[colombiamigra] Fw: MPI Report Offers Deceptive Assessment of Immigration Enforcement
- From: william mejia <wmejia8a@xxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:30:02 -0800 (PST)
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From: Center for Immigration Studies <center@xxxxxxx>
To: William <wmejia8a@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 5:27 PM
Subject: MPI Report Offers Deceptive Assessment of Immigration Enforcement
MPI Report Offers Deceptive Assessment of Immigration Enforcement
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CONTACT: Jessica Vaughan, jmv@xxxxxxx, (508) 346-3380
New Report Offers Deceptive Assessment of Immigration Enforcement
Washington, D.C. (January 10, 2012) - A new report being promoted by the
Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a research institute dedicated to promoting
migration, paints a deliberately misleading picture of the state of immigration
law enforcement. The report, titled Immigration Enforcement in the United
States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery, is presented as an objective
assessment of immigration programs, and has been widely covered in the news
media -- but is riddled with false statements, cherry-picked statistics and
inappropriate comparisons. This compilation of bogus findings aims to convince
opinion leaders and the public that the government has succeeded in creating an
effective "bulwark" of immigration enforcement that cannot be improved upon
much, and suggests that spending cuts might be in order. MPI seems to have
issued this report in an attempt to help sell the President's immigration
agenda, which includes amnesty for illegal
immigrants, further restrictions on immigration enforcement, and expanded
legal immigration.
Researchers at the Center for Immigration Studies have found numerous problems
in the MPI report. Below, in bold, are some of the false and/or deceptive
statements found in the report’s executive summary, followed by our critique.
* "U.S. Spends More on Immigration Enforcement than on FBI, DEA, Secret
Service & All Other Federal Criminal Law Enforcement Agencies Combined; Nearly
$187 Billion Spent on Federal Immigration Enforcement over Past 26 Years." This
is the headline on the MPI press release, and the most egregious falsehood in
the report. First, MPI grossly inflates the immigration enforcement spending
totals by tallying all spending by three Department of Homeland Security
agencies -- Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) and US-VISIT. But a large share of these agencies’ activities
are not immigration enforcement, including customs screening and enforcement,
drug and weapons interdiction, cargo inspection, returning stolen antiquities,
and intellectual property violations. Some of these agencies’ activities, such
as inspecting incoming travelers at ports of entry and maintaining databases,
are not enforcement at all, but
routine administrative work. It is impossible to determine how much the
federal government has spent on immigration enforcement in any year, much less
the last 26 years, because the Department of Homeland Security and its
predecessor, INS, have never tracked these activities; but one thing is obvious
– that amount is certainly far less than $187 billion. It is probably at least
25-30% less, judging by historical budgets for Customs enforcement.
* Second, MPI’s comparison of immigration enforcement spending to other
federal law enforcement spending is similarly deceptive. MPI fails to include
several big-ticket agencies in its tally of other principal federal law
enforcement expenditures, such as the federal prison system and the U.S.
Attorneys. This is important, because MPI counted similar program expenses in
ICE and CBP’s budget (immigration detention, Border Patrol, and ICE trial
attorneys).1
* Further, MPI excludes expenses of more than a dozen other federal law
enforcement agencies that are part of "other federal law enforcement." Some of
these law enforcement agencies, such as the Transportation Security
Administration (TSA), have budgets larger than ICE, DEA, or ATF.2
* A few simple adjustments turn MPI's dubious calculations upside-down.
Subtract a conservative estimate for customs enforcement ($4.4 billion) from
the immigration agencies, and add the Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Attorneys, and
TSA to the "All Others" total spending, then immigration enforcement costs
closer to half of "All Others," not more, as MPI claims (See Table 1). Add in
the other missing federal law enforcement agencies and the whole point about a
huge immigration enforcement complex disappears.
* Some of what MPI calls immigration enforcement overlaps and possibly
even surpasses the efforts of other federal criminal law enforcement agencies.
It would be interesting to compare, for example, the number of CBP drug and
weapons seizures with DEA and ATF statistics, and the number of ICE gang
arrests and prosecutions with FBI activities. That is beyond the scope of this
fact sheet, but such an analysis would give some context to MPI’s facile
spending comparisons.
* "Border Patrol staffing, technology and infrastructure have reached
historic highs, while levels of apprehensions have fallen to historic lows."
Border Patrol funding is higher than ever, but illegal immigration has been
higher in the last decade than 20 or 40 years ago. Apprehensions are down
overall, but that is an incomplete measure of progress, according to the
Government Accountability Office (GAO), which has concluded that DHS had
achieved operational control of only a small share of the southwest border.
According to the latest GAO report, the border patrol is intercepting only an
estimated 61% of illegal crossers.3
* "CBP and ICE together refer more cases for prosecution than all
Department of Justice (DOJ) law enforcement agencies combined." This MPI
factoid is based on data they retrieved with a do-it-yourself on-line
analytical tool, and is therefore difficult to replicate.4 In any case,
immigration prosecutions are the fast food of the federal criminal justice
system; there are lots of offenders, the cases are relatively simple, and the
sentences (if any) are relatively short because removal is usually the outcome.
Another more accessible and perhaps more reliable source, the U.S. Sentencing
Commission, reports that immigration cases represent a much smaller share of
the federal criminal justice docket than MPI suggests. Their 2011 annual report
says that immigration offenders were 35% of all those sentenced in federal
court that year, meaning there were twice as many sentenced offenders from
non-immigration agency prosecutions than from CBP and ICE.5 However,
this same report notes that 10% of murderers, 31% of drug traffickers, 34% of
money launderers, 64% of kidnappers, and 28% of food and drug offenders
sentenced that year were non-citizens, so it’s easy to see why immigration
enforcement should be such a high priority in federal law enforcement.
