Controversial quota drives immigration detention boom

By Nick Miroff, Published: October 13

KARNES CITY, Tex. — In the past five years, Homeland Security officials have jailed record numbers of immigrants, driven by a little-known congressional directive known on Capitol Hill as the “bed mandate.”

The policy requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to keep an average of 34,000 detainees per day in its custody, a quota that has steadily risen since it was established in 2006 by conservative lawmakers who insisted that the agency wasn’t doing enough to deport unlawful immigrants.

But as illegal crossings from Mexico have fallen to near their lowest levels since the early 1970s, ICE has been meeting Congress’s immigration detention goals by reaching deeper into the criminal justice system to vacuum up foreign-born, legal U.S. residents convicted of any crimes that could render them eligible for deportation. The agency also has greatly expanded the number of undocumented immigrants it takes into custody after traffic stops by local police.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials say that they are not needlessly jailing immigrants to meet a quota and that they find plenty of candidates for detention and deportation by targeting criminals who pose a threat to public safety and border security.

But critics of the mandate note that the majority of ICE detainees are not violent offenders. Immigration judges eventually allow many to remain in the United States, but the detainees may spend months in costly federal custody, even when far cheaper alternatives are available, such as ankle bracelets and other forms of electronic monitoring.

With federal spending on immigration detention and deportation reaching $2.8 billion a year, more than doubling since 2006, the mandate has met growing skepticism from budget hawks in both parties, particularly after DHS officials told Congress during the “sequestration” debate in April that the agency could save money by lowering the bed mandate to 31,800 and relying on cheaper alternatives to jails. But House Republicans successfully pushed back, set the mandate at 34,000 detainees and ordered ICE officials to spend nearly $400 million more than they requested.

ICE operations are largely unaffected by the government shutdown, since the agency’s workers are among the federal employees considered essential, DHS officials have said.

Some of the additional money provided by Congress will be spent filling beds at places such as the brightly painted Karnes County Civil Detention Center, which opened here last year amid bobbing oil derricks on the rolling plains south of San Antonio. It holds more than 600 detainees, but ICE prefers not to call them that.

They are “residents,” guarded by unarmed “resident advisers,” and they sleep in air-conditioned, unlocked “suites” with flat-screen TVs overlooking volleyball courts and soccer fields. The low-security facility, built and operated on the government’s behalf by a private contractor, the GEO Group, offers computer labs, libraries and microwaves for making popcorn.

“This place is great,” said one young man from Honduras, strumming a government-issued bass guitar in a recreation room, along with newfound band mates from El Salvador and Guatemala.

Most detainees here are Central American migrants picked up along the border. Having requested asylum, they await an ICE interview to determine if they have a legitimate fear of returning home.
 

In the meantime, they can earn $3 a day working on cleaning crews or in the laundry room, and there are free English classes, “life skills” instruction and tutorials in Microsoft Word and Excel. They dine in a cafeteria cheerfully appointed with Southwestern art and Georgia O’Keefe prints.

The jail has become a showcase for improved detention conditions, especially as ICE relies less on the low-cost bed space offered by aging, rural county jails and signs contacts with for-profit private detention companies that include incentives such as guaranteed minimum-occupancy payments.

Congress’s expanding detention goals have been a boon to the contractors, especially Florida-based GEO Group and Tennessee-based Corrections Corp. of America.

The two companies have won hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of ICE contracts in recent years while lobbying Congress on immigration enforcement issues.

Former ICE director Julie Myers Wood, who led the agency from 2006 to 2008 under President George W. Bush, said a congressional mandate for ICE to maintain a minimum number of detainees was a reasonable guideline at the outset of her tenure, when the Border Patrol was making more than a million arrests per year.

But today, she said, “it doesn’t make sense.”

Defenders of the bed mandate say it remains a useful tool to compel ICE to devote the maximum amount of resources to catching and deporting illegal migrants and foreign-born legal residents who commit crimes, including dangerous gang members, rapists and other violent felons.

With an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, they argue, there’s still a vast pool of potential deportees for the agency to pursue, or as Rep. John Abney Culberson (R-Tex.) put it, “plenty of customers.”

“We know ICE can fill more than 34,000 beds, so why would they use less?” said Culberson, a member of the House Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, which ties ICE funding to its compliance with the mandate.

Four countries — Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — accounted for 88 percent of all immigration detainees in 2011, the most recent year for which statistics were available.

Broad range of offenses

As illegal border crossings have declined, a growing portion of ICE detainees are legal U.S. residents who face deportation after completing a jail term or probation, targeted by ICE’s Secure Communities program.

Of the 33,391 immigrants held in federal custody on Sept. 7 — a single-day snapshot provided by ICE — 19,864 were convicted criminals, according to the agency.

Yet ICE’s definition of criminals includes a broad range of offenders, and a 2009 internal review found that only 11 percent of detainees had been convicted of violent crimes.

Jose Luis Vargas, a legal U.S. resident since 1986, was arrested by San Antonio police three years ago after neighbors reported a marijuana plant growing in his garden, among his tomatoes and prickly pear cactus.

Vargas, 52, said he had planned to make a poultice with the plant to alleviate joint pain from diabetes, which has left him with impaired vision and an amputated finger.

After two years on probation for the marijuana charge, ICE officials took Vargas into custody and tried to deport him to Mexico. He spent nearly three months in ICE’s South Texas Detention Facility until an immigration judge ordered his release.

“They didn’t treat me badly, but when I’d have to ride to the hospital, I’d miss lunch, and being in handcuffs so much was bad for my circulation,” Vargas said.

Immigrant rights advocates say detainees such as Vargas, who was two years shy of paying off the 30-year mortgage on his San Antonio home, should be allowed to remain under cheaper, less severe forms of ICE supervision, such as GPS-enabled electronic monitoring.

Those alternatives can cost less than $10 a day, they say, while the cost of keeping someone in immigration jail exceeds $150.

“The explicit purpose of ICE detaining people is to make sure they show up for their immigration hearings, so it would make sense to consider less costly, more humane alternatives that meet that same goal,” said Ruthie Epstein, legislative policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Immigrant advocates and attorneys say the majority of detainees taken into ICE custody today have convictions for lesser offenses such as drug possession — or no criminal record at all.
Nearly 48 percent of the 350,000 immigrants over the past 16 months who triggered an “ICE detainer” — a request by the agency that local jails or police hold an individual until ICE can pick them up — had no criminal convictions, not even traffic violations, according to the TRAC Immigration Project.

Almost half of all potential deportees who appear in immigration court are allowed to remain in the United States, according to TRAC data.

But many end up spending months, even years, in ICE custody while they await a ruling.


Detention alternatives

ICE officials have testified to Congress that Alternatives to Detention programs — geared toward legal residents with family and community ties — have had compliance rates of 96 percent with court-ordered appearances.

Yet the agency’s budget for alternatives is less than $100 million, dwarfed by its detention budget. The comprehensive immigration bill approved by the Senate in June would expand use of these methods, but the legislation faces increasingly dim prospects in the House.

ICE officials also note that they have limited discretion over which detainees are eligible for alternative forms of supervision. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 greatly expanded the scope of crimes that could trigger deportation.

More than two-thirds of the immigrants in ICE custody on Sept. 7, for instance, were “mandatory cases,” including drug offenders, violent offenders and anyone involved in prostitution-related crimes, among other violations that trigger automatic detention. Pending immigration legislation would give greater discretion to federal judges to assign detention on a case-by-case basis.

“We’re not forcing poor little people to be in there to meet a quota,” said Rep. John Carter (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee.

“The law is the law, and none of these people are being held contrary to the law,” he said.

The Heartache of an Immigrant Family

 

By SONIA NAZARIO

Published: October 14, 2013

LOS ANGELES — WHEN we talk about immigration to America, we tell a hopeful story about courage and sacrifice. But that story obscures the fact that, especially for the poor, immigration is often a traumatizing event, one that tears families apart.

Consider the experience of one family, originally from Honduras. In 1989, Lourdes Pineda was the single mother of a 5-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl. She sold tortillas, plantains and used clothes door to door, but barely earned enough to feed her children, and feared not being able to send them to school past the sixth grade. So she made the painful decision to leave them behind in Honduras, and found work in the United States as a nanny, taking care of other people’s children.

