Illegal immigrants accused of crimes are being swept up in the Midwest and
deported
By Oscar
Avila Tribune staff reporter
October 5, 2005
Dawn had yet to
arrive in Park Ridge, but the sun was setting on Wojiech Wojtulewicz's time in
America.
Federal agents surrounded his beige split-level home, knocked
firmly on the door and rushed in when it opened, as a woman inside screamed. Ten
months after the Polish immigrant--already convicted of burglary and
battery--had ignored a deportation order, he was one of about a dozen illegal
immigrants arrested in a week of raids throughout the Chicago area this
summer.
Even as border states try to stem the flow of illegal
immigration, federal officials in the American interior are unleashing a
continuing series of sweeps for illegal immigrants, especially gang members, sex
offenders and those who ignore deportation orders.
In 2004, deportations
from the six-state Chicago district rose to 6,231, a 27 percent increase from
the previous year. And U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials expect
that fiscal 2005 data will show deportations remain a high
priority.
Officials say the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks prompted a
push to restore integrity to the immigration system. The first step, they
decided, was a targeted approach against immigrants who present the greatest
threats to public safety.
But the crackdown also shows the daunting
nature of immigration enforcement, which one analyst compared to removing stones
from a beach, one by one, even as the tide brings in more.
As part of the
operation that netted Wojtulewicz and others in July, agents with a special
fugitive-apprehension team staked out the homes and workplaces of immigrants for
weeks.
Still, officials estimate that nearly 17,000 immigrants remain at
large in the Chicago district after ignoring deportation orders.
`What we
need to do'
"I don't view it as overwhelming," insisted Jeffrey Jacoff, a
supervisor on the fugitive team, as he awaited the next raid in a darkened car.
"I view it as, `Here's what we need to do.'"
Despite Jacoff's
determination, lawmakers of all stripes say the U.S. government's current
approach will generate only modest gains, without reversing the tide of illegal
immigration.
Conservative lawmakers favor stricter controls, including
putting soldiers on the U.S.-Mexico border and raiding job sites. Liberal
politicians say enforcement alone doesn't work and want to provide legal status
for most of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United
States.
Illinois is now home to an estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants,
a number that swelled during the first part of this decade despite a sluggish
economy and stricter security after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Mexicans
make up about 83 percent of the immigrants deported from the Chicago area in
fiscal 2005. Immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, Poland and El Salvador
represented the rest of the top five.
Peter Fahey, an investigations
supervisor in the Chicago office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
credits the creation of the Department of Homeland Security for increasing
deportations by coordinating efforts.
Customs agents investigating a drug
smuggler, for example, can also tip off immigration agents who are now under the
same departmental umbrella.
Also, Fahey said immigration agents are
upgrading their databases so local police running a criminal check on a suspect
can turn up deportation orders that might have been ignored.
At the same
time, authorities are working with state and county officials to match
registered sex offenders to immigration records. Agents in the Chicago district
have arrested 300 sex offenders in Illinois since 2003 as part of a project
called Operation Predator.
But Fahey said agents simply cannot expend the
resources to track down the gardeners, busboys and other undocumented immigrants
who haven't committed other violations.
"It would be nice to work every
lead we get," he said. "Common sense says you can't."
Because most
immigrants aren't jailed while their deportation cases are heard, it was always
relatively simple for them to ignore final deportation orders and disappear into
the general population.
More teams hunt fugitives
Immigration
officials now have dispatched more than a dozen fugitive teams across the
country. In fiscal 2005, the teams have arrested nearly 9,000 fugitive
immigrants, including about 500 in the Chicago area. And Chicago officials say
they have heard that they will receive funding to bolster their
teams.
But the Park Ridge raid showed the logistical challenges of the
strategy. A team spent about four hours, not to mention weeks of surveillance,
to capture Wojtulewicz and a Mexican man in Des Plaines.
Five immigration
agents were joined by a U.S. marshal and a Park Ridge police officer who had
cruised by to offer assistance.
Behind a strip mall off Northwest
Highway, home to a tanning salon and video store, agents put on bulletproof
vests in case the raids turned violent.
Back inside the cars, the team
supervisor read through the particulars of Wojtulewicz's case. A call on the
radio crackled that a car in the driveway corresponded with one registered to
his wife.
"That's a good sign," Jacoff muttered, meaning they were likely
at the right address. The raid went off without incident.
As the team did
a post-raid review, an agent shook his head as he reported back on one wild
card--there had been an infant in the house, a fact not uncovered by the
surveillance. Had they known, the agents might taken more care to protect the
infant from any desperate actions by the suspect.
"This guy," Jacoff
said, "knew we were looking for him. Who knows what might have
happened?"
Craig Nelsen, executive director of Friends of Immigration Law
Enforcement, a Washington-based coalition of attorneys and other activists, said
he is encouraged that immigration authorities are pursuing fugitives and other
criminals.
But he challenged government officials to take the more
politically sensitive step of targeting workplaces and employers, many of whom
are generous political donors.
"They are going after the ones who have no
constituency," Nelsen said. "It's the safe way. If you are the director of the
ICE office in Omaha, you're going to go after the gang members that no one
likes. If you take on the Nebraska slaughterhouses, you'll have all these
elected officials screaming at you."
Other ideas
Raj Goyle, senior
domestic policy analyst for the liberal Center for American Progress, said the
nation's reliance on undocumented immigrants in the labor force makes mass
deportation an impractical option. Immigrant advocates suggest more
comprehensive approaches, including strengthening the Mexican economy and
increasing the number of legal visas for foreign workers, in addition to
providing legal status for undocumented immigrants currently in the
country.
"Everyone should be against illegal immigration. At the same
time, it's very clear that deportation as a sole response would be completely
unaffordable and ineffective," said Goyle, who recently co-authored a study that
reported on the exorbitant costs of a hypothetical mass-enforcement
campaign.
Fahey, the immigration supervisor, said he realizes that
tracking down every illegal immigrant might not be feasible. But he said the
agency can't sit by as their numbers continue to grow.
"The American
public and the U.S. government see people who are out there and shouldn't be,"
Fahey said. "They want to see some type of action brought against these people.
That is our mission."
