Enforcement

Discrediting “Self Deportation” as Immigration Policy

Why an Attrition through Enforcement Strategy Makes Life Difficult for Everyone

By Michele Waslin

The day that Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant law went into effect in October of 2011, thousands of school children were reported absent from schools across the state, and workers did not show up for their jobs. In recent months, many immigrants living in the state have confined themselves to their homes, fearful of driving their kids to school, getting groceries, or seeking medical attention. The Alabama State Representative behind the law, Mickey Hammon, explicitly stated that this was the law’s intended effect. He said that the law, HB56, “attacks every aspect of an illegal alien’s life” and “is designed to make it difficult for them to live here so they will deport themselves.”

Alabama provides a sterling example of the devastating impact of a strategic and systematic plan being promoted by anti-immigrant groups and lawmakers who have jumped on the bandwagon. The plan is called “attrition through enforcement” (sometimes called “self deportation”) and the groups behind it have created a web of federal and state legislative proposals that seek to reduce illegal immigration by making it difficult, if not impossible, for unauthorized immigrants to live in American society. While individual proposals may appear to be relatively benign, they are part of a larger systematic plan that undermines basic human rights, devastates local economies, and places unnecessary burdens on U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants.Read more...

Published On: Mon, Feb 06, 2012 | Download File

How to Fix a Broken Border: A Three Part Series

PART I: How to Fix a Broken Border: Hit the Cartels Where It Hurts
By Terry Goddard (Released September 2011)

Former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard argues that “much of the ‘secure the border’ debate is nonsense. Again and again, symbols trump reality, misinformation buries the truth. Programs like building a bigger border wall or enlisting police in the local enforcement of immigration laws are sold as ways to make the border more secure. They will not.” According to Goddard, our border-enforcement resources should be deployed not against unauthorized immigrants, but against the criminal cartels in Mexico that control the smuggling of people, drugs, guns, and money across the border. “A more effective border strategy starts with the…torrent of cash pouring across the border into the cartel pocketbooks. So, go after the money. Taking away the profit cripples the organization. Conversely, as long as the money from drug sales and human smuggling—which may total more than $40 billion a year—flows to the cartels, the violence in Mexico, the sophisticated smugglers crossing our border, and the perception that nothing is being done to defend the border will continue.”

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Published On: Wed, Feb 01, 2012 | Download File

The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program: A Fact Sheet

Immigration law is highly complex. Determining which non-citizens are “lawfully” or “unlawfully” present and whether they should be allowed to stay in the United States are complex matters which involve the interpretation of a range of federal laws and regulations, broad policy considerations, and prioritization of existing resources, to name just a few considerations.

Alabama and other states that have passed harsh anti-immigration laws don’t understand this complexity. State legislators seem to want a fast, simple answer to the question of whether someone is lawfully or unlawfully present in the United States. These states are planning to lean heavily on the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program or some other system of verification, such as E-verify, as the mechanism for determining whether someone is unlawfully present in the country.

But there is no magic database or system that gives the simple, speedy determination of unlawful presence that states crave. The SAVE program, operated by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), does not and was never designed to meet these needs. SAVE can only verify immigration status or immigration information at a particular point in time, and cannot determine whether someone is unlawfully present in the U.S. E-Verify is a federal database that can only be used to verify a worker’s authorization to work in the U.S.Read more...

Published On: Thu, Dec 15, 2011 | Download File

The Secure Communities Program: Unanswered Questions and Continuing Concerns

The Secure Communities program, which launched in March 2008, has become a centerpiece of immigration enforcement efforts by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Its rapid expansion coupled with serious concerns about the design, goals, and implementation of the program has resulted in a great deal of controversy.

Under Secure Communities, participating jurisdictions submit arrestees’ fingerprints not only to criminal databases, but to immigration databases as well, allowing ICE access to information on individuals held in jails. While state and local law-enforcement officers are not directly enforcing federal immigration law or making arrests for immigration violations, the transmission of fingerprints allows ICE to tap into information about detainees and make determinations about additional ICE enforcement action.

While some may claim that Secure Communities is an improvement over other federal-local partnerships—such as the 287(g) program, which deputizes state and local police officers to enforce immigration laws through agreements with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)DD DD—the Secure Communities program still faces many of the same criticisms. A Task Force appointed by DHS to make recommendations regarding the program concluded that Secure Communities is fundamentally flawed.DD DD While roughly half of the Task Force members favored a suspension or termination of the program and half believed the program must be continued while reforms are being made, all Task Force members agreed that the program must be reformed.
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Published On: Tue, Nov 29, 2011 | Download File

Checklist for Estimating the Costs of SB 1070-Style Legislation

(Updated November 2011) - Arizona’s infamous anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, has spawned many imitators. In a growing number of state houses around the country, bills have been passed or introduced which—like SB 1070—create new state immigration crimes and expand the power of police to enforce immigration laws. Some state laws would make E-Verify mandatory for all businesses, require schools to check students’ immigration status, or make it a crime to “harbor or transport” unauthorized immigrants. State legislators who are thinking of jumping on the immigration enforcement bandwagon, however, would be wise to consider the costs of such legislation. State immigration enforcement laws impose unfunded mandates on the police, jails, and courts; drive away workers, taxpayers, and consumers upon whom the state economy depends; and invite costly lawsuits and tourist boycotts. These are economic consequences which few states can afford at a time of gaping budget deficits.

The following is a guide to calculating the costs associated with state-level immigration enforcement bills:

Cost to Police

Costs associated with a projected increase in arrests by police.

Average number of hours needed for police to detain someone for a particular offense, determine their legal status, transport them to a police station, book them, complete a report, prepare for court, and testify in court.

Average cost per hour for police to complete these tasks.

