To call the administration’s “worst of the worst” claims a ruse is to give this administration too much credit. It’s not clever enough to run a con. Going after criminals was never the point during Trump’s first term. And mass deportation was the platform Trump ran on to get back to the Oval Office for this term.
Given the expectations, ICE was always going to fall short of arrest quotas if it restricted itself to actual lawbreakers. That’s why it’s casting a wider net, one that not only removes anyone looking vaguely Hispanic, but also people who happen to disagree with Trump or his policies.
And that’s why most of ICE’s high-profile raids have targeted businesses. This administration is creating a labor crisis with its shotgun approach to deportation, something that’s only going to aggravate current financial problems created by the administration’s shotgun approach to perceived trade deficits.
Who are we ejecting from this country at the rate of dozens of people per day? Hardworking, law-abiding migrants who’ve done nothing more than seek jobs, pay taxes, and carve out a better life for their loved ones. The government knows what it’s doing. After all, it already has all the evidence it needs to show its mass deportation program has nothing to do with making this nation safer or more secure.
As of June 14, ICE had booked into detention 204,297 individuals (since October 1, 2024, the start of fiscal year 2025). Of those book-ins, 65 percent, or 133,687 individuals, had no criminal convictions. Moreover, more than 93 percent of ICE book-ins were never convicted of any violent offenses. About nine in ten had no convictions for violent or property offenses. Most convictions (53 percent) fell into three main categories: immigration, traffic, or nonviolent vice crimes.
The pretense of making America safer has been discarded. America won’t get any safer, just as surely as it won’t get any greater under this president. For years, it’s been known that migrants commit fewer crimes than natural-born citizens. But with arrest numbers flagging after an initial, more-targeted surge, the administration made it clear it was time to hit the streets and round up any foreigners ICE might come across.
This shift in policy resulted from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s meeting at the end of May, when he ordered ICE to start arresting more non-criminals. “What do you mean you’re going after criminals?” he said. “Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7‑Eleven?”
ICE did indeed go to Home Depot. And for that, it’s now dealing with multiple weeks of unending protests, with the focal point being the Home Deport raid that occurred in Los Angeles.
It’s nothing more than a racist purge — something that can be ascertained even with incomplete data. As Blier points out, it’s difficult to get a complete picture on deportation efforts, now that the job has been split up between ICE, CBP, and the Border Patrol. But just looking at ICE’s numbers, it’s easy to see this isn’t about ejecting criminals. It’s about getting rid of non-white people.
Since the beginning of this year, ICE book-ins based on ICE arrests have increased nearly sixfold, from a daily average of 215 to over 1,100 per day.
As that number has exponentially increased, so has the percentage of migrants without criminal convictions, who now make up nearly three-quarters of all ICE detainees. And yet, many of these people will be routed to whatever hellhole might take them, whether it’s being stacked up in repurposed shipping containers in South Sudan or forced into general population at El Salvador’s CECOT.
And we possibly haven’t even seen the worst of this.
The White House has ordered ICE to meet an unreasonable quota of 3,000 arrests per day, a target they were nowhere near achieving as of June 14.
Trump’s anger has been re-lit by incessant protests and an extremely low-energy birthday party. On top of all but declaring war on “Democrat” cities, Trump has ordered ICE to increase its deportations. At some point, the demands will outstrip the supply. That unavoidable fact — along with the administration’s blood lust for cruelty — increases the odds that actual citizens will be treated like disposable foreigners by people too busy to do the job right and too removed from any form of accountability to care.
This story was originally published by ProPublica, along with The Texas Tribune, Alianza Rebelde Investiga, and Cazadores de Fake News.Republished under ProPublica’s CC BY-NC-ND 3.0license.
The Trump administration knew that the vast majority of the 238 Venezuelan immigrants it sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador in mid-March had not been convicted of crimes in the United States before it labeled them as terrorists and deported them, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security data that has not been previously reported.
President Donald Trump and his aides have branded the Venezuelans as “rapists,” “savages,” “monsters” and “the worst of the worst.” When multiple news organizations disputed those assertions with reporting that showed many of the deportees did not have criminal records, the administration doubled down. It said that its assessment of the deportees was based on a thorough vetting process that included looking at crimes committed both inside and outside the United States. But the government’s own data, which was obtained by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and a team of journalists from Venezuela, showed that officials knew that only 32 of the deportees had been convicted of U.S. crimes and that most were nonviolent offenses, such as retail theft or traffic violations.
The data indicates that the government knew that only six of the immigrants were convicted of violent crimes: four for assault, one for kidnapping and one for a weapons offense. And it shows that officials were aware that more than half, or 130, of the deportees were not labeled as having any criminal convictions or pending charges; they were labeled as only having violated immigration laws.
As for foreign offenses, our own review of court and police records from around the United States and in Latin American countries where the deportees had lived found evidence of arrests or convictions for 20 of the 238 men. Of those, 11 involved violent crimes such as armed robbery, assault or murder, including one man who the Chilean government had asked the U.S. to extradite to face kidnapping and drug charges there. Another four had been accused of illegal gun possession.
We conducted a case-by-case review of all the Venezuelan deportees. It’s possible there are crimes and other information in the deportees’ backgrounds that did not show up in our reporting or the internal government data, which includes only minimal details for nine of the men. There’s no single publicly available database for all crimes committed in the U.S., much less abroad. But everything we did find in public records contradicted the Trump administration’s assertions as well.
