'Can't stop' illegal immigration

Lack of manpower, funding limit immigration enforcement

The Capital-Journal
WICHITA -- Dawn faintly touched the horizon as Fernando Tello Del Pilar guided a green Ford pickup truck along US-56 highway in far southwest Kansas.

Pilar was wheelman for an outfit hauling fragile freight -- eight illegal immigrants, including himself, from Mexico in the cab and 11 more in the back under a camper shell. It was the sixth day of a covert trek from Phoenix to destinations in the Southeast that included Atlanta and Myrtle Beach, S.C. Passengers crammed into the vehicle were struggling to sleep as Pilar pointed the pickup east at 6:40 a.m. on Feb. 21.

Without warning, they were all launched into a squall of steel, bodies and debris.

Bedlam was triggered when the F-150's left rear tire snapped off. The brake drum slammed to the road surface, grinding a flat section before breaking free. The truck heaved right and began tumbling end over end in a grassy ditch.

When the vehicle came to rest on its top 500 feet down the highway, three men lay motionless. Tossed like rag dolls to their deaths were brothers Pedro and Fernando Montalvo-Ramirez and Juan Manuel Perez-Rosales.
Kansas National Guard
Members of the Kansas Air National Guard's 184th Civil Engineer Squadron construct steel fence on the U.S.-Mexico border near Yuma, Ariz., prior to Congress voting to allocate $1.2 billion for 700 miles of new border barriers.
Click here to check for reprint availability.The 16 survivors, ranging in age from 3 to 60, also were ejected from the vehicle. Each was driven or flown to hospitals for treatment. Once healed, all but one was deported. The exception was Pilar. He went to jail.
Their pilgrimage to the United States in search of a better life was over.

"This was a worst-case scenario that points to the inherent dangers of this form of human smuggling," said Eric Melgren, U.S. attorney for Kansas. "In case after case, we see smugglers driven by a desire for profit, charging undocumented aliens for transportation in unsafe conditions."

The reaction

This bad fortune on US-56 highway illustrates a prominent feature of immigration law enforcement in Kansas.

Interviews with city, county, state and federal officials indicate that a policy of reaction, rather than proaction, guides this Heartland state's approach to impeding the flow of illegal aliens.

Major highways that slash through Kansas -- Interstates 70 and 35 -- along with lesser-known state roads are important routes for human traffickers. Law enforcement officers say untold thousands of illegal immigrants are smuggled into or through Kansas each year along these routes. Some aliens stay, adding to the state's total of illegal residents. Most, however, are headed for jobs and family elsewhere.


DYING TO LIVE:SECURING THE BORDER
ABOUT THE PROJECT

There are protests in the streets. Campaign rhetoric sizzles. Economic realities of illegal immigration confront Americans daily as they drive past construction sites, hire lawn care crews, dine at restaurants or simply bite into a slice of beef or nibble on an apple.

This is the third installment in a series of stories to be published throughout the year examining this explosive issue and its impact on Topeka, Kansas and the nation.

Sept. 3: A Capital-Journal news team travels to Mexico to find what drives people to risk everything to cross the border illegally.

Sept. 17: The perspective from people who have navigated the legal waters to become citizens of the United States.

Today: Local law enforcement agencies say they want a realistic directive from Washington.

More inside: Immigrants headed for deportation often stay at the Shawnee County Jail. Page 9A.

Feelings are mixed about recent development of vigilante groups. Page 9A.

Next month: The business of illigal immigration.

There are occasional law enforcement roadside checkpoints along these Kansas corridors, but there are too few officers, too few jail cells and too few dollars to justify aggressive programs to root out people in the state illegally. In areas of Kansas where undocumented labor is the backbone of the economy, local authorities operate under what amounts to a "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward their guest labor pool.
When an undocumented immigrant runs afoul of state or local police in Kansas, there is no guarantee U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, will take custody of the offender for deportation. In 2005, Kansas law enforcement officers made 2,429 inquiries about possible immigration violations to the ICE support center in Vermont. In 97 cases, ICE agents told local authorities to put a hold on a person for deportation.

"I worked raids in the '60s and '70s," said Shawnee County Sheriff Dick Barta. "We'd call immigration (U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, forerunner of ICE). They would come in a short amount of time. Nowadays, that's just not the case. They'll be the first to tell you, unless those detained are wanted, they don't have time to spend with them."

