{"id":3281,"date":"2009-07-29T18:37:37","date_gmt":"2009-07-29T18:36:18","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-29T18:36:18","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=3281","title":{"rendered":"Cardozo Immigration Justice Clinic report: Constitution on Ice: A Report on Immigration Home Raid Operations<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new report out by the Cardozo Immigration Justice Clinic on ICE immigration home raids: Constitution on Ice: A Report on Immigration Home Raid Operations<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The executive summary:<\/p>\n

During the last two years of the Bush Administration, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) vastly expanded its use of home raid operations as a method to locate and apprehend individuals suspected of civil immigration law violations. These home raids generally involve teams of heavily armed ICE agents making predawn tactical entries into homes, purportedly to apprehend some high priority target believed to be residing therein. ICE has admitted that these are warrantless raids and, therefore, that any entries into homes require the informed consent of residents. However, frequent accounts in the media and in legal filings have told a similar story of constitutional violations occurring during ICE home raids \u2014 a story that includes ICE agents breaking into homes and seizing all occupants without legal basis.<\/p>\n

This report is the first public effort to compile and analyze the available evidence regarding the prevalence of constitutional violations occurring during ICE home raids. Through two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, the authors of this report obtained significant samples of ICE arrest records from home raid operations in New York and New Jersey. Analysis of these records, together with other publicly available documents, reveals an established pattern of misconduct by ICE agents in the New York and New Jersey Field Offices. Further, the evidence suggests that such pattern may be a widespread national phenomenon reaching beyond these local offices. The pattern of misconduct involves:<\/p>\n

\u2022 ICE agents illegally entering homes without legal authority \u2013 for example, physically pushing or breaking their way into private residences.<\/p>\n

\u2022 ICE agents illegally seizing non-target individuals during home raid operations \u2013 for example, seizing innocent people in their bedrooms without any basis.<\/p>\n

\u2022 ICE agents illegally searching homes without legal authority \u2013 for example, breaking down locked doors inside homes.<\/p>\n

\u2022 ICE agents illegally seizing individuals based solely on racial or ethnic appearance or on limited English proficiency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The report analyzes the variety of factors that have contributed to this pattern of ICE misconduct including: 2006 changes in ICE performance expectations; the inability of suppression motions or civil lawsuits to serve as a meaningful deterrent to ICE misconduct; and serious management and oversight failures by ICE supervisors. In order to correct course and to improve the ability of ICE to carry out its mission, we propose several policy recommendations aimed at: setting appropriate limits on the use of home raids; revising ICE\u2019s warrant & consent practices; improving supervision and training of ICE home raid teams; minimizing harm to local community policing efforts; minimizing the intrusion to non-targets encountered during ICE home raids; and improving accountability for ICE agents and supervisors involved in illegal home raids. Our key recommendations include, among others:<\/p>\n

\u2022 ICE should use home raids as a tactic of last resort, and then, only to make criminal arrests or civil arrests for targets who pose a real risk to national security or who have violent criminal records. <\/p>\n

\u2022 ICE should obtain judicial warrants in advance of any home raid. <\/p>\n

\u2022 ICE should require a high level supervisor to be on site for any home raid. <\/p>\n

\u2022 ICE should videotape home raids.<\/p>\n

\u2022 ICE should issue clear guidance that the sole objective of a home raid is to apprehend the target \u2014 agents should not generally question non-targets encountered about matters other than the location of the target.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The Department of Homeland Security\u2019s (DHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) should undertake an investigation of the pattern of misconduct established in this report to better assess the national scope of the problem. <\/p>\n

\u2022 DHS and\/or the Department of Justice should enact regulations disallowing the use of evidence in immigration removal proceedings when such evidence has been obtained through violation of the Constitution.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}