U.S.-L.A. Task Force Deports 175 With Ties to Drug, Gang Activity

A task force of federal immigration agents and Los Angeles police investigators has deported 175 illegal aliens involved in gang and narcotics activities since the unit was expanded last December, officials said Tuesday.

At least 111 of the deported gang members were “involved one way or the other in drug use and trafficking,” Harold Ezell, Western regional commissioner for the U.S Immigration and Naturalization Service, said at a news conference. INS officials said the deportees also had criminal records for felonies ranging from murder to possession of stolen property.

Authorities said that the gang members--a majority of whom were identified as Mexican and Salvadoran nationals--were either sent back to their homelands after serving prison terms for felony counts or were picked up in street round-ups and deported by immigration agents.

Deported to Many Nations

INS officials said that 77 alleged gang members were deported to Mexico. Another 56 were sent to El Salvador, 15 to Honduras and less than 10 each returned to Guatemala, Colombia, Jamaica, Belize, Costa Rica and Japan.

Though authorities did not provide specific details on the crimes committed by the deported gang members, they said that in one case, the task force decimated the leadership of Mara Salvatrucha, a Salvadoran street gang. John Brechtel, assistant district director for INS investigations in Los Angeles, said that more than 20 key members of the gang were deported.

The INS increased the number of its agents, from two to eight, on the interagency task force last December, officials said, after a boost in federal funding. INS agents have also begun to work with sheriffs’ deputies and suburban law enforcement agencies in a similar capacity.

Targeted for Deportation

Under the task force program, INS agents, police and sheriff’s deputies target illegal aliens known to be gang members for deportation. Some are deported after they are arrested and charged with crimes. But in some cases, INS agents have deported gang members even if police have been unable to charge them with any illegal activities.

“If a gang member is out on the street and the police can’t make a charge, we will go out and deport them for being here illegally if they fit that criteria,” Brechtel said.

Under a similar program, 50 INS agents are assigned to interviewing undocumented immigrants and lawful resident aliens serving time on felony convictions in state and federal prisons. The felons are given deportation hearings while in prison, then sent back to their homelands as soon as they are released.

Ezell said that about 9,000 aliens with felony convictions have been deported in the last six months from the INS Western Region, which encompasses California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam. Of those, 2,058 were deported from Los Angeles, he said.

Immediate Benefit

Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief Bernard Parks said the deportations allow “our officers to concentrate on gang members in another fashion.” The most immediate benefit, Parks said, was the ability to remove illegal alien gang members from a community even if police had not been able to develop charges against them.

“The positive impact on the system is that we don’t have to go out and look for that person again after they’ve been deported,” Parks said.

But social workers and others who work with gang members suggest that the program is flawed because gang members can quickly return to a community soon after they are deported.

“What we’ve found is that after they’re deported, they surface within days back in the community,” one official with the California Youth Authority said.