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Low-risk, legal immigrants being deported

Travis County spent $1.3 million on inmates detained by federal program.

By Juan Castillo AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Updated: 6:22 p.m. Monday, Feb. 22, 2010
Published: 8:21 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010

A federal program to identify and deport dangerous criminal immigrants has been routinely scooping up legal and unauthorized immigrants with little or no criminal history, according to a locally generated study released this week by the Immigration Policy Center in Washington.

According to the study, 57 percent of immigrants identified by the Criminal Alien Program in 2009 had no criminal convictions, up from 53 percent in 2008.

Written by Austin attorney Andrea Gruttin, the report, “The Criminal Alien Program: Immigration Enforcement in Travis County Texas,” covers the history of what it describes as a problematic program responsible for deporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants.

The program is managed in local jails by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who cull through the jail population looking for those who are in the country illegally and who are considered dangerous because of their criminal backgrounds.

The study concludes that the majority of immigrants caught up in the program had been arrested on misdemeanor charges. In 2008, 58 percent of the detainers were placed on people charged with misdemeanors — up from 38 percent in 2007 and 34 percent in 2006.

The program “does not distinguish between the innocent and the guilty, between those who are traffic violators and those who are violent felons, or between victims and aggressors,” the report says, adding that the program tends to erode trust between immigrants and local law enforcement.

It found that in 2008, Travis County spent $1.3 million after federal reimbursements to house inmates with detainers from the program. The Travis County sheriff’s office disputed that assertion and other conclusions in the report, calling them nothing new. “They just put it in writing,” spokesman Roger Wade said.

“Obviously, (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) prioritizes removing dangerous criminals from the country, and no one is going to argue with the importance of doing that,” said Michele Waslin, a senior policy analyst for the center. “However, I think this report sheds some light on the effectiveness of doing that through this program.

“Are (those being apprehended) really the worst of the worst, or is there a better way to be spending taxpayer dollars?”

In a statement, the immigration agency referred to the program as an important tool to identify and remove criminal aliens from the United States.

“ICE is committed to smart, effective immigration enforcement that focuses first on criminal aliens that pose a threat to our communities,” the statement said.

“In the first four months of fiscal year 2010, the program identified more than 70,000 aliens already present in our nation’s jails and prisons.”

According to the study, the program apprehended more deportable immigrants than any other federal program. In 2008, the immigration agency charged 221,000 noncitizens under the program.

Critics say the local-federal cooperation through the Criminal Alien Program can have dangerous consequences, which the report notes. Immigrants might be discouraged from reporting crimes or cooperating with police because they fear deportation. Jails might be more crowded, and jail costs could go up. And deportations could separate families with children who are U.S. citizens.

Wade said the jail population has gone down by about 10.7 percent as ICE detainers have gone up. Of the report’s assertion that the program erodes trust in immigrant communities, he said, “We’ve said all along we’ve never seen any evidence of that.”

Thomas Esparza Jr., an immigration lawyer in Austin and a critic of the program said, “I agree there are dangerous people who need to be apprehended, but (the program) is such a broad net that it catches people with Class B and Class C misdemeanors.”

The Immigration Policy Center recommends that federal officials prioritize immigrants who have been convicted of felony offenses rather than low-level offenders. And it recommends that jail status screenings be conducted after conviction, not after arrest.

The center is the research and policy arm of the American Immigration Council. Waslin said it supports reforms that include legalization of unauthorized immigrants who are already in the U.S. and who do not have criminal records, and the creation of legal channels that allow more workers to come to the United States.

jcastillo@statesman.com; 445-3635

UPDATE: In the original story, the Travis County jail said the population there has decreased by about 20 percent as federal immigration agents have increased their presence there. Sheriff’s office spokesman Roger Wade said he misspoke and that the actual decrease is 10.7 percent.

Documents Reveal Earlier Immigrant Deaths

By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: January 9, 2010
Over the last two years, the news media and Congress have brought attention to many deaths in the immigration detention system that appear to have involved substandard medical care or abuse. But a trove of documents obtained over recent months by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union sheds light on even more fatalities.

Among the most haunting cases to emerge from the files are deaths that were undisclosed at the time but foreshadow the later fatalities that galvanized public attention.

One example is the case of Miguel J. Rodriguez Gonzales, 43, a longtime legal resident of California who was detained for immigration violations on Feb. 22, 2006. He had end-stage renal disease, diabetes and chronic heart failure, and was receiving dialysis at a hospital three times a week.

Records show that Mr. Rodriguez fell at least five times during his first 10 days in detention and reported “intense pain all over.” By March he was unable to shower by himself, and “for hygiene issues” he was sent to a disciplinary isolation cell. Soon he had to be taken to the clinic in a wheelchair because he was unable to walk.

“He has been sent to the emergency room three times and has been admitted twice for infection and hypotensive episodes while in our custody,” an immigration enforcement officer reported to a supervisor in April 2006, noting that the man’s condition appeared to be rapidly deteriorating.

To give him a chance to find a lawyer, the report said, an immigration judge kept delaying his deportation to Mexico — where Mr. Rodriguez had told jail medical personnel that he had no family and could not get dialysis.

On April 10, 2006, after two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents returned him to the San Pedro detention center after dialysis, Mr. Rodriguez told a supervisor that the agents had made him stand up from the wheelchair and let him fall to the ground several times, laughing and insisting that he could walk.

