'Fugitive' immigrant arrests up
Federal officials announced Tuesday they have made significant strides toward reducing the number of illegal immigrants in the area who have committed serious crimes or eluded deportation.
The announcement came a day after suburban law enforcement officials said they had petitioned to take part in a controversial program adopted by communities where federal efforts to combat illegal immigration have fallen short.
In fiscal year 2007, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested 1,043 immigrants previously tagged for deportation in the six-state area that encompasses Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin, a Tuesday statement from ICE said.
That's about twice as many as in 2006, when Chicago teams targeting "fugitive" immigrants arrested 520.
The announcement lauded increased manpower and improved cooperation with local law enforcement agencies. But some suburban law enforcement officials have deemed even the increased manpower and improved cooperation insufficient to combat the problem of illegal immigration in their communities.
On Monday, Lake County sheriff's officials said they were joining Carpentersville and Waukegan police in requesting training for local officers to do deportation paperwork.
Lake County sheriff's officials and federal immigration agents have collaborated in the past, most recently in November on a sweep in Round Lake that netted three illegal immigrants wanted on felony warrants, Chief Michael Blazincic said.
Still, federal officials lack the resources to rid the county of all the violent criminals who are in the country illegally, Lake County Sheriff Michael Curran said Tuesday.
"Knowing that they're undermanned, and knowing that we're responsible for the entire county," Curran said, "we're stepping up to the plate."
Nationally, ICE fugitive teams, which target illegal immigrants who fail to appear for immigration hearings or disappear after they are ordered to leave the country, arrested 30,408 people in fiscal 2007, up from 15,462 the previous year.
The recent arrest statistics are encouraging, Mundelein Police Chief Raymond Rose said Tuesday.
"As ICE starts to pick it up and put more people on to target this problem, then there's less of a need for local police to be doing it," Rose said. "Then we have everyone doing their own job. It's ICE's job to be doing this."
ICE officials said they're getting better at doing that job.
"We are continuously increasing our ability to identify, locate and apprehend those who either pose a threat to our communities or those who choose to ignore an immigration judge's order of removal," said Glenn Triveline, field office director of the ICE Office of Detention and Removal Operations in Chicago.
But some immigrant rights advocates said Tuesday's announcement by ICE, which included profiles of two illegal immigrants who had eluded deportation despite being convicted of violent crimes, was an attempt to mischaracterize deported illegal immigrants as dangerous criminals.
The number of "fugitive" illegal immigrants arrested last year is small compared to the total number of illegal immigrants deported, said Joshua Hoyt, director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
The 1,043 "fugitive" illegal immigrants arrested in 2007 were a fraction of the 8,100 illegal immigrants deported by Chicago-based agents in 2007, according to ICE spokeswoman Gail Montenegro.
And of the 1,043 illegal immigrants that ICE arrested in 2007 and classified as "criminal and fugitive aliens," just 166 had criminal records, Montenegro said.
"There's no question there's a huge increase in deportations," Hoyt said. "And an overwhelming number of those they're deporting, their only crime is working."