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Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Thursday, April 16, 2015

Bipartisan Dissatisfaction With Immigration Enforcement Aired

CQ
By David Harrison
April 14, 2015

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldaña faced criticism from both Democrats and Republicans at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, with one side saying she had been too lax in enforcement and the other that she had been too aggressive.

The bipartisan anger – albeit over different aspects of the agency’s mission – suggests that ICE remains a controversial law enforcement agency, in no small part because of Capitol Hill’s inability to enact new immigration laws, leaving much of the policymaking to the Obama administration.

Republicans criticized ICE and the administration for not moving quickly enough to apprehend people in the country illegally who have been convicted of serious crimes or felonies. Under the administration’s stated policy, law enforcement resources should be directed to deporting those convicted of serious crimes rather than other people with strong ties to the United States who are living here without proper authorization.

Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte, R-Va., said the administration has released some convicted criminals while their deportation proceedings are underway rather than detaining them, creating a dangerous environment for officers and communities. Last year, 30,558 people convicted of serious crimes had been released from custody after serving their time as they await deportation, Goodlatte said.

“ICE officers must wake up in the early hours of the morning, put their lives at risk, and go out into the community to apprehend convicted criminal aliens that have been released onto the streets,” he said.

In the past, ICE relied on a program known as Secure Communities, which required local law enforcement officers to hold those convicted of crimes until they were picked up by ICE. But the program came under criticism from states and cities that claimed that Secure Communities made it almost impossible for police to gain the trust of immigrant communities. Local governments were also concerned that they were legally liable for holding people beyond the terms of their sentence.

Roughly 200 jurisdictions now refuse to cooperate with federal immigration agents. Last year, local governments denied more than 12,000 requests to detain people, Saldaña said. Most notably, California enacted the TRUST Act in 2013, which limits the state’s cooperation.

Last year, the Obama administration abandoned Secure Communities and put in place a new program, the Priority Enforcement Program, which relies instead on voluntary cooperation from local officials.

But Republicans at the hearing blamed the new, voluntary program for the release of thousands of people convicted of crimes who could have been deported. Several, including Goodlatte, called the decision to move away from Secure Communities shortsighted.

Secure Communities, Goodlatte said, “was a simply and highly successful program to identify criminal aliens once arrested and jailed. It protected American citizens and immigrants alike from aliens who were a danger to their communities.”

Saldaña said she hoped local jurisdictions could be persuaded to detain those convicted of crimes while they await deportation. In some cases, though, their release had been ordered by an immigration court. In others, the agency was complying with a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that stated that the government could not indefinitely detain illegal immigrants convicted of a crime if their home countries refused to take them.

Democrats, for their part, objected to the agency’s detention of women and children who flocked across the Southern border last summer fleeing violence and drug cartels in Central America.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said she was concerned about “the department’s current policy of holding women and children in family detention for extended periods of time – eight, nine and 10 months – even after they have established a credible or reasonable fear of persecution.”

Lofgren said she was particularly concerned about the new family detention facility in Dilley Texas, where she said one woman has already tried to commit suicide.

Saldaña said she was satisfied that the conditions at Dilley were “humane.” She said a shortage of immigration judges was to blame for the long periods of time that families are forced to wait in detention centers.

The courts are dealing with a backlog of 480,000 cases, she said.


“To the extent there is anything you can do to help those courts get more judges, that would help us,” she said.

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

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