Napalitano: $600 million border security bill will fund Streamline expansion

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Bob Libal

While we’d speculated that additional funds allocated in the $600 million border security bill passed last month may fund an expansion to Operation Streamline, I hadn’t seen it explicitly laid out by the administration.  But, buried in an article (“Arizona National Guard soldiers start surveillance at the border,” East Valley Tribune, August 30) about a debate between Pinal County’s tough-on-immigration sheriff Paul Babeau and DHS Secretary Janet Napalitano about border security, was this information:

And it’s being played out in the Yuma sector of the border. There, Operation Streamline results in all border crossers being detained for up to three weeks and then appearing before a judge before being deported. That criminal conviction,

Babeau said, means someone caught reentering illegally faces up to two years in prison. Napolitano said some of that $600 million would be used to expand Operation Streamline in the Tucson sector. With the current number of judges and prosecutors, courts can handle only about 70 cases a day; the remainder who do not have criminal records are simply deported.

Babeau conceded the cost, saying it would take $3.5 billion to fully implement what Kyl and McCain want to do. But he said it would enable federal agents to achieve “operational control” of the border.

It’s unclear where Babeau’s $3.5 billion number comes from, if it includes all Streamline-related costs, and if it’s an annual number or covers a number of years.  Regardless, it’s an incredible cost for a program that essentially funnels folks into the criminal justice system before deporting them.

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Op. Streamline overwhelms federal courts in El Paso, doesn’t deter migration

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Bob Libal

photo: Jason Cato

A new report by the El Paso-based youth development organization Community Scholars shows that federal judges in El Paso are overwhelmed by cases related to Operation Streamline and a glut of vacancies of the federal bench.  According to the KFOX report (“West Texas Federal Judges Flooded With Cases,” August 30):

Some new statistics KFOX has obtained said the federal court system in West Texas had more cases per judge than any other part of the Lone Star State.

According to the Community Scholars based in El Paso, the Western District of Texas handled more than 10,000 cases last year.

The Community Scholars said each judge in the Western District handles about 691 cases a year. That’s compared to 598 per judge in the Southern District, 594 per judge in the Eastern District, and 447 per judge in the Northern District.

Community Scholars said one problem is a number of judicial vacancies in the Western District and a federal program called “Operation Streamline.”  In that program, illegal immigrants caught by Border Patrol are charged with a federal misdemeanor, so the immigrant has to go before a federal judge.

“Modify Operation Streamline so that no improper entry will be charged with a federal misdemeanor; instead they would just be forced to go back to their country,” said Jorge Zamora with Community Scholars.

The report also indicated the state courts in El Paso County appear to be in line with other Texas counties, if not slightly on the lighter side for caseloads.

On top of overwhelming the court system, federal judges from El Paso have also complained the program is ineffective at deterring unauthorized entry into the country  (Lauren Gambino, “Program Prosecutes Illegal Immigrants Before Deporting Them,” News21.com, August 2010),

And U.S. Magistrate Judge Norbert Garney of the U.S. District Court in El Paso says he is seeing the same number of illegal immigrants pass through his courts as always.

“Does it (Streamline) discourage people from crossing the border? Of course it doesn’t,” Garney said. “Ten to 14 days [in jail] is a small price to pay for the opportunity to double, triple or even quadruple your income and start a better life for your family.”

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McCain and Kyle continue push for Streamline, ignore recent reports

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Bob Libal

Arizona Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl continued their push for full funding of Operation Streamline last week in what CQ Today (“Arizona Senators Slam Report on Anti-Illegal Immigration Program,” August 25), called:

an angry letter to the departments of Justice and Homeland Security Wednesday, criticizing the handling of a George W. Bush-era program that prosecutes illegal immigrants as criminals.

The Arizona Republicans complained that a congressionally mandated report on “Operation Streamline” from DHS’s Customs and Border Protection branch sent earlier in the month was insufficient.

“You had nearly a year to complete the report, which was due December 27, 2009,” Kyl and McCain said in their letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. “We had hoped that you were using those extra eight months to complete a robust analysis about how to make Operation Streamline fully operational, in particular in the Tucson Sector.”

“Instead, the seven-page report amounts to an affirmation that CBP supports Operation Streamline and a collection of statistics that could easily be found on the Internet in a matter of minutes, not months,” the senators concluded.

