Thursday, January 31, 2013

NY Border Patrol Agents Got Home Depot Gift Cards As Bonus For More Arrests - COLORLINES

NY Border Patrol Agents Got Home Depot Gift Cards As Bonus For More Arrests

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

A new report from Families for Freedom (FFF) in collaboration with New York University (NYU) Immigrant Rights Clinic found U.S. Border Patrol agents are encouraged to apprehend immigrants through various incentive programs.
FFF, a New York-based defense network by and for immigrants facing deportation, obtained data from the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) station in Rochester, New York and the Buffalo Sector through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.
According to the report this is the first public data on USBP discretionary bonus programs that include cash bonuses, vacation awards, and distribution of gift cards to border patrol agents from Home Depot and Macys. Data shows bonuses reached up to $2,500 a year per agent.
The report also found close to 300 cases of wrongful arrests have been reported, the vast majority are people of color from Africa, South and East Asia, and the Caribbean.
Below is a summary of key findings from the report “Uncovering USBP: Bonus Programs for United States Border Patrol Agents and the Arrest of Lawfully Present Individuals [PDF]:

USBP uses three different bonus programs to reward its agents. The programs include cash bonuses, vacation awards and distribution of gift cards of up to $100. As part of the settlement of our case, CBP gave us tallies for each of these for the Buffalo Sector (which covers northern New York). We also obtained the documents for approving the cash and time off awards, which provide no justification for which agents are awarded year‐end bonuses of up to $2,500 or 40 hours of vacation time. The sums spent on these programs in the Buffalo Sector alone amount to over $200,000 a year. The gift card program, which was not funded in 2009, resumed in 2010.
USBP has adopted a protocol for documenting arrests of individuals who are later determined to have legal status. Through FFF’s lawsuit, we obtained copies of forms - called “I‐44” forms - for persons arrested by agents at the Rochester Station. An analysis of those forms shows that the vast majority of those wrongfully arrested were from South Asian, East Asian, African, and Carribean backgrounds. In just one program (train and bus arrests) in one station, almost 300 persons who had a form of legal status were arrested and transported to USBP offices prior to being released. The actual number is probably far higher because CBP did not formally instruct its agents to document these arrests until June 2010. These legally present individuals include 12 U.S. citizens, 52 Legal Permanent Residents, 28 tourist visa holders, 37 student visa holders, 39 work visa holders, 51 individuals in immigration proceedings, 26 with pending immigration applications, and 32 individuals that had been granted asylum, withholding or temporary protective status. Eleven individuals had other forms of status, including diplomatic visas, special visas for victims of domestic violence, and special status provided to the citizens of former US territories. Many of these people were arrested because of USBP database errors. The report includes stories about the experiences of these people, including those who are arrested in the middle of the night, and many who are forced to depend on family or employers to fax documents to USBP in order to be released.
Contrary to sworn statements submitted in the federal district court stating that the agency did not maintain an array of arrest statistics, including annual totals for the Rochester Station, the depositions ordered by the Court revealed that arrest statistics are the primary measure employed by local USBP stations and their Sector supervisors in the Buffalo Sector. The Agent in Charge in Rochester testified that recording the station’s daily arrest statistics and sending them to the Sector is the last job of the supervisor at the end of the day. The next morning, the Buffalo Sector office sends summary arrest statistics out to each station in time for each Patrol Agent in Charge to review when he first opens his e‐mail in the morning. Meanwhile, the Chief of Staff of USBP testified that the national office of USBP tracks arrest statistics and distributes reports through mass emails on a twice daily basis. The Agent in Charge for the Rochester Station, which is the subject of much of the data in this report, stated that the Station does not keep any other regular measure of performance.
The documents show that USBP agents act on the assumption that no matter where they operate within the United States, they may arrest any noncitizen—whether a tourist or a long‐term legal resident with a driver’s license—whenever that person is not carrying detailed documentation that provides proof of status. But USBP’s records also show that the agents are not genuinely interested in what documents the law might require noncitizens to carry. Instead, USBP’s demand for “papers” is universal, resulting in an enforcement culture that maximizes arrest rates.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Migration Policy Institute Discusses Immigration Enforcement | C-SPAN

WASHINGTON, DC
Monday, January 7, 2013

The Migration Policy Institute Monday released a report on immigration enforcement in the United States. It finds that the United States spends more on immigration enforcement than on all other principle law enforcement agencies combined. As of FY 2011, the United States spent $18 billion on immigration enforcement, nearly 15 times the spending level in 1986 when the Immigration Reform and Control Act was enacted. This discussion, hosted by the Migration Policy Institute looked at how U.S. enforcement programs have evolved as President Obama plans to push for immigration reform.

