Department of Deportation
Surging resources to immigration enforcement comes with tradeoffs.
NYT (“The Department of Deportation“):
The Department of Homeland Security has diverted thousands of federal agents from their normal duties to focus on arresting undocumented immigrants, undermining a wide range of law enforcement operations in response to mounting pressure from President Trump, a New York Times investigation has found.
Homeland security agents investigating sexual crimes against children, for instance, have been redeployed to the immigrant crackdown for weeks at a time, hampering their pursuit of child predators.
A national security probe into the black market for Iranian oil sold to finance terrorism has been slowed down for months because of the shift to immigration work, allowing tanker ships and money to disappear.
And federal efforts to combat human smuggling and sex trafficking have languished with investigators reassigned to help staff deportation efforts.
The changes have extended deep into D.H.S.’s public-safety mission, as the Coast Guard has diverted aircraft to transport immigrants between detention centers and the department’s law enforcement academy has delayed training for many agencies to prioritize new immigration officers.
That the Trump administration has prioritized immigration enforcement should not come as a surprise. It was one of his major campaign themes. But I would imagine most who supported that were envisioning a policy shift rather than a diversion of non-immigration-related assets.
This part of the report, though, was surprising to me:
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said that “any insinuation that the Trump administration isn’t successfully combating dangerous crime is false and uninformed.”
In fact, federal data shows that many immigrants being arrested do not have criminal records in the United States. Fewer than 40 percent of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — the D.H.S. law enforcement agency leading the administration’s crackdown — have a criminal conviction, according to a Times analysis. Roughly 8 percent of those arrested had been convicted of a violent crime, while about 9 percent had a traffic conviction, the analysis found.
I would have guessed the percentage of the deportees with a criminal conviction would have been vanishingly small. That some 40 percent have a criminal conviction, and eight percent one for a violent crime, is stunning. (I’m assuming “traffic conviction” is a DUI or the like; routine speeding tickets and the like are civil infractions, not criminal offenses.)
The overall numbers are staggering:
[T]he number of people in immigration detention has soared past 60,000, a record tally. The Homeland Security Department says it has deported more than 550,000 people, with the daily pace of removals reaching levels not seen since the Obama administration. Illegal border crossings have fallen to their lowest point in decades.
That the Obama administration—which Trump has consistently used as a boogeyman on this issue—is a high-water mark for deportations is easy to forget.
Still, perhaps because of the performative nature of the sweeps, this feels different. I was talking yesterday afternoon with the fellow who owns the lawn service I’ve used for going on 20 years. He’s El Salvadoran and has been a legal resident for close to 30. Some of his crew, including a man who’d worked for him for many years, have been deported. Even though his papers are in order, he’s afraid to go back home to visit his 92-year-old mother because he doesn’t know if he’ll be let back in. He’s heard plenty of stories about people in his situation being denied re-entry.
As his crew was working, another crew of Latino men were on day four of repairing the outdoor pavers that were already deteriorating when we bought the house six years ago and had become dangerous. Pretty much every contractor who has worked on this house and my previous one has relied almost exclusively on Latino labor. Aside from the occasional plumber and HVAC technician, that’s the labor force around here.
Most of them, like my lawn guy and the crew rebuilding my steps, work really long hours six or seven days a week. Most of the ones that I’ve worked with often enough to get to know have raised their American citizen children to not have to work with their hands.
The lawn guy actually supports the thrust of the immigration crackdown. He thinks people should have to wait in line like he did and get admitted legally. But he’s not happy with the way ICE and DHS are going about it.
Judging by the local labor market, though, we’re likely to regret the thrust of the policy, not just the cruelty of it. I don’t envision a surge of native-born Americans scrambling to replace the workers being deported.
My guess is that he doesn’t realize how much harder it is to “wait in line…and get admitted legally.” It now takes multiple years, and it’s entirely possible that some of those being deported were on exactly that type of wait list.
I really don’t care for these pull the ladder you used up after you types, whether it’s Paul Ryan and SSI benefits or this sort of thing, it’s gross.
Speaking of gross, everyone needs to burn this into their brains:
So, the pursuit and removal of people doing nothing but working the jobs that they do well and no one else seems to be clamoring for is more important than dealing with child predators.
That. Is. Appalling.
@Jen:
I think that’s right. I honestly have no idea what percentage of the Latino men who’ve done work in my home over the years were here legally. I wish we’d make it easy for them to come and go.
