Former Missouri official must reprioritize immigration enforcement
Ed Bushmeyer and Dora Schriro (2002) Post-Dispatch file photo
Dora Schriro, who served as the St. Louis city corrections commissioner before she became director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, on Wednesday was named to an important post in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona, tabbed the head of the corrections department in her home state. Schriro has been appointed to the daunting bureaucratic title of Special Advisor on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Detention & Removal.
Aside from her ties to Missouri, her selection became more important this week after the Migration Policy Institute released a report based on Homeland Security records showing an ICE task force funded to deport the most threatening criminal aliens spent more time rounding up people without criminal backgrounds or warrants.
The mission of the National Fugitive Operations Program begun in 2003 is unassailable.
Track, find and deport undocumented immigrants with criminal warrants or outstanding deportations orders. Many were envisioned as thugs, drug dealers and bad actors involved in organized crime.
Funding grew from $9 million to $219 million from 2003 to 2008. Any bureaucrat or politician would defend Homeland Security dollars being funneled to extract the worst elements of the undocumented population.
But the process got co-opted by politics as the funding and attention mounted.
The Washington, D.C., think-tank obtained ICE memoranda that showed that agency focus shifted from the worst-of-the worst to the most arrests they could make.
For political posturing, the Bush Administration wanted numbers of people arrested and deported instead of zeroing on the biggest menaces. The ICE did its job and begun to arrest more people.
The think-tank analysis, however, showed that 73 percent of the 97,000 immigrants detained by the fugitive program in those five years had no criminal warrants or deportation orders.
Instead of finding the bad apples who defy police detection, they rounded up undocumented people like gardeners, day laborers, roofers and nannies _ hardly the criminal element.
Being or working without authorization in the United States is not a crime handled in criminal court. It is a civil proceeding handled by the federal courts. If a person is accused of committing crimes, he or she then would be subjected to regular criminal prosecution.
To be sure, ICE had the legal authority to detain undocumented people here. But it is analogous to a local police department creating and adding funding to an elite anti-drug squad, which in turn then focused on busting people in possession of a joint, bong or hit of speed to drive arrest numbers.
Those are illegal acts but what is the public threat and appropriate priority for this elite unit? ICE is huge agency within the monstrous amalgamation of federal agencies known as the Homeland Security Department.
Schriro, who oversaw the St. Louis City Workhouse before she headed the Missouri Department of Corrections from 1993 to 2001, will be the central player to revamp ICE’s arrest priorities.
ICE has many units devoted to protecting borders, assisting immigrants to become legalized and deporting the undocumented. Undocumented immigrants without criminal backgrounds will continue to be deported.
But one big job is to redirect the fugitive squad back toward the worst criminal threats and those who purposely evade deportation orders.
The politics of padding arrest numbers should be shelved in favor of public safety. Everyone benefits from returning to the fugitive program’s real mission _ regardless of one’s national origin.
Gilbert Bailon has been editor of the P-D editorial pages since November 2007. Previously, he worked as a reporter, editor and executive editor for The Dallas Morning News and its daily Spanish-language newspaper, Al Dia. He still harbors a passion for all things Tex-Mex: food, music, language, boots and border culture. And yes he has found some of that in the Midwest. 
Did anyone at the PD actually read the report cited here? Cause if they had, they’d clearly see that ICE has gone after often dangerous criminal aliens in increasing numbers. The only reason the numbers of non-fugitive illegals has gone up is because of a policy change in 2006 that orginally forbade agents from arresting non-criminals while exercising warrants against felons.
According to the report, prior to 2006 ICE had a policy of releasing non-criminal aliens discovered while searching for criminals because they were not the targets of the raids. ICE agents also were subjected to a quota system that required 75% of the arrests be fugitive aliens. This obviously discouraged arrests of other illegal immigrants found at the locations where warrants were served.
After 2006, however, agents serving these warrants were required to arrest any illegal alien with whom they came into contact. Overall arrests and deportations increased sharply, as anyone other than an editorial writer might easily predict. In 2003, ICE teams arrested 1,901 illegals. In 2004, they arrested 6,584. But after the policy change the number of overall arrests jumped to 15,462. In 2007, it was 30,407.
There isn’t a shred of evidence in that report, or anywhere else, that supports the assertion that ICE deliberatly targets non-criminals to pad their numbers. In fact, the report itself says just the opposite.
I wish Ms Shriro well. Illegal immigration is a serious social and political problem that demands rational and serious attention. Editorials that misrepresent the basic facts of the matter don’t help.
