Deported criminals slip back into U.S.
Long-term effectiveness of policies questioned
By Leslie Berestein
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 17, 2007
By the time Jesús Ricardo Mendoza led police on a 90-mph chase down Interstate 215 in Riverside County two years ago, he had served four prison terms and had been deported four times already.
Mendoza, 33, had been convicted of assault, vehicle theft, drug possession and illegal entry. Although he had immigrated legally from Mexico as a child, he had since lost his legal status and been deported first through Nogales, Ariz., then twice through San Ysidro, then Calexico. Each time, he came back.
The federal government has stepped up efforts in recent years to deport immigrants with criminal records, sending agents to comb prisons and jails for deportable inmates in the name of national security.
But data from the Border Patrol suggest that such efforts may be misfiring. Thousands of previously deported criminals are caught trying to slip back into the United States, and it’s likely thousands more return unnoticed. Those caught are eventually kicked out again, making for a revolving door of lawbreakers.
Between last Oct. 1 and the end of August, a federal database the Border Patrol uses to identify illegal crossers with U.S. criminal records yielded 17,553 hits nationwide for violent and drug-related offenses.
Each hit represents an offense rather than an individual, said Lloyd Easterling, a spokesman for the agency in Washington, D.C., meaning that a person with two recorded offenses can show up as two hits.
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Prior offenses by the numbers
Major crimes that showed up on the records of previously deported, illegal border crossers apprehended from Oct. 1, 2006, to Aug. 31, 2007:
127: Kidnapping
286: Homicide
430: Sexual assault
789: Robbery
5,078: Assault
10,843: Dangerous drugs
SOURCE: U.S. Border Patrol Still, he said, the data provide an idea of how often deported criminals try to return to the United States. In fiscal year 2006, when 88,970 people with criminal records were deported, the Border Patrol logged more than 69,000 hits for prior offenses – excluding immigration violations – among the 1.1 million illegal border crossers arrested nationwide.
Last year, 72 percent of the immigrants with criminal records who were deported were Mexicans, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. With the exception of a small number flown to the interior of Mexico, most were simply taken to ports of entry such as San Ysidro and sent through the pedestrian gate.
Officials in Tijuana and other border cities have long complained about problems created by an out-of-town criminal element deposited at their doorsteps. The flip side is that much of this floating population eventually makes its way back north. The incentive is especially strong for those who have spent much of their lives in the United States.
In San Diego, Border Patrol agents are accustomed to chasing down recently deported convicted criminals.
Some try to jump the border fence just a few dozen yards east of the port of entry. Others make their way back through East County, where ranchers find rocks on their property sprayed with gang graffiti and agents routinely encounter deported felons, some so fresh out of prison they’re still wearing flimsy jail-issued sneakers.
“We pulled over a van, and two of them handed us their California corrections department cards as ID,” said R.K. Smith, the agent in charge of the Border Patrol’s checkpoint on state Route 94 in Dulzura.
Growing trendThe federal government’s current focus on deporting immigrants with criminal records dates to the late 1980s but has gathered steam in recent years.
Changes to immigration laws in 1996 made it easier to deport legal residents convicted of an aggravated felony or of petty crimes committed more than once within a certain time frame; at the same time, the definition of an aggravated felony was greatly expanded.
The latest push to find and deport immigrants with criminal records stems from the Secure Border Initiative, a 2005 plan that calls for screening 90 percent of all foreign-born state and federal inmates for immigration status by fall 2008, with the goal of deporting them once they have served their sentences. Similar screening in the jails of major metropolitan areas is expected by late 2009.
In its Homeland Security budget request for 2008, the Bush administration has asked for $28.7 million to add 22 new teams of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the agency’s Criminal Alien Program.
“The reason we focus on the jails is it just makes sense,” said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for the agency in San Diego. “Once they get out of jail, they become very difficult to locate. Why not use our resources inside the jails, where we have them in a limited, contained environment, and they are immediately there for us to take.”
Effectiveness at issueWhile the number of deported immigrants with criminal records has more than doubled since 1996, when 38,015 were removed, it’s the long-term effectiveness of these policies that is questioned by critics, who see them as just recycling criminals back and forth across the border.
Nationwide, ICE agents searching prisons and jails have identified more than twice as many deportable inmates this year than last.
Simply depositing these individuals at the border, some lacking even Spanish language skills, does not make for sound national security policy, said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.
“It’s a completely head-in-the-sand approach,” Shirk said. “If you come from East L.A. and you came here when you were 3 years old, and you’re going back to Mexico or Central America, you do not have the coping skills to deal with that society . . . It’s ultimately going to come and bite us in the end.”
Shirk criticizes the removal policies for contributing to the proliferation of transnational gangs, which have become a security threat as gang members deported to Central America have formed extensive organized crime networks.
On her Boulevard property, which is crisscrossed with migrant trails, ranch owner Donna Tisdale has found rocks tagged with what she believes is gang graffiti.
“I am glad they are deporting them, but it is just a revolving door,” Tisdale said.
