Thread: Lawbreakers leave trail of tears, 12-year-old cries for leni

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Lawbreakers leave trail of tears, 12-year-old cries for leniency

By Burt Hubbard, Rocky Mountain News
June 12, 2006
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Commit a crime, serve the time and get deported.

That's how it's supposed to work for criminal immigrants, whether they are in the U.S. legally or illegally. But landing in jail in Colorado is no guarantee an immigrant will get kicked out of the country, a Rocky Mountain News investigation has found.

The News found case after case where illegal immigrants had committed multiple crimes, but had not been deported.

Weld County found the same. The district attorney did a study of the jail population in November. He found 34 foreign-born inmates tagged by immigration officials for possible deportation. Three-quarters — 25 inmates — had spent time in the jail at least once before, said District Attorney Ken Buck. That means they either weren't deported, or were removed and came back.

Nationally, illegal immigrants in state and federal prisons — who will eventually be deported — had been arrested an average of eight times, according to a May 2005 Government Accountability Office report. The study focused on more than 55,000 illegal immigrants, including 1,100 from Colorado.

In Colorado state prisons, most foreign-born inmates who aren't U.S. citizens are supposed to be deported when they finish their sentences. Illegal immigrants can be removed for any reason. Legal immigrants must be convicted of an "aggravated felony" under immigration law. Those include violent crimes, drug crimes and other state felonies.

The News reviewed the records of 881 inmates as of May 2005 who had been identified by the Department of Corrections as foreign-born and marked by immigration officials for possible deportation.

About 10 percent — 87 inmates — had a criminal history in Colorado, yet there was no record in immigration court that the federal government had tried to deport them for their earlier crimes.

Immigration officials said it is possible the 87 were removed from the U.S. using an administrative procedure outside immigration court. But those records are not public, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials declined to check their computer database to find out, saying it was too heavy an administrative burden.

Prison officials reported about 400 other foreign-born inmates in May 2005 who did not have ICE holds. ICE had not yet interviewed this group to see who was deportable, said Cheryl Saucedo, head of detention operations at the Colorado Department of Corrections. Some could have been naturalized U.S. citizens and not deportable.

After Sept. 11, 2001, the ICE agent assigned to screen incoming inmates was reassigned, Saucedo said.

"There was a time right after 9/11 when it was really hard to get a response," she said. "We knew they were busy doing other things."

As a result, some foreign-born inmates were released after they served their time, without being interviewed by ICE agents.

However, Saucedo said corrections officials now forward "100 percent" of the names of those inmates to ICE before they are released from prison, along with any documentation on their crimes or legal status. No one is released without first being interviewed by ICE agents, she said. Saucedo said ICE takes custody of at least 95 percent of them.

Corrections officials said they don't keep track of how many are deported.

ICE's own national statistics show it screens about 60 percent of criminal immigrants in prison for potential deportation, and the agency's goal is to reach 90 percent by 2009. No Colorado estimates were available.

Jonathan Cortez, 12, holds a picture of himself taken while he was in immigration detention at age 8. After journeying 3,000 miles from El Salvador, Jonathan was caught in California with a coyote guide who was taking him to his mother, a legal immigrant, in Colorado. After U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar intervened, officials dropped their four-year legal battle to deport him. But he's still considered an illegal foreign national.

I love these sob stories about illegals and their children! Tell it to Vincente Fox PLEASE or your new president whoever he will be! Charity begins at home and we need to help our own citizens. We have plenty of sad little boys who need help - get off the pity party for illegals! They flaunt our laws and rob us!