"THE DEPORTATION DILEMMA:
RECONCILING TOUGH AND HUMANE ENFORCEMENT"
Summary of Research done by Marc R.
Rosenblum and Doris Meissner with Claire Bergeron and Faye Hipsman at the
Migration Policy Institute (www.migrationpolicy.org), 2014
Beryl Flom, League
of Women Voters of San Diego
A couple of copies of this report were handed to LWV of
San Diego members by the Consulate General to Tijuana. Since most of the participants have not read
it, I am presenting a summary of it.
The authors quote some estimated statistics regarding
unauthorized immigrants:
·
86% had been in the U.S. for six years or more
(2011)
·
46% are parents of minor, mostly U.S.-citizen
children
·
23% of removals were parents of American citizen
children
·
95% had another relative in the U.S. (2013)
·
74% are in the U.S. labor force
·
over 1 million young people are eligible for
DACA
They found that the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP)
operate quite differently close to the Mexican border as opposed to inland
United States. Along the border,
undocumented people crossing into the U.S. are often deported or accused of a
crime. In the interior of the U.S.,
there is more flexibility and use of other resources for people who are
undocumented. (The handout at the
Deportation Dilemma tour on May 14, 2015 titled "U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement", June 17, 2011for ICE lists circumstances for deportation
discretion; it must apply to the interior U.S.)
Many more decisions about deportation are now being
handled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as administrative removals
because there is not nearly enough funding for the judicial system. CBP and ICE budgets have increased by 300%
from 2002-2013 but the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) has only
increased by 70% in the same time period.
Previously, an immigration judge held a formal hearing for people being
considered for deportation. There is
also an increase in relatively minor criminal charges (mainly illegal entry and
reentry) and a shift from repeated
entries being considered a civil offense to now being a criminal offense. Nonimmigration crimes have remained at about
7%. Removal hearings are consider civil
cases, so the accused is not given legal counsel. A study done in 2014 figured that the average
time for a case to be heard was 577 days.
The backlog of immigration cases in the courts rose from 166,061 in 2002
to 363,239 in 2014.
The crackdown on people who are undocumented was started
in 2005 and was aimed at discouraging people from trying to cross into the U.S.
illegally. Fewer people are offered
voluntary return and more are incarcerated partly so they will show up for
hearings. The U.S. deported about 400,000
people in 2012. The result of this
hard-nosed policy now is that there is a significant drop in apprehensions at
the border and more deportations.
One result of the Patriot Act after 9/11 was the
interchange of information between various levels of law enforcement. Through a program called Secure Communities,
local police are required to send their fingerprints to the FBI and to
ICE. Undocumented people can be
identified if their fingerprint is on file with ICE. (Recently, the issue of Sanctuary Cities was
in the news after the shooting of a girl in San Francisco by an undocumented
person. Sanctuary Cities have chosen not
to report undocumented people to ICE.)
Some proposals to make more humane enforcement:
·
certain minor offenses could be removed from the
list of crimes for illegal immigrants; criminals pose a risk to public safety
and national security
·
return to the practice of having judges
prosecute all removals; more funds to EOIR; more consistency through the nation
·
CBP should develop guidelines for discretion at
the border (ICE has them)
·
Extend Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA) or children brought to the U.S. as minors who have completed high
school, are in college or working) to allow them to stay in the U.S. rather
than deporting them. The Courts have put
a hold on processing DACA applications, but over 600,000 cases were approved.