The President, citing a lack of action by Congress, announced last year that his administration would allow illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and had graduated from high school to remain in the country for several years, opening up opportunities for states to offer tuition breaks and scholarships to those young immigrants.

Additionally, with growing attention to Latino voters, who see immigration issues as important, it is likely that Congress will take up some type of immigration reform bill in the coming year. Republicans, who lost much of the national Latino vote, have stated publicly that they know they need to find a way to become a more inclusive party, and immigration reform, already supported by a number of border-state Republicans, may be a key issue.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Huge Amounts Spent on Immigration, Study Finds

John Moore/Getty Images

A man suspected of being an illegal immigrant from Mexico was searched by a federal immigration officer in Phoenix last April.

By JULIA PRESTON

Published: January 7, 2013

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The Obama administration spent nearly $18 billion on immigration enforcement last year, significantly more than its spending on all the other major federal law enforcement agencies combined, according to a report published Monday by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

Times Topic: Immigration and Emigration

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Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

Nogales, Mexico, along the border with Arizona. The federal government spent $18 billion on immigration enforcement last year.

Based on the vast resources devoted to monitoring foreigners coming into the country and to detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, immigration control has become “the federal government’s highest criminal law enforcement priority,” the report concluded.

In recent years, it found, the two main immigration enforcement agencies under the Department of Homeland Security have referred more cases to the courts for prosecution than all of the Justice Department’s law enforcement agencies combined, including the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Total spending on those agencies was $14 billion, official figures show.

The 182-page report was an opening salvo in a contentious debate over immigration that President Obama has pledged to lead this year. Its purpose was to marshal publicly available official figures to show that the country has built “a formidable enforcement machinery” since 1986, the last time Congress considered an overhaul of the immigration laws that included measures granting legal status to large numbers of illegal immigrants. Spending on immigration enforcement was 15 times greater last year than in 1986, the report found.

The report responds to lawmakers, mainly Republicans, who have argued that federal authorities must do much more to strengthen enforcement before Congress can consider any legalization for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.

“The ‘enforcement first’ policy that has been advocated by many in Congress and the public as a precondition for considering broader immigration reform has de facto become the nation’s singular immigration policy,” the report concluded.

Although the institute includes both Democrats and Republicans and did not offer any recommendations in this report, it has previously supported policies to bring illegal immigrants into the legal system, rather than expelling them.

According to the report, financing, staffing and technology investments for the Border Patrol have reached “historic highs,” while apprehensions of illegal border crossers have plunged by 53 percent since 2008. As a result of huge increases in spending, deportations have also “increased dramatically,” the report says, with far more immigrants removed in expedited proceedings that do not involve any formal proceeding before an immigration judge.

The budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which handles interior enforcement and detention, has increased by 87 percent since 2005, to nearly $6 billion, according to the report. The number of foreigners the agency detains annually increased to 429,247 in 2011. In December, the agency announced it had deported 410,000 foreigners in 2012, giving Mr. Obama the record for the highest number of removals during his term.

“As a result of 25 years of investment,” said Doris Meissner, an author of the report who is a senior fellow at the institute, “the bulwark is fundamentally in place.” She said the existing system made it unlikely that an immigration overhaul could unleash a new wave of illegal migration, like the surge since the amnesty of 1986.

Ms. Meissner, who served as commissioner of the immigration service in the Clinton administration, said public perceptions of uncontrolled migration across the border with Mexico “have not caught up with the reality.”

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, federal law enforcement agencies have revamped and coordinated databases for monitoring the movement of foreigners into the country. An immigration databank that federal authorities have created is the “largest law enforcement electronic verification system in the world,” said Donald Kerwin, another author of the report.

Some critics said the report’s figures were misleading because they include the entire budget for Customs and Border Protection, another Department of Homeland Security agency, which also oversees cargo inspections on land and at seaports.

“A large amount of that spending has nothing to do with immigrants,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that supports tough measures against illegal immigration. Immigration enforcement still has “gaping holes,” he said.

One of them, Mr. Krikorian said, is the lack of a national system for employers to verify that new hires are legally authorized to work. He also noted that the United States still has no system to confirm that foreigners leave the country when their visas expire.

