Two years after the Secure Communities immigration enforcement program was implemented, federal officials determined that choices available to local law enforcement agencies that wished to decline or limit their participation would be "streamlined" or "eliminated," making the information-sharing program mandatory, according to a memo recently made public and quoted by the Los Angeles Times. Launched in 2008, Secure Communities was promoted to local and state leaders as a way to focus immigration enforcement efforts on "serious convicted criminals."
The program, which involves the FBI sharing fingerprints collected from county jails with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has come under fire because a large percentage of immigrants caught up in the system were never convicted of a crime or were low-level offenders. Federal officials initially said there were ways for state and local officials to drop out of the program. In a 9-page memo dated Oct. 2, 2010, a legal advisor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said at that time that "choices available to law enforcement agencies who have thus far decided to decline or limit their participation in current information-sharing processes will be streamlined and aspects eliminated. In that way, the process, in essence, becomes 'mandatory' in 2013."
Read full entry »By Lisa Riordan Seville
Civil liberties activists say the Department of Homeland Security is undermining Congress’ efforts to apply the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) to immigrant detainees.
Read full entry »In a sweeping change, federal immigration enforcement is shifting toward faster deportations of convicted criminals and fewer deportations of many illegal immigrants with no criminal record, reports the New York Times. The Department of Homeland Security is beginning a review of all deportation cases before the immigration courts and will start a nationwide training program for enforcement agents and prosecuting lawyers,
The accelerated triage of the court docket — about 300,000 cases — is intended to allow severely overburdened immigration judges to focus on deporting foreigners who committed serious crimes or pose national security risks, Homeland Security officials said. It is part of a policy announced in June to encourage immigration agents to use prosecutorial discretion when deciding whether to pursue a deportation. The policy would scale back deportations of illegal immigrants who were young students, military service members, elderly people or close family of American citizens, among others. While the announcement raised expectations in immigrant communities, until now the policy has been applied spottily.
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By Mark Dow
1996 anti-terrorist and immigration laws are being used to deport some Haitian immigrants in the U.S. to an island they haven’t seen since childhood, and which is struggling through a deadly cholera epidemic, warns a prominent immigration observer.
In response to a terrorist act committed by a U.S. citizen at home 15 years ago, the U.S. government is about to send Haitians who left their country as small children into a post-earthquake cholera epidemic and political turmoil—and in many cases, we can assume, to their deaths.
In 1996, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Congress hurriedly passed —and President Bill Clinton signed into law—the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Shortly thereafter, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act was passed. Both laws drastically expanded the range of crimes for which lawful U.S. residents are subject to mandatory detention and deportation or “removal.”
These immigrants were stripped of the right even to apply for a so-called waiver of deportation from an immigration judge.
Today, as we mark another grim anniversary, hundreds of legal Haitian residents in the U.S. are likely to become victims of that anti-terrorist and immigration reform legislation. Last month, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed that it plans to begin deportations in January of some 700 Haitians who have criminal records.
The timing couldn’t be worse. This week is the first anniversary of the earthquake which killed over 200,000 Haitians and left an estimated 1.5 million homeless. A subsequent cholera epidemic has killed an estimated 3,000 more. And the country remains dangerously unstable; results of the recent Haitian presidential election remain in dispute. Many of the Haitians being sent back have not seen the country since their childhood and have few family ties there to help them survive.
And most of them are not “illegals” but rather lawful residents here. Presumably they do not qualify for Temporary Protected Status, which, after the earthquake, was quickly enacted by the Obama Administration—to its credit― to stop certain Haitians who were not convicted of any criminal offense from being deported.
Rhetoric from Democrats and Republicans has helped convince the public that when someone with a green card is deported, it’s because he is dangerous. But that has not usually been the case.
How ‘Dangerous’ are Deportees?
Between 1997 and 2007, according to Human Rights Watch, “among legal immigrants who were deported, 77 percent had been convicted for such nonviolent crimes” as drug possession and traffic offenses, Using ICE statistics, the human rights group estimates that in those ten years, 434,495 people were deported as a consequence of non-violent criminal offenses, compared to 140,572 for violent offenses.
The rhetoric goes further. As Nancy Morawetz of New York University Law School explained in a June 2000 article in the Harvard Law Review, the 1996 laws allow ICE to refer to a lawful immigrant’s “conviction” when, according to the criminal justice system, there was no such thing; and to “imprisonment” when the criminal justice system gave the immigrant no jail time. Through perversities such as these, families have been torn apart, and people have been sent “back” to countries with which they have no ties. Billions of dollars in enforcement spending and potential tax revenue have been wasted and lost.
As for the Haitians targeted, when I asked Barbara Gonzales of ICE Public Affairs what their crimes were, she replied: “Here is a list of some of the charges that those facing removal are convicted of. Homicide, kidnapping, sexual assault, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, embezzlement, money laundering and extortion.” When I asked for a complete list, Gonzales replied, “What I gave you is what I have.”
Those who have actually spoken with the Haitian prisoners have more information. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and several other civil rights groups have filed an emergency petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to stop the round-ups and deportations. These groups have identified, for example, a 43-year-old father of four; two of those children are minors. The U.S. intends to deport this man because of a conviction for drug possession with intent to sell, for which he served six months. He has no family in Haiti.
