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New York ships 75 parolees for deportation

By CAROLYN THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer
June 28, 2005, 6:34 PM EDT

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Immigration officials on Tuesday started 75 killers, rapists and drug dealers paroled by the state on the road to deportation.

The aliens, who had been held at the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia since being paroled by the Department of Corrections over the past several months, were flown to a jail in Louisiana.

They will be sent back to the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Mexico, where they likely will go free, having served at least their minimum sentences in the United States, said William Cleary, director of the Buffalo office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"These criminals represent the worst of the worst," Cleary said. "Once deported they will no longer be able to victimize the people of New York state with violent crimes."

Nor will they be a burden to taxpayers, he said. Many in the group _ those convicted of nonviolent drug crimes _ were granted early parole on the condition they be deported.

"It costs about $30,000 a year just to have one individual incarcerated ... It was actually quite a lot of money we ended up saving the taxpayers," Cleary said.

The group included six people convicted of manslaughter or murder, four rapists, four with violent assault convictions and nine imprisoned on weapons charges. The rest were drug dealers, said ICE spokesman Michael Gilhooly.

They were flown to Louisiana by the U.S. Marshals Service.

New York state has deported 264 criminal aliens so far this year, according to ICE.

Also Tuesday, ICE announced the deportation of nine alien gang members from the Batavia facility and the arrest of eight other gang members in four cities: San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta and Detroit.

Several of those deported to Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic had violent criminal histories.