Did ICE Intentionally Mislead?

Photo courtesy US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Yesterday, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) called again for an immediate investigation into whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement intentionally misled local authorities as to whether they could opt out of the controversial immigration enforcement program, Secure Communities. In late April, Lofgren asked ICE to investigate the program for misleading statements surrounding their opt-out policy. “I believe some of these false and misleading statements may have been made intentionally, while others were made recklessly, knowing that the statements were ambiguous and likely to create confusion,” Lofgren wrote. In return, she received a promise from Acting Inspector General Charles Edwards that a review of Secure Communities, otherwise known as S-Comm, would begin at the start of the 2012 fiscal year. In a letter she sent out on May 17, Lofgren states that an investigation into the program is “pressing,” and that the review should begin immediately (see “Lofgren Letters” at the end of this article for all documents).

S-Comm requires local authorities to share fingerprints of anyone arrested with federal immigration authorities, and it purports to target dangerous criminals. The program has drawn heat from immigrant advocates and sheriffs alike, not only for how many non-criminals have been deported under its guises, but also for being vague about whether states and counties had the option to participate. In a recent attempt to clarify S-Comm’s policies, Janet Napolitano definitively told the San Francisco Chronicle that local governments could not exclude themselves from the program. “The whole opt-in, opt-out thing was a misunderstanding from the get-go,” she said. Even so, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn said at the beginning of May that he will pull the state out of the program and that local police will no longer participate.

Lofgren’s most recent demand to ICE also included a copy of a letter sent to her by a former ICE regional coordinator Dan Cadman (see “Lofgren Letters,” page 11). After being fired from ICE for some “unacceptable emails,” Cadman wrote a scathing complaint about his treatment by the agency. “ICE painted itself in a corner and needed someone to blame,” he wrote, referring to how he felt he was made a scapegoat by the agency for their own failures. His letter hints that miscommunication or even deception by the federal government caused state and local authorities to be confused about the program. He also suggests that Freedom of Information Act officials chose which documents to release to the public after immigrant advocacy groups filed a FOIA request, and that officials redacted his name on some of the documents.

Cadman insists that he urged ICE to take a stronger stance on S-Comm’s opt-out policy back in 2009, which he says they ignored (see below).

 

It’s still hard to say whether ICE backpedaled or intentionally misled local law enforcers about the program (we’ll have to wait for the full investigation to find out). Professor Kevin R. Johnson, Dean of Public Law at UC Davis and editor of ImmigrationProf Blog, says he doubts the feds ever intentionally lied about whether counties had to embrace S-Comm, and thinks the confusion is probably owed to a series of miscommunications. Misleading or not, S-Comm has certainly caused many to question the federal government’s role in local law enforcement. “This shows how far Obama’s ‘enforcement now, enforcement forever’ policy is going,” Johnson says, referring to the president’s hard stance on immigrants and record deportations. While local and state governments are used to dealing with their own law enforcement, in this case “the federal government is commandeering the state governments to deal with immigration for them.”

If an investigation reveals that the feds misled us, will that mean a moratorium on S-Comm, such as the one proposed by an immigrant activist group today, would be successful? “That seems unlikely,” argues Johnson. “The administration is doing everything in its power towards enforcement. I don’t see them backing down here.”

 

Lofgren Letters

 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate