The Washington Post is reporting the expansion of a $1.1 billion program targeting immigrants in criminal lock-up. This program, previously focused on federal and state prisons, is broadening it scope to include local county and municipal jails. According to the Post Article, immigration officials are estimating a potential ten-fold increase in the number of non-citizens identified for deportation. Three California counties -- Los Angeles, Ventura, and San Diego -- have already taken the plunge and are promising cooperation with ICE.
Identifying non-citizens for possible removal is one thing; actually deporting is something else entirely. Many of those persons identified will need to be placed before an Immigration Judge to determine whether they are in fact deportable, and a fair proportion of those charged will be held in ICE and local contract detention facilities, far from family and access legal counsel. A great number of my clients face long delays in having their cases heard, and are housed at government expense in detention centers far from their homes, in far-flung locales Florence, Arizona and Yuba City, California.
The question now is: how is the Government going to come up with the resources to properly jail and hear these cases?
A familiar gripe on this blog is how Congress has systematically starved the Immigration Courts. An adequately resourced immigration court system is critical to ensuring that the right people are being deported, and not just everyone caught in this ever expanding immigrant dragnet. In an environment of inadequate court resources, cases are too often rushed to judgment, particularly where our clients are in ICE custody, and the cost of detention trumps a person's due process right to adequate preparation time. The Immigration Court system is already strapped for resources; the ten-fold increase in non-citizens tagged for removal sounds like a tsunami that EOIR may not be able to withstand.
It's true that many of these non-citizens might be deportable. But they also might not be -- as witnessed by the success of our law firm in getting cases favorably terminated by the Immigration Judge, or at least obtaining some form of forgiveness. We can only hope that Pres. Obama's new plan will provide the resources the Immigration Courts deserve, minimize detention as a means of tracking non-citizens in proceedings, and providing adequate supervision and funding to ameliorate conditions for those already in detention.
