Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan – Page 2

TAL KOPAN AT CNN: HOMAN PROMISES MORE DHS “GONZO” ENFORCEMENT AT WORKSITES!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/17/politics/ice-crackdown-workplaces/index.html

Tal reports:

“Washington (CNN)The administration’s top immigration enforcement official on Tuesday said his agency will vastly step up crackdowns on employers who hire undocumented immigrants — a new front in President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration agenda.

Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan spoke at the conservative Heritage Foundation and was asked whether his agency would do more to target not just undocumented workers, but their places of work.

Homan said he has instructed Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative unit of ICE, to potentially quintuple worksite enforcement actions next year.

He said he recently asked HSI to audit how much of their time is spent on work site enforcement, and said he has ordered that to increase “by four to five times.”

“We’ve already increased the number of inspections in work site operations, you will see that significantly increase this next fiscal year,” Homan promised, saying the goal is to remove the “magnet” drawing people to enter the US illegally.

close dialog

DHS explores ways to transform immigration system without Congress

And he said his agency would approach the task in a way that’s “a little different” than in the past, by going just as aggressively after employees.

“Not only are we going to prosecute the employers that hire illegal workers, we’re going to detain and remove the illegal alien workers,” Homan said.

“When we find you at a work site, we’re no longer going to turn our heads,” Homan elaborated after the event. “We’ll go after the employer who knowingly hires an illegal alien … but we’re always going to arrest a person who is here illegally. That is our job.”

ICE still has posted the previous administration’s policy on work site enforcement, which prioritizes targeting employers that use undocumented labor as a business model, engage in human smuggling, mistreat employees, commit identity fraud, launder money or are otherwise involved in criminal activity.

ICE spokeswoman Liz Johnson said the strategy “continues to address both” employers and employees.

White House lays out DACA deal asks

“While we focus on the criminal prosecution of employers who knowingly hire illegal workers, under the current administration’s enforcement priorities, workers encountered during these investigations who are unauthorized to remain in the United States are also subject to administrative arrest and removal from the country,” Johnson said.

According to a 2015 Congressional Research Service report, ICE arrested 541 individuals on immigration charges and 362 individuals on criminal charges in work site actions in 2014, continuing a downward trend in actions from a peak in 2011.”

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Been there, done that, likely to be just as unsuccessful and wasteful as ever. Indeed, back in the late 1970’s while I was INS Deputy General Counsel we developed the famous (or infamous, depending on which side one was on) “Blackie’s Warrants” (referencing the then well-known but now defunct Washington, D.C. eatery “Blackie’s House of Beef” a noted employer of undocumented workers) for entry into workplaces for civil immigration enforcement purposes. Workplace operations were a fertile source of Federal Court litigation, alleged constitutional violations, some class actions and injunctions, but not many final orders of removal.

Compounding the problem — lots of the employers whose workers will be hauled off in cuffs are likely to be GOP donors who aren’t going to like it when the law is enforced against them, rather than just food cart operators and lawn mowers. My recollection is that politicos of both parties weren’t too happy either, particularly when key industries like tourism, restaurants, and hotels were hit during “prime season.” But, why not keep repeating the same failed “strategies” over and over again just to prove that they still don’t work?

Let’s see, with 630,000+ pending cases in U.S. Immigration Court and counting, some of these new “employee cases” might come up for trial by the end of 2020, with luck. That is, unless under Sessions the DOJ does yet another round of “ADR.” But, since many of the folks now working in the U.S. probably have at least arguable avenues for relief, most cases probably will take even longer. And, of course, in a “saturated” court system, every “low priority” case mindlessly placed on the docket displaces another case, which might be older or higher priority. But, that’s what “Gonzo enforcement” and wasting Government resources is all about.

Oh yeah, we also happen to have extremely low unemployment. That probably means that no “other U.S. workers” are going to be rushing in to fill those jobs supposedly vacated by Homan’s operations. Been there, done that too — never saw it work successfully in the long run — particularly since the Trumpsters seem determined to cut off or diminish legal work visa opportunities.

