Border patrol officers are offered gift cards & extra vacation time for making arrests.

The lure of bonus pay and extra vacation time perhaps drove border patrol agents in western New York to arrest hundreds of people that were in the country legally, a new report finds.

Over five years, Border guards patrolling Rochester's bus and train stations arrested about 300 people who weren't suspected of any other crime, but weren't carrying complete citizenship or immigration papers, according to a report released this week by the immigrant rights group Families for Freedom and the New York University School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic.

"The border patrol thinks that you can be expected to carry your passport at all times," said NYU School of Law Professor Nancy Morawetz, a co-author of the report. "You can put the pieces together and see the encouragement of reckless arrests -- arresting first and asking questions later."

The Rochester agents reported to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol sector in Buffalo, where the workplace culture emphasized making high numbers of arrests, researchers said.

Supervisors dispensed bonus pay of up to $2,500 per year, a week's worth of extra vacation time and $100 gift cards to retailers like Home Depot. In depositions cited in the report, border patrol managers provided little explanation for what criteria went into distributing the rewards.

The agency's rewards programs are relatively new and have seen tremendous growth. The bonus pay budget was almost $200,000 in 2011, compared to $5,000 in 2003, the report says. The office introduced the vacation award in 2009 with a pie of 400 hours to be divided up. In 2011, there were more than 1,000 vacation hours available for the taking.

The researchers fear the incentive of extra pay and time off from work possibly contributed to overzealous stops and wrongful arrests. "A law enforcement agency that focuses on arrests allows the agents to operate in a way that harasses people in the community," said Morawetz. "These law enforcement officers have enormous power over people's liberty." 

Agents on patrol were encouraged to engage travelers in what border patrol officials called "consensual, non-intrusive conversations." They asked people about their national origins and immigration status. Depending on the answers, people could be arrested or detained for formal questioning. 

Swept up in the tide were college students, skilled foreign-born workers and tourists stopped by border guards, the report found.

The researchers say the potential for racial profiling is obvious. Topping the list of the wrongly arrested were 33 people from China and 30 from India. Significant numbers were from Latin America, the West Indies, Africa and other Asian countries, according to the report.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol declined to answer questions about the report, but provided a statement:

CBP officers and Border Patrol Agents protect border security, while facilitating trade and travel, and do so while preserving the civil rights and civil liberties of all people with whom the officers and agents interact. CBP does not tolerate racial profiling. Our officers and agents are trained in how to recognize people and situations that present a potential threat or violation of law without regard to race. No such practice of paid incentives and awards for specific human targets or enforcement actions has ever occurred within the Border Patrol, nor will it ever occur within the ranks of any CBP component.

Families for Freedom teamed up with Morawetz after hearing complaints a few years ago that people were being unfairly targeted by border patrol agents in upstate New York. This is the second report the partners have released assailing the border patrol's practices.

Contrary to court statements previously made by officials, the report revealed that the New York state border patrol offices kept detailed records of arrest statistics. In 2011, wrongful lockups at the Rochester train and bus hubs accounted for more than 10 percent of all arrests made at those sites, according to border patrol records obtained by the researchers. 

The agency's Buffalo sector covers a 450-mile stretch of the U.S. border from western Pennsylvania to northern New York, near the source of the St. Lawrence River. Its jurisdiction extends south to include all of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, as well as much of western New York. 

The report's authors say the arrests made in Rochester show that the border patrol's active presence goes far beyond stopping illegal entries along international borders, and they worry there could be systemic flaws in border patrol offices throughout the country. 

"The documents show that USBP agents act on the assumption that no matter where they operate within the United States, they may arrest any noncitizen," the report says. "USBP's demand for 'papers' is universal, resulting in an enforcement culture that maximizes arrest rates."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/border-patrol-rewards-arrests-new-york_n_2591416.html

2014: Too late to leave the U.S.?

The Ex-PATRIOT Act lies like a coiled snake on a table in the U.S. Senate. The longer title of this unenacted bill from 2012 is the Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy Act. Its self-description is, "A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide that persons renouncing citizenship for a substantial tax avoidance purpose shall be subject to tax and withholding on capital gains, to provide that such persons shall not be admissible to the United States, and for other purposes."

The Ex-PATRIOT Act seeks to impose a perpetual exit tax and a re-entry ban on “specified expatriates.” A specified expat is anyone with a net worth of at least $2 million or a tax liability averaging at least $148,000 over the last 5 years. A renunciation of citizenship would be automatically viewed as a tax dodge. The person would need to prove his innocence to the IRS to become exempt from a permanent and annual 30% tax on all earnings from U.S. investments. The net worth level at which the tax triggered would undoubtedly sink over time and, perhaps, quickly so.
(Even the Nazis were not so extreme. Until 1941, the third Reich used the Reichsfluchtsteuer (Reich Flight Tax) to charge emigrating Jews a one-time 25 percent exit tax. Schumer wants 30% in perpetuity.)

The Ex-PATRIOT Act would also ban “former citizens” from U.S. soil unless he received a waiver. The waiver requirements are to be determined at a later date. Current expats have no legal right to return, but they are rarely banned from doing so.

The Act was introduced in May 2012 by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), read twice, and referred to the Senate Committee on Finance. It is likely to pass in 2013.

The likelihood of passage:

When the Act emerged from the Democrat-dominated Senate, John Boehner – the Republican leader in the House of Representatives -- was luke-warm. He would back the Act if it was “necessary,” he stated. But he asked, is this really necessary? Since then, the two parties have feuded bitterly over a budget bill, with the Republicans accused of serving millionaires at the expense of America. The mud stuck. Boehner caved; despite a vow to never do so, he allowed taxes on millionaires to rise.

If he opposes the Ex-PATRIOT Act, Republicans will be excoriated for pandering to jet-set tax evaders. Democrats will chortle with joy. In fact, they have already played the embarrassment card. A co-sponsor of the Act challenged Boehner through a press conference, “Washington needs to work together in a bipartisan manner. I request that you introduce the Ex-PATRIOT Act in the United States House of Representatives and call for an immediate vote on this important legislation.” The political dynamic favors passage of the Act in both the Senate and the House.

The average trapped American is resentful of expats...and, most especially, rich ones. As long as the rate of expatriation was small, it could be dismissed as an aberration. After all, who would flee from the land of the free? That was something Europeans did. But the annual rate of expatriation has been rising sharply since Obama's first term (2009-2012). In 2008, 231 Americas went through the complex and expensive process of officially leaving. In 2009, 750 left; in 2010, 1534; in 2011, 1782. These are official numbers from the Taxpatriate Lists published by the IRS.

The real numbers would be much, much higher. Consider a series of Zogby International polls conducted between 2005 to 2007. The polls focused on households, not individuals, and excluded households in which any member went abroad as a part of work for the government or a private company. Zogby found that “1.6 million U.S. households had already determined to relocate abroad; an additional 1.8 million households were seriously considering such a move, while 7.7 million more were 'somewhat seriously' contemplating it.” Zogby concluded, “If the data collected in the seven polls...are fairly representative of the current decade, then, by a modest estimate, at least 3 million U.S. citizens a year are venturing abroad."

The polls were pre-Obama. If the post-Obama rate of household relocation tracks the Taxpatriate List rate, then household relocation increased more than eight-fold from 2008 to 2011. No one knows the real numbers but the “expat problem” is now too large to ignore.
http://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2013/1/31/2014-too-late-to-leave-the-us.html