Lost In Detention During The Obama Administration (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

[Music] tonight on front fire as a candidate he promised to fix the immigration system this the system just isn't worth and we need to change it as President Obama Crackdown hard what did he give us a million people been deported Frontline the investigative reporting workshop and correspondent Maria inohosa the investigate Obama's tough immigration enforcement as of the president ended up enacting the Republican agenda what the president is doing is enforcing a law of the land examining his promise to deport heartened criminals one thousand murderers six thousand sex offenders forty five thousand serious drug violators while critics say the program has swept up thousands of immigrants with no criminal record a mother who had a broken tail light being separated maybe forever from her children they don't understand how their mother could have been thrown out of the country and investigating conditions in the vast network of immigrant detention centers women harassed for sexual favors gar has taken detainees and beating them running him down like they were animals tonight how politics of immigration are lost in detention these are the front lines of a new immigration Crackdown in America Federal officers from Ice Immigration and Customs Enforcement on their way to arrest some of the millions of immigrants who are in the country illegally first Target guys he's got conviction of Hit and Run also he's got DUIs he's a final order he goes to work between 6 30 7 o'clock any questions we good the so-called fugitive operations are part of an immigration enforcement offensive I'm pretty sure the guy's going to be here that has reached historic levels under the Obama Administration the team's been doing surveillance on this house for the last few days right here right here on my right side this year about 400 000 undocumented immigrants will be detained and deported totally more than one million since Obama took office we have a job to do we enforce immigration law and and we seek to remove people that are here illegally from the country in terms of protecting the public and also in terms of border security we're setting records with our enforcement results in terms of apprehending people putting them in a detention system and then removing them from the country the scale has gone way up under Obama the numbers are significantly higher than they were under Bush so Obama has Juiced up the bush policies we have strengthened border security beyond what many believed was possible earlier this year the president came to the border in El Paso have more boots on the ground to defend his tough enforcement policies and we are deporting those who are here illegally well at the same time pushing for comprehensive immigration reform now we need to come together around reform that reflects our values as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants the Administration has believed since it was sworn in that in order to make the political ground fertile for a comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill that enforcement had to come first but there is no chance of comprehensive immigration reform in the current political environment there's just there's no support on the Republican side Washington has been unable to enact new immigration legislation for like 20 years and it's in this vacuum that enforcement all of a sudden has become this kind of Talisman that you have to prove the government is in control in the absence of Reform we're left with essentially enforcement on steroids but that's all we're left with that that is our immigration policy [Music] this is the story of how that policy is playing out often far from the border in places like Maple Park in the president's home state of Illinois Antonio arceo and his wife moved to Maple Park from California five years ago to raise their five children and live near family then last February Antonio told me he received a call that changed everything I was working in about four o'clock I received a call from my wife's own cell phone but a man was speaking he asked in English if I knew Roxanna Garcia who's my wife I said yes he said it's the police Kane County Sheriff the king your wife has been detained for not carrying a license can you come pick up your kid Roxanna had been stopped for speeding and was held overnight in the county jail next morning when I went back she was no longer there I asked the lady there how come they told me she was getting out the next day she said no immigration came this morning and took her away what the government had with his wife he spent days looking for her I went around to all the jails where she could possibly have been held and nobody would give me information does so at that point I was desperate because we didn't know what had happened what he didn't know is that Roxanna had been taken six hours away to Southern Illinois swept up by the administration's wide any net of enforcement was being held in detention at the center of this story is a federal program called secure communities Sanchez in which ice has extended its reach by enlisting the help of local law enforcement to better identify illegal immigrants who have committed crimes the sheriff's department here in Lake County Illinois north of Chicago joined secure communities in 2010. the sheriff is Mark Curran I think in law enforcement especially since 9 11 it has been impressed upon us that need to work as a team when you have local state and federal law enforcement all sharing information all working together all contributing to each other's task forces that's when when we work best an elected Republican and former prosecutor hi folks Curran says he came to realize that about 20 percent of those locked up in his jail were undocumented immigrants they're everywhere probably ever since one of the people that's in here in all likelihood is uh an undocumented he decided the government wasn't being tough enough as a result I thought you know let's let's close down these borders let's start deporting these people as fast as we can and let's let's return the rule of law to its place secure communities seemed like the right tool the goal is to identify people aliens who are removable from the United States based on their criminal background while they're still within the premise of the criminal justice system not giving the opportunity to be released on the street and commit other crimes this system is designed where a person will be arrested booked into a jail or prison and just by the submission of those fingerprints instantly sent off Not only would all of the criminal justice systems be checked the immigration databases would also be checked at the same time so within seconds literally seconds you would have the immigration vetting almost complete by identifying that person do we know why he was arrested it appears that he got charged with leaving the scene of accident that resulted in injury and or death it is a felony the Obama Administration says secure communities is essential to taking the worst criminals off the streets and removing them from the country we have record-breaking numbers in terms of Criminal Alien removals 195 000 last year about half of the people we removed that included one thousand murderers six thousand sex offenders forty five thousand serious drug violators as we expand the deployment of secure communities focused on criminal aliens you'll see that number continue to go up and up [Music] the critics say than just serious criminals and in Illinois one case in particular got a lot of attention started about 75 miles west of Chicago in McHenry County when local police made a routine traffic stop in March of 2010. the driver had changed lanes without signaling all of a sudden I saw the lights on the police car turn on that's when the policeman stopped me I didn't even know why until later on he asked me for my driver's license and car insurance I didn't have a license yeah he said I was going to be arrested to call someone to pick up my truck and little girl he simply put me in the car and took me to jail what did you understand that you were being arrested for because I didn't have a license when Susana Ramirez was booked into custody her fingerprints were sent to ice under the secure communities program ice quickly put a hold on her she was in the country illegally have you ever been arrested before do you have a criminal record no no that was the only time not even in Mexico this is the first time this has ever happened to me a single mom with two daughters both American citizens Ramirez says she fled the violence of Mexico's drug wars after being threatened with kidnapping in her hometown of Durango she came to the U.S legally in 2007 and found work in Illinois cleaning houses then she overstayed her visa and says she was afraid to return home for me the place I wanted to be was Mexico but I had to emigrate because of the circumstances for fear because of fear exactly Ramirez the sympathetic story of a mother facing deportation was picked up by immigration activists and politicians and I'm a person who was detained a state Bill known as susana's law was introduced to deny funding for secure communities the federal government should stop deporting the parents of American citizen children who have never like this wonderful woman who has never committed any serious violation of the law leaders in the Immigrant Community came to the governor and met with us on the staff and said the participation in Secure communities is driving a wedge between our our neighbors our families and our local law enforcement Jerry sturmer is a top advisor to the Democratic governor of Illinois Pat Quinn a close Obama Ally sturmer says the administration had sold secure communities to Illinois as a program targeting the worst of the worst we're talking about murderers and rapists and arsonists and the most serious and that was very clear that's what we heard about and that's what we understood uh was going on but when the governor's office looked at Ice's own statistics and discovered that less than 20 percent of those deported from Illinois had been convicted of a serious crime they concluded they'd been sold a bill of goods we met on a number of occasions with the federal officials and said this isn't this isn't going the way that you had described it and that we had understood can we fix this and they said well if we're looking for the most serious offenders and we want to deport them there's going to be collateral damage and and we thought are we talking about collateral damage of a mother who had a broken tail light being separated maybe forever from her children and we said to them our interest is in zero collateral damage not some collateral damage that collateral damage has been felt here in Lake County Illinois my last name is uh Ramirez after 18 months of secure communities Sheriff Mark Curran once a supporter of the program has had a surprising change of heart when I deal with the Latino Community throughout Lake County there's fear that's running through these communities they know all about secure communities they know the horror stories of their uncle or their brother that committed the most Ticky tack of offenses got incarcerated as a result and is now being deported but for supporters of secure communities the program is doing exactly what it should be doing so when you hear stories about unauthorized immigrants now living in a state of fear because they could be detained and put into a Detention Center you think this fear is a good thing absolutely I mean it's supposed to be it's like if you're speeding on the highway and you're afraid there might be a trooper around the corner or if you want to claim a couple of extra deductions on your income tax form and you're worried about the IRS maybe paying attention you're supposed to be afraid in fact the reason we have 11 million illegal immigrants is because too many people for too long understood quite clearly that there wasn't anything to be afraid of but Sheriff Curran says that