Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and policy

Immigration and Customs Enforcement

THE LONG ARM of the LAW

Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE is an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, which protects national security and promotes public safety (ICE 2008). It targets criminal networks and terrorist organizations hounding the immigration system and other criminal elements in the borders, federal facilities and other law violators elsewhere. Its mission is to make and keep America safer and more secure (ICE).

The organization performs this full range of responsibilities through five operational divisions (ICE, 2008). These are the Offices of Detention and Removal Operations, Investigations, Federal Protective Service, Intelligence and International Affairs. Fiscal Year 2007 was particularly outstanding in the implementation of its responsibilities. Its comprehensive interior enforcement strategy on handling illegal, criminal and fugitive aliens, it removed a record-high 276,912 of these illegal aliens, including voluntary deportees. Its DEPORT center identified 11,292 documents in incarcerated criminal aliens in federal prisons nationwide so they could be released upon completion of their sentence. It also launched six new Document and Benefit Fraud Task Forces in cities nationwide. These teams initiated 1,301 investigations, which led to a record-high 1,531 arrests and 1,178 convictions. And from fiscal years 2005-2007, ICE increased the number of Fugitive Operations Teams to four. These teams are charged with identifying, locating and arresting fugitive aliens. They decongested the backlog of fugitive cases of more than 100,000 cases, a first in its history. Moreover, ICE's Fugitive Operations Support Center processed and resolved more than 73,000 open fugitive cases, enabling IC to target fugitives still at-large (ICE).

Through its job magnet at the worksite, which attracts illegal aliens seeking jobs in the U.S., ICE secured fines and judgments amounting to more than $30 million through 863 criminal arrests and 4,077 administrative arrests. ICE investigators also imposed compliance to immigration laws upon student and exchange visitors and other non-immigrant visitors. As a result, 1,366 high-risk arrests were made. ICE also conducted 3,069 investigations into criminal and terrorist organizations. The investigations also dismantled the funding schemes of these organizations. ICE Cornerstone teams, on the other hand, made more than 1,250 outreach presentations to more than 20,500 industry groups to establish working partnerships with them against criminal organizations. In the conduct of its drug smuggling responsibility, ICE seized 241,867 pounds of cocaine; 4,331 pounds of heroin; 2,731 pounds of methamphetamine; and 1.3 million pounds of marijuana. In connection with the seizures, it made 8,920 arrests; 4,949 indictments; 5,539 convictions. In intercepting illegal exports of weapons, military equipment and technology, ICE conducted 188 arrests and secured 127 convictions in these national initiatives. ICE Trade Transparency Units provided training on cash smuggling schemes in money laundering, bulk cash smuggling and cross-border trade fraud to more than 700 international partners (ICE).

ICE made 235 arrests and secured 117 convictions in intellectual property fraud cases (ICE, 2008). It conducted 51 cultural property investigations and 15 confiscations of high-value items. Investigations of unlicensed money service businesses led to 39 arrests, 30 convictions, and confiscations worth more than $7.9 million. Human trafficking investigations resulted in 164 arrests and 91 convictions. It arrested 3,302 gang members for violence in cities nationwide. Its Operation Predator arrested 10,000 sexual predators of children in June of the fiscal year. It made 3,000 citations and arrests and 760,000 interceptions of approximately 760,000 prohibited items from federal facilities. Its Forensic Document Laboratory trained 3,810 federal, state and local officials on document analysis techniques. It also conducted 4,382 analyses. An increase in the number of Border Enforcement Security Task Forces led to 526 criminal arrests and 1,093 administrative arrests and seizures worth $2.5 million in cash. ICE lawyers participated in 365,851 cases in immigration courts. Of this number, 323,845 were removal cases. And ICE's workforce increased by more than 10%, improved its information technology systems, training and development, contracting and acquisitions. ICE scored highly in all its key areas of responsibility, as evidenced by these achievements in the given fiscal year (ICE).

Duties

to reduce illegal migration

ICE's interior enforcement strategy complements the Department of Homeland Security's border security goals (ICE, 2006). It targets employers of illegal aliens and immigration violators within the country. It endeavors to reverse illegal employment and illegal immigration through three simultaneous courses of action. These are to identify and remove the violators from the country; build worksite programs to deter illegal employment; and eliminate criminal setups in the country and abroad, which support illegal immigration. These setups include human smuggling and trafficking organizations and document or benefit fraud organizations (ICE).

to identify, process and remove criminal aliens

Through its Criminal Alien Program, ICE targets illegal aliens with criminal records who pose a threat to public safety (ICE, 2008). The Program does this by identifying, processing, and removing these criminal aliens who are imprisoned in federal, state and local jails throughout the country. A final order of removal is required before they are returned to the general public when they complete their sentence. U.S. Bureau of Prisons statistics showed that approximately 27% of inmates are non-U.S. citizens. The Detention Enforcement and Processing Offenders by Remote Technology or DEPORT processes these inmates through the Criminal Alien Program (ICE).

to combat human smuggling, trafficking and terrorism travel

ICE performs this function through the Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center or HSTC (ICE, 2008). The Center does so by coordinating with foreign governments for the effective implementation of the function. These foreign governments work through their experts on policy, law enforcement, intelligence and diplomatic relations. The Center has five main functional areas. These are the facilitation of all-source information, preparation of strategic assessments, identifying interagency coordination and action, coordinating select initiatives and providing other support, and coordinating and communicating with foreign governments on this endeavor (ICE).

