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 News from Around the Americas | December 2007 
Dallas Immigration Officials Cracking Down on Those Who Ignore Deportation Orders
 Dianne Solís - Dallas Morning News
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| Nuria Prendes has been in charge of regional detention and removal operations for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas since 2003. The agency's Dallas office is one of the busiest in the country. (Sonya N. Hebert/DMN)
Nuria Prendes
Title: Field office director for detention and removal, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Birthplace: Guantánamo, Cuba
Education: Criminal justice degree, Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University), San Marcos
Career start: Border Patrol, Eagle Pass
Portfolio: Supervises teams in Oklahoma and North Texas in such areas as fugitive operations, the Criminal Alien Program and deportations by bus and plane.
Most rewarding part of the job:
"I get to make a difference. There are a lot of criminals out there. We have our own native-born criminal element. We do not need the foreign criminal element." |
Every day in Dallas, a bus loaded with Mexican deportees pulls out of a Homeland Security Department office near an interstate highway. Some days, there are two buses.
It's a get-tough testament to the federal crackdown against illegal immigrants – enforcement unseen in decades in the U.S.
"We are definitely doing all we can to tackle illegal immigration," said Nuria Prendes, head of regional detention and removal operations for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas since 2003.
Detention and removal operations took more than 40 percent of ICE's $4.7 billion budget last fiscal year.
And Ms. Prendes is part of a new emphasis on what the law enforcement agency calls fugitive operations – that is, the removal of illegal immigrants who have outstanding deportation or exclusion orders. In October 2006, there were nearly 624,000 persons who fit ICE's profile of a fugitive, according to federal audits done by the Office of Inspector General for the Homeland Security Department.
Such high numbers of illegal immigrants who ignored deportation orders – or in some cases never received them – come, in part, because ICE resources are stretched thin and detention bed space is sparse, the report said. But that effectively "created an unofficial mini-amnesty program," said the auditor's report in 2006.
The backlog is now down by about 42,000. Fugitive operations teams have been increased to 75 around the country, from about 50 a year ago.
And ICE has placed quotas on the fugitive operations teams to nab 1,000 persons a year, up from goals of 125 arrests in 2003, according to an updated 2007 report from the same auditors.
Nevertheless, with an estimated 11.5 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., the report said, "the fugitive alien population is growing at a rate that exceeds the teams' ability to apprehend."
Others are critical, as well.
"What kind of rule of law do you have when you order them deported and then you just sort of let them go into the fabric of the country?" said Roy Beck, executive director of Numbers USA, a group that wants restrictions on legal immigration and an end to illegal immigration.
For immigration attorneys fighting for clients, ICE's toughened procedures cause new worries, especially in North Texas, where the sweep of illegal immigration has been significant.
"Nearly everyone in that system believes their chance of promotion depends on racking up statistics that show they have deported a lot of people," said John Wheat Gibson, a Dallas immigration lawyer. "That is the ethos of the whole organization."
And that includes Ms. Prendes, Mr. Gibson said.
Ms. Prendes is herself an immigrant – albeit legal.
She left her native Guantánamo, Cuba, as a 9-year-old when her banker-father was forced to cut sugar cane and her mother was forced to sort beans on an island-nation being reconstructed by a young guerrilla named Fidel Castro.
Her family first defected to Spain. Then they came to the U.S. Soon they settled on the Texas-Mexico border. She graduated from high school in McAllen, Texas, earned her bachelor's degree in criminal justice, and took at job as a Border Patrol agent in Eagle Pass. A huge Smith & Wesson pistol on one hip and a large flashlight on the other padded out her self-described "Olive Oyl" frame.
"I know the system," said Ms. Prendes, who still carries a pistol, a 9 mm Glock. "I've lived through the system. I've seen my family live through the system. We left for political reasons. I know the difference between leaving for political reasons and leaving for economic reasons."
If Mr. Castro were to fall, she'd probably return to Cuba for a short visit, but she's "a proud U.S. citizen" now.
The Dallas office that she heads covers a 128-county region and Oklahoma. Two fugitive operations teams, each with seven persons, are based in Dallas, and a third is in Tulsa County, Okla.
Local efforts
Tulsa County now participates in a federal program that certifies local officers to perform certain federal immigration enforcement duties, under a section of immigration law known as 287(g).
Use of the program is on the rise. As Congress debated and then deadlocked on passage of a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws, 26 more states or municipalities certified some of their law enforcement officers for 287(g) training, which enables them to arrest people under federal immigration law.
There are now 34 state or local law enforcement agencies, with nearly 600 local officers participating in the program. But no city or county in Texas has been certified, Ms. Prendes noted.
ICE also operates what it calls the Criminal Alien Program – taking referrals from local law enforcement agencies that believe an illegal immigrant is involved in a criminal misdemeanor or a criminal felony. ICE agents then place a hold on the person and potentially proceed with a deportation.
That program has become so popular in North Texas that ICE officers say they're sometimes overextended.
Last month, ICE announced it would still take referrals but may not be able to respond to the mounting requests if the detainee is involved in a Class C misdemeanor. Class C misdemeanor charges include speeding, assault, public intoxication and hot checks. The penalty for the misdemeanors is a fine of no more than $500.
The move was a controversial one. ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said, "We are a victim of our own success. If we are getting huge amounts of referrals on any given day, we might say that we cannot take your Class C's right now."
'We do what we can'
As the public clamors for tougher enforcement, civil libertarians have hammered the agency with lawsuits, asserting Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations on the use of warrants and due process. Some efforts have been more diplomatic.
A month ago, the American Bar Association complained in a letter to Homeland Security that detainees who are transferred to remote facilities won't have sufficient access to immigration legal assistance. Illegal immigrants arrested in the Dallas area, for example, are sent some 200 miles away to Haskell, a city of about 2,700 in Central Texas.
Ms. Prendes emphasized that ICE has a contract with a jail there because the conditions meet corrections systems standards.
"We would love to have a jail closer but it must meet our standards," Ms. Prendes said.
She adds that warrants are properly administered in her ICE district. The absence of warrants in home arrests has been the subject of litigation in New York and New Mexico.
And workers do everything by the book, calling consulates when an arrest is made, and giving them access to detention facilities, as per a United Nations treaty on consular relations dating back to 1963.
Updated agreements on deportation processes cover minors, women and others considered "vulnerable," such as injured deportees.
For several years, federal immigration authorities rented detention space just outside Dallas in Denton County, but that space is now filled by "their own criminals," Ms. Prendes said.
To those who say frequently and loudly that ICE isn't doing enough to detain those in the U.S. illegally, Ms. Prendes responds: "Congress is the one who enacts the laws. All I do is enforce the laws. We do what we can."
dsolis(at)dallasnews.com
FUGITIVE OPERATIONS
Size: Nationwide, 75 teams target those who have been given orders of deportation, removal or exclusion. Teams usually consist of seven persons. There are three teams that report to the Dallas regional ICE office.
Scope: There are an estimated 11.5 to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. About 5 percent of them have been given orders to depart and are now classified as "fugitive aliens."
Challenge: The floating population of illegal immigrants with removal orders has grown, partly because of a lack of detention space, according to an Inspector General report. Those here unlawfully can be released under certain restrictions, such as a bond or with an electronic monitoring device, or with stipulations to report to ICE.
SOURCES: ICE and Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security |
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