Tracking down deportation targets
Federal agents are briefed before going out into the Riverside community to apprehend immigrants who may be deportable. In the past, the agency would simply contact local jails where such immigrants were being detained and ask jail officials to hold them until an ICE van could pick them up, but hundreds of counties across the country stopped honoring such requests after a federal judge last year found that practice unconstitutional.
Originally formed to locate immigrants who had failed to comply with a judge’s deportation order, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement program is increasingly being used to find immigrants with criminal convictions who have recently been let out of jail.