This year, the owner of the Barrett Junction Cafe in Dulzura decided to take the pay phone off his porch to discourage loiterers, many of whom were calling for rides to the Los Angeles area.
“These guys out there on the porch don’t make for good business,” said cafe owner Leon Herzog. With the pay phone gone, now “the guys come here and try to use my phone, saying ‘my brother is in Long Beach.’ ”
Herzog, who routinely calls the Border Patrol, said most of those who show up at the cafe appear relatively harmless. The agents who pick them up say otherwise.
“If we get a citizen’s call from the Barrett Cafe, you pretty much know you are going to be doing casework,” said agent James Jacques of the Border Patrol, who spent several months working at the state Route 94 checkpoint last year. “There’s a 50-50 chance it will be a returning criminal alien, or in my experience, more like 80 percent.”
It was difficult to estimate how many deported criminals were returning until recently because the FBI-linked fingerprint database, known as the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System or IAFIS, wasn’t rolled out to most Border Patrol stations and ports of entry until 2004.
“We did not have the technology,” said agent Smith. “But I would see the prison tattoo on their neck, the three tears for the assassination, the prison shoes.”
When he first began using the database, Smith tallied the hits just for his checkpoint’s jurisdiction, between Brown Field in Otay Mesa and the Tecate port of entry on state Route 94. He calculated that about 3 out of 20 arrests, or 15 percent, involved a returning criminal.
Between the start of fiscal year 2007 last Oct. 1 and the end of August, there were 133,620 total hits on the database. More than half were for immigration violations, typically an administrative offense. The rest include crimes ranging from homicide (286) and assault (5,078) to drug-related offenses (10,843), and minor violations such as traffic (7,915) and gambling offenses (41).
There have been fewer total hits so far this year than last, agency spokesman Easterling said, because overall apprehensions are down.
More jail timeMendoza, the four-time deportee, was wrapping up yet another prison sentence – punishment for the car chase – when San Diego ICE agents picked him up at Centinela State Prison in Imperial County this year. Rather than deport him again, the standard approach, they charged him with illegal re-entry after deportation, a felony.
In San Diego and several other cities, the agency has set up prosecution units to deal with criminal deportees in the hope that more jail time will dissuade them from coming back again.
“We created this unit in response to the growing numbers of criminal aliens returning across the border,” Mack said. “We’re trying to use prosecution as a deterrent tool.”
Once he completes his new 57-month sentence, Mendoza, will be deported one more time – cycled back through the system and, some say, likely to return.
Long-term effectiveness of policies questioned
By Leslie Berestein
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 17, 2007
By the time Jesús Ricardo Mendoza led police on a 90-mph chase down Interstate 215 in Riverside County two years ago, he had served four prison terms and had been deported four times already.
Mendoza, 33, had been convicted of assault, vehicle theft, drug possession and illegal entry. Although he had immigrated legally from Mexico as a child, he had since lost his legal status and been deported first through Nogales, Ariz., then twice through San Ysidro, then Calexico. Each time, he came back.
The federal government has stepped up efforts in recent years to deport immigrants with criminal records, sending agents to comb prisons and jails for deportable inmates in the name of national security.
But data from the Border Patrol suggest that such efforts may be misfiring. Thousands of previously deported criminals are caught trying to slip back into the United States, and it’s likely thousands more return unnoticed. Those caught are eventually kicked out again, making for a revolving door of lawbreakers.
Between last Oct. 1 and the end of August, a federal database the Border Patrol uses to identify illegal crossers with U.S. criminal records yielded 17,553 hits nationwide for violent and drug-related offenses.
Each hit represents an offense rather than an individual, said Lloyd Easterling, a spokesman for the agency in Washington, D.C., meaning that a person with two recorded offenses can show up as two hits.
Advertisement
Prior offenses by the numbers
Major crimes that showed up on the records of previously deported, illegal border crossers apprehended from Oct. 1, 2006, to Aug. 31, 2007:
127: Kidnapping
286: Homicide
430: Sexual assault
789: Robbery
5,078: Assault
10,843: Dangerous drugs
SOURCE: U.S. Border Patrol Still, he said, the data provide an idea of how often deported criminals try to return to the United States. In fiscal year 2006, when 88,970 people with criminal records were deported, the Border Patrol logged more than 69,000 hits for prior offenses – excluding immigration violations – among the 1.1 million illegal border crossers arrested nationwide.
Last year, 72 percent of the immigrants with criminal records who were deported were Mexicans, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. With the exception of a small number flown to the interior of Mexico, most were simply taken to ports of entry such as San Ysidro and sent through the pedestrian gate.
Officials in Tijuana and other border cities have long complained about problems created by an out-of-town criminal element deposited at their doorsteps. The flip side is that much of this floating population eventually makes its way back north. The incentive is especially strong for those who have spent much of their lives in the United States.
In San Diego, Border Patrol agents are accustomed to chasing down recently deported convicted criminals.