ProPublica and the Tribune, along with Venezuelan media outlets Cazadores de Fake News (Fake News Hunters) and Alianza Rebelde Investiga (Rebel Alliance Investigates), also obtained lists of alleged gang members that are kept by Venezuelan law enforcement officials and the international law enforcement agency Interpol. Those lists include some 1,400 names. None of the names of the 238 Venezuelan deportees matched those on the lists.
The hasty removal of the Venezuelans and their incarceration in a third country has made this one of the most consequential deportations in recent history. The court battles over whether Trump has the authority to expel immigrants without judicial review have the potential to upend how this country handles all immigrants living in the U.S., whether legally or illegally. Officials have suggested publicly that, to achieve the president’s goals of deporting millions of immigrants, the administration was considering suspending habeas corpus, the longstanding constitutional right allowing people to challenge their detention.
Hours before the immigrants were loaded onto airplanes in Texas for deportation, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, declaring that the Tren de Aragua prison gang had invaded the United States, aided by the Venezuelan government. It branded the gang a foreign terrorist organization and said that declaration gave the president the authority to expel its members and send them indefinitely to a foreign prison, where they have remained for more than two months with no ability to communicate with their families or lawyers.
Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in the American Civil Liberties Union’s legal fight against the deportations, said the removals amounted to a “blatant violation of the most fundamental due process principles.” He said that under the law, an immigrant who has committed a crime can be prosecuted and removed, but “it does not mean they can be subjected to a potentially lifetime sentence in a foreign gulag.”
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in response to our findings that “ProPublica should be embarrassed that they are doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens who are a threat,” adding that “the American people strongly support” the president’s immigration agenda.
When asked about the differences between the administration’s public statements about the deportees and the way they are labeled in government data, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin largely repeated previous public statements. She insisted, without providing evidence, that the deportees were dangerous, saying, “These individuals categorized as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gang members and more — they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.”
As for the administration’s allegations that Tren de Aragua has attempted an invasion, an analysis by U.S. intelligence officials concluded that the gang was not acting at the direction of the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro and that reports suggesting otherwise were “not credible.” Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, fired the report’s authors after it became public. Her office, according to news reports, said Gabbard was trying to “end the weaponization and politicization” of the intelligence community.
Our investigation focused on the 238 Venezuelan men who were deported on March 15 to CECOT, the prison in El Salvador, and whose names were on a list first published by CBS News. The government has also sent several dozen other immigrants there, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who the government admitted was sent there in error. Courts have ruled that the administration should facilitate his return to the U.S.
We interviewed about 100 of the deportees’ relatives and their attorneys. Many of them had heard from their loved ones on the morning of March 15, when the men believed they were being sent back to Venezuela. They were happy because they would be back home with their families, who were eager to prepare their favorite meals and plan parties. Some of the relatives shared video messages with us and on social media that were recorded inside U.S. detention facilities. In those videos, the detainees said they were afraid that they might be sent to Guantanamo, a U.S. facility on Cuban soil where Washington has held and tortured detainees, including a number that it suspected of plotting the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Trump administration had sent planes carrying Venezuelan immigrants there earlier this year.
They had no idea they were being sent to El Salvador.
Among them was 31-year-old Leonardo José Colmenares Solórzano, who left Venezuela and his job as a youth soccer coach last July. His sister, Leidys Trejo Solórzano, said he had a hard time supporting himself and his mother and that Venezuela’s crumbling economy made it hard for him to find a better paying job. Colmenares was detained at an appointment to approach the U.S.-Mexico border in October because of his many tattoos, his sister said. Those tattoos include the names of relatives, a clock, an owl and a crown she said was inspired by the Real Madrid soccer club’s logo.
Colmenares was not flagged as having a criminal history in the DHS data we obtained. Nor did we find any U.S. or foreign convictions or charges in our review. Trejo said her brother stayed out of trouble and has no criminal record in Venezuela either. She described his expulsion as a U.S.-government-sponsored kidnapping.
“It’s been so difficult. Even talking about what happened is hard for me,” said Trejo, who has scoured the internet for videos and photos of her brother in the Salvadoran prison. “Many nights I can’t sleep because I’m so anxious.”
The internal government data shows that officials had labeled all but a handful of the men as members of Tren de Aragua but offered little information about how they came to that conclusion. Court filings and documents we obtained show the government has relied in part on social media posts, affiliations with known gang members and tattoos, including crowns, clocks, guns, grenades and Michael Jordan’s “Jumpman” logo. We found that at least 158 of the Venezuelans imprisoned in El Salvador have tattoos. But law enforcement sources in the U.S., Colombia, Chile and Venezuela with expertise in the Tren de Aragua told us that tattoos are not an indicator of gang membership.
McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said the agency is confident in its assessments of gang affiliation but would not provide additional information to support them.
John Sandweg, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said, “for political reasons, I think the administration wants to characterize this as a grand effort that’s promoting public safety of the United States.” But “even some of the government’s own data demonstrates there is a gap between the rhetoric and the reality,” he said, referring to the internal data we obtained.
The government data shows 67 men who were deported had been flagged as having pending charges, though it provides no details about their alleged crimes. We found police, court and other records for 38 of those deportees. We found several people whose criminal history differed from what was tagged in the government data. In some cases that the government listed as pending criminal charges, the men had been convicted and in one case the charge had been dropped before the man was deported.
