ICE Announces New Victim-Centered Policy, Showing a Favorable Shift Toward Vulnerable Immigrants

 

By Kate Goettel - www.immigrationimpact.com/

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced this week a new policy designed to honor and protect vulnerable immigrants. The new policy addresses protections for survivors of violence, trafficking, and domestic abuse. Issued on August 11, the policy states that ICE will exercise prosecutorial discretion “to facilitate access to justice and victim-based immigration benefits by noncitizen crime victims.” Among other things, ICE will refrain from enforcement actions, absent exceptional circumstances, until U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) makes a final or interim decision on an application for immigration benefits.

Importantly, the memo defines “enforcement actions” broadly to constrain ICE, in most circumstances, from taking the following actions against individuals with pending applications for victim-based protections:

• Issuing detainers.
• Issuing a Notice to Appear, the charging document in immigration court proceedings.
• Stopping, questioning, or arresting an individual.
• Detention.
• Executing a removal order; i.e., deportation from the United States.

The new policy also constrains ICE from taking enforcement actions during a pending criminal investigation or prosecution...

More information  https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a5215-ICE-Announces-New-Victim-Centered-Policy.html

Federal Court Blocks Error-Prone ICE Deportation Program

By: Emma Winger www.immigrationimpact.com

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested millions of people based on unreliable electronic databases. In a recent court decision with nationwide impact, a federal judge in California ruled that parts of this mass deportation program—called Secure Communities—are unconstitutional.

Through Secure Communities, anyone arrested and fingerprinted for any reason has their fingerprints sent to ICE. ICE runs those fingerprints through certain databases and then, often without any additional investigation, issues a detainer —a request that the federal, state, or local law enforcement agency hold the person for up to 48 hours after they would otherwise be released from custody. This extra time allows ICE to arrest the person. This means that ICE asks state officers to arrest people for deportation based on nothing more than a few clicks on a computer.

In Gonzalez v. ICE, a case brought on behalf of people who are or will be the subject of a detainer issued by an ICE officer in the central region of California, the court found that Secure Communities is fatally flawed. The databases include incomplete, outdated, and incorrect information.

The results are predictable. Countless people have been arrested without adequate cause. For example, from May 2015 to February 2016, ICE asked law enforcement officers to arrest almost 800 people who were either U.S. citizens or otherwise not deportable. The court ruled that ICE violates the U.S. Constitution in two ways when the agency issues a detainer based solely on these faulty databases.

First, ICE is asking state officers to make an arrest without “probable cause” that the person is deportable. Second, in many cases, ICE is asking state officers to do something they aren’t allowed to do—arrest someone for the purpose of deportation. In many states, law enforcement officers are only allowed to arrest a person for a crime.

The court blocked ICE from issuing detainers relying on nothing more than error-prone databases and from making these arrest requests in states where law enforcement officers are not authorized to arrest for deportation.

Though the court’s order applies to ICE agents in California, this includes ICE’s Pacific Enforcement Response Center, which issues detainers across the county when local ICE offices are closed. As a result, the court’s decision is an important check on ICE’s unconstitutional deportation machine.

 

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4533-Federal-Court-Blocks-Error-Prone-ICE-Deportation-Program.html

US Citizens Caught In Immigration Dragnet As Enforcement Gets More Aggressive

 

By Walter Ewing

There is a disturbing trend in aggressive immigration enforcement that is appearing more and more recently: the detention of U.S. citizens. There are clear indications that U.S. immigration agents are locking up people they assume must be non-citizens, but who are in fact U.S. citizens.

These abuses transcend any presidential administration. But there are indications that the Trump administration has been particularly aggressive in detaining and then challenging U.S.-born individuals about their citizenship status. According to a report released in July that analyzes ICE enforcement data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), there has been a striking increase in the number of U.S. citizens “encountered” by ICE during the Trump years. 

In the first year after President Trump took office, ICE encountered 27,540 U.S. citizens. In comparison, during the last year of the Obama administration, ICE encountered 5,940 U.S. citizens. This trend suggests that some U.S. citizens who may “appear deportable” in the eyes of some U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have become increasingly vulnerable to immigration enforcement in recent years. 

