Most deported illegal immigrants from 4 Latin American countries

By Brady McCombs
Arizona Daily Star
October 27, 2011

Four Latin American countries accounted for 91 percent of the record number of people deported in the recently-completed fiscal year.

Nearly 363,000 of the 396,900 people deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in fiscal year 2011 were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, government figures show. Here’s the breakdown:

• Mexico - 286,893 (72 percent)

• Guatemala - 33,324 (8 percent)

• Honduras - 23,822 (6 percent)

• El Salvador - 18,870 (5 percent)

There was a big dropoff to the next country, Brazil, which accounted for 3,364 deportations. Only seven other countries accounted for more than 1,000 deportations: Dominican Republic, Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Jamaica, China and Peru.

The combined deportations of citizens from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have accounted for 87-91 percent of the yearly deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement every year since 2001, government figures show.

Mexico has been the leading country of origin for deportees every year in this span, accounting for 57-73 percent of the yearly deportations.

Criminal illegal immigrants

The breakdown of the felony and misdemeanor crimes committed by the nearly 217,000 deportees defined as "criminal" illegal immigrants is not yet available for the completed fiscal year 2011.

But, the figures through the first 10 1/2 months of fiscal 2011 show that five crimes account for 62 percent of the people in this category:

• Dangerous drugs - 37,083 (22 percent)

• Driving under the influence, liquor - 28,214 (17 percent)

• Immigration offenses - 28,110 (17 percent)

• Miscellaneous traffic offense - 14,331 (8 percent)

• Assault - 11,386 (7 percent).

Four of these crimes — drugs, DUI, immigration and assault — have been among the top five every year since 2001.

But the miscellaneous traffic offenses category has not always been among the leaders. The percentage of criminal illegal immigrants who have committed some kind of traffic offense has been on the rise each of the past five years.

This category includes hit and run; transporting dangerous material; driving under the influence of drugs; driving under the influence of liquor; and other traffic offenses. Here is a look at how this category has increased as a percentage of the total deportations of “criminal” illegal immigrants:

Fiscal 2011* — 44,136 (26 percent)

Fiscal 2010 — 42,339 (22 percent)

Fiscal 2009 — 27,354 (20 percent)

Fiscal 2008 — 16,249 (14 percent)

Fiscal 2007 — 10,787 (10 percent)

Fiscal 2006 — 6,154 (7 percent)

The Obama administration has taken criticism from both sides of the immigration debate for rising deportation levels.

Republican border hawks and critics of the administration's immigration enforcement strategy call the deportation numbers inflated because they include people who voluntarily leave with no penalties and may be able to cross back into the country illegally.

Immigrant rights groups contend the government is unfairly targeting illegal immigrants who are not a menace to society, separating families and creating fear in immigrant communities.

Contact reporter Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com

http://azstarnet.com/most-deported-illegal-immigrants-from-latin-american-countries/article_2943c31c-00d0-11e1-aca9-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1cxSmWity

Hasta 769 deportados han sido auxiliados en Juárez por el gobierno estatal

Marisela Ortega Lozano
El Paso Times
Posted: 08/05/2011

De abril a la fecha, las autoridades del Estado de Chihuahua en Juárez han auxiliado a 769 mexicanos deportados desde Estados Unidos por esta frontera, para reubicarlos en sus lugares de origen si así lo desean, informaron las autoridades correspondientes.

"El objetivo es apoyar económicamente a los connacionales, quienes, al no contar con documentos legales para laborar en Estados Unidos, fueron detenidos y devueltos a México", explicó el director del Servicio Nacional de Empleo (SNE) en Juárez, José Serralta Hernández, en un comunicado de prensa.

"Les ayudamos a volver con sus familias y rehacer su vida en su lugar de origen", agregó.

Se les apoya con el pasaje del autobús y son canalizados a las agencias de colocaciones para encontrarles trabajo, expuso.

Jesús Hernández Soto, de 20 años, dijo haber sido deportado de Deming, Nuevo México, después de trabajar durante tres años como albañil.

"Hace tres años crucé el desierto de Arizona y tardé cuatro días para llegar", relató Hernández Soto, originario de San Luis Potosí.

"Trabajé en la construcción pero, desafortunadamente, llegó la migración (agentes de inmigración de Estados Unidos) y nos detuvo a cinco trabajadores porque no teníamos papeles legales", dijo.

Añadió que los funcionarios migratorios los deportaron por Juárez.

Rosendo Camargo, de 33 años y originario de Michoacán, laboró seis años en Phoenix, Arizona, pero fue deportado el pasado 22 de junio, según dijo.

Pero allá se quedaron sus seres queridos.

"Estoy muy triste, pues mi esposa y mis niñas, de 2 y 3 años, se quedaron allá; separaron a mi familia", relató el hombre a funcionarios estatales. De las personas repatriadas, según las autoridades, el 95 por ciento son del sexo masculino y oriundos de Hidalgo, Michoacán, Oaxaca y Guerrero, principalmente.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/spanish/ci_18625081

Executive for Mississippi's Howard Industries Sentenced for Hiring Undocumented Immigrants

By Elizabeth Llorente
Fox News Latino
March 03, 2011

A former executive of a Mississippi company that was the target of nation’s largest federal immigrantion raid was handed a six-month sentence Thursday.

The former human resources manager of Howard Industries pleaded guilty in 2009 to conspiracy in connection with the hiring of hundreds of unauthorized immigrants at the company’s electrical transformer plant.

The sentence for José Humberto González, the only Howard Industries official charged in the 2008 raid, called for six months under house arrest. The company pleaded guilty to conspiracy on Feb. 24 and was fined $2.5 million.

Immigration agents detained more than 600 undocumented immigrants during the raid on Aug. 25, 2008. Most of them were deported, though a few were convicted on identity theft charges for using fraudulent documents and providing fake papers to other workers.

Until then, the largest workplace raid at a single site had taken place in Postville, Iowa at the Agriprocessors plant, in which 389 unauthorized immigrants were arrested and many held at a cattle exhibit hall.

The Bush Administration said at the time that it illustrated a new concerted effort to go after illegal employment.

The approach drew praise from those who support strict immigration enforcement – they maintain that jobs are a key magnet for illegal immigration, and the problem cannot be solved without taking away the incentive of getting employment.

But immigration advocacy groups assailed the raids, complaining that they resulted in the arrest and deportation of undocumented workers, but left employers essentially untouched, even those who were repeat offenders.

In 2009, the Obama Administration announced that it was shifting its workplace enforcement to employers. In the last year, ICE roughly doubled its audits of employers – to more than 2,700 – over past years.

Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, audited the Chipotle chain’s Minnesota restaurants last year. ICE told the chain that the audit turned up questionable information in the documents Chipotle had provided, apparently indicating many employees were not authorized to work in the United States.

Chipotle fired hundreds of Minnesota employees when, the chain says, the workers could not explain discrepancies that the ICE audit had found.

The government’s focus on Chipotle has grabbed headlines given that it is one of the most high-profile businesses to be targeted in the Obama Administration’s crackdown on employers who hire undocumented immigrants. Chipotle has more than 1,000 operations nationwide.

Howard Industries has repeatedly denied knowing that unauthorized immigrants worked at the sprawling plant, and blamed the situation on González.

In a lengthy statement after pleading guilty last week, Howard Industries said the undocumented immigrants used fake papers to circumvent numerous identification checks the company uses. But prosecutors said the company knowingly hired unauthorized immigrants.

But recently, people who had been turned down for jobs by Howard Industries filed a lawsuit against the company alleging that, not only did it know it was hiring undocumented immigrants, but instructed some on how to get false identities and concealed the fact that hundreds of employees were unauthorized immigrants.

In the days after the raid, hundreds of people lined up outside the plant to apply for jobs. Jobs at Howard Industries were among the most coveted in the area, which is in Mississippi's Pine Belt region and is home to a commercial timber industry and chicken processing plants.

Howard Industries makes dozens of products from electrical transformers to medical supplies. It had been considered one of Mississippi's most successful private companies.

Some of the workers were given jobs even after the Social Security Administration told the company that their Social Security numbers were not valid, prosecutors said. The same allegation is made in the civil lawsuit.

González admitted to similar allegations when he pleaded guilty.

Follow immigration and politics reporter Elizabeth Llorente on Twitter: @LlorenteLatino

Elizabeth.Llorente@FoxNewsLatino.com

This story contains material from The Associated Press.

Quarter of Those Deported Through Violent Illegals Program Have No Criminal Record

By AllGov.Com
February 20, 2011

A federal program designed to locate and remove violent illegal immigrants from the U.S. has been more effective in deporting undocumented immigrants with no criminal backgrounds.

A review of federal records by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting found that 28% of the more than 75,000 immigrants deported since Secure Communities was created in 2008 have been “non-criminal” immigrants, while just 23% of those detained and deported have convictions for violent crimes such as murder or rape.

