Detention & Enforcement

The following are a list of resources about immigration enforcement.

See also in the Research Center: Border Enforcement.

2010

Immigration Enforcement Actions: 2009

August 18, 2010 - Office of Immigration Statistics, Department of Homeland Security

This Office of Immigration Statistics Annual Report presents information on the apprehension, detention, return, and removal of foreign nationals during 2009.

Arizona Federal Prosecutions Driven to Record Highs

August 17, 2010 - Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

Federal prosecutions in Arizona reached an all-time high during the first eight months of fiscal year 2010. For the first time, Arizona now leads the nation in terms of having more federal prosecutions than any other federal district in the country. So far this year nearly one out of every five (19%) of all prosecutions filed anywhere in the nation were brought in Arizona. Immigration cases accounted for more than four out of five (84.5%) of all federal prosecutions in Arizona during FY 2010.

Summaries of Recent Reports on Immigration Detention

June 30, 2010 - National Immigration Forum

This document summarizes a number of reports that have been issued by a range of groups that document conditions in immigration detention facilities.

Brick by Brick: A Half-Decade of Immigration Enforcement and the Need for Immigration Reform

June 28, 2010 - C. Stewart Verdery, Jr., Founder and Partner, Monument Policy Group, for the Center for American Progress

This paper catalogues how much more robust immigration enforcement has become over the last five years, with particular emphasis on the 2007 Senate bill’s enforcement benchmarks. It concludes that DHS has made great strides in meeting these benchmarks. Additional budget increases for immigration enforcement programs will not significantly reduce the size of that population absent other changes to immigration laws.

Locked Up but Not Forgotten: Opening Access to Family & Community in Immigration Detention System

April 29, 2010 - NYU School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic

The report focuses on the role of family and community visitation for detainees within the detention system, emphasizing its importance to meeting the needs of detainees, and the need for visitation policy reform at ICE and in Congress.

Summaries of Recent Immigration Enforcement Reports

April 06, 2010 - National Immigration Forum

This document summarizes a number of reports issued in 2008 through 2010 by non-profit and governmental watchdog organizations documenting problems with various immigration enforcement programs.

How Errors in E-Verify Databases Impact U.S. Citizens and Lawfully Present Immigrants

March 15, 2010 - National Immigration Law Center

The E-Verify employment eligibility verification program is being sold as an easy fix that would curb unauthorized employment by undocumented immigrants and protect American jobs. Proposals to expand the program entirely ignore the effect the program will have on U.S. citizens and lawfully present noncitizens. Database errors would keep authorized workers from working.

How Expanding E-Verify Would Hurt American Workers and Business

March 02, 2010 - Immigration Policy Center

This fact sheet discusses how expanding E-Verify and making it mandatory would threaten the jobs of thousands of U.S. citizens and saddle U.S. businesses with additional costs. Expanding E-Verify now would be in direct contradiction to the goal of creating jobs and would slow America’s economic recovery.

E-VERIFY: Why Mandatory Employer Participation Will Stall Economic Growth and Job Creation

February 15, 2010 - National Immigration Law Center

A mandatory electronic employment eligibility verification system will be part of any comprehensive immigration reform bill, but requiring employers to participate in E-Verify without legalizing existing unauthorized workers would compound the already-severe problems of a struggling economy by imposing new costs on employers, preventing qualified workers (including U.S. citizens) from working, increasing unemployment, and depriving the government of revenue.

Facing Our Future: Children in the Aftermath of Immigration Enforcement

February 02, 2010 - Ajay Chaudry, Randolph Capps, Juan Pedroza, Rosa Maria Castaneda, Robert Santos, Molly M. Scott, Urban Institute

Almost three-quarters of the 5.5 million children with unauthorized parents are U.S.-born citizens. This report examines the consequences of parental arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, detention, and deportation on 190 children in 85 families in six locations, providing in-depth details on parent-child separations, economic hardships, and children's well-being. The report provides recommendations for stakeholders to mitigate the harmful effects of immigration enforcement on children.

2009

The ICE Process for Authorizing Medical Care for Immigration Detainees

December 22, 2009 - Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General

In this report, the OIG evaluated the effectiveness of the process used to authorize care for immigration detainees. The OIG identified a variety of limitations that hinder the processing of requests. OIG determined that the existing medical treatment request process can be improved through a reduction in the amount of pre-authorization review, expansion of case management functions, and improvement in relationships with outside medical providers who deliver care to immigration detainees.

