Posts tagged Illegal Entry

Prosecutors say they lack resources, facilities

It’s illegal to enter the United States without permission. At least technically.Improper entry by an immigrant is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in prison. A second offense is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison.

But in practice, it’s treated much less seriously.

“We basically do not prosecute that offense,” said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. “Essentially, if you’re an illegal alien and you come across the border and we find you, we almost never do anything.”

Indeed, in 2008, the most recent year for which information is available, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California – which includes San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties – didn’t prosecute a single person for simple illegal entry.

The lack of prosecutions is just a sign that, as lawmakers have said, U.S. immigration policy is broken and doesn’t satisfy those on either side of the debate.

Illegal immigrants who are found and detained by federal officials are often deported but rarely charged with the crime of entering the country illegally. That usually only happens, Mrozek said, when an illegal immigrant has been convicted of a felony and has returned to the U.S. after being deported.

“It always comes after that person has been convicted of some other offense – drug trafficking, burglary,” Mrozek said. “What we’ve decided to do is focus on the worst of the worst.”

In 2008, the Central District filed charges in 699 felony illegal immigration cases.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office, part of the Department of Justice, isn’t the only federal agency that deals with illegal immigration. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, can detain and deport immigrants, but it does not charge illegal immigrants with a crime.

In many cases, illegal immigrants from Mexico and Canada are allowed to go home without being formally deported.

In a speech Thursday, President Barack Obama acknowledged that illegal entry, even if it isn’t treated as a crime per se, is a violation of U.S. law.

“Ultimately, our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship,” Obama said. “And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million (illegal immigrants in the U.S.) who broke these laws should be held accountable.”

The nation’s patchwork of immigration enforcement techniques doesn’t seem to please the president or anyone else.

Rep. Joe Baca, D-San Bernardino, who has been a vocal advocate of allowing illegal immigrants in the U.S. an opportunity to become citizens, says illegal immigrants should not be seen as criminals.

“The hard-working men and women who are here to make a better way of life for their families are not criminals,” Baca said. “They are an embodiment of the American dream.”

Emilio Amaya, executive director of the San Bernardino Community Service Center, which provides legal aid to immigrants, said he has concerns about how ICE enforces immigration laws, specifically that the agency will deport people without taking into account the families they are leaving behind.

“I think enforcement should recognize that people come from mixed families,” he said, meaning families in which some members are illegal immigrants while some are citizens or legal residents. “Before expelling people from the country, I think family unification, morally, should play a role.”

But Raymond Herrera – president of anti-illegal-immigration group We the People, California’s Crusader – said it’s not acceptable for illegal immigrants to carry on without being punished.

Federal officials, Herrera said, “took the law and said we’re only going to go after criminals – but they’re all criminals.”

He said those who want to allow illegal immigrants to become citizens and ignore the crime of illegal entry might think illegal immigration is a victimless crime.

“The federal government says there’s no victim, but that illegal alien displaced an American worker,” Herrera said. “I’m a victim, but nobody is looking to prosecute the criminal.”

He said federal officials should find illegal immigrants, charge them and deport them.

But Rep. Gary Miller, R-Brea, said the federal government isn’t even doing enough to remove illegal immigrants who have committed other crimes.

“We can’t even prosecute some of the most egregious,” Miller said. “Let’s prosecute the people who are coming here and committing crimes.”

Mrozek said prosecuting every illegal immigrant in the country – estimates range from 11 million to 30 million – or even the Central District of California would require a lot more resources than his office has.

“If we wanted to, every single prosecutor in our office could do nothing but immigration crimes,” he said. “There’s enough business, so to speak, to keep those people more than occupied.”

But he said the U.S. Attorney’s Office has other priorities: international smuggling, organized crime, tax evasion.

“If we had thousands of prosecutors and the (federal) Bureau of Prisons had infinite beds and we had who knows how many courtrooms, yeah, all these cases could theoretically be dealt with,” Mrozek said. “We have what we have, and we do the best we can to deal with the criminal problems that exist in our district.”

Herrera, though, said a lack of manpower or resources isn’t a good argument for letting thousands of criminals off the hook.

“When they tell you they can’t afford to enforce the law, they’re saying we have a state of anarchy,” he said.

Source: SBSun.com