Efforts to focus deportations on criminal immigrants face union resistance

WASHINGTON ? The federal agency in charge of deportations is conducting a training course to push immigration enforcement officers and prosecutors nationwide to focus their efforts on removing immigrants convicted of crimes.

The training course is the clearest sign yet that administration officials want to transform the way immigration officers work, asking them to make nuanced decisions to speed deportations of high- risk offenders while halting those of illegal immigrants with clean records and strong ties to the country. The policy is President Barack Obama's most ambitious immigration initiative before the November elections, senior administration officials said.

But in a sign of the deep divide on immigration, the union representing about 7,000 deportation officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, has so far not allowed its members to participate in the training.

Without the formal assent of the union, the administration's strategy could be slowed for months in labor negotiations.

Chris Crane, president of the union, the National ICE Council, has criticized the strategy, saying it amounts to orders for agents not to enforce the law. In congressional testimony, Crane accused the administration of tailoring its enforcement practices to win support for Obama's re-election.

"Law enforcement and public safety have taken a back seat to attempts to satisfy immigrant advocacy groups," Crane told a House Judiciary subcommittee in October.

Department of Homeland Security officials say the training, although only half a day, is central to bringing all ICE officers on board for an effort that they say will raise the numbers of convicted criminals among deportees and is expected to lead in coming months to unprecedented suspensions of deportations of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants.

Virtually all ICE commanding officers and prosecutors have gone through the training course and are working on the new strategy, Homeland Security Department officials said.

But because of the silence from the ICE Council, the officials will miss their Friday goal for completing the nationwide training blitz, which began in November.

Source: http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_19697152?source=rss

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