With Audit of 287(g) Program, Another Shoe Drops at ICE
Washington, DC – This week, America’s Voice released a new video that highlights the series of failures at ICE and calls for President Obama to fix the agency and for swift action on comprehensive immigration reform.
This comes on the heels of a new report by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that slams the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The report, released last Friday, details a woeful lack of management controls and oversight in the controversial 287(g) program, and confirms what immigrant advocates have been saying for years: the program is not being used to target the “worst of the worst” criminal offenders, as ICE contends, but ordinary immigrants who pose no threat to their communities.
The OIG report exposes, in appalling detail, ICE management failures and the agency’s inability to rein in rogue “deputies” in the 287(g) program such as Joe Arpaio , the controversial sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. The report capped an embarrassing week of ICE missteps highlighted in news reports, from the revelation of an internal quotas memo that instructs ICE agents to pursue easy targets to ramp up deportation levels, to the jailing of Haitian refugees brought here by U.S. forces after the massive earthquake in Haiti.
“With each new revelation about ICE, it becomes abundantly clear that the DHS needs to rein in ICE. More fundamentally, the problems outlined in the report, and other problems highlighted in recent news stories, point to the urgent need for legislative reform of the immigration system,” said Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice.
The problems at ICE have prompted a drumbeat of criticism and calls for policy and leadership changes at the agency.
Sharry added, “the criticisms are only going to get louder until ICE is brought under control and comprehensive reform is enacted.”
America’s Voice — Harnessing the power of American voices and American values to win common sense immigration reform.
http://www.americasvoiceonline.org
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