Obama Administration Redefines ‘Dangerous’ Illegal Aliens
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) used the Friday before Christmas to release official word that ICE was once again narrowing its definition of who it considers a dangerous individual.
This latest change involves the process of ICE detainers, a topic addressed routinely at Front Page Magazine. ICE detainers are holds, up to two business days, that ICE places on prisoners in municipal prison. These prisoners would otherwise be let go, but because ICE wants to detain them for immigration violations, they continue being held for ICE to pick them up and process them itself. According to a memo dated December 21, 2012, ICE changed its definition of priority to receive such a detainer to someone with three misdemeanor convictions, from one misdemeanor previously.
The pertinent portion of the memo states that “[t]hree or more prior misdemeanor convictions” not including minor traffic misdemeanors or other relatively minor misdemeanors unless the convictions “reflect a clear and continuing danger to others or disregard for the law.” It should be noted that an individual still only needs to be suspected or convicted of any felony in order to warrant an ICE detainer.
This most recent memo augments policy from the most famous memo, now referred to as the Morton Memo, referring to the long-time Director of ICE, John Morton. In that memo, which was released on June 17, 2011, ICE directed all field agents to prioritize dangerous individuals, which the memo defined using an assortment of prior criminal activity. That memo only asked for one misdemeanor conviction. As such, simply being in the country illegally was no longer an ICE investigative priority.
From there, future directives required that a suspect be convicted of a crime before they were a priority for being held in detention. There are only 32,400 beds in all ICE facilities, even though there are roughly 300,000 individuals in the immigration system at any given time. This means that ICE can only hold about one in nine people that it puts in the system.
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