“He asked why they were treating him that way,” the supervisor wrote in a report about the allegations. “They picked him up from the ground and harshly shoved him into the transporting vehicle. One used his feet to shove or kick him into the vehicle.”

The Rodriguez matter was referred to the agency’s Office of the Inspector General, records show. But when an investigator arrived to interview Mr. Rodriguez, he was in a coma. With no complaining witness, the Justice Department’s civil rights division and the local United States attorney’s office declined to prosecute without comment. And when Mr. Rodriguez died on April 21, 2006, the investigation was closed.

The allegations are strikingly similar to those made by the family of Hiu Lui Ng, a Chinese computer engineer who died in April 2008, his spine broken and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed in a Rhode Island detention center, where he had pleaded in vain for proper medical care. In that case, however, the investigation unfolded against a backdrop of news media coverage and a lawsuit by relatives.

Detention center guards had been caught on security cameras as they dragged Mr. Ng from his cell a week before his death, insisted that he could walk, and ridiculed him as they loaded him into a van. The agency, caught in the spotlight of public attention, stopped placing immigration detainees there.

“There are tremendous acts of cruelty, and these are not just rogue individuals,” said Joshua Bardavid, a lawyer who represented Mr. Ng. “If there’s a common thread, it’s the system. It really is a systemic problem.”

Last summer the Obama administration announced an overhaul of detention, including improved health care for detainees and more centralized oversight. But the administration did not make legally binding rules for immigration detention, rejecting a federal court petition by former detainees and their advocates. It argued that “rule-making would be laborious, time-consuming and less flexible” than its own overhaul.

“I’m glad there are changes in the works, but obviously it’s too late for a lot of people,” Mr. Bardavid said. “And I’m skeptical until I see actually substantive changes and independently enforceable rules.”

Tomas Esparza Abogado “Conozco Sus Derechos”

Family claims U.S. midwife policies disrupted lives

January 03, 2010 10:20 PM
Jazmine Ulloa
The Brownsville Herald

BROWNSVILLE — The midwife home in Brownsville where Trinidad Muraira de Castro says she gave birth to her second daughter more than 25 years ago still stands on East Jackson Street. But, the midwife who delivered Yuliana no longer lives in it. Times have changed.

One August morning last year, Trinidad attempted to cross from Matamoros through a Brownsville port of entry with her two daughters, now in their twenties, and a newborn granddaughter, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Brownsville in September. But Yuliana’s birth certificate, registered by midwife Trinidad Saldivar, came into question.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer suspected the document to be false and for the next 11 hours, he held the women at the port of entry for intense interrogation, the Castros state in court records. The women say the officer harassed and threatened them with deportation or imprisonment to persuade them to sign papers confessing that their documents were fraudulent. They say they were not allowed to call anyone for help or speak to relatives who came to look for them.

“After a while, I realized I had no way out since he (the CBP officer) told me no matter what I did, to him, I was Mexican,” Yuliana, 25, writes in her statement.

Immigration attorneys are now seeking class-action status for the women’s lawsuit against CBP, saying the problem underwent by the Castros is systematic and a “window into the cases of dozens, if not hundreds, of similarly situated persons.”

CBP officers in the past have been accused of mistakenly detaining, deporting or denying entry to dozens of lawful U.S. citizens under what many have called a complicated and broken U.S. immigration system. But since the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative went into effect in June, those primarily targeted for long interrogations at ports of entry have been people with birth certificates issued by midwives, immigration attorneys said.

The travel security measure requires all U.S. citizens to present passport books, passport cards or other initiative-compliant documents when crossing into the country from Mexico through land borders.

But for years the U.S. Department of State had been arbitrarily rejecting hundreds of passport applications from people delivered by midwives, citing a history of forgeries for Mexican-born children in South Texas dating back to the 1960s, immigration attorneys said.

In a settlement agreement last year with the American Civil Libertities Union and immigration attorneys, the department agreed to implement new procedures and training for taking passport applications.

But many people have yet to receive their passports. To cross between Mexico and the United States, they must present their birth certificates, Texas identification cards and receipts for passport applications.

Yuliana writes in her statement that she showed these documents to the CBP officer at the Brownsville and Matamoros International Bridge but was still referred to secondary inspection with her family.

There, the situation became more complicated. Her mother had obtained falsified Mexican birth certificates for Yuliana and her sister, Laura Nancy Castro, 29, to enroll them in a Matamoros school when they were children, said Elisabeth Lisa Brodyaga, one of the lead attorneys in their case.

Out of intimidation and exhaustion from the officer’s questioning, Trinidad signed a “confession,” saying she had falsely registered her daughters as being born in the United States, according to court documents.

The women were denied entry into the country and sent back to Mexico. At the time of their crossing, Yuliana had been traveling with her newborn baby and Laura was pregnant, according to court filings. They lived in Brownsville with their spouses but had been staying temporarily with their mother in Matamoros.

A judge has since granted the sisters permission to re-enter the United States, but they can no longer visit their mother in Matamoros.

Their case demonstrates, immigration attorneys said, how the U.S.-Mexico border has become a different place for families like Trinidad’s, people who for years have made their lives along both sides of the Rio Grande.

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