A 53-year-old man who has been here since 1980 has four children, three of whom are U.S. citizen minors. He owns a house here, and can be deported because of a drug conviction.
These are just two of the hundreds of cases attorneys are trying to identify.
Many of the Haitians who are to be deported have lived here for so long that they don’t speak Haitian Creole.
Dehumanizing Process
The current law does not allow us to see individuals, much less their families and the fuller context of their lives. ICE Public Affairs reinforces this dehumanizing process with its selective and duplicitous information.
It seems possible that President Clinton had no idea of the future consequences of what he was signing in 1996. Author Philip Schrag has described the secretive legislative process behind these laws in his book A Well-Founded Fear: The Congressional Battle to Save Political Asylum in America. Schrag quotes Senator Patrick Leahy’s comment that few of his fellow senators “have the foggiest notion of what it is they are voting on.” Many Democrats and Republicans in Congress acknowledged too late that they had gone too far. Bipartisan reform efforts were underway, but these came to a stop on September 11, 2001.
There are politicians who recognize the unfairness, but their own rhetoric has made them afraid to stand up for “criminal aliens” when immigration reform is discussed. Instead, “private bills” are introduced to help individual victims of these laws. Exceptions are made, and the laws remain.
On Christmas Eve 2010, then New York Governor David Paterson announced pardons for two dozen people subject to deportation as a result of past criminal convictions for which their debts have been paid. Paterson’s office provided sketches of those pardoned, people who “should be protected from inflexible and misguided immigration statutes.” For example:
“[E. C.] was brought to the United States from Haiti as a lawful permanent resident at age 10. He was convicted in 1997 of Attempted Burglary in the Third Degree and sentenced to five years on probation. He has maintained gainful employment and is married to a United States citizen with whom he has two young sons. The pardon will remove the basis for his deportation.”
If not for the governor’s pardon, E. C. could be sitting with other Haitians awaiting “removal” in a jail in Louisiana — in Jena or Waterproof, or in Basile, where ICE detainees went on hunger strike last year to protest insufficient medical care, predatory phone prices, filth, and separation from their families, lawyers, and case files, and were then thrown into solitary confinement in retaliation for their protests.
(Several years ago I had lunch in the cafeteria of the Pine Prairie Correctional Center with the general manager of Louisiana Correctional Services (LCS), which also owns and operates the jail at Basile. Now executive vice president of the ICE-contracted company, he told me without embarrassment that LCS saved money by not providing napkins to the inmates. “Most of these folks wouldn’t use them, anyway,” he said. )
In the weeks before Christmas, in a familiar enforcement pattern, Haitian immigrants were rounded up and bused hundreds of miles from Miami’s Krome Detention Center and elsewhere to these Louisiana jails, while their families and attorneys have scrambled to locate them. There are few pro-bono immigration attorneys in Louisiana. ICE strategy has long been to isolate detainees from legal help, and that’s what the agency is doing again. All of this is taking place, incidentally, as the current Administration trumpets its “reforms” of the immigration detention system.
Here’s a reality check. The laws mandating detention and removal—the laws through which these Haitians will be banished—are called immigration laws; but they constitute a separate justice system for non-citizens, no matter how long those people have been here.
Bill Clinton’s Unique Position
Former President Bill Clinton is in a unique position to take what would be a very unpopular stance on the impending deportation of Haitians who deserve to stay here, or at least to have their cases heard.
First, his foundation, the William J. Clinton Foundation, is very involved in post-earthquake rebuilding efforts. Second, it is because of his administration’s landmark anti-immigrant laws that most of these cases will not be heard.
In Haiti, as the cholera outbreak continues, the Clinton Foundation has listed its programs for cholera education and prevention among its accomplishments. The new deportation program is likely to create more cholera victims. Haiti regularly jails deportees who have criminal convictions, and cholera has reportedly spread through the prisons. In their emergency petition, CCR and other groups report the following:
“Jailed populations are particularly at risk, where the overcrowding, lack of sanitation or toilets, and lack of clean drinking water present classic conditions for cholera transmission…detainees are held in overcrowded cells and locked inside for 24 hours at a time with no outside break and are forced to sleep on insect- and rodent-infested cement floors and to defecate in bags and urinate in communal buckets…Paul Waggoner, a U.S. citizen aid worker [from Massachusetts] recently released from Haiti’s National Penitentiary, told the Montreal Gazette that there was no clean water in prison. Waggoner also reported that while he was in the National Penitentiary, ‘A couple of bodies a day were being removed from there…The last night I just went to the bathroom in plastic bags my friends had given me.’”
In a poem called “Botpipel” (Boat People), the late Haitian poet Felix Morisseau Leroy wrote: Nou tap kouri pou Fò Dimanch / Nou vin echwe nan Kwòm Avni.
“We were running from Ft. Dimanche / We washed ashore on Krome Avenue.”
Morisseau’s readers would have recognized the references to the penitentiary in Port-au-Prince and U.S. Immigration’s Krome Service Processing Center in Miami. Certain things have changed since Morisseau wrote those lines. “Criminal aliens” raised on our streets are not the same as asylum-seekers afraid to be killed on theirs. But they all have something in common with us: their humanity.
Former President Clinton should speak out against the imminent deportation of Haitians, “criminal alien” or otherwise. They aren’t all unsympathetic, and even those who are deserve our protection.
