Read The Globe's Gripping Immigration Investigation

This is just a friendly suggestion to read the on-going Boston Globe series on the secrecy surrounding U.S. immigration enforcement. The first installment by reporter Maria Sacchetti ran Sunday, and it details the cases of many, many “convicted criminals released since 2008 because their native countries would not take them back.” Our Twitter feed is calling the series “gripping.” “I really encourage everybody to read this,” says CNN host Zoraida Sambolin this morning. BU communications professor John Carroll thinks the Globe is gunning for a Pulitzer. 

The opening anecdote describes Huang Chen, an immigrant who went to jail for brutally attacking a woman named Qian Wu. Once he served his sentence, his native China refused to take him back, so immigration officials released him without notifying Wu. Once released, he found, stalked, and murdered her. Sacchetti sets up the stakes of a scarily typical story:

A yearlong Globe investigation found the culture of secrecy can be deadly to Americans and foreigners alike: Immigration officials do not notify most crime victims when they release a criminal such as Chen, and they only notify local law enforcement on a case by case basis. And even though immigration officials have the power to try to hold dangerous people longer, that rarely occurs.

In Monday’s paper, Sacchetti is joined by reporter Milton Valencia to describe immigrants with no criminal record whom the secrecy of the system allows to languish in detention with little recourse. The series is being kept outside the BostonGlobe.com paywall so there goes your best excuse not to check it out.