Some illegal immigrants commit other crimes, but 'data terrible'
By Josh Brodesky and Kim Smith
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.21.2008
advertisement
You've heard it from pundits and read it online: Illegal immigrants
are clogging our legal system. They may come with the dreams of work
and a better life, but they bring increased crime and strife.
Many of those coming here illegally do end up in court — some for
being here without permission, others for property, financial, drug
or violent crimes.
But it's anyone's guess how many illegal immigrants enter the justice
system, and how much it costs taxpayers. Neither the state nor the
federal courts formally keep track.
The lack of hard numbers makes it nearly impossible to know whether
our immigration policies are working — even as taxpayers spend tens
of millions of dollars a year to house and defend illegal immigrants
arrested in the Tucson area.
"The data (are) terrible, and lead to entirely different
conclusions," said Steven Camarota, of the Center for Immigration
Studies, which supports tighter immigration controls. "No one has
made it a priority. No one has ever wanted to know."
Camarota said everybody talks about the combination of illegal
immigration and crime, but "nobody ever does anything about it."
Federal policies targeting illegal immigration also skew the picture.
Although the number of people arrested in the Tucson Sector for
illegal immigration has actually declined in recent years, the push
is on to prosecute more illegal-entry cases, most recently through
"Operation Streamline," which aims to prosecute 100 illegal
immigrants a day.
The emphasis on illegal immigration has overwhelmed Tucson's federal
prosecutors to the point that they have declined to take on a number
of serious drug-offense cases in recent years. To keep up, the U.S.
Attorney's Office recently hired 22 more prosecutors and has
converted a courtroom into a makeshift holding area for illegal
immigrants waiting to see judges.
Illegal immigration made up half the felony sentencings in federal
court here last year, but no one can say — beyond estimates — how
many other federal crimes are tied to illegal immigrants.
It's a similar scene at Pima County Superior Court. Officials there
agree that cases involving illegal immigrants put an extra burden on
judges and attorneys — but no one knows how big a burden.
Estimates of the share of Pima County criminal cases involving
illegal immigrants range from 3.5 percent to 11 percent.
Financial estimates are only slightly more specific. At a minimum,
taxpayers spend about $80 million per year on cases involving illegal
immigration that are processed through Pima County and the federal
court in Tucson. But that doesn't include the cost of lawyers to
represent and prosecute illegal border crossers charged with more
serious federal crimes. Those costs are not tracked.
And it doesn't sort out those non-citizens in the court system who
are here legally.
Still, Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall is confident that the
effect is small. "The illegals we see are only an itty-bitty, tiny
fraction of the illegals who are in Pima County and Arizona," LaWall
said.
"Their presence here has a huge impact, but they are not driving the
crime rate," she said. "Ninety-seven percent of the folks we
prosecute are homegrown criminals."
Soft statistics
It's clear that illegal immigrants do affect our court system, but
getting an accurate count of cases is nearly impossible.
At the federal level, cases that involve only illegal entry are easy
to identify, but tracking more serious crimes by illegal entrants
just isn't done.
"The U.S. Attorney's Office prosecutes the cases based on whether a
federal offense was committed," said Lynnette Kimmins, chief
assistant U.S. attorney who heads the Tucson office. "We don't keep
track of a person's citizenship unless a lack of citizenship is an
element to the crime."
To do that, Kimmins said, would require a change in the computing
system used in all U.S. attorneys' offices, not just those in Arizona.
Still, Kimmins estimated that 90 percent of all the criminal cases
prosecuted by her office had some kind of tie to the border, a
connection that includes citizens and non-citizens. Most of those
cases are either immigration- or drug-related.
Just over half of Arizona's 4,700 federal felony sentencings in 2007
were for immigration violations, said a U.S. Sentencing Commission
report. Nationally, immigration made up about a quarter of all felony
sentencings.
Felony cases include those involving people with multiple illegal-
entry convictions and people here illegally who commit another
serious crime. Most people arrested only for being here illegally are
deported without being charged, or they're charged with misdemeanors.
