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Felons slip through net while agents deport immigrants with no criminal record

By Laura Frank and Burt Hubbard, Rocky Mountain News
June 11, 2006
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An Englishman commits crimes for nearly two decades in Colorado — drug offenses, assault, child neglect, theft — before he is ordered deported. He gets the order overturned, then later rams a police officer's car.

A Mexican man goes to jail 13 times, prison once, and registers in Weld County as a sex offender nine times before he is finally picked up by immigration officials to be sent back to his home country.

Another Mexican kills a 31-year-old Denver father in a hit-and-run accident. Despite the immigrant's decade-long record of drunken driving and probation violations in Colorado, local officials had never turned him over to immigration agents.

The aim of the U.S. immigration system is supposed to be squarely on people like these — foreign-born criminals doing damage in American communities. That priority, set by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is second only to terrorists. But a look at which immigrants are actually removed from the United States tells a different story.

"If more Americans knew how the system works, they'd be frustrated," said Tony Rouco, supervisory special agent at the Denver regional office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "We all are."

In a yearlong investigation, the Rocky Mountain News has found that for years criminal immigrants have gone free, while precious time and resources are spent on deporting people who are living in the country without permission but have no criminal record.

Nationally, ICE admits it checks the legal status of only about 60 percent of immigrants who commit crimes serious enough to land them in U.S prisons. It recently set a goal of reaching 90 percent by 2009. A federal study last year found that illegal immigrants in prison had been arrested an average of eight times. Another federal study released in May found that it would cost $1.1 billion for enough detention beds to ensure the deportation of all criminals.

Yet, less than half of all deportations from the U.S. last year involved criminals, ICE data show. In the Denver ICE region, which covers Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, half of the 3,500 people deported were criminals.

The other half of the cases involved people who are not criminals. They are people like these:

A Longmont woman on her way to becoming a legal resident who made an unauthorized trip to Mexico because her critically ill mother called for her. She was caught coming back and now faces deportation and separation from her husband, a legal resident, and her children, all U.S. citizens.

An 8-year-old boy from El Salvador caught in California with a coyote guide who was taking him to his mother, a legal resident of Colorado. ICE did not drop its four-year effort to deport the boy, now 12, until March, after U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar's office got involved.

A Korean-Argentinian businessman with spinal problems who has been held for three months in an immigration detention center without bond for overstaying his travel permit by six years. He has agreed to return voluntarily to Argentina but faces years of separation from his wife, who just had their fourth child last month while he was jailed. All the children are U.S. citizens. His wife, a legal resident, says she could end up on welfare unless she moves to Argentina, too, forfeiting her chance for U.S. citizenship.

Each of these people broke immigration law. Living in the U.S. without proper authorization is illegal, but it's a civil offense, not a criminal one. Immigration violators can be jailed, pending removal from the U.S. — a penalty that most civil offenses, such as speeding or breach of contract, do not carry.

A net with too many holes

Most people want the government to snare more illegal immigrants in the enforcement net. In an April USA Today/Gallup Poll, 81 percent said yes when asked if illegal immigration is out of control.

But immigration officials say the net they have — woven by laws and funding from Congress — isn't enough to catch those they already are most urgently seeking.

And the net keeps getting filled with catches that aren't their top priority.

"When you throw the net out, you end up getting everything — including the strictly noncriminal types who are just out there working and not causing trouble," said Douglas L. Maurer, Denver field office director in charge of detention and removal for ICE.

Behind the headlines on one of the nation's most controversial issues, the Rocky Mountain News found:

Local and federal law-enforcement officials ignore known illegal immigrants — including some already in local custody who have committed crimes — because immigration officials lack the personnel or places to handle them. ICE officials say they deport the worst offenders, and Front Range jailers say ICE has done a better job in the past year of monitoring criminal immigrants. But the News investigation found many criminal immigrants who were overlooked and went on to commit worse crimes.

In the Colorado region, about half of all those deported last year had a criminal background, up from 41 percent in 2001. The other half were deported because of their unlawful presence here, but had no criminal record.

Policymakers have said they presume tougher penalties deter future illegal immigration. But even prison time and deportation don't stop some criminal immigrants.

The News investigation found that one in five Colorado prison inmates identified by ICE as potentially deportable as of May 2005 had been removed from the country at least once before. They returned to commit the crimes for which they were imprisoned.

An estimated 640 foreign-born criminals are currently fugitives in the Colorado region. They are among 4,000 immigration fugitives in the state — people who failed to show up in immigration court or were ordered deported but disappeared. Denver ICE caught more criminals than noncriminals among the fugitives captured in 2005, putting it above the national average for ICE offices. But Denver agents still rounded up 183 noncriminal fugitives along with 304 criminals.

An estimated 225,000 to 275,000 illegal immigrants lived in Colorado in 2005, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have a combined 45,000 to 65,000. ICE began withholding staffing information after 2003. That year, it had about 50 criminal investigators for the four-state region, according to a Syracuse University research group. Officials would say only that their staffing has stayed stable in the past few years. No investigators are assigned specifically to catch administrative violators, ICE says. That means the noncriminals were arrested by investigators whose primary focus is supposed to be criminals.

In the search for foreign-born criminals, five immigration agents are assigned to monitor 14 Front Range jails and five state prisons. A News survey of those 14 county jails, plus four other Front Range jails that other ICE agents monitor, found that on average they held a total of 600 potentially deportable inmates. That doesn't include jails in the rest of Colorado, where some sheriffs report a fifth to a quarter of their inmates are foreign-born.