[Number of additional arrests] x [number of hours per arrest] x [cost per hour for an arrest] = cost to police.

Cost to JailsRead more...

Published On: Tue, Nov 08, 2011 | Download File

Fiscally Irresponsible: Immigration Enforcement without Reform Wastes Taxpayer Dollars

Many political pundits, GOP presidential aspirants, and Members of Congress want to have it both ways when it comes to federal spending on immigration. On the one hand, there is much talk about the need for fiscal austerity, and a Congressional “super-committee” is currently working on slashing federal spending in order to reduce the deficit. On the other hand, even though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just announced a record high number of deportations, some still want to increase federal spending on immigration enforcement; putting more Border Patrol boots on the ground, completing the border fence, and deploying an array of high-tech gadgetry. However, they miss one very important fact: piling on more immigration enforcement without immigration reform is a practical and fiscal dead-end.

Over the past decade, the federal government has spent tens of billions of dollars trying to keep unauthorized immigrants out of the United States, or trying to get them out of the country if they are already here. The end result? Roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants now call the United States home, the majority have been here for more than 10 years, and many have U.S.-born children. In short, the “enforcement only” approach to unauthorized immigration has proven to be costly and ineffective.Read more...

Published On: Wed, Oct 19, 2011 | Download File

Locked Up Without End: Indefinite Detention of Immigrants Will Not Make America Safer

One of the ugliest myths in the immigration debate is that immigrants are more likely to commit crime or pose a danger to society. Although studies repeatedly have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, politicians continue to exploit the public’s fear of crime to justify ever more punitive immigration measures, including the mass incarceration of immigrants for reasons that would never be permitted for U.S. citizens. A prime example of this political double standard is the “Keep Our Communities Safe Act of 2011” (H.R. 1932), introduced this past spring by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. H.R. 1932 proposes a massive expansion of our immigration lock-up system that would waste millions of taxpayer dollars and violate our constitutional commitments to individual liberty and due process of law, while doing little to make America safer.

The vast scope of H.R. 1932 became clear during its committee mark-up, where members of the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement challenged the language and intent of the legislation and sought to amend its reach. During that meeting, Rep. Smith was forced to acknowledge that the bill’s detention mandates extend to immigrants who have no criminal record whatsoever, much less focus narrowly on hard-core offenders. Since that time, however, Rep. Smith has continued to misrepresent that “the bill only specifies that a small segment of criminal immigrants may be detained for extended periods.”Read more...

Published On: Thu, Oct 06, 2011 | Download File

Guns, Drugs, and Money: Tackling the Real Threats to Border Security

The external borders of the United States matter to security, but how and in what ways is neither automatic nor obvious. The current assumption is that borders defend the national interior against all harms, which are understood as consistently coming from outside—and that security is always obtained in the same way, whatever the issue. Some security policies correctly use borders as tools to increase safety, but border policy does not protect us from all harms. The 9/11 terrorists came through airports with visas, thus crossing a border inspection system without being stopped. They did not cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Future terrorists would not necessarily cross a land border. U.S. citizens and residents, and nationals of Western Europe, also represent an important element of the terrorist threat, and they have unimpeded or easy passage through U.S. borders. Fortified borders cannot protect us from all security threats or sources of harm.

Moreover, not all border crossers pose security concerns, even ones who violate national laws. The hundreds of thousands of unauthorized migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border each year have not posed a threat of political terrorism, and external terrorists have not traveled through this border. Enforcement of laws against unauthorized immigration is, in the vast majority of cases, a resource- and attention-wasting distraction from sensible national security measures. That does not mean the U.S.-Mexico border is free from risk of harm, such as increasingly violent drug trafficking organizations operating nearby in Mexico. But that issue needs to be addressed in different ways than current enforcement policy does.

Published On: Mon, Sep 12, 2011 | Download File

So Close and Yet So Far: How the Three- and Ten-Year Bars Keep Families Apart

Most Americans take it for granted that marriage to a U.S. citizen and other family relationships entitle an immigrant to a green card, but there are barriers that often prevent or delay these family members from becoming lawful permanent residents, even if they are already in the United States. Among these barriers are the “three- and ten-year bars,” provisions of the law which prohibit applicants from returning to the United States if they were previously in the U.S. illegally. Thousands of people who qualify for green cards based on their relationships to U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident relatives leave the U.S. to obtain their green card are caught in a Catch-22—under current law they must leave the country to apply for their green card abroad, but as soon as they leave, they are immediately barred from re-entering the U.S. for three or ten years.

The Secretary of Homeland Security may waive the bar to admission if extreme hardship to a spouse or parent can be established. But there are no waivers available for others, even if it would mean hardship for U.S. citizen children. Unfortunately, current policies and interpretations of these provisions have made it difficult—and sometimes impossible—for many deserving applicants to obtain a waiver, especially if they initially entered the country illegally. Under current DHS policy, applicants must apply for the waiver from abroad, sometimes waiting months or years in another country before they learn whether the waiver has been granted and whether they will be permitted to return to their loved ones in the United States.Read more...

Published On: Mon, Jul 25, 2011 | Download File

The Impact of E-Verify on Louisiana’s Economy

Some members of Congress have proposed making it mandatory for all employers to use E-Verify—the federal, web-based program through which U.S. businesses can verify the work authorization of new hires. However, mandatory E-Verify without immigration reform is not a solution to the problem of unauthorized immigration. Addressing the reality of a workforce that relies on unauthorized immigrants requires a more comprehensive package of reforms—including a legalization program that brings unauthorized workers out of the shadows, and the creation of sufficient legal visas for the immigrant workers America needs. Mandatory E-Verify alone is likely to harm the economy and U.S. workers.

Immigrants in Louisiana.
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Published On: Wed, Jul 20, 2011 | Download File