Fast-track deportations set a record

Arizona Daily Star ^ | 2/24/04 | Michael Marizco

[SandRat]

A system that rushes criminal illegal entrants back to Mexico helped push the number of deportations from Eloy to record numbers last month, immigration officials said Wednesday.

"Stipulated removal" allows an illegal entrant convicted of a crime to be deported within days instead of weeks and that's at least partly credited for the deportation in January of 766 entrants who committed felonies, said Russell Ahr, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The system gives convicts the opportunity to not contest their deportation if they were going to be deported anyway, he said.

Under U.S. felony-deportation rules, illegal entrants and green card holders who commit felonies are deported to their native country.

A stipulated removal can be accomplished in 24 to 48 hours, Ahr said, and deportation officers are asking all eligible inmates if they want to enter that system, he said.

Up to 40 people a day are being removed using the system, compared with 10 to 15 when the system began last year, he said.

The fast system increases the turnover rate at the Eloy Federal Alien Detention Facility, he said. The center, which houses 1,500 foreign criminals, needs all the space it can get, said Phillip Crawford, field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement's detention and removal operations in Arizona.

But a judge may not know everything about a case when it's fast-tracked like that, said Holly Cooper, staff attorney with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project. The nonprofit group helps people through the deportation proceedings or represents them in front of an immigration judge.

While Mexican nationals are given the right to tell a deportation officer they don't want to see a judge, they also may be giving up access to knowledge that would allow them to stay in the United States, she said.

[SandRat]

That's what I get to do twice a week -- Stipulated Removal. Mrs. SandRat tells me to take the garbage out for pick-up. She stipulates that I remove it from the house and put it out for hauling to the dump.

[KiloLima]

Finally some good news!

Amen!

[Robert Lomax]

Yeh right, they just find another avenue to come in. It all about numbers. They'll finally get through again, without being caught.