Then Clinton should address the laws making these deportations possible in the first place. They are unjust laws for which he bears responsibility.
Mark Dow is author of American Gulag: Inside US Immigration Prisons (California 2004), which was condemned by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Public Affairs and used as a resource by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) in its audits of detention centers. He teaches English at Hunter College CUNY in New York.
Photo by Matthew Marek/American Red Cross via Flickr.
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An immigration program meant to catch the most dangerous criminals has raised questions about the priorities of immigration enforcement.
In mid-November, the New York City Council convened a hearing to discuss immigration policy in its city jails. The meeting ran more than five hours and mixed statistics, testimony and outrage as the audience tried to determine what implementing an immigration program called Secure Communities would mean for the city.
But New York, like many other jurisdictions around the country, found itself with more questions than answers.
Launched in 2008, Secure Communities is a Department of Homeland Security program that identifies deportable immigrants in U.S. jails. Under the program, an arrestee’s fingerprints are checked against federal criminal and immigration databases, giving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) technological access to local prisons and jails.
ICE and local law enforcement are notified immediately of the arrestee’s immigration status. ICE can then issue a detainer against the arrested individual--meaning the person can be held until ICE decides whether to initiate deportation proceedings against them.
Secure Communities has been activated in 788 jurisdictions in 34 states. The agency plans to implement the program in every state and local jail by 2013.
According to ICE’s Fiscal Year 2010 Fact Sheet, Secure Communities targets and assists “all local communities in the removal of those criminal aliens representing the greatest threat to community safety.” In fiscal year 2010 alone, the Secure Communities program deported more than 1,000 aliens convicted for homicide, nearly 6,000 convicted of sex offenses, more than 45,000 aliens convicted of drug offenses, and nearly 28,000 convicted of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
‘No-cost’ immigration control
For many law enforcement officials and community members, the Secure Communities program is a no-cost, simple way to control immigration and protect residents from potentially violent criminals, without turning local police into immigration officials.
“The program identifies individuals who are here in our country illegally and commit serious crimes, without profiling or enforcement of federal immigration laws by our deputies,” says Fairfax County, Virginia Sheriff Stan Barry in an ICE press release. “There’s no additional workload for our staff and does not cost a dime to Fairfax County or to our residents.”
Much like Arizona’s controversial SB170 law and the 287(g) program, the Secure Communities program is, undoubtedly, changing the face of immigration enforcement in the United States by giving ICE unprecedented access to prisons and jails across the country.
Supporters of the program say that complaints about Secure Communities miss the point: criminal or not, the program targets individuals who broke U.S. law.
"Where it is written that you have to commit a serious felony to have something done to get you out of the country?” says Ira Mehlman, spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an advocacy group that calls for reducing immigration levels. “The penalty is, if you are caught in this country illegally, you are removed."
Police departments already work with federal agencies, notes Mehlman, adding that ICE shouldn’t be exempt.
“Every single day, the New York City police department works with the FBI, the ATF, and the DEA---nobody seems to object to that (and) nobody is asking them to go out and do the job of federal immigration authorities,” he adds. “But if somebody falls into your lap, they ought to have the responsibility to run that person to federal immigration authorities."
But although the Secure Communities program seems an efficient way to catch and deport immigrant law-breakers, some wonder if the costs of the program outweigh the benefits.
Mixed Message
ICE has offered a mixed and perplexing message to the three communities around the country that have tried to opt-out of the Secure Communities program. In September, the County Board of Arlington, Virginia voted unanimously to opt out of the program, because officials feared it would “promote a culture of fear and distrust of law enforcement, ” according to the Board’s published resolution.
By early November, after writing a letter to ICE asking for information about opting out, County Manager Barbara M. Donnellan and Arlington’s police chief and sheriff met with ICE and found that they had two options. They could either not receive the results of federal database searches, meaning local law enforcement would not receive crucial information about the arrestee—such as known aliases or criminal history—or they could decline to share fingerprints with ICE and the FBI. Virginia law, like many states, requires that an arrestee’s fingerprints be checked against both state and federal databases, rendering it impossible for Arlington to opt out.
Like Arlington, San Francisco and Santa Clara, Calif. have each struggled to define their responsibilities and requirements to ICE.
ICE initially told the cities the program was not optional. Then, last September, a memo from Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano implied that communities could in fact chose not to send fingerprints of those they arrest to immigration authorities.
“A local law enforcement agency that does not wish to participate in the Secure Communities deployment plan must formally notify the Assistant Director for the Secure Communities program,” Napolitano wrote. She added that jurisdictions that did not wish to participate would still be responsible for notifying ICE about “suspected criminal aliens” in their custody.
Both Arlington and San Francisco told ICE in writing that they did not want to be “deployed.” But ICE reversed itself again in November, and informed both that opting out was not, in fact, an option.
“Jurisdictions cannot opt out of Secure Communities as it is fundamentally an information sharing program between federal partners,” wrote ICE spokesman Ivan Ortiz Delgado in an email to The Crime Report. According to ICE, once a state signs an Memorandum of Agreement with ICE approving the program, jurisdictions may decide when, but not if, they wish to begin the program.
“Should a jurisdiction not wish to activate on its scheduled date in the Secure Communities deployment plan, ICE will gladly work with them to address any concerns and determine appropriate next steps,” Delgado added.
