The BIA released a decision today holding that a Florida conviction for criminal solicitation for the delivery of cocaine is a controlled substance offense. Matter of Juan Carlos Zorilla-Vidal, 24 I&N Dec. 768 (BIA 2009). According to the BIA, "the respondent's Florida conviction for soliciting the delivery of cocaine is a conviction for an offense under State law relating to a controlled substance that makes him removable from the United States under section 237(a)(2)((i) of the Act." This case sounds like more bad news for anyone interested in arguing that a conviction for a [...]
Lawmakers Upset About Immigrant Workers Taking Prison Guard Jobs
At least 32 guards in the short-staffed Texas prison system are on work visas — immigrant workers from Nigeria and Mexico, officials said Wednesday. Prison officials confirmed the use of visa workers after an East Texas lawmaker inquired about the hiring of several Nigerian visa workers at the Michael Unit near Palestine and after other correctional officers at the Eastham Unit near Huntsville raised questions about the issue. Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the hiring of visa workers has been long-standing policy — and legal — in the 112-prison [...]
When the “Criminals” are not criminals
Despite ICE's frequent claims that its widespread immigration sweeps target dangerous criminals, a new report issued by the Migration Policy Institute says otherwise. The report Collateral Damage: An Examination of ICE's Fugitive Operations Program, found that a staggering 9 percent of total arrests in 2007 were of people with any kind of criminal conviction. Over the course of the program's entire existence (it was established in 2003), MPI "found that 73 percent of the nearly 97,000 people arrested ... were unauthorized immigrants without criminal records." So much for ICE's claims [...]
Police Use Income Tax Filings to Enforce Immigration Law
In another example of overzealous law enforcement officials confusing immigrants for dangerous individuals, the New York Times reported that the sheriff and district attorney of Weld County, Colorado have teamed up to identify undocumented people through income tax filings. Sheriff's officials have reportedly seized thousands of confidential tax filings from a small tax preparation business in a Latin@ community. “I don’t care whether they are meth addicts or petty thieves or illegal immigrants,” district attorney Ken Buck told the Times. “What matters most to me is that they are committing [...]
Obama Administration to Target “Criminal Aliens”
The Bush Administration's days of targeting "criminal aliens" for deportation are not over. This week, President Obama's new Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said that she also wants to prioritize removing "criminal aliens" from our neighborhoods. One of her goals, according to an article in the New York Times, is to increase information sharing by local, state, and federal prison officials. Targeting individuals with criminal records, "sounds very simple," the Times reports Napolitano said, "but it's historically not been done." Napolitano couldn't be more wrong. [...]
Is the criminal immigrant an illusion?
The threat of the criminal immigrant seems to rear its head everywhere these days--from politicians to obstensibly pro-immigrant advocates. There's no shortage of people interested in deporting immigrants who commit crimes. But, as David Wilson wrote David Wilson wrote in FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), the rhetoric might be exaggerating the reality. According to Wilson, "While noncitizens now make up more than 8 percent of the U.S. population, the available evidence indicates that they account for no more than 6 or 7 percent of the people incarcerated for crimes in the [...]
Supreme Court to hear Aggravated Felony Case
On January 16, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would hear a case concerning the fraud or deceit offense definition of aggravated felony. In Nijhawan v. Mukasey, the Supreme Court will consider what Congress meant when it made a conviction for an offense involving fraud or deceit in which the loss to the victim exceeds $10,000. Can someone be deported under this provision even though the criminal conviction didn't require the prosecutor to prove the loss amount? If so, what documents can the Immigration Judge look at to determine whether the amount lost exceeds $10,000? The Court [...]
ICE Raids-Using Collateral Arrests to Terrorize Communities
With much fanfare, ICE has touted its efforts to round-up non-citizens with criminal records. This is ICE's so-called "fugitive list" that justifies its middle of the night raids. But in the process of searching for individuals with criminal records, ICE has also detained tens of thousands of people with no criminal history whatsoever--dubbed "collateral arrests." According to an article by Leslie Berestein of the San Diego Union Tribune, "Out of the 80,025 arrests made by ICE fugitive teams in fiscal years 2006 through 2008, nearly one-third were people not on the list." Increasingly, ICE's [...]