Our reporting found that, like the criminal convictions, the majority of the pending charges involved nonviolent crimes, including retail theft, drug possession and traffic offenses.
Six of the men had pending charges for attempted murder, assault, armed robbery, gun possession or domestic battery. Immigrant advocates have said removing people to a prison in El Salvador before the cases against them were resolved means that Trump, asserting his executive authority, short-circuited the criminal justice system.
Take the case of Wilker Miguel Gutiérrez Sierra, 23, who was arrested in February 2024 in Chicago on charges of attempted murder, robbery and aggravated battery after he and three other Venezuelan men allegedly assaulted a stranger on a train and stole his phone and $400. He pleaded not guilty. Gutiérrez was on electronic monitoring as he awaited trial when he was arrested by ICE agents who’d pulled up to him on the street in five black trucks, court records show. Three days later he was shipped to El Salvador.
But the majority of men labeled as having pending cases were facing less serious charges, according to the records we found. Maikol Gabriel López Lizano, 23, was arrested in Chicago in August 2023 on misdemeanor charges for riding his bike on the sidewalk while drinking a can of Budweiser. His partner, Cherry Flores, described his deportation as a gross injustice. “They shouldn’t have sent him there,” she said. “Why did they have to take him over a beer?”
A couple of years ago, a Reuters investigation uncovered another revamp of immigration policies under President Trump. ICE has a Risk Classification Assessment Tool that decides whether or not arrested immigrants can be released on bail or their own recognizance. The algorithm had apparently undergone a radical transformation under the new administration, drastically decreasing the number of detainees who could be granted release. The software now recommends detention in almost every case, no matter what mitigating factors are fed to the assessment tool.
ICE is now being sued for running software that declares nearly 100% of detained immigrants too risky to be released pending hearings. The ACLU’s lawsuit [PDF] opens with some disturbing stats that show how ICE has rigged the system to keep as many people detained as possible.
According to data obtained by the New York Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, from 2013 to June 2017, approximately 47% of those deemed to be low risk by the government were granted release. From June 2017 to September 2019, that figure plummeted to 3%. This dramatic drop in the release rate comes at a time when exponentially more people are being arrested in the New York City area and immigration officials have expanded arrests of those not convicted of criminal offenses. The federal government’s sweeping detention dragnet means that people who pose no flight or safety risk are being jailed as a matter of course—in an unlawful trend that is getting worse.
Despite there being plenty of evidence that immigrants commit fewer criminal acts than natural-born citizens, the administration adopted a “No-Release Policy.” That led directly to ICE tinkering with its software — one that was supposed to assess risk factors when making detention determinations. ICE may as well just skip this step in the process since it’s only going to give ICE (and the administration) the answer it wants: detention without bond. ICE agents can ask for a second opinion on detention from a supervisor, but the documents obtained by the ACLU show supervisors depart from detention recommendations less than 1% of the time.
The negative effects of this indefinite detention are real. The lawsuit points out zero-risk detainees can see their lives destroyed before they’re allowed anything that resembles due process.
Once denied release under the new policy, people remain unnecessarily incarcerated in local jails for weeks or even months before they have a meaningful opportunity to seek release in a hearing before an Immigration Judge. While waiting for those hearings, those detained suffer under harsh conditions of confinement akin to criminal incarceration. While incarcerated, they are separated from families, friends, and communities, and they risk losing their children, their jobs, and their homes. Because of inadequate medical care and conditions in the jails, unmet medical and mental-health needs often lead to serious and at times irreversible consequences.
When they do finally get to see a judge, nearly 40% of them are released on bond. ICE treats nearly 100% of detained immigrants as dangerous. Judges — judges employed by the DOJ and appointed by the Attorney General — clearly don’t agree with the agency’s rigged assessment system.
There will always be those who say, “Well, don’t break the law.” These aren’t criminal proceedings. These are civil proceedings where the detained are tossed into criminal facilities until they’re able to see a judge. This steady stripping of options began under the Obama administration but accelerated under Trump and his no-release policy.
ICE began to alter its custody determinations process in 2015, modifying its risk-assessment tool so that it could no longer recommend individuals be given the opportunity for release on bond. In mid-2017, ICE then removed the tool’s ability to recommend release on recognizance. As a result, the assessment tool—on which ICE offices across the country rely— can only make one substantive recommendation: detention without bond.
The ACLU is hoping to have a class action lawsuit certified that would allow it to hold ICE responsible for violating rights en masse, including the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause. Since ICE is no longer pretending to be targeting the “worst of the worst,” the agency and its deliberately-broken risk assessment tool are locking up immigrants who have lived here for an average of sixteen years — people who’ve added to their communities, held down jobs, and raised families. These are the people targeted by ICE and it is ensuring that it is these people who are thrown into prisons and jails until their hearings, tearing apart their lives and families while denying them the rights extended to them by our Constitution.
It’s good to see ICE is still working hard to round up all these “bad hombres.” Instructed by the President to round up the hordes of undocumented criminals — each one more dangerous than the last — ICE and its parent agency (DHS) have struggled a bit to live up to Donald Trump’s imagination.
We were supposed to be overrun with rapists, murderers, and RICOists because President Barack “Thanks” Obama loved illegal immigrants more than he loved Americans, possibly due to his non-citizenship. But as ICE and DHS have come to realize, immigrants aren’t any more dangerous than natural citizens. In fact, they’re less dangerous than the average American, which makes it pretty difficult to focus only on the “worst of the worst.”
