ICE arrests 60,000 in Trump’s first five months

Under President Trump’s watch, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has kept busy arresting tens of thousands of migrants, newly obtained data reveal. From January 20, the date of Trump’s inauguration, and June 7, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division took into its custody 58,954 people. Of those, 15,594, or twenty-six percent of the total, had not been convicted of any crime. Almost three-quarters of ERO’s arrestees—43,360 individuals—had been convicted of some crime, but the offenses varied tremendously. The most common offenses involved vehicular traffic [...]

When a criminal alien isn’t

In conversations about immigration law reform, migrants with criminal records are something of a bogeyman. Like President Obama before him, President Trump claims that his administration’s immigration law-enforcement priorities target so-called criminal aliens. Even advocates frequently turn their backs on migrants who have run up against the criminal justice system. In New York City and Los Angeles, for example, elected officials have insisted that people convicted of certain crimes not benefit from public money intended to help migrants avoid immigration detention and deportation. In Denver, [...]

Massachusetts top court deals detainers another blow

In another loss for federal immigration officials, the highest court in Massachusetts decided yesterday that it is illegal under state law to hold someone on an immigration detainer. Lunn v. Commonwealth, No. SJC-12276, slip op. (Mass. July 24, 2017). This case involved a man who was held in a courthouse holding cell after the judge overseeing a criminal prosecution against him dismissed the case. [Disclosure: I was one of many immigration law scholars to sign a brief authored by my colleague Christopher Lasch submitted on behalf of Mr. Lunn.] The state’s Supreme Judicial Court easily [...]

Crimmigration defense counsel

The boundary between criminal law and immigration law has been blurring for decades. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, for example, formed a core part of the early war on drugs, as its title suggests. It also introduced the aggravated felony into immigration law, altering the lives of hundreds of thousands of migrants in the three decades that followed. Two years later, the Immigration Act of 1990 revamped immigration law. Yet when he signed it, President Bush declared it to be a central component of his administration’s attempt to curtail illicit drug activity. But it wasn’t until 2006 that [...]

Criminalizing unlawful presence

It’s been more than a decade since the massive immigrants’ rights marches of 2006, but the images remain palpable. Millions of immigrants and their allies took to the streets in the country’s major urban centers and small towns alike. Had it been enacted, Representative James Sensenbrenner’s infamous bill, H.R. 4437, would have criminalized presence in the United States in violation of immigration law. Today, the House Judiciary Committee takes up a bill that revives Sensenbrenner’s failed attempt. The Michael Davis, Jr. and Danny Oliver in Honor of State and Local Law Enforcement Act, H.R. [...]

Systemic indifference in ICE detention leads to unnecessary deaths

In a prison population of roughly 400,000, someone is bound to die. But it doesn’t have to happen because of sheer indifference as a report released today found sometimes occurs in ICE detention. Advocacy groups Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC) teamed up to take an in-depth look of medical records for eighteen deaths in ICE custody. The organizations tasked two independent experts with extensive experience in inmate medical care delivery with reviewing records of deaths from 2012 to 2015. Based on those analyses plus interviews [...]

Congress finds more money for immigration imprisonment

The budget bill making its way through Congress and expected to receive the president’s signature offers plenty of money for immigration imprisonment. If enacted, the bill would fund federal government operations through September 30, 2017. The nation’s immigration imprisonment regime is delegated among various agencies. Some agencies hold migrants under civil law authority and others use criminal confinement powers. All hold people who are not United States citizens because of the federal government’s claims that they violated some provision of immigration law. The Immigration and [...]

ICE deaths

The Trump Administration is busy expanding the nation’s immigration prison archipelago. An internal DHS document reports that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has already boosted its capacity by 1,100 beds available nightly. It is has identified an additional 21,000 beds that it could potentially tap. As I wrote last week, the Detention Watch Network has confirmed that ICE has secured agreements for over 2,000 beds in recent months and is currently negotiating for access to an additional 1,500 beds. Even before this increase, ICE already operated an enormous prison estate. For [...]