Report: Many immigrants re-arrested after detainers declined

By AMY TAXIN
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) - More than 1,800 immigrants that the federal government wanted to deport were nevertheless released from local jails and later re-arrested for various crimes, according to a government report released Monday.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement report - obtained by an organization that actively opposes illegal immigration - said the re-arrested immigrants were among 8,145 people who were freed between January and August 2014 despite requests from federal agents that they be held for deportation.

More than 250 jurisdictions across the country -including some formally designated as sanctuary cities, such as San Francisco - have stopped fully honoring so-called immigration detainers, saying they can't hold arrestees beyond their scheduled release dates without probable cause. California and Connecticut have passed state laws to limit the use of immigration detainers and jails in states from Oregon to Iowa also refuse to honor the requests.

In the report provided by the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, the top crimes for which immigrants were re-arrested were drug violations and drunken driving. The report also cited six examples involving more serious offenses, including a San Mateo County case in which an individual was arrested for investigation of five felony sex crimes involving a child under 14.

"This is a genuine safety problem, and also a crisis for immigration enforcement," said Jessica Vaughan, the center's director of policy studies.

The controversy surrounding immigration detainers has re-entered the national spotlight since the shooting death of 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle on a San Francisco pier. Suspect Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez was released from jail in April even though immigration officials had lodged a detainer to try to deport him from the country for a sixth time.

San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has argued he was upholding local law and that detainers are not a legal way to keep someone in custody and have been proven to erode police relations with immigrant communities.

Immigrant advocates said immigration agents already have information about who is in local jails, and they can make the arrests on their own.

"It is not correct to point to the detainers as the reason why people are getting re-arrested," said Jennie Pasquarella, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "ICE has had, and continues to have and develop its tools to be able to prioritize people who it believes are priority for removal, and to pick up those people."

So far this year, the Obama administration is on track to remove the fewest number of immigrants from the country since 2006. In 2012, the government sent home a record of more than 409,000 immigrants, with help from a program that automatically alerts federal agents every time someone with an immigration record is arrested.

Immigrant advocates complained that immigrants arrested for investigation of minor violations were getting deported, not the dangerous criminals ICE claimed to target, and decried the use of detainers.

Following the pushback, ICE last year said it will focus on more serious criminals and ask law enforcement agencies to notify them when they're releasing immigrants from custody, if not actually hold them. Some agencies already do just that, and tell immigration agents when to come by the jails to pick up individuals who are about to be freed.

ICE did not comment on the statistics but said in a statement that the agency continues to work with local law enforcement agencies to uphold public safety.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.