Consider three recent examples: 

• In March 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers detained a 9-year-old girl who is a U.S. citizen for 32 hours without her parents present. The girl lives in Tijuana and crosses the border every day to get to and from school in the United States. On this particular day, a CBP officer decided that she didn’t resemble the photo in her passport and detained her. Why it took nearly a day and a half to verify her U.S. citizenship and release her is unclear.
• Throughout June and July 2019, an 18-year-old U.S.-citizen was detained for 23 days by CBP. He wasn’t given a chance to show officials his U.S. birth certificate until he was transferred to ICE custody—although even that didn’t immediately get him out of detention. He described conditions in the CBP facility as so bad that he considered allowing himself to be deported to Mexico just to get out.
• A Marine veteran with PTSD was held by ICE for three days in Michigan in December 2018. He was briefly being held in jail for an altercation at a hospital when ICE requested that he be turned over to them for removal from the country.

Incidents such as this are not limited to the Trump administration. For instance, a U.S. citizen in New York was detained by ICE for two years beginning in 2016. He was being held in jail for a drug offense and, on the day of his release, was incorrectly informed that he was not a U.S. citizen and therefore subject to deportation. It is mind-boggling that it took officials two years to figure out he was a citizen. 

There are many reasons to be critical of over-zealous immigration enforcement in the United States—such as the fact that enforcement is focused on non-violent individuals with no criminal records or relatively minor records. However, locking up U.S. citizens takes over-zealousness to a whole new level. 

Source: http://www.immigrationimpact.com
https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4370-US-Citizens-Caught-in-Immigration.html

A Primer On Expedited Removal

Created in 1996, expedited removal is a process by which low-level immigration officers can quickly deport certain noncitizens who are undocumented or have committed fraud or misrepresentation. Since 2004, immigration officials have used expedited removal to deport individuals who arrive at our border, as well as individuals who entered without authorization if they are apprehended within two weeks of arrival and within 100 miles of the Canadian or Mexican border. 

On January 25, 2017, President Trump issued an executive order which directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to dramatically expand the use of “expedited removal” to its full statutory extent. n July 22, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would carry out the full expansion. As of July 23, 2019, expedited removal may be applied to individuals who are undocumented, or who have committed fraud or misrepresentation, and who are encountered within the entire United States and who have not been physically present in the United States for two years prior to apprehension. 

One of the major problems with expedited removal is that the immigration officer making the decision virtually has unchecked authority. When an immigration official encounters someone they believe may be subject to expedited removal, the burden of proof is on the individual to prove otherwise. This means that an individual believed to be subject to expedited removal will have the burden of proving to an immigration official that they have been physically present in the United States for two or more years or that they were legally admitted or paroled into the United States. 

Individuals subject to expedited removal rarely see the inside of a courtroom because they are not afforded a regular immigration court hearing before a judge. In essence, the immigration officer serves both as prosecutor and judge. Further, given the speed at which the process takes place, there is rarely an opportunity to collect evidence or consult with an attorney, family member, or friend before the decision is made. 

Such a truncated process means there is a greater chance that persons are being erroneously deported from the United States, potentially to imminent harm or death. Moreover, individuals who otherwise might qualify for deportation relief if they could defend themselves in immigration court are unjustly deprived of any opportunity to do so. Yet expedited removal has been increasingly applied in recent years; 35 percent of all removals from the United States were conducted through expedited removal in Fiscal Year (FY) 2017, the most recent government data available. A dramatic expansion, as directed by President Trump and implemented In July 2019, could result in thousands of additional deportations without due process. 


What the Law Says

“Expedited removal” refers to the legal authority given to even low-level immigration officers to order the deportation of some non-U.S. citizens without any of the due-process protections granted to most other people—such as the right to an attorney and to a hearing before a judge. The Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 created expedited removal, but the federal government subsequently expanded it significantly. 

As it now stands, immigration officers can summarily order the removal of nearly any foreign national who arrives at the border without proper documents; additionally, undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States 14 days or less since entering without inspection are subject to expedited removal if an immigration officer encounters them within 100 miles of the U.S. border with either Mexico or Canada. As a general rule, however, DHS applies expedited removal to only those Mexican and Canadian nationals with histories of criminal or immigration violations, as well as persons from other countries who are transiting through Mexico or Canada. There is no right to appeal an immigration officer’s decision to deport someone via expedited removal. Individuals in expedited removal are detained until removed. 

