Illegals Going Back By The Planeload
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Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY, Feb. 16
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic—Ana Ortega left here for the USA 14 years ago. She never thought she’d return, much less like this: in handcuffs and ankle shackles, on a U.S. government jet with 49 others whose criminal convictions got them deported from the USA.
Ortega, 27, said that she was a legal permanent U.S. resident and that until recently she was an office manager for a chiropractor in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. Four years ago, she was convicted of conspiracy for being a bit player in a drug-smuggling ring. Her husband, a U.S. citizen and repeat offender, received 10 years in prison; she got probation. She was ordered to appear at a deportation hearing, but she skipped it.
In another time—before the Sept. 11 attacks focused attention on lax enforcement of immigration laws—she probably would have been free to continue living in the USA with her two young children. U.S. agents rarely pursued hundreds of thousands of fugitives like Ortega. That’s what happened in her case for nearly three years—before agents showed up at her door seven months ago.
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Mostly criminals deported
The number of illegal immigrants deported by the U.S. has jumped, especially since the Sept. 11 attacks. In the budget year that ended, the U.S. has deported more illegal immigrants with criminal records, than in any previous year.
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‘Busy all the time’
During the year that ended Sept. 30, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported a record 157,281 immigrants. Like Ortega and the others aboard the flight to Santo Domingo, more than half of those deported last year had criminal records, a reflection of ICE’s emphasis on booting such people from the country. The jet that brought Ortega back here also included convicted drug dealers, sex offenders, robbers and wife beaters.
As ICE agents have pursued criminals who are in the USA illegally, they also have swept up record numbers of illegal immigrants who have committed no crimes other than violations of visa limits and other immigration laws. That helped increase the total number of deportations by more than 45% from 2001 to 2004.
Most of those deported—more than 70% in 2004—have been returned to Mexico. Most of the rest have been sent back to Central or South America or to the Dominican Republic. ICE now has four jets that in 2003 alone made 317 flights to return more than 18,500 immigrants to their native countries.
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(Posted on February 18, 2005)