to secure America's borders and reduce illegal migration

ICE struggles to fulfill this responsibility through expanded fugitive operations and criminal alien programs (ICE, 2008). It uses an expedited removal process to quickly eliminate aliens "other than Mexican." Expedited removal reduces detention time while the aliens await deportation from 30 to 15 days. Since its implementation in September 2005, this Program has turned over almost 4,000 non-Mexican aliens for removal by ICE. From this number, approximately 3,000 have been deported by ICE (ICE).

to secure the border

The Secure Border Initiative or SBI was established by the Department to handle the national security threat of illegal immigrants crosses the borders to enter the U.S. (ICE, 2008). The consistent aim is to secure the border and reduce illegal migration. SBI also handles document fraud. Records show that the ICE has been accomplishing these goals through the expanded fugitive operations and criminal alien program and the expedited removal process (ICE).

Following the Law

Immigration enforcement is often misunderstood. When local police arrest some persons in routine traffic stops and these are illegal aliens, the police can have them detained (Romboy, 2005). Its agents have their hands full day-to-day, cracking down illegal immigrants, especially those with criminal intent. At the same time, they also unrelentingly go after those who are ordered by the courts to leave but have not obeyed the court order. They are caught between arresting the wrong person and not pursuing someone who should be arrested. They say they are doing their job in making arrests. But those on the other side claim these agents can go too far, especially when families are involved (Romboy).

Rise in Arrests Explained

The Department of Homeland Security statistics showed that non-worksite arrests increased by 75% from the previous year's level (Wides-Munoz, 2007). ICE said that standing policy on arrests, not random sweeps, accounted for this increase. More than two-thirds of those detained had deportation orders. ICE says it runs after mainly fugitives in the U.S. with deportation orders. But during their search, they may also detain those suspected of illegal stay in the country through "collateral arrests." Since its creation in 2003, the arrests it has made outpaced the department's budget and resources. Its officials insisted that the detentions were not in the least political. In the first three months of 2006, it made 3,222 arrests nationwide, compared to 2,174 in 2005. The arrests leaped to 4,516 by the middle of 2006 or twice the 2005 figure. These excluded worksite arrests, which went up more than thrice from 2005-2006 from 1,292-4,383. Some sectors believed that the Bush administration pushed for the arrests to prove its stance with Congress on whether to allow illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship. The administration wanted to show that they could control immigration / One response to this fervent tide of arrests was a nationwide demonstration of protest by more than a million people in late March 2006. More than half came from Los Angeles alone. Miami teems with immigrants who work in South Florida farms. Many of them kept their children from school to join or sympathize with the protest. Even women with high-risk pregnancies did not go to the clinic (Wides-Munoz).

Hispanics are the Main Target

In reaction to perceived federal inaction on border policies, states and localities set up their own protective measures against undocumented immigrants (Galuzska, 2008). These measures included laws, which denied services to undocumented residents, alerted police to assume ICE functions, penalized for employers who hired the aliens, and made English the official language. In Arizona, ordinary citizens were encouraged to report businesses, which hired suspicious foreign-looking persons. Hispanics were the major targets of this xenophobia because they were believed to be the major law violators. Statistics showed that there were approximately 12 million undocumented immigrants, most of them Latinos or Hispanics, in the U.S. The national bias against them showed up in studies, which considered only them in determining how much they were costing the country in services. But did they really drain the economy? A spokesman for the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission did not think so. A 2004 study on "foreign-born" citizens of Virginia alone concluded that Asians outnumbered Hispanics. The Commission found that these "foreign-born" citizens were not a huge drain on services. Rather, they contributed a lot to the State economy (Galuszka).

This extensive bias shown immigrants seemed out of pace with reality in the rest of the world (Galuszka, 2008). School links with foreign countries have been growing and increasing. Free trade agreements have been crossing national borders. Foreigners keep coming in to buy stocks in American companies. With these stark realities in globalization, such behavior and stigma ascribed to immigrants, especially those with dark akin, seemed out of place. In those places where the bias is high and immense, the local media do their part in repeating them and indoctrinating the public against aliens. Even though no convincing records support the bias, the media make it real and create the crisis (Galuszka).

A Total Failure

The Operation Scheduled Departure caused the ICE and its 16,000 employees $5 billion annual budget and a lot of face in admitting a failed responsibility (Navarrette Jr., 2008). It failed to attract more than 8 out of the targeted 457,000 illegal immigrants without criminal record in the 5 target cities to surrender to federal authorities for voluntary deportation. The failure owed in part because it targeted "fugitive aliens," people who appeared before the immigration judge and order to leave but had not complied. The other reason was the illusory image projected by the ICE that its agents roam the countryside and seek out violators. Many suspect not too many homes are really searched. At a rate of 30,000 fugitive alien arrests a year, it would take 400 years to exhaust the country of 12 million illegal immigrants in the country. Those who report about the presence of illegal immigrants mostly have to wait for them to pick these immigrants up yet the enforcers never appear the true reason behind the failure seemed more like the need for an overhaul of image after the September 11 fiasco (Navarrette, Jr.).