Immigration raids target noncriminals

The past few years have seen one of the largest immigration enforcement efforts take place in the United States, with raids that have swept across the country and arrested thousands. But according to a study released last week by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, 73 percent of almost 97,000 people arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fugitive operations teams between 2003 and early 2008 were illegal immigrants without criminal records. 

MPI's report, "Collateral Damage: An Examination of ICE's Fugitive Operations Program," says the National Fugitive Operations Program, a federal program established in 2003 to apprehend fugitive aliens who pose a threat to the community, has only "succeeded in apprehending the easiest targets, not the most dangerous fugitives." 

The ICE program obtained big funding increases from Congress -- more so than any other program ICE runs -- after immigration officials told lawmakers they would concentrate on rounding up the most dangerous criminals and terrorism suspects. Over the past five years, program funding has totaled to more than $625 million. But the MPI report shows that the agency abandoned its stated mission to go after dangerous fugitives and instead targeted noncriminal undocumented workers -- the "low-hanging fruit." 

The MPI report explains that a policy change in 2006 accounts for the policy shift. That year, ICE Fugitive Operations Teams were each given a quota of 1,000 arrests a year. Before that, each team's target was 125 arrests per year. ICE also discarded rules dictating that 75 percent of those arrested be criminals. Following these policy changes, the report found that the percentage of people arrested by the teams who weren't fugitives, had no criminal histories and hadn't been ordered deported rose to 35 percent, from 22 percent from 2003 and 2005. Non-criminals arrested rose to a high of more than 26,000 in 2008, compared to 4,300 in 2005.

ICE tactics have drawn criticism for splitting families and instilling fear in immigrant communities across the nation. Immigrant rights activists indicate receiving growing numbers of calls from families torn apart in the random sweeps of undocumented people. There have been several mass arrests of suspected illegal immigrants in the South in the past year alone. In August, the largest raid in U.S. history occurred in a manufacturing plant in Mississippi, in which almost 600 workers were detained on suspicion of violations of immigration laws. 

The national findings in the MPI report mirror local trends in several Southern states. Florida immigrant rights advocates say people with simple visa problems are being rounded up and deported at alarming rates by teams that are supposed to be catching dangerous criminals and terrorists, reports the Miami Herald. Of the 117 immigrants across arrested last week across South and Central Florida, only 30 had criminal records. Similarly, of the 1,587 arrests made by Houston's fugitive operations teams in the 2008 fiscal year, 17 percent were for people with criminal convictions, reports the Houston Chronicle.