#Immigration and Customs Enforcement

[socialjusticeinamerica]

WTAF! Immigration and Customs Enforcement set up a fake school and kept tuition money paid by prospective students!

😡😡🤬

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Officers working for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat, according to an email from a Department of Public Safety trooper who described the actions as “inhumane.”

The July 3 account, reviewed by Hearst Newspapers, discloses several previously unreported incidents the trooper witnessed in Eagle Pass, where the state of Texas has strung miles of razor wire and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande.

According to the email, a pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last month caught in the wire, doubled over in pain. A four-year-old girl passed out from heat exhaustion after she tried to go through it and was pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers. A teenager broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire and had to be carried by his father.

The email, which the trooper sent to a superior, suggests that Texas has set “traps” of razor wire-wrapped barrels in parts of the river with high water and low visibility. And it says the wire has increased the risk of drownings by forcing migrants into deeper stretches of the river.

The trooper called for a series of rigorous policy changes to improve safety for migrants, including removing the barrels and revoking the directive on withholding water.

“Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well,” the trooper wrote, later adding: “I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane.”

Department of Public Safety spokesman Travis Considine did not comment on all the contents of the trooper’s email, but said there is no policy against giving water to migrants.

Considine also provided an email from DPS Director Steven McCraw on Saturday calling for an audit to determine if more can be done to minimize the risk to migrants. McCraw wrote troopers should warn migrants not to cross the wire, redirect them to ports of entry and to closely watch for anyone who needs medical attention.

In another email, McCraw acknowledged that there has been an increase in injuries from the wire, including seven incidents reported by Border Patrol where migrants needed “elevated medical attention” from July 4 to July 13. Those were in addition to the incidents detailed by the trooper.

“The purpose of the wire is to deter smuggling between the ports of entry and not to injure migrants,” McCraw wrote. “The smugglers care not if the migrants are injured, but we do, and we must take all necessary measures to mitigate the risk to them including injuries from trying to cross over the concertina wire, drownings and dehydration.”

The incidents detailed in the email come as Abbott has stepped up efforts in recent weeks to physically bar migrants from entering the country through his Operation Lone Star initiative, escalating tensions between state and federal officials and drawing increased scrutiny from humanitarian groups who say the state is endangering asylum seekers. The most aggressive initiatives have been targeted at Eagle Pass.

The state has also now deployed a wall of floating buoys in the Rio Grande, which triggered complaints over the weekend from Mexico.

Federal Border Patrol officials have issued internal warnings that the razor wire is preventing their agents from reaching at-risk migrants and increasing the risk of drownings in the Rio Grande, Hearst Newspapers reported last week.

The DPS trooper expressed similar concerns, writing that the placement of the wire along the river “forces people to cross in other areas that are deeper and not as safe for people carrying kids and bags.”

The trooper’s email sheds new light on a series of previously reported drownings in the river during a one-week stretch earlier this month, including a mother and at least one of her two children, who federal Border Patrol agents spotted struggling to cross the Rio Grande on July 1.

According to the email, a DPS boat found the mother and one of the children, who went under the water for a minute.

They were pulled from the river and given medical care before being transferred to EMS, but were later declared deceased at the hospital. The second child was never found, the email said.

The Governor has said he is taking necessary steps to secure the border and accused federal officials of refusing to do so.

“Texas is deploying every tool and strategy to deter and repel illegal crossings between ports of entry as President Biden’s dangerous open border policies entice migrants from over 150 countries to risk their lives entering the country illegally," said Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary. "President Biden has unleashed a chaos on the border that’s unsustainable, and we have a constitutional duty to respond to this unprecedented crisis.”

The DPS trooper’s email details four incidents in just one day in which migrants were caught in the wire or injured trying to get around it.

On June 30, troopers found a group of people along the wire, including a 4-year-old girl who tried to cross the wire and was pressed back by Texas Guard soldiers “due to the orders given to them,” the email says. The DPS trooper wrote that the temperature was “well over 100 degrees” and the girl passed out from exhaustion.

