ICE transitioned from Obama to Trump with record high daily detention population

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency continues to ramp up hardline immigration policing practices, government-issued statistics about the number of detainees indicate. In the transition year that began under President Obama and ended under President Trump, ICE surpassed previous highs in its immigration detention network. In fiscal year 2017—running from October 1, 2016 to September 30, 2017—ICE detained, on average, 38,106 people every day. Called the “average daily population” in official reports, the FY 2017 figure is an increase of approximately 4,000 from the previous year [...]

ICE detention population closed Obama era at record daily high

By at least one important measure, the immigration detention system run by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency closed the Obama era holding more people than ever before. During the 2016 fiscal year—the period from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016—ICE detained, on average, 34,376 people per day. See DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2018, Congressional Justification ICE-14. According to ICE, it paid, on average, $128.88 per bed per day. Id. Compared to the rest of Obama’s tenure, the average daily population is a slight uptick from FY [...]

Immigration budget bill summary

Congressional leaders appear to have worked out a budget plan with President Trump that is expected to get through both chambers in the coming days. The budget bill, H.R. 1625, titled the “Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018,” helps Trump move forward with his border wall plans, but also imposes limitations on DHS’s immigration policing practices. The bill pays for federal government activities through September 30, 2018. Below is a quick summary of key provisions affecting DHS and the Justice Department’s immigration operations. DHS’s two main immigration law enforcement agencies, CBP [...]

Supreme Court to hear another immigration imprisonment case

On the heels of its decision allowing prolonged confinement in an ICE detention center to continue, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear arguments in another case about the federal government’s practice or locking up migrants. Every day, the Department of Homeland Security detains roughly 34,000 individuals. At a cost of at least $126 per day per person, ICE spends more than $4 million daily to incarcerate. In Nielsen v. Preap, No. 14-16326, the Court will decide whether ICE is required to detain migrants who have served their jail or prison time for a laundry list of crimes and have [...]

Jennings v. Rodriguez highlights need for detention time limits

Justine N. Stefanelli The US Supreme Court’s decision in Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U.S. ___ (2018) (slip opinion), denying bail hearings to thousands of detainees is a serious blow to the rule of law. Detaining categories of people without regard to their individual circumstances is an arbitrary interference with the right to liberty and, at the very least, should be accompanied by procedural safeguards. The most obvious of these is a temporal limit on immigration detention. However, US immigration law provides no maximum. The closest the law has come is the setting of a presumptively [...]

US prison population drops a bit in 2016, including for immigration crimes

The number of people locked up in the United States continued a recent trend of modest decreases in 2016. Along with a one percent decline to the total number of people in a state or federal prison, the nation’s population of immigration prisoners also dropped, data released by the federal government this week reveal. People sentenced to federal prison for at least one year dropped 1.4 percent to 1,505,397 people, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported. Of those, 189,192 were in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons due to conviction for a federal offense. Approximately twenty-one [...]

Judges can’t deny bail because ICE threatens removal

Focusing its sights squarely on criminal law’s intersection with immigration law, a federal appellate court concluded that judges can’t deny bail to migrant defendants simply because ICE threatens to deport them. The court’s opinion, in a case involving an illegal reentry prosecution, is an important reminder of the presumption of liberty in United States criminal law—and an equally stark example of ICE’s persistent efforts to pierce holes in that presumption. Mario Ailon-Ailon, a resident of Dodge City, Kansas for seven years, was arrested by ICE and handed over to the U.S. Marshals [...]

Detention and removal numbers down in FY 17

The number of people detained and removed by DHS during the 2017 fiscal year dropped when compared to 2016, the last full fiscal year under President Obama. Government data released Tuesday show that DHS detained 323,591 people and removed 226,119 people in FY 2017, most of which elapsed under President Trump’s watch. ICE’s detention network famously reached a massive scale under President Obama. Tuesday’s release indicates that ICE held about 30,000 fewer people over the course of 2017. Described as an “initial book-in,” ICE took into its custody 352,882 people in FY 2016 and 307,342 [...]