Other experts said the report was an accurate summary of a recent transformation in immigration control. “There is no question that there has been a big, big increase in enforcement across the board,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 8, 2013, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Huge Amounts Spent on Immigration, Study Finds.

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Friday, January 4, 2013

New ICE Detainer Guidance Too Little, Too Late » Immigration Impact

New ICE Detainer Guidance Too Little, Too Late

Crime, Customs and Border Patrol, Detainers, Detention, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Police, Prosecutorial Discretion, Secure Communities, Undocumented Immigration

by Ben Winograd

On the Friday before Christmas, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released new guidance on immigration “detainers,” the lynchpin of agency enforcement programs involving cooperation with local police. In the new guidance, ICE Director John Morton instructed agency employees to only file detainers against immigrants who represent agency “priorities.” Unfortunately, as with prior agency memos on prosecutorial discretion, the detainer guidance is so riddled with loopholes that it could have little—if any—practical effect.

The new guidance defines “priorities” so broadly as to make the term virtually meaningless.

As is now well known, immigration detainers are requests (not commands) sent by ICE to local jails asking for selected inmates to be held even after they would otherwise be entitled to release. Although the federal government has issued detainers for decades, their use has become especially common following the expansion of Secure Communities, the controversial program that gives ICE access to the fingerprints of all people arrested by local police. Once ICE becomes aware of a potentially deportable immigrant in state or local custody, agency employees file a detainer requesting that the individual be held until federal officers assume custody. Like prior memos issued by Morton, the new detainer guidance instructs ICE employees to focus on immigrants representing agency “priorities.” Among other examples, the guidance lists those charged with or convicted of a felony. In an editorial praising the new guidance, the New York Times suggested that—if implemented correctly—it could lead “to smarter enforcement of the immigration laws, with greater effort spent on deporting dangerous felons and less on minor offenders who pose no threat.”
In truth, however, the guidance contains so many loopholes that it could have little if any practical effect. To begin with, the guidance applies only to employees of ICE—not those of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Thus, if ICE declines to issue a detainer under the new guidance, a local jail could simply notify the Border Patrol, an agency that does not even pretend to prioritize its enforcement efforts. The guidance also need not be followed in “extraordinary circumstances,” an undefined phrase that ICE officers can easily exploit.
But most importantly, the new guidance defines “priorities” so broadly as to make the term virtually meaningless. For example, regardless of the seriousness of a person’s criminal history, ICE may still issue a detainer against any arrestee who illegally re-entered the country after a previous “return”—a category that includes the potentially millions of undocumented immigrants who have ever tried to re-enter the country after a previous apprehension by the Border Patrol. The new guidance also permits the issuance of detainers against persons convicted of “illegal entry,” a federal misdemeanor that the government has used to prosecute thousands of ordinary borders crossers under Operation Streamline.
In short, jurisdictions that are considering legislation to adopt their own detainer policies—such as California, where the TRUST Act is again before the state legislature—should not be fooled. Far from being a serious attempt to reform its detainer policies, ICE’s new guidance on detainers represents an insignificant change from the status quo.
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Tags: blogs on immigration, detainers, ice detainer guidance, ice detainers, immigration blogs, prosecutorial discretion, secure communities, secure communities detainers

Monday, December 31, 2012

Big Stories of 2012 - #4 - Conditions at Two Texas Detention Centers Highlighted In "Expose and Close" Campaign | Texas Prison Bid'ness

Big Stories of 2012 - #4 - Conditions at Two Texas Detention Centers Highlighted In "Expose and Close" Campaign

Sun, 12/30/2012 - 6:23am — Bob

To round out 2012, Texas Prison Bid'ness is highlighting the top private prison stories of the year, based on stories covered by our blog. Our number four story are the two private immigrant detention centers - the Corrections Corporation of America's Houston Processing Center and Community Education Centers' Polk County Secure Adult Detention Center - highlighted as amongst the worst detention centers in the country by a national report issued by Detention Watch Network.