Washington D.C. did, however, terminate its agreement with ICE last summer, and it may still be possible to opt out at the state level.
New York balks
Two weeks after the meeting downtown, the New York City Council called on New York State Governor David Paterson to do just that, but the move seems unlikely. Although New York City has resisted signing on to the program, 11 local departments in the state have made moves to implement the fingerprint-sharing plan.
“Communities right now don’t have to implement it right away,” says John Caher, spokesman for the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services. But Caher notes that the state has reason to support the program.
“New York State and in particular New York City is by far the premier target in this country for terrorism,” he says. “There is a legitimate rationale.”
New York City already cooperates with ICE through the Criminal Alien Program, which reviews the immigration records of all inmates at the Rikers Island jail complex. ICE interviews about 4,000 people at Rikers each year, 3,000 of which are pre-trial detainees, according to data obtained by the New Sanctuary Coalition in New York, a coalition of pro-immigration advocacy groups and individuals.
ICE detains about 3,200 Rikers inmates a year, who then get sent to facilities across the country, many in the southwest. Criminal charges are habitually dropped, but immigration detainees do not have the legal right to council, so many immigration detention cases go uncontested.
Make the Road New York is one of several immigrant-rights groups in the city that has opposed ICE’s presence at Rikers Island. They worry Secure Communities will exacerbate an already problematic program.
“Right now they have carte blanche to do what they want,” says Javier Valdez, deputy director of Make the Road. “We need to make sure that ICE is following the national rhetoric and going after the hardened criminals.”
Who gets deported?
ICE has said that Secure Communities places priority on prosecuting and deporting the most dangerous criminals, convicted of “level one” offenses like murder and other violent felonies. Critics are concerned that the program seeks to deport any undocumented or otherwise deportable but non-criminal immigrant found in the databases.
The numbers seem to support this. According to ICE’s, non-criminals seem to be keeping pace with Level 1 and 2 offenders. Last year, ICE booked 33,188 non-criminals and 11,173 Level 3 offenders, or those convicted of a misdemeanor, 36,390 Level 2 offenders, and 30,967 Level 1 offenders.
According to ICE spokesman Ortiz-Delgado, more aliens have been convicted of Level 2 and Level 3 crimes simply because more individuals commit those crimes. However, Ortiz-Delgado says, “ICE prioritizes the removal of criminal aliens convicted of Level 1 offenses, allocating resources to remove those aliens first.”
Those resources have grown exponentially in recent years. ICE appropriated $200 million for the Secure Communities program during fiscal year 2010. But that is only a small sliver of the $5.7 billion budget for the department. About $2.55 billion of that is allocated for detention and removal operations in fiscal year 2010, more than twice the amount budgeted in 2005.
Impact on Community Policing
Many local officials are concerned that the program will discourage immigrant groups from cooperating in police investigations or reporting crime, destroying often hard-earned trust between local law enforcement and communities living off the grid.
Lack of information on the Secure Communities program has also led many immigrants to speculate that local law enforcement and immigration enforcement are one and the same.
“Tight-knit communities have informal methods of communication which aren’t always 100 percent accurate,” says San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey. “When they hear the story of someone who was not convicted of a crime being taken away and disappeared, I think it sends a chilling message to that community: ‘Don’t deal with the police because they are going to turn you over to ICE.’”
“The concern is that if the immigrant community, whether they are here legally or not, will be reluctant to report crimes or come forward as witnesses because they would be fearful of being caught up in the ICE dragnet,” Hennessey adds.
Hennessey says reports are circulating of domestic violence victims being deported after they reported their abuser.
“I know that there are cases where police have responded to a domestic violence call,” he says. “They arrest both parties. One of them is a victim, but they both get reported to ICE.”
Oversight and enforcement
According to federal reports, ICE does not have a strong track record of oversight and management of its enforcement and detention policies.
A 2007 report from the Government Accountability Office found that ICE did not regularly update its training materials and manuals. Some dated from before the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002. “As a result,” the report said, “ICE officers are at risk of taking actions that do not support operation objectives and making removal decisions that do not reflect the most recent legal developments.”
Another GAO review released in January 2009, found serious issues with the implementation of the 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement to act as immigration officers. ICE told investigators the program strove to enhance the security of communities “by addressing serious criminal activity committed by removable aliens.” Yet investigators found “some participating agencies are using their 287(g) authority to process for removal aliens who have committed minor offenses,” like speeding, open-container violations or public urination.
Like Secure Communities, the 287(g) program does not prohibit local government from pointing ICE toward people arrested for minor offenses. But the GAO report presented an issue that could grow as Secure Communities goes forward. “If all the participating agencies sought assistance to remove aliens for such minor offenses,” the report said, “ICE would not have the detention space to detain all of the aliens referred to them.”
ICE declined to respond to a question about the fiscal impact of the full implementation of Secure Communities, but both supporters and critics of the program believe ICE cannot implement Secure Communities across the country without significantly increasing its detention capacity.
Private companies, with the support of the federal government, have already begun to build new facilities to accommodate the growing number of individuals detained under Secure Communities.
One such facility in Farmville, Virginia, stands to receive about $213,000 in revenue and 300 jobs, according to a recent article in The Washington Post. Over the next year, the $21 million, privately-run center expects to hold over 1,000 detainees, most of them found through the Secure Communities program.
