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Thomas HomanICE Deputy Executive Director, Enforcement and Removal Operations
FY 14-15: Agency Priority Goal
Enforce and administer our immigration laws through prioritized detention and removal of criminal aliens
Priority Goal
Goal Overview
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is committed to identifying, arresting, detaining, prosecuting, and removing aliens who present a danger to national security or are a risk to public safety, as well as those who otherwise undermine the integrity of our immigration laws and our border control efforts. These include, but are not limited to aliens engaged in or suspected of terrorism or espionage, violent criminals, felons and repeat offenders, and organized criminal gang members. Also critical to ICE enforcement priorities are recent illegal border crossers.
This goal is a continuation of effort began in FY12 to increase efficiencies in the process of detaining and removing illegal aliens. The focus for the next two years will be to showcase ICE’s abilities to remove criminal aliens from the United States. These efforts include identifying and apprehending at-large criminal aliens, and expanding coverage in jails and prisons in order to identify and process removable incarcerated foreign-born detainees.
ICE uses prosecutorial discretion which improves efficiencies by identifying and eliminating low priority cases clogging the immigration system. The use of prosecutorial discretion also allows ICE to prioritize the use of its enforcement personnel, detention space, and removal assets to ensure that the aliens it removes represent, as much as reasonably possible, the agency's enforcement priorities, namely the promotion of national security, border security, public safety, and the integrity of the immigration system.
Strategies
ICE has put into place a number of strategies to target immigration enforcement resources on DHS priorities like threats to public safety or national security, including convicted criminals, recent border crossers, immigration fugitives, and repeat immigration law violators, including:
• Expansion of the Criminal Alien Program (CAP):
This program provides ICE-wide direction and support in the biometric and biographic identification, arrest, and removal of priority aliens who are incarcerated within federal, state, and local prisons and jails, as well as at-large criminal aliens that have circumvented identification. It is incumbent upon ICE to ensure that all efforts are made to investigate, arrest, and remove individuals from the United States that ICE deems priorities by processing the alien expeditiously and securing a final order of removal for an incarcerated alien before the alien is released to ICE custody. The identification and processing of criminal aliens prior to release from incarceration decreases or eliminates the time spent in ICE custody and reduces the overall cost to the Federal Government.
• Expansion of the National Fugitive Operations Program (NFOP):
The NFOP identifies, locates, and arrests fugitive aliens, at-large criminal and previously removed aliens, focusing on public safety threats and violent criminal aliens. The success of the NFOP’s integrated efforts requires analysis and cross-referencing of records; surveillance; investigative interviews; liaison with federal, state and local public safety agencies as well as foreign government representatives; administration of subpoenas; and execution of both administrative and criminal arrest warrants and has resulted in an overall decrease in the fugitive population and an increase in at-large criminal alien arrests.
• Utilizing Secure Communities to improve the ability of State and Local Law Enforcement in identifying criminals
This initiative uses an already-existing federal information-sharing partnership between ICE and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that helps to identify criminal aliens without imposing new or additional requirements on state and local law enforcement. For decades, local jurisdictions have shared the fingerprints of individuals who are arrested or booked into custody with the FBI to see if they have a criminal record. Under Secure Communities, the FBI automatically sends the fingerprints to DHS to check against its immigration databases. If these checks reveal that an individual is unlawfully present in the United States or otherwise removable due to a criminal conviction, ICE takes enforcement action – prioritizing the removal of individuals who present the most significant threats to public safety as determined by the severity of their current crime, their criminal history, and other factors – as well as those who have repeatedly violated immigration laws.
• Enhance the use of Prosecutorial Discretion to resolve detention and removal cases.
ICE has limited resources to support its responsibility to enforce the nation's civil immigration laws. Like any other law enforcement agency, ICE has prosecutorial discretion and may exercise it within the course of ordinary enforcement. Initiatives such as the case-by-case review, where ICE reviewed over 300,000 cases in the immigration court docket backlog, help improve efficiencies by identifying and eliminating low priority cases that are clogging the system. These initiatives ensure that the agency’s immigration enforcement resources are focused on priorities, including the identification, arrest, and removal of convicted criminal aliens.
