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Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security's major internal policing subagency is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE is responsible for detection of unauthorized immigrants and terrorism suspects.

ICE has over 20,000 employees who carry out mandatory detention and removal, and deported record numbers of immigrants. In 2011, ICE statistics indicated 396,906 noncitizen removals. A primary goal is the removal of “criminal aliens” through the Secure Communities program and 287(g) Memorandums of Agreement (MOAs) with local and state law enforcement to expand such enforcement through state or local police cooperation.

After September 11, 2001 (9/11), ICE was conceived when a major reorganization of immigration enforcement occurred. When the Department of Homeland Security was created, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service was broken into separate divisions, including ICE, and was placed under the Director of Homeland Security. Within ICE, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) is the primary unit involved in arrests for immigration law violations. It is responsible for the apprehension, arrest, and removal (deportation) of undocumented immigrants. Removals include noncitizens who are convicted criminals, national security threats, immigration fugitives (individuals who fail to report for deportation), and unauthorized border crossers. ICE supervises individuals in custody or detention alternatives and transports individuals ordered to be deported for any reason, procedural or criminal. During removal, deportees are shackled until they are deposited in the country of origin.

ICE contains the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) directorate, and its mission is criminal operations. It investigates international and domestic movement of people and goods, including immigration crime, human smuggling, and human rights violations. Internal enforcement has over 10,000 employees, including 6,700 special agents assigned in more than 200 U.S. cities and 47 overseas locations.

ICE Strategies

Daniel Kanstroom, an immigration lawyer, refers to a major operational function of ICE as post-entry immigration social control. This involves determining the location of workers, students, and permanent resident aliens approved to be in the country but determined removable after committing a crime. ICE also carries out extended border control when it detains and removes individuals who entered without authorization from the Department of the Interior.

Policing strategies used by ICE have included worksite, community, and home raids. Citizens are legally protected from noncriminal raids. During the George W. Bush administration, workplace raid targets ranged from meatpacking to small businesses. A Bedford, Massachusetts, raid that separated immigrants mothers from their children, including a breastfeeding child, generated notoriety. Home raid searches are made for immigrants in violation of civil immigration laws, and are conducted without a court warrant or protection of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Officers look for individuals who have committed civil immigration offenses, including entry without inspection or failure to report for a deportation hearing.

In his 2012 publication on deportation law, Daniel Kanstroom indicates that ICE has conducted predawn raids into private households, and that it is not always clear that informed consent was given. These raids have often involved bad information, targeting the wrong individuals or address, and ICE officers have had difficulty in separating immigration law violators from legal residents. Exclusionary rules regarding the legality of seizure of evidence are less likely to be applied in deportation hearings, and ICE agents are known to be willing to take advantage of home raids for extralegal evidence gathering. Concerns have been raised about the social and psychological impact of these raids on both citizens and noncitizens, especially U.S. birthright citizen children. During the Barack Obama administration, workplace and home raids declined but did not fully stop.

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