ICE agents cannot ask for papers.

[grantcart]

I keep waiting for somebody in the national media to make the point about the Arizona Law that it represents a massive increase in the power of government over individual liberties.

ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) agents are the only agency away from the border that is responsible for enforcing illegal immigration. Customs agents are restricted to stay within 200 feet of the border (they cannot engage in hot persuit). Border Patrol agents are deployed at the border and along the feeder roads that run parallel to the border.

Under the Obama administration deployment of ICE agents has moved from multiple interior offices to more investigation along the border. Also the administration has made a major move to increase the number of ICE agents in prisons to identify felons that are here illegally and deport them.

The number of ICE agents conducting raids far from the border has been significantly reduced. Also the vast majority of ICE agents are involved in holding and moving suspected undocumented workers after they have been picked up by the Border Patrol.

That is the background.


Under Bush ICE agents would be taken away from the border and go into Hispanic neighborhoods and pick up suspected aliens. You may remember that this was roundly criticized by Hispanic leaders because it was spreading fear in Hispanic neighborhoods in San Bernadino, Riverside and Los Angeles Counties.

What is not commonly understood is that ICE agents are well trained and follow the constitution. In doing their job they never ask to see Identification Papers. They will engage in conversation with someone asking them what high school they went to and so on and it is pretty easy for these agents to develop probable cause (most of them are first or second generation US Hispanics).

However if the person who the ICE agent is talking to simply says nothing and walks away the ICE agent is powerless to do anything unless there is some obvious 'reasonable cause'.

Now under the AZ law, as I understand it, citizens are compelled to answer and not answering is a violation. In fact legal aliens who do not comply or do not have their 'papers' with them can get a 6 month sentence.

For all the conservatives and Tea Baggers who profess concern about expansion of power by the government the AZ law actually is a major change in the current practices and gives local law enforcement officials vastly more intrusive power than federal law enforcement officers have - or want.

[CreekDog]

1. I keep waiting for the 40 supporters on DU to acknowledge the same

:sigh:

[EFerrari]

2. ICE Officials Accused of Covering Up Immigrant Deaths in Detention

The Obama administration has promised to overhaul immigration detention. But a scathing report in the New York Times last weekend reveals that federal officials used their role as overseers to prevent media from reporting deaths and abuses inside the nation’s immigration prisons. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, now admits 107 immigrants died in ICE custody since October 2003, but for years the deaths went uncounted in the public record.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/13/ice_officials_accused_of_covering_up

[grantcart]

5. There have been substantial changes under the Obama administration

For example before the Border Patrol used to ask people that they picked up whether or not they simply wanted to go back and a quick release program.

Under the Obama administration everyone who is picked up is assigned a lawyer and represented at a deportation hearing.

If you go to Yuma or El Centro you can go to the court and watch these hearings although they are very boring because the migrants simply want to go back and now even if they plead guilty they still have to ellecute (sp?).

The numbers that are housed have naturally increased because instead of just being driven to the Port they have to stay 3 days to arrange legal representation.

I am sure that the number of 107 immigrants is a much under reported number simply because many more migrants are taking more and more dangerous routes and more are dying before they are apprehended. The number of people that are apprehended in critical condition are up significantly as well. Obviously when you have hundreds of people found in dehydration and desperate conditions - especially in 130 degree heat, some are going to die.

I have regular access to immigration detention areas, and state prisons. Detained aliens are housed in better facilities than state prisons when they are federal facilities but most of them are simply in segregated wings of state prisons.

ICE agents in fact do not operate immigration detention facilities or the segregated areas in state prisons these are operated by contract with private prison guards, the same guards that are contracted for many state prisons.

In general immigration detention facilities have much less conflict among its population because quite frankly most of the people are just migrant workers and unlike other prison communities there are few fights between inmates.

You can test all of this yourself by contacting immigration attorneys that are going to immigration jails every day.

If there were the kind of widespread abuses that your article hints at you would expect to see widespread lawsuits not scathing 'reports'. Deportation hearings are opened to the public and they are tedious events where judges repeatedly ask the accused if they understand each of their rights as they wave them.

[EFerrari]

3. The Nation: Immigration Agents Holding US Residents in Unlisted, Unmarked Facilities

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is holding an untold number of people in secretively maintained detention facilities all over the United States. That’s according to an explosive report that’s the cover story of the latest issue of The Nation magazine. They also report that ICE agents regularly impersonate civilians and rely on other illegal tricks to arrest longtime US residents who have no criminal history. We speak with the author of the two-part investigation, Jacqueline Stevens.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/24/the_nation__immigration_agents_holding

[grantcart]

6. untold people in secret facilities

That is laughable without some evidence.

You can go to the GSA website and get a list of all of the leases that the US government carries in any area.

I have actually gone to each and every facility in San Diego and have found leases that the GSA has that were for 'secret' FBI anti cyber contracting units that were quite surprised to see me show up there lol.

The facilities for migrants that are coming across the border are all well known and there are no secret facilities for migrants being detained.

The second sentenc of your report cited however confirms exactly what I reported in my OP as being standard operating procedure under Bush:

quote
They also report that ICE agents regularly impersonate civilians and rely on other illegal tricks to arrest longtime US residents who have no criminal history.
unquote


ICE agents don't ask people for their papers but rather engage in casual conversation. There, obviously is nothing illegal for a plainsclothes law enforcement official to do that. Again if the migrants do not respond there is nothing that they can do.

It is precisely those types of interior raids that were common under Bush that are no longer common.

