Customs Enforcement Research Articles

Migrant Detention Turns Deadlier

A Guatemalan man died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody on May 24, 2020 after testing positive for Covid-19. Thirty-four-year-old Santiago Baten-Oxlaj was a husband and father of three...

Sheltering in Place in a Xenophobic Climate: COVID-19 and Children in Immigrant Families.

* Abbreviations: CIF — : children in immigrant families COVID-19 — : coronavirus disease DACA — : Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ICE — : Immigration and Customs Enforcement LEP — : limited English proficiency SDH — : social determinant of health TPS — : temporary protected status WIC — : Women, Infants, and Children Program Like many health conditions that disproportionately impact vulnerable populations of color, we expect that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic will inequitably affect the health and livelihoods of immigrant families. One in 4 children (>18 million) in the United States lives in an immigrant family, in which the child or ≥1 parent was born outside the United States.1 Among children in immigrant families (CIF), >7 million live in “mixed-status” families, meaning ≥1 parent is not a US citizen.2 Before the COVID-19 pandemic, immigrant families faced increasingly restrictive policies and discrimination. Regardless of legal status, CIF experience increased health and social risks compared with peers in nonimmigrant families, including lower rates of health insurance coverage and higher poverty levels.3 The COVID-19 pandemic amplifies existing inequities and introduces new ones as immigrant families navigate school closures, lack of health insurance and paid leave, and decisions to seek medical care or public services amid ongoing immigration enforcement. Additionally, immigrant families are more likely to live in multigenerational households,4 heightening the risk of COVID-19 for multiple family members. Families with limited English proficiency (LEP) must decipher rapidly evolving public health directives, such as “shelter-in-place” orders and recommendations for mask-wearing, without multilingual and culturally relevant messaging. Underlying these challenges is the implicit presumption of a safe place in shelter-in-place and social distancing directives. For immigrant families seeking safe haven in the United States, “place” may include violence and abject poverty, both in home countries and at the US border. For CIF in US communities coping with persistent fears of immigration enforcement and family separation, … Address correspondence to Rushina Cholera, Duke University School of Medicine, 200 Morris St, 3rd Floor, Durham, NC 27701. E-mail: rushina.cholera{at}duke.edu

Opt-out Testing Pilot for Sexually Transmitted Infections Among Immigrant Detainees at 2 Immigration and Customs Enforcement Health Service Corps-Staffed Detention Facilities, 2018.

Correctional settings (prisons, jails, detention facilities) provide a unique opportunity to screen for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among correctional populations with a high prevalence of infection. Immigrant detainees are a distinct and poorly described correctional population. The main objective of this study was to determine the feasibility of a national STI screening program for immigrant detainees. We developed an opt-out STI testing program that included electronic health record integration, patient education, and staff member training. We piloted this program from June 22 through August 19, 2018, at 2 detention facilities with different operational requirements and detainee demographic characteristics. We assessed STI test positivity rates, treatment outcomes, estimated cost to conduct testing and counseling, and staff member perceptions of program value and challenges to implementation. Of 1041 immigrant detainees approached for testing, 526 (50.5%) declined. Of 494 detainees who were tested, 42 (8.5%) tested positive for at least 1 STI; the percentage positivity rates were 6.7% (n = 33) for chlamydia, 0.8% (n = 4) for syphilis, 0.8% (n = 4) for gonorrhea, 0.6% (n = 3) for hepatitis B, and 0.2% (n = 1) for HIV. The estimated cost to detect any STI ranged from $500 to $961; the estimated cost to identify 1 person infected with HIV ranged from $22 497 to $43 244. Forty of 42 persons who tested positive began treatment before release from custody. Medical staff members had positive views of the program but had concerns about workload. STIs are prevalent among immigrant detainees. A routine screening program is feasible if operational aspects are carefully considered and would provide counseling, education, and treatment for this vulnerable population.

Latinxs in La Migra: Why They Join and Why It Matters

Once an exclusively white enterprise, the last forty-five years have witnessed the emergence of a disproportionately Latinx immigration law enforcement workforce. This article addresses the question of why Latinxs elect to work for agencies that have systematically targeted the ethnic communities to which they belong. Where existing scholarship has often implied Latinxs may self-select into immigration law enforcement due to a lack of identification with the immigrant-experience, a dissociation with ethnic identity, and generally restrictionist immigration attitudes, this article finds little empirical evidence to support such an assumption. Analysis of interviews with sixty-one Latinx Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents across Arizona, California, and Texas reveals, instead, Latinxs elect to work in immigration law enforcement in service of economic self-interest and survival, with “money,” “a good job,” and “benefits” cited as the primary motivation(s) behind applying for and accepting a job in immigration. This pattern holds irrespective of individual agents’ levels of identification with the immigrant-experience and particular attitudes toward immigration, and suggests a diversity in the demographics of immigration law enforcement agencies that extends beyond mere race and ethnicity, to include a diversity of perspective and potential for empathy.

