Immigrants face long detention, few rights

[peejay 327]

Immigrants face long detention, few rights

Many detainees spend months or years in U.S. detention centers

The Associated Press

updated 1:00 p.m. CT, Sun., March. 15, 2009

America's detention system for immigrants has mushroomed in the last decade, a costly building boom that was supposed to sweep up criminals and ensure that undocumented immigrants were quickly shown the door.

Instead, an Associated Press computer analysis of every person being held on a recent Sunday night shows that most did not have a criminal record and many were not about to leave the country — voluntarily or via deportation.

An official Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, showed a U.S. detainee population of exactly 32,000 on the evening of Jan. 25.

The data show that 18,690 immigrants had no criminal conviction, not even for illegal entry or low-level crimes like trespassing. More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. A dozen had been held for three years or more; one man from China had been locked up for more than five years.

Detention deadlines routinely missed

Nearly 10,000 had been in custody longer than 31 days — the average detention stay that ICE cites as evidence of its effective detention management.

Especially tough bail conditions are exacerbated by disregard or bending of the rules regarding how long immigrants can be detained.

Based on a 2001 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, ICE has about six months to deport or release immigrants after their case is decided. But immigration lawyers say that deadline is routinely missed. In the system snapshot provided to the AP, 950 people were in that category.

The detainee buildup began in the mid 1990s, long before the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Since 2003, though, Congress has doubled to $1.7 billion the amount dedicated to imprisoning immigrants, as furor over "criminal aliens" intertwined with post-9/11 fears and anti-immigrant political rhetoric.

But the dragnet has come to include not only terrorism suspects and cop killers, but an honors student who was raised in Orlando, Fla.; a convenience store clerk who begged to go back to Canada; and a Pentecostal minister who was forcibly drugged by ICE agents after he asked to contact his wife, according to court records.

Many detainees are asylum seekers

Immigration lawyers note that substantial numbers of detainees, from 177 countries in the data provided, are not illegal immigrants at all. Many of the longest-term non-criminal detainees are asylum seekers fighting to stay here because they fear being killed in their home country. Others are longtime residents who may be eligible to stay under other criteria, or whose applications for permanent residency were lost or mishandled, the lawyers say.

Still other long-term detainees include people who can't be deported because their home country won't accept them or people who seemingly have been forgotten in the behemoth system, where 58 percent have no lawyers or anyone else advocating on their behalf.

ICE says detention is the best way to guarantee that immigrants attend court hearings and leave the country when ordered.

"It's ensuring compliance, and if you look at the stats, for folks who are in detention, the stats are pretty darn high," said ICE spokeswoman Cori Bassett.

By comparison though, most criminal suspects, even sometimes those accused of heinous offenses, are entitled to bail.

"We're immigrants, and it makes it seem like it's worse than a criminal," said Sarjina Emy, a 20-year-old former honors student who spent nearly two years in a Florida lockup because her parents' asylum claim was denied when she was a child. "I always thought America does so much for justice. I really thought you get a fair trial. You actually go to court. (U.S. authorities) know what they are doing. Now, I figured out that it only works for criminal citizens."

The use of detention to ensure immigrants show up for immigration court comes at a high cost compared to alternatives like electronic ankle monitoring, which can track people for considerably less money per day.

Detention costs about $141 a night

Based on the amount budgeted for this fiscal year, U.S. taxpayers will pay about $141 a night — the equivalent of a decent hotel room — for each immigrant detained, even though paroling them on ankle monitors — at a budgeted average daily cost of $13 — has an almost perfect compliance rate, according to ICE's own stats.

For years, ICE and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had the power to detain immigrants. With little bed space or public clamor to lock people up, though, millions of foreigners quietly went about life in the United States.

In 1996, Congress passed a pair of laws requiring that immigrants who committed crimes be locked up for deportation, beginning a dramatic run-up in incarcerations. So-called "criminal aliens" — immigrants convicted of a crime, including some misdemeanors like low-level drug crimes — became mandatory detainees even if their original crime brought no prison time.

A system that housed 6,785 immigrants in 1994 now holds nearly five times that amount in 260 facilities across the country, most under contract with local governments or private companies. For this fiscal year, ICE has enough money budgeted for 33,400 people on any given night.

Family rounded up in July 2007

Emy, who was raised in Orlando, Fla., spent 20 months in a detention center even though she had no criminal record. She traded her Baby Phat clothes for a gray uniform and window-shopping at the mall for a law library behind razor wire.