Interesting data, if a bit out of date:
There are more criminals than you might think. And these are just the people who’ve been in the system. There are far, far more people who have actually committed crimes. Among the regulars here I am confident that we have people who have driven drunk, been in a physical fight, stolen, embezzled, shoplifted or perhaps committed spousal abuse or statutory rape.
Illegals, clustered at the bottom of the economic ladder, are perhaps more likely to have committed crimes than better-off people who can afford lawyers and who don’t live in neighborhoods where crime is common, but not by much.
I believe Spanberger addressed immigration in her campaign with an AND (and you know how I love AND!)
We need to enforce the laws at the border, allocate more resources to them, and make it secure, and not a source of safety issues for Americans,
AND we need to find a way for people who have been here for a very long time to become citizens. Especially Dreamers.
We’ve had bills pass the Senate, or almost pass, that did this. Republicans have killed it because it would take away a campaign and fundraising issue.
@Michael Reynolds: My guess is that a large number of that 40 percent’s criminal convictions was for simple possession of marihuana. A visit to the misdemeanor docket on any day in any major city, particularly in the 60s, 70s or 80s, would reveal a large portion of the docket was for simple possession. In nearly all of those cases the result would be a fine and probation and the charged party would be on their way.
@Jen:
It’s not just possible, it is regularly happening.
At the risk of the “I have a friend” bit sounding like a) a complete lie because of course Gustopher doesn’t have friends or b) my sisters’ friend’s cousin who knows a guy who works at Target who is whacking up with a poodle breeder who was speaking to a particularly well informed ornithologist…
I have a friend who does a lot of immigration work — he translates and he puts together a lot of affidavits — and he regularly calls to tell me that this client or that, who has been approved for a visa but is in the many years of waiting for that visa to become available, has been picked up and deported.
ICE, and its affiliated ethnic purity enforcement agencies, is often deployed at court houses to pick people up. A common tactic is for the government to drop their case against the asylum, and for Ethnic Purity Police to then pick up the person leaving the court — apparently once the case is closed but before the visa is granted is one of the times the immigrant is most vulnerable.
People are also being picked up when they show up for their check-ins — routine visits with some part of DHS that it responsible for just making sure the people are still where they say they are — with no crime, or accusations, but just because they can.
Sometimes they are shuffled around jurisdictions to try to prevent any lawyers from getting involved before deportation. Other times they are told that they can be detained for the 8 years it takes to get a visa and maybe they want to just sign away their rights and leave, other times they are just flat out lied to about what they are signing.
And there are some very well documented cases of US citizens being picked up and their communities having to scramble to find documentation, getting that documentation rejected, going to court, having court moved, finding the court du jour…
It’s less Kafka and more Calvin Ball.
Utterly vile and everyone involved in implementing these goals (they’re not quite policies, as policies have more consistency) should be tossed into a metaphorical woodchipper.*
——
*: if it’s never used to chip wood, is it really a woodchipper?
@Michael Reynolds: Not only criminal in general, but quite violent. Over my life I have come to realize the enormous advantage being a straight white male with a good income has been in protecting me from that violence.
For example, when I worked for my state’s legislature, staff was required to regularly work late during the session. I parked in a space rented from a nearby church because the waiting list to get a space in the state’s parking garage was very long. I would cut down a couple of dark alleys in the middle of the night and not even think about it. Female staff, by contrast, went to the top of the list for garage spaces. After dark they could call the state patrol desk in the Capitol and an officer would come escort them to their car. Walking the block along the well-lit street and through the well-lit garage was deemed (properly, according to the officers) physically dangerous for the women. I asked one of the sergeants-at-arms (who were mostly retired cops) about it. He said, “You’re white, a guy in his 50s, and I’ve seen you run across the street when they needed you on the House floor on short notice. The bad guys will wait for someone who looks easier.”
A federal judge’s decision to order the release of potentially hundreds of Chicago detainees has revealed that DHS can identify only a small percentage of them having criminal backgrounds. From CNN a couple of days ago…
and…
Relatedly, the Chicago apprehensions were led by the US Border Patrol, with the explanation that it has an operations zone up to 100 miles from borders and coastlines (although, as we learned in school, Lake Michigan is located entirely within the US). And now the Border Patrol has moved their operation to Charlotte, despite it being well over 100 miles from the coast.
@Michael Reynolds:
Your comparison, between classes, is probably true, however I’ve never seen that comparison in actual data.
What is reported data is that illegals, as a class, are much less likely to commit crimes than the population in general. The speculated reason is that illegally present people tend to not do anything to call attention to their status.
Your proposition, whatever it is, would be more persuasive if you chose to compare criminality between two roughly equavanent classes with the sole distinction that one group has committed a administrative offense.