COVID-19 and Kidney Disease Disparities in the United States

Racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, age, and sex-related health disparities in kidney disease are prominent in the United States. The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has disproportionately affected marginalized populations. Older adults, people experiencing unstable housing, racial and ethnic minorities, and immigrants are potentially at increased risk for infection and severe complications from COVID-19. The direct and societal effects of the pandemic may increase risk of incident kidney disease and lead to worse outcomes for those with kidney disease. The rapid transition to telemedicine potentially limits access to care for older adults, immigrants, and people experiencing unstable housing. The economic impact of the pandemic has had a disproportionate effect on women, minorities, and immigrants, which may limit their ability to manage kidney disease and lead to complications or kidney disease progression. We describe the impact of COVID-19 on marginalized populations and highlight how the pandemic may exacerbate existing disparities in kidney disease.

'This Is Not a Patient, This Is Property of the State': Nursing, ethics, and the immigrant detention apparatus.

This paper opens with first-hand accounts of critical care medical interventions in which detainees, in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are brought to the emergency department for treatment. This case dramatizes the extent to which the provision of ethical and acceptable nursing care is jeopardized by federal law enforcement paradigms. Drawing on the scholarship of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, this paper offers a theoretical account of the power dynamics that inform the health care of patients who find themselves caught in the custodial scaffolding of a vast immigration and detention apparatus. It offers an analysis of the display of sovereign and biopolitical power over the lives (and deaths) of detainees (Foucault), as well as the ways these individuals are reduced to "bare life" under the political pretext of an emergency or "state of exception" (Agamben). Our purpose here is both theoretical and practical: to better understand the often hidden agency or impersonal "will" exercised by the immigrant detention system, but also to equip clinicians in these and cognate facilities (e.g., prisons) with the critical tools by which they might better navigate incommensurable paradigms (i.e., care vs. custody) in order to deliver the best care while upholding their ethical duties as a care provider. This is all the more pressing because hospitals are not sanctuaries and given the incursion of federal law enforcement agents, nurses may find themselves conscripted as de facto agents of the state.

Mapping Interfacial Regimes of Control: A Qualitative Analysis of America’s Post-9/11 Security Technology Infrastructure

Recent technological advancements in surveillance and data analysis software have drastically transformed how the United States manages its immigration and national security systems. In particular, an increased emphasis on information sharing and predictive threat modeling following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has prompted agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security to acquire powerful data analysis software from private sector vendors, including those in Silicon Valley. However, the impacts of these private sector technologies, especially in the context of privacy rights and civil liberties, are not yet fully understood. This article interrogates those potential impacts, particularly on the lives of immigrants, by analyzing the relational database system Investigative Case Management (ICM), which is used extensively by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track, manage, and enforce federal immigration policy. As a theoretical framework, the we use Benjamin Bratton’s concept of the “interfacial regime,” or the layered assemblages of interfaces that exist in modern networked ICT infrastructures. By conducting a document analysis, we attempt to visually situate ICM within the federal government’s larger interfacial regime that is composed by various intertwined databases both within and outside the government’s realm of management. Furthermore, we question and critique the role ICM plays in surveilling and governing the lives of immigrants and citizens alike.

Fatal prescriptions: Immigration detention, mismedication, and the necropolitics of uncare

This article focuses on detention care and its deadly consequences in the United States. Between October 2003 and October 2019, there were at least 196 deaths in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, many the result of grossly inadequate medical practices. Drawing on the case of Juan Carlos Baires, who was denied antiretroviral medication, the essay argues that, rather than being beneficiaries of care, noncitizens in detention are often victims of uncare—of a dearth or absence of both affective (concern about) and practical (providing for) care. The consequence of this uncare is that migrant lives are imperiled to the point of death.

COVID-19 Outbreaks in US Immigrant Detention Centers: The Urgent Need to Adopt CDC Guidelines for Prevention and Evaluation.

There have been several significant outbreaks of COVID-19 in federal immigrant detention centers, which lack clear and consistent guidelines across Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies to limit the spread of COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued detailed guidelines for the control, prevention, and evaluation of COVID-19 in detention facilities. While the DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has stated that it complies with CDC recommendations, its policies significantly differ from these CDC guidelines, placing detainees at risk for contracting COVID-19. This submission urges the adoption of CDC guidelines across DHS-associated facilities. Such a policy change has the potential to protect and save the lives of the most vulnerable populations under the auspices of the federal government.

