The New York Times reports that federal authorities plan to identify and deport more than 200,000 immigrants this year who are serving time in prisons across the country, according to the top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official.  The effort to speed the deportation of foreign-born criminals is part of a new campaign by ICE to help federal and states prisons reduce the costs of housing immigrants, says Julie Myers, head of ICE said last week in an interview.   

Myers says that in 2007, ICE brought formal immigration charges against approximately 164,000 immigrants in prisons.  Many of those immigrants are still in the United States and are slated for deportation this year.  By comparison, in 2006, ICE identified 64,000 immigrants behind bars, most of whom were deported.  Myers notes that by stepping up deportation efforts, "a significant burden" will occur both to ICE’s detention centers.   

Myers specified that in 2008, ICE would also intensify the crackdown with increased criminal prosecutions of employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants.  "There should be more of those," she said of such prosecutions.  Last year, the agency totaled $30 million in fines and forfeitures against employers, but fewer than 100 executives or managers were arrested, compared with 4,100 unauthorized workers.   

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Facing pressure from civil rights advocates, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced, via press release, that immigration officials will no longer sedate deported foreign nationals against their will without a federal court order.  According to The Los Angeles Times, the press release clarifies that ‘There are no exceptions to this policy.  Emergency or exigent circumstances are not grounds for departures from this policy.’  The nationwide policy took effect immediately from the press release’s Jan. 9^th date.   

The change comes seven months after the ACLU of Southern California sued the government to stop the practice.  "We’re very pleased that the government has finally agreed to stop forcibly drugging people without court orders," ACLU attorney Ahilan Arulanantham of the new policy.  "It appears that if the policy is implemented, the government will finally put a stop to this shameful, barbaric chapter of our immigration history."  

This is the second major change to the government’s policy on sedating immigrants: in June of last year, ICE amended their policy, but still allowed forced sedation without a court order in an emergency.  This new change, however, requires a court order every time medication is to be given against a deportee’s will.  

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Last week, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials publicly posted newly implemented standards set for immigrant women and children held in confinement facilities, The Austin American Statesman reports.  The standards seek to address and clarify education, discipline, use of force, medical care, strip searchers, sexual assault and prevention, detainee counts and other issues.  The standards were first approved Dec. 21 and are currently now in effect.  

The new standards came about from a settlement agreement reached last August in federal lawsuits filed in Austin by the ACLU and the University of Texas Law School immigration clinic.  Attorneys for several children confined at the T. Don Hutto residential facility in Taylor, Tx. contended in their lawsuits that conditions there were inhumane and violated minimum standards for minors in immigration custody, set under a 1997 settlement approved by the U.S. Supreme Court.  

"We commend the Department of Homeland Security for drafting standards that will improve these facilities," said Michelle Brane with the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children.  "However, we continue to be concerned with many provisions of the standards, particularly that they allow children to be disciplined based on adult prison protocol, including the use of restraints, steel batons and strip searches."   

Brane, the director of the women’s commission’s detention and asylum program, said the new standards take into account many recommendations made by the commission and other immigrant advocacy groups.  She said they included limiting strip searches on minors, and provisions that children not be awakened or disturbed during night census counts unless urgent circumstances exist.