Houston ICE raids yield mixed results

[peejay 327]

ICE's raids yield mixed results

4-day project to nab hundreds of fugitives ends with 89 arrests

By JAMES PINKERTON

2008 Houston Chronicle

The arrest went exactly as the agents planned.

A few minutes after dawn, the Mexican citizen backed his new Chevy pickup out of the driveway onto the street, on the way to his job as a construction supervisor.

Within seconds, Reynaldo Campos, wanted for being in the country illegally, was boxed in by vehicles driven by immigration agents who, wearing flak jackets and guns drawn, ordered him out of the car and cuffed him.

It was a successful start to last Thursday's roundup of illegal immigrants, the third of a four-day operation to track down illegal immigrants who have gone underground after being ordered to leave the country.

It's a daunting task.

In Houston alone there are an estimated 30,000 immigrant fugitives, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nationally there are about 575,000.

Last week, ICE agents in the Houston Field Office's area of responsibility, which extends over 52 counties from Louisiana to Corpus Christi, cut that number by a small margin.

Before the operation began at dawn Tuesday, ICE officials were confident of apprehending hundreds of immigrants. But when it ended shortly before noon Friday, they had picked up 89, including 28 with criminal convictions.

"Well, we always hope for more, but we don't always get everybody we're looking for," said Kenneth Landgrebe, the ICE Field Office director for Detention and Removal in Houston.

"It's not a stagnant population. They move, addresses change, or there is little information to identify them. It's always a constantly moving target to identify and locate."

Landgrebe stressed that the fugitive operation, which was conducted by a dozen fugitive teams with 60 agents from Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and El Paso, was not part of a ''mass raid" but an effort to deport immigrants who had their day in court, and lost.

"ICE is not doing indiscriminate raids through apartment complexes or on the streets," he said. "These are targeted individuals that we have investigated, and done research on, and tried to locate these individuals to apprehend and remove them from the United States."

The Houston Chronicle, and several other news organizations, were given an inside look at fugitive operations and techniques as reporters were allowed to accompany agents as they made arrests around the city.

One condition was that neither agents nor those arrested be identified without their consent.

Eluding authorities

The elusive nature of the immigrants became evident during the course of the operation. A number of leads the agents followed turned out to be dead ends, with information either outdated or wrong.

"These people are mobile, and transient, and Houston is more than likely a transit point," said one ICE official. "The other factor is they have a primary goal, as an absconder, to avoid the law. So they go underground."

In some cases, immigrants refused to allow agents to enter their homes. The arrest warrants carried by the agents did not allow them to enter without permission.

After arresting Campos early Thursday, agents went on to an upscale Houston apartment complex listed as the address of a cook from Morocco. But they learned he had moved out long ago.

At another apartment complex, a resident opened his door and was startled by six armed agents with a warrant for another immigrant. The agents had bad information, and were told the Nigerian they were searching for had never lived there.

But soon there was news crackling over the government radio. Other agents on the ICE team had tracked down an undocumented Colombian immigrant with a weapon's charge.

"Sometimes we'll go two or three days," without finding a fugitive, said field supervisor Hector McKenna. "It's called getting skunked. And sometimes we get five or six in a day."

Checking databases

McKenna, a former Marine who supervises one of the four detention teams in Houston, said a successful arrest requires checking databases, researching court documents, as well as surveillance.

When the operation began before dawn on Tuesday, McKenna and several members of his team took up positions outside the home of another Nigerian citizen. The 30-year-old man, who a Houston immigration judge had ordered to leave in November 2004, was later convicted of property theft, according to ICE records.

McKenna's agents had the immigrant under surveillance when he left for work each morning, knew his daily routine, and had followed him home the night before to make sure he would be there in the morning. And, because of the way he changed his route, they knew he was wary.

At 7:08 a.m., an agent reported the immigrant was on the move. "Target coming out of the house. Yellow shirt on."

But moments later, the immigrant looked over his shoulder, and walked back into the house. And for a long while, agents waited to see whether he would re-emerge, while debating whether they had been spotted.

"He's hinked man; I think he made you," McKenna radioed the officer who had parked across from the residence. "I mean, he's definitely cautious."

