A recent report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General provides much needed insight into the inner workings of ICE’s alternatives to detention (ATDs). U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Alternatives to Detention (Revised) (Feb. 4, 2015). At the same time, the report hints at a major risk inherent in ATD expansions: that throwing more people into some form of government supervision will eventually mean more people in detention. Until November 2014, the government ran a single ATD program, called [...]
Lawsuit reveals DACA data treasure trove
Litigation often reveals fascinating information tough to obtain otherwise and the states’ lawsuit against the federal government’s use of its executive powers to provide temporary lawful status to many migrants already in the United States is proving to be no exception (for more on that lawsuit see my article here). A document that the United States filed in federal court last week provides a much-needed glimpse into DACA’s internal operations. In a formal declaration, Donald W. Neufeld, the associate director for service center operations at USCIS, gives a detailed accounting of the [...]
Immigration took center stage among federal criminal cases during FY 2011-12
A new report indicates that federal law enforcement agents, prosecutors, and courts are significantly involved in regulating immigration law through the criminal process. Mark Motivans, Federal Justice Statistics, 2011-2012 (Jan. 2015). By overall historical standards, this is quite anomalous, but it is in line with the trend we’ve seen in recent years (see my analysis of parallel data for fiscal year 2010). Law enforcement investigations and arrests for alleged immigration law violations are at eye-catching rates, with the bulk of those arrested individuals soon finding themselves in federal [...]
Naturalizing Immigration Imprisonment
Every day, roughly 33,000 people spend the night imprisoned while waiting to learn whether they will be allowed to remain in the United States. Thousands more are confined on charges of having committed an immigration crime. Others are behind bars because they were already convicted. The substantive law that applies to people in each of these categories differs: civil law governed by the Immigration and Naturalization Act for those in removal proceedings, and criminal law governed by the federal penal code (and, to a smaller degree, its state counterparts). That is largely where the [...]
Immigration detention population drops in FY ‘13, while removals increase to all-time high
The Department of Homeland Security detained a remarkably large number of migrants in fiscal year 2013—440,557—but not as many as the record high reached the previous year. DHS, Immigration Enforcement Actions: 2013 Annual Report 6 (September 2014). Removals, meanwhile, increased to what the department calls an all-time high of 438,421. Id. People convicted of nothing more serious than an immigration offense continue to face removal in increasing numbers. The number of migrants detained over the course of FY 2013 was 36,966 fewer than the 477,523 detained the previous year. To contextualize [...]
Latina/o immigrant involvement in violent crime
Despite the oft-repeated claims that immigrants commit more crime than the native-born, a developing body of criminological research indicates that the opposite is true: immigrants tend to commit less crime than the native-born. A couple of articles that I recently came across bolster this conclusion. In Incorporating Ethnic-Specific Measures of Immigration in the Study of Lethal Violence, Jacob I. Stowell and Ramiro Martinez, Jr. examine homicide data in Miami, a city with large Latina/o populations. 13 Homicide Studies 315 (2009). They conclude that “at least in the city of Miami, Latino [...]
Immigration’s role in federal criminal docket continues to grow
A report issued by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that immigration crime continued to take up more time on the federal criminal docket during the 2010 fiscal year. Mark Motivans, Federal Justice Statistics, 2010 (Dec. 2013). Law enforcement actions targeting immigration crimes have driven up arrests and investigations of federal crimes, while also affecting the daily work of federal criminal courts. Immigration crime was the most common category of federal crime for which suspects were arrested and booked by the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), the federal [...]
ICE: 41% of noncitizens removed in FY 13 had no criminal history; 20% fell into most serious crime category
Data that ICE recently released about its immigration enforcement efforts during fiscal year 2013 indicate that the agency continues to remove large numbers of people with no criminal history or fairly minor offenses on their record. During fiscal year 2013, ICE reported, 368,644 individuals were removed. ICE, FY 2013 ICE Immigration Removals: ERO Annual Report at 1. The agency made much of the fact that almost all (98%) of these individuals fell into one or more of its immigration enforcement priorities as set out by a March 2011 memo from former ICE director John Morton. Any noncitizen [...]