“We provided treatment to the unresponsive patient and transferred care to EMS,” the trooper wrote. A spokesperson for the Texas National Guard did not respond to a request for comment.

In another instance, troopers found a 19-year-old woman “in obvious pain” stuck in the wire. She was cut free and given a medical assessment, which determined she was pregnant and having a miscarriage. She was then transferred to EMS. The trooper also treated a man with a “significant laceration” in his left leg, who said he had cut it while trying to free his child who was “stuck on a trap in the water,” describing a barrel with razor wire “all over it.” And the trooper treated a 15-year-old boy who broke his right leg walking in the river because the razor wire was “laid out in a manner that it forced him into the river where it is unsafe to travel.”

In another instance, on June 25, troopers came across a group of 120 people camped out along a fence set up along the river. The group included several small children and babies who were nursing, the trooper wrote. The entire group was exhausted, hungry and tired, the trooper wrote. The shift officer in command ordered the troopers to “push the people back into the water to go to Mexico,” the email says.

The trooper wrote that the troopers decided it was not the right thing to do “with the very real potential of exhausted people drowning.” They called command again and expressed their concerns and were given the order to “tell them to go to Mexico and get into our vehicle and leave,” the trooper wrote. After they left, other troopers worked with Border Patrol to provide care to the migrants, the email said.

The trooper did not respond to a request for comment Monday. His email was shared by a confidential source with knowledge of border operations. It was unclear whether the trooper received a response from the sergeant he’d messaged.

Considine acknowledged that DPS was aware of the email and provided the additional agency emails in response. Those emails detail seven other incidents reported by federal border agents in which migrants were injured on the wires, including a child who was taken to the hospital on Thursday with cuts on his left arm, a mother and child who were taken to the hospital on Wednesday with “minor lacerations” on their “lower extremities,” and another migrant taken to San Antonio on July 4 to receive treatment for “several lacerations” that required staples.

Victor Escalon, a DPS director who oversees South Texas, wrote in an email Friday to other agency officials that troopers “may need to open the wire to aid individuals in medical distress, maintain the peace, and/or to make an arrest for criminal trespass, criminal mischief, acts of violence, or other State crimes.”

“Our DPS medical unit is assigned to this operation to address medical concerns for everyone involved,” Escalon wrote. “As we enforce State law, we may need to aid those in medical distress and provide water as necessary.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Radley Balko at The Watch Substack:

Donald Trump wants to deport 15 million people. He has now made that promise on multiple occasions. He made similar promises during his first term, when he said he’d deport 8 million people. Back then, he was thwarted by institutional resistance, other priorities, incompetence, and his general tendency to get distracted. But this time there’s a plan. It is not a smart plan, nor is it an achievable one. But it is an unapologetically autocratic plan. “You don’t even try something like this unless you aspire to have an authoritarian government behind you,” Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition told me. “You’re talking about soldiers marching through neighborhoods across the country, pulling families out of their homes.”

The Atlantic, New York Times and Washington Post have all looked at what Trump and the MAGA coalition have planned for immigration policy should he be elected again. Those stories all got some attention at the time, but not nearly enough to reflect the insanity of what he’s proposing. Perhaps it’s the sort of bluster Trump often spurts out in the moment, but never bothers to implement. We ought to take it more seriously. Trump has made 15 million deportations a central part of his 2024 campaign. And he’s stepped up the dehumanizing of immigrants he’ll need to get a significant portion of the country on board.

Even if Trump gets distracted, it’s likely he’ll put Stephen Miller in charge of the plan. Miller is the only non-relative senior staffer who served the entirety of the first Trump term. And Miller won’t be distracted. Ridding the country of non-white immigrants has been a core part of his identity for his entire life. Miller himself has long made clear that the distinction that matters most to him is not between “legal” and “illegal,” but between white and non-white immigrants. Both prior to and after joining the Trump campaign in 2016 and White House in 2017, Miller sent hundreds of emails to far-right outlets like Breitbart touting racist literature like Camp of the Saints, and links to unabashed white nationalist sites where writers argue that nonwhite immigrants are of lower intelligence, and are disease-ridden, parasitic, and predisposed to criminality.