PWS

10-17-17

HERE IS THE HUMAN FACE OF HOMAN’S GONZO ENFORCEMENT POLICIES: RUINED LIVES, INTENTIONAL CRUELTY, WASTED RESOURCES, MISSED OPPORTUNITIES, & A DIMINISHED AMERICA!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/he-had-a-college-scholarship-but-was-deported-now-the-former-soccer-star-must-build-a-life-in-el-salvador/2017/08/21/743d1c12-8368-11e7-b359-15a3617c767b_story.html?utm_term=.c705a02c768b&wpisrc=nl_buzz&wpmm=1

Maria Sacchetti reports in the Washington Post:

“SAN SALVADOR — Lizandro Claros Saravia was supposed to be at college in North Carolina by now. At soccer practice. At the library.

Instead, the 19-year-old soccer star from Germantown, Md., is hundreds of miles away, in a sweltering Central American nation he barely recognizes and sometimes fears.

U.S. immigration officials swiftly deported him and his older brother, Diego, on Aug. 2, days after Lizandro told them during a routine check-in that he had a scholarship to attend Louisburg College.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Lizandro, his gaze flat, said in an interview here last week as he and his brother waited to pick up their 83-year-old grandfather — who had been visiting the United States on a visa when his grandsons were deported — from the airport. “I feel like in this country, I don’t have a future.”

The expulsion of the brothers, both of whom graduated from Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg and neither of whom had been accused of any wrongdoing once in the United States, outraged Democratic lawmakers and advocates for immigrants, as well as their teachers, friends and teammates.

The expulsion of Lizandro Claros Saravia, 19, left, and his older brother, Diego Claros Saravia, 22, has outraged Democratic lawmakers as well as their teachers and friends. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

Lizandro and Diego, now 22, used fraudulent visas and passports to come to the United States in 2009 and reunite with their family; some of whom were also here illegally. Lizandro was 10, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement; his brother was 14.

They were ordered deported in 2012 and granted a stay in 2013. Two subsequent requests for stays were denied. But with their clean records and high school diplomas, the brothers were not a priority for deportation under the Obama administration.

Under President Trump, however, the “handcuffs” are off, in the words of ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan. Anyone in violation of immigration law can be targeted for deportation. Officials say that they want to reduce the United States’s population of undocumented immigrants, currently about 11 million, and dissuade would-be migrants from making the illegal, and sometimes deadly, journey north.

Critics say that the Trump administration’s approach is robbing the United States of talented and dedicated immigrants, and endangering Americanized young people by sending them to their now-unfamiliar homelands without their families.

Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) blasted ICE for deporting the brothers to El Salvador, which he called one of the “most violent countries in the world.” Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) said “ICE should be ashamed of itself.”

Lizandro Claros Saravia played with Bethesda Soccer Club for four years, which helped him earn a scholarship to Louisburg College in North Carolina. (Bethesda Soccer Club)

Lizandro’s teammates at the Bethesda Soccer Club — he calls them his “brothers” — have taken up a collection in hopes of helping him someday realize his dream to become the first in his family to earn a college degree.

The brothers say they miss everyone from their lives in Maryland, especially their parents and two siblings, friends and the staff at the Guapo’s — a restaurant where they had family dinners — just off I-270 in Gaithersburg. They don’t go out much now because they don’t think it is safe.

Instead, they stay in their new home, a pair of neighboring dwellings that Lizandro and Diego share with their aunts and uncle in a village of roughly 1,000 people outside of Jucuapa. Last year, Reuters cited that city as a place where the coffin-making business has taken off, partly fueled by the high homicide rates.

The rules are that Lizandro and his brother stay in constant touch with their aunts and uncle, unless they all travel somewhere together. At night, they sleep in one of their aunt’s houses, with bars on the windows and guard dogs at the door.

The brothers say they are trying to blend into their new country, but they clearly stand out. At the airport this week, they towered over the crowd, dressed as if they’d been plucked from an American shopping mall.

Diego wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the initials “USA.” Lizandro wore Top-Siders, shorts and a shirt decorated with tiny sunglasses. He speaks English better than Spanish. He wouldn’t recognize the president of El Salvador if he saw him on the street.

“To be honest, I don’t feel good being here,” he said. “People are looking at me different. . . . All my friends from when I was young, they barely know me now.”

From left, Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA de Maryland, speaks at a news conference denouncing the deportation of Lizandro and Diego Claros Saravia. Their mother, Lucia Saravia, is comforted by their older sister Fatima Claros Saravia and their father, Jose Claros Saravia. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

Asked about the possibility of going to college in El Salvador, Lizandro said, “I don’t know if I can do that here. It’s hard to go from the bottom all the way to the top again.”