Permanent Injury Beyond Medical Intervention: Disguising Death in U.S. Immigrant Detention

Between 2003-2015 over 150 deaths occurred across public and private Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities. The additional deaths in 2018 of migrant children under ICE custody have come to question the exact daily operations of ICE by immigration activists across the globe. Despite these fatal conditions, immigrant detention facilities routinely pass federal audits and are rarely held accountable for their deficiencies. We analyze qualitative and quantitative data obtained through Freedom of Information Request (FOIR) that include 5 years of data (2008-2012) across 116 of the largest ICE detention facilities. Looking specifically at 106 immigration detention contracts and 181 office of detention oversight audits, we conclude that ICE creates a framework of obscurity around troubling conditions to disavow the agency from responsibility for administrative detainee’s deaths and poor health. These frames, legitimacy through documentation, benevolent dictatorship, and the detainee as a self-serving opportunist, allow ICE to reinforce the legitimacy of the immigrant detention network despite the awful conditions creating a potential human rights crisis. Our analysis also demonstrates how immigration detention facilities fortify structural legitimacy to continue intergovernmental service agreements with providers despite poor performance reviews. Specifically, phrases such as Permanent Injury Beyond Medical Intervention are used as key mechanisms of obscurity in the failure of medical services, emergency medical service, transfer of custody, and suicide prevention. The vague and generic terminology of Permanent Injury Beyond Medical Intervention serves to protect the interests of the immigrant detention center at the expense of detainees especially in cases of death. After providing background and descriptive on immigrant detention facilities, we construct a theoretical framework to explain the intersections of race and legal violence. Then, we offer three different conceptual frames to show how ICE operators make sense of negligence and deficiency.

Modeling COVID-19 and Its Impacts on U.S. Immigration and CustomsEnforcement (ICE) Detention Facilities, 2020.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities house thousands of undocumented immigrants in environments discordant with the public health recommendations to reduce the transmission of 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Using ICE detainee population data obtained from the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) website as of March 2, 2020, we implemented a simple stochastic susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered model to estimate the rate of COVID-19 transmission within 111 ICE detention facilities and then examined impacts on regional hospital intensive care unit (ICU) capacity. Models considered three scenarios of transmission (optimistic, moderate, pessimistic) over 30-, 60-, and 90-day time horizons across a range of facility sizes. We found that 72% of individuals are expected to be infected by day 90 under the optimistic scenario (R0 = 2.5), while nearly 100% of individuals are expected to be infected by day 90 under a more pessimistic (R0 = 7) scenario. Although asynchronous outbreaks are more likely, day 90 estimates provide an approximation of total positive cases after all ICE facility outbreaks. We determined that, in the most optimistic scenario, coronavirus outbreaks among a minimum of 65 ICE facilities (59%) would overwhelm ICU beds within a 10-mile radius and outbreaks among a minimum of 8 ICE facilities (7%) would overwhelm local ICU beds within a 50-mile radius over a 90-day period, provided every ICU bed was made available for sick detainees. As policymakers seek to rapidly implement interventions that ensure the continued availability of life-saving medical resources across the USA, they may be overlooking the pressing need to slow the spread of COVID-19 infection in ICE’s detention facilities. Preventing the rapid spread necessitates intervention measures such as granting ICE detainees widespread release from an unsafe environment by returning them to the community.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s11524-020-00441-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Ending Forced Labor In ICE Detention Centers: A New Approach

Privately managed detention centers hold the majority of immigrant detainees in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. Coerced detainee labor in these for-profit facilities is commonplace. The practice contributes significantly to the financial viability of CoreCivic and GEO Group, the two corporations that manage ICE detention centers, but it violates the prohibition on forced labor contained in the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act. This Article provides the first scholarly assessment of a wave of pending class action lawsuits challenging forced labor in privately managed ICE facilities under the TVPA. It concludes that given the breadth of the TVPA and facts revealed in discovery, these lawsuits are likely to succeed and may cause fundamental changes to the current system of mass immigration detention.

Every house a sanctuary: Fighting displacement on all fronts in Sunset Park, Brooklyn

The right to housing has been a key focus for both immigrant rights and anti-gentrification activists in the United States. In this update, I highlight the ways in which these come together in the neighborhood of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York. In 2019, the neighborhood was specifically targeted in a series of raids by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement resulting in a rapid mobilization of existing anti-gentrification networks to protect those vulnerable. I argue that this mobilization and its success highlights contradictions in liberal, pro-immigrant rights discourses that ignore the increasing threat of gentrification in “sanctuary cities.” Recognizing and exploiting this contradiction provides a way forward for thinking about secure housing as a requirement for sanctuary.

