Who Is ICE Arresting and Deporting? The Answers Aren't Clear

It isn't easy to sort through immigration data about who U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is arresting and deporting.

The federal agency often cites the statistic that 90 percent of individuals arrested have either criminal convictions, pending criminal charges, or already were subject to a removal order issued by a federal immigration judge.

The priority for deportation are individuals who "pose the greatest threat to national security, public safety and border security," said ICE spokeswoman Tanya Roman. Under President Barack Obama this had been the standard, but President Donald Trump through executive order broadened enforcement.

But ICE data obtained by Syracuse University and the University of Washington's Center for Human Rights shows that more than half of undocumented individuals detained in jails had no criminal convictions. Many who were incarcerated for criminal charges committed DUIs or other traffic offenses.

The data that does exist on state and national levels is sparse, offering only composites of how many individuals have criminal convictions, pending charges or neither.

Data about the number of individuals with criminal convictions or pending charges who have been transported out of the Yakima Air Terminal at McAllister Field, since ICE started using the airport on May 7, is available only through filing Freedom of Information Act requests.

The flights have raised concerns in Yakima, where almost half of the population is Hispanic, with multiple people saying at City Council meetings that their families are afraid to go anywhere near the airport or even leave their houses for fear that they'll get swept up and deported in indiscriminate raids.

Roman said that's not the case: ICE conducts only targeted enforcement, with no indiscriminate raids or "sweeps," she said. But she added that anyone in violation of immigration laws, regardless of their criminal history, can be deported in keeping with ICE's overall mission.

"All of those in violation of the immigration laws, including those who illegally re-entered the country after being removed, may be subject to immigration arrest, detention, and if found removable by final order, removed from the United States," she said.

Who is being arrested?

Nationwide, 73 percent of those arrested outside of prison or jail had criminal convictions or pending charges, according to ICE data for fiscal year 2018. Twenty-seven percent did not.

Statewide data shows that ICE arrested 4,359 individuals in Washington state in fiscal year 2018. Of those, 67 percent had criminal convictions, 25 percent had pending criminal charges and 8 percent had neither, according to ICE data.

Bryan Wilcox, the acting field director of enforcement and removal efforts for ICE-Seattle, estimated that 54 percent of those undocumented individuals incarcerated at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma are asylum seekers without criminal records.

"The people we are bringing into Yakima and then to the detention center are almost exclusively from the southern border seeking asylum," he said. "We are relieving those facilities. We are bringing them here, where it's less crowded and there is better housing."

Wilcox estimated that the remaining 46 percent at the detention center, whom are people he said have been arrested locally, have "overwhelmingly criminal histories." ICE defines "overwhelming criminal" as anything from assault to resisting an officer to a DUI.

In February, the Yakima County jail stopped handing over to ICE inmates who were arrested on local charges and eligible for release. The change came as part of a settlement negotiated by Columbia Legal Services and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, whose data showed 47 percent of ICE arrests were happening at local jails, and that between 2014 and 2018, a quarter of those arrested had no criminal record while others were cited for minor offenses involving traffic violations.

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, hosted by Syracuse University, also monitors federal immigration enforcement activity at the county level.

In December 2018, 641 out of 1,186 detainees in Pierce County, or 54 percent, had no criminal conviction. Pierce County is home to Tacoma and the detention center.

One detainee from Yakima County had a DUI charge classified as a "most serious criminal conviction," according to Martha Rickey, an attorney with the Northwest Justice Project.

"I think the trend is clear that ICE either doesn't share or describes criminality in remarkably exaggerated terms," Rickey said.

National data on ICE arrests for 2018 shows that, for the 87 percent of individuals who had criminal convictions or pending charges, the three most frequent crimes were DUI traffic offenses, dangerous drug charges or other traffic offenses.

Who is being deported?

A report from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, published in April, sheds some light on those who were deported out of Boeing Field in King County.

The center filed FOIA requests in 2018 and reportedly received a copy of ICE's Alien Repatriation Tracking System database, with

1.73 million records on nearly 15,000 ICE Air operations at the airport from October 2010 through December 2018.

