U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

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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In August, after the federal government rescinded state contracts related to the Secure Communities immigration enforcement program, those states that at the time were trying to opt out of the controversial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
January 4, 2012 | 1:54 PM | By

TRAC vs. ICE: Report claims more disparity in deportation stats

The back-and-forth between immigration authorities and a university center that tracks federal data has become more heated, after Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) sent out a press release today once again accusing the federal government of inflating its deportation statistics and withholding public information.

In a report last month, TRAC accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of inflating its tally of criminal deportations. ICE officials criticized the report as “wildly misleading,” saying that deportees’ criminal histories aren’t always found in administrative removal records, hence the disparity in numbers.

In its release today, TRAC claims that an examination of case-by-case records provided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveals that “many fewer individuals were apprehended, deported or detained by the agency than were claimed in its official statements — congressional testimony, press releases, and the agency’s latest 2010 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics.” From the release:

In its initial FOIA request in May 2010, TRAC asked for specific information about all individuals who had been arrested, detained, charged, returned or removed from the country for the period beginning October 1, 2004 to date. In its initial and incomplete response, however, ICE so far has only provided TRAC with information through FY 2005. The agency said it would provide detailed information about the more recent years later.

When compared with various public statements by the agency, however, TRAC’s analysis of this limited case-by-case information provided found vast discrepancies. Among them: ICE statements claimed almost five times more individual apprehensions than revealed in the data, as well as 24 times more individuals deported and 34 times more detentions.

According to TRAC, its analysis of fiscal year 2005 data counted 6,906 deportations, while ICE logged 166,075. There were similar discrepancies between the official totals for apprehensions (21,339 vs. 102,034) and for immigrants detained (6,778 vs. 233,417).

Why the huge gap?

Last month, ICE officials cited vastly different accounting methods: When counting criminal deportations, for example, the agency includes administrative deportations in which the individual had a past conviction. However, if the crime doesn’t factor into the deportation case, it’s typically not found in the immigration court records, which the TRAC report analyzed. Many immigrants, particularly those who are in the country illegally, are removed solely on administrative grounds, whether or not there’s a criminal history.

TRAC maintained in its release today that “this was not an inconsequential bookkeeping problem.” A statement from ICE is forthcoming. The press release can be viewed here.

ICE’s response: The agency won’t likely have a mathematical explanation for the disparity until tomorrow. However, an agency spokeswoman stressed that ICE is still in the process of releasing data to TRAC. Agency spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said the numbers today were inaccurate and “based on conclusions gathered from an incomplete set of data,” and that ICE “has worked diligently to respond to their requests for extremely large amounts of data and related information.”

“Nevertheless,” she wrote, “ICE is committed to continuing to provide data that confirms the accuracy of the agency’s removal numbers. We stand by our record.”

FILED UNDER: ICE, Record deportations, TRAC, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
December 29, 2011 | 12:53 PM | By

Top five immigration stories of 2011, #2: More record deportations

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

A man is prepared for a deportation flight bound for San Salvador in Mesa, Arizona, December 2010

In fiscal year 2011, the Obama administration broke its own deportation record for the second straight year, deporting close to 400,000 people in the year that ended last Sept. 30.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that news of another record-breaking year for removals was pretty much expected, with the continued expansion of federal immigration enforcement programs like Secure Communities and 287(g), both of which have fed the deportation pipeline in recent years with a steady flow of cases stemming from local law enforcement.

The number of deportations has crept upward steadily for years now. According to a federal chart, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has removed these many people in recent years:

FY 2010 = 392,862

FY 2009 = 389,834

FY 2008 = 369,221

FY 2007 = 291,060

Still, it’s a story that has legs, as newspaper editors used to say, and which continues to raise questions.

Among these questions is just who being deported, and whether the programs being used are working as intended. The Obama administration has long made a point that its focus is on deporting immigrants (including legal residents) with criminal records. An October press release from ICE read that “nearly 55 percent or 216,698 of the people removed were convicted of felonies or misdemeanors — an 89 percent increase in the removal of criminals since FY 2008.”

But analyses of federal deportation stats have pointed out gray areas. Last summer, an Associated Press analysis revealed that among those counted as criminal deportees are a growing number of people who have been deported following traffic and DUI arrests; the number of those deported following less-serious, non-DUI traffic offenses had close to tripled over a two-year period. From a story in July:

The U.S. deported nearly 393,000 people in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, half of whom were considered criminals.