By law, expedited removal may not be applied to certain individuals. U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents (LPRs, or “green card” holders) should not be subject to expedited removal. Nor should it be used against refugees, asylees, or asylum seekers (people who fear persecution in their home countries or indicate an intention to apply for asylum). 

Asylum seekers are instead referred to an asylum officer for an interview to determine if they have a “credible fear” of persecution. If an individual has been previously deported, an asylum officer determines if the person has a “reasonable fear” of persecution—a higher standard than “credible fear.” If the asylum officer fails to find that the person has a credible or reasonable fear of return, that person is ordered removed. Before deportation, the individual may challenge the asylum officer’s adverse finding by requesting a hearing before an immigration judge, who must review the case “to the maximum extent practicable within 24 hours, but in no case later than 7 days….” The judge’s review is limited solely to assessing whether the individual’s fear is credible or reasonable. 

Individuals found to have a credible or reasonable fear of persecution are detained pending further review of their asylum case. In limited circumstances, these individuals may be paroled—that is, released from detention—and permitted to remain in the United States while their asylum case is pending. 

Until January 2017, an exception to expedited removal had been made for “an alien who is a native or citizen of a country in the Western Hemisphere with whose government the United States does not have full diplomatic relations and who arrives by aircraft at a port of entry.” Cubans arriving by aircraft had been exempted from expedited removal under this provision, but in the closing days of the Obama administration, DHS published a regulation eliminating Cuban nationals from the exemption 


Use of Expedited Removal Is on the Rise

The use of expedited removal to deport people has risen substantially over the past two decades, peaking in FY 2013 when approximately 193,000 persons were deported from the United States through expedited removal, which represented 43 percent of the 438,000 removals from the United States that year. After 2013, the number of people deported from the United States through expedited removal fell, likely as a result of more asylum seekers who were found to have a credible fear of persecution. However, expedited removal still accounted for 35 percent of all deportations in FY2017. 
Fig. 1 Expedited Removals FY 2001-2017

Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Immigration Enforcement Actions: 2010-2017; U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 2000 Statistical Yearbook, chp. 6. 


Concerns about Expedited Removal

Erroneous Deportations 

There are few checks on the authority of immigration officers to place non-citizens in expedited removal proceedings. In essence, the law permits the immigration officer to serve both as prosecutor (charged with enforcing the law) and judge (rendering a final decision on the case). Generally, the entire process consists of an interview with the inspecting officer, so there is little or no opportunity to consult with an attorney or to gather any evidence that might prevent deportation. For those who are traumatized from their journey or harm they fled, the short timelines can make it extremely difficult to clearly explain why they need protection in the United States. The abbreviated process increases the likelihood that a person who is not supposed to be subject to expedited removal—such as a U.S. citizen or LPR—will be erroneously removed. Moreover, individuals who otherwise would be eligible to make a claim for “relief from removal” (to argue they should be permitted to stay in the United States) may be unjustly deprived of any opportunity to pursue relief. For example, a witness or victim of a crime might be eligible for status but is prohibited from making such a claim in expedited removal proceedings. 

Inadequate Protection of Asylum Seekers 

In practice, not all persons expressing a fear of persecution if returned to their home countries are provided a credible or reasonable fear screening. Studies by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) noted that, in some cases, immigration officers pressured individuals expressing fear into withdrawing their application for admission—and thus their request for asylum—despite DHS policies forbidding the practice. In other cases, government officers failed to ask if the arriving individual feared return. In addition, the Commission found that the government did not have sufficient quality assurance mechanisms in place to ensure that asylum seekers were not improperly being turned back.

A Growing Backlog of Asylum Applications 

Individuals expressing fear of return who are diverted from expedited removal are referred to asylum officers for screening. These officers are often the same corps handling affirmative asylum applications (i.e., cases filed by individuals not in removal proceedings). Since these asylum seekers are detained pending completion of the credible or reasonable fear process, their cases are prioritized by the government. Asylum Office resources are therefore diverted to these interviews, contributing to the backlog of affirmative asylum cases. 

Further expansion of expedited removal will require significantly more asylum officers, or the backlog of affirmative asylum cases will continue to grow. This workload management crisis could be avoided entirely if DHS personnel placed all asylum seekers apprehended at the border in regular immigration court proceedings and paroled them pending their hearings. Providing the immigration court system with enough funds to sufficiently staff immigration judge teams would help ensure that asylum seekers get a prompt court hearing. 

