Further, only slightly more than a third (38 percent) of the individuals against whom detainers were issued had any record of a criminal conviction, including minor traffic violations. If traffic violations (including DWI) and marijuana possession violations are excluded, then only one-quarter (26 percent) of the individuals against whom detainers were issued had any conviction. See Figure 1 and compare with a similar chart showing patterns before the guidelines went into effect.

Figure 1. Most Serious Criminal Conviction
for Individuals with ICE Detainers, June 2013

In fact, comparing agency data from both before and after the new ICE guidelines were issued reveals that fewer — not more — individuals on whom detainers were placed have had any record of criminal activity, let alone serious criminal conduct.

The purpose of this brief report is to present newly obtained data supplementing recent in-depth coverage of this topic in TRAC's September 17, 2013 report. For additional information, see the sidebar listing other reports in TRAC's ongoing series about ICE detainer practices.

ICE Detainer Practices Before and After the New Guidelines

Detainers, often called "immigration holds," are a primary tool that ICE uses to apprehend the suspects it is seeking. These official ICE notices ask local, state and federal law enforcement agencies not to release suspected non-citizens held at their facilities in order to give ICE an opportunity to take them into its custody. However, there is no legal obligation for state and local law enforcement agencies to honor these detainers, and some jurisdictions have begun refusing to hold individuals arrested for minor violations or those who pose little risk to public safety.

Despite directives by former ICE Director John Morton issued in 2010 and again in 2011 prioritizing the use of the agency's limited resources to better target those it sought to deport, actual agency detainer practices in the field were often at variance with the Obama Administration's announced priorities.

Introduced at the end of last December, ICE's new detainer form required agents to indicate on the form itself the specific reason(s) the detainer was being placed. Presumably the intent was to bring agency detainer practices closer into line with the Administration's stated goals.

TRAC received newly-released agency records on detainers, placed through June 2013, following release of the previous report in this series. (Note that while data on all ICE detainers placed during January, March, May and June 2013 have been made available, ICE has inexplicably not responded to earlier FOIA requests for this same data for the months of February and April[1].)

TRAC's analysis of the new data reveals that little has changed (see Table 1). Before the new policy was issued, slightly more than half of detainers were placed on individuals convicted of some crime, however minor. Now decidedly fewer are turning up with any conviction record.

Before the new policy was announced, 14 percent of all detainers had been placed against those convicted of committing offenses identified as ICE's highest — Level 1 — priority. After the new policy, that number had acually dropped to between 10 and 12 percent[2].

A word of caution: the January - June 2013 figures should be considered preliminary, as conviction numbers are expected to rise somewhat until the outcome of any remaining pending charges are recorded. Thus, it is likely that the recent decreases seen in the numbers of detainers issued against individuals with no convictions at all may be an artifact of delayed reporting rather than any actual declines[3].

What is evident so far is that the new detainer policy has had no discernible impact in terms of improving the practice of targeting ICE detainers in the field.