I cannot believe this crap. What the HELL do they expect?
...The lobby of U.S. Immigration Court in Harlingen is just about empty, with only a bored-looking security guard manning the front entrance.
Down the hall, immigration Judge Elozar Tovar is running down a list of names and case numbers one after another, and yet the table reserved for defendants remains empty.
In less than two hours, Tovar will have ordered the deportation of about 34 undocumented immigrants. Of those 34 cases, not one of the defendants has appeared in the courtroom.
Delinquency is the norm, not the exception, in the Harlingen branch of U.S. Immigration Court. According to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a division of the Department of Justice, which oversees the nation’s immigration courts, 88 percent of the 10,401 people scheduled to appear before the court in 2004 failed to do so.
Well no shit! I can't even begin to understand why they wouldn't show up to court and face deportation. What the hell are they doing free anyway? When you pick up a CRIMINAL, you should probably put them in jail, especially someone who is as great a flight risk as an illegal immigrant. When are we going to start using our heads?
Asked why so many aliens failed to appear, EOIR spokesman Greg Ganya handed the question to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more widely known as ICE. It is that agency’s duty to see undocumented immigrants to court and deport them if and when they lose their appeal for residency.
"We don’t have a rationale for it here. Whether they appear or not tends to be a function of the people who bring all the charges," he said.
When an illegal alien is apprehended, he is issued a Notice to Appear in immigration court at a specified date, usually within six months or less...
Why not issue them a deportation notice, a set of handcuffs and a one-way ticket back to Mexico?
...At the time of apprehension, ICE decides whether the individual should be detained in the time leading to the court date. If the person has a criminal record or is perceived as a threat to national security, he will be placed in a detention facility. If not, the person is released, with or without bond, depending on whether he is considered a flight risk.
WHY!?! I don't understand this. What illegal immigrant isn't going to be a flight risk, you idiots! By their very being here and attempting to avoid detection, they are saying "Hello, if you let me go I'm going to run away and hide again." WHY would you let these people pack up and move to some other state and hide? Why aren't these people loaded onto 747s or busses and shipped back to Mexico? These people should be arrested on the spot, detained, processed and shipped back to Mexico.
"From a practical sense, the reason why people fail to show up is individual to each person," he said. "I couldn't’t tell you why; we don’t really look at it that deeply." - ICE spokesman Manny Van Pelt
Our tax dollars at work! A six year old kid could tell you why they don't show up. They don't want to go back to the Hell-Hole that is their home country.
The fact that ICE doesn't consider the high rate of no-shows worthy of examination isn't surprising.
An organization still coming into its own, ICE was only created in 2002 by a massive government overhaul that proceeded the 9/11 terrorist attacks and spawned the Department of Homeland Security. ICE, a division of Homeland Security, replaced the much criticized U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and operates under the promising mandate of restoring integrity to the immigration system.
Budgeted at $3.6 billion for 2005, the division has the massive task of investigating terrorist threats, drug and human smuggling operations, as well as the monumental matter of enforcing immigration law.
A variety of people within the immigration field, from academics to legal representatives to federal officers, were contacted to explain the delinquency phenomenon. Everyone had a theory, but no one was able to offer a conclusive answer.
The most common explanation was that location and lack of jobs in the Rio Grande Valley make the area a funnel for undocumented immigrants to points north.
Well no shit, again. They're all migrating to Arizona and Tennessee and Florida. They've been caught and could have been deported, and instead they get a "second chance" to get away with their crime and continue to rob this country of Jobs, Tax revenue and increasing the costs of Welfare, health care and education.
WHY do we continue to let these people flow across the border and infiltrate our nation and culture and rob our treasuries? Why do we continue to elect people who will do nothing to stop the flow of criminals into our cities and states?
Denton Langford, an ICE agent in San Antonio, agreed to a degree, saying a good portion of those who didn't appear simply left the area and failed to notify the court of their change in address.
Well no shit, thrice. What the hell else are they going to do if they've been given a second chance to invade our country?
Most immigrants who appear in the Harlingen Court were captured somewhere in the 17,000 square miles that make up the McAllen sector of U.S. Border Patrol, which extends from Brownsville north as far as Palacios and west to Falcon Lake.
Every day, agents patrol the endless scrubland, keeping a close eye out for footprints and other signs that will give away an undocumented immigrant’s location. On an average day, agents capture about 270 people — and only about half will be Mexican, the majority of whom will opt to be returned home almost immediately to avoid the court system.
Does their low appearance rate in Harlingen mean that the Salvadorans who pass through here are less law-abiding than their counterparts in San Diego?
Probably not, said one attorney, who asked that her name not be used. She suggested ICE agents here simply were not doing a very good job of keeping undocumented immigrants in the area.
I'd agree. They should be slapping handcuffs on these people and sitting them in a cell until they can either be deported or properly processed, especially if there is an acknowledged problem with these people running after making bond. Why not just stop the process of bonding, since it's a MAJOR problem and start putting these people in that vacant courtroom right off the bat?
In truth, there is nowhere to put the majority of those apprehended. The detention center in Bayview, the only dedicated immigrant housing facility in the area, holds 800 people. That is far short of what would be required if every immigrant captured were to be held. According to Langford, Bayview’s beds largely are reserved for immigrants with criminal records.
If they capture 270 a day, and deported 270 a day, then a facility that could house 800 is THREE TIMES big enough to handle the flow of immigrants. If no one is showing up for immigration court, then there is no need for a waiting period. Ship 'em to the court after you catch them, house them at the facility after their case has been judged, then ship 'em out. See how easy? See how logical.
He said ICE will find extra space when the need arises, but the fact is the department simply doesn't deem it necessary to detain every immigrant, opting instead to release most of them on a minimal bond. According to Langford, the bond for an undocumented immigrant without a criminal record runs between $1,500 and $3,000.
Robert Garcia, a bail bondsman in the Valley, says the undocumented have adapted, often coming across with enough money to post the full bond themselves if they get caught.
"It’s a risky type of bond," Garcia said. "But a lot of these people have the money to post bond and not show up."
For someone who might already have paid thousands of dollars to human smugglers, $1,500 isn't a great loss. And with that money paid, freedom is only a bus ride away.
WHY! WHY! WHY! I just don't get it. Stop bonding them and make them all pay a $5000 fine for illegally entering the country and then ship them back. WHY are they turning these criminals loose and expecting them to be honest and come back for their trial. Why not just confiscate everything they have when they are caught and punt them right back to their home-land?
In the case of those captured in the Rio Grande Valley alone, more than 9,000 people a year join the swelling ranks of undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
Read that very carefully. 9,000 illegal immigrants A YEAR, who have been captured at the border by the INS and ICE are turned loose to enter the United States so they can steal jobs, swell welfare expenses, crowd our schools, and rob our health care systems. 9,000 a year.
* Notice. The article is presented here in a slightly trimmed form. For the full article, see the link at the top of the story.
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