Of those, 27,635 had been arrested for drunken driving, more than double the 10,851 deported after drunken driving arrests in 2008, the last full year of the Bush administration, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data provided to The Associated Press.

An additional 13,028 were deported last year after being arrested on less serious traffic law violations, nearly three times the 4,527 traffic offenders deported two years earlier, according to the data.

DUI offenders made up a large number (35,927) of those deported in fiscal year 2011, as did people convicted of drug-related offenses (44,653). Violent offenders (homicide, 1,119; sexual offenses, 5,848) were fewer in number, according to ICE.

As for the non-criminals being deported, some are being ensnared through the methods used to target serious criminals, another criticism of the administration’s enforcement tactics. Reports have indicated that nearly half the immigrants who have been caught up in the embattled Secure Communities program, which allows for biometric data of people fingerprinted in local jails to be shared with immigration officials, have been non-criminals or low-level misdemeanor offenders.

A more recent report from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) tallied up the criminal charges used in the nation’s immigration courts, coming up with a much lower percentage of criminal charges found in deportation cases. ICE called the analysis “wildly misleading,” attributing the difference to the fact that the agency doesn’t always note prior criminal records in deportation cases. However, these individuals still make the annual criminal tally in the federal deportation stats.

The growing number of deportations has had broader domestic repercussions as more immigrants are sent back to their native countries, among them a growing number of mixed-status or legal-resident families in the U.S. left without a parent (or sometimes both parents), and a growing number of U.S. citizen children of deported parents landing in foster care.

In August, the Obama administration announced that it would review some 300,000 deportation cases to ferret out those deemed a “low priority” for removal under a set of prosecutorial discretion guidelines released by ICE earlier this year, again stating that its focus is on criminals. Among those who could be spared are undocumented immigrants who arrived here as children, college students and graduates, and immigrants with U.S. military ties. The review process is being pilot-tested now.

If the reviews are expanded and some deportation cases are indeed thrown out (though these individuals would still not have legal status – but that’s another story), will it make a dent in the deportation caseload next year? Or will the continued expansion of programs like Secure Communities, which the federal government has declared mandatory and is expected to be operating nationwide by 2013, make for another record year of removals in 2012?

Come back tomorrow for top story #1.

FILED UNDER: 287(g), ICE, Record deportations, Secure Communities, Top five immigration stories of 2011, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
December 28, 2011 | 1:56 PM | By

Top five immigration stories of 2011, #3: Secure Communities

Photo by Corey Moore/KPCC

Anti-Secure Communities protesters in Los Angeles, August 15, 2011

The controversy over the federal immigration enforcement program known as Secure Communitieshas been brewing since not long after it was first implemented 2008, during the waning days of the Bush administration. But after a heated back-and-forth between state, local and federal officials over the program as some jurisdictions attempted to withdraw – only to be told they couldn’t – the controversy came to a head this year.

First, in a nutshell, how Secure Communities works: When state or local authorities book someone into a local jail, the person’s fingerprints are electronically submitted to the FBI. These fingerprints are then sent to the Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents check them against an immigration records database to determine if the person is deportable (legal residents are also subject to deportation if they have committed certain offenses). The person is then held for deportation by ICE.

Unlike with a similar federal-local partnership known as 287(g), the screening is done pre-conviction, meaning that some people who turn out to be otherwise innocent have landed in the deportation net; some cases have involved domestic violence victims. This has been a sticking point for critics of the program, who say it goes against the Obama administration’s stated goal of focusing on criminals for deportation. Criticism has also come from some law enforcement agencies, state and city officials who complain that because of its nature, the program alienates immigrant communities by undermining trust in police, making policing them more difficult.

Which brings us to this year’s explosive controversy: Several jurisdictions around the country, including the city of San Francisco, began attempting to opt out of the program last year. Many local and state officials had believed that as with 287(g), Secure Communities was optional, as evidenced by a series of internal emails released last spring. After all, federal officials had signed contracts known as Memorandums of Agreement, or MOAs, with state and local officials around the country allowing Secure Communities to be implemented.

Here’s how part of the contract with the California Department of Justice, dated January 23, 2009, reads:

This MOA may be modified at any time by mutual written consent of both parties.

