Sending them back (The Columbus Dispatch)

Sending them back
Stepped-up deportation efforts present enforcement challenges

Wednesday, September 10, 2008 3:11 AM
By Stephanie Czekalinski and Jill Riepenhoff
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

The caravan of unmarked vans and a sheriff's bus unloaded the human cargo onto the sweltering tarmac of an airport in northwestern Ohio.

Nearly 100 illegal immigrants shuffled toward the plane, handcuffed and shackled at the waist and ankles.

They were going home, compliments of Uncle Sam.

Everyone involved in the 45-minute boarding process -- deputies, federal agents and immigrants -- looked tired or resigned to the realities of deportation.

Every week, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency flies as many as 127 immigrants caught living illegally in Ohio and Michigan to a small town in southern Texas.

From there, Mexican nationals are taken by bus across the southern border. Those headed to other Latin American countries wait for flights home.

Until recently, most immigrants living here illegally had little reason to fear deportation.
The days of catch and release apparently have ended.

Last year, ICE deported about 900 immigrants from Ohio. So far this year, agents have sent about 3,300 home.

ICE allowed The Dispatch to observe a deportation on the condition that it not publish specifics about the airport, the airplane, the agents, the immigrants and their destination.

For this flight in late July, the deportees arrived from county jails with immigration agents and deputy sheriffs as their escorts.

At the airport, they were transferred into the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, which operates the jet.

The marshals checked their passengers' mouths, hair and hands for hidden objects while ICE agents and deputies loaded catered meals and the immigrants' belongings onto the plane. In many cases, the luggage amounted to clear, kitchen-size garbage bags.

The white jet lacked any identifying marks or logos.

Of the 99 deportees on this flight, 95 were men, most of whom looked younger than 35. All were Latino.

Agents would not reveal how their prisoners ended up in custody. ICE typically picks up illegal immigrants at job sites, jails and prisons. Some may be felons. Some may have been caught speeding. Some may have been nabbed when agents were looking for someone else.

There are now more than 40 ICE agents in Ohio, up from eight a year ago.

The cost of deportation can be as much as $6,000 per person, said ICE spokesman Greg Palmore, who is based in Houston.

Some of the people on the flights are frequent fliers.

In 2007, more than 1,800 immigrants nationally were prosecuted for sneaking back into the country after being deported, he said.

"We'll see some of them again," said Rebecca Adducci, ICE's assistant field director in Detroit. "That's the reality."

Through May, more than 3,800 people nationally have been convicted of re-entering the country illegally -- a felony that can result in a federal prison sentence of up to 20 years.

Next year, the 5-year-old agency hopes to make an even greater impact. It has asked Congress for a $5.7 billion budget, up from $3.6 million four years ago.

If approved, the budget will add agents, bolster deportation operations and expand training to local police willing to help enforce immigration laws.

Mixed messages
If federal authorities beef up enforcement, they may face resistance at the local level.

Ohio is considering state laws to give local police the authority to enforce parts of the federal immigration law, which could cause a bigger surge in deportations.

But not all local authorities want it or will use it, leading to different approaches in different communities.

Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman, for one, believes that reaching out to Latinos, rather than hunting down those without visas, will make the city safer because they will work with police to solve crimes.

"I do not have the police department putting up roadblocks in the community checking people's IDs to see if they're documented or undocumented," Coleman said. "And we're not going to do it.

"I operate from a general philosophy of trying to unite, trying to bring people together to address our challenges in a constructive way."

Some fear that expanded police powers would lead to racial profiling by local officers, and some sheriffs worry about crowded jails.

"I don't believe we should be doing the federal government's job," said Franklin County Sheriff Jim Karnes. "Besides, if I lock 'em up and they get sick, who's going to pay for that? We have enough problems taking care of the locals."

But Franklin County law-enforcement agencies, all of which use the jail to house prisoners, are locking up Latinos more often on misdemeanor violations than blacks or whites, according to a Dispatch analysis of jail booking data from 2003 through 2007.

Nearly all of them were freed to return to their homes in central Ohio.

During the past five years, 83 percent of the charges against Latinos were misdemeanors, compared with 65 percent for whites and 56 percent for blacks.

Lawyers with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said the data supports anecdotal information they receive from Latinos at their office in Chicago.

Latinos complain that they are targeted and treated more harshly than others.

"We see local police feeling like they can take things into their own hands: 'I'll pull this guy over, and then I'll call ICE and he might be illegal,'" said Ricardo Meza, the group's regional counsel. "It might be that that person is here legally, and they may have (legal) action against the police."

In the eyes of many Latinos, anyone in uniform is a threat.

That fear is blamed by many as the reason police haven't been able to solve the arson that killed 10 Latinos four years ago at what were then known as the Lincoln Park West apartments in western Franklin County.