(It shouldn’t need saying, but immigrants and their children contribute far more to the economy than they take from it, are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens, interracial IQ comparisons are based on a false premise and have few real-world implications, and provided there’s some basic screening at the border, there’s zero evidence that immigrants threaten public health.) In November, Miller offered the details of his plan in an interview with Charlie Kirk. Miller plans to bring in the National Guard, state and local police, other federal police agencies like the DEA and ATF, and if necessary, the military. Miller’s deportation force would then infiltrate cities and neighborhoods, going door to door and business to business in search of undocumented immigrants. He plans to house the millions of immigrants he wants to expel in tent camps along the border, then use military planes to transport them back to their countries of origin.

[...]

Miller also wants to end birthright citizenship (more on that in a moment), and during the first Trump administration pushed a “denaturalization” program to strip naturalized immigrants of their citizenship. Last year, a coalition of MAGA factions put together “Project 2025,” their blueprint for a second Trump term. It’s basically a roadmap to autocracy. And they make no secret of the fact that they want to do away with legal immigration — and nonwhite legal immigration in particular.

The Project 2025 plan would end the only legal way for seasonal and agricultural workers to come to the U.S. to work. It would also effectively end the H1-B visas that allow immigrants to work in fields like tech, engineering, and medicine — most of whom come from India or China. They want to end humanitarian programs that grant sanctuary for refugees fleeing war or natural disasters, and suspend all visas to any country that the administration deems uncooperative in accepting deportations. They want to screen visa applicants for ideology, barring entry and terminating the visas of people Miller considers politically impure. Miller told the New York Times that the administration would also invoke a 1798 law that allows federal officials to deport immigrants without due process during wartime, taking the broad view that drug cartels are waging a war against the United States.

The Project 2025 plan also calls for cutting all federal aid to colleges and universities that provide financial aid to undocumented students, including DACA recipients — the undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. It would cruelly tie all sorts of unrelated federal aid — including emergency aid after natural disasters — to state and municipal cooperation on immigration enforcement. The plan would require at least 70 percent of the staff of any federal contractor to be U.S. citizens — not legal residents, but U.S. citizens. As the Niskanen Center puts it, “the Mandate aims to demolish the American immigration system, coerce states and localities into cooperating with administrative schemes, and intimidate immigrants present in the United States.”

[...] Deporting even a fraction of 15 million people would also wreck the economy. Inflation would soar (especially when combined with Trump’s plan to slap a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on imports), and the U.S. would likely spiral into a recession, possibly a depression. Naturally, House Speaker Mike Johnson has expressed his enthusiastic support. Trump and Miller aren’t going to deport 15 million people in four years. It just isn’t possible. But the important thing — the thing that ought to be immediately disqualifying — is that they plan to try.

[...]

Trump’s plan would require deportation officials to go into cities, workplaces, colleges, and neighborhoods, find undocumented immigrants, and forcibly extract them. He did some of this during his first term, but it was sporadic and mostly for show. This would be on a much, much larger scale.

These will be people who for the most part are indistinguishable from legal residents and citizens, and whose only offense is to be in the country without documentation (which is a civil offense, not a criminal one). That means it’s a near certainty that a significant number of people who are here legally would be mistakenly detained. Some would be deported. And once they’re gone, they’d have to battle a backlogged and bureaucratic morass of an immigration system to get back in. Usually, refugee crises are brought on by large groups of people either voluntarily migrating from regions struck by war or natural disaster, or armies forcibly moving people en masse. Trump’s deportation plan would mean identifying the undocumented people in virtually every decent sized city, town, and county in the United States, detaining those people in some regional facility, transporting them to a bus station or airport, then flying, walking, or driving them across the border.

