DHS memos expose avenue for racial profiling

Washington DC - March 31, 2010 -- Numerous statements have been made by the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stating that ICE enforcement actions are focused on “the most dangerous criminal aliens currently charged with, or previously convicted of, the most serious criminal offenses.”  ICE claims that is gives priority “to those offenses including, crimes involving national security, homicide, kidnapping, assault, robbery, sex offenses, and narcotics violations carrying sentences of more than one year.” However, an article in last Friday’s Washington Post exposed memos that set quotas for enforcement, in some cases even explicitly tying job performance evaluations of individual agents to their success in meeting a target quota of arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants.

Although ICE officials have distanced themselves from the memos in private meetings with advocates, no clear guidance on how immigration enforcement is to be prioritized in the field has been made public. Instead, ICE leadership expects the public to believe that they did not know about or endorse the memo that was operational for at least a month, and that they are still prioritizing those who pose a threat to the community even as they refuse to share information about how they intend to implement and track their stated priorities.

“A numbers based approach to immigration enforcement leads to sloppy law enforcement work,” said Margaret Huang, Executive Director of the Rights Working Group.  “When law enforcement is focused on numbers and not investigations that prioritize those who pose a danger to our communities, enforcement can become a proxy for racial profiling.”

A recent lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court alleges that DHS agents “board Amtrak trains and public buses, looking for undocumented immigrants and criminal aliens, and use racial profiling to meet arrest quotas.”  Communities subject to 287(g) MOAs and the Criminal Alien Program report an uptick in profiling concerns.  Even ICE Congressional testimony continues to conflate people identified through initiatives such as Secure Communities who have been charged with only minor offenses and are not yet convicted of any crime as “criminal aliens.”

“If DHS is serious about doing smart, targeted enforcement of immigration laws, where their limited resources are focused on people who are dangerous, they will have to do the hard work of law enforcement and not use a quota system to boost their numbers,” said Huang. “ICE, like any law enforcement agency, must respect the Constitution and ensure that no agents resort to racial profiling to enforce the laws.”

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