Inmates don't move to ICE custody until their jail term is over, so all 600 are not ready for ICE at one time. ICE estimates two to 10 inmates a day complete their time in local jails.

Yet, ICE has funding for only 300 of its 360 beds to detain anyone they find, and about 40 percent are filled by noncriminals, said John Good, deputy field office director for the Denver regional ICE office. As a result, ICE cannot pick up most of the 500 suspected illegal immigrants stopped each week on highways by the Colorado State Patrol, troopers say.

"You do the math," Good said.

'Set up for failure'

Last year, a report from congressional leaders who oversee the Department of Homeland Security, which supervises ICE, put it this way:

"ICE's enforcement mission is torn between criminal investigations and enforcing administrative violations, leaving a culture that will do neither activity well and is set up for failure."



Maurer, of the Denver ICE office, said, "It comes down to what we are willing to accept as citizens of this country."

ICE officials say they haven't given up their focus on criminals, but are putting more emphasis on bigger criminal organizations, such as smuggling and drug rings. In the past, they went after the immigration equivalent of the street-level drug dealer.

"The old way had proven ineffective," said Paul Maldonado, assistant special agent in charge in the Denver ICE office. "For every one person we removed, umpteen more replaced them."

Jeff Copp, ICE special agent in charge of investigations in the Denver region, said, "We're looking at the organization as a whole. We're looking at smugglers, money launderers. It takes longer to do, so the impact may not be felt for six months or a year."

Federal mandates say ICE agents can exercise discretion in which cases they take. So why are noncriminals consuming such a significant portion of ICE resources?

ICE officials in Denver would not estimate how their agents' time is divvied up between criminals and noncriminals.

On a national level, a Congressional Research Service report issued in April analyzed agents' time for fiscal 2003, the latest year available. It found, at least in the investigative phase, that agents spent the most hours pursuing criminals (39 percent) and the second-most on administrative work (23 percent). Noncriminal "status violators" accounted for only 6.7 percent of hours.

ICE officials would not discuss how they decide which cases to pursue or why half of the people deported are noncriminals.

"The process of making priorities and following through on priorities is a very human-type process," said ICE regional spokesman Carl Rusnok in Dallas. "It's just kind of like whatever pops up, we'll handle, based on whatever else is going on."

Victor Cerda is more blunt. The former national head ofICE's detention and removal program, Cerda also served as ICE's principal legal counsel.

If ICE tried to catch every illegal immigrant who had committed crimes beyond immigration violations, it would leave no one to enforce immigration laws, Cerda said.

"Criminal aliens are such a large problem, it would take all the investigators out there," he said. "It's mission overload, in certain respects."

Cerda said ICE agents shouldn't have to choose between catching criminals and enforcing broader immigration law.

"I think if Congress was really serious, they would be making these priorities and paying for it," Cerda said. "The reality is, we've had national security lapses related to immigration. It's going to cost a pretty penny to fix. I don't believe that's really sunk in to members of Congress.

"They're talking about putting new siding on the house, but you've got to fix the foundation first."

frankl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5091; hubbardb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5107

All those that entered this country illegally are criminals in my book! From reading the article above, it's obvious that our government is not serious about punishing all those that break our immigration laws. Sure, the murderers, rapist, robbers, etc. should take priority, but that shouldn't exempt the other illegal immigrants - yes, even the eight year old boys and those with legal family members. Track down and deport all illegal immigrants and secure the borders so they can't repeat their crime of illegal entry. The only way to gain entry into the U.S. should be through legal channels! That is not going to happen though, not until our borders are secured.

Apparently Mexican's are in control of mass producing forged immigration and ID documents. Not Arabs, not Moldavians, not Asians, not Icelanders.

Most human smugglers, coyotes, are Latino.

Most drugs are smuggled in from the South - mostly by Latinos.

A particularly vicious ganga, M13, is from Mexico.

Latino criminals are especially wicked. It's machismo and unalloyed, hostile selfishness. (I'm a Latina, we know how Latin men are, trust me.)

Most acts of international terrorism has been committed by Arab Islamic fundamentalists.

Ya' know, there is a preponderance of brown here, and as a brown person, I resent it mightily. They give people like me a bad name.

I was raised to be more afraid of my parents than the law. They would never tolerate letting me shame them or act as if they didn't raise me right. Now, did they over-do it sometimes - oh yeah. But, as a result of the overall lessons, I'm a decent member of society. I get the whole law concept and I can't think of a good reason to defy it.

There have been a few times when I personally experienced racism based on my skin color. One time in Texas, when I was growing up, and again in Los Angeles, while downtown eating some fast-food.

First time, I was a child, so my parents handled that one. We were in a diner and discretion was the better part of valor that day.

But in LA, when the guy asked me if I spoke English, I literally flipped out. I shocked myself. I couldn't believe how visceral my reaction was, and I'm still not really sure the guy was being racist, or using a lame pick up line.

My point is, we Mexicans, we sometimes damn the torpedoes. So taking it easy on us just let's us secretly gather strength. Kinda' like Islamic terrorists do too. You think we don't notice? Hello, Latin people aren't known as hot-blooded for nothing.

America, listen to me: don't be stupid. Now is not the time to relax. We cannot get comfy. Any laziness will be lunged for like limping prey. If there's one thing I learned as a Latina: do not show any weakness in the face of the opponent, not for even a micro-second.

I'm not suggesting anything other than a solid, unambiguous, unwavering, relentless march to the win.

I'm serious.