Thread: Foreign nationals returning to U.S. illegally up

Alfonso Chardy
03/04/2015 7:15 PM
03/04/2015 7:19 PM

For years, federal immigration authorities have hailed as an enforcement success the annual growth in deportations of foreign nationals who have been convicted of serious crimes or caught living or working in the United States without papers.

What authorities have not highlighted is the simultaneous growth in the number of previously deported foreign nationals who have returned to the United States illegally either by sneaking through the porous Mexican border or by traveling on boats from the Bahamas to South Florida.

While annual illegal reentries are not as numerous as deportations, over time they contribute to an erosion of enforcement gains. For example, in fiscal year 2012 at least 409,849 undocumented immigrants were deported. But during the same period, more than 160,000 previously deported foreign nationals returned illegally. By now, three years later, roughly the same number of people deported in 2012 have returned, immigration experts say.

The returns not only undermine immigration authorities’ claims of enforcement success but also highlight the inefficiency of border controls, experts say.

Federal prosecutors filed almost 20,000 criminal cases against previously deported foreign nationals in 2012 and have filed about 19,000 illegal reentry cases in federal courts every year since 2009. But that is only the tip of the iceberg because those figures reflect only cases that have been prosecuted. It is not known with precision how many previously deported foreign nationals return each year and are not prosecuted or detected. But experts believe that the number of annual illegal reentries is considerable.

Dan Cadman and Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), who have researched the issue, estimate that about 25 percent of all foreign nationals detained annually by immigration authorities have been previously deported. That means that in 2012 — when 643,474 foreign nationals were detained by immigration authorities — more than 160,000 of the detainees had been previously deported.

“In recent years, the figure of apprehensions of aliens who were previously deported has hovered at around 25 percent of the total of apprehensions,” said Cadman, a former official of the now-defunct U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and its successor agency — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This means that in three years, about the same number of foreign nationals deported in 2012 — 409,849 — have returned.

Federal immigration officials familiar with deportations and illegal reentries of previously deported foreign nationals declined comment on the findings.

But ICE said in a statement: “ICE is focused on effective immigration enforcement that prioritizes threats to national security and public safety. Criminal reentrants remain a priority target for immigration enforcement and criminal prosecution as appropriate.”

Immigrant rights activists say previously deported foreign nationals return because they have left behind properties or families.

“They come back because they built their lives here,” said Francisco Portillo, president of Miami-based Francisco Morazán Honduran Organization. “They found a good future here. They come back because they left family members behind, children, wives, husbands and the lack of jobs and the violence in our countries also play a role in making them return.”

Portillo cited as an example the recent tragic case of his friend José Amilcar Canales.

A 34-year-old Honduran who had lived in South Florida for 14 or 15 years without immigration papers, Canales was deported more than a year ago after being arrested for driving without a license. He left behind his 12-year-old daughter and his ex-wife. Two weeks ago, he tried to re-enter the United States illegally, swimming across the Rio Grande near McAllen, Texas. He drowned. His body was sent to Honduras.

Announcing the number of deportations as an enforcement accomplishment became an annual ritual for ICE over the last few years. But in November 2014, President Barack Obama ordered a shift in removal policy partly to stem mounting criticism of his immigration priorities.

At one point so many deportations were occurring that even the president’s political allies publicly denounced his immigration policies. Janet Murguia, president and chief executive officer of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation’s largest Latino advocacy organization, stunned the administration when she called Obama “deporter-in-chief.”

Obama’s Nov. 20 policy shift included a new deportation policy focusing chiefly on dangerous criminals. He also offered removal reprieves to nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants who have no serious criminal records and whose children are U.S. citizens or residents.

The deportation reprieve program is now on hold because a federal judge in Brownsville, Texas, ruled on Feb. 16 that the president’s new policy failed to comply with certain federal regulations and proposed to not only shield millions from deportation but sought to grant them a number of immigration benefits.

The judge, however, did not prevent the Obama administration from setting new deportation priorities, which are expected to drastically reduce the number of non-criminal undocumented immigrants expelled in future years.

