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[Previous entry: "DHS Moves Forward On Open Competition For BCIS Jobs"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Iranian's 6-Year Journey to Celebrate Democracy"] 09/13/2003 Entry: "U.S. Faces Big Illegal Immigrant Problem" Of the estimated 8 million illegal immigrants, about 400,000 have been identified and ordered deported. It is the job of bureau to find them. September 13, 2003 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BOSTON (AP) -- The federal government is falling far short of its post-Sept. 11 goal of removing nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants from the United States over the following six years. The $10 million approved in April for nine new federal enforcement teams has been released, but the positions have yet to be filled. No new money is proposed for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. An internal immigration agency document estimated it will take 240 new teams over the next four years to round up foreigners who have ignored orders to leave the country. ``The numbers are growing at an alarming rate -- for every 10 final orders (of deportation) issued, we're removing six people,'' said Anthony Tangeman, director of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's detention and removal operations in Washington. ``We don't have the capability to remove all the removable aliens. We're not going to get to where we need to go in my lifetime, or at least in my career as director of this program.'' The 19 hijackers involved in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, traveled to the United States on valid visas; two were in the country illegally at the time of the attacks. Sept. 11 ``provided the catalyst for a lot of things. One of those was to highlight the fact that there are a lot of people in this country who don't belong here,'' Tangeman said. Of the estimated 8 million illegal immigrants, about 400,000 have been identified and ordered deported. It is the job of Tangeman's bureau to find them. The Boston office, touted as a bureau success, has doubled its goal of 450 arrests this fiscal year, apprehending 902 fugitives since Oct. 1. While immigration officials stress they target the more dangerous criminal aliens, often those caught in the dragnet are members of poor, foreign-born families who came in search of the American dream. Their crime is their refusal to give up their new lives. ``We're changing the way we view ourselves as a country,'' said Nancy Kelly of Greater Boston Legal Services, which provides free legal assistance to low-income people. ``We're a country of immigrants -- that has always been the soul of America. To assume now that they are all bad people, that they're all the enemy, is wrong.'' Instead, she said, many are confused by a complex and overloaded immigration system. She fears the increased enforcement will consume all the federal money and leave little for other immigration services. Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that wants to curb immigration, praised what he called a rare positive immigration effort. ``We wouldn't have nearly as many absconders, and it wouldn't be as hard flushing them out, if we didn't have such a permissive system for illegal immigrants in general,'' he said. Two thick black binders rest in deportation supervisor Jim Martin's bureau office in Boston, and they are filled with hundreds of wanted posters. The crimes listed under some photos include rape, child sex abuse and drug dealing, but many fugitives are guilty only of refusing to go home. Outside Martin's door, agents comb through databases. Folders are stacked on their desks, surrounded by boxes of files. One sign sums it up: ``Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.'' The Boston office, which controls all of New England, has arrest warrants for about 1,000 illegal immigrants -- a fraction of the 400,000 nationwide. But the office is considered a model because of the systematic way the unit targets, investigates and gets the fugitives. Nationwide, 110,000 illegal immigrants have been deported in this fiscal year, about 71,000 with criminal convictions. Still, nothing has stopped the stream of illegal immigrants coming into the country, overstaying their visas or evading deportation orders. ``People still come every day,'' said Fausto da Rocha, executive director of the Brazilian Immigrant Center. ``They are undocumented, but they are not criminals. They come to work.'' He knows. His visa ran out almost 14 years ago. But while he turned himself in and will plead his case before an immigration judge, millions of others continue to hide. ``After 9-11 it all changed,'' said Bruce Chadbourne, interim director of the bureau's New England field office. ``Our priorities changed. We're not the immigration service, we're not the Customs Service. We're homeland security, and our main mission is to protect the homeland.''
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