The Washington Post moves the ball forward on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's National Fugitive Operations Program, which was initially designed to capture undocumented immigrants who had been ordered deported, excluded, or removed by an immigration judge. The drew a bonanza in funding from Congress, even as its original purpose, capturing undocumented immigrants who had avoided a deportation order or committed a crime, shifted to undocumented immigrants who hadn't committed any crimes. Being in the country illegally is a civil, not a criminal violation.
As a report from the Migration Policy Institute explains, the program's funding has increased from $9 million to $213 million, even as its original purpose has been abandoned. In 2006, ICE officials increased the quota of fugitive aliens--fugitive meaning they had committed a crime, or ignored a deportation order--to 1000. But the number of fugitive aliens captured decreased as time went on, as the FOP began capturing more and more ordinary status violators to fill their quota. What's most disturbing is the way some of these people were arrested, the Post highlights an incident in which an FOP official encouraged enforcers to just run around Lowe's or Home Depot parking lots looking for day laborers who they assumed were illegal.
In fact, according to the MPI report, criminal fugitives made up only 9 percent of those apprehended in 2007, after the quota was instituted. Of the remaining 91 percent, 40 were ordinary status violators--not the kind of undocumented immigrants the program was designed to target--and 51 percent were fugitives with no criminal history.
-- A. Serwer
