A year ago this week, ICE was formed by combining the investigative and intelligence arms of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the U.S. Customs Service, as well as the Federal Protective Service and the Federal Air Marshal Service. By integrating these once-fragmented resources, the Department of Homeland Security not only created the second-largest investigative agency in the Federal government, but it also created a dynamic and innovative new law enforcement organization uniquely and exclusively focused on homeland security—specifically border security, air security, and economic security.
<snip>
Applying a systemic approach to addressing the large number alien absconders, ICE set about prioritizing the most dangerous offenders. We first developed a ''Top Ten'' list with ''the worst of the worst.'' While this standard law enforcement tool was not regularly employed by the legacy INS, it proved to be a tremendous success for ICE. Nine of the original ''Top Ten'' were located and apprehended within the first two weeks, and the tenth was soon confirmed to have left the country.
This initiative revealed that among the criminal subset of the alien absconder population, many have convictions for sexual offenses and, in particular, offenses against children. By law, any non-citizen who commits such a crime is to be deported back to his or her home country. Unfortunately, that wasn't always the case under the INS, as you know. This committee has heard too many terrible stories about alien predators freed to prey upon children again and again.
To address this problem, ICE began to examine Megan's Law directories, matching our immigration databases to Megan's Law databases, and rounding up deportable aliens convicted of sexual crimes against children. Our success rate was astounding, Mr. Chairman, and we quickly came to recognize the awful dimension of the child predator problem. Besides the high number of alien predators, our investigators were unearthing remarkable numbers of child pornographers on the Internet, human smuggling organizations trafficking in children for sexual exploitation, and the relatively new phenomenon of ''sex tourists,'' American citizens who travel to other countries to engage in sex with minors. So we coordinated all, systematically.
As appropriate within ICE's existing jurisdiction, Operation Predator has grown to include U.S. citizens and residents suspected of sex crimes against children. This new approach targets child predators by combining our immigration authorities and our child pornography authorities to merge efforts in a way that had never been done in the past. In a way unforeseeable before the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE is coordinating once fragmented resources and underutilized authorities into a united campaign against those who prey upon our children—drawing on the full range of intelligence, investigative, and detention and removal functions of ICE to target those who exploit children. Protecting children from these ruthless predators is undoubtedly paramount to our homeland security mission.
The results of this initiative are unprecedented in law enforcement. The success of Operation Predator—as measured by the number of child predators ICE has taken off the streets—is a testimony to the tireless work of ICE agents who have embraced the integration of the legacy agencies' legal authorities and used them in new and more effective ways. Since Operation Predator was launched in July 2003, ICE has arrested more than 2,000 child predators. While this is indeed a worldwide enforcement effort, it has a direct impact on the safety of the streets in your local communities, as evident in that nearly 1,300 of these arrests occurred in the nine states represented by the Members of this Subcommittee.
Recognizing the synergies realized through our own merger, we aggressively sought to incorporate and join forces with others in this important effort. ICE is currently working closely with a number of agencies and organizations under Operation Predator. Such cooperation is critical to the success of this initiative, since child predator investigations often cross jurisdictional boundaries and require specialized assistance to help victims overcome the trauma of their abuse. ICE Operation Predator partners include other DHS agencies such as U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP); state and local police departments, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service; the U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor & Combat Trafficking in Persons; NCMEC; Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN); INTERPOL; the U.S. Department of Justice; and many others who also provide critical support to the program.
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju92347.000/hju92347_0.HTM
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