Her daughter went to live with her maternal grandmother, her son — Luis Enrique Motiño Pineda — with his paternal grandmother. Enrique, whose story I followed for a book, was devastated. He was passed from relative to relative, left wondering, didn’t his mother love him enough to be with him? In 2000, when he was 16, he set off to find her. It took him eight attempts to cross through Mexico and into the United States — a journey of 122 days and 12,000 miles.

Enrique had left behind someone of his own: a girlfriend, María Isabel Carias Durón, whom he later learned was pregnant. She followed Enrique north a few years later, leaving their daughter, Katerin Jasmín, behind. Enrique was determined that his daughter not endure the long separation he had faced, so when Jasmín was 4, he sent for her to come to Jacksonville, Fla., where the family had established a home.

In the decade after Enrique came to the United States, more migrants arrived than at any time in the nation’s history, fueling a backlash. From 2005 to 2010, nearly a thousand laws were passed by State Legislatures addressing illegal immigration. In 2008, the federal government told all police departments to turn over any unlawful migrants they arrested to federal immigration authorities, a program called Secure Communities. A result: deportations nearly doubled between fiscal 2006 and 2012 to more than 409,000 a year.

And so immigrant families are being separated again, this time in reverse. Parents are being deported to Mexico and Central America, away from United-States-born children.

About 200,000 parents of children who are American citizens were deported between 2010 and 2012, and 5,000 parentless children are now in foster care because their mother or father was detained or deported. An analysis by the Applied Research Center estimates that more than 15,000 children would join them by 2016 if record numbers of deportations continued.

On Dec. 26, 2011, Enrique was partying with friends at a motel when police officers arrived. He had an outstanding arrest warrant for not paying a ticket for driving without a license. (All but 11 states prohibit unlawful immigrants from obtaining a driver’s license.) Enrique was arrested and handed over to federal immigration authorities to be deported. María Isabel was three months pregnant with their second child.

On a Sunday afternoon nearly a year later, Enrique’s mother, Lourdes, arrived at the jail with her grandchildren: Jasmín, then 11 years old, and the 3-month-old baby, Daniel Enrique. I sat with them before video screen No. 9 in a cinder-block visitation stall. The image of Enrique in an orange jumpsuit appeared on the screen.

Jasmín scooted her chair closer, and picked up the receiver to talk. Lourdes lifted Daniel Enrique, with chubby cheeks and tufts of black hair, up to the screen. “Say ‘Hello, Papi,’ ” Jasmín said to her brother. Enrique smiled at his son. “I am your father,” he said. “How is my boy?” Enrique had never been allowed to cradle his son. Later, Enrique told me that when he thought about him, he could feel his arms ache. If he were deported, he agonized, would both his children grow up without their father?

There are huge benefits to migration: mothers who go north are able to send money home so their children can eat and go to school. But there are consequences, too: many of these children deeply resent their mothers for leaving. They feel abandoned, and disproportionately join gangs or get pregnant, searching for the love they feel they missed.

The United States is spending billions on walls that don’t really keep migrants out (a University of California, San Diego, study showed that 97 percent of migrants who want to cross the border eventually get through), and on locking up and deporting people, many of whom return. Border enforcement, guest worker programs and pathways to citizenship haven’t addressed the problem. Instead they have sealed in many migrants who would have preferred to circle back home, attracted temporary workers who never left, and legalized migrants who then brought relatives illegally, causing the number of unlawful migrants to grow.

We can prevent this pain, and slow the flow of migrants permanently, only by addressing the “push” factors that propel migrants, especially women, to leave in the first place — and by helping families like Enrique’s avoid the heartache that his mother’s exodus began a quarter-century ago.

We can start by creating opportunities for women in just four countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, which send three-quarters of all undocumented migrants here. The United States could increase aid to those countries to improve education for girls, which would lower birthrates. It could finance or promote microloans to help women start job-generating businesses. It could gear trade policies to give clear preferences to goods from these four countries. And it could work with hometown associations — groups of immigrants in the United States who want to help the towns they came from — to coordinate a percentage of the tens of billions of dollars that immigrants send home to Latin America each year toward investing in job-creating enterprises. (One Mexican hometown association helped build a factory in Oaxaca, which has employed many would-be immigrants.)