Her only crime? Her parents, who feared her father's political affiliations endangered the family, brought her and two brothers to the United States from Bangladesh in September 2003 — when she was 5, according to court documents.

She doesn't speak Bangla and never imagined a future without college. No one in her family realized her father's work certificate from the Labor Department didn't equate to legal immigration status.

Family members were rounded up in July 2007, treated as fugitives on a dated but active deportation order.

Her parents were deported first. Emy languished in custody while continuing her fight to stay.

'Justice is not being served'

But because the asylum application had been filed on behalf of the entire family, only the parents got a hearing. Emy never saw a judge, according to Emy and her attorney.

"Justice is not being served," she said from a prison pay phone.

In January, a federal appeals court denied her petition to stay in the U.S. Fearing she'd celebrate another birthday behind bars, Emy agreed to be deported and left the country Feb. 18.

Immigration law "is the only United States law where we punish the children for the actions of their parents," said Emy's attorney, Petia Vimitrova Knowles.

Immigration violations are considered civil, something akin to a moving violation in a car, so the government can imprison immigrants without many of the rights criminals receive: No court-appointed attorney for indigent defendants, no standard habeas corpus, no protection from double jeopardy, no guarantee of a speedy trial.

"You're locking up people without even a hearing," said Judy Rabinovitz of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants Rights Project. "That, to me, is the outrage: basic due process. Since when do we allow the government to lock up people without even giving them a bond hearing?"

Most immigrants are navigating a complex legal system without an attorney. Fifty-eight percent went through immigration proceedings without an attorney in fiscal year 2007, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a branch of the U.S. Justice Department.

But, ICE officials often argue, immigrants largely hold the keys to their own freedom. If they simply agree to return to their home country, they can go, Bassett said.

"They're making a choice (that) they're going to appeal, which is their right," she said.

Winning a claim doesn't always mean freedom

But even giving up, or winning a claim, doesn't always spell freedom because ICE acts as police officer, arraignment judge, jailer and prosecutor. It has sole jurisdiction over when a detained immigrant is sent back after a deportation order is issued, and can continue to hold immigrants while it appeals a decision that didn't go its way.

In another telling case, Ahmad Al-Shrmany, a 34-year-old Iraqi with no appeal pending, begged for a year to be deported and yet remained in detention. He wanted to be allowed to go to his native Iraq or his adopted Canada, where he had been granted asylum a decade ago. A lawyer filed a habeas corpus petition in December that went unanswered.

"Just deport me. That's your job," he said in a late January interview with the AP that ICE officials tried to block minutes before it was scheduled at a Houston lockup.

Less than a week after the interview, Al-Shrmany was deported to Canada, said his lawyer, Afreen Ahmed.

Incarceration used to strong-arm people?

Immigrant advocates say ICE prefers incarceration for non-criminal immigrants, even though alternatives are available, for one major reason: to strong-arm people.

"When you're there for weeks and weeks or months or months, your determination to fight your charges is reduced," said Judy Green, a policy analyst with Justice Strategies, a nonpartisan think tank on incarceration issues. The goal is "to keep intense pressure on detainees to agree to removal and not to fight on whatever grounds they have for relief."

The Rev. Raymond Soeoth, a Pentecostal minister from Indonesia who had never been imprisoned, said his lengthy incarceration — and the uncertainty of how long it would last — wore on him as he fought his immigration case and pursued a lawsuit accusing ICE officials of forcibly drugging him and other detainees.

"We just wait. We cannot do anything," said Soeoth, who was released after more than two years, given a special visa as part of the government's settlement of the drugging lawsuit.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29706177

[Kathryn41 3,205]

Sickening, frightening and definitely shows an ugly side to a country that gives such public claims of justice for all - looks like that is only lip service. Justice appears to be only for those who have a political voice - a vote.

[panamania79 2]

Immigrants face long detention, few rights

Many detainees spend months or years in U.S. detention centers

The Associated Press

updated 1:00 p.m. CT, Sun., March. 15, 2009

America's detention system for immigrants has mushroomed in the last decade, a costly building boom that was supposed to sweep up criminals and ensure that undocumented immigrants were quickly shown the door.

Instead, an Associated Press computer analysis of every person being held on a recent Sunday night shows that most did not have a criminal record and many were not about to leave the country — voluntarily or via deportation.

An official Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, showed a U.S. detainee population of exactly 32,000 on the evening of Jan. 25.

