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Dispelling Myths: Immigration part two
By Hannah Winkler and Keren Rivas / Times-News
April 30, 2007 3:00 AM
While federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are remaining tight-lipped about their procedures on detaining arrested aliens, two local ICE agents spoke to the Times-News last week. They refuted claims that they use intimidation during interviews to extract admissions of foreign birth from those suspected of a crime.

“We don’t have to intimidate you to get what we have to know,” Lt. R.L. Wilborn said.
For the most part, those who are here legally can, and want, to prove it to authorities. It’s only a few people who they have problems with, he said.
Local immigration groups and those that have been picked up by ICE agents disagree, saying they have forced people to sign deportation release papers or refused to let them make phone calls home.

ICE agents say their job is an extension of the booking process. No more than two ICE agents interview a suspect at one time.
Interviewees are asked two questions: Where are you from and what is your nationality?

“Every person gets asked,” he said. That is, everyone who is arrested.
“For anyone in Alamance County to be interviewed or processed by the ICE unit that works for the Alamance County Sheriff’s office, they must have committed a crime or been convicted,” Wilborn said.

Wilborn said that contrary to some rumors, if officers stop someone for a traffic violation and let them go, “we won’t even know about it.”

Though ICE only needs to know the legal status of a person to start the deportation process, Wilborn said they look at the charge and previous criminal history to determine the proper route to follow for removal.

For instance, a legal alien resident can be stripped of his or her status if he or she has been convicted of a deportable offense in the past.

He said that, typically, they check the person’s background and fingerprint information through the National Crime Information Center database. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes for agents to run a full criminal history to see if the suspect qualifies for the deportation process.

A detainee is allowed to call a lawyer at any time, Wilborn said, and added that because the interviews are considered an administrative proceeding, people are not assigned an attorney. They must hire their own, which Wilborn said has rarely happened so far.

“We’ll let them make a call if that’s what they want,” Wilborn said. “They are not bound to talk to us.”

However, he added, that doesn’t stop the process. He said that if the agent determines that there is “reasonable suspicion” to investigate the status of a person, “we can detain them until the (legal) status is proven.”
Once it has been established whether or not a person qualifies for deportation proceedings, the person is given the choice to go before an immigration judge or sign a voluntary removal form.

Wilborn said most people choose the latter option because they don’t want to be caught up in the system, which is usually very lengthy.

In a recent public forum on immigration, the resident agent-in-charge of ICE’s Raleigh office, Tom O’Connell, said it takes about two hours to process one alien. People who sign voluntary release orders could be automatically deported. The whole process of going through the immigration court or judicial system, finding beds for the detainees, and finding officers to deport them could take months.

However, if the person has pending state charges, Wilborn said the deportation process starts after the charges have been taken care of in the courts. If the person is sentenced to jail time, the process doesn’t start until after the sentence is served. If the person decides to go before an immigration judge, “it is the alien’s responsibility to prove why they should stay here illegally,” Wilborn said.
After hearing arguments, the immigration judge has the final say.

SO FAR IN Alamance County, about 110 people have been interviewed by the local ICE agents.

“It’s not the big monster that some people have made it out to be,” Alamance County’s Sheriff’s spokesman Randy Jones said.

Jones said they are only trying to get illegal criminals off the streets, and not minor offenders like some people have been led to believe.

“We are not here arresting people with no operator’s license,” Jones said. He added that though sometimes the arresting charge is minor, what leads officers to start the deportation process is what they find after they run a background check.

Some people have pending felony charges or even a different identity, he said.
Sheriff Terry Johnson said that contrary to rumors, in Alamance County “we’re not messing with any misdemeanor stuff.”

Whereas in nearby Mecklenburg County, agents are deporting people even for misdemeanors.
Mecklenburg County’s Sheriff Jim Pendergraph said his office interviews everyone who is charged with a crime, regardless if it was a misdemeanor or a felony.

Pendergraph, who is known as a lead supporter of the 287(g) program, has said that his officers have arrested about 1,300 illegal residents who have deportation orders or are criminals since the program started last May.

Leading advocates note also that the number of DWI-related arrests among Hispanics and the amount of Hispanic gang-related crime rates has decreased in Mecklenburg County since the 287(g) program started.

“Mecklenburg (County ICE agents) is looking to charge all those with DWIs, and we’re not looking for that yet,” Johnson said.
Although that isn’t to say that things won’t change in the future, “We’re just trying to get those felonies. We’ve got enough on our hands with them.”

PATRICIA CARNAVAL is not so sure that is the case.

Her nephew was stopped a couple of months ago for speeding and charged by the Burlington police with driving without a license.

The man learned that to apply for a driver’s license, he needed photo identification. He and his aunt contacted the Burlington police, where they were told to go to the jail to get a copy of the arrest record, which DMV accepted as a form of identification.

At the jail, Carnaval said they were approached by a deputy who identified himself as an ICE officer. She said the man told her nephew that because he was illegal he could be deported.

Carnaval said she told the officer there were no grounds to arrest her nephew and that he already had a court day in May for the driving without a license charge.

“They treated my nephew like he was a murderer or a terrorist,” Carnaval said. “They worry so much about the small stuff but do nothing about the big cases.”
She said she feels like Burlington police sent them to the sheriff’s department knowing that immigration was going to be waiting on them. She said her nephew is so scared he is not sure if he will show up for his court date.

Both Wilborn and Burlington Police Chief Mike Gauldin said Carnaval was not “set up” to go to the jail.

Wilborn said that neither one of the sheriff’s ICE agents were involved in the conversation with Carnaval and her nephew.
He said the lone ICE agent-in-residence handled the case, though he doesn’t know how or why he got involved in the first place.

However, he added, “We are not asking anybody to bring anyone here.”

He said his unit has enough work as it is with the arrests made by police officers on the streets. “We are not soliciting anybody to bring anyone to us.”
Besides, Wilborn said, his own federal powers are confined to the jail and to determining the deportation eligibility of those who come before him. “Outside the jail, my federal authority stops,” he said.

However, he added that federal ICE officers do have the power to arrest people simply based on their immigration status.

“They don’t have to be convicted of anything,” ICE agent-in-charge O’Connell has said. “They became a criminal when they crossed the border.”
Arzola said he understands the need to get rid of delinquency. He said he is in favor of getting rid of the drug traffickers, child molesters and wife beaters, but that these and other criminals should not be confused with the Hispanic working class.

He said the sheriff is contradicting himself with his rhetoric. While Johnson says he is only interested in those immigrants who break the law, he has also said in the past that illegal immigrants have already broken the law, and therefore are criminals by default.

“When he talks about criminals he is talking about immigrants,” Arzola said. “For him, being an illegal immigrant equals being a criminal.”

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