Imagine what it would take to evacuate the entirety of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. Imagine the number of buses and you’d need, the number of holding facilities, and everything you’d need to staff and equip those facilities. You’d need security. You’d need medical staff and food services. You’d need bathroom and shower facilities. You’d need janitorial staff, bus drivers, and pilots. Now imagine moving a population equal in size to the populations of those cities, but spread out all over the United States. In addition to Miller’s tent encampments along the border, you’d also need detainment facilities in every major city to hold immigrants as they await transport. Sanctuary cities would resist letting the administration use space in their jails. But even in cooperating jurisdictions, there wouldn’t be nearly enough available space. In his Atlantic piece, Brownstein consulted with experts who made the dystopian suggestion of housing immigrants in warehouses and abandoned shopping malls.

Currently, removals are handled by the Enforcement and Removals Operations (ERO) division of ICE. At the moment, that office has 7,600 employees. Last year, ERO removed about 142,000 people with a budget of $4.7 billion. If we apply these numbers to Trump’s 15 million plan, and spread it out over a 4-year term, Trump would need the ERO or an equivalent agency to increase its capacity by a factor of about 26. So the office would need to increase to more than 200,000 employees, and a budget of $122 billion. But that’s just the “muscle,” or the people who carry out the removals. ICE also has investigators, administrative staff, and attorneys who argue immigration cases in court. Overall, ICE has about 20,000 employees, with a budget of $8.5 billion. If we assume the current staffing and budget would need to expand at scale with the number of removals, Trump’s deportation plan would need 530,000 employees. That’s about 70,000 more staff than current active-duty troops in the U.S. Army.

The overall ICE budget would need to increase to $225 billion — 80 percent more than the current budget for the entire Department of Homeland Security, and 20 percent more than the Army’s 2025 budget. You’d also need to multiply the number of immigration courts and judges. Currently there are 69 immigration courts with 650 immigration judges. To keep the current ratio of courts and judges to deportations, you’d need more than 1,800 courts and over 17,000 judges. The current budget for these courts is $981 million. That would need to jump to $26 billion.

Radley Balko wrote an insightful column on the costs of Donald Trump’s fascistic mass deportation plan, as it would be very costly to the economy and would require tons and tons of people to carry out.

[thisisnotapublicforum]

[ourlastbastion]

Never thought I’d be working with ICE before but here I am.

Bosses sent me into the dungeons of another building because they need a body from our dept in the room as ICE messes with our switches and networking. I’m basically so they can say he was supervised and so someone can let him in and out of the room since it’s keycard and pin pad locked.

He’s a nice guy, accent a bit tough to understand, but I don’t think anyone really understands why ICE is here in the first place or why they need to do stuff to our networking /cables/ wiring dungeon

[rapeculturerealities]

ICE Is Grabbing Data From Schools and Abortion Clinics | WIRED

US IMMIGRATION AND Customs Enforcement agents are using an obscure legal tool to demand data from elementary schools, news organizations, and abortion clinics in ways that, some experts say, may be illegal.

While these administrative subpoenas, known as 1509 custom summonses, are meant to be used only in criminal investigations about illegal imports or unpaid customs duties, WIRED found that the agency has deployed them to seek records that seemingly have little or nothing to do with customs violations, according to legal experts and several recipients of the 1509 summonses.

A WIRED analysis of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) subpoena tracking database, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, found that agents issued custom summons more than 170,000 times from the beginning of 2016 through mid-August 2022. The primary recipients of 1509s include telecommunications companies, major tech firms, money transfer services, airlines, and even utility companies. But it’s the edge cases that have drawn the most concern among legal experts,

[usadvlottery]

US Immigration and Customs Laws encompass a complex framework governing the movement of people and goods across the United States' borders. These laws are designed to regulate immigration, prevent illegal entry, ensure national security, and facilitate lawful trade and travel. They cover a wide range of topics, including visa requirements, border security measures, customs duties, import/export regulations, and enforcement mechanisms. Compliance with these laws is crucial for maintaining legal status, preventing unauthorized entry, and upholding the nation's safety and security. Various government agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, oversee the enforcement and administration of these laws.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazilian Man’s Suicide Sends Shockwaves Through ‘Inhumane’ ICE Detention Center

Detainees at New Mexico’s Torrance County Detention Facility recently launched a hunger strike, motivated in part by the August death of a 23-year-old asylum seeker in custody.

