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Old 02-14-2010, 05:35 PM
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Default Wyoming illegal immigration cases triple

Wyoming illegal immigration cases triple
A third of Wyoming's federal prosecutions last year involved people who illegally immigrated here from Mexico or Central America.
By Michael Van Cassell
CHEYENNE - Illegal immigration re-entry cases tripled in Wyoming from 2008 to last year and increased nearly tenfold from a decade ago.

Illegal immigration accounted for a third of federal prosecutions in Wyoming in 2009, a year in which there were more criminal cases in the U.S. District Court in Wyoming than in the past decade.

Many of the illegal immigration cases come out of Teton County, those involved with the federal system said.

The majority of cases involved Mexican nationals who are found working in a gamut of jobs, a federal public defender said.

Some are involved in criminal activity, while others have lived in the United States for 15 years and have families.

And while economics plays a role in Wyoming's situation and possibly a national trend, additional immigration enforcement staff at local offices could account greatly for the increase.

How the system works

Carl Rusnok, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, called re-entry a serious offense.

"If they had originally been deported because they committed an aggravated felony, the prosecution of their re-entry can be up to 20 years in prison," Rusnok said.

There are several programs that ICE, an agency that falls under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, uses to crack down on illegal immigrants.

Through these programs, and local law enforcement agencies running suspects through ICE databases, agents can find illegal immigrants and present cases for prosecution.

"Any means that we have of encountering aliens that are illegally in the country, we can, using our databases, identify those people who have already been deported, and then we can present those cases for prosecution," Rusnok said.

Rusnok said ICE targets people who have final orders of deportation, meaning a judge already made a ruling before a defendant is arrested.

"We find out, usually from the local law enforcement agencies, that someone has been arrested on criminal charges," Rusnok said.

A recent report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering and research organization at Syracuse University, showed Congress increased national ICE spending $24 billion in the past five years.

From 2005 to last year, ICE's overall budget increased 67 percent, and detention and removal spending specifically increased 104 percent.

"There were some changes that occurred as far as administratively, and that impacted a lot of things," Rusnok said.

More recently, additions were made to local ICE offices in Wyoming.

"We significantly increased our detention and removal agents on site there at the local offices in Wyoming," Rusnok said.

Rusnok would not offer more details, citing security concerns.

In the last few years, control of Wyoming immigration enforcement was moved from Salt Lake City to Denver, Rusnok said.

John Powell, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Wyoming, said the increase in cases does have an effect, but that "it's part of what we do anyway."

"It takes a percentage of our time, but it's not onerous in any way," he said.

Will the number of cases from last year hold steady into the future?

"It's difficult to estimate because of the economy situation and the amount of work here," Powell said.

Simplifying the system

Federal Public Defender David Weiss approached the U.S. Attorney's Office here earlier last year because he noticed an increase in illegal immigration cases.

"I noticed a lot of people sitting needlessly," he said.

In conjunction with prosecutors, Weiss created an informal "fast track" program that significantly reduced the time it takes to process cases.

Typically, illegal immigration cases take four or five months, depending on how closely the defendant is picked up near indictment, Weiss indicated.

Fast-tracking those cases means it takes two to three months to complete their prosecution, he said.

Such a system formally is used in jurisdictions like Texas and Arizona, where there are thousands of immigration cases.

The penalty a defendant receives varies.

"It depends on the number of times they've been in the system," Powell said.

Many of the defendants are sentenced to time served in jail while awaiting the resolution of the case and then deported back to their country of origin.

Weiss said the vast majority of his clients are from Mexico, with the occasional Guatemalan or Honduran. He represented one defendant from Brazil.

Many of the cases involve blue-collar workers, Weiss said, running the gamut from restaurant work to landscaping to skilled construction to oil rig workers.

A high number of cases come out of Teton County, Weiss said.

Teton County, depending on the agency conducting the study, can be listed as the wealthiest per capita county in the country.

"You have a tourism industry there that I think a lot of people work in," Powell said.

Weiss said some of the defendants are bad individuals, but some are not.

"They are guys who've been here 10, 15 years and they have families, kids," Weiss said.

He said it is a legislative issue.

"Neither me nor the U.S. attorneys charging the cases have any say in immigration policy," he said.

A complex issue

University of Wyoming professor Eddie Munoz teaches criminal justice and Chicano studies.

While ICE refers to illegal immigrants as "criminal aliens," Munoz uses the term "undocumented immigrants."

"It's such a complex problem, getting into the economics of it, the politics of it, even some of the social aspects of it," Munoz said.

There always has been an ebb and flow of immigration from Mexico into the United States, Munoz said.

"I think it's been an issue historically for the entire United States," he said.

He said the U.S. wouldn't have as many undocumented immigrants if people didn't hire them.

"If there are jobs, they're going to come," he said.

The professor characterized immigrants as a diverse group of people who come to the United States seeking work.

"Overall, immigration has been beneficial to U.S. society," he said.

Munoz said undocumented immigrants often do pay sales taxes because they buy local. That also pumps money into the local economy, he said.

And undocumented workers often have some form of papers for employment, so they are still contributing to payroll taxes, Munoz said. In those cases, they often don't apply for tax refunds if they are eligible, he said.

Munoz advocated for some system to allow undocumented immigrants to gain citizenship and pay taxes.

"There's this kind of myth that undocumented immigrants don't pay taxes," Munoz said.

He said law enforcement funds typically go to punish immigrants, not the people who employ them.

Communities often want businesses to do well; and sometimes it's difficult for employers to know whether an employee is an undocumented immigrant because they don't thoroughly examine documentation.

Labor costs are the most expensive part of doing business.

"When we have tough economic times, we don't want immigrants," he said. "But when we have good economic times, we want immigrants."
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