2012-03-07 10:00:05
Identification: Department of Justice agency formerly responsible for upholding all immigration laws
Date: Operated from 1933 until March 1, 2003
Also known as: INS
Significance: The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service was long the primary federal agency responsible for the protection and enforcement of laws guiding the immigration and naturalization processes. It was also responsible for investigating, arresting, prosecuting, and deporting aliens who entered the United States illegally. After the agency was dissolved in 2003, its functions were distributed among three new federal agencies.
Through its seventy-year history, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, was the branch of the U.S. Department of Justice that handled both legal and illegal immigration matters. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the U.S. population expanded exponentially with immigrants pouring into the country from all over the world. These early immigrants entered the country without having to carry documents or meet the requirements of immigration law.
In 1891, the federal government created the U.S. Bureau of Immigration within the Department of the Treasury to oversee the administration of immigration law. After going through several administrative reorganizations and cabinet department shifts, the bureau was combined with the previously separate Bureau of Naturalization into the Immigration and Naturalization Service within the Department of Labor. Put in charge of controlling all aspects of illegal immigration into the United States, this new agency oversaw the U.S. Border Patrol.
In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt transferred the INS from the Department of Labor to the Department of Justice. Over the ensuing decades, the duties and responsibilities of the INS continued to evolve. The agency experienced a dark period during World War II, when it was put in charge of operating and maintaining internment camps and detention centers for enemy aliens and sympathizers. Through the balance of the twentieth century, the agency concentrated on cracking down on illegal immigration resulting from weak border patrol and surveillance efforts. As new laws were enacted, the INS and Border Patrol became essential tools in the fight against domestic and foreign terrorism while continuing to regulate the flow of legal immigrants into the United States.
After being reassigned to the Department of Justice, the INS was restructured internally. Its top administrators were commissioners appointed by the president of the United States. The commissioners reported directly to the U.S. attorneys general. A comparatively large bureaucratic agency, the INS comprised four main subdivisions: programs, field operations, policy and planning, and management. Its Programs Division handled all functions pertaining to enforcement and investigations, including arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants as well as the regulation and processing of all legal aliens attempting to enter the country.
The Field Operations Division was accountable for the oversight of numerous INS field offices both at home and abroad. It was responsible for the implementation of policies and delegated tasks for its three regional offices. In turn, administrators fromthese regional offices oversaw thirty-three districts and twenty-one border-area offices throughout the United States. Globally, the Field Operations Division was also tasked with directing the INS’s Office of International Affairs headquarters that provided oversight for sixteen offices in other countries. Additionally, the division worked directly with the United Nations, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that human and civil rights of all who entered the United States, both legally and illegally would, be safeguarded.
The third major division of the INS, the Office of Policy and Planning, oversaw coordinating, housing, and distributing all information related to immigration- related services. This division was also responsible for official communications with other cooperating federal agencies and the general public, along with all research and evaluation efforts.
The fourth office of the INS was the Management Division, which provided key administrative services to all field offices, both at home and abroad. These services included offices tasked with such items as information resource and technical management, finance, human resources, and clerical support.
On March 1, 2003, the INS was officially disbanded. Most of its original functions and responsibilities were delegated to three new federal agencies to be housed in the newly created Department of Homeland Security, a new federal department created in response to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. All border divisions of the former INS, which included patrol, investigation, prosecution, and deportation of all illegal immigrants, were combined with branches of the U.S. Customs Service to form a new agency called U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Paul M. Klenowski
Further Reading
See also: Border Patrol, U.S.; Bureau of Immigration, U.S.; Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S.; Commission on Immigration Reform, U.S.; Drug trafficking; Goldman, Emma; Homeland Security, Department of; Immigration Act of 1891; 9/11 and U.S. immigration policy; Patriot Act of 2001.