Report Questions the System Used to Flag Rikers Island Inmates for Deportation

The New York Times
By: Sam Dolnick
Published: November 10, 2010
Read the original article

As the Obama administration steps up efforts to deport immigrants held on criminal charges, federal officials in New York City have long been on the job. At the city’s main jail on Rikers Island, immigration officers comb through lists of foreign-born inmates, then question, detain and deport about 3,200 of them a year. Immigration authorities say they decide whom to flag by considering the severity of the crime and the inmate’s criminal history and immigration record. Their top priority, they say, is removing the most dangerous offenders.

Related Publication

JS Publication November 12, 2010

New York City Enforcement of Immigration Detainers

Justice Strategies is conducting research for a forthcoming report on the combined impact of drug laws and immigration enforcement on jailers, prisoners and taxpayers. The New York City Department of Corrections provided Justice Strategies with a database of all discharges in 2008. We analyzed the dataset of noncitizen prisoners whose top charge is a drug-related offense.

Justice Strategies found that:

  • While Homeland Security purports to target the most dangerous offenders, there appears to be no correlation between offense level and identification for deportation.
  • In New York City, Homeland Security detainers are enforced in such a fashion as to effectively terminate the bail rights of certain pre-trial noncitizen prisoners.
  • Controlling for race and offense level, noncitizens with an ICE detainer spend 73 days longer in jail before being discharged, on average, than those without an ICE detainer.