{"id":537902,"date":"2010-04-21T09:09:36","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T13:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.southernstudies.org,2010:\/\/5.12232"},"modified":"2010-04-21T09:30:48","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T13:30:48","slug":"ice-numbers-belie-obama-promise-on-immigration-enforcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/537902","title":{"rendered":"ICE numbers belie Obama promise on immigration enforcement"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ICEAgents_feat.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>By Marcelo Ballv\u00e9, New America Media<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

The Obama administration had long promised to shift the focus of
\nimmigration enforcement from workers to employers. <\/p>\n

In real terms, that means less of the high-profile raids like those at
\nelectronics and meatpacking plants in Postville, Iowa and Laurel, Miss.
\nthat characterized the last years of the Bush administration. Those led
\nto the arrests of hundreds of immigrant workers, but only a trickle of
\nemployer prosecutions. <\/p>\n

Instead, as John Morton, assistant secretary of Homeland Security under
\nPresident Obama, promised in a rare public speech earlier this year at
\nthe Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., his agency would “focus on the employer” and pursue “aggressive criminal and civil
\nenforcement against (employers) who knowingly violate the law.” <\/p>\n

“But it hasn’t been done,” said Crystal Williams, executive director of
\nthe American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). <\/p>\n

Although Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) worksite arrests
\nappear to be trending down, worksite raids continue. I-9 or Employment
\nEligibility Verification audits designed to spot unauthorized workforces
\n have leapt in number. Meanwhile, ICE’s own statistics — which the
\nagency shared with New America Media — show that the agency’s efforts to
\n investigate employers have yet to yield an increase in prosecutions. <\/p>\n

In fact, the opposite happened — ICE brought less charges against
\nemployers in 2009 than it had the previous year. <\/p>\n

In the 2008 fiscal year, still under President Bush, ICE brought
\ncriminal charges against 135 business managers, supervisors and owners
\nas part of immigration investigations. <\/p>\n

In the next fiscal year — which ended in September 2009 after President
\nObama’s first eight months in office — ICE brought criminal charges
\nagainst 114 employers, a 16 percent decrease. <\/p>\n

Clearly, “white-collar” cases against employers who profit from the
\nbroken immigration system are harder to prove than run-of-the-mill
\nimmigration arrests. <\/p>\n

But the number of employer cases appears as a “miniscule proportion”
\nwhen set alongside the total prosecutions initiated by ICE, said
\nWilliams of AILA. <\/p>\n

Taken together, the total number of ICE cases referred to the federal
\ncourts ballooned to 20,411 in fiscal year 2009 — a 12 percent increase
\nover the prior year — according to data from the Transactional Records
\nClearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. <\/p>\n

These prosecutions take in everything from counterfeit toothpaste to
\ndrug trafficking, but the bulk of the cases were relatively minor
\nimmigration charges. Just over half (10,346), according to TRAC, were
\nfor entry or re-entry of undocumented immigrants. <\/p>\n

The large number of lower-level immigration prosecutions has immigrant
\nadvocates worried that the agency’s focus is still on quantity rather
\nthan quality. <\/p>\n

Of course, new priorities take a while to trickle through a
\nlaw-enforcement agency as large as ICE. The agency has more than 7,000
\nagents and is the federal government’s second-largest investigative
\nforce after the FBI. <\/p>\n

“They are trying to do what they say they’re trying to do,” said Donald
\nM. Kerwin, Jr., vice president for programs at the Migration Policy
\nInstitute. “Give them a couple of years to turn the ship around.” <\/p>\n

It may be well be that this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2009, proves
\n a turning point for worksite enforcement. <\/p>\n

In December 2009 ICE prosecuted 6 percent fewer total cases than in the
\nsame month the prior year, a drop driven mainly by a decline in charges
\nfor illegal entry, a charge for which those convicted are rarely sent to
\n prison, according to TRAC. <\/p>\n

Kerwin of the Migration Policy Institute sees this decline in
\nprosecutions as a possible sign the agency is re-ordering its priorities
\n to focus on serious and flagrant violators of immigration laws such as
\nexploitative employers. <\/p>\n

And so far this fiscal year, ICE has initiated 1,687 investigations
\nagainst employers, more than the entire previous year combined, said
\nHarold Ort, ICE spokesman in Newark. <\/p>\n

