Quotas aren't just for traffic tickets

It's a full house... by law.
Photo credit @ChodHound, Flickr; used under CC License.

A Congressional quota requires that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) keep roughly 34,000 detainees in custody per day -- whether ICE wants to detain that many people, or not. This policy dates from 2006, when some legislators wanted to make sure that the federal government didn't get lazy on enforcing the immigration laws.

Years ago, ICE filled those spots easily, with the huge number of people it caught at border crossings. Now there are fewer people coming over the border, and ICE cannot meet its quota. So the government searches for legally present immigrants who have criminal records, and also focuses on undocumented immigrants taken into custody during traffic stops by local police.

A large number of these people --as many as half of them --will appear before immigration judges and eventually be approved to stay in the United States. In the meantime, however, they have to spend months in costly federal custody. This also feeds the pockets of private prison companies, such as the GEO Group and CCA. These companies, in turn, spend money lobbying Congress on immigration issues.

Immigration advocates point out that other, less costly forms of supervision are available, such as GPS ankle bracelet monitoring. The alternatives cost less than one-tenth of the price of keeping a person in detention, and research shows there is nearly full compliance with them.

While a quota, in theory, may seem like a way to ensure that immigration laws are enforced, in practice it just means that people are locked up unnecessarily.

Read more at the Washington Post.

Supreme Court Reverses SEC V. Gabelli, Clarifies Five-Year Statute of Limitations

On February 27, 2013, the Supreme Court reversed the 2nd Circuit in the case of Gabelli et al. v. Securities and Exchange Commission, holding that the five-year period for the government to commence actions for civil penalties for fraud begins to run when the fraud occurs, not when it is discovered. 

The SEC filed the initial enforcement action in 2008 against petitioners Gabelli and Alpert under the Investment Adviser Act.  The Investment Advisers Act makes it illegal for investment advisers to defraud their clients, and authorizes the SEC to seek civil penalties within five years of the alleged illegal activity.  The SEC alleged that Gabelli and Alpert had aided and abetted investment adviser fraud from 1999 until 2002. 

At issue in the case was whether the SEC could file claims of fraud against an investment adviser after this five-year deadline had passed on the argument that it had not discovered the violation until more recently.  Courts sometimes apply a “discovery rule” to fraud cases to keep alive otherwise-lapsed securities claims by investors and other private parties.

The Supreme Court declined to extend the “discovery rule” to government civil penalty enforcement actions.  The Court explained that, unlike private parties who may have no reason to suspect fraud, the SEC’s very purpose is to root out fraud.  The SEC also has many legal tools at its disposal to detect and expose fraudulent activity.  The Court also discussed the importance of setting time limits on penalty actions because they go beyond compensation and are intended to punish and label defendants as wrongdoers.