“Net migration from Mexico is zero right now,” Meghan Rhoad, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, told theGrio. “There aren’t these floods of young single men that are coming to the United States looking just for a short-term job. These are people who call their home the United States. They own homes here. They have family here. They are fleeing persecution and coming here for safety.”

Some advocates for undocumented immigrants also see them as a group that is particularly susceptible to abuse, including sexual abuse, while in government custody.

Sexual abuse of the undocumented: hard to trace

The federal government has documented almost 200 sexual abuse allegations by migrants held in U.S. custody between 2007 and 2011, according to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) elaborated on these figures according to its records in an email to theGrio, stating that of 168 sexual abuse allegations made between 2010 and 2012, only seven were substantiated.

But human rights advocates fear neither account accurately reflects what may be occurring in a system they say has little oversight.

“It’s really hidden,” Amy Fettig, senior staff counsel of the ACLU, said of these alleged occurrences of abuse, which she believes are widespread. “And that’s why it’s happened on such a large scale, because nobody’s expected it and nobody’s been watching.”

A large, decentralized system

Captured persons suspected of violating U.S. immigration law are housed within one of hundreds of detention centers across the U.S. The civil liberties advocates we spoke with characterize these facilities as lacking a uniform implementation of sexual abuse prevention policies, and existing policies as inadequate for properly protecting unauthorized immigrants from such abuses.

Some of the difficulties in applying existing policies have been linked by these groups to what they describe as the sprawling nature of the U.S. immigration detention system, and a lack of outside oversight provided by disinterested entities.

ICE detained 429,000 people in 2011, with some individuals being held for months, or even years, awaiting hearings. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) runs short-term holding facilities along America’s 102,514-mile combined Northern, Southern and maritime border, and in all U.S. airports.

Critics accuse the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE and CBP, of failing to adequately protect prisoners from sexual abuse during its decade of running immigration enforcement.

While ICE allows some outside oversight of its facilities, CBP, with its many tiny prisons, does not permit outside inspection of its detention centers.

“When I talk to friends and family who don’t do this kind of work, they are shocked that there is this huge detention system in this country, let alone the kinds of abuses that are going on,” New York City immigration attorney Jennifer Oltarsh, of Oltarsh & Associates, P.C., told theGrio. “I think for the average person there’s just a lot of ignorance that this is happening, and how many people are being detained, and for how long, and how expensive it is for the U.S. government to be doing this.”

Billions spent on immigration enforcement

According to the Migration Policy Institute, the U.S. spends more on immigration enforcement than on all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. Nearly $18 billion was spent on ICE and CBP in fiscal year 2012, compared to $14.4 billion spent altogether on the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Secret Service.

In addition, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) made it mandatory to detain unauthorized immigrants for committing petty crimes, among other circumstances, contributing significantly to both the volume of immigrant detention and its cost.

A subsequent 500 percent growth in the number of facilities housing undocumented foreign nationals occurred between 1996 and 2010, according to the ACLU.

“Unfortunately, it’s a system that exploded without much oversight, and unfortunately the results have been unregulated staff and facilities that have not produced good results,” Fettig said of DHS’s detention apparatus, which includes jails in sub-sets of government-run prisons and privately-owned prison businesses.

TheGrio contacted DHS, which referred all questions to ICE and CBP. CBP acknowledged multiple requests for comment from theGrio on these allegations, but did not release a statement or respond to questions by publication time.

Numerous opportunities for abuse

The ACLU, the Women’s Refugee Commission and other advocacy organizations allege that because of lax oversight at some detention facilities, detained women have reported being sexually accosted, and in some instances even raped, by officers on their way to being deported. Watchdogs warn of other conditions that are ripe for abuse, including the routine segregation of children from their parents or guardians during arrests, a common practice in CBP jails.

Another common scenario that advocates say puts unauthorized immigrants at risk is their transport to and from facilities.

A 2011 ACLU report describes the sexual assault of a woman named Kimberly, who was molested by the officer assigned with releasing her from ICE custody. The fact that she was being transported by him alone was a typical circumstance for which advocates state there are not enough precautions.

“He started yelling for me to look at him, and finally I looked sideways and saw that he was touching himself and he was grabbing me, wanting me to touch him,” Kimberly told the ACLU. “I was leaning away with my seat belt on, pushing into the door and crying.  The doors were locked, there were no cars on the road, and there was nothing I could do. I just shut up. I was crying, and he talked to me as if I were nothing.  I thought he was going to kill me.”

