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An Open Letter to Rep. Spencer Bachus

21 Mar

 

Dear Congressman Bachus,

Thank you very much for speaking out about the overuse of detention by Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) in civil proceedings to determine the removability of individuals in the U.S.  By stating and asking “it looks to me like there is an overuse of detention by this administration.  If these people are not safety risks . . . why are we detaining them?,” you have joined the growing chorus of Americans who wonder why the government, during a time of fiscal crisis, spends so much money locking people up during immigration proceedings when they present no danger to society.  You are welcome in our club and we are glad to have you.

However, we do think it is important that you understand the role you played in building the gulag archipelago of immigration detention.  The explosion of immigration detention is a direct result of legislation you voted for, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.  This law, more than any decision by the Obama administration, has resulted in the overuse of detention for individuals in removal proceedings.  While you are right to question the overuse of detention by the administration, please do not overlook Congress’, and your, responsibility in forcing the detention of tens of thousands of people, the vast majority of whom are not safety risks.  IIRIRA fueled the explosion of detention in several ways.  First, it expanded mandatory detention to cover lots of people convicted of minor offenses.   Mandatory detention has forced ICE (and INS before ICE) to detain people during the course of their removal proceedings.  These individuals had no right to individualized determinations of their risk to society or likelihood to appear for hearings.  By expanding the classes of people subject to mandatory detention, Congress created a base layer of detainees.  It is true that interpretations by this and previous administrations have increased the potential pool of mandatory detainees, but mandatory detention and its wide reach is a creation of Congress.  Second, IIRIRA labelled many minor offenses as “aggravated felonies,” requiring detention during removal proceedings.  For example, an individual convicted of shoplifting a pair of $100 sunglasses might be sentenced to one year imprisonment, with service of the sentence suspended.  In other words, the criminal court would determine that that individual should not serve jail time unless they do something bad during the year of the suspended sentence.  Under IIRIRA’s overinclusive language, such an offense would be an aggravated felony and subject that individual to mandatory detention.  And IIRIRA made it clear that it did not matter when the offense occurred.  It is hard to imagine that this hypothetical defendant is a safety risk, but the law gives ICE and the immigration courts no authority to release that individual.  Third, IIRIRA created 287(g) partnerships with state and local law enforcement to enforce immigration law.  The explosion of detention is also directly related to the numbers of people coming to ICE’s attention because a local police officer pulls an immigrant over for failing to use a turn signal.  IIRIRA is the impetus to Arizona-style laws, one of the worst of which was passed in your own Alabama, Congressman.  Fourth, by creating the ten year bar to return to the U.S., IIRIRA made it close to impossible for many immigrants to regularize their status.  Thus, individuals who would have been able to obtain residence under previous laws, remained in the U.S. in unlawful status.  When encountered by ICE, they have often been detained in the discretionary determinations of ICE.  It is true that here is an area where the administration’s overuse of detention is due to the refusal to exercise favorable discretion, but please note that many of these people would be legal residents if not for the 1996 Act.  In addition, please recognize the role that the fear of Congressional rebuke plays in ICE’s decisions.  Take a look at the outcry from your colleagues when ICE released 2200 detainees last month in anticipation of the sequester.  Moreover, Congressional intent has been a key building block of the judicial decisions that have legalized the massive detention edifice.  Decisions such as the Supreme Court’s Demore v. Kim, which upheld mandatory detention, and Matter of Rojas, where the Board of Immigration Appeals decided that mandatory detention applies to people released from custody years or decades ago, are underpinned by statements that Congress intended to impose an unyielding policy of detention in IIRIRA.

Finally, Congress has provided ICE with enormous sums of money to spend on detention.  As you know, nature abhors a vacuum.  As Congress states that it intends to tighten spending, the unnecessary detention of the thousands of people who present no real danger to society should be looked at skeptically.  ICE will spend the money Congress gives it on detention.  It is up to Congress to say “no.”

Congressman, thank you for taking a stand against the overuse of detention.  We are glad to have you as an ally and hope that you use your position in Congress to advocate for more sensible immigration policies.  Thanks again for speaking out and we hope that the words are matched with action.