• Reduce the cost of detention through effective detention bed management that focuses on high priority individuals.
ICE is working to reduce the cost of detention, while maintaining PBNDS. These reductions are taking place while ensuring transparency and accountability through effective management of resources, including number of beds that are available for detainees, strong financial oversight and a review of detention procurement in the field. These measures will enable ICE to identify opportunities to reduce costs while ensuring consistent practices. For instance, in an effort to better allocate resources, ICE has implemented revised acquisition strategies, facility consolidation and realignments, and contract review initiatives.
To improve its acquisition strategy, ICE is utilizing a combination of federal acquisition regulation -based contracts and federal government-to-state/county/local-government Inter-Governmental Service Agreements (IGSAs) which provide more operational flexibility and can be extended by mutual agreement or terminated by either party at any time after proper notice is given.
ICE has reduced excess capacity in the detention system by optimizing the utilization of detention facilities. The geographical alignment of detention capacity with operational demand will significantly reduce the number of detainee transfers and result in decreased costs associated with detainee transportation and delays in detainee legal proceedings.
Progress Update
In November of 2014, Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, issued the memorandum Policies for the Apprehension, Detention and Removal of Undocumented Immigrants, outlining the Department’s revised civil enforcement priorities (CEP). The memorandum directs that the nation’s limited immigration enforcement resources be used in the most effective and efficient way possible, focusing on the removal of the greatest threats to national security, public safety, and border security. The revised civil enforcement priorities strengthen the Department’s focus on recent border crossers and serious criminals. Successful execution of the Secretary’s memorandum was supported by the following contributing programs in FY 2015:
Enforcement:
• ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) continued to utilize the Criminal Alien Program Surge Enforcement Team (CAPSET), which is capable of deploying to areas needing additional assistance. ERO completed four CAPSET operations specifically targeting facilities with a high population of detainees scheduled to be released in November 2015 pursuant to the 2014 United States Sentencing Commission Amendment 782. These operations resulted in 777 encounters, 247 detainers, 161 charging documents issued, and 55 arrests.
• ICE continues to expand the Criminal History Information Sharing (CHIS) program, allowing ERO to share information regarding the criminal convictions of foreign nationals being removed from the U.S. and to receive information about foreign criminal convictions for individuals in ICE custody. In FY 2015, ERO concluded negotiations with Jamaica and the Bahamas, and official CHIS agreements are expected to be signed in FY 2016.
• Fugitive Operations Teams made 20,961 arrests, approximately 89% of which were criminal arrests, the highest percentage in the program’s history.
• ICE continued National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center support to the Sex Offender Registration initiative to identify, target, and remove foreign-born sex offenders, leading to 55 arrests in FY 2015.
Detention:
• In FY 2015, nearly 99% of ICE detainees were subject to mandatory detention or otherwise met an enforcement priority.
• The Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program continued to provide monitoring of non-detained criminal aliens and increased the average daily population by approximately 3,625 from FY 2014 (approximately 23,000) to FY 2015 (approximately 26,600).
• The ATD program developed and implemented numerous staging areas (S sites) that allow for initial ATD evaluation and enrollment of individuals before they are released from Border Patrol facilities or Family Residential Centers. ICE assigns a GPS unit to such individuals, and allows them to transit across the U.S. to their final destination in the appropriate AOR, where their status in the program will then be further evaluated. The S sites enable oversight of those individuals in transit, where previously they were not monitored unless and until they reported in at their final destination. ICE enrolled 6,308 participants on the southwest border and over 2,099 participants at the three Family Residential Centers.
Removal:
• ERO established a process with the government of El Salvador to acquire travel documents in order to advance Failure to Comply (FTC) removal cases. FTC cases are those comparatively small number of cases where ICE has been unable to obtain the necessary travel documents to effectuate repatriation of an individual in its custody. This resulted in the removal of over 50 FTC cases in FY 2015.
