The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Los Angeles Times
Police not focusing on dangerous illegal immigrants, study says
Police officers empowered by a federal program to enforce immigration laws are instead arresting day laborers and street vendors, the report finds.
By Anna Gorman
February 26, 2009

A federal program that empowers local police to enforce U.S. immigration laws has failed in its promise to target illegal immigrants who pose a threat to public safety or national security, according to a study released today.

Instead of focusing on serious criminals, local law enforcement officers are arresting "day laborers, street vendors, people who are driving around with broken taillights," said Judith Greene, coauthor of the study by Justice Strategies, a New York-based nonprofit research organization focusing on humane and cost- effective approaches to criminal justice and immigration law enforcement.

At the same time, the costly enforcement program is diverting resources from local police and sheriff departments, the authors wrote. Many of the agreements are in cities where the crime rates are lower than the national average but had Latino population growth higher than the national average, they said.

There were more than 65 agreements between federal immigration officials and local law enforcement agencies across the nation and more than 950 officers had been trained by federal authorities as of late 2008, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

On the agency's website, the program is described as "one of the agency's most successful and popular partnership initiatives as more state and local leaders have come to understand how a shared approach to immigration enforcement can benefit their communities."

Locally, immigration authorities have partnerships with the Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino sheriff's departments. According to the immigration agency, the program -- known as 287(g) -- is credited with identifying more than 79,000 suspected illegal immigrants between January 2006 and late 2008. The majority of those have been screened at jails.

The best-known local-federal partnership is in Maricopa County, Ariz., where Sheriff Joe Arpaio has attracted headlines for his immigration enforcement tactics that have included marching illegal immigrant inmates in shackles from a local jail to a tent city. Lawmakers have called upon the U.S. attorney general to investigate the actions of Arpaio.

"Joe Arpaio has a media circus going on around him," said Aarti Shahani, coauthor of the study. "But there are mini-Joe Arpaios all over the place."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has called for a review of the program.
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Arizona Republic
Experts call ICE program used by Arpaio a failure
by Daniel González
Feb. 26, 2009

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's continuing and controversial crackdown on illegal immigration and the federal program that lets him identify and arrest undocumented immigrants is a financial and public-safety failure, according to a new report.

The program, known as 287 (g), has been touted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a public-safety measure aimed at removing criminal illegal immigrants. But the Sheriff's Office and other participating agencies have focused on easy targets such as traffic violators and day laborers who pose little threat, says the report by Justice Strategies, a non-profit nonpartisan research group based in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Arpaio defended his participation in the program, which he said has led to the identification of thousands of illegal immigrants.

Though ICE touts the nearly 8-year-old program as a money saver, Arizona taxpayers are footing a greater share of the bill for enforcing immigration laws, usually the responsibility of the federal government, according to the report to be released today. Enforcing immigration laws detracts local police from their primary job of fighting crime and keeping neighborhoods safe, the report says, and race, not crime, has fueled the program's growth in Phoenix and other areas of the country with growing Latino populations.

"It had enough time to prove itself, and it failed," said Aarti Shahani, a researcher with the Justice Strategies group who co-authored the report. "The immigration system is broken, and 287 (g) is not the way to fix it. It's like pouring water into a cup that is broken, and the water keeps leaking out. It isn't doing anything to solve the problem."

The report concludes by recommending that the Obama administration terminate the program, which was created under the Clinton administration but wasn't promoted until after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, under the Bush administration.

The report comes amid growing opposition to Arpaio's immigration crackdowns. The National Day Labor Organizing Network, Somos America and other pro-immigrant groups plan to hold demonstrations on Friday and Saturday in Phoenix and other parts of the country calling for an end to the crackdowns.

Less than two weeks ago, four key Democratic members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate complaints that since Arpaio signed a 287 (g) agreement with ICE in 2007, deputies have unconstitutionally used skin color to look for illegal immigrants as part of a series of crime sweeps and work-site raids. The four Democrats also asked for Napolitano, the former Arizona governor, to terminate Arpaio's agreement if any problems can't be fixed.

Arpaio this week sent a letter to the four Democrats, including U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, saying that his office is abiding by the agreement and inviting them to come see the program for themselves.

Despite the criticism, polls show that Arpaio's crackdowns have broad public support. In November, he was re-elected to his fifth four-year term.

Under the 287 (g) program, Maricopa County sheriff's deputies have arrested 1,434 people for immigration violations, often after they had been encountered by deputies investigating state crimes, Arpaio said.

Michael Keegan, a spokesman for Homeland Security, said the Justice Strategies report would be reviewed.

