Posted by John Morton, Director, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)


On the eve of Super Bowl XLVI, ICE has already scored a victory. Through Operation Fake Sweep, a nationwide enforcement operation targeting stores, flea markets and street vendors selling counterfeit game-related sportswear, we seized more than 42,692 NFL trademarked items with a record-breaking value of $4.86 million – up from $3.72 million last year.

In addition we seized the domain names of 291 illegal Internet websites selling counterfeit NFL merchandise largely made overseas and 16 websites engaged in illegal streaming of live sporting events and pay-per-view events over the Internet, including the Super Bowl. This is the largest number of websites we have ever seized in a single operation.

Intellectual property (IP) thieves undermine the U.S. economy and jeopardize public safety. American jobs are being lost, American innovation is being diluted and organized criminal enterprises are profiting from their increasing involvement in IP theft.

Discerning consumers should know that counterfeiters are more pervasive and more sophisticated than ever before. The fake merchandise and the bogus websites look authentic. The prices are discounted, yet not ridiculously low. So even a savvy consumer might not realize he or she is being duped. These are new tricks of the counterfeiting trade.

In sports, players must abide by rules of the game, and in life, individuals must follow the laws of the land. Our message is simple: abiding by intellectual property rights laws is not optional; it's the law

Posted by Director John Morton, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

This blog post is part of a series of posts related to National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

Human trafficking victims are often hidden in plain sight. That was the case in northern Virginia in 2009 when Jose Ciro Juarez-Santamaria, an El Salvadoran national and MS-13 gang member, forced a 12-year-old girl – a runaway – into a life of prostitution. This past October, thanks in large part to the work of our Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents, Juarez-Santamaria was sentenced to life in prison for child sex trafficking.

Sadly, scenarios like this one play out across the country every day. Through the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) HSI agents, DHS works hard to prevent and combat human trafficking. Last fiscal year, ICE initiated more than human trafficking investigations, which resulted in more than 900 arrests, 400 indictments and 270 convictions.
You can help us combat human trafficking and continue to put traffickers like Juarez-Santamaria behind bars. I urge you to keep your eyes and ears open to report suspicious activity and help us crack down on these horrific crimes.
At ICE, we not only investigate cases of human trafficking, but we also provide services and support to trafficking victims. ICE has full-time victim assistance coordinators at nearly 70 percent of its HSI field offices. We also have 350 collateral-duty coordinators who provide counseling and crisis intervention services when necessary.

President Obama declared January as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Please join ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the fight against this heinous crime. If you suspect human trafficking, I encourage you to call 866-DHS-2-ICE or complete our online tip form. We can’t combat human trafficking without your assistance.

Posted by Secretary Napolitano

Today I visited the University of Wisconsin – Madison to announce an important new initiative to help streamline the international student visa process and encourage foreign students to study and lawfully remain in the United States.

Each year, more than a million international students study in our nation’s world-leading system of universities, exchange programs, and training opportunities.

These students enrich the cultural and academic life of campuses like the University of Wisconsin and many others across our country. They also contribute directly to our economy, serve as a source of innovation by generating new ideas, and enhance our nation’s economic, scientific and technological competitiveness.

The Study in the States initiative that Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton and I announced today will examine regulatory changes, expand public engagement between government and academia, and provide a user-friendly online information hub for DHS and its agency partners to provide students with updated and relevant visa requirements. 

Students will benefit from links to social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, and useful information about visa requirements, exchange visitors, and the academic community. 

The Study in the States site includes information from all agencies involved with prospective and current international students, as well as the academic community and the public at large. It will enable DHS and our partner agencies to coordinate and disseminate messages to international students, exchange visitors, and their dependents, that travel to the United States to study each year. 

It also will help us ensure the international student population is clearly informed about student visa rules and regulations. And it will enhance coordination among the various federal agencies that play a role implementing our student visa and exchange visitor programs.

We’re pleased to be working with students, educational institutions, and our many federal partners on this important effort. It will help us ensure that the best and brightest international students continue to make America their destination of choice.

Posted by John Morton, Director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Last week Secretary Napolitano released a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report highlighting the significant progress that DHS had made in fulfilling specific recommendations by the 9/11 Commission.

This year marks the 10-year anniversary of the most horrific terrorist attacks in U.S. history – 9/11. While the memories of that day are still sobering, I’m proud to say that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has played an integral role in making the world a safer place by bolstering the security of our borders and maintaining the integrity of our identification documents.