This MOA may remain in effect from the date of signing until it is terminated by either party. Either party, upon written or oral 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.

Sounds optional, right? But it isn’t, according to federal officials.

By last summer, the governors of Massachusetts, Illinois and New York had announced plans to withdraw from the program, and California’s state Assembly had passed legislation that would allow the state to renegotiate its Secure Communities contract with Homeland Security, allowing local jurisdictions to opt out.

Then the hammer came down. In August, ICE director John Morton sent out a letter to governors terminating all existing MOAs with the agency regarding Secure Communities. The letter clarified “an issue that has been the subject of substantial confusion,” i.e. that states must participate and have no choice in the matter, according to ICE.

The program has continued to draw harsh criticism, most recently from civil rights advocates angry over U.S. citizens being detained accidentally after being fingerprinted. A recent UC Berkeley Law School report cited as many as 3,600 cases of U.S. citizens having been arrested by ICE as a result of Secure Communities.

The Obama administration continues to support use of Secure Communities, crediting it along with 287(g) in part for continued record deportations, a growing number of which federal officials are counting as removals of people with criminal records. But that’s another story for this week.

Come back tomorrow for top story #2.

FILED UNDER: ICE, Record deportations, Secure Communities, Top five immigration stories of 2011, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
December 15, 2011 | 4:36 PM | By

Hundreds at ‘Occupy ICE’ rally in downtown L.A.

Photo by Corey Moore/KPCC

"Occupy ICE" protesters in Los Angeles, December 15, 2011

KPCC’s Corey Moore reported on today’s “Occupy ICE” protest in downtown Los Angeles, organized by labor, civil and immigrant rights groups. It’s one of a slowly growing number of immigration-related Occupy protests, similar to one that took place in San Diego last month.

Hundreds joined the rally, according to the story, protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Secure Communities fingerprint-sharing enforcement program and the separation of mixed-status families as the federal government has carried out record numbers of deportations. A march concluded at the downtown federal building, where ICE has an office.

Check here later for audio.

FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, ICE, Occupy ICE, Occupy LA, Occupy Wall Street, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
December 15, 2011 | 12:21 PM | By

More immigration-Occupy synergy as ‘Occupy ICE’ comes to L.A.

Photo by DB's Travels/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A sign at the Occupy L.A. camp, October 2011

Several posts lately have explored the immigrant rights component of the Occupy movement, at least in California, where Occupy protesters in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego have counted immigration among the many issues they’ve taken up.

Last month, protesters in San Diego mounted an “Occupy ICE” rally organized by the local janitors’ union. The Service Employees International Union has joined with with other labor, civil and immigrant rights groups to do the same in Los Angeles today, with a march to the downtown federal building, which houses a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.

In spite of recent immigration-related Occupy protests in New York and Alabama, perhaps nowhere has the Occupy movement – initially accused of being too white – been as involved with immigrant rights activism as in California. Late last month, as police prepared to remove the protesters’ camp outside City Hall, Occupy Los Angeles leaders put together and posted a list of “grievances not addressed” that included this request:

Los Angeles to be declared a sanctuary city for the undocumented, deportations to be discontinued and cooperation with immigration authorities be ended – including the turning in of arrestees’ names to immigration authorities.

In the Bay Area, some protesters became involved in a “Free Pancho” movement after the arrest in Oakland of Mexican-born protester and former graduate student Francisco “Pancho Ramos-Stierle, which landed him in the custody of immigration officials. Ramos-Stierle was eventually released pending a deportation hearing.

According to the Occupy Los Angeles website, protesters today are rallying “to help end the targeting of immigrant workers and their families, who have struggled to make poverty jobs, into good jobs!” (That’s their exclamation point.)

FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, ICE, Occupy ICE, Occupy LA, Occupy Wall Street, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
November 14, 2011 | 11:01 AM | By

Obama administration’s new deportation policy being applied unevenly

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

A man is prepared for a deportation flight bound for San Salvador in Mesa, Arizona, December 2010

A series of recent posts on Multi-American highlighted how a new deportation policy announced in August by the Obama administration, which promised to potentially spare thousands from deportation, was being applied unevenly.

