Thread: Denver deportation cases still focus mostly on immigration

Denver deportation cases still focus mostly on immigration - not criminal - violations

denverpost.com
By Nancy Lofholm
Posted: 12/05/2011 01:59:57 PM MST
Updated: 12/05/2011 04:53:43 PM MST

In spite of federal government assurances that criminal undocumented immigrants are being prioritized for deportation, a watchdog group reports that more than 85 percent of removal proceedings initiated in Colorado in the last fiscal year focused on those with only immigration violations.

Of 5,207 deportation cases filed in Colorado through September, 3,602 were against immigrants accused of "entry without inspection," meaning they allegedly crossed the border into the United States illegally. An additional 827 were accused of other immigration charges which can include not having a valid visa, falsely claiming citizenship or being back in the country after previously being deported.

These numbers are the latest released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University-based non-profit that compiles data based on information obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests.

A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that enforces immigration law, said ICE has not had time to review TRAC's new numbers. But she disputes the numbers and noted that ICE bases statistics on different criteria and even on a different calendar year.

"It doesn't reflect our numbers," said spokeswoman Nicole Navas.

Navas said 55 percent of 396,906 individuals deported by ICE during the last fiscal year had criminal convictions. She said nearly half of the non-criminals deported had other factors that made them priorities for removal, such as re-entering the country after being removed or illegally crossing the border recently.

Sue Long, a senior researcher with TRAC, said ICE will not share numbers to show how that agency's statistics were obtained and why they are different than TRAC's.

"We have been unsuccessful in obtaining the information needed from them," Long said.

TRAC's numbers show the breakdown of offenses behind deportation proceedings has changed little since the previous year when around 83 percent of those targeted for removal from the country were charged only with immigration offenses.

Going by those numbers indicates the reasons behind deportations haven't budged much since the Obama administration, the Dept. of Justice and ICE announced earlier this year that criminals would be the priority targets for deportation.

ICE's own records show that removals of criminal illegal immigrants jumped from 195,772 in fiscal year 2010 to 216,000 this year.

TRAC's numbers show immigrants charged with or convicted of aggravated felonies or other criminal charges made up 14 percent of those targeted for deportation in Colorado this year. Those charged with national security violations made up 1.67 percent.

Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com

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Feds Say Immigration Deportees Were High Priority
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is disputing a report that the majority of Colorado deportees in the last fiscal year were not high-priority criminals.

kktv.com
Reporter: AP
Posted: 9:20 AM Dec 7, 2011

DENVER (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is disputing a report that the majority of Colorado deportees in the last fiscal year were not high-priority criminals.

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse report says of more than 5,200 deportation cases filed in Colorado through Sept.3, about 3,600 involved immigrants of crossing the border into the United States illegally, a low priority violation.

The nonprofit organization partners with Syracuse University to review staffing, spending, and enforcement activities of the federal government.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Nicole Navas tells the Denver Post the report focused only on the technical reasons why an individual is deported and did not include the criminal history that triggered the decision to seek a removal order.

http://www.kktv.com/home/headlines/Feds ... 72938.html