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If the federal rules and priorities are the same now as they were in the early 2010s, then why have arrests dipped?

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Thinkstock, Lucy Nicholson/Reuters and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Handout via Reuters.

Last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released data showing it had achieved a nearly 40 percent spike in immigration arrests in the first 100 days of the Trump administration. In a press call about the new numbers, ICEs Acting Director Thomas Homan explained that these elevated numbers stemmed from the White Houses decision to reverse a November 2014 Obama policy prioritizing certain criminal aliens and recent border crossers for arrest. These statistics reflect President Trump's commitment to enforce our immigration laws fairly and across the board, Homan said.

The arrest total in Trumps first 100 days41,898represents an increase of more than 10,000 over the same period last year. Its important to note, however, that these numbers dont reach the former administrations immigration arrest levels from prior to November 2014, when ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations agents worked with much the same latitude they have today. During the same 100-day period in 2014, for example, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations made 54,484 arrests, with that number representing a slight decline from the even higher rates of arrest in 2012 and 2013.

If the federal rules and priorities are the same now as they were in the early 2010s, then why have arrests dipped? Narrowing in on the data at a regional ICE field office level provides a possible answer: The growing sanctuary city movement may be affecting ICEs ability to get back to its previous arrest capacity.

Several regions where sanctuary policies are prevalent, including those overseen by ICEs Los Angeles and New York field offices, have not come close to their 2014 arrest levels. By contrast, arrests have exceeded 2014 levels in regions like Dallas and St. Paul, which have large swaths of territory without sanctuary protections. (Note: ICE field office regions extend far beyond the cities they are named after. For example, the St. Paul field office includes Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota.) The maps below show total arrests per field office between Jan. 20 and April 29, 2014 as compared to the same dates in 2017. The larger the bubbles, the more arrests per field office; click on the bubbles to see precise numbers.

Very broadly, sanctuary city policieswhich have been adopted in places like San Francisco (in May 2014), Los Angeles (July 2014), and New York City (November 2014)shield unauthorized immigrants from federal immigration enforcement by ensuring that local authorities do not, for instance, question residents about their immigration status or use local jail systems to funnel arrestees into deportation proceedings. Since 2014, city leaders and sheriffs and police departments in the above citiesand others began honoring far fewer ICE detainer requeststhat is, requests to hold unauthorized immigrants past their release dates to give ICE the opportunity to pick them up from local jails. Between Jan. 20 and April 29, 2014, ICE agents in the Los Angeles field office made 6,209 arrests; during the same period this year, they made 2,273. In that same 2014 time period, ICE agents in San Francisco and New York made 2,870 and 1,458 arrests respectively. They made just 1,976 and 687 arrests respectively between Jan. 20 and April 29, 2017.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for stricter immigration enforcement, argues that we should not expect ICE to immediately reach 2014 arrest rates. It takes time to get back in the groove here, says Mehlman, citing the Trump administrations need to replace Obama-era appointees with new personnel in leadership positions. Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors restricting immigration, adds that ICEs dramatic increase in arrests compared to the final two years of the Obama administration is a very good start. Vaughan, however, notes the difficulties that sanctuary cities have caused ICE enforcement agents. In places like California, New York, and Philadelphia ICE was no longer able to arrest criminal aliens while they were in local custody, so they had to go out and find them in the community, she explains via email. Some sanctuary jurisdictions have recently reversed their policies, but it will take some time for the administration to implement new policies to address that problem.

In discussing the new arrest spike last month, Homan acknowledged the logistical difficulties that sanctuary cities pose to ICE agents. To arrest people at-large rather than in the county jail, it takes longer, it takes more resources, it's less efficient, said Homan. He later added, If people get released, now theres several people out in the general public, we may not know where they are. So it is gonna take a team of officers to locate that person and do a lot of investigative research on where we can find them.