This targeted economic development would cost much less than the billions — $18 billion each year — we currently dole out for immigration enforcement.

For too long, American immigration policy has ensured access to cheap, compliant workers. This has helped spur our economy, but has come at a great cost to taxpayers, as well to the immigrants themselves. We must demand a different approach, one in line with the goal of keeping families intact.

In August, after a total of 14 months in jail, Enrique received a miracle: a visa to stay in the United States legally, thanks to two lawyers, Sui Chung and Michael Vastine, who agreed to represent him pro bono and tirelessly fought his case. Jasmín and María Isabel obtained similar visas two months earlier. Enrique will not be torn from his family.

But imagine the suffering they would have been spared, if Lourdes had never had to come here in the first place.

Sonia Nazario is the author of “Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother,” recently published in a young adult version.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on October 15, 2013, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: The Heartache of An Immigrant Family.

Obama plans immigration push after fiscal crisis ends

According to Reuters, President Obama said that immigration reform would be a top priority once the fiscal crisis has been resolved.

Read the entire article here at Reuters: Obama Plans Immigration Push After Fiscal Crisis Ends
 

AILA: Government Shutdown and Shutout

http://ailaleadershipblog.org/2013/10/16/shutdown-and-shut-out/

10/16/2013

It has now been two weeks since the government shut down.  During that time, the media has spent a lot of time on closed national parks and Tea Party politicians storming barricades at the World War II Memorial–a recent addition to the National Mall, whose barricades are less daunting than those stormed in Normandy, France in 1943.  Yet the day-to-day machinery of the government has also closed in much less visually melodramatic ways.  The unsexy administration of justice has ground to a halt and hundreds of thousands of American businesses, employers, families and individuals await the resolution of the budget/health care impasse so that they can get on with their lives and their work.

As an immigration lawyer, my focus tends to run to the agencies that administer the immigration laws.  In fact, most of them are operating.  Customs and Border Protection, which guards the airports and the borders is unaffected by the shutdown.  U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service, the decider of applications for status in the U.S., is open for business, due to the fact that it is funded by the immigrant applicants themselves and not the federal budget.  Immigration & Customs Enforcement, responsible for overseeing the removal of individuals from the U.S. and representing the government before the U.S. immigration courts, is also operating if not quite at full steam.  The deportation and investigation officers remain busy identifying those subject to removal, detaining them and removing them from the U.S.  However, the lawyers for the government who appear before the courts are furloughed and the courts they appear in front of are also offline.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the nation’s immigration courts, has received the brunt of the “funding hiatus,” as the voice mail messages of the furloughed employees say.  The immigration courts are largely shuttered. In courts around the country, that would normally hear thousands of cases a week, operations are suspended.  Courts continue to hear detained cases, but the vast majority of cases are not detained and those cases are not being resolved, adding to the court’s already notorious backlog.  When cases are not heard, people’s lives are upended.  Individuals are waiting for asylum hearings that may allow them to bring their family from danger abroad.  Many long-term residents look forward to having their day in court where they can remove the specter of removal which has haunted them for, in some cases, years.  For example, I have a client whose hearing was cancelled last week.  Now twenty years old, she has resided in the U.S. since she was three.  The government and the judge agree that she should receive her residence, yet a number of factors, none of them her doing, have conspired to leave this case in limbo.  Hurricane Sandy cancelled one hearing, the Congressional quota on visas in her category cancelled another and the budget/health care impasse has cancelled a third.  No one can say when she will get her hearing and she and her family will continue to wait while they figure out what will become of their lives.  The old axiom of “justice delayed is justice denied” has rarely been more true.

Yet, detention and removals continue.  Congress has mandated that 30,000 detention beds remain full.  Thus, ICE stacks up bodies in for-profit detention centers without regard for dangerousness or flight risk. The costs of detaining so many immigrants gets little attention and, as we face a budget showdown, it is amazing that no one in Congress has scrutinized the gross amounts of money paid to for-profit prisons to detain the non-dangerous.  One does not need to be a cynic to believe that the lavish contributions of the for profit prison industry to Congressional campaign put the kibosh on such inquiries.  The shutdown of the immigration courts while the removal machine goes on with barely a hiccup is a grotesque parody of the government’s love affair with enforcement while paying only grudging lip service to the administration of justice.

