Immigration Woes Abound

TAMPA - Fernando Merino-Ronquillo saw the Border Patrol car drive slowly past him, stop, then turn around. He never made it to his construction job that morning in December.

He admitted to the Border Patrol agent that he was in the United States illegally and figured he soon would be sent back to Mexico. But less than six hours after being caught, he was let go.

Across the country, immigrants such as 24-year-old Merino-Ronquillo routinely are released from government custody because there isn't enough space to hold them, according to an April report from the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Thousands are never found again.

Detention space will only get tighter in Florida, officials say, because the 300-bed immigrant jail and court in Bradenton is closing. Today is the last day of hearings at the facility, the only immigrant detention center and court on Florida's west coast. The two judges will move to the immigration court in Orlando. Detainees are being transferred to the Krome Detention Center in South Florida.

The federal government has leased jail and court space from Manatee County since 1996 for about $10 million a year. But the aging facility "doesn't fit the need anymore," said Michael Rozos, the director of detention and removal for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Florida.

He said the government wants to open a large detention center in North Florida, although no plans have been approved.

Border Patrol agents say the space problem has been building for years. "I couldn't believe it when I heard they were closing," said Richard Pierce, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the agents' union. Before retiring last year, he was based in Tampa.

Agents take the people they catch into custody, Pierce said. But when they notify ICE officials, who are responsible for detention, "they'll say, 'We have no space.'"

"So you'll set up a court date [for the immigrant] and say, 'You gotta be here on this date.' He'll just nod and say, 'Sure, OK.' Then he walks out the door.

Many agents wonder why they come to work every day, he said. Officials talk tough, but "what they're really doing is throwing their hands in the air and saying, 'We give up.'"

As of May, the number of immigrants who had been ordered deported and could not be found was up to 590,000.

Bush Says Catch And Remove Three weeks ago, President Bush went on national television to say the government would end the practice of catching and releasing undocumented immigrants. What he didn't say was that the plan focuses on newly arrived immigrants caught within 100 miles of the border or coastline they crossed.

"The president says from now on the policy is catch and remove," said Border Patrol Council President T.J. Bonner. "The reality is, there simply isn't enough money."

Six years ago this month, Merino-Ronquillo walked across the border near Douglas, Ariz., with about 10 others. A friend brought him to Tampa, where one of his brothers lived.

After that he found work with a concrete company building one of the condos in the Channel District.

He had just checked in that morning on Dec. 7 when the Border Patrol agent stopped him and asked to see his green card. He didn't have one. He sat in the patrol car while the agent picked up several more people at the Tampa bus station downtown.

He was questioned at the Border Patrol office. When noon came, he was told he could leave but that he would have to appear later before an immigration judge.

He found a lawyer, hoping for a way to stay in the United States, at least for a couple of years. But that lawyer, John Miotke, of St. Petersburg, had few options to offer.

He had two choices: stay illegally or leave. On May 11 he appeared before immigration Judge R. Kevin McHugh in Bradenton to ask that he not be deported but be allowed to go back to Mexico on his own. This meant that he wouldn't be barred from trying to return to the United States legally in the next several years.

"As soon as I got picked up, I knew it meant it was time for me to go back," he said. He also didn't want to live with a warrant out for his arrest.

Thousands seem to see it differently, according to the Homeland Security Department report.

Federal agents caught nearly 775,000 undocumented immigrants from 2002 through 2004. During that same time, the number of detention beds dropped from more than 19,000 to 18,000.

Because of a shortage of detention beds and staff, more than one-third of the immigrants who had been picked up were let go.

ICE Weighs Priorities The government now has about 21,000 detention beds and has asked Congress for more, said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman in Miami. In the meantime, "we are prioritizing our actions," she said. "We prioritize our focus on national security and public safety threats."

According to the HSD report, however, nearly 28,000 of the immigrants caught and released from 2001 through 2004 had criminal records.

The critical April report is the third in a series going back 10 years. In 1996, the Inspector General for the U.S. Justice Department found that the federal government had deported only 11 percent of the undocumented immigrants who had been caught, released and ordered to leave the country. It blamed a shortage of detention beds.

Border agents continued their patrols through 2004, catching 275,680 people, 8,300 more than the year before. Detention space and staff remained tight, the HSD report states. It created what the report calls a "mini amnesty."

But not for Merino-Ronquillo. About Sept. 7, he will fly to Mexico City, then take a bus to his village in the state of Veracruz. There he will have to file a form with the U.S. Consulate to prove he arrived.

He can't imagine what he will find in the place he left behind six years ago, a collection of about 100 people who earn their living working cattle. Over the years, at least one-fourth of them have left for the United States, Merino-Ronquillo said.

He'll follow the debate in Congress, he said, hoping for a change that will let him come back, hoping to come back legally.

Within weeks he was working, first roofing new houses, then repairing sewer pipes for a city contractor. He earned $8 an hour on that job, more money than he had ever imagined making in Mexico, he said.

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I found this line interesting, I remember when $8. an hour was far beyond the wildest dreams of all but the most ambitious tiny minority of American citizens, I was probably past thirty before it dawned on me that I might one day earn that much. Now, thanks to our government which has relentlessly removed all backing from the currency and inflated the money supply constantly during my lifetime, $8. an hour is now little more than peanuts. In fact, according to most figures currently quoted it is no more than equal to the 1963 minimum wage of $1.25 an hour, I say it is less than that.

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