Thread: U.s. Deportations put a burden on tijuana

utsandiego.com
Written by Sandra Dibble
12:01 a.m., Feb. 5, 2012

TIJUANA — Less than four months after he was released from a Nevada prison and deported to Mexico, Fermín Pérez Juárez is in trouble again. He is now behind bars in Tijuana, accused along with four others in the kidnapping and torture of a man who was hoping to be smuggled into the United States.

It wasn’t just the brutality of the crime, committed last month in the city’s Zona Norte, that commanded attention in Tijuana newspaper headlines and on TV broadcasts. It was the people allegedly behind the crime: Pérez and the other suspects are deportees with U.S. criminal records, Mexican authorities said.

Illegal immigration is a contentious topic in the United States, but it can be a touchy subject in Mexico, too. This is especially true in northern border cities such as Tijuana, where hundreds of Mexicans are returned each day.

The city’s officials say the presence of large numbers of deportees poses public safety problems and further strains social-service programs. Business owners near the border complain that they drive up crime and drive away customers. Deportees say they often are made to feel like convicts even when they are not — ostracized, unable to find work, lacking any family or friends in the area, targeted by police as well as criminals who shake them down and take their money and documents.

Though theses issues are not new, an unprecedented effort by the U.S. government to deport foreigners convicted of crimes is raising alarm in Tijuana.

“They arrive in border cities and they don’t have work, they don’t anywhere to live, they don’t have documents,” said Adán Velázquez, head of criminal investigations in Tijuana for the Baja California Attorney General’s Office. “They become addicted to drugs, they wander the streets, they are bad for the city’s image and have become a serious problem.”

While the Mexican government offers deportees transportation back to their hometowns, many of them choose to remain near the U.S.-Mexico border in hopes of making another crossing. But increasingly tight U.S. security along the border makes such returns far more difficult, so deportees linger in limbo.

“Before, we didn’t have so many people getting stuck in Tijuana,” said the city’s security chief, Alberto Capella.

Asking for advance notice

To find deportees, head to the Padre Chava soup kitchen in downtown Tijuana, which serves breakfast to more than 1,000 people several days each week. Co-founder Margarita Andonaegui said about one-quarter of those individuals are deportees, and more have been showing up.

“We see men who are destroyed emotionally,” she said. “Their lives have been truncated. They have family in the United States, and down south they have no one.”

The deportations issue has flared up in Tijuana and other Mexican border cities since late last year, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that it had deported a record 396,906 people during the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 — and that more than half of those people had criminal convictions. More than 70 percent of the deportees were from Mexico.

A study by Mexico’s National Migration Institute showed that deportation patterns change from year to year, but that Baja California has traditionally received a large portion of deportees. In 2010, the figure was close to 40 percent of the total registered by Mexican immigration officials.

Statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement show that deportees with criminal records are far more likely to have been convicted of a traffic offense, immigration violations or drug-related charges than of a violent crime. In Tijuana, thefts and low-scale robberies are the biggest sources of complaint among business owners in downtown areas near the U.S. border.

Mexican authorities want more notice when people with criminal records are deported — at least three days beforehand, so they can check for any criminal issues in Mexico.

“We are in a constant struggle to get information ahead of time,” said Antonio Valladolid, who heads the National Immigration Institute in Tijuana.

ICE has no large holding facilities at the border and often gets little advance notice before receiving criminal deportees, said Lauren Mack, the agency’s spokeswoman in San Diego.

“We don’t hold them longer because we don’t have a legal reason to, and because it drains our resources,” she said.

Mexican authorities also are asking for more detailed information on who’s being sent back. “We need pictures, fingerprints, tattoos, color of eyes, height, weight,” said Alfredo Arenas, the international liaison for Baja California’s Public Safety Secretariat. “Not just a list with names, because it’s known that many of these people give false names. We need biometric information in advance so we can detect how many of those people have outstanding warrants in Mexico.”

Seeking coordination

Despite the concerns, authorities in Baja California are hard-pressed to come up with hard data on crimes committed by deportees.

The Mexican government often categorizes deportees as “migrants,” a term that also includes new arrivals from other parts of Mexico. Daniel de la Rosa, Baja California’s public safety secretary, said state figures show that migrants committed one in 10 crimes statewide last year. And data from Tijuana’s public safety secretariat showed that less than 8 percent of the detainees turned over to its facility for minor infractions in 2011 were classified as migrants.