The data show that 18,690 immigrants had no criminal conviction, not even for illegal entry or low-level crimes like trespassing. More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. A dozen had been held for three years or more; one man from China had been locked up for more than five years.

Detention deadlines routinely missed

Nearly 10,000 had been in custody longer than 31 days — the average detention stay that ICE cites as evidence of its effective detention management.

Especially tough bail conditions are exacerbated by disregard or bending of the rules regarding how long immigrants can be detained.

Based on a 2001 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, ICE has about six months to deport or release immigrants after their case is decided. But immigration lawyers say that deadline is routinely missed. In the system snapshot provided to the AP, 950 people were in that category.

The detainee buildup began in the mid 1990s, long before the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Since 2003, though, Congress has doubled to $1.7 billion the amount dedicated to imprisoning immigrants, as furor over "criminal aliens" intertwined with post-9/11 fears and anti-immigrant political rhetoric.

But the dragnet has come to include not only terrorism suspects and cop killers, but an honors student who was raised in Orlando, Fla.; a convenience store clerk who begged to go back to Canada; and a Pentecostal minister who was forcibly drugged by ICE agents after he asked to contact his wife, according to court records.

Many detainees are asylum seekers

Immigration lawyers note that substantial numbers of detainees, from 177 countries in the data provided, are not illegal immigrants at all. Many of the longest-term non-criminal detainees are asylum seekers fighting to stay here because they fear being killed in their home country. Others are longtime residents who may be eligible to stay under other criteria, or whose applications for permanent residency were lost or mishandled, the lawyers say.

Still other long-term detainees include people who can't be deported because their home country won't accept them or people who seemingly have been forgotten in the behemoth system, where 58 percent have no lawyers or anyone else advocating on their behalf.

ICE says detention is the best way to guarantee that immigrants attend court hearings and leave the country when ordered.

"It's ensuring compliance, and if you look at the stats, for folks who are in detention, the stats are pretty darn high," said ICE spokeswoman Cori Bassett.

By comparison though, most criminal suspects, even sometimes those accused of heinous offenses, are entitled to bail.

"We're immigrants, and it makes it seem like it's worse than a criminal," said Sarjina Emy, a 20-year-old former honors student who spent nearly two years in a Florida lockup because her parents' asylum claim was denied when she was a child. "I always thought America does so much for justice. I really thought you get a fair trial. You actually go to court. (U.S. authorities) know what they are doing. Now, I figured out that it only works for criminal citizens."

The use of detention to ensure immigrants show up for immigration court comes at a high cost compared to alternatives like electronic ankle monitoring, which can track people for considerably less money per day.

Detention costs about $141 a night

Based on the amount budgeted for this fiscal year, U.S. taxpayers will pay about $141 a night — the equivalent of a decent hotel room — for each immigrant detained, even though paroling them on ankle monitors — at a budgeted average daily cost of $13 — has an almost perfect compliance rate, according to ICE's own stats.

For years, ICE and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had the power to detain immigrants. With little bed space or public clamor to lock people up, though, millions of foreigners quietly went about life in the United States.

In 1996, Congress passed a pair of laws requiring that immigrants who committed crimes be locked up for deportation, beginning a dramatic run-up in incarcerations. So-called "criminal aliens" — immigrants convicted of a crime, including some misdemeanors like low-level drug crimes — became mandatory detainees even if their original crime brought no prison time.

A system that housed 6,785 immigrants in 1994 now holds nearly five times that amount in 260 facilities across the country, most under contract with local governments or private companies. For this fiscal year, ICE has enough money budgeted for 33,400 people on any given night.

Family rounded up in July 2007

Emy, who was raised in Orlando, Fla., spent 20 months in a detention center even though she had no criminal record. She traded her Baby Phat clothes for a gray uniform and window-shopping at the mall for a law library behind razor wire.

Her only crime? Her parents, who feared her father's political affiliations endangered the family, brought her and two brothers to the United States from Bangladesh in September 2003 — when she was 5, according to court documents.

She doesn't speak Bangla and never imagined a future without college. No one in her family realized her father's work certificate from the Labor Department didn't equate to legal immigration status.

Family members were rounded up in July 2007, treated as fugitives on a dated but active deportation order.

Her parents were deported first. Emy languished in custody while continuing her fight to stay.

'Justice is not being served'

But because the asylum application had been filed on behalf of the entire family, only the parents got a hearing. Emy never saw a judge, according to Emy and her attorney.

