Details of 155 Immigration Detainers for U.S. Citizens

David J. BierImmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) routinely requests that local law enforcement detain U.S. citizens to allow it to pick them up. ICE ’s recordslist 3,158 U.S. citizens as targets of ICE detainers from October 2002 to September 2019. Another 1.6 percent of actual ICEarrests through Secure Communities —the targeting system that ICE uses to issue detainers—were U.S. citizens from October 2008 to April 2011—or 3,627 citizens. Immigration courts—again with incomplete records—show 2,549 removal proceedings terminated in the favor of U.S. citizens from 2002 to June 9, 2017.These totals undercount the number of U.S. citizen targets because ICE and the courts fail to accurately update citizenship records after someone proves their citizenship status.My research on detainers in Travis County, Texasshowed that ICE almost certainly targeted at least 228 U.S. citizens before canceling or declining to execute those detainers from October 2005 to August 2017 —almost 1 percent of all detainers. Nationwide, that would equal roughly 19,873.Research on detainers in Miami-Dade County in Florida by the ACLU implies a similar finding.The statistical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the U.S. government is regularly issuing immigration detainers for U.S. citizens. But unfortunately, little qualitative research is available on the circumstances behind these erroneous detainers. This analysis is an effort to help fill that gap providing the details surrounding...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs