Thread: Illegals shocked as judge actually puts them in jail

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=44630

INVASION USA
Illegals shocked as judge actually puts them in jail
Texas jurist locks up offenders, deports them instead of freeing them with 'notice to appear'
Posted: June 6, 2005
5:00 p.m. Eastern


© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

A judge in Texas is shocking illegal aliens in the Brownsville area by actually jailing them and making sure they're deported rather than simply letting them go with a "notice to appear" – most of which are not honored.

The Brownsville Herald reported U.S. Magistrate Judge Felix Recio is getting tough with illegals caught crossing the Rio Grande, telling a group of Honduran immigrants last week to warn their buddies back home.

"I want you to tell all your friends in Honduras that if they come through Brownsville, Texas, they will not be paroled into the system, and they will be put in jail and deported," Recio told 18-year-old Jorge Enrique Vasquez Carrasco in open court as he handed him a jail sentence that could keep him locked up until space opens at an immigration facility and he is deported.

Under the typical scenario, illegals are issued a notice to appear, at which time they go on their way and begin their new life in the U.S. Federal statistics indicate 88 percent of aliens issued a notice don't show up for their hearings. Border agents near McAllen, Texas, have nicknamed the summons "notice to disappear" because they are so often disregarded.

A nearby Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center contracts with county jails when bed space reaches capacity.

"There is not a limit on how long a federal prisoner can stay in a county facility," ICE spokeswoman Letty Zamarripa told the Herald.

Zamarripa said criminals and detainees from "nations of interest" such as those that support terrorism are give priority when moved from county jails to federal facilities.

"We are removing detainees everyday," Zamarripa said of immigrants being deported from the facility. "We have two flights a week with room for 120 on each flight in addition to two buses leaving each week."

Nathan Selzer with the Valley Movement for Human Rights said "undocumented" immigrants, who he believes are committing "non-violent and victimless crime," are being put in danger when housed in the same jails as "real" criminals.

Selzer said U.S. immigration policy needs to be reformed.

"But that's in the hands of President Bush and Congress and they refuse to do so," Selzer is quoted as saying.

Just think what all that moving around costs the United States??

I applaud the Judge 100%!!

But wouldn't it be nice to NOT HAVE THE PROBLEM?

Put Troops on the Border Governor Perry and Keep Them Out so we don't need all these facilities, all these expenditures to feed, clothe, guard, medicate, treat these detainees, all this transporation cost moving them from one place to another.

JUST STOP IT AT THE BORDERS BEFORE THEY ENTER THE UNITED STATES!!

Nathan Selzer with the Valley Movement for Human Rights said "undocumented" immigrants, who he believes are committing "non-violent and victimless crime," are being put in danger when housed in the same jails as "real" criminals.

Welcome to the United States Judicial System!

Victimless crime??? PLEASE!!!

Every tax-payer in this country is a VICTIM!

Get REAL!!!

WAY TO GO JUDGE!!!

Welcome to the USA PENAL SYSTEM!!

Duuuuuuuuh!!

I must tell you folks, these are the whiniest people I've ever encountered.

They will not ever strengthen our nation, only weaken it, because as this quote above demonstrates, there isn't anything "good enuf" for them here.

Thus, they should return to their country of origin and enjoy their own culture and penal system!!

GET THESE PEOPLE OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!!!

I don't think the illegals are half as shocked as the American people -- and him telling them to go " tell all your friends" was great!

At least somebody is doing something..... There are very few law enforcement agencies or people in those positions that will actually enforce our laws. Deporting them is the right thing to do, good going for this judge. Well if they were worried about being in jail with "real" criminals they should not have become criminals themselves by crossing our borders illegally.

I don't think judges can take email, but here's where he works if you want to thank him.

info@www.txs.uscourts.gov

I believe I will do just that loservillelabor, thanks for the address.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/ ... 769407.htm










--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted on Thu, Jun. 08, 2006



Illegal immigrants make shambles of Border Patrol policy

BY MICHAEL MARTINEZ
Chicago Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Before dawn on the Rio Grande one day last week, Border Patrol agents caught Teodoro Escobar sneaking into the U.S. from Mexico.

They arrested him and took him to the station. They fingerprinted, photographed and questioned him, leaving him red-eyed and tired in a room with more than a dozen other suspected illegal immigrants.

Then Border Patrol agents handed him a "Notice to Appear" before an immigration judge, and by early afternoon the 38-year-old farmworker from El Salvador was escorted out the same door he had entered. Three hours later he was on a bus to Houston, armed with a document that would allow him to pass a Border Patrol checkpoint up the road.

He said he had no intention of returning for the court hearing.

Escobar, who crossed the border with $10 and some Mexican pesos in his pocket, found freedom thanks to the Border Patrol's "catch and release" policy, cited by critics as a huge shortcoming in America's border enforcement efforts, and one that illegal immigrants are increasingly trying to exploit.

"Notice to Disappear" is what critics of the program call the document given to non-Mexican immigrants, usually from Central America, when they're stopped by the Border Patrol. Even President Bush says the "vast majority" of illegal immigrants don't show up for their hearings.

These individuals are let go because there aren't enough beds to hold them while flights to take them back to their home countries are arranged.

"You really do feel like it was all for nothing," Vanessa McKeon, 34, a supervisory Border Patrol agent, said of the release of Escobar and two other non-Mexican immigrants.

Amid the ongoing national debate over immigration, an audit of the Department of Homeland Security demonstrated an increase in the frequency of "catch and release" of non-Mexican immigrants since 2001, when the release rate was about 42 percent.

By last fiscal year, that rate rose to almost 70 percent, according to Border Patrol figures, paralleling Bush's assertions that most non-Mexican immigrants were released into American society.

The situation takes on disturbing dimensions when incarcerated or dangerous illegal immigrants are released on their own recognizance because there's no space, Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner said in an April audit.

The shortages of beds, personnel and funds "encourage illegal immigration," and when other factors are included, such as some countries' reluctance to repatriate their citizens, the outcome is "an unofficial `mini-amnesty' program for criminal and other high-risk aliens," Skinner wrote.

Indeed, on the steamy banks of the Rio Grande and elsewhere along the border, a "Notice to Appear" is mistakenly viewed as a pass, or permiso, by non-Mexican immigrants to travel freely on U.S. soil. In the past, many even voluntarily surrendered to Border Patrol stations to ask for the notice, agents say.

Such requests dropped after federal authorities last year streamlined the deportation process for most non-Mexican immigrants, agents said.

Those "expedited removals" have reduced typical detention time for many non-Mexican immigrants to 20 days from 90 days, said a south Texas spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency in the Homeland Security Department.

Still, 35,000 more beds in detention facilities will be needed to end the "catch and release" program nationwide for dangerous illegal immigrants, the inspector general said.

The Bush administration's proposal for next fiscal year would add 6,700 beds, while the Senate's immigration reform proposal seeks 20,000 more. Roughly 20,000 beds exist, the audit said.

Union leaders for Border Patrol agents are skeptical about seeing more beds.

"It's a national embarrassment to have this failed policy, and no one is doing anything except giving it lip service," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents 10,500 front-line employees.

Non-Mexican immigrants aren't pervasive, accounting for about 10 percent of the apprehensions, the remainder being Mexicans, said Josiah Heyman, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. Last year, 165,175 non-Mexican immigrants were arrested, and 114,912 of them were released, Border Patrol figures show.

"There's been a long history of disturbances at detention centers because Homeland Security often contracts out to private prisons and state and local prisons and jails to hold people," Heyman said. "Holding a lot of people is not necessarily good. It sounds good_that it will deter people from coming to the country_but it's not clear that deterrence works."

Border Patrol officials disagree, citing how the agency's Del Rio sector in Texas collaborated with local law-enforcement agencies, and their jails, to create a zero-tolerance zone for "catch and release" along 167 miles of the frontier.

Overall apprehensions in that area have dropped 17 percent so far this fiscal year, said sector spokesman Dennis Smith.

The Rio Grande Valley sector, framed by 320 miles of riverbank and 250 miles of gulf coast, is traditionally the busiest of all nine districts along the Mexican border for non-Mexican immigrants, accounting for half of all such captures so far this year.

Using a shorthand favored by officers on the line, Border Patrol agent Daniel Serna, 34, summarized how undocumented immigrants who are caught often falsely claim to be from one Central American country or another_Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador.

"It used to be `Hondus.' Then `Guats.' . . . Then `Nics.' Now everyone is claiming to be `El Salvs,' " Serna said.

Under a U.S. court injunction from the 1980s, immigrants from El Salvador are guaranteed an immigration hearing and can't be subjected to fast-track removals. That means an illegal immigrant posing as a Salvadoran stands a better chance of being released because of constraints on bed space.

The geography of the Rio Grande Valley sector - at the southernmost tip of Texas - makes it the shortest route between Central America and the United States. Would-be immigrants from dozens of countries have tried this year to enter through Brownsville and surrounding communities, Border Patrol spokesman Roy Cervantes said.

Last fiscal year, more than half of the sector's 134,185 detainees were non-Mexican immigrants from 70 countries, with Honduras and Brazil as the most popular origins. Since October, about half of the apprehensions have been non-Mexican crossers from 60 countries, with Salvadorans making up a fourth of all arrests, Cervantes said.

In response, agents use questions designed to catch people in a lie about being from El Salvador. Agents ask about the recent currency switch and native foods and will even look up residences on Internet maps and inquire about surrounding landmarks, agents said.

Though Escobar didn't have any identification, agents determined he was telling the truth about being from El Salvador.

After the Border Patrol released him Wednesday afternoon, a Brownsville resident offered him a ride and bought him a $25 bus ticket to Houston, where a nephew and brother reside, he said. Cervantes said Samaritans often do such acts.

Inside the Brownsville bus station, another illegal immigrant just released by the Border Patrol joined Escobar . The young man claimed to be Salvadoran, but Escobar, who became acquainted with him during their detention, said he thought the man was really from Honduras.

Escobar expressed relief that his ordeal seemed over for now, but his decision not to appear for his immigration hearing in August could lead to a deportation judgment in absentia, according to officials.

No matter, Escobar said.

"I thank God that he's been guiding me," he said, just before he boarded the bus.






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© 2006 KRT Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.charlotte.com