ICE

RECENT POSTS

May 9, 2012 | 11:14 AM | By

ICE deportation reviews by the numbers, explained

Photo by olongapowoodcraft/Flickr (Creative Commons)

The review of some 300,000 deportation cases in the nation’s backlogged immigration courts recently led to some confusing headlines after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that about 16,500 pending cases would be temporarily put on hold, which some translated into these cases being “shelved.”

But that’s not exactly how it works. As the review process continues, there are no guarantees for those so far deemed eligible for relief. And even for the few spared removal to date, the future is uncertain.

Here’s some of the recently released ICE data on the deportation reviews, followed by an explanation of what it means. From ICE:

• In total, ICE has reviewed 219,554 pending cases with approximately 16,544, or 7.5%, identified as amenable for prosecutorial discretion as of April 16, 2012.

What it means: The agency has identified this many cases as being eligible for prosecutorial discretion, the guidelines for which were established by federal officials last year. The “low priority” immigrants defined in the guidelines include people who have a clean record, have close ties to the United States, have lived in the U.S. since they were minors, have served in the military or are part of a military family, have or are attempting a college education, and so forth.

But these 16,544 cases have only been identified as meeting the criteria for prosecutorial discretion. While it’s good news for those identified as eligible, there are still hoops for them to jump through, such as producing additional documentation and background checks. These cases could be at any stage in the process, and not all will make the cut. ”These cases have not been suspended,” ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzales clarified by phone.

Of the eligible cases identified, just a small fraction so far have been administratively closed.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Deportation reviews, ICE, Immigration courts, Prosecutorial discretion, TRAC, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
April 11, 2012 | 12:52 PM | By

L.A. County inmates released to ICE, by the numbers

Photo by 888bailbonds/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A Los Angeles County prisoner bus, June 2009. The county participates in the federal 287(g) program.

Crowding, violence and allegations of civil rights abuses are among the reasons the embattled Los Angeles County jail system is under federal investigation. But the county has also faced criticism in recent years in some circles for its federal-local partnerships with immigration authorities.

Sheriff Lee Baca a supporter of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s controversial Secure Communities enforcement program, which allows for the fingerprints of people booked into local jails to be shared with immigration officials. The county has also long participated in a smaller voluntary federal-local partnership called 287(g), in which deportable inmates are identified and released post-conviction to immigration officials.

How many L.A. County inmates are released to ICE? The 2011 numbers are found buried in new report on the county jail system from an independent justice expert, which among other things recommended closing the Men’s Central Jail downtown because of violence problems.

According to the report, there were more people released to immigration authorities from county jails than there were inmates transferred to California state prisons. A chart from the report:

The 19,725 releases to immigration authorities made up 14 percent of last years’ releases from the county jail system; by comparison, there were 17,816 people released to California prisons, 13 percent of total releases.

According to the report, the focus of the study was the eight-facility “core jail system” and excluded the Mira Loma Detention Center in Lancaster, a facility that ICE contracts from the county and is reserved for immigrant detainees.

The complete report can be downloaded here.

FILED UNDER: 287(g), ICE, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles County jails, Secure Communities, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
April 6, 2012 | 3:44 PM | By

Report: ‘ICE did not clearly communicate…the intent of Secure Communities’

Art by José Luís Agapito/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Immigration officials may not have intentionally misled lawmakers or the public about the controversial Secure Communities immigration enforcement program, but their communication strategy was a mess, according to an investigation by Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.

The OIG investigation was requested last year by California’s Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from San Jose, after states and local jurisdictions trying to withdraw from the federal fingerprint-sharing program began learning they could not. It’s one of two new OIG reports related to Secure Communities, the other addressing the program’s operations.

The communications analysis is perhaps the most interesting of the two, among other things examining the Secure Communities memorandums of agreement, called MOAs, which states and jurisdictions signed after the program began rolling out in late 2008.

The MOAs’ language gave the impression that the program was voluntary. From the report:

The use of MOAs generated questions as to whether participation in Secure Communities was voluntary or mandatory. According to current and former ICE personnel, the agency chose to use MOAs because they had been used in past enforcement and removal programs, such as the 287(g) Program, to establish the responsibilities of ICE and States or local jurisdictions. However, the 287(g) Program was a voluntary program.

