the crime report

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A new report from Human Rights Watch accuses the U.S. government of locking up refugees who miss paperwork deadlines. Between August and October 2009, the authors interviewed 17 refugees from countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Sudan who were being held by immigration in Arizona and Pennsylvania because they’d failed to file for permanent status within the one-year deadline. The report concludes that between their limited English and the “often confusing” bureaucracy of the immigration system, some refugees have trouble completing this task, and are occasionally jailed for the offense.

Click here to read the report.

Use The Crime Report for more information on Immigration.

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On June 2-4 2008, a conference titled “Immigration, Justice, and Crime: Where Do We Go From Here” was held at John Jay College. Speakers discussed issues concerning immigration, including debate over local police enforcement of immigration laws.

Panelists include  Peter Smith, Special Agent in Charge, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Julia Preston, Immigration Reporter, New York Times, John DeStefano, Mayor, New Haven, Gregg Ball, New York State Assemblyman, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, U.S. House of Representatives, Congressional District of Texas, Aarti Shahani, Co-founder, Families for Freedom, and Tom Diaz, Senior Policy Analyst, Violence Policy Center.

Access the program agenda here.

Twenty-four journalism fellows who cover immigration attended the conference in conjunction with the Center on Media, Crime and Justice and the Institute for Justice and Journalism. The list of fellows can be accessed here. 

Aarti Shahani, Deepa Fernandes, Philip Kretsedemas and Tom Diaz discuss local versus federal funding towards fighting illegal immigration.

 Panelists Julia Preston, Peter Smith, Tamar Jacoby, and Eddie Francis debate on whether or not  immigration is being criminalized.

U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes discusses issues in immigration legislation and reform.

New Haven Mayor John DeStefano and Assemblyman Gregg Ball debate over whether or not local police should enforce immigration laws.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has interrogated 4,000 prisoners — including pre-trial, and thus presumably innocent, detainees — at New York’s Rikers Island every year since 2004, according to a new report by East Harlem Against Deportation. The group, led by New York State Senator Jose Serrano, who represents Manhattan’s immigrant-heavy East Harlem neighborhood, was created in May of this year in response to what the neighborhood felt was increasing immigration enforcement by local police and corrections officials.

“Immigration Reform Starts Here: City and State Policy Recommendations to Protect New York Immigrants and Their Families,” recommends limiting ICE’s ability to question pre-trial detainees, and outlines a sample framework for how NYPD might more effectively build trust within the immigrant community.

Use The Crime Report for more information on Immigration, Family Detention and ICE.

The Obama administration’s plan to streamline federal detention for immigration violators could impact Utah jails and a company based in the state, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. The government now scatters tens of thousands of people designated for deportation among 350 jails, prisons and contract facilities with little federal oversight. But over the next five years, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to drop that number and move undocumented immigrants into their own facilities, which will resemble locked-up dorms more than prison cells.

The move may mean Weber, Washington and Utah county jails would house fewer immigrants awaiting deportation and receive less federal funding. It could also impact the business of Management & Training Corp., a Centerville-based company that runs two out-of-state ICE lockups. But federal officials say they are months away from determining the details. What is known is that ICE wants fewer locations, but more regulations and oversight. And it plans to make the changes within its existing $3 billion detention budget.

A coalition of advocacy groups has asked President Obama to end a program that allows local police to enforce federal immigration law, reports the Los Angeles Times. The program, known as 287(g) for its provision in the federal immigration code, deputizes police to turn over suspects or criminals to immigration authorities for possible deportation. Immigrant rights groups said the program has led to civil rights violations and racial profiling. (more…)

American law enforcers in border cities are facing difficult decisions about immigration enforcement in light of the government’s decision to to press into use a provision of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act through which 63 local law enforcement agencies throughout the country partner with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to designate officers who can enforce federal immigration laws, reports the McAllen, Texas, Monitor. Agencies can allocate officers to work on an enforcement task force or assign jail officers who focus on identifying illegal immigrants already in jail.

For the sheriffs in the Rio Grande Valley’s two most populous counties, rounding up illegal immigrants on the street has never been a priority. Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio said he would not participate because his agency lacks the manpower and jail space to round up illegals. And Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said his agency will continue to target the “criminal illegal immigrant” — those whose offenses entail more than violating federal immigration law. “That is not my job,” Treviño said of federal immigration enforcement. “But when you land in my jail, then you’re mine.”

An Associated Press investigation has found U.S. law officers who work the border are being charged with criminal corruption in numbers not seen before, as drug and immigrant smugglers use money and sometimes sex to buy protection, and internal investigators crack down. The AP tallied corruption-related convictions against more than 80 enforcement officials at all levels — federal, state and local — since 2007, shortly after Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels that peddle up to $39 billion worth of drugs in the United States each year.

U.S. officials have long pointed to Mexico’s rampantly corrupt cops and broken judicial system, but Calderon told the AP this isn’t just a Mexican problem. ”To get drugs into the United States the one you need to corrupt is the American authority, the American customs, the American police — not the Mexican,” the Mexican president said. A former Texas prosecutor agreed, saying drug traffickers look ”for weaknesses in the armor.”

About 3 percent of those arrested for violent crimes last year in Prince William County, Va., were illegal immigrants, reports the Washington Examiner. The vast majority of illegal immigrant arrested–three out of four–were charged with less serious crimes, including public drunkenness, driving without a license and driving under the influence, according to a report prepared by the University of Virginia’s Center for Survey Research and presented this week to the county Board of Supervisors.

The board ordered the study following the county’s highly publicized police crackdown on illegal immigrants. It concluded that the crackdown was implimented smoothly, but the report reached few conclusions about the minority community’s perception of the department and the new policy’s impact on the immigrant population, which is believed to have declined by several thouand.