Investigators: ICE cracks down on criminal aliens
10:36 PM PST on Wednesday, November 7, 2007
By CHRIS INGALLS / KING 5 News
http://www.king5.com


SEATTLE – Immigration is a political hot potato right now as lawmakers debate an overhaul to immigration laws.

There is not a lot of argument when it comes to undocumented immigrants who commit serious crimes in this country. The federal government has not done much to find them - until now.

It was a knock at the door that was years in coming. Agents from Immigration and Custom's Enforcement, or ICE, recently put Juan Albarran-Martinez in handcuffs during a pre-dawn round-up.

Martinez has been on-the-run since 2005, when a judge ordered him deported to his Mexican homeland. Like the others targeted in the round-up, he has a criminal history as well, with convictions for DUI and two assaults.

Neil Clark, head of ICE's detention and removal operations in the Pacific Northwest, says his team targets immigration fugitives -- those who've ignored a judge's orders to leave the country. Those with additional criminal records, which ICE calls "criminal aliens," are a No. 1 target.

"Those are the ones we're gonna try to identify as quickly as we can and go out and get them," Clark said.

ICE has arrested so many criminal aliens this year that for the first time in United States history it's actually cutting into the backlog of tens of thousands of cases nationwide. Cases like that of Ramiro Fernandez, who thought the law would not come after him. He's been in Washington on a Green Card since 1985 and served his time for dealing heroin.

"I wasn't running," Ramiro said. "I wasn't hiding."

Fernandez was deported within days of his capture last month.

Six years ago the King 5 Investigators showed how the federal government was failing its mission to deport criminal aliens - even those that were easy to find.

The INS was supposed to place immigration holds on those locked up in local jails for various crimes. Instead of being deported, the K5 Investigators found they often walked free after serving their jail sentences.

We live with the consequences to this day.

At a Federal Way apartment, KING 5 recently found Camarino Lemus. Profiled in a 2001 Investigators story, Lemus is still legally in the United States. In 2002 an immigration judge allowed him to stay even though he has convictions for a sex crime -- an assault -- and failure to register as a sex offender. Authorities say Lemus has not had any troubles with the law since 2001.

Other cases have had more tragic consequences.

Sex offender Teraphon Adhahn could have been deported in the 1990s. He's now accused in the rape and murder of 12-year-old Zina Linnick in Tacoma.

ICE's goal is 1,000 fugitive arrests in the Pacific Northwest this year.

Arron Patterson helped catch the drunk driver, Hilariou Pinto-Cordero, who smashed into the back of a Nissan earlier this month and ran off. Pinto-Cordero has three previous DUIs. KING-TV found court papers from his last case in his front seat at the time of crash.

This time -- though – ICE found him in the King County Jail and expects to deport Cordero this month.

"I'm glad that he's off the road," Patterson said.

These fugitive arrest teams make immigration rights groups uncomfortable. The groups generally like the idea of going after violent criminals, but they do worry that agents are using them as a "cover" -- one activist called it -- to sweep up immigrants who are here illegally but are otherwise leading honest lives.

Agents do sometimes make these kind of "collateral" arrests, and say they can't just look the other way.