Don't know if everyone saw this yet. It came out last week.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/26/AR2010032604891.html?sid%3DST2010032700037




By Spencer S. Hsu and Andrew Becker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 27, 2010

Seeking to reverse a steep drop in deportations, U.S. immigration authorities have set controversial new quotas for agents. At the same time, officials have stepped back from an Obama administration commitment to focus enforcement efforts primarily on illegal immigrants who are dangerous or have violent criminal backgrounds.


The moves, outlined in internal documents and a recent e-mail by a senior U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official to field directors nationwide, differ from pledges by ICE chief John T. Morton and his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, to focus enforcement on the most dangerous illegal immigrants. That approach represented a break from the mass factory raids and neighborhood sweeps the Bush administration used to drive up arrests.

In a Feb. 22 memo, James M. Chaparro, head of ICE detention and removal operations, wrote that, despite record deportations of criminals, the overall number of removals was down. While ICE was on pace to achieve "the Agency goal of 150,000 criminal alien removals" for the year ending Sept. 30, total deportations were set to barely top 310,000, "well under the Agency's goal of 400,000," and nearly 20 percent behind last year's total of 387,000, he wrote.

Beyond stating ICE enforcement goals in unusually explicit terms, Chaparro laid out how the agency would pump up the numbers: by increasing detention space to hold more illegal immigrants while they await deportation proceedings; by sweeping prisons and jails to find more candidates for deportation and offering early release to those willing to go quickly; and, most controversially, with a "surge" in efforts to catch illegal immigrants whose only violation was lying on immigration or visa applications or reentering the United States after being deported.

"These efforts must be sustained and will be closely monitored," Chaparro told field directors in the e-mail, which was obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting and The Washington Post.

ICE spokesman Brian P. Hale distanced the agency from Chaparro's remarks, saying, "Portions of the memo were inconsistent with ICE, inconsistent with the administration's point of view and inconsistent with the secretary." He added that the agency has moved to "clarify" the situation.

Chaparro issued a new memo Friday stating that his earlier e-mail "signals no shift in the important steps we have taken to date to focus our priorities on the smart and effective enforcement of immigration laws, prioritizing dangerous criminal aliens . . . while also adhering to Congressional mandates to maintain an average daily [detention] population and meet annual performance measures."

In the new memo, Chaparro did not alter or rescind any of the strategies he had laid out.

An immigration official said deportations are falling mainly because the focus on criminals has added a complication: It takes an average of 45 days to deport criminals, compared with 11 days for non-criminals, creating a shortage of detention beds. The number of beds was also limited because costs were higher than Congress expected, the official said.

Deportations of convicted criminals climbed 19 percent in 2009 and are on pace to climb 40 percent this year, while deportations of non-criminal illegal immigrants fell 3 percent and are on pace to drop 33 percent this year, agency officials said.

Advocates on the right and left pounced on the memo and other ICE documents, saying they showed that the agency is being neither tough nor consistent in targeting the worst offenders.

"We cannot allow a preoccupation with criminal aliens to obscure other critical ICE missions," Rep. Harold Rogers (Ky.), the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations subcommittee for homeland security, said in a statement released by his office. "At best, it appears as though immigration enforcement is being shelved and the Administration is attempting to enact some sort of selective amnesty under the cover of 'prioritization.' "

Joan Friedland, immigration policy director at the National Immigration Law Center, countered that quotas will encourage agents to target easy cases, not the ones who pose the greatest safety risk.


"For ICE leadership, it's not about keeping the community safe. It's all about chasing this 400,000 number," said Chris Crane, spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees Council 118, which represents ICE workers.

Since November, ICE field offices in Northern California, Dallas and Chicago have issued new evaluation standards and work plans for enforcement agents who remove illegal immigrants from jails and prisons. In some cases, for example, the field offices are requiring that agents process an average of 40 to 60 cases a month to earn "excellent" ratings.

Such standards present a problem, said one San Francisco area agent who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal. Instead of taking a day to prepare a case against a legal resident with multiple convictions for serious crimes, agents may choose to process a drunk driver or nonviolent offender who agrees to leave the country voluntarily, because it will take only hours.

The steps appear at odds with a statement made by Morton in August, when he told reporters ICE had ended quotas in a program to capture illegal immigrants violating court deportation orders.

"I just don't think that a law enforcement program should be based on a hard number that must be met," Morton said. "So we don't have quotas anymore."

Under the Bush administration, ICE officials in 2006 increased an annual quota from 125 to 1,000 arrests for each fugitive operations team. At the same time, the agency dropped its policy that agents focus on criminals and deportation violators.

Becker is a staff reporter for the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, Calif.


http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/ICEdocument032710.pdf?sid=ST2010032700037

I'm trying to figure out why the quotas. This is so inhuman.

http://restorefairness.org/tag/james-m-chaparro/

Haitian Earthquake Survivors Amongst Those In Immigration Detention Centers



Where have all the promises gone?

The Obama administration has delivered many promises, not least of which is to deliver desperately needed reforms to an unwieldy and unjust immigration detention system.

So why is it that the New York Times reported today that 30 survivors of the devastating Haiti earthquake were rushed out of Haiti during aftershocks at the airport, only to be thrown into immigration detention centers on U.S. soil in far flung areas, confined while dealing with the traumas of what they had encountered back home. Many have relatives in the U.S. who are desperate to take them in. They are neither flight risks, nor a danger to the community. Yet, they continue to remain detained. Like Jackson,

who was trapped in the collapse of his family’s apartment building in the quake… His formal request for release, dated March 12, describes how even the sound of someone on the jail stairs makes him fear another earthquake and worry that because he is locked up, he will be unable to escape.

The detainees have received little or no mental treatment for their trauma. This is not surprising, given a new report from a public interest law center Texas Appleseed that documents the shocking treatment and lack of due process meted out to immigrants with mental disabilities. The case studies are astounding. Take for example a 50-year-old legal permanent resident who had lived in the United States since 1974. Declared incompetent by a New York criminal court, he was ordered to serve 90 days in a mental institution, but before anyone could blink, he was transferred far away to a detention center in Texas for deportation without his family’s knowledge. Even though he was suffering from severe schizophrenia, he went without his medication for a month, as detention centers are notorious for medical mistreatment, and this extends even further to mental illness. As his sister said

If they deport him, it will be the end of his life and the end of my mother’s life. My mother says he will die out there in the streets.

The example illustrates the continuing emphasis on enforcement only approach. Even though many immigrants are neither flight risks, they are mandatorily detained in far flung locations. Even though detention is a civil sanction, people in the system are treated as criminals, required to wear prison uniforms, housed in cells and monitored constantly. More than 33,000 immigrants are held daily in a network of privately contracted facilities and state and local jails. Imagine the state of someone with a mental illness in an increasingly overwhelmed system. Moreover, 84% of detainees have no legal counsel – so in an overburdened court system, mentally ill detainees are often left defending themselves.

The report documents what health professionals in the facility have to say. Like one Detention Facility Nurse who stated, rather matter of factly, that “When they are crazy and cannot be managed they go to ‘seg’ [segregation] when there is not room in the short stay unit.”Detainees are often given the wrong drugs, or accused of faking their illness. The worst is when they are let free, often suddenly in the middle of nowhere where the detention facility is located, without any resources. Like the tragic story of a delusional Mexican national suffering from schizophrenia whose father had arranged with immigration for his son’s voluntary departure by plane to Mexico, where he was to be picked up by his mother. But when he called the deportation officer to confirm the travel arrangements, he was told that his son had been deported four days earlier than originally planned, due to the vacation plans of his deportation officer. He still remains missing two years later, though the body of a young man who fits his son’s description remains in a morgue in Tijuana.

Day by day, violations in detention continue, even as a leaked memo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has revealed the need to meet larger quotas of immigrants for deportation, contrary to the official stand by the administration that they are mainly targeting immigrants who have criminal convictions. According to the ACLU,

The ACLU and select immigration groups met Monday with ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton and his senior staff to discuss the reported quota policy and Detention and Removal Office (DRO) priorities. At the meeting, James M. Chaparro, the DRO director who wrote the memo, which was apparently not cleared by the Assistant Secretary, apologized for his “tremendous error”… Assistant Secretary Morton denied the use of quotas, stated his commitment to work together in a “spirit of candor and transparency” and asked to be “judged on the record, not on rumors.”