Sincerely,

Benach Ragland LLP

 

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Benach Ragland Submits Brief in Mandatory Detention Case

21 Feb

Earlier this month, Benach Ragland authored a brief on behalf of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in the case of Michael Sylvain v. Attorney General before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.  In Sylvain, the court must decide whether the Immigration & Nationality Act (INA) requires the detention of individuals convicted of certain offenses regardless of how long it has been since they were released from criminal custody. On behalf of AILA, Benach Ragland argued to the court that people released from custody prior to Immigration & Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) assumption of custody are entitled to a bond hearing where an immigration judge can make a determination as to whether they are flight risks or dangers to the community.  ICE argues that the INA gives immigration judges no authority to consider the release such individuals and that they must be detained for the duration of their removal proceedings regardless of how long it has been since they were convicted of an offense.

In Sylvain, the government defends a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) in Matter of Rojas.  In Rojas, the BIA decided that the mandatory detention provisions of the INA require detention without possibility of release on bond regardless of when that person was released from criminal custody.  However, the INA mandatory detention provision states that certain individuals shall be taken into custody “when the alien is released.”  The BIA decided in Rojas that that language did not limit ICE to apply mandatory detention to individuals regardless of when they were released.  Under Rojas, an individual would be subject to detention without any sort of review by a judge even if they had been released from prison a decade earlier.  As immigration judges around the country cited Rojas and explained that their hands were tied, advocates went to U.S. District Courts around the country and sought habeas corpus review.  Almost uniformly, the federal courts told the immigration service that Rojas was wrong and that the detained individual was entitled to a bond hearing.  The immigrant was then released.   ICE rarely appealed these decisions to the courts of appeals.

However, they did so in Hosh v. Lucero.  In that case, a district court judge found that Rojas was wrongly decided and ordered an immigration judge to hold a bond hearing.  However, this time, the government, sensing a possibly friendly court in the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, a court known for giving the government wide berth to operate, appealed the judge’s decision.  The government’s gamble paid off and the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed the district court judge and deferred to the BIA’s decision in Rojas, foreclosing habeas relief in the states of the 4th Circuit (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia).  Although district courts in the Fourth Circuit must follow Hosh, district courts outside of the Fourth Circuit have not found Hosh terribly persuasive.

Now this issue is before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which encompasses New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, in Sylvain.  A decision rejecting Rojas would create a split between the Third and the Fourth Circuits, possibly leading the way to Supreme Court review.  Oral argument is coming next month and we will report from the argument and when a decision comes down.

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Hey FAU! Drop GEO!

20 Feb

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Yesterday, after receiving a gift of $6 million, Florida Atlantic University announced that it was renaming its stadium “The Geo Group Stadium,” after the for-profit prison company, best known for operating detention facilities on behalf of Immigration & Customs Enforcement.  It is remarkable that any university would name a stadium after a prison company, but simply stunning that Florida Atlantic University, which sits in South Florida, a community that has been decimated by the overuse of civil immigration, would be so tone deaf as to think this was a good idea.  Although $6 million can certainly affect one’s “hearing,” FAU’s renaming of its stadium displays a failure of a university’s most cherished obligation, to empower students to make intelligent, ethical and moral decisions in a complex world.

FAU is a public school with over 30,000 students and boasts that 44% of its students are “minority or international students.”  Twenty-three percent of FAU students identify as “Asian” or Latino.”  And FAU sits in Southern Florida, where GEO operates a notorious link in the immigration gulag, the Broward Transitional Center, in FAU’s hometown of Boca Raton.

Universities have long been at the forefront on civil and human rights issues.  Universities nurtured the civil rights movement, the women’s and gay liberation efforts.  Universities divested from South Africa during apartheid and universities have led the charges against foreign sweatshops that made apparel sold in college bookstores.  And it is no surprise that universities have been actively involved in the immigrant rights movement.  Leading educators have stood up for the DREAM Act, have supported efforts to get individuals out of detention and deportation proceedings, and have led urgency to the need for a better system for employment-based immigration.  So, why would FAU accept a donation and so prominently highlight a company who makes it profits off the maintenance of an immigration detention apparatus that is morally dubious if not downright repugnant?

