INS Assailed for Not Deporting Immigrant Criminals : Congress: Senate staff report says those who break the law after entering U.S. illegally are a growing threat to safety and a drain on resources.

Branding criminal illegal immigrants a growing threat to public safety and a drain on scarce criminal justice resources, Senate investigators will release a scathing report today on the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s failure to identify and deport non-citizens who commit crimes.

The report by the Republican staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs permanent investigations subcommittee, a copy of which was provided to The Times, primarily faults the INS for its “flawed” record-keeping, lack of fingerprinting and inflating statistics rather than deporting illegal immigrants who commit crimes inside the United States.

The report, which will be issued at a subcommittee hearing today, says illegal immigrants are the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, accounting for more than 25% of federal prison inmates.

On any given day, about 452,980 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes are in prison or jail, on probation or on parole around the nation, the report said, and the cost of imprisoning them is at least $724 million a year.

Those estimates do not include immigrants in local jails or on probation or parole for local crimes and do not cover the INS cost for investigating and deporting illegal immigrants who commit crimes, or the cost to victims of the crimes they commit.

“If you are an alien in America, and you commit a crime, chances are you can outwit and outrun the American justice system,” said Sen. William V. Roth Jr. of Delaware, the subcommittee’s ranking Republican.

“Aliens who commit crimes, whether they are here legally or illegally, are subject to being deported to their home countries,” he noted. “However, the first step in identifying a criminal as an alien often does not even take place because the Immigration and Naturalization Service is unable to identify most of the criminal aliens in state and local jails before they are released back onto the streets.”

Meanwhile, as a sign of the increasing attention being paid to the issue on Capitol Hill, a House Government Operations subcommittee heard testimony from families of victims of violent criminals who fled to Mexico, which will not extradite its nationals to the United States.

Rep. Gary A. Condit (D-Ceres), chairman of the information, justice, transportation and agriculture subcommittee, sharply criticized the departments of State and Justice for declining to testify at the hearing, saying their refusal illustrated “bureaucratic arrogance and the lack of accountability.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman said, however, that the decision reflected a desire not to compromise discussions with Mexico on barring trans-border abductions and prisoner exchanges. She denied suggestions by some in Congress that the decision was connected to the pending vote on the embattled North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Senate subcommittee staff report called for radically simplifying the deportation process, for delaying most appeals until after a convicted illegal immigrant is sent home and for requiring that all “aggravated felons” be held until they are deported--a step that would ensure their appearance at court hearings.

The report also urged the INS to establish a fingerprint-based identification system to replace a name-based system that often is stymied by the use of aliases, and it urged the agency to stop giving work authorization permits to illegal immigrants while they are challenging deportation orders after criminal convictions.

Last year, the report said, the INS deported 18,297 illegal immigrants who committed crimes, a 30% increase from the 1991 total and twice those deported in 1990. But the “impressive” figures “mask the fact that criminal aliens stream back in across the border in large numbers following deportation--especially along the Southwest border,” the report said.

“Deportation is not a significant deterrent to re-entry,” the report said, noting that several U.S. attorneys near the U.S.-Mexico border limit prosecution to immigrants who have multiple illegal re-entries and have been charged with multiple felonies, whereas others have caps on the number of re-entry cases they will prosecute.

Although the maximum prison term for re-entering the country after conviction of a crime and deportation is 15 years, most cases are plea-bargained to a lesser sentence, the report said.