Search warrant

After waiting more than an hour, the agents knocked on the immigrant's door and asked him to surrender. When he refused, they began the process of obtaining a search warrant to enter the home.

Before noon, the immigrant decided to open the door and surrender to agents. During the wait, other members of McKenna's team detained others on their list.

"This is my team, and that's how they work — they're out there kicking butt," said McKenna, elated by the arrests of all five of their morning targets.

But he was candid about the challenges, and said his team apprehends, on average, only 32 to 37 percent of its targets.

"I'm not going to lie, a lot of times we have the address, and other info, that is cold ... the case goes cold, our leads are cold, and Houston is transitory," McKenna explained.

And there was some drama.

As agents arrested Jaime De Leon in the East End, they asked the Mexican immigrant to tie his pit bull to a fence. But when the dog's leash began to slip, the agents retreated to their cars until the immigrant's landlord arrived and took charge of the dog.

Some of those arrested last week vowed to return.

"I have to; I have little children here," explained a 40-year-old Mexican citizen arrested at the apartment complex where he is a maintenance worker.

'Free ride' home

And the immigrant, who ICE said was convicted of human trafficking and possession of marijuana, acknowledged the charges but said he had successfully completed probation. And he joked about his deportation as he sat in an ICE transport van early Tuesday.

"Now they're giving me a free ride to see my father and mother," he said, referring to parents in Mexico he hasn't seen in five years.

Asked whether he was worried about crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, he laughed, "They say it's hard, so I guess I'll see and later I'll let you know," he said.

But his arrest and detention placed his family in a precarious situation. He has been supporting an older daughter from a previous marriage, along with his second wife, her older son, and the couple's two infant sons.

"So tell me, how I'm going to support all of us," the daughter said at his home the next day. She said she is contemplating dropping out of college and looking for a second job.

And Campos, the construction supervisor arrested Thursday, is also thinking about returning to Houston if he is unable to contest his deportation.

"Well, all the bills are going to get behind if I don't come back," he said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5770244.html

[Ban Hammer 12,878]

maximum effective range of an excuse = 0 meters.

[natty bumppo 289]

keep up the good work ... be nice to see 100% caught and deported

[Chuckles 0]

What's the point? 99% of them will be back.

It may take a week, a few months, a year... but they will be back.

What a colossal waste of money.

[natty bumppo 289]

What's the point? 99% of them will be back.

It may take a week, a few months, a year... but they will be back.

What a colossal waste of money.

maybe they like getting caught ... and sharing a caged room .... and deciding ... top or bottom

[Nagishkaw 510]

Imagine all the possibilities....

[mawilson 2,133]

What's the point? 99% of them will be back.

It may take a week, a few months, a year... but they will be back.

What a colossal waste of money.

They won't be back if they are in prison.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

[mawilson 2,133]

I do think deporting them is stupid, because they'll be back.

Put them in prison, on the other hand, and you got yourself an unlimited source of free labor.

[Ban Hammer 12,878]

I do think deporting them is stupid, because they'll be back.

Put them in prison, on the other hand, and you got yourself an unlimited source of free labor.

i've about decided we need to have some place, say hondura, run a prison and we send the illegals from south/central america to there to work at hard labor for a year

[mawilson 2,133]

I do think deporting them is stupid, because they'll be back.

Put them in prison, on the other hand, and you got yourself an unlimited source of free labor.

i've about decided we need to have some place, say hondura, run a prison and we send the illegals from south/central america to there to work at hard labor for a year

Why not exploit their labor here?

Want to pick strawberries? No problem - just need a couple of "supervisors" with machine guns next to them.

[Ban Hammer 12,878]

I do think deporting them is stupid, because they'll be back.

Put them in prison, on the other hand, and you got yourself an unlimited source of free labor.

i've about decided we need to have some place, say hondura, run a prison and we send the illegals from south/central america to there to work at hard labor for a year

Why not exploit their labor here?

Want to pick strawberries? No problem - just need a couple of "supervisors" with machine guns next to them.

too many crybabies in this country.

[mawilson 2,133]

too many crybabies in this country.

Not as many as in Yurrup.

[Nagishkaw 510]

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Just exile them to Death Valley and put a bounty on their heads.