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If there is any good news here, it’s that “ordinary folks” in American communities are being exposed to and personally affected by the wastefulness and mindless cruelty of the current U.S. immigration laws. Hopefully, at some point in the future, this will result in the individuals who advocate, perpetuate, and maintain this system (in some cases actually trying to make it even worse) being tossed from office and replaced with more rational legislators and executives who have both human decency and America’s long term best interests in mind. Perhaps not likely in my lifetime. But, eventually, if the U.S. is to survive, it must happen.

PWS

08-22-17

ACTING ICE DIRECTOR HOMAN PLEDGES MORE REMOVALS — CLAIMS SUCCESS — ACTUAL FIGURES TELL A DIFFERENT STORY — CRIMINAL REMOVALS ACTUALLY DOWN — GAINS ACHIEVED BY MANIPULATING PRIORITIES, DEPORTING NON-CRIMINALS — “LOW HANGING FRUIT!”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/08/17/ice-director-says-his-agents-just-getting-started/576702001

Alan Gomez writes in USA Today:

“MIAMI — In the seven months since Thomas Homan was appointed to carry out President Trump’s promises to crack down on undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., he has been accused of abusing that power by targeting undocumented immigrants without criminal records.

So far, the data seems to back up those accusations, with the percentage of undocumented immigrants without a criminal record arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents increasing each month, from 18% in January to 30% in June.

But Homan, a 33-year law enforcement veteran who has worked along the southern border and is now the acting director of ICE, doesn’t shy away from those numbers. In fact, he said they’re only the start.

“You’re going to continue to see an increase in that,” Homan told USA TODAY during a visit to Miami on Wednesday.

Homan has become the public face of Trump’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, a central theme of his presidential campaign and one of the few areas where he’s been able to make wholesale changes without any help from Congress.

Under President Obama, ICE agents were directed to focus their arrests on undocumented immigrants who had been convicted of serious crimes, were members of gangs or posed a national security threat.

Trump and his Department of Homeland Security have vastly expanded that pool, ordering agents to focus on undocumented immigrants who have only been charged with crimes and allowing them to arrest any undocumented immigrant they happen to encounter.

ICE agents are also targeting undocumented immigrants who have been ordered removed from the country by a federal judge — a group that the Obama administration largely left alone. And they’re targeting people who have illegally entered the country more than once, which raises their actions to a felony.”

Using that new metric, Homan said 95% of the 80,000 undocumented immigrants they’ve arrested so far fall under their newly-defined “priority” categories.

“That’s pretty close to perfect execution of the policies,” Homan said. “The numbers speak for themselves.”

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Read the rest of the article at the link.

Homan glories In his “near perfect execution” of gonzo policies that actually harm America while wasting taxpayer money. To go behind the Homan smokescreen, take a look at Maria Sacchetti’s previously posted article on what the numbers really mean:

http://immigrationcourtside.com/2017/08/11/trumps-gonzo-enforcement-policies-produce-more-removal-orders-but-fewer-actual-deportations-criminal-deportations-fall-as-dhs-picks-on-non-criminals-mindless-abuse-of-already-overwhelme/

As noted in both the USA Today article and Sacchetti’s article, criminal deportations are actually down under the Trump/Homan regime. Overall removals are also down, The difference has been made up by deporting non-criminals. Most of these are good folks, contributing to America, many with jobs providing services we need, and with U.S. families who depend on them. They are being sent to some of the most dangerous countries in the world.

Picking up many of them up took no particular skill or effort; they voluntarily showed up for periodic check-ins with DHS, were taken into custody, and removed with no rationale, other than “because we can.” For others, “due process” consisted of “final orders” issued “in absentia,” perhaps with no notice or other legal defects.

And, the only reason Homan and his minions have been able to achieve 95% of the goals, was by a mindless redefining of the “priorities” to include virtually anyone. That’s a rather lame definition of “success,” even by DHS terms.

Sure, the real problem here is Congress and the failure to enact reasonable immigration reform combined with the voters who put Trump’s xenophobic regime in power. But, that doesn’t necessarily give a “free pass” to guys like Homan who have the knowledge and experience, but fail to use it to stand up for human decency and the best interests of our country.