The August suicide of a young Brazilian man detained at a New Mexico Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility has spurred new calls for action among immigrants’ rights advocates and fellow detainees, who recently launched a hunger strike to protest alleged abuse and inhumane conditions.

Kesley Vial, a 23-year-old asylum-seeker from Brazil, was found unconscious in his cell at the Torrance County Detention Facility on Aug. 17 and taken to the University of New Mexico Hospital. He died a week later. Though an official cause of death has yet to be determined, the American Civil Liberties Union and New Mexico Immigrant Law Center—who are in contact with Vial’s family and with other detainees at the facility—say that Vial died by suicide.

Vial had been in ICE custody for around four months at the time of his death. Border patrol agents first detained him on April 22 in Texas, following a border crossing. He was initially held at an immigration center in El Paso, before being transferred to Torrance. The privately operated ICE facility in Estancia has attracted national controversy amid officially documented reports of safety risks and unsanitary conditions, with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) going so far as to call for the immediate removal of all detainees earlier this year.

Vial’s death has compounded the suffering that many immigrants in ICE custody say they’ve faced at Torrance. Some fear that another tragedy could unfold at any moment. Detainees and advocates now tell The Appeal that the only way to achieve justice is to shut the facility down.

Continue reading.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Ron DeSantis Says He'll End Birthright Citizenship As President | Miami Herald

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday unveiled a sweeping plan to overhaul the nation’s immigration system and ramp up border enforcement, vowing to “repel the invasion” at the U.S. southern border, end birthright citizenship and to use the “levers at our disposal” to ensure cooperation from Mexico.

The plan, which was unveiled during a campaign trip to the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, ushered in the beginning of a new, policy-focused phase of DeSantis’ presidential bid that his campaign has billed as a more direct effort to challenge President Joe Biden.

But the rollout also doubled as an attempt to criticize former President Donald Trump, the heavy frontrunner for the GOP’s 2024 White House nomination whose political brand was built in large part on his hardline – and often inflammatory – rhetoric on immigration and border security.

“The reason why I’m really motivated to bring this issue to a conclusion is because I have listened to people in DC for years and years and years,” DeSantis told supporters on Monday. “Republicans and Democrats always chirping about this and never actually bringing the issue to a conclusion, never actually getting the job done.”

DeSantis pledged to end “catch and release” – the policy that allows migrants to be released into the U.S. while they await their asylum hearing – reimpose the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy and finish Trump’s long-promised, though still incomplete, border wall.

And DeSantis vowed to charge forward on his own whenever possible.

“When we go in on day one we’re gonna marshal every bit of authority that we have, will work with Congress when we need to, we’ll take executive action when we can, and it will be a day one priority, and you’re gonna see a big change very, very quickly,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis’s proposals went even further, calling for the end of birthright citizenship, cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to so-called “sanctuary jurisdictions” that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration law and deputize state and local governments to enforce immigration law.

“I think the states have a role to play,” DeSantis said. “I can tell you, as a President, we are fully going to deputize all state and local governments to be able to enforce immigration law, you will be able to have that authority.”

As Governor, DeSantis has signed legislation that requires all Florida law enforcement officials that operate a county detention center to participate in a federal immigration program, known as the 287(g), designed to identify undocumented immigrants in county jail after they are arrested. Officers are deputized to work under the supervision of ICE and the training is paid for by Florida taxpayers.

The program is among a series of state actions DeSantis has taken as Governor to have a role in enforcing federal immigration law. Some of the actions have been done with the help of the Republican-led Legislature, but others have been done through executive orders and emergency rules.

In his first term, DeSantis has spent at least $1.6 million to send state law enforcement officers to Texas to help secure the border, cracked down on Florida migrant shelters that care for migrant kids, asked the Florida Supreme Court to impanel a statewide grand jury to investigate immigration-related crimes and launched a strike force that mirrors a broader partisan effort promoted by national Republican groups.

Most prominently, DeSantis created a state-funded program that has allowed him to relocate migrants from Texas to other parts of the country, including Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts and Sacramento, California. The program has led to several lawsuits, including from migrants who say they were tricked into getting on the planes to Martha’s Vineyard, and a criminal investigation by the Bexar County sheriff in Texas.

Addressing supporters in Texas on Monday, DeSantis pledged that, if elected President, he would look to enact at the federal level a version of a sweeping immigration bill Florida lawmakers passed last month that requires businesses with more than 25 employees to use E-Verify, a federal electronic system, to check the immigration status of new hires. The state law he signed exempts independent contractors and those who hire people to do house work, such as housekeepers, maids and gardeners.

Among his other proposals: raising pay for Border Patrol agents, restricting visas of countries that don’t accept deportees and defunding nongovernmental organizations and other groups “engaged in facilitating illegal alien processing, human smuggling, and encouraging mass migration.”

DeSantis also used the policy announcement to pivot to foreign policy, saying that as President of the United States he would use all the “levers at our disposal” to “ensure better behavior” from Mexico.

“I think there is a lot of leverage we have over Mexico that a lot of Presidents have not been willing to use,” he said. “I think that they think that somehow that will be bad politically. I don’t think so at all. I think you’ve got to do it.”

While DeSantis did not provide too many specifics on his plans, he seemed to agree with a supporter in the crowd who suggested that Mexico is committing an “act of war” because they are not doing enough to stop migrants from coming into the country.

“I think we should act,” DeSantis said. “I view taking action that is very forward-facing in terms of that because it’s violating our sovereignty and it’s killing Americans.”

DeSantis added that when he is President, he would give Texas law enforcement the authority to deport individuals.

“As President, under Article II of the Constitution, you have a responsibility and a duty to protect the country, and we are going to do that and we are going to do that robustly,” DeSantis said.

Little more than a month into his 2024 presidential campaign, DeSantis has struggled to close a yawning polling gap with Trump. The Governor’s policy announcement on Monday – the first major rollout of his White House bid – seized on an issue that Republicans, particularly Trump, have used for years to energize their conservative voter base.

Yet DeSantis still faces tough competition on the immigration front, most notably from Trump, who has sought to elevate the issue in his own presidential bid. Speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. over the weekend, Trump pledged to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” and finish building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims at Popular Information:

Former President Donald Trump has promised that he will start mass deportations if he wins in November. The promise has become a central selling point of his 2024 campaign. At a campaign rally in Michigan this summer, Trump vowed, “As soon as I take the oath of office, we will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”  In April, during an interview with TIME, Trump laid out his plan for mass deportations, stating that he will use “local law enforcement” and “the National Guard.” Trump also said he would “not rule out” building new migrant detention facilities and that he would use the military “if necessary.” When TIME told Trump that deploying the military against civilians is prohibited under the Posse Comitatus Act, Trump responded, “Well, these aren’t civilians. These are people that aren’t legally in our country.”

Trump has promised that one of his first targets will be Springfield, Ohio, where Trump and his allies have, on numerous occasions, falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants are eating neighborhood pets. “[W]e will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio. Large deportations. We’re gonna get these people out,” Trump said last week at a press conference in California. (The Haitian immigrants that Trump and his allies are targeting are in the country legally.) Trump also promised to prioritize deportations from Aurora, Colorado, where Trump has falsely claimed that Venezuelan immigrants are “taking over the whole town.” [...]