• On March 27, 2015, ICE ERO signed a MOU with the People’s Republic of China facilitating the travel of Chinese experts to the U.S. to verify the identity and citizenship of Chinese nationals who are under final removal orders. Chinese officials have already interviewed 82 such individuals, and verified the Chinese citizenship of 30 of them. These individuals are now awaiting removal. The remaining cases are ongoing.
• On September 4, 2015, ERO established a process to obtain birth certificates from the Government of Jamaica for individuals who are subject to a final order of removal.
Challenges:
In FY 2015, many of ICE’s performance outcomes were negatively impacted by laws and policies in jurisdictions across the country that limit state and local law enforcement cooperation with ICE detainers, and federal court precedent that has resulted in the release of a greater number of criminal aliens on bonds and their placement on the slower, non-detained docket. Consistent with Secretary Johnson’s November 2014 memorandum Secure Communities, ICE is working with state and local jurisdictions to increase cooperation through requests for notification of certain priority aliens prior to the alien’s release in order to mitigate the impact of detainer non-compliance.
Next Steps
No Data Available
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Performance Indicators
Percent of total aliens removed categorized as Criminal aliens
Number of convicted criminal aliens removed per fiscal year
Number of aliens removed convicted of the most serious crimes (level 1 offenders)
Average length of stay in detention of all convicted criminal aliens prior to removal from the United States
Percent of removal orders secured by ICE attorneys that support the agency’s civil enforcement priorities (CEP)
Contributing Programs & Other Factors
Current estimates puts the total unauthorized alien population in the U.S. at approximately 12 million, however public safety & resource limitations drive ICE to focus on a subset of that population. ICE’s APG reflects that targeted focus and has four programs that contribute to it: Criminal Alien Program (CAP); Fugitive Operations Program Teams (FOT); 287(g); & Secure Communities (SC). ICE officers comprise CAP & FOTs, and while CAP’s main focus is the screening of incarcerated aliens & FOTs track down at-large criminals, those efforts are sometimes coordinated based on threats. 287(g) allows local law enforcement agents (LEA) to supplement ICE officers by permiting the LEA to function in a similar capacity as CAP officers, identifying and processing all criminal and other priority aliens arrested and booked into a detention facility. In contrast to the first three programs that perform physical identification & removal of criminal aliens, SC provides electronic identification of criminal aliens when booked in by an LEA for non-immigration related offenses. Only through follow up by CAP, FOT, or 287(g) can a removal process be initiated. Though different in composition and execution, all four programs are critical to meeting ICE’s APG.
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Strategic Goals
Strategic Goal:
Mission 3: Enforce and Administer our Immigration Laws
Statement:
Enforce and Administer our Immigration Laws.
Strategic Objectives
Statement:
Strengthen and Effectively Administer the Immigration System
Description:
At the center of any good immigration system must be a structure able to rapidly respond to regulatory changes and the flow of demand around the world while at the same time safeguarding security. We are constantly seeking ways to better administer benefits and use technology to make information more accessible and secure.
We will pursue the following strategies to strengthen and effectively administer the immigration system:
- Promote lawful immigration by uniting families, providing refuge, fostering economic opportunity, and promoting citizenship. We will also work to better assist high-skilled immigrants, streamline the processing of immigrant visas to encourage businesses to grow in the United States, and develop innovative programs to enable immigrants to reach their potential in the United States.
- Effectively administer the immigration services system by: 1) providing effective customer-oriented immigration benefit and information services at home and abroad; 2) making all information needed to make immigration decisions available to appropriate agencies electronically and in real-time, including active individual case files and biometric information; and 3) ensuring that only eligible applicants receive immigration benefits through expanded use of biometrics, a strengthening of screening processes, improvements to fraud detection, increases in legal staffing to ensure due process, and enhancements of interagency information sharing.
- Promote the integration of lawful immigrants in American society by enhancing educational resources and promoting opportunities to increase understanding of U.S. civic principles and the rights, responsibilities, and importance of citizenship, and supporting comprehen-sive immigration reform that provides an earned pathway to citizenship.
