By david montero

The Salt Lake Tribune
First published Dec 29 2011 01:34PM
Updated 7 hours ago

A new hotline, revamped detainer forms and a focus on improved communication between federal authorities and local police on detaining undocumented immigrants were unveiled Thursday by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

While details and reasons for the new procedures were scant, Salt Lake City immigration attorney Aaron Tarin said it appeared to be an attempt by the federal government to insulate officials from suits over unlawful detentions.

"It’s no surprise," Tarin said. "There are several of these lawsuits going on around the country where these local facilities violate the law by playing fast and loose with detainer regulations."

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice would not comment on the reasons for the series of changes and revisions to existing policy beyond the news release issued Thursday.

Among the new measures was the addition of a toll-free hotline for people to call if they believe they are American citizens or were victims of a crime while being detained. The hotline will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week — coupled with translation services being made available for 17 hours a day.

But the detainer forms are simply replacing existing forms used by local police and ICE to zero in on candidates for deportation as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is prioritizing those removals based on serious criminal offenses.

The new policy will require officials to provide detainees a copy of the revised form that explains to them that ICE has requested local authorities to keep them in custody "beyond the time when they would have otherwise been released by the state or local law enforcement authorities based on their criminal charges or convictions."

The detainer form also directs local police that they may hold a person for only 48 hours — excluding weekends and holidays — and it advises individuals to contact local authorities about their release if ICE doesn’t take them into custody within that time frame.

Tarin said the move to clarify things for local authorities is "a good step" by ICE given lawsuits that are being filed on charges of unlawful detentions.

In U.S. District Court, a lawsuit was filed by Enrique Uroza in August in which he claimed he was unlawfully detained in Salt Lake County Jail for 39 days despite posting bond within 10 minutes of being locked up.

The Weber State University student was arrested on forgery and theft charges in June, but his attorneys argued Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder was misinterpreting Utah’s law that says his department should make "a reasonable effort to determine the citizenship status of a person charged with a felony or driving under the influence ... when the person is confined to the county jail for a period of time."

But in court filings, Winder charges the lawsuit is "frivolous" and has "failed to allege and cannot demonstrate a nexus between official policies, customs or practices and the alleged unconstitutional acts."

The spate of cases of unlawful detention of U.S. citizens was studied by Jacqueline Stevens, a political science professor and ICE expert at Northwestern University. She released a report in October for the Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law.

In her findings, she discovered 82 cases of citizens being held in jails in Arizona between 2006 and 2008 and she estimated that 4,000 detained each year nationwide are U.S. citizens.

The shift in procedures, according to ICE, reflects "a broader effort to improve our immigration enforcement process ... while continuing to strengthen oversight of the nation’s immigration detention system."

ICE’s new directives also will require local authorities to post directions for detainees on how to file a complaint if they feel their civil rights have been violated.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, ICE has averaged 400,000 deportations a year dating to 2009 — a pace that will have President Barack Obama remove more undocumented immigrants in one term than President George W. Bush did in two full terms.

There are an estimated 11.2 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and, within Utah, Arizona and Nevada, that population stands at about 700,000.

dmontero@sltrib.com

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politic...minal.html.csp