Source: American Immigration Council 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4360-A-Primer-On-Expedited-Removal.html

U.S. Citizen Children Impacted By Immigration Enforcement

In the United States today, more than eight million citizens live with at least one family member, often a parent, who is undocumented. Children make up the majority of these U.S. citizens; almost six million citizen children under the age of 18 live with a parent or family member who is undocumented. Consequently, immigration enforcement actions—and the ongoing threats associated with them—have significant physical, emotional, developmental, and economic repercussions on the children left behind. Deportations of parents and family members have serious consequences that affect children and extend to communities and the country as a whole.

This fact sheet provides an overview of the U.S. citizen children who could be impacted by immigration enforcement actions, the challenges and risk factors that these children face, and the existing mechanisms designed to protect children if a parent is detained or deported. 


Millions of U.S. citizen children have undocumented parents and family members. 

• 4.1 million U.S. citizen children under the age of 18 live with at least one undocumented parent according to the most recent estimates available (analyzing 2009-2013 U.S. Census data).
• 5.9 million U.S. citizen children under the age of 18 live with an undocumented family member, according to the most recent estimates available (analyzing 2010-2014 census data).
• Roughly half-a-million U.S. citizen children experienced the apprehension, detention, and deportation of at least one parent in the course of about two years, according to the most recent estimates available (analyzing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data between 2011 and 2013).
• As of 2017, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti had an estimated 273,000 U.S.-born citizen children. With those TPS designations terminated, many of these parents will become undocumented by the end of 2019.

Immigration enforcement—and the threat of such actions—can negatively impact a child’s long-term health and development. 

• A child’s risk of having mental health problems like depression, anxiety, and severe psychological distress increases following the detention and/or deportation of a parent. Since late 2016, doctors and service providers have reported anecdotally that they have seen more children exhibiting stress- and anxiety-related behavioral changes, including symptoms of “toxic-stress,” due to fear that a family member will be deported.
• A study of Latino citizen children from 2013-2015 found that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms were significantly higher for children who had at least one detained or deported parent.
• A 2010 study of immigration-related parental arrests (at home or worksites) found that the majority of children experienced at least four adverse behavioral changes in the six months following a raid or arrest. Compared to the previous six months, children cried or were afraid more often; changed their eating or sleeping habits; and/or were more anxious, withdrawn, clingy, angry, or aggressive.
• Even before birth, immigration enforcement can put a child’s health at risk. The 2008 worksite raid in Postville, Iowa—the largest single-site immigration raid in U.S. history—was tied to premature and underweight births, complications that put babies at risk for infant death or long-term health problems. Researchers found that babies born to Latina mothers in Iowa within 37 weeks of the raid were 24 percent more likely to be underweight compared to the previous year. This increased risk was not evident in babies born to non-Latina white mothers in Iowa.

The detention or deportation of a parent puts children at risk of economic instability. 

The deportation, and even the arrest or detention, of a parent or other household family member has significant short- and long-term financial implications. U.S. citizen children and any remaining family members can face substantial economic disadvantages following the removal of a primary provider. 

• An analysis of 2014 median family income estimated that a family’s income would decrease 50 percent following the deportation of a family member.
• A study of immigration enforcement in six U.S. locations between 2006 and 2009 found that families lost 40 to 90 percent of their income, or an average of 70 percent, within six months of a parent’s immigration-related arrest, detention, or deportation.
• The ability to afford housing may become more tenuous following the deportation of a provider, resulting in the loss of a family’s home and more frequent relocations.
• A 2016 study of immigration enforcement and housing foreclosures found that “deportations exacerbate rates of foreclosure among Latinos by removing income earners from owner-occupied households.” Furthermore, the research revealed that counties with 287(g) agreements, which authorize immigration enforcement collaboration between local police and ICE, had substantially higher foreclosure rates among Latinos.

U.S. citizen children may end up in the child welfare system following the detention or deportation of their parent. 

Parents—regardless of immigration status, detention, or deportation—have a constitutional right to custody of their children (unless deemed unfit). While the child welfare system generally recognizes that it is in a child’s best interest to remain with a parent or family member, the intersection with immigration enforcement can negatively impact parental rights and thus a child’s well-being. For example, the lack of coordination between agencies has historically led to prolonged family separation and even termination of parental rights. 

