I missed this last week, but three immigrant rights groups came out with a report last Wednesday grading Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s progress on its promised reform of the immigrant detention system. The main problem, according to critics of the system, is that detention centers are too much More…
More bad news for cities that want to opt out of Secure Communities: Immigration and Customs Enforcement Chief John Morton confirmed to the Associated Press Friday that participation in the program, which shares fingerprints taken by police with federal immigration enforcement, is not voluntary.
Local governments More…
Apropos of my story today on municipalities that want to opt out of Secure Communities, the county manager for Arlington, Va., sent a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement yesterday requesting more information on how the community can remove itself from the fingerprint-sharing program, the Sun Gazette More…
Roughly $9.2 billion, according to figures from a March report on the per-immigrant cost of each step of the removal process. The numbers are estimates, of course, but it is still useful to illustrate the high costs behind the record number of deportations the DHS announced More…
One day after the Department of Homeland Security announced record-high deportations of illegal immigrants, ColorLines has a good story about some of the problems of heavy enforcement — particularly under a system that strongly favors deportation. Framed by the story of a legal resident who was More…
Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported a record number of illegal immigrants in the 2010 fiscal year, removing 392,000 illegal immigrants from the country, according to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security today. That’s only 8,000 away from the 400,000 people ICE Chief John Morton More…
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano confirmed today that Secure Communities, a program that provides federal immigration officials with fingerprint data from local police, is mandatory for local jurisdictions. “We don’t consider Secure Communities an opt in/opt out program,” Napolitano said, according to an Immigration and Customs More…
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University-based organization responsible for much of the non-partisan data analysis on immigration enforcement, is accusing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials of purposefully withholding information on immigrant detainees. After TRAC requested detailed information on the enforcement process through the Freedom of Information Act, More…
Change.org links to a good summary of the 874-page comprehensive immigration reform bill Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced Wednesday. The bill includes paths to legalization for non-criminal illegal immigrants in the country, provided they pay a fine and application fees. But first it focuses More…
The first state communities are beginning to opt out of Secure Communities, a fingerprint-sharing program between local police and federal immigration enforcement officers. The program, which the Department of Homeland Security plans to extend nationwide by 2013, goes against some communities’ philosophies about policing immigration. Although the program has always More…
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