BY HON. DENISE NOONAN SLAVIN &HON. DANA LEIGH MARKS
The views expressed here are those of the authors in their individual personal capacities and as Vice President and President of the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), formed after extensive consultation with the membership of the NAIJ. The NAIJ is a professional association of immigration judges and also the certified representative and recognized collective bargaining unit that represents the immigration judges of the United States. The views expressed herein do not purport to represent the views of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), or the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge.
INTRODUCTION
As these words are written, approximately 275,000 cases are pending before about 265 immigration judges (IJs) across the United States.1 These matters are not just dry statistics or theoretical “widgets.” Rather these are life-altering proceedings where people’s fates lie in the hands of IJs. Simply put, immigration judges are charged with the grave decision of deciding who should be removed and who should be granted the benefits of lawful status in the United States.
The U.S. Supreme Court has called the effect of deportation (or removal) the equivalent of banishment, a sentence to life in exile, loss of property or life or all that makes life worth living, and, in essence: a Apunishment of the most drastic kind.”2 An order of deportation can effectively amount to a death sentence when an individual will be subject to persecution upon return to his or her country.3 Yet in this post-9/11 era, legitimate concerns regarding national security and terrorism are also crucial factors that can be implicated in these cases. Herein lies the inescapable challenge posed by these cases. There are, however, improvements that could be made to allow this system to function better.
Despite these exceedingly high stakes, immigration cases are further complicated by mundane administrative realities. The complexity of the law and the paucity of resources available to the Immigration Court contribute to a court system that has been widely recognized as overburdened and overwhelmed.4 Immigration law has been repeatedly recognized by the federal courts as being second only to tax law in its complexity.5 Add into the mix the staggering number of cases on the docket, the myriad of languages and cultural contexts these potential immigrants bring, and the fact that less than half of the people are represented by an attorney.6 Then you begin to appreciate the full array of challenges faced by immigration judges, whose mission is to fairly and expeditiously make decisions in each case.
One goal of this article is to identify the structural impediments that undermine the optimal functioning of this important tribunal. Issues of concern in the system range from the macro level (such as questions over which branch of our government should administer the Immigration Court) to the micro level (how to alleviate workload pressures and ensure that judges have the ability to independently and expeditiously render decisions).
What should an individual expect from the immigration judge who is to decide his or her future? In deciding cases, an immigration judge is required by law to "exercise ... independent judgment and discretion" and to take actions consistent with the law and regulations to decide a case.7 American society’s most fundamental expectation of any judge is independent judgment. Most legal scholars would agree that without an independent and neutral decisionmaker, due process cannot be achieved. The independence of the judiciary in our federal and state systems is ensured by separation of the judicial from the legislative and executive branches.8 Administrative tribunals, as executive branch agencies, also provide a valuable method for high-volume adjudications by specialized adjudicators. These tribunals, most of which are governed by the Administrative Procedure Act, safeguard decisional independence by specific provisions to protect against any commingling of investigative and prosecutorial functions, thereby assuring impartiality and independence.9
The immigration courts are unique. They are not courts with either of those structural protections. They are not in the judicial branch of the government, and they are not covered by the Administrative Procedure Act. Congress decided to exempt deportation proceedings from the protections of the Administrative Procedure Act, accepting the argument that adherence to the statute would be too costly or cumbersome.10 The Immigration Court system is part of the executive branch of government, located in an agency called the Executive Office for Immigration Review,11 which is a component of the Department of Justice. Until the last decade, the DOJ also housed the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the same office that employed the prosecutors appearing before the Immigration Court; now those prosecutors are housed in a sister agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).12 As employees of the executive branch rather than the judicial branch, immigration judges are arguably “attorneys” employed by the U.S. government, rather than true judges.
This article also will explore in depth a few of the actual and potential conflicts that this unique structure has caused. Our choice of title comes from one fundamental, overarching issue: the fact that on one hand there are circumstances where immigration judges are treated as “attorneys working for or representing the U.S. Government,” while on the other hand, their daily role and the duties they discharge mandate the traditional responsibilities that the title of “judge” implies. The following examples and discussion are intended to highlight the inherent tension between these conflicting functions. Finally, a solution to this problem is proposed.
I. Case Completion Goals: Timeliness Versus Quality
Immigration Judge X is instructed by her superior to schedule four cases for final hearings in a day. In addition, she is tasked with completing all cases within a specified number of months after they appear on her docket. As she is an attorney working for the government, her performance is subject to performance evaluations and she is subject to the rules relating to employee insubordination if she fails to follow her supervisor’s instructions. As a judge, in her first case of the day, a long-pending case, she must decide whether to grant a continuance to a party who asserts that he needs more time to obtain vital evidence from a foreign country. Then, during her third case of the day, she must decide whether an additional witness should be allowed to testify, although that would necessitate either delaying the case to another date or in rescheduling the fourth case on her docket to a later date.
Should she act as an attorney or as a judge? How would her role influence the choice she must make? How do the personal consequences to Judge X differ based on whether she is considered a government attorney or a judge?
It is axiomatic that “justice delayed is justice denied.” Litigants should be able to have their cases heard fairly and promptly. In federal, state, and local courts judges struggle to keep up with burgeoning caseloads. The same is true in Immigration Court, but because it is a court within a federal agency, there are mechanisms in place outside the control of the litigants that impose timeliness constraints on immigration judges: “case completion goals.” In the Immigration Court system, these “goals” have become an undue and sometimes unseen pressure on an immigration judge’s ability to render a thorough, well reasoned decision.
In June 2000, the Immigration Court system began formulating “case completion goals,” which were formally implemented in May 2002.13 They were the result of requirements imposed by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993. Bound by its mandate, the Department of Justice had to quantify achievements and accountability. To comply, the Department chose to establish “adjudication priorities” for the Immigration Court, and elected to measure its success by evaluating whether the Court met case-completion goals.14
The stated purpose of these “goals” is to assist the immigration courts in “adjudicat[ing] cases fairly and in a timely manner.”15 To that end, a time frame was established for the completion of every case, based on the case type, and the agency set expectations of the percentage of cases to be completed within that time frame.16 Providing some flexibility, EOIR determined that, for the most part, completing 90% of cases within the established time frame is an “acceptable result.” 17 The agency monitors each local immigration court to identify any that have not met the established time frames and takes action to assist courts that are not meeting the goals.18
While EOIR has not stated publicly that actions can be taken against an individual immigration judge for failure to meet a goal in any given case and repeatedly asserts they are only aspirational goals, not inflexible mandates, narrative responses from immigration judges in a recent study revealed that judges perceive these goals to be mandatory and frequently in conflict with ideal conditions for adjudicating cases fairly and independently.19 Judges noted: “In those cases where I would like more time to consider all the facts and weigh what I have heard I rarely have much time to do so simply because of the pressure to complete cases.” and “What is required to meet the case completions is quantity over quality.”20
The agency’s monitoring of case completions has been described as:
the drip-drip-drip of Chinese water torture that I hear in my mind (i.e. in my mind I hear my boss saying: “more completions, more completions, bring that calendar in, you are set out too far, you have too many reserved decisions, why has that motion been pending so long, too many cases off calendar.”).21
Based on these reports, the way in which these "goals” are being imposed by supervisors of IJs may not comport with what is expected of an independent and fair judge, even though they may be in line with appropriate expectations for an attorney for the government. Or perhaps the IJs, being accustomed to succeeding and achieving, fear disapproval or even discipline from their supervisors if they fail to meet these expectations. Certainly each situation is different. Yet perhaps most problematic is the fact that litigants might not be aware of these goals or the pressures that they place on immigration judges, since these are internal management directives that are not "on the record” with regard to how they apply to a particular case.
The reality of this pressure and the role it can play when it becomes a factor that impacts an IJ’s decision is illustrated in a published 2008 case. In Hashmi v. Attorney General of the United States,22 an immigration judge noted that the case-completion goal for the case type had been exceeded when he denied an unopposed motion to continue the case. The circuit court found that “the sole basis for the IJ’s exercise of discretion was the IJ’s perceived ‘obligation[]’ to ‘manage [his] calendar[].’”23 The court cautioned:
Case completion goals are ordinarily implemented as guidelines to promote reasonable uniformity and to help judges schedule and effectively manage their caseloads. As guidelines, they should not be read as an end in themselves but as a means to prompt and fair dispositions, giving due regard to the unique facts and circumstances of the case.24
Finding that the immigration judge had reached the decision on whether to grant or deny the motion based Asolely” on case-completion goals, the circuit court found that the decision was Aimpermissibly arbitrary” and an abuse of discretion.25
On remand, the Board of Immigration Appeals seemed to have disagreed with the circuit court’s characterization of the immigration judge’s decision. The Board noted that it had affirmed the initial decision to deny a continuance because it agreed with the immigration judge that “a further continuance was unwarranted in light of the numerous continuances already granted,” that there was no prejudice to the respondent, and that the delay was caused, in part, by the respondent’s failures.26 Nevertheless, the Board went on to articulate factors to be considered in determining whether a continuance is warranted, and noted that, while “other procedural factors” may be considered, “[c]ompliance with an Immigration Judge’s case completion goals, however, is not a proper factor in deciding a continuance request, and immigration judges should not cite such goals in decisions relating to continuances.”27
This illustrates the conflicts facing immigration judges tangled between their classification as government attorneys and their duties as judges. While the circuit court made clear that case-completion goals should not be a factor in a decision, the comments of the immigration judge in that case and the comments of the judges in response to the survey noted above reveal that case-completion goals frequently have become a factor in the decisionmaking process. Reinforcing the mixed message that IJs receive, the Board referenced “an Immigration Judge’s case completion goals [emphasis added],” reflecting an agency view that these goals are imposed on individual immigration judges, not on the courts as a whole. The Department of Justice has made it clear that these goals are essential to its compliance with the Government Performance and Results Act. Under these circumstances, it is easy to understand how an immigration judge would have uppermost in his or her mind the concern for the agency’s success in meeting case-completion goals. How this consideration is weighed against other fundamental due process concerns is a choice that plays out daily, unfolding on a case-by-case basis. The question is, does this tension have to exist, or could structural reform eliminate this conflict once and for all?
II. Potential Conflicts for "Judges" Working in a Law Enforcement Agency
Immigration Judge X is presiding over a case where the individual is applying for asylum because he was jailed and tortured for engaging in a protest against the ruling party of his homeland. In his country, the judicial branch is corrupt and seen as a Apuppet” of the government. How does Judge X educate the respondent that immigration courts are not a Arubber stamp” for DHS, which previously denied his asylum application?
One of the conflicts facing immigration judges on a day-to-day basis deals with the court being “housed” within the Department of Justice, a law enforcement agency.28 Many of these conflicts are simply perceived, but some are
Unfortunately, the history of the Immigration Court system is rife with instances where undue law enforcement pressures were placed on immigration judges. Judges in the Immigration Court are aware of that history and mindful of it. In its early years, the Immigration Court and the prosecutor’s office (then the INS) were both housed within the Department of Justice, and the immigration judges depended on the INS District Directors (in essence the client of the prosecutors) for hearing facilities, office space, and supplies.29 Many immigration courts remain located inside detention centers operated and/or controlled by DHS, and many others are located in the same building as DHS offices and prosecutors. Immigration judges are familiar with the old rumor that a Texas immigration judge lost his parking space when the INS District Director was upset with his decision.30 While this rumor may seem laughable, the discomfort among the IJs who were at the mercy of the INS for worksite conditions was all too real and contributed to a desire not to Arock the boat.” A similar discomfort persists today while the Immigration Court remains housed in the Department of Justice, which is closely aligned with DHS and shares with it the primary mission of law enforcement rather than neutral adjudication.
In addition, there is the day-to-day problem of the perception of being housed inside the same building as the prosecutor and using some of the same resources. The public and even members of the press all too frequently refer to the immigration courts as the “INS Courts” and fail to be aware that they are part of the DOJ, a completely separate department. Many of the respondents appearing before the Immigration Court come from countries “where a courtroom is not an institution of justice, but rather an extension of a corrupt state.”31 It is not infrequent in Immigration Court for an unrepresented respondent to assume that the immigration judge works for the same entity as the DHS prosecutor. Frequently in court, a respondent will indicate that he gave a document to a judge Abefore,” yet further inquiry will reveal that the document was actually given to a DHS representative. Many respondents come to court with the perception that their deportation is a foregone conclusion, claiming that the DHS representatives told them that. It is difficult to elicit cooperation and forthrightness from a respondent who believes that the deck is already stacked against him. These perceptions are even more difficult to dispel when the judge’s courtroom door is located directly across from the prosecutor’s door. This is most difficult in the detained setting, when the guard providing security for the courtroom may be the same guard who is watching over the respondent in his "barracks.”
It is not just the co-location of immigration courts with a prosecutorial party that has caused charges that the Immigration Court is subject to undue pressure from the government. Allegations also have persisted that government prosecutors have had inappropriate ex parte contact with the Immigration Court system.32 The allegations that the Immigration Court has undue bias towards the government persist to this day. Recently, a report from the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice noted, “The Immigration Courts and the BIA [have] never enjoyed a stellar reputation for impartiality. But that reputation fell to a new low after a deliberate effort to stack the Immigration Courts . . . in favor of the government between 2004 and 2006.”33 The report also claimed that the composition of the Immigration Court bench favors the government, stating that “almost 80 percent of immigration judges have professional backgrounds that tend to cause them to find in favor of the government significantly more often than judges without those34
This public perception of the Immigration Court affects the ability of immigration judges to do their jobs. As noted above, an immigration judge is expected to use his or her independent judgment and to be impartial. As the Appleseed report noted, “John Adams urged that judges should be ‘impartial and independent as the lot of humanity will admit.’”35 Immigration judges are aware of the public perception that they are partial towards the government, and have been subjected to incredibly increased scrutiny as a result.36 Specifically, in 2006, the Attorney General created a “performance evaluation” process for judges, and in 2010, a process for filing complaints against IJs online.37 At this time, there is a real concern that these allegations of government bias could cause immigration judges to overcompensate, to “bend over backwards” or, worse, exhibit a bias against the government to avoid being the object of complaint or discipline. As noted in a letter to the Attorney General from Ranking Member Lamar Smith:38
Under its practice, OPR will usually investigate immigration judges only in cases in which they deny relief that is later granted by the federal courts. The course of least resistance is therefore for immigration judges to grant relief in many cases despite their beliefs about the merits of the cases. ... This perceived pressure ultimately frustrates the integrity of our immigration laws and the American people’s interest in the laws being enforced in a fair and orderly manner.