FY 2009 Federal Prosecutions Sharply Higher

December 21, 2009 - Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

Immigration prosecutions now make up well over half — 54 percent — of all federal filings. Last year immigration prosecutions jumped 15.7 percent — to 91,899 in FY 2009. Just two lead charges accounted for more than nine out of ten immigration prosecutions: illegal entry of an alien and illegal re-entry of an alien. Out of the 91,899 immigration prosecutions last year, only 13 employers in 8 cases were prosecuted for the felony offense of illegal hiring of undocumented workers.

Secure Communities

December 03, 2009 - National Immigration Forum

This brief backgrounder explains “Secure Communities,” and discusses its problems. Secure Communities is a program that allows state and local police to check the fingerprints of an individual they are booking into a jail against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration databases.

Huge Increase in Transfers of ICE Detainees

December 02, 2009 - Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

As the number of detainees has grown, ICE has not sought to balance where it located new detention beds with where individuals are apprehended. Instead, ICE transports detainees from their point of initial detention to many different locations, often to remote locations. As a result, the number of detainees transferred each year has grown much more rapidly than the population held in custody. Facility-by-Facility Reports.

Locked Up Far Away: The Transfer of Immigrants to Remote Detention Centers in the United States

December 02, 2009 - Human Rights Watch

This report presents new data showing that immigrants in detention are increasingly being transported to remote facilities. Detained immigrants have the right to be represented in deportation hearings by an attorney of their choice and to present evidence in their defense. But once they are transferred, immigrants are often so far away from their lawyers, evidence, and witnesses that their ability to defend themselves in deportation proceedings is severely curtailed.

The Secure Communities Program: Unanswered Questions and Continuing Concerns

November 23, 2009 - Michele Waslin, Immigration Policy Center

This report raises questions about whether the Secure Communities program meets its goal of removing dangerous criminals from the U.S. There are questions concerning who is being targeted by the program and how ICE defines and prioritizes criminal immigrants. There are additional concerns regarding the role of local law-enforcement officers, and the potential for racial profiling and pretextual arrests. There are also questions about the management, data collection, and evaluation of the program.

Immigration Enforcement in the United States

November 16, 2009 - Kristen McCabe and Jeanne Batalova, Migration Policy Institute

Drawing from the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, published by the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Immigration Statistics, this fact sheet provides data on apprehensions, detentions, returns, and removals of unauthorized noncitizens in the United States as of 2008.

An Innovative Pro Bono Response to the Lack of Counsel for Indigent Immigrant Detainees

November 15, 2009 - City Bar Justice Center NYC Know Your Rights Project

This report analyzes data on 158 detainees counseled by pro bono volunteers at the Varick ICE detention facility, between December 11, 2008 and July 9, 2009, in Lower Manhattan.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Policies and Procedures Related to Detainee Transfers

November 10, 2009 - Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General

This report found that transfer determinations made by ICE officers at the detention facilities are not conducted according to a consistent process. This leads to errors, delays, and confusion for detainees, their families, and legal representatives. The OIG recommends that ICE establish a national standard for reviewing each detainee’s administrative file prior to a transfer determination, and that it develop protocols with EOIR court administrators for exchanging hearing and transfer schedules.

Attorneys’ Perspectives on the Rights of Detained Immigrants in Minnesota

November 10, 2009 - University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs

This report presents the finding from a systematic sampling of attorneys who reported on violations of rights of detained immigrant clients. Since many immigrants rarely understand the detention process or are aware of their rights, attorneys were surveyed as an important source of information on the rights of detained immigrants.

ICED OUT | How Immigration Enforcement Has Interfered with Workers’ Rights

October 27, 2009 - National Employment Law Project, AFL-CIO, American Rights at Work Education Fund

This report shows that in too many instances, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) worksite raids have prevented meaningful enforcement of labor standards for all workers. ICE actions have created incentives for shady employers to continue hiring and abusing undocumented workers, since the deportation of their employees may excuse those employers from complying with labor laws.