Statement:
Prevent Unlawful Immigration
Description:
The increased movement of people and goods across our borders provides many opportunities but also provides more places for illegal goods, unauthorized migrants, and threats to hide. Unauthorized migration is influenced by many factors, including weak rule of law and violence in sending countries. In addition, violent extremists and criminals can hide within this larger flow of migrants who intend no harm.
We will pursue the following strategies to prevent unlawful immigration:
- Prevent unlawful entry, strengthen enforcement, and reduce drivers of unlawful immigration by: 1) increasing situational awareness of our borders; 2) ensuring that only those abroad who are eligible receive travel documents to the United States; and 3) identifying and removing criminal aliens, individuals who pose a threat to public safety, health, or national security, repeat immigration law violators, and other individuals prioritized for removal. We also reduce the demand for illegal immigrants by conducting inspections, audits, and investigations of employers who hire illegal immigrants and administering tools such as E-Verify to facilitate employers’ ability to hire eligible workers in compliance with immigration laws.
- Arrest, detain, and remove criminals, fugitives, and other dangerous foreign nationals by leveraging federal information sharing and state, local, and federal criminal justice systems to take enforcement action based on priorities with regard to criminal aliens, and working with the Department of Justice to ensure more timely hearing of immigration cases and appeals.
Agency Priority Goals
Statement:
Enforce and administer our immigration laws through prioritized detention and removal of criminal aliens. By September 30, 2015, ICE will increase criminal alien removals, as a percentage of total removals by 5%.
Description:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is committed to identifying, arresting, detaining, prosecuting, and removing aliens who present a danger to national security or are a risk to public safety, as well as those who otherwise undermine the integrity of our immigration laws and our border control efforts. These include, but are not limited to aliens engaged in or suspected of terrorism or espionage, violent criminals, felons and repeat offenders, and organized criminal gang members. Also critical to ICE enforcement priorities are recent illegal border crossers.
This goal is a continuation of effort began in FY12 to increase efficiencies in the process of detaining and removing illegal aliens. The focus for the next two years will be to showcase ICE’s abilities to remove criminal aliens from the United States. These efforts include identifying and apprehending at-large criminal aliens, and expanding coverage in jails and prisons in order to identify and process removable incarcerated foreign-born detainees.
ICE uses prosecutorial discretion which improves efficiencies by identifying and eliminating low priority cases clogging the immigration system. The use of prosecutorial discretion also allows ICE to prioritize the use of its enforcement personnel, detention space, and removal assets to ensure that the aliens it removes represent, as much as reasonably possible, the agency's enforcement priorities, namely the promotion of national security, border security, public safety, and the integrity of the immigration system.
Strategic Objectives
Strategic Objective:
Goal 3.1: Strengthen and Effectively Administer the Immigration System
Statement:
Strengthen and Effectively Administer the Immigration System
Description:
At the center of any good immigration system must be a structure able to rapidly respond to regulatory changes and the flow of demand around the world while at the same time safeguarding security. We are constantly seeking ways to better administer benefits and use technology to make information more accessible and secure.
We will pursue the following strategies to strengthen and effectively administer the immigration system:
- Promote lawful immigration by uniting families, providing refuge, fostering economic opportunity, and promoting citizenship. We will also work to better assist high-skilled immigrants, streamline the processing of immigrant visas to encourage businesses to grow in the United States, and develop innovative programs to enable immigrants to reach their potential in the United States.
- Effectively administer the immigration services system by: 1) providing effective customer-oriented immigration benefit and information services at home and abroad; 2) making all information needed to make immigration decisions available to appropriate agencies electronically and in real-time, including active individual case files and biometric information; and 3) ensuring that only eligible applicants receive immigration benefits through expanded use of biometrics, a strengthening of screening processes, improvements to fraud detection, increases in legal staffing to ensure due process, and enhancements of interagency information sharing.
- Promote the integration of lawful immigrants in American society by enhancing educational resources and promoting opportunities to increase understanding of U.S. civic principles and the rights, responsibilities, and importance of citizenship, and supporting comprehen-sive immigration reform that provides an earned pathway to citizenship.