"We are just one of nine sectors along the Southwest border, but our
sector last year accounted for 380,000 arrests for people being here
illegally and nearly a million pounds of marijuana being brought
across the international border," said Chief U.S. District Judge John
M. Roll of Tucson.
"That represents about half of all the marijuana seized along the
Southwest border," Roll said. "It represents about 44 percent of
everybody arrested for being here illegally."
Less clear is the role that illegal immigrants play in other types of
criminal cases, such as those involving drugs, guns or fraud.
Nationally, non-citizens accounted for about 30 percent of all drug
felony sentencings, 8 percent of firearms sentencings and 20 percent
of fraud sentencings. That includes people here legally and illegally.
"I know that a very high number of our defendants in drug and gun
cases are deportable," Roll said, referring to the Tucson Sector.
"I'm sure a very high percentage of our defendants are deportable."
Other federal officials offered similar experience-based estimates
but no hard figures.
"A majority of our arrests are not U.S. citizens. For trafficking, at
least more than 50 percent," said Anthony Coulson, Drug Enforcement
Administration assistant special agent in charge of the Tucson
District Office.
"Drug trafficking doesn't know any nationality or whether you have
papers or anything like that. That's immaterial to the whole game,"
Coulson said.
At the county level, there are conflicting statistics on illegal
immigrants in the system.
LaWall, the county attorney, said 3.5 percent of people with open
cases in her office have an Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold
on them, meaning the federal agency is investigating their legal
status while they are held in the county jail.
No tracking in Pima County
Presiding Superior Court Judge Jan Kearney, however, said 11 percent
of suspects with pending criminal cases in Pima County Superior Court
have acknowledged that they are in the country illegally.
It's unclear how that compares with Pima County's population of
illegal immigrants, because no one is really tracking it. Most
estimates are either statewide or for Phoenix.
Varying estimates from 2006, the most recent available, placed the
state's population of illegal immigrants at about 450,000 to 500,000,
said Jeffrey Passel of the non-partisan Pew Hispanic Center. The
Urban Institute, a non-partisan research group, estimated most of
those illegal immigrants, about 350,000, lived in the Phoenix
metropolitan area.
Similarly, the Arizona Department of Corrections knows that 13
percent of its 39,000 inmates are Mexican citizens, but it doesn't
know how many came here illegally, said its spokes-man, Nolberto
Machiche.
Whatever the number, LaWall and Kearney said the immigration debate
is more a product of a change in people than any change in the issue.
"The level of immigration, both legal and illegal, has been enormous
for the last 20 years, but nothing has really changed," Kearney said.
"There is just more public attention and concern now. It's how the
laws have changed that have had an impact. It's not the illegals who
have had an impact."
Prosecution discretion
LaWall has made a decision not to prosecute suspected illegal
immigrants for being in the country illegally, unlike Maricopa County
Attorney Andrew Thomas, who believes they are guilty of a crime, the
same as the "coyotes" — people smugglers — who bring them into the
country.
If LaWall opted to prosecute people whose sole crime was entering the
country illegally, "we would not be able to prosecute murderers,
rapists, child molesters, armed robbers and drug dealers," LaWall
said. "The feds do prosecute thousands and thousands of them every
year, and has it had a deterring effect? No."
The most recent federal effort to deter illegal immigration is known
as Operation Streamline, a so-called "zero-tolerance" approach to
illegal immigration. Its goal is to prosecute 100 illegal immigrants
a day, although prosecutions so far have hovered at 40 to 70 on most
days. On some days, there are no prosecutions.
Part of the challenge has been a lack of prosecutors — a problem
that is being addressed with the new hires, who are to start this fall.
But there is also a lack of space. With nowhere to put Operation
Streamline defendants, one courtroom had to be turned into an ad hoc
detention center. Defendants meet with their attorneys in the morning
for about 20 minutes, and then they're prosecuted in the afternoons.