This perception and the complaint process certainly create pressure for immigration judges.
Responses by immigration judges to the recent survey noted above indicate that the negative perception of the public and fear of investigation is a driving and stressful force in the decisionmaking process.39 For example, one cited “Fear that every decision or proceeding may trigger a ‘personalized’ and scathing published criticism from the reviewing circuit court and/or an Office of Professional Responsibility investigation into the judge, which may destroy the judge’s professional reputation and career without the ability to rebut or defend.”
Another judge noted that he/she was “demoralized by being made the ‘whipping boy’ by the press and public, when it is the system we are forced to follow that contributes so greatly to the errors I make.”40 These comments reveal that the negative perception of the Immigration Court system, as well as the mechanisms the Department of Justice has put in place to deal with these perceptions, are a potentially coercive influence on immigration judges. At a minimum, they have indisputably found to be corrosive to morale and have increased stress and burnout in the immigration judge corps.41
Thus, being housed within the Department of Justice creates several conflicts for immigration judges on a daily basis. First, many of their workplace resources are inextricably tied to those of the Department of Homeland Security, a sister agency. At the very least, this harms the perception of the Immigration Court system, impedes the IJs’ ability to do their jobs, and may have a chilling effect on them. In addition, the inescapable impression of government bias created by being housed in a law enforcement agency may actually cause a backlash.
III. Concerns About the Lack of Even-Handed Sanctions Authority
Immigration Judge X has constant problems with two attorneys who appear before her regularly. They are both routinely late, unprepared, rude, and belligerent, and have even made misrepresentations in court. One is a government attorney, and one is a private attorney. Judge X can refer the private attorney for possible sanctions, but cannot take such action against the government attorney. What should Judge X do in order to maintain control of her court in a fair manner?
“With the mountain of cases facing Immigration Judges every day, judges need to run their courtrooms as efficiently as possible; this necessarily requires the power to discipline all attorneys who come to court unprepared.”42 While immigration judges have had authority to sanction attorneys by civil monetary penalties since 1996,43 the Department of Justice has failed to promulgate the regulations needed to implement this authority. This lack of an appropriate sanctions mechanism for attorneys appearing before the Court has lead to pressures that may contribute to stress and intemperate behavior by immigration judges.44
The current procedures for sanctioning lawyers appearing before the Immigration Court are one-sided. The procedures for sanctioning practitioners before the Immigration Court for “criminal, unethical, or unprofessional conduct” or “frivolous behavior” apply only to an attorney or representative “who does not represent the federal government.”45 Since this process can be used only against a private attorney, some immigration judges are reticent to use it, believing that it may create the appearance of a lack of impartiality. Yet, without the ability to impose sanctions, an immigration judge lacks a vital tool to address attorney misconduct. This situation leaves immigration judges without a mechanism to punish recalcitrant lawyers, short of resort to punitive rulings that may harm the respondent far more gravely than his private attorney, or benefit a respondent who may not deserve it, rather than really affect the government attorney. These procedures also could be viewed as another example where immigration judges are providing preferential treatment to government attorneys who escape discipline.
In the survey noted above, one IJ commented that “We have been intentionally deprived by the Department [of Justice] and DHS of the tools and rules necessary to make DHS function in court in a reasonably professional and competent manner.”46
This belief the DHS has obstructed the implementation of contempt authority rules is not unfounded. It appears that the situation remained unresolved at least in part because of historical opposition of DHS. “The INS has generally opposed the application of the [contempt] authority to its attorneys. In more than three years since the enactment of IIRIRA, the [EOIR] and the DOJ have failed to resolve this issue, apparently still paralyzed by the legacy of their relationship with INS.”47 Thus, the placement of the Immigration Court within the Department of Justice created an internal, and later interagency, barrier to enactment of regulations to implement contempt power.
While immigration judges have protested the lengthy delay (fifteen years) in enacting regulations to enforce the contempt power, they remain stalled. From this inaction, the immigration judges lack a vital tool to do their jobs. While attorneys routinely function in their jobs without contempt authority or sanctions powers, judges are rarely so constrained, thus providing another example of how the lack of a structure that treats immigration judges as judges has contributed to dysfunction in an already overburdened system.
CONCLUSION
This article has attempted to explore some of the real and potential conflicts created for immigration judges in their dual roles as “attorneys” for or representing the U.S. government and as “judges.” Immigration judges face several pressures that are inherent to the unusual placement of the Immigration Court within a federal law enforcement agency: (1) case completion “goals” that are perceived to be mandatory and frequently in conflict with adjudicating cases fairly; (2) the public perception of a government bias of the Immigration Court and the effect that this perception has on an immigration judge’s ability to do his or her job; and (3) the lack of even-handed tools to deal with misconduct by government attorneys appearing before them.
The NAIJ believes that the best solution to these and other problems caused by this structural flaw is the creation of an Article I Immigration Court, or the establishment of an Immigration Court in an independent agency outside the Department of Justice.48 This idea has been seriously considered for more than twenty-five years.49 The same conclusion has been reached recently by the comprehensive study commissioned by the American Bar Association and the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice.50 The National Association of Women Judges has endorsed the concept as well.51 History has shown that incremental modifications to the Immigration Court have not resolved these pernicious problems. After years of thorough study, the bipartisan Select Commission came to this conclusion in 1981. Almost thirty years later, after exhaustive study of all stakeholders, the nation’s largest bar association, the American Bar Association, has again come to the same conclusion. We applaud many of the efforts that the Department of Justice has made over the years and continues to make to provide for fair and full adjudications in the Immigration Court system. Nevertheless, it is only through an Article I court or separate agency that complete independence and impartiality can be achieved, both in reality and in public perception.
____
Denise Noonan Slavin is Vice President of the National Association of Immigration Judges. She has served as either Vice President or President of NAIJ since July 2001. Judge Slavin also has been an IJ since April 1995, sitting first in the U.S. Immigration Court in Miami and for the last few years at the U.S. Immigration Court in the Krome Detention Center. Previous to her appointment to the bench, she was an attorney for the Department of Justice, and also served as an attorney for the Maryland Commission on Human Relations. She has written numerous articles related to Immigration Court proceedings.
Dana Leigh Marks is President of the NAIJ. She has served as either President or Vice President of NAIJ since July 1999. Judge Marks has been an IJ in San Francisco since January 1987. Prior to her appointment as an IJ she was an attorney in private practice for ten years, specializing in immigration law. She served as lead counsel in the landmark case of INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421 (1987), which established that persons applying for asylum need prove only a reasonable possibility of future persecution. She has testified before Congress, lectured, and published numerous articles on the urgent need to restructure our nation’s immigration courts.
This article is excerpted from a paper that was prepared for a conference sponsored by the Boston College Center for Human Rights and International Justice. It has then been edited by the staff of Bender’s Immigration Bulletin.
NOTES
1. Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, New Judge Hiring Fails to Stem Rising Immigration Backlogs, http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/250/; see also Executive Office for Immigration Review, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, FY 2010 Statistical Year Book, at Y1 (Jan. 2011), www.justice.gov/eoir/statspub/fy10syb.pdf; News Release, EOIR, The Executive Office for Immigration Review Swears in Nine Judges, Judge Corps Reaches 270 Serving in 59 Courts (Dec. 20, 2010), available at www.justice.gov /eoir/press/2010/IJInvestiture12172010.pdf.
2. See, e.g., Lehman v. United States, 353 U.S. 685, 691 (1957); Jordan v. DeGeorge, 341 U.S. 223 (1951); Fong Haw Tan v. Phelan, 333 U.S. 6 (1948); Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U.S. 276 (1922).
3. See INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 449 (1987); Padilla-Augustin v. INS, 21 F.2d 970, 978 (8th Cir. 1994).
4. Todd Etshman, Immigration courts face backlog, N.Y. Daily Record, March 7, 2011.
5. Castro-O’Ryan v. U.S. Dep’t of Immigr. & Naturalization, 847 F.2d 1307, 1312 (9th Cir. 1988) (“With only a small degree of hyperbole, the immigration laws have been termed ‘second only to the Internal Revenue Code in complexity.’” (quoting Elizabeth Hull, Without Justice for All 107 (1985))).
6. For an inside perspective from an IJ on the topic of attorney representation, including the laudable efforts by New York pro bono programs, see Noel Brennan, A View From the Immigration Bench, 78 Fordham L. Rev. 623 (2009).
7. 8 C.F.R. §1103.10(b).
8. 16A Am. Jur. 2d Constitutional Law '239:
The primary purpose of [separation of powers] doctrine is to prevent the commingling of different powers of government in the same hands. The doctrine is premised on the belief that too much power in the hands of one governmental branch invites corruption and tyranny, and thus, the doctrine prevents one branch of government from aggrandizing itself or encroaching upon the fundamental functions of another. The separation of powers prevents any one governmental branch from aggregating unchecked power which might lead to oppression and despotism.
9. The Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. §553(a)(1), requires that administrative policies affecting individual rights and obligations be promulgated pursuant to certain stated procedures so as to avoid the inherently arbitrary nature of unpublished ad hoc determinations. Morton v. Ruiz, 415 U.S. 199 (1974).
10. For a thorough history of these times, see Sidney B. Rawitz, From Wong Yang Sung to Black Robes, 65 Interpreter Releases 453 (1988).
11. INA §101(b)(4), 8 U.S.C. §1101(b)(4).
12. Homeland Security Act, Pub. L. No. 107-296, §1517, 116 Stat. 2135, 2311 (Nov. 25, 2002) (codified at 6 U.S.C. §557).
13. U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office, GAO-06-771, Executive Office for Immigration Review Caseload Performance Reporting Needs Improvement 20-21 (Aug. 2006) (Report to the Chairman, S. Comm. on Finance).
14. Id.
15. Id.
16. Id.
17. EOIR, Fiscal Years 2008-2013 Strategic Plan 8 (Jan. 2008), www.justice.gov/eoir/statspub/EOIR%202008-2013% Final.pdf.
18. Id.
19. Stuart L. Lustig et al., Inside the Judges’ Chambers: Narrative Responses from the National Association of Immigration Judges Stress and Burnout Survey, 23 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 57, 64-65 (2008) [hereinafter Stress Survey].
20. Id.
21. Id.
22. 531 F.3d 256 (3d Cir. 2008).
23. Id. at 261.
24. Id.
25. Id.
26. Matter of Hashmi, 24 I. & N. Dec. 785, 787 (BIA 2009).
27. Id. at 793-94.
28. The mission of the Department of Justice is to enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans. www.justice.gov/jmd/mps/strategic2007-2012/introduction. pdf.
29. Immigration Reform and the Reorganization of Homeland Defense: Hearing before the Subcomm. on Immigration of the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 107th Cong. 72-73, 85 (2002) (S. Hrg. 107-931, Serial No. J-107-90) (testimony and written statement (An Independent Immigration Court: An Idea Whose Time Has Come) of Dana Marks Keener, National Association of Immigration Judges).
30. Id. at 85.
31. Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, Assembly Line Injustice 7 (May 2009) [hereinafter Appleseed Report].
32. See Immigration Reform and the Reorganization of Homeland Defense 87.
33. Appleseed Report 7. This was based on a 2008 report by the DOJ Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility that found a systematic campaign by members of the previous administration to pack the court with “good Republicans” who were "on the team.”
34. Id. at 7-8.
35. Id. at 7.
36. See, e.g., Press Release, Department of Justice, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales Outlines Reforms for Immigration Courts and Board of Immigration Appeals (Aug 9, 2006).
37. Press Release, EOIR, The Executive Office for Immigration Review Announces New Process for Filing Immigration Judge Complaints (May 9, 2010), available at www.justice.gov/eoir/press/2010/IJConductProfComplaints05192010.pdf.
38. Letter from Lamar Smith, Ranking Member of the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, to Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General (May 26, 2010) (on file with the authors).
39. Stress Survey at 71-72.
40. Id.
41. Id.
42. Appleseed Report at 11.
43. Pub. L. No. 104-208, div. C., §304, 110 Stat. 3009, 3009-589, codified as amended at §240(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. §1229a(b)(1).
44. See, e.g., Press Release, Department of Justice, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales Outlines Reforms for Immigration Courts and Board of Immigration Appeals (Aug. 9, 2006) (“By better enabling judges to address frivolous submissions and to maintain an appropriate atmosphere in their courtrooms, we will reduce the pressures that may have contributed to intemperate conduct in the past.”).
45. 8 C.F.R. §1292.3(a)(1) and (2). Under §1292.3(i), OPR handles discipline of government attorneys.
46. Stress Survey at 70.
47. Michael J. Creppy et al., Court Executive Dev. Project, Inst. for Court Mgmt., The United States Immigration Court in the 21st Century 109 n.313 (1999).
48. Hon. Dana Leigh Marks, An Urgent Priority, Why Congress Should Establish an Article 1 Immigration Court, 13 Bender’s Immigr. Bull. 3, 15-17 (Jan. 1, 2008).
49. See, e.g., Select Comm’n on Immigration and Refugee Policy, U.S. Immigration Policy and the National Interest: Final Report and Recommendations of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy with Supplemental Views by the Commissioners (1981).
50. Commission on Immigration, American Bar Association, Reforming the Immigration System ES-9 (Feb. 2010); Appleseed Report 35-36.
51. See its Resolution passed on April 16, 2002.
DHS Issues Awaited Guidance on Prioritizing Deportations, Law Enforcement Letter Praises Approach
November 17, 2011
Washington D.C. - Today, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Principal Legal Advisor directed all ICE attorneys to begin a systematic review of immigration cases to determine whether pursuing deportation in each case is consistent with the Administration’s enforcement priorities. This directive follows last summer’s announcement that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to review 300,000 immigration cases to assess whether they fall within the enforcement priorities and suspend those cases which do not. ICE also provided more detailed guidance to ICE attorneys regarding criteria for determining when it is appropriate to exercise prosecutorial discretion to close or dismiss a case.
