Washington Post:  Did U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Engage in Racial Profiling?

February 19th, 2009

Did U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents engage in racial profiling?  That was the question posed by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD) after an incident on January 23, 2007 during which ICE officers conducted a sweep and detained multiple Latino men at a local 7-Eleven.  The question is still relevant, and it was posed again by a Washington Post article from February 18, 2009, as the findings of an external court investigation have conflicted with the findings of the ICE's internal probe. 

According to an account of the internal investigation only recently made public, an ICE boss asserted on the morning of the immigration sweep:  "I don't care where you get more arrests, we need more numbers."

As a part of a special unit that ICE launched post-9/11, agents have been responsible for apprehending suspected terrorists or dangerous criminals who have evaded their deportation orders.  Instead of doing their jobs and arresting fugitives, however, the ICE agents met their quotas for arrest by raiding a 7-Eleven, bypassing the store's non-Hispanic patrons, and arresting 24 men who simply looked Latino.

Of the 24 men arrested that day, some were undocumented workers and some were not; none of them, however, were suspected terrorists or dangerous criminals who had evaded deportation orders.  In 2006 and 2007, an apprehended non-fugitive could be counted toward the ICE's annual arrest quota if an agent apprehended the non-fugitive during an organized ICE operation.  According to a report released by researchers at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and the Migration Policy Institute, there was a dramatic increase during these two years in the arrest of immigrants who were neither fugitives nor criminals.

ICE spokeswoman Kelly A. Nantel informed The Washington Post that as of February 4, 2009, ICE changed its annual quota of 1,000 arrests per team.  Each team is now expected to identify and target 50 fugitives per month and 500 per year as part of operations with other teams.  According to Nantel, in fiscal year 2008, the share of non-fugitive arrests dropped from 40% to 24% nationwide.  This is definitely an improvement, but it's still not good enough. 

One out of every four arrests is still being made outside of the scope of the agents' mission and responsibilities.  In the internal investigation summary, deportation officer Sean C. Ervin Ervin said that, "he believed that the Fugitive Operations team was not appropriately used. . . . [Ervin] believed strongly in the Fugitive Operations mission, and felt from the start that the orders given to the team were outside their operational mandate."

Ervin makes a good point.  When these agents go out and arrest immigrants who are neither fugitives nor criminals, not only are they no longer doing the job that they are mandated to do, but they are also unquestionably opening themselves up to charges of racial profiling. 

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