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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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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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What do Dostoyevsky and Sam from Zambia have in common?

18 Jan

On December 23, 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky, who went on to become Russia’s greatest novelist, and several other members of the so-called Petrachevsky Circle were taken out into the courtyard of the Semonyonov Prison in St. Petersburg.  The tsarist government had sentenced them to death.  Men were blindfolded and tied to posts.  The firing squad was locked and loaded when a cart with a reprieve from the Tsar himself commuted the sentence to exile and hard labor.  The execution, minutes away from proceeding, was stopped.

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This morning, around 10:15, I received a phone call from Immigration & Customs enforcement (ICE) informing me that our request to stay the removal of our client, Sam from Zambia, had been granted and that ICE agents had removed him from a plane bound to depart the U.S. at 10:30.  Like Dostoevsky, Sam was all set and ready to go.  Seat beat buckled.  Tray in upright and locked position and all luggage safely stowed.  And while the stakes were much higher for Dostoyevsky, it is not hyperbole to wonder how Sam would survive in Zambia, an extraordinarily poor country where he has not lived in twenty years and has no family.  However, ICE granted the stay at the last minute and Sam was removed from the airplane.

This is the second time I have been lucky enough to have the remarkable emotional experience of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat by having a person removed from an airplane bound to deliver them to an unknown fate in a country that has become foreign to them.  Years ago, over the Christmas holidays, I, and FOBR Nadeen Aljijakli, worked day and night to stop the removal of our client to Haiti.  They flew her out of Baltimore to Miami, where she was to board a plane to Port-au-Prince,a  charter full of deportees.  The Board of Immigration Appeals granted our stay while the plane was en route to Miami.  She was taken onto the plane in Miami when the ICE agents got the word of the stay.  They came onto the plane and pulled her off.  As she struggled to get her bags, the entire plane, full of people living through the tragedy of their own deportation to Haiti, cheered for the one lady who avoided their fate.  I wish I could have seen and heard that.

I knew that they were planning on removing Sam today.  We had been on it for two days.  He had a final removal order, but, as the victim of a serious crime, potentially qualified for a U visa, available to foreign nationals who have been the victim of a serious crime and were helpful in the investigation and/or prosecution of that offense.  A prerequisite for seeking a U visa is obtaining a signed certification from the law enforcement agency that investigated or prosecuted the crime.  Obtaining that certification is often a challenge as many agencies do not have established or easily ascertainable policies on signing off on certifications.  They take weeks or months.  However, due to the presence of some outstanding people in the Baltimore County Police Department, we got one turned around in an hour and sent it to ICE.  That was about 4:30 yesterday and it appears that the decisionmakers on the stay had gone for the day.

Friday morning is pancake morning in the Benach household.  By 7:30 AM, we had pancakes on the table and I was on the phone with ICE.  I knew Sam was either at or on the way to the airport.  At that point, the pancake breakfast turned into a war room.  My oldest Paloma, was writing down phone numbers as I barked them out from the phone.  Teddy, the youngest, kept me supplied with coffee.  And Alex, sensed opportunity and ate everyone’s pancakes.  Not only were the Benach children conscripted into helping Sam from Zambia, but I abused my colleagues in the immigration bar.  I love being a part of this community of lawyers who care about their clients and will help you at the drop of a hat.   So many people made this happen.  When I needed to find someone  in Baltimore County, Paula Xinis of the amazing Baltimore firm of Murphy, Falcon & Murphy got a partner there to make calls to people he knew on behalf of a young man he never met.  This morning, when I needed phone numbers and emails, FOBRs Sandra Grossman, Jay Marks and Michelle Mendez of Catholic Charities rode to my rescue.  Let me just say that this is not the first time that Sandra Grossman delivered for me in a huge way.  Jay helped me keep a sense of humor with his infectious laugh.  And, for Michelle, I will root for the Ravens this weekend in your honor.  Now, that is no biggie as they are playing the Patriots, but I will be loud for the Ravens

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Finally, the stay was filed yesterday only because BR’s own Liana Montecinos is charming and delightful and she convinced the ICE officials to take the application even after the official cashier had left for the day.

Sam’s fight is not won.  So much of immigration is living to fight another day.  But now, with the gift of time, we can do for Sam what he needs and give him a chance to stay.