These cases include an ongoing investigation in the Baltimore area that
\nlast month led to raids on two Maryland restaurants, as well as several
\nhomes and businesses. <\/p>\n

The sweep was meant “to ensure that employers are held accountable for
\nmaintaining a legal workforce,” William Winter, ICE special agent in
\ncharge of Baltimore, said in a press release issued after the raid. <\/p>\n

Yet no employers were charged in connection with the Maryland raids. The
\n only arrests were non-criminal administrative detentions of 29
\nimmigrants in the country unlawfully. <\/p>\n

The absence of immediate charges against business owners or managers is
\nnot unusual. The lag-time between raids and charges against employers
\ncan be years. <\/p>\n

But when raids are not quickly followed by high-level charges or
\nindictments, it reinforces the perception that it’s still employees and
\nnot their bosses who are bearing the brunt of enforcement. They are the
\nones being scooped up by ICE and fired en masse. <\/p>\n

“This is not an acceptable way to treat members of our community,” said
\nGustavo Torres, executive director of the CASA de Maryland immigrant
\nrights group, after the Baltimore-area raids. <\/p>\n

ICE has no choice but to enforce the law when encountering undocumented
\nimmigrants in the course of employer-targeted investigations, said
\nagency spokesman Ort. <\/p>\n

Ort also defended the audits of I-9 forms as a powerful tool in
\ndetecting unscrupulous employers, immigration-related fraud, and
\nfineable employment offenses. <\/p>\n

“We consider … employee records as important as tax or income records,”
\nhe said. <\/p>\n

As a federal agency in charge of the politically sensitive task of
\nimmigration enforcement, ICE must endure criticism from both sides of
\nthe immigration debate. <\/p>\n

On the one hand, immigrant advocates castigate the agency as a callous
\nenforcer that terrorizes immigrant communities through raids such as
\nlast week’s sweep of Arizona shuttle van installations or I-9 audits
\n(which advocates call “paper raids”). <\/p>\n

On the other hand, activists and elected officials with more
\nuncompromising law-and-order views on immigration prod the agency to be
\nmore aggressive and make as many arrests as possible. <\/p>\n

On March 18 — just a week after the raids in nearby Maryland — ICE
\nassistant secretary John Morton testified on Capitol Hill before the
\nHouse Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee about his agency’s
\nbudget request of $5.5 billion for the 2011 fiscal year. <\/p>\n

Morton received a tongue-lashing from a Kentucky legislator. <\/p>\n

Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican, pointed out that while I-9 audits of
\nbusinesses had increased by 187 percent to more than 1,100 in fiscal
\nyear 2009, at the same time there had been a drop in worksite arrests of
\n undocumented immigrants. <\/p>\n

“When I look at the shift in ICE’s focus over the last year, I’m deeply
\nconcerned,” said Rogers, according to a transcript of the hearing. “It
\nappears as though immigration enforcement is being shelved and the
\nadministration is attempting to enact some sort of selective amnesty
\nunder the cover of prioritization.” <\/p>\n

For Frank Sharry, executive director of immigrant advocacy group
\nAmerica’s Voice, only comprehensive immigration reform that modernizes
\nthe system as a whole will free up immigration enforcement to balance
\npriorities and focus on illegal hiring and unfair labor practices. <\/p>\n

In the current climate, federal immigration authorities certainly do
\nfeel pressure to deliver politically expedient statistics. <\/p>\n

This pressure was put on public view by the Washington Post’s March 27
\npublication of internal memos in which a top ICE official discussed
\ndeportation quotas. In a written statement, Assistant Secretary Morton
\nsaid most of the memo obtained by the newspaper did not reflect ICE
\npolicy, and added, “We definitively do not set quotas.” <\/p>\n

Still, Morton himself was not above promising improved numbers as he was
\n grilled on the 2010 drop in worksite enforcement arrests during the
\nMarch 18 appropriations hearing. <\/p>\n

“I am very focused on getting that up,” Morton replied. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Marcelo Ballv\u00e9, New America Media The Obama administration had long promised to shift the focus of immigration enforcement from workers to employers. In real terms, that means less of the high-profile raids like those at electronics and meatpacking plants in Postville, Iowa and Laurel, Miss. that characterized the last years of the Bush administration. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4086,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-537902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}