•287(g) Program: This program cross-designates local officers to enforce immigration law.
•Asset Forfeiture: It allows ICE agents to seize and forfeit illicit proceeds and other criminally derived assets.
•Border Enforcement Security Task Forces: It allows Homeland Security law enforcement agencies, working cooperatively with other law enforcement entities, to comprehensively identify organizations posing significant threats to border security. BEST Task Forces are currently in Arizona, California and Texas.
•Criminal Alien Program: It focuses on identifying criminal aliens who are incarcerated within federal, state and local facilities, ensuring they are deported upon serving sentences.
•Customs Cross-Designation: It allows federal, state, local and foreign law enforcement officers who participate primarily on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement task force operations to be cross designated as "customs officers” and be granted the authority to enforce U.S. customs law.
•Document and Benefit Fraud Task Forces: It targets benefit fraud, identity theft and documentation fraud. It was initially launched in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Newark, N.J., Philadelphia, St. Paul, Minn., and Washington, D.C. In April 2007, additional task forces were added in Baltimore, Chicago, Miami, Fla., Phoenix, San Francisco and Tampa, Fla., bringing the total to 17 nationwide.
•Equitable Sharing/Joint Operations: This gives Homeland Security the ability to offer payment to local law enforcement for their cooperation and assistance in immigration enforcement. In fiscal year 2006, ICE coordinated payments of $5.65 million in overtime costs for state and local police officers working alongside ICE agents throughout the U.S., and provided $43.46 million in direct payments of equitable sharing of forfeited assets to 362 state and local agencies, four federal agencies and one foreign government.
•Fugitive Operation Teams: They identify, locate, apprehend, process and remove fugitive aliens from the United States with the highest priority placed on those fugitives who have been convicted of crimes.
•Other enforcement programs operating under the ICE ACCESS umbrella: The ICE-led National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, Law Enforcement Support, Operation Firewall, Operation Predator and Operation Community Shield — which in 2007 netted the arrest of 65 alleged illegal immigrant gang members in Oklahoma City.
But illegal immigration opponents say it must do a better job of targeting the lure of illegal immigration: The availability of work.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement made nearly four times as many workplace arrests as it did in 2006. Of those 4,900 arrests, 864 people were charged with a crime, more than 500 of which involved document fraud and identity theft in an attempt to appear to be legal residents.
The number of employers or managers arrested for hiring illegal immigrants was fewer than 100, however.
"When you have more than 500,000 illegals entering this country every year, you are not going to cut off the incentive until you start drying up employment. Employment is the No. 1 reason illegal immigrants come here,” said Bryan Griffith, spokesman for the Center for Immigrat