The cold realities of immigration enforcement
The question has long ceased being whether or not, that under this administration, if the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE is turning this nation into an immigration police state — it already has, and we can take their word for it.
In an interview last week with the Chicago Tribune editorial board, Julie Myers, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for ICE, told reporters that tougher immigration enforcement will continue through the end of 2008.
Julie Myers, Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security for ICE .
(Source: ice.gov)
We only have to look at ICE's Fiscal Year 2009 budget factsheet to know their plans extend beyond this year.
Under the heading Key Strategic Issues in FY 2009:, it's printed:
ICE will focus on border security and interior enforcement of immigration laws, transforming the way ICE finds and removes criminal aliens, and its other critical law enforcement responsibilities.
The key phrases are "interior enforcement" and "transforming the way ICE finds and removes criminal aliens."
That same 2009 budget calls for more funds to support the addition of 1,000 new detention beds, over 200 special agents for investigations, and expansion of the 287 (g) program.
In fact, the 287 (g) program, which empowers local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws, is one of the more popular programs of the federal government.
The 287(g) program
So far, there are currently 55 active 287(g) programs in the country with 80 pending requests as of June 25, 2008.
Yet, while this program is gaining in popularity among some law enforcement, it's a program that lends itself to rampant abuse. Though the program specifically states that it is not designed to perform "random street operations," the fact remains that it is being reported, in those towns where this program is operating, that the most common method of how law enforcement officers find undocumented immigrants is by cruising along city streets and highways looking for people or cars most likely to fit the profile of either undocumented immigrants or vehicles common to the transportation of undocumented immigrants.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio
In the last few weeks, two stories have emerged about the repercussions of when local law officers enforce federal policy.
The first is an excellent news series by the East Valley Tribune of Phoenix, Arizona. The five-part series, titled Reasonable Doubt, chronicles Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and how, through the use of 287 (g), he's taken immigration enforcement into his own hands.
In one example in the article, the reporter is riding alongside one of the detectives assigned to the specialized unit created by the Sheriff dedicated to human smuggling. The detective is tailing a van. The journalist reported that the van was not breaking any speed limits and didn't have a broken tail light but that the detective was sure that undocumented immigrants were inside. He was tailing the van until he caught them doing something.
Finally, the detective flashed his lights for the van to stop and told the reporter the reason for stopping the van was "failure to signal." However, the writer reported that the van did not change lanes.
In another case, in Nashville, TN, a nine-month pregnant woman, Juana Villegas DeLaPaz was pulled over for "negligent driving." During the stop, it was found that she had been deported previously and so there was a charge against her for being back in the country. The officers took her into custody but ICE officials declined to keep her, but she had to serve her jail time for "negligent driving" and not having a driver's license. While she was in jail, she went into labor. The rest of the story begs to ask why didn't these officers use their common sense and write the woman a citation for not having a driver's license, since she did show them two other forms of ID and given how far along she was in her pregnancy?
Nashville mother Juana Villegas DeLaPaz
Stories like these are happening every day and even though 287(g) guidelines stipulate that ICE officials are supposed to be monitoring how these officers implement the program, it's obviously not being done and individual departments are being allowed to mete out their own kinds of immigration justice.
The crimmigation of undocumented immigrants
ICE can justify the deportation of people like Villegas DeLaPaz because she is, in the law's eyes, a criminal. A new tactic these days that ICE employs, and which immigration lawyers have dubbed "crimmigation," is charging undocumented immigrants who are caught with a misdemeanor, giving them jail time and a court appearance.
What has happened is that immigration misdemeanor cases now represent 58 percent of all new federal prosecutions as of April 2008. In essence, they outnumber drug and white-collar crimes.
One federal program that feeds into this "crimmigation" is the Criminal Alien Program or CAP. CAP identifies those undocumented immigrants who are incarcerated within federal, state and local facilities and starts deportation proceedings.
It's because of the CAP program that deportations are up 11 percent nationwide in this fiscal year. Yet, deportations are up 40 percent in the Pacific Northwest.
In the state of Washington, from June 2007-2008, 6,000 people have been added to the CAP program. In Oregon, 4500 people. All of this means that once these people finish serving their sentences they'll be deported.
Yet, the term "criminal" as ICE officials like to use is misleading since ICE doesn't break down the number of immigrants convicted of felonies from less-serious misdemeanors.
Riot police stand guard outside a Tacoma immigrant detention facility waiting to fend off weekly protesters.
ICE's intimidation tactics
Because of these deportations, families are being separated. We constantly hear stories of parents who are taken away and the children are left alone eventually being cared for or helped by either extended family members, friends or neighbors, or that nursing mothers are separated from their babies or that the parent left behind with the children when the other parent is deported is left trying to figure out how to pay for food and rent and, whereas before that family had been self-sufficient, they are now reduced to accepting handouts and receiving private aid.
On June 25, in Houston at the Action Rags, U.S.A. company, 200 ICE agents swept in and arrested 166 workers. Reports indicate that as many as 70 percent of those detained were women, 10 of whom were pregnant and most of whom were working to feed families.
However, the biggest tragedy with these deportations and which is increasingly being recorded as traumatic for the children who are present at the time of the apprehensions is the method ICE uses to take people.
