Immigration Agents Holding U.S. Residents in Unlisted, Unmarked Facilities
The Nation
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency or ICE is holding an untold number of people in secretively maintained detention facilities all over the United States. That’s according to an explosive report that’s the cover story of the latest issue of the Nation magazine. In addition to its publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is holding people in 186 unlisted and unmarked spaces known as sub-field offices.
Many of the offices are in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants. According the report in The Nation, they are mainly used to house individuals in transfer and are not subject to the basic standards applied to ICE detainees.
The Nation is also reporting that ICE agents regularly impersonate civilians and rely on other illegal tricks to arrest longtime US residents who have no criminal history. ICE agents have posed as Occupational Safety and Health inspectors, insurance agents and even religious workers.
We invited ICE to respond to the allegations but they refused to comment on any aspect of The Nation’s investigation. In a telephone call with Democracy Now! producers a spokesperson from ICE’s Office of Public Affairs simply described the articles as “conspiratorial nonsense” and “fiction.”
For more on this story we’re joined now here in New York by the author of this two-part investigation. Jacqueline Stevens filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain a partial list of the sub-field offices. Her articles are available at the nation dot com and the latest issue of the Nation magazine. They’re called “America’s Secret ICE Castles” and “ICE Agents Ruse operations.” Jacqueline Stevens is a professor in the Law and Society Program at the University of California at Santa Barbara and author of the recently published book “States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals.”
Jacqueline Stevens, professor in the Law and Society Program at the University of California at Santa Barbara and author of the recently published book “States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals.”
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D - AZ), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
