DHS Pursues Dangerous Fugitive Gardeners, Nannies

There is more news this week in the NY Times (apparently now at war with Bill O'Reilly) about how the U.S. public was sold a bill of goods with expensive widescale immigration raids pretending to target criminals while actually sweeping up the easiest targets.  Again, Nina Bernstein:

The raids on homes around the country were billed as carefully planned hunts for dangerous immigrant fugitives, and given catchy names like Operation Return to Sender.

And they garnered bigger increases in money and staff from Congress than any other program run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even as complaints grew that teams of armed agents were entering homes indiscriminately.

But in fact, beginning in 2006, the program was no longer what was being advertised. Federal immigration officials had repeatedly told Congress that among more than half a million immigrants with outstanding deportation orders, they would concentrate on rounding up the most threatening - criminals and terrorism suspects.

Instead, newly available documents show, the agency changed the rules, and the program increasingly went after easier targets. A vast majority of those arrested had no criminal record, and many had no deportation orders against them, either.

. . . [By 2007], fugitives with criminal records dropped to 9 percent of those arrested, and nonfugitives picked up by chance - without a deportation order - rose to 40 percent. Many were sent to detention centers far from their homes, and deported.

Some will argue that the government should be raiding factories and warehouses and breaking into homes to deport undocumented people.

But if so, DHS should tell the truth about what they are doing and drop the "criminal alien" facade.  Hasn't the public been told enough lies over the last eight years?

Bernstein references a report released today by the Migration Policy Institute analyzing the National Fugitive Operations Program (NFOP).

Analyzing more than five years of arrest data supplied to the institute last year by Julie Myers, who was then chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the report found that over all, as the program spent a total of $625 million, nearly three-quarters of the 96,000 people it apprehended had no criminal convictions.

Without consulting Congress, the report concluded, the program shifted to picking up "the easiest targets, not the most dangerous fugitives."

From the report itself (pdf, p. 15):

Three-quarters of the criminal fugitive aliens arrested in FY 2007 had committed nonviolent crimes, such as shoplifting . . .  In other words, these individuals do not pose a threat to national security or to their communities.  In fact, fugitive aliens posing a threat to the community or with a violent criminal conviction represented just 2 percent of all FOT [Fugitive Operations Teams] arrests in FY 2007.

While the number of "fugitive aliens with criminal convictions" apprehended by the special teams remained constant from 2004-08, the money allocated by Congress for the NFOP increased 17-fold (p. 17).

Bernstein mentions that "many deportation orders were issued without the subject in court, sometimes because of faulty addresses."

This is something called an "in absentia" removal order, which means that the order is issued by the judge in the absence of the immigrant.  On one level, it makes sense that the government should be able to order someone deported who has been advised of a court date and still doesn't show up.  But as with so many aspects of immigration enforcement, the devil is in the details.  I can vouch from experience that missed court dates happen due to error or miscommunication far more frequently than they should.  It happens to people who have a viable defense in court and no reason not to show up.  In fact, they have a whole lot to lose by not showing up--potentially their entire lives with their citizen families here in the U.S.  Sometimes when court cases are continued 5, 8, 10 times, a person may mix up a date, change an address without following proper procedure, or get stuck in traffic a little too long.  Sometimes the court changes the date of the hearing and the respondent doesn't find out until it is too late.  This can happen to permanent residents who lived peacefully in this country for decades after minor convictions in their youth.  It can happen to asylum seekers.  It can happen to anyone in removal proceedings.

The rules for reopening a case are complicated and sometimes narrowly construed.  It's emblematic of the way the supposedly impartial immigration court system favors the government.

And then, once you've missed your day in court, suddenly ICE officers start showing up like a SWAT team at your home or workplace.  This makes it difficult to earn the money to pay a good attorney to reopen your case, makes it hard to maintain your own life, makes it hard to fight a court case.  But that's the point.

It's easy to see how you might start to lose faith in a justice system that deals in this kind of justice.