Roos’ Bill Would Deport Illegal Alien Criminals

Hoping to take an Orange County program statewide, Assemblyman Mike Roos announced Friday that he will introduce a bill designed to guarantee the deportation of illegal aliens who commit serious crimes in California.

Roos, a Los Angeles Democrat, said he got the idea from Orange County Superior Court Judge David O. Carter, who began screening illegal alien defendants in his Santa Ana courtroom a year ago. Carter’s program is believed to be the only one of its kind in the country.

If the bill is approved, Immigration and Naturalization Service agents would fan out into California courts and determine the citizenship status of those accused of so-called aggravated felonies, such as murder, robbery, drug-dealing and other serious crimes.

Defendants who are in this country illegally would be tracked as they move through the justice system, Roos said. Once they are convicted, a judge could choose to waive sentence and turn them over to the INS for deportation, or sentence them to jail and have the INS deport them afterward, Roos said. Those re-entering the country would be subject to enhanced penalties.

Roos, Carter and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Richard Byrne discussed the proposal at a news conference in MacArthur Park, a notorious hangout for drug dealers.

Carter said Roos’ bill is intended to remedy the lack of coordination between state and federal authorities, which he said results in the release of many illegal alien convicts back onto the streets of California after they serve their time.

“If the Medellin and Cali cartels can cooperate to get 19 tons of cocaine into a warehouse in Sylmar, the state and federal governments can cooperate to get illegal aliens who commit crimes out of the country,” Carter said, referring to last year’s discovery of a huge cache of drugs in the San Fernando Valley.

Nativo Lopez, spokesman for Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a Santa Ana advocacy group for undocumented workers, agreed that illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes should be deported, but he expressed fear that the program could lead to harassment of non-citizens.

“Today, it’s aggravated felonies. What will it be tomorrow, driving under the influence of alcohol? It expands the power of the judiciary to persecute these people even more,” Lopez said.

Carter, assistant presiding judge of Orange County Superior Court’s criminal division, has pushed for nationwide legislation to implement his idea. Last November, he pitched the program to a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee and to federal drug czar William J. Bennett.

Roos said he believes the INS should redirect its current efforts to focus on those who are “the scourge of our society.” The INS should cut back on raids of “fields, sweatshops and garment businesses,” whose workers are “trying to make something of themselves,” and concentrate on illegal aliens who have committed serious crimes, Roos suggested.

Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for the INS’s western regional office in Laguna Niguel, said the identification and deportation of criminal aliens has always been a “top priority” for the agency. But any change in the enforcement targets of the INS in California would be impossible without a national policy directive from Washington, she added.

Carter estimates that at least 40% of the people arrested for felonies who pass through his court are illegal aliens. In the first nine months of 1989, 685 of the 1,880 felons brought before him were here illegally from 17 other countries, he said. INS is now tracking all 685, Carter said.

Roos said a recent INS study of crimes in the Los Angeles Police Department’s tough Rampart Division near downtown showed that 80% of those arrested on drug-related crimes and 70% of the total number of arrestees were illegal aliens. About 120,000 prison inmates nationwide are deportable because of their criminal convictions, he said.