To ensure that enforcement activities did not “unnecessarily disrupt the parental rights” of parents or legal guardians of minor children, ICE issued its Parental Interests Directive in 2013. The Parental Interests Directive was replaced in 2017 with a new Detained Parents Directive. The 2017 policy eliminated many aspects of the 2013 directive, including guidance for the use of prosecutorial discretion in cases involving children and all references to parental rights. The 2017 directive instead instructs ICE agents to “remain cognizant of the impact enforcement actions may have” on certain children.

• According to ICE’s 2017 Detained Parents Directive, when certain minor children are encountered during immigration enforcement, ICE agents should “generally accommodate” the parent or legal guardian’s efforts to make child care arrangements before contacting local child welfare or law enforcement to take temporary custody.
• If a parent is unable to arrange childcare or custody prior to detention or deportation, the child may be taken by the state’s Child Protective Services (CPS) for placement and case management. The child is usually placed in an emergency shelter; group home; or with a relative, friend, or stranger in a foster home while custody is determined in family court.
• An estimated 5,000 U.S. citizen children in foster care had a detained or deported parent in 2011, according to a national study.
• Children in foster care in counties with 287(g) agreements were 29 percent more likely to have detained or deported parents compared to non-287(g) counties studied in 2011.

There are limited mechanisms to safeguard parental rights, which are incredibly difficult for parents to regain following detention or deportation. 

All parents have the right to receive a notification of custody proceedings affecting their children, attend such proceedings, and receive copies of related court documents. Yet there are few enforceable, permanent policies in place to protect these rights.

• Federal law mandates that parental rights be terminated if a child has been out of a parent’s custody for 15 of the past 22 months. Policies and procedures vary by state, but in order to maintain or regain parental rights, CPS generally implements a reunification plan that requires a parent to have regular contact with the child and participate in family court hearings. Detained or deported parents have historically faced significant barriers to these requirements.
• Parents may request release from detention in order to care for their children while they are in immigration proceedings. However, ICE no longer provides its personnel with guidance for exercising such discretion in cases that involve a child.
• The 2017 directive generally instructs agents to facilitate regular visitation for detained parents and their minor children, though no longer emphasizes in-person visitation. ICE personnel should also arrange for a detained parent's participation in custody proceedings when required by a court.

Significant issues persist for detained parents who may be dealing with both immigration and custody proceedings. Since ICE is not required to inform CPS of a parent’s whereabouts, CPS may have difficulty locating and properly notifying a detained parent; family courts and caseworkers may not understand why a parent is detained and unable to participate in proceedings; and ICE officials may underestimate the impact that enforcement has on U.S. citizen children who are likely to be left behind. 


Parents with a final deportation order must make the difficult decision of whether to bring their children—including U.S. citizen children—with them. 

ICE issued more than 200,000 deportation orders between 2010 and 2012 for parents who report having U.S. citizen children, according to the most recent estimates of government data available. While the government does not track whether U.S. citizen children stay in the United States or leave with a deported parent, both scenarios occur and pose challenges.

• If parental rights remain intact, parents with a pending deportation may make custody arrangements for their children to stay in the United States. ICE is supposed to “accommodate, to the extent practicable,” a detained parent's efforts to make guardianship or travel arrangements for the child prior to deportation.
• If a child’s custody is still being determined after a parent has been deported, the ability of the parent to regain custody or participate in proceedings—even if the court requires the parent’s attendance—is extremely limited. ICE no longer has guidance to consider facilitating the travel of a deported parent back to the United States to participate in proceedings that may result in the termination of parental rights.
• Deported parents have the right to reunite with their children outside of the United States as long as the reunification plan is ongoing, but this requires significant coordination between family members, the parent country’s consulate, and U.S. state and federal agencies. It can be difficult for deported parents to prove that they can provide for their children in a stable and safe environment in the country of deportation, based on many of the same conditions that may have triggered the parent’s migration to the United States

Source: www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org  
https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4339-Citizen-Children-Impacted-by-Immigration.html

More Women And U.S. Citizens Impacted By Immigration Enforcement Actions

Written by Guillermo Cantor 

The Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement is seriously impacting noncitizens and citizens around the country. 