This pattern of arrest spikes in non-sanctuary cities is not entirely consistent. Some field offices in non-sanctuary-dense regions such as San Antonio and El Paso, Texas, have not reached 2014 arrest levels. There are also a few regions with major sanctuary jurisdictions that have actually seen an increase in arrests. It is difficult to make definitive assertions about the degree of this trend nationwide, given that ICE field offices cover large swaths of territory and the fact that sanctuary city policies differ nationwide. However, of the nine field office zones that have higher arrest rates in 2017 than 2014, just threeBoston, Philadelphia, and St. Paulappear to have more than a handful of sanctuary jurisdictions, as per the Center for Immigration Studies most recent sanctuary cities map. By contrast, of the nine field office zones with the lowest 2017 arrest numbers compared to 2014, four contain six or more sanctuary jurisdictions and twoNew York City and San Diegohave small field office zones that are well-covered by city and county sanctuary policies, respectively.

John Sandweg, the acting director of ICE from 2013 to 2014, cautions that regional variations in ICE arrest numbers could be due to varying institutional capacities across ICE field offices rather than sanctuary policies. The sample size remains relatively small and could be a byproduct of a wide array of operational issues, says Sandweg via email. While Vaughan echoes these caveats, she points out that the dramatic drop in ICE arrests in California suggests that those jurisdictions widespread refusal to cooperate with ICE, especially on detainer requests, is having a significant effect. Its hard to know for sure without more granular statistics, but I think it is notable that the arrests by the California field offices of ICE in particular have gone down so much and been slower to recover, because that state is the biggest and most populous sanctuary jurisdiction in the country, Vaughan says.

Though ICEs arrests of unauthorized immigrants, with or without criminal histories, have still not matched the records set by the Obama administration, immigrants rights advocates contend the Trump regime has returned to immigration enforcement policies that round up people who do not pose any danger to society. The maps below show arrests of unauthorized immigrants without criminal records per field office between Jan. 20 and April 29, 2014 as compared to the same dates in 2017.

2014 ICE Arrests of Immigrants Without Criminal Records:

2017 ICE Arrests of Immigrants Without Criminal Records:

As can be seen in the maps, several ICE field offices, particularly in the South, have hiked their noncriminal alien arrest numbersin a few cases surpassing 2014 levels. Witold J. Walczak, legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, says the large jump in noncriminal arrests, including in the region served by the ICE Philadelphia field office, can be attributed to the agencys new willingness to arrest unauthorized immigrants who are found in the vicinity of planned enforcement actions. They are extremely aggressive now in trying to get into houses, and they question anybody in the area resulting in collateral pick-ups, says Walczak, whose advocacy work is based in southwestern and central Pennsylvania. But weve also seen a good number of raids, either going to worksites, like factories and construction sites, or pulling over work vans. My perception is these are often not targeted operations, just straight up ethnic profiling.

Adrian Smith, a spokesperson for ICEs Philadelphia field office, disputes these claims, saying in an email that ICEs enforcement actions are targeted and lead driven. Asked about his offices large increase in noncriminal unauthorized immigrant arrests, Smith notes that ICE no longer exempts classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement. All of those in violation of immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention, and if found removable by final order, removal from the United States, says Smith.

Former ICE officials argue that this increase in noncriminal arrests stems from President Trumps reversal of the previous administrations immigration enforcement priorities. ICE has a finite number of resources. During the Obama administration, all of those resources were dedicated to the identification and removal of criminal aliens, says Sandweg. As the new administration directs officers and agents to broaden their focus and places equal priority on noncriminals, resources that were previously dedicated to criminal aliens are expended against people who pose no threat.

Top Comment

If sanctuary cities are "winning", then that's a damn good argument for shutting them down. The government shouldn't be fighting against itself. Either we have open borders or we regulate who gets to stay here. Choose one or the other. More...