So, ICE has expanded its targeting. It has expanded this targeting as it has expanded its surveillance capabilities. Hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the US are willing to be ICE’s posse, helping it bypass federal restrictions and feeding the agency whatever information local cops think might be useful.
There is a regular pattern of communication between Boston police and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that includes emails regarding arrests for low-level offenses like trespassing and shoplifting, according to documents obtained by WBUR.
[…]
In emails reviewed by WBUR, Boston police and federal immigration officials regularly offer information back and forth between the agencies. Often, the agencies are comparing arrest records of individuals accused of non-felony violations — like operating a vehicle without a license and shoplifting — to see if they have potential civil immigration violations, and vice versa.
I guess this works out for the Boston PD. It frees up its officers to tackle serious crimes and actually dangerous criminals. I mean, theoretically. This information-sharing doesn’t appear to be linked to any uptick in enforcement or case clearance rates.
It also works out for ICE, which is willing to settle for apprehending mildly-disruptive hombres in lieu of bad ones. Since no one up top is paying too much attention to the quality of ICE apprehensions, anything that increases the quantity of apprehensions is welcome.
This runs contrary to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s declaration that city law enforcement would not assist ICE in anything but actually rounding up the “worst of the worst.” Cooperation was supposed to be limited to violent crimes and suspected felons.
Maybe the rest of the police force is complying with Mayor Walsh’s wishes. But one officer definitely isn’t. The documents obtained by WBUR show a single officer — Police Sergeant Detective Gregory Gallagher — is handling almost all of ICE’s requests for information. When not acting as a single source provider for immigrant info, Detective Gallagher is also offering to cover shifts for DHS special agents.
Detective Gallagher’s work makes a certain amount of sense considering he’s the PD’s point man for the department’s own immigration enforcement efforts. And it makes sense more broadly since local law enforcement agencies have been authorized to “perform the full range of law enforcement duties of a Customs Officer” on behalf of ICE since 2014.
But what doesn’t make sense is this officer’s insistence on acting as an ICE liaison to hunt down shoplifters and unlicensed drivers when ICE isn’t supposed to be focusing on these non-threats to national security/public safety. It also doesn’t make sense when the mayor has specifically instructed the city’s police force to provide assistance only in the most severe cases.
The response to this report by the city’s top cop isn’t necessarily reassuring.
Boston Police Commissioner William Gross told WBUR Thursday that his officers are focused on violent crimes and drugs, not a person’s immigration status.
That’s great and all, but someone inside the department is very much focused on immigration status. While the rest of the PD may be busying itself with actual police work, one detective has transformed himself into ICE’s top lackey — one with access to records and databases ICE possibly can’t access legally on its own.
Even if everything about this was completely above-board, it would still be problematic. ICE has limited resources but it’s using them to hunt down scofflaws, not dangerous criminals. It has a shortage of manpower, but still feels compelled to busy itself with low-level offenses committed by people who pose no threat to anything but the administration’s bullshit-shoveling.
The border surge is upon us. Apparently. Since the 2016 election, actually, if we’re honest about it. Trump wasn’t a single-issue candidate but has sort of morphed into one since taking office. The swamp remains undrained. Hillary Clinton remains unjailed. But BUILD THE WALL has become the calling card of Donald Trump as he seeks to rid the nation of pesky brown people. Good times. To be fair, ICE and CBP have always sucked. But their moment in the spotlight has only increased the intensity of their sucking.
The problem with declaring the border a national security threat/war zone/flashpoint for a trade war/whatever is that you have to be ready to deal with the problem you’re causing. If you think America’s greatness is measured by the number of people we capture and detain, you have to have a plan in place to deal with this influx of eventual deportees.
We do not have a plan in place. ICE may be enjoying the extremely rare experience of being a presidential administration’s favorite agency, but it definitely had no idea what it was in for. For months, ICE scrambled around knocking heads and fudging numbers to back Trump’s claim that the United States was swimming with dangerous undocumented immigrants.
ICE performed raid after raid in major cities, hoping to score a batch of hardened criminals. CBP also stepped up enforcement, detaining more people than usual in hopes of sending a message to outsiders about America’s not-all-that-open borders.
The problem is you have to put all of these people somewhere. ICE is in charge of that and it doesn’t particularly relish any part of the job but locking people up. It farmed out some of this work to contractors. Whatever it doesn’t handle poorly itself is handled terribly by third parties. ICE rarely inspects its facilities and even more rarely makes sure the few problems it notices are addressed.
This has led directly to the problems found by ICE’s Inspector General. IG investigations of ICE detention centers have found a shitload of inhuman conditions that we, the people, are funding with our tax dollars. First, an inspection [PDF] of a facility in El Paso, Texas, discovered ICE and CBP are just shoving as many detainees into a room as inhumanly possible, resulting in standing-room-only detentions that can last for several days.
Here are a couple of photos taken by investigators. Each white block is covering a face… or faces, since there’s not a lot of room between detainees.
Part of the problem is a spike in apprehensions, apparently triggered by presidential rhetoric.
These agencies (ICE, CBP) view detainees as subhuman, much in the way prisons view prisoners.
Here are the numbers, according to the IG investigation:
According to PDT Border Patrol processing facility staff, the facility’s maximum capacity is 125 detainees. However, on May 7 and 8, 2019, Border Patrol’s custody logs indicated that there were approximately 750 and 900 detainees on site, respectively. TEDS standards provide that “under no circumstances should the maximum [cell] occupancy rate, as set by the fire marshal, be exceeded” (TEDS 4.7).