According to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with the Secure Communities program, “the fingerprints of everyone arrested and booked are not only checked against FBI criminal history records, but they are also checked against DHS immigration records.

If fingerprints match DHS records, ICE determines if immigration enforcement action is required, considering the immigration status of the alien, the severity of the crime and the alien's criminal history.”

However, Secure Communities’ rate of going after non-criminal illegals is even higher in Florida than in the country as a whole (42%), while only 20% of deportations consisted of violent criminals. Some of Florida’s largest counties have yet higher rates, including Orange County (63%), Palm Beach County (62%), Broward County (57%) and Miami-Dade County (51%).

http://www.allgov.com/Top_Stories/ViewNews/Quarter_of_Those_Deported_Through_Violent_Illegals_Program_Have_No_Criminal_Record_110220

‘Silent Raids’: ICE’s New Tactic Quietly Wreaks Havoc on Immigrant Workers Thursday

By R. M. Arrieta
In These Times
Jan 27, 2011

They may not burst into workplaces wielding guns and dogs, but the effects are no less devastating.

Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) is increasing immigration controls that have a serious impact on immigrants in the workplace using a different—and quieter—tactic. Recently, eight workers were arrested after they chained themselves together in an act of civil disobedience inside a Chiplotle Mexican Grill restaurant in Minneapolis.

The action was part of a protest over the firing of between 350 to 700 immigrant workers from the restaurant chain’s 50 restaurants without notice in December. The workers were dismissed after ICE perused I-9 forms. Chipotle says each worker was given a chance to show documentation, and all dismissed employees were paid "promptly."

The strategy of “silent raids" avoids dramatic workplace raids, but still tightens the screw on workers. If paperwork is not in order, ICE demands that the employer fire the employee. Last year ICE conducted more than 2,200 I-9 audits. (There were 1,400 in 2009.)

In Los Angeles, ICE audits caused the layoffs of 253 workers at Overhill Farms. As reported on this website, American Apparel laid off 1,800 workers in 2009, many of whom had worked for the company for many years. ABM Janitorial company laid off 1,200 workers and SEIU members in Minneapolis, and Seattle Building Maintenance fired over 100 janitorial workers, they too were all SEIU members.

“Injustice for All,” a report issued by Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network, (a project of the National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights; NNIRR), states that these silent raids ignore workplace abuses and allow employers off the hook as long as they rid themselves of the undocumented workers.

The strategy has made workers more vulnerable to labor rights violations and other forms of abuse, the report says. The report includes 100 narratives by members of Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network, (aka HURRICANE). Their stories stretch from the east to west, north to south, from the midwest to the southwest.

The report claims that ICE’s “new workplace strategy of auditing employment files, allowing employers to fire undocumented workers en masse” has not only deepened the economic and humanitarian crisis in communities, but has increased labor rights violations and abuses.

Many immigrant workers are reluctant to report worker abuses to police because of fear of deportation. They report being paid as low as $2 to $6 a day for a ten-hour workday in Southern California.

In New York City, the South Asian community contains the second largest number of undocumented people after Latinos. Desis Rising Up & Moving or DRUM is composed of South Asian workers in retail, restaurants, construction, domestic workers and taxi drivers who are organizing to better their working conditions. The organization was launched in 2009.

“Sometimes the [bosses] blackmail us [saying] that we do not have papers and if [we] do something [they] will call immigration. There are a lot of people that work here that do not have papers and they do not get paid well either,” said a DRUM Worker Committee member in the NNIRR report.

The report finds that among other things, some state and local governments are using the “illegal immigration problem” as a way to deal with their own fiscal problems. According to the report, “From Virginia to Oregon and Pennsylvania, ICE offers governments immigration jails as job creation and revenue source strategy.”

Different localities are approached to build and, at times, run public-private immigrant jails, “where investors will reap millions in profits [and] governments will boost their revenues.” 2010 was a record year for the detention of immigrants, the report states. In addition, almost 400,000 immigrant workers, students, women and youth, many long-time residents of the United States, were deported.

“Injustice for All” is the third human rights report issued by HURRICANE and is based on more than 100 incidents of violations and abuse. The findings are based on community-based tracking and human rights abuse reporting.

ICE deportations are also having a severe economic impact on communities and the economy, according to the Center for American Progress report “The Costs of Mass Deportation.”

Among its many recommendations, NNIRR/HURRICANE demands that employer sanctions should be repealed and E-Verify programs should be suspended, as well as expanding labor rights of all workers and increasing the Department of Labor inspectors.

Right now, that seems pretty unlikely.

Just yesterday (Wednesday, Jan. 26) the newly named House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement held its first hearing of the new session. Judging from the name of the new session, “ICE Worksite Enforcement—Up to the Job?”, Committee Chair Lamar Smith and Subcommittee Chair Elton Gallegly may focus on enforcement rather than immigration reform this session.

Stated Emily Tulli, policy attorney at the National Immigration Law Center in a press conference organized by the Immigration Policy Center:

"This enforcement-only agenda, with military-style raids as its centerpiece, may make for good PR, but it is ineffective policy. These raids terrorize communities, shutter businesses, and hurt our local economies. This enforcement-only model is not only unsustainable and inhumane, but also doesn't fix our broken immigration system."

---

Rose Arrieta was born and raised in Los Angeles. She has worked at three dailies and two television stations. She currently lives in San Francisco, where she is editor of the Bay Area’s independent community bilingual biweekly El Tecolote. She can be reached at rmarrieta@inthesetimes.com.

http://inthesetimes.com/working/print/6895/silent_raids/

US immigration target for 2011: 404,000 deportations, includes screening jails

A record number of immigrants were deported from the United States in 2010 boosted in part by the expansion of the Secure Communities program of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which identifies imprisoned undocumented foreigners.
Merco Press
January 2nd 2011

During Fiscal Year 2010, ICE deported 392,862 undocumented foreigners, of whom more than 195,000 were convicted criminals, an increase of more than 23,000 deportations – including 81,000 people with criminal records – compared with 2008.

In 2009, deportations totaled 389,834 and the goal for 2011 is 404,000.

ICE broadened the Secure Communities program, a biometric technology effort that compares the fingerprints of people being held in local jails with those in ICE and FBI databases.

Up through November 2009, the one-year anniversary of the implementation of the measure, which operated at that time in 95 detention centers in 11 states, John Morton, the Homeland Security assistant secretary for ICE, announced that Secure Communities had detected 11,000 undocumented foreigners accused of major crimes such as murder, rape and kidnapping.

Currently, the program is operating at 891 incarceration centers in 35 states.

An example of its rapid expansion is in the state of North Carolina, which in 2009 had 13 Secure Communities participating in the program and by Dec. 21, 2010, was functioning in 77 counties.

According to ICE spokesperson Barbara Gonzalez, during 2010 about 90,937 people were arrested on the federal level for immigration violations after being identified by Secure Communities and deportation proceedings have been begun against 49,739 of them.

Of that latter group, 11,493 are being deported for committing major Level 1 crimes, another 19,271 for Level 2 crimes such as drug trafficking, and another 5,275 for Level 3 infractions including traffic violations.

The rest – 13,700 – were acquitted of the criminal charges against them in court but their immigration cases remain pending because they were found to be in the country without the proper documents.

“The goal of Secure Communities is for it to install the system in the country’s more than 3,000 jails by (the end of) 2013” said Gonzalez.

In the two years that the measure has been in effect – and according to a report by the Immigration Policy Center it lacks the proper supervision and a complaint procedure and it spurs racial profiling against immigrants – 69,905 foreigners have been identified as being in the country illegally and deported.

The majority of those – 52,237 – have been deported for medium level and minor crimes, according to ICE figures.

“It’s deplorable that under the mandate of President Barack Obama the number of deportations has increased. The expansion of Secure Communities paints a difficult panorama for our community in 2011,” complained Ruben Campillo, North Carolina coordinator of the group Reform Immigration for America.

Campillo said that NC is an example of the abuses that have been committed during the course of the implementation and expansion of programs like Secure Communities and 287g, which mainly identifies immigrants who do not have criminal records.

“It will be of great importance to work closely with the agencies of local public order to ensure that their personnel are trained and to establish an alternative to accepting official identification documents that enable the high number of arrests of immigrants who don’t have driver licenses to be avoided,” the community leader said.

ICE has given no sign of easing up during 2011, and on the contrary, it is threatening next year to be even more severe with immigrants with criminal records and with companies that hire unauthorized labor.

http://en.mercopress.com/2011/01/02/us-immigration-target-for-2011-404.000-deportations-includes-screening-jails

Editorial: Why deport immigrants?

By Joseph Chamie & Barry Mirkin
Khaleej Times
27 December 2010

The world as we know it emerged out of the ceaseless wandering of humans on the planet and, more recently, with migrations of millions across national borders. That trend of globalisation could be reversed as growing numbers of political parties and movements around the world call for sterner restrictions on immigration and immediate removal of those unlawfully residing within their countries.