"The department takes very seriously any allegations of civil-rights abuses, and Secretary Napolitano is undertaking a broad review of all immigration programs, including the 287 (g) agreements," he said.

ICE credits the program with identifying more than 70,000 people suspected of being in the country illegally.

U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and author of the 287 (g) program, defended it.

"It is astonishing that anyone would want to end a successful, voluntary program that protects American communities from criminal illegal immigrants," Smith said.

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Daily News
Ineffective raids should be ICE'd
Wednesday, February 25th 2009

The image of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as an efficient institution carrying on a heroic struggle for national security has been tarnished.

A couple of weeks ago, a study by the Migration Policy Institute revealed that 73% of the people arrested since early 2008 in much ballyhooed ICE raids had no criminal records. Yet the flashy paramilitary operations were billed by the Homeland Security Department as carefully planned dragnets for dangerous "immigrant fugitives."

The truth, though, came out in the study: Raids do little to enhance national security or solve the immigration crisis.

Now, a report released today, "Local Democracy on ICE," arrives at a similar conclusion.

The report was conducted by Justice Strategies, a New York-based nonprofit research group that is "dedicated to more humane and cost-effective approaches to criminal justice and immigration law enforcement."

Aarti Shahani, the report's lead author, said, "We make the same underlying criticism [as the MPI study], but we are looking particularly at the fusion of federal immigration and local justice."

Shahani and her co-author, Judith Greene, who heads Justice Strategies, said the report is the result of an investigation of the so-called 287(g) program, which authorizes police, traffic cops and correction officers to arrest immigrants without cause.

Implemented under President George W. Bush, ICE justified 287(g) as a public safety program designed to get "illegal criminal aliens" off the streets. The new report reveals a different reality.

To begin with, Shahani said, there are 63 localities in the U.S.(the closest one to New York is in Hudson County, N.J.) where ICE has deputized officers, and 61% of the localities have crime rates that are lower than the national average.

"The statute is being applied to corn vendors and people with broken taillights," said Shahani who added that police already have the legal power they need to arrest anyone suspected of a crime.

It is precisely when they don't have reasonable suspicion of a crime that the 287(g) is applied, Shahani said.

It is very telling that ICE had given the largest and most powerful 287(g) contract to the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz. This is a man well known for blatantly racist actions like ordering indiscriminate street "sweeps" of Latinos without any evidence of criminal activity.

Yet ICE deputized 160 of Arpaio's men, adding them to the 200 officers deputized nationwide. It was the first time local enforcement officers were given the power to conduct searches, make street arrests, conduct investigations and issue detainersin jail.

"Sheriff Joe" happily summarized the added value of the 287(g) program like this: "When we stop a car for probable cause, [now we can take] the other passengers, too."

To top it all, the 287(g) program is, as Shahani put it, "a huge drain of tax dollars." It doesn't provide funds for implementation, and shifts massive immigrant detention costs to local governments, straining already crowded jails.

DESPITE ITS grandiose crimefighter pretensions, the 287(g) program's main target has been day laborers and traffic violators. These are the "criminal illegal aliens" routinely arrested by deputized officers without probable cause.

"The program is under scrutiny, and ICE needs to be held responsible for its failure to supervise and direct all local partners that has led to rampant abuse," Shahani said. "There is a real opportunity for it to be reined in or terminated."

The sooner the better.

Wednesday, February 25th 2009

The image of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as an efficient institution carrying on a heroic struggle for national security has been tarnished.

A couple of weeks ago, a study by the Migration Policy Institute revealed that 73% of the people arrested since early 2008 in much ballyhooed ICE raids had no criminal records. Yet the flashy paramilitary operations were billed by the Homeland Security Department as carefully planned dragnets for dangerous "immigrant fugitives."

The truth, though, came out in the study: Raids do little to enhance national security or solve the immigration crisis.

Now, a report released today, "Local Democracy on ICE," arrives at a similar conclusion.

The report was conducted by Justice Strategies, a New York-based nonprofit research group that is "dedicated to more humane and cost-effective approaches to criminal justice and immigration law enforcement."

Aarti Shahani, the report's lead author, said, "We make the same underlying criticism [as the MPI study], but we are looking particularly at the fusion of federal immigration and local justice."

Shahani and her co-author, Judith Greene, who heads Justice Strategies, said the report is the result of an investigation of the so-called 287(g) program, which authorizes police, traffic cops and correction officers to arrest immigrants without cause.