Going National: Immigration Enforcement and the Politicization of Local Police

ABSTRACTThis article develops a theory of when and how political nationalization increases interest in local elections using evidence from county sheriff elections. A quintessentially local office, the sheriff has long enjoyed buffers from ideological or partisan politics. However, many sheriff elections since 2016 were waged on ideological grounds as progressive challengers—often backed by outside money—linked their campaigns to opposition to President Trump. I argue that this “redirected nationalization” becomes possible when a salient national issue impinges on a local government service, enabling challengers to expand the scope of conflict against valence-advantaged incumbents. In the highly nationalized 2018 midterm election, the question of cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the nation’s jails provided a compelling link between local sheriffs and national politics, infusing new interest and energy in these races. Although redirected nationalization can help align local policies with voter preferences, the politicization of local law enforcement also might undermine police professionalism and credibility.

Pulmonary Tuberculosis Disease Among Immigrant Detainees: Rapid Disease Detection, High Prevalence of Asymptomatic Disease, and Implications for Tuberculosis Prevention.

Rapid screening for tuberculosis (TB) disease at intake into immigrant detention facilities allows for early detection and treatment. Detention facilities with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Health Service Corps (IHSC) medical staffing utilize chest radiography and symptom screening as the primary screening for pulmonary TB (PTB) disease. This analysis describes the demographic, clinical, and microbiological characteristics of individuals identified with TB disease at these facilities. We conducted a retrospective analysis to describe the population of immigrant detainees identified via chest radiography with PTB disease between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2016 at facilities with IHSC medical staffing. We collected demographic variables, clinical presentation, diagnostic testing results, and microbiological findings. We generated descriptive statistics and examined univariate and multivariate associations between the variables collected and symptomatic status. We identified 327 patients with confirmed PTB disease (incidence rate, 92.8 per 100 000); the majority of patients were asymptomatic (79.2%) at diagnosis. Adjusting for all other variables in the model, the presence of cavitary lesions, acid-fast bacillus smear positivity, and multilobar presentation were significantly associated with symptomatic status. Among all patients identified with TB disease who had a tuberculin skin test (TST) result recorded, 27.2% were both asymptomatic and TST negative, including those with smear-positive disease. Asymptomatic PTB disease is a significant clinical entity among immigrant detainees and placement in a congregate setting calls for aggressive screening to prevent transmission. Early identification, isolation, and treatment of TB disease benefit not only the health of the patient, but also the surrounding community.

COVID-19 and the coming epidemic in US immigration detention centres

Individuals in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention are at risk from serious consequences resulting from the rapid spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and inadequate access to appropriate medical care. This situation represents a moral and public health imperative for rapid action by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to mitigate the human toll of the pandemic.

EU Ethical Charter on the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Judicial Systems with a part of the law being established on Blockchain as a trojan horse anti-counterfeiting in a Global perspective

In 2018 the use of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms in European judicial systems remains primarily a private-sector commercial initiative aimed at insurance companies, legal departments, lawyers and individuals. The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) of the Council of Europe in the 4 of the december 2018 has adopted the first european text setting out ethical principles relating to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in judicial systems. The Charter provides a framework of principles that can guide policy makers, legislators and justice professionals when they grapple with the rapid development of AI in national judicial processes. Aside from the benefits for copyright traceability and management, blockchain can also become a central means for protecting digital assets and provide the rightholder with the ability to pursue civil and criminal remedies. The Anti-Counterfeiting Blokathon Forum on 2018 takes forward its works on using blockchain to cocreate the future EU anti-counterfeiting infrastructure. Could blockchain live up to the challenge? Any future anti-counterfeiting blockchain solution must comply with Regulation (EU) No 608/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 June 2013 concerning customs enforcement of intellectual property rights, and with Ethical Charter made from CEPEJ in the 2018.

COVID-19 and immigration detention in the USA: time to act

COVID-19 and immigration detention in the USA: time to act

APA Condemns Use of Therapy Records in Immigration Cases

APA Condemns Use of Therapy Records in Immigration Cases

"Did I see what I really saw?" Violence, percepticide, and dangerous seeing after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid.

We use a violence framework to describe an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid, and the subsequent cultural and structural violence that played out in one community after the raid. First, we focus on testimonies given about the ICE raids at two city council meetings, compared with how the raids were characterized in the local paper. We document cultural and structural violence in the newspaper reporting, through ideology and narratives (as forms of cultural violence) and percepticide (as a form of structural violence). We then analyze the process undertaken by 9-12-year-old youth researchers to construct a problem definition, and the script they wrote to explain the problem. We describe the "dangerous seeing" they engaged in to decode fictions about violence and create a rupture for solidarity and social action. Finally, we examine how elementary school leadership responded to these youth. Through fieldnotes, we document the cultural violence (via the control of public space) and structural violence (via percepticide and the obscuring of the social origins of social problems) perpetrated by school leadership.