Immigration Crackdown: Report: U.S. Immigration Enforcement Program Leading to Deportation of Low Level Offenders

Here is a more detailed look at the report issued this week by the Migration Policy Institute on the 287(g) program. It outlines how the program is implemented in three different ways and that local officials, not federal ones, decided which way to implement it. It is used in some jurisdictions, mostly in the southeast U.S., as a broad dragnet to find all undocumented immigrants, or it is used to target those with significant criminal records, which is the federal government's expressed goal. The feds (Immigraton and Customs Enforcement, ICE) let the local police decide which way they use their deputy powers. 

Report: U.S. Immigration Enforcement Program Leading to Deportation of Low Level Offenders | Feet in 2 Worlds: "A federal program that is supposed to target serious criminals often leads to the deportation of low level offenders, according to a report issued by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) this week.

The 287(g) program lets local and state officers detain immigrants who are arrested for non-immigration offenses and transfer them to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to the agency’s web site, “ICE has 287(g) agreements with 71 law enforcement agencies in 25 states.”

The authors of the report discovered that despite public statements by the Obama administration that the program is primarily targeted at identifying and removing people the federal government has identified as its top enforcement priorities – those who represent security threats, have committed serious crimes, or have accumulated multiple immigration violations – about half of 287(g) activity involves mainly undocumented immigrants arrested for misdemeanors or traffic offenses."