Comments: ICE and Immigration

Every day I watch videos of ICE agents on television and social media, with masks covering their faces, dressed in plain clothes, and many without any form of visible identification.  I watch them brutally and violently arrest grandfathers, housewives, moms, kids in high school, college students, gardeners, workers at Walmart, vegetable and fruit pickers on farms, mechanics, cooks and waiters in small restaurants, and in other places where they can be readily identified because they speak Spanish.  They are the low hanging fruit so that ICE agents can meet the quotas set by Stephen Miller, the Homeland Security Adviser, designer of the mass deportation plan, and Trump confidant dating back to his first term in office. After physically beating them, they are hauled off, sometimes in unmarked vehicles, to detention centers for deportation.  Their families are seldom notified of what has happened.  Children are often left alone without any parent or guardian.  Detainees are denied legal due process.  ICE data indicate that 60 to 70 percent of those detained have never been convicted of a crime.  Many are here legally waiting for a political asylum hearing.  Many are undocumented and have lived in the United States for several to many years.  Those that are undocumented work hard, pay taxes, and many are often raising a family or married to US citizens.  Some have children who were brought into the country undocumented when they were very young.  These children know no other country as they grow older, yet are denied citizenship rights.  Some have children who are US citizens by birth who have served in the US military.

I, like most Americans, support the deportation of immigrants (undocumented or legal) who are guilty of violent crimes or who were or are members of gangs, but this must be carried out with legal due process being fully observed.  Yet, these people who have committed violent crimes are the most difficult for ICE to locate and capture because they are actively hiding.  It takes time and resources to apprehend these violent criminals.  As of the end of August of this year, only 30 to 40 percent of those detained by ICE had criminal convictions.  The further problem is that the public has no idea of the nature of these convictions.  They could be something as simple as a traffic violation.

Trump and Miller have transformed the program into a mass deportation of those who primarily speak Spanish and come across our southern border undocumented.  The new ICE budget places it among the top 20 well-funded militaries in the world.  At the end of August, more than 60,000 people were being detained in ICE detention centers in the United States.  Almost 200,000 people have been deported in Trump’s second term as of the end of August.  We know that many of those already deported were never convicted of a crime and some were US citizens.

The aggressive expansion of ICE enforcement, aided by the fact that the Supreme Court has stated that it can now profile people based on the language they speak, has increased the risk of wrongful detentions, including US citizens.  Because ICE agents often do not clearly identify themselves and may act on incomplete or inaccurate information, there have been documented cases of US citizens or those holding legal visas or green cards being mistakenly detained.  There have been cases where US citizens were detained for days and even weeks before proving their status.  This has created fear and uncertainty among US citizens of color and those with foreign-sounding names.  This is especially true of those with a Latino heritage.

There is currently a backlog of 3.7 million cases of individuals legally seeking political asylum in the United States.  Many of these have been detained and deported by ICE when they show up for their required asylum hearings.  Both Democrats and Republicans have supported an increase in the number of judges to adjudicate these cases.  There are currently about 680 immigration judges that function in 71 immigration courts/adjudication centers across the country.  In the budget bill recently passed by the Republicans there was money set aside to hire approximately 800 more immigration judges.  Congress estimated that this would allow the backlog of cases to be taken care of by 2032. Note that hiring and training new immigration judges takes more than a year. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review fired 50 immigration judges in the first 6 months and in the past month fired 20 more immigration judges without any justification.  The necessary additional judges have yet to be hired despite money that is available to do so.

The immigration problem is complex and should not be left to the whim of the executive branch, especially one that has violated orders by federal judges and denies due process to individuals.  In the end, the only solution is comprehensive reform legislation passed by Congress.  Those that are here undocumented and have no criminal convictions or have not committed a violent crime should be given a method to become US citizens.  More judges need to be hired to deal with the backlog of 3.7 million political asylum cases.  Funding should be provided not only to increase the number of border patrol agents but to increase the use of technology at the border.  No money should be spent on a wall. The number of legal border crossing locations should be increased.  It is interesting to point out that the vast majority of illegal drugs coming into the country pass through legal border crossings. Due process rights should be clearly stated for those that are facing deportation hearings and all should have legal counsel available to them. Deportations should never split families. Special visas should be given to farm workers and their rights should be protected. ICE agents must wear complete uniforms with identification and be prohibited from wearing masks. ICE must be given very limited and specific authority.  Recruits should be required to have some law enforcement background (none required now), and their training must focus on the rights of individuals they happen to capture and detain.

Given ICE’s overwhelming focus on Latinos, an interesting note is that about 30 percent of ICE agents are Latino.  Given that most speak Spanish this is a plus for ICE.  University of Notre Dame professor David Cortez interviewed over 60 ICE and Border Patrol agents as part of his research and asked how they found themselves in that job, and how they felt about it.  Most of the agents did not say they joined because they did not identify with their Latino community, or because they held anti-immigrant views.  Instead, they joined because they wanted a stable job and did not see many other ways of getting one.  One Latino agent Cortez spoke with for the study, Claudio “CJ” Juarez, said this about why he began working in immigration enforcement decades ago: “No-because I was literally starving. [laughing] I ate a lot of beans and rice in those days, let me tell you, man . . . But really, I wish I could say that it was idealistic, or . . . more sexy-but it really was as simple as they were the first ones that called me, and I jumped on the first opportunity.” (Ana Lucia Murillo, July 6, 2020) In other words, Latino ICE agents like the majority of Latinos they target simply want to be able to work and provide for their families…like all of us.  See also my essays “Open Borders” (April 17, 2024) and  “Useful Terms Concerning Immigration” (September 23, 2022) on this blog.