fear is undermining the ability of law enforcement to do its job when the squad car rounds the corner you'll see people scram and it's not because they're engaged in criminal activity necessarily it's because they have this perception that they're illegal or they know somebody that might be undocumented and they don't want to have anything to do with the law enforcement and what does that do to you as a law enforcement officer law enforcement works best when it's engaged with the community to have the community not working with you it's frightening proposition although current is now an outspoken critic of secure communities the Obama Administration has made the program mandatory and the Lake County Sheriff's Department is still helping to identify and hold undocumented immigrants for ice one thing that I've experienced since in 2002 when I started you did not get a lot of immigration detainers now it appears to me that immigration is placing holds on almost everybody that was born outside of the United States this aggressive enforcement by Ice has been driven according to insiders by the agency's need to hit a target number of deportations now four hundred thousand a year because the number four hundred thousand was what was agreed upon what's happened is uh you pick up whatever you can so the low-hanging fruit the high hanging fruit and all the fruit that's in between you would pick up whatever you could and take your collateral apprehensions which would be the other illegals that may be present when you're arresting The Fugitive and bring them into custody as well to get the numbers moved up the pressure to move the numbers up was evident in an internal ice memo last year ice was at risk of falling well under the agency's goal of four hundred thousand deportations the memo says in particular it highlighted the shortfall of non-criminal removals so basically Washington is setting some numbers and on the ground if you're not meeting those numbers then you're being judged by not meeting those numbers you're being judged or you're being summoned the Washington you know you'll get this be in my office tomorrow morning so kind of a thing well ice tries to hit its numbers the results show up in the Miami courtroom of immigration judge Denise slavin we're seeing more and more people who are just having some sort of contact with the law enforcement Community where the individuals who are being picked up were not the not the target of the law enforcement operation at all they were a witness to a crime a victim of crime that could happen because they had a flat tire on the side of the road and the State Police Stopped so I think that they're going after people if they're easy to if they're handed to them probably is the best way to put it that if the state police or or local police run across someone who is unauthorized and call the Department of ice they're not going to say no we're not going to take that person they're going to come and pick them up and put them into detention um that that happens more now than it used to at the White House President Obama's top advisor on immigration is Cecilia Munoz even the supporters of the president the Illinois governor have said secure communities is doing more damage and in fact there's collateral damage of mothers being separated from their children of fathers being separated from their children right is this collateral damage that this Administration is prepared to accept well as a result of the concerns raised by the governor of Illinois the governor of Massachusetts and others DHS made adjustments in how it's implementing the policy so the the feedback from the community has been important in shaping dhs's work but at the end of the day when you have a community of 10 million 11 million people living and working in the United States illegally some of these things are going to happen even if the law is executed with perfection there will be parents separated from their children we don't have to like it but it is a result of having a broken system of laws and the answer to that problem is reforming the law [Music] hi Mommy in Maple Park Illinois sale family has been pulled apart last March Antonio's wife Roxanna Garcia who'd been stopped for speeding was deported back to Mexico she had a previous record of crossing the border illegally Left Behind were her husband and her five american-born children [Music] if your wife before she was deported was in charge of five kids what happened after she was deported how did you handle this didn't handle the situation the situation definitely handled me although he had help from friends and his church Antonio had a tough time making ends meet I stand ing there were times when he had no one to pick up the kids at school and so they stayed with him at his repair shop they don't understand how their mother could have been thrown out of the country because of a simple piece of paper they're American citizens that are going to be productive for this country one day how can you take away the most important pillar in their life their mother I don't understand at times Antonio has his doubts about making it without Roxanna and considers moving his family back to Mexico thank you would you want to go back to Mexico no not really have you ever been to Mexico no so when your dad talks about maybe the solution is to go back to Mexico what do you think about that David well just the thought of having to pack everything up and leaving my country to be somewhere I've never even been it just doesn't seem right to me 46 percent of undocumented people live in a family and the majority have been in the U.S for longer than 11 years so the face of the undocumented person isn't the young Mexican who's scaling the fence and able to get in works for six months and then leaves it's not a Mexican male anymore it's women it's kids it's people who put their Roots down here their lives down here there are now four and a half million U.S citizen children living in families where one or both parents are undocumented we had future plans like going to