Immigration in the courts
But exactly how many people have been detained and deported through the Secure Communities program remains a mystery. ICE has evaded repeated attempts by groups to obtain specific data on the program.
Data does show, however, that immigration courts are throwing out a significant number of the immigration detention cases that come before them.
During the last three months of fiscal year 2010, courts rejected nearly one out of every three cases, according to a report released by The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a non-partisan research and data distribution organization at Syracuse University. In some of the busiest courts—New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Oregon and Philadelphia—more than half the cases were judged to be without merit.
The data suggests that ICE is either not screening cases before they enter the legal system, or is failing to present compelling cases in court, according to Syracuse University professor Susan Long, co-director of TRAC. How much of this is tied to Secure Communities is impossible to know, Long said, because ICE refuses to release that data.
“There are hard choices here, whether we think about it from our tax dollars and efficiency, cheating security, or we think about it from the perspective of how people are being treated and the adverse impacts on people’s lives,” says Long.
“If we really want to have a reasoned debate here, which I think the vast majority of people do, we need to have the government release the data so that the facts will be on the table.”
Lisa Riordan Seville and Hannah Rappleye are freelance reporters living in Brooklyn.
Photo courtesy ICE
Read full entry »Last October, ICE released an unusually self-critical review of its immigrant detention system. The report criticized the system for its often poor treatment of the illegal immigrants it houses, notes the New Mexico Independent. The system takes in too many detainees, the report said, and treats them too much like prisoners, even though immigrant detention is a civil — not criminal — process. The report concluded that ICE should improve its facilities and services and create alternatives to detention for some non-criminal illegal immigrants. But a year later, not much has changed. Though ICE added an oversight office and a tool to help families and attorneys locate their relatives and clients, detainees say the detention system is still badly in need of repair.
The paper cites the example of Pedro Guzman, who has been in federal detention since September 2009. Guzman moved to the U.S. from Guatemala, illegally, with his mother when he was eight years old. He attended school in the U.S. and then successfully applied each year for temporary work visas. But three years ago, he was denied permanent residency. Then last year, when he was settled down in North Carolina with his wife and son, Guzman received a notice of deportation from the government. ICE officers showed up at the Guzman home and arrested him on Sept. 28, 2009, and he has been in federal detention ever since.
Read full entry »The Houston Chronicle says the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency often turns a blind eye when it identifies suspected illegal immigrants working at businesses. It said ICE inspectors found that a California company had 262 employees — 93 percent of the workforce — with “suspect” documents on file. At an Illinois service company, auditors found dubious documents for nearly 8 in 10 of its 200-plus employees. Inspectors examining records at a Texas firm found suspicious paperwork for half of the 107 employees on the payroll. But the companies didn’t pay a penny in fines. None of the employers was led away in handcuffs. ICE didn’t even issue them a formal warning.
Instead, they were instructed to purge their payrolls of illegal immigrants. Armed with assurances that the employees with suspect documents were fired — or, in the Texas case, “self-terminated” — the ICE auditors closed the cases. The cases are just a few examples included in ICE’s internal records on its audit initiative, an enforcement program launched last July. In the past, ICE had faced criticism for raiding job sites and rounding up illegal immigrants for deportation, but not necessarily building cases against employers. With the audit initiative, ICE aims to scrutinize the hiring records of more businesses and impose “tough” and “smart” employer sanctions. But ICE audit records show the agency has, in many instances, failed to punish companies found to have workers with questionable documents.
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Arizona's crime rate is at its lowest levels in the past forty years, as the Hispanic immigrant population has soared, found a new study from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ). Researchers also found that drug abuse was higher among the non-Hispanic population in Arizona. The report "Scapegoating Immigrants: Arizona's Real Crisis Is Rooted in Residents' Soaring Drug Abuse," was compiled using data from Arizona state agencies.
Read the report here.
Use the Crime Report for more information on immigration and crime.
Read full entry »The House's approval Tuesday of $600 million in border security funding appears to mark a shift away from technology in favor of more boots on the ground, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Half of the money will pay for 1,500 new border agents. Another chunk of nearly $200 million goes to the Justice Department-supported efforts of the US Marshals and other law enforcement agencies. Two surveillance drones ring up another $32 million.
In March, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano froze funding for a "virtual fence" begun under President Bush in 2006. The string of towers was intended to catch illegal border-crossers using cameras, radar, and ground sensors, but it was "plagued with cost overruns and missed deadlines," Secretary Napolitano said. The program had burned through some $2.4 billion between 2005 and 2009. Another border security measure with a high price tag but not many supporters: the 600 miles of fence erected along the border since 2005. A 2009 Government Accountability Office audit found that the fence – still unfinished – had cost $2.4 billion to build, and would require another $6.5 billion to maintain over the next 20 years.
Read full entry »About 47,000 people have been removed or deported from the U.S. after the Homeland Security Department sifted through 3 million sets of fingerprints taken from bookings at local jails, reports the Associated Press. About one-quarter of those kicked out of the country did not have criminal records, according to government data obtained by immigration advocacy groups that have filed a lawsuit.
