Prosecuting Illegal Immigrants
Posted: April 22, 2008 12:08 AM EDT
By J.D. Wallace, KOLD News 13 Reporter

Illegal immigrants passing through the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector now have a greater chance of seeing a federal courtroom than ever before. The Arizona Denial Prosecution Initiative uses the legal system as one more approach to try and discourage illegal immigrants from entering through Arizona.

"The biggest bang for our buck is deterrence," said agent Jesus Rodriguez. "It's sending a message that if you get caught, you're going to get prosecuted; so, you're not going to try it."

About 60 suspects a day are prosecuted under the initiative, and Border Patrol aims to increase that to 100 a day. More than three thousand have been prosecuted the initiative began in January. Each one that is caught is fingerprinted and entered into a database. The first time someone is caught entering illegally, they are charged with a misdemeanor that carries six months imprisonment as a maximum penalty. If there is a next time, they are charged with a felony that carries at least two years imprisonment. But the average sentence under the initiative has been 26 days.

"Some of these folks now are no longer coming back into this area," Rodriguez said. "They're going out to the other sectors."

The initiative is part of Operation Arizona Denial, which Rodriguez said focuses a variety of resources on a thirty mile stretch of border somewhere between Sasabe and the western boundary of Pima County. He said when the program began, illegal entrants were returning to the area 80 percent of the time. Now the recidivism has been cut to 40 percent. Meanwhile, he noted that overall arrests compared with this time last year have dropped from 178,839 to 157,299.

"It's starting to make an impact on the number of people crossing the area," Rodriguez said.

But the effort is not cheap.

"There's a real lack of stewardship going on with the people who insist that this is the fix," said first assistant federal public defender Heather Williams. "We have to figure out another way, a better way, to use the money for criminal justice."

The money for defense alone could run into the millions. While the federal public defender's office uses two attorneys a day for the initiative, the court must hire an additional eight to fourteen private attorneys to handle the rest of the defendants.

"If somebody's willing to cross the desert for days without water and food, not knowing anybody in the United States, not speaking the language, think prison's a concern for them?" Williams asked.

Each private attorney gets $100 an hour, and works from five to eight hours a day. When the initiative reaches 100 suspects a day, more attorneys will be needed. Some might have to drive from Phoenix, and might need interpreters during meetings with their clients. The yearly bill for defense alone could easily top $3 million.

"There is a huge cost to the Marshal Service and to the court because when the court is dealing with this, they can't deal with other things," Williams said.

Each day, one magistrate is dedicated to the initiative's prosecutions.

"It's going to be stretching everybody's resources," said assistant chief U.S. Marshal Ray Kondo.

Thirty to forty defendants already pass through the federal courthouse's cell block on a daily basis. The initiative has added another sixty that will soon become another 100.

"Nobody's over-taxed so far, but we're all curious and anxious to see what it's going to be like at 100 a day," Kondo said.

Kondo said that the service is currently paying a private security firm about $18,000 a week for additional support at the federal courthouse. The Marshal Service is also in charge of imprisonment of convicts who receive prison time. According to Kondo, Corrections Corporation of America receives about $10 million a month.

"Housing costs haven't been impacted all that much yet," Kondo said, but he also admitted that he is still waiting. "Oh, it could change tomorrow. The area of operation changes, the type of person they're apprehending at the border changes, (we) just don't know."

And the Border Patrol could very well expand the area of the initiative, which will become part of Operation Streamline once it reaches 100 prosecutions a day. The operation has shown success in cutting down recidivism in other parts of the border.

"It will give us that opportunity to keep expanding," Rodriguez said. "And as we go out to the east and the west with the operation, the word is going to spread. The word is spreading already."
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