Before Obama took office in 2009, the majority of deportees were foreign nationals detained for having no immigration papers.

Under the Obama administration, the deportation priorities began to change. Slowly, the number of deportations of convicted criminals began to grow. Today, deportations of convicted criminals represent the majority of removals. Figures for fiscal year 2013, for example, show that nearly 60 percent of ICE’s total removals, 368,644 people, were previously convicted of a criminal offense.

While annual illegal reentries are not as numerous as deportations, over time they contribute to an erosion of enforcement gains. For example, in fiscal year 2012 at least 409,849 undocumented immigrants were deported. But during the same time period, more than 160,000 previously deported foreign nationals returned illegally. By now, three years later, roughly the same number of people deported in 2012 have returned, immigration experts say.

Federal prosecutors filed almost 20,000 criminal cases against previously deported foreign nationals in 2012 and have filed about 19,000 illegal reentry cases in federal courts every year since 2009.

Immigration experts estimate that about 25 percent of all foreign nationals detained annually by immigration authorities have been previously deported. That means that in 2012 — when 643,474 foreign nationals were detained by immigration authorities — more than 160,000 of the detainees had been previously deported.

This means that in three years, about the same number of foreign nationals deported in 2012 — 409,849 — have returned.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/loca...e12531212.html

DHS is a total failure, a giant flop, a bunch of overpaid government hacks who can't figure out how to stop foreign trespassing into the United States. Yes, that's what it is, simple trespass, the type of activity that drives Americans to hate their neighbors for stomping on their flower beds cutting through their yards, the type of activity that business owners spend billions on to fence in their properties and/or install expensive security systems to prevent, the type of simple invasion that no American has ever tolerated for long.

Oh sure, once they're in the country, they do worse things, like steal jobs, deflate our wages and salaries, sign up for Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, WIC, TANF, free school lunch, low income housing, dream loans, and tax credit refunds for taxes they didn't pay. And obviously, once they're in they're free to roam and run the drug trade, smuggling, tax fraud, welfare fraud, birthing tourism, and any other illegal enterprise they can get their hands on, while the women stroll through Walmart and emergency rooms, and their kids bankrupt our educational system.

But, the original act that leads to all this is simple trespassing or overstaying a visa. Yet, with $40 billion a year to stop it and secure our nation from such, DHS can't and won't do it, and oh yes, they've always got an excuse, the borders are too long, the work is too hard, the dangers too risky, the illegal aliens too clever, the numbers too large, the resources too small, and on and on and on.

Meanwhile back at the Castle, the King is giving the clever illegal aliens work and residency permits, promising amnesty, deferred action and pathways to citizenship and conspiring with them on conference calls with 14 King's Cabinet Members to build a country of their own within our country, plant "seedlings" and "navigate", and even agreeing to "leverage" their various departmental tax payer funded budgets to pay for it.

So outrageous, so bizarre is the situation that all the world's people wonder, "what in the world is happening to the United States?"

And the brave Republican Knights howl from their rooftops: TREACHERY is what's happening to the United States!

So we ask, who amongst ye will pull the cord of their courage and join our fray to end this fracas?

Will the 7 GOP Governors who have not yet joined the Texas lawsuit to stop Obama Amnesty sign up before it's too late?

Will the GOP members of Congress unite, hold the line and stand their ground next budget cycle and defund these activities in DHS?

Will GOP majorities in Congress pass the bills we need to stop this madness?

Will 6 Blue-Dog Democrats join the GOP to save our nation from the ravages of illegal immigration?

Will Americans of all political, religious, race, ethnic, age and economic persuasions come together and elect a President in 2016 committed to enforcing US immigration, US labor and US civil rights laws to the letter and verse without exception or concocted mercy and secure our nation from the greatest threat to our national security and economic well-being?

Review our history, and stay tuned.

Right is right and wrong is wrong. A illegal alien is an illegal alien, to be permanently deported or declared an enemy of the State upon re-entry and the appropriate punishment administered with little fanfare!