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Immigration detention system strained

Backlog, lack of space pose hurdles to border strategy
By Leslie Berestein
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
November 30, 2005

One recent morning, a group of newly apprehended illegal border crossers stood at the door of the federal immigration detention center, waiting to be escorted in.
The Otay Mesa facility was already close to capacity. There were nearly 900 detainees bunking at an institution that holds 1,000. And autumn is the slow season, before illegal immigration picks up after the holidays.

As the Bush administration touts its plans to curb illegal immigration and implement a guest-worker program, such overcrowding, backlogs in immigration courts and delays in obtaining travel documents for deportees are a few of the daunting obstacles that could stymie efforts to make the detention and removal process more efficient.

PEGGY PEATTIE / Union-Tribune
A security officer at the downtown federal building fastened leg chains to Guatemalan men being interviewed by Guatemalan consular officials last week.
President Bush traveled to Arizona and Texas this week to plug his administration's overall immigration strategy, which includes revamping the detention and removal system to add 2,000 new detainee beds and speed up the repatriation of non-Mexican illegal immigrants.
It also seeks to eliminate a practice known as "catch and release" for these immigrants, who can't be sent back to Mexico. Lacking bed space, federal agents must often release them with a notice to appear in court. Most disappear instead.

The goal of the Homeland Security Department is to get the detention and removal system working more efficiently within a year, ending the need to release people for lack of a place to put them. But detention officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees the system, grapple with bottlenecks that make clearing beds a daily challenge.

Nationwide, there are roughly 18,000 beds available in ICE detention centers. On an average day in September, there were roughly 21,000 detainees: undocumented immigrants, foreign criminals awaiting deportation, asylum seekers and others working their way through the courts. The overflow is housed in rented prison space.

Detainees appealing their deportation are sometimes in custody for years. Others wait months or longer just for permission to go home. On a regular basis, officials must decide which immigrants to release on bond in order to house those who must be held by law.

In recent years, the detention system has been taxed by a rising number of border crossers from countries other than Mexico. Most come from Central America and Brazil, and the majority cross through south Texas, the shortest route into the United States from Mexico's southern border.

The number of non-Mexicans caught entering via Mexico by the Border Patrol has more than doubled in a year, from 65,916 in federal fiscal year 2004 to nearly 155,000 in fiscal year 2005, which ended Sept. 30.

Since Oct. 1, more than 22,778 non-Mexicans have been apprehended – a 70 percent spike from a year ago.

While most non-Mexicans who enter through California and Arizona are held, the numbers crossing through south Texas are impossible to accommodate. In the past fiscal year, out of the 79,859 non-Mexicans caught just in the Border Patrol's McAllen, Texas, sector, 90 percent were released. Ninety-nine percent of those who were issued notices to appear by the court in nearby Harlingen, Texas, failed to do so.

Borderwide, 110,854 non-Mexicans were released last year for lack of bed space. Less than 30 percent of those apprehended were detained and sent home.

"Our objective is to get to 100 percent," Michael P. Jackson, deputy Homeland Security secretary, said early this month when the department announced its Secure Border Initiative, billed as a long-term plan to tighten the borders and reduce illegal immigration.

Part of the plan involves the increased use of expedited removal, a process that eliminates court hearings unless a detainee fears returning home. Long applied to people caught at ports of entry, it was expanded last year to those caught by the Border Patrol. The number of expedited removal cases jumped from 3,585 last year to 31,618 in fiscal year 2005, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Two weeks ago, the Department of Justice filed a motion in court to end a protective measure that so far has blocked the expedited removal of Salvadoran nationals.

However, immigrants placed in expedited removal, unlike those handed notices to appear, must be housed as they await travel documents and a flight home, sometimes for two weeks or more.


In and out
It's likely, some detention officials say, that to make way for additional non-Mexican newcomers, the release of other detainees will be needed.
"It puts a great deal of pressure on us," said Marc Rapp, the deputy agent in charge of the ICE detention facility in Otay Mesa. "The bed spaces are a finite number."

None of the additional proposed 2,000 beds are slated for detention centers in California, where less than 2 percent of non-Mexicans apprehended on the Southwest border entered last year.

Yet even without this traffic, the detention and removal system in San Diego is under strain. About 60 percent of the population in Otay Mesa is in mandatory custody; many of those held are criminals. A 1996 law stipulates that people convicted of certain crimes must be held as they await removal or contest deportation, even if their sentences are completed.

Noncriminals in expedited removal are also mandatory detainees. The other 40 percent are fighting deportation, in asylum proceedings or awaiting documents to return home.

Some people are there for the long haul.

One German-born detainee with a string of petty theft and drug convictions has been appealing his deportation since 1998. He has been at Otay Mesa for two years, after changes in the law made his custody mandatory. He is considered stateless: Germany doesn't grant citizenship at birth, and his parents were born elsewhere. Such detainees are often released, but because his case is on appeal, he remains at the center.

"I've done more time in detention (here) than I've done in penal custody," said Camal Marchabeyoglu, 45.


The long wait
Attorneys complain of cases being resolved more slowly in San Diego than elsewhere.
"San Diego has a pretty large docket as a border city and only has seven (immigration) judges," said immigration attorney Robin Carr. "It doesn't make any sense."

One of her clients has been in custody fighting his deportation to El Salvador since mid-2003. Another, a Colombian asylum seeker who is not in custody, has been in immigration proceedings since early 2004. Her trial is set for next October.

Detention officials complain about the time and cost – around $100,000 a year – it takes to shuttle detainees downtown for hearings. There are two courtrooms in Otay Mesa, but only one full-time judge, and the courtrooms are dark on Tuesdays.

Greg Gagne, a spokesman for the federal Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review, said the assignment of judges nationwide is determined by caseload.

"We're not running an assembly line," Gagne said. "We provide hearings and due process to individuals based on what their individual case requires."

Another hurdle in San Diego and elsewhere is the issuance of travel documents. Certain countries, including Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Iran and Somalia, do not have repatriation agreements with the Unites States. Others, including some former Soviet republics, refuse to recognize citizens born before or after certain dates. Some countries are slow or reluctant to issue travel documents, often wary of taking back criminal deportees.

"Let's face it, a lot of these countries don't want these people back," said Nora Antunez, assistant field office director for detention and removal in San Diego.

Many detainees unable to obtain travel documents are eventually released under a supervision order that requires them to check in regularly. Those deemed a security risk are held indefinitely, or until a third country takes them.

An additional hindrance is that few nations other than Mexico have consulates on the border. Central American consulates in Los Angeles typically send someone to San Diego every two weeks.

During a recent mass interview of more than 50 Guatemalan detainees in the federal building downtown, a young woman sounded tired as a consular official asked her questions.

"I've been up since 2 a.m.," she told him.

"So have I," the weary official replied.

As part of its new enforcement plan, Homeland Security has announced that it will also expand its fugitive operations to track down "absconders," such as immigrants who are released on bond then fail to appear in court.

Since Oct. 1, according to ICE, some 645 detainees released on bond in San Diego have failed to appear.

However, once caught, an absconder becomes a mandatory detainee, which means that person will need a bed.