Implemented under President George W. Bush, ICE justified 287(g) as a public safety program designed to get "illegal criminal aliens" off the streets. The new report reveals a different reality.

To begin with, Shahani said, there are 63 localities in the U.S.(the closest one to New York is in Hudson County, N.J.) where ICE has deputized officers, and 61% of the localities have crime rates that are lower than the national average.

"The statute is being applied to corn vendors and people with broken taillights," said Shahani who added that police already have the legal power they need to arrest anyone suspected of a crime.

It is precisely when they don't have reasonable suspicion of a crime that the 287(g) is applied, Shahani said.

It is very telling that ICE had given the largest and most powerful 287(g) contract to the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz. This is a man well known for blatantly racist actions like ordering indiscriminate street "sweeps" of Latinos without any evidence of criminal activity.

Yet ICE deputized 160 of Arpaio's men, adding them to the 200 officers deputized nationwide. It was the first time local enforcement officers were given the power to conduct searches, make street arrests, conduct investigations and issue detainersin jail.

"Sheriff Joe" happily summarized the added value of the 287(g) program like this: "When we stop a car for probable cause, [now we can take] the other passengers, too."

To top it all, the 287(g) program is, as Shahani put it, "a huge drain of tax dollars." It doesn't provide funds for implementation, and shifts massive immigrant detention costs to local governments, straining already crowded jails.

DESPITE ITS grandiose crimefighter pretensions, the 287(g) program's main target has been day laborers and traffic violators. These are the "criminal illegal aliens" routinely arrested by deputized officers without probable cause.

"The program is under scrutiny, and ICE needs to be held responsible for its failure to supervise and direct all local partners that has led to rampant abuse," Shahani said. "There is a real opportunity for it to be reined in or terminated."

The sooner the better.

--------------
Phoenix New Times
VINNIE'S BOO-BOO
Stephen Lemons
February 26, 2009


"WTF?!" That's what this ticked-off Toucan thought when he saw that local Immigration and Customs Enforcement flack Vinnie Picard was quoted in the paper of record as saying, "Arizona's 287(g) program is working as intended," and that there are no "firsthand" complaints of racial-profiling lodged with the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part.

Had Vinnie been smokin' the good ganja? Does the guy read the papers? Or does he just use them to roll himself a fat doobie?

Even if Picard never got around to perusing the ACLU's big lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio alleging all kinds of civil rights abuses, complaints regarding Arpaio's 287(g)-men — you know, the 160 MCSO deputies "cross-trained" by the feds as ICE agents — are as plentiful as frickin' poppies in Afghanistan these days.

The Bird figures you'd have to be doing your best King Oedipus impersonation to not see evidence that Arpaio's abusing his 287(g) powers. Maybe Vinnie never got his invite to Joe's 200 Mexican March earlier this month, where Arpaio segregated a passel of undocumented immigrants in their own separate Tent City, with its own electrified fence, marching them past a gantlet of shutterbugs from the Fourth Estate.

Though all of those poor saps were wearing striped shirts reading "UNSENTENCED" — meaning they were awaiting trial — they probably all had ICE holds on them, as Arpaio had identified them as illegal immigrants.

Why, that stunt has pissed off folks far and wide, from legislators in Mexico to the New York Times, which denounced the barbaric photo op and called on DHS to rein in Maricopa County's Bull Connor.

Arpaio's sick media event even awoke a sleeping giant, the U.S. Congress, in the form of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan and three other ranking Dems on the committee, who wrote a stern letter to Barack Obama's new attorney general, Eric Holder, and DHS chief, Janet Napolitano, telling them to get busy and investigate Arpaio's wrinkled ass.

But Picard must've missed all that, 'cause here he was spouting the party line, saying all was hunky-dory in Denmark — despite that rotten flounder smell. This feathered fiend decided to give the flack a call to give him a hard time about his bout with foot-in-mouth disease. But Picard's lips had been permanently sealed by his superiors on the issue of the 287(g) program, and he was referring all calls to one of his betters in D.C.

Picard did make clear, however, that this was a new policy, one that came after his statements to the local daily. So this peeved parakeet phoned ICE headquarters in D.C. The call was not returned.

ICE is sure sensitive all of a sudden. Aren't these the badasses who go around breaking up families, throwing dishwashers and day laborers in jail, treating moms and dads like they're thieves and killers? Big, tough hombres, eh? So tough, that at least under Arpaio's command, his 287(g) thugs wear black ski masks while they're pulling over little old ladies and gardeners for traffic violations.