college especially for starting this country like it everyone does but this happened what were your dreams about what you wanted to do I wanted to be a police officer when I grew up and now changed my mind I wanted to be a lawyer and now now I I don't know I I'm not really concentrating on that right now we're talking about people that have been here for 20 years and they have that have five children they're U.S citizens and that they came here under this message that don't worry about it you can get into this country don't worry about it you can work and nobody's ever going to ask about it and now we're going to deport them to me that it's absolutely wrong I mean I can talk about it from a faith perspective but people don't want to hear that especially if they're not Roman Catholic but the truth is there when you take a father out of the house and you Deport them or a mother out of the house and you Deport her and you leave those children now without one of the two spouses to me that's not a good recipe for the future of America it makes us a lesser country [Music] of the get tough immigration policy is a vast network of 250 detention centers from County jails to large centers run by private prison companies where immigrants facing deportation are held until they can be removed from the country in the past decade three million immigrants have been detained in the system this woman a Canadian citizen was one of them I went to Florida in 1994 and when I went there I liked it and I inquired about business and she agreed to speak only if we disguised her identity we'll call her Mary her detention began when local police in Florida pulled her over in a routine traffic stop so I show my license and my registration and whatever and everything was fine but then he came back and he said there's a warrant out for you I said a war and like I didn't do anything I don't have no outstanding tickets but the warrant said Mary had bounced a 230 dollar check 10 years earlier I wrote a check to Walmart but then I moved down to Fort Lauderdale and I closed my account it was soon discovered that Mary had been living in the U.S for 15 years without a Visa she was quickly detained by ice and then sent a thousand miles away to the southern tip of Texas to the willisey Detention Center when she first arrived Mary was warned about willisey by a fellow detainee he said it's terrible it's really terrible and you need to tell them you need to go back to Canada because you don't want to stay in some place like this this is not for you willisey had been built quickly in 2006 designed to hold up to three thousand detainees it was run by a private prison contractor and was one of the largest detention centers in the country what's stunning about it is the sheer size of it it looks like an Airfield with these Kevlar white domed tents and you walk in and there's razor wire all around it and in each one of them they're holding 200 people with very limited space and movement where they're basically warehoused in order to effectuate their removal Mark Fleming was part of a special Human Rights Commission for the organization of American states that inspected willisey in 2009. I established these facilities mainly to make sure that they show up for their hearing and if they're ordered removed to effectuate that removal it's not supposed to be punitive and yet in every way shape or form it was punitive it was a criminal setting they wore uniforms as inmates the officers had very much a criminal justice mentality and so it's palpable the desperation that detained immigrants feel at this facility because they're not well informed of when they're going to get out I begged and I begged every day what's going on please I I want to get out just get me out of here Mary wanted to fight her deportation but she had a problem like the vast majority of detainees she had no attorney to help her unlike in the criminal justice system immigration detainees don't have a guaranteed right to an attorney even if they have strong cases to remain in the U.S most have to fend for themselves and be their own legal Advocates we hold people we handcuff them we detain them we take away the basic right to Liberty and the right to due process when the Garment takes away your basic right to Liberty should be equivalent to that in the criminal context and that's unfortunately not the case immigration matters are not criminal matters those are administrative matters there's no punishment that the immigration service meets out it is simply a question of whether you're supposed to be here or whether you're supposed to be there that's an administrative matter and the Supreme Court has said repeatedly for over a century that due process in Immigration matters is whatever Congress says it is without access to attorneys critics say detainees are vulnerable in other ways they're less likely to have legal protection in cases of physical and sexual abuse during her three months at willisey Mary says she endured repeated sexual assaults by a guard he kissed me and then I pushed him and then he said well I love big breasted women and then he took his hands and he like put it in my pants he put his hands in your hands and he said well do you like that does it feel good because you're locked up so you don't know what it feels like and they pushed him away and I said please let me go and then what happened he said if you tell anyone you wouldn't come out of here alive to see your family so then who you who do you go into Mary says she told a female guard about the attacks she she said to me that if you go to ice and you complain or you write a report it's gonna be worse for you because and they don't want a bad name that these things are going on don't complain about the fact that you've been sexually assaulted because it could be worse for you if you complain yes they could retaliate against you yes visual speed our investigation into willisey found that Mary's treatment wasn't unique we uncovered many stories of racial physical and sexual abuse when we visited willisey ice would