This could be more than an empty threat as such parties gain in established democracies. Examples abound: the Dutch Freedom Party, the German National Democratic Party, the British National Party, the French National Front, the Italian Northern League, the Irish National Party, the Israeli Yisrael Beitenu, the Indian Shiv Sena, the Sweden Democrats Party, the Danish People’s Party, the Spanish People’s Party, the Norwegian Progress Party, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Flemish Interest Party, the True Finns Party, the Swiss People’s Party, the Australian First Party and the American Tea Party.

Resistance to immigration, running against the modern tide of globalisation, is an early and major plank for many of these political parties. Particularly visible and forceful, often striking a sensitive nerve among much of the public, is their fierce opposition to illegal immigration. For example, a year after voting to ban minarets, Swiss voters in November approved the referendum backed by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party for automatic deportation of foreign-born nationals convicted 
of crimes.

Calls for increased deportation of unauthorised migrants are reinforced by the global economic recession, severity of governmental austerity measures and high levels of unemployment. Recent electoral gains by nativist parties at the ballot box have intensified pressure on leaders of every political stripe to respond to the presence of illegal migrants. Exacerbating the situation are continuing high numbers of people attempting to immigrate illegally. For example, every month an estimated 10,000 men and women, most from North Africa and South Asia, cross the Greek-Turkish border illegally.

Fueling calls for increased deportations are frustrations and disappointments with multiculturalism and assimilation, contributing to anti-immigrant sentiments. Various national leaders and party officials — most recently in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland — have expressed serious doubts about the success of immigrant integration, especially among those who differ religiously and ethnically from their host communities. Remarks by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example, were unequivocal with regard to immigration, stating that attempts to build a multicultural society, living side by side and enjoying one another, have utterly failed. Some go further, such as the leader of the Sweden Democrats, claiming that the population growth of the Muslim immigrants was the greatest foreign threat to his country since World War II.

And no doubt, the heightened security concerns as a result of past terrorist tragedies and uncovered threats produce additional pressures to deport illegal migrants, particularly those with suspect leanings. Although many of those involved in terrorist acts were in the country legally, this distinction has not diminished public demands for increased deportations. Removal of unauthorised migrants is often a politically sensitive matter for governments, especially in the international context. Consequently, some countries, in particular those that do not always observe due legal process and internationally recognised protocols on migrant rights, avoid providing timely, accurate information on migrants deported or expelled. For instance, United Nations officials estimate that last year Angola expelled 160,000 Congolese, while the Democratic Republic of Congo expelled 51,000 Angolans. Malaysia in 2005 ordered the mass expulsion of more than 400,000 illegal migrant workers mainly from neighbouring Indonesia.

Other countries regularly publish annual figures and other data on those deported. While no doubt incomplete, this information provides an up-to-date sketch of the nature of migrant deportations. The country deporting the largest number of unauthorised migrants is the United States. This should not be unexpected, however, given that the US has the largest number of migrants — 43 million, as well as the largest number of unauthorised migrants — approximately 10.8 million. The number of persons removed from the US in 2009 was 393,289, a record high and nearly an eightfold increase over the level just 15 years earlier. About a third of recent US removals were convicted criminals, most involved in illegal drugs, traffic offenses and immigration violations. This proportion has declined considerably since the early 1990s when about 70 per cent of the removals were convicted criminals.

Other top deporting nations include: South Africa (165,270), Greece (68,191), the United Kingdom (64,750) and Libya (53,842). Even in countries where mass regularisation programmes have been implemented in the recent past, such as in Greece, Italy and Spain, tens of thousands of illegal migrants continue to be deported every year. Attempts to discuss international migration in international forums, such as the United Nations, have not advanced much. Calls for shared responsibility fall on deaf ears. With economic recovery reported to be underway, demands from various business sectors for more migrant workers — both skilled and unskilled — will intensify, as it has in past recoveries. As a result, countries will face the difficult task of balancing the need for economic growth and additional migrant workers with the political and social consequences of increased immigration. Failure to properly balance these powerful, but opposing forces will in all likelihood lead to heightened social tensions, rising political extremism and increased governmental paralysis, especially for democratic societies.

Illegal entry is a major means through which low-skilled foreign workers join the labour force in many industrialised countries. In the United States, for example, these workers account for 5 percent of the labour force, but are more vital to those sectors that rely on low-skilled labour intensively, including farming, construction, landscaping, low-end manufacturing, the hospitality industry, building maintenance and family care-giving. The US Secretary of Agriculture recently warned that the nation has three options concerning immigration and food prices: pay substantially higher prices if more unauthorised workers are removed from the United States; import substantially more food from other countries, raising food-safety concerns; or pass comprehensive immigration reform that addresses labour shortages in the agriculture industry.

Of course, governments may choose to ignore or downplay the presence of large numbers of migrants residing unlawfully within their borders. Or, they may decide — as has often been the case — to postpone confronting this contentious issue in hopes the political climate will improve. However, as has been observed in country after country, citizens increasingly reject government’s ostrich-like behaviour and promised-filled postponements as viable options and demand concrete action. Consequently, the calls for increased and immediate deportation of unauthorised migrants continue to mount.

Joseph Chamie is research director at the 
Center for Migration Studies, and Barry 
Mirkin is an independent consultant

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=/data/opinion/2010/December/opinion_December130.xml&section=opinion

In S.D., deportations are few, But supporters call illegal immigration initiative effective

John Hult
Argus Leader
November 28, 2010

An effort to find and remove illegal immigrants with criminal records from South Dakota has led to the deportation of five people in its first five months.

The five are among a larger group of 3,127 immigrants removed from South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and North Dakota so far in 2010.

The Secure Communities Initiative asks jailers to send the fingerprints of every new inmate through a federal database to quickly identify illegal immigrants most likely to pose a danger to the community.

Minnehaha and Pennington counties joined June 22. Custer, Fall River and Jackson counties soon followed.

Of the almost 4,500 sets of prints scanned since then, only 12 have prompted action by a response from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Some South Dakota lawmakers say the small return from the ICE program is further proof that the federal government's strategies are ineffective. They say a set of Arizona-style state laws punishing illegal immigrants and anyone who offers them a job, a home or transportation could force the hand of Washington, D.C.

Others see the numbers as a sign that South Dakota's immigration issues aren't pressing enough for a law that could fill state jails with international offenders and draw costly legal challenges.

Feeding a growing distrust

Victim's advocates fear that programs such as Secure Communities and laws such as Arizona's do little but foment distrust between law enforcement and minorities.

For Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead, who signed off on the fingerprint checks this summer at ICE's request, deportations never were meant to be the measure of the program's success.

Secure Communities, he said, is simply a way to foster communication between frustrated agencies tasked with tackling a problem that has grown larger than the laws written to deal with it.

"Whether it's one or it's 100, the key is that there's a mechanism in place to link us together," Milstead said. "I think many Americans realize that our current laws and current enforcement are marginal at best."

No drawbacks, sheriff says

Milstead didn't expect huge numbers. Realistically, the program is designed to catch people who already have been caught at least once.

"Most people who are here illegally are not going to have their fingerprints in a database," he said.

Still, he said, there was no reason not to join the program. Signing up is free and gives ICE a chance to catch the worst of the worst.

Before Secure Communities, new prints were checked only against the Federal Bureau of Investigation's criminal database. Now, the prints go there and to the Department of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency.

Immigration officers get a notice every time the system detects a previously-convicted criminal or possible illegal immigrant.

It's up to ICE to decide what to do after that. The agency does not and cannot pursue everyone, ICE spokesman Shawn Neudauer said. Not every crime is a deportable offense under federal law.

A drug conviction involving narcotics qualifies a person for deportation, for example. A drug conviction involving an ounce or less of marijuana is not.

Simply being in the country illegally doesn't catch ICE's attention.

"That's why we try to focus on those violent offenders," Neudauer said.

ICE wants every county jail in the nation to join Secure Communities. Since it began in 2008, 788 jurisdictions in 34 states have signed up.

Neudauer also was not surprised at the number of deportations in South Dakota. Three counties in Montana signed up on July 27, and ICE has not detained or deported anyone.

"It takes time for these cases to move through the system," he said.

Not time-consuming cases

U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson has one experienced prosecutor for immigration cases in each of his three offices. They deal with felony cases of illegal reentry after deportation, most of which originate through ICE investigations.

Immigration judges generally deal with nonfelony deportations.

The number of felony cases in South Dakota has fluctuated but held relatively steady for the past 10 years, even as the foreign-born population has more than doubled in some parts of the state.


Such cases amount to 15 percent to 18 percent of Johnson's caseload. ICE can send as many as they find, Johnson said, because cases often are open-and-shut affairs with clear proof of re-entry.

"These cases are not very time-consuming," Johnson said. "We have plenty of resources that have been allocated to us."

Counties pass court information along to ICE as well. Minnehaha County State's Attorney Aaron McGowan has opened 25 cases for possession of a forged instrument, a crime that most often refers to a fake Social Security card used by an illegal immigrant.

