well under the Agency’s goal of 400,000.” (Emphasis in original.)

Under a section titled, “Here is What I Need You To Do,” the memo goes on:

“Within 30 days we will increase our national [Average Daily Population] by 3,000 bringing our national overall ADP to approximately 32,600.”

Sounds like a quota, doesn’t it?

Apparently, it sounded like a quota to Mr. Chaparro’s boss, John Morton, who immediately issued a statement following the appearance of the Washington Post article revealing the Chaparro memo.  That statement said in part,

“Significant portions of the memo … did not reflect our policies, was sent without my authorization, and has since been withdrawn and corrected.

We are strongly committed to carrying out our priorities to remove serious criminal offenders first and we definitively do not set quotas.”

The Post article noted that, even before the Morton statement was issued,

Chaparro issued a new memo stating that his earlier e-mail “signals no shift in the important steps we have taken to date to focus our priorities on the smart and effective enforcement of immigration laws, prioritizing dangerous criminal aliens….”

At times like these, it sounds a little like the old enforcement policies of the last administration have been coated with new buzzwords, and they are now “smart, effective enforcement” sort of like how coal has become “clean coal” in the past year.

While Morton’s statement repudiating the Chaparro memo was unequivocal, in other contexts Mr. Morton has sounded more…equivocal.  There was an exchange in a hearing on March 18 with Hal Rogers (R-KY), the ranking Republican on the Appropriations Committee’s Homeland Security Subcommittee, in which Mr. Morton seemed to suggest he plans to implement quotas.  Here are some excerpts:

ROGERS: “However, you’ve all but stopped apprehending and detaining non- criminal illegal aliens. As I said in my opening statement, a major, major decline in administrative arrests—that’s non-criminal arrests—down 68 percent.”

MORTON: “What I will tell you there is you are right that a number of the categories that you identified are down from the previous year. It’s of concern to me. I’ve been talking about it the last few weeks and we are going to do better.”

ROGERS (a bit later):  “I’m just saying that the unused beds are an indication that you’re not apprehending and deporting the numbers that you’re talking about. Otherwise you wouldn’t—you would use every bed you could. We’ve done it for decades.”

MORTON: ”… on April 1st you are going to see us move to something very close to 33,400 and run it for the rest of the year.”

Until Congress acts to reform our broken immigration laws, ICE is stuck enforcing laws that don’t make sense.  Mr. Chapparo alludes to the bind the agency is in in his second memo (mentioned above), when he refers to the “smart and effective” prioritization of “dangerous criminal aliens,”

“while also adhering to Congressional mandates to maintain an average daily [detention] population and meet annual performance measures.”

Still, the Administration has to decide what it’s priorities really are, get everyone in the Department of Homeland Security on board, and stick to the decision.  Mr. Morton only creates confusion and creates a credibility problem both outside and inside the agency when he says one thing in a press statement, and another thing to one of Congress’ immigration hardliners.  Until he can provide direct and clear leadership to his subordinates, Mr. Morton will be stuck in neutral.

Detention ICE

More Promised Change for Immigration Detention

January 27, 2010 - Posted by Maurice Belanger

On January 25, John Morton, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), gave a speech at an event hosted by the Migration Policy Institute.

The bulk of his remarks were devoted to reform of the immigration detention system.  Morton reiterated that detention reform is a personal priority for him, and that ICE will engage in a sustained effort to transform the immigration detention system, an effort that will extend beyond his tenure.  This effort was first announced in August 2009, and re-announced in October 2009.  These announcements included fact sheets and media events laying out many of the reforms that Morton repeated this week.  Given the enormous scale of this announced reform, and the lengthy timeline required, we will be monitoring and periodically reporting about progress here.

He noted that ICE currently detains as many as 32,000 people a day in a vast network of more than 300 mostly penal facilities that are for the most part county, state, federal, and private prisons that ICE contracts with.

That is the crux of the problem. 

Some of the individuals ICE detains have been convicted of crimes, and the penal system is designed to incarcerate those in the criminal justice system.  However, the vast majority of those ICE has detained are being held for violations of immigration laws.  They are people who came here to work and have done so without authorization.  If they can’t show they have an avenue to stay here legally, they are being detained only until they can be removed—not because they have done anything more serious than work without permission.

What ICE needs, then, is to design a system that is appropriate to hold such people for a short period of time until their immigration cases are adjudicated and they are removed (or are found to be eligible for release).

Morton’s vision is to have a smaller network of facilities designed to hold suspected immigration violators, with appropriate medical care and transparent standards that are fully implemented.  These facilities will be managed by federal personnel.  That’s the long-range plan.  It is a long way to there from where ICE is now.

Morton did give a preview of changes to expect in the coming months.