ICEs apparent attempts to dial up arrests on unauthorized immigrants regardless of their criminal histories means Americas cities will necessarily be in its crosshairs. According to Pew, 61 percent of the nations estimated 11.1 million unauthorized immigrations live in just 20 major metropolitan areas. The Trump administration has already succeeded in pushing several jurisdictions to reverse sanctuary protections. In February, citing federal funding threats, Floridas MiamiDade County, which includes the city of Miami, reversed a policy limiting cooperation with ICE detainer requests. The same month, the city of Dayton, Ohio, reversed a policy prohibiting police from contacting ICE in cases involving misdemeanor violations and felony-level property crimes.

Whether federal pressure will continue to bring other cities into line with immigration authorities remains to be seen. But without local compliance, ICE will have a significantly tougher time ratcheting its arrest levels up to the levels reached by the Obama administration in the early 2010s.

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Where Trump's Immigration Crackdown Is Failing - Slate Magazine

When Zachary Wood arrived at Williams College his freshman year, he had high hopes for an academic environment that challenged his views. Now going into his senior year, Wood says he has faced backlash from students and administrators for inviting controversial speakers to campus.

Wood appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, part of a panel discussing free speech on college campuses.

Wood describes himself as a liberal Democrat, but he brought provocative speakers representing diversepolitical ideologies to campus. He wanted to expose students to ideas they disagree with.

One such speaker invitation prompted the Williams College administration to cancel the event and revise the campus speaker policies.

Wood said this was impermissible, undemocratic, and antithetical to the intellectual character of the college

Williams College is not alone in disinviting speakers. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has tracked attempts to disinvite college speakers since 2000. It documented an upward trend. In 2016, FIRE recorded 43 incidents in which students or administrators attempted to cancel a planned speech.

Senator Ted Cruz lambasted college administrators for acting as speech police.

If universities become homogenizing institutions that are focused on inculcating and indoctrinating rather than challenging, we will lose what makes universities great, Cruz said.

The issue of disinviting speakers gained national attention in February when violent protests broke out at the University of California, Berkeley in response to a scheduled talk by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

More recently, Berkeley cancelled a talk by commentator Ann Coulter amid more threats of protest.

Ranking Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein pointed to these violent demonstrations as justification for college administrators cancelling speeches. The senator from California said university police forces often do not have the training and resources needed to handle these situations.

Feinstein argued that Berkeley has a right to protect its students from demonstrations once they become acts of violence.

While there was consensus among panel members on the importance of free speech on campus, the issue came to the application of that right in practice.

UCLA Law professor Eugene Volokh said it was important to punish violent protesters to ensure that they dont continue to disrupt speeches. He said this will sometimes require bringing in more law enforcement.

If you violate the law and by this I mean laws against vandalism, laws against violence, laws against physically shouting people down, then in that case you will be punished rather than having your goals be achieved, Volokh said.

Feinstein pushed back on the suggestion of more law enforcement to control college protests. She asked whether any lessons were learned fromthe 1970 Kent State shooting, in which Ohio National Guardsmen shotand killed four students and injured nine others.

Frederick Lawrence, secretary and CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, said colleges must start with a strong presumption in favor of the speech but make judgements based on the circumstances. As a former president of Brandeis University, Lawrence said it is greatly exaggerated to expect colleges to have the resources to deal with all types of violent protests.

Lawrence said that no matter the speakers beliefs, colleges should find ways to host the event. He suggested making speeches private events if needed, closed to people outside the university community.

Over the past few months, several states have taken up the issue of free speech on campus. A bill passed the North Carolina House in April that would ensure public universities be open to all speakers. It also would require sanctions on protesters who disrupt events.

Panelist Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, said he was apprehensive about state legislatures getting too close to the university campuses. Abrams said state legislatures should not dictate what colleges can teach or cannot teach.

On the federal level, a bipartisan resolution calling for the protection of free speech was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in May. If passed, the resolution would condemn university free speech zones and restrictive speech codes. The Senate does not have any similar legislation.

Calling himself a small government guy, Sen. Ben Sasse said he wants to see as little of this adjudicated by coercion and power and possible. The Nebraska senator and former college president called on college administrators to defend free speech on their campuses.

Following the hearing Sen. John Kennedy agreed with Sasse, making clear to reporters that federal intervention was not needed to solve the problem.

I dont want the government to have to come in and say this is acceptable and this isnt, Kennedy said. I want a university president to do his job and to have the guts to do it. And if he cant do it he ought to quit.

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Balancing the First Amendment and Students' Safety - Roll Call

On Monday in Packingham v. North Carolina,the justices unanimously (minus Gorsuch) voted to invalidate a North Carolina statute making it a felony for a registered sex offender to access a commercial social networking Web site where the sex offender knows that the site permits minor children to become members or to create or maintain personal Web pages. But Justice Alito, joined by Roberts and Thomas, concurred only in the judgment. All eight Justices agreed that the statute wasnt sufficiently tailored. Both opinions emphasized the possible application of the statute to Amazon.com, washingtonpost.com, and webmd.com.

So where did the opinions differ? The central disagreement between the two opinions is how judges applying the First Amendment should respond to the changing nature of cyberspace. From the majority:

While we now may be coming to the realization that the Cyber Age is a revolution of historic proportions, we cannot appreciate yet its full dimensions and vast potential to alter how we think, express ourselves, and define who we want to be. The forces and directions of the Internet are so new, so protean, and so far reaching that courts must be conscious that what they say today might be obsolete tomorrow.

This case is one of the first this Court has taken to address the relationship between the First Amendment and the modern Internet. As a result, the Court must exercise extreme caution before suggesting that the First Amendment provides scant protection for access to vast networks in that medium.

And from the concurrence:

The Court is correct that we should be cautious in applying our free speech precedents to the internet. Ante, at 6. Cyberspace is different from the physical world, and if it is true, as the Court believes, that we cannot appreciate yet the full dimensions and vast potential of the Cyber Age, ibid., we should proceed circumspectly, taking one step at a time. It is regrettable that the Court has not heeded its own admonition of caution.

The majoritys point that that what [courts] say today might be obsolete tomorrow is an important one that I discussed in the Internet context almost 20(!) years ago in Stepping into the Same River Twice: Rapidly Changing Facts and the Appellate Process.

But I want here to highlight a slightly different point. When it comes to changing phenomena (like cyberspace), what is the best default position with respect to the First Amendment? Should judges err on the side of starchy application of free speech tests, or a more flexible approach? This are not new questions. For instance, back in 1996, in Denver Area Education Telecommunications Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, the Supreme Court considered regulation of indecency on public access and leased access channels. Justice Souter wrote a concurrence suggesting that, in the fast-changing world of telecommunications, judges should heed the admonition First, do no harm. Justice Kennedy responded: Justice Souter recommends to the Court the precept, First, do no harm. The question, though, is whether the harm is in sustaining the law or striking it down. As I noted in a different article, the injunction [f]irst, do no harm provides little guidance unless we can identify what the do no harm position is.

In Mondays case, Justice Kennedys majority opinion, consistent with his concurrence in Denver Area and his First Amendment jurisprudence more generally, treats broad and rigorous application of First Amendment tests as the do no harm position in the ever-changing world of cyberspace. Justice Alitos concurrence wants a default that takes smaller steps and gives judges (and thus legislatures) more flexibility. Obviously there is no ineluctable answer here. But, once again, baselines are doing a lot of work.

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What is the 'do no harm' position on the First Amendment in cyberspace? - Washington Post

Progressive hysterics highlight the beauty of the First Amendment

American free speech is a wonderful thing, even when the speech is stupid

Free speech is indeed the great American right; our freedom of speech regime is perhaps the most liberated in the world. It is exceedingly difficult to get in trouble for saying something in America. This is a good thing.

