Small charge may mean deportation
Latinos get jail jitters
Pat Schneider
January 28, 2008

An apparent increase in the number of undocumented immigrants being picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from the Dane County Jail has the local Latino and judicial communities nervous, but jail officials say the impact of stepped-up federal enforcement is not yet clear.

"It's devastating," said Peter Munoz, executive director of Centro Hispano, who is worried about the families of undocumented immigrants who may be deported after convictions on relatively minor offenses.

Circuit Judge Stuart Schwartz is concerned that if word goes out in immigrant communities that going to jail means being deported, "people will stop coming to court." The need to issue warrants for, arrest and hold people in the jail for minor offenses threatens to clog the court system and overtax an already overcrowded jail, said Schwartz, who oversees the Criminal Defense Project.

Anthony Delyea, a Spanish-speaking private attorney who is hired by the court system under the Criminal Defense Project to represent indigent defendants, said that he can no longer advise his clients who are not in the country legally to plead guilty in cases he once would have because now they are facing deportation.

ICE notified jails across the country last spring that it had taken over responsibility for foreign-born inmates being held on criminal charges and that additional resources were being allotted to detaining and removing them.

Sheriff Dave Mahoney said there have been spotty increases in the number of inmates on which ICE has placed immigration holds in the past year, but said there is no clear pattern of increases. While no law requires local jails to notify ICE that they are holding undocumented immigrants on criminal charges, Mahoney maintains the jail for a decade has notified federal authorities of all non-citizens it is holding to meet federal legal requirements that it notify the consulates of some nations that a citizen is in custody. Mexico has asked as a courtesy that notification be made on its residents, Mahoney said.

In 2007, the jail gave federal authorities notice it was holding 286 foreign inmates, and ICE placed immigration holds on 61 of them, with 38 of the holds placed in the last three months of the year. Jail officials cannot say, however, how many of the 61 inmates were picked up by ICE because the jail does not track which agency recaptures an inmate.

ICE is not saying how many inmates it picked up from the Dane County Jail. "We don't keep statistics by jail," said ICE spokesperson Gail Montenegro. But in the 2006-2007 fiscal year, ICE initiated deportation proceedings nationwide on 164,000 "criminal aliens." In Wisconsin, where ICE personnel has been increased 30 percent over the past two years, 500 such proceedings were initiated, compared to 200 to 300 in the prior fiscal year.

Montenegro said ICE focuses on immigrants convicted of felonies, violent crimes or with numerous convictions, but said she could give to specific list of criminal violations that would lead to ICE to seek to detain a jail inmate.

Munoz said his agency is attempting to help a half-dozen local immigrants who have detention holds on them. "One family has four kids and the father, who was the provider, is in the process of being deported," he said. Munoz said he understood the charge was "alcohol-related."

Many immigrants don't understand the U.S. justice system, he said. Traffic violations, for example, are pretty much ignored in Mexico and immigrants here may not understand the consequences, Munoz said.

Schwartz said that attorneys with the state Public Defenders Office have told him they are concerned about clients being deported for driving after license revocation or similar offenses. Undocumented immigrants can no longer get a Wisconsin drivers license, so when it expires, they either quit driving or drive without a license.

If defense attorneys find they have to try cases without merit rather than expose them to deportation, it will cost the system to pay jurors and clog court calendars, he said.

Schwartz said concerns reach beyond the justice system to social impacts. "Will somebody be reluctant to call police on a domestic battery?" he asked.

Delyea said in an interview that because he is paid a flat rate for each case he handles for the court, he can't afford to handle cases that would have been a routine guilty plea in the past, but for which now he can't advise his clients to plead.

In a letter notifying Schwartz he will likely resign from the Criminal Defense Project, Delyea wrote: "I can think of no possible incentive to enter a plea that will result in deportation, because a one in a million chance of winning at a trial you do not have to pay for is much better than entering a plea where your chances of avoiding deportation are zero."

Beyond the legal ramifications are the human costs, Delyea said in an interview. "Some of these people own houses, they've lived here 20 years. People who have done relatively minor things suffer unbelievably harsh consequences."


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