However, we observed dangerous overcrowding at the facility with single adults held in cells designed for one-fifth as many detainees (see Figures 1 through 3). Specifically, we observed:
– a cell with a maximum capacity of 12 held 76 detainees (Figure 1);
– a cell with a maximum capacity of 8 held 41 detainees (Figure 2); and
– a cell with a maximum capacity of 35 held 155 detainees (Figure 3).
66% of detainees had been there longer than the 72 hours and 4% (33 detainees) had been there — in these conditions — for more than two weeks. The IG also observed hundreds of detainees standing in line to surrender their valuables to DHS/CBP personnel prior to detention. The IG also observed how government personnel processed these possessions, which apparently involved a.) taking the valuables, and b.) hurling them into a nearby dumpster.
The CPB excuse? Some possession were “wet,” which made them “biohazards.” Management on site had their own complaints: employees were getting sick frequently and morale was pretty much nonexistent. Unsurprisingly, sending personnel into overcrowded holding areas to check on detainees also increases the dangers they face, especially when detainees are understandably distressed and angry about their supposedly-temporary living conditions.
There is no help coming from upper management. Nor is ICE willing to assist in alleviating the problems it’s caused.
Although CBP headquarters management has been aware of the situation at PDT for months and detailed staff to assist with custody management, DHS has not identified a process to alleviate issues with overcrowding at PDT. Within DHS, providing long-term detention is the responsibility of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), not CBP. El Paso sector Border Patrol management said they are able to complete immigration processing for most detainees within a few days, but have not been able to transfer single adults into ICE custody quickly. Border Patrol managers at the stations we visited said they call ICE daily to request detention space for single adults. They said in some instances ICE officers tell them they cannot take the detainees. In other instances, ICE initially agrees to take some adult detainees, but then reverses the decision.
El Paso isn’t the only area of concern. Another Inspector General’s report [PDF] obtained by CNN contains even more depictions of subhuman conditions being foisted on detainees by the federal government. Overcrowding isn’t the problem here. Everything else is.
This report summarizes findings on our latest round of unannounced inspections at four detention facilities housing ICE detainees. Although the conditions varied among the facilities and not every problem was present at each, our observations, detainee and staff interviews, and document reviews revealed several common issues. Because we observed immediate risks or egregious violations of detention standards at facilities in Adelanto, CA, and Essex County, NJ, including nooses in detainee cells, overly restrictive segregation, inadequate medical care, unreported security incidents, and significant food safety issues, we issued individual reports to ICE after our visits to these two facilities. All four facilities had issues with expired food, which puts detainees at risk for food-borne illnesses.
If you can take it, there’s more:
At three facilities, we found that segregation practices violated standards and infringed on detainee rights. Two facilities failed to provide recreation outside detainee housing units. Bathrooms in two facilities’ detainee housing units were dilapidated and moldy. At one facility, detainees do not receive appropriate clothing and hygiene items to ensure they could properly care for themselves. Lastly, one facility allowed only non-contact visits, despite being able to accommodate in-person visitation. Our observations confirmed concerns identified in detainee grievances, which indicated unsafe and unhealthy conditions to varying degrees at all of the facilities we visited.
In two facilities, food handling processes were so substandard, the kitchen manager was fired during the IG’s visit. At one facility, personnel performed suspicionless strip searches with alarming regularity and without proper documentation. In multiple facilities, detainees were not given adequate recreation time or access to outdoor activities. Some assholes (including government employees!) probably consider this to be coddling people engaged in illegal behavior, but the IG points out an important nuance that often gets ignored during heated discussions of immigration enforcement.
Detainees are held in civil, not criminal, custody; yet, according to the National Institute for Jail Operations, the loss or reduction of recreation-related amenities (indoor recreation; no fresh air and direct sunlight) may result in increased idle time and a significantly lower quality of life.
Given the conditions indoors, no wonder so many detainees wanted to spend more time outside detention facilities.
[A]t the Adelanto and Essex facilities, we observed detainee bathrooms that were in poor condition, including mold and peeling paint on walls, floors, and showers, and unusable toilets… At the Essex facility, mold permeated all walls in the bathroom area, including ceilings, vents, mirrors, and shower stalls.
That’s a factor that cannot be overlooked. Most of the thousands of people detained at ICE facilities are civil detainees. And in many cases, they’re being treated worse than the criminals housed in our nation’s many prisons. The administration is very engaged in an anti-immigration flex, but it has zero interest in handling its border enforcement activities responsibly. This does not reflect well on this country, especially if these problems continue long after Trump leaves office.
[N]o warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Internal emails and other ICE documents he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, since reviewed by CNN, show that other officers across the five-state region where Oxley worked had improperly signed warrants on behalf of their supervisors — especially on evenings or weekends. Some supervisors even gave their officers pre-signed blank warrants — in effect, illegally handing them the authority to begin the deportation process.
Oxley forged signatures of supervisors. Other ICE officers didn’t go that far. Many simply phoned up the supervisor who was supposed to be reviewing the warrants — you know, to ensure they were compliant with the Constitution — and then signed them on their behalf. In all the cases reviewed by CNN, no one was following the rules.
