Thread: Good News From ICE

http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/newsreleases ... 0620dc.htm

News ReleasesJune 20, 2007

Number of fugitive aliens drops for the first time in U.S. history
ICE fugitive operations teams, technological advances identify and remove more aliens who have ignored final deportation orders

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced today for the first time that it had reduced the backlog of open fugitive alien cases in the country. "Fugitive aliens" are illegal aliens who fail to appear for an immigration hearing or who abscond after having been ordered to leave the country by an immigration judge.

"ICE has been working aggressively to improve the systems that help us identify, target and remove fugitive aliens from the United States," said Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for ICE. "By apprehending more fugitives and reducing the number of new fugitives, we're making unprecedented progress. This turning point is truly a significant milestone, and a reflection that we're headed in the right direction, yet there is more work to be done."

Between September 2003 and September 2006, the fugitive alien population grew by an average of 5,682 fugitives per month or 68,184 new cases per year. By streamlining business practices, tripling the number of fugitive operations teams, improving intelligence and analysis, increasing available detention spaces and ending the practice of catch and release at the border, ICE has seen that growth level off for the last eight months and drop by more than 500 names in the last two months - for the first time in U.S. history. In the past two months, according to ICE's Deportable Alien Control System (DACS), there were 632,189 fugitive aliens in the United States.

ICE has been able to achieve this milestone by apprehending more fugitives in the United States and by changing practices that were creating fugitives at the border.

To apprehend more fugitive aliens, ICE:

Tripled the number of Fugitive Operations Teams (FOTs), which are dedicated to identifying, locating and arresting fugitive aliens. FOTs increased from 18 in 2005 to 61 today; by the end of FY 2007, there will be 75 deployed at Detention and Removal (DRO) offices throughout the United States. In FY2006, ICE removed more than 17,817 fugitive aliens from the United States. In FY2007, ICE is on the way to doubling that number.
Opened the Fugitive Operation Support Center (FOSC) in Vermont in June 2006 to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the National Fugitive Operations Program. The FOSC reviews and updates absconder cases in DACS, develops leads for and provides assistance to the teams and aids in the development of national fugitive operations. Since its inception, the FOSC has resolved 32,725 fugitive alien cases in the system by discovering that the fugitives had been incarcerated or by verifying the fugitives' departure from the United States.
Created the Detention Enforcement and Processing Offenders by Remote Technology (DEPORT) Center in Chicago in June 2006 to review the records of criminal aliens at federal correctional institutions run by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) under the Department of Justice. DEPORT has cleared up a backlog of criminal aliens held by the BOP. The program processes criminal aliens while they are incarcerated so that they may be removed immediately upon release, without reentering society. More than 500 individuals located in approximately 35 states are interviewed each week from the command center in the Chicago office. Aliens who are in need of hearings are assigned to hearing sites and those whose cases are complete are forwarded to an appropriate facility where the process of obtaining the necessary documents for removal can begin.
ICE put a halt to the creation of new fugitives by:

Ending the practice of catch and release along the border in September 2006. Before that, only 34 percent of non-Mexican aliens apprehended along the border were detained.
Expanding its detention capacity to more than 27,500 beds daily, enabling the agency to remove a record 186,600 illegal aliens from the country in FY2006.
Increasing its use of expedited removal, a legal process that allows ICE to remove illegal aliens without a formal hearing before an immigration judge if the aliens have no credible claim to asylum or any other relief from deportation.
Decreasing processing time -from apprehension to removal- from approximately 90 days to around 30 days, to free up detention bed space.
ICE was created in 2003. The Immigration and Naturalization Service did not track numbers of fugitive aliens.


-- ICE --

Yet Elvira Arellaneo remains free in a so-called Chicago church.

Her butt needs to go south of the border!

I not going to hold my breath just yet!

Originally Posted by MW

Yet Elvira Arellaneo remains free in a so-called Chicago church.

And does this church still get tax exemptions?

Originally Posted by Dagmar

Originally Posted by MW

Yet Elvira Arellaneo remains free in a so-called Chicago church.

And does this church still get tax exemptions?

of course, chicago is a sanctuary city after all

This is good news from ICE.