"Justice is not being served," she said from a prison pay phone.

In January, a federal appeals court denied her petition to stay in the U.S. Fearing she'd celebrate another birthday behind bars, Emy agreed to be deported and left the country Feb. 18.

Immigration law "is the only United States law where we punish the children for the actions of their parents," said Emy's attorney, Petia Vimitrova Knowles.

Immigration violations are considered civil, something akin to a moving violation in a car, so the government can imprison immigrants without many of the rights criminals receive: No court-appointed attorney for indigent defendants, no standard habeas corpus, no protection from double jeopardy, no guarantee of a speedy trial.

"You're locking up people without even a hearing," said Judy Rabinovitz of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants Rights Project. "That, to me, is the outrage: basic due process. Since when do we allow the government to lock up people without even giving them a bond hearing?"

Most immigrants are navigating a complex legal system without an attorney. Fifty-eight percent went through immigration proceedings without an attorney in fiscal year 2007, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a branch of the U.S. Justice Department.

But, ICE officials often argue, immigrants largely hold the keys to their own freedom. If they simply agree to return to their home country, they can go, Bassett said.

"They're making a choice (that) they're going to appeal, which is their right," she said.

Winning a claim doesn't always mean freedom

But even giving up, or winning a claim, doesn't always spell freedom because ICE acts as police officer, arraignment judge, jailer and prosecutor. It has sole jurisdiction over when a detained immigrant is sent back after a deportation order is issued, and can continue to hold immigrants while it appeals a decision that didn't go its way.

In another telling case, Ahmad Al-Shrmany, a 34-year-old Iraqi with no appeal pending, begged for a year to be deported and yet remained in detention. He wanted to be allowed to go to his native Iraq or his adopted Canada, where he had been granted asylum a decade ago. A lawyer filed a habeas corpus petition in December that went unanswered.

"Just deport me. That's your job," he said in a late January interview with the AP that ICE officials tried to block minutes before it was scheduled at a Houston lockup.

Less than a week after the interview, Al-Shrmany was deported to Canada, said his lawyer, Afreen Ahmed.

Incarceration used to strong-arm people?

Immigrant advocates say ICE prefers incarceration for non-criminal immigrants, even though alternatives are available, for one major reason: to strong-arm people.

"When you're there for weeks and weeks or months or months, your determination to fight your charges is reduced," said Judy Green, a policy analyst with Justice Strategies, a nonpartisan think tank on incarceration issues. The goal is "to keep intense pressure on detainees to agree to removal and not to fight on whatever grounds they have for relief."

The Rev. Raymond Soeoth, a Pentecostal minister from Indonesia who had never been imprisoned, said his lengthy incarceration — and the uncertainty of how long it would last — wore on him as he fought his immigration case and pursued a lawsuit accusing ICE officials of forcibly drugging him and other detainees.

"We just wait. We cannot do anything," said Soeoth, who was released after more than two years, given a special visa as part of the government's settlement of the drugging lawsuit.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29706177

That's why Wyatt Detention Center is in big trouble.

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.ph...=184593&hl=

[peejay 327]

To be honest, I think there is a whole lot omitted in this article to skew the perception of what is really going on here.

It has been a proven fact that roughly 98% of illegal immigrants don't show up to their scheduled hearings. That is what basically ended "catch and release" to begin with. Detention until a hearing assures they don't abscond. I really wonder if a bail bondsman would take a chance on these people? Who would be stupid enough to put up a $20K or $30K bail on these people?

Most asylum cases are proven to be frivilous and are merely ploys to buy time. Some deportees have managed to milk the system with appeal after appeal for up to 10 years before finally being deported. What do you think these people do for 10 years when they are not incarcerated?

People come to the USA on tourist and temporary business visas and blatantly overstay as if they are immigrants rather than temporary visitors. Does this entitle them to permanent residency and a pathway to US citizenship? They blatantly lied to US embassy personnel to get these visas in the first place.

Unlike the lone example of the Iraqi, most are free to go home but choose to remain incarcerated in hopes that some judge may let them stay. In the mean time what started as a temporary tourist visa or a business visa is costing the American taxpayer big $$$. Giving signals that cheating is the way to US residency just encourages more people to try the same lame stunt.

In the end...anyone with foreign relatives or a business suffers because these games make it even harder on all of us to get visas for our relatives to visit.