Of those in the database, 52 percent of individuals who had been deported had no criminal record, according to the report.

But the report noted that the removals in the ICE database only represented 44 to 53 percent of all total removals, leaving questions about why the remaining deportations weren't logged.

"In the absence of transparency surrounding these processes, troubling questions arise, not only about the treatment and ultimate fate of thousands of people, but about the accuracy of all the information provided by the U.S. government about immigration enforcement," the report noted.

Roman said all individuals removed from the United States using Yakima's airport had final orders of removal and that ICE maintains meticulous records about the immigration and criminal histories of those in ICE custody.

She pointed to ICE's 2018 enforcement and removal operations report, which provides data at national and statewide levels.

According to that data, 66 percent of individuals removed by the agency on a national level had criminal records or pending charges -- meaning that 34 percent had neither.

In Washington, ICE removed 2,371 individuals in fiscal year 2018. Of those, 74 percent classified as having criminal convictions, 13 percent had pending charges and 13 percent had neither.

When asked, neither Roman nor Wilcox could say how many of the individuals transported out of Yakima to date had criminal records or pending charges, or how many of the flights were used for purposes other than ultimate deportation -- which Roman said can include transporting people to important court hearings or to jails closer to their families.

"I have no figures on the folks who are leaving," Wilcox said. "Locally, we don't track that. Most are on their way to being removed from the United States and it's a mix of criminals and non-criminals."

Roman told the Yakima Herald-Republic to submit a FOIA request for any additional information. The newspaper is in the process of doing so.

David Morales, an attorney with the Northwest Justice Project in Yakima, noted that information about who is on the flights out of Yakima has been equally difficult for him to attain.

"ICE has made some assertions, but the assertions seem to be limited to either specific cases or subsects of the population," he said. "We have identified some individuals on those planes through families and attorneys, but the flight manifests are typically protected from disclosure."

Humanitarian concerns

Roman said that ICE removes individuals humanely and in full compliance with domestic law.

But La Resistencia, a grassroots collective led by undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens based in Tacoma, disagrees.

The group issued a news release Friday about Jose Velarde Quinonez, a man with cancer who underwent surgery less than a month ago and still requires post-operative care. Quinonez had been deported July 9 from Tacoma despite recommendations from medical professionals.

ICE first attempted to deport Quinonez on June 24, but a doctor ordered a halt to the proceedings. Medical staff at the detention center cleared Quinonez's deportation this time, despite the fact that he likely will not be able to receive medical care in Mexico, according to the La Resistencia news release.

Maru Mora Villalpando, spokeswoman for the group, also noted that Jose Martin Delgado Jaimes had been deported despite the need for continued dialysis and medical treatments and has since died.

Yakima City Councilman Jason White said he has heard humanitarian concerns about the flights from his constituents, mainly about what he called handcuffs -- the metal handcuffs, waist chains and leg irons used to restrain individuals while boarding and during flights.

"People don't want them handcuffed," White said. "But handcuffing is standard procedure when you break the law, and not just in immigration law. I want to make sure that their constitutional rights are upheld as well, but I do support the general mission of ICE to get violent criminals off the streets."

The UW Center for Human Rights report raised questions about human rights abuses as well as other possible constitutional rights violations -- including that more than 8,000 people had been deported from the King County airport while their legal processes were still pending.

The report also noted that asylum seekers from Central America and Mexico -- who make up 95 percent of removals -- frequently had asylum claims related to violence or targeting by gangs denied. Other groups have been affected as well.

"While Mexican and Central Americans are by far the most numerous, recent years have seen an uptick in deportations from other longstanding Puget Sound communities, including resettled refugees from Somalia and Cambodia who now face deportation to countries they fled as refugees of U.S. fueled conflicts," the report noted.

Roman said ICE will continue to carry out its mission to enforce U.S. immigration laws.

"State and local efforts thwarting ICE operations serve only to create additional security concerns and add significant delays and costs to U.S. taxpayers," she said.

Reach Lex Talamo at ltalamo@yakimaherald.com or on Twitter: @LexTalamo.