These directives are important steps toward reforming the culture of immigration enforcement within the agency and aligning its resources with its enforcement priorities. They empower ICE attorneys to take into account the individual circumstances of each case when deciding whether it is appropriate to pursue removal. Although DHS needs to refine its overly-broad definitions of criminality, this new guidance, if fully implemented, should mean that the government can focus its resources on deportations of those who pose a real threat to public safety. It should result in fewer deportations of low priority immigrants, such as DREAM Act students or individuals with strong family and community ties and more. Importantly, prosecutorial discretion does not mean that a person is granted legal status in the United States; rather, a person whose case is dismissed or closed will remain in the status they were in prior to the initiation of deportation proceedings.
The new ICE guidance also brings DHS more in line with traditional law enforcement practices, which emphasize the important role of discretion in carrying out any law enforcement officer’s duties. In fact, members of a DHS Task Force sent a letter today to Congress highlighting the importance of prosecutorial discretion as an immigration enforcement tool. They write:
“there is nothing unusual in our recommendation or in DHS’s current efforts to improve its use of prosecutorial discretion. Such discretion is a normal and essential part of the everyday activities of law enforcement agencies and prosecutors’ offices at the local, state, and federal levels across the nation. Exercising prosecutorial discretion, case by case, in a systematic and professional way, does not amount to administrative amnesty. Instead it helps to make sure that resources are focused in ways that best promote the overall enforcement mission.”
To view the memo and guidance see:
DHS Guidance to ICE Attorneys (11/17/2011)
DHS PD Case Review Memo (11/17/2011)
To view the DHS Task Force Letter to Congress see:
DHS Task Force Letter to Congress (11/17/2011)
Washington D.C. - Today, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Principal Legal Advisor directed all ICE attorneys to begin a systematic review of immigration cases to determine whether pursuing deportation in each case is consistent with the Administration’s enforcement priorities. This directive follows last summer’s announcement that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to review 300,000 immigration cases to assess whether they fall within the enforcement priorities and suspend those cases which do not. ICE also provided more detailed guidance to ICE attorneys regarding criteria for determining when it is appropriate to exercise prosecutorial discretion to close or dismiss a case.
These directives are important steps toward reforming the culture of immigration enforcement within the agency and aligning its resources with its enforcement priorities. They empower ICE attorneys to take into account the individual circumstances of each case when deciding whether it is appropriate to pursue removal. Although DHS needs to refine its overly-broad definitions of criminality, this new guidance, if fully implemented, should mean that the government can focus its resources on deportations of those who pose a real threat to public safety. It should result in fewer deportations of low priority immigrants, such as DREAM Act students or individuals with strong family and community ties and more. Importantly, prosecutorial discretion does not mean that a person is granted legal status in the United States; rather, a person whose case is dismissed or closed will remain in the status they were in prior to the initiation of deportation proceedings.
The new ICE guidance also brings DHS more in line with traditional law enforcement practices, which emphasize the important role of discretion in carrying out any law enforcement officer’s duties. In fact, members of a DHS Task Force sent a letter today to Congress highlighting the importance of prosecutorial discretion as an immigration enforcement tool. They write:
“there is nothing unusual in our recommendation or in DHS’s current efforts to improve its use of prosecutorial discretion. Such discretion is a normal and essential part of the everyday activities of law enforcement agencies and prosecutors’ offices at the local, state, and federal levels across the nation. Exercising prosecutorial discretion, case by case, in a systematic and professional way, does not amount to administrative amnesty. Instead it helps to make sure that resources are focused in ways that best promote the overall enforcement mission.”
To view the memo and guidance see:
DHS Guidance to ICE Attorneys (11/17/2011)
DHS PD Case Review Memo (11/17/2011)
To view the DHS Task Force Letter to Congress see:
DHS Task Force Letter to Congress (11/17/2011)
U.S. to Review Cases Seeking Deportations
By JULIA PRESTON
The Department of Homeland Security will begin a review on Thursday of all deportation cases before the immigration courts and start a nationwide training program for enforcement agents and prosecuting lawyers, with the goal of speeding deportations of convicted criminals and halting those of many illegal immigrants with no criminal record.
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. Taken together, the review and the training, which will instruct immigration agents on closing deportations that fall outside the department’s priorities, are designed to bring sweeping changes to the immigration courts and to enforcement strategies of field agents nationwide.
According to a document obtained by The New York Times, Homeland Security officials will issue guidelines on Thursday to begin the training program and the first stages of the court caseload review. Both are efforts to put into practice a policy senior officials had announced in June, to encourage immigration agents to use prosecutorial discretion when deciding whether to pursue a deportation.
The policy, described in a June 17 memorandum by John Morton, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, suggested that the Obama administration 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 excited expectations in Latino and other immigrant communities, until now the policy has been applied spottily, deepening disillusionment with President Obama in those communities.
The Obama administration has removed high numbers of illegal immigrants, nearly 400,000 in each of the last three years. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Mr. Morton said those numbers would not decrease, but they wanted agents and courts to focus on deporting the worst offenders, including national security risks, criminal convicts and those who repeatedly violate immigration laws. Many immigration offenses, including being present in the United States without legal status, are civil violations; they are not crimes.
Administration officials have flexibility to transform immigration court procedures because those courts are part of the Justice Department in the executive branch, not part of the federal judiciary. Central to the plan is giving more power to immigration agency lawyers — the equivalent of prosecutors in the federal court system — to decide which deportation cases to press.
“We are empowering the attorneys nationally to make them more like federal prosecutors, who decide what cases to bring,” said a senior Homeland Security official, who asked not to be named because the policy has not been formally announced.
In the first stage of the court docket review, which will begin on Thursday, immigration agency lawyers will examine all new cases just arriving in immigration courts nationwide, with an eye to closing cases that are low-priority according to the Morton memorandum, before they advance into the court system.
At the same time, immigrants identified as high priority will see their cases put onto an expedited calendar for judges to order their deportations, Homeland Security officials said.
The goal is to “reduce inefficiencies that delay the removal of criminal aliens and other priority cases by preventing new low priority cases from clogging the immigration court dockets,” the Homeland Security document said. Officials said the first stage was an “initial test run” that would be completed by Jan. 13.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group that analyzes immigration court data, reported in September that the backlog before the nation’s 59 immigration courts was at “a new all-time high.”
In a second stage, to begin Dec. 4, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department will start six-week pilot projects in the immigration courts in Baltimore and Denver, in which teams of immigration agency lawyers will comb through the current dockets of those courts. They will focus on cases of immigrants who have been arrested for deportation, but who are not being held in detention while their cases proceed.
Immigrants who are deemed to qualify for prosecutorial discretion will have their cases closed, but not dismissed, officials said. That means that agents could re-open the deportations at any time if the immigrants commit a crime or a new immigration violation. Immigrants whose cases are closed will be allowed to remain in the United States, but they will be in legal limbo, without any positive immigration status.
The pilot projects will also end on Jan. 13, and then officials will decide how to expand the program to all immigration courts nationwide early next year.
Also on Thursday, Homeland Security officials will introduce a training program based on scenarios that could arise in enforcement operations, which every Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent must complete by mid-January. The goal is to instruct agents, many of whom have expressed doubts about Mr. Morton’s policy, to apply the prosecutorial discretion criteria.
The approach of deporting some illegal immigrants but not others requires a deep change in the mentality of the agents, who have long operated on the principle that any violation was good cause for deportation.
Republicans in Congress have denounced the new deportations policy, accusing the Obama administration of trying an end-run around Congress by granting de facto amnesty to illegal immigrants. Representative Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the prosecutorial discretion policy had the “specific purpose of overruling or preventing orders of removal for illegal immigrants.”
Administration officials said they would proceed case by case using existing legal authorities, and had no plans to exempt any large group of illegal immigrants from deportation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/us/deportation-cases-of-illegal-immigrants-to-be-reviewed.html?hp
The Department of Homeland Security will begin a review on Thursday of all deportation cases before the immigration courts and start a nationwide training program for enforcement agents and prosecuting lawyers, with the goal of speeding deportations of convicted criminals and halting those of many illegal immigrants with no criminal record.
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. Taken together, the review and the training, which will instruct immigration agents on closing deportations that fall outside the department’s priorities, are designed to bring sweeping changes to the immigration courts and to enforcement strategies of field agents nationwide.
According to a document obtained by The New York Times, Homeland Security officials will issue guidelines on Thursday to begin the training program and the first stages of the court caseload review. Both are efforts to put into practice a policy senior officials had announced in June, to encourage immigration agents to use prosecutorial discretion when deciding whether to pursue a deportation.
The policy, described in a June 17 memorandum by John Morton, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, suggested that the Obama administration 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 excited expectations in Latino and other immigrant communities, until now the policy has been applied spottily, deepening disillusionment with President Obama in those communities.
The Obama administration has removed high numbers of illegal immigrants, nearly 400,000 in each of the last three years. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Mr. Morton said those numbers would not decrease, but they wanted agents and courts to focus on deporting the worst offenders, including national security risks, criminal convicts and those who repeatedly violate immigration laws. Many immigration offenses, including being present in the United States without legal status, are civil violations; they are not crimes.
Administration officials have flexibility to transform immigration court procedures because those courts are part of the Justice Department in the executive branch, not part of the federal judiciary. Central to the plan is giving more power to immigration agency lawyers — the equivalent of prosecutors in the federal court system — to decide which deportation cases to press.
“We are empowering the attorneys nationally to make them more like federal prosecutors, who decide what cases to bring,” said a senior Homeland Security official, who asked not to be named because the policy has not been formally announced.
In the first stage of the court docket review, which will begin on Thursday, immigration agency lawyers will examine all new cases just arriving in immigration courts nationwide, with an eye to closing cases that are low-priority according to the Morton memorandum, before they advance into the court system.
At the same time, immigrants identified as high priority will see their cases put onto an expedited calendar for judges to order their deportations, Homeland Security officials said.
The goal is to “reduce inefficiencies that delay the removal of criminal aliens and other priority cases by preventing new low priority cases from clogging the immigration court dockets,” the Homeland Security document said. Officials said the first stage was an “initial test run” that would be completed by Jan. 13.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group that analyzes immigration court data, reported in September that the backlog before the nation’s 59 immigration courts was at “a new all-time high.”
In a second stage, to begin Dec. 4, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department will start six-week pilot projects in the immigration courts in Baltimore and Denver, in which teams of immigration agency lawyers will comb through the current dockets of those courts. They will focus on cases of immigrants who have been arrested for deportation, but who are not being held in detention while their cases proceed.
Immigrants who are deemed to qualify for prosecutorial discretion will have their cases closed, but not dismissed, officials said. That means that agents could re-open the deportations at any time if the immigrants commit a crime or a new immigration violation. Immigrants whose cases are closed will be allowed to remain in the United States, but they will be in legal limbo, without any positive immigration status.
The pilot projects will also end on Jan. 13, and then officials will decide how to expand the program to all immigration courts nationwide early next year.
Also on Thursday, Homeland Security officials will introduce a training program based on scenarios that could arise in enforcement operations, which every Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent must complete by mid-January. The goal is to instruct agents, many of whom have expressed doubts about Mr. Morton’s policy, to apply the prosecutorial discretion criteria.
The approach of deporting some illegal immigrants but not others requires a deep change in the mentality of the agents, who have long operated on the principle that any violation was good cause for deportation.
Republicans in Congress have denounced the new deportations policy, accusing the Obama administration of trying an end-run around Congress by granting de facto amnesty to illegal immigrants. Representative Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the prosecutorial discretion policy had the “specific purpose of overruling or preventing orders of removal for illegal immigrants.”
Administration officials said they would proceed case by case using existing legal authorities, and had no plans to exempt any large group of illegal immigrants from deportation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/us/deportation-cases-of-illegal-immigrants-to-be-reviewed.html?hp
ARC Report: 5,100 Children of Deported Parents Now In Foster Care
http://www.arc.org/shatteredfamilies
THOUSANDS OF FAMILIES SHATTERED
Groundbreaking National Report by the Applied Research Center Releases First Data on the Intersection Of Immigration Enforcement And Child Welfare Systems
November 2, 2011
New York, NY – A new report from the Applied Research Center (ARC) conservatively estimates that there are more than 5,000 children currently living in foster care whose parents have been either detained or deported. To date, there has been no national data available on the numbers of children impacted by the intersection of immigration enforcement and child welfare systems. http://arc.org/shatteredfamilies/
"Shattered Families" offers groundbreaking national research on the perilous intersection of immigration enforcement and the child welfare system. Historic levels of detention and deportation, combined with a clear lack of child welfare policies are resulting in the separation of thousands of families across the United States. These families face formidable barriers to reunification, and in many cases will be permanently separated. ARC projected that at least 15,000 more children will face these threats to reunification in the next five years, if the same rate holds true for new cases.“
Immigration enforcement greatly increases the chances that families will never see each other again,” said ARC President Rinku Sen. “Detaining and deporting parents shatters families and endangers the children left behind. It’s unacceptable, un-American, and a clear sign that we need to revisit our immigration policies.”
In fiscal year 2011, the United States deported a record-breaking 397,000 people and detained nearly that many. According to never before released federal data acquired by ARC through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, a growing number of deportees are parents. In the first six months of 2011, the federal government removed more than 46,000 mothers and fathers of U.S.-citizen children.
For the first time, ARC’s “Shattered Families” provides evidence on the scale and scope of this growing national problem. These impacts are not confined to border jurisdictions or states. In fact, ARC identified at least 22 states across the country where children in foster care are separated from their parents because of immigration enforcement. http://arc.org/shatteredfamilies/
“Our research found time and again that families are being left out of decision-making when it comes to the care and custody of their children,” said Seth Freed Wessler, author and principal investigator of “Shattered Families.” “As a result, children of detained and deported parents are likely to remain in foster care when they could be with their own family.”
