O.C. Judge’s Experiment Gains National Attention

Eighteen months after Judge David O. Carter invited federal immigration agents into his Orange County courtroom to identify and ultimately deport illegal aliens convicted of serious crimes, the experiment is being eyed as a model for California and other border states.

A proposed law that would encourage all Superior Court judges in California to follow Carter’s lead easily cleared the state Assembly recently. And in Washington, D.C., the leader of a U.S. Justice Department-backed study said he, too, is optimistic about copying the Orange County project in other courts.

“We’re very impressed with the program in Orange County,” said Joseph A. Trotter Jr., a lawyer at American University who is conducting the study with a Justice Department grant. “It has a lot of potential benefit for alleviating caseload pressures. . . . We’re trying to identify what’s going on in Orange County that could be replicated nationally.”

Carter is believed to be the only county or state court judge in the country who has invited INS agents to screen people coming through his court--and his approach is criticized by some who see it as abusive of detainees or a misuse of time and effort.

“He’s the only judge who feels it’s necessary to use state resources for a federal agency,” said Ramon Ortiz, the assistant public defender in charge of Orange County Superior Court cases. “I find it wrong.”

Most of those coming to Carter’s court and screened by the INS are felons who have violated the terms of their probation. A smaller percentage have pleaded guilty to a new felony offense and are awaiting sentencing before Carter, although he said he does not know in advance what any offender’s residency status is.

In addition to allowing access to the offenders, Carter’s court staff also promptly provides the INS agents with certified criminal-conviction documents that are crucial to the deportation process, according to immigration officials.

Carter’s statistics show that illegal aliens consistently compose more than one-third of the total number of criminal offenders appearing in his court. According to the records, about 35%--834 of the 2,366 offenders screened in 1989--were identified as illegal aliens. And, if those violators are not deported upon completing their sentences, local probation officers already working at full capacity must supervise them.

“It’s a major, major issue in the border states,” said John B. Robinson, Orange County’s chief deputy probation officer in charge of field services.

For Carter, a remedy is at hand: Those illegal-alien offenders--many of whom have committed crimes involving drugs, burglary and violence--should not continue to burden the probation system.

“Do I want to be on the bench 10 years from now, presiding over a hopeless system, or does the bench want to take a leadership position?” Carter, 46, asked in an interview. “I’ll be damned if I’m not going to have the resources to turn around a 16-year-old, or an 18-year-old kid” who otherwise might lose the chance to be rehabilitated while on probation.

Because of legal restraints and limited federal funds, Carter conceded that it may be impossible to quickly clear caseloads by deporting criminal aliens before they are sentenced to already-clogged jails and prisons.

But Carter and INS officials said they are hopeful that, after the illegal aliens have served their sentences and are formally deported as felons, they will be less eager to re-enter the United States and risk prosecution that could result in maximum terms of two to 15 years in federal prison.

“When an individual is deported from the U.S. as a criminal alien, their desire to return to the U.S. and engage in additional criminal activity is less,” said John Brechtel, the INS assistant district director for investigations. Brechtel did not have statistics to document his view but said he is convinced that “the rate of recidivism is less” among those deported with a formal, criminal alien status.

An observation by The Times of Carter’s court last week found that INS agents questioned female and male offenders who would appear later in the morning before the judge. The questioning occurred through the metal bars of a holding cell two floors beneath the courtroom in Santa Ana.

Once the agents located an offender they believed was an illegal alien, they asked questions aimed at providing the best long-term identification aids. One man, for instance, displayed a severed left middle finger. Another, saying he was born in Guadalajara, showed a large tattoo on his shoulder.

The aliens set to appear before Carter, said one of the INS agents, “are very cooperative. They don’t want to get into any more trouble than they are already. It’s very rare that someone will claim that he’s an American citizen when he’s an undocumented alien.”

Although white and Latino offenders alike were questioned, the agents said that the most basic tip-off of whether an individual is in the United States illegally is whether that person can speak English. After the questioning is completed and those interviewed appear before Carter, the judge’s staff provides the necessary paper work, usually within 24 hours.

“It’s probably the best place to identify . . . the undocumented alien who’s coming through the criminal court system,” said one INS agent, who spoke on a condition of anonymity.

Said Brechtel, of the INS district office in Los Angeles: “The Orange County project has been working very well for us. This has expedited our ability to remove the criminal alien more quickly. It’s a model that we would like to copy.”

Indeed, a bill inspired by Carter’s project cleared the state Assembly on June 15 by a 61-4 vote. It would specify that judges could, under state law, similarly cooperate with the INS.

“A lot of (judges) are hesitant to implement it because it is not specifically allowed for in law,” said Lynn Montgomery, a spokeswoman for the bill’s author, Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles). “This would give them the statutory authority.”

The measure, AB 3819, is awaiting a hearing in the state Senate and Roos said he expects it to pass.

The Orange County project is also getting national scrutiny. Trotter, the lawyer at American University, has enlisted court officials from Texas and Cook County, Ill., to help examine the project. He said the group will report its findings to the Justice Department later this summer.

Still, some look skeptically on the advisability of duplicating what Carter is doing in his Santa Ana court.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Horowitz, supervisor of the court’s criminal division, said he thinks it is better for INS agents to confine their screening to jail facilities. The INS has been granted access to Los Angeles County’s jails for about a year, Horowitz said, but not to courtroom holding cells, as allowed by Carter.

Horowitz said that granting INS agents access to the holding cells “really interferes” with the confidentiality of conversations between defense lawyers and detainees in what are already cramped quarters.

Horowitz also said that he is not eager to assign county court personnel to provide quick-service paper work for the INS because the Justice Department has not yet begun to vigorously prosecute those criminal aliens who re-enter the country.

“If they’re not going to follow up,” Horowitz said, “then I don’t see why we’re spending our time.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said she could not assess how often such prosecutions are undertaken.

Ortiz, the Orange County assistant public defender, is also critical, saying that the aliens being screened with Carter’s blessing “have no leverage, and are not about to raise any fuss.”

Nativo Lopez, spokesman for Hermandad Mexicana Nacional of Santa Ana, an advocacy group for undocumented workers, said he is “concerned from the standpoint that individuals are not informed that they have a right to counsel before they’re interrogated by these people.”

“It’s a specious argument,” Carter countered, noting that INS agents routinely question suspected illegal aliens on the street and elsewhere without attorneys present. Carter said his project requires the questioning of detainees of all racial backgrounds and is just, because those being targeted have committed “aggravated” felonies and may be dangerous.

The approach makes sense and is beginning to reduce probation officers’ caseloads, said Robinson of the Orange County Probation Department. He noted that the county now monitors some 20,000 adult and juvenile offenders--a ratio of one probation officer to 120 adult clients.

“It is a great benefit not to have (illegal alien felons) on our caseloads to be supervised,” Robinson said.

Carter, meanwhile, is promoting his project in occasional speeches across the country, and is waiting to see if his idea will mushroom.

“You’re talking about how you spend finite resources,” Carter said. “There’s something wrong about federal and state agencies not cooperating” in battling drug offenders and other felons, he said.