"Federal authorities are cracking down on immigrants who were previously deported and then reentered the country illegally -- a crime that now makes up more than one-third of all prosecutions in Los Angeles and surrounding counties, a Times review of U.S. attorney's statistics shows."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-crackdown16mar16,0,611750.story
From the Los Angeles Times
U.S. tries to shut revolving door of illegal reentry
The effort includes combing California prisons and jails for illegal immigrants who have previously been deported.
By Anna Gorman and Scott Glover
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
5:06 PM PDT, March 15, 2008
Federal authorities are cracking down on immigrants who were previously deported and then reentered the country illegally -- a crime that now makes up more than one-third of all prosecutions in Los Angeles and surrounding counties, a Times review of U.S. attorney's statistics shows.
The surge in prosecutions reflects the federal government's push in recent years to detect illegal immigrants with criminal records in what may seem the most obvious of places: the state's jails and prisons.
Immigration authorities have long combed inmate populations for illegal immigrants, but additional money and cooperation with local law enforcement has fueled an increase in such cases by the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. The illegal reentry charge is the single most prosecuted crime in the office.
Prosecutors filed 539 such cases in fiscal year 2007, making up 35% of the total caseload, compared to 207 in 2006 -- 17% of all cases. Statistics for the first four months of this fiscal year show the trend continuing.
Federal authorities touted the recent effort, saying the prosecutions serve as a deterrent for those who see the border as a turnstile. They said they were targeting violent gang members, career criminals and drug dealers who have returned to the country after being deported -- many of them repeatedly.
"They are some of the worst of the worst," said Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Washington, D.C. "They are people that citizens of any community would want off the streets."
"I just wish that were true," said Jerry Salseda, a deputy federal public defender who has represented scores of illegal immigrants charged with reentering the country after having been deported. He and other critics say people who committed minor crimes years ago have been caught up in the wave of prosecutions.
Bruce J. Einhorn, a former immigration court judge, said the U.S. attorney's office should spend more resources going after smugglers rather than illegal crossers.
"That would do more to stop dangerous illegal immigration than by prosecuting a few more undocumented people who have reentered illegally," he said.
Einhorn also questioned the efficacy of the cases, because people's motivations to return -- reuniting with small children and escaping poverty -- often outweigh time behind bars.
In years past, many of those now being prosecuted for illegally reentering the country would have simply been deported. Now they are being sent to prison first. Sentences can be as long as 20 years, but most defendants receive three to five years, prosecutors said.
Immigration officials in Los Angeles are largely responsible for the recent spike in prosecutions. In 2006, they created a nine-person team to scrutinize inmate populations for potential prosecution. The agency also placed an officer in the U.S. attorney's office to serve as a liaison with immigration officials on these cases. Agents also look for possible defendants -- primarily gang members -- in communities around Southern California.
Prosecutions are likely to continue increasing nationwide as the immigration agency expands its work in jails. Congress recently appropriated $200 million for the agency, which Myers said would be used to develop technology and work with local and state officials to identify more illegal immigrants behind bars.
The effort in Los Angeles was recently cited by U.S. Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey, who said Justice Department officials were reviewing it "with an eye toward expanding it to the Southwest border districts" and elsewhere.
Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, said the cases make up a large percentage of the overall number prosecuted by the office, but they do not represent an undue drain on resources or hinder other types of prosecutions. That's because the reentry cases are easy to prove, he said, rarely go to trial and don't require much time.
To win a conviction, prosecutors need to prove three things: that the defendant is in the United States, that he or she is not legally permitted to be in the U.S., and that the person had been formally deported in the past.
A side benefit of such easy-to-prove cases is that they can be made when there isn't enough evidence to convict illegal immigrants on other charges, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates tighter enforcement of immigration laws.
It's the same idea as when "you send Al Capone to jail for not paying his taxes," he said.
Curtis Kin, chief of the Domestic Security and Immigration Crimes Section of the U.S. attorney's office, which was created in 2006 in part to prosecute illegal reentry cases, chafed at the notion that most defendants are sympathetic.
"The people we go after are demonstrated threats," he said. "The No. 1 reason to do this is to protect the community," he said.
As evidence, he pointed to the cases of two gang members charged after a jail sweep in December dubbed "Operation Winter Warning."
One of them -- Julio Cesar Mata-Sosa, a member of the Radford Street gang in North Hollywood -- had been deported seven times between 1998 and 2006, authorities said. His criminal resume included convictions for burglary, robbery, vehicle theft, cocaine possession and sales, and presenting false identification to a police officer.
The other, Ascension Hernandez-Perez, a Valerio Street gang member, was deported seven times between 1999 and 2004 and had previously been convicted of burglary, assault, battery, cruelty to a child, spousal battery and making terrorist threats, authorities said. Both men have pleaded guilty to illegally reentering the country after having been deported and are awaiting sentencing.
Defense attorney Yolanda Barrera, who handles several of these cases each year, says not every illegal reentry case features hard-core criminals with multiple deportations.
"They could be a priest, they could be a nun; it doesn't matter," she said. "If they are here illegally, they have previously been deported and they have an aggravated felony, they are going to be prosecuted."
She recently defended a woman named Leticia Esparza, a former gang member who was sentenced to five years in prison on a 1997 drug sales conviction before being deported. Esparza was deported in 2000 and returned to the U.S. the same day because her two U.S.-born daughters were still here.
After returning, Esparza, now 37, left the gang, got her tattoos removed and started working selling cosmetics and had four more children.
Esparza was rearrested last June after police said she tried to cash a stolen check. Barrera said she was able to prove that the check was not stolen, but Esparza was still prosecuted for illegal reentry after deportation and sentenced to one year in federal prison. The prosecutors had pushed for a 37-month sentence, Barrera said.
"I can understand the law is the law," Barrera said, "but to send her to prison for what they wanted -- I think that's outrageous."
Even within the U.S. attorney's office, some prosecutors -- particularly veteran lawyers who have risen to supervisory levels -- have regarded the cases as distractions that take time away from more meaningful work.
William Carter, who was chief of the environmental section when he resigned in 2006, said he recalled some illegal re-entry cases that were triggered by relatively minor crimes such as DUIs, traffic offenses and even jaywalking.
"With some of these cases, why are we bothering?" he said. "You need to do something about the border. You don't do it by throwing people in jail."
anna.gorman@latimes.comscott.glover@latimes.com
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