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The Provisional Waiver and Removal Proceedings

17 Jan

 

Over the last few weeks we have answered dozens of questions about the provisional waiver.  One group of questions keeps appearing- questions about how people in removal proceedings or with a removal order can qualify for the provisional waiver.  Whereas, the initial rule announced by the Department of Homeland Security indicated that the provisional waiver would be unavailable to people in removal proceedings, the final rule is somewhat more forgiving.  The final rule states that an individual in removal proceedings can not seek a provisional waiver with the Citizenship & Immigration Service (CIS) unless proceedings have been administratively closed or terminated.

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As Julie Andrews sang, let’s start at the very beginning as it is a very good place to start.  Removal proceedings are initiated when the DHS issues a charging document known as a Notice to Appear (NTA) and lodges it with the Immigration Court.  Any of the three immigration agencies, Immigration & Customs Enforcement, Citizenship & Immigration Services and Customs & Border Protection has the authority to issue NTAs.  Usually, the time between DHS issuing an NTA and filing it with the court is close to simultaneous.  However, on occasion, the NTA is issued and not filed with the court for days, weeks, months or even years.  An individual is not “in removal proceedings” until an NTA has been filed with the court.  Until the NTA is filed with the court, DHS has exclusive authority to choose not to bring removal proceedings against an individual.  In cases where an NTA has been issued and not filed with the court, that individual is not in removal proceedings and should remain eligible for the provisional waiver.  Removal proceedings continue until the immigration judge grants relief and terminates the case or the person departs the U.S. either under an order of voluntary departure or an order of removal.  In cases where there is a final order of removal, but the individual has not been removed yet, even though there are no more proceedings before the court, that individual is still “in proceedings” and would be ineligible for the provisional waiver.

Once a person is in removal proceedings, the provisional waiver rule is clear that those proceedings must be administratively closed or terminated before that individual can seek the provisional waiver.  Termination of removal proceedings can happen in one of two ways.  First, proceedings are terminated where the immigration judge grants relief, allowing an individual to remain in the U.S. in some sort of legal status.  Second, and this is the rarer form of termination, ICE may elect to terminate proceedings because it has decided that seeking removal in a particular case is no longer in the interests of the government.  Although the DHS has exclusive authority to issue and to decide whether to file a Notice to Appear in immigration court,  once proceedings have been initiated, DHS becomes a party to litigation and only the immigration judge has the authority to terminate removal proceedings.

Administrative closure is a tool of convenience for immigration courts.  Administrative closure allows the court to take a case off an active docket and place it into “hibernation.”

clipart_sleepingbearBy administratively closing a case, the case remains pending before the immigration court, but it is taken off the active calendar.  When a case is pending before the court, it is on an active calendar and at the end of each hearing another hearing must be calendared.  When a case has been administratively closed, it is not on any calendar and no hearings are scheduled.  The case remains before the court, but the court is not acting on the case.  In order to get the case back on the active docket, one of the parties must file a “motion to recalendar” the case.  Cases can be administratively closed for months or years at a time.  Either party may request administrative closure and the immigration judge has authority to grant it.  Until recently, the law required the concurrence of both the foreign national and the government to allow for administrative closure.  However, last year, in Matter of Avetisyan, the Board of Immigration Appeals held that an immigration judge may grant administrative closure over the objection of one of the parties.  In other words, DHS can not unilaterally deny the foreign national’s  ability to obtain administrative closure.

People currently in removal proceedings who would otherwise qualify for the provisional waiver can seek both termination and administrative closure.  We expect that ICE, who represents the government in removal proceedings, will be fairly accommodating to requests to terminate or administratively close cases where the foreign national can present a prima facie case for eligibility for the provisional waiver.  In these cases, your lawyer ought to prepare a motion to terminate or administratively close demonstrating that you qualify for the provisional waiver and that the pending removal proceedings are the only impediment.  These individuals should be able to demonstrate that they are the spouse, parent or children of a U.S. citizen and that their only violation of law relates to entering illegally.  By presenting evidence to the government of qualification for the provisional waiver and readiness to file it, it seems that ICE would exercise its discretion to administratively close the case to allow the applicant to file the provisional waiver application.  Upon approval, termination seems appropriate.  If the case is not approved, it is reasonable to expect that ICE would seek to recalendar the case and proceed with removal proceedings.  Should the government refuse to join a motion for administrative closure, the immigration judge has the authority under Matter of Avetisyan to close the case nonetheless upon the motion of the foreign national.