Facts About E-Verify

October 15, 2009 - National Immigration Law Center

Basic fact sheet on the E-Verify electronic employment verification system.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department 28th Semiannual Report

October 15, 2009 - Police Assessment Resource Center

This report analyzes how the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) handles undocumented immigrants from initial arrest until release. It contrasts the old and proposed new agreement between L.A. County and ICE. ICE has had a presence in L.A. County jails since 2005 and has presented a proposed new agreement to the County on a take it or leave it basis. The report further looks at the conditions at the Mira Loma Detention Facility, the largest public detention facility to contract with ICE nationwide.

Immigration Detention: Overview and Recommendations

October 06, 2009 - Dr. Dora Schriro, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement

This report provides a review and evaluation of the Immigration Detention system. It describes the policy, human capital, informational, and management challenges associated with the rapid expansion of ICE’s detention capacity. It identifies important distinctions between the characteristics of the Immigration Detention population in ICE custody verses the population in the Criminal Incarceration system. It provides a seven part framework for developing a new system of immigration detention.

Immigrant Detention: Can ICE Meet its Legal Imperatives and Case Management Responsibilities?

September 10, 2009 - Donald Kerwin and Serena Yi-Ying Lin, Migration Policy Institute

This report explores whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is capable of meeting its legal and case management responsibilities in light of its use of information systems that may not be collecting all the data necessary for compliance with legal, detention management and humanitarian standards. ICE may well need more information on detainees than it currently collects.

A Broken System: Confidential Reports Reveal Failures in U.S. Detention Centers

July 28, 2009 - National Immigration Law Center, ACLU of Southern California, and Holland & Knight, LLP

This report, based on an analysis of hundreds of detention facility review reports from 2001 through 2005 that were obtained through litigation, finds that the men and women within the nation’s immigration detention system find their fundamental rights routinely and systematically violated. The report highlights the importance of having independent monitors of detention centers, and offers specific recommendations to ameliorate the current situation.

Constitution on ICE: A Report on Immigration Home Raid Operations

July 22, 2009 - Cardozo Immigration Justice Clinic

This report documents the prevalence of constitutional violations that occur when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conduct home raid operations. These violations involve immigration agents forcing their way into private residences during pre-dawn hours, without warrants or other legal authority, and seizing residents without legal basis, in a pattern suggestive of racial profiling. The report proposes several policy recommendations.

The Next Generation of E-Verify: Getting Employment Verification Right

July 20, 2009 - Doris Meissner and Marc R. Rosenblum, Migration Policy Institute

This report examines the strengths and weaknesses of E-Verify. It makes recommendatins to strengthen the existing E-Verify and suggests the testing of three alternatives for a next-generation E-Verify based on secure documents, PIN pre-verification, and biometric scanning.

Detention Conditions and Human Rights Under the Obama Administration: Immigrant Detainees Report

July 15, 2009 - New Orleans Workers’ for Racial Justice

This report is based on the accounts of over 100 immigrant detainees in a privately-run immigrant detention center in Basile, Louisiana, a facility known for repeated incidences of prisoner abuse. The detainees acted as human rights monitors, reporting human rights violations and substandard detention practices to jail staff, immigration officials, and advocates.

The Math of Immigration Detention

July 07, 2009 - National Immigration Forum

This backgrounder examines how much it costs the taxpayer to detain immigrants, most of whom have no criminal record and who could be placed in less expensive alternatives to detention.

Raids on Workers: Destroying Our Rights

June 18, 2009 - National Commission on ICE Misconduct, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union

This report documents the devastation and destruction that immigration raids have had on families, workplaces and communities across the country. It provides a detailed account of how heavy handed enforcement tactics led to systemic abuse of workers’ rights and a willful disregard for the rule of law.

What Are the Impacts of the Economic Crisis and U.S. Enforcement Strategy?

June 08, 2009 - Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD

This slide show, based on more than 4,000 survey interviews in Mexico, California, and Oklahoma, gives information on how the current U.S. economic crisis has affected migration from Mexico, and how U.S. border enforcement strategies has altered migration strategies.

The Basics of E-Verify, the US Employer Verification System

April 30, 2009 - Marc Rosenblum, Migration Policy Institute

This article explores E-Verify's history, how it works, and the arguments for and against making it mandatory.

Forced Apart (By the Numbers): Non-Citizens Deported Mostly for Nonviolent Offenses

April 15, 2009 - Human Rights Watch

This report analyzes deficiencies in ICE enforcement and reporting policies, specifically relating to deportation of non-citizens on criminal grounds, revealing which kinds of non-citizens have been deported between 1997 and 2007 and for what types of crimes.