State prosecutors dismiss those cases if the defendant is taken into ICE custody.

"If they're going to be deported and we can save some tax dollars on that ... we're going to work with federal authorities," McGowan said.

Six of the 25 county forged instrument cases have been dismissed so far, McGowan said, while eight people have pleaded or been found guilty and 11 cases are still open.

Federal policies criticized

McGowan, like Milstead and Johnson, said ICE officers in South Dakota are accessible and easy to work with. Because Secure Communities makes it easy to trade information, they all support the program.

So do state Rep. Manny Steele and state Sen. Craig Tieszen. However, they think policies at the federal level limit ICE officers and let too many immigrants free.

Nationwide, concerns about civil liberties have cropped up through Secure Communities. But law officers here and elsewhere say the program is necessary to deal with problems caused by insecure borders.

Mitchell's Salgado case

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley points to the killing of 16-year-old Mitchell High School student Jasmine Guevara by Alexander Salgado as an example of such problems.

Salgado is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for his part in Guevara's November 2009 murder. She burned to death in the trunk of her own car in rural Hanson County after being stabbed repeatedly by Salgado and his 15-year-old girlfriend.

Both Salgado and his 15-year-old girlfriend were in the U.S. illegally.

"He shouldn't have even been here, and he ended up killing a little girl," Jackley said.

Milstead said he thinks the coming immigration debate in the legislatures of South Dakota and almost two dozen other states "scratches the surface" of the national immigration reform voters want.

For law enforcement, especially in smaller communities without the easy access Milstead has to ICE officers, there can be disappointment. Officers can collect evidence on illegal immigrants, but in the end, local agencies must rely on ICE.

"We have a marginal ability to act in these situations," Milstead said.

For Huron Police Chief Doug Schmitt, the frustration has translated into inaction.

In many cases, "if we encounter someone we know to be in the country illegally, we can pick them up but ICE won't come get them," he said. "It's frustrating, at best."

Reach reporter John Hult at 331-2301.

http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=201011280303

Coziness between jails, ICE worries immigrants

By DEEPTI HAJELA
The Associated Press

November 12, 2010

NEW YORK (AP) — Luis Guerra swore he had nothing to do with any murder, that whoever picked him out of a lineup was wrong. Still, he was held at the Rikers Island jail for more than a year before the charges were dropped.

It didn't end there. Federal immigration officials stepped in because Guerra was in the country illegally, brought over from Mexico as a child. He ended up in federal immigration detention in Texas before being allowed to return to Manhattan; he's now waiting to find out whether he'll be shipped to a country he hasn't seen since he was 9.

Merely being at Rikers put him on the radar of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, said Guerra, 21, who's trying to get a college degree while awaiting word on his future. City authorities made "a mistake, and now I'm paying for their mistake," he said. "I was living a normal life before."

Removing illegal immigrants who come in contact with the criminal justice system is a significant part of ICE's nationwide enforcement efforts, but it needs the cooperation of local law enforcement to do so. The relationships that make it work are causing concern not just in New York, but also in places like Arlington County, Va.; Washington, D.C.; Santa Clara County, Calif.; and San Francisco.

Immigrant advocates and some politicians find it disturbing that local officials work with ICE on identifying illegal immigrants. In New York, they say, it puts a city that owes its existence to immigrants in the deportation business and breeds fear among immigrants that any contact with authorities — even reporting crimes — could have severe consequences.

"It is really not a good idea to have large segments of your community be afraid of law enforcement," said Nancy Morawetz, a professor at the New York University School of Law and part of its Immigrant Rights Clinic.

Guerra, testifying at a City Council hearing on the issue Wednesday, said he saw that firsthand after his 2007 arrest on a second-degree murder charge.

"There were people who witnessed the murder, people who could have cleared my name," he said, "but they were afraid to go to the police after they heard what was happening to me with immigration."

ICE has had a presence at New York's main jail complex for at least 15 years. The city Department of Correction says federal regulations require it to comply with things like detainers that ICE puts on inmates it wants custody of.

In the 2010 fiscal year, 3,155 out of 13,386 foreign-born inmates had ICE detainers, and 2,552 of them were released directly into federal custody when they were discharged from Rikers, the department said. Nationwide, about half of the nearly 393,000 people removed from the country in the past year were criminals, according to Homeland Security Department statistics.

"Our top priority is to identify and remove criminal convicted aliens who post a threat to the community and to national security," said ICE spokesman Ivan Ortiz-Delgado.

ICE says the city is obligated to hold anyone the agency has put a detainer on, and Department of Correction spokeswoman Sharman Stein echoed that.

If anything, ICE should be taking more people into the detention and deportation system, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tighter controls on immigration.

He argued that every illegal immigrant is deportable at any time, and that as it is, ICE exercises discretion in terms of whom it detains. Advocates' fears of a dragnet dragging are overblown, he said.

"I'd be ecstatic if this program worked the way immigrant rights groups fear it does," he said.

The federal agency often comes under fire for its practices, with critics citing issues like transfers of detainees far away from family and friends, and people in the system having limited access to legal resources that could allow them to stay in the country.

The city is going along with that by not exercising more care in who gets turned over to ICE, critics say. It's one thing for people convicted of violent felonies to be turned over, they say; it's another for someone convicted of a misdemeanor or of nothing at all.

That would include Jose Reyes, a legal resident from the Dominican Republic. Arrested in May 2009 after an argument with his ex's new boyfriend, an immigration detainer was put on him because of a misdemeanor drug arrest from 1997. He was able to avoid deportation after that case was reopened and the charge taken down to disorderly conduct.

"They say they're trying to arrest only criminals," he said through a translator at Wednesday's hearing. "It is not fair that people who have these small convictions are deported."

Critics also worry what the future holds as the Secure Communities program, a more extensive immigration enforcement effort not yet in use in New York City, continues to be implemented around the country as part of a national rollout planned by 2013.

There is confusion over whether localities can opt out of the program, under which the fingerprints of anyone arrested for anything from a traffic violation to a violent crime are automatically checked against federal immigration records.

Arlington County, Washington and Santa Clara County voted recently to opt out the program, saying it could lead to racial profiling, and San Francisco officials tried — with no luck — to drop it.

"I understand that the goal of the relationship between ICE and the Department of Correction is one that is based on the goal of public safety, and keeping New York City residents safe from individuals who are criminals and could do harm," Council Speaker Christine Quinn, among New York's most powerful politicians, said Wednesday.

But, she said, "many appropriate concerns have been raised that the way the Department of Correction is working with ICE is in a way that has granted them such latitude that the implementation of this program goes far beyond."

http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/coziness-between-jails-ice-worries-immigrants-1.2452731

As deportations increase, so do attempts to deport wrong people

By Marian Wang
Tuscon Sentinel
Posted Nov 11, 2010

As deportations have increased under the Obama administration, immigration judges have also increasingly denied requests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport people who were legitimately entitled to stay in the country, according to new data obtained by Syracuse University’s Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse.

From July to September of this year, for instance, almost a third of all deportation cases brought by ICE were rejected by immigration judges—up from 12 months earlier, when the rate was one out of every four. According to TRAC, judges have rejected removal orders for more than a quarter of a million individuals in the past five years.

While the judges’ exact reasons remain unclear, records from the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review indicate that many times, immigration officials had either tried to deport the wrong people or requested dismissal because they didn’t have enough evidence to justify deportation. In some cases, judges also granted relief because of an individual’s refugee status, a pending application for change of legal status or for some other reason.

ICE has refused to turn over more detailed data on the deportation cases that were rejected by courts, according to TRAC. In lieu of more data, TRAC noted the following questions:

The new findings about the broad failures in ICE efforts to deport individuals raise two important questions that might be answered with the more extensive data that the agency has sought to withhold from the public. One involves the effectiveness of the agency: is it targeting the individuals for removal who in fact should be deported? The second question concerns the basic fairness of the process: what is the impact on those individuals the agency has wrongly sought to remove who were entitled to remain in the United States?

When we asked about the immigration cases brought by ICE that were rejected by judges, ICE spokesman Ivan Ortiz-Delgado said his agency has “no say in what the decision of the immigration judges is going to be,” and reiterated that his agency’s priority is to “remove criminal aliens first.”

The new statistics coincide with a smattering of local reports, which in recent months have noted that immigration courts across the country are increasingly dismissing some deportation cases for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. Here’s a Miami Herald story, for instance, that ran just last week:

In August and September, for example, judges at Miami immigration court dismissed 631 deportation cases compared to 449 in June and July.

In fact, the 324 cases immigration judges dismissed in August was the highest monthly case termination figure in the last 12 months, according to statistics the Justice Department's immigration court system released last week.

… While immigration court officials would not speculate on why judges are terminating more cases than before, some attorneys said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement trial attorneys now seem more willing to drop deportation cases against certain foreign nationals.

Last month, Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee called for an investigation into the increase in dismissals of deportation cases, alleging that Homeland Security officials are selectively enforcing the law based on “chosen enforcement priorities.”