I haven’t seen the 7-page document produced by Customs and Border Patrol, but the Senators may want to look at Lauren Gambino’s excellent report for News21.com (“Program Prosecutes Illegal Immigrants Before Deporting Them,” August 2010) for information on the costs of fully implementing Streamline to CBP’s Tucson sector.  Gambino found that it would take an addition of 50,000 federal prison beds and between hundreds of millions of dollars and $1 billion dollars in additional annual incarceration costs to fully implement the program in the Tucson sector.  And those numbers don’t include additional court costs associated with the program.

These numbers are similar to what we found in Grassroots Leadership’s report Operation Streamline: Drowning Justice and Draining Dollars along the Rio Grande. Streamline-related detention costs in Texas have exceeded $1.2 billion since its inception in 2005.  Perhaps we should send these reports to Senators McCain and Kyl.

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Investigative piece takes on Operation Streamline; Expanding program could add 50,000 federal prison beds

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Bob Libal

Source: News21.com

Lauren Gambino at the investigative outfit News21.com has authored a terrific piece (“Program Prosecutes Illegal Immigrants Before Deporting Them,” August 2010) on the impact of Operation Streamline on the Arizona court and prison system.

The piece is worth a read in its entirety, but one of the key findings that jumped out at me was the numbers associated with the plan pushed by Senators McCain and Kyl to expand Operation Streamline to full implementation in Arizona.  Costs associated with McCain and Kyl’s plan could “run at minimum into the hundreds of millions of dollars and could have topped $1 billion,” and that

If everyone apprehended at the border in 2009 was put through Streamline, Arizona federal prisons would need an additional 51,000 beds on top of the 4,741 that currently exist. Similar expansions would be required in other states if they, too, fully implement Operation Streamline.

That’s an incredible amount of prison space that would be needed if plans to expand the program succeed, especially for a program that many advocates and federal officials say doesn’t actually deter people from crossing the border.  According to the story:

And U.S. Magistrate Judge Norbert Garney of the U.S. District Court in El Paso says he is seeing the same number of illegal immigrants pass through his courts as always.

“Does it (Streamline) discourage people from crossing the border? Of course it doesn’t,” Garney said. “Ten to 14 days [in jail] is a small price to pay for the opportunity to double, triple or even quadruple your income and start a better life for your family.”

Supervisory Federal Public Defender William Fry said he is representing just as many illegal immigrants as always in the Del Rio Sector of Texas, where Streamline has been in effect the longest.

So, who stands to benefit from this policy?  The private prison industry certainly seems one likely candidate.  Companies like GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America are already bringing hundreds of millions a year on federal detention contracts.

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Arizona leads the way in federal prosecutions; Numbers driven by immigration prosecutions

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Bob Libal

Arizona doesn’t need SB 1070, its state-level controversial immigration enforcement measure, to lead the way in criminal prosecutions for immigration violations.

TRAC has released a new report on the federal criminal prosecutions of immigrants in Arizona.  The results mirror the findings in our green paper Operation Streamline: Drowning Justice and Draining Dollars along the Rio Grande, showing that criminal prosecutions for immigration violations have pushed Arizona to the head of all districts for prosecutions for any crime:

For the first time, Arizona now leads the nation in terms of having more federal prosecutions than any other federal district in the country. So far this year nearly one out of every five (19%) of all prosecutions filed anywhere in the nation were brought in Arizona, up from 15 percent during the first year of the Obama administration. In contrast, the state accounts for just 2 percent of the nation’s population (see Table 2).
The increased concentration of federal enforcement in Arizona during the last two years contrasts with the effort during the Bush Administration. Five years ago, for example, only 7 percent of all FY 2005 federal prosecutions were filed in Arizona. In the last years of the Bush Administration (FYs 2006-2008) this rose to 11 percent of the national total, still well below current levels.

A whopping 84.5% of those prosecutions are for immigration violations.  While Arizona Senators John McCain and Jon Kyle, along with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, stump for even more border enforcement funding, the state is already leading the way in criminalizing migration.

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Republican Senators push Op. Streamline as Border Security bill appears to contain Streamline support funding

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Bob Libal

Despite last week’s $600 million border security bill which funds more border patrol agents and federal prisons, several Republican Senators have criticized the measure saying that it doesn’t go far enough to fund Operation Streamline, amongst other hawkish measures.

