U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) steps up efforts to deport illegal aliens focusing on those illegal immigrants that have come into contact with the criminal justice system.
Federal immigration officials are scouring jails and reviewing years of criminal records to identify illegals that should be deport.
Assistant secretary of homeland security who heads ICE, Julie Myers, tells the Washington Post that when she first took the position in January 2006, ICE and federal agencies did not check federal detention facilities for immigration violators.
This is something she has corrected because she feels that it is a high priority to "make sure that people are not released from criminal institutions onto the street."
Since then, she said, the agency has studied the demographics of correctional facilities across the country and has assigned more agents to check facilities with higher numbers of foreign-born offenders. ICE's Criminal Alien Program created partnerships between immigration officials and jailers at nearly 4,500 detention facilities. Federal agents now frequently visit courthouses and jails to comb through court files. In 2006, the agency opened a division in Chicago that is responsible for screening federal inmates nationwide for deportation.
They go on to report that many police departments are now enrolling into an ICE training program which deputizes officers to enforce immigration law as well as probation officers and police tipping off immigration officials in cases where illegal aliens are suspected.
A judge who asked to remain anonymous told reporters that "Cities are overwhelmed with the consequences and costs of illegal immigration. It's a concerted effort to get rid of them, get them out of their community." He also says he is seeing more accused of minor offenses being brought to the courts attention in that effort.
Vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, Denise Slavin, brings another detail to the public about the U.S. Congress, which has increased funding for immigration enforcement initiatives but "has not provided commensurate financial support to the immigration court system."
In Delaware, agents shut down a fraudulent documents operation. That operation resulted in the arrest of a arrest of a Mexican national on federal charges that he was producing and misusing immigration documents, such as phony immigration documents, Social Security cards and driver's licenses.
This is not the only news from ICE though, as their recent news release page shows, they have recently cracked down on illegal aliens in a massive four day operation around the country which has resulted in 225 arrests in a four day Great Lakes operation:
Eleven fugitive operations teams made 225 arrests in: Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, New York, Wisconsin and Missouri. ICE's Detroit Fugitive Operations Team made 85 arrests, including 66 fugitives, and 21 aliens with criminal convictions. The arrests took place throughout Metro Detroit. Those arrested are from the following countries: Albania, Bangladesh, Cuba, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Jamaica, Lebanon, Lithuania, Mexico, Russia, Uzbekistan and Yugoslavia.
Those press releases are from February 26, 2007.
Stringent new laws, police and federal immigration cooperation and a series of ICE raids are all in response to the citizens of the U.S. and their demands that the laws be enforced and the illegal immigration problem be dealt with.
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