Really, this heron's heart goes out to Picard and all the government flacks forced to rationalize the vile stuff ICE does on a regular basis in the name of immigration enforcement. The ones who should go down — whose careers should rightfully be ruined and who should be butt-kicked out of government service — are a-holes like Arizona ICE pooh-bah Matthew Allen, whose lips have been KrazyGlued to Joe Arpaio's keister since he scored the job early last year. And, of course, Allen's bosses in D.C.

In other words, Picard is just a PR flunky, albeit a polite one for the local press to deal with. The real evil in ICE is further up the food chain.

ICE ON FIRE

Thing is, even without Arpaio as its albatross, ICE is besieged nationwide with bad news, tales of misdeeds, and study after study arguing that the 287(g) program should be tossed like a used Tiparillo.

Examples of ICE eff-ups are popping up daily, in newspapers from sea to shining sea. Recently, the Baltimore Sun reported that the immigrant advocacy group CASA de Maryland obtained through the Freedom of Information Act a copy of an internal ICE document detailing an investigation into an ICE raid on a Baltimore 7-Eleven in 2007.

The ICE report contradicted statements from some ICE officers that they'd just happened to be grabbing a cup o' Joe at the 7-Eleven when they lucked upon a group of day laborers.

"The evidence revealed that the Fugitive Operations officers were ordered to seek additional arrests that day due to managerial pressure to produce statistics for Operation Return to Sender," said the ICE doc.

See, Operation Return to Sender is the name of a massive ICE dragnet that's stated intention is to collar criminal aliens, gangbangers, and such. Not the schmucks waiting for handyman work at the corner convenience store. The fact that ICE agents were pressured to essentially go out and grab every Mexican they could lay their hands on runs counter to ICE's propaganda on the subject.

On the other side of the country, the Los Angeles Times reports that an immigration judge recently tossed the case against alleged undocumented worker Gregorio Perez Cruz, pinched in an ICE raid of a Van Nuys, California company. ICE's goons failed to advise Cruz of his rights and deprived him of food and water for 18 hours while they interrogated him, forcing him to sleep on a concrete floor.

At least Cruz survived his detention. Lately, ICE's been having almost as many problems as Joe when it comes to prisoner deaths.

According to the Washington Post, ICE was forced to stop detentions at a county jail in northern Virginia after Guido Newbrough, a 48-year-old German immigrant who came to this country when he was 6 years old, died from "massive organ failure brought on by an untreated bacterial infection." This, after his jailers allegedly ignored his repeated requests for medical care.

At the beginning of February, the Associated Press ran a piece about how the widow of a Chinese immigrant is suing ICE for a death at a Rhode Island facility it contracts with.

"Hiu Lui 'Jason' Ng, a 34-year-old computer engineer accused of overstaying his visa, died of liver cancer in August," states the item, "weeks after being taken to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls [Rhode Island]. His cancer went undiagnosed until days before he died."

The Bird could go on and on and on. But ICE has more problems than just the dead stacking up like cordwood. Both ICE and its vaunted 287(g) program are under barrage from various think tanks for xenophobic, ineffective, and inhumane practices.

The Pew Hispanic Center just published a study pointing out that, in 2007, "Latinos accounted for 40 percent of all sentenced federal offenders, more than triple their share of the total adult U.S. population." The reason? Immigration convictions are up 24 percent, and 80 percent of those convicted are Hispanic.

Of non-citizen Hispanics convicted federally, 81 percent were found guilty of entering unlawfully or residing in the United States without authorization — both of which are nonviolent, civil offenses.

A report by the Migration Policy Institute in D.C. found ICE and the DHS obsessed with meeting statistical goals and going after the low-hanging fruit of undocumented workers, rather than setting their sights on actual bad guys in the country illegally. The New York Times called the MPI study "largely a portrait of dysfunction."

MPI offered 36 ideas for cleaning up the mess but stopped short of the wholesale gutting of the 287(g) program. Leave that to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Law School, which just issued a report so scathing in its assessment of ICE's 287(g) program that it ultimately concludes that the best thing to do would be to call the priest and the pallbearers and bury the damn thing.

"The program, as illustrated through this policy paper, is too problematic, too costly, and too difficult to properly operate," asserts the take-no-prisoners policy review. "The existence of such a program . . . where a federal agency abdicates its authority to inadequately trained, less knowledgeable agents, indicates fundamental issues with the current federal immigration law enforcement scheme."

The UNC-CH assessment faults the ICE program for its lack of oversight, its abrogation of federal and state laws — as well as the U.S. Constitution, its unfunded mandates, and the unlawful detention of lawful residents and U.S. citizens by 287(g)-trained officers.