U.S. Detention of Asylum Seekers: Seeking Protection, Finding Prison

April 15, 2009 - Human Rights First

This report examines DHS detention policies and practices relating to asylum seekers since 2003. HRF interviewed detained asylum seekers, visited detention facilities, met with ICE and DHS officials and interviewed pro bono legal service providers to prepare the report.

Immigration and Custom Enforcement Detention Bedspace Management

April 10, 2009 - Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General

This report addresses the strengths and weaknesses of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention bedspace management. It is based on interviews with employees and officials of relevant angencies and institutions, direct observations, and a review of applicable documents.

The Obama Opportunity on Immigration Enforcement: Redirect Priorities

April 01, 2009 - America's Voice

The Bush Administration focused its resources on immigrant workers rather than unscrupulous employers and dangerous criminals. The Obama Administration should pursue effective immigration enforcement strategies that are focused on the worst offenders.

Jailed Without Justice: Immigration Detention in the USA

March 25, 2009 - Amnesty International

Amnesty International has found that the dramatic increase in the use of detention as an immigration enforcement mechanism has resulted in a number of human rights violations. The conditions under which immigrants are held violate both US and international standards on the treatment of detainees.

SEVERING A LIFELINE: The Neglect of Citizen Children in America’s Immigration Enforcement Policy

March 23, 2009 - A Report by Dorsey & Whitney LLP, to The Urban Institute

U.S. citizen children are the victims of immigration laws that are out of step with the manner in which we address child welfare issues in other areas of the law. The “best interests” of the child find little or no hearing in the process of detaining and deporting undocumented parents.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Tracking and Transfers of Detainees

March 17, 2009 - Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General

This report finds that ICE tracks immigration detainees with 94% accuracy. Agency staff interviewed generally considered completing and providing copies of the transfer forms to detainees a low priority, and they did not know that they were responsible for informing detainees’ legal representatives of transfers. Medical staff at detention facilities did not always conduct physical examinations within 14 days, as required.

Detained and Dismissed: Women’s Struggles to Obtain Health Care in U.S. Immigration Detention

March 17, 2009 - Human Rights Watch

This study focuses on conditions of women’s health care in immigration detention facilities.

Detained and Dismissed: Women’s Struggles to Obtain Health Care in U.S. Immigration Detention

March 17, 2009 - Human Rights Watch

This study focuses on conditions of women’s health care in immigration detention facilities.

Dying for Decent Care: Bad Medicine in Immigration Custody

March 17, 2009 - Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center

This study finds significant shortcomings in provision of health care to ICE detainees.

DHS: Organizational Structure and Resources for Providing Health Care to Immigration Detainees

February 23, 2009 - U.S. Government Accountability Office

The GAO was requested to answer 3 questions relating to: (1) ICE’s organizational structure, (2) annual health care spending/staffing/services provided to ICE detainees, and (3) determining whether ICE mortality rate can be compared to Bureau of Prisons or US Marshals Service.

Halfway Home: Unaccompanied Children in Immigration Custody

February 15, 2009 - Women's Refugee Commission

This study examines living conditions for unaccompanied children in immigration proceedings.

Collateral Damage: An Examination of ICE’s Fugitive Operations Program

February 04, 2009 - Margot Mendelson, Shayna Strom, Michael Wishnie, Migration Policy Institute

ICE's Fugitive Operations Program established in 2003 to locate, apprehend and remove fugitive aliens who pose a threat to the community has instead focused chiefly on arresting unauthorized immigrants without criminal convictions. 73 percent of the nearly 97,000 people arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fugitive operations teams between the program’s inception in 2003 and early 2008 were unauthorized immigrants without criminal records.

Unseen Prisoners: A Report on Women in Immigration Detention Facilities in Arizona

January 15, 2009 - University of Arizona

Findings from a year-long study based on over 40 interviews covering the three detention facilities in Arizona, two of which are private for-profit prisons contracted by ICE.

Removals Involving Illegal Alien Parents of United States Citizen Children

January 12, 2009 - Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General

This report addresses the number of instances over the past 10 years in which the illegal alien parent of a United States citizen child was removed from the country. It is based on interview with employees and officials of relevant agencies and institutions and a review of applicable documents.

