Tuesday, April 29, 2014

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[IWS] MPI: THE DEPORTATION DILEMMA: RECONCILING TOUGH AND HUMANE ENFORCEMENT [29 April 2014]

IWS Documented News Service

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Institute for Workplace Studies----------------- Professor Samuel B. Bacharach

School of Industrial & Labor Relations-------- Director, Institute for Workplace Studies

Cornell University

16 East 34th Street, 4th floor---------------------- Stuart Basefsky

New York, NY 10016 -------------------------------Director, IWS News Bureau

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Migration Policy Institute (MPI)

 

THE DEPORTATION DILEMMA: RECONCILING TOUGH AND HUMANE ENFORCEMENT [29 April 2014]

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/RemovalsOverview-WEBFINAL.pdf

[full-text, 71 pages]

 

Press Release 29 April 2014

MPI Report Assesses Current-Era Deportation System and Record Removals; Outlines Sharply Different Enforcement Pictures that Have Emerged Over Past Two Decades at Border and in U.S. Interior

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/mpi-report-assesses-current-era-deportation-system-and-record-removals-outlines-sharply

WASHINGTON — More than 4.5 million unauthorized immigrants and other removable non-citizens have been deported from the United States since Congress passed sweeping legislation in 1996 to toughen the nation's immigration enforcement system, with the pace of formal removals rising from about 70,000 in 1996 to a record 419,000 in 2012.

The current-era deportation system—shaped by laws expanding and speeding the removal process, major increases in immigration enforcement spending and policy decisions by three successive administrations—is characterized by sharply different enforcement pictures at the border and within the United States. At the border, a near zero-tolerance system has emerged, where most unauthorized immigrants are subject to formal removal and criminal charges. Within the country, there is greater flexibility, with priorities and resources focused on a smaller share of the sizeable unauthorized population. The differences reflect different goals and circumstances confronting border and interior enforcement. But their impacts are converging, raising complex questions for policymakers.

A Migration Policy Institute (MPI) report issued today, The Deportation Dilemma: Reconciling Tough and Humane Enforcement, assesses the border and interior enforcement systems and outcomes over the past two decades. The report analyzes the current pipelines for removal and key trends in border and interior apprehensions, deportations and criminal prosecutions. With the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the midst of a review of its deportation policies to see if they can be conducted "more humanely," the report also examines the policy levers the Obama administration has to influence deportation policies, practices and results.

"While adjustments to DHS enforcement priorities can be made, actions by the executive branch alone cannot reconcile the fundamentally competing policy demands the immigration enforcement system now confronts," said report co-author Doris Meissner, director of MPI's U.S. Immigration Policy Program and former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. "The deportation dilemma is this: How does the government carry out its enforcement responsibilities and mandates while also shielding U.S.-citizen and immigrant families and communities from the inevitable damage that a robust enforcement system inflicts?"

The report identifies three key enforcement trends that have emerged since passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996:

  • A fundamental shift from a deportation system focused on informal returns (voluntary return and departure) to one focused on formal removals, which have more severe consequences for those who are repatriated. Formal removals, which averaged 3 percent of all deportations in FY 1970-96, increased after 1996 and then spiked sharply beginning in 2006, reaching a high of 65 percent in 2012. Voluntary return, used in 82 percent of apprehensions at the Southwest border in FY 2005, plummeted to 21 percent in FY 2012.
  • Major expansion in the use of non-judicial removal procedures such as expedited removal and reinstatement of removal, in which immigration enforcement officers rather than immigration judges make deportation decisions. Expedited removals and reinstatements accounted for 75 percent of all deportations in FY 2012—the highest proportion ever. By comparison, analogous non-judicial removals accounted for just 3 percent of removals in FY 1996.
  • Escalating criminalization. The proportion of those apprehended at the Southwest border charged with immigration-related criminal offenses rose from 1 percent in FY 1997 to 22 percent in FY 2013. Immigration cases now represent almost half of the docket of federal district and magistrate courts, as people have been charged with immigration-related crimes almost 1 million times since 1997. And while criminals represent a rising share of removals, MPI analysis of newly obtained U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data for FY 2003-2013 shows that non-citizens charged exclusively with immigration-related crimes accounted for 55 percent in the increase in ICE criminal removals between FY 2008-2013.

While there has been overall policy continuity in border enforcement policies for a decade or more, the Obama administration has introduced a significant policy change for enforcement within the country. The administration established explicit enforcement priorities and updated guidelines for exercising discretion not to deport certain people who fall outside established enforcement priority categories. The great majority of the nearly 2 million people removed by the current administration during its first five years fall into one or more of the DHS enforcement priority categories. Yet while the administration's policies have focused enforcement on high-priority cases, the report finds that the record has been mixed when it comes to taking low-priority cases out of enforcement pipelines.

"The capacity of the current deportation system to remove 400,000 or more unauthorized immigrants per year represents a new historical reality," said report co-author Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of MPI's U.S. Immigration Policy Program. "The current system is deeply unsatisfying to both sides in the immigration debate. Those who favor tougher enforcement object to the low priority being placed on deporting unauthorized immigrants who fall outside stated enforcement priority categories. Those who are concerned about the harsh effects of deportation object to the continued removal of large numbers of people with strong ties to American families and communities."

The report assesses a number of potential policy reforms, including refining enforcement priorities based on earlier implementation experience, providing opportunities for greater judicial oversight of removals, closer examination of cases of non-citizens with deep ties in the United States and improving consistency around the country in the application of enforcement guidelines.

"Whatever answer the administration gives when it concludes its policy review is not likely to diminish controversy and the disagreements over issues of deportation until the real solution—a rationalized, updated immigration law—is one day politically possible," Meissner said.

The report can be downloaded at www.migrationpolicy.org/research/deportation-dilemma-reconciling-tough-humane-enforcement.

For more MPI reports, issue briefs, and data pertinent to the current U.S. immigration policy debate, visit: www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/us-immigration-policy-program/CIR

 

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