PWS

08–22-17

NO MERCY, NO JUDGEMENT, NO SANITY — “Deport ‘Em All — Create Universal Fear” (Paraphrased) Says Acting ICE Chief Homan!

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/13/thomas-homan-ice-chief-says-illegal-immigrants-sho/

Stephen Dinan reports in the Washington Times:

“Illegal immigrants should be living in fear of being deported, the chief of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday, pushing back against a growing sentiment among Democrats on Capitol Hill and activists across the country who have complained about agents enforcing the laws on the books.
Thomas D. Homan, acting director at ICE, said anyone in the country without authorization can be arrested and those who have been ordered deported by judges must be removed if laws are to have meaning.
His comments marked a major shift for an agency that President Obama forbade from enforcing the law when it came to more than 9 million of the country’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. Unshackled from Mr. Obama’s strictures, agents have dramatically increased the number of arrests.
Advocacy groups are enraged and demand leniency for “traumatized” immigrants.
Mr. Homan makes no apologies.
“If you’re in this country illegally and you committed a crime by being in this country, you should be uncomfortable, you should look over your shoulder. You need to be worried,” Mr. Homan testified to the House Appropriations Committee. “No population is off the table.”

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Homan’s definition of “criminal” (the “Trump definition”) is remarkable. It includes folks who have never been convicted of a crime, but might have committed one. So, by this definition, anyone who has ever driven a car while over the legal limit, left assets off of a Federal or State tax return, or tried marijuana in high school or college when it was against the law is a “criminal.” That probably would include the majority of the U.S. population, and even lots of folks who work for Homan. Fortunately for them, they aren’t subject to Homan’s arbitrary removal policies.
Homan’s over-broad use of “criminal” nevertheless excludes a large portion of the undocumented population who entered the U.S. legally on visas or visa waivers and then overstayed. Recent studies estimate that the visa overstays surpassed illegal entrants as a source of undocumented arrivals in 2008 and might amount to as much as 60% of the “new” undocumented population in recent years. Overstaying is not, in and of itself, a “crime.”
Some of the individuals under “final orders” of removal were ordered removed in absentia. Many of these individuals have a right to file a motion to reopen which automatically stays removal and requires immediate attention by an Immigration Judge. In my experience, because of the “haste makes waste” priorities followed by the last few Administrations, many “Notices To Appear” (NTA’s) had incorrect addresses or were otherwise were defectively served. (Keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of NTAs and Notices of Hearing Date are served by regular U.S. Mail, rather than actual personal service.) Consequently, many of these supposed “scofflaws” might not actually have had their day in court and will be entitled to a reopened individual hearing in the future.
Make no mistake about it, what Homan really is advocating is arbitrary enforcement. We can’t remove millions of individuals, but by arbitrarily removing a limited number, even if they are actually benefitting the US, we can spread fear among millions. And, by sowing fear, we can make these individuals afraid to report crime or cooperate with authorities in solving crime.
It’s not really Homan’s fault. His pride in his largely arbitrary use of the enforcement resources at his disposal is just the logical outcome of years of intentional neglect of needed immigration reforms by Congress and successive Administrations. Arbitrary enforcement is what the Trump Administration asked for, and Homan is giving it to them. Big time! Eventually, it’s likely to crash the entire system. And, that will finally force Congress to do what it hates most: legislate.
It also would be wrong to think of Acting Director Homan as a creation of the Trump Administration. He is a career civil servant who is exceptionally good at doing what he is told to do. So good, in fact, that he received a Presidential Rank SES Award from the Obama Administration for “jacking up” removals. Don’t forget that until Trump and his bombast arrived on the scene, President Obama was known as the “Deporter-in-Chief.” Obama made mistakes, but he did temper some of his counterproductive enforcement efforts with at least some amount of mercy, common sense, and the very beginnings of a rational system of enforcement along the lines of almost every other law enforcement agency in America. With Trump, the age of “full gonzo enforcement” has returned.

PWS

06-14-17

ICE Gets Jollies By Busting More Non-Criminals, Adding to Immigration Court Backlogs!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration-arrests-up-during-trump/2017/05/17/74399a04-3b12-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports in the Washington Post:

“Federal immigration agents are arresting more than 400 immigrants a day, a sharp leap from last year that reflects one of President Trump’s most far-reaching campaign promises.

