 |
|
In April of 2015, Johnson put into place the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), which purports to restrict ICE detainers to "special circumstances," including cases in which the individual poses a risk to national security or has been convicted. But according to the the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), during April 2015 only 32 percent of individuals on whom detainers were placed had been convicted of a crime, only 19 percent had a felony conviction, and nearly two-thirds had no criminal conviction of any type. This supports what immigration advocates have long claimed: that the majority of those targeted by PEP (and Secure Communities before it) are ordinary folks (whose illegal entry or overstaying a visa is a civil, not criminal, offense) who cannot "reasonably (be) regarded as a danger to the security of the country," or be "considered a danger to the community."
|
|
|
|
