Judge Pushes Plan to Let INS Identify Alien Criminals While They’re in Courts

Thousands of illegal aliens convicted of serious crimes, including murder and drug trafficking, escape deportation because immigration authorities are not trying to identify them in state courts, an Orange County judge told a congressional panel Wednesday.

Superior Court Judge David O. Carter, who has established an unusual program in his courtroom to allow immigration officials to check the citizenship of convicted felons, urged Congress to take steps to ensure that other jurisdictions adopt the idea.

Carter’s program is believed to be the only such effort in the country, according to congressional aides and immigration officials.

Carter testified before the immigration subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, which is considering legislation that would expand the arrest powers of federal immigration agents. The committee is also studying the more fundamental problem of how to deal with illegal aliens who commit serious crimes.

Although it is difficult to determine the number of criminals who are in the country illegally, Carter and others said the problem is substantial. One immigration official told the panel that state and federal prisons house more than 120,000 aliens, not necessarily illegal, who are deportable because of their criminal convictions.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service generally does not try to identify illegal aliens among the criminal population until after they are incarcerated, according to an official of the General Accounting Office who testified at the hearing.

“This strategy . . . is not effective in dealing with all deportable aliens because, for example, they may receive a probationary or suspended sentence,” said Lowell Dodge, director of the justice section of the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.

Under federal law, aliens--both legal and illegal--become deportable if they are convicted of so-called aggravated felonies such as murder, robbery, drug dealing or other serious crimes.

“A primary focus of the (INS) . . . should be the deportation of illegal immigrant narcotics offenders out of the state courts,” Carter told the subcommittee.

He said the government’s “drug war” has tended to focus on the federal level and failed to recognize that most offenders are under state jurisdiction.

“In the past, INS was not invited into the state courts,” he said. “The result is that the vast majority of illegal immigrant drug dealers are not deported by INS.”

The program Carter instituted a year ago is intended to correct that problem, the judge said, by identifying criminals who are in the country illegally before they are released on probation or shipped off to county jail or state prison.

Identification of illegal aliens who have received probationary sentences permits them to be deported immediately instead of being allowed to remain in the country. And by placing an INS hold on convicts before they are incarcerated, officials ensure that the criminals will be subject to deportation upon their release from custody.

During the first nine months of 1989, Carter said INS identified as illegal aliens 36.4% of the 1,880 defendants in his court who were convicted of felony offenses or probation violations.

Carter suggested that the federal government should require cooperation between state courts and federal immigration authorities for those states that receive federal aid for anti-drug programs.

The proposal met with an enthusiastic response from Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), a subcommittee member who authored the bill to give immigration agents general arrest powers.

“You are really doing something that is unique and of real benefit to this country, and it’s incredible to me that it’s not being duplicated elsewhere,” Smith told Carter.

Smith said William J. Bennett, who heads the federal anti-drug effort, expressed interest in Carter’s suggestion in a conversation Wednesday morning. Carter, however, said Bennett so far had ignored his request for an appointment. Smith said he would try to arrange a meeting.