Operation Return to SenderThe government's immigration enforcers run amok.
By Jennifer BennettPosted Friday, May 30, 2008, at 7:15 AM ET
May has been an embattled month for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, faced inquiries from House and Senate members about the inhumane treatment of people detained for violating immigration laws. This congressional scrutiny followed a special report in the Washington Post (and a rash of articles elsewhere) detailing stomach-turning—and sometimes deadly—mistreatment in immigrant detention centers.
A bill to improve detention center conditions has recently been introduced in Congress, but this legislation would do nothing to address the abuses committed by ICE officers well before the people they pick up reach a detention center. Nor would it alter the framework of immigration enforcement that has led to the mistreatment. Congress should be thinking about these problems, too—and so should the courts.
Since 2006, ICE has been dispatching teams of agents into neighborhoods throughout the country as part of a ramped-up enforcement effort called "Operation Return to Sender." Each team must apprehend an annual quota, currently set at 1,000, of fugitive aliens. These are immigrants who remain in the United States despite outstanding orders to leave.
Unsurprisingly, people who've been ordered deported are not always easy to find. This is not just because undocumented immigrants flee deportation (although, of course, some do). It's also because, according to a 2006 Department of Homeland Security report, about half of the information in ICE's "Deportable Alien Control System"—a database of immigrants to be deported—is incorrect or incomplete. This means that many immigrants never receive a deportation notice and so don't know they've been ordered to leave. It also means that ICE officers, relying on faulty information, don't know where to find them.
And so, to meet their quotas, enforcement teams carry out large-scale sweeps, raiding homes in neighborhoods with a lot of immigrants just after sunrise. Without an accurate list of which homes actually harbor undocumented immigrants, agents often rely on race to figure out who's here legally and who isn't. For example, in Fair Haven, Conn., several residents reported that during a raid last summer, ICE officers went door to door asking how many people were inside each house—and what race they were. In an ICE operation in Willmar, Minn., Latino residents were handcuffed and interrogated while white residents, some even in the same home, went unquestioned.
Race, in fact, is not a very good indicator of whether someone is in the United States illegally. Up to two-thirds of the people ICE arrests have never received deportation orders, frequently because their presence here is lawful. By ICE's own admission, the bureau has mistakenly detained, arrested, and even deported not only legal immigrants but also U.S. citizens. Those caught up in recent home raids include Adriana Aguilar, a citizen living in East Hampton, N.Y., who was sound asleep with her 4-year-old son when ICE officers stormed into her bedroom, pulled the covers off the bed, and shined flashlights into her face before interrogating her. In San Rafael, Calif., ICE detained 6-year-old Kebin Reyes, a citizen from birth, holding him in a locked office for 12 hours after immigration agents, pretending to be police, stormed into the apartment he shared with his father and forcibly removed him from his home.
Operation Return to Sender:The government's immigration enforcers run amok.
Jennifer Bennett is a student at Yale Law School.
Photograph of ICE officer arresting a suspect by Mark Avery/AP.
COMMENTS
Remarks from the Fray:
The immigration debate in this country is badly flawed, and this article does nothing but contribute to the flaw. The illegal immigration debate is flawed in that most people fail to see the heart of the issue. We waste a lot of time arguing about illegal immigrants' civil rights, contribution to crime, use of public services, and impact on our culture. We waste a lot of money sending federal agents on house-to-house searches, building ridiculous border fences, and slogging through endless deportation hearings. But the heart of the illegal immigration issue is that the private sector continues to hire these people.
If we were serious about controlling illegal immigration, we would place the burden on employers: be able to prove that every one of your employees is here legally, or pay a stiff fine. Instead of smashing down the doors of private homes, ICE should be visiting offices, interviewing managers and reviewing personnel records.
Illegal immigrants aren't coming here for fun; they're coming here for work. American companies, from family farms to meat-packing plants to Wal-Mart, are giving them jobs. They can afford to do it because (1) there's no significant penalty for them if they get caught employing illegals, and (2) there's always another illegal to do the work if the first one gets caught and deported.
Those who employ illegal immigrants, knowingly or not, should be punished severely for it. If they were, they would stop employing illegals. If there were no more job for illegals here, the illegals would stop coming.
At the end of the piece, I wish the author provided more detail on the procedural safeguards she has in mind for the courts to impose, because it is not immediately clear what would fix the problem--and I agree that there is a problem.
ICE is trying to find people who are not here legally. Even if every constitutional right is violated in finding those people, it doesn't change the fact that they are not here legally. The important evidence in immigration proceedings is merely the identity of the immigrant. Once you know who the person is, then you can determine if he or she is here legally. Even in criminal trials, the identity of the person is never suppressed. So imposing criminal procedure rights on immigration proceedings doesn't get you very far--it wouldn't seem to address the systemic problem identified in the article.
Suppressing identity would also create a strange situation where the government may not be able to stop a known continuing violation of law, such as remaining in this country without authorization.
