President Obama released the final budget request he will make to Congress earlier this month and the pitch for DHS is peppered with costly security measures that fall in line with the department’s existing operations centered on security concerns. At almost $41 billion, the DHS budget request covers everything from FEMA operations to the nation’s principal immigration law enforcement bodies, ICE and CBP. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Security, Budget-in-Brief: Fiscal Year 2017, at 1 (2016). Combined, the budgets for ICE and CBP comprise almost one-third (30.3 percent) of DHS’ total budget, including [...]
Will PEP lead to less detention than Secure Communities? Not likely
By Patricia M. Corrales Secure Communities, Priority Enforcement Program, Potato, Potatoe...What’s the difference? The shortest answer is “none.” The controversial Secure Communities program together with ICE’s 287(g) program, established under the Bush Administration and directly administered by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, came to an end under Obama’s executive action initiative on immigration announced on November 21, 2014. In its place, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh C. Johnson announced the Department of Homeland Security’s (“DHS”) new Priority Enforcement Program [...]
PEP vs. Secure Communities
Last November, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson announced the end of the Secure Communities program. Beloved by the Obama Administration, Secure Communities (often described simply as S-Comm) came under heavy criticism by advocates, state and local lawmakers, and police officials. Whatever victory advocates could celebrate was short lived. In the same memo in which Johnson announced S-Comm’s demise, he added that DHS would replace it with a new initiative called the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). Since then advocates and scholars have been trying to figure out how PEP differs [...]