“Shattered Families” analyzes these problems, identifies key barriers, and presents policy recommendations for Department of Homeland Security, various levels of legislature, state child welfare departments, and juvenile dependency courts on how we can better protect families from separation and reunify families in a timely way.
For more information on “Shattered Families” report findings:
• Join a press briefing call to be held Wed, 11/2, at 2pmET/11amPT
• ARC will present a public informational webinar on Thursday, 11/10, at 3pmET/12noonPT,
Information on events available at http://arc.org/shatteredfamilies/
To schedule an interview with ARC, please contact Communications Manager Rebekah Spicuglia media@arc.org or 646-490-2772.
About ARC - The Applied Research Center (ARC) is a 30-year-old racial justice think tank that uses media, research and activism to promote solutions. ARC’s mission is to popularize racial justice and prepare people to achieve it. ARC also serves as the publisher of Colorlines.com. For more information on ARC’s work, please visit http://www.arc.org/.
Key Findings: There are at least 5,100 children currently living in foster care who are prevented from uniting with their detained or deported parents.
Federal, state and local governments must create explicit policies to protect families from separation.These polices should stop the clock on the child welfare process and the immigration enforcement process to ensure that families can stay together and allow parents to make the best decisions for the care and custody of their children.
THOUSANDS OF FAMILIES SHATTERED
Groundbreaking National Report by the Applied Research Center Releases First Data on the Intersection Of Immigration Enforcement And Child Welfare Systems
November 2, 2011
New York, NY – A new report from the Applied Research Center (ARC) conservatively estimates that there are more than 5,000 children currently living in foster care whose parents have been either detained or deported. To date, there has been no national data available on the numbers of children impacted by the intersection of immigration enforcement and child welfare systems. http://arc.org/shatteredfamilies/
"Shattered Families" offers groundbreaking national research on the perilous intersection of immigration enforcement and the child welfare system. Historic levels of detention and deportation, combined with a clear lack of child welfare policies are resulting in the separation of thousands of families across the United States. These families face formidable barriers to reunification, and in many cases will be permanently separated. ARC projected that at least 15,000 more children will face these threats to reunification in the next five years, if the same rate holds true for new cases.“
Immigration enforcement greatly increases the chances that families will never see each other again,” said ARC President Rinku Sen. “Detaining and deporting parents shatters families and endangers the children left behind. It’s unacceptable, un-American, and a clear sign that we need to revisit our immigration policies.”
In fiscal year 2011, the United States deported a record-breaking 397,000 people and detained nearly that many. According to never before released federal data acquired by ARC through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, a growing number of deportees are parents. In the first six months of 2011, the federal government removed more than 46,000 mothers and fathers of U.S.-citizen children.
For the first time, ARC’s “Shattered Families” provides evidence on the scale and scope of this growing national problem. These impacts are not confined to border jurisdictions or states. In fact, ARC identified at least 22 states across the country where children in foster care are separated from their parents because of immigration enforcement. http://arc.org/shatteredfamilies/
“Our research found time and again that families are being left out of decision-making when it comes to the care and custody of their children,” said Seth Freed Wessler, author and principal investigator of “Shattered Families.” “As a result, children of detained and deported parents are likely to remain in foster care when they could be with their own family.”
“Shattered Families” analyzes these problems, identifies key barriers, and presents policy recommendations for Department of Homeland Security, various levels of legislature, state child welfare departments, and juvenile dependency courts on how we can better protect families from separation and reunify families in a timely way.
For more information on “Shattered Families” report findings:
• Join a press briefing call to be held Wed, 11/2, at 2pmET/11amPT
• ARC will present a public informational webinar on Thursday, 11/10, at 3pmET/12noonPT,
Information on events available at http://arc.org/shatteredfamilies/
To schedule an interview with ARC, please contact Communications Manager Rebekah Spicuglia media@arc.org or 646-490-2772.
About ARC - The Applied Research Center (ARC) is a 30-year-old racial justice think tank that uses media, research and activism to promote solutions. ARC’s mission is to popularize racial justice and prepare people to achieve it. ARC also serves as the publisher of Colorlines.com. For more information on ARC’s work, please visit http://www.arc.org/.
Key Findings: There are at least 5,100 children currently living in foster care who are prevented from uniting with their detained or deported parents.
- If nothing changes, 15,000 more children may face a similar fate in the next 5 years.
This is a growing national problem, not one confined to border jurisdictions or states-- ARC identified at least 22 states where these cases have emerged. - Families are more likely to be separated where local police aggressively participate in immigration enforcement.
- Immigrant victims of domestic violence are at particular risk of losing their children
- ICE detention obstructs participation in Child Protective Services' plans for family unity.
- Most child welfare departments lack systemic policies to keep families united when parents are detained or deported.
Federal, state and local governments must create explicit policies to protect families from separation.These polices should stop the clock on the child welfare process and the immigration enforcement process to ensure that families can stay together and allow parents to make the best decisions for the care and custody of their children.
USCIS Redesigns Employment Authorization Document and Certificate of Citizenship to Enhance Security and Combat Fraud
State-of-the-art technology will deter counterfeiting, obstruct tampering, and facilitate quick and accurate authentication
Oct. 25, 2011
WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Alejandro Mayorkas today announced the launch of an enhanced Employment Authorization Document (EAD) and a redesigned Certificate of Citizenship (Form N-560) with new features to strengthen security and deter fraud.
As part of USCIS’s ongoing efforts to enhance the integrity of the immigration system, the state-of-the-art technology incorporated into the new documents will deter counterfeiting, obstruct tampering, and facilitate quick and accurate authentication. USCIS began issuing the new EADs today and will begin using the redesigned certificates on Oct. 30. The agency anticipates that more than 1 million people will receive the new documents over the next year.
“These enhanced documents are more secure than ever,” said Director Mayorkas. “They advance our efforts to safeguard against fraud and protect the integrity of the immigration system.”
The new features of the EAD will better equip workers, employers and law enforcement officials to recognize the card as definitive proof of authorization to work in the United States.
USCIS worked closely with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Forensic Document Laboratory to incorporate technology and tactile features in order to deter fraud and facilitate card authentication.
Additionally, USCIS employs a new and more secure printing process for its redesigned Certificate of Citizenship that renders the certificate more tamper-proof. Although the look and feel of the documents is new, the manner in which an applicant applies for and receives them will not change. USCIS will replace EADs already in circulation as individuals apply for their renewal or replacement. All previously issued EADs remain valid until the expiration date printed on the card. Previously issued Certificates of Citizenship remain valid indefinitely.
These improvements demonstrate USCIS’s ongoing efforts to produce more secure documentation. In 2010, USCIS issued the new Permanent Resident Card, which added security features to the physical card and integrated technology improvements in the card production process. Additionally, USCIS launched the redesigned Certificate of Naturalization (Form N-550) featuring the naturalization candidate’s digitized photo and signature embedded into the document. USCIS will continue to enhance document security features as technology improves.
For more information on USCIS and its programs, please visit www.uscis.gov or follow us on Twitter (@uscis), YouTube (/uscis) and the USCIS blog The Beacon.
Oct. 25, 2011
WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Alejandro Mayorkas today announced the launch of an enhanced Employment Authorization Document (EAD) and a redesigned Certificate of Citizenship (Form N-560) with new features to strengthen security and deter fraud.
As part of USCIS’s ongoing efforts to enhance the integrity of the immigration system, the state-of-the-art technology incorporated into the new documents will deter counterfeiting, obstruct tampering, and facilitate quick and accurate authentication. USCIS began issuing the new EADs today and will begin using the redesigned certificates on Oct. 30. The agency anticipates that more than 1 million people will receive the new documents over the next year.
“These enhanced documents are more secure than ever,” said Director Mayorkas. “They advance our efforts to safeguard against fraud and protect the integrity of the immigration system.”
The new features of the EAD will better equip workers, employers and law enforcement officials to recognize the card as definitive proof of authorization to work in the United States.
USCIS worked closely with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Forensic Document Laboratory to incorporate technology and tactile features in order to deter fraud and facilitate card authentication.
Additionally, USCIS employs a new and more secure printing process for its redesigned Certificate of Citizenship that renders the certificate more tamper-proof. Although the look and feel of the documents is new, the manner in which an applicant applies for and receives them will not change. USCIS will replace EADs already in circulation as individuals apply for their renewal or replacement. All previously issued EADs remain valid until the expiration date printed on the card. Previously issued Certificates of Citizenship remain valid indefinitely.
These improvements demonstrate USCIS’s ongoing efforts to produce more secure documentation. In 2010, USCIS issued the new Permanent Resident Card, which added security features to the physical card and integrated technology improvements in the card production process. Additionally, USCIS launched the redesigned Certificate of Naturalization (Form N-550) featuring the naturalization candidate’s digitized photo and signature embedded into the document. USCIS will continue to enhance document security features as technology improves.
For more information on USCIS and its programs, please visit www.uscis.gov or follow us on Twitter (@uscis), YouTube (/uscis) and the USCIS blog The Beacon.
Fiscally Irresponsible: Immigration Enforcement without Reform Wastes Taxpayer Dollars
October 19, 2011
Washington D.C. - Many political pundits, presidential aspirants, and Members of Congress want to have it both ways when it comes to federal spending on immigration. On the one hand, there is much talk about the need for fiscal austerity, and a Congressional “super-committee” is currently working on slashing federal spending in order to reduce the deficit. On the other hand, even though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just announced a record high number of deportations, some still want to increase federal spending on immigration enforcement; putting more Border Patrol boots on the ground, completing the border fence, and deploying an array of high-tech gadgetry. However, they miss one very important fact: piling on more immigration enforcement without immigration reform is a practical and fiscal dead-end.
Over the past decade, the federal government has spent tens of billions of dollars trying to keep unauthorized immigrants out of the United States, or trying to get them out of the country if they are already here. The end result? Roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants now call the United States home, the majority have been here for more than 10 years, and many have U.S.-born children. In short, the “enforcement only” approach to unauthorized immigration has proven to be costly and ineffective. But many political candidates and Members of Congress have yet to get the news that the enforcement-only approach has been tried and failed.
To learn more about the impracticality of enforcement without reform, view our Fact Check:
Fiscally Irresponsible: Immigration Enforcement without Reform Wastes Taxpayer Dollars (IPC Fact Check, October 2011)
Also see today's blog post on the recent release of DHS's fiscal year 2011 deportation numbers:
Redefining Criminality: Untangling DHS’s Record High Deportation Numbers (ImmigrationImpact.com, October 19, 2011)
Washington D.C. - Many political pundits, presidential aspirants, and Members of Congress want to have it both ways when it comes to federal spending on immigration. On the one hand, there is much talk about the need for fiscal austerity, and a Congressional “super-committee” is currently working on slashing federal spending in order to reduce the deficit. On the other hand, even though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just announced a record high number of deportations, some still want to increase federal spending on immigration enforcement; putting more Border Patrol boots on the ground, completing the border fence, and deploying an array of high-tech gadgetry. However, they miss one very important fact: piling on more immigration enforcement without immigration reform is a practical and fiscal dead-end.
Over the past decade, the federal government has spent tens of billions of dollars trying to keep unauthorized immigrants out of the United States, or trying to get them out of the country if they are already here. The end result? Roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants now call the United States home, the majority have been here for more than 10 years, and many have U.S.-born children. In short, the “enforcement only” approach to unauthorized immigration has proven to be costly and ineffective. But many political candidates and Members of Congress have yet to get the news that the enforcement-only approach has been tried and failed.
To learn more about the impracticality of enforcement without reform, view our Fact Check:
Fiscally Irresponsible: Immigration Enforcement without Reform Wastes Taxpayer Dollars (IPC Fact Check, October 2011)
Also see today's blog post on the recent release of DHS's fiscal year 2011 deportation numbers:
Redefining Criminality: Untangling DHS’s Record High Deportation Numbers (ImmigrationImpact.com, October 19, 2011)
Lost in Detention
October 18, 2011
A Frontline investigative piece on Immigration.
Video (16:48)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/lost-in-detention/
Chapter 1: "Enforcement on Steroids"
(The controversy surrounding Obama's record number of deportations)
A Frontline investigative piece on Immigration.
Video (16:48)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/lost-in-detention/
Cecilia Muñoz: “Even Broken Laws Have to be Enforced.”
October 18, 2011, 7:53 pm ET
As director of intergovernmental affairs, Cecilia Muñoz is one of the president’s top advisers on immigration issues. She previously worked as a senior vice president for the National Council of La Raza, and in 2000, she won a MacArthur “genius” grant for her work on immigration and civil rights. Here, Muñoz explains the administration’s current immigration policy: tough enforcement while trying to build bipartisan support for comprehensive immigration reform. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted on Sept. 21, 2011.
Does President Obama believe that his aggressive policy in immigration and enforcement has been successful?
The president has said a number of times, he swore an oath to uphold the law. It’s our responsibility to enforce the laws that we’ve got. Congress gives us resources to enforce the laws that we’ve got. But how we do it matters a lot. He’s talked about that as well.
So Congress gives us the resources to remove about 400,000 people a year, but it’s very important that DHS [Department of Homeland Security] has been making strategic judgments about what that means and how we do it. The previous strategy was go after anybody you can find, which doesn’t have a lot of value as a law enforcement strategy.
“The president can’t say to the Congress, ‘I’m not going to bother to enforce this particular law because these are really compelling people.’ That’s not how democracy works.”
What this DHS has done, starting in 2010, was put forward a strategy to be strategic about how we make the choices about who we remove, how we prioritize. So what DHS is doing is prioritizing the folks who present the greatest harm for people, who have committed crimes, who have been convicted of crimes in this country, and not people who were lower priorities. And that’s the first time that the immigration enforcement regime has had that kind of strategy.
And it’s important because that’s the best way to do law enforcement. Any domestic police force does the same thing. You invest your resources where they’re going to have the greatest impact. And that’s what this administration is doing.
But it’s also true that this is a broken system of laws, and we have to fix it, and that requires the Congress of the United States. And that is the other body of work that the president is engaged in, is making sure that we fix what’s broken about this law, and that requires congressional action.