Agency Priority Goals
Statement: Enforce and administer our immigration laws through prioritized detention and removal of criminal aliens. By September 30, 2015, ICE will increase criminal alien removals, as a percentage of total removals by 5%.
Description: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is committed to identifying, arresting, detaining, prosecuting, and removing aliens who present a danger to national security or are a risk to public safety, as well as those who otherwise undermine the integrity of our immigration laws and our border control efforts. These include, but are not limited to aliens engaged in or suspected of terrorism or espionage, violent criminals, felons and repeat offenders, and organized criminal gang members. Also critical to ICE enforcement priorities are recent illegal border crossers. This goal is a continuation of effort began in FY12 to increase efficiencies in the process of detaining and removing illegal aliens. The focus for the next two years will be to showcase ICE’s abilities to remove criminal aliens from the United States. These efforts include identifying and apprehending at-large criminal aliens, and expanding coverage in jails and prisons in order to identify and process removable incarcerated foreign-born detainees. ICE uses prosecutorial discretion which improves efficiencies by identifying and eliminating low priority cases clogging the immigration system. The use of prosecutorial discretion also allows ICE to prioritize the use of its enforcement personnel, detention space, and removal assets to ensure that the aliens it removes represent, as much as reasonably possible, the agency's enforcement priorities, namely the promotion of national security, border security, public safety, and the integrity of the immigration system.
Strategic Objective:
Statement:
Prevent Unlawful Immigration
Description:
The increased movement of people and goods across our borders provides many opportunities but also provides more places for illegal goods, unauthorized migrants, and threats to hide. Unauthorized migration is influenced by many factors, including weak rule of law and violence in sending countries. In addition, violent extremists and criminals can hide within this larger flow of migrants who intend no harm.
We will pursue the following strategies to prevent unlawful immigration:
- Prevent unlawful entry, strengthen enforcement, and reduce drivers of unlawful immigration by: 1) increasing situational awareness of our borders; 2) ensuring that only those abroad who are eligible receive travel documents to the United States; and 3) identifying and removing criminal aliens, individuals who pose a threat to public safety, health, or national security, repeat immigration law violators, and other individuals prioritized for removal. We also reduce the demand for illegal immigrants by conducting inspections, audits, and investigations of employers who hire illegal immigrants and administering tools such as E-Verify to facilitate employers’ ability to hire eligible workers in compliance with immigration laws.
- Arrest, detain, and remove criminals, fugitives, and other dangerous foreign nationals by leveraging federal information sharing and state, local, and federal criminal justice systems to take enforcement action based on priorities with regard to criminal aliens, and working with the Department of Justice to ensure more timely hearing of immigration cases and appeals.
Agency Priority Goals
Statement: Enforce and administer our immigration laws through prioritized detention and removal of criminal aliens. By September 30, 2015, ICE will increase criminal alien removals, as a percentage of total removals by 5%.
Description: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is committed to identifying, arresting, detaining, prosecuting, and removing aliens who present a danger to national security or are a risk to public safety, as well as those who otherwise undermine the integrity of our immigration laws and our border control efforts. These include, but are not limited to aliens engaged in or suspected of terrorism or espionage, violent criminals, felons and repeat offenders, and organized criminal gang members. Also critical to ICE enforcement priorities are recent illegal border crossers. This goal is a continuation of effort began in FY12 to increase efficiencies in the process of detaining and removing illegal aliens. The focus for the next two years will be to showcase ICE’s abilities to remove criminal aliens from the United States. These efforts include identifying and apprehending at-large criminal aliens, and expanding coverage in jails and prisons in order to identify and process removable incarcerated foreign-born detainees. ICE uses prosecutorial discretion which improves efficiencies by identifying and eliminating low priority cases clogging the immigration system. The use of prosecutorial discretion also allows ICE to prioritize the use of its enforcement personnel, detention space, and removal assets to ensure that the aliens it removes represent, as much as reasonably possible, the agency's enforcement priorities, namely the promotion of national security, border security, public safety, and the integrity of the immigration system.
