Does GOP’s “pledge” include Operation Streamline funding?

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Bob Libal

Last week, the the GOP announced it’s “Pledge for America” – a campaign tool meant to hark back to the 1994 Contract for America that lead to sweeping Republican mid-term election gains.

The Washington Independent (Elise Foley, “‘Pledge to America’ Plans for Immigration” September 23, 2010) has an interesting look at what the some of the immigration implications of the “Pledge” may be, including how it could affect Operation Streamline:

Here are the immigration-related items, followed by their likely policy implications:

Establish Operational Control of the Border
We must take action to secure our borders, and that action starts with enforcing our laws. We will ensure that the Border Patrol has the tools and authorities to establish operational control at the border and prohibit the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture from interfering with Border Patrol enforcement activities on federal lands.

Likely translation: The GOP wants more border enforcement, probably including additional troops to the border. This may include an expansion of Operation Streamline, which is part of Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyle’s 10-point border security plan. Operation Streamline mandates federal criminal prosecution of all border crossers in certain regions. Experts have questioned whether either of these methods really makes the U.S.-Mexico border safer: Critics say the border may already be saturated with troops and Operation Streamline has not been proved effective at deterring illegal immigrants.

Of course, Congressional Republicans, especially Arizona Senators McCain and Kyl, pushing for increased funding for Operation Streamline is nothing new.  What will be of interest is how an expanded GOP presence in the legislature may affect such proposals.

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Final in NPR Op. Streamline Series Addresses Costs

Posted on September 20, 2010 by tbuentello

In the third and last of NPR’s stellar series on Operation Streamline, Ted Robbins addresses lawmakers wanting to expand the program when nobody knows how much it costs, except that those costs are staggering (“Border Convictions: High Stakes, Unknown Price” September 14, 2010).

A great, direct message in five minutes, though I think the piece could have made an even greater impact had Robbins pointed out that there are three people in the country who could each singlehandedly end this policy in practice – Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of DHS Janet Napolitano, or President Obama. (For more on that, see recommendations in the Operation Streamline Green Paper).

That being said, the investigation is a five minute parade of evidence affirming that nobody really understands the huge costs of OS. However, “huge” is a relative term, and many government programs are costly, so I appreciate that Robbins took the time to make it clear that OS is different. It’s financially infeasible. U.S. Federal Judge John Roll, District of Arizona:

“[If they implemented OS fully, the Tucson district] would have more cases than the rest of the entire country. You would take the resources now, for the entire country, and just double it, and put that in Arizona.”

Other illustrations of Streamline’s infeasibility? If the program met its stated goal of zero tolerance, Tuscon would have 1,000 immigration cases every weekday, totaling a quarter million prosecutions a year and $1 billion in annual costs to taxpayers. Clearly worse than the roughly 200 a day processed now . . . in a court designed to hold 100 cases a day.

When compared to the multiple, concrete costs listed in the story, the vague statements of those supporting expansion fall flat. Most shameless, however, was Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl. I couldn’t help but cringe at how lightly he takes his responsibilities as a legislator: “We have to guess at it. We’ll give $50 million [to fund OS in Arizona]. How much will that do?”

That $50 million won’t ensure a fair judicial process for the immigrants ensnared in this program. It won’t deter most of them from re-entering, just as it didn’t deter them from entering in the first place. It won’t even free resources to worry about other crimes the federal courts should be prosecuting. And that $50 million most certainly won’t be enough, whatever one can mean by “enough” when this program shouldn’t even be continued in the first place.

To hear more details about OS costs, and more empty excuses for expanding it, hear the full story here: “Border Convictions: High Stakes, Unknown Price“

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Second in NPR series rebuts DHS justifications for Operation Streamline

Posted on September 16, 2010 by tbuentello

On Monday afternoon, Ted Robbins followed up on his much-needed review of due process concerns in the criminal justice system with an impressive critique of the three justifications Border Patrol continually uses to defend Operation Streamline (“Claims of Border Patrol Success are Unproven” September 13).

While the piece is thorough, what jumped out to me was how little information was needed to see that not a single justification for Operation Streamline has much basis in actual data.

This fact was almost comically clear when Department of Homeland Security’s Matt Chandler made a data-bereft, vague statement about Operation Streamline being a “valuable tool” in decreasing the number of border-crossers. Follow this with the commonsense reasoning of University of Arizona law professor Mark Miller:

“If dying in the desert is not a deterrent, it’s hard to imagine why spending no or little time in federal prison and being returned to your home country is a deterrent.”

Not allowed access to Operation Streamline detainees in the states, Robbins visited a food center for deported immigrants in Sonora. While the 30 with OS convictions who revealed they will try to re-enter despite the risk of further imprisonment is by no means a statistically representative sample, that’s 85% of OS deportees in one site saying the program does not deter them. It makes the government’s assertion that only 20% attempt re-entry seem more-than-dubious, if it didn’t already.

Robbins investigates two more justifications, dealing with each each quickly. Border Patrol’s assertion that apprehensions are already down because of the program? During the same time period that Operation Streamline has been growing, Border Patrol has beefed up security through staff, technology, infrastructure, and physical barriers. Not to mention the United States has been in an economic recession, a situation which always brings with it decreased immigration numbers.

How about the claim that convicting non-violent border crossers frees resources for pursuing drug offenses, violent crime, and white collar crime? Turns out, the only border district that appears to support that claim . . . isn’t participating in the Operation Streamline Program. When data from OS districts is analyzed, prosecutions of “serious crimes” (non-immigration) are actually down 10% when one looks at each OS district from when the policy was enacted to the end of 2009.

The story is a quick listen. Turns out it’s not that hard to see how empty the reasons are for continuing Operation Streamline. Find it here: Claims of Border Patrol Success are Unproven

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First in NPR series on Op. Streamline documents due process concerns

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Bob Libal

NPR’s Ted Robbins is rolling out an excellent in-depth 3-part series documenting the impact of Operation Streamline on the federal criminal justice system along the Southern Border.  The first in the series (“Border Patrol Program Raises Due Process Concerns” September 13) addresses the serious due process concerns raised by Operation Streamline.  The story describes the program as a “daily, systematic mass sentencing … unlike anything in U.S. judicial history.”

Perhaps the most poignant quote in the story comes from Heather Williams, an assistant federal defender in Tuscon.

Imagine, she says, if the tables were turned.

“What if your sister was in custody in France, or in Uganda, or in Thailand, and was treated and was shuffled through a process all in one day where they could be facing up to six months in prison, the way that people in Mexico and Central America are being shepherded through in this. The United States government would be absolutely outraged, and they’d be right in being outraged,” Williams says.

See the entire story here.  We’ll cover the rest of Robbins excellent series as the week progresses.

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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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