not let us talk with detainees we met along the way so if you're a detainee you have to stay or interview the local ice officials but we did speak with dozens of former detainees and staff I would take account of how many detainings we saw Tawana Cooks Allen was the mental health coordinator at willisey we would make referrals to our department to see those she heard a lot of stories of abuse men of color were coming to me talking about Gars taking them in an area and beating them talking to me about guards he were running them down like they were animals and yelling and screaming and calling them names and talking about family members and getting in their faces spitting this is the first piece we ever went to that it was all right for somebody to say you Monkey black monkey you know a guard to say that to you yeah and say it in front of a lot of other people too so you would start to think that I guess that's all right down here for them to do that you were detained at willisey did you witness any physical abuse by the guards on the detainees well there was a lot of nights I hear screaming in the hallway I would like sticks and stuff and then I'll run to the door and look and you would see them have somebody on the ground beating them you saw this yeah more than once the guard's favorite thing was to say let's take him down using excessive force all right they will tell you I'll take you down I'll Take You Down because I've seen him took off put the radius down took off their belts and getting into fisticuffs with detainees you get a call in the middle of the night one night this former guard says she saw a surveillance video of a vicious beating of a detainee I basically saw a lieutenant a sergeant and two officers beat up on a detainee um to me just looked half to death um he had they knocked off his front teeth uh busted nose he had a black eye he was bleeding everywhere um what what was the reason for the altercation from my understanding he talked back he talked back yes so there wasn't an actual violent assault against the officers it was a verbal response yes ma'am and then four officers two supervisors and two officers proceeded to beat him yes ma'am adamite says she was shown the video and asked by officials to clean up the statements of the guards and make them consistent to hide evidence it was just covered up and next morning he was shipped out I'm not mistaken he was from Ecuador so he was on the first plane out by jpac former detainee Donovan Jones acted as a jailhouse lawyer helping others with their legal cases he says he heard many stories of abuse much of it targeting women there there were a lot going on between the women and the guards the guards will bring stuff from the outside things that we could not or the ladies could not access and they will bring stuff in in exchange for different favors some of them sex I knew something was wrong when I started getting women coming in complaining about being harassed by guard for sexual favors I had got to informed where I knew and felt comfortable with some of the guards so that went to them and said look just tell me is this really going on out there we keep getting these detainees complaining and saying this and that and the sad thing was that many of the guards supported it in a sense of saying they're right yeah it does happen I mean isn't it the case that there are always going to be some bad apples within the context of of people who are guarding detainees a couple of bad apples and I think they had a whole lot of bad apples I think they had some barrels of Bad Apple said will they see recently this willisy guard pled guilty to sexually assaulting a female detainee admitting he forced her into a bathroom to have intercourse frontline's investigation to willisey uncovered more than a dozen allegations of sexual abuse including Mary who says she couldn't take it anymore I said I want to go back home please I want to go back home get me out of air because if this goes on one more time with me and I don't get out of here I'm gonna kill myself desperate to get out of willisey Mary asked to be deported back to Canada she left behind four U.S citizen children in the care of a relative she says she's been unable to see them for more than two years how do you explain the seven eight nine-year-old kids that their mom can't come there I can't take care of them how do you tell little kids that do they understand they don't understand a cache of government documents recently obtained by the ACLU reveals that claims of sexual abuse are widespread throughout the U.S detention system the documents detail more than 170 allegations of sexual abuse during the past four years we're only scratching the surface of what we know is a much bigger phenomenon we know that there are many more cases that don't get investigated where people do not get held accountable for the abuse or the rape of immigrants and especially when you're dealing with a vulnerable Community where they don't have access to lawyers where they're out of the way places and so you're much less likely to have them step forward and say wait I was just raped I was just abused sexually in a Detention Center they just want to get on with it let me out of here get me out of here get me out of this purgatory and so they'll do anything to get out despite all the problems we uncovered at willisey a 2009 audit gave the Detention Center a rating of good at the same time the audit also said that 900 grievances have been filed by the detainees you look at the audit and the audit is is Bare Bones it's hard to believe that you can have 900 Grievances and no discussion as to what the substance of those grievances were and so there's no transparency as far as once they do get a complaint like that what happens the willisey Detention Facility actually got an audit in 2009 and it was rated acceptable but in fact there were more than 900 grievances filed that year how do you put those two things together well I don't know the specifics of what the Grievances may be I don't know if they if they agree I