Here is a report from 2007 on the kind of ICE sweeps that are no longer being conducted under the Obama administration

http://www.rwor.org/a/104/ice-raids-en.html

[EFerrari]

4. ICE Set Quotas to Deport More Undocumented Immigrants

The Washington Post reports US immigration authorities have set controversial new quotas for agents to deport more undocumented workers. The head of ICE detention and removal operations, James Chaparro, outlined the plan in a recent memo. He wrote that ICE is on pace to deport about 310,000 immigrants for the year ending September 30, well below ICE’s goal of 400,000 deportations a year. In the memo, Chaparro said ICE will increase the number of overall deportations by increasing detention space to hold more undocumented immigrants, by sweeping prisons to find more candidates for deportation, and by launching a so-called "surge" in efforts to catch undocumented immigrants whose only violation was lying on immigration or visa applications or reentering the United States after being deported. The moves outlined in the memo differ from public pledges by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to focus enforcement on the most dangerous undocumented immigrants. Deportations of convicted criminals climbed 19 percent in 2009 and are on pace to climb 40 percent this year. Joan Friedland of the National Immigration Law Center criticized the ICE memo, saying quotas will encourage agents to target easy cases, not the ones who pose the greatest safety risk.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/29/headlines#9


I'll stop but there is a lot more where this came from, especially this:

Obama Admin Expands Law Enforcement Program 287(g), Criticized for Targeting Immigrants and Increasing Racial Profiling

The Obama administration has expanded the controversial 287(g) program, which allows local law enforcement agencies to enter into agreements with Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, effectively giving local police the powers of federal immigration agents. The agreements have been widely criticized for increasing racial profiling and singling out immigrants for arrest without suspicion of crime. We speak to Aarti Shahani of Justice Strategies and Roberto Lovato of New America Media.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/29/obama_admin_expands_law_enforcement_program

No, these people are not professionals and their mandate is not in the public interest. They are the Black Water of immigration law.

[grantcart]

7. Absolute lies

To begin with the practice before the Obama administration was to conduct massive catch and release deportations which meant that migrants could opt to voluntarily go back to the border. These migrants, who never had access to the judicial system, were never counted in statistics.

Now that all migrants are provided legal representation the number is going to go up but from a statistical point of view it is comparing apples and pineapples and the people that are reporting it know it. In the first place they were critical of the catch and release operations and now they are using the change to pad the statistics

The following statement is a bold faced lie:

saying quotas will encourage agents to target easy cases, not the ones who pose the greatest safety risk.


Anyone who is familiar with ICE offices knows that the ICE offices that were spread through the interior of the US are being closed and that those officers are now being deployed in prisons.

For example

http://www.10news.com/news/9800305/detail.html?rss=sand&psp=news

SAN DIEGO -- As the debate heats up nationwide over the affects of illegal immigration on the U.S., there is a new program in San Diego County aimed at catching illegal immigrants accused of crimes.

A new program inside downtown San Diego’s Central Jail targets immigrants arrested for crimes. The program is called the Criminal Alien Program.

Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, screen people who have been arrested to identify anyone foreign born. Illegal immigrants can be deported, along with legal residents or visa holders who commit a serious crime.


"We're moving more aggressively into prisons and jails in order to remove the criminal element that doesn’t need to be in the U.S. at all,” said Michael Magee of ICE.

Since the program started on Jan. 28, it has identified 1,200 people in the jail who qualified for deportation -- about one-third illegal immigrants.

Last month alone, the program identified 381 deportable immigrants locked up for a broad range of crimes.

"Whether it be drunk in public, driving under the influence, to more severe crimes, burglary or armed robbery," said Lt. Mark Hays of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

The immigration department was already screening in state and federal prisons, and in the courts.

What is new about this program is that it targets those brought to Central Jail -- for local crimes -- illegal immigrants whom, if not prosecuted, would have previously been released to the streets.

"These are people from another country that have come here to commit a crime. I don't think anyone across the spectrum would disagree that they don't need to be here and we should deport them," said Magee.

. . .

The Criminal Alien Program also operates out of the Las Colinas Women’s Jail and the Vista Jail.

In the last 11 months alone, more than 29,000 people have been deported from San Diego County.

According to ICE, of those deported, more than 8,700 people were criminals.

Now there are some critics who say that some mistakes are being made but no informed immigration analyst is suggesting that the Obama is not moving ICE assets from inland inforcement areas, ending the sweeps and concentrating on sending back more aliens from the jails and prisons.

Your sources who are saying otherwise are promoting propoganda that is blatantly untrue.

In San Diego County alone where the vast majority of deportees are 'fence jumpers' detained by the border patrol almost 30 percent are from jails. None are from neighborhood sweeps that were conducted by the Bush Administration.

[EFerrari]

8. "Sheriff: ICE referrals will leap from 2,000 to 40,000"

05.18.10

There was a strong showing of supervisors, activists and community members at today’s rally to urge San Francisco to opt out of the Secure Communities Initiative, an automated fingerprint screening system that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to switch on, in San Francisco on June 1—just two weeks ago.

The program links local law enforcement agencies to the Department of Homeland Security’s biometric system through interoperability agreements with each state. Scott Lorigan in the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information reportedly signed such an agreement with John P. Torres, acting assistant Secretary of ICE, over a year ago, on April 10, 2009. And according to ICE, As April 2010, biometric identification has been activated in 169 jurisdictions in 20 states:

In California, the system has already been activated in Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Imperial, Los Angeles, Monterey, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernadino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Ventura.But as speakers pointed out at today’s rally, the supervisors and the communities they represent would not have even known that this system was about to go live in San Francisco, had it not been for San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey, who spoke out after ICE informed local law enforcement agencies about the program three weeks ago.

Eric Quezada of Mission-based Dolores Street Community Services kicked off the rally with a rousing speech in which he warned that this “draconian Policy” was happening in the “shadow of Arizona.

http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2010/05/18/sheriff-ice-referrals-will-leap-2000-40000

I suppose you must be right and all these "propagandists" like our sheriff must be wrong.