…All 42 MOAs we reviewed included a modification and termination clause that may have added to the confusion regarding participation in Secure Communities. The clause stated that “either party, upon 30 days’ written notice to the other party, may terminate the MOA at any time. A termination notice shall be delivered personally or by certified or registered mail and termination shall take effect 30 days after receipt of such notice.” Because it allows for unilateral termination, a State could interpret the language of this clause to mean it could choose not to submit fingerprints to DHS and to end its participation in Secure Communities.

That was just the beginning. The report critiques the information that ICE continued to put out as confusion over the nature of the program, which allows fingerprints taken in local jails to be shared with immigration officials, continued to mount. In response to a series of inquiries from legislators, local officials, media and other stakeholders between 2009 and 2010, “ICE, and in one instance DHS, provided unclear and inconsistent responses,” the report reads. It continues:

Our review of internal and external correspondence showed that ICE had not clearly defined or agreed on whether the participation in Secure Communities was mandatory or voluntary. We reviewed correspondence that included definitions of participation, such as letters to stakeholders, as well as ICE interoffice emails, presentations, talking points, and public affairs guidance. These documents revealed that, from August 2009 through August 2010, the definition of participation changed five times.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: ICE, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Secure Communities, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
April 4, 2012 | 10:42 AM | By

A growing number of deported parents

Photo by Brian Auer/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A man in Playas de Tijuana, on the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border fence, September 2008

A post last week examined an attempt by some California lawmakers to keep the children of deported immigrants out of foster care, a growing problem as record deportations lead to more separated families. It briefly cited a new federal report on deported parents that had just begun trickling out to legislators.

The details of the report, now making the rounds, are impressive. During the period between January 1, 2011 and June 30, 2011, according to the report, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 46,486 immigrants from the country who claimed to be the parent of at least one U.S. citizen child.

The seven-page report to Congress is part of a federal response to lawmakers seeking more data from ICE on deported parents of U.S. citizen children. Interestingly, it cites a Homeland Security estimate from 2009 that tallied more than 100,000 parents of U.S. citizen children removed between 1998 and 2007. Spread out over several years, that’s a relatively low number in comparison. Since then, as deportations have increased, so naturally have the deportations of parents.

There are several charts, including one listing final orders of deportation obtained for the parents of U.S. citizen children by district (1,496 in Los Angeles over a six month period) and another of final deportation orders sought in that period for parents of U.S. children (39,918 nationwide).

The more than 46,000 removals of parents tracked in the first half of last year include not only formal deportations and removals (including voluntary departures), but expedited removals (which allow people to be removed without the decision of an immigration judge) and exclusions, a term that used to apply to a formal denial of entry, but is now applied to some removal proceedings.

Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

The emerging crisis as removals have hit record highs under the Obama administration is what to do with the children of the immigrants who are deported or detained. In a best-case scenario, a second parent will remain in the United States, preferably legally, or the children can at least stay with relatives. Other times, deported parents opt to take their U.S.-born children with them.

But when relatives can’t be located, or the parents are shuffled off quickly into the immigrant detention system, the kids can land in foster care. Once this happens, these immigrants can lose their parental rights, as detainees in custody are hard pressed to meet the requirements established by child welfare agencies, such as attending case meetings or court proceedings. If they don’t meet the terms within the timelines set, their parental rights can be terminated.

Last fall, the social justice magazine ColorLines reported that more than 5,000 children were in foster care following the detention or deportation of their immigrant parents.

Earlier this month in California, a state Senate committee voted in favor of a bill that would to help some immigrants in deportation hold onto their children through the process. Known as SB 1064, the bill proposes authorizing courts to extend the review hearing period in child welfare cases involving parents who are immigrant detainees, among other things. Were the bill to become law, it would be the first measure of its kind in the country.

The entire ICE report can be read here.