But many are not believing the “bad apple” story. Key immigrant and Latino organizations have called on President Obama and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to dismiss John Morton. “The reality is that ICE has gone rogue and needs to be reined in with dramatic action,” said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change.

Growing frustration is leading to more broken families and destroyed futures. No more promises we say again. It’s time for concrete action.


I'm not sure about "gone rogue". It's pretty much business as usual for this government so far...

is Obama a racist?

Whenever politically expedient.

from a few days ago (which I read in the actual paper that my boss brought in last week) and I can't find it online. but it looks like those folks got let out...

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/01/us/AP-US-Haiti-Earthquake-Detainees.html
30 Haitians Who Came to Fla. Without Visas Freed
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 1, 2010


Filed at 3:31 p.m. ET

MIAMI (AP) -- More than 30 Haitians who boarded U.S.-bound planes without paperwork in the frenzied evacuations after the earthquake were freed from a Florida immigration detention center Thursday, attorneys for the Haitians said.

The Haitians had been held at a facility in Pompano Beach by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since January. Some represented by the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center told attorneys there that American troops waved them aboard planes without asking for their papers.

The U.S. suspended deportations to Haiti after the Jan. 12 earthquake.

''We knew these Haitians were not about to be deported because of our government's policy. They didn't have criminal histories. They had suffered terribly. We just couldn't figure out why they weren't being released,'' said Cheryl Little, the advocacy center's executive director.

A total of 65 Haitians had been detained in Florida and other states, said Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

A story about the detainees was first reported in The New York Times.

By the end of February, U.S. Customs and Border Protection processed more than 31,000 people evacuated from Haiti, including roughly 7,200 foreign nationals. About 1,100 received humanitarian parole while others received tourist visas.

Haitians already living in the U.S. illegally by Jan. 12 were allowed to apply for temporary protected status, an 18-month reprieve from deportation that also allows recipients to work.

If he says he's going to do something, expect the opposite to happen with a side order of semantics to befuddle.


http://blogs.ilw.com/deportationandremoval/2010/03/obamas-firm-commitment-to-immigration-reform-goal-to-deport-400000-people-in-2010.html

Obama's "Firm Commitment" to Immigration Reform: Goal to Deport 400,000 People in 2010



The Washington Post has dug up a February 22, 2010, internal memorandum of James M. Chaparro, Director of ICE Detention and Removal Operations, that specifically sets forth a "critical Agency goal of achieving 400,000" deportations in 2010. He further states that the efforts to deport 400,000 people from the United States "must be sustained and will be closely monitored."

The memorandum does not indicate who will be closely monitoring the progress of achieving the 400,000 deportation goal, but given the fact that this memorandum was issued by the Director of ICE Detention and Removal Operations, one can assume that a person of such rank and authority would be answering directly to the top of the food chain.

One can also assume that our President is fully aware of these "critical agency goal{s}", and has signed off on them. So let me ask you this: Where is the President's "commitment" to comprehensive immigration reform? We have all heard the words, but they ring hollow in juxtaposition to the President's actual "commitment" to deport as many people as humanly possible in his second year in office.

This memorandum was sent to Field Office Directors and Deputy Field Office Directors praising them and telling them to "keep up the good work." If only it were possible to praise our President for his "good work" reforming our beyond broken immigration laws. Wishful thinking.

...

The following is the administration's feeble attempt at damage control: (We aren't buying it.)
ICE statement in response to March 27 Washington Post article

"ICE is required by Congress to submit annual performance goals as part of the budgetary process and our longstanding focus remains on smart, effective immigration enforcement that places priority first on those dangerous criminal aliens who present risk to the security of our communities.

This focus has yielded real results – between FY2008 and FY2009, criminal deportations increased by 19% and this priority continues in FY10 with 40% more criminal aliens removed to date as compared to the same period last year.

Significant portions of the memo cited in The Washington Post (3/27/10 - Becker/Hsu) did not reflect our policies, was sent without my authorization, and has since been withdrawn and corrected.