In Trump’s first 100 days in office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 41,318 immigrants, up 37.6 percent over the same period last year, the agency said Wednesday. Almost 3 out of 4 of those arrested have criminal records, including gang members and fugitives wanted for murder. But the biggest increase by far is among immigrants with no criminal records.

“This administration is fully implementing its mass-deportation agenda,” said Gregory Chen, government relations director for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “They’re going after people who have lived here for a long time.”

. . . .

Acting ICE director Thomas Homan said the statistics released Wednesday show that agents still prioritize lawbreakers: 30,473 criminals were arrested from Jan. 22 to April 29, an 18 percent increase from the same period in 2016.

Meanwhile, arrests of immigrants with no criminal records more than doubled to nearly 11,000, the fastest-growing category by far.

“Will the number of noncriminal arrests and removals increase this year? Absolutely,” Homan said. “That’s enforcing the laws that are on the books.”

What is less clear is what is happening to the immigrants who are being taken into custody.

Overall, deportations have fallen about 12 percent this year, to about 56,315 people, which Homan attributed to a severe backlog in federal immigration courts. He also said it can take longer to deport criminals than those without criminal records, because those in the former category may have additional court proceedings. The Trump administration has called for additional immigration judges and detention space to speed deportations.

Homan did not say how many of the 41,318 people whose arrests were announced Wednesday have been deported, remain in custody or have been released.

Unlike criminal arrests, records of immigration arrests — which are considered civil violations — are not publicly accessible.

The secrecy allows immigration officials to pick and choose which examples of their work to highlight. On Wednesday, they said the immigrants arrested since Trump’s executive order include Estivan Rafael Marques Velasquez, an alleged MS-13 gang member from El Salvador captured in New York in February; Juan Antonio Melchor Molina, a fugitive wanted for a 2008 murder in Mexico who was arrested last month in Dallas; and William Magana-Contreras, another reputed MS-13 member arrested in Houston last month. Magana-Contreras is wanted for aggravated homicide in El Salvador, officials said.

Some advocates questioned whether ICE is truly prioritizing the most serious criminals.

Parastoo Zahedi, an immigration lawyer in Virginia, said ICE is actively trying to deport one of her clients to Italy because of a conviction for possession of a small amount of marijuana. He has lived in the United States nearly all his life.

“It’s not criminal aliens,” Zahedi said. “It’s anyone that they can catch.”

Ava Benach, a D.C. immigration lawyer, said ICE agents are “empowered, emboldened and . . . eager to enforce the law aggressively.”

Advocates also questioned the wisdom of arresting thousands more immigrants — especially those who pose no known public safety threat — when immigration courts are severely backlogged. But Homan said that is the agency’s job.

. . . .

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Let’s put this in plain language. We have a law that doesn’t work, and a system that is broken. There are an estimated 11 million undocumented individuals residing in the U.S. Most of them work, pay taxes (in some form), and contribute to the economy. Many have immediate relatives who are US citizens or otherwise in the country legally.

Because everyone can’t possibly be removed, the “unfocused” enforcement advocated by Homan on behalf of the Trump Administration turns out to be highly if not completely arbitrary. In most cases of those without serious criminal records, removal would be a net loss to our country.

Moreover, the Administration has reassigned U.S. Immigration Judges away from their regular dockets to work on detained cases, which, understandably, are the highest priority. By mindlessly “jacking up” the detained docket, the Administration guarantees that backlogs will continue to build on the “non-detained” dockets.

The Immigration Courts now have a backlog approaching 600,000, and it continues to grow by leaps and bounds even though there are more Immigration Judges on duty now than in past years and productivity has remained constant over the past few years (although Immigration Judges still complete multiples of what other similarly situated Federal Judges do, and far more cases than the
“ideal”). This is because of the “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” — ADR — foisted on the Immigration Courts by the past two Administrations.

While, at the very end of the Obama Administration ICE was making some progress toward smarter, more focused use of enforcement resources, which took into account the finite limits of Immigration Court dockets, the Trump Administration has returned to a policy of random irrational enforcement. They have also limited the discretion of individual ICE Assistant Chief Counsel to exercise discretion to get what should be “low priority” cases off the docket — in other words, to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” — “PD” — as other prosecutors do.

PWS

05-17-17

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