This doesn't mean that immigrants cannot assert rights against unconstitutional investigations. If certain rights are violated, then the immigrant can bring a civil rights suit seeking damages, just like everyone else. But immigrants can do that now, so I'm not sure that changes need to be made. I'm just not sure what courts can do differently to address this issue.
Arrests are not taking place based on skin color. ICE officers are tasked with returning fugitive aliens to their nation of origin. Because the overwhelming amount of illegal aliens are from hispanic nations south of the US, most fugitive aliens are going to be hispanic. I am absolutely positive that if the person on the alien fugitive warrant is from Russia they will be looking for a Russian person.
ICE agents I am sure receive warrants for fugitive aliens and sort them into batches by neighborhood therefore I would not expect Raids to be limited to one house when they can raid 5 with not much more effort.
The citizens who were detained and are suing the government for violation of their 4th amendment rights may or may not have a legitimate case. The fact they have filed suit does not mean their cases have merit. I am sure that a fugitive warrant was issued for a person in that household with the same name and general description as the citizen detained perhaps this was even by design.
The fact we are enforcing laws now that have not been enforced since their passage in the Reagan Administration and Americans are insisting we start before we even consider another amnesty bill means the press who opposes enforcement and supports amnesty will simply report things that are not true or they will fail to report certain facts in order to support their POV.
The Ladder How a Supreme Court case about promotions at a local fire department will decide who gets the good jobs in cities across America. Nicole Allan | June 25, 2009
May has been an embattled month for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, faced inquiries from House and Senate members about the inhumane treatment of people detained for violating immigration laws. This congressional scrutiny followed a special report in the Washington Post (and a rash of articles elsewhere) detailing stomach-turning—and sometimes deadly—mistreatment in immigrant detention centers. 
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Remarks from the Fray:
The immigration debate in this country is badly flawed, and this article does nothing but contribute to the flaw. The illegal immigration debate is flawed in that most people fail to see the heart of the issue. We waste a lot of time arguing about illegal immigrants' civil rights, contribution to crime, use of public services, and impact on our culture. We waste a lot of money sending federal agents on house-to-house searches, building ridiculous border fences, and slogging through endless deportation hearings. But the heart of the illegal immigration issue is that the private sector continues to hire these people.
If we were serious about controlling illegal immigration, we would place the burden on employers: be able to prove that every one of your employees is here legally, or pay a stiff fine. Instead of smashing down the doors of private homes, ICE should be visiting offices, interviewing managers and reviewing personnel records.
Illegal immigrants aren't coming here for fun; they're coming here for work. American companies, from family farms to meat-packing plants to Wal-Mart, are giving them jobs. They can afford to do it because (1) there's no significant penalty for them if they get caught employing illegals, and (2) there's always another illegal to do the work if the first one gets caught and deported.
Those who employ illegal immigrants, knowingly or not, should be punished severely for it. If they were, they would stop employing illegals. If there were no more job for illegals here, the illegals would stop coming.
--misterben
(To reply, click here.)
At the end of the piece, I wish the author provided more detail on the procedural safeguards she has in mind for the courts to impose, because it is not immediately clear what would fix the problem--and I agree that there is a problem.
ICE is trying to find people who are not here legally. Even if every constitutional right is violated in finding those people, it doesn't change the fact that they are not here legally. The important evidence in immigration proceedings is merely the identity of the immigrant. Once you know who the person is, then you can determine if he or she is here legally. Even in criminal trials, the identity of the person is never suppressed. So imposing criminal procedure rights on immigration proceedings doesn't get you very far--it wouldn't seem to address the systemic problem identified in the article.
Suppressing identity would also create a strange situation where the government may not be able to stop a known continuing violation of law, such as remaining in this country without authorization.
This doesn't mean that immigrants cannot assert rights against unconstitutional investigations. If certain rights are violated, then the immigrant can bring a civil rights suit seeking damages, just like everyone else. But immigrants can do that now, so I'm not sure that changes need to be made. I'm just not sure what courts can do differently to address this issue.
--Analang
(To reply, click here.)
Arrests are not taking place based on skin color. ICE officers are tasked with returning fugitive aliens to their nation of origin. Because the overwhelming amount of illegal aliens are from hispanic nations south of the US, most fugitive aliens are going to be hispanic. I am absolutely positive that if the person on the alien fugitive warrant is from Russia they will be looking for a Russian person.
ICE agents I am sure receive warrants for fugitive aliens and sort them into batches by neighborhood therefore I would not expect Raids to be limited to one house when they can raid 5 with not much more effort.
The citizens who were detained and are suing the government for violation of their 4th amendment rights may or may not have a legitimate case. The fact they have filed suit does not mean their cases have merit. I am sure that a fugitive warrant was issued for a person in that household with the same name and general description as the citizen detained perhaps this was even by design.
The fact we are enforcing laws now that have not been enforced since their passage in the Reagan Administration and Americans are insisting we start before we even consider another amnesty bill means the press who opposes enforcement and supports amnesty will simply report things that are not true or they will fail to report certain facts in order to support their POV.
--TexasPete
(To reply, click here.)
(5/30)