Some try to jump the border fence just a few dozen yards east of the port of entry. Others make their way back through East County, where ranchers find rocks on their property sprayed with gang graffiti and agents routinely encounter deported felons, some so fresh out of prison they’re still wearing flimsy jail-issued sneakers.
“We pulled over a van, and two of them handed us their California corrections department cards as ID,” said R.K. Smith, the agent in charge of the Border Patrol’s checkpoint on state Route 94 in Dulzura.
Growing trendThe federal government’s current focus on deporting immigrants with criminal records dates to the late 1980s but has gathered steam in recent years.
Changes to immigration laws in 1996 made it easier to deport legal residents convicted of an aggravated felony or of petty crimes committed more than once within a certain time frame; at the same time, the definition of an aggravated felony was greatly expanded.
The latest push to find and deport immigrants with criminal records stems from the Secure Border Initiative, a 2005 plan that calls for screening 90 percent of all foreign-born state and federal inmates for immigration status by fall 2008, with the goal of deporting them once they have served their sentences. Similar screening in the jails of major metropolitan areas is expected by late 2009.
In its Homeland Security budget request for 2008, the Bush administration has asked for $28.7 million to add 22 new teams of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the agency’s Criminal Alien Program.
“The reason we focus on the jails is it just makes sense,” said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for the agency in San Diego. “Once they get out of jail, they become very difficult to locate. Why not use our resources inside the jails, where we have them in a limited, contained environment, and they are immediately there for us to take.”
Effectiveness at issueWhile the number of deported immigrants with criminal records has more than doubled since 1996, when 38,015 were removed, it’s the long-term effectiveness of these policies that is questioned by critics, who see them as just recycling criminals back and forth across the border.
Nationwide, ICE agents searching prisons and jails have identified more than twice as many deportable inmates this year than last.
Simply depositing these individuals at the border, some lacking even Spanish language skills, does not make for sound national security policy, said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.
“It’s a completely head-in-the-sand approach,” Shirk said. “If you come from East L.A. and you came here when you were 3 years old, and you’re going back to Mexico or Central America, you do not have the coping skills to deal with that society . . . It’s ultimately going to come and bite us in the end.”
Shirk criticizes the removal policies for contributing to the proliferation of transnational gangs, which have become a security threat as gang members deported to Central America have formed extensive organized crime networks.
On her Boulevard property, which is crisscrossed with migrant trails, ranch owner Donna Tisdale has found rocks tagged with what she believes is gang graffiti.
“I am glad they are deporting them, but it is just a revolving door,” Tisdale said.
This year, the owner of the Barrett Junction Cafe in Dulzura decided to take the pay phone off his porch to discourage loiterers, many of whom were calling for rides to the Los Angeles area.
“These guys out there on the porch don’t make for good business,” said cafe owner Leon Herzog. With the pay phone gone, now “the guys come here and try to use my phone, saying ‘my brother is in Long Beach.’ ”
Herzog, who routinely calls the Border Patrol, said most of those who show up at the cafe appear relatively harmless. The agents who pick them up say otherwise.
“If we get a citizen’s call from the Barrett Cafe, you pretty much know you are going to be doing casework,” said agent James Jacques of the Border Patrol, who spent several months working at the state Route 94 checkpoint last year. “There’s a 50-50 chance it will be a returning criminal alien, or in my experience, more like 80 percent.”
It was difficult to estimate how many deported criminals were returning until recently because the FBI-linked fingerprint database, known as the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System or IAFIS, wasn’t rolled out to most Border Patrol stations and ports of entry until 2004.
“We did not have the technology,” said agent Smith. “But I would see the prison tattoo on their neck, the three tears for the assassination, the prison shoes.”
When he first began using the database, Smith tallied the hits just for his checkpoint’s jurisdiction, between Brown Field in Otay Mesa and the Tecate port of entry on state Route 94. He calculated that about 3 out of 20 arrests, or 15 percent, involved a returning criminal.
Between the start of fiscal year 2007 last Oct. 1 and the end of August, there were 133,620 total hits on the database. More than half were for immigration violations, typically an administrative offense. The rest include crimes ranging from homicide (286) and assault (5,078) to drug-related offenses (10,843), and minor violations such as traffic (7,915) and gambling offenses (41).
There have been fewer total hits so far this year than last, agency spokesman Easterling said, because overall apprehensions are down.
More jail timeMendoza, the four-time deportee, was wrapping up yet another prison sentence – punishment for the car chase – when San Diego ICE agents picked him up at Centinela State Prison in Imperial County this year. Rather than deport him again, the standard approach, they charged him with illegal re-entry after deportation, a felony.
In San Diego and several other cities, the agency has set up prosecution units to deal with criminal deportees in the hope that more jail time will dissuade them from coming back again.
“We created this unit in response to the growing numbers of criminal aliens returning across the border,” Mack said. “We’re trying to use prosecution as a deterrent tool.”
Once he completes his new 57-month sentence, Mendoza, will be deported one more time – cycled back through the system and, some say, likely to return.