don't know whether it has to do with the quality of the food or whatever we put a lot of people through our facilities more broadly this is a big system there are always going to be people that are dissatisfied with one element of it or another but where it rises to to a level you know that that merits attention and merits a response and we're aware of it we we do all we can to address it the response that Tawana Cooks Allen saw the circle things we had to write in in 2009 she was asked to survey all detainees at willisey part of a broad review of the detention system undertaken by Ice officials in Washington and all of this information you're getting in writing yes you're documenting we're documenting but when she delivered initial findings of the survey she says local ice officials began a cover-up I said questions about it and Ice wanted to know what in store as far as you understood they want to know who said what period who said what anything that had to do with anything negative and were they trying to fix the situation no not the information I get back from the detainees I had detainee who had saw me come down a hall and came in and knocked on my door and he was upset he was extremely upset because he said ice came over yesterday pulled me out of the dorm and basically told me if I complained about anything else again they would make sure that I didn't stay here and that I was deported and in that day I got bombarded with those first 38 people that I had interviewed and majority of them came in complaining or crying that they had been harassed by Ice the survey was shut down and soon after Cook's Allen resigned her position at willisey you have a decision to make and your decision is either you stay there and continue and see the unethical Behavior that's being played out there or you choose to walk away this summer the government made changes at willisey the facility was transferred from Ice to the Bureau of Prisons it's still run by the private contractor but it's now a prison for repeat offenders caught crossing the border illegally meanwhile I says it's making major reforms to the detention system says they plan to build six new centers that will house detainees in less prison-like conditions we're trying to do the best we can to move the system in a way that treats our detainees in a respectful way there are areas that we need to improve on there are places that we need to to continue to work towards making them better but we're committed to doing that it's an ongoing process and it's something that we're going to continue but critics say the vast network of 250 detention centers the fastest growing incarceration system in the country will not be easy to reform it's clear that when you create a Detention Facility that's out of the public Spotlight that's an out of the way places where lawyers don't have access to individuals who are detained there where you have very little public scrutiny that are privately run by government contractors that without that public scrutiny of what goes on behind those Barbed wires and those closed doors you have the potential for enormous violations of basic rights there are about 50 million Latinos living in the U.S today and Obama's tough enforcement policies have deeply angered many of them on a personal level somewhere in America today there's a man missing his wife there's a woman missing her husband there's a destroyed family and it doesn't have to be that way more than half of Latino voters know someone who is undocumented more than a quarter know someone who's been detained or deported enforcement policy and the deportations largely invisible to most voters I'd say it it appears in the English language media every once in a while it's on Spanish language television all the time all the time and I promise you the sense of human cost that's resulted from this enforcement effort is very real to Latino voters he promised us that he was going to give us immigration reform and what did he give us a million people have been deep so we're very angry and we're locking up our votes and we were not going to give them to him unless he delivers as a candidate Obama had been sympathetic to their cause when communities are terrorized by Ice immigration rates when nursing mothers are torn from their babies when children come home from school to find their parents missing when people are detained without access to legal counsel when all that's happening the system just isn't working and we need to change it his strategy for change wasn't really different from previous presidents it was George W Bush's blueprint tough border enforcement and deportations together with a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants already in the country my Administration is fully behind an effort to achieve comprehensive immigration reform so there's nothing new about the ideas that Obama was proposing secretary he was basically came into office saying I'm going to take something that exists we're going to put it on the agenda we're going to get it and act it and not put it off till a year two years three years five years from now but to start working on this thing right now but the president's agenda was immediately overrun by more urgent priorities can I breaking news a Federal Reserve turned out nothing happened because the first year of the administration was spent with the economic crisis markets fell around the globe today then we got into Health Care reform and then came the 2010 elections President Obama and we're not going to be able to get anything like this measure through still a very serious situation the president said that he was going to support immigration reform in a big way in his first year and that didn't happen well he did support immigration reform in a big way and his first form didn't happen the reform didn't happen because it requires action on the part of the Congress or the United States which did not take it up but he's going to keep at it until we find the partners we need in the Congress to get this job done but finding partners for reform