The GEO Group operates 73,000 “beds,” but it is not the Best Western.  “Beds” is corrections-speak for “places where detainees can try to sleep.”  It has a ignominious track record.  Before they were GEO, they were they were the Wackenhut Correctional Corporation.  British journalist Greg Palast wrote of Wackenhut’s operation of private prisons in New Mexico, “New Mexico’s privately operated prisons are filled with America’s impoverished, violent outcasts — and those are the guards.”  The Wackenhut name was so tarnished with scandal that the board changed the name in 2003.   Yet, transforming the way that they did business was much more elusive. Some of GEO’s greatest hits include:

In addition, the GEO groups lobbies for punitive immigration laws and resists efforts to introduce more discretion for judges to release detained individuals.  After all, the trough must be refilled.  It has a very cozy relationship with ICE.  Just last week, we learned that a former ICE bureaucrat David Venturella, who had some ambitious ideas about pumping up removal numbers, has left ICE for his payday at GEO.  The revolving door between government and for profit incarceration is quite lucrative for ICE bureaucrats, but there is no such door for detainees.

It is simply stunning that a university would agree to name a stadium after this behemoth.  It is especially galling in South Florida, where brave immigrant activists Marco Saavedra and Viridiana Martinez infiltrated the Broward Transitional Center to document abuses and conditions.  Would FAU name their stadium after the Bushmaster assault rifle? Or after Phillip Morris (rebranded as Altria)?  No university in their right mind would ever be associated with such corporate pariahs.  The goal for immigrants rights communities is to make the name of GEO as toxic as those names.  The devastating impact that GEO has had on the immigrant community in South Florida simply makes it an unacceptable choice for naming rights at a stadium.  Especially one in South Florida.  FAU must know that GEO is as much a pariah as gun manufacturers and cigarette pushers.  How many FAU students have been detained by GEO?  How many FAU student’s parents and loved ones languished in GEO’s dungeons?  How many kids never got a chance to attend a football game because GEO got them first?

Dream Activist has started a petition.  Please sign.  Please share on all your networks.  While FAU may be intoxicated with GEO’s money, they need to be reminded that their community or “customers” reject GEO’s profiteering on detention misery.

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The Whine of the ICE Bureaucrats

3 Feb

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It has been a tough week for the ICE bureaucrats who have sought to undermine the political leadership of this country to pursue their own restrictivist and nativist agenda.  Regular readers of this blog (my wife and my mother), will know that we have sought to document the efforts of bureaucrats within ICE to stymie intelligent immigration enforcement through insubordination, lawsuits, leaks, and more generic tactics like refusal to complete trainings and sick-outs.  But, like their pals Kris Kobach, Steve King, Jeff Sessions, and Joe Arpaio, time has passed them by and they continue their ignominious descent into laughable irrelevance.

Last week, we saw politicians competing to put forward the most comprehensive immigration reform.  The President outlined a plan.  We saw Republicans and Democrats, who could not agree on anything for close to four years, all agree that immigration reform is needed and that a path to citizenship is an essential to that effort.  We learned that the even the House has a bipartisan working group planning to develop its own immigration legislation.  Simultaneously, a federal judge in Dallas, Texas dealt a near fatal blow to the ICE agents lawsuit, where they alleged potential injury if they refused to follow the DHS secretary’s directives regarding DACA.  While the Judge did not entirely dismiss the lawsuit, FOBR Ben Winograd at the Immigration Policy Center described the lawsuit as” hanging by a thread.“  Bad week to be on the losing side of history.

Increasing the hope that immigration reform will finally happen in 2013 is the largely unanimous support of reform by the country’s major labor organizations.  The AFL-CIO and the SEIU, the country’s two largest union organizations, are major supporters of immigration reform.  But just when you thought that the unions had finally come together with the business community, there is one union that wants you to know that they are not on board.  Guess who?  The American Federation of Government Employees National ICE Council issued a press release to declare that the AFL-CIO does not speak for the ICE union.  The union wrote: “Respectfully, we see a lot of problems with the recently proposed reforms and we plan to exercise our rights as American’s to participate in the democratic process and voice those concerns publicly in the upcoming months; we hope to do so without groups like the AFL-CIO demonizing us for expressing a different opinion.”

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With all due respect, the position of the ICE agents union is crystal clear.  They so believe in an anti-immigrant policy where their actions are not subjected to meaningful review that their views are meaningless in an effort to reform the immigration law in a way to break their power.  The ICE bureaucrats are afraid of being demonized for participating in the democratic process.  Well, welcome to the arena, folks.  You can’t continue to say outlandish and self-interested garbage and not be called out on it.  The bureaucrats have always had a weak grip on the basics of democracy.  While begging to be treated with kid gloves, the ICE bureaucrats union has staged a vote of no confidence in ICE’s political leadership, sued the Department to stop DACA, and has encouraged its members not to follow the direction of their management.  In the military and any other law enforcement agency, that is known as insubordination and can result in dismissal or, in the case of the military, the brig.  But ICE bureaucrats ask not to “be demonized.”