TPB Big Story #4 - Conditions at Two Texas Detention Centers Highlighted In "Expose and Close" Campaign

Texas immigration advocates (including Grassroots Leadership, a sponsor of this blog) have

Polk protest joined a national effort to "Expose and Close" some of the nation's worst immigrant detention facilities. As part of that effort, two private detention centers in Texas - the Community Education Center's Polk County Detention Center and Corrections Corporation of America's Houston Processing Center - have come under fire for a range of human rights violations.
According to the reports, the Polk facility in particular had egregious conditions. According to the groups' press release:

"At Polk, detained men eat, sleep, and use the bathroom all in one room. The cells are dreary, lack natural lighting, and do not offer privacy. Neither meaningful programming nor legal services exist at Polk. One man detained at Polk told members of Texans United for Families, “This isn’t a good place; I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

In December, over a hundred protestors from a diverse coalition of Austin and Houston-based human rights group gathered to for a Human Rights Day vigil to call for the closure of the detention center and denounced profiteering from the detention of immigrants in the US.

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Saturday, December 22, 2012

Multi-American : ICE announces 'immigration hold' guidelines while hitting new deportation record | 89.3 KPCC

ICE announces 'immigration hold' guidelines while hitting new deportation record

Leslie Berestein Rojas | December 21st, 2012, 4:52pm

John Moore/Getty Images

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), officer prepares an undocumented Salvadorian immigrant for a deportation flight bound for San Salvador.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is responding to state and local leaders' recent efforts to cut down on the number of immigrants held for deportation by issuing its own set of guidelines for what are known as "immigration detainers," released Friday.

But despite reports of a recent dropoff in deporation cases at the court level, the Obama adminstation has continued to deport record numbers of people, at least through fiscal year 2012. During that time, immigration authorities removed more than 409,000 people.

State or local law enforcement places immigration detainers, or holds, on individuals if that person is deemed deportable. The holds are standard practice in the enforcement of Secure Communities, a federal program that allows peace officers to share the fingerprints of people booked at local facilities with Homeland Security. If there is a match, the local agency is asked to hold the person for deportation by immigration officials.

The new ICE guidelines, outlined in a memo by agency director John Morton, call for limiting who is held and to note various qualifying offenses. But there are still broad categories of people who can be held for no other violation. One clause states that detainers can be issued for individuals simply if agents "have reason to believe the individual is an alien subject to removal from the United States." Convictions for illegal entry also count.

From the memo, detailed guidelines for "National Detainer Guidance:"

Consistent with ICE's civil enforcement priorities and absent extraordinary circumstances, ICE agents and officers should issue a detainer in the federal, state, local, or tribal criminal justice systems against an individual only where (1) they have reason to believe the individual is an alien subject to removal from the United States and (2) one or more of the following conditions apply:
• the individual has a prior felony conviction or has been charged with a felony offense;
• the individual has three or more prior misdemeanor convictions;2
• the individual has a prior misdemeanor conviction or has been charged with a misdemeanor offense if the misdemeanor conviction or pending charge involves -
- violence, threats, or assault;
- sexual abuse or exploitation;
- driving under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance;
- unlawful flight from the scene of an accident;
- unlawful possession or use of a firearm or other deadly weapon;
- the distribution or trafficking of a controlled substance; or
- other significant threat to public safety;
• the individual has been convicted of illegal entry pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1325;
•the individual has illegally re-entered the country after a previous removal or return;
• the individual has an outstanding order of removal;
• the individual has been found by an immigration officer or an immigration judge to have knowingly committed immigration fraud; or
• the individual otherwise poses a significant risk to national security, border security, or public safety.

The ICE memo notes that the Homeland Security detainer form, I-247, will be revised to reflect the guidelines.

One frequent criticism of Secure Communities has been that too many people with either minor or no offense records are held for deporation, whereas the stated focus of the Obama administration has been to net serious criminals.

The program, combined with other policies, has boosted deportations to record levels in recent years, and fiscal 2012 is no different: ICE on Friday said that it removed 409,849 individuals between Oct. 1, 2011 and last Sept. 30; 55 percent were categorized as convicted criminals, although this includes misdemeanors. See a breakdown of removals here.

Since Secure Communities rolled out in late 2008, opponents have pointed out problems including confusion over whether the program was optional. As officials in various states began voicing concerns that it might alienate immigrant communities and potentially impede policing, some states attempted to bow out of the program, only to be told by ICE that they could not. In August of last year, ICE director John Morton announced that he was rescinding the federal-state contracts that agreed to Secure Communities, leaving states little choice but to participate.