The President claims the “crisis” at the southern border warrants a national emergency declaration. The job ICE does is, apparently, too important to be done correctly. The agency is cooking the books to make it appear as though the nation is overrun by dangerous immigrants. Simultaneously, ICE threw manpower and funding at creating a fake college so it could sweep up immigrants and visitors attempting to comply with the law.
This warrant process that can barely be called a “process” is resulting in the illegal detention of immigrants who haven’t violated the law. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to limit government wrongdoing, but ICE officers appear to believe civil rights are inconveniences to be routed around. It wants to make the fun part of the job — rounding up people and detaining them — more efficient.
The process is detain first, ask questions later, if ever.
One ICE deportation officer in the Northwestern United States, who asked not to be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak for the agency, said his supervisors were not reviewing and signing individual warrants, called I-200s, as prescribed.
“I’ve had two supervisors since the memo came out. Both do it different ways, neither in the way that’s outlined in the policy,” the officer said. “My first supervisor would just sign the I-200s; he’d leave them blank and I would fill in the name later. My current supervisor tells us to sign his name for him.” Most supervisors in that office do the same, he added.
It’s only after ICE has someone in custody that anyone conducts a review of the paperwork. Apparently the agency feels comfortable abusing the rights of non-citizens, even though these same protections are extended to them by the government. It’s a collective shrug from ICE towards the Constitution the agency’s officers are sworn to uphold.
Brent Oxley is no hero. He’s not even a whistleblower. This misconduct has come to light because the union representing ICE officers is trying to get a man who forged supervisors’ signatures on warrants his job back. All Oxley was trying to show was that ICE’s Fourth Amendment violations are common practice. He wasn’t trying to expose the agency’s wrongdoing. He was simply trying to justify his own.
We already know ICE can’t find enough dangerous immigrants to satisfy President Trump’s absurd fantasies of a nation overrun by foreign murderers, rapists, and terrorists. But it appears the agency has completely given up on its “worst of the worst” targeting. According to an unsealed indictment and recently-released ICE emails, the agency blew a lot of man hours and taxpayer money on rounding up [squints at court documents] immigrants attempting to further their educations.
The Department of Homeland Security set up a fake university in Farmington Hills to target foreign students who wanted to stay in the U.S. without proper authorization, according to federal indictments unsealed in Detroit on Wednesday.
Eight people were arrested and indicted in an immigration fraud case for conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harboring aliens for profit, said the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Matthew Schneider.
Six of them were arrested in metro Detroit, one in Florida and another in Virginia. The students enrolled at the fake university with the intent to obtain jobs under a student visa program called CPT (Curricular Practical Training) that allows students to work in the U.S., said prosecutors.
This is ICE’s take on the arrests. What actually happened here is something bordering on entrapment.
The students seeking to attend the fake university had expiring visas. They were allowed to stay in the US and work as long as they continued their education. As long as these students continued working towards approved degrees, they were allowed to stay in the country. A limited supply of H-1B visas means attending school or exiting the country for most of the immigrants involved.
The government portrays this as “staying in the US without proper authorization.” But the university offered proper authorization under this immigration program. Rather than do nothing and sweep up students whose visas were expired, ICE decided to set up a bogus university as a honeypot for foreign students working against the clock to get their stays extended.
The emails obtained by the Detroit Free Press show an ugly, calculated move by ICE to both rob immigrants of their money and their chance to stay in the United States. The agency went so far as to obtain bogus accreditation from a national accreditation agency in order to better dupe unaware immigrants.
Undercover investigators with the Department of Homeland Security registered the University of Farmington with the state of Michigan as a university using a fake name.
At the request of DHS, a national accreditation agency listed the University of Farmington as being accredited in order to help deceive prospective students.
The university was also placed by federal investigators on the website of ICE as an university approved by them under a government program for foreign students known as SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Program)
All of this led prospective students to believe they were dealing with a real university offering programs that would allow them to stay, study, and work in the US legally. In addition to taking $100 application fees from over 600 students, ICE also hoovered up an untold amount of tuition fees.
“I was told by the students, that the university reassured them that classes would be held and everything would be fine and that they are following the immigration laws,” said Prashanthi Reddy, an attorney in New York City. “The students paid them the tuition fees and were trapped once they realized that classes were not being held, as some didn’t have the money to transfer and pay tuition at another university.”
Students were told by ICE’s fake university they were complying with immigration laws by applying for continuing education. This was buttressed by the bogus accreditation obtained by the agency. Students thought they were taking the next step to extend their stays in the US — all of it completely legal — until it became apparent the fake university would never be holding classes or handing out degrees.
While there may have been a few people taking advantage of immigrants by either lying to them about their visa status or charging fees to route them into another university, a majority of those swept up in ICE’s sting were following the law. If the government says you can stay and work in the country as long as you continue your education, students applying to ICE’s bogus university were in full compliance. All told, 149 duped students were arrested, but only eight of them are actually facing charges for what’s detailed in the indictment.
This is a horrific abuse of trust — aided and abetted by a national accreditation agency. The government lied repeatedly to people trying to follow the law, took their money, and basically arrested them for failing to figure out it wasn’t a real university.
The DOJ doesn’t care if it lies to the American people. This isn’t exactly a shocking accusation. The DOJ isn’t anyone’s idea of honest, no matter what its name implies. The DOJ has encouraged and supported parallel construction, entrapment (ATF stash house stings, almost every FBI terrorism bust), and shown itself to be a willing extension of every administration it’s attached to. If a narrative needs bolstering, the DOJ will comply.