Renamed and expanded following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, ICE lacks muscle in Kansas to deal with the high volume of illegals ripe for deportation. In Kansas, ICE and the U.S. attorney's office concentrate on undocumented immigrants who can be charged with a felony, such as drug smuggling, or those subject to felony arrest for entering the United States after being previously deported.

Pilar fell into the felon category after the deadly wreck in Morton County.

"We're reactive," said Brent Anderson, an assistant U.S. attorney in Wichita. "Basically, that's what's going on out there. We don't have any big program designed to go out and find cases."

But Anderson isn't sitting on his hands. The federal prosecutor's docket is swamped this year with about 200 criminal cases involving illegal immigrants -- five times the caseload of five years ago.

Feds in charge
l
Three undocumented immigrants were killed and 16 injured Feb. 21 in the crash of a pickup truck driven by a smuggler on US-56 highway in southwest Kansas.
Click here to check for reprint availability.ICE was created in 2003 from the old INS and is now the largest investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's broad responsibilities touch upon immigration, child predators on the Internet, gang violence and intellectual property rights of U.S. businesses.
In terms of immigration enforcement, agents assigned to ICE -- offices are in Kansas City, Mo., and Wichita -- work out of the Office of Investigations to dismantle enterprises tied to illegal immigration and the Office of Detention and Removal Operations to complete the discharge of aliens out of this country.

"ICE has an effective law enforcement presence in Kansas City and Wichita," said Carl Rusnok, spokesman for ICE's operations in Kansas. "Every agency could do more with more available resources. As with every government agency, ICE maximizes its effectiveness within its available budget."

ICE did create a special unit to provide operational oversight of human smuggling and trafficking investigations. Teams of agents were linked to work on apprehension of fugitive aliens.

Rusnok said about half of the 168,000 undocumented immigrants who ICE deported in the 2004-05 fiscal year were criminal aliens.

ICE also endorses use of a program designed to enlist greater collaboration among local law enforcement officers in catching illegal immigrants. The platform is Section 287 of a federal law passed 10 years ago. Under the statute, Homeland Security can delegate enforcement of federal immigration law to a state or local agency.

No law enforcement departments in Kansas are openly involved in that program, but agencies in California, Alabama, Florida and North Carolina have accepted ICE training to prepare officers to properly identify, process and detain illegals.

Thad Allton/The Capital-Journal
Col. William Seck, superintendent of the Kansas Highway Patrol, says Kansas doesn't have enough manpower to battle the onslaught of illegal immigration. "We cannot stop it," he said. "We need a long-term strategy that transcends a four-year election with a president."
Click here to check for reprint availability.That isn't to say local and state authorities in Kansas don't find opportunity to work closely with ICE. Look no further than the S.E. Carnahan Street exit off Interstate 70 in Topeka. The Kansas Highway Patrol and the Topeka Police Department conducted a license check lane from 8 p.m. Sept. 22 to 1 a.m. the next morning in the eastbound lane.
Any drivers without a valid license were handed over to ICE agents. That led to the arrest of 49 people determined to be in the United States illegally. The 41 men and eight women were from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

Thirty-six of the 44 from Mexico were declared noncriminals, which meant they accepted voluntary return the next day to their homeland. The other immigrants were placed in ICE custody for formal deportation proceedings. Three of the aliens had been previously deported, making them subject to felony prosecution and a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

"These coordinated law enforcement efforts go a long way to help keep our local communities safe from many different fronts," said Pete Baird, assistant special agent in charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in Kansas City, Mo.

If the Topeka operation can serve as a measuring stick, I-70 stands as a major conduit for undocumented immigrants. An average of 10 were taken into custody each hour. Extrapolate that over one year, and it could be argued that as many as 80,000 could be smuggled annually past that point in Topeka.

"On I-70, you can sit out there on the highway and watch the vans go by," said Darrell Wilson, executive director of the Kansas Sheriff's Association. "You can see big vans with windows blacked out. You can tell the van is loaded by the way it rides. It's a problem all over the state."

Field experience

Col. William Seck, superintendent of the Kansas Highway Patrol, said his perspective of immigration law enforcement in Kansas was tempered by the realization that funding at all levels was inadequate for the task.

"We, as an agency, certainly recognize the challenges out there," he said. "We're doing the best we can with the resources allotted to us."