Here are a few ICE initiatives that are helping to improve secure identification:

• Our specially trained ICE agents, assigned to the Visa Security Program, are identifying and stopping potential terrorist and criminal suspects before entering the U.S. Deployed to diplomatic posts overseas, ICE agents perform thorough visa application reviews in order to assess whether applicants are attempting to enter the U.S. for illegitimate purposes.
• Our world-renowned Forensic Document Laboratory (FDL) is on the leading edge of detecting and deterring use of fraudulent documents by terrorist and other criminal who are trying to elude or outsmart the screening process.
• We are furthering our nation’s safety through management of the International Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which tracks and monitors the status and activities of nonimmigrant students and exchange visitors. Our agents ensure that only legitimate foreign students or exchange students gain entry to the U.S. and that they abide by the terms of their visas while here.
• We are also assisting the DHS-wide effort to address the backlog of unvetted potential visa overstays by investigating leads with potential national security concerns.

These examples just touch the surface on how ICE has effectively responded to recommendations put forth in the 9/11 Commission Report. While threats continually evolve, we must continue to do our part to ensure a stronger, more secure nation.

Written by: John Morton, Director, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Too often, political posturing rather than facts dominates the debate surrounding immigration. But when you look at the facts, including record-breaking statistics, our record shows this Administration is serious about sensible and tough enforcement.

Let’s start with the facts. As required by federal law, one of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) primary missions is to remove illegal aliens from this country. Under this Administration, ICE has focused its efforts on removing criminal aliens, recent border entrants, and immigration fugitives. The results have been unprecedented. Last fiscal year, ICE removed a record 389,000 illegal aliens from the United States, 136,000 of whom were criminals. So far this fiscal year, we have removed a record 170,000 criminals and have placed more people—criminal and non-criminal--in immigration proceedings than ever before.

The recent expansion of Secure Communities, which uses biometrics to identify criminal aliens in local jails and prisons, has significantly increased the number of criminal aliens subject to removal. To ensure these individuals who have been convicted of crimes such as assault, arson, drug trafficking, burglary, drunk-driving, do not pose further danger to our communities, ICE has implemented a policy to expedite the removal of convicted criminal aliens and ensure these cases are prioritized by our courts. Simply put, this is a common sense solution to ensure convicted criminal aliens are not released into our communities and address the record backlogs cases our courts currently have pending.

Greetings from Phnom Penh, Cambodia

By any measure, Cambodia has come a long way in a relatively short period of time. Since its full independence in 1953, this nation of now 14 million has endured two distinct and lengthy conflicts, and dictatorial regime that – between 1976 and 1979 – annihilated at least 1.5 million Cambodians through execution, forced servitude, and malnourishment. Cambodia is a democracy today, but serious problems remain.

Child sex tourism in Cambodia is a persistent, pervasive practice that threatens the most vulnerable in this developing country. In recent years, the Cambodian National Police, international partners, and a number of non-governmental organizations have worked to crack down on pedophiles from around the world, arresting and prosecuting these criminals while working to rescue and rehabilitate the abused.

I am proud to say that the agency I lead, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is at the forefront of this emerging issue, and aggressively pursues Americans who travel overseas to abuse children. Millions of children fall prey each year to sexual predators, and these young victims are left with permanent psychological, physical, and emotional scars. Many American criminals clearly believe they can evade detection and prosecution by committing child sex crimes overseas. They are wrong.

My visit to Cambodia seeks to strengthen our ongoing cooperation with the Cambodian National Police. Earlier this week, we signed a Letter of Intent to solidify the working relationship between our two law enforcement agencies to combat child sex tourism. This agreement seeks to develop a bi-national, coordinated, and intelligence-driven investigative response to the sexual exploitation of children by U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.

There is no more poignant reminder of the critical nature of these investigations than a neighborhood outside Phnom Penh, known simply by its distance from the center of town – “Kilo 11.” There, predators from around the world prey on young boys and girls amidst the shocking poverty of a Cambodian slum. Accompanied by our Cambodian Police partners, we walked down narrow streets and dark alleys where we saw firsthand the extreme circumstances that lead some families to sell their children to these criminals – many of them from Western nations. Not long ago, ICE agents assisted in arresting an American man for abusing a six-year-old child in a ramshackle blue hut, set deep in this labyrinthine neighborhood. This individual was eventually returned to the United States and is currently standing trial for charges stemming from his arrest in Cambodia.

These types of cases are extremely challenging to investigate and prosecute, but we owe it to these young victims to take action. Tragically, many of these children will bear the emotional and physical scars of this trauma for the rest of their lives.

The United States would not be able to successfully prosecute these cases without the assistance of our international partners.

John Morton is the Assistant Secretary U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)