When the Trump administration wanted to push its narrative about the southern border crawling with dangerous terrorists and criminals, the DOJ leapt in to help. It had to, since the agency charged with immigration enforcement (ICE) couldn’t actually find very many dangerous criminals to detain and deport, even as the President continued to make daily assertions about the national security threat directly across the border.
The DOJ and DHS presented its “findings” to Congress and the American public — a bunch of paper masquerading as a set of facts that contained very little factual information. It claimed a “vast majority” of terrorist acts were perpetrated by foreigners illegally in the United States. This was not simply wrong, but an apparently deliberate attempt to inflate numbers into a national security threat-sized problem. To do this, the DOJ and DHS added in foreign citizens who had been extradited to the US to face trial for terrorism-related charges. Subtracting these, the actual percentage was closer to 20% — not anywhere near the “majority” the agencies claimed.
This was only part of the report’s misrepresentations. Another assertion claimed immigrants were convicted of almost 70,000 sex offenses from 2003 to 2009. Again, the facts did not back this claim up.
The nearly 70,000 offenses spanned a period from 1955 to 2010 — 55 years, not six; the data covered arrests, not convictions…
The DOJ has finally admitted it screwed up when compiling this fact hack job. This admission isn’t going to help it fare any better in the litigation that resulted from the release of the DOJ/DHS’s fact-free report. The agencies are being sued under a little-used law called the Information Quality Act. But larger than this problem is the DOJ’s refusal to truly own its skewed report and the misinformation it spread to support the President’s xenophobic agenda.
Now, after two rounds, the Justice Department has told the groups it will not retract or correct the document. Rather, “in future reports, the department can strive to minimize the potential for misinterpretation,” Michael H. Allen, deputy assistant attorney general for policy, management and planning, wrote in a Dec. 21 letter to the groups.
The DOJ’s counsel claims the misrepresentations were merely “editorial errors.” That hardly seems likely. The addition of extradited individuals to bring up the percentage of foreign-born persons charged for terrorist acts could not have been accidental. And perhaps someone may have slipped up when tallying sexual offenses by foreigners, but it would be a whole lot more believable if the error had been a couple of extra years, rather than five additional decades.
The DOJ and DHS — despite admitting error — also refuse to release the underlying data used to compile the disingenuous report. Certainly the numbers won’t back up the government’s claims, which is likely the reason it won’t hand those numbers over. But the DOJ is being even more obtuse than it needs to be. Here’s the DOJ’s counsel explaining why the DOJ won’t be providing anyone with the underlying data.
“There is no requirement in either the [law or department guidelines] that agencies must always provide underlying data when disseminating information to the public,” Allen wrote.
Well, fuck you too. That’s a hell of a reason to refuse to own up to your misrepresentations. The law doesn’t prevent the DOJ from handing over this info. It simply doesn’t make it mandatory. The DOJ could claw back a bit of goodwill by openly admitting its errors and allowing the public to view the data for itself. But it won’t because no one’s making it. This is what it looks like at the top of the governmental org chart: a bunch of children who’ve spent their free time looking for legal loopholes. What a disgrace, especially for an agency with the word “justice” in its title.
The president’s new “see something, say something” program isn’t about national security, even if he’ll claim it is. It’s about gathering whatever bits of evidence he can use to shore up his repeated claims about “dangerous” immigrants. The narrative doesn’t work without it. Unfortunately, despite the money and manpower being thrown at it, the lack of “bad hombre” data continues to undermine this administration’s assertions.
Last year kicked off with a bunch of ICE sweeps. Done in hopes of rustling up enough undocumented hardened criminals, it was a robust failure. Communications obtained from ICE show it inflated the number of “egregious” cases by cannibalizing reports from other jurisdictions, if not travelling back in time to include violators seized during 2016 raids. Even the inflated numbers were underwhelming.
The next step was the VOICE hotline — a place where citizens could report suspicious individuals they suspected were undocumented and known criminals/immigrants. Calls are fielded 12 hours a day, supported by $1 million in annual funding taken directly from “any and all resources that are currently used to advocate on behalf of illegal aliens.”
Data leaked by ICE showed this plan wasn’t working either. A majority of the calls received reported aliens of extraterrestrial origin when not showering staffers with obscenities. The more “legitimate” complaints weren’t all that legitimate. Many of the calls discussing illegal immigrants were nothing more than estranged spouses, angry parents, and other such upstanding Americans attempting to use ICE as an on-call vigilante force to remove people they didn’t like from their lives.
Since April of last year, six operators sitting at a call center in Laguna Niguel, California, have fielded an astonishing range of calls for 12 hours a day.
One caller asked to make a reservation at a Trump hotel. Another called to report that “a ‘coyote’ stole his cat.” Then there was the one who “requested to report Melania Trump, who is stealing caller’s taxpayer funds.” Another complained that “illegal aliens are going into her yard and taking food from her garden.”
Dozens of callers reported space aliens, some going into the details of what dates they were abducted by UFOs — all dutifully logged by the operators. Hundreds called to denounce ex-spouses, neighbors, and business rivals whom they suspected of being in the country illegally.
A much smaller number called to request information about the immigration status or the custody status of alleged criminals who are undocumented immigrants — the original purpose of the toll-free hotline.