To read the rest of the story go to TheGrio.com.

Follow Alexis Garrett Stodghill on Twitter at @lexisb.

Napolitano said Thursday after meeting with Houston law enforcement officials and business leaders the agency still is reviewing the numbers but it appears security will “get back to where we were before sequestration.” Later Thursday, she issued a statement saying the number of border agents should be back to normal with the 2014 fiscal budget.

Napolitano was in Houston discussing immigration reform. She also visited the Texas border town of McAllen. On Friday, she heads to Tucson, Ariz.

The National ICE Council, which represents some 7,600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff, criticized Napolitano for not discussing reforms with them.

Congress hopes to tackle immigration reform this month.

The administration had insisted that only a “few hundred” immigrants were released for budgetary reasons, challenging as inaccurate a March 1 report by The Associated Press that the agency had released more than 2,000 immigrants in February and planned to release more than 3,000 others this month. Intense criticism led to a temporary shutdown of the plan.

RELATED: 2,000 undocumented immigrants released due to sequester

The director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, John Morton, told a congressional panel Thursday that the agency had actually released 2,228 people from immigration jails over the course of three weeks, starting February 9, for what he described as “solely budgetary reasons.” They included 10 people considered the highest level of offender.

After the administration had challenged the AP’s reporting, ICE said it didn’t know how many people had been released for budget reasons but would review its records.

Morton, who testified with two other agency officials, told lawmakers that the decision to release the immigrants was not discussed in advance with political appointees, including those in the White House and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. He said the pending automatic cuts known as sequestration was “driving in the background.”

“We were trying to live within the budget that Congress had provided us,” Morton told lawmakers. “This was not a White House call. I take full responsibility.”

The House appropriations subcommittee chairman, Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, pressed Morton about the agency’s claims that immigrants were routinely released, and Morton acknowledged that the release of more than 2,000 immigrants was not routine.

“At the time this release started, the president of the United States was going around the country telling people what the pain was going to be from sequester,” Carter said. “That’s a fact. That was the atmosphere. It was Chicken Little, the sky is falling, almost.”

Morton told Carter that more immigrants were released in Texas than in any other state but did not name other states where they were released.

Morton said that although the most serious offender category can include people convicted of aggravated felonies, many of those released were facing financial crimes. Those released include immigrants who had faced multiple drunken driving offenses, misdemeanor crimes and traffic offenses, Morton said.

The AP, citing internal budget documents, reported exclusively that the administration had released more than 2,000 undocumented immigrants since at least Feb. 15 and planned to release 3,000 more in March due to looming budget cuts. Napolitano said days later that the AP’s report was “not really accurate” and that the story had developed “its own mythology.”

RELATED: Arizona Governor Brewer: Immigrant detainee release “could be payback” from administration

“Several hundred are related to sequester, but it wasn’t thousands,” Napolitano said March 4 at a Politico-sponsored event.

On March 5, the House Judiciary Committee publicly released an internal ICE document that it said described the agency’s plans to release thousands of undocumeted immigrants before March 31. The document was among those reviewed independently by the AP for its story days earlier.

The immigrants who were released still eventually face deportation and are required to appear for upcoming court hearings. But they are no longer confined in immigration jails, where advocacy experts say they cost about $164 per day per person. Immigrants who are granted supervised release — with conditions that can include mandatory check-ins, home visits and GPS devices — cost the government from 30 cents to $14 a day, according to the National Immigration Forum, a group that advocates on behalf of immigrants.

RELATED: Politics aside, sequestration already making an impact

ICE initially released detainees in order to save money, as the cost of keeping an immigrant in detention can run as high as $164 a night.  But the effects of the sequester kick in gradually, so it’s odd that the agency would free detainees right away (It is unclear how many detainees were let go; ICE says it was a few hundred, while the Associated Press says the number was a few thousand).  An ICE spokeswoman told Talking Points Memo that these detainees were“non-criminals and other low risk offenders who do not have serious criminal histories that would subject them to mandatory detention.”  If so, then why were they being detained?

Napolitano said that “career officials in the field” had made the decision to release detainees. “Do I wish that this all hadn’t been done all of a sudden, and so that people weren’t surprised by it?” she told ABC News.  “Of course.”  The White House was not made aware of the releases either.  So Napolitano’s regrets are not enough.  As the head of Homeland Security, she should investigate this breakdown of communication.

A bigger, ongoing problem with ICE is that the agency seems to be conflicted about its mission.  The Obama Administration says its immigration policy is focused on detaining dangerous criminals who are a threat to public safety.  Yet according to ICE memos obtained by USA Today, ICE officials made plans to go after undocumented immigrants who committed minor crimes. USA Today’s report claims officials went through driver’s license records, staked out traffic safety checkpoints, and detained low-level offenders – all to meet deportation quotas.  But Vincent Picard, ICE Public Affairs Director for the Southern region, stated that “USA Today’s story lacks context and does not present an accurate picture of ICE’s focus on criminal offenders.”  Picard also said the Atlanta field personnel were discussing possible steps on pursuing criminal offenders, and “few of the contemplated steps were ever pursued.”

In fact, ICE set another record in 2012 for deportations, removing 409,849 undocumented immigrants from the U.S.  Forty-five percent of these deportees had no criminal records whatsoever.  Of the 55 percent classified as “criminals,” most were convicted of low-level crimes and immigration violations – not violent crimes, drug offenses, or DUIs.  As one advocacy group point out, ICE is deporting the same undocumented immigrants that President Obama wants to put on a path to citizenship.

ICE has internal problems as well.  The president of the ICE employees union, Chris Crane,recently told the House Judiciary Committee that the agency ranked 279^th out of 291 federal agencies for employee job satisfaction.  “Outside influences have in large part eroded the order, stability, and effectiveness of the agency,” he said, “creating confusion among ICE employees.”  It has also led to open dissent; a group of ICE agents is suing the Obama Administration over the Deferred Action policy, which they contend prevents them from doing their job.

Yes, ICE is the agency everyone loves to hate.  Conservative critics say ICE is not keeping the country safe from illegal immigration, while immigrant groups accuse it of tearing apart families.  Precisely because the agency is subjected to such scrutiny, Napolitano must make it as transparent as possible.  She has been an important supporter of immigration reform, but her credibility is at stake here. If Napolitano does not get ICE in order, it will provide ammunition for opponents of comprehensive reform.  Napolitano must accept responsibility for the detainee releases, and ensure that her agency is committed to appropriate enforcement goals.  Just as the public can no longer tolerate a broken immigration system, we can no longer tolerate a broken immigration agency.

Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and member of the USA Today Board of Contributors.

“Do you think they are picking on you?” asked Hemmer.

“I think it’s obvious they are doing everything in their power,” said Brewer to Hemmer. “This is just another notch in their belt bucket if you will. They are suing Arizona, when did you see the federal government sue a state?”

The Administration  - as well as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have stated that the release of several hundred immigrant detainees was a decision made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. ICE Deputy Press Secretary Gillian Christensen said the decision was made in anticipation of looming budget cuts.  Christensen said that “as fiscal uncertainty remains over the continuing resolution and possible sequestration, ICE has reviewed its detained population to ensure detention levels stay within ICE’s budget.”

Petra Falcón, Executive Director of the pro-immigrants rights group Promise Arizona, responded to Brewer’s remarks.  ”The Governor just needs to always have it be about her, but it’s about these families,” says Falcon. “Detention is causing an impact on people who are here and who provide for their families, so releasing detainees is only going to help families,” adds Falcon.

“The looming budget cuts are forcing ICE to do what it should have been doing already – prioritizing resources to focus on real threats,” said National Immigration Forum spokesperson Katherine Vargas.  The National Immigration Forum has long cited the high costs of detaining a low-risk immigrant as one of the reasons to limit ICE detention programs. In an August 2012 report called “The Math of Immigration Detention,” the organization said that taxpayers could save $1.6 billion a year – an 80 percent reduction in current costs – if only individuals convicted of serious crimes were detained and less expensive monitoring efforts were used, which was what ICE did when the detainees were released.

RELATED: Release of ICE detainees shines spotlight on immigration 

But the detainees’ releases elicited strong reactions from some lawmakers.  Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Lou Barletta said – and posted on his website: ”We learned today that the Obama Administration summarily released untold numbers of inmates – this reminds me of Fidel Castro’s release of criminals in the Mariel Boatlift in 1980.” Barletta also added, “if this is the best cost-savings that Secretary Napolitano can do, then we have to begin to seriously question her judgment.”  Administration officials have said the release of detainees for budget reasons was a decision made by ICE and it did not involve the White House.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s spokesperson Matthew Benson said the detainees’ release was a “bad sign” for the Administration’s commitment to immigration reform and security, according to an article in the Arizona Republic.

