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Austin seeing change in immigration prosecutions
Some undocumented immigrants facing criminal charges before being deported.

By Steven Kreytak
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, April 28, 2006

Austin immigration agents in recent months have filed criminal charges against dozens of undocumented immigrants for crimes that have long been handled with simple deportation, according to the agents' supervisor.

Alonzo Pena, the special agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's San Antonio division, which includes Austin, attributes the change to a recent shift in the cases that federal prosecutors are willing to take to court.

"We bring them the cases; they tell us what the thresholds are," Pena said. "(Prosecutors) are taking more cases at a lower threshold."

The cases come as Congress considers an overhaul to the nation's immigration laws and groups of mostly Hispanic demonstrators have taken to the streets to demand legal status for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

For undocumented immi- grants in the Austin area, the chance of being prosecuted remains small, but the shift means they are more likely to face federal prison time or leave the country with a criminal record if they are caught.

That raises the stakes if they try to enter the country illegally again.

Under federal law, re-entering the country illegally after being deported is a felony.

But for years, the U.S. attorney's office for the Western District of Texas has typically prosecuted immigrants for illegal re-entry only when they had previously committed an aggravated felony — like murder, rape or drug trafficking — or in rare cases when they had returned multiple times after deportation.

The maximum punishment for illegal re-entry is two years in prison, but it jumps to 20 years for those with aggravated felony records.

In recent years, the office has prosecuted about three to five people a month for illegal re-entry.

Since March 1, it has prosecuted 24 people, including eight with no previous felony history, according to a U.S. attorney's office count.

U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton said his office decides whether to file criminal charges on a case by case basis. He said that the recent filings are not related to the national immigration debate and said that he does not "anticipate that we will see a huge number of those cases coming in the future.

"We don't look at it as a dramatic policy change. These are laws that have always been on the books," said Sutton, whose office is responsible for prosecuting immigration violations and other federal crimes in a large swath of Texas that runs from El Paso to Del Rio to Waco.

The recent cases include illegal re-entry charges against three of the 34 immigrants arrested last week at a Hutto pallet factory — part of a nationwide raid on a Houston company's plants. The rest were deported without charges.

None of them had a criminal history, authorities said.

Immigrants in a second group were charged with making their first illegal entry into the country, a misdemeanor.

On March 10, about 20 Mexicans and Dominicans were charged in Austin after they were caught along with their smugglers, officials said.

The immigrants have all pleaded guilty and been deported after serving days in jail; the smugglers face more serious charges.

In the past, smuggled immigrants have not faced criminal charges for their first illegal entry.

Because of limited resources, Sutton said prosecutors will continue to focus on filing federal charges against the most dangerous immigrants.

Without discussing the recent cases, Sutton said that prosecutors will consider charges under the illegal re- entry law when the person is suspected of other illegal activity, has a significant misdemeanor record or was "combative or disruptive at the time of arrest."

Assistant Federal Public Defender Horatio Aldredge said that if prosecutors continue to seek criminal charges against a wider sample of immigrants, the system may not be able to handle them.

"It seems to me," he said, "that it's not a very good allocation of resources."

skreytak@statesman.com; 912-2946