FILED UNDER: Deportations, Deported parents, Family separation, ICE, Mixed-status families, Record deportations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
April 2, 2012 | 11:34 AM | By

An immigration sweep by the numbers

Photo by olongapowoodcraft/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Announcing a nationwide series of immigration sweeps this morning, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials tallied up the arrests of what ICE director John Morton termed in ”3,168 fewer criminal aliens and egregious immigration law violators in our neighborhoods across the country.”

But as it typically goes with these operations, which have grown larger in recent months as the Obama administration carries out its mandate to arrest convicted criminals, the breakdown of the immigrants arrested is complicated. Not all are high-profile offenders; in fact, not all are convicts.

Here’s ICE’s local breakdown from Los Angeles, where of the 206 people apprehended, 106 had convictions for serious or violent crimes, according to the agency:

106 with Level I Convictions (Convicted of serious crimes, such as homicide, rape, drug trafficking, threats to national security and other “aggravated felonies,” or convicted of two or more felonies.)

85 with Level II Convictions (Convicted of a single felony, such as a property crime or extortion, or convicted of three or more misdemeanors.)

5 with Level III Convictions (Convicted of up to two misdemeanors, such as minor drug offenses and disorderly conduct.)

10 with no prior convictions

Of the 3,168 arrests nationwide, the breakdown was similar: 1,296 Level 1 arrestees; 1,427 Level II arrestees; 111 Level III arrestees, and 334 people with no criminal records, according to ICE.

Five of the people without criminal records arrested in Los Angeles were encountered at residences where agents “went to take custody of criminal targets,” according to the agency. The remaining five were people who had no criminal convictions but had been previously deported. Altogether, non-criminals accounted for a little under 10 percent of those arrested in the sweeps nationwide.

The agency has managed to cut down somewhat on what it once termed “collateral arrests,” which once represented a hefty percentage of the immigrants arrested in sweeps targeting criminals or “immigration fugitives,” a term used for people who failed to comply with deportation orders or missed court appearances. Many of these arrests took place after immigration agents appeared at homes to arrest people they were actively seeking. Sometimes, even if the person didn’t live there, other deportable immigrants who happened to be in the home were arrested.

In fiscal year 2007, “collaterals” comprised 40 percent of those arrested in fugitive sweeps, according to a report from the Migration Policy Institute. After a series of complaints, the Obama administration stated it would hone its focus on criminals. The percentage of non-criminals arrested in sweeps dropped afterward, though some are still picked up, as seen in the numbers.

FILED UNDER: Collateral arrests, ICE, ICE sweeps, Immigration fugitives, Immigration sweeps, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
March 13, 2012 | 1:02 PM | By

Civil immigrant detention: Kinder and gentler, but still a boon for private prisons

Photo courtesy of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Part of the interior grounds at the new privately-run Karnes Civil Detention Center in Karnes City, Texas

Almost three years ago, after a flurry of lawsuits alleging overcrowding, shoddy medical care and the unlawful detention of children in one former prison-turned-immigrant detention center in Texas, Homeland Security officials announced they’d be reforming the immigrant detention system.

The jury is still out on how much of those planned reforms have taken root; last fall, a report put out by an international human rights organization suggested that in spite of promises to make detention centers more liveable, “the overwhelming majority of detainees are still held in jails or jail-like facilities.”

Enter what U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is calling its “first-ever designed-and-built civil detention center.” It’s in Karnes City, Texas and is owned by Karnes County, with the county acting as middleman between ICE and The Geo Group, a private prison company. As is standard practice, counties contract with these companies to develop immigrant detention centers for the government, receiving a cut of the revenue in exchange.

The development of the Karnes County Civil Detention Center, whose 608 beds have yet to be occupied, is an interesting experiment. It’s also latest development in a story that began early in the last decade, when ICE suddenly found itself with an overwhelming demand for contract detention space post-9/11 and the existing private-prison stock consisted of, well, prisons.

Since reforms were announced in 2009, according to ICE, some of its existing contract facilities have been rehabbed, but this one, designed to house male adults, is one is the first designed with a model that “allows for greater unescorted movement, enhanced recreational opportunities and contact visitation,” reads an agency news release. B-roll footage of the interior shows a place that still looks institutional, but there’s some green space, basketball courts, a soccer field and what looks like a small library, among other things.