People with old orders of removal who have not yet departed the United States would need to reopen removal proceedings so that removal proceedings can be administratively closed or terminated.  This is a heavy lift.  If the removal order is more than 90 days old, a foreign national will, generally, need the government to agree to reopen for the purpose of closing.  Makes sense, right?  However, there may be circumstances where the hardship is so clear and extreme and the facts are so compelling that the government agrees to this.  By asking the government to join a motion to reopen, an individual with a final order of removal, who may or may not be on the government’s radar screen for removal, makes herself vulnerable to enforcement of the removal order should the government prove unwilling to join in reopening.  While there are limited circumstances in which an immigration judge can reopen on his own motion, those instances are rare and should not be, generally, relied upon.

Finally, people who have been deported or departed the U.S. under an order of voluntary departure or removal are ineligible for the provisional waiver and must seek the waiver through the traditional means at the consulate in their home country.

The provisional waiver has the potential to help thousands of people in removal proceedings.  Many of them may be waiting for hearings on cancellation of removal which requires a much higher level of hardship than the provisional waiver’s standard of extreme hardship.  It is not really conceivable that anyone can navigate this thicket without experienced counsel.  Visit us at BenachRagland.com or check with your local bar or the American Immigration Lawyers Association to find qualified attorneys to assist you.

 

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Someone(s) at ICE Needs to Be Fired

11 Jan

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Those of us on the East Coast woke up this morning to the news that Maria Arreola and her son Heriberto Arreola were arrested in their home Thursday night by Immigration & Customs enforcement in Phoenix, Arizona.  Another day in immigration, where ICE enters people home’s homes and removes individuals who have done little more than entered into or remained in the country without permission.  Yep, this was a normal case except that Maria is Erika Andiola’s mother and Heriberto is her brother.  And Erika is one of the most, to paraphrase Junot Diaz, activistingest activists of activism on immigrant rights and reform and by the time ICE officials in Washington had their morning coffee, their inboxes were full of email, the phones full of messages and their press representatives scrambling to figure out what happened in Arizona.  Why is it always Arizona?

Well, it did not take long for the ICE brass to realize something was dreadfully wrong.  After all, the Director of ICE states that ICE has priorities and those priorities were securing the homeland, protecting the national security, keeping our communities secure, and maintain the integrity of the immigration system.   Memos have been written!  Trainings have been held!  Testimony has been given!  ICE is going to focus on the worst of the worst.  ICE is going to engage in smarter law enforcement and target those who threaten our national security and our public safety.  Fifty something women who entered illegally and never left and their teenage son are not considered priorities!

So, what happened in Phoenix?  Was this the action of local ICE agents who were just going about business as usual?  Was this the action of local ICE agents who had an axe to grind against Erika Andiola?  Did they even know that Maria was Erika’s mother?  If they knew, did they clear this with headquarters?  Did they consult the guidance on enforcement priorities before acting?

Evidence seems to point to another circumstance where ICE agents in a district far away from Washington went about their business without regard to the multiple expressions of policy from headquarters.   As readers of this page know, much of the ICE bureaucracy has been in open rebellion against the political leadership since the President took office and his ICE Director assumed control.  In addition, by mid morning, ICE had reversed itself.  An ICE spokeswoman stated: “One of two individuals detained by ICE in Phoenix, AZ has been released. The other individual will be released imminently. Although one individual had been previously removed from the country, an initial review of these cases revealed that certain factors outlined in ICE’s prosecutorial discretion policy appear to be present and merit an exercise of discretion. A fuller review of the cases is currently on-going. ICE exercises prosecutorial discretion on a case-by-case basis, considering the totality of the circumstances in an individual case.”  Maria was on a bus heading to Mexico when she learned of the stay of removal.  Looks like Phoenix ICE was trying to get her out as fast as possible before Washington could react.

I really hope that there was a lot of anger at ICE headquarters when they learned of the actions.  I hope that phones were slammed down and much screaming occurred.  I hope that people within ICE headquarters said “This is it!  This is the last straw.  Heads are going to roll!”  By now, it should be perfectly clear to the ICE political leadership that they are dealing with a rogue agency of bureaucrats who are in open contempt of the policy decisions of their bosses.  Moreover, the ICE bureaucrats do not have the courage to quit their positions and make a political stand.  They sabotage from the inside.  This is known as contempt and insubordination and it can no longer be tolerated.  ICE Director John Morton should demand the resignations of the Phoenix Field Office Director and anyone else who participated in this tragicomedy.  And if he can not do this, the President is the one who should be demanding Morton’s resignation.

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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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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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