Lawmakers in some states and cities have since attempted other ways to work around the program. Most recently, California Attorney General Kamala Harris issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies in the state with the legal opinion that they needn't comply with ICE orders to detain an individual for deportation. From her bulletin earlier this month:

Several local law enforcement agencies appear to treat immigration detainers, sometimes called “ICE holds,” as mandatory orders. But immigration detainers are not compulsory. Instead, they are merely requests enforceable at the discretion of the agency holding the individual arrestee.

Agencies in the state -among them the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department - have since revised policies to reflect Harris' direction on immigrant detainers.

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Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Behind Razor Wire, a Voice — An Account of Visiting an Asylum Seeker in Detention

December 19, 2012 by Linda Hartke · Leave a Comment

Today, I’d like to use this blog to lift up the insights of someone who’s experienced visiting migrants in detention. This account was written by Nicholas Kang, Program Fellow for LIRS’s Access to Justice unit. His post showcases not only the courage of those in detention, but also the incredible importance of the work of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition (TASSC), the Florence Project, and Casa Mariposa.
I arrived at the Florence Service Processing Center in Arizona along with 15 others — wives, children, and friends of people being held behind the walls. We were escorted by a series of different guards through a cage of chain-link and razor wire, then into a nearby concrete building. Finally, we entered a large sterile room furnished with 12 steel tables bolted to the floor, and spotted a man in a blue jumpsuit. He was nervously waiting to see who had made the 50+ mile trip from Phoenix, Tucson, or elsewhere to visit.
Because it was an impromptu visit, my friend Johannes from Catholic Charities San Antonio and I had to wait for everyone else to settle in. At that point, it was easy to identify Juan (name changed to protect his identity), the man we were scheduled to meet: He was the only one sitting alone.
During our time with Juan, an asylum-seeker, he shared his story. He mentioned how much he wished to be with his children. He shared how difficult it was to visit with his kids, and not to be able to explain the challenges he faces every day in detention. He showed us the rows of scars on his wrists and forearms from being tortured in Mexico. He talked about the struggle of seeing his children grow up while he remains locked up.
Our hour with Juan vanished before our eyes, and we were forced to go our separate ways. For Johannes and me, it was only back through the cage of chain-link and razor wire, the narrow hall, and then down the road to Tucson. For Juan, it was back to the same cell and building in which he had lived for the past seven months.
I left Florence SPC angry and frustrated with the challenges Juan is facing. Our conversation revealed the difficulties he’s dealing with in attempting to complete his asylum application. Juan speaks only Spanish, and the forms are only available in English. One would think that with over 75% of the estimated undocumented immigrant population in the United States coming from Spanish-speaking nations, our government would provide multilingual forms. As matters stand, the English forms fundamentally restrict the due processes of people who can’t access translators and/or legal counsel.
Another challenge facing Juan is staying connected to his wife and children. He enjoys speaking with them by phone, but the cost is prohibitive. He works within the facility, but being paid $1 a day for his labor doesn’t even begin to cover the outgoing calls overcharged by the facility. Furthermore, this $1 a day does little to help Juan save enough money to post bond or bail, even if given the opportunity to do so.
The reality of immigration detention seemed to run counter to our image of the country we have pride in. We live in a nation without an official national language, yet we suppress those who speak anything other than English. We live in the age of the Internet and telecommunications, yet we develop restrictions to limit communication between those in detention and those outside. We have abolished slavery, yet we allow private correctional facilities to pay detainees nickels and dimes for work within their centers. We have community-based alternatives to detention that uphold the rights of migrants, yet we elect to incarcerate them instead. It does not make sense.
At Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the goal of our unit, Access to Justice, is to promote access to the justice system, immigrant benefits, and legal protection to immigrants and refugees. There are alternatives to detention that are cheaper, more effective, and (most importantly) more humane. It’s up to all of us to ensure that the least-restrictive measures are prioritized, and that incarceration becomes a last resort when dealing with migrants and refugees.
(Holding back tears, Juan said that his youngest son’s Christmas wish was for his father to come home. This holiday season, I ask you to reflect on those who are being detained and separated from their family because they simply asked us, our nation, for a helping hand.)
I thank the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition (TASSC), the Florence Project, and Casa Mariposa for organizing an incredible weekend of conversation and visitation, and for all the work they do on a daily basis. Their energy, inspiration, and commitment to their work is making a difference in immigration detention, and I look forward to working with them in the near future.

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Filed Under: Advocacy, Detention, LIRS · Tagged: Advocacy, Department of Homeland Security, Deportation, Detention, Immigration Reform, LIRS, Lutheran

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Thursday, January 31, 2013