Illegals Going Back by the Planeload
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (Feb. 17) - Ana Ortega left here for the USA 14 years ago. She never thought she'd return, much less like this: in handcuffs and ankle shackles, on a U.S. government jet with 49 others whose criminal convictions got them deported from the USA.
Ortega, 27, said that she was a legal permanent U.S. resident and that until recently she was an office manager for a chiropractor in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. Four years ago, she was convicted of conspiracy for being a bit player in a drug-smuggling ring. Her husband, a U.S. citizen and repeat offender, received 10 years in prison; she got probation. She was ordered to appear at a deportation hearing, but she skipped it.
In another time — before the Sept. 11 attacks focused attention on lax enforcement of immigration laws — she probably would have been free to continue living in the USA with her two young children. U.S. agents rarely pursued hundreds of thousands of fugitives like Ortega. That's what happened in her case for nearly three years — before agents showed up at her door seven months ago.
On Monday, Ortega was sent back to the Dominican Republic on a flight from Boston that symbolized the U.S. government's increasingly aggressive push to expel immigrants who either are here illegally or violate the conditions of their stay by committing crimes. More than three years after John Ashcroft, then attorney general, cited the 9/11 attacks by foreign terrorists in announcing a broad crackdown on violators of immigration laws, the United States is deporting foreigners at an unprecedented pace.
'Busy all the time'
During the year that ended Sept. 30, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported a record 157,281 immigrants. Like Ortega and the others aboard the flight to Santo Domingo, more than half of those deported last year had criminal records, a reflection of ICE's emphasis on booting such people from the country. The jet that brought Ortega back here also included convicted drug dealers, sex offenders, robbers and wife beaters.
As ICE agents have pursued criminals who are in the USA illegally, they also have swept up record numbers of illegal immigrants who have committed no crimes other than violations of visa limits and other immigration laws. That helped increase the total number of deportations by more than 45% from 2001 to 2004.
Most of those deported — more than 70% in 2004 — have been returned to Mexico. Most of the rest have been sent back to Central or South America or to the Dominican Republic. ICE now has four jets that in 2003 alone made 317 flights to return more than 18,500 immigrants to their native countries.
"We're busy all the time," says Jonathan Rust, chief of the Air Transportation Unit for ICE, which is a division of the Department of Homeland Security. "We have two (Boeing) 737s and two MD-83s, and I could probably use two more."
ICE expects the number of deportations to increase again this year. In his 2006 budget, President Bush has requested an additional $170 million above the $1.4 billion that ICE's Detention and Removal program will get in 2005.
"We're going to make the community safer by removing aliens who come into the country and commit crimes," says Victor Cerda, acting director of Detention and Removal.
Those targeted for deportation represent a small fraction of the estimated 8 million illegal immigrants in the USA. Most illegal immigrants are unknown to U.S. immigration officials. Only those who are caught trying to enter the USA or who otherwise reveal themselves — such as by committing crimes, applying for asylum or seeking government benefits — become targets for deportation.
Despite the rising number of deportations, U.S. agents have struggled to reduce the number of illegal immigrants who have disobeyed orders to leave the country or who have failed to appear at deportation hearings. That number has remained at an estimated 400,000 because immigrants continue to flow into the USA — particularly along the Southwest border — and illegal immigrants continue to defy orders to appear at deportation hearings.
Detention and Removal identifies non-citizens who have been ordered by a federal judge to leave the country but who have ignored the orders or failed to appeal in court.
Agents also track non-citizens who are serving time for serious crimes and bring their cases to an immigration judge. If the judge orders them deported, they can be sent to their home country as soon as they are released from prison.
"I think some aliens were willing to take the risk of not complying with the laws," Cerda says. "The message I want to get out is, 'We're not going to forget about you.' These people are being identified, and we're ... sending them home."
Cuffed and shackled
At an airfield near Boston, the deportees boarded a government 737 in handcuffs and ankle shackles after U.S. marshals searched them for weapons.
After the jet landed here, the marshals removed the handcuffs and shackles. The deportees walked off the jet and into the custody of Dominican immigration officials. Any of the deportees with outstanding warrants in the Dominican Republic were to be kept in custody; the rest were to be freed.
Ortega says she was sad to have left the USA. Her son, 8, and her daughter, 5, are U.S. citizens and will live with Ortega's mother in the USA. "It wouldn't be fair for them to have to live in a country they've never lived in," Ortega says.
An immigration judge ruled that Ortega should be banned from the USA for life, but she plans to ask the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic whether there's a chance she could return to the USA.
"People make mistakes," she says. "Now it's not only me, but my kids who will pay."
02-17-05 09:19 EST
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