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U.S. adding fugitive squads that target immigrants who ignore expulsion orders
By Ruth Morris
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted February 26 2007
Far from the dusty Mexican border and Florida's coastal waters, federal authorities have stepped up the battle to control immigration, and, in many cases, the new front is just down the block.
A fast-growing network of fugitive squads is tracking and arresting undocumented immigrants inside the United States, in living rooms and on front doorsteps.
Though the squads' principal targets are terrorism suspects and convicted criminals, more than half of the people they snare are immigrants who lost legal bids for asylum or other relief, and then remained here illegally. Many have paid taxes, sent their U.S.-born children to public schools -- and quietly ignored a judge's order to leave the United States.
They're called "absconders," and increasingly they are the targets of federal fugitive squads.
Immigration authorities began the program in 2002 with eight teams, including one in Miami. After a gradual expansion, federal officials made the teams a bigger priority, pushing their number last year to 50, with two in South Florida. Authorities plan to add 20 teams this year.
"People need to be identified. Post 9-11 taught us this," said Mike Rozos, field director of Detentions and Removals in Florida, and one of the creators of the Fugitive Operations Program. Rozos said his forces go after criminals and noncriminals alike.
"We have 12 million illegal aliens in the country," he said. "Who are they? Are they your domestic, doing the house cleaning chores, or are they here to do something else?"
Here for years
By the time federal agents knocked on her door in November, Elizabeth Pozada had lived here 15 years.
A week later, she sat on a sofa, which she would soon give away, making lists of things to cancel, her belongings piled on the curb.
Immigration agents initially took Pozada and her husband from their Coral Springs home and detained them. Authorities then released Pozada for two weeks to settle her affairs in the United States before her deportation to Peru.
She said she would leave her house for foreclosure and her 8-year-old son, born in the United States, would move in with her brother, a naturalized U.S. citizen, also in Coral Springs.
"We don't have a family anymore," she said, sitting amid stacks of plates and boxes of video games.
Having found a foothold as a manicurist and house cleaner, Pozada applied for political asylum with her husband in 2001 and was denied. She said she thought her lawyer was appealing her case when immigration agents arrived at her door.
Pozada said she had paid income and Social Security taxes and sent her son to public school.
"All these years I did the best I can," she said. "I never applied for any [welfare] help. I don't have one returned check, and suddenly they send me back. I have to pack my 15 years in six suitcases."
More than half a million other absconders live in the United States, according to federal estimates, and their numbers have been growing faster than arrests. Authorities say their goal is to find as many as enter the system, and then tackle the backlog.
Rozos' office also pursues jailed immigrants who are eligible for deportation. Authorities look for inmates with drug possession, rape, gang violence or even lesser charges and intervene before they leave jail.
In 2006, Rozos' agents deported 4,417 immigrants; 1,900 of them, or 43 percent, had criminal convictions.
Before the fugitive program began, Rozos said, there was no comprehensive system for identifying and deporting immigrants with criminal records. A national screening center now identifies them before they leave 119 of the nation's federal prisons and with local jails that cooperate.
Noncriminal absconders are not always hard to find, either, as they leave paper trails in the immigration courts where they sought permission to stay here.
Failed honor system
According to Victor Cerda, former national head of detentions and removals at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, roughly 85 percent of immigrants that federal judges tell to leave the United States disregard the ruling. He considers fugitive squads one of the most effective tools to ensure such people leave they country. Before the fugitive teams, federal authorities largely ignored absconders.
"The honor system has not worked," Cerda said.
It makes a joke of the immigration system and its attention to providing due process, he said, "to have 500,000 absconders running around and no one knows where they are."
Advocates for stricter immigration controls say federal officials should do more to keep people who are denied immigration benefits from remaining in the country. They suggest more detention beds to hold immigrants who pose a flight risk, and a bonding system, like the one in place for criminal suspects, while cases move through the courts.
Immigrant rights groups say most of today's absconders have spent a long time trying to legalize their status, seeking asylum, for example, and should not be treated like outlaws. They insist many leave the United States voluntarily, without informing officials, and they question whether immigrants are truly receiving their final removal orders, sent by mail to them and their lawyers.
As the nation debates what to do about the federal immigration system, politicians and everyday citizens say they are deeply frustrated with the growing number of immigrants here illegally. But competing proposals to overhaul U.S. immigration law stalled in Congress last year.
A Senate bill would have made it easier for immigrants to come to the United States legally while bolstering security at the U.S.-Mexican border and providing a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants living here without authorization. A House version focused solely on enforcement, including heavy fines on employers who hire undocumented workers.
"There is widespread criticism of our broken immigration system. That's actually accurate, it is an out-of-control system," said Christina DeConcini, policy director at the National Immigration Forum in Washington, D.C., which advocates for stricter border controls and legalization for undocumented immigrants.
"But if we are using our enforcement funds to chase down busboys and gardeners who don't have criminal backgrounds, instead of going after people who want to cause harm, that's not an efficient use of our limited resources," she said.
It's unclear whether the new Democratic Congress will slice or boost spending for enforcement measures like extra detention spaces and deportations.
Meanwhile, federal authorities estimate 40,000 new absconders slip below the radar every year. For many, this means stepping out of a final hearing and back onto the street. They go home and quietly get on with their lives, hoping immigration agents never come knocking on the door.