However, immigrants and their families will continue to dream. They, unlike Congress, will rise daily and do their jobs growing our food, caring for our children, and cleaning our cities.  In this shutdown, they will have little relief from the specter of sudden arrest, detention and removal, but also little hope that they will get a fair chance to prove why they deserve to remain.  That knowledge rarely diminishes the immigrant spirit.  Five hundred and twenty one years ago, intrepid explorers left Spain for the unknown and landed on this continent, forever changing the course of the world.  Every day, idealistic and entrepreneurial immigrants leave their homes and families in an effort to achieve the American dream, a process that goes on undaunted, no matter how much political dysfunction undermines those values.

By Andres Benach, Member, AILA Amicus Committee

**SI USTED ESTA PUESTO BAJO UN “HOLD” DE INMIGRACION O ESTA DETENIDO POR ICE**

 

1

No Firme Ningun Papel

Al firmar, puede estar renunciando su derecho a un abogado o su derecho a una audiencia con un juez.

2

No Acepte “Salida Voluntaria”

Consulte con un abogado de inmigración antes de aceptar “salida voluntaria.” Aceptar salida voluntaria resultare en que no tenga oportunidad de una audiencia con un juez. Tendrá que salir de los Estados Unidos, y dependiendo de las circunstancias no podrá volver a los Estados Unidos para obtener beneficios de inmigración

3

No Asuma Que Oficiales De Inmigracion Le Explicaran Sus Derechos

Oficiales de inmigración y jueces de inmigración pueden no explicarle todos sus derechos y opciones que tiene. No asuma que la información que le den sea correcta. Consulte con un abogado antes de decidir qué acción tomar.

4

Usted Tiene El Derecho A Un Abogado

Usted tiene el derecho de consultar con un abogado aunque este detenido. Tiene el derecho de ser representado por un abogado en todas audiencias antes un juez de inmigración, pero el gobierno no pagara su abogado, ni le darán uno. You have the right to consult with an attorney even when detained.

5

Consulte Con Un Abogado

Consulte con un abogado de inmigración y dele todo la información sobre su estado migratorio, y las circunstancias de su arresto. Debe de darle todo la información al abogado para que lo pueda representar completamente en su caso de inmigración. Es importante que su abogado entienda su circunstancia para poder determinar si usted califica para beneficios de inmigración.

6

Puede Pedir Que Lo Dejen Salir Libre O Bajo Fienza

Si usted es detenido por ICE, digale al official de inmigracion que quisiera que lo dejaran salir libre o bajo fianza. Si esta option no se la dan, dígale al oficial de inmigracion que quiere ver un juez. Recuerdo de no firmar salida voluntaria (únicamente si esta absolutament seguro que quiere salir de Estado Unidos).

**IF YOU HAVE BEEN PLACED UNDER AN ICE HOLD OR ARE IN ICE CUSTODY**

 

1

Do Not Sign Any Paperwork

By signing, you may waive your right to an attorney or your right to a hearing before a judge

2

Do Not Accept "Voluntary Departure"

Consult with an attorney before accepting "voluntary departure.” Signing a voluntary departure acceptance means you will not have a hearing before a judge. You will have to leave the United States, and depending on your circumstances you may not be able to return to the United States or obtain any immigration relief.

3

Do Not Assume Immigration Officials Will Explain Your Rights

Immigration officials and Immigration Judges may not fully explain your rights and options to you. Do not assume the information you are given is correct. Consult with an attorney before deciding on what action to take.

4

You Have the Right to an Attorney

You have the right to consult with an attorney even when detained. You have the right to be represented by an attorney in any hearings before an Immigration Judge, but the Immigration Service and the United States Government will not pay for your attorney, nor will they provide you one.

5

Consult with an Attorney

Consult with an immigration attorney and provide all the information regarding your status, and the circumstances surrounding your arrest. You must provide your attorney with all the information so the attorney can fully represent you in your immigration case. It is important for your attorney to understand your circumstances in order to determine if you have any immigration relief.