A new report by the American Immigration Council highlights how the administration’s indiscriminate, aggressive enforcement approach has created new categories of individuals who are more vulnerable to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) encounters, arrest, and potential deportation. Since President Trump took office in 2017, U.S. citizens and women have become increasingly subjected to immigration enforcement actions. The report draws on ICE records on 1,199,026 encounters, 381,370 arrests, and 650,944 removals that occurred between January 2016 and September 2018. The data was obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation. 

Specific findings in the report include: 

• The number of U.S. citizens encountered by ICE jumped from 5,940 during the last year of the Obama administration to 27,540 during the first year of the Trump administration. This suggests that certain U.S. citizens who may “appear deportable” have become increasingly vulnerable to enforcement actions.
• Proportionally, ICE encountered and arrested more women during the first part of the Trump administration than it did at the end of the Obama administration.
• During the report’s timeframe, over 85 percent of all removals under both administrations involved individuals either with no criminal convictions or only non-violent convictions.
• The volume of custodial arrests (those conducted in a jail or prison) and at-large arrests (those conducted in the community) increased during the first year of the Trump administration—compared to the last year of the Obama administration.
• The largest percent increases in the number of at-large arrests occurred in the ICE Areas of Responsibility (AORs) in Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Phoenix. AORs are large regions over which ICE field offices have jurisdiction.
• Both in the last part of the Obama administration and the first part of the Trump administration, over 70 percent of encounters and over 60 percent of arrests were conducted through the Criminal Alien Program (CAP). This program supports ICE in the identification, arrest, and removal of individuals incarcerated within federal, state, and local prisons and jails.

The Trump administration has cast a wider enforcement net in its search for individuals who may be deportable from the United States. To achieve this, it has broadened who is considered a priority for enforcement, sought to eliminate humanitarian protections that shielded hundreds of thousands of noncitizens from enforcement action, and expanded ICE’s reach within communities. 

Given the nature of the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda, it is not surprising that the overall number of encounters and arrests has increased since President Trump took office. 

Some trends, however, are unanticipated and raise concerns—such as the increased vulnerability of those who may “look deportable,” women, and individuals in certain regions of the country. 

As the president vows to conduct mass immigration arrests and deportation, some of the trends highlighted in this report might soon become even more pronounced. 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4288-Impacted-by-Immigration-Enforcement-Actions.html

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Regularly Detains Children for Months at a Time

 

Written by Walter Ewing 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to their internal operations. The agency rarely discloses basic details about where their immigration detention centers are located, how many people are detained, or what the cost is to keep these facilities operational. As one of the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement arms, this lack of transparency often makes it difficult to hold the agency accountable on their detention and treatment of immigrants.

Yet in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, ICE has done something it rarely does: publicly release information about how it operates. The information was handed over to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center—which made the FOIA request—and has been analyzed by the National Immigrant Justice Center. 

The data provides a revealing snapshot of the immigrant-detention business in the United States: 


Immigrant Detention Centers by the Numbers

Immigrants are detained in over 1,000 facilities that include not only Bureau of Prisons facilities, but also county jails, hospitals, and even hotels. For instance, thousands of people—including children—have been booked into the Quality Suites San Diego since 2016. The average daily number of detainees at the hotel in 2017 was 22 people, all of whom were classified as “non-criminal” with “no ICE threat level.” 

Within these facilities, a record 39,322 people are being held daily in 2018. This is the second year in a row that ICE has surpassed its previously record-setting detainee population. 


ICE Regularly Detains Children, Adults Classified as “Non-Criminal” 

Children are frequently detained, sometimes for months at a time. Often, they are held not in Office of Refugee Resettlement children’s shelters or even family detention centers—they are housed in juvenile jails under contracts with ICE. At the three facilities where children are held for more than 72 hours, length of detention ranges from 100 to 240 days. 

On average, 51 percent of the daily detained population is classified as “non-criminal”—and 51 percent were also classified as “no threat.” Only 23 percent qualified as Level 1 threats, which encompasses a mix of nonviolent offenses and serious crimes. 


Most Detainees Are Held in Privately Operated Prisons

Private prisons dominate the immigration-detention industry. Roughly 71 percent of the daily detained population was held in private prisons owned by companies such as Core Civic (formerly known as the Corrections Corporation of America). 

Many of these contracts with private, for-profit prison companies were made between local governments and the federal government. As of 2017, more than 15,000 people were held daily in private prisons or jails throughout the country. 


