Home > The Border Line > Archives > 2008 > August > 22
Friday, August 22, 2008
Feds end “self-deport” program after few takers
A controversial pilot program that allowed illegal immigrants to turn themselves in for deportation will be discontinued after only eight people volunteered, federal officials said Friday.
The three-week program by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had targeted about 30,000 illegal immigrants in five cities — Santa Ana, Calif., San Diego, Phoenix, Charlotte, and Chicago.
“We are not considering at this time expanding or extending the program,” said James Hayes, acting director of ICE’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations. “We believed we learned a lot.”
Hayes said the program — which cost $41,000 — was not a failure because it provided valuable information. He added that it saved money because it would have cost $54,000 to detain and deport the eight volunteers.
Immigrant advocates assailed the program from the beginning and Hayes accused such groups of discouraging participation.
The eight immigrants who volunteered for the program include two from Guatemala, two from India, one from Estonia, one from Lebanon, one from Mexico and one from El Salvador, Hayes said.
Douglas Rivlin, spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, said that most undocumented immigrants and their children are entrenched in American society and do not want to leave.
It would be unrealistic to expect them to take 90 days to find foster parents for their children or prepare them to go to a school system in a country they’ve never been to or in a language they don’t speak, not to mention deal with their mortgages and other affairs, he said.
“We’re simply not going to deport ourselves out of a situation where we have 12 million people living here,” Rivlin added.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment
Police group: leave immigration enforcement to feds
Local and state authorities should leave immigration policing up to federal agencies, according to preliminary findings of a study conducted by the Police Foundation, a nonprofit group.
Through a series of focus groups that brought together academics, sheriffs, police chiefs and human-rights advocates, the foundation found the majority prefer having federal authorities enforce immigration policies instead of extending the responsibility to the nation’s local police and sheriff’s departments.
The findings, which will be included in a full report in the coming months, were presented at a two-day conference in Washington that ended Friday.