As we’ve noted, one potential cause for the dismissals could be the staggering backlog of cases in immigration courts—a number that has risen to record levels along with the rise in deportations under the Obama administration.

This week the Las Vegas Review-Journal noted that while dismissals don’t seem to be increasing in Las Vegas, the backlog there is at an all-time high, having ballooned by more than 80 percent this year.

TRAC’s data also show that the trend of rejected deportation cases depends on the court, but the top five in this fiscal year were New York City (with 70% of cases rejected), Portland (63%), Los Angeles (63%), Miami (59%), and Philadelphia (55%).

http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/111110_deportation

Families face wrenching decisions when immigrant parents deported

By Jennifer Gaie Hellum of The Cronkite News Service
The Tuscon Sentinel
August 30, 2010

PHOENIX – Bonnie Delgado and her two children are Americans living in Mexico because of love, family unity and a fateful border crossing 20 years ago by her Mexican husband, Tolmec Sandoval.

Another couple, John and Anna, met while working at a factory in the Midwest. They got married when Anna, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, found out she was pregnant. They now have three elementary-school aged children born in the U.S., citizens like their father. To stay with her family, Anna endures a life in the shadows.

The two families' experiences dispel the myth that marrying an American and having children who are U.S. citizens ensures legal residence in this country for a foreign spouse. Both families found the pursuit of legal immigration expensive, difficult to navigate and ultimately devastating.

Tolmec was told he will never be allowed to enter the U.S. Anna lost her bid because of a paperwork technicality and was ordered deported. Both couples and their children consequently faced the painful decision of whether to abide the visa denials and live outside the country or to stay in the U.S. illegally. One family chose to remain in the U.S.; the other chose to live in Mexico.

While these two family units have managed to remain together, large numbers of families that include U.S. citizens are being severely impacted by enforcement of immigration laws. A 2006 Pew Hispanic Center study reported "there are 6.6 million families in the U.S. in which either the head of the family or the spouse was unauthorized. These unauthorized families contained 14.6 million persons."

According to the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report from January 2009, over 100,000 illegal immigrant parents of U.S.-born children were deported from 1998 to 2007.

What happened to their children? No one knows for sure. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials do not collect data on how many U.S.-born children these parents have or whether the children stay in the U.S. when the parents are deported. The OIG report recommended that ICE review the feasibility of establishing procedures to document the number of American children displaced by a parent's deportation.

Although so far no change of policy has been implemented, Vincent Picard, ICE's public affairs officer in Phoenix, said in an email that ICE has initiated the feasibility study and expects it to be completed soon. According to Picard, ICE has determined that the system changes are feasible and is working to meet the deadline. "ICE's fiscal year 2010 appropriations bill stated "ICE is directed to begin collecting data on the deportation of parents of U.S.-born children no later than July 1, 2010, and to provide the data at least semi-annually to the Committees and the Office of Immigration Statistics."

Deportations happen to families in Arizona every day. But the issue becomes more complex when the deportees' families are of mixed-status—some with citizenship, some with visas and some here illegally. When a parent is denied a visa or deported, the stress is enormous—leaving youngsters to care for the younger and families to decide whether to leave jobs and schools in the name of family unity. It can lead to marital problems as well as mental health issues for parents and their children.

On any given day, Crockett Elementary School administrator Tammy Tusek deals with issues of deportation and immigration status, as students worry about family members and their own futures. Most of her students are from immigrant families, she says, estimating that about 60% of the student body have mixed-status families. She says the deportations usually are a result of "a traffic violation, day-to-day things—not a drug bust."

A May 2006 report from the Pew Hispanic Center stated "nearly two-thirds (64%) of the children living in unauthorized families are U.S. citizens by birth, an estimated 3.1 million children in 2005."

For these children, removals of family members are commonplace. "There was a former student, and I asked how his brother was," Tusek recalls. "He said he had been deported. This was just a casual conversation by the swings."

Tusek says the students at Crockett, where she has worked for 10 years, generally are aware of immigration issues and see them as part of life. "We did see a lot of anxiety when employer sanctions went through. (Sheriff Joe Arpaio's) sweeps really increased in our neighborhood. Kids would tell me that the police had been on their streets."

The teachers at this Phoenix elementary school see how anxiety affects performance when a child knows a parent—usually the dad—is getting deported and the mom doesn't have a job. "The anxiety is familial; it's not about the individual's status," says Tusek. "Often separation from the family is not an option, so the child knows he could have to go, too."

Jennifer Allen is the executive director of Border Action Network, a membership-based community-organizing network based in Tucson. Among their 12 human rights-oriented guiding principles is family unification.

"The group tries to educate the public that the immigrant family is not "monolithic," in that 'family' oftentimes is comprised of a variety of statuses: undocumented immigrant, legal immigrant, citizen and visa-overstayer," says Allen. "The notion of fixing the problem by rounding up and deporting them is absurd, given what families look like in reality."

In addition to local awareness campaigns, the organization focuses its energy at the state legislative level trying to fend off efforts to deport undocumented immigrants and split families.

"We also work on building relationships with local officials and legislators, urge them to not treat them like they are criminals," says Allen. "Within Arizona, we do a lot of work around how to prepare people for the possibility of having their status challenged, minimize effects of deportation and advocate to keep families here legally and safely."

Sometimes both parents get deported and kids have to move. At Crockett Elementary, the staff and the families tend to handle these realities in a matter-of-fact manner. "Sometimes parents come and withdraw them. They'll just tell the front office that they've been deported," says Tusek.

But other times the teachers are not told about a deportation and have to rely on their instincts to determine when a child is suffering a loss. Tusek recalls how one family with six children was affected last fall by the deportation of a parent.

"This was a long-standing family at the school and we had a relationship with them. But we weren't aware of it. Four of the siblings, who typically performed 'at level', had become withdrawn. The teachers were talking and we realized that the girls' grades were slipping."

Others teachers noticed the girls' charismatic, somewhat mischievous brother also appeared withdrawn. Eventually the school called in the children's mother, who told Tusek she hadn't noticed a change in her children's demeanors. "The translator I work with told her we're just trying to see if there's something we could do to help. She finally said their dad had been deported and 'if I can't find a job, we're going to have to move back.'"

Tusek referred the kids to the school counselor immediately and found out that the kids had been instructed by their mother not to discuss what had happened to their dad. Within a week or two, the teachers were able to engage the girls and their brother in conversations about what happened.

She says it's interesting that the authorities see deportation as the solution, telling the story of a mother who came in to say her children's father was being deported. "The father left his wife and six kids and was back in six days."

Bonnie and Tolmec, on the other hand, aren't willing to live apart or with the upheaval and anxiety that would come from Tolmec's being undocumented in the U.S. They instead have chosen family unity and legal immigration status for Bonnie and the kids in Mexico. The decision nonetheless has been a heart-wrenching one. Bonnie grieves that her U.S.-citizen children might never know the American Dream.

The couple met while Bonnie was on a study abroad program in Tijuana. They fell in love, got married in San Diego in 1999 and returned to Mexico where Tolmec worked as an English teacher at the University of Baja California at Tijuana. They soon applied for Tolmec to legally immigrate into the U.S., only to find that a careless border crossing with a friend as a young man would lead to his permanent ban from entering the U.S.

When Tolmec was 21, he and a friend decided to travel to San Diego for a Padres baseball game. Tolmec used his daily border crosser visa. According to Delgado, her husband's friend claimed he was a U.S. citizen (which is not uncommon in border towns where Mexican mothers often cross to give birth). The border agents discovered he, in fact, was Mexican. They impounded Tolmec's car and denied his visa for one year. There were no formal proceedings following the incident and Tolmec later obtained subsequent visas.

When Bonnie filled out the application for her husband's spousal visa application in 2003, Tolmec never mentioned the 1990 incident at the border. "He didn't think to mention it," says Delgado. "It had happened so long ago, and he had gotten subsequent visas."

Officials at the embassy in Ciudad Juarez caught the omission. They said the border-crossing incident had been reclassified as human smuggling and that the failure to report it on the visa application constituted an unpardonable felony. Bonnie's petition was denied. As a result, Tolmec will never be allowed to enter the U.S.

Delgado's unsuccessful application process took ten years and cost thousands of dollars in application and legal fees. The process usually involves many forms and fees, including forms for "alien relatives" as fiancées or as spouses, for mandatory medical exams and for proof of financial support. (If documents are sent to the incorrect processing office, the application is automatically denied and fees lost.)

She remains angry at what she sees as an injustice denying law-abiding citizens their right to live in their country. "You have no idea how many times people have offered to smuggle him into this country," says Delgado. "But instead we tried to do the right thing, and now he's being punished again after already paying the penalty for it. What's most frustrating is how oblivious they are to the emotional and financial distress they bring upon my children and myself."

