ICE leader at UVa: Focus shifts to deporting illegals who commit crimes while in U.S.

Federal investigators are focusing more on finding and deporting illegal alien criminals and less on illegals living stable lives, the nation’s top immigration and customs enforcement said Monday.

John Morton, director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security, told a University of Virginia School of Law audience that his department refocused to remove unlawful immigrants who are dangerous or are border-crossing scofflaws.

“We deport about 400,000 unlawful immigrants a year and there are an estimated 11 million unlawful immigrants in this country,” Morton said. “If ICE can only move 400,000 a year, we have to focus on who those people are going to be.”

Morton, who earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a law degree from UVa, spoke at a Student Legal Forum program.

ICE enforces American immigration laws and investigates and prosecutes customs violations, including human trafficking, weapons dealers, child pornography and copyright piracy.

Morton said the number of illegal immigrants detained and deported has increased by 80 percent in the past three years. About 55 percent of ICE cases involve criminal behavior, 20 percent repeat border crossers and 11.5 percent caught crossing borders illegally. About 5 percent of cases involved fugitives from immigration enforcement action.

Morton credited the department’s Secure Communities program, in which fingerprints and information on every arrest made are sent to the FBI and ICE to determine whether the arrestee is an immigrant, documented or otherwise.

ICE evaluates the immigrants’ status and the arrest to determine what, if any, action immigration officials should take.

“If you can identify [criminals] and take them out of the jails before they hit the streets again, you have created a safer community,” Morton said. “The program does not authorize local law enforcement to make decisions on immigration status. We still investigate it. It just gives us a notice that someone has been arrested so we can investigate.”

ICE is less likely to detain and deport those undocumented aliens who have jobs, families, who are veterans or are over 65.

“That doesn’t mean they won’t be in our process, but they are not our priorities,” Morton said. “We are focusing our resources on the targeted areas.”

Morton noted that fingerprints are routinely run through the FBI’s records to check the identification of an arrestee and to determine if the person has committed any crimes or is wanted in other jurisdictions. He said adding the ICE review of arrests is not a privacy violation.

“We have to protect the government and citizens of this country because there are people who want to take advantage of it and who want to do it harm, but you can’t lose yourself in the process,” he said in an interview prior to his law school talk. “In immigration, you want to have strong enforcement of your immigration laws, but you want strong and lawful commerce and you want people to come and visit or live and work. We want that flow.”

Debate regarding immigration laws and policies is continuing, Morton said, but so far there has been little change in the system. And, although the department is setting priorities, Morton said the nation’s immigration laws and process need to be refined.

 “The law doesn’t work very well,” he said in the interview. “There’s no doubt that the laws need to be reformed and have needed reform for more than 40 years, but the problem is that there is no agreement about what that reform should look like.”

Morton said true immigration reform will take compromise.

“Real reform needs to address policy, but we’re also going to have to balance how to treat people who have been here a long time, who have family here and a car in the driveway and maybe a child in high school or college,” he said. “It’s going to take both sides coming together for the good of the country.”