But if there is a broken law, can’t the president say: “This is a broken law, and it’s creating more problems for us as a country, and for me as an administration, for all of us. Broken laws should not be enforced”?
Even broken laws have to be enforced. The president has said many times that this is a broken law and it needs to be fixed, but he cannot say to the Congress, which passes laws, “I don’t like this one so I’m not going to enforce it.” We have an obligation to enforce the law, the federal government.
But how we do it matters, and DHS is taking very important steps to do it in a strategic way. And the feedback from the communities that are affected from the law enforcement community, from the faith community, from other constituencies, has been really important in shaping how DHS does that, to their credit. DHS has been listening to concerns across the country to make sure that this new strategy gets implemented well.
And that where it doesn’t work; it gets adjusted.
At this point, even President Obama’s supporters have said that the policy of Secure Communities has not done what it promised, which was to go after the worst of the worst, and instead at this point about 60 percent of the people who have been deported are noncriminals — noncriminals, low-level, nonviolent. So is this what you would consider a successful policy?
Well, it’s an important policy, and it’s a policy that has improved over time and will continue to improve over time. Of the people that DHS removed from the country, roughly 400,000 a year, it used to be in the Bush administration that 30 percent of the removals were criminals.
As a result of DHS’s policies, including Secure Communities, that proportion has gone up to more than half, just slightly more than half. So it’s having some impact in making sure that the number of criminals that we remove increases. And the number of folks who are not criminals has decreased as a result of that as well.
But it’s also important to understand, of the people that DHS removes from the country who are not criminals, the vast majority — well over two-thirds — are people who have just arrived, recent arrivals at the border or people who had previously been deported and re-entered, which is under our laws a felony.
So when people raise concerns about our enforcement policies not being completely focused on criminals, on the one hand they have a point. This is it’s not going to be a 100 percent record. And the concerns that they raise in the community are real. DHS is responding to them.
But on the other hand, there isn’t a clear understanding that the vast majority of the people who are deported, who are not criminals, are recent arrivals. They’re not folks who have established roots in the interior of the country. Or they’re people who were previously deported and re-entered. That’s not well understood.
Will this administration continue to oversee the deportation of 400,000 people a year?
As long as Congress gives us the money to deport 400,000 people a year, that’s what the administration is going to do. That’s our obligation under the law. We will be strategic about how we do it, and the number of those folks who are either criminals or recent arrivals will continue to go up. But yes, this is our obligation under the law.
And while we have the debate about reforming the law, we must enforce it, and we will do that.
Are you saying that this administration believes that there are 400,000 serious criminals who are not in jail right now and who should be deported? Four hundred thousand people. Where are you going to find them if you are saying that your emphasis is only on serious criminals?
As I pointed out, of the people that we remove, of the 400,000 people removed in the last year, about half of them are serious criminals under the definition in immigration law. And the vast majority of the other half are either recent arrivals, people who are in the process of crossing at the border or people who have recently been deported, or who had previously been deported and are re-entering. So that makes up the bulk of the 400,000.
In previous years, and if the trends continue, that will be reflected in the next 400,000 that we remove.But Congress passed a law, and Congress appropriates funds to implement that law, and the executive branch’s job is to enforce it. How we do it matters a lot, but the president can’t say to the Congress, “I’m not going to bother to enforce this particular law because these are really compelling people.” That’s not how democracy works.
If women, mothers of American-born children, are stopped for a traffic violation and they are driving without a license, is that somebody who would be targeted for deportation?
The policy that DHS put forward both in I think it was March of 2010 and then reiterated with more detail in June of this year, and then again in August of this year, it makes it really [clear] that DHS has priorities, folks who are priority for removal and folks who are not priorities for removal.
And DHS set up a particular task force to look at the question of traffic violations to make sure that all of the stakeholders — the law enforcement community, the immigrants’ rights community, the folks in the labor movement, folks in faith communities and others — all have a say in helping us make the determination about how we deal with folks who are guilty of minor traffic violations.
Those folks are clearly not a priority. We need to be aligned with local law enforcement and how we deal with those folks. At the end of the day, it is incredibly important for DHS to have a strategy governing its removals. I don’t think there is a lot of disagreement [that] if we’re going to do this job, it should be focused on the folks who are convicted of serious crimes. Secure Communities is an important tool in doing that.
But even the supporters of the president — the Illinois governor [Democrat Pat Quinn], governor of New York [Democrat Andrew M. Cuomo] — have said the Secure Communities is doing more damage, and in fact there’s collateral damage of mothers being separated from their children, of fathers being separated from their children. Is this collateral damage that this administration is prepared to accept?
As a result of the concerns raised by the governor of Illinois, the governor of Massachusetts [Democrat Deval Patrick] and others, DHS made adjustments on how it’s implementing the policy, so the feedback from the community has been important in shaping DHS’s work.
But at the end of the day, when you have immigration law that’s broken and you have a community of 10 million, 11 million people living and working in the United States illegally, some of these things are going to happen. Even if the law is executed with perfection, there will be parents separated from their children.
They don’t have to like it, but it is a result of having a broken system of laws. And the answer to that problem is reforming the law, making sure that we have an immigration system that works here. You can’t fix the heartbreaking things that happen as a result of immigration enforcement just through enforcement policy. You have to fix that by reforming the law, and that requires the Congress to act, which is why the president has been pushing them so hard.
Why has the Obama administration essentially made it a goal to deport those 400,000 people a year?
The Congress has made that goal.
But the administration is overseeing that.
Well, right. The Congress appropriates funds to remove roughly 400,000 people a year, and our application is to expend those funds in the wisest possible way. That’s how it all works.
But do you believe that goals, these kind of quotas, this number puts undo pressure on ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] field agents to meet that quota?
Again, it’s like any other law that Congress passes and appropriates the funds to execute, and the agency’s job is to use those funds to implement the law.
This isn’t a judgment that’s being made at ICE. This is an obligation that is being placed upon us by the Congress. How we do it matters a lot, and I think it’s to DHS’s credit that they have built a strategy that makes sense, that it is appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.
But again, we have a system of laws that I think everybody acknowledges is broken, doesn’t work terribly well, and in order to fix that, Congress needs to act, and the president has been urging them to do that. The president has been engaged in that conversation with folks in Congress since we got here, and we have to keep that conversation going until we fix it. We’re not going to be able to fix it through enforcement policy.
We’ve spoken to several high-level ICE agents who told us that if they don’t meet these deportation goals, then they pay a very high price in Washington. Is that true?
Congress passes the laws, appropriates the funds for implementing the laws, and the federal agency’s job is to do what the Congress has told them to do. That’s how a democracy works. So yes, this is what the agency is for.
But again, rather than executing a strategy that says we’ll just go after anybody we can find out of this population of 10 million or 11 million people, what DHS is doing is saying we’re going to have some priorities about this, and we’re going to have a system that makes sense. And those are important tools in enforcing the law. But they are not sufficient tools for fixing what’s broken about the law. For that, Congress needs to act, and we need immigration reform.
The president seems to have calculated that tougher enforcement might convince conservatives to support comprehensive immigration reform, but it seems now that the GOP is as intransigent as ever. So has the president now basically ended up enacting the Republican agenda on immigration?
What the president is doing is enforcing the law of the land. That’s our obligation as a federal government. There’s no quid pro quo, there is no negotiation that has happened here. Congress passes a series of laws, appropriates the funds to enforce those laws, and the executive branch’s job is to enforce them.
How we do it matters. And DHS has made some very important strides forward in making sure that they do that wisely and well. They have responded to community input and will continue to do that. But in the end, the problem here is that we have a broken system of laws and we have to fix it, and that requires an act of Congress.
I want to read something that then-candidate Obama said about immigration reform on the campaign trail. He said: “When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids — when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel,” he said, “when all of this is happening, the system isn’t working, and we need to change it.” But isn’t that exactly what’s going on today?
I was there when he said that, and that’s exactly why we need to reform immigration law. The point he was making when he said that is that the system is broken, and he was right; it is. That doesn’t mean he can say to the Congress, “I am not going to bother to enforce the law because it’s broken.” That’s not how a democracy works.What it means is that we need to be working, as we are working all across the country with every possible stakeholder, lifting every pair of hands and every possible voice to get the job done of reforming the law. That requires congressional action, and we went from the situation where we had bipartisan support for immigration reform, which passed the Senate in 2006, to an environment now where we have no rapport, no support on the Republican side for immigration reform.
And until we get to a place where we can have a bipartisan debate, we’re going to continue to have a broken system. And that’s unacceptable. The president has talked a lot about why it’s not just a moral imperative or a legal imperative; it’s an economic imperative to fix our immigration system. This is not something we can afford to kick down the road and do when it’s more comfortable.
We have a real sense of urgency about reforming this law because it’s the right thing to do for the country, because it’s an economic imperative, and because all of the work that we’re doing to build a robust economy of the future is undermined when we are trying to build it on top of a broken immigration system. This is something we’ve got to fix, and soon.
I’m going to quote from a longtime supporter of candidate Barack Obama, Nena Torres, objecting to some of the high levels of deportations. This is what she said to us. She said: “It’s shameful, and it’s shameful that it is being done by someone who is a civil rights attorney and someone who understood grassroots communities and someone who sold himself as part of the great American immigrant narrative. I don’t think I ever contemplated the fact that he would be worse than any other president of the United States on the issue of immigration.”
This president is committed to an immigration system that works, that deals with the population of immigrants that is here in the country, and that deals with making sure that immigrants who come to this country come legally. We are a long way from having that kind of system. What we have now, I think, is something that everybody agrees doesn’t work.
The way to fix it is legislative. Now, the president has been very clear on that, and it’s been a priority since we got here. In order to get to the kind of reform that’s going to be effective, that’s going to make sure that the immigrants who come to this country come legally, that’s going to make sure we don’t have a population of 10 or 11 million people without immigration status in this country, we need Congress to act. It’s not something that the president can do by himself.
And the president has been deeply engaged with all kinds of constituencies to make sure that we’re lifting every voice and every pair of hands to create the sense of urgency outside of Washington that we feel here in the White House to get this done.
Define the worst of the worst, the immigrants that you believe should be targeted for deportation. Who are they exactly?
These are folks who are convicted of serious crimes, quite literally people that, under immigration law but also under criminal law, these people who have been convicted of the most serious crimes, crimes that I think people of goodwill would agree are serious enough to merit someone being expelled from the country.
But as I said, it’s also true that of the people that are removed from the country, a great number of them are also recent arrivals, and as those are part of DHS’s priorities.
So DHS’s priorities include serious criminals. They also include people who are trying to enter at the border, because part of their job is to create a deterrent. And it also includes people who are previously deported and re-entered, because that’s a felony under immigration law.
So it’s important to present the whole picture that DHS has embarked on strategies to go after the folks convicted of the most serious crimes. But they are also removing folks at the border, and they are also removing folks who are previous deportees. And that is what makes up the roughly 400,000 that get removed every year.
While the Obama administration has been in power, we have spoken with two families where mothers of young children in one case, and of five children in another case, that are in the process — one has been deported; the other one is in the process of being deported. So when you think about mothers who are being served with a traffic violation and that they end up being deported, is this a definition of the priority person who should be deported to that country?
This is exactly what DHS is working to change.
In June they announced — actually going back to 2010 — DHS established what is called the civil enforcement memo [PDF], which establishes the priorities that I’ve described, that prioritizes people who are convicted of the most serious crimes. In June of 2011 they issued what is called a prosecutorial discretion memo [PDF], which illustrates more [clearly] how officials up and down the chain of command in the law enforcement system should use their discretion to focus on folks who are our highest priorities, and not focus on lower priorities.
And then again in August they announced that DHS and DOJ [Department of Justice] are reviewing the entire deportation caseload, because there are 300,000 people in it. It is seriously backlogged. That prevents us from using our resources to go after the most serious criminals, and the folks who are our highest priorities will stay in the deportation pipeline, and the folks who are not will not.
Those are all policy developments which are based on the principle, and if you’re doing law enforcement, you focus your resources where they’re going to have the greatest impact and not on folks that are of a low value for enforcement purposes.So these are incredibly important developments. They are unprecedented developments with respect to this agency. They are smart law enforcement, and they are more consistent with our values. Those are incredibly important changes.
DHS really has done this in collaboration with the law enforcement community, in collaboration with some of the states who are raising concerns and in collaboration with some of the community organizations who are raising concerns.
So these are incredibly important developments in how immigration laws are enforced, but they cannot by themselves fix the fact that our immigration system is broken, and in order to fix it we need Congress to step up to the plate.
Would you say, at this point, that there is a sense that this president is himself lost in detention, basically boxed into a situation where he himself is lost in this detention system?
The president is very, very clear on where he is on immigration. This is a law which is broken and needs to be reformed. He has made it very clear how he intends to reform it. There is a blueprint that is up on the White House’s website [PDF] for anybody who wants to see it.
He is working incredibly hard to find the congressional parties he needs in order to reform this law. He needs somebody on the other side of the aisle to step forward, including from among those on the other side of the aisle who have voted for immigration reform before, in the United States Senate, and he’s going to continue to press until we can get legislation through the Congress.
Cecilia, have you gone to the immigrant detention centers?
I have. I have been working on immigration policy for 25 years, so I am well familiar with immigration enforcement.
So, since your role now at the White House, you have visited?
I haven’t since I came to the White House, but I have in the past. I am quite familiar with how the immigration enforcement system works.
But if you’re in change of overseeing immigration, wouldn’t you want to be seeing what’s happening now by going into these detention centers and seeing what’s happening there?
It’s very important to have a deep understanding of the whole enforcement system. I work on immigration policy for the administration closely with the agencies that administer it. And in the end the solution here is a reform law, and I’ve been working on that for most of my career.
In fact, you received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award [in 2000] for your work on immigration.
I did.
So how do you see your MacArthur genius award given that now you work for an administration that has deported more people than any other president in history?