Homeland Security officials announced that they would review the deportation cases of some 300,000 immigrants deemed a low priority for removal, among them young people who arrived here as minors and had no criminal record. But people who meet the criteria for leniency have continued moving through the deportation pipeline. One prominent recent example was Matias Ramos, a UCLA graduate and student activist who in September suddenly found himself wearing an electronic shackle and informed that he was to be deported to Argentina, where he was born.

Ramos was granted a last-minute temporary reprieve, as have other potential young deportees who have been the focus of social media campaigns by student activists and advocacy groups. But while some like these have been spared, others who meet the criteria and have similar backgrounds and similarly clean records continue to be deported.

The New York Times examined the problem in a story this weekend, citing from a new report from the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the American Immigration Council. The report collected data from 252 cases handled by attorneys who had asked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to exercise prosecutorial discretion for their clients. From the story:

“The overwhelming conclusion is that most ICE offices have not changed their practices since the issuance of these new directives,” the report found.

“This is a classic example of leadership saying one thing and the rank and file doing another,” said Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the lawyers association. The report found that training for immigration officers on the new guidelines had been lacking.

Officials at the Homeland Security Department acknowledge the policy’s slow start. Mr. Morton’s June guidelines were followed by a three-month lull, when resistance grew among agents in the field. In late September, Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Morton went on the offensive to press the policy, and since then Mr. Morton has been on the road inaugurating training programs.

“Like any major change in enforcement policy, this is a work in progress,” Mr. Morton said by telephone from Miami, where he was joining in a training session. “I have been handling much of the initial explanation myself, because I feel so strongly about it.”

Some of the immigrants whose cases were documented in the report experienced vastly different outcomes, despite similar legal backgrounds. Included in the story are cases like that of Rubén Quinteros, a 43-year-old undocumented immigrant from Uruguay who was arrested by immigration officials eight days before his planned wedding and deported in late October. The end result of his case was a far cry from that of Manuel Bartsch, an 24-year-old undocumented man brought to the U.S. from Germany when he was 10. After fighting deportation for years, his deportation case was terminated earlier this month, and he will now be able to apply for a work permit.

Last month, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano announced that a pilot program to begin reviewing the cases of immigrants deemed a low deportation priority would begin “in a few weeks.”

FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, AILA, Deportation, Deportation policy, Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, Matias Ramos, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
October 19, 2011 | 5:27 PM | By

‘Lost in Detention’ online: Government documents on sexual abuse allegations, more

Photo by Mauricio Rabuffetti/AFP Getty Images

A guard stands outside one of the tent-like structures at the Willacy Detention Center in Texas, May 2007

PBS Frontline has followed up last night’s “Lost in Detention” special on the immigrant detention system – and the policies landing a growing number of immigrants in it – with additional materials online.

The Frontline website has posted a series of government documents related to more than 170 allegations of sexual abuse in the last four years, with the largest number of abuse compliants coming from the Willacy Detention Center, a privately operated detention center in Raymondville, Texas that has been nation’s largest. Built from Kevlar domes and commonly referred to as a “tent city,” it was announced in June that the facility was losing its U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, and will instead be housing foreign-born “criminal alien” inmates for the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

According to Frontline, their investigation into sexual abuse complaints in the detention system “found no evidence that the vast majority of complaints had been investigated or resolved.” From the website:

Most of the complaints went through the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s (IG) Office, which is the primary office responsible for investigating outside complaints. IG records show only 15 “reports of investigation,” which resulted in six substantiated or partially substantiated cases. Two guards were convicted of sexual abuse; three others have been terminated from their positions.

The documents, together with interviews of dozens of detainees, employees, investigators and officials, present a portrait of detainees with few effective recourses if they are victims of crimes while in detention. Many say they face continuous pressure to sign deportation orders. And unlike in the criminal justice system, immigration detainees do not have a guaranteed right of legal representation, and so have difficulty with access to counsel if they have a grievance.

A former mental health coordinator at Willacy Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas, told FRONTLINE that officials attempted to cover up complaints of sexual abuse, which she described as common among female detainees. The coordinator said she later resigned because of the treatment of detainees at the facility.

The site also features an interactive map of detention facilities around the country. In case you missed the documentary, the first chapter can be viewed online. Here’s the video:

Watch Lost in Detention on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

FILED UNDER: ICE, Immigrant detention, Lost in Detention, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Willacy Detention Center