Fear also likely prompted a campus-area man to run and hide after his vehicle was hit by a car speeding at 50 mph on N. High Street in June. The victim, who lived illegally near the Ohio State campus, was so scared of police that he returned to Mexico, his neighbor said.

In May, two brothers who had been drinking tried to outrun a Franklin Township police officer. The car crashed into a tree, killing the brothers, ages 23 and 21.

Friends said the older brother had been caught driving without a license in March. A judge warned him then that he would be deported if he had any additional traffic violations.
Variety of enforcement

Who winds up facing deportation largely depends on which police officer arrests an immigrant.

"Our directive says, 'If you arrest someone, you fax the information to ICE,"' said Kenneth Ramos, a community liaison officer for the Columbus Division of Police. He's one of seven Hispanics on the force.

"But it's an individual officer's discretion. If they've never been arrested before, I give them a summons" to appear in court. Some never show up.

Other officers take a hard-line approach, calling federal agents on everyone that they suspect is living here illegally.

Take the cases of Jose and David, two Mexicans who sneaked into the country.

One was sent back home after being arrested for traffic violations; the other remained in the country for years after being charged with a violent crime.

Police first encountered Jose Jesus Banda Cuellar in 2006. The construction worker had pushed his wife out of the car he was driving on the East Side. He was charged with assault and domestic violence.

Last year, he ended up in more trouble after abusing her again.

Concerned about Cuellar's escalating temper, a court employee anonymously reported him to ICE last November. "He has no soul and the devil in his eyes," said the employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution.

Nothing happened. Then he was caught driving drunk in April, his fifth arrest. That finally triggered his deportation in May.

By contrast, agents quickly scooped up David Chavez, who was arrested by Columbus police for speeding and driving without a license in May.

Chavez called a relative from the Franklin County jail to help him make bail.

The relative stood outside the jail for four hours, waiting for Chavez's release. He never appeared. The relative later learned that Chavez had been deported in early July.

"It wasn't a serious crime -- he wasn't driving drunk," said the relative, who asked not to be identified because he's living in the country illegally.

Corey Price, an assistant field director in ICE's Columbus office, said the action was justified.

"He committed a crime," Price said. "If any local or state law-enforcement officer charges someone with a crime, we're going to interview him, no matter what it is."

ICE's priorities are offenders who are a danger to the community, but it will take people who have committed minor offenses into custody if it can.

Price said that some people are deported for traffic offenses while more violent criminals go free because ICE relies, in part, on local authorities to alert it when a violent criminal or traffic violator is in custody.

"For someone to come onto our radar, we have to be aware of them and arrest them ourselves, or another law-enforcement agency has to make us aware of them," he said.

Who's who?
When it comes to immigrants, the biggest challenge for police is identifying lawbreakers.

Without a valid visa, immigrants cannot legally get a driver's license in Ohio. So police are left to their own devices and databases of previous arrests to determine who's who when they stop an unlicensed driver.

Franklin County deputies struggled last year to sort out the identity of two Latinos with the same first and last names.

One was stopped for driving without his lights on. When deputies entered information from his Mexican ID card into the crime computer system, it reported that a man with that name was wanted for failing to pay a fine for drunken driving in 2004.

Deputies assumed they had caught the wanted man.

However, Latino names are confusing to some Americans because Latinos often use two first and last names.

The man driving without lights was arrested and sent to jail as a fugitive.

"It's unjust," said the man's wife, who asked not to be identified because she lives here illegally. "We can't get an ID. You have to go out. You have to drive."

Court officials used the man's expired Wisconsin driver's license and his Mexican birth certificate to confirm that he wasn't wanted for drunken driving.

By then, he had spent 10 days in jail before he was freed to return to his West Side home.

"For the safety of the officers, there should be some way to identify who they've stopped," said Henry Guzman, director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety and the governor's homeland security adviser. "There's a legitimate law-enforcement purpose."

Cleared for takeoff
Back at the airport, the deportees looked as if they were wearing the clothes they wore when taken into custody.

One woman wore fuzzy black house slippers; another, bejeweled jeans and pink flip-flops.

At least two men wore pants coated in different shades of paint -- presumably their work clothes.

Most shuffled along in jeans and work boots. One man, wearing a sweater vest and khaki pants, looked humiliated.

Stripped of their shoelaces and belts for safety, some immigrants struggled against their handcuffs and belly chains to keep their clothes in place. One man failed, accidentally mooning observers. An agent gently slid his pants back to his waist. An older man with gray hair and a goatee hobbled across the blacktop with a teenage boy beside him. The boy wore Crocs and checkered Bermuda shorts.

They looked like a family going on a Latin American vacation, except for the handcuffs and manacles.