DHS Signals Policy Changes Ahead for Immigration Raids

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, March 29, 2009; 1:19 PM

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has
delayed a series of proposed immigration raids and
other enforcement actions at U.S. workplaces in
recent weeks, asking agents in her department to
apply more scrutiny to the selection and investigation
of targets as well as the timing of raids, federal
officials said.

A senior department official said the delays signal a
pending change in whom agents at U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement choose to prosecute --
increasing the focus on businesses and executives
instead of ordinary workers.

"ICE is now scrutinizing these cases more thoroughly
to ensure that [targets] are being taken down when
they should be taken down, and that the employer is
being targeted and the surveillance and the
investigation is being done how it should be done,"
said the official, discussing Napolitano's views about
sensitive law enforcement matters on the condition of
anonymity.

"There will be a change in policy, but in the interim,
you've got to scrutinize the cases coming up," the
senior DHS official said, noting Napolitano's
expectations as a former federal prosecutor and state
attorney general.

Another DHS official said Napolitano plans to release
protocols this week to ensure more consistent work-
site investigations and less "haphazard" decision-
making.

Napolitano's moves have led some to question
President Obama's commitment to work-site raids,
which were a signature of Bush administration efforts
to combat illegal immigration. Napolitano has
highlighted other priorities, such as combating
Mexican drug cartels and catching dangerous
criminals who are illegal immigrants.

Napolitano's moves foreshadow the difficult political
decisions the Obama administration faces as it
decides whether to continue mass arrests of illegal
immigrant workers in sweeps of meatpackers,
construction firms, defense contractors and other
employers.

Critics say workplace and neighborhood sweeps are
harsh and indiscriminate, and they accuse the
government of racial profiling, violating due process
rights and committing other humanitarian abuses.

The raids have enraged Latino community and
religious leaders, immigrant advocates and civil
liberties groups important to the Democratic base,
who have stepped up pressure on Obama to stop
them.

At a rally last week in Chicago, Cardinal Francis
George, head of the archdiocese of Obama's home
city, called on the government "to end immigration
raids and the separation of families" and support an
overhaul of immigration law. "Reform would be a clear
sign this administration is truly about change," George
said.

Also last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-
Calif.) and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus made
similar calls as the caucus met formally with Obama
for the first time.

"Raids that break up families in that way, just kick in
the door in the middle of the night, taking [a] father, a
parent away, that's just not the American way. It must
stop," Pelosi added at a Capitol Hill conference on
border issues sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce.

But Obama also faces pressure from conservative
lawmakers and many centrist Democrats, who say
that workplace enforcement is needed to reduce the
supply of jobs that attract illegal immigrants, and that
any retreat in defending American jobs in a recession
could ignite a populist backlash.

When the White House announced plans last week to
move more than 450 federal agents and equipment to
the border to counter Mexico's drug cartels,
lawmakers warned Napolitano against diverting
money from workplace operations.

Rep. Lamar Smith (Tex.), ranking Republican on the
House Judiciary Committee, said the
administration "appears to be using border violence
as an excuse" to undercut immigration enforcement in
the nation's interior.

"It makes no sense to take funds from one priority
(worksite enforcement) to address a new priority (the
growth in border violence). This is just robbing Peter
to pay Paul," Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), the
powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations
subcommittee for homeland security, said in an e-
mail.

Led by Byrd, Congress this year ordered ICE to spend
$127 million on workplace operations, $34 million
more than President George W. Bush had requested.
Reducing those amounts, even in ICE's overall $5
billion budget, would provoke a fight, senior aides in
both parties said.

DHS officials categorically deny any reduction. Instead
Napolitano has sought to chart a middle course by
ordering a review of which immigrants are targeted for
arrest. While a policy is still under development,
Napolitano has said she intends to focus more on
prosecuting criminal cases of wrongdoing by
companies. Analysts say they also think ICE may
conduct fewer raids, focusing routine enforcement on
civil infractions of worker eligibility verification rules.



Former Bush administration officials said their raids
were also targeted against supervisors, but that it took
time to build complicated white-collar cases. In the
meantime, they said, depriving companies of their
workforces and in some cases filing criminal charges
against illegal immigrant workers sent a clear
message of deterrence to both management and
labor.



Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for
Immigration Studies, which seeks to reduce
immigration, said Obama aides are trying to manage
the issue until an economic turnaround permits an
attempt to overhaul immigration laws.



"I think their calculus is, how do they keep Hispanic
groups happy enough without angering the broader
public so much that they sabotage health care and
their other priorities?" Krikorian said.



Ali Noorani, executive director of the National
Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group,
said that to the contrary, groups such as his support
Obama's focus on going after bad employers and
criminal illegal immigrants first -- or as he put it,
prioritizing "drug smugglers, not window washers."



Within ICE, the front-office vetting of cases has led to
some doubts. Last week, for example, ICE postponed
plans to raid employers at a military-related facility in
Chicago for which they had arranged to temporarily
detain as many as 100 illegal immigrants, according
to one official. A second official said Napolitano
thought the investigative work was inadequate.

The raid would have been the second under the
Obama administration. After the first, a Feb. 24 sweep
of an engine-parts maker in Bellingham, Wash., that
led to 28 arrests, Napolitano publicly expressed
disappointment that ICE did not inform her
beforehand and announced an investigation into
agency communication practices.

In response, Leigh H. Winchell, the ICE special agent
in charge in Seattle, wrote an e-mail to his staff --
subsequently leaked to conservative bloggers --
saying they had acted correctly. He also copied a
statement from House Republicans calling
Napolitano's review "beyond backwards."

"You did nothing wrong and you did everything right,"
Winchell wrote. "I cannot control the politics that take
place with these types of situations, but I can remind
you that you are great servants of this country and this
agency."