Feds More Vigilant Against Immigrants In Jail
Katie DeLong


http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/9832711.html
WAUSAU - The federal government's ramped-up efforts to deport illegal immigrants convicted of crimes didn't come soon enough for Kenosha County Deputy Frank Fabiano Jr.

Fabiano, 48, was gunned down while making a traffic stop on May 16. Immediately after Ezeiquiel Lopez, 44, was arrested in the slaying, he was identified as being in the country illegally.

Records show he had been jailed in Kenosha County about a year before that, but it wasn't until about four months later that the county started sending daily e-mails to federal agents in Milwaukee alerting them to inmates who may be in the country illegally.

"He would have popped up on our radar unless he had done an outstanding job of appearing to be a U.S. citizen," said Brent Kriehn, a deportation officer with the Milwaukee office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

Kriehn said he was convinced that if the enhanced program had been in place several months earlier, it's unlikely Lopez would have been on the streets.

The agency for the first time has established a criminal alien program in Wisconsin and staffed it with several people, Kriehn said. Deporting illegal immigrants convicted of crimes in America is a higher priority because it's now being viewed as a public safety issue, Kriehn said.

The agency has opened 414 cases in Wisconsin since June, mostly with leads from eight jails, leading to 167 detainees, said Carl Rusnok, an ICE spokesman in Dallas.

Glenn Triveline, acting head of the ICE regional office in Chicago that covers six states, including Wisconsin, said nationwide, 280 jobs were added within the agency's detention and removal office, which includes the criminal alien program, boosting the workforce to 6,700 and leading to a more aggressive search for illegal immigrants in jails.

"In Indianapolis our numbers have gone up. In Louisville are numbers have gone up since January as new officers come on board," he said.

In New Jersey, Attorney General Anne Milgram recently ordered all New Jersey law enforcement authorities to notify federal immigration officials whenever an illegal immigrant is arrested for an indictable offense or drunken driving.

The policy followed the Aug. 4 killings of three college students in a schoolyard by six suspects. At least one of the suspects was in the country illegally.

Illegal immigrants have been on the front burner of American politics for months, mostly due to attempts at overhauling federal immigration laws, including a plan in the U.S. Senate that would have legalized as many as 12 million unlawful immigrants while fortifying the border and strengthening enforcement.

According to Rusnok, the federal agency processed 7,138 criminal illegal immigrants for removal from the U.S. last October. The total had grown to 14,542 in June, in part because of new technology, including video-conferencing between jails, and a federal deportation center in Chicago.

"ICE considers the criminal alien issue a high priority," Rusnok said.

More help may be on the way, too. The next federal budget seeks another $28.7 million to deploy another 220 workers, Rusnok said.

Sgt. Gil Benn, a spokesman for the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department, said that in the past the agency filled out a form and a report about possible illegal immigrants in jail and the paperwork was sent to what was then called the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

"From there, I don't know what action they took on it," he said.

Benn said Lopez was jailed in Kenosha County on a probation revocation from Nov. 26, 2005, to Aug. 14, 2006.

"I can't find anything that indicates his name was referred to INS," Benn said.

Inmates now get referred to ICE based on their answers to a series questions, Benn said.

"To be quite frank, from what I have seen and talked to others, if they don't speak English, that is a pretty good indicator right there or if they need an interpreter," Benn said.

Kriehn said many jails in the past made no attempt to track illegal immigrants, in part because the federal agency was more lackadaisical about it, too. He said no records were available to compare whether the number of illegal immigrants found in jails since November was up or down compared to previous years.

For the year ending last September, the federal government deported 195,000 people, of which 88,600 were criminals, Rusnok said.

In the six-state region that includes Wisconsin, 7,100 people were deported last year, including 2,659 with criminal convictions, compared with 6,600 in 2005, with 2,707 criminal convictions, Rusnok said.

As of May 31 this year, about 5,000 unlawful immigrants were deported and about 1,800 had criminal convictions, he said.

Kriehn suspected more cases are being started now in Wisconsin because of more vigilance, not necessarily because more illegal immigrants are ending up in jails.

So far, the "vast bulk of our leads" on illegal immigrants convicted of crimes have come from eight jails, he said. The "big producers" are Outagamie, Kenosha and Brown counties, while a "fair number" of referrals have come from Dane, Rock, Walworth, Winnebago and Milwaukee counties, he said.

The referrals have mostly involved minor crimes -- such as driving without a license or drunken driving -- but some involve serious felonies, such as murder, he said.

Lt. Ron Yow, supervisor of the Outagamie County Jail, said that since November, jail staff have investigated 191 inmates as possible illegal immigrants and 95 have been turned over to ICE.

"Before that, it wasn't so much in our consciousness and with the old INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) working with them wasn't always very pleasant or rewarding," Yow said. "I may have made a dozen referrals the whole year."


(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)