Entrants with criminal past often won't be prosecuted
Entrants with criminal past often won't be prosecuted
â—? Prosecutors seldom act on misdemeanors or low-end felonies.
22,000
The number of illegal entrants with criminal records captured in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector
12, 060
Were picked up for immigration violations
3,056 were prosecuted this year
19,000
Are misdemeanors and low-end felonies
U.S. Border Patrol agents captured a sex offender and a gang member trying to sneak across the U.S.-Mexico border this weekend.
The two arrests push the number of illegal entrants with criminal records captured in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector up to more than 22,000 this fiscal year.
But not all are being prosecuted, mostly because the crimes were low-end felonies or misdemeanors, officials say.
Even those with felony warrants out of Arizona courts are not always prosecuted, one recent arrest demonstrates.
The number of entrants with criminal records has been expounded as a major reason to seal the border. Two weeks ago, U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., brought up the number of criminals crossing the border as an argument for the dire need to close it down.
In 2003, the Border Patrol began using a system - the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System - to register all the fingerprints of crossers the agency picked up. The system cross-checks the fingerprints with a similar FBI database.
Using the system, the Border Patrol has arrested 22,590 people since Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year.
About half, 12,060, were picked up for immigration violations, including the most common charge, illegal re-entry, said agency spokesman Jose Garza.
But only a fraction, 3,056, met the threshold for prosecuting this year, Garza said.
The other 19,000-plus are misdemeanors and low-end felonies such as repeated drunken driving.
Those people were deported and will face immigration felonies if they try to re-enter the United States, he said.
"If we were to prosecute every alien with a criminal history, we'd fill up the prison system," Garza said.
The two men arrested Saturday, for example, face only immigration charges.
In the first case, an admitted member of the Mara Salvatrucha, a Salvadoran gang with roots in Los Angeles, was not charged because his earlier criminal convictions did not fall under prosecutable guidelines, said Shannon Stevens, a Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokeswoman.
Instead, Omar Nuñez Jairo, 29, awaits deportation proceedings after being picked up with a group of 16 illegal border crossers near Arizona 286 last Saturday, she said.
Nuñez Jairo had previously been arrested on three separate charges of criminal mischief, malicious wounding and mob violence.
The same day, camera operators at the Naco station spotted two people who had crossed the fence west of Naco and hid in the brush when agents approached.
One of the men, Juan Marin Velasquez, 26, had a felony warrant out of Santa Ana, Calif., for having sex with a minor.
Charges against him were also dropped when the agency issuing the warrant refused extradition from Arizona. Marin Velasquez is being held for entry without inspection.
Normally, aggravated felons who were deported for the felonies they committed are prosecuted when they try to enter the United States, Garza said.
The decision to prosecute is made by the U.S. Attorney's Office, he said.
For their part, the federal prosecutor's office won't disclose the threshold for prosecution because it would not be appropriate, said Sandy Raynor, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allh ... /75499.php