During the application process, Bonnie's attorney advised her to move to the U.S. with her children as a good-faith gesture demonstrating her desire to live here. She worked as a substitute teacher in Cave Creek, but her son became clinically depressed by the separation from his father. They returned to Mexico the following year. "It's been really tough," she says. "They miss Cave Creek a lot. They miss their friends and their teachers. They miss the little things, like Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts and having a nice park down the street."

Every weekday, she leaves her home at 5:30 a.m. and crosses the border on foot from Tijuana to work part-time as a secretary at a tile showroom outside of San Diego. (She earns more than she did teaching full-time at a private school in Tijuana.) She returns home by 1:30 p.m. and homeschools her children in English, while her husband teaches at the Instituto Sandel, an independent English school he owns. Each time she crosses, Bonnie is haunted by the consequences of her husband's mistake.

Delgado recently applied to DHS's Secure Electronic Network for Travelers Rapid Inspection (SENTRI) program, which facilitates border crossings for low-risk crossers. Although the card, part of the Trusted Traveler Program, would have reduced her border-crossing time by as much as 90%, says Delgado, she was denied access because of her husband's inadmissibility. "I argued that I'm a U.S. citizen, with no criminal background, not even a parking ticket, that I cross by foot. So how could I possibly smuggle anyone? I have a clean record, yet the official said I'm not 'low risk' because of my husband's record."

Like Bonnie and Tolmec, John and Anna had every intention of pursuing legal status through the appropriate government channels and every expectation that they would receive it. In the end, their denial left them frustrated and angry

The couple met while working together at a factory where John was a shop foreman and Anna was an operator. When she became pregnant, they got married and began the visa application process.

John, a military veteran, says he wanted to do the right thing. "We did a lot of stuff to try and do it the right way." Anna had come to the U.S. by car without papers, so John set about getting her a legitimate U.S. social security number and a valid driver's license for tax purposes. She obtained work authorization papers and underwent fingerprinting each time they moved to a new state, including Arizona.

By the time he and Anna had their final interview, she was pregnant with their third son. Certain her application would be approved, they had even purchased tickets for the family to go to Mexico for Christmas to meet Anna's parents, who she had not seen in over ten years. Her application's denial delivered a crushing end to their plans.

"I didn't know it was going to go this way," says John. "Married? With three children? For someone to sit across the desk from a pregnant woman, with no compassion, and deny her, based on someone filing the wrong paperwork that had expired?" Apparently, someone at the agency John had hired used an application that had since been revised. As John describes it, the young woman on the other side of the desk coldly saw the error as grounds for denial.

John believes that if he hadn't been there with Anna that day and she hadn't been pregnant, the authorities would have taken her to a deportation cell. Instead, they were told they would receive a letter telling them when she would have to leave. They never received the papers.

Five years and $5,000 later, John's frustration with the process remains fresh. "It's real complicated to do it without a lawyer. So you put yourself in a situation where (the lawyers) say they're going to help you, but they didn't look at the paperwork when they filed it."

Instead of returning to Mexico without her children and trusting that it would take only six to twelve months to receive legal documents, Anna has chosen a more risky, and more isolated, path. She remains in the States with John and her children but no longer works and must keep a low profile in their community. There's been no contact from immigration authorities nor close calls with local law enforcement, but nonetheless she lives in fear. As John puts it, "She feels like she's in a prison."

John says the boys don't know anything about their mother's immigration status. The family lives in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood, but they don't have sweeps like in Arizona. Still, the strain on the family from her not being able to work affects them all. "It's incredibly stressful," says John. "We have arguments every other week about her being stuck in the house."

John sounds resigned to the idea of Anna having to leave to get legal status, suggesting they'll eventually try to do what they must to get her status changed. They've thought about her taking the kids to Mexico over summer break some year and hoping for speedy processing, but that would require buying passports and securing notarized documents to allow Anna to take her U.S.-citizen children across the border. Instead John, most likely, would have to take the boys to Mexico himself. The considerable expense, complicated logistics and uncertain outcome of such a plan are reasons enough to make it unlikely to happen any time soon.

Maurice Goldman is an immigration attorney in Tucson, AZ, who focuses his practice on issues related to U.S. immigration laws. He advocates abolishing re-entry penalties, including the 3-year and 10-year bans on re-entering the U.S after deportation.

"I see these families get torn apart," says Goldman. "The penalties are nonsensical because they don't really deter a person from being here illegally or unlawfully. They basically force a person to live here in the shadows, without any documentation, and with the fear that if they go back, they may not be able to come back and be with their loved ones. I just think that's completely unfair. And I can understand making the person pay a penalty because they did somehow break a law, but when you have a family and you have a U.S. citizen or a permanent-resident spouse or a child that's going to be potentially separated from their mother or their father, you know, it's kind of sad to see. Very sad, actually."

Arizona Congressmen Ed Pastor and Raul Grijalva have co-sponsored legislation that would allow immigration judges flexibility when determining whether illegal immigrant parents of U.S.-citizen children should be removed from the U.S. Although previous legislation has died in committee in earlier efforts, a similar provision has be included in a comprehensive immigration reform proposal pending in Congress.

Others in Congress would like to see the repeal of the 14th amendment, which grants citizenship to all persons born in the U.S. In the wake of Arizona governor Jan Brewer's recent signing of the controversial immigration bill SB 1070, the debate over citizenship has gained intensity. When asked at a recent Tea Party rally in San Diego if he would support deportation of U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine) of California responded, "I would have to, yes… We simply cannot afford what we're doing right now." He added, "It takes more than just walking across the border to become an American citizen. It's what's in our souls…"

Even when parents of U.S-born children succeed in securing legal status, anxiety can remain for the non-citizen spouse. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data reports that roughly 21,000 Arizona residents received green cards in 2009.

Suzette Acosta, a pre-school director, and her husband Jose, an executive chef, grew up together in Nogales, Sonora. Jose became a U.S. citizen in his twenties when a pastor encouraged a friend and him to apply for citizenship. He attended college in Tucson; Suzette went to college in Mexico. Some years later they began dating, and in 1999 Jose proposed to Suzette. The following year he applied for a fiancée visa through the Tucson immigration office. Suzette eventually obtained permanent residence (also known as "green card") status in 2002.

They now have four children, all of whom are U.S. citizens, and Suzette very much wants to become a citizen. According to DHS, most legal permanent residents who are at least 18 years of age are eligible to apply for citizenship after meeting certain requirements, including five years of lawful permanent residency in the United States and successful completion of English language, civics and history tests.

Suzette says the biggest obstacle for her is the cost. "It cost us $2,500-3,000 at the time for my green card. At this point, we don't have a lot of money, with daycare costs and a house. We have good jobs, but there's not much money left over."

Instead, she has incorporated the realities of her family's mixed status into their life. Each time her mother takes Suzette's children to Nogales for a visit, Suzette dutifully gets the notarized paperwork required to allow her mother to take the kids to and from Mexico, as required by Mexican law. She also always tells the truth at the border about her immigration status and speaks openly about it in front of her children.

Despite having permanent residency, she still has anxiety when she travels because of concerns about the authority of individual border patrol agents. "Any time we cross the border, there could be any reason someone could take my residency card from me, and it would be all over. It's very sad because it's supposed to be that if you followed the procedures (to get documents), you're fine. But every time you're treated at the will of the person at the border. We're always at the mercy of who's at the border."

Suzette describes an unsettling incident that happened a year after she had gotten a pre-residency card permit. "I'm supposed to get out of the car, and they are supposed to sign my paper. The woman at the border didn't know what the permit was, and she wanted to take the paperwork from me. I said, 'Call the office in Tucson so you can learn about it.' I wasn't going to let her take it."

When asked what Jose and she would do if she somehow lost her legal status, Suzette replies, "We always talk about it. If that happened, we'd go back (to Mexico) and start over."

But despite the anxiety from not yet being a citizen, Suzette says they feel blessed that they aren't like other families who have a parent here illegally. "You have no idea, even the difference between their life and ours."

This package was produced by students in Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication under the direction of Rick Rodriguez, Carnegie Professor specializing in Latino and transnational news coverage.

http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/083010_divided_families

Fingerprint Deportation: Homeland Security Deports 47,000 Immigrants

By SUZANNE GAMBOA
The Huffington Post
08/10/10

WASHINGTON — Records show that about 47,000 people were removed or deported from the U.S. after the Homeland Security Department sifted through 3 million sets of fingerprints taken from bookings at local jails.

About one-quarter of those kicked out of the country did not have criminal records, according to government data obtained by immigration advocacy groups that filed a lawsuit. The groups plan to release the data Tuesday and provided early copies to The Associated Press.

At issue is a fingerprint-sharing program known as Secure Communities that the government says is focused on getting rid of the "worst of the worst" criminal immigrants from the U.S.

Immigration advocates say that the government instead spends too much time on lower-level criminals or non-criminals.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement divides crimes into three categories, with Level 1 being the most serious. Level 1 crimes include actions that threaten or compromise national security, murder, rape, drug crimes punishable by more than one year and even resisting arrest.

