U.S. Intensifies Immigrant Raids
Escalation Comes as Bush Encounters Pressure Over Proposed Overhaul
By EVAN PEREZ
June 20, 2007; Page A4

BROOKLYN, N.Y. -- Jeffrey Dorant said he was rolling out of bed to wake his daughter yesterday before starting his day as a car salesman when loud knocks came at the front door.

It had taken nine years after a judge ordered Mr. Dorant to be deported to his native Trinidad and Tobago for immigration agents to finally catch up with him. The 36-year-old is now in jail pending a final decision on his deportation.

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WSJ's Evan Perez accompanies police on an immigration raid in Brooklyn, as authorities
The raid involving Mr. Dorant was part of a new initiative by the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division to intensify a crackdown on fugitive aliens. These immigrants are defined as those who are living in the country illegally or who lost their legal status because of criminal convictions but have been released pending appeals or other steps in the deportation process. In the past, many fugitive aliens have disappeared into the diaspora of newcomers spread across the country before their hearings, apparently gambling federal immigration agents wouldn't be able to find them.

Because of the backlog of court cases, the government had effectively turned a blind eye to the problem in recent years as the number of these fugitive aliens increased. They are currently estimated to top 632,000.

Now, immigration officials said they are for the first time making headway in tracking down such illegal immigrants and deporting them.

The push comes as the Bush administration encounters pressure from critics of its immigration policy to show more muscle in enforcing existing laws. Conservatives, in particular, say they can't support a comprehensive immigration-overhaul proposal now on life support in the Senate on the grounds it would provide "amnesty" for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants believed to be living in the U.S.

Conservatives also say that, judging from the past, they don't trust the administration's enforcement promises made in the overhaul proposal.

The initiative is being driven by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who also is the administration's point man in promoting its immigration overhaul. The initiative is aimed at showing that the government's enforcement efforts go beyond raids of factories and immigrant neighborhoods. Those have often garnered negative publicity, with photos of parents being ripped away from their children.

The enforcement division said that as of this month it had reduced by 537 the number of fugitive immigrants to 632,189, from 632,726 in October. Between 2003 and 2006, the fugitive list increased by an average of 5,700 people a month, or more than 68,000 a year.


Of more than 15,000 illegal immigrants arrested last year, more than 10,000 were fugitives, the agency said. (The others were immigrants about whom the agency didn't previously know.)

Immigration officials said the change is coming as a result of new strategies, including ending the agency's "catch-and-release" policy, which essentially allowed immigrants to disappear. Instead, they are being housed in detention centers while they await hearings.

Officials also credit better computers, stricter detention procedures and the availability of more beds in immigration detention centers. The agency said it is deploying more "fugitive operation teams," with as many as 75 teams by the end of this year, up from 15 in 2005. Enforcement-division officials said the fugitive crackdown is a priority.

Mr. Dorant, who has lived in the U.S. since he was 7, lost his legal status after being convicted of gun possession and robbery, according to enforcement-division records. He said he has lived a clean life since his run-ins with the law in the early 1990s.

Yesterday he was tearful as he worried about his 8-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, whom he left at his apartment in the care of a sister-in-law. "I don't know what's going to happen to my little girl. I don't know if I have a chance to get before a judge to show how I've changed."

Enforcement officials said Mr. Dorant can choose whether to return to Trinidad and Tobago with his child or to leave her with a guardian in the U.S. "We will help him facilitate whichever decision he makes," said enforcement-division spokesman Marc Raimondi.

Some critics said the timing of the raids seemed aimed at winning over hard-line critics of the administration. Eric Gutierrez, Washington-based counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the new tactics often split families and the agency should allow for additional hearings in cases in which immigrants being deported are the main caregivers for their families.

"We're not saying don't deport criminal aliens, we're saying put strategies in place to do this in a humane way," he said.

Julie Myers, assistant secretary of homeland security for immigration, denied that the tougher enforcement tactics have anything to do with the debate on pending legislation.

"We cannot simply sit around and bend at the whims of public opinion," she said in an interview. She said the agency has made sure children aren't abandoned after such raids and parents are allowed to arrange for the care of their families.

Homeland Security officials are inviting reporters along on raids this week as part of a wider effort to show they can pursue tough tactics to protect Americans while also handling the processing of 12 million undocumented immigrants who may eventually attain legal status under legislation supported by President Bush.

John Torres, director of detention and removal operations for the enforcement division, acknowledged the department has fallen behind on deportations. He said the agency is trying to learn from companies that are masters of logistics, such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc., to improve tracking of its deportation caseload.

"You want to be able to know where everyone is at all times," he said. "When you think of the amount of inventory that Wal-Mart keeps track of, or how UPS keeps track of packages, that's the direction we're going next year."

Some of those netted in the raids are taking it in stride. One 44-year-old man, pulled from hiding in his mother's closet in an apartment on Coney Island yesterday, exhibited bravado when agents hauled him into a detention center.

"Let me go back home to be free," he said. "In my country, I have land, I have no worries. Just let me go home."

Write to Evan Perez at evan.perez@wsj.com

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