At issue is a fingerprint-sharing program known as Secure Communities that the government says is focused on getting rid of the "worst of the worst" criminal immigrants from the U.S. But immigration advocates say the government instead spends too much time on lower-level criminals or non-criminals. Immigration and Customs Enforcement divides crimes into three categories, with Level 1 being the most serious. Most of those deported committed Level 2 or 3 crimes or were non-criminals, a monthly report of Secure Communities statistics shows. Peter Markowitz, director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, called it a "bait and switch."
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In America’s border ‘war zone,’ a U.S. Border Patrol agent is assaulted every eight hours
Border Patrol Agent Jose Morales has patrolled the same stretch of no-man's-land in his unmarked SUV between Tijuana, Mexico and San Ysidro, Calif., hundreds of times. But the world seemed to stop around 9 a.m. one morning last month when a dispatcher broke through the radio chatter with a solemn announcement, "Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas, you will never be forgotten."
That morning―July 23―was the anniversary of the first on-duty death of a Border Patrol agent by gunfire in 12 years. Rosas was gunned down in a remote area some 60 miles east of San Diego by Christian Daniel Castro-Alvarez, then a 16-year-old Mexican citizen who was working with others to lure the 30-year-old father of two out of his patrol vehicle to rob him. Alvarez who pleaded guilty to the agent's murder, was sentenced in San Diego Federal Court this May as an adult to 40 years in prison. His accomplices remain at large.
Chillingly, Rosas is not likely to be the last fatal victim.
“Rosas’ death hit us all pretty hard,” said Morales. “He was in a remote area when he was attacked, which is where many of our patrols are.”
Morales said the anxiety level is always present because agents never know if they will be confronted by three or 30 people crossing the border and how they will react to being stopped by the Border Patrol.
As the debate over securing U.S. borders heats up once again following Arizona’s controversial immigration law, one key element has been overlooked. Over the past four years there has been a significant increase in assaults against agents, primarily in the southwest sectors.
Officials are concerned enough to call for a re-examination of Border Patrol tactics, in the wake of the escalating violence along the U.S.-Mexican border.
T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which serves as the union for more than 20,000 agents, says records show that an agent is being assaulted every eight hours.
‘The Wild West’
"This is the Wild West,” declares Bonner, adding that many injuries to agents have gone unreported.
The numbers bear out Bonner’s concerns. In 2006, there were 729 assaults against agents along the Mexican border from San Diego to the Rio Grande Sector in Texas. That number jumped in 2007 to 979, peaked at 1,085 in 2008, then slid slightly to 1,073 in 2009, the latest year for which records are available.
Bonner said the numbers for fiscal year 2010 are on track to surpass the 2008 high.
The San Diego Sector saw the highest amount of assaults, mainly because the San Ysidro crossing, the busiest in the U.S., went from 200 assaults in 2006 to a high of 337 in 2008. Tucson followed with a jump from 192 assaults in 2006 to 261 in 2009.
Why the increase? Bonner, ironically, calls it a product of success.
The stepped-up law enforcement presence along the border has frightened away many of the traditional traffickers who ferried undocumented workers into the U.S. But in their place has stepped “a much more violent breed of smugglers” connected with Mexico’s fierce drug cartels, he says.
According to Bonner, the well-armed and well-financed drug cartels have increasingly turned to the more lucrative —and comparatively less risky—business of human smuggling to cut losses suffered from increasingly fierce crackdowns on both sides of the border. Many have simply taken over or co-opted the entrepreneurial but comparatively unarmed organizations of “mules” that brought immigrants in by buses, trucks and remote trails through the mountains.
"Nothing, absolutely nothing, crosses these borders without someone paying the cartels," said Bonner.
And along with corruption has come a ruthless style of violence that had rarely been associated with human smuggling in the past.
“The disturbing level of violence sometimes overshadows the national security risks along the border,” says Assistant FBI Director Kevin Perkins
One senior agent in the FBI’s El Paso field office likened the violence level of the cartels to Al Qaeda.
“The cartels here are often just as willing to resort to extreme brutality and bloodshed to carry out their objectives,” says the agent, who asked to remain anonymous..
In terms of reducing the flow of undocumented immigrants across the border, the get-tough strategy has been successful. The number of border apprehensions has been cut nearly in half in the southwest sector in just four years, from 1,171,396 in 2005 to 540,865 in 2009.
But even as agents are seeing fewer illegal crossings at the border, “the number of assaults is increasing," said Senior Agent Valeria Morales (no relation to Joe Morales), who works out of the El Paso Sector just yards from Ciudad Juarez, the "Murder Capital of the World."
The enlarged presence of the Border Patrol, now often the principal barrier standing between the cartels and their U.S. markets has frustrated the drug kingpin’s efforts to connect with wholesalers across the border―and forced them to adapt more aggressive methods, according to Morales.
Since 1994 the Border Patrol has not only stepped up its forces, but has put in place sophisticated technology such as strategically placed infrared and surveillance cameras, fences, and powerful lights. The federal strategy has received a boost from Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who deployed over 45,000 troops in border regions, starting in 2006, in an all-out war with the drug cartels.
Complicating the situation is Mexican authorities’ inability – or unwillingness—to stop them.
"The Mexican military and law enforcement is so corrupt you can't trust them," said Bonner, "We have video of Mexican police arresting a suspect in an agent assault only to let him go a few blocks away."