Does it make any sort of difference? It depends on who you ask. The advocates who were calling for reforms to the system years ago cheered the idea of more humane, less prison-like facilities for people who are not being held for a crime. While immigration officials commonly refer to detainees with criminal records as “criminal detainees,” these are people who have completed their prison sentence already, and are only held by ICE while awaiting or fighting deportation.

“We want to hold people in facilties that are appropriate to their background,” said Gillian Christensen, an ICE spokeswoman, by phone. ”We don’t detain people for punitive reasons.”

That said, the new detention center will house “low risk” detainees not deemed a flight or security risk, while others will still be held in tighter-security facilities. And the overall number of immigrants in the detention system – undocumented immigrants, deportable legal residents, asylum seekers and others – has remained consistently high, averaging 33,000 on any given day.

Several factors that led to problems in the last decade remain, including the fact that private for-profit contractors manage the bulk of ICE detention centers, and there continue to be financial incentives for these companies to keep their facilities full. Private prison companies make money via a daily “per diem” rate per detainee, with contracts that typically charge less per person if there are more detainees. For example, at the new Karnes County facility, GEO will be paid $68.75 a day per immigrant if there are 480 detainees or less, according to ICE. But it will give the agency a break ($56.48 a day per detainee) if there are more than 480 detainees at a time.

A move toward kinder, gentler detention facilities stands to be a boon for private prison companies regardless. According to a December 2010 news release from The Geo Group, a Florida-based company that is the nation’s second-largest private prison operator, its contract with Karnes County was expected to generate approximately $15 million in annual revenue. That’s just under half the $32 million GEO estimated then that the place would cost to build.

ICE is planning more newly-built contract facilities, including some that may house a combination of low-risk detainees in less restrictive surroundings and others with more security. Part of the building push is also to have large detention centers closer to metropolitan areas, Christensen said, to avoid transfers and because “their families are there, and legal counsel is there.”

Among these is planned detention centers is one outside Chicago in Crete, Illinois, where the private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America, has met with resistance.

FILED UNDER: Civil detention center, Detention reform, ICE, Immigrant detention, Karnes County, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
February 27, 2012 | 1:58 PM | By

Is prosecutorial discretion leading to fewer deportation cases?

Photo by Jose Cabezas/AFP/Getty Images

Deportees from the United States alight after their plane arrives in El Salvador, December 18, 2008

Are the prosecutorial discretion guidelines issued by the Obama administration last year having an effect on the number of deportation cases that the administration is pursuing?

A new Syracuse University report suggests yes, federal immigration officials say no, and some lawmakers are calling “amnesty” nonetheless.

First, the report: Issued in recent days by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, the number of deportation proceedings begun in the nation’s immigration courts between October and December of last year (the first quarter of federal fiscal year 2012) “fell sharply to only 39,331 — down 33 percent from 58,639 filings recorded the previous quarter,” a drop of more than 10,000 cases filed. The report notes that since filings are typically lower at that time of year, the numbers were adjusted for seasonal drop-off. It continues:

This substantial drop may have been caused by the steps needed to implement the June 17, 2011 agency directive on prosecutorial discretion or as the indirect effect of the review announced August 18, 2011 by the Administration of all pending Immigration Court cases. The objective of these twin initiatives was to better target enforcement resources on high priority cases.

Not necessarily the case, say federal immigration officials, for whom a number of recent Syracuse University reports have been a thorn in the side. As with other recent reports from TRAC, the report uses data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which administers the immigration courts, and this is “essentially incomplete data,” said Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Washington D.C.

According to Christensen, “their data is only focused on the initiation of formal removal proceedings in the Executive Office for Immigration Review. It ignores the fact that we regularly remove individuals without going through formal proceedings: voluntary return, voluntary deportation, reinstatement of old removal orders. We can voluntarily return someone without going through the formal initiation of proceedings.”

The Obama administration has said that it counts voluntary removals in its overall record-breaking deportation tallies. The makeup of overall removals in any given period can shift, Christensen said, making a quarter-by-quarter comparison difficult to read.

