Thread: Hispanic inmates' numbers snowball

Hispanic inmates' numbers snowball

By Amanda Lee Myers and Garance Burke The Associated Press Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Sunday, June 5, 2011 12:00 am

They shuffle into the courtroom in shackles, still wearing the dust-covered clothes and shoes from when they crossed the desert into Arizona from Mexico.

The 70 illegal immigrants, mostly men in their 20s and 30s, fill the 16-seat jury box and seven rows of wooden benches normally reserved for the public in Tucson's gleaming federal courthouse. The expansive courtroom is filled with the pungent smell of dried sweat.

In only an hour or so, the dozens of border crossers will agree to plead guilty and be sentenced in a process that could play out for months for most federal defendants.

The scene offers a window into a federal immigration-enforcement effort that is pushing the limits of the U.S. justice system, overwhelming federal judges and escalating the ranks of Latinos sent to prison.

Expedited court hearings along the border are a major force driving a seismic demographic shift in who is being sent to federal prison. Statistics released this week revealed that Hispanics now comprise nearly half of all people sentenced for federal felonies, a number swollen by immigration offenses. In comparison, Hispanics last year made up 16 percent of the total U.S. population.

Sentences for felony immigration crimes, which include some illegal crossings as well as other crimes such as alien smuggling, accounted for about 87 percent of the increase in the number of Hispanics sent to prison over the past decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Sentencing Commission data.

The trend has divided lawmakers and officials in the courts and along the border. Some politicians believe the en masse hearings should be expanded to deter illegal immigration. Others question whether the system actually affects people seeking to cross the border, while some contend the programs distract prosecutors from pursuing more serious crimes.

"There is a use of criminal-justice resources that doesn't make sense," said Chicago federal Judge Ruben Castillo, who retired in December after serving on the U.S. Sentencing Commission for 11 years. "Are we just running numbers so it appears we're doing more on immigration and drug offenses, or are we doing anything worthwhile?"

"Catch and release"

Some of the expedited border- court hearings are part of a program called Operation Streamline that began in 2005 in Del Rio, Texas, and soon spread to other Border Patrol sectors.

It is a departure from the old "catch and release" policy and aims to stem the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico. Before 2005, illegal crossers were sporadically charged with federal misdemeanors, but many Mexican immigrants were often simply driven back across the border.

Operation Streamline and other fast-track programs speed illegal immigrants through accelerated legal proceedings, where most guilty pleas come in Spanish and thousands of Mexican citizens end up locked up each year for entering the country without papers.

The first time someone is caught entering the country illegally usually results in a misdemeanor that leads to deportation or a maximum of six months in federal custody. If they are caught again - as often happens - they are charged with a felony count called illegal re-entry that carries at most a two-year prison sentence or more if they have a criminal history. Some felony charges ultimately are reduced to misdemeanors through plea bargains.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission tracks the number of people who repeatedly enter the country illegally in a broad sentencing category called immigration crimes. The number of people sent to prison for the primary crime of unlawfully entering or remaining in the U.S. jumped from 6,513 in fiscal 2000 to 19,910 in fiscal 2010. Many people also were sentenced for that crime plus other, more serious offenses.

Defendants' rights at issue

The programs have raised concerns about defendants' constitutional rights and the sheer volume of work flooding the courts. Critics say the programs overburden the courts and distract authorities from prosecuting major crimes.

The debate surfaced tragically on Jan. 8, the day of the Tucson shooting rampage that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Arizona's Chief Judge John Roll, who died in the gunfire at the Safeway parking lot, had been pleading with Congress to hire more judges in Arizona, the busiest corridor for illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

That winter morning, Roll went to the "Congress on Your Corner" meeting to thank Giffords for her efforts to secure more funding for the courts. Minutes after he lined up among her constituents, Jared Lee Loughner began firing, and Roll died while trying to protect Giffords' district director Ron Barber. Five others died as well, and 13, including Giffords and Barber, were wounded.

Roll was already overseeing a fast-track program for felony crossers in the Tucson courts. But he felt the daily, systematic mass sentencing of first-time offenders could create new burdens, so he asked the key players to meet to talk about how to best run Operation Streamline.

"His position was, we have to react because we don't get any choice in what prosecutors file in the court, but let's organize it in a way that is effective," said Heather Williams, Arizona's first assistant federal public defender.

Tucson federal defenders Jason Hannan and Saul Huerta have challenged Operation Streamline's legality, and call it a separate and unequal criminal justice system. Those cases are currently going through the appeals process.

Arizona Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain recently introduced a bill to expand Operation Streamline in the Arizona courts and potentially elsewhere along the Southwest border. Kyl has often cited Border Patrol figures showing that immigrant apprehensions dropped 93 percent since the program began in Yuma in fiscal 2006.

"Everybody knows where the bulk of the illegal immigrants are coming from, and if you're going to deal with the deterrent effect of putting some of those people who cross in prison for a while … then naturally you're going to have a majority of those people be Hispanic," Kyl said. "Let's just stop illegal immigration and we won't have that problem."

http://azstarnet.com/article_6e2dd7da-2 ... 8fe45.html

yeah, I am sure this is made up by racist, nativists because Hispanics/Mexicans are clearly being discriminated against, right?

Well we would not have to worry about the growing number of hispanic prisoners if we just secure the border and then dump all the illegal prisoners ... in mass....back over the wall into tacoland

I say we start putting lojack on these people who insist on crossing the border illegally! A big ol'collar like what you would see on a bear in the wild for tracking purposes. That way when we send them back to mexico we know when they're trying to come back! Since the left and our goverment doesn't belive in building fences we need something to help combat this mass illegal crossing of our border!