Its a good thing even when the speech in question is irritating, hateful or profoundly stupid. Such was the case recently at the University of Georgia, where the colleges Young Democrats called for the beheading of congressional Republicans. The group of students was actually playing off of a professors earlier call for the firing-squad execution of Republicans. Both the professor and the students were demanding that Republicans be killed due to their efforts to repeal Obamacare and replace it with Trumpcare. (It seems to be an accepted part of the American political order that the Left, when confronted with politics they dont like, will often quickly and happily resort to violence or the threat of violence.)

There are several ways to look at this incident. On the one hand, this is simply an instance of childish political hysterics, something the American body politic must deal with every time theres a Republican in the White House. On the other hand this kind of thing could be an indication of a much more deep-seated political dysfunction, a sign that liberals are increasingly incapable of operating within the bounds of normal, healthy, rational political discourse.

But more broadlyand more importantlywe might look at this stupid dust-up as a key indicator of the free state of American speech and expression. The level of protection that speech is afforded in this country is frankly astonishing, not just compared to the tyrannies and tinpot dictator republics across the globe but even when stacked up against the relatively enlightened countries of Western Europe and the member states of the British Commonwealth. When a university professor and a group of college students can espouse this kind of reprehensible rhetoric free from the fear of prosecution, it says something special about our country (even as it says something rather dismal about the state of progressive politics).

Our college campuses, of course, have in recent years become hotbeds of censorship and anti-free-speech agitation, though such efforts have primarily been directed atconservativespeech: if a right-wing professor or a group of College Republicans had made these comments, you can be assured that the Office of Civil Rights would be mounting several investigations into the matter, and the campus mobs would have instituted a 24-hour vigil against the offenders. Culturally and sometimes legally, free speech is often a one-way street at American universities, and that is a disgrace. But in the country at large, we are more or less entirely free to speak our minds. And that is a blessing.

MORE: Berkeley op-ed: safety of marginalized more important than free speech

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Progressive hysterics highlight the beauty of the First Amendment - The College Fix

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton just got very bad, yet familiar, news from the State Department shes under federal investigation again. The probecenters around the well-known accusations that Clinton and her staff mishandled classified information.

Fox News reported that the State Department has opened the investigation anew, though Clinton and her associates will retain their security clearance designations.

The departments investigation aims to determine whether Clinton and her closest aides violated government protocols by using her private server to receive, hold and transmit classified and top-secret government documents. The department declined to say when its inquiry began, but it follows the conclusion of the FBIs probe into the matter, which did not result in any actions being taken against Clinton or any of her aides.

Fox News said that Clinton and her aides could have their security clearance privileges revoked based on the findings of the investigation.

The existence of Clintons controversial private email server was discovered during the congressional hearings into the Benghazi debacle headed by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.). The mishandling of classified information was used by Donald Trump, then a candidate, to bludgeon Clintons candidacy and heighten the appearance of incompetence and corruption on the Democrat side.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) confirmed the existence of the investigation to Fox News even as his committee conducted their own probe into Clintons carelessness. Grassley said there appeared to be evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.

Grassley cited the controversial statement from former FBI Director James Comey that outlined the many violations Clinton made against the State Departments policy on document security. Comey later said that Clinton should not be criminally prosecuted for her violations, but his statement has been widely cited by Clinton allies as the central reason she lost the election.

Fox News outlined the findings that were problematic for Clinton:

During the FBIs investigation of Clintons use of top-secret and classified information on her private server, Comey said there were seven email chains on Clintons computer that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level. Another 2,000 emails on her private server were found to have contained information deemed classified now, though not marked classified when sent. In addition, the server also contained 22 top-secret emails deemed too damaging to national security to be released.

Clintons spokesperson contradicted the report, saying, Nothings been more thoroughly dissected. Its over. Case closed. Literally.

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State Department has terrible, but familiar, news for Hillary Clinton - TheBlaze.com