You know, everybody in the immigration arena has a role to play, and it’s incredibly important that the people who are advocates in the community be able to talk to the people in government who are responsible for enforcing the law. We each have our responsibilities in this arena, and it’s important that everybody do their job wisely and well. It’s incredibly important that folks in government be able to do their job wisely and well.
When DHS says we’re going to move from an environment where we are just going after anybody we can find among the 10 million people who are here illegally and instead [are] applying a strategy, saying we’re going to be selective about who we go after, and we’re going to focus on the people who have committed serious crimes, that is an incredibly important policy development, and it’s the kind of policy development, again, that reasonable people on all sides of this debate agree is the right strategy for enforcing the law.
So it’s incredibly important that everybody engaged who is a stakeholder be able to have that conversation, and that the folks administering the laws in the federal government do as well informed a job and as wise a job as possible.
How concerned is the president about the issue that his perceived inaction on the issue of immigration by stakeholders in the community, specifically Latinos — who are very now disenchanted with the president, we’ve heard — how concerned is the president of the cost that this might have on his own re-election if he loses the Latino support?
He knows people are frustrated and shares that frustration enormously. He wants to get this fixed as much as anybody because it’s the right thing for the country, and he’s going to stay focused on fixing what’s broken about our immigration system by passing a new law with the Congress because it’s the right thing for the country. That’s what motivates him.
And that’s why his marching orders to his team are so clear, and he’s going to keep at it until we find the partners we need in the Congress to get this job done.
We’ve investigated detainee abuse at the Willacy detention facility in Texas — a record number of sexual abuse, beatings, racist name calling, cover-ups, attempts to investigate the abuses, intransigence to change. It’s a pretty miserable record for an administration that is saying that it wants to reform the system.
The detention system has been broken for a very, very long time. That did not start with this administration, and Secretary [of Homeland Security Janet] Napolitano, when she came onboard [in 2009], one of the very first things she did was bring on staff with experience in reforming what happens in detention systems. One of the first things they did was take a thorough look at what happens in immigration detention systems.
The materials that they prepared and the recommendations are, I think, part of the public record for well over a year now, and so this is something that she takes very seriously, and where the standards have begun to change and improvements have begun to be felt, we’re not finished.
We have a long way to go, but that is something that the secretary took on as a priority really on day one.
And so when you hear people say, how many more mothers, how many more fathers will this president allow to be deported who are noncriminals, what’s that number?
The question that we’re asking is, how long is the Congress of the United States going to allow this broken system to continue before it finally takes action? We are ready. We have put the policy together; we know exactly what needs to change, and we are working with everybody we can find in the business community, in the law enforcement community, in state and local governments, in the faith community, to create the space for the partners that we need in the Congress to come forward and help us reform this law.
And we are going to keep at it no matter how long it takes, because it’s so vital to this country’s future.
The president said that he was going to support immigration reform in a big way in his first year in office. And that didn’t happen.
Well, he did support immigration reform in a big way in his first year.
The reform didn’t happen.
The reform didn’t happen because it requires action on the part of the Congress of the United States, which did not take it up. We had long conversations with a bipartisan group in the Senate about bringing a bill forward. They asked us religiously [for] the language, which the administration gave them.
And at the end of the day, we could not persuade any bipartisan — even [a] pair [of legislators] — in the Senate to come forward with a bill. So as a result of that experience, we started taking the conversation outside of Washington, and we’re working with stakeholders all over the country.
We have mayors in Georgia doing roundtables. We have business leaders in the Silicon Valley doing events. We have labor leaders. We have faith leaders all over the country lifting this issue up in partnership with the administration to create the political space that’s needed for the folks on the other side of the aisle who we need to come forward to help us get this job done. And we will keep at it until we get this job done.
One last thing: You continue to say that this is a presidency that wants to follow the rule of law, but if this presidency came into power and there was a law that said that all gay people had to ride in the back of the bus, or all black people had to ride in the back of the bus, would this president say, “Well, I have a problem with that law, but I have to enforce it”?
There’s more than one example of laws that are not what we would have done in this administration that the president has been working on to fix. Immigration law is one. The other is the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy which was the law, and which we worked ultimately with the Congress to change.
This is how democracy works. It requires support around the country. It requires support among our elected officials, and it requires legislation. And that’s what we have to do in order to change immigration laws. It’s what we had to do to change the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. We are working on other fronts in similar ways, because that’s how democracy works.
As director of intergovernmental affairs, Cecilia Muñoz is one of the president’s top advisers on immigration issues. She previously worked as a senior vice president for the National Council of La Raza, and in 2000, she won a MacArthur “genius” grant for her work on immigration and civil rights. Here, Muñoz explains the administration’s current immigration policy: tough enforcement while trying to build bipartisan support for comprehensive immigration reform. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted on Sept. 21, 2011.
Does President Obama believe that his aggressive policy in immigration and enforcement has been successful?
The president has said a number of times, he swore an oath to uphold the law. It’s our responsibility to enforce the laws that we’ve got. Congress gives us resources to enforce the laws that we’ve got. But how we do it matters a lot. He’s talked about that as well.
So Congress gives us the resources to remove about 400,000 people a year, but it’s very important that DHS [Department of Homeland Security] has been making strategic judgments about what that means and how we do it. The previous strategy was go after anybody you can find, which doesn’t have a lot of value as a law enforcement strategy.
“The president can’t say to the Congress, ‘I’m not going to bother to enforce this particular law because these are really compelling people.’ That’s not how democracy works.”
What this DHS has done, starting in 2010, was put forward a strategy to be strategic about how we make the choices about who we remove, how we prioritize. So what DHS is doing is prioritizing the folks who present the greatest harm for people, who have committed crimes, who have been convicted of crimes in this country, and not people who were lower priorities. And that’s the first time that the immigration enforcement regime has had that kind of strategy.
And it’s important because that’s the best way to do law enforcement. Any domestic police force does the same thing. You invest your resources where they’re going to have the greatest impact. And that’s what this administration is doing.
But it’s also true that this is a broken system of laws, and we have to fix it, and that requires the Congress of the United States. And that is the other body of work that the president is engaged in, is making sure that we fix what’s broken about this law, and that requires congressional action.
But if there is a broken law, can’t the president say: “This is a broken law, and it’s creating more problems for us as a country, and for me as an administration, for all of us. Broken laws should not be enforced”?
Even broken laws have to be enforced. The president has said many times that this is a broken law and it needs to be fixed, but he cannot say to the Congress, which passes laws, “I don’t like this one so I’m not going to enforce it.” We have an obligation to enforce the law, the federal government.
But how we do it matters, and DHS is taking very important steps to do it in a strategic way. And the feedback from the communities that are affected from the law enforcement community, from the faith community, from other constituencies, has been really important in shaping how DHS does that, to their credit. DHS has been listening to concerns across the country to make sure that this new strategy gets implemented well.
And that where it doesn’t work; it gets adjusted.
At this point, even President Obama’s supporters have said that the policy of Secure Communities has not done what it promised, which was to go after the worst of the worst, and instead at this point about 60 percent of the people who have been deported are noncriminals — noncriminals, low-level, nonviolent. So is this what you would consider a successful policy?
Well, it’s an important policy, and it’s a policy that has improved over time and will continue to improve over time. Of the people that DHS removed from the country, roughly 400,000 a year, it used to be in the Bush administration that 30 percent of the removals were criminals.
As a result of DHS’s policies, including Secure Communities, that proportion has gone up to more than half, just slightly more than half. So it’s having some impact in making sure that the number of criminals that we remove increases. And the number of folks who are not criminals has decreased as a result of that as well.
But it’s also important to understand, of the people that DHS removes from the country who are not criminals, the vast majority — well over two-thirds — are people who have just arrived, recent arrivals at the border or people who had previously been deported and re-entered, which is under our laws a felony.
So when people raise concerns about our enforcement policies not being completely focused on criminals, on the one hand they have a point. This is it’s not going to be a 100 percent record. And the concerns that they raise in the community are real. DHS is responding to them.
But on the other hand, there isn’t a clear understanding that the vast majority of the people who are deported, who are not criminals, are recent arrivals. They’re not folks who have established roots in the interior of the country. Or they’re people who were previously deported and re-entered. That’s not well understood.
Will this administration continue to oversee the deportation of 400,000 people a year?
As long as Congress gives us the money to deport 400,000 people a year, that’s what the administration is going to do. That’s our obligation under the law. We will be strategic about how we do it, and the number of those folks who are either criminals or recent arrivals will continue to go up. But yes, this is our obligation under the law.
And while we have the debate about reforming the law, we must enforce it, and we will do that.
Are you saying that this administration believes that there are 400,000 serious criminals who are not in jail right now and who should be deported? Four hundred thousand people. Where are you going to find them if you are saying that your emphasis is only on serious criminals?
As I pointed out, of the people that we remove, of the 400,000 people removed in the last year, about half of them are serious criminals under the definition in immigration law. And the vast majority of the other half are either recent arrivals, people who are in the process of crossing at the border or people who have recently been deported, or who had previously been deported and are re-entering. So that makes up the bulk of the 400,000.
In previous years, and if the trends continue, that will be reflected in the next 400,000 that we remove.But Congress passed a law, and Congress appropriates funds to implement that law, and the executive branch’s job is to enforce it. How we do it matters a lot, but the president can’t say to the Congress, “I’m not going to bother to enforce this particular law because these are really compelling people.” That’s not how democracy works.
If women, mothers of American-born children, are stopped for a traffic violation and they are driving without a license, is that somebody who would be targeted for deportation?
The policy that DHS put forward both in I think it was March of 2010 and then reiterated with more detail in June of this year, and then again in August of this year, it makes it really [clear] that DHS has priorities, folks who are priority for removal and folks who are not priorities for removal.
And DHS set up a particular task force to look at the question of traffic violations to make sure that all of the stakeholders — the law enforcement community, the immigrants’ rights community, the folks in the labor movement, folks in faith communities and others — all have a say in helping us make the determination about how we deal with folks who are guilty of minor traffic violations.
Those folks are clearly not a priority. We need to be aligned with local law enforcement and how we deal with those folks. At the end of the day, it is incredibly important for DHS to have a strategy governing its removals. I don’t think there is a lot of disagreement [that] if we’re going to do this job, it should be focused on the folks who are convicted of serious crimes. Secure Communities is an important tool in doing that.
But even the supporters of the president — the Illinois governor [Democrat Pat Quinn], governor of New York [Democrat Andrew M. Cuomo] — have said the Secure Communities is doing more damage, and in fact there’s collateral damage of mothers being separated from their children, of fathers being separated from their children. Is this collateral damage that this administration is prepared to accept?
As a result of the concerns raised by the governor of Illinois, the governor of Massachusetts [Democrat Deval Patrick] and others, DHS made adjustments on how it’s implementing the policy, so the feedback from the community has been important in shaping DHS’s work.
But at the end of the day, when you have immigration law that’s broken and you have a community of 10 million, 11 million people living and working in the United States illegally, some of these things are going to happen. Even if the law is executed with perfection, there will be parents separated from their children.
They don’t have to like it, but it is a result of having a broken system of laws. And the answer to that problem is reforming the law, making sure that we have an immigration system that works here. You can’t fix the heartbreaking things that happen as a result of immigration enforcement just through enforcement policy. You have to fix that by reforming the law, and that requires the Congress to act, which is why the president has been pushing them so hard.
Why has the Obama administration essentially made it a goal to deport those 400,000 people a year?
The Congress has made that goal.
But the administration is overseeing that.
Well, right. The Congress appropriates funds to remove roughly 400,000 people a year, and our application is to expend those funds in the wisest possible way. That’s how it all works.
But do you believe that goals, these kind of quotas, this number puts undo pressure on ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] field agents to meet that quota?
Again, it’s like any other law that Congress passes and appropriates the funds to execute, and the agency’s job is to use those funds to implement the law.
This isn’t a judgment that’s being made at ICE. This is an obligation that is being placed upon us by the Congress. How we do it matters a lot, and I think it’s to DHS’s credit that they have built a strategy that makes sense, that it is appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.
But again, we have a system of laws that I think everybody acknowledges is broken, doesn’t work terribly well, and in order to fix that, Congress needs to act, and the president has been urging them to do that. The president has been engaged in that conversation with folks in Congress since we got here, and we have to keep that conversation going until we fix it. We’re not going to be able to fix it through enforcement policy.
We’ve spoken to several high-level ICE agents who told us that if they don’t meet these deportation goals, then they pay a very high price in Washington. Is that true?
Congress passes the laws, appropriates the funds for implementing the laws, and the federal agency’s job is to do what the Congress has told them to do. That’s how a democracy works. So yes, this is what the agency is for.
But again, rather than executing a strategy that says we’ll just go after anybody we can find out of this population of 10 million or 11 million people, what DHS is doing is saying we’re going to have some priorities about this, and we’re going to have a system that makes sense. And those are important tools in enforcing the law. But they are not sufficient tools for fixing what’s broken about the law. For that, Congress needs to act, and we need immigration reform.
The president seems to have calculated that tougher enforcement might convince conservatives to support comprehensive immigration reform, but it seems now that the GOP is as intransigent as ever. So has the president now basically ended up enacting the Republican agenda on immigration?
What the president is doing is enforcing the law of the land. That’s our obligation as a federal government. There’s no quid pro quo, there is no negotiation that has happened here. Congress passes a series of laws, appropriates the funds to enforce those laws, and the executive branch’s job is to enforce them.
How we do it matters. And DHS has made some very important strides forward in making sure that they do that wisely and well. They have responded to community input and will continue to do that. But in the end, the problem here is that we have a broken system of laws and we have to fix it, and that requires an act of Congress.
I want to read something that then-candidate Obama said about immigration reform on the campaign trail. He said: “When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids — when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel,” he said, “when all of this is happening, the system isn’t working, and we need to change it.” But isn’t that exactly what’s going on today?
I was there when he said that, and that’s exactly why we need to reform immigration law. The point he was making when he said that is that the system is broken, and he was right; it is. That doesn’t mean he can say to the Congress, “I am not going to bother to enforce the law because it’s broken.” That’s not how a democracy works.What it means is that we need to be working, as we are working all across the country with every possible stakeholder, lifting every pair of hands and every possible voice to get the job done of reforming the law. That requires congressional action, and we went from the situation where we had bipartisan support for immigration reform, which passed the Senate in 2006, to an environment now where we have no rapport, no support on the Republican side for immigration reform.
