By ELLIOT SPAGAT
Associated Press Writer
SAN DIEGO- To understand why undocumented immigrants from countries other than Mexico often are freed soon after being caught sneaking across the border, look at the bottleneck in San Diego’s immigration jail.
For reasons both bureaucratic and practical, the 850 inmates filling the beds are likely to stay months, weeks or even years. As a result, there’s just no room left.
Long-term residents include a 48-year-old Polish man locked up since November 2000 who refuses to sign a document that would put him on a plane home. Authorities have all but given up trying to deport him.
A 22-year-old Chinese man detained since December won’t fill out paperwork the Chinese government requires for anyone deported. A Tongan man has waited four months for his government to send travel documents promised long ago. Even the quick turnarounds _ Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans _ stay two or three weeks.
U.S. officials must navigate legal and logistical roadblocks to deport non-Mexicans, often forcing protracted negotiations with foreign governments and even airlines. The consequence: Border Patrol agents release many of the non-Mexicans they catch.
With only 19,444 beds nationwide, immigration jails are picky about whom they accept.
Under federal guidelines, anyone with a record of violent crimes including murder and rape must be jailed. Those from 35 so-called “special-interest” countries linked to terrorism also get a close look.
Mexicans, who accounted for 94 percent of the U.S. Border Patrol’s 1.1 million arrests last year, rarely go to jail _ unless they are serial offenders or have criminal histories. Typically, they are fingerprinted and immediately sent home on a bus as “voluntary returns.”
Non-Mexicans, however, were jailed an average of 89 days last year, Wesley Lee, acting director of detention and removal operations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told a Senate panel in June. In an effort to lower numbers of non-Mexicans released, the Border Patrol introduced an “expedited removal” procedure that lets authorities deport people without a hearing before an immigration judge. Under that program, non-Mexican detainees were jailed an average of 32 days.
The U.S. Supreme Court has sharply limited the power to keep inmates indefinitely, ruling in 2001 that they must be freed if their deportation is “no longer reasonably foreseeable.”
In San Diego, the jail has deported inmates from 65 countries this year, almost all caught crossing the border by land in California. The jail is one of the nation’s busiest, accounting for 12,878 of the 161,676 inmates deported last year. The jail sits amid barren hills about a mile from the Mexican border.
Just nine deportation officers are assigned to arrange return travel for deportees.
They occupy a windowless office at the jail, spending their time negotiating with consular officials for travel documents and arranging one-way trips on U.S. government or commercial flights.
It is a well-traveled bunch. One flew to China in April to accompany an inmate on a commercial flight; another went to Lebanon three times.
Deportation Officer Yadira Avalos gets some of the trickiest cases, including Cubans, Vietnamese and others whose governments don’t have full diplomatic relations with the United States.
She started a recent day by updating files on a Cuban who was released after the Department of Homeland Security determined there was little chance Cuba would ever accept him. His U.S. criminal record included convictions in 1992 for attempted murder and selling drugs in 1999.
One of her cases is the Chinese inmate who refuses to fill out a questionnaire asking about job prospects and family in the United States. “He figures that if he doesn’t cooperate, we’re not going to be able to deport him,” said Avalos, who will continue to recommend to superiors that he stay in jail.
Avalos walks upstairs, where about 100 inmates are lunching on baloney, beans and cole slaw. She tells a Vietnamese inmate who was convicted for stealing a car a few years ago that he is scheduled to be released in July. After that, he will be required to check in occasionally with a deportation officer. The man shows little emotion as he offers fingerprints and signs a release form.
Deportation Officer Glen Beck is working on a 27-year-old Armenian whose criminal record includes a 1993 conviction for assault with a firearm. The tattooed Armenian, whose file identifies him by the nickname “Little Sniper,” was born in the Soviet Union and failed to seek Armenian citizenship. A telephone conversation with his attorney ends with a promise from the lawyer to translate documents from Armenian to English.
“The question is whether Armenia will issue a passport,” said Beck.
Deportation Officer Ken Smith gets Central American detainees, some of whose governments insist on face-to-face meetings before they issue travel documents. The Honduran government, in a pilot project aimed at speedier deportations, has agreed to interview people by videoconference.
In May, the San Diego jail flew 52 inmates to Florence, Ariz., where they caught three U.S. government flights to Guatemala and two flights each to El Salvador and Honduras. Two additional flights that month _ one to Guatemala and one to Honduras _ were full.
On one recent day, Smith met an official of the Guatemalan consulate in Los Angeles, who arrived at the jail to interview 31 inmates.
“I’m exhausted,” said Vice Consul Milton Alvarez, noting that he had just interviewed 120 detainees over several days in Arizona.