We are strongly committed to carrying out our priorities to remove serious criminal offenders first and we definitively do not set quotas." - Assistant Secretary John Morton


There's some more details in this sound file, which is a phone seminar on reactions to this.

http://www.communitychange.org/file-repository/firmconference.mp3

They seem to think that the agency is working outside the approval of the White House. Wake up fellas! They promised you that only violent criminals would be deported. Now traffic violations are a violent criminal act. Problem solved. :(

Where is institutional racism most rampant?

War (easier to kill 'those' people)

Education (where are the 'failing' schools? Who lives there?)

Immigration (is anyone concerned about western Europeans overstaying their visas? didn't think so)

War on Drugs

and so on...

What 'change' is happening in these areas under the Obama presidency?

Well, if the shoe fits...

Those poor fucking people, what a nightmare.

(well if it weren't sad and terrible it'd be funny anyway) is that it's a figurative drop in the bucket anyway - 400,000 out of what, 12-15 million? Isn't that what the estimates are for undocumented immigrants?

And how many more will show up in the country this year? Will this even 'break even' so to speak? (I am sorry I have been reduced to using language like this for actual human beings)

It's a load of crap to appease some crapheads. Fairness and justice be damned. Root causes of anything be damned.

Obama - Crap for Crapheads. that's my new slogan. I'll get a sticker made. To put on my new Prius right next to my "Drill Baby Drill" sticker and my "Obama/Biden" sticker and my "No War For Oil" sticker and my "Marriage Equality Now" sticker. Wait a minute. Whaaaa?

I mean, does the cognitive dissonance cause a psychotic break at some point? How can people even pretend anymore?

(no i don't have a new prius. just my old hyundai, lolol)

There was something in the article about how they wouldn't even let a local Creole-speaking psychologist in to talk to them on a volunteer basis. These people have fucking PTSD and every heavy step on the stairwell sounds to them like an aftershock and they're fucking locked up for nothing. Un fucking believable.

I'm sure they aren't going after the big corporate places that hire immigrants. That's probably where the larger number of workers are employed. This 400,000 is probably being targeted from the places that are smaller and independent. I'm trying to find out. I think there is something else going on too. Terrorizing the workers and breaking up the cycle of production of a smaller business can completely destroy a vulnerable community. Everyone suffers.

Who has been making money for his friends with that lately? (See: Detroit, Obama's billionaire buddies)

On second thought, I am going to pm this response to people. Caution or paranoia? Fuck, I don't know anymore.

Tents surrounded by chain link/razor wire in the Sonoran Desert, got to be miserable, it really cooks.

Around here it is poultry processing plants and 'food services' that are most often targeted. They keep it under the radar and until a bust happens you'd never know anything was going on, unless you're in the immigrant community

Immigration Agents Are Going Rogue
Scandal over ICE-issued deportation quotas for field officers, calling into question whether Obama is truly focused on criminals and abusive employers.
April 8, 2010 |

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, Andrea Nill, and Alex Seitz-Wald.

Last Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a damning critique of the federal 287(g) program that deputizes local and state police to enforce immigration law after entering into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The OIG's report couldn't have come at a worse time for ICE officials. The week started with a leaked memo revealing that ICE issued deportation quotas for field officers, directly calling into question pledges made by the Obama administration to keep enforcement focused on criminals and abusive employers. Then, Texas Appleseed released a report indicating that the "incompetence" of mentally ill detained immigrants "is routinely ignored by immigration judges and deportation officers." Two days later, the New York Times revealed that over 30 Haitians had been languishing in immigration detention for months after being accidentally ushered onto a U.S.-bound plane by American Marines. For immigrants and immigration advocates frustrated by the lack of immigration reform, the OIG's report added "insulted to injury" at the end of an embarrassing week for ICE and left many to conclude that ICE is "more rogue than right."