“If their first step was to start releasing into the community criminal aliens, that doesn’t suggest they have a real high commitment to public safety and continued immigration enforcement,” said Benson, adding, “Hundreds or thousands of criminal aliens are being released into these communities. We don’t know anything about their criminal profiles, the manner in which they’re being supervised or where they’re being released to.”

The approximately 300 immigrants who were released had no serious criminal records and are being monitored after their release, according to ICE.

RELATED:  ICE: Official’s resignation not tied to detainees’ release 

In response to the remarks from Governor Brewer’s office,  Promise Arizona‘s Petra Falcón says that apart from the high costs of detaining immigrants with no serious criminal record, there is also the human cost of detention – and the benefits to releasing some immigrant detainees.

“It is always a good idea to bring our families together, especially when people are in detention over a broken tail light or because they were lacking some documents,” says Falcón.  ”Many of these detainees have been working here for years in hotels or in landscaping, raising families, and have connections and even long-term jobs,” she adds.  ”I think in these cases there should be prosecutorial discretion, but they are still being detained in Arizona.”

“As some people are being released, others are being detained—a never-ending cycle,” said Carolina Canizalez, from United We Dream.

On the legislative side, bipartisan groups in the House and Senate say they are making progress on proposals on immigration reform.

“Gary Mead – disclosed his departure in an email to his staff Tuesday afternoon. The announcement of the release of the illegal immigrants had come earlier in the day,” reported the AP, which also reported Mead did not give a reason for his departure in the e-mail and said he was leaving with “mixed emotions.”

In a statement, Gillian Christensen, ICE Deputy Press Secretary, said the connection between Mead’s resignation and the detainees’ release was not accurate.  ”Gary Mead announced several weeks ago to ICE senior leadership that he planned to retire after 40 years in federal service and 6 years at ICE,” stated Christensen, adding, “As planned, and as shared with ICE staff weeks ago, Mr. Mead will retire at the end of April.”

A few days ago ICE confirmed that hundreds of immigrant detainees who did not pose serious risks or criminal records were being released from different detention centers in several states.

RELATED: Release of ICE detainees shines spotlight on immigration debate 

In a statement, ICE said that “as fiscal uncertainty remains over the continuing resolution and possible sequestration, ICE has reviewed its detained population to ensure detention levels stay within ICE’s budget.”  ICE’s Gillian Christensen stated that over the last week, it had reviewed several hundred cases and placed some individuals on methods of supervision which were less costly than detention.

Some immigrants rights groups said that releases of detainees should not come due to budget cuts.  “It shouldn’t take a manufactured crisis in Washington to prompt our immigration agencies to actually take steps towards using government resources wisely or keeping families together,” according to United We Dream’s Carolina Canizales.

“It shouldn’t take a manufactured crisis in Washington to prompt our immigration agencies to actually take steps towards using government resources wisely or keeping families together,” said United We Dream’s Carolina Canizales.  Pablo Alvarado, Executive Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), said, “the president should move aggressively to reunite the families currently divided by detention not only to save money but to bring immigration policy back in line with cherished national values.”

ICE deputy press secretary Gillian Christensen released a statement today, saying that “as fiscal uncertainty remains over the continuing resolution and possible sequestration, ICE has reviewed its detained population to ensure detention levels stay within ICE’s budget.”  Christensen added that over the last week, ICE reviewed several hundred cases and placed some individuals on methods of supervision less costly than detention.  ”Priority for detention remains on serious criminal offenders,” Christensen stated.

But today, NDLON said this is an example of what they called the “ludicrous overreach of ICE,” and urged the passage of state TRUST Acts, which limit state law enforcement officials’ interactions with federal immigration authorities. Under a state’s TRUST Act, for example, local law enforcement could release undocumented immigrants despite requests from ICE for detention as long as the immigrants do not pose a serious threat. NDLON used the example of Ruth Montaño, a Bakersfield, California mother who was held for a week on an ICE “hold” after police responded to complaints of her barking dogs.  She is now facing deportation.

Connecticut Democratic State Representative Gary Holder-Winfield, who filed a TRUST bill in his state, said “we have created communities that  avoid interaction with police at all costs – what we have done with Secure Communities is make us less secure.”

But speaking today on the 10-year anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said the government has made strides to focus on criminal deportations.  Napolitano said that previously, a college student who came to the U.S. with her parents was considered “the same priority as a drug smuggler,” but that this has changed. Napolitano said that 250,000 criminals had been deported the year before.

Napolitano said while illegal immigration was at a 40-year low and the border was more secure than ever, the notion that we can wall off or seal the border is a “pipe dream.”  Napolitano said the best way to limit the flow of undocumented immigrants was to have a legal framework for reform which took into account employer needs in the country.

Kristian Ramos, policy director for the 21st Century Border Initiative and Immigration Reform at the New Democratic Network, says this is worth keeping in mind as Senators and members of the House work on crafting a comprehensive immigration reform package.  ”Immigration has always been a three-legged stool — enforcement, future flows of immigration and what to do about undocumented immigrants who are in the country. The notion that you can solve the two other problems by just focusing on enforcement alone is unrealistic,” he says.

Today the staffers of several Latino legislators working on immigration reform spoke at a NALEO conference, and said the bipartisan talks were progressing well.  “From my side of  the aisle I see a bigger willingness to speak on the issue – there is a very cordial atmosphere,” said Enrique Gonzalez III, special counsel to Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio.

Kerri Sherlock, chief counsel for Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, said the bipartisan group was covering issues in a fair way.  “We are hammering out the details,” said Sherlock.

The group said one thing to keep in mind is that immigration reform will be a centrist bill, and it will involve compromise.  Today President Obama met with Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham.  ”It was one of the best meetings I’ve had with the president, very good,” said Graham.  He said Senator McCain made a strong point about the border, and the president understood “the working components of it,” adding, “so I was frankly quite encouraged.”

Gillian Christensen, an ICE spokeswoman, said ICE has reviewed “several hundred cases” of immigrants being held in jails around the country and released them in the last week. They have been “placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release,” she said.

Christensen said the agency’s “priority for detention remains on serious criminal offenders and other individuals who pose a significant threat to public safety.” She did not say how released immigrants were selected or what jails they were released from.

Tuesday’s announcement of jail releases is the first tangible impact of the looming budget cuts for DHS.

The Obama administration has been issuing dire warnings about the impact of the sequestration and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters at the White House Monday that across-the-board cuts would impact the department’s core operations, including border security and airport screening operations.

She also warned that DHS might not be able to afford to keep the 34,000 immigration jail beds mandated by Congress. On average last week, there were 30,773 people being held in ICE jails.

“I don’t think we can maintain the same level of security at all places around the country with sequester as without sequester,” said Napolitano, adding that the impact would be “`like a rolling ball. It will keep growing.”

According to the National Immigration Forum, it costs the government about $164 a day to keep an illegal immigrant facing deportation jailed. In a report on immigration detention costs last year the advocacy group said costs for supervised release can range from about 30 cents to $14 a day.

Republicans lawmakers decried the releases Tuesday.

“It’s abhorrent that President (Barack) Obama is releasing criminals into our communities to promote his political agenda on sequestration,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte. “By releasing criminal immigrants onto the streets, the Administration is needlessly endangering American lives. It also undermines our efforts to come together with the Administration and reform our nation’s immigration laws.”

The administration asked for about $1.96 billion for immigration jail operations in the last budget. It amounts to about $5.4 million a day, according to the National Immigration Forum’s report.

Christensen said Tuesday that released immigrants will still face deportation proceedings.

The report also found that in more than two out of three (77.4 percent) detainers issued, the individual identified had no criminal record. Of the remaining 22.6 percent who had a criminal record, only 8.6 percent were classified as a Level 1 offense, though some records show some of those Level 1 offenders had committed traffic violations or illegal entry and not serious crimes.

Responding to the report’s release, Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), stated, “The Obama Administration’s policy of using police as immigration ‘force multipliers’ through programs like Secure Communities has violated civil rights, imperiled public safety, and compounded injustice.”

But ICE deputy press secretary Gillian Christensen stated: “As the TRAC report itself notes, its conclusions are based on data that dates back four years, prior to many of ICE’s enforcement reforms including the new detainer guidance issued by the agency on Dec. 21.” The new guidelines, Christensen added, restrict ICE detentions for minor traffic violations or misdemeanors, and attempt to focus on more serious crimes.Immigration authorities can issue detainers if they suspect someone may be in the country illegally, and there are guidelines on how long a person can be held and under what circumstances.

The TRAC report does not have information on how many detainers were lifted or how many people were eventually deported.  It is illegal for authorities to detain U.S. citizens. The report found almost 3,500 facilities received one or more ICE detainers.

The NDLON says it is calling on the Senate to hold hearings on the use of detainers.