Attorney General Sessions Announces Expansion and Modernization of Program to Deport Criminal Aliens
A USDOJ Press Release states:
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions today announced the expansion and modernization of the Department’s Institutional Hearing Program (IHP).
The IHP identifies removable criminal aliens who are inmates in federal correctional facilities, provides in-person and video teleconference (VTC) immigration removal proceedings, and removes the alien upon completion of sentence, rather than releasing the alien to an ICE detention facility or into the community for adjudication of status. Bringing an Immigration Judge to the inmate for a determination of removability, rather than vice versa, saves time and resources and speeds hearings.
The program is coordinated by the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“We owe it to the American people to ensure that illegal aliens who have been convicted of crimes and are serving time in our federal prisons are expeditiously removed from our country as the law requires,” said Attorney General Sessions. “This expansion and modernization of the Institutional Hearing Program gives us the tools to continue making Americans safe again in their communities.”
The expansion and modernization of the IHP program will occur in the following three ways:
1. ICE, BOP, and EOIR will expand the number of active facilities with the program to a total of 14 BOP and 6 BOP contract facilities;
2. EOIR and BOP will increase each facility’s VTC capabilities and update existing infrastructure to aid in the ability to conduct removal proceedings; and
3. EOIR and ICE will finalize a new and uniform intake policy. EOIR and ICE expect to have reached agreement on this new intake process by April 6, 2017.
These improvements will speed the process of deporting incarcerated criminal aliens and will reduce costs to taxpayers.”
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The IHP has been around for many years. However, recently it has not been a point of emphasis for the DHS.
Restoring emphasis and expanding the program makes sense. It deals with serious criminals, while they are serving time in Federal or state penitentiaries, and therefore does not raise some of the sensitive community enforcement and local police cooperation issues tripped by the Administration’s expanded criminal priorities.
A few points of concern:
1) It’s usually very difficult to get attorneys to represent individuals in the IHP;
2) The VTC (“televideo”) equipment upon which the IHP depends for conducting hearings has in the past sometimes been less than reliable;
3) The “new” priorities on the U.S. Immigration Court are starting to pile up; to “prioritize IHP cases other cases in the Immigration Court’s 540,000 backlog will have to be put aside;
4) In the past, there have been some irrationalities in IHP scheduling; too often cases of individuals whose “earliest release date” is literally decades from now are treated as “priorities” for no good reason, forcing more viable cases further back in the queue.
Given the Administration’s priority on criminal removals, this looks like a smart move. However, the proof will be in the execution, which, based on my experience, takes an exceptionally high degree of coordination and cooperation among different entities.
PWS
03/31/17