What Newly Revealed Documents About ICE Deportation Quotas Mean for Georgia: A Briefing Guide

On Friday, USA Today published never-before-disclosed communications between the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Atlanta Field Office, which is in charge of immigration enforcement throughout Georgia, and ICE national headquarters.1 The documents are a treasure-trove of information, revealing a sharp divergence between the Obama Administrations rhetoric on immigration and its action on the ground. This Briefing Guide highlights some key takeaways. I. Immigration Enforcement is Quota Driven and Pressure to Make the Numbers Comes Directly from ICE Headquarters The documents show that, despite all the recent talk of targeted enforcement, ICE continues to be driven by quotas. The Atlanta Field Office felt the heat last year when its deportation numbers were down 1,200 from the prior year. Directors were instructed to come up with a plan to increase deportationsASAP.2 No consideration appears to have been given to the well-documented relationship between quotas and increases in racial profiling and civil rights violations. Rather, officers were to make the numbers at all costs.

II. ICE Enlistment of Local Law Enforcement as Force Multipliers has More to do with Numbers and Less to do with Safety. When pressed to increase deportations, it is striking how much ICE has come to depend on cooperation with local law enforcement. The documents reveal efforts to expand partnerships from police and sheriffs to courts, district attorneys, and probation officers.3

1 2

See Brad Heath, Immigration tactics aimed at boosting deportations, USA Today, Feb. 17, 2013. See ICE Documents, p. 4, available at http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/603861-icedocuments.html. 3 See ICE Documents, p. 11-13, available at http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/603861-icedocuments.html.

ICE never addresses how infusing immigration enforcement into every aspect of the criminal justice system will impact safety. The focus is on expanding the dragnet. It is as if the agency learned nothing from the disastrous roll out of its Secure Communities program, which has been widely criticized by local law enforcement officials for threatening public safety by making crime victims and witnesses reluctant to cooperate with the police.4 Indeed, many of the Atlanta Field Offices plans to increase deportations take their cue from widely criticized sections of Georgias anti-immigrant bill, HB 87, which observers allege encourage racial profiling and threaten public safety. One program in particular, the Local Law Enforcement Taskforce, mirrors HB 87s racial profiling provision by instructing ICE to work with local police to check the immigration status of anyone with whom they come into contactfocusing on those who are never taken into custody, but simply receive a traffic ticket or warning or a field interview.5 III. That DUI Checkpoint? Its Really an Immigration Inspection Throughout Georgia, checkpointspurportedly set up to check for DUIs, but in reality netting far more undocumented mothers and fathers than drunk drivershave been a flashpoint for community protest. Residents complain that the checkpoints are concentrated in Latino neighborhoods and that officers rely on race to determine who will be subject to extended investigation. The checkpoints convert daily commutes to work or the store into lengthy ordeals complete with harassment for anyone with brown skin.

The disclosed documents show that a key part of ICEs strategy to boost deportations is to increase these much-hated checkpoints. Although a key part of ICE's deportation strategy, the checkpoints "would not appear to be an ICE organized checkpoint." But ICE "would be set up there, waiting to interview all individuals that we deem necessary."6 Disturbingly, ICE specifically includes non-driver occupants among those who would be interviewed.

See Restoring Community: A National Community Advisory Report on ICEs Failed Secure Communities Program, available at http://altopolimigra.com/s-comm-shadow-report/ 5 See ICE Documents, p. 14, available at http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/603861-icedocuments.html. 6 See ICE Documents, p. 11, available at http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/603861-icedocuments.html.

IV. As Bond Decisions Become Politicized, Already High Immigration Bonds May Become Even Higher One key strategy for increasing deportations is to increase already high immigration bonds. Anything less than $10,000 is deemed to be unacceptable.7 This politicization of bond amounts means even more people will be subject to immigration detention as they await a day in court.8

V. ICEs Definition of Criminal is Overly Broad and Has No Relation to Public Safety Throughout the documents, ICEs focus is primarily on criminal alien removalsit is the only performance measure that will count, in the words of a high-level official in Washington.9 But the way ICE uses the term criminal internally is very different from its public representations. For quota purposes, anyone who has ever been convicted of anything is a criminal.10 Whether your crime happened 10 years ago or amounted to nothing more than driving without a license. In other words, ICE is unconcerned with whether its so-called criminals actually present any threat to public safety. In fact, because ICE has long been embedded in state prisons, the only way for it to increase its criminal removals is to focus on individuals who would normally not make it to prison. That includes the mom driving without a license and the dad fishing in violation of regulations.

7 See ICE Documents, p. 3, available at http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/603861-icedocuments.html. 8 See ICE Documents, p. 9, available at http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/603861-icedocuments.html.
9

See ICE Documents, p. 4, available at http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/603861-icedocuments.html. 10 See ICE Documents, p. 2, available at http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/603861-icedocuments.html.