BUSH-ERA DEPORTATION NUMBERS

Since coming into office, the Obama administration has shied away from the controversial work-site raids of the Bush administration. Instead, both President Obama and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano have promised to focus on pursuing undocumented immigrants who pose a danger to national security. Nonetheless, deportations have increased by 5 percent, reaching 387,790 removals in fiscal year 2009 -- two-thirds of which involved non-criminals. James Chaparro, head of ICE detention and removal operations, was upset that removals were still "well under the Agency's goal of 400,000," and said so in a memo that was eventually leaked to the Washington Post. Immigration advocates responded to the leaked deportation quotas with outrage. The Reform Immigration for America Campaign issued a press release stating, "ICE has a serious credibility problem as they continue to say one thing while doing another." The Immigration Policy Center issued a DHS "report card" stating, "[W]hile there is a policy shift at the top of DHS, it remains to be seen whether that shift will translate into a cultural shift throughout the agency." Frank Sharry of America's Voice urged the Obama administration to improve practices and performance by ICE, while other organizations called on the President to outright dismiss ICE head John Morton. Top ICE officials immediately denounced the leaked memo and clarified that it doesn't represent the agency's official policy. However, advocates remain largely skeptical of ICE leadership and the agency's capability to implement Obama's enforcement strategy.

287(G) BROKEN BEYOND REPAIR

In early 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report criticizing ICE for failing to provide local police participating in the 287(g) program with clearly defined objectives or a consistent system of supervision. "Contrary to the objective of the program," the GAO report found that participating local police were removing immigrants for minor violations amidst rampant allegations of discrimination and racial profiling instead of curbing serious crime committed by "removable aliens." Napolitano responded by announcing new objectives and guidelines aimed at "providing uniform policies" that prioritized the deportation of immigrants who commit serious crimes. The new OIG report indicates that, despite recent improvements, little has changed, and "significant challenges in administering the 287(g) program continue to exist." In fact, the report definitively stated that "ICE cannot be assured that the 287(g) program is meeting its intended purpose, or that resources are being appropriately targeted toward aliens who pose the greatest risk to public safety and the community." The report also found that little thought has been given to the protection of civil rights and civil liberties throughout the program's implementation, and "287(g) officers at several program sites were not knowledgeable about the asylum process, immigration benefits, and victim and witness protections." Although civil rights and immigration advocates weren't surprised by OIG's findings, the report was the last straw. Several organizations believe the program is "broken beyond repair" and are calling on the Obama administration to terminate the program once and for all.

ATTACKS FROM THE RIGHT

In the past, Morton has accurately pointed out that he "can get criticized on the same issue from both sides on the same day." Throughout the past week, Morton has probably felt the sting from both sides on a daily basis. The same weekend Chaparro's memo leaked, a prominent Arizona rancher was shot and killed while in his SUV near the Mexican border. The despicable act of violence immediately prompted anti-immigration hawks like former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo to describe the murder as having been committed by an undocumented immigrant, despite the lack of suspect and leads. Tancredo took his demands a step farther by calling for Napolitano's dismissal, accusing her of lying about border security in order to move immigration reform forward. However, Napolitano has never said that DHS's work at the border is done. What she has said is that over the past few years, the U.S. has seen "improve[d] immigration enforcement and border security within the current legal framework." Ultimately, the agency's inconsistent application of the Obama administration's promises isn't just the result of a few "ICE cowboys" carrying out their own priorities, it's also the natural result of an agency that is stuck enforcing bad immigration laws within a broken system. "We will never have fully effective law enforcement or national security as long as so many millions remain in the shadows," Napolitano has stated. Throwing more money and boots at the border might temporarily shut restrictionists like Tancredo up, but in the absence of immigration reform, the tragedies associated with the nation's defective immigration laws will continue to mount on both sides of the debate.

http://www.alternet.org/immigration/146358/immigration_agents_are_going_rogue?page=entire

"The same weekend Chaparro's memo leaked, a prominent Arizona rancher was shot and killed while in his SUV near the Mexican border. The despicable act of violence immediately prompted anti-immigration hawks like former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo to describe the murder as having been committed by an undocumented immigrant, despite the lack of suspect and leads."

It may be petty, but why is this called "The despicable act"? Is it just because it was a "prominent rancher"? How many others were shot down on the border during the same time period? I am sorry, if a poor person is killed near the border - "Oh well"; but a "prominent rancher"! Sorry, I am so twisted-up by this whole series of events, I can hardly think straight.

Here, in North Alabama, there is a large and vibrant Hispanic community. As a group, they have seemed to gone into some kind of "low-profile" mode over the last month or so. I have been trying to find out conditions and what has been going on, but I can get almost nothing. The fear is palpable.

I'll bet all those Haliburton detention camps built all over the place over the past four or five years are coming in handy now...