And for all the fears that large numbers of California inmates are being released early and sent to Baja California due to prison overcrowding, this has yet to happen. A California Supreme Court ruling last May required the state to reduce its inmate population, but Robin Baker, the director for enforcement and removal operations for ICE in San Diego, said he has not yet seen an increase in California prison deportees.

Still, the potential is there: As of Dec. 31, California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Services listed 14,886 prisoners who are Mexican citizens — about 10 percent of the total; of those, 11,606 had an ICE hold, meaning they will be sent back to Mexico once they’re released.

Because of deportees’ mobility and the different agencies involved in deportations, the numbers are difficult to track.

Mexico’s National Immigration Institute reported a 20 percent drop in “repatriations” — Mexicans returned by the U.S. government and counted by the agency — between 2010 and 2011 along the country’s northern border. In Tijuana, that number is down 40 percent — from 133,000 in 2010 to 81,000 last year, while they rose in Mexicali by 20 percent.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said its deportation numbers have been rising, with a record 33,006 on the Baja California border through Tijuana and Mexicali during the past year carried out by its San Diego Field Office — including 14,412 convicted criminals. Those numbers do not include those deported through Tijuana by the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office.

In addition, the U.S. Border Patrol and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection also send back significant numbers of Mexicans to Tijuana, but they did not provide figures for this story.

Baker, the local enforcement and removal director for ICE, said his office is deporting an average of 1,425 people a week to Tijuana, with 60 percent of them criminal removals.

One solution for border communities has been to send deportees straight back to their hometowns. In Tijuana, a range of Mexican federal, state and local programs offer deportees bus rides, paying anywhere from 25 percent to 100 percent of the ticket. Close to 15,000 accepted the offer last year, said Valladolid, the Mexican immigration official.

Julio Figueroa, 28, was offered bus fare to his hometown of Cuernavaca. “I said, ‘No, I don’t have family there,’” said Figueroa, who had lived in San Diego County since he was 8.

He has found a construction job in Tijuana, but for now still sleeps on a mattress at a shelter. It’s lonely and difficult he said, but he hopes to get back to San Diego somehow. “If I’m going to struggle, I’d rather struggle here.”

U.S. DEPORTATIONS PUT A BURDEN ON TIJUANA | UTSanDiego.com

Good , how does it feel Messyhole ?

The city’s officials say the presence of large numbers of deportees poses public safety problems and further strains social-service programs. Business owners near the border complain that they drive up crime and drive away customers. Deportees say they often are made to feel like convicts even when they are not — ostracized, unable to find work, lacking any family or friends in the area, targeted by police as well as criminals who shake them down and take their money and documents.

Bwaaaaaa haaaaaa. Turnabout is fair play. We don't want your criminals either.

Its NOT Our problem!! Mexico has to take responsibility for its citizens!! We deport, and rightly so! We shouln't keep them here and be burdened by their crimes & their illegal status!!

Bottom line: IT's NOT America's responsibility or problem! PERIOD.

Its INSANE and Ridiculous to even have the idea that America is responsible for this, Illegals are NOT Our citizens, therefore, NOT our Problem to take care of.

This falls 100% on the shoulders of Mexico!, They wont even foot the bill to Keep their citizens Out of America!

America SHOULD charge them the cost of deportation! Maybe that'll give them incentive to Man-Up and take charge of whats going on in their country!

Their citizens DON'T belong in America, they aren't legalized, authorized Americans, therefore, we shoulder 0% of the burden to care for them!

Hey MEXICO, SIMPLE SOLUTION!

GUARD YOUR NORTHERN BORDERS SO THEY WON'T CROSS INTO AMERICA!

Deporting Criminals back to their home country is the humane thing to do. If we lock them up and throw the key away or execute murders Mexico runs to NATO complaining that it is inhumane. Sorry Mexico you cannot have it both ways.

Ohh yes, its the US's fault that Mexico Citizens don't respect their home countries laws or our laws and act like a lawless people. Give me a break! How is Mexico's Citizens not a problem for Mexico? Why should it be our problem?

Right you are ShawnX5, and Welcome to ALIPAC...
Yeah sure, this is our fault....Deportation is not the cause!
A broken border is..Corruption and blatant failure to enforce immigration law is.
A corrupt Mexican state is!
Welcome to Tijuana....
Coming soon to a town near you real soon!

Added to the homepage with amended title
http://www.alipac.us/content/u-s-dep...en-mexico-147/