Climate of Violence
The impunity with which the organized cartels are able to operate has also helped to create a general climate of violence.
Ironically, the weapon which accounts for the highest number of assaults against Border Patrol agents is the most primitive: rocks.
That led to one of the most notorious and controversial border incidents in recent months. A Juarez teenager was shot and killed on June 7 near a border-crossing bridge when an agent trying to detain an illegal crosser came under a shower of rocks, The victim, Sergio Adrian Hernandez, who had a history of smuggling arrests, was operating with a group of young people.
The FBI investigation of the incident is continuing, but border patrol agents say they are outraged that the U.S. Attorney has launched a civil rights investigation of the incident. Bonner calls it ‘ludicrous’ that a federal agent who was under assault from a foreigner “who has no civil rights” may be subject to charges.
"Rock throwing incidents occur frequently in the El Paso Sector due to our close proximity to Juarez, which is only 25-30 yards in some areas," adds Valeria Morales.
In the El Paso Sector rock assaults went from seven in 2006 to 34 in 2008. There have already been 29 so far this year. To put this in perspective, she said, in 2008 the only other assault against an agent was physical. In 2010 there have been two physical confrontations and two weapons-related incidents.
"Rocks are dangerous weapons and should not be underestimated," said Bonner who has seen his share of agents lose eyes, hearing and suffering chronic post-concussion syndrome as a result of rock attacks. One of Morales’ co-workers needed 37 stitches in the head following a rock assault.
And while rock-throwing may be considered by some critics to be a relatively minor offense, agents point out that it is closely connected with the general rise of organized criminal violence on the border.
According to Bonner and Morales, the smuggling organizations are encouraging rock-throwing as a way of diverting agents’ attention. Even though weapons are increasingly seen in the border areas, some consider it a less lethal form of intimidation―and one less likely to provoke a heavier crackdown from U.S. forces.
But it has only been a matter of luck, says Bonner, that a rock-throwing incident has so far not resulted in the death of an agent. The severity of the injuries, he adds, can’t be underestimated.
Even as the nation tries to re-calibrate its border-control efforts with strategies such as the recent plan to put more National Guard troops along the border, border patrol reps argue that the general approach needs to change in what they consider a “war zone.”
Bonner calls for the discontinuance of mounted, bike, and ATV patrols which he claims have left agents vulnerable, and he wants stiffer prosecution of assailants.
"We need to send a message it is not OK to assault a federal agent," he said. "We need to adapt our tactics to the unbridled violence."
Joe Kolb is publisher and editor of the Gallup (New Mexico) Herald
Photo by James Tourtellotte.
For an FBI update on Southwest border crime, click here.
Read full entry »Federal immigration officials plan changes at several privately owned immigration detention centers, including relaxing some security measures for low-risk detainees and offering art classes, bingo and continental breakfast on the weekends, reports the Houston Chronicle. The changes were welcomed by immigrant advocates who have been waiting for the Obama administration to deliver on a promise made in August to overhaul the nation's immigration detention system.
The 28 changes identified in an ICE e-mail obtained by the paper range from the superficial to the substantive. In addition to “softening the look of the facility” with hanging plants and offering fresh carrot sticks, ICE will allow for the “free movement” of low-risk detainees, expand visiting hours and provide unmonitored phone lines. ICE officials said the changes are part of broader efforts to make the immigration detention system less penal and more humane.
Read full entry »Mexicans are seething over the second death of a countryman at the hands of U.S. Border Patrol agents in two weeks, an incident near downtown El Paso that is threatening to escalate tensions over migrant issues, reports the Los Angeles Times. U.S. authorities said a Border Patrol agent was defending himself and colleagues when he fatally shot the 15-year-old as officers came under a barrage of big stones while trying to detain illegal immigrants on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande.
About 30 relatives and friends gathered late Tuesday to mourn Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereka, whose shooting Monday evening came along the border with Texas. He died on the Mexican side of the river. Preliminary reports on the incident indicated that U.S. officers on bicycle patrol "were assaulted with rocks," a Border Patrol spokesman said.
Less than two weeks ago, Mexican migrant Anastasio Hernandez, 32, died after a Customs and Border Protection officer shocked him with a stun gun at the San Ysidro border crossing that separates San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico. The San Diego medical examiner's office ruled that death a homicide. Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Tuesday that his government "will use all resources available to protect the rights of Mexican migrants."
San Francisco’s police chief denounces Arizona’s new legal crackdown on undocumented immigrants in an exclusive commentary for The Crime Report
As a police chief with over 30 years of law enforcement experience, I have a great appreciation for the impact laws can have on law enforcement, and on the lives of the people we are sworn to serve and protect. That’s why I am concerned about the law recently enacted by the Arizona legislature allowing police to inquire into immigration status if an officer has a “reasonable suspicion” that an individual is illegally in the country.
The law reflects, regrettably, a lack of understanding on the part of some of the general public about how difficult it would be to enforce it, and how it would limit their police forces’ ability to protect them from crime.
Before my current appointment to lead the San Francisco Police Department, I served for three years (until 2009) as chief of police in Mesa, Arizona—and that has given me an additional perspective on the issue that bill was meant to address.
I have three major areas of concern.
