Why Is the U.S. Deporting Assets While Ignoring Threats?

It is hard to argue that our immigration enforcement priorities make sense. Over the past several years, we have seen an explosion of raids, detention beds, boots at the border, and enforcement of every kind against immigrants in the country illegally. But what is the result? For the most part, we are arresting, jailing, and deporting immigrant family members who have committed no crimes beyond violating immigration regulations. These people are assets to our economy and communities, not threats to them.

Worse than ineffective or economically counterproductive, enforcement that is poorly targeted and wasteful sometimes does actual damage to public safety.

This was the theme of Executive Director Ali Noorani's speech in late January to the National War College. It was coauthored by the Forum's Senior Legal Advisor Brittney Nystrom as is available on the Forum's website:

"Indisputably, there are individuals who misuse America's immigration system for nefarious purposes. Measures to deport or exclude foreign nationals who pose a potential threat to our national security have a legitimate place in any immigration system and wise and deliberate use of immigration authority can increase the security of our country. However, this proper intention of separating the few individuals who wish to do us harm from the many who seek only safety or to work or reunite with their families has been badly distorted."

- Ali Noorani, "Assets or Enemies: Securing our Nation by Enforcing Immigration Laws," Speech to the National War College, January 27, 2009

The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun are reporting on ICE enforcement teams in Maryland. They were supposed to be going after serious criminal immigrants, but finding few, decided to pick up whoever was easiest to get.

Shortly before federal agents arrested 24 Latinos outside a Fells Point 7-Eleven in January 2007, the acting field office director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore told a deputy "to bring more bodies in," according to an internal ICE report.

The roundup at the 7-Eleven occurred after the official told that deputy "to go back out to make more arrests, as the quantity of arrests that were made that morning was unacceptable," said the report. It appears to contradict previous statements by ICE officials that the agents were taking a drink break Jan. 23, 2007, when they happened to be approached by Latino laborers who thought they were contractors in need of workers.

--Scott Calvert, "Agents were urged to round up immigrants, report says," Baltimore Sun, February 19, 2009

Wednesday, the Pew Hispanic Center released a report on skyrocketing federal incarceration rates for Hispanic men, mostly due to simple immigration violations:

In 2007, Latinos accounted for 40% of all sentenced federal offenders - more than triple their share (13%) of the total U.S. adult population. The share of all sentenced offenders who were Latino in 2007 was up from 24% in 1991, according to an analysis of data from the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. Moreover, by 2007, immigration offenses represented nearly one-quarter (24%) of all federal convictions, up from just 7% in 1991. Among those sentenced for immigration offenses in 2007, 80% were Hispanic.

But it isn't Hispanic men that are changing; rather it is the number of folks being criminally prosecuted for simple immigration violations that is going up.

Among sentenced immigration offenders, most were convicted of unlawfully entering or remaining in the U.S. Fully 75% of Latino offenders sentenced for immigration crimes in 2007 were convicted of entering the U.S. unlawfully or residing in the country without authorization.

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