I have no sympathy for these scofflaws and gamers of a system that is broken. I think the system is way too lenient as it is. What we need is more immigration judges to move these people on their way. The US government has an immigration policy, but refuses to adequately fund it. Either eliminate immigration altogether or spend the friggin' money to do it in a competent way.

[Kathryn41 3,205]

These are the comments I found alarming:

"Others are longtime residents who may be eligible to stay under other criteria, or whose applications for permanent residency were lost or mishandled, the lawyers say."

"The data show that 18,690 immigrants had no criminal conviction, not even for illegal entry or low-level crimes like trespassing. More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. A dozen had been held for three years or more; one man from China had been locked up for more than five years."

"Based on a 2001 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, ICE has about six months to deport or release immigrants after their case is decided. But immigration lawyers say that deadline is routinely missed. In the system snapshot provided to the AP, 950 people were in that category."

"a convenience store clerk who begged to go back to Canada; and a Pentecostal minister who was forcibly drugged by ICE agents after he asked to contact his wife"

Immigration violations are considered civil, something akin to a moving violation in a car, so the government can imprison immigrants without many of the rights criminals receive: No court-appointed attorney for indigent defendants, no standard habeas corpus, no protection from double jeopardy, no guarantee of a speedy trial."

"Winning a claim doesn't always mean freedom

But even giving up, or winning a claim, doesn't always spell freedom because ICE acts as police officer, arraignment judge, jailer and prosecutor. It has sole jurisdiction over when a detained immigrant is sent back after a deportation order is issued, and can continue to hold immigrants while it appeals a decision that didn't go its way."

"Ahmad Al-Shrmany, a 34-year-old Iraqi with no appeal pending, begged for a year to be deported and yet remained in detention. He wanted to be allowed to go to his native Iraq or his adopted Canada, where he had been granted asylum a decade ago. A lawyer filed a habeas corpus petition in December that went unanswered.

"Just deport me. That's your job," he said in a late January interview with the AP that ICE officials tried to block minutes before it was scheduled at a Houston lockup."

"The Rev. Raymond Soeoth, a Pentecostal minister from Indonesia who had never been imprisoned, said his lengthy incarceration — and the uncertainty of how long it would last — wore on him as he fought his immigration case and pursued a lawsuit accusing ICE officials of forcibly drugging him and other detainees.

"We just wait. We cannot do anything," said Soeoth, who was released after more than two years, given a special visa as part of the government's settlement of the drugging lawsuit.

These items from the article should alarm anyone who believes that justice is important in the US. It sounds like ICE believes they are above the law, not an arm of the law.

[Niels Bohr 72]

I've known ICE is about that.

Here's the situation in Providence. A computer engineer who overstayed his visa was incarcerated in the Wyatt Detention facility. He was refused access to medical attention due to his cancer, and died.

The FED canceled their contract with Wyatt, and removed all detainees to another hold facility. Now, the family of the person have followed up with a lawsuit.

The guards not only refused medical attention, but, they also have abused him while he was sick already.

I think the image of illegals through the media have created some type of hatred towards them.

I am following up on this case. Last I heard was the family was able to have a judge to delay the deportation of the guy who was in the same cell to get his testimony.

[peejay 327]

I've known ICE is about that.

Here's the situation in Providence. A computer engineer who overstayed his visa was incarcerated in the Wyatt Detention facility. He was refused access to medical attention due to his cancer, and died.

The FED canceled their contract with Wyatt, and removed all detainees to another hold facility. Now, the family of the person have followed up with a lawsuit.

The guards not only refused medical attention, but, they also have abused him while he was sick already.

I think the image of illegals through the media have created some type of hatred towards them.

I am following up on this case. Last I heard was the family was able to have a judge to delay the deportation of the guy who was in the same cell to get his testimony.

Well...why didn't he leave like he was supposed to before his visa expired? When I travel to other countries I leave before my visa expires. What's up with that?

I have friends and relatives that have worked overseas in foreign countries and when it it time to leave they go. My dad worked overseas and ditto to that too. At some point you have to wonder what is going on in these cases cited. Why don't these people follow the terms of their visas? Why do they feel they can break our laws?

Before I weigh in one way or another I'd like to see detailed reports on how these people got into the USA and what got them into detention by ICE. This article gives the impression that nobody should ever have to answer for violating the terms of their visa or have to follow US immigration laws. I just don't buy that logic. People should not be abused, but they cannot be allowed to break any law they deem inconvenient to follow.