Interestingly, the UNC-CH team, which labored a year to produce the report, never once mentions Sheriff Joe Arpaio or Arizona. Rather, the group focused on the use of the 287(g) program by eight law enforcement entities in North Carolina. But its conclusions parallel those of this plumed penman when it comes to the use of 287(g) here in Sand Land.

It points out that the 287(g) program "was originally intended to target and remove undocumented immigrants convicted of [in ICE's own words] 'violent crimes, human smuggling, gang/organized crime activity, sexual-related offenses, narcotics smuggling, and money laundering.'"

But the Memoranda of Agreement that define how each local police force or sheriff's office is to use its federal 287(g) authority "are in actuality being used to purge towns and cities of 'unwelcome' immigrants . . . thereby having detrimental effects on North Carolina's communities."

The UNC-CH report doesn't use the term "ethnic cleansing," but 287(g) is a de facto tool for it. Where immigrants were once in desperate need in Arizona's housing industry, they've been a draw in North Carolina for a different reason — agriculture.

The infusion of Central American workers into communities made up mostly of whites and blacks has led to a rise in anti-Hispanic sentiment. Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell stated last year that immigrants are "breeding like rabbits," are "trashy," and "rob, rape, and murder American citizens."

Another N.C. sheriff, Terry Johnson of Alamance County, lamented all the "foreign-born illegal, criminal immigrants" who had come to settle in his county. He further offered up, "In Mexico, there's nothing wrong with having sex with a 12-, 13-year-old-girl . . . They do a lot of drinking down in Mexico."

Both Bizzell and Johnson, like Arpaio, see themselves as responding to the masses by weeding out illegals. And they ain't the only ones. The 287(g) program has empowered like-minded bigots and opportunists all across the country.

But beyond propping up local tyrants and prejudiced politicians, the 287(g) program is an abject failure in the eyes of Judith Greene, co-author of a report on 287(g) by the think tank Justice Strategies. Set to drop this week, the report, "Local Democracy on ICE," reveals how local governments are getting stiffed as tax dollars are diverted from traditional police functions to running after waiters and maids without proper ID. She told this tweeter that, ultimately, it's citizenry that foots the bill for 287(g) shenanigans, though ICE pays for training and throws localities a bone here and there.

"There is a growing consensus that the 287(g) program needs to be ended," she explained to The Bird from her home in Brooklyn, saying that from a strict cost-benefit analysis, the program's a bust.

This avian's in complete agreement. Sure, ICE can point to scads of domestic workers booted from the country. But has that made us any safer from real criminals? Of course not.

RAGE AGAINST ARPAIO

The Bird argues that those congregating in Phoenix this Saturday for the anti-Arpaio/anti-287(g) march beginning at 9 a.m. at Steele Indian School Park need to keep in mind that Arpaio's a symptom, but he ain't the whole disease.

Indeed, sources tell The Bird that ICE may attempt to fake out those on the left and in the pro-immigrant community by suspending Joe Arpaio's 287(g) agreement and, perhaps, even offer a few lip-service reforms, while keeping the 287(g) program in place. That's not good enough.

As the UNC-CH study suggests, the 287(g) program needs to be killed off deader than Heath Ledger. President Obama has ordered the closing of Gitmo within a year (see this week's cover story, starting on page 15). He should act even quicker to put an end to this country's shameful treatment of non-criminal aliens, and offer them a path to legalization.

Until this is done, activists need to raise a ruckus as if George W. Bush were still in office. Even more so. It's easy to protest demonized enemies like W. It's another thing altogether to take on politicians you helped elect.

This beak-bearer was encouraged to learn that Rage Against the Machine's radical frontman, Zack de la Rocha, has endorsed the anti-Joe action this Saturday and has promised to put foot to concrete himself. De la Rocha's statement reminds this raven of the days when actors and intellectuals marched in civil rights protests in the '60s.

"To witness what is happening in Arizona and remain neutral is to be implicated in human rights violations that are occurring right here on U.S. soil against migrants," de la Rocha said in a statement released by the L.A.-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

Just don't forget that even if Phoenix is the Selma, Alabama, of today's immigrant rights struggle, 287(g) isn't just bad for Cactus Country. It's bad all-around. Yeah, we need to topple Arpaio. But we also need to cut off the source of his federal power, so there are no more little Arpaios emboldened by 287(g) elsewhere.

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Copies of the report can be found at:
http://www.justicestrategies.net/files/JS-Democracy-On-Ice.pdf