Criminal Alien Removal Initiative, Little-Known ICE Pilot Program, Stirs Protest In New Orleans

A pilot program launched by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2012 is coming under growing criticism from civil rights groups and immigrant advocates for what they describe as race-based immigration raids carried out around apartment complexes, grocery stores, Bible study groups and other public places. Al Jazeera reports that the Criminal Alien Removal Initiative (CARI) is part of an ICE effort to increase the number of fugitive operations teams – which track down individuals who either haven’t left the country or failed to report to an ICE office after they were ordered to do so -- by 25 percent in certain field offices. The initiative makes use of mobile biometric units to check the fingerprints of those stopped by agents with immigration and police records.

According to MintPressNews, which based its information on internal ICE emails published by the ACLU of North Carolina, CARI was established in May 2012 as part of a broad agency push to boost deportations of immigrants with criminal records. That puts the initiative squarely in line with stated Obama administration priorities. But when details about the initiative’s operations in New Orleans came to light in September 2013 – after the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice (NOWCRJ) requested an ICE case review of Erlin San Martin Gomez, a father with no criminal record who was swept up as part of a raid and placed into deportation proceedings – the Center launched a campaign against the initiative, staging a protest and publishing a report on the program.

“As 2013 comes to a close without the passage of immigration reform, New Orleans is experiencing the new frontier in immigration enforcement: a ‘stop and frisk’ program for the immigrant community,” said Saket Soni, the group’s executive director, in a press release accompanying the December report. “Without immediate action, the race-based raids being piloted in New Orleans will become the new normal across the country.”