While the bill doesn’t explicitly fund Operation Streamline, there does appear to be Streamline-related funding tucked into the bill.  According to a US News and World Report (Senate Passes $600 Million Border Security Package, August 12) story,

The bill, sponsored by Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Claire McCaskill, will deploy 1,500 enforcement personnel to the U.S.-Mexico border and fund increased intelligence and unmanned surveillance vehicles, or drones, along the border. The measure will give $196 million to the Department of Justice to pay for U.S. attorneys, legal expenses, and a federal prison system for illegal immigrant felons, among other security measures.

The DOJ funding in particular looks like costs that are associated with the massive increase in federal prosecutions and incarceration for petty immigration violations.  That hasn’t stopped prominent Republican Senators, including Arizona’s Jon Kyle and John McCain, from pushing for more funding for Operation Streamline. In fact, fully funding Operation Streamline is part of the Arizona duo’s 10 border security point plan (KVOA.com, April 19, 2010).

Mickey McCarter at Homeland Security Today (I too, was unaware that this informative publication existed) noted last week  (No Timetable for Immigration Reform Effort, August 15) noted DHS Secretary Napolitano’s addressed the Senator’s push in a comments in a White House briefing.

“Operation Streamline has proven effective in some places where it is used.  We use it in some places,” Napolitano said. “It’s very expensive, and there are other methods that we use that are proven equally effective.  And so as you’re trying to make the best use of taxpayer dollars and make sure that they’re targeted where they can do the best — Streamline is one way. Repatriation into the interior of Mexico is another way that has proven very effective.”

Clearly momentum appears to be building for Streamline, despite its costs – both human and financial.  We’ll keep you posted on the latest developments.

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Press release: Grassroots Leadership Issues “Green Paper” on Operation Streamline

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Bob Libal

Report Stresses Impact of Streamline on Immigrants, Detention System in Texas; Calls for Repeal of Controversial Program

NEWS ADVISORY

For Immediate Release: July 19, 2010

Contact: Bob Libal, Grassroots Leadership, (512) 971-0487, blibal@grassrootsleadership.org

Austin, TX – Grassroots Leadership today issued a “green paper” of the report Operation Streamline: Drowning Justice and Draining Dollars along the Rio Grande. Operation Streamline is a controversial policy that mandates the criminal prosecution of border-crossers in certain areas.  Before Streamline, immigration was usually enforced in the civil immigration system.  The report analyzes the impact of Streamline on two border districts in Texas.

“Operation Streamline has clogged federal criminal courts with prosecutions of border-crossers,” said report co-author Tara Buentello.  ”Our report shows that Operation Streamline has had little deterrent effect on migration while it has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars.”

Key findings include that federal districts along the Texas-Mexico border have spent more than $1.2 billion in government dollars on the criminal detention and incarceration of border-crossers since the onset of Operation Streamline in 2005. More than 135,000 migrants have been criminally prosecuted in these two border districts since 2005 under two sections of the federal code that make unauthorized entry and re-entry a crime. Continue reading →

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Operation Streamline: Drowning Justice and Draining Dollars along the Rio Grande – Executive Summary

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Bob Libal

The following is the executive summary to Grassroots Leadership’s “green paper”  Operation Streamline: Drowning Justice and Draining Dollars along the Rio Grande.  The full report is available at www.grassrootsleadership.org.  This is a green paper, meaning that we invite feedback, criticism, and suggestions.

Executive Summary

Operation Streamline, a policy begun in 2005 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in conjunction with the Department of Justice (DOJ), mandates that nearly all undocumented immigrants apprehended near the southern border in designated areas be detained and prosecuted through the federal criminal justice system, a dramatic departure from previous practices when most immigration cases were handled exclusively within the civil immigration system.  According to the Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Streamline press release:

“Those aliens who are not released due to humanitarian reasons will face prosecution for illegal entry.  The maximum penalty for violation of this law is 180 days incarceration.  While the alien is undergoing criminal proceedings, the individual will also be processed for removal from the United States.”[i]

Operation Streamline’s key component is that it mandates that immigrants crossing the border in designated areas be arrested, detained while awaiting trial, prosecuted with a misdemeanor or felony charge, incarcerated in the federal justice system, and finally deported.  On December 16, 2005, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched Operation Streamline along a section of the Texas-Mexico border near Del Rio, Texas, spanning a total of 210 miles.[ii] Operation Streamline has spread to other areas along the U.S.-Mexico border, including much of Arizona and Texas. Continue reading →

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