The human capacity problem

The scale required to orchestrate Trump’s proposed policy is far beyond the capacity of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Trump’s solution is to use local law enforcement. In an interview on Fox News, Trump said that he would give local police “immunity” to do “the job they have to do,” and that “the officers understand who the migrants are.” Using local law enforcement would result in police officers having less time to perform their other duties. A March report by the Center for Migration Studies of New York cited research that found putting local police officers in charge of immigration responsibilities would make “local communities less safe” and immigrants, fearing deportation, “less likely to report crimes or cooperate with police.”

[...]

The enormous price tag

ICE acknowledges that each deportation is costly and difficult. In its 2023 annual report, the agency stated, “Removal management is a complex process that requires careful planning and coordination with a wide range of domestic and foreign partners and uses significant ERO resources.” According to that report, ICE deported 142,580 non-citizens from the U.S. in 2023. Its budget for removals and transportation last year was over $420 million, meaning that it cost nearly $3,000 to remove each person from the country. If Trump successfully deported the estimated 11 million non-citizens currently in the U.S., it would cost $33 billion just to transport people out of the U.S. — more than triple ICE’s total budget in 2023. But the cost of actually moving a person off U.S. soil is only one part of the equation. It also costs ICE money to track people down and keep them in custody before their deportation. NBC reported that ICE currently has about 40,000 beds in detention centers which each cost $57,378 a year to maintain. If Trump enacted his mass deportation plan of 11 million people, ICE would need to expand its detention capacity drastically.

[...]

The nationwide civil rights violation

Trump’s promise of mass deportations would cause major civil rights violations. The policy would effectively result in local law enforcement engaging in a mass racial profiling campaign, as there is no objective way to identify undocumented immigrants. According to a report by the Center for Migration Studies of New York, “[i]mmigration ‘sweeps’... often lead to profiling, usually on racial or ethnic grounds.” The report argues that this would lead to U.S. citizens and legal immigrants being “unjustly detained and even deported,” and give them “little opportunity to legally respond to their arrest and detention.” In a memo released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in response to Trump’s proposed immigration policies, the group warns that Trump’s plan could also lead to violations of “constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, including arrests and detentions without a specific reason to detain a certain individual.”  

The massive detention camps

Once the Trump administration identifies undocumented immigrants, it would need to detain them somewhere before deporting them. Trump has suggested that massive detention centers would need to be built in order to keep up with the number of deportations being processed. Aside from the economic cost, detention centers have been the sites of numerous human rights abuses. Undocumented immigrants in detention centers have been denied urgent medical care, sexually abused, and kept in chain-link pens.

The damage to the economy

[...]

The U.S. is already facing a labor shortage, and removing 11 million undocumented workers (about 5% of the total workforce) would only make the problem worse, pushing up prices on goods and services. Mass deportation would also impact the housing market, putting many of the 1.3 million mortgages of mixed-status households in danger, and cut tax revenue to the government and Social Security. 

Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy is a quagmire if it ever gets implemented, because it is a grave insult to civil liberties, police resources, and the economy.

Vote Kamala Harris to protect civil liberties!

[coochiequeens]

“ in 2020 found that some immigrant women held by U.S. immigration officials at a Georgia detention center likely underwent "unnecessary" invasive gynecological procedures, according to a report released Tuesday.”

Washington — A congressional investigation into medical abuse allegations that garnered national attention in 2020 found that some immigrant women held by U.S. immigration officials at a Georgia detention center likely underwent "unnecessary" invasive gynecological procedures, according to a report released Tuesday.

The 18-month bipartisan investigation by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations reviewed allegations that women detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia had endured medical neglect, lax coronavirus mitigation policies and questionable procedures, including hysterectomies. 

The allegations first surfaced in an explosive Sept. 2020 whistleblower complaint by Dawn Wooten, who worked as a nurse at the Ocilla detention facility. 

The investigation's 108-page report is set to be formally presented by Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, the chair of the subcommittee, later on Tuesday during a hearing in which officials from ICE, the Homeland Security Inspector General and LaSalle Corrections, the private company operating the Ocilla facility, are set to testify following testimony from Wooten as well as a former immigrant detainee and physicians.