The agency will soon have 50 new employees to monitor detention facilities.  (These same 50 positions were announced in October, but apparently have not yet been filled.)  An overdependence on contractors and a lack of federal employees to monitor them were blamed by Morton for leading to some of the problems that have caused the detention system to come under public and Congressional scrutiny in recent months.  Morton said his long-term goal is to have a federal monitor in each facility used by ICE. 

By this summer, there will be an on-line detainee locator system, so the family members and representatives of detainees can figure out where they are being held.

ICE is developing a classification system so that when someone enters the system there will be an assessment to determine their danger to the community, flight risk, and medical status.  Everyone with a medical issue will have a case manager assigned to them to ensure they receive appropriate medical care.  What Morton didn’t say is whether this classification system will result in a greater identification of those who qualify for release or enrollment in an alternatives to detention program.

The agency is now in discussion with contractors about designing a facility model that will be appropriate for the population ICE detains. 

Morton also noted that ICE is working with groups to revise its detention standards, but implementation of new standards will take time.  The problem with the current standards, he noted, is that they came out of the penal world, and they are not appropriate for the kind of civil system that he wants ICE to move toward.  Reading between the lines, it will be difficult to fully implement the kind of detention standards advocates want as long as immigration violators are being held in prisons.

For many persons who are now routinely detained, ICE is exploring alternatives to detention.  ICE will soon begin a pilot project with the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR, the immigration judges).  This initiative was promised by January 2010 in the October detention reform announcement.  He noted that widespread implementation of alternatives to detention (Morton said the agency has 16,000 or 17,000 slots funded) will require more resources for EOIR; the backlog of cases for immigrants in proceedings who are not detained (and thus have a lower priority for the immigration courts) is very long.  The agency is about to submit a report to Congress on alternatives to detention.  (Morton and Secretary Napolitano previously pledged to submit this report to Congress by Fall 2009.)

The Administration’s budget, to be released on February 1st, should contain more clues as to what we can expect in the near term regarding the effort to reform the detention system.  All of this will take resources, but the reforms ICE has begun to tackle are long overdue and deserve to be funded.  Given that more than 100 people have died in immigration detention since 2003, these reforms could quite literally be lifesaving.

You can view a video of the program with Assistant Secretary Morton on the Web site of C-Span.

Detention ICE

More Questions About Detention Reform

January 11, 2010 - Posted by Brittney Nystrom

The Department of Homeland Security under the Obama Administration marked 2009 with splashy announcements of planned detention reforms intended to revamp the immigration detention system, in chief by designing a civil detention system more appropriate for holding immigration violators who should not be kept in penal institutions.

The announcements were made after a series of stories in the press and numerous reports by NGOs uncovered serious problems with the system of health care for immigrant detainees (problems that included the preventable deaths of several detainees).  Improved health care for detainees and more centralized oversight were central features of the 2009 detention reform announcements.  These announcements were encouraging. 

However, the ability of the administration to carry out the reforms was called into question in a New York Times report on January 10.

“as the administration moves to increase oversight within the agency, [newly obtained] documents show how officials — some still in key positions — used their role as overseers to cover up evidence of mistreatment, deflect scrutiny by the news media or prepare exculpatory public statements after gathering facts that pointed to substandard care or abuse.”

The Times story weakens the Administration’s stance against making legally-binding rules for immigration detention, something that detention reform advocates have long asked for.  The Administration argued that rule-making would be “laborious, time-consuming and less flexible” than its own overhaul.  In other words, in spite of its abysmal record, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wants us to believe that it can police itself.

Advocates at Detention Watch Network expressed dismay and disappointment at the news,

“The Department of Homeland Security’s announced reform efforts are meaningless unless there is a fundamental shift in the way the agency operates, governed by enforceable standards and appropriate oversight of the agency’s authority which has long been unfettered.  It is unrealistic to expect that officials involved in the cover-up of previous abuses can lead a true reform effort.”

Detention reform will not be easy.  The system has grown to an unprecedented size.  Efforts at imposing good management practices are certain to take time.  In the meanwhile, individuals will linger in immigration custody in jails designed for the criminal justice system and families will continue to suffer. 

The task is made much more formidable due to Congressional failure to reform our immigration system.  The vast majority of immigrants who are jailed should be given a work permit, not a jail cell. A path to legalization would significantly reduce the number of individuals present in the United States in violation of the immigration laws, and consequently reduce the need for an immigration detention system. 

As we wait for Congress to do the right thing, DHS must do all that it can to transition to an immigration detention system in which preventable deaths are prevented and enforceable standards are enforced.  The deceptive and evasive conduct of ICE officials described by the New York Times must be replaced by transparency and accountability.  A new year and a new decade offer the opportunity for change.  We hope it’s not too late to teach an old dog a few new tricks.

Detention ICE

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