Bee Staff and News Reports
Published 10/26/03 04:10:18
At any given moment, there are an estimated 20,000 criminal immigrants sitting in California prisons – half of them in the San Joaquin Valley.
The numbers continue to grow, according to immigration officials, who also cite a high incidence of criminal illegal immigrants returning to the United States after their release from prison.
How many of the criminal deportees eventually make it back to the United States is not known for sure, but estimates from police and researchers start at 40% nationwide.
Authorities cite a recent state study that concluded that as many as seven out of 10 criminal immigrants released from custody in California – 70% – eventually return to the United States.
Officials in the home countries of the criminal deportees report the same pattern. In El Salvador, for example, Metropolitan Police Chief Eduardo Linares estimated that 60% or more of the criminal deportees to his country end up returning to the United States.
Much of the evidence is anecdotal, but there are some intriguing statistics. Testifying before Congress in 1999, Robert Bach, then an associate commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, cited a 1997 study of the Los Angeles County jail system.
It found that 75% of the criminal immigrants who had been removed from the county’s jails and deported over the previous six years not only had returned to the United States but were back in county jails for new offenses.
Many deported from Los Angeles or the Valley are Mexicans who don’t have far to go to return. The percentage returning from other countries is likely to be lower, the study found.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William Sims says the Eastern District of California last year prosecuted about 400 cases of illegal immigrants with criminal records who had re–entered the country after being deported at least once.
In most of those cases, the federal government obtains a writ to bring the inmate out of state prison after he or she has completed the term for the felony committed. The prisoner then faces the federal charges, Sims said.
“An illegal re–entering the country, that in and of itself, is a crime,” Sims said.
The illegal immigrants in federal court typically enter plea agreements and serve an additional 24 to 30 months after their state sentence.
Despite the prison time they face, authorities say, many of the criminal illegals have a cocky attitude about being deported.
Orange County Assistant District Attorney Al Valdez said he hears it often: “Go ahead, deport me. I’ll be back in two weeks.”
The cost of housing the prisoners is borne by local governments or the state. Fresno and Tulare counties law enforcement agencies recently received federal grants to help pay for putting criminal illegal immigrants in jail.
Fresno County will get $737,301. Tulare County will get $495,203. The money is from the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program.
Last year in the Valley, about 1,800 illegals were removed from jails and faced deportation, immigration officials said.
The deportations, authorized by a 1996 federal law, were intended to reduce crime in the United States, but there is no hard evidence that it is working – and many in law enforcement doubt that it has made much difference.
The deportations, authorized by a 1996 federal law, were intended to reduce crime in the United States, but there is no hard evidence that it is working – and many in law enforcement doubt that it has made much difference.
Resendez was 14 when he first came to the United States from Mexico and 17 when he first got in trouble with the law. Over the next 20 years, he was arrested 16 times, deported at least eight times, and kept returning, using at least 11 aliases.
What police did not discover until 1999 was that Resendez also was killing people – seven in Texas, two in Florida, two in Illinois and one each in California, Kentucky and Georgia, all near the train lines he rode from coast to coast. He is now on death row in a Texas prison.
Bee staff writer Jerry Bier and The Associated Press contributed to this report.