Enforcement and Employment Verification

Many people believe that only illegal immigrants are deported.  However, thousands of long-term legal immigrants are deported each year.  While some are deported for committing serious crimes, many more are deported for committing minor, nonviolent crimes, and judges have no discretion to allow them to stay in the U.S.—even if they have U.S. citizen children.

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Published On: Mon, Apr 26, 2010 | Download File

The Secure Border Initiative (SBI), launched by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2005, is a cautionary tale of the dangers inherent in seeking a technological quick fix to the problem of unauthorized immigration.  SBI calls not only for fencing the U.S.-Mexico border in the literal sense, but constructing a “virtual fence” as well.  Since physical fencing can be climbed over, broken through, or dug under, it is complemented in SBI by a system of cameras and sensors—known as “SBInet”—that will, in theory, alert the Border Patrol whenever an unauthorized border crossing occurs. 

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Published On: Thu, Apr 15, 2010 | Download File

The Costs of Enforcement-Only and the Benefits of Comprehensive Reform

Tax Day is an appropriate time to take stock of a few fiscal bottom lines about immigration enforcement and immigration reform.  The federal government spends billions of taxpayer dollars every year on border and interior enforcement measures intended to deter unauthorized immigration.  While these efforts have failed to solve the problem of unauthorized immigration, they have had a negative impact on American families, communities, and the economy.  Were the United States to adopt a different approach by implementing comprehensive immigration reform, the legalization of currently unauthorized immigrants alone would generate billions of dollars in additional tax revenue as their wages and tax contributions increase over time. 

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Published On: Tue, Apr 13, 2010 | Download File

The month of March marks the seventh anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its immigration agencies. It also marks the end of a sweeping internal review ordered by Secretary Janet Napolitano, a review which as not been made public. In order to assess the first year of immigration policy under the Obama Administration, the Immigration Policy Center releases the following Special Report which compare DHS's actions with the recommendations (Transition Blueprint) made to the Obama Transition Team’s immigration-policy group. How does DHS stack up? The following IPC report finds a department caught between the competing priorities of old broken policy and new reforms. While DHS has failed to meet key expectations in some areas, it has engaged thoughtfully and strategically in others, and has made some fundamental changes in how it conducts its immigration business.

Published On: Tue, Mar 02, 2010 | Download File

Expanding mandatory E-Verify would threaten the jobs of thousands of U.S. citizens and saddle U.S. businesses with additional costs—all at a time when we need to stimulate our economy.  Expanding E-Verify now would be in direct contradiction to the goal of creating jobs and would slow America’s economic recovery.

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Published On: Tue, Mar 02, 2010 | Download File

Updated 10/01/10 - While the implementation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of the state/local partnership agreements known as the 287(g) program has been a source of great controversy, it is far from the only tool ICE uses to engage state and local law enforcement in immigration control.  Most notably, the Secure Communities Program, which launched in March 2008, has been held out as a simplified model for state and local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. This fact sheet lays out the basics of Secure Communities program, how it works, key areas of concern and recommendations on how to improve the program.

What is Secure Communities?

Secure Communities is a DHS program designed to identify immigrants in U.S. jails who are deportable under immigration law.  Under Secure Communities, participating jails submit arrestees’ fingerprints not only to criminal databases, but to immigration databases as well; allowing ICE access to information on individuals held in jails. Unlike other ICE-local partnerships, Secure Communities gives ICE a technological, not physical, presence in prisons and jails.  No Memoranda of Agreement (MOAs) with local law-enforcement agencies are required, and no local law-enforcement agents are deputized to enforce immigration laws through Secure Communities. 

As of October 2010, Secure Communities is available in more than 650 jurisdictions in 32 states.  ICE plans to have a Secure Communities presence in every state by 2011, and plans to implement Secure Communities in each of the 3,100 state and local jails across the country by 2013. Read more...

Published On: Fri, Oct 01, 2010 | Download File

Study Finds Significant Behavioral Changes in Children After Raids

Children of unauthorized immigrant parents are often forgotten in debates over immigration reform.  There are roughly 5.5 million children living in the United States with unauthorized immigrant parents—three-quarters of whom are U.S. born citizens.  These families live in constant fear of separation.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates that over the last 10 years, more than 100,000 immigrant parents of U.S. citizen children have been deported from the United States.  

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Published On: Mon, Feb 22, 2010 | Download File

The Criminal Alien Program (CAP) is a program administered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that screens inmates in prisons and jails, identifies deportable non-citizens, and places them into deportation proceedings. In this Special Report, The Criminal Alien Program: Immigration Enforcement in Travis County, Texas, author Andrea Guttin, Esq., provides a brief history and background on the CAP program.  Guttin also includes a case study of CAP implementation in Travis County, Texas, which finds that the program has a negative impact on communities because it increases the community’s fear of reporting crime to police, is costly, and may encourage racial profiling.

Download the Special Report

Download a Summary of the Report

Download a Fact Check on Immigration Detainers

Published On: Wed, Feb 17, 2010 | Download File

In The Criminal Alien Program: Immigration Enforcement in Travis County, Texas, author Andrea Guttin explores the Criminal Alien Program (CAP), which is one of the programs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) uses to identify immigrants who may be deportable.  The paper provides a history and analysis of the CAP program, as well as a case study of CAP implementation in Travis County, Texas.

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Published On: Wed, Feb 17, 2010 | Download File

What is an immigration detainer and how does it work? Are detainers only placed on unauthorized immigrants? What happens after an immigration detainer has expired?  What are the consequences of immigration detainers?  In order to better understand immigration detainers’ function and impact, the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) provides the following Fact Check to shed much needed light on this often misunderstood immigration enforcement tool.

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Published On: Wed, Feb 17, 2010 | Download File