Feds To Crackdown On Illegal Immigrants In NW


By Austin Jenkins

OLYMPIA, WA 2007-05-30 Washington, D.C. is sending more federal immigration agents to the Northwest. Their job is to deport undocumented immigrants who've had a run-in with the law. Correspondent Austin Jenkins reports.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement - ICE for short - recently got a $30-million budget increase to hire more deportation officers.

Some of those officers -- the agency won't say how many -- are headed to the Northwest. Specifically Seattle, Portland and Yakima. Medford already has a deportation office.

Lorie Dankers, an ICE spokeswoman, says the officers will target illegal immigrants who've broken the law.

Lorie Dankers: "ICE deportation officers will go into the jails and actually when those individuals are done serving their time for their criminal conviction, they'll come into ICE custody and therefore then what we will do is secure a final order of removal for them once their sentence is done and they would be removed from the country."

Yakima will also get a new fugitive team.

This group of agents will track down immigrants who were supposed to leave the country, but haven't.

Dankers says the focus will be on those with criminal records.

In 2006, more than 4500 illegal immigrants were deported the Northwest region.

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