Delay in Immigration Raids May Signal Policy Change

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Delay in Immigration Raids May Signal Policy Change
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 29, 2009; A02
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has delayed a series of
proposed immigration raids and other enforcement actions at U.S.
workplaces in recent weeks, asking agents in her department to apply
more scrutiny to the selection and investigation of targets as well as
the timing of raids, federal officials said.
A senior department official said the delays signal a pending change
in whom agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement choose to
prosecute -- increasing the focus on businesses and executives instead
of ordinary workers.
"ICE is now scrutinizing these cases more thoroughly to ensure that
[targets] are being taken down when they should be taken down, and
that the employer is being targeted and the surveillance and the
investigation is being done how it should be done," said the official,
discussing Napolitano's views about sensitive law enforcement matters
on the condition of anonymity..
"There will be a change in policy, but in the interim, you've got to
scrutinize the cases coming up," the senior DHS official said, noting
Napolitano's expectations as a former federal prosecutor and state
attorney general.
Another DHS official said Napolitano plans to release protocols this
week to ensure more consistent work-site investigations and less
"haphazard" decision-making.
Napolitano's moves have led some to question President Obama's
commitment to work-site raids, which were a signature of Bush
administration efforts to combat illegal immigration. Napolitano has
highlighted other priorities, such as combating Mexican drug cartels
and catching dangerous criminals who are illegal immigrants.
Napolitano's moves foreshadow the difficult political decisions the
Obama administration faces as it decides whether to continue mass
arrests of illegal immigrant workers in sweeps of meatpackers,
construction firms, defense contractors and other employers.
Critics say workplace and neighborhood sweeps are harsh and
indiscriminate, and they accuse the government of racial profiling,
violating due process rights and committing other humanitarian abuses.
The raids have enraged Latino community and religious leaders,
immigrant advocates and civil liberties groups important to the
Democratic base, who have stepped up pressure on Obama to stop them.
At a rally last week in Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, head of the
archdiocese of Obama's home city, called on the government "to end
immigration raids and the separation of families" and support an
overhaul of immigration law. "Reform would be a clear sign this
administration is truly about change," George said.
Also last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the
Congressional Hispanic Caucus made similar calls as the caucus met
formally with Obama for the first time.
"Raids that break up families in that way, just kick in the door in
the middle of the night, taking [a] father, a parent away, that's just
not the American way. It must stop," Pelosi added at a Capitol Hill
conference on border issues sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
But Obama also faces pressure from conservative lawmakers and many
centrist Democrats, who say that workplace enforcement is needed to
reduce the supply of jobs that attract illegal immigrants, and that
any retreat in defending American jobs in a recession could ignite a
populist backlash.
When the White House announced plans last week to move more than 450
federal agents and equipment to the border to counter Mexico's drug
cartels, lawmakers warned Napolitano against diverting money from
workplace operations.
Rep. Lamar Smith (Tex.), ranking Republican on the House Judiciary
Committee, said the administration "appears to be using border
violence as an excuse" to undercut immigration enforcement in the
nation's interior.
"It makes no sense to take funds from one priority (worksite
enforcement) to address a new priority (the growth in border
violence). This is just robbing Peter to pay Paul," Sen. Robert C.
Byrd (D-W.Va.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations
subcommittee for homeland security, said in an e-mail.
Led by Byrd, Congress this year ordered ICE to spend $127 million on
workplace operations, $34 million more than President George W. Bush
had requested. Reducing those amounts, even in ICE's overall $5
billion budget, would provoke a fight, senior aides in both parties
said.
Napolitano has sought to chart a middle course by ordering a review of
which immigrants are targeted for arrest. While a policy is still
under development, Napolitano has said she intends to focus more on
prosecuting criminal cases of wrongdoing by companies. Analysts say
they also think ICE may conduct fewer raids, focusing routine
enforcement on civil infractions of worker eligibility verification
rules.
Former Bush administration officials said their raids were also
targeted against supervisors, but that it took time to build
complicated white-collar cases. In the meantime, they said, depriving
companies of their workforces and in some cases filing criminal
charges against illegal immigrant workers sent a clear message of
deterrence to both management and labor.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration
Studies, which seeks to reduce immigration, said Obama aides are
trying to manage the issue until an economic turnaround permits an
attempt to overhaul immigration laws.
"I think their calculus is, how do they keep Hispanic groups happy
enough without angering the broader public so much that they sabotage
health care and their other priorities?" Krikorian said.
Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an
immigrant advocacy group, said that to the contrary, groups such as
his support Obama's focus on going after bad employers and criminal
illegal immigrants first -- or as he put it, prioritizing "drug
smugglers, not window washers."
Within ICE, the front-office vetting of cases has led to some doubts.
Last week, for example, ICE postponed plans to raid employers at a
military-related facility in Chicago for which they had arranged to
temporarily detain as many as 100 illegal immigrants, according to one
official. A second official said Napolitano thought the investigative
work was inadequate.
The raid would have been the second under the Obama administration.
After the first, a Feb. 24 sweep of an engine-parts maker in
Bellingham, Wash.., that led to 28 arrests, Napolitano publicly
expressed disappointment that ICE did not inform her beforehand and
announced an investigation into agency communication practices.
In response, Leigh H. Winchell, the ICE special agent in charge in
Seattle, wrote an e-mail to his staff -- subsequently leaked to
conservative bloggers -- saying they had acted correctly. He also
copied a statement from House Republicans calling Napolitano's review
"beyond backwards."
"You did nothing wrong and you did everything right," Winchell wrote.
"I cannot control the politics that take place with these types of
situations, but I can remind you that you are great servants of this
country and this agency."
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