Ins deportation proceedings

The goal of the Institutional Removal Program IRP is to enhance the INS's efforts at identifying removable criminal aliens in federal, state, and local correctional facilities, and initiate deportation proceedings to effect their timely removal. Under the IRP, attorneys, immigration judges, and incarcerated aliens are brought together in a system that is designed to expedite the removal process.

The program objectives are to complete the judicial and administrative review proceedings prior to completion of aliens' sentences, thereby eliminating the need for further detention by the INS. Based on the most current information available, the IRP operates at 13 hearing sites at Federal Bureau of Prisons BOP facilities; 83 state hearing sites at facilities in 49 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico; and 4 hearing sites at county facilities in California, Florida, and Massachusetts.

Removal proceedings for incarcerated criminal aliens processed through the IRP begin with the facilities' identification of foreign-born inmates upon their entry into federal, state or county incarceration. Generally, INS district offices are provided with periodic listings of foreign-born inmates from federal and state correctional institutions within their jurisdiction.

How to check deportation status in usa

Such reporting by federal correctional institutions is required; the INS depends on voluntary cooperation from state and local facilities. At the county level, INS district offices must proactively check local booking records of inmates identified as foreign-born for potentially deportable criminal aliens. INS agents assigned to the IRP, usually immigration agents, conduct on-site interviews with inmates identified by the facility as foreign-born to determine their legal status and deportability.

Once an inmate is determined removable, the INS agent files a Notice to Appear NTA , at which point the Executive Office for Immigration Review EOIR is brought into the process culminating in a deportation hearing before an immigration judge, ideally at a designated hearing site within the federal, state, or local prison system. Upon completion of their sentences, deportable aliens are then released into INS custody for immediate removal.

We selected California and Florida to perform our site work based on preliminary audit work indicating that coverage i. As of June 30, , California and Florida ranked first and fourth, respectively, in the number of foreign-born inmates held in state and federal custody, accounting for nearly half of the nation's known population of foreign-born inmates.

In order to assess the effectiveness of the IRP at the county level, we selected Fresno and Kern counties in California, and Broward and Dade counties in Florida for review. Fresno and Kern counties were selected because they are rural counties with intense alien involvement in the surrounding agricultural environment and are sufficiently removed from major INS district offices to make significant and sustained INS coverage difficult.

Broward and Dade counties in Florida, conversely, were selected because they are large metropolitan areas with large foreign-born populations and INS offices in close proximity. Local correctional facilities, such as those in Broward, Dade, Fresno, and Kern counties, represent a potentially vast, but largely unknown element with regard to the size of the nation's incarcerated criminal alien population.