If the ICE bureaucrats do not want to be demonized, they should stop resisting efforts to create intelligent immigration policy and participate in implementing immigration law, both today’s and tomorrow’s in a more humane and useful way.

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The Immigration Industrial Complex

9 Jan

5a6cb_man-shocked-at-billThe Migration Policy Institute recently released a study documenting that the U.S. government spent $18 billion on immigration enforcement, dwarfing the $14 million spent on other federal law enforcement agencies. The FBI, the DEA and the ATF, combined, received $14 billion.  Immigration & Customs Enforcement’s budget, alone, is $6 billion.  Something is seriously out of whack here.

None of this is surprising to immigration attorneys.  ICE runs a gulag archipelago of detention centers across the country, holding immigrants who have overstayed visas, entered without inspection, seek asylum, and  committed minor offenses.  ICE has continued to push in the federal courts for expansive definitions of mandatory detention, even if it means detaining people for offenses committed decades ago.  In 2011, ICE detained over 429,000 people, more than any other single government entity.  More than the Bureau of Prisons, the States of California, Texas, Florida, and New York.  ICE operates in its own jails, rents out space at local jails and contracts with private companies like the GEO corporation to manage this enormous population.  In addition, ICE has contracts with BI Incorporated to monitor individuals with final orders of removal.  This often involves ankle bracelets with GPS, telephonic and in-person reporting.  BI officials also monitor an individual’s efforts to obtain passports and plane tickets to depart the U.S. under an removal order.  In other words, they do ICE’s job.  And, frankly, they are pretty good at it.  Over 400,000 removals in 2011 shows how good BI is.  If budget hawks are serious about making government run like a business, how about saving money by eliminating the middleman?

The large budgetary excess for immigration enforcement also provides an explanation for the massive ICE resistance to immigration reform.  After all, if undocumented youth are getting DACA rather than being detained and deported, bed spaced is being underutilized and removals may go down.  In our current economic environment, it won’t be long before some budget-cutting legislator begins to question the excess of the the immigration enforcement budget.  If ICE were to exercise discretion and not detain and deport everyone that they possibly could, can they fulfill their contracts with the private companies that have built jails throughout the country.  If ICE were to take a more reasonable approach to enforcement, would they need to send out 20 agents before dawn to arrest four plumbers working a contract at Dulles because they are working on fake green cards?

The large amount of money at stake for immigration enforcement makes it clear that the efforts of some ICE bureaucrats to derail common-sense immigration reform is a result not of a principled belief in our national security and public safety, but rather to protect their exalted place at the public trough.

As we spend months debating the economic future of this country and what immigration reform will look like, it is worth contrasting the unproductive use of $18 billion tax dollars that ICE has commanded on an enforcement roid rage with the agreed-upon economic stimulus that would be provided by an immigration reform package.

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Protecting the Homeland

3 Jan
English: Mo Farah during EC Cross 2008

English: Mo Farah during EC Cross 2008 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ever heard of Mo Farah? If you watched the London Olympics last summer, the name likely rings a bell. Mohamed “Mo” Farah is a Somali-born British track and field superstar. He is the current Olympic champion at the 10,000 meters and 5,000 meters. He is also World Champion and European Champion at the shorter distance. A few days ago, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in honor of his athletic achievements. Pretty impressive, right?

Well, according to U.S. immigration officials, he’s also a suspected terrorist. Just before Christmas, when he was returning to Oregon to spend the holidays with his family, he was pulled out of line by agents of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and questioned for hours. You can read the full story as reported by the New York Daily News here. Farah was understandably shocked by the treatment he encountered. “I couldn’t believe it. Because of my Somali origin I get detained every time I come through US Customs. This time I even got my medals out to show who I am, but they wouldn’t have it.” Can this be right? Despite being shown his two gold medals from the London Olympic Games, CBP officials continued to question Farah and investigate whether he posed a terrorist threat? Could it be that CBP Portland doesn’t yet have access to the internet?