Most of those deported committed Level 2 or 3 crimes or were non-criminals, a monthly report of Secure Communities statistics shows.

"ICE has pulled a bait and switch, with local law enforcement spending more time and resources facilitating the deportations of bus boys and gardeners than murderers and rapists and at considerable cost to local community policing strategies, making us all less safe," said Peter Markowitz, director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.

Markowitz's clinic, the National Day Laborer Organizers Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights had requested and sued for the statistics. Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted some of the documents on its website late Monday.

Richard Rocha, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, said non-criminals still may be people who have failed to show up for deportation hearings, who recently crossed the border illegally or who re-entered the country after deportation. He also said it's important to remember that more people commit crimes that are considered Level 2 and 3.

Secure Communities is "a beneficial partnership tool for ICE and state and local law enforcement agencies helping to identify, prioritize and remove convicted criminal aliens not only from the communities, but also from the country," Rocha said.

The Obama administration wants Secure Communities operating nationwide by 2013.

As of Aug. 3, 494 counties and local and state agencies in 27 states were sharing fingerprints from jail bookings through the program.

From October 2008 through June of this year, 46,929 people identified through Secure Communities were removed from the U.S., the documents show. Of those, 12,293 were considered non-criminals.

California had the highest percentage of immigrants deported who had committed Level 1 crimes, with 38 percent of a total 14,823 immigrants sent out of the country, according to statistics from 24 states participating by the end of June. In Georgia, 39 percent of 624 immigrants removed were non-criminals, the highest rate among the states.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/10/fingerprint-deportation-h_n_676611.html

Deportation fears plague locals

By J. Adrian Stanley
Colorado Springs Independent
August 5, 2010

In past years, Sandra Hernandez, executive director of the Colorado Springs nonprofit Centro de la Familia and a licensed clinical social worker, spent her days helping Hispanic and immigrant families with run-of-the-mill issues: parenting skills, marital problems, children struggling in school.

But recently, Centro has given its free or low-cost counseling to families with bigger troubles. Hernandez is seeing depressed kids, even suicidal kids, regularly. And they all have something in common: a parent or loved one who's been deported.

The trend began several years ago, after Colorado enacted several laws to crack down on illegal immigration, and it hasn't eased since. Hernandez says that now, she's worried about some politicians' campaign-trail promises to bring Arizona's rigid new immigration law to Colorado.

Were that to happen, she says, the stories she hears weekly will only get worse. And they're bad enough already.

In one recent case, a father was facing deportation, to the horror of his two young sons — both American citizens.

"You could tell that dad was very nurturing, spent a lot of time with his boys, played a lot of soccer with his boys, took them to the movies, that they went fishing ... and when dad was in jail for three months, these kids really deteriorated," Hernandez says. She adds, "The one little boy, the oldest one, he became suicidal; he was making suicidal threats. I think he was about 9 or 10 — 9 or 10 — and he was basically saying, 'I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to hurt myself. I don't want to live.'"

Imagine, Hernandez says, being a child afraid that someone would invade your home and take your mom or dad — or even you — away to some strange place. Mexico. A place you've heard about on the news, where heads show up without bodies, and young women are found in mass graves.

Most often, she says, kids she sees are worried about a father who's facing deportation, a process that can take months. (Hernandez only helps families facing deportation if the undocumented worker has not committed any crime.)

"What we're dealing with here is that there's no resolution to 'What's going to happen with my dad?'" she says. "'Are they going to come in the middle of the night and pick up my dad? Is my dad going to be taken while I'm in school, like happened last time? What's going to happen at the hearing? When my dad goes to the hearing, is he going to be allowed to come back home? Are we going to have to move to Mexico?'"

The ordeal leaves kids depressed, anxious, aggressive and unable to concentrate in school. They have nightmares, and self-esteem issues. Hernandez is currently working with an 8-year-old who stopped speaking when her father was picked up by authorities.

And there's another case that haunts her: an English-speaking 18-year-old girl, raised in America, who is stranded in Juarez. The girl's request for citizenship was denied. Not because she did anything wrong, but because the petition her parents filed on her behalf is no longer valid.

"This little girl comes to the United States," Hernandez explains. "She's 6 years old. The mom marries an American citizen, so mom becomes an American citizen and they petition for the little girl. Well, this takes forever, these things sometimes. So she hits the age of 18, and ... the hearing occurs after her 18th birthday, so they have to go to Ciudad Juarez [where the hearing is held]. And the judge said no. He said no to the petition because it's after her 18th birthday. So, they have to leave this 18-year-old girl in a boarding house in Juarez, where all the killings are going on with the women. You can imagine how these parents feel."

Hernandez sighs.

"We can do better than this."

Mood swings

The law of unintended consequences often plays out spectacularly when it comes to immigration enforcement.

But that hasn't stopped the laws from coming, as anger about immigration grows. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, in 2005, 300 bills were introduced by state legislatures nationwide; 38 laws were enacted. In 2009, that number ballooned to about 1,500 bills introduced, 222 enacted and 131 resolutions adopted.

Back in 2006, long before Arizona required police to question anyone they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally — a law whose most controversial elements are now tied up in the courts — Colorado was already passing some of the country's strictest immigration policy.

That year, one law required all state workers and contractors to prove their citizenship. Another required police officers to report any arrestee suspected of being an illegal immigrant to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) for possible deportation. (Domestic violence cases were excepted from the law since it's common for both the perpetrator and the victim to be arrested.) It also stated that all local law enforcement must cooperate with ICE.

While the current Legislature has been easier on immigrants, Gov. Bill Ritter is considering signing the state up for a federal program called Secure Communities. It would mandate a fingerprint check of anyone booked into any jail, to see if they are in the country illegally and if they have committed any crimes. Since first being implemented in Harris County, Texas in October 2008, Secure Communities has been adopted by portions of 27 states, and has screened about 3 million people.

The program has led to the deportation of more than 47,000. Of those, 9,800 were found to have committed Level 1 crimes (including the most serious crimes like homicide and rape), more than 19,000 committed Level 2 offenses (crimes like arson and vehicle theft), and more than 5,600 were convicted of Level 3 crimes (such as public drunkenness and property damage). About 12,300 had not been convicted of a crime.

Even if Ritter decides against Secure Communities, Republicans are promising that, if elected, they will bring ever-stricter immigration law to Colorado. Conservative gubernatorial candidates Scott McInnis, Dan Maes and Tom Tancredo have all spoken fondly of Arizona's tactics. Locally, both candidates for sheriff like Arizona's law, and both support a current program that the sheriff's office runs with ICE.

Of course, it wasn't so long ago that big-name Republicans and Democrats wanted "comprehensive immigration reform." Most envisioned this as providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the United States, and creating a more logical process for immigrants to come to the country — legally — in the future.

These days, few are willing to stick their necks out. Even Arizona Sen. John McCain, one of the Republican Party's most vocal proponents of reform in past years, has changed his mind.

What's going on?

"I think that race is very heightened now, along with economic insecurity," says Eric Popkin, Colorado College associate professor of sociology. "If you perceive that lots of people coming from another country are here and taking jobs, when the unemployment rate is as high as it is, that fear of the other can be manipulated."

In reality

Of course, attitudes and realities don't always align.

Even as concerns about immigration spike, Popkin notes, immigration (as measured by border apprehensions) is down. In fact, in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2009, there were 556,041 border apprehensions. In 2008, there were 723,825. In 2000, there were 1,675,438.

Yes, some people say the decrease is due to increased border security. But Popkin isn't buying it.

"What some real noted studies have said is that it's the economy," he says. "When there's an upsurge of jobs, those apprehension rates go way up; when there are less jobs, they go way down. This has occurred cyclically for years."

Another note: Studies have shown that immigrants don't often compete with natives for jobs. To put it bluntly, immigrants work jobs Americans don't want. (To illustrate this point, the United Farm Workers of America launched their Take Our Jobs campaign, takeourjobs.org, wherein undocumented farm workers invite citizens and legal residents to replace them in the fields.)

Many economists, Popkin says, have long maintained that immigrants are necessary for the economy, especially as Baby Boomers age. They work lower-paying jobs. They pay into Social Security. And they buy things, including cars and houses.

Earlier this year, the Center for American Progress and the American Immigration Council released studies estimating that comprehensive immigration reform, as described above, would increase the U.S. gross domestic product by at least $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

In Colorado, immigrants keep tourism going in small mountain towns with pricey real estate; they often drive hours each day to and from minimum-wage positions in ski towns. Migrants also work the fields and grunt construction jobs.

It's a similar story elsewhere. In Arizona, for instance, Popkin says many migrants work as home health care aides, assisting the huge population of senior citizens. In 2007, Forbes named the profession one of the worst paid in America.

Illegal immigrants also usually live in, and often support, households in which some members are legal. Take away the breadwinner, Popkin notes, and those left behind could be forced to turn to welfare and other social programs.