has proved impossible be no reform until you secure the Border Republican leaders like Judiciary chairman Lamar Smith are pressing for even tougher enforcement unfortunately the Obama Administration is not really enforcing the law anyone in the country illegally that is apprehended or detained ought to be sent home not just the ones who have committed the most serious crimes so just to be clear chair chairman you believe that anyone who is in this country without papers regardless of whether they've committed any other crime should at some point be targeted and processed for deportation unless Congress is going to change the law and say Grant amnesty to millions of people the law should be enforced and if you're in the country illegally if you're apprehended I think you ought to go home fed or demanding action enforce the law the possibilities of comprehensive reform have dropped so drastically I mean no one thinks that it's likely to come anywhere close to getting enacted with the current configuration in Washington so talking about it becomes kind of a meaningless exercise in the meantime however he has continued the trajectory of aggressive enforcement the president seems to have calculated that tougher enforcement might convince conservatives to support comprehensive immigration reform but it seems now that the GOP is intransigent so hasn't the president now basically ended up enacting the Republican agenda on immigration what the president is doing is enforcing the law of the land it's a it's that's Our obligation as a federal government there's no quid pro quo there is no negotiation that's happened here Congress passes a series of laws appropriates the funds to enforce those laws and the executive Branch's job is to enforce them will this Administration continue to oversee the deportation of 400 000 people a year as long as Congress gives us the money to deport 400 000 people a year that's what the administration is going to do that figure of four hundred thousand a year is a target number a goal set by Ice Immigration and Customs Enforcement based on the agency's annual appropriation from Congress why don't you tell Congress a number they're fixated on that number so if you were to say four hundred thousand well that's etched in their mind they're going to give you the resources to get the 400 000 but you never go back to Congress and say oh by the way we weren't able to meet our goals and then expect the next year is going to be as resourced up if you will as the previous year so in essence in terms of ice you want to keep your detentions as high as you possibly can because that's going to impact your budget for the next year absolutely for the next two or three years for the next two or three years right because you're always working two or three years out [Music] [Applause] on this program critics say the administration doesn't have the political will to slow down the enforcement Machinery at ice and reduce the Damage Done by secure communities how do you have to hear of women who call the police to get help and get shackle of children who are taken from their parents in response the Administration has been holding listening sessions around the country promising to review deportation cases and better focus enforcement on serious criminals you come here with an unequivocal demand that to terminate this program but President Obama is not backing down on secure communities it plans to take it nationwide it's shameful and it's shameful that it is being done by someone who was a civil rights attorney and someone who understood Grassroots communities and someone who sold himself as part of this great American immigrant narrative a longtime Obama supporter and informal advisor reached out to her old friend at a White House reception he was you know very nice and greeted my husband and I and you know how are the kids et cetera et cetera et cetera and I just basically said Barack you've got to help us and he said uh what can I do and I said you've got to stop the deportations and he said it's very complicated we've been talking about it this is like a week before the El Paso speech it's very very complicated and I don't want to bicker with you right now that was it hello with an election looming the president tried to explain his political dilemma we have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement all the stuff they asked for what we've done he said he understood the high cost of his policies even as we recognize that enforcing the laws necessary we don't relish the pain that it causes the lives of people who are just trying to get by and get caught up in the system the trip to El Paso was intended to reconnect the president to the court constituency that had become disaffected he got about 70 percent of the Latino vote in 2008. but the percentage of Latinos saying that they're certain to vote for the present for re-election hovers in the mid 40s now Latinos are not going to run over and vote Republican that would be out of the frying pan and Into the Fire as it were and so the only question is turnout are Latinos so disenchanted that Latino Democrats might not turn out in the numbers that the president needs them to and this could spell problems for the Obama reelection campaign in very closely contested States what we really need to do is to keep up the fight to pass genuine comprehensive reform that is the ultimate solution to this problem that's what I'm committed to doing recently the administration said that for the third year running it expects to break records for deportations yes we can we can do it [Music] thank you for more on this and other Frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org [Music] thank you [Music] front lines lost in detention is available on DVD to order visit shop pbs.org or call 1-800 play PBS Frontline is also available for download on iTunes foreign [Music]

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

Views: 233,585

Keywords:

Id: YcCiF4_elGY

Length: 53min 15sec (3195 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023