2008

Report on the December 2008 Humanitarian Visit to the Stewart Detention Center

December 20, 2008 - Georgia Detention Watch

This report outlines observations made by a group of concerned Georgia residents during a visit to the Stewart Detention Center. It is based on interviews with sixteen detainees and includes recurring concerns voiced by the interviewees.

Detention and Deportation in the Age of ICE

December 15, 2008 - ACLU of Massachusetts

Report regarding ICE detention conditions based on interviews with 40 detainees, plus advocates and lawyers, and on government reports.

Basic Pilot/E-Verify Reality Check: Businesses Challenge DHS’s Claims

October 15, 2008 - National Immigration Law Center

A sampling of real-life experiences with E-Verify contrasted with claims about the program made by the Department of Homeland Security.

The History of Basic Pilot/E-Verify

October 15, 2008 - National Immigration Law Center

Includes a discussion of employment verification systems pre-E-Verify, legislative history, implementation history, and E-Verify in the states.

Crossing the Line: Human Rights Abuses of Migrants in Short-Term Custody on Arizona-Sonora Border

September 15, 2008 - No More Deaths

This report documents civil rights and human rights abuses of short-term immigrant detainees (less than 72 hours in custody) apprehended by ICE and Border Patrol. The study surveys findings from volunteers and medical professionals working with detainees in Southern Arizona in 2006-2008.

Voices from Detention: A Report on Human Rights Violations at the Northwest Detention Center in WA

July 01, 2008 - OneAmerica

This report examines human rights violations against immigrant detainees in the Northwest Detention Center, a private prison contracted by ICE, in Tacoma, Washington. It is based on interviews with four attorneys, a family members, 41 detainees and ICE and GEO officials.

Interpreting after the Largest ICE Raid in US History: A Personal Account

June 13, 2008 - Erik Camayd-Freixas, Ph.D., Florida International University

Compelling account of the government's "fast track" prosecution of immigrants caught in the 2008 Postville, Iowa, raid, from the perspective of an official government translator. This account exposes the government tactic of charging the workers with identity theft, even though they did not know they had committed such a crime. The author also discusses how ICE conflates prosecutions of these workers with terrorism cases, and pads their statistics with the prosection of immigrant workers.

Money for Nothing: Immigration Enforcement without Immigration Reform Doesn’t Work

May 21, 2008 - Immigration Policy Center

Rather than reducing undocumented immigration, the enforcement-without-reform strategy has diverted the resources and attention of federal authorities to the pursuit of undocumented immigrants who are not a threat to anyone. It has done nothing to lessen the dependence of many U.S. industries on the labor of undocumented immigrants.

Backgrounder: Immigration Enforcement in the Wake of Immigration Reform’s Collapse

February 12, 2008 - National Immigration Forum

This paper highlights some of the enforcement actions and related government rules issued in the wake of the collapse of immigration reform in 2007.

2007

Facts about the IMAGE Program

January 31, 2007 - National Immigration Law Center

A fact sheet about the ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers, in which ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) provide employers with education and training in proper hiring practices, fraudulent document detection, use of E-Verify and anti-discrimination procedures.

2006

Immigration Enforcement: What Has Been Tried? What Has Been The Result?

March 10, 2006 - National Immigration Forum

A compilation of statistics and facts highlighting how our reliance on enforcement-only has failed to control undocumented immigration.

2005

Immigration Enforcement Spending Since IRCA

November 01, 2005 - Migration Policy Institute

This paper details how much we've spent on immigration enfocement since the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Eligible to Work? Experiments in Verifying Work Authorization

November 01, 2005 - Kevin Jernegan, Migration Policy Institute

This study evaluates three employment verification pilot programs instituted as a result of the 1996 immigration law, as well as the "Basic Pilot" system.

Immigration Enforcement at the Worksite: Making it Work

November 01, 2005 - Marc R. Rosenblum, Migration Policy Institute

This report examines flaws in the existing system of employer sanctions and suggests that reforms needed to make the system work will require a combination of strategies

Deporting the Undocumented: A Cost Assessment

July 26, 2005 - Rajeev Goyle & David A. Jaeger, Center for American Progress

This report estimates the cost of a policy designed to deport all undocumented persons currently in the United States and those who successfully cross the border (approximately 10 million people). The costs are estimated to be at least $206 billion over five years ($41.2 billion annually), exceeding the entire budget of the Department of Homeland Security.