Popkin acknowledges that the overall benefit most of America derives from immigration may not exist in the most crowded border counties, where large numbers of immigrants can drain resources.

"I understand the anger at the lack of federal response to the immigration issue," he says. "I understand where it comes from. Those costs are real. And if you're a rancher whose land straddles the border and people are crossing, and then you have the drug [smuggling] issue — which I separate from the immigration issue — yeah, I understand that people see it as a problem. And the answer, of course, is to regulate that flow through comprehensive immigration reform."

Feeling the impact

While it seems much of the country is screaming for deportations, there is resistance.

Before Arizona's law was put on hold by a judge (when the U.S. Department of Justice questioned its constitutionality), opponents hit the street in full force. Brown-skinned citizens left their homes without identification, daring police to arrest them for suspicion of being here illegally.

Locally, the response has been more muted. But state Rep. Dennis Apuan says he's hearing worries.

"District 17 is largely made up of communities of color," he says. "So I have a lot of Hispanics in my district, so I understand that they would be against something like Arizona [has]."

The American Civil Liberties Union has launched a campaign against that law. Colorado ACLU legal director Mark Silverstein says if it's allowed to stand, or even spread to other states, Americans would be living in something akin to a police state, afraid to take their dog for a walk without identification for fear of being swept up and deported. That's especially true, he says, since local law enforcement don't go through the special training that federal immigration agents must undergo.

"There's a tremendous chance that [police] will rely on their own biases," he says, adding, "It's the kind of policy that we've traditionally abhorred when its carried out in totalitarian countries."

— stanley@csindy.com

Immigration nation


State laws related to immigration have ballooned in recent years. Here's how the National Conference of State Legislatures has tallied them up.

• In 2005, 300 bills were introduced; 39 laws were enacted and six vetoed.

• In 2006, 570 bills were introduced; 84 laws were enacted and six vetoed.

• In 2007, 1,562 bills were introduced; 240 laws were enacted and 12 vetoed.

• In 2008, 1,305 bills were introduced; 206 laws and resolutions were enacted and three vetoed.

• In 2009, approximately 1,500 bills were introduced; 353 laws and resolutions were enacted and 20 vetoed.

http://www.csindy.com/colorado/barbed-ire/Content?oid=1800727

Unwanted Immigrants: America’s Deportation Dilemma

Passing immigration laws is easy—moving the uninvited people back home is far more difficult
By Joseph Chamie
The Epoch Times
Aug 1, 2010

As being played out by the legal battle between the U.S. Government and the state of Arizona, the bottom line in the illegal immigration debate is whether or not to deport those unlawfully resident within a country.

Faced with the growing presence of illegal migrants—many arriving without documents on foot, in backs of trucks, on creaky boats; others overstaying their visas; and still others having asylum claims denied—nations from Angola to Australia, Israel to Italy, and the United Kingdom to the United States struggle with this knotty issue.

The deportation dilemma has become more acute due to global recession and widespread joblessness at levels not seen since the Great Depression. Partly as a result, a common perception emerges throughout Europe, North America, and elsewhere—“millions of native workers without jobs and millions of jobs without native workers.”

Whereas the global number of illegal migrants is large, estimated at roughly 50 million, those actually deported are considerably less. In the United States, for instance, less than 4 percent—or 358,886—of the estimated 11 million illegal migrants were deported in 2008. While deportations have declined in some countries, such as Germany, Greece, and Italy, numbers of deported have increased substantially in others, such as Canada, France, the UK, and the United States.

Lack of Uniformity

Concerning the undesirability of illegal immigration, near universal agreement exists among governments and much of the public, especially when it involves smuggling and trafficking. In fact, governments—especially at intergovernmental gatherings such as the United Nations—uniformly stress national sovereignty, emphasizing rights to monitor borders, manage immigration, and pass laws aimed at deterring illegal immigration.

However, and this is the crux of the issue, views and policies differ enormously between sending and receiving countries, such as Mexico and the United States, and within countries, such as Israel, Italy, Spain, the UK and the United States, on how to deal with millions of men, women and children living unlawfully in scores of countries around the world.

At one extreme are those who contend that deportation is the appropriate and required solution: As illegal migrants are lawbreakers, they should not be rewarded with amnesty or legalization.

The political will needed to implement wide-scale deportation programs is normally lacking or weak at best.

Relevant laws pertaining to illegal immigration should not be ignored, camouflaged or halfheartedly carried out by responsible authorities. Illegal migrants must go to the back of the line and apply for immigration back in home countries just as legal immigrants have done and continue to do.

Granting amnesty to illegal migrants not only undermines the rule of law, erodes public trust, and constitutes a slap in the face to all those who migrated legally, this view maintains, but it also encourages future illegal immigration.

At the other extreme are those who oppose deportation, pressing for legalization of unauthorized migrants: Most of these migrants, struggling to meet their most basic needs, simply seek gainful employment to support themselves and improve the lives of their families.

Identifying and sending unauthorized migrants back to home countries is costly and logistically difficult. Moreover, widespread deportations can lead to economic disruptions, breakup of families, and violations of fundamental civil liberties.

Unauthorized migrants should be allowed to reside and work legally in the country, proponents maintain, and permitted to apply for citizenship.

In the middle are the many who tend to equivocate on deportation, depending on circumstances: Unauthorized migrants—and it doesn’t matter from where—who commit serious crimes should be returned to their home countries after serving jail sentences.

In contrast, law-abiding unauthorized migrants should be allowed to remain and permitted to apply for citizenship. In particular, unauthorized migrants who arrive as children—and those subsequently born in the country to unauthorized migrants—should be allowed to stay in the country and become citizens.

The political will needed to implement wide-scale deportation programs is normally lacking or weak at best. Politics, voting patterns, economic interests and labor needs, especially evident in Europe, Japan and the United States, push political leaders to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration, by and large evading the prickly issue of deportation.

In addition, the costs of identifying, detaining, processing and deporting are considerable. For example, the United Kingdom Border Agency spent the equivalent of about $40 million in 2009 on chartered and scheduled flights to remove illegal migrants. In the United States, simply detaining an illegal migrant has average cost of about $100 per day.

Deportation Concerns

Legal deportation proceedings, if they take place at all, frequently give rise to ethical and humanitarian concerns. Sending illegal migrants back to countries with civil conflict or searing poverty, for example, could violate their basic human rights.

In some cases, if returned home—especially to war-torn countries—their lives could be endangered by militants and insurgents. Moreover, expulsion of seriously ill or disabled unauthorized migrants, including those with HIV/AIDS, heart disease or cancer as well as mental illness or physical disabilities, to their countries of origin, particularly if least developed, could be a death sentence.

Even when deportation is decided by the courts and ordered by governmental authorities, illegal migrants, especially among the EU countries, increasingly protest court decisions with defiant refusals, including hunger strikes, street demonstrations and appeals to human rights organizations, often leading to lengthy stalemates.

Taking up refuge in places such as churches and makeshift camps, some illegal migrants alongside sympathetic supporters challenge physical removal, often with attendant reporters and television crews. In response to heightened visibility and negative public reaction to these removals, some governments, such as France and the UK, deport illegal migrants surreptitiously late at night.

Objections to deportation also arise in the countries of origin, such as Mexico which has spoken out against U.S. deportations and the recent Arizona law.

Some nations, such as China, Ethiopia, Eritrea, India, Iran, Jamaica, Laos and Vietnam, refuse to repatriate many of the illegal migrants. Also, origin countries, such as Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Jamaica, are understandably not keen to receive deported citizens convicted of crimes abroad or linked to organized crime.

And the numbers of deported criminals are not inconsequential; the United States alone deported close to 100,000 criminals in 2008.

In addition to the loss of valued remittances, returning unauthorized migrants are likely to contribute to unemployment rolls, additional costs, and political unrest. Besides new and uncertain economic circumstances, deported migrants often face re-entry difficulties, including stigmatization and depression.

As a result of their inability or unwillingness to return illegal migrants to their home countries, some governments, especially among EU nations such as Italy and Spain, have offered regularization programs to hundreds of thousands. To reduce opposition to amnesty, legalization programs are frequently labeled as “the last.”

Legalization is often coupled with commitments for increased border, interior and workplace enforcement as well as public information campaigns aimed at discouraging future illegal migration.

However, governments acknowledge that offering “last chance” legalization programs likely encourage others to try unlawful entry in hopes of being eligible for the next amnesty, as was the case following the “last” U.S. amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal migrants passed under President Ronald Reagan in 1986.

Political leaders, especially in developed countries, are unlikely to consider amnesty or legalization, not until the economy rebounds and record-setting unemployment rates subside. At the same time, legalization advocates insist that governmental authorities address the plight of the undocumented migrants.

For the foreseeable future, governments and intergovernmental organizations must struggle with the deportation dilemma. And until it’s resolved, illegal migrants must confront the immigration Sword of Damocles.

Joseph Chamie, former director of the United Nations Population Division, is research director at the Center for Migration Studies. With permission from YaleGlobal Online.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/40172/