300,000 ordered to leave America have yet to do so
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, The Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - Federal authorities announced yesterday a renewed crackdown against immigrants who have committed crimes in the United States but have managed to avoid deportation.
About 80,000 so-called “criminal alien absconders” are estimated to be on the loose, many of them keeping a low profile after having served state and local sentences for their crimes.
About 300,000 immigrant “absconders” have received deportation orders but have eluded immigration agents. With a $10 million appropriation from Congress, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it will redouble efforts to find and deport them.
“We are looking for you. We will find you. And your days in the United States are numbered,” said Michael J. Garcia, director of the bureau, a part of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service that is now in the Homeland Security Department.
Garcia released a Most Wanted List featuring child molesters, killers, rapists and drug felons.
Some of those on the Most Wanted List of nine men and one woman had convictions dating to the late 1980s.
Immigrants - even those with legal status - can be deported for a range of criminal offenses, not all of them major. For years, however, the federal government has lacked a comprehensive way to track foreigners serving time in state and local prisons. The Clinton administration and Congress made deportations of criminal aliens a priority in the mid-1990s.
“It’s been a historical problem,” said Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security. “Historically, local law enforcement arrested someone, sent them to state prison, and it was never checked.”
One of the men on the Most Wanted List was arrested quietly in Rialto, Calif., on Tuesday. Esteban Grajiola-Mora was picked up at his home about 6 a.m., said Chuck Ziethen, acting chief of fugitive operations.
The 57-year-old machinist had been convicted in 1994 of lewd and lascivious acts on a minor under 14. In 1999, Grajiola-Mora was released on bond by an immigration judge while he contested his deportation.
Until recently, he had dropped off the immigration enforcement radar screen. Now, he is back in his native Mexico, Ziethen said.