For example, this week in Laurel, Maryland five immigration agents showed up before sunrise, forced their way into a home and arrested a mother and daughter.
When the husband, who is legally in the United States, asked to see some authorization for them to enter the home, the agents held a gun to his head and handcuffed him. Then then took away his wife and mother-in-law who are in detention and waiting deportation to El Salvador.
Time and time again, stories are surfacing about the rough treatment immigration agents inflict on families in search of undocumented immigrants.
In May, during raids in Northeast Texas in conjunction with the Pilgrim's Pride poultry plant, a 19-year-old worker at the plant was forced from her home still wearing her pajamas. She was a U.S. citizen. The way agents entered her home and took her is still so traumatizing for the girl that family members say whenever she remembers the incident she breaks down.
In fact, ICE's tactics have become so intimidating that there are reports of agents either parked nearby or driving by schools that are predominantly Hispanic.
Both children and parents become so afraid when reports of ICE are in the neighborhood that schools routinely report a drop in attendance during ICE presence in the neighborhoods or even just rumors of it.
An uncertain future for the children left behind
Part of this fear in families is fueled by different scenarios that can happen to the children when parents are apprehended: Some children are permanently separated from their parents, some are taken to ICE detention facilities and others are placed in Child Protective Services if their parents are deported and remain in foster care, essentially classified orphans though their parents are living.
To date, the biggest immigration raid has been in Postville, Iowa. Recently, a federal interpreter who translated for those detained broke his silence on how he saw the government railroad and intimidate these people, mostly illiterate Guatemalans, into pleading guilty to instances where they were innocent.
The raid has devastated the town and left many families not just broken but emotionally scarred to the point that counseling is needed for the more than 500 children and help for the parent left behind when the breadwinner of the family was taken away.
On July 27, a massive rally will be held in Postville to show support to the families and focus a spotlight on the problematic consequences of an enforcement-only approach.
Detention — The fastest growing form of incarceration and breeding ground for abuse
As a result of the increase in worksite raids, more detention facilities are now being used by ICE officials. In fact, immigrant detention has become the fastest-growing form of incarceration in the U.S.
With the Department of Homeland Security policy being that detainees can have little contact with family members during detention, too often, detainees are transported to detention centers far from the families who either don't know where the facilities are located or don't have a way to get there.
Thanks to the Detention Watch Network, an interactive map is online showing all the detention facilities ICE uses. While ICE's web page lists 22 detention facilities, the Detention Watch Network has identified over 350 detention centers, private prisons, and local jail facilities that ICE uses to detain immigrants.
Until recently, when ICE was forced to address the issue of providing poor health care to detained immigrants, The Washington Post had found that "83 detainees had died since ICE was created five years ago and that many more sick and mentally ill people have been denied the treatment to which they are entitled. The Post found medical staff shortages, treatment delays, sloppy record-keeping, poor administrative practices and cover-ups by employees aware of the poor care."
Also, in these overcrowded detention facilities, there are reports of other kinds of abuses too. In fact, this week, a 65-page report titled Voices from Detention, released by Seattle University School of Law and OneAmerica details the appalling conditions at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington.
According to the report, detainees were routinely subjected to overzealous strip searches, were underfed and medical treatment was delayed. ICE responded to the report by calling it a "work of fiction" but university scholars associated with the report said that the "alleged conditions violate international human rights."
It's not the first time that ICE has been accused of providing sub-par care to immigrant detainees. At the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center, ICE was forced to respond to a similar report condemning the way they treated women and children housed at the unit.
Until they were pressured to amend their policies, ICE subjected the women and children to a prison-like environment — from wearing orange jumpsuits to guards intimidating the children saying that if they did not behave they would not see their mothers.
In the report, Locking up Family Values: The Detention of Immigrant Families, the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children outlined a long list of abuses that deprived the children of consistent schooling, recreation and mealtimes, among other things. Since that report, ICE has since corrected the worst of the offenses but the fact remains that women and children are still being incarcerated at these detention centers and will continue to be.
In June, the federal government set a deadline for accepting bids to build up to three new family detention centers. The centers would house 600 men, women and children.
At other detention centers, other grievous abuses have come to light. In May, a San Antonio television reporter uncovered rampant sexual abuse of female immigrants at a detention center in Pearsall, TX. A lot of the women detained at this facility were young girls who were too afraid to reject the advances of the guards.
One girl even got pregnant. The guard accused of her rape was fired by ICE but no legal action has been taken against him.
As one former detainee told the reporter, "Some of the guards actually tried to force themselves on the girls and that they've told them that if they ever said anything about it, that they have the power with ICE to deport them."
Also, one ICE officer who alerted his superiors about the sexual abuse, admitted to the reporter that "if ICE can keep it under wraps, they will keep it under wraps."
Public outrage forces changes
These types of abuses underscore the fact that there must be alternative forms of detention that can be used rather than incarcerating women and children and subjecting them to this kind of treatment and abuse.
However, it's not until there is more public pressure and media vigilance on these government entities to correct these problems that positive changes will happen and send a message to Washington that an agenda to separate families, entrap unsuspecting motorists, intimidate whole communities, and subject a defenseless, and otherwise law-abiding people, to a system that refuses to recognize their basic human rights is not how America wants to define itself.
