Thread: UT-Fed agents tout raids on criminal immigrants

Fed agents tout raids on criminal immigrants
But researchers say three-quarters of those busted have no criminal records.
By Nate Carlisle



Updated: 04/28/2010 08:08:00 PM MDT

Leon Roberto Prieto talked on the telephone with his wife Tuesday, trying to explain why he was cooperating with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who arrested him an hour earlier.

"I don't want them to think I'm not professional," Prieto said. "I'm a human being."

Prieto's last appeal to remain in this country was denied in 2008, according to ICE records, and a judge has signed Prieto's deportation order.

A Mexican citizen with convictions in the U.S. for unlawful sex, forging a prescription and misdemeanor theft, Prieto was officially considered a fugitive. But when 10 agents arrived to arrest him, he was hardly on the run. Prieto was living in a basement apartment in Murray with his wife and a 2-year-old son.

The 55-year-old was arrested as part of an ICE program designed to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants who had committed crimes in the United States. In fiscal year 2009, agents in the four-state region that includes Utah arrested 2,020 immigrants who committed crimes or had a deportation order -- about twice as many as the previous year.

Agents have credited the program with ridding the United States of dangerous felons, but immigrant advocates and researchers have said the program more often pursues easier targets like Prieto.

In a report released last year, Yale University researchers found about three-quarters of the people arrested by ICE's fugitive apprehension program between 2003 and 2007 had no criminal records. Specific numbers for Utah were not available.

Steve Branch, who directs immigrant detention and removal in Utah and three other states, acknowledges not everyone who his agents arrest is a killer. But agents still must pursue people like Prieto, who has broken U.S. laws and has a deportation order.

"They've placed themselves in this situation and their families in this situation," Branch said.

Prieto was not the only person to be apprehended by ICE on Tuesday. Before sunrise, agents knocked on the door of a Bulgarian woman living in South Salt Lake. She entered the country on a visitors visa in 1991, according to ICE. She was convicted of retail theft in 1996 and had been told to leave the United States by 1998.

The 47-year-old woman answered her door in a blue bathrobe. Agents let her change into jeans, a T-shirt and a black jacket before placing her in handcuffs. Unless a judge intervenes soon, agents will fly her back to Bulgaria at U.S. taxpayer expense.

ICE says in the past few weeks, Utah agents also arrested a 40-year-old British man who had a felony conviction for possessing cocaine and a misdemeanor theft conviction. Agents also arrested a 28-year-old Mexican woman convicted of possessing drug paraphernalia and credit card fraud.

After speaking with his wife by telephone from the ICE offices in Murray, Prieto told his story to reporters who accompanied ICE agents on Tuesday morning.

Prieto said he was born in Palermo, Italy, and his parents moved the family to Mexico City and naturalized Prieto as a citizen there. Prieto said he arrived in Utah in 1979 with permanent resident status. Prieto also said he graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from Brigham Young University and received a master's degree in business administration from the University of Utah and had a career as an inspector at refineries and Hill Air Force Base.

But much of that may have been fiction. Both the University of Utah and BYU confirmed Prieto attended but did not graduate. Prieto's ex-wife, in a telephone interview, described Prieto as a compulsive liar and said he was actually born in Mexico City. She doesn't know whether he has ever been to Italy. Prieto has only worked odd jobs, she said. One story she did confirm: What Prieto did to earn a sex crime conviction. Prieto impregnated her in 1984 when she was a young teenager. Prieto pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse, though the two did later marry. They divorced in 1997, records show.

Agents took Prieto to their holding center at the Weber County jail on Tuesday.

"He'll probably be on a plane Thursday," Branch said.

ICE will transport Prieto to one of the Mexican cities near the U.S. border. Prieto does not know what he'll do when he gets there.

"My whole life is gone because my children, my wife is here," Prieto said.

ncarlisle@sltrib.com


http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_14978717

Bull crap (unlike Senator Levin I am being decent)...With our wide open borders which the "Anointed One" absolutely refuses to secure because cheap labor and more votes are more important to him than the lives of Americans, any deported illegal aliens will be back in Salt Lake City in time for dinner.....What an absolute crock of feces......