Much of your information is dated, incorrect, or incomplete understanding of the statistics.
1) ICE officers conducting sweeps of undocumented aliens in residential areas.
The second article is published recently but actually details, and says so in the article, sweeps that happened in 2008 during the Bush administration.
Here is an article that details the worst of these sweeps:
http://www.rwor.org/a/104/ice-raids-en.htm... here is another
http://www.nrn.com/article/industry-blasts... Since January there has been a standing order that no undocumented aliens are to be detained by ICE if they don't have a clear criminal connection. In the San Diego/Imperial County sector that has been only one such detention and the officer was repreimanded.
If you look at the graph carefully you will se that the largest increase of alien deportations is in criminals. ICE Offices in the inland area have been closed and those officers have been reassigned to work in jails identifying criminals that are here illegally. They are also conducting sweeps of "criminal" aliens.
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=... LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- It's being called the largest operation targeting criminal aliens in the history of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
During the three-day sweep, 286 foreign nationals with criminal records were arrested in California.
More than 80 percent of the suspects had prior convictions for serious or violent crimes. There were also 30 convicted sex offenders. At least 100 of the criminal aliens have already been deported while the rest face deportation.
"Of the 286 individuals whom we have taken into custody, more than 200 had prior convictions for serious and violent criminal offenses like crimes involving rape and armed robbery," said John Morton of the I.C.E.
2) Increased number of deportations - non criminal.
In fact your graph shows most of the increase as being criminal related and the non criminal declined slightly but this too is deceptive.
When somebody ws caught by the Border Patrol within 40 miles of the border, many times within a few feet, it was the practice of the BP to allow them to ask for voluntary deportations (VD). These cases which account for a large percentage of all returns are not recorded as deportations. Under the Obama administration the practice has been to significantly reduce VDs. For one reason these people are not getting the benefit of an attorney. The other problem is that you are not keeping track of repeat offenders. If a person is repeatedly caught crossing the border then penalties including future visa denials and short term detention can be used to deter illegal crossing.
So non criminal deportations are inflated by the fact that volunatary deportations have been reduced by 80% and those numbers have increase the number of non criminal deportations.
3) Access to ICE courts and detention facilities.
In CA these facilities are well identified an conspicous areas. They have regular visits from relatives and attorneys and anyone else who has a reason to be there. They are much nicer facilities than normal criminal jails probably because most of the people in there are regular folks and they maintain a non violent atmosphere.
You can visit immigration court and you will find that they take the same painstaking efforts to follow US legal procedure as they do on Law and Order. You can't simply plead guilty, you have to allocute and your allocution has to be in order or the judge will order a trial. You can be sure that if these people were not receiving access to lawyers and courts that there would be strong response from the Hispanic organizations that are helping them.
The last time I was at a detention facility I had to wait 30 minutes because an inmate complained that the company that was contracted to sell phone cards for the detainees had shorted his credit. After auditing his calls the officer determined that inmate was correct and an order was issued to the contractor to refund $ 7 to the inmate.
You would be hard put to see any other agency where there has been a bigger change between the two administrations
1) Residential Sweeps stopped
2) Work place sweeps stopped (unless there is evidence of employers involved in criminal conspiracy including exploiting workers)
3) Interior ICE offices closed.
4) ICE officers moved from non criminal deportatios to working in jails and tracking down criminal aliens
5) Decrease in voluntary deportations ensuring more aliens have access to legal representation prior to deportation.
6) Sharp increase in deportation of criminal aliens.
