We’ve all heard it before: police authorities having a monthly quota to fill and having to adjust their ways to meet that end. This quota is also applicable to immigration authorities. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has recently announced that it would add 150 agents that previously worked behind a desk to the teams created to locate and detain “fugitive immigrants” who are allegedly a threat to the nation or the community or who have a violent criminal history in order to deport them. According to the LA Times, ICE reported it was “experiencing a shortfall in criminal removals for the fiscal year” and planned to increase its numbers through these so-called Fugitive Operations Teams. While it is arguably a good idea to target undocumented immigrants who are serious criminals, there is a problem with ICE’s definition of “criminal alien” since its use of it is very broad, and as a consequence leads the Fugitive Operations Team to deport individuals who do not in fact pose a threat to the community. “Fugitive immigrants” are defined as those with outstanding order of deportation who have not been deported. Yet while in some cases they have deliberately fled detention, in many others they are completely unaware that they even have a deportation order.
According to a 2009 report by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), the number of immigrants apprehended by Fugitive Operations Teams had in fact increased but relatively fewer of those arrested had any violent history, instead detaining greater numbers of individuals with no criminal background at all. Moreover, MPI concluded in its report that the Fugitive Operations Program “has failed to focus its resources on the priorities Congress intended when it authorized the program. In effect, it has succeeded in apprehending the easiest targets, not the most dangerous fugitives.” There is also a major underlying problem with the quota that has been set for each officer to arrest 50 suspects per month. While ICE has time and again denied having set quotas, the fact still remains that there have been several memos issued by ICE stating concrete figures that should be met in a given year—and if that is not a quota then I don’t know what is. Surely, ICE raises red flags when it claims it is falling behind on deportations and needs to deport more people. The inconsistency that exists between focusing on serious criminals and trying to maintain high levels of deportations should be clarified because increasing the number of deportations all too often means deporting immigrants who are not serious criminals and that goes directly against the official directive set by President Obama and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.
