Thread: Despite arrests, illegal immigrants remain free

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsbu ... 62785.html

Despite arrests, illegal immigrants remain free

By Mark Houser
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, July 23, 2006


In April 2005, a state trooper pulled over a white van that was erratically maneuvering on the Pennsylvania Turnpike near New Stanton, Westmoreland County. Inside, he found a skittish driver.
Packed into the vehicle were 19 illegal aliens, including the driver, Armando Lagunas-Suazo of Mexico.

A month earlier, the Pittsburgh office of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement was sharply criticized after its agents refused to drive to Somerset County to take a group of illegal aliens into custody because they felt the snow-covered roads were too slippery.

Police wound up letting those aliens go.

The van driven by Lagunas-Suazo was the third vehicle caught on Western Pennsylvania highways carrying illegal aliens in one weekend. This time, immigration agents headed to each scene to make arrests. Forty-four people were taken into custody.

Rich Boronyak, resident agent-in-charge in Pittsburgh, issued a rare news release boasting of the arrests and praising state police for their work.

"The Pennsylvania State Police and the local police departments have been instrumental in identifying large groups of illegal aliens transiting the corridor in unsafe vehicles, in vehicles being improperly operated, or in vehicles operated by unqualified and uninsured drivers," Boronyak said. "We greatly appreciate anything the troopers and officers can do to save lives."

More than a year later, only three of those 44 people have left the United States.

After interviews, fingerprinting, photographs and document checks, officials released the aliens and gave them a date to appear in immigration court -- a standard practice across the country.

Technically, they could have been detained until the hearing, but detention space is limited and usually reserved for criminals or aliens deemed high security risks.

In December, the immigration judge at Lagunas-Suazo's hearing sentenced the driver to deportation. Lagunas-Suazo wasn't there to learn his fate. He skipped his hearing, and his whereabouts are unknown.

Nineteen other illegal immigrants caught in the three arrests in April 2005 also have been deported "in absentia" after failing to show at hearings. Five cases were dismissed. Sixteen people are waiting for a final decision.

Bill Riley, Boronyak's supervisor in Philadelphia, said the work of police and federal agents who arrested the illegal aliens wasn't in vain.

"Those (20) individuals, if they're encountered again, they are now mandatory custody, because they have a final order against them. So they will get one of those (detention) beds at night," Riley said.

"I know it doesn't sound like the best system, but that's the system we have."

My ancestors were legal

Unlike Mexicans and other Latin Americans crossing the Rio Grande today, most immigrants to America a century ago came by boat and were relatively easy to monitor.

But the tide of European immigrants that poured into America from the 1890s to the 1920s, though meticulously recorded, was otherwise practically unrestricted.

Quick health screenings and perfunctory interviews at Ellis Island were used to determine if immigrants had communicable diseases, were mentally unfit or otherwise could not support themselves, or were avowed anarchists. Literacy was required beginning in 1917, but in any language, not just English.

As a result, only 2 percent of New York arrivals were denied entry, according to the Ellis Island Foundation. Ten million immigrants arrived in the decade before World War I.

A 1924 law strictly limited the annual number of immigrants by nationality, with a formula favoring Germans, British and Irish, limiting Eastern Europeans and Italians and excluding Asians. Nationality caps remained in place until 1965.



Mark Houser can be reached at mhouser@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7995.

Oh Oh!

Missed this one.