Perhaps more troubling, this was not Farah’s first run-in with U.S. immigration officials or the first time he’s had to fight to clear his name. When he applied for permanent residency (a “green card”) last year, immigration authorities informed him that he was under investigation as a potential terrorist threat. His application was only processed – and approved – after he reached out to his coach, famed former champion Alberto Salazar (heard that name before?). Apparently, Salazar contacted a friend in the FBI who made some calls and helped sort things out. Is that really what it takes?

Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan, arrival for press...

Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan, has been detained by the CBP on several occasions. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sadly, the answer is yes. In April of last year, Indian film superstar Shah Rukh Khan was detained and questioned by U.S. immigration officials in White Plains, New York. Khan is arguably Bollywood’s biggest star, a veritable industry unto himself. He is much beloved in his homeland – and around the world – but, alas, he also has a Muslim-sounding name. Like Farah, this was a repeat occurrence for Khan, who was previously detained for two hours at Newark Airport and released only following intervention by the Embassy of India. Khan wryly commented: “Whenever I start feeling arrogant about myself, I always take a trip to America. The immigration guys kick the star out of stardom.”

Okay, a couple of isolated incidents, right? Hardly. In December 2010, India’s then-Ambassador to the United States Meera Shankar was pulled out of the security line at an airport in Mississippi and frisked by an immigration officer, apparently because she was wearing a sari. On two occasions, former Indian President APJ Abdul Karam was singled out and frisked by immigration officials. One of those times, agents also saw fit to confiscate his jacket and shoes. The list goes on and on.

A few years ago, we represented a well-known Tibetan folk singer named Yungchen Lhamo, and helped her obtain a green card based on her exceptional ability in the arts. Lhamo, who has been called the world’s leading Tibetan vocalist, has performed around the world and recorded with the likes of Annie Lennox, Natalie Merchant, Michael Stipe, Philip Glass, and Sheryl Crow. Her songs were featured on the soundtrack of Seven Years in Tibet, and Peter Gabriel was so taken by her ethereal voice that he signed her to his prestigious Real World Records label. Lhamo, who walked to freedom from Tibet to India over the Himalaya mountains, stands all of five feet tall, often wears traditional Tibetan clothing, and greets the world with a warm, gentle demeanor. Obvious security threat.

Lhamo told me that every time she travels back to the United States – she’s a permanent resident, mind you, who lives in New York – she is stopped, detained for hours, sometimes questioned (but other times not), and ignored when she attempts to explain who she is. “Finally, I have to bring out my photo album,” she told me. The album, which she also showed me, contains photographs of Lhamo and Paul McCartney. Lhamo and Sting. Lhamo and Peter Gabriel. Lhamo and John Cleese. And (my personal favorite) Lhamo and the Smashing Pumpkins. And many, many more. “Usually, after a few hours, one of the officers will say ‘Oh, you must be someone important’ and they’ll finally let me go.” But there are no apologies, no notations in the system, and she can expect the same mistreatment next time around.

Now, some will say this is just the price we pay in the post-9/11 world to ensure that we’re safe, to ensure America’s security. But as Benjamin Franklin famously remarked: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” And does anyone truly feel safer knowing that our national security is in the hands of government agents who can’t distinguish between an Olympic gold medalist and a terrorist threat? Or a global movie superstar, or an Ambassador to the U.S., or a former President of India? Can we not instruct these agents in how to use Google? At least Barney Fife wasn’t put in charge of anything important.

What other agency of the U.S. government is permitted to engage in such blatant racial, ethnic, and religious profiling? Who other than officers of the Department of Homeland Security are empowered to detain and interrogate lawful U.S. residents based solely on their country of origin, the sound of their name, or the clothes they happen to be wearing? Where else but in DHS can we find such institutionalized xenophobia?

But fret not! Our hard-working immigration officials are protecting the homeland from the likes of Mo Farah and Yungchen Lhamo. Feel safer now?

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New Memo on Detainers- Will it be Followed?

28 Dec

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A persistent and fair criticism of the current administration is that while it has made grand pronouncements of focusing its enforcement efforts on violent criminals and threats to the national security, programs like 287(g) and Secure Communities have scooped far more benign immigrants in their overboard nets.  While the administration has put forward numerous memoranda and made extensive public statements about focusing limited resources on the dangerous and the recidivist immigration violators, the reality has been that, as a result of Secure Communities, immigrants without status and without serious criminal issues encountered by the police either due to a minor offense, while reporting a crime, or while the police look for another individual have been swept into the immigration dragnet, detained and deported.  According to ICE, the government deported over 400,000 people last year and most of them were not “the worst of the worst.”