The bill will adversely affect public safety. It will incline immigrant communities to distrust the police, and further alienate immigrant and minority communities from law enforcement agencies and officers in Arizona. Victims of crimes such as domestic violence and assault will be reluctant to contact the police if they fear such contact will lead to investigations into the immigration status of the victim, of family members and neighbors, or of other persons close to the victim―perhaps leading to their detention and deportation.
The alienation between police and communities that we can reasonably expect will result from the law will occur not only where the victim of the crime is undocumented, but also in a great many other cases. This is because many households and communities are made up of individuals with varying immigration status, and frequently include at least one individual who is a U.S. citizen or an authorized immigrant. Therefore, out of fear of deportation of a family member or neighbor, many crime victims who are documented immigrants or U.S. citizens will decide not to contact the police.
This problem with the law was not cured by the amended language that relieves officers of the duty to inquire into immigration status if such inquiry would hinder or obstruct an investigation. Quite simply, the law sends an overriding message to immigrant communities: avoid law enforcement officers because it is presumed that they will be inquiring about immigration status. Minor nuances and exceptions in the law’s language will not affect this over-arching message.
Serious Consequences
The consequences are serious for both crime victims and law enforcement.
Police investigations will be impeded by the lack of information that could help them solve crime. And it will have an impact on public safety not only for immigrant communities, but all communities in the state of Arizona. It will create a vacuum in law enforcement, and criminals will be emboldened because they will have less reason to be concerned about being reported by victims or witnesses in immigrant communities, and less reason to fear any consequences for their criminal conduct.
San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon
I cannot overstate the critical importance of victim and witness cooperation in solving crimes and anything that diminishes that cooperation should be rejected.
The second issue I see with this law is that it creates a resource allocation problem. Police departments in Arizona, already spread thinly and under-funded, now have an added responsibility – to enforce federal immigration law. Enforcement will effectively divert resources from the primary mission of ensuring public safety. It will require that police undertake the complicated task of checking for federal immigration status. This is simply not something police officers are trained to do.
Neither is it the reason the vast majority of officers entered the policing profession. Men and women generally join the ranks of the police force to protect the vulnerable, solve and, whenever possible, deter crimes, apprehend criminals, and maintain the peace―not to act as federal immigration enforcement agents. Quite simply, police officers cannot take on immigration enforcement duties without taking substantial time away from these basic priorities, which are central to the obligations of a local law enforcement agency.
The Arizona law also gives a right to sue to anyone who believes that a particular police department is not vigorously enforcing federal immigration law. To avoid lawsuits, police departments will likely expend significant time, money and other resources to head off the filing of these lawsuits and defending themselves against claimed failures to take appropriate actions. This puts police departments and individual police officers in an untenable position.
The third problem from a law enforcement perspective is that the law is likely to lead to constitutional violations.
Danger of Racial Profiling
The criminal provisions of this law would be extremely difficult to enforce in a race-neutral manner. When police officers attempt to determine whether an individual they encounter on patrol is in the United States illegally, as the bill requires, they will likely rely upon race and ethnicity as factors in establishing reasonable suspicion to investigate potential violations. As a practical matter, even the amended language, which prohibits consideration of race, color or national origin, will not prevent the improper use of race or ethnicity.
Short of directly observing an individual actually crossing the border in a surreptitious manner, there are not reliable indicators that would give rise to a reasonable suspicion to believe that a person is unlawfully in the United States. In good conscience, we should not be putting police officers in this precarious position.
There will also be a greater incidence of pretextual stops of individuals of color in Arizona, as officers under pressure to comply with the law will use pretextual reasons to stop or question individuals they believe to be in this country illegally. [ED NOTE: pretextual refers to the legal ability of a police officer to question a suspect about matters not related to the specific reasons he or she was detained]
If an officer is motivated by race or ethnicity he or she can easily find a valid pretext for encountering an individual, whether by following a car until a minor traffic violation occurs or by approaching a pedestrian for “consensual” questioning. Consequently, the law permits, and inevitably makes more likely, the disparate treatment of Latinos and other persons of color. For example, when police receive a complaint about excessive noise by a neighbor, they may be more likely to interrogate residents of the home about their immigration status if they are Latino than if they are white. Such disparities in law enforcement based on race and ethnicity also will almost certainly lead to greater legal liabilities for police agencies.
Taking all of these considerable defects into account, I can only conclude that Arizona’s law is extremely harmful for the state’s local police departments. It undermines public safety by causing communities to distrust the police; it diverts resources from the goal of ensuring public safety and it discourages victims from coming forward. It will also likely lead to racial profiling, and thus subject local agencies to litigation.
I frankly can see nothing of value resulting from this legislation. At a time when law enforcement officials are attempting to engage all stakeholders through community policing practices, and to bring about the level of safety that all communities deserve, this is a significant step backwards.
Police officers should not be drawn into the enforcement of federal immigration statutes. This has been and should remain the jurisdiction of the federal authorities. I urge our leaders at the state and national levels to craft meaningful solutions to the issues surrounding immigration, and not concoct politically expedient legislation that, intended or not, will most assuredly produce even greater disaffection in our communities.
George Gascon was appointed police chief of San Francisco on August 7, 2009. He served as chief of the Mesa, Arizona police force between 2006-2009, and previously served as Assistant Chief in the Los Angeles Police Department. He is also a lawyer in the state of California.
Front page photo by Kevin Bondelli via Flickr.
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