Posted on 05/18/2006 3:42:25 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SAN DIEGO – The vast majority of people caught smuggling immigrants across the border near San Diego are never prosecuted for the offense, demoralizing the Border Patrol agents making the arrests, according to an internal document obtained by The Associated Press. “It is very difficult to keep agents' morale up when the laws they were told to uphold are being watered-down or not prosecuted,” the report says.
The report offers a stark assessment of the situation at a Border Patrol station responsible for guarding 13 miles of mountainous border east of the city. Federal officials say it reflects a reality along the entire 2,000-mile border: Judges and federal attorneys are so swamped that only the most egregious smuggling cases are prosecuted.
Only 6 percent of 289 suspected immigrant smugglers were prosecuted by the federal government for that offense in the year ending in September 2004, according to the report. Some were instead prosecuted for another crime. Other cases were declined by federal prosecutors, or the suspect was released by the Border Patrol.
The report raises doubts about the value of tightening security along the Mexican border. President Bush wants to hire 6,000 more Border Patrol agents and dispatch up to 6,000 National Guardsmen. He did not mention overburdened courts in his Oval Office address Monday on immigration.
The report was provided to the AP by the office of Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who has accused the chief federal prosecutor in San Diego of being lax on smuggling cases. Issa's office said it was an internal Border Patrol report written last August. It was unclear who wrote it.
The lack of prosecutions is “demoralizing the agents and making a joke out of our system of justice,” said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents agents. “It is certainly a weak link in our immigration-enforcement chain.”
The 41-page report says federal prosecutors in San Diego typically prosecute smugglers who commit “dangerous/violent activity” or guide at least 12 illegal immigrants across the border. But other smugglers know they are only going to get “slapped on the wrist,” according to the report.
The report cites a 19-year-old U.S. citizen caught three times in a two-week period in 2004 trying to sneak people from Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego in his car trunk, two at a time.
“This is an example of a kid who knows the system,” the report says. “What is true is that he will probably never be prosecuted if he only smuggles only one or two bodies at a time.”
The report also cites a Mexican citizen who was caught in Arizona and California driving with illegal immigrants and was released each time to Mexico. He was prosecuted the fourth time and sentenced to five years in prison, after two illegal immigrants in his van died in a crash.
U.S. Attorney Carol Lam in San Diego said about half her 110 attorneys work on border cases in an area where the Border Patrol made nearly 140,000 arrests last year. She said she gives highest priority to the most serious cases, including suspects with long histories of violent crime or offenders who endanger others' lives.
“We figure out how many cases our office can handle, start from the worst and work our way down,” she said.
Lam said many suspected migrant smugglers are prosecuted instead for re-entering the country after being deported, a crime that can be proved with documents. Smuggling cases are more difficult to prosecute because they require witnesses to testify.
The Border Patrol, which would neither confirm nor deny the document's authenticity, said prosecutors in San Diego recently agreed to prosecute a Top 20 list of smugglers if they are caught.
The Justice Department in Washington declined to comment. However, at a congressional hearing last month, Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., told Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that Lam's record on migrant smuggling was “a pathetic failure.” Gonzales replied that he was urging U.S. attorneys to more actively enforce laws but noted that immigration cases were “a tremendous strain and burden” along the border.
Peter Nunez, a former U.S. attorney in San Diego, said prosecutors along the border struggle with limited resources and a huge caseload of immigration cases.
“This is not an indictment of the U.S. attorney's office, because you have to deal with the realities of the caseload, but it is an indictment of how badly Congress and presidents have handled the immigration system,” he said.
The report says immigrants in the area paid an average of $1,398 to be guided across the border in 2004.
“Smugglers are making lots of money breaking the immigration laws, and there is not much incentive for them to stop these illegal activities,” it says. “The smugglers know that even if they are caught, it will be difficult to punish them.”
FROM THE LA TIMES
1. 40% of all workers in L.A. County (L.A. County has 10 million people) are
working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are
predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.
2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
4. Over 2/3's of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien
Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
5. Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican
nationals here illegally.
6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely
illegal aliens from south of the border.
8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
9. 21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish speaking.
10. In L.A.County 5.1 million people speak English. 3.9 million speak
Spanish (10.2 million people in L.A.County).
(All 10 from the Los Angeles Times)
Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops but 29% are on welfare.
http://www.cis.org
Over 70% of the United States annual population growth (and over 90% of
California, Florida, and New York) results from immigration.
The cost of immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 was a NET (after
subtracting taxes immigrants pay) $70 BILLION a year, [Professor Donald
Huddle, Rice University].
The lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average
adult Mexican immigrant is a NEGATIVE
29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.
Posted earlier as excerpt from ap article
AP: Many immigrant smugglers not prosecuted ^
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1634556/posts
You are correct. A serious fence would stop this thing dead. No need for a Border Patrol agent to take the Mexican drug smuggler to a court that's too overcrowded to even take the case. A fence keeps out the drug pushing scum in the first place
I accuse GW of crimal negligence for not shuuting down the mexicnn boder to keep out the drugs. Illegal immigrants are a menace but hwo about all the drug smuggling. Forget Colombia. Mexico sends us the most drugs
You should read the statistics in #2--since you don't feel illegals are a problem.
Neither the smugglers or the employers... everyone is making $$ here, and the citizens are the losers. The Repubs could take a principled stand on this and demand a REAL, comprehensive immigration policy, and they'd get at least half of the Dems to vote with them in November (the half that works for a living).
This could be the biggest possible winner for Repubs. Naturally, the Senate Repubs are going to find a way to make that impossible...
For example: 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
This is preposterous and cannot even be remotely true.
Poster #2 needs to provide proof that the Los Angeles Times ever published those statistics.
They are fabrications. Similar to the supposed "Quotes by Bush" emails I get aoccasionally.
Perhaps Beth528 will explain further, but I found some (but not all) of this in separate articles on the CIS link she provided.
Beth528, some of what you posted makes sense if only because of the huge percentage of illegals in L.A. County. The higher percentage of illegals, the higher the crime rates, I'd guess.
Here is something else you can everyone can read by Heather MacDonald (She appeared on O'Reilly tonight to talk about Hispanic crime) and her testimony is mentioned in the Snopes article. http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mac_donald04-13-05.htm
Here is a link to the source the writer of the op-ed piece in the LA Times used.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mac_donald04-13-05.htm
WOW- did you see this on the snopes page??? Astonishing numbers, thanks for the link- and thanks to the other poster for calling you on that so we could see this!!LOL This was almost 10 years ago- I wish we had the numbers for more recent years- does anyone know how to dig that out???
From Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/taxes.asp
A 1997 General Accounting Office (GAO) report determined that in 1995 households headed by illegal aliens received a total of $700 million in AFDC benefits and $430 million in Food Stamps.
Ping to # 16
1995 **almost 10 years ago** should be **over 10 yers ago**
Time warp day- sorry
This has been going on for years and years! The entire process is a joke. The democrats want them across the border for votes, although of course, they aren't supposed to vote! I can't recall a time in my life when this wasn't a problem in California.
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