And until we get to a place where we can have a bipartisan debate, we’re going to continue to have a broken system. And that’s unacceptable. The president has talked a lot about why it’s not just a moral imperative or a legal imperative; it’s an economic imperative to fix our immigration system. This is not something we can afford to kick down the road and do when it’s more comfortable.
We have a real sense of urgency about reforming this law because it’s the right thing to do for the country, because it’s an economic imperative, and because all of the work that we’re doing to build a robust economy of the future is undermined when we are trying to build it on top of a broken immigration system. This is something we’ve got to fix, and soon.
I’m going to quote from a longtime supporter of candidate Barack Obama, Nena Torres, objecting to some of the high levels of deportations. This is what she said to us. She said: “It’s shameful, and it’s shameful that it is being done by someone who is a civil rights attorney and someone who understood grassroots communities and someone who sold himself as part of the great American immigrant narrative. I don’t think I ever contemplated the fact that he would be worse than any other president of the United States on the issue of immigration.”
This president is committed to an immigration system that works, that deals with the population of immigrants that is here in the country, and that deals with making sure that immigrants who come to this country come legally. We are a long way from having that kind of system. What we have now, I think, is something that everybody agrees doesn’t work.
The way to fix it is legislative. Now, the president has been very clear on that, and it’s been a priority since we got here. In order to get to the kind of reform that’s going to be effective, that’s going to make sure that the immigrants who come to this country come legally, that’s going to make sure we don’t have a population of 10 or 11 million people without immigration status in this country, we need Congress to act. It’s not something that the president can do by himself.
And the president has been deeply engaged with all kinds of constituencies to make sure that we’re lifting every voice and every pair of hands to create the sense of urgency outside of Washington that we feel here in the White House to get this done.
Define the worst of the worst, the immigrants that you believe should be targeted for deportation. Who are they exactly?
These are folks who are convicted of serious crimes, quite literally people that, under immigration law but also under criminal law, these people who have been convicted of the most serious crimes, crimes that I think people of goodwill would agree are serious enough to merit someone being expelled from the country.
But as I said, it’s also true that of the people that are removed from the country, a great number of them are also recent arrivals, and as those are part of DHS’s priorities.
So DHS’s priorities include serious criminals. They also include people who are trying to enter at the border, because part of their job is to create a deterrent. And it also includes people who are previously deported and re-entered, because that’s a felony under immigration law.
So it’s important to present the whole picture that DHS has embarked on strategies to go after the folks convicted of the most serious crimes. But they are also removing folks at the border, and they are also removing folks who are previous deportees. And that is what makes up the roughly 400,000 that get removed every year.
While the Obama administration has been in power, we have spoken with two families where mothers of young children in one case, and of five children in another case, that are in the process — one has been deported; the other one is in the process of being deported. So when you think about mothers who are being served with a traffic violation and that they end up being deported, is this a definition of the priority person who should be deported to that country?
This is exactly what DHS is working to change.
In June they announced — actually going back to 2010 — DHS established what is called the civil enforcement memo [PDF], which establishes the priorities that I’ve described, that prioritizes people who are convicted of the most serious crimes. In June of 2011 they issued what is called a prosecutorial discretion memo [PDF], which illustrates more [clearly] how officials up and down the chain of command in the law enforcement system should use their discretion to focus on folks who are our highest priorities, and not focus on lower priorities.
And then again in August they announced that DHS and DOJ [Department of Justice] are reviewing the entire deportation caseload, because there are 300,000 people in it. It is seriously backlogged. That prevents us from using our resources to go after the most serious criminals, and the folks who are our highest priorities will stay in the deportation pipeline, and the folks who are not will not.
Those are all policy developments which are based on the principle, and if you’re doing law enforcement, you focus your resources where they’re going to have the greatest impact and not on folks that are of a low value for enforcement purposes.So these are incredibly important developments. They are unprecedented developments with respect to this agency. They are smart law enforcement, and they are more consistent with our values. Those are incredibly important changes.
DHS really has done this in collaboration with the law enforcement community, in collaboration with some of the states who are raising concerns and in collaboration with some of the community organizations who are raising concerns.
So these are incredibly important developments in how immigration laws are enforced, but they cannot by themselves fix the fact that our immigration system is broken, and in order to fix it we need Congress to step up to the plate.
Would you say, at this point, that there is a sense that this president is himself lost in detention, basically boxed into a situation where he himself is lost in this detention system?
The president is very, very clear on where he is on immigration. This is a law which is broken and needs to be reformed. He has made it very clear how he intends to reform it. There is a blueprint that is up on the White House’s website [PDF] for anybody who wants to see it.
He is working incredibly hard to find the congressional parties he needs in order to reform this law. He needs somebody on the other side of the aisle to step forward, including from among those on the other side of the aisle who have voted for immigration reform before, in the United States Senate, and he’s going to continue to press until we can get legislation through the Congress.
Cecilia, have you gone to the immigrant detention centers?
I have. I have been working on immigration policy for 25 years, so I am well familiar with immigration enforcement.
So, since your role now at the White House, you have visited?
I haven’t since I came to the White House, but I have in the past. I am quite familiar with how the immigration enforcement system works.
But if you’re in change of overseeing immigration, wouldn’t you want to be seeing what’s happening now by going into these detention centers and seeing what’s happening there?
It’s very important to have a deep understanding of the whole enforcement system. I work on immigration policy for the administration closely with the agencies that administer it. And in the end the solution here is a reform law, and I’ve been working on that for most of my career.
In fact, you received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award [in 2000] for your work on immigration.
I did.
So how do you see your MacArthur genius award given that now you work for an administration that has deported more people than any other president in history?
You know, everybody in the immigration arena has a role to play, and it’s incredibly important that the people who are advocates in the community be able to talk to the people in government who are responsible for enforcing the law. We each have our responsibilities in this arena, and it’s important that everybody do their job wisely and well. It’s incredibly important that folks in government be able to do their job wisely and well.
When DHS says we’re going to move from an environment where we are just going after anybody we can find among the 10 million people who are here illegally and instead [are] applying a strategy, saying we’re going to be selective about who we go after, and we’re going to focus on the people who have committed serious crimes, that is an incredibly important policy development, and it’s the kind of policy development, again, that reasonable people on all sides of this debate agree is the right strategy for enforcing the law.
So it’s incredibly important that everybody engaged who is a stakeholder be able to have that conversation, and that the folks administering the laws in the federal government do as well informed a job and as wise a job as possible.
How concerned is the president about the issue that his perceived inaction on the issue of immigration by stakeholders in the community, specifically Latinos — who are very now disenchanted with the president, we’ve heard — how concerned is the president of the cost that this might have on his own re-election if he loses the Latino support?
He knows people are frustrated and shares that frustration enormously. He wants to get this fixed as much as anybody because it’s the right thing for the country, and he’s going to stay focused on fixing what’s broken about our immigration system by passing a new law with the Congress because it’s the right thing for the country. That’s what motivates him.
And that’s why his marching orders to his team are so clear, and he’s going to keep at it until we find the partners we need in the Congress to get this job done.
We’ve investigated detainee abuse at the Willacy detention facility in Texas — a record number of sexual abuse, beatings, racist name calling, cover-ups, attempts to investigate the abuses, intransigence to change. It’s a pretty miserable record for an administration that is saying that it wants to reform the system.
The detention system has been broken for a very, very long time. That did not start with this administration, and Secretary [of Homeland Security Janet] Napolitano, when she came onboard [in 2009], one of the very first things she did was bring on staff with experience in reforming what happens in detention systems. One of the first things they did was take a thorough look at what happens in immigration detention systems.
The materials that they prepared and the recommendations are, I think, part of the public record for well over a year now, and so this is something that she takes very seriously, and where the standards have begun to change and improvements have begun to be felt, we’re not finished.
We have a long way to go, but that is something that the secretary took on as a priority really on day one.
And so when you hear people say, how many more mothers, how many more fathers will this president allow to be deported who are noncriminals, what’s that number?
The question that we’re asking is, how long is the Congress of the United States going to allow this broken system to continue before it finally takes action? We are ready. We have put the policy together; we know exactly what needs to change, and we are working with everybody we can find in the business community, in the law enforcement community, in state and local governments, in the faith community, to create the space for the partners that we need in the Congress to come forward and help us reform this law.
And we are going to keep at it no matter how long it takes, because it’s so vital to this country’s future.
The president said that he was going to support immigration reform in a big way in his first year in office. And that didn’t happen.
Well, he did support immigration reform in a big way in his first year.
The reform didn’t happen.
The reform didn’t happen because it requires action on the part of the Congress of the United States, which did not take it up. We had long conversations with a bipartisan group in the Senate about bringing a bill forward. They asked us religiously [for] the language, which the administration gave them.
And at the end of the day, we could not persuade any bipartisan — even [a] pair [of legislators] — in the Senate to come forward with a bill. So as a result of that experience, we started taking the conversation outside of Washington, and we’re working with stakeholders all over the country.
We have mayors in Georgia doing roundtables. We have business leaders in the Silicon Valley doing events. We have labor leaders. We have faith leaders all over the country lifting this issue up in partnership with the administration to create the political space that’s needed for the folks on the other side of the aisle who we need to come forward to help us get this job done. And we will keep at it until we get this job done.
One last thing: You continue to say that this is a presidency that wants to follow the rule of law, but if this presidency came into power and there was a law that said that all gay people had to ride in the back of the bus, or all black people had to ride in the back of the bus, would this president say, “Well, I have a problem with that law, but I have to enforce it”?
There’s more than one example of laws that are not what we would have done in this administration that the president has been working on to fix. Immigration law is one. The other is the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy which was the law, and which we worked ultimately with the Congress to change.
This is how democracy works. It requires support around the country. It requires support among our elected officials, and it requires legislation. And that’s what we have to do in order to change immigration laws. It’s what we had to do to change the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. We are working on other fronts in similar ways, because that’s how democracy works.
Record deportations of illegal immigrants under Obama
By Jordy Yager - 10/18/11 02:31 PM ET
The U.S. deported more people — nearly 400,000 — who were in the country illegally in fiscal 2011 than ever before, according to the latest numbers released Tuesday by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau.Of the 396,906 people removed from the U.S., more than half of them — 216,698 —had been previously convicted of felony or misdemeanor crimes, according to the ICE numbers, which boast a 90 percent increase in the number of criminals deported over those in fiscal 2008.
ICE Director John Morton attributed this jump to the agency’s newly revamped discretionary policy that allows agents to focus their resources on removing illegal immigrants they deem to be a more imposing threat to society over those who are in the country illegally but are not violating other laws."
Smart and effective immigration enforcement relies on setting priorities for removal and executing on those priorities," Morton said in a statement.“
These year-end totals indicate that we are making progress, with more convicted criminals, recent border crossers, egregious immigration law violators and immigration fugitives being removed from the country than ever before,” he said.
Republicans have criticized the White House’s new enforcement policies, which allow immigration officers to place an emphasis on arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes over those who are in the country illegally but have not been arrested for other crimes. Republicans say this is a backdoor path to citizenship.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, said earlier this month that the rising number of deportations show her agency is doing its job to enforce the law.“
We cannot, on the one hand, be on the verge of removing, for the third consecutive year, a record-breaking number of unlawful individuals from this country with the highest number of criminal removals in American history and, at the same time, be abrogating our law enforcement responsibilities,” Napolitano said during a talk at American University.
ICE said that of the criminals deported, 1,119 had been convicted of committing a homicide, 5,848 had been convicted of sexual offenses, and 44,653 aliens had been convicted of drug related crimes.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) strongly objected to ICE’s announcement, saying that the White House’s policies have torn apart families and are symptomatic of an “uncontrolled” Department of Homeland Security (DHS).“
All told, this administration has deported nearly 1.2 million people, leaving a wake of devastation in Latino communities across the nation,” said Joanne Lin, ACLU’s legislative counsel.
“These record-breaking deportation numbers come at a time when illegal immigration rates have plummeted, the undocumented population has decreased substantially and violent crime rates are at their lowest levels in 40 years. Our country can no longer afford to pay for uncontrolled, unwarranted DHS spending at the cost to U.S. taxpayers,” Lin said.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Tuesday that he planned to ask Napolitano about the new ICE policies during Wednesday’s hearing.
“The Obama policies may be an impermissible intrusion on Congress’s plenary authority over immigration law,” said Grassley, speaking at Judicial Watch. “They’re pushing the envelope for sure and there’s little transparency in their actions.”
Source: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/188241-ice-announces-record-breaking-deportations
The U.S. deported more people — nearly 400,000 — who were in the country illegally in fiscal 2011 than ever before, according to the latest numbers released Tuesday by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau.Of the 396,906 people removed from the U.S., more than half of them — 216,698 —had been previously convicted of felony or misdemeanor crimes, according to the ICE numbers, which boast a 90 percent increase in the number of criminals deported over those in fiscal 2008.
ICE Director John Morton attributed this jump to the agency’s newly revamped discretionary policy that allows agents to focus their resources on removing illegal immigrants they deem to be a more imposing threat to society over those who are in the country illegally but are not violating other laws."
Smart and effective immigration enforcement relies on setting priorities for removal and executing on those priorities," Morton said in a statement.“
These year-end totals indicate that we are making progress, with more convicted criminals, recent border crossers, egregious immigration law violators and immigration fugitives being removed from the country than ever before,” he said.
Republicans have criticized the White House’s new enforcement policies, which allow immigration officers to place an emphasis on arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes over those who are in the country illegally but have not been arrested for other crimes. Republicans say this is a backdoor path to citizenship.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, said earlier this month that the rising number of deportations show her agency is doing its job to enforce the law.“
We cannot, on the one hand, be on the verge of removing, for the third consecutive year, a record-breaking number of unlawful individuals from this country with the highest number of criminal removals in American history and, at the same time, be abrogating our law enforcement responsibilities,” Napolitano said during a talk at American University.