ICE’s Detention Standards Are Unclear

ICE has three different sets of standards governing the detention of adults, yet only 65 percent of the agency’s adult detention facilities are contractually bound to observe any of them. 

Some detention facilities make cryptic reference to abiding by “minimum service standards” or “local standards.” Perhaps this is on account of a 2014 Government Accountability Office report, which found ICE sometimes obtains a facility’s agreement to be inspected using a newer set of standards without actually incorporating the new standards into the contract. 

ICE claims that it inspects all facilities under one of its three sets of standards, regardless of the contract. Yet some facilities have passed inspection despite the deaths of multiple detainees, including some from medical neglect. 

The fact that so much prodding was necessary for ICE to release even this much information about its operations is an indication of the degree to which the agency lacks transparency or accountability. ICE officers—like their immigration-enforcement counterparts at U.S. Customs and Border Protection—are accustomed to acting behind a veil of secrecy. As this new disturbing information reveals, we must continue to push past that veil and hold ICE accountable for what happens within their detention centers.

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

http://inmigracionyvisas.com/a3781-Immigration-and-Customs-Enforcement-Regularly-Detains-Children.html 

 

Written by Tory Johnson 

Immigration enforcement has become increasingly severe, especially in the past year. Yet news coverage often merely scratches the surface of what people across the country are experiencing. Consequently, one topic that often gets left out of the larger conversation is the deep and lasting impact immigration enforcement has on the education of children. 

Increasingly, education and childcare professionals report that this harsh approach to immigration enforcement is harming the environment in schools and childcare centers and, more broadly, the communities of students and families they serve. Two recent multi-state surveys add to a growing body of evidence demonstrating how immigration enforcement negatively affects children in the United States. 

The first, a national survey of pre-K through high school educators conducted by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, reveals that immigration enforcement has negatively impacted U.S. schools and classrooms. Of the 5,438 teachers, administrators, and other school staff surveyed between October 2017 and January 2018, 73 percent observed potential impacts of immigration enforcement at their school. 

“Fear” and “separation” were the two most common words used when describing students’ immigration concerns, based on about 3,500 responses from personnel in 730 schools in 12 states. Thousands of educators described how their students from immigrant families, the vast majority of whom are U.S.-born, “were terrified that families and friends, and occasionally they themselves, would be picked up by ICE… [and] that it was, at times, very difficult for students to learn and teachers to teach.” 

Educators reported student absences, decline in academic performance, and less involvement from parents as some of the impacts on immigrant students. In addition, the UCLA survey found that: 

• 84 percent of educators reported having immigrant students express concerns about immigration enforcement while at school, such as fear of their parents being taken away.
• Nearly 90 percent of school administrators observed immigrant students experiencing behavioral or emotional problems, most often related to fear and anxiety.
• Two-thirds of educators said their students were indirectly affected by immigration enforcement, due to concern for classmates whose families are targeted by enforcement actions, which affected the overall learning environment.

The second study illustrates how immigration enforcement is affecting children even before they are old enough to attend school. The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) interviewed over 150 early childhood educators and parents in six states between May and November 2017, finding that young children experience daily fear, stress, and uncertainty in connection to immigration enforcement. 

Through conversations with early care and education providers, community-based social service providers, and immigrant parents, CLASP documented how children as young as three-years-old fear they will lose a parent to deportation—even if the parent has legal status. 

Among the most concerning impacts of immigration enforcement documented by CLASP, providers interviewed reported: 

• Declines in enrollment, attendance, and parent participation at early care and education programs.
• Greater reluctance among immigrant families to access needed health, nutrition, and social services.
• Difficulty meeting the needs of immigrant families in this climate, such as legal advice, rights trainings, and information about policy implications.

These hardships—recognized by medical professionals as toxic stress —have been shown to have long-standing detrimental effects on a child’s development and well-being. With such high stakes, it is ever more concerning that immigration enforcement is exposing children to these risks at such a young age. 

These recent studies highlight the serious, detrimental effects of harsh immigration enforcement. Policymakers and citizens alike must recognize how aggressive immigration threatens our collective future, and instead pursue solutions that work for us all.

 

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

http://inmigracionyvisas.com/a3777-How-Aggressive-Immigration-Hurts-Schools.html