Thread: Miami ICE office gets new deportations chief

August 6, 2010


Miami ICE office gets new deportations chief
A new deportations chief has taken over at the Miami office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
BY ALFONSO CHARDY

It was an ad in a Texas newspaper that set Marc Moore on the path to a long career in immigration enforcement that started out in El Paso and has now brought him to South Florida.

Moore, who joined the Border Patrol in 1991 to monitor the Mexican border, is now the new field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Miami field office for enforcement and removal operations. As such, Moore, 49, will oversee local enforcement of perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of immigration work: detention and deportation of foreign nationals.

Moore has taken charge at a particularly tense time, as immigrant rights and immigration control activists step up the fierce debate over whether undocumented immigrants should be legalized or forced to leave.

Moore, for his part, takes the view that immigration has been perennially controversial and that he intends to enforce laws the way the Obama administration wants them enforced.

In an interview this week at his Plantation office, Moore said the goal is to emphasize the strategy of deporting foreign nationals convicted of crimes, but without ignoring undocumented foreigners who have no criminal records.

Citing a recent memo by ICE Director John Morton in Washington, Moore notes Morton ``doesn't say we won't arrest individuals without criminal backgrounds. He simply says that we will focus our priorities to achieve the greatest community safety, public safety. Criminals first, but we also have the obligation to ensure effective border enforcement.''

To show how the ``criminals first'' strategy is working, Moore said recent ICE figures prove that ICE is deporting more criminal foreign nationals than before. Moore said that 50 percent of those deported so far in the current fiscal year had criminal convictions -- compared to 35 percent of the total in fiscal year 2009.

Fiscal years run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. In fiscal year 2009, the total number of foreign nationals removed by ICE was 387,790. So far this fiscal year, 294,230 have been deported. Of the total deported so far nationwide, 11,503 were removed by the Miami field office and of those almost 36 percent had criminal convictions.

ICE figures show a downward trend in deportations of noncriminal foreigners, but immigrant rights activists say the figures show immigration authorities are still deporting tens of thousands of those who merely have no immigration documents. Illegal presence in the country is a civil, not a criminal offense.

Moore is the first formal enforcement and removal operations chief in the Miami field office since former field office director, Michael Rozos, retired in April.

Born in Denver, Colo., Moore is married and the father of five children. He became an INS inspector at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in 1998 and rose up the ranks in the INS central region in Dallas. In 2000 he joined the office of detention and removal operations, which last month became enforcement and removal operations under ICE.

Before landing the Miami job, Moore was stationed in Washington, D.C. where he oversaw the work of ICE's 24 detention and removal field offices.

www.miamiherald.com

Moore, for his part, takes the view that immigration has been perennially controversial and that he intends to enforce laws the way the Obama administration wants them enforced.

Before landing the Miami job, Moore was stationed in Washington, D.C. where he oversaw the work of ICE's 24 detention and removal field offices.

Texas has eight Embassies and Consulates of Mexico.

AZ has four Embassies and Consulates of Mexico.

California has ten Embassies and Consulates of Mexico.

Just how many total Embassies and Consulates of Mexico are there? Seems to me ICE is out gunned when just three states have almost as many Embassies and Consulates of Mexico as our entire Nation has ICE detention centers.