GO_FISH _ I encourage others to read the report titled “Collateral Damage: An Examination of ICE’s Fugitive Operations Program” at wwww.migrationpolicy.org. The researchers come to very different conclusions from you and make a number of recommendations about how ICE should change its program.
Or read the front-page Feb. 4 New York Times story by Nina Bernstein that includes this passage: “An Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo dated Jan. 22, 2004, underscored that commitment: “Effective immediately, no less than 75 percent of all fugitive operations targets will be those classified as criminal aliens” noncitizens with a criminal record as well as an order of deportation. It added that “collateral apprehensions” _ immigration violators encountered by chance during an operation _ would not be counted in that percentage”
“But on Jan.31, 2006, a new memo changed the rules. The directive, from John P. Torres, acting director of the agency, raised each team’s “target goal” to 1,000 a year, from 125.”
“And it removed the requirement that at least 75 percent of those sought out for arrest be criminals……..But that standard, too, was dropped nine months later. A new memo from Mr. Torres said “nonfugitive arrests may now be included” to reach the required 1,000. On average, however, it said that at least half of the those arrested should be fugitives.”
The percentage of criminal aliens apprehended in fiscal 2007 was 9 percent, the report stated.
Schiro has spent her career in detention. Removal and enforcement will be a new area for her.
Best of luck to her and ICE.
Sic ‘em Dora!!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/opinion/06fri2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
I’ll say it again: The conclusion reached by migrationpolicy.org are not supported by the data and memos they themselves cite. Here are the actual numbers of fugitive vs non-fugitive arrests made by ICE by fiscal year:
FY05: Fugitives: 5,781; Non-fugitive: 2,178
FY06: Fugitives: 10,109; Non-fugitive: 5,353
FY07: Fugitives: 18,323; Non-fugitive: 12,084
FY08: Fugitives: 25,936; Non-fugitive: 8,219
These numbers come from the list of citations in the migration policy study and are easily verifiable. My calculator shows that 18,323 represents about 60% of the total arrested for that year, not 9%. Maybe those layers of fact checkers and professional editors at the Times use another form of math?
The underlying message of the editorial seems to be that arresting non-criminial illegal aliens is somehow wrong, yet offers no rational reason for why that should be.
What I find most interesting about all this though, is that at a time where we should be applauding government for becoming more efficient, ICE has significantly increased both the apphrension of the most dangerous criminal aliens along with those who aren’t necessarily dangerous but are by definition criminals just the same. I fail to see anything wrong with that.
Mr. Bailon, are you suggesting that the invasion of our country by millions of foreigners from around the globe should be a “civil” matter? Why do you so casually dismiss the criminal and national defense aspects of the very act of illegal entry? The fact they use stealth instead of military force and wear civilian clothes instead of uniforms does not change their status as invaders who present a clear danger to the well being of our nation.
Legal and honorable means exist to immigrate to the United States. That protocol includes measures to screen entrants and protect our citizens from disease, crime, and free loaders. Quotas can be raised if necessary for deserving and needed immigrants to establish legal residence in the U.S. Those who violate U.S. immigration laws and policies deserve no more sympathy than their enablers who employ, protect, or excuse them.
Why would an employee of the government worshiping PD criticize government for performing its constitutional duty to enforce our laws? I think we all know the answer.
You have your numbers wrong, I’m afraid.
The MPI study reports that 9% of the total arrests by these Fugitive Operations Teams were criminal fugitive aliens — which is who the program is mandated to arrest. That number is correct. In FY07, the NFOP arrested 30,407 people. 2,677 of them were criminal fugitive aliens (meaning that they have an outstanding removal order and have been convicted of a crime.) That’s 9% — and those are ICE numbers. And, in fact, 75% of that 9% were nonviolent crimes. Not exactly high priority fugitives!
The numbers you are referring describe whether or not the person has an existing removal order. And, as you note, fully 40% of the individuals arrested by the NFOP in FY2007 do NOT — meaning that not only are they not high priority fugitive aliens, they aren’t fugitive aliens at all.
Not great for a program that has cost taxpayers more than $625 million and describes itself as a national security program.
Javanne… “meaning that not only are they not high priority fugitive aliens, they aren’t fugitive aliens at all.”
All illegal alien invaders of our country are fugitives. They reside in the U.S. inviolation of our laws. Yet, the open borders traitors simultaneously argue that there should be another amnesty because “we can’t capture them all” and that we are capturing too many under this program. Truth to some is written in chalk and revised at will.