He said the 400 state troopers who regularly travel the state's highways and the local police officers and sheriff's deputies dotting Kansas can't be expected to withstand the onslaught.

"We cannot stop it," he said.

Courtesy of the Kansas Highway Patrol
Agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, secure one of 49 undocumented migrants taken into custody in September during a five-hour period at a roadblock on Interstate 70 in Topeka.
Seck said the law enforcement community needs Congress and the White House to agree on a national strategy for dealing with undocumented immigrants. That policy should bring order to the status of millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States and the large number of people willing to travel across the border in the future, he said.
"We need a long-term strategy that transcends a four-year election with a president," Seck said.

Pittsburg Police Chief Mendy Hulvey said consensus policy shouldn't undermine hard-earned trust and cooperation that officers have developed with immigrants in Kansas communities. A crackdown could make the undocumented less willing to report crimes, she said. And if local officers take a bigger role in federal enforcement of immigration law, she said, the inappropriate catch-and-release approach should be modified.

"Give me a realistic directive I can sell to my officers," she said.

Ford County Sheriff Dean Bush said there were practical issues to consider in developing expectations for local law enforcement agencies. He said roadblocks could, until the smugglers switched tactics, net large numbers of undocumented people because "we get them running through the county all the time."

However, the sheriff said, the closest ICE office was 150 miles away in Wichita. Where are detainees to be held? Who is to pay for lodging, meals and transportation of deportees?

Local economic issues also need to be factored in development of law enforcement reform, Bush said.

"There are a significant number of undocumented aliens working here," he said. "Our whole economy revolves around them."

Lenexa Police Chief Ellen Hanson said local police agencies don't need an unfunded mandate from the federal government about enforcement of immigration statutes. If there is investigative work to be done in the nation's streets by local law enforcement agencies, she said, that responsibility needs to be accompanied by funding.

"We don't have the resources nor desire to be placed in a position to be the primary agency to find undocumented people and arrange to send them back. Our plate is full," she said.

Building a wall

Before adjourning for the November election season, Congress and President Bush agreed to hire additional border agents and secure more jail space for detained illegal immigrants. The legislation also earmarked $1.2 billion to erect 700 miles of fencing and barriers along the 2,000-mile southern border with Mexico.

Members of the 184th Civil Engineer Squadron of the Kansas Air National Guard already know something about building fence on the U.S.-Mexico border.

In July, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius responded to Bush's appeal for National Guard support by authorizing the state's participation in "Operation Jumpstart," which was intended to help the U.S. Border Patrol improve security on the border.

"It's Washington's responsibility to defend our borders, but since we've seen precious little action nationally on that front, states like Kansas are stepping up," Sebelius said.

Lt. Col. James Culp, the 184th's squadron commander, led 50 airmen from Kansas in a joint operation with Kentucky Army National Guard soldiers. They built 2,000 feet of concrete and steel wall near Yuma, Ariz.

"That's more than the previous seven units combined," Culp said. "There was a lot of welding, concrete work and digging."

He said temperatures reached 110 degrees in the day and hovered around 90 degrees at night. The troops were divided into day and night shifts, he said, to permit welding to be done without the sun beating down on workers.

Culp said construction of 700 miles of new fencing on the southern border "will take a long time" but would deter illegal immigration. Only about 100 miles of fencing is in place.

"We felt we made a difference," Culp said.

Pilar's mess

Morton County Sheriff Loren Youngers, who has been at his post in the southwest corner of the state for 18 years, can't recall a more lethal encounter with smugglers than what occurred on a flat section of US-56 highway near Rolla in February.

"That's probably the worst we've had," Youngers said.

It was too easy, he said, for a person to bring that truckload of people into harm's way.

Pilar, who was confirmed as an undocumented alien, was charged in federal court in the deaths of three passengers. He entered a guilty plea in June to one count of unlawfully transporting illegal aliens resulting in a death.

Defense attorneys argued the judge should show leniency because Pilar had no way to know the borrowed 1997 F-150 had mechanical problems. The crash of the pickup, which had more than 200,000 miles on the odometer, was caused by a loss of differential gear fluid, according to prosecutors.

U.S. District Judge Monti Belot last month sentenced the 22-year-old Pilar to four years and nine months in prison.

"It's not enough," Youngers said.

Tim Carpenter can be reached at (785) 295-1158 or timothy.carpenter@cjonline.com.


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