I do not believe these cases are what ICE and enforcement of immigration laws are all about. Of course people that are being forcibly kicked out of the USA are not the best unbiased source of a story about immigration law enforcement.

Edited March 16, 2009 by peejay

[Niels Bohr 72]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiu_Lui_Ng Edited March 16, 2009 by Niels Bohr

[peejay 327]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiu_Lui_Ng

It is unfotunate that this guy died in custody, but I see no mention of any criminal wrongdoing by ICE in the article. There is a right way and a wrong way to go about your life. This guy made a lot of wrong turns and failed to take care of his business properly on numerous occassions.

[Niels Bohr 72]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiu_Lui_Ng

It is unfotunate that this guy died in custody, but I see no mention of any criminal wrongdoing by ICE in the article. There is a right way and a wrong way to go about your life. This guy made a lot of wrong turns and failed to take care of his business properly on numerous occassions.

Obviously, the criminal wrong doing is not ICE. It's the torture of this guy. That is what criminal about it.

A rapist do not get this type of torture in confinement. You're telling me someone overstayed his VISA, and didn't commit a crime must be subjected to torture.

Or. are you saying that crossing the border must be much more heavier in crime versus all other types of crimes.

Edited March 16, 2009 by Niels Bohr

[EstebanTrabajos 7]

woooow!

The guy is on a streak, seems you are on spring break lad...or maybe laid-off

[panamania79 2]

I've known ICE is about that.

Here's the situation in Providence. A computer engineer who overstayed his visa was incarcerated in the Wyatt Detention facility. He was refused access to medical attention due to his cancer, and died.

The FED canceled their contract with Wyatt, and removed all detainees to another hold facility. Now, the family of the person have followed up with a lawsuit.

The guards not only refused medical attention, but, they also have abused him while he was sick already.

I think the image of illegals through the media have created some type of hatred towards them.

I am following up on this case. Last I heard was the family was able to have a judge to delay the deportation of the guy who was in the same cell to get his testimony.

Yep,like I said,that's why Wyatt Detention Center is in some deep trouble.

[justashooter 430]

1.) "Others are longtime residents who may be eligible to stay under other criteria, or whose applications for permanent residency were lost or mishandled, the lawyers say."

2.) "The data show that 18,690 immigrants had no criminal conviction, not even for illegal entry or low-level crimes like trespassing. More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. A dozen had been held for three years or more; one man from China had been locked up for more than five years."

1.) I once watched a lawyer say "the moon is made of blue cheese" in a court of law. Not likely.

2.) Many illegals are given an opportunity to deport without criminal conviction so that teh courts are not clogged and they don't have criminal records when they leave. It's a maneuver that is attractive to both sides, and often used. They "could be convicted", based upon the evidence, but it would cost tax money. The illegal is led to believe that if he is not convicted he might be granted a visa in future. Not likely.

[peejay 327]

1.) "Others are longtime residents who may be eligible to stay under other criteria, or whose applications for permanent residency were lost or mishandled, the lawyers say."

2.) "The data show that 18,690 immigrants had no criminal conviction, not even for illegal entry or low-level crimes like trespassing. More than 400 of those with no criminal record had been incarcerated for at least a year. A dozen had been held for three years or more; one man from China had been locked up for more than five years."

1.) I once watched a lawyer say "the moon is made of blue cheese" in a court of law. Not likely.

2.) Many illegals are given an opportunity to deport without criminal conviction so that teh courts are not clogged and they don't have criminal records when they leave. It's a maneuver that is attractive to both sides, and often used. They "could be convicted", based upon the evidence, but it would cost tax money. The illegal is led to believe that if he is not convicted he might be granted a visa in future. Not likely.

Hence you have the die hards that are going to whine about being detained even though they really don't have a leg to stand on. They are going to milk the appeals waiting for amnesty or a liberal judge to reward them for cheating.

I don't understand why there is such sympathy for these cheaters since many are just that...cheaters. They cheat and jump ahead of the line while people who go about it legally wait.

Tourists, students, other temporary visa holders, and illegal aliens that swim across the river are entitled to permanent residency, jobs, and a pathway to citizenship for lying and cheating? Who buys into that logic? I argue frequently with quite a few in Off Topic that buy into that notion 100%.

[HAL 9000 96]

I argue frequently with quite a few in Off Topic that buy into that notion 100%.

Names please. Or are these the 'special ones' that precede your rants?

I'd like to see these arguments and give you a thumbs up to agree with you.