Thread: ICE raids mostly nab non-criminals, files show

ICE raids mostly nab non-criminals, files show
Program was supposed to target dangerous fugitives
By SUSAN CARROLL
Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Feb. 4, 2009, 11:04PM

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement program designed to target the most dangerous immigration fugitives has swept up mostly non-criminals in recent years, newly released documents show.

The National Fugitive Operations Program, created in 2003 with the mission of locating and deporting fugitives who are national security or public safety threats, resulted in the arrests of more than 62,000 people through the end of the 2007 fiscal year.

Of those arrests, roughly 18 percent involved fugitive immigrants with criminal records, according to a report released Wednesday by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington D.C., which obtained the data from ICE. Roughly 48 percent of the arrests involved immigrants with outstanding deportation orders and no criminal record. The remaining 34 percent were simply identified during a raid and arrested on suspicion of being in the country illegally, the report said.

ICE officials have said the fugitive operations program gives top priority to cases involving violent fugitives, including gang members and child sex offenders. A series of internal directives, however, shows the agency steeply increased an annual arrest quota for the fugitive teams in 2006, while relaxing a requirement that 75 percent of targets have criminal records.

The result, critics say, is that ICE shifted focus and went after “low-hanging fruit,â€

They are illegal, therefore they DID catch criminals. How is this hard to understand?

The whole point is to catch as many illegal aliens as possible. They certainly are criminals and need to be caught/prosecuted as criminals and deported as criminal illegal aliens!

GOOOO ICE!

What don't they understand about illegal and fugitive?

February 4, 2009
Target of Immigrant Raids Shifted
By 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.

Internal directives by immigration officials in 2006 raised arrest quotas for each team in the National Fugitive Operations Program, eliminated a requirement that 75 percent of those arrested be criminals, and then allowed the teams to include nonfugitives in their count.

In the next year, 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.

The impact of the internal directives, obtained by a professor and students at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law through a Freedom of Information lawsuit and shared with The New York Times, shows the power of administrative memos to significantly alter immigration enforcement policy without any legislative change.

The memos also help explain the pattern of arrests documented in a report, criticizing the fugitive operations program, to be released on Wednesday by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington.

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.â€

agents who found no one home at an address specified in a deportation order simply knocked on other doors until one opened, pushed their way in, and arrested residents who acknowledged that they lacked legal status.

Just critical of law enforcement doing their job.

Checked next door to ask questions and investigate to find the fugitive. Arresting someone that acknowledged that they were here legally is what law enforcement does. When a law enforcement officer asks are you breaking the law and you say yes, then the curffs go on. Duh!!!! It's an admission of guilt and these immigration attorneys and illegal huggers have been telling the illegal aliens to keep their mouths shut and not answer, which doesn't spare them either because they can be detained until their identity is confirmed, which will reveal they are illegal.

Dixie

Originally Posted by Dixie

agents who found no one home at an address specified in a deportation order simply knocked on other doors until one opened, pushed their way in, and arrested residents who acknowledged that they lacked legal status.

Just critical of law enforcement doing their job.

Checked next door to ask questions and investigate to find the fugitive. Arresting someone that acknowledged that they were here legally is what law enforcement does. When a law enforcement officer asks are you breaking the law and you say yes, then the curffs go on. Duh!!!! It's an admission of guilt and these immigration attorneys and illegal huggers have been telling the illegal aliens to keep their mouths shut and not answer, which doesn't spare them either because they can be detained until their identity is confirmed, which will reveal they are illegal.

Dixie

Bingo, you hit the nail on the head!

Justice department estimates over 75 percent of illegal aliens are involved in identity theft a (a class 4 felony) so they ARE criminals........

I guess we have to keep saying it until they get it right.... ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE COMMITING A CRIME.....THEY ARE BREAKING INTO A SOVEREIGN NATION THEY WERE NOT BORN IN AND BREAKING THE LAW OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY DOING IT.

ILLEGAL....AGAINST THE LAW!!!