ICE said that of the criminals deported, 1,119 had been convicted of committing a homicide, 5,848 had been convicted of sexual offenses, and 44,653 aliens had been convicted of drug related crimes.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) strongly objected to ICE’s announcement, saying that the White House’s policies have torn apart families and are symptomatic of an “uncontrolled” Department of Homeland Security (DHS).“
All told, this administration has deported nearly 1.2 million people, leaving a wake of devastation in Latino communities across the nation,” said Joanne Lin, ACLU’s legislative counsel.
“These record-breaking deportation numbers come at a time when illegal immigration rates have plummeted, the undocumented population has decreased substantially and violent crime rates are at their lowest levels in 40 years. Our country can no longer afford to pay for uncontrolled, unwarranted DHS spending at the cost to U.S. taxpayers,” Lin said.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Tuesday that he planned to ask Napolitano about the new ICE policies during Wednesday’s hearing.
“The Obama policies may be an impermissible intrusion on Congress’s plenary authority over immigration law,” said Grassley, speaking at Judicial Watch. “They’re pushing the envelope for sure and there’s little transparency in their actions.”
Source: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/188241-ice-announces-record-breaking-deportations
US expelled 397,000 undocumented migrants in year
AFP – Wed, Oct 12, 2011
US authorities deported 397,000 undocumented immigrants, of which 210,000 had criminal records in the fiscal year just concluded, the top immigration enforcer told lawmakers Wednesday.
John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), offered the figure at a congressional hearing, which would outpace the records of 390,000 illegals and 195,000 with criminal records in the prior fiscal year.
"The numbers are quite strong," he told the House Judiciary Committee.
Morton said that with "limited resources," his agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is focusing on "priority" cases -- including those who pose dangers to public safety or who are fugitives from justice.
Also in this category are persons crossing the border from Mexico, in some cases returning after being sent back.
In the face of questions about the administration's toughness on immigration, Morton said ICE had held some 25,000 hearings for businesses suspected of hiring illegals, and had arrested 217 employers along with 15,000 undocumented workers, and had imposed $6 million in fines in the fiscal year ended September 30.
Committee chairman Lamar Smith told the hearing, however, that the administration "doesn't often take enforcement of ICE's immigration laws seriously enough."
He argued that officials "intentionally allowed illegal immigrants to remain in the United States" by using "backdoor amnesty through administrative action even if it can't get congressional approval."
Smith said the claim that ICE is focusing on priority cases is "just a slick way of saying they don't want to enforce immigration laws. ICE has shown little interest in actually deporting illegal immigrants who have not yet been convicted of what they call 'serious' crimes."
US authorities deported 397,000 undocumented immigrants, of which 210,000 had criminal records in the fiscal year just concluded, the top immigration enforcer told lawmakers Wednesday.
John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), offered the figure at a congressional hearing, which would outpace the records of 390,000 illegals and 195,000 with criminal records in the prior fiscal year.
"The numbers are quite strong," he told the House Judiciary Committee.
Morton said that with "limited resources," his agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is focusing on "priority" cases -- including those who pose dangers to public safety or who are fugitives from justice.
Also in this category are persons crossing the border from Mexico, in some cases returning after being sent back.
In the face of questions about the administration's toughness on immigration, Morton said ICE had held some 25,000 hearings for businesses suspected of hiring illegals, and had arrested 217 employers along with 15,000 undocumented workers, and had imposed $6 million in fines in the fiscal year ended September 30.
Committee chairman Lamar Smith told the hearing, however, that the administration "doesn't often take enforcement of ICE's immigration laws seriously enough."
He argued that officials "intentionally allowed illegal immigrants to remain in the United States" by using "backdoor amnesty through administrative action even if it can't get congressional approval."
Smith said the claim that ICE is focusing on priority cases is "just a slick way of saying they don't want to enforce immigration laws. ICE has shown little interest in actually deporting illegal immigrants who have not yet been convicted of what they call 'serious' crimes."
Governor Brown signs California Dream Act
The law grants illegal immigrants access to state aid at public universities and colleges. It is one of 50 education-related bills weighed by the governor.
By Patrick McGreevy and Anthony York, Los Angeles Times
October 9, 2011
Reporting from Sacramento
Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday granted illegal immigrants access to state financial aid at public universities and community colleges, putting California once again in the center of the nation's immigration debate.
But he vetoed a measure that would have allowed state universities to consider applicants' race, gender and income to ensure diversity in their student populations.
Deciding the fate of 50 education-related bills, the governor also rejected an effort to make it more difficult to establish charter schools. But he accepted a move to improve college life for gays, lesbians and bisexual and transgender people and a measure to restrict the privatization of libraries.
None of the other proposals, however, has drawn the attention — or rancor — surrounding the California Dream Act. Most Republican legislators voted against it, and anti-illegal-immigration groups denounced it as unfair.
Brown's signature on the bill fulfilled a campaign promise to allow high-achieving students who want to become citizens the opportunity to attend college, regardless of their immigration status."
Going to college is a dream that promises intellectual excitement and creative thinking," Brown said in a statement. "The Dream Act benefits us all by giving top students a chance to improve their lives and the lives of all of us."
Beginning in 2013, illegal immigrants accepted by state universities may receive assistance from Cal-Grants, a public program that last year provided aid to more than 370,000 low-income students.
The new law also makes students who are not legally in the country eligible for institutional grants while attending the University of California and California State University systems.
And it permits them to obtain fee waivers in the community college system.Students must graduate from a California high school after attending school in the state for at least three years and must affirm that they are in the process of applying to legalize their immigration status. They also must show financial need and meet academic standards.
The bill was by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), who praised Brown for showing courage in signing it."
After having invested 12 years in the high school education of these young men and women, who are here through no fault of their own," Cedillo said, "it's the smartest thing for us to do to permit these students to get scholarships and be treated like every other student."
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles, said Saturday was "a great day for California, for education and for immigrant students who have kept their end of the bargain and continue to give their best to the only nation they know as their home."
But Republican lawmakers and conservative groups assailed Brown for approving AB 131.
"It's morally wrong," said Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-San Bernardino). "We have just created a new entitlement that is going to cause tens of thousands of people to come here illegally from all over the world."
Donnelly said he plans a referendum drive to repeal the legislation and believes the issue will hurt Democrats in next year's elections.
Assemblyman Curt Hagman (R-Chino Hills) said Brown's signature "absolutely sends the wrong message. It says if you violate the law, it's OK."
Also opposed is the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national group pressing for a crackdown on illegal arrivals. Spokeswoman Kristen Williamson called the bill "a reckless use of taxpayer money" at a time when the state is broke, has raised tuition and has cut many services to legal residents.
Brown downplayed the cost to taxpayers. He said the California Department of Finance estimates 2,500 additional students will qualify for Cal-Grants as a result of the Dream Act, at a cost of $14.5 million.
The Cal-Grant program costs $1.4 billion, so about 1% of all Cal-Grant funds could be affected, the governor said.
But the community college fee waivers and institutional grants will likely increase the price tag. A Senate committee analysis has predicted that new costs resulting from the legislation would be $40 million a year, all told.
Brown signed another bill related to undocumented students Saturday, AB 844 by Assemblyman Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens). It allows them to serve in student government on public campuses and receive grants, fee waivers and expenses for doing so.
The governor's actions came while Congress is gridlocked over immigration reform and followed efforts by other states, including Arizona, Georgia and Alabama, to tighten laws on illegal immigration. But in 2001, Texas Gov. Rick Perry allowed undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public universities. And earlier this year, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn approved private financial aid for undocumented students and allowed them to enroll in state tuition savings programs."
There's division of opinion among the states about what to do about immigration," said Kevin Johnson, dean of UC Davis School of Law. "We will continue to get these types of differences until Congress comes up with some kind of federal immigration reform and starts to answer some of those questions in a national, as opposed to a state, way."
In California, the legislation that would have allowed the UC and Cal State systems to factor race and gender into admissions decisions was also controversial.
Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina) said he wrote the bill, SB 185, to avert a clash with a 1996 voter-approved prohibition against preferential treatment for minorities in public institutions. Brown's veto statement said he agreed with the goal of the bill and noted that, as California's attorney general, he had argued that courts should allow universities to consider race to the extent allowed by the U.S. Constitution.
But "our constitutional system of separation of powers," he wrote Saturday, "requires that the courts — not the Legislature — determine the limits of Proposition 209," the measure voters passed.
The governor also vetoed AB 86, which would have required at least half of the classified staff at a school to sign petitions for it to become a charter. Brown, who started two charter schools in Oakland, said in his veto message to Assemblyman Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) that charter schools are already hard to establish and even more difficult to maintain.
Brown signed AB 438, by Assemblyman Das Williams (D-Santa Barbara), restricting the privatization of public libraries, a growing trend as municipal governments have fallen on hard times. Those that are privatized must continue to pay government wages.
The governor also approved a measure by Assemblyman Marty Block (D-San Diego) that will encourage state university systems to collect data on students' sexual orientation and encourage the legislative analyst to use it to recommend improvements in the quality of life for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. That bill is AB 620.
By Patrick McGreevy and Anthony York, Los Angeles Times
October 9, 2011
Reporting from Sacramento
Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday granted illegal immigrants access to state financial aid at public universities and community colleges, putting California once again in the center of the nation's immigration debate.
But he vetoed a measure that would have allowed state universities to consider applicants' race, gender and income to ensure diversity in their student populations.
Deciding the fate of 50 education-related bills, the governor also rejected an effort to make it more difficult to establish charter schools. But he accepted a move to improve college life for gays, lesbians and bisexual and transgender people and a measure to restrict the privatization of libraries.
None of the other proposals, however, has drawn the attention — or rancor — surrounding the California Dream Act. Most Republican legislators voted against it, and anti-illegal-immigration groups denounced it as unfair.
Brown's signature on the bill fulfilled a campaign promise to allow high-achieving students who want to become citizens the opportunity to attend college, regardless of their immigration status."
Going to college is a dream that promises intellectual excitement and creative thinking," Brown said in a statement. "The Dream Act benefits us all by giving top students a chance to improve their lives and the lives of all of us."
Beginning in 2013, illegal immigrants accepted by state universities may receive assistance from Cal-Grants, a public program that last year provided aid to more than 370,000 low-income students.
The new law also makes students who are not legally in the country eligible for institutional grants while attending the University of California and California State University systems.
And it permits them to obtain fee waivers in the community college system.Students must graduate from a California high school after attending school in the state for at least three years and must affirm that they are in the process of applying to legalize their immigration status. They also must show financial need and meet academic standards.
The bill was by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), who praised Brown for showing courage in signing it."
After having invested 12 years in the high school education of these young men and women, who are here through no fault of their own," Cedillo said, "it's the smartest thing for us to do to permit these students to get scholarships and be treated like every other student."
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles, said Saturday was "a great day for California, for education and for immigrant students who have kept their end of the bargain and continue to give their best to the only nation they know as their home."
But Republican lawmakers and conservative groups assailed Brown for approving AB 131.
"It's morally wrong," said Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-San Bernardino). "We have just created a new entitlement that is going to cause tens of thousands of people to come here illegally from all over the world."
Donnelly said he plans a referendum drive to repeal the legislation and believes the issue will hurt Democrats in next year's elections.
Assemblyman Curt Hagman (R-Chino Hills) said Brown's signature "absolutely sends the wrong message. It says if you violate the law, it's OK."
Also opposed is the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national group pressing for a crackdown on illegal arrivals. Spokeswoman Kristen Williamson called the bill "a reckless use of taxpayer money" at a time when the state is broke, has raised tuition and has cut many services to legal residents.
Brown downplayed the cost to taxpayers. He said the California Department of Finance estimates 2,500 additional students will qualify for Cal-Grants as a result of the Dream Act, at a cost of $14.5 million.
The Cal-Grant program costs $1.4 billion, so about 1% of all Cal-Grant funds could be affected, the governor said.
But the community college fee waivers and institutional grants will likely increase the price tag. A Senate committee analysis has predicted that new costs resulting from the legislation would be $40 million a year, all told.
Brown signed another bill related to undocumented students Saturday, AB 844 by Assemblyman Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens). It allows them to serve in student government on public campuses and receive grants, fee waivers and expenses for doing so.
The governor's actions came while Congress is gridlocked over immigration reform and followed efforts by other states, including Arizona, Georgia and Alabama, to tighten laws on illegal immigration. But in 2001, Texas Gov. Rick Perry allowed undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public universities. And earlier this year, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn approved private financial aid for undocumented students and allowed them to enroll in state tuition savings programs."
There's division of opinion among the states about what to do about immigration," said Kevin Johnson, dean of UC Davis School of Law. "We will continue to get these types of differences until Congress comes up with some kind of federal immigration reform and starts to answer some of those questions in a national, as opposed to a state, way."
In California, the legislation that would have allowed the UC and Cal State systems to factor race and gender into admissions decisions was also controversial.
Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina) said he wrote the bill, SB 185, to avert a clash with a 1996 voter-approved prohibition against preferential treatment for minorities in public institutions. Brown's veto statement said he agreed with the goal of the bill and noted that, as California's attorney general, he had argued that courts should allow universities to consider race to the extent allowed by the U.S. Constitution.
But "our constitutional system of separation of powers," he wrote Saturday, "requires that the courts — not the Legislature — determine the limits of Proposition 209," the measure voters passed.
The governor also vetoed AB 86, which would have required at least half of the classified staff at a school to sign petitions for it to become a charter. Brown, who started two charter schools in Oakland, said in his veto message to Assemblyman Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) that charter schools are already hard to establish and even more difficult to maintain.
Brown signed AB 438, by Assemblyman Das Williams (D-Santa Barbara), restricting the privatization of public libraries, a growing trend as municipal governments have fallen on hard times. Those that are privatized must continue to pay government wages.
The governor also approved a measure by Assemblyman Marty Block (D-San Diego) that will encourage state university systems to collect data on students' sexual orientation and encourage the legislative analyst to use it to recommend improvements in the quality of life for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. That bill is AB 620.
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