Thread: AZ: Self-deport plan draws one taker

Self-deport plan draws one taker
SHERYL KORNMAN
Tucson Citizen

If you want to know how many illegal immigrants showed up Tuesday in Phoenix on the first day of the federal government's new, no-penalty deport yourself program, you'll have to wait.

Vincent Picard, spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix, said he could not say how many or if any "fugitive aliens" presented themselves to discuss a "scheduled departure."

Picard said cities involved in the pilot program will report their data to ICE in Washington, D.C. ICE will then release the information on how the pilot program is going once it completes its own report. He could not say when that will be.

The Arizona Republic, citing an ICE official who spoke on condition of anonymity, reported that by Tuesday afternoon, only one person in Phoenix had taken the offer. Officials in the other cities said they had no takers by midafternoon, according to The Associated Press.

"Scheduled Departure" is the federal government's name for the temporary illegal immigrant program.

It allows certain noncitizens to report to five U.S. cities from Aug. 5 to Aug. 22 under the "compassionately conceived enforcement initiative," according to ICE's Web site.

Illegal immigrants being sought by federal agents and who report to ICE in the five cities will have 90 days to arrange travel back to their own country. Fugitives can present themselves at ICE offices of Detention and Removal Operations in Phoenix; Santa Ana and San Diego, Calif.; Chicago; and Charlotte, N.C.

The program covers only "non-criminal" illegal immigrants - those with no other criminal record.

Those eligible for the pilot program are the target of ICE's 90 fugitive operations teams scattered around the country.

The key targets of the teams are fugitives "who pose a threat to national security," according to ICE's Web site.

The pilot program is an attempt to address concerns of community groups and immigration attorneys "who say ICE unnecessarily disrupts families while enforcing the law," said an ICE news release announcing the start of the program.

The benefit to illegal immigrants are that they can make their own arrangements to leave the United States without being held in federal custody and they can take their families with them. A spokesman for ICE in Washington said late Tuesday that the results would be available in a "day or so."
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/border/92837.php

The program covers only "non-criminal" illegal immigrants - those with no other criminal record.

Well, that prolly leaves 3/4 of them out.