Obviously these two sets of data are measuring different things – referrals for
prosecution and sentenced offenders -- but they are equally valid measures of
the immigration agencies’ footprint in the federal criminal justice system. MPI
obviously preferred the more melodramatic of the two.
* "Since 1990, more than 4 million non-citizens, primarily unauthorized
immigrants, have been deported from the United States. Removals have increased
dramatically in recent years . . ." As the President has said, these numbers
are "actually a little deceptive."6 The "dramatic" increases in deportations,
removals and returns occurred between 2005 and 2009; since then, the numbers
have flattened out.7 By discussing the increases over the time span 1990 to
2011, MPI is able to avoid drawing attention to the recent stagnation in
enforcement. It has been established that recent deportation statistics are
heavily padded with cases that were not previously counted as such.8 In
addition, ICE arrests have been trending downward since 2008, after a sharp
rise that year; it’s hard to see how deportations can be rising when
apprehensions are falling.9
* "Fewer than half of the noncitizens who are removed from the United
States are removed following hearings and pursuant to formal removal orders
from immigration judges." MPI tries to give the impression that noncitizens are
being denied due process. As discussed in a recent CIS publication,10 there are
many reasons why DHS is able to remove noncitizens without a hearing. The main
reason is because most of the aliens selected for removal by ICE are not
entitled to a hearing, either because they are convicted criminals or because
they have been ordered removed before. Considering how backlogged the
immigration court system is, which MPI notes with great concern, the fact that
DHS is using more expedited processing in many cases should be viewed with
approval, not alarm.
* "The average daily population of noncitizens detained by ICE
increased nearly five-fold between FY 1995-11 . . . . a significantly larger
number of individuals are detained each year in the immigration detention
system than are serving sentences in federal Bureau of Prisons facilities for
all other federal crimes." This is another silly apples-to-anchovies
comparison. MPI compares the static number of federal prisoners (about 218,000)
with a year’s worth of immigration detainees (429,000). It would have been more
appropriate (but still pointless) to compare the average daily immigration
detention population (33,000) with the BOP number. MPI probably also noticed on
the Bureau of Prisons web site that immigration offenders represent only 12% of
the federal inmate population, a statistic that does not fit in with their
portrayal of a massive immigration enforcement dragnet that dominates the
federal corrections system. But as MPI notes, the
immigration detention system is not at all like the federal prison system in
purpose or nature. Immigration detention is more comparable to the local jail
system, which has an average daily population of about 750,000 inmates.11
Spending for Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Agencies Compared To All Other Comparable Federal
Law Enforcement Agencies: FY 2012 (in billions)
Immigration and Customs
Customs and Border Protection 11.8
Immigration and Customs Enforcement 5.8
Total 20.2
Estimated Customs Enforcement Expenses 4.4
Total Adjusted for Customs Enforcement 15.8
Other Comparable Federal Law Enforcement Agencies
Federal Bureau of Investigations 8.1
Drug Enforcement Administration 2
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives 1.2
U.S. Marshals 1.2
Secret Service 1.9
U.S. Attorneys 2
Transportation Security Administration 7.8
Total 24.2
Estimated Customs Enforcement Expenses 4.4
Estimated Customs Enforcement Expenses 28.6
Source: DHS Budget in Brief 2012 and DOJ Summary of Budget Authority 2012
________________________________
End Notes1 Moreover, the figures MPI uses for the immigration agencies’
spending are actually budget requests, not appropriations or expenditures. In
contrast, the other federal law enforcement spending figures are amounts
actually expended. A small point, perhaps, but indicative of their sloppy
methodology.
2 Other federal law enforcement agencies excluded include the National Park
Service, Federal Protective Service, Treasury agents, and LEAs attached to the
large federal departments, such as State, Defense (including Military Police),
Agriculture, U.S. Postal Service, and so on.
3 Government Accountability Office, Border Patrol: Key Elements of New
Strategic Plan Not Yet In Place to Inform Border Security Status and Resource
Needs, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-25.
4 http://tracfed.syr.edu/trachelp/tools/help_tools_godeep3.shtml.
5 U.S. Sentencing Commission, 2011 Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics,
http://www.ussc.gov/Data_and_Statistics/Annual_Reports_and_Sourcebooks/2011/SBTOC11.htm.
6 Vaughan, “Obama: Deportation Numbers Actually a Little Deceptive,
“http://cis.org/vaughan/actually-a-little-deceptive.
7 DHS Immigration Enforcement Actions, 201,
http://www.dhs.gov/immigration-enforcement-actions-2011.
8 Rep. Lamar Smith,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/26/obama-puts-illegals-ahead-of-americans/.
9 DHS Immigration Enforcement Actions, 2011
10 Reasoner and Vaughan, “Secure Communities By the Numbers, Part
3,”http://cis.org/SC-by-the-numbers-critique-part3. “If the law doesn't require
it; if Congress has provided other forms of due process outside of the
immigration court venue; if immigration judge hearings are lengthy, often
delayed, and costly to taxpayers; and if scheduling a hearing substantially
prolongs the length of detention for many aliens who are neither entitled to be
released on bond nor have any reasonable chance at relief from deportation,
then there are few reasons why the government should opt to go the immigration
judge hearing route when alternatives exist, whereas there are many sound
reasons not to do so.”
11 Bureau of Justice Statistics, http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/ and Bureau of
Prisons, http://www.bop.gov/locations/weekly_report.jsp.
The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit
research organization founded in 1985. It is the nation's only think tank
devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social,
demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States.
Center for Immigration Studies
1629 K St. NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20006
phone: (202) 466-8185
fax: (202) 466-8076
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