Heather Williams, first assistant federal public defender in Tucson,
said her office can provide two trial attorneys daily, each
representing roughly six illegal-entrant defendants. The rest are
represented by contract attorneys who are paid $100 an hour.
Williams estimated that taxpayers spend about $8,000 a day on
attorney costs for Operation Streamline. That troubles her, because
almost all the defendants have been arrested solely for illegal entry.
"Their priority seems to have been with charging first-timers," she
said. "That is, people who have no prior criminal arrests in the U.S.
and no prior immigration history."
Customs and Border Patrol officials credit Operation Streamline with
drastically reducing recidivism rates in Southern Arizona, but
Williams disagrees. Immigration arrests already were declining, she
said, and factors such as the weak economy and the time period the
Border Patrol was studying could distort statistics.
In a recent statement she gave to the U.S. House of Representatives,
Williams called Operation Streamline "one of the least successful but
most costly and time-consuming ways of discouraging entries and re-
entries."
In the federal system, taxpayers spend roughly $100,000 a month on
gas and time for attorneys to travel to and from Florence, where
illegal immigrants are held.
The U.S. Marshals Service spent $71 million in the last year housing
defendants specifically from Tucson in Florence — most of whom were
illegal immigrants.
Meanwhile, Tucson's federal court, saddled with one of the highest
caseloads in the country, has asked for more judges.
"I believe it can be very difficult for the border courts to get the
resources they need," District Judge Roll said, noting that there are
only five border courts in four states. "There's another 46 states
who don't have the problem we have."
Williams said she's concerned that the increase in prosecutors will
result in public defenders handling more Operation Streamline cases
while more serious criminal cases are farmed out to contract
attorneys, ramping up costs to taxpayers.
To some degree, county officials are feeling the strain, too.
Pima County residents pay about $8 million a year to house and defend
suspected illegal immigrants accused of non-immigration-related
charges, county officials estimate.
There were 1,211 Pima County jail inmates released to Immigration and
Customs Enforcement last fiscal year, said Assistant County
Administrator Lindy Funkhouser.
County and federal officials are working together to reduce the time
defendants spend in the county jail before being released to federal
officials, Funkhouser said. They also hope to reduce the number of
cases that go to contract defense attorneys — now about a third of
the cases involving suspected illegal immigrants. Contract attorneys
are paid more than public defenders.
No matter what they do, illegal immigrants will always be brought to
the jail, because the Pima County Attorney's Office must have time to
review their cases to decide what charges, if any, should be filed
against them, Funkhouser said.
The role of policy
Although Superior Court does not handle immigration cases, illegal
immigration is affecting things there, too.
Judges are required to determine within five days of a suspect's
initial appearance whether that person is in the country illegally.
Under Proposition 100, approved by Arizona voters in 2006, illegal
immigrants accused of committing certain felonies are ineligible for
bond.
While Pima County's Pretrial Services division has been asking
certain suspects to disclose their immigration status for at least 10
to 15 years, a formal determination hadn't been made before, said
Rick Peck, Pretrial Services director.
There are five to 20 Proposition 100 hearings every week, all of
which require police officers, attorneys and Pretrial Services
employees to take time away from their other duties.
The hearings are often postponed, something that studies have shown
drives up the cost of the criminal justice system, County Attorney
LaWall said.
Meanwhile, the debate on immigrants and crime continues.
"There is no evidence linking illegal immigrants with crime," said
Passel, of the Pew Hispanic Center, citing a handful of recent
studies that support his contention. "There is plenty of data out
there, and people don't pay attention to it."
But Camarota, of the Center for Immigration Studies, has a different
view.
"The bottom line is, some data suggest it's low, and some data
suggest it's high," he said. "We simply don't know."
STAR SPECIAL REPORT: BEHIND THE BORDER RHETORIC
● To contact reporters: Josh Brodesky, 807-7789 or
jbrodesky@azstarnet.com; Kim Smith, 573-4241 or kimsmith@azstarnet.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment