Self-Deportation Has Few Takers

Self-Deportation Has Few Takers
Program Reflects Problems in Immigration Enforcement Efforts, Experts Say
By Spencer S. Hsu and Kari Lydersen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 10, 2008; A02

CHARLOTTE -- With a fanfare of news conferences and Spanish-language television and newspaper ads, U.S. authorities last week started giving 457,000 illegal immigrants a chance to turn themselves in without the usual threat of arrest and detention.
Three accepted.

The cold reception given to the rollout of the three-week pilot self-deportation program, called Scheduled Departure, presents an apt metaphor for the state of relations between U.S. enforcement officials and immigrant advocates in the year since Congress killed President Bush's proposed overhaul.

Since lawmakers rejected Bush's plan to combine tougher enforcement with a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and more guest workers for industry, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have stepped up raids at workplaces, in neighborhoods and in homes.

That has triggered a fierce backlash from immigrant advocates, labor and religious leaders, and Hispanic and civil rights groups, who say the Bush administration is coddling employers while brutalizing families and abusing immigrant communities.

Meanwhile, key members of Congress charge that the raids are shifting ICE's focus away from its stated priority of targeting illegal immigrants with criminal records. And even though its funding has grown, the agency is finding it more difficult to keep up its increasing pace of arrests of such illegal immigrants, having already snared those who are easy to apprehend and encountering limits in detention space.

These problems, immigration experts say, help explain why officials turned to Scheduled Departure -- despite little evidence that it will much reduce the nation's estimated illegal immigrant population of 12 million.

"Perhaps it's trying to make them [ICE] look more humane," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. "It's not designed to work."

Scheduled Departure is aimed at illegal immigrants who are living here in violation of deportation orders -- people the government calls "fugitive aliens." Those with no criminal record and who pose no threat to national security or to the community may get as much as 90 days to put their affairs in order, avoid the risk of arrest or jail time, and, in some cases, leave with some family members.

About 457,000 of 570,000 fugitive aliens may qualify, ICE said, although the pilot is set to run only until Aug. 22 in Charlotte, Chicago, Phoenix, San Diego and Santa Ana, Calif.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/09/AR2008080901553.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Mexico denounces INS raids against Mexican airport workers

TheNewsMexico.com
Mexico denounces INS raids against Mexican airport workers
EFE
Published on April 20, 2002

The Foreign Secretariat expressed on Thursday its "consternation" regarding Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) raids against legal Mexican airport workers in the U.S.

The secretariat referred specifically to an incident at the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, noting that situation "sparked concern among> the Mexican communities in the area."

During last month's Operation Access Denied, INS agents - responding to a call by airport managers - detained 266 Mexican workers at the Charlotte airport but only filed charges against 66.....