Nytimes_logo_1.gif (1794 bytes) @wehaitians.com  arrow.gif (824 bytes) No one writes to the tyrants  arrow.gif (824 bytes) HistoryHeads/Not Just Fade Away
News & Analysis This Month ... Only our journal brings you hours of fine reporting and research.
Correspond with us, including our executive editor, professor Yves A. Isidor, via electronic mail:
letters@wehaitians.com; by way of a telephone: 617-852-7672.
Want to send this page or a link to a friend? Click on mail at the top of this window.

news_ana_1_logo.gif (12092 bytes)

 journal.gif (11201 bytes)
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (O.E.C.D.)

bluebullet.gif (326 bytes)Must learnedly read, too; in part, of intellectual rigor

bluebullet.gif (326 bytes)Wehaitians.com, waiting for your invaluable financial assistance blue_sign_1.gif (84 bytes)Reference Search
A SPECIAL SECTION: Haiti, Since the January 12, 2010 Fierce Earthquake

Posted Thursday, October 7, 2010                                        

Deportations From The U.S. Hit a Record High   
 
By JULIA PRESTON
 
Immigration authorities deported a record 392,862 immigrants over the last year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday.

About half of those deported - 195,772 - were convicted criminals, also a record, Ms. Napolitano said, and an increase of more than 81,000 deportations of criminals over the final year of George W. Bush's presidency.

As midterm elections approach, Obama administration officials are facing intense pressure to show they are tough on illegal immigration. States across the country have enacted laws to crack down, citing a failure of the federal government to do the job. An especially broad law adopted by Arizona drew a lawsuit from the federal government and an outcry from Latinos in the state, who said it could lead to harassment and racial profiling. A federal judge stayed central provisions of the law.

In some races for Congress, particularly in the Southwest, a candidate's position on the Arizona law has become a litmus test for many voters, especially among Republicans.

Ms. Napolitano said the deportation figures, especially the criminals figure, reflected the Obama administration's shift to focusing more closely on 'removing those who pose public safety threats to our communities.' The overall figures for deportations increased slightly from about 389,000 in the 2009 fiscal year, also a record at the time.

The surge in deportations of criminals came in part as a result of a program called Secure Communities, officials say, which allows local law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of every person, including American citizens, booked into a county or local jail. The identity check is based on comparing fingerprints of people arrested against prints in Department of Homeland Security databases.

Initiated in 2008 in Harris County, Tex., which includes Houston, the program has grown to include about 660 counties and cities nationwide. Sheriff Adrian Garcia of Harris County said on Tuesday that since the start of the program officers there had identified more than 20,000 immigrants in the county jail system who were eligible for deportation.

Many immigrants in Houston who were identified for deportation 'didn't come here to make a better life for themselves, they came to continue their criminal careers," Sheriff Garcia said.

About one-third of the criminals who were deported had committed the most serious crimes, including murder, rape and major drug offenses, according to the Homeland Security figures. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also conducted more than 2,200 audits of hiring documents at businesses to check for unauthorized immigrant workers, the officials said, bringing criminal charges against 180 employers and levying more than $50 million in fines.

Officials said that many of the nearly 200,000 immigrants deported who had committed no crimes were fugitives from immigration courts or had recently crossed the border illegally.

Immigration lawyers questioned that portrayal. "Were they immigrants who were just caught in the web of a very dysfunctional system?" asked David Leopold, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. He said that repairing the system would require a broader overhaul to provide channels for illegal immigrants to gain legal status.

"Everybody is behind smart enforcement," Mr. Leopold said. "But smart enforcement without a comprehensive fix to the system is not smart." Despite repeated pledges by President Obama, he has made no progress on persuading Congress to take up an overhaul.

Researchers who study federal statistics said they could not dig into the immigration figures to learn more about the deportees who were not criminals, because immigration authorities had blocked them for the first time from receiving detailed data. "It is unprecedented what they are doing withholding data," said Susan B. Long, a co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a group that studies federal data.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company. Reprinted from The New York Times, National, of Thursday, October 7, 2010.
Wehaitians.com, the scholarly journal of democracy and human rights
More from wehaitians.com
Main / Columns / Books And Arts / Miscellaneous