How was David DePape, suspect in Paul Pelosi attack, able to live in the U.S. without
How was David DePape, suspect in Paul Pelosi attack, able to live in the U.S. without a visa?
Rick Jervis, USA TODAY
Tue, November 8, 2022 at 6:51 PM
David DePape, the man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi, is a Canadian who entered the United States nearly two decades ago on a tourist visa and simply remained.
That fact emerged only because he was charged with a serious crime – the most common way for U.S. immigration officials to catch up with people who have been in the country without authorization, according to analysts.
So-called visa overstays make up about half of the unauthorized population in the United States, and Canadian overstays make up a significant portion of them, analysts said.
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Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a file photograph from March 2022. He was attacked by a man with a hammer in his home in late October.
A San Francisco judge on Friday kept DePape, charged with attacking the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in jail without bail while he awaits trial.
Prosecutors say he knocked Paul Pelosi unconscious with a hammer in his home Oct. 28 during an early morning break-in at the couple's San Francisco home. DePape has pleaded not guilty.
How DePape, who is white, was able to stay for so long in the U.S. without being arrested and deported by U.S. immigration officials while Latino and Black migrants are routinely deported underscores inherent biases in the country's immigration system, said Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based nonpartisan think tank.
"There are large numbers of Canadians, large numbers of Irish, large numbers of Poles who aren’t in the country legally, but they don’t think of them as illegal because they don’t fit the profile," Chishti said. "It's only when there are high profile cases like this that you realize there are people in this country illegally from predominately white countries."
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What country is David DePape from?
U.S. officials said DePape is Canadian.
Federal records show that he entered the U.S. at the San Ysidro bridge crossing between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego on March 8, 2008, on a B2 tourist visa, which is usually valid for up to six months but can be renewed.
Officials did not indicate why DePape would have entered from Mexico or whether he had been in the U.S. before that crossing.
How did DePape stay for so long?
Even if immigration officials had been alerted that DePape had overstayed his visa, they lack the manpower to locate, arrest and deport him, Chishti said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency charged with removing undocumented migrants in the interior of the U.S., has 20,000 law enforcement and support personnel in more than 400 offices across the country.
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David DePape is shown in Berkeley, California, in 2013. Police say DePape attacked the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
But that's not nearly enough agents to go after the 11 million undocumented people estimated to be living in the U.S, Chishti said. Migrants entering the United States on temporary visas are not given tracking devices, he said.
By the time DePape's visa had expired, he probably had changed residences, which would have made it it nearly impossible for ICE agents to locate him, Chishti said.
"We don’t have an enforcement mechanism robust enough to remove people who have just overstayed visas or come illegally and stayed on," he said.
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How do officials locate and remove undocumented immigrants?
ICE agents tend to focus on what are considered "high yield" targets – migrants who have committed serious crimes or are considered national security risks.
They do this largely by relying on local law enforcement agencies who arrest a migrant on a criminal charge. That person's name then enters national criminal databases that alert ICE and other agencies to their arrest.
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A family is deported to Central America in 2016 on ICE Air.
ICE then requests a "detainer" on the person – or a request to hold the immigrant until the federal agency can assume custody.
ICE lodged an immigration detainer on DePape with San Francisco County Jail on Tuesday, four days after his arrest, according to a spokesman with Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.
How did deportations change under Trump?
Before taking office, former President Donald Trump pledged to increase deportations of unauthorized immigrants. After his election, his administration directed ICE to go after all unauthorized people, not just those who have committed crimes.
Though interior removals under Trump did nudge up, averaging at or under 100,000 a year, they were still well below levels seen in President Barack Obama's first term, which averaged more than 200,000 ICE removals a year, according to a Migration Policy Institute report.
President Joe Biden toned down the enforcement policy after taking office, bringing deportation numbers down.
Even under Trump's aggressive removal policy, it would take the United States about 46 years to deport everyone who is now in the country without authorization – assuming no new undocumented migrants enter the U.S., said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based immigrant advocacy group.
"With 11 million undocumented immigrants, the United States government simply does not know who those people are, where the majority live, or even have the resources to go after them," he said.
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrest a person during a raid in Brooklyn in April 2018. Experts say there are far more people present in the U.S. than will ever be located by immigration officers.
Who makes up the majority of undocumented people in the US?
Over the past two decades, on average, about half of undocumented people entered the country by crossing the border without authorization and half entered legally and overstayed temporary visas, like DePape, Chishti said.
A 2019 analysis by the Center for Migration Studies showed that of the 515,000 unauthorized migrants who entered the U.S. in 2016, 62% overstayed temporary visas, compared with 36% who illegally crossed the border.
A 2021 Homeland Security report to Congress showed that the country with the highest number of people overstaying visas in the U.S. in 2020 was Mexico, with 77,494 overstays. Second place: Canada with 57,592.
Visa overstayers tend to be white and educated, Reichlin-Melnick said.
"There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people who have violated their visa but are not on the radar of the U.S. government," he said.
Follow Jervis on Twitter: @MrRJervis.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Pelosi attack suspect David DePape lived in US with expired visa
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