This practice is due to the combination of two practices.  The first is Secure Communities.  This is the cooperative program between local law enforcement and ICE that checks arrestees (not convicts) against ICE databases.  As a result many individuals stopped for minor offenses, such as driving without a license, are arrested when ICE can not confirm their lawful status.  Ordinarily, individuals stopped under such circumstances are not arrested.  Once arrested, the second practice kicks in when ICE places a detainer on the individual.  A detainer is a request made by ICE to the local police department to hold an individual for 48 hours beyond when they are due to be released so that ICE may assume custody.  Because people arrested for minor offenses are held for brief periods of time in local jails, a detainer placed by ICE has the effect of keeping them detained by the local police department far longer than they would have been without the detainer.  This is one reason that many police departments have resisted and rejected participation in Secure Communities.  When ICE assumes custody, they initiate removal proceedings against the individual, not due to the arrest, but because of the lack of status.  If the individual can not demonstrate that she is likely to obtain some form of relief from removal, ICE will often detain without bond during removal proceedings.  Thus, through the operation of Secure Communities and detainers, many non-criminal immigrants without status have been identified, detained and deported.  This sad procession has undermined the administration’s claims to be focusing on the worst of the worst.

Into this unhappy scenario comes a new memo from ICE Director John Morton issuing new guidelines for the use of detainers.  The director has been a prolific memo writer.  He has issued guidance about ICE’s enforcement priorities and attempted to force a recalcitrant bureaucracy to use its limited resources more wisely.  He has written memos regarding the increased use of prosecutorial discretion to make intelligent decisions about when not to bring removal proceedings, when to terminate removal proceedings and when to exercise discretion not to remove a removable individual.  These memos and his approach to ICE’s responsibilities have resulted in the ICE bureaucracy’s open rebellion against him.  And the continued presence of “Obama, why are you deporting my mama” articles and signs among immigrant youth show that ICE agents continue to resist the administration’s stated approach to enforcement.  So, here comes another memo.  If followed, the memo should have a significant positive impact as it will reduce the number of low enforcement priority immigrants who come into contact with ICE and are, therefore, not placed into removal proceedings.

The detainer memo instructs ICE to be more judicious in the issuance of detainers.  According to the director, ICE should issue detainers against individuals only where: (1) they have reason to believe that the individual is deportable from the U.S. and (2) one of the following factors is present:

  • the individual has a prior felony conviction or has been charged with a felony
  • the individual has three or more prior misdemeanor offenses
  • the individual has a prior misdemeanor conviction or has been charged with a misdemeanor offense which relates to: violence, threats, assault, sexual abuse or exploitation, DUI, leaving the scene of an accident, firearms offenses, controlled substance distribution offenses
  • the individual has been convicted of illegal reentry
  • the individual has illegally re-entered the country after removal
  • the individual has outstanding order of removal
  • the individual has been found to have knowingly committed immigration fraud
  • the individual otherwise poses a significant risk to national security, border security or public safety.

Under these guidelines, detainers should be issued much less frequently than they have been over the past few years.  Individuals stopped for driving without a license, arrested for simple marijuana possession, disorderly conduct, underage drinking, petit theft, or other minor offenses should not come to the attention of ICE.  By keeping the immigration detention facilities and the immigration courts free from these low priority individuals, ICE remains free to concentrate on those who present serious public safety and national security risks.  In addition, it has the potential to stop or slow the removal of parents, children, brothers and sisters who are good members of their community except for a momentary and unfortunate interaction with law enforcement.  Properly implemented, the new detainer policy has the potential to drastically reduce the removals of low priority immigrants that have sullied the pro immigrant credentials of this administration.

However, as before, there is a battle going on between the stated desires of the political leadership of ICE and the ICE bureaucracy.  The ICE bureaucracy has proven itself extraordinarily adept at undermining its political leadership and has been in open revolt against the administration for the better part of four years.  Like every other memo and political effort announced by this administration, the challenge will remain in whether they can force an unwilling bureaucracy to yield to the wishes of its civilian leadership.  Lincoln had to fire McClellan, Truman had to fire McArthur and Obama fired McChrystal.  We are not sure who in ICE needs to be fired, but, one way or another, this power struggle will need to be resolved.

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