“The statement made by Lory K. Haley, a public affairs officer and not an operational officer of ICE, is not correct,” Kaipat said.
“Ms. Haley may not be familiar with the situation here in the commonwealth. Our Labor Department has provided information to ICE officials in exactly the same way as we formerly provided information to the CNMI Immigration Division. Our former Immigration Division deported between 200 and 300 illegal aliens each year.
There is no reason ICE cannot do the same,” Kaipat said.
“I recommend that ICE use its authority under Section 287g of the INA to provide funding to local law enforcement officers to assist in locating and arresting aliens,” Kaipat said.
ICE has an Office of State and Local Coordination that operates this program nationwide. Many states participate.
Kaipat also pointed to the failure of U.S. agencies to hire local people.
“I understand that ICE’s personnel, assigned to the commonwealth only on a temporary basis, may have a problem. If they need translators and informants to find people, they should use their resources to hire them.
But one part of the problem stands out. So far as I know, ICE has not hired any of our former Immigration Division inspectors to assist them. These people are very knowledgeable about the local immigration enforcement situation. I think this would be an obvious resource to tap. If ICE used local talent, with the information that the Labor Department formerly supplied to local officials and now supplies to ICE, they should have considerably more success,” Kaipat noted.
Under former commonwealth deportation processes, the Labor Department provided identification information to the Immigration Division on illegal aliens who formerly had held work permits.
The Immigration Division used that identification information to locate and arrest the named aliens.
These people were then presented to the commonwealth prosecutors.
“Under our former deportation processes, the prosecutors would ask the alien for a current passport and a current permit allowing employment in the commonwealth. If the alien did not have these credentials, they were deemed deportable. Of course, anyone can present a defense against the prosecution’s challenge, but these cases moved quickly in the Commonwealth Superior Court. Most were disposed of and the alien departed within 60 to 90 days,” Kaipat explained.
“We provide the same identification information to ICE on a very timely basis, and we certify illegal status in the same way for ICE. That means, if ICE needs it, there is a Labor Department official ready to testify that the alien has no current permit to work in the commonwealth,” Kaipat said.
“ICE apparently has not been able to deport anyone in the six months they have been in charge of deportations in the commonwealth,” Kaipat observed.
“So now we have a public affairs officer, Ms. Haley, saying that it is our fault, not ICE’s fault, for this rather astonishing record.”
Elsewhere in the United States, ICE officials are responsible for finding illegal aliens and creating the necessary information with which to prosecute their deportation.
There is no burden put on state agencies to spend their resources to these ends.
“Before Ms. Haley offered her observations, we already initiated a meeting with ICE officials here in the commonwealth to collaborate on their problems with deporting illegal aliens. That meeting will be held in the near future,” Kaipat said.
“So far as we know, ICE has not yet even processed the more than 200 cases that the commonwealth prosecutors turned over to them on the transition date. Those cases involved complete prosecutor files. As I understand it, nothing remained to be done but to bring the case. The U.S. Government Accountability Office report told us that ICE had not even brought many of these cases. So why ICE is complaining about the lack of data on the more than 1,300 illegal aliens that we certified to them months ago is puzzling.”
Kaipat added, “In my view, two things are necessary for successful commonwealth and federal collaboration:
First, mutual respect for our roles. The commonwealth should be treated as a partner. We are not a colony.
Second, operational cooperation at the working level between agencies, without inflammatory defensive statements from public relations officials.”
She regards “the failure to deport any illegal aliens and the consequent build-up of illegal aliens in the commonwealth as an enormous social problem for the commonwealth, and I and my department will do our best to help alleviate this problem. At the same time, I must spend our very meager funding resources on finding jobs for U.S. citizens. I cannot do ICE’s job for it. They are the federal government. They have enormous resources. They need to use those resources to fix this problem.”
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