6

You May Ask for a Bond for Your Release

If you are detained by ICE, tell the immigration officer you would like to be released on your own recognizance or on bond. If this option is not extended to you, tell the immigration officer you would like to see a judge. Remember not to sign a voluntary departure/removal (unless you are absolutely sure you want to leave the US).

Immigration courts remain partly open but political asylum cases delayed

 

By Pam Constable, Published: October 1

For tens of thousands of immigrants across the United States with pending immigration cases or legal procedures, the federal government shutdown will put some urgent matters on hold and allow others of less importance to move ahead.

Petitions for political asylum and non-emergency deportation cases are among the matters that could be delayed for months if the shutdown lasts more than a few days, according to immigration lawyers and advocates.

Meanwhile, some services for U.S. citizens and legal residents, which are financed by customer fees, will continue to be provided. Court hearings or other procedures for any immigrant who is in federal custody will also continue on schedule, and the Board of Immigration Appeals will hear requests for emergency relief from deportation as well as appeals for detained immigrants, according to the Justice Department.

Nationwide, 16 immigration courts are closed and 42 remain open, 23 of which handle only cases of detained immigrants.

The asylum process, advocates in the Washington area and elsewhere said, is especially backed up, with about 350,000 cases pending before immigration judges. Even under normal circumstances, most cases take more than a year to complete.

“This is a nightmare. It is already a nightmare, because of the huge backlog in the court system,” said Judy London, a lawyer with the Public Counsel agency in Los Angeles. “When we go into court, we are often told the first available trial date is a year later. This could mean more delays of months, or even another year.”

One of London’s clients is Didier Vakumbua, 43, a medical doctor who fled his native Congo five years ago after he said police jailed and brutalized him for revealing human rights atrocities to foreign monitors. He spent several years in California while his asylum petition worked its way through the system. His wife and children, meanwhile, sought refuge in another African country.

Last week, Vakumbua won his case on appeal and began preparing to fly his family to the United States. Because one child has a brain tumor, he had been granted emergency permission to bring them quickly. But he still needed one more judge’s signature on some paperwork — and after the shutdown Tuesday, that court was suspended.

“I am happy because I finally won my case, but I am frustrated, too,” Vakumbua said Tuesday afternoon, speaking a mixture of French and Spanish. “I have been waiting a very long time to see my family.”

In the Washington area, officials at the American Immigration Lawyers Association expressed similar concerns. They noted that only about 10 percent of asylum applicants are detained and therefore will be allowed to keep any scheduled court date. For the rest, they said, every delay in the judicial process can make a crucial difference.

“Situations change. Memories fade. Evidence gets lost,” said Greg Chen, advocacy director for the association. “If you have a court date now, and it is kicked off the calendar, it could be a matter of life and death.” Chen noted that because of heavy court backlogs, canceled hearings cannot be quickly rescheduled.

Abel Nuñez, executive director of the Central American Resource Center in Northwest Washington, said many of his agency’s clients are involved in more routine matters, such as waiting to become a U.S. citizen or renewing temporary protective status as a refu­gee from conflict. Still, he said, delays in these procedures can also be stressful and confusing.

On Tuesday morning, Nuñez was told that a Salvadoran student in the District, who qualified for legal residency under President Obama’s “Dream Act” order, was scheduled to have her fingerprints and other biometrics taken Wednesday. At first, he was told the service had been canceled by the shutdown. A few hours later, he learned that the tests were being offered after all, and that her appointment was still on.

“It’s good to have a little positive news, but what really worries me is that this fight over the shutdown and other issues is pushing immigration reform out of the picture,” Nuñez said. “There is a lot of friction and smoke in the air, and there are bigger noises out there now. This is taking the focus off immigration, and the window is shrinking fast.”

See the entire article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration-courts-remain-partly-openbut-political-asylum-cases-delayed/2013/10/01/29ce8bac-2ab1-11e3-b139-029811dbb57f_story.html?utm_source=AILA+Mailing&utm_campaign=9243db0027-AILA8_10_2_13&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3c0e619096-9243db0027-287725961