Interior Enforcement
Non-Citizens with Mental Disabilities
In 2009, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained approximately 380,000 people. Roughly 15 percent of the non-citizen population in detention, or around 57,000 people, have a mental disability. Unfortunately, these mental disabilities often go unrecognized by law enforcement and immigration officials, resulting in less access to justice for the individual and greater confusion and complexity for the attorneys and judges handling the cases. The consequences of immigration enforcement for unauthorized immigrants, long-term permanent residents, asylum-seekers, and other non-citizens with mental disabilities can be severe. Even U.S. citizens have been unlawfully detained and deported because their mental disabilities made it impossible to effectively defend themselves in court. Teasing out the complicated issues of fair treatment for people with mental disabilities caught up in our broken immigration system is not easy, particularly because it must be disentangled from the many challenges facing all immigrants who find themselves in immigration custody or in proceedings before the immigration court. As a report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union aptly put it: Read More
Sanctuary Cities and the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program: Two Things that Do Not Go Together
The Center for Immigration Studies recently released a report entitled Subsidizing Sanctuaries: The State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which claims the federal government is giving State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) grant money to “sanctuary” cities. The problem with this argument is that the very fact these cities (San Francisco, Chicago, Arlington, VA) are receiving SCAAP money means that they are not providing sanctuary to immigrants. SCAAP money goes to localities to reimburse them for the costs of jailing immigrants. Read More
ICE’S Enforcement Priorities and the Factors that Undermine Them
As part of its strategy to gain support for comprehensive immigration reform, the administration has continually touted its enforcement accomplishments. In fact, over the last two years, the Obama administration has committed itself to a full-court press to demonstrate how committed the administration is to removing criminals and others who remain in the country without proper documentation. They have continued to use the enforcement programs of the previous administration, including partnering with state and local law enforcement agencies to identify, detain, and deport immigrants. However, in doing so, they have lost the ability to fully control their own enforcement priorities and enforcement outcomes, and the results have demonstrated that the state and local partners are not necessarily committed to the same priorities. At an October 6, 2010, press conference, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had removed more than 392,000 individuals in Fiscal Year (FY) 2010, and presented other “record-breaking immigration enforcement statistics achieved under the Obama administration.” In addition to record-breaking overall numbers, Napolitano also announced the “unprecedented numbers of convicted criminal alien removals” in FY 2010. Of the 392,000 removals in FY 2010, more than 195,000 were classified as “convicted criminal aliens,” which was 81,000 more criminal removals than in FY 2008. Read More
Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce Continues Immigration Crusade Despite Budget Crisis
A cog in the wheel of local enforcement legislation, Arizona state Senator and now Senate President-elect, Russell Pearce, predictably said he will continue his immigration crusade to repeal part of the 14th Amendment despite the looming state budget crisis. A recent article points out that Pearce, in the throes of last minute campaigning, pledged that he would make boosting Arizona’s flailing economy his number one priority instead of pushing yet another immigration bill. Not surprisingly, however, Pearce told reporters today that “he never promised the 14th Amendment bills wouldn’t be heard, only that he wouldn’t sponsor it.” Sound fishy? That’s because it is. Sponsor of Arizona’s controversial enforcement law SB1070, Pearce has a history of not only prioritizing immigration enforcement legislation, but accepting campaign contributions from the prison lobby who helped write it. Read More
Finally, an Immigration Bill that Embraces Racial Profiling!
Florida State Representative William Snyder, a former police officer from Miami, drafted his own version of Arizona’s SB 1070 for the state—a bill has the potential to be even more offensive. The bill mimics SB 1070—allowing officers to stop persons based on a “reasonable suspicion” that they are undocumented in order to check their immigration status. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Rep. Synder’s bill actually goes a step further by providing a caveat that the person stopped will be presumed legal if they have a Canadian passport or a passport from a country which participates in our visa waiver program—the majority of which are Western European countries. Naturally, this caveat has groups enraged over the potential for racial profiling. Read More
Office of Inspector General (OIG) Finds 287(g) Program Still Riddled with Flaws
DHS’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently released an updated report on the Performance of 287(g) Agreements which provides the same dreary account of the program as the first one. The April 2010 OIG report found that ICE and its local law enforcement partners have not complied with the terms of their 287(g) Memoranda of Agreement (MOAs), that the standards by which deputized officers are evaluated are not in line with the stated objectives of the 287(g) program, that the program is poorly supervised by ICE, and that additional oversight is necessary. It included 33 recommendations to improve the program, 28 of which, the new report finds, still remain open. Read More
Another Lawsuit Against Arizona’s SB1070 Moves Forward
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton denied motions by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu last week to dismiss a lawsuit filed by plaintiffs against Arizona law SB 1070. Counsel for the plaintiffs, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, and the National Immigration Law Center, alleges that SB 1070 unlawfully attempts to regulate immigration and would result in widespread racial profiling. The lawsuit is one of seven originally filed against SB 1070. Read More
Utah Leaders Balk at Arizona-esque Immigration Enforcement Bill
With midterm election campaigning well underway, some local candidates are lifting up state and local immigration enforcement legislation as a means to garner public support. Unfortunately, as is often the case when politics meets reality, not everyone is on board with local enforcement laws like Arizona’s SB1070—key provisions of which were enjoined by a federal district judge in late July. Over the last few months, state leaders in Ohio, Idaho, Nebraska and Houston have either heavily edited or voted not to pursue state immigration measures, citing costly lawsuits, court battles and the dubious constitutionality of such laws. This month, state leaders in Utah are also balking at an immigration measure modeled on the controversial Arizona law. Read More
The American Immigration Council Addresses Problems with Draft Immigration Detainer Policy
Washington D.C. – The American Immigration Council has joined a number of organizations in formally commenting on a proposed detainer policy issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Detainers are requests from ICE to local law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to hold people – whom they suspect may be… Read More
Counties Say No to ICE’s Secure Communities Program, But is Opting Out Possible?
Earlier this week, the Santa Clara (CA) Board of Supervisors and the Arlington County (VA) Board both voted unanimously to opt-out of the Secure Communities program—an ICE program that shares the fingerprints of individuals booked into jails with immigration databases. However, Today’s Washington Post claims that opting out of Secure Communities “is not a realistic possibility, and never was.” The Secure Communities program, launched in 2008, is currently active in 658 jurisdictions in 32 states, according to ICE, who plans to activate the program in every jurisdiction in every state by 2013. It remains unclear, however, whether the program is voluntary. Read More
America's story is an immigrant story.
