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Jailed illegals dodge feds
Immigration agents focus on serious offenders, ICE says

By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News
May 17, 2005

Immigration officials picked up only 10 percent of 1,700 possible illegal immigrants at the Denver Jail in 2004, according to an aide to Congressman Tom Tancredo.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Carl Rusnok could not confirm those numbers late Monday. They were found on a Department of Justice Web site.

He did say that some of the illegal immigrants were not picked up because they went to prison to serve their sentences and immigration will deport them after they've done their time.

But some of the others were minor offenders allowed to go free because the immigration agency has enough staff to deport only more serious criminals, Rusnok said.

"We have to deal with priorities," he said. "If you have an illegal alien who has committed rape or homicide, and you only have a certain amount of resources, you want to use those resources to put away the people who are a serious danger to the public."

ICE's Web site has news releases listing a large number of major criminals it has deported, Rusnok noted.

"Is it worth it, using a significant amount of your resources, to go after people that are of a non-criminal nature?" he asked.

Rusnok did not immediately know how serious a crime must be to prompt ICE to pick up the perpetrator and deport him.

"The fact is ICE is not staffed up" to collect more, said Charles Heatherly, Tancredo's immigration aide. "Mr. Tancredo complains about that often."

Tancredo has been attacking Denver officials for failing to contact immigration when the suspect in the May 8 slaying of Denver police Detective Donald Young was stopped for traffic violations in the months before the killing. The Littleton Republican argues that quick deportation of illegals for minor crimes will prevent major ones.

Heatherly, who found the statistics on the Web site, said immigration has only four agents to check jails and prisons in a four-state area for illegal immigrants who have committed crimes.

Denver reported 1,937 apparently undocumented jail inmates in 2004 to a Department of Justice program that paid the city nearly $1 million in aid for incarcerating them. Under the rules of the aid program, those reported all had been convicted of a felony or two misdemeanors, and served at least four days.

Mark Valentine, the Denver official who filled in the form, said the city used a broad definition and counted everyone possible when applying for the aid. "If we think they might be (illegal), we submit them," he said.

According to the DOJ Web site, Immigration and Customs Enforcement found that 191 of the 1,937 were here legally and dropped them from the calculation for aid.

The Web site said only 177 of the remaining 1,746 possible illegal immigrants were confirmed by immigration authorities as "undocumented aliens or otherwise qualifying."

Heatherly said he spoke with John Fabricatore, the ICE official for this region whose staff physically picks up the illegals at the jails. He said Fabricatore said the 177 had immigration holds placed on them and that ICE actually collected 175 immigrants. Two of the immigration holds were canceled, Heatherly quoted Fabricatore as saying.

Fabricatore could not be reached late Monday.

Immigration agents placed immigration holds on a similar 10 percent of the apparent illegals in Larimer County, but 33 percent in Morgan County. In the state prison system, where crimes are significantly more serious, immigration placed holds on 1,071 of 1,329 apparent illegals, or 80 percent.

The Bush administration has not sought more funding for ICE enforcement in its budget requests, and the issue is regularly a point of debate on the appropriations bill, Heatherly said.

But Tancredo blames Denver for the small number of inmates deported, as much as he blames short-staffing at the federal immigration agency.

Denver sends ICE a list of its inmates regularly, and the four overworked ICE agents pore over it to choose the three per week they will pick up on average, Heatherly said. Denver should be calling and asking for ICE to pick up more, he said.

Inmates held for immigration in 2004

Federal agents ordered a small share of suspected illegal immigrants held:

County Identified as possibly illegal Ordered held by immigration Identified as legal by immigration
Denver 1,937 177 191
Adams 303 41 21
Arapahoe 683 247 101
Boulder 194 37 35
Douglas 125 11 21
Larimer 132 13 4
Weld 342 55 37
El Paso 534 30 98
State prisons 1,597 1,071 268


Source: Department of Justice, Congressman Tom Tancredo's office

imsea@RockyMountainNews

Sorry, I can't get the chart of figures to show up right. You'll have to use the url.