Articles Posted in Deportation & Removal

This year the American Immigration Lawyers Association National conference is being held in San Diego. Just a few blocks from our down town office, you can see thousands of Immigration lawyers gather to socialize, learn and advance our profession.

This morning, ICE head John Morton, opened with an discussion about ICE’s activity and future plans. ICE released new IDENT statistics that show immigrants with low level offenses account for a large number of those caught in the dragnet created by Secure Communities.

Of 477,035 matches, 71, 197 have been identified as level 1 offenders, while 405,838 were identified as level 2 and level 3, between October 2008 and February 2011.

ICE officials are not happy this morning. Illegal immigrants arrested for petty crimes won’t be held in jail longer than necessary in San Francisco, even if federal immigration agents may want them detained for possible deportation.

Instead, starting Wednesday, deputies will treat those eligible for release just like U.S. citizens: They will be cited to appear in court. The new policy is his attempt to comply with a city law that prevents police from aiding federal authorities in non-felony crimes and a U.S. law that requires authorities to share fingerprints with immigration agents.

Under this policy, illegal immigrants who commit misdemeanors, such as disorderly conduct, trespassing or shoplifting, will not be held while the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) checks their status through a fingerprinting monitoring program.

CPB released a report on 5/19/11 of statistics on U.S. Border Patrol’s total apprehensions of undocumented individuals by fiscal year, from FY1999 through FY2010. The report also includes a breakdown of such apprehensions from Mexico, and from countries other than Mexico.

* U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended 463,382 individuals smuggled across the border, including 8,905 smugglers. (3,027 of the smugglers apprehended were deemed “deportable.”)

* U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended 59,017 “Other Than Mexican” illegal aliens through October 7, 2010.

Arizona will appeal directly to the US Supreme Court in a bid to overturn an injunction blocking key parts of the state’s controversial immigration law, state officials announced today.

Gov. Jan Brewer said she and Attorney General Tom Horne had decided to take the case directly to the nation’s highest court, asking it to examine whether US District Judge Susan Bolton acted correctly when she issued her injunction in Phoenix last summer.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the injunction on April 11. Arizona could ask all active judges on the Ninth Circuit to rehear the appeal, but state officials decided it would be faster to take the case directly to the Supreme Court. Expect another showdown.

Great story, another example how the illegal immigration debate is now a big part of our culture.

In 1993, when I was 14, I became a regular on “Sesame Street.” The show usually liked to have a teenager on, so that was me. My character had my same name, Carlo, and eventually I got a job at Mr. Hooper’s store. I had to make a birdseed milkshake for Big Bird, that was my tryout. I ended up appearing on “Sesame Street” for five years. But the whole time, I had a secret: I was an undocumented immigrant. The papers I’d used to get hired were fake.

My family had come from Ecuador when I was seven and my older brother Angelo was nine. We came on a tourist visa, and the moment my parents had gotten it, we knew we were not coming back. They sold all our furniture before we left.

What do you make of this? Thousands of immigrants from India have crossed into the United States illegally at the southern tip of Texas in the last year, part of a mysterious and rapidly growing human-smuggling pipeline that is backing up court dockets, filling detention centers and triggering investigations.

The immigrants, mostly young men from poor villages, say they are fleeing religious and political persecution. More than 1,600 Indians have been caught since the influx began here early last year, while an undetermined number, perhaps thousands, are believed to have sneaked through undetected, according to U.S. border authorities.

Hundreds have been released on their own recognizance or after posting bond. They catch buses or go to local Indian-run motels before flying north for the final leg of their months-long journeys.

Tough days ahead for employers. Chipotle Mexican Grill has fired a substantial number of the 1,200 employees at its 50 Minnesota restaurants after a federal immigration audit found some were illegal workers. The circumstances of the firings sparked a protest by several dozen people. As Greg Nammacher, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union (“SEIU”), Local 26 in St. Paul said: “companies all over this country are using immigrant labor, and then, when the government shines a light on those employees, the companies wash their hands of them.”

The investigation of Chipotle began several months ago, when ICE asked to see work eligibility documents. The company was not told why it was singled out for review. ICE then provided Chipotle with a list of employees whose documents might be invalid.

Chipotle tries to screen new employees, but some provide false documents showing they are eligible workers. In cases where employees insist they have the proper documents, Chipotle has sought to give them extra time to produce the identification.

According to a recent NPR story, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wastes resources by targeting the wrong people for deportation. The study shows immigration judges are rejecting an increasing number if ICE’s deportation requests.

The study, by a clearinghouse called TRAC, at Syracuse University, says immigration judges turned down one in three of ICE’s deportation requests during a three month period this year.

That’s up from one in four compared to the same period the previous year, according to the study.

We are informed by AILA and the American Civil Liberties Union that there has been a relatively large-scale ICE enforcement operation conducted in the past 24 hours in relations to a bakery in Otay Mesa.

There have been multiple search warrants executed and many arrests–with some entire families having been taken into custody. Preliminary word is that several managers of the bakery may be prosecuted criminally on immigration-related charges, and many workers (perhaps dozens) will face removal proceedings and/or attempts by ICE to have them accept voluntary removals. We will keep our readers posted as new developments come up.

Last year, a sweep targeting illegal immigrants led to the arrest of more than 300 people – including at least 125 with criminal histories – in San Diego and Imperial counties. The arrests were part of a statewide operation that netted more than 1,000 arrests.

The government has been ramping up enforcement of employment immigration laws, with a particular focus on insuring that companies are staying in compliance. The number of enforcement activities has increased dramatically in the past year. Now, more than ever, it’s important to insure that your company is ready in case of a government I-9 audit. And for the first time, it’s not enough to be in compliance. Each company must prove compliance, and if using an electronic system, use one that works in accordance with immigration laws.

The San Diego Union Tribune reports, enforcement in San Diego County mirrors a national trend toward more scrutiny of employers’ I-9 forms, the universal tool for verifying permission to work in the United States.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, initiated 66 audits with local employers in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, reviewing 5,588 individual I-9s in the process. That was up from 44 audits in fiscal 2009 and just one audit in 2008. A company can be fined up to $1,100 for each illegal employee, and knowingly violating verification laws can lead to criminal charges and forfeited assets.