As for the prosecutorial discretion reviews of roughly 300,000 deportation cases to be conducted in the nation’s immigration courts, as announced last summer by the Obama administration, a pilot program began in two cities, Denver and Baltimore, last November. The pilot lasted six weeks, with a little more than 1,600 cases recommended for closure once it concluded last month. But these were already pending deportation cases, which wouldn’t factor into a dip in new cases filed.

Experts have said it’s too soon to see a trend, but some lawmakers have taken the data to heart. On the House Judiciary Committee website, committee chair Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, said in a statement linking to the TRAC report: “Last quarter’s data confirms what we knew all along: President Obama is recklessly determined to grant backdoor amnesty to thousands of illegal immigrants.”

Also in dispute is whether ICE, as the report points out, is focusing less on criminals. The Obama administration has stated that its goal is to deport criminals, with less of an emphasis on immigrants with clean records. In a similar report last year, TRAC pointed to fewer criminal cases in the immigration courts; ICE’s reply was that those deportation cases in which a crime is pointed out as part of the case make up just a portion of criminal removals overall, since many people with criminal records are removed administratively. From an ICE statement today:

When removing individuals who have been convicted of a crime and who have no lawful immigration status, like those who illegally cross our border or overstay their visa, ICE is not required to file charging documents in immigration court asserting criminal grounds of removal.

The entire TRAC report can be viewed here.

FILED UNDER: Deportation, Deportation reviews, ICE, Prosecutorial discretion, TRAC
February 3, 2012 | 3:35 PM | By

‘TRUST Act 2.0′ would limit local cops’ cooperation with Secure Communities

Photo by Chad Miller/Flickr (Creative Commons)

In August, after the federal government rescinded state contracts related to the Secure Communities immigration enforcement program, those states that at the time were trying to opt out of the controversial fingerprint-sharing program seemed to have little choice but to comply.

But there’s another option, at least according to a California state legislator who is retooling a bill from last year to allow for another kind of out: Restricting how law enforcement agencies hold immigrants for deportation at the request of federal immigration officials.

The yet-to-be-introduced California bill is a retooled version of the TRUST Act, a measure approved last May by the state Assembly that would have allowed the state to renegotiate its contract with the feds and allowed local jurisdictions to opt out of Secure Communities if they wanted to. It had begun moving through the Senate when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director John Morton sent a letter to state governors terminating the contracts, whose language did not suggest the program was mandatory.

Here’s how Quintin Mecke, a spokesman for bill sponsor and Assembly member Tom Ammiano, described the retooled legislation in an email:

We are in the midst of finalizing the exact language, but right now it will likely create thresholds and standards for local jurisdictions around ICE detainers. The bill will likely create a baseline for local governments not to expend resources on responding to ICE holds and detaining people for deportation, unless the individual had a serious or violent felony conviction.

Jurisdictions that do choose to detain people on the basis of immigration status will need to come up with common-sense plans to guard against profiling and wrongful detentions of citizens.

In a recent story the Los Angeles Times quoted Ammiano, a Democrat from San Francisco:

“States have their own ways of fighting back,” Ammiano said. “We can’t stand by and let innocent people, food vendors, etc., be caught up in sweeps, assume they’re guilty of some violent offense and then deport them and separate them from their families.”

The bill would be better met in some jurisdictions than others, such as in San Francisco, where Sheriff Michael Hennessey announced last spring that he would not hold arrestees for ICE. Some state, local and law enforcement officials have spoken out against Secure Communities, saying it alienates immigrant communities and thus impedes policing. But other jurisdictions have been supportive of the program, and the proposed additional regulations for those who do choose to hold prisoners for immigration officials are not bound to go over well in some local agencies.

Los Angeles’ law enforcement principals have been split over Secure Communities: Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck has voiced misgivings, but county Sheriff Lee Baca is a supporter.

Mecke said the timeline for reintroducing what’s being called “TRUST Act 2.0″ is still fluid, but that it will be sometime this spring.

FILED UNDER: ICE, Secure Communities, Tom Ammiano, Trust Act, Trust Act 2.0, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement