By Sandra Emerson, Staff Writer
The Sun
08/11/2010
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is reporting a sizeable increase in the number of illegal immigrants deported from the United States who are convicted criminals.
ICE deported 294,230 illegal immigrants from Oct. 1, 2009, to Aug. 2, of which just over half - 148,717 - were convicted of crimes.
The criminals deported from the United States account for a 35percent increase compared with ICE's 2008-09 fiscal year. A fiscal year for ICE runs from October to September.
From October 2008 to September 2009, 387,790 illegal immigrants - of which 136,126 reportedly were criminals - were deported.
Officials attribute the rise in criminal deportations to department programs that focus on identifying and removing
convicted criminal illegal immigrants.
"ICE is focused on smart and effective immigration enforcement and I think these statistics demonstrate the agents' efforts to prioritize immigration enforcement by focusing on the removal of individuals who pose the greatest threat to the public," ICE spokeswoman Lori Haley said.
From October 2009 through July of this year, more than 48,000 deportees were convicted of Level 1 crimes, which are the most severe and include murder and rape.
More than 63,000 committed Level 2 crimes, which are mostly property crimes, and more than 31,000 committed Level 3 crimes, which are misdemeanors.
There have been 18,020 deportations in ICE's Los Angeles Area of Responsibility, including 11,557 criminals. The area includes San Bernardino, Riverside, Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department has had an increase in the number of illegal immigrants entering its jail system, sheriff's spokeswoman Arden Wiltshire said.
The Sheriff's Department referred 118 more illegal immigrant males and 108 more illegal immigrant females to ICE from Jan. 1 through July 1 of this year, compared to the same time period in 2009, Wiltshire said.
"We're not able to identify them as being from the U.S. or a legal resident," she said. "We refer them over to ICE to investigate that further. These are the ones we referred over to ICE and had an immigration hold on them."
Wiltshire said it is hard to pinpoint the reason for the increase because numerous agencies use the jail system, including the California Highway Patrol as well as the Ontario and Rialto police departments.
Frequent DUI checkpoints and DUI saturations may have contributed to the increase, she said.
"Those are very effective. Of course, we don't have numbers on arrests involving illegals, however, this all comes into play," Wiltshire said.
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department officials continue to see steady numbers among illegal immigrants in their jails, said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.
"It's about 20 (percent) to 25 percent of our (jail) population," Whitmore said.
The county spends from $100 million to $180 million annually to house illegal immigrants, he said. About $15 million is reimbursed by the federal government.
"Crime is cyclical. Especially in the summertime it tends to go up and people come to jail more often," Whitmore said. "We've got a tremendous burden in L.A. County when it comes to this."
Whitmore said not being able to identify criminals in the jails is a problem.
"The big thing is to identify who's in our jails, and so that's the big way to manage this, just to know exactly who's who," he said.
ICE's Secure Communities program, used in San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties, has recently undergone scrutiny from immigrant advocate groups.
The groups contend ICE is using the program to target low-level criminals and non-criminals, rather than keeping the focus on high-risk criminals.
The program has assisted in the deportation of 47,000 illegal immigrants over 18 months, according to documents released by ICE through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Suzanne Foster, executive director of the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center, said she is supporting efforts looking into the way San Bernardino County is using the program as well.
The problem with the statistics is they include even minor crimes under the title "criminal," Foster said.
"We need to ask first how ICE is defining criminal and to really get to the heart of what kind of crimes people are committing and what defines it as a crime," Foster said.
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