After September 11, 2001, the United States began to extend existing immigration policing, focusing on its border but also on the interior of the country.  The creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002, the largest federal agency to date, put all immigration enforcement and services under its purview.^[1] Since then, the enforcement arm of DHS, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has intensified interior enforcement, deporting immigrants that have committed crimes, conducting large-scale workplace raids and raids of other public spaces, as well as carrying out door-to-door raids of homes with immigrants with deportation orders.^[2]

Due to ICE’s intensification of interior enforcement, deportations have skyrocketed and immigrants are becoming the fastest-growing prison population in the United States.^[3] Workplace arrests of immigrants increased more than sevenfold from 500 to 3,600 between 2002 and 2006.^[4] Several large workplace raids have occurred at meatpacking plants, the most notable being the 2006 Swift raids that occurred simultaneously in six states,^[5] and the 2008 Agriprocessors raid in Iowa.  As documented by Camayd-Freixas,^[6] these raids violate the rights of those detained by ‘fast-tracking’ their arrest, prosecution, and conviction, with little regard for immigrants’ understanding of the process or the charges against them.  Raids not only affect the immigrants detained, but also their children, families (both in the U.S. and their country of origin), and communities.  It is estimated that the number of children affected by workplace raids is half that of the number of adults arrested.  As can be expected, the processing, detention, and possible deportation of parents have severe material and psychological consequences for affected children, ranging from the loss of household income to the loss of a parent’s presence due to their deportation.^[7]

Several people have died in privately-run detention facilities, and there is evidence that these policies have not met their intended goals.  In a study conducted by the Migration Policy Institute, it was found that only 18% of the nearly 90,000 immigrants arrested through home raids had any prior criminal record, not even for entering the country without documents or low-level crimes like trespassing.^[8] More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. In total, over 30,000 immigrants are detained every day, triple the number detained just ten years ago.^[9]

It does appear that policies will shift at least slightly under the Obama administration.  Department of Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano has directed ICE agents to focus more on arresting and prosecuting employers than undocumented workers.  Furthermore, President Obama has stated that he plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system by the end of 2009, including looking for a path for undocumented immigrants to gain legal status.

References:

1. The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “Over-Raided, Under Siege: US Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Immigrants,” January, 2008.

2. The Urban Institute. “Paying the Price: the Impact on Immigration Raids on America’s Children,” 2007.

3. The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “Over-Raided, Under Siege: US Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Immigrants,” January,  2008

4. The Urban Institute. “Paying the Price: the Impact on Immigration Raids on America’s Children,” 2007

5. Kramer, Jerry. “The 2006 Swift Raids: Assessing the Impact of Immigration Enforcement Actions at Six Facilities.” Center for Immigration Studies, March 2009

6. Camayd-Freixas, Erik. “Prepared Statement of Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas.” Congressional Testimony at a hearing on The Arrest, Prosecution, and Conviction of 297 Undocumented Workers in Postville, Iowa, from May 12 to 22, 2008, July 24, 2008

7. The Urban Institute. “Paying the Price: the Impact on Immigration Raids on America’s Children,” 2007

8. Democracy Now. “Daily Updates,” February 6, 2009, 2009

9. AP Impact, “Immigrants Face Detentions, Few Rights,” March 15, 2009

Further Reading:

Raids

• Map and brief explanation of ICE raids throughout the United States made by Centro Legal, a former non-profit community law office in Minnesota.

Detention

• Human Rights Watch. “Detained and Dismissed: Women’s Struggles to Obtain Health Care in United States Immigration Detention,” March 17, 2009.
• Amnesty International. “Jailed without Justice, a report that exposes the immigration detention system in the United States as broken and unnecessarily costly,” March 25, 2009. 
• Map of detention facilities throughout the world, made by the Global Detention Project (GDP), an inter-disciplinary research endeavor that investigates the role detention plays in states’ responses to global migration.

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