Sunday, September 23, 2018

ICE: More Than A Quarter Of Illegal Immigrant Families In Alternative To Detention Skip Court Hearings

A significant share of illegal immigrant families released from federal detention have failed to show up for their immigration court hearings this year, a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said Tuesday.
The family units in question are placed in programs collectively known as alternatives to detention (ATD), which allow people with pending deportation cases to avoid detention in favor of some other non-custodial monitoring. Alternatives include community monitoring through nonprofit organizations and GPS tracking with ankle or wrist bracelets.
ATD programs are frequently touted as a humane and cost-saving way to monitor migrant families while they await a decision on their asylum claims, a process that can take years. But ATD often leads to family units’ skipping immigration court hearings and, ultimately, ignoring removal orders issued in absentia, according to Matthew Albence, the executive associate director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations Division.
Between Oct. 1, 2017 and July 31, 2018 — the first 10 months of fiscal year 2018 — the absconder rate for family units in ATD was 28 percent, Albence said in prepared testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. That was significantly higher than individuals in ATD, who had an absconder rate of about 16 percent over the same time period, Albence said.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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