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1 million
The number of so-called detainer requests issued by Immigration and Customs and Enforcement and sent to local authorities from 2008 to 2012, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
More than three-quarters of those were for immigrants who had no criminal convictions on their records. For the ones who'd been convicted, only 8.6% were charged with serious offenses, based on federal standards.
Federal immigration authorities use detainers to ask local agencies to hold unauthorized immigrants and eventually hand them over to the Department of Homeland Security.
It's a controversial approach that's long drawn fire from immigrant rights advocates, who argue that the feds have used the tool inappropriately to detain and deport people who don't deserve it.
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