"Endgame" Documents: Before and After

On March 26, 2007, the Boston Globe ran our op-ed about operation Endgame, the plan to remove all 12 million undocumented immigrants from the United States by 2012. We wrote the piece to point out that the March 2007 raid in New Bedford by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents was not just an isolated incident, but part of a detailed and ambitious plan that will likely require similar tactics on an even greater scale.

After that (and starting the very next day), something interesting happened. While publicly taking issue with our assertion that Endgame uses tactics similar to the ethnic cleansing we saw in the Balkans during the 1990s -- lightning raids, mass arrests, packed detention centers, and mass deportations -- ICE has quietly removed documents about operation Endgame from its website, ice.gov.

Fortunately, we anticipated this and saved copies.

The operation Endgame strategic plan itself used to be available online here.

As of the day after our op-ed ran, however, the document was gone -- but you can still download it from us here.

Similarly, an ICE Office of Detention and Removal (DRO) fact sheet mentioning the Endgame plan as one of its "key" accomplishments used to come up when searching the ICE web site:

It doesn't anymore.

Perhaps the Dept. of Homeland Security will also get around to removing Endgame-related documents like An Assessment of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Fugitive Operations Teams:

If they do remove it, it's still available here.

This March 2007 report discusses the possibility of eliminating the "backlog of fugitive aliens" with an even more aggressive goal: the end of Fiscal Year 2009.