It’s more of the same stuff (inadvertently) reported by ICE when it moved an unredacted spreadsheet of call center info to an unprotected space on its document server. And it’s more of the same petty misuse of government resources — both by people trying to deputize ICE to fix their personal problems and prank callers seeking to derail the office’s limited usefulness.
What can’t be found anywhere in this report [PDF] is a justification for its ongoing existence. $1 million a year was supposed to buy the administration a whole lot of anti-immigrant narrative. Even in terms of this disingenuous effort, it has failed. But it goes beyond that. Even if you cede the argument that hardline immigration enforcement is necessary for the health and the security of this nation, the lack of actionable info makes it a waste of time and money.
[T]he office’s first “quarterly report,” released just over a week ago, 15 months after the office was officially launched and covering April through September of last year, provides no information on how many of the more than 4,000 calls it received involved crimes by undocumented immigrants. Nor does it say much about the “effects of victimization by criminal aliens” who, in the words of the memo that announced its establishment, “routinely victimize Americans and other legal residents.”
More than half the calls have nothing to do with immigrants, immigration enforcement, or reports of illegal activity. Sure, lots of this can be chalked up to prank callers, but many of these calls are also of the “I saw a Mexican in my neighborhood” variety. It’s a vehicle for petty vindictiveness, which adds nothing to the understanding of the supposed immigration “problem,” nor aids in the apprehension of actual dangerous criminals.
The report data shows 972 calls reporting crimes, but the underlying data shows many of these calls were reporting nothing more than perceived illegality related to citizenship.
[M]ore than one in five users used it as a tip line to report people they suspected of being in the country illegally — which the office is not supposed to handle, and has to refer to ICE’s tip line. Call logs show that the bulk of their allegations — marriage fraud, faking signatures, employing undocumented workers — was a far cry from the violent crimes the president cites when he talks about “criminal aliens.”
The decision to give ICE its own “see something, say something” hotline makes no sense. The DHS’s hotline — tied to its multiple “Fusion Center” boondoggles — has resulted in little more than an expanding collection of non-actionable anecdotes from citizens who treat these call centers as a hotline for the redress of personal grievances where they can turn in neighbors, in-laws, their kids’ friends, the sketchy-looking guy at the mall, etc. for simply existing. The fuel being thrown on the rhetorical fire by this administration has still failed to coalesce into a data-driven narrative about dangerous immigrants, but it’s not for a lack of trying.
When you’ve got an official narrative to deliver, you need everyone to pitch in to keep it from falling apart. No one can say ICE didn’t try. The Trump administration — bolstered by supporting statements conjecture from DOJ and DHS officials — has portrayed undocumented immigrants as little more than nomadic thugs. Unfortunately, there’s hardly any evidence available to back up the assertion that people here illegally are more likely to commit serious criminal acts.
Back in February, shortly after Trump handed down immigration-focused executive orders, ICE went all in on arresting undocumented visitors and immigrants. Included in this push was a focus on so-called “sanctuary cities” like Austin, Texas, which had vowed to push back against Trump’s anti-immigrant actions.
On February 10, as the raids kicked off, an ICE executive in Washington sent an “URGENT” directive to the agency’s chiefs of staff around the country. “Please put together a white paper covering the three most egregious cases,” for each location, the acting chief of staff of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations wrote in the email.
It’s a good starting point, especially if the administration is relying on you to back up its assertions. ICE was willing to go the extra mile to do just that, apparently.
“If a location has only one egregious case — then include an extra egregious case from another city.”
This is an interesting ploy: cannibalizing nearby cities’ reporting in order to present some semblance of an “egregious case” immigrant nightmare –one that would need to be stripped of redundancy before final presentation.
Unfortunately for ICE agents, you can’t make something out nothing. Three cases per city proved to be almost impossible. Many raids failed to uncover even one egregious case. With the clock ticking down, some ICE offices decided to grab “egregious cases” completely unrelated to the current operation.
In February 11, an official responded to a colleague’s list of egregious cases by pointing out that they were unrelated to the ongoing operation. “The arrest dates are before any operation and even before the EO’s. What is up with these cases?” the official wrote.
What’s up with those cases is there were almost zero new cases to report to the man upstairs. Hundreds of arrests were made, but many involved people with no prior criminal record. In the remaining arrests, most of the priors found were minor violations, with the worst being drunk driving.
Not exactly the “public safety threat” the Trump administration had promised. When it became clear the “egregious case” reports might total only a handful of serious criminal offenses from hundreds of arrests nationwide, ICE quickly applied its own spin.
As criticism escalated, ICE shifted to downplaying the operation as “no different than the routine,” telling reporters that the raids were the same “targeted arrests carried out by ICE’s Fugitive Operations Teams on a daily basis,” and suggesting off the record that claims to the opposite were “false, dangerous, and irresponsible.” As it became clear that dozens of individuals with no criminal history had been apprehended, ICE shifted gears and told reporters that in addition to targeting safety threats, the raids were always meant to target those whose only crimes were immigration-related, like re-entering the U.S. after deportation…
By spinning it this way, ICE can pay needed lip service to the administration’s “dangerous immigrants” narrative and portray the lack of egregious cases as the result of the banal day-to-day work of immigration enforcement. But in doing so, it undercuts the narrative it’s trying to serve. If there are so many dangerous criminals out there, why isn’t ICE focused on them, rather than dozens of people whose only criminal act is a lack of documentation? ICE can’t have it both ways. Neither can the White House.
