Office of Detention and Removal (DRO)

The Office of Detention and Removal (DRO) is a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

DRO is the primary enforcement arm within ICE for the identification, apprehension and removal of illegal aliens from the United States. The resources and expertise of DRO are utilized to identify and apprehend illegal aliens, fugitive aliens, and criminal aliens, to manage them while in custody and to enforce orders of removal from the United States. DRO is committed to enforcing our nation’s immigration laws in a fair, effective, and professional manner.

Mission

DRO promotes public safety and national security by ensuring the departure from the United States of all removable aliens through the fair and effective enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws.

Ten-Year Vision

Within 10 years, DRO will have the capacity to meet all presidential and congressional mandates.

Making this happen will require:

• Visionary leadership at all levels of the organization;
  
  
• An effectively trained and educated professional workforce;
  
  
• The right levels of critical resources, e.g., personnel, facilities, infrastructure; and
  
  
• Effective, responsive, and accurate command–control–communications–computer–intelligence (C4I) systems that advance the DRO mission.

Program and Activity Information

Removals

The primary responsibility of DRO is to identify, apprehend and remove illegal aliens from the United States. This requires DRO to facilitate the processing of illegal aliens through immigration courts, and to enforce their removal from the United States.

Key elements in exercising those responsibilities include: identifying and removing all high-risk illegal alien fugitives and absconders; ensuring that those aliens who have already been identified as criminals are expeditiously removed; and to develop and maintain a robust removals program with the capacity to remove all final order cases - thus precluding growth in the illegal alien absconder population.

Simply stated, DRO’s ultimate goal is to develop the capacity to identify and remove all removable aliens.

Generally, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) grants aliens the right to a removal proceeding before an immigration judge to decide both inadmissibility and deportability. Aliens can be removed for reasons of health, criminal status, economic well-being, national security risks and other reasons of public concern that are specifically defined in the Act.

Immigration judges, employed by the Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) weigh evidence presented by both the alien and ICE, assesses the facts and renders a decision that can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

If the immigration judge issues a decision ordering the alien removed from the United States, DRO is responsible to enforce the removal order. The process includes coordination and liaison with foreign government officials and embassies to obtain travel documents and country clearances, coordinating complex logistical and transportation issues to repatriate the alien and, if required DRO officers escort the alien to his or her foreign country.

Fugitive Operations

The removal of criminal aliens from the United States is a national priority. To address this priority, DRO designed the National Fugitive Operations Program (NFOP). Its mission is to identify, apprehend, and remove from the United States aliens who have failed to surrender for removal or to comply with a removal order. NFOP teams work exclusively on fugitive cases, giving priority to the public safety concerns of criminal aliens cases.

The “Absconder Apprehension Initiative” uses the data available from National Crime Information Center databases as a virtual force multiplier. As part of the Alien Absconder Initiative, DRO developed and coordinated the “ICE Most Wanted” program. This program publicizes the names, faces and other identifying features of the 10 most wanted fugitive criminals by ICE. If you have comments or questions about the Most Wanted list, the Absconder Apprehension Initiative or the National Fugitive Operations Program, please contact us at:

U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Office of Detention and Removal - Fugitive Operations
801 I Street, NW
Washington, DC 20536

Report Suspicious Activity -1-866-DHS-2-ICE

e-mail: ICEFUGITIVEOPS@dhs.gov

MOST WANTED Criminal Aliens

Intelligence Operations Unit

The Intelligence Operations Unit (IOU) manages the collection and dissemination of law enforcement information and intelligence within the DRO Program. The IOU ensures that all intelligence, developed or received, is evaluated and disseminated to the appropriate ICE operational entity as it pertains to homeland security, criminal activities, infrastructure protection, and the illegal movement of people, money, narcotics, and cargo entering, transiting, or operating within our national borders.

One of the most important ICE mandates is the enhancement of public safety and the security of the American public. The broad authority of ICE allows for the identification and removal of dangerous, often recidivist, criminals engaged in crimes such as murder, predatory sexual offenses, narcotics trafficking, alien smuggling, and a host of other crimes that have a profoundly negative impact on our society.

A largely untapped source of information resides in the ICE detainee population. The IOU seeks to dedicate personnel to gather information in detention facilities, organize information, provide information locally, as needed, to avert possible detention riots or other illegal activities within the ICE detainee population and provide the information to the ICE Office of Intelligence for further analysis and assimilation into the “big picture”.

The information obtained from aliens can also provide more raw information to:

• provide real time information on particular terrorist threats or organized criminal activities,
• enhance the development of a foreign informant network strategy utilizing alien removals, and
• provide a source of information that can provide the ICE Office of Intelligence with criminal trends and patterns that will allow for the effective use of ICE investigative resources.

In addition to exploiting available intelligence information, the IOU is working in conjunction with other DHS entities to coordinate border security intelligence in achieving the recommendations of the Secure Border Initiative (SBI).

The IOU also provides guidance, direction and accountability for DRO intelligence initiatives and exercises oversight over intelligence efforts by all DRO field offices.

Detention

The aliens (non-citizens) who are apprehended and not released from custody are placed in detention facilities. Those that cannot be legally released from secure custody constitute DRO’s “nondetained” docket. Every case, whether “detained” or “nondetained,” remains part of DRO’s caseload, actively managed until and unless it is formally closed. DRO processes and monitors detained and nondetained cases as they move through immigration court proceedings to conclusion. At that point, DRO executes the judge’s order.

Primary healthcare for alien detainees is managed by the Division of Immigration Health Services (DIHS). The DIHS is located within the Bureau of Primary Health Care of the Public Health Service of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

DRO has defined policy and procedures regarding the proper handling of unaccompanied alien juveniles taken into federal custody as a result of their unlawful immigration status. DHS’ juvenile guidelines address the responsibilities related to unaccompanied alien juveniles who enter the United States illegally, violate their legal status or commit a deportable crime. As part of the restructuring of INS, the responsibilities related to the care and custody of unaccompanied alien juveniles has been transferred to HHS, Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Division of Unaccompanied Children Services.

Immigration Detention Facilities

2008 Performance Based Standards
2000 Detention Standards

DRO secures bed space in detention facilities, and monitors these facilities for compliance with national Detention Standards. The standards specify the living conditions appropriate for detainees. These standards have been collated and published in the Detention Operations Manual. This Manual provides uniform policies and procedures concerning the treatment of individuals detained by ICE.

ICE operates eight secure detention facilities called Service Processing Centers (SPCs). They are located in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico; Batavia, New York; El Centro, California; El Paso, Texas; Florence, Arizona; Miami, Florida; Los Fresnos, Texas; and San Pedro, California. The newest SPC, the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility, is unique because in addition to its 300 beds for detained aliens, it has 150 beds for use by the U.S. Marshals Service.

ICE augments its SPC’s with seven contract detention facilities. These facilities are located in Aurora, Colorado; Houston, Texas; Laredo, Texas; Seattle, Washington; Elizabeth, New Jersey; Queens, New York; and San Diego, California. ICE also uses state and local jails on a reimbursable detention day basis and has joint federal facilities with the Bureau of Prisons, the Federal Detention Center in Oakdale, Louisiana, and the contractor owned and operated (with the Bureau of Prisons) criminal alien facility in Eloy, Arizona. In addition, major expansion initiatives are underway at several SPCs’ to enhance DROs detention capabilities.

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