Tuesday's report said investigators did not corroborate "allegations of mass hysterectomies." But investigators said they did find "serious issues" regarding medical procedures and policies at the Georgia facility and the conduct of Mahendra Amin, a doctor whom Irwin County detainees accused in 2020 of performing questionable medical procedures, including, in some cases, without the patients' full consent.

The Biden administration in May 2021 ordered ICE to stop holding immigrants at the Irwin County facility as part of an effort to reform immigration detention. ICE did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the subcommittee's findings. CBS News also reached out to representatives for Amin and LaSalle Corrections, which still runs the Ocilla facility under a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service.

Citing a medical review it commissioned of over 16,600 pages of medical records pertaining to 94 women treated by Amin, the congressional subcommittee concluded that "female detainees appear to have undergone excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological procedures."

Dr. Peter Cherouny, the obstetrician-gynecologist tasked with reviewing the women's medical records, said Amin's approach to surgical procedures was "too aggressive," investigators said. Cherouny found Amin's care to be antiquated, calling it "pretty good medicine for the 1980s, but we're not there anymore."

"Dr. Cherouny explained that 40 patient records—of the 94 examined—indicated the patients had benign ovarian cysts removed by Dr. Amin, despite the fact that benign ovarian cysts 'generally resolve without surgical intervention,'" the report said.

Cherouny, the report noted, said the risks associated with these surgeries include infection, bleeding, pain and even infertility.

The report said six formerly detained women told investigators that Amin was "rough and insensitive" during medical procedures and failed to be forthcoming about his diagnoses and treatment plans. 

"These women described feeling confused, afraid, and violated after their treatment by Dr. Amin," investigators said. "Several reported that they still live with physical pain and uncertainty regarding the effect of his treatments on their fertility."

The subcommittee called Amin a "a clear outlier" in the number and types of gynecological procedures he performed on ICE detainees. "Ultimately, the Subcommittee's investigation found that Dr. Amin performed just two hysterectomies, one in 2017 and one in 2019, which ICE deemed to be medically necessary," the report said. "However, the Subcommittee did find that Dr. Amin performed an unusually high number of  other gynecological procedures on ICDC detainees."

While the Irwin County detention center held 4% of women in ICE custody between 2017 and 2020, the report said, Amin performed over 80% of certain gynecological procedures on detainees across the U.S. during that time, including laparoscopies, Depo-Provera injections, limited pelvic exams and dilation and curettage procedures.

According to the report, investigators tried to interview Amin, but their requests for voluntary testimony were denied. After the subcommittee issued a subpoena for his testimony, Amin, through his lawyer, said he "declined to provide testimony pursuant to his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination."

Investigators said Amin was under criminal investigation by the federal government as of earlier this year. A separate internal investigation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and a federal lawsuit related to medical procedures for immigrants held at the Irwin County facility remain ongoing, the subcommittee said.

Tuesday's report found that ICE does not have a policy of securing immigrants' consent for medical procedures conducted outside of facilities overseen by the agency. ICE officials, the report said, "stated to the Subcommittee that it is the sole professional obligation of the off-site provider to obtain informed consent from patients."

The investigation also uncovered 659 reports from detainees who described "delayed or deficient medical care" at the Irwin County detention center between 2018 and 2020. Investigators said ICE and LaSalle Corrections, the private company that oversees the Georgia detention facility, "failed to take effective corrective action" to address the grievances.

Moreover, the report raised questions about ICE's vetting and oversight procedures for medical providers. The subcommittee said ICE was not aware of several malpractice claims against Amin and other physicians or a federal lawsuit against him before the Sept. 2020 whistleblower complaint.

Investigators noted that Amin was not board certified, and had been sued in 2013 by officials in Georgia and the Justice Department, who claimed he committed Medicaid fraud by "ordering unnecessary and excessive medical procedures." The case was settled in 2015, with Amin and his codefendants paying $520,000, but not admitting any wrongdoing, the report said.