[ilbegone]

Why is this not amnesty? Of course it is. Any reason is sufficient to justify legalization, and fines are small if not forgiven.
Chain migration is one of our biggest threats to the workplace.

Report: Judges deny 63 percent of deportation requests


BY CINDY CARCAMO
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Nov. 12, 2010

Federal immigration judges in Los Angeles rejected 63 percent of deportation requests this year filed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials — the third highest number in the nation, according to a report by a data-gathering organization at Syracuse University.

One of the primary reasons for the rejections appears to be that judges found the government had no legitimate grounds for seeking a removal order, according to the report released Tuesday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The Los Angeles Immigration Court serves Orange County, as well as other surrounding counties.

The number of denials in Los Angeles has significantly increased in the last couple of years, peaking in Fiscal Year 2010, according to the report. That rejection rate is mirrored in large cities such as New York City, Portland, and Miami. Los Angeles ranks third for highest deportation denials.

The report suggests that some relatively new ICE programs, such as Secure Communities program may have attributed to the increase. Secure Communities shares fingerprint information of those arrested in local custody with immigration officials.

"Is it targeting the individuals for removal who in fact should be deported?" the report says about ICE.

ICE officials said in a written statement that the administration is still committed to prioritizing the arrest and removal efforts of those who are in the country illegally that pose a danger to public safety.

"It appears that the report fails to take into account many factors, including the fact that immigration courts are independently authorized to allow illegal aliens to remain in the United States," said the statement, released by ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice.

The report comes a little more than a month after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced a record number of immigration removals at a Washington, D.C., press conference. The agency has touted their new focus on deporting the "worst of worst" people in the country illegally.

"In 2010, ICE has removed more than 195,000 convicted criminals -- a record number," Kice said in the statement.

The report stated that in Los Angeles, 27 percent of the cases were turned down in 2010 because the court determined there were no grounds for removal of the person in question. About 29 percent were granted some sort of relief to remain in the country.

Two years ago, 43 percent of deportation requests presented by ICE officials in Los Angeles were denied by immigration judges. About 9 percent of the cases were turned down because the judge found no grounds for removal, according to the report.

Susan Long, co-author of the report, said they were unable to determine why there were no grounds for deportation in the cases in question because ICE officials refused to release the information.

"The public should point the finger to ICE and ask 'why are you not releasing this data?,' " she said. "We'd be happy to put it out there and analyze it for the public. That's exactly what our original intent was to present as full of a picture."

As the new administration has ramped up deportation efforts there are a growing number of cases and less oversight over the decisions to initiate the deportation process compared to the past, said Ahilan Arulanantham, director of immigrant rights and national security for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

“This is happening for two reasons,” Arulanantham said. “A lot of time, the person making the decision is a local law enforcement officer who doesn’t know much immigration law. Second, even when it is ICE officers … they probably had less training than ICE officers had in the past and the pile on their desk is bigger than the pile they had in the past.”

Reasons for denials can vary widely. Just because a person is in the country illegally doesn’t mean their subject for immediate removal, Arulanantham said. For instance, a judge could reject a deportation order for a person who is the country illegally but who is in the process of gaining U.S. residency.

In addition, some of these deportation requests are filed against legal immigrants convicted of a crime that doesn’t necessarily qualify for deportation, Arulanantham added.

However, the exact reasons for these particular cases remain unclear.

“The determination that someone is deportable is not simple, it's actually complex,” he said.

The report doesn't attribute the court make up or policies as factors, stating that there have been very few changes to the makeup of the judges or Executive Office for Immigration Review policies.

Immigrant rights groups and policy advocates have called the federal agency's deportation statistics "misleading," stating that the agency is deporting people with minor criminal convictions and those who have been charged yet not convicted of crimes.

"This happens when you have programs like Secure Communities and the 287g programs where local police are responsible for identifying and arresting people and turning them over to ICE. They're basically casting a very wide net," said Michele Waslin, a senior policy analyst at the Immigration Policy Center, the pro-immigration, research and policy arm of the American Immigration Council.

"Now, it might be that these cases are going before a judge," she said.

The report's authors state that ICE officials may have the answers but have refused to disclose more extensive data to the public, making it difficult to track cases from their origins to disposition. This prevents the report from determining which particular initiatives may account for the sharp increase in ICE's turndown rate.

"The poor targeting of government removal efforts documented by the Immigration Court data shows that scarce resources such as the investigative time of ICE agents are being wasted and that the ability of the government to deport those who should be removed from the country therefore has been reduced," the report said. "Poor targeting that weakens the government is inefficient.''

http://www.ocregister.com/news/repor...ation-ice.html


Link to Los Angeles Immigration Court http://www.justice.gov/eoir/sibpages/los/losmain.htm


I'm continuing this train of thought here http://saveourstate.info/showthread.php?t=3019