Broad Range of Offenses Can Lead to Removal

Every year, thousands of immigrants face the prospect of being forcibly removed from the United States. Some are removed because they committed serious crimes, others because they entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas.

Government officials say the principle is simple: If an immigrant is here illegally, he or she is removable. Authorities also say that deportation is an efficient means of ridding the nation of potential security threats.

“Deportation and immigration prosecution has always been one of the tools in our tool chest to try and protect our community, whether the target is a violent criminal or a potential terrorist,” said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Last month, a Pakistani cleric being held on immigration charges agreed to be deported after U.S. law enforcement officials accused him of plotting to establish a radical religious school in Lodi to train potential terrorists.

Shabbir Ahmed, 39, the former imam of a mosque in the San Joaquin Valley town, was being detained for overstaying his three-year work visa, not on terrorism-related charges. Two other Pakistani men, arrested in Lodi in June for overstaying their religious work visas, also agreed to be expelled from the country.

Immigration officials acknowledge that it is typically harder to substantiate terrorism charges than it is to remove an individual who is unlawfully present in the country.

Question: What does deportation mean?

Answer: Deportation, officially known as “removal,” is the forced expulsion from the U.S. of a foreigner who an immigration judge has determined has no lawful basis to be in the country.

Q: Who can be deported?

A: Immigrants entering the country illegally, regardless of age and nationality, can be deported. Immigrants who enter the country lawfully but commit serious crimes or overstay their visas also can be removed from the country.

In many instances, immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for decades, have never broken the law and have American-born children are subject to deportation because they lack legal residency status.

Such is the case of Jayantibhai and Indiraben Desai, who have lived in Norwalk more than 20 years. They own a house, pay taxes and have two U.S.-born sons in college.

But Jayantibhai Desai, an Indian, and his Tanzanian-born wife, who has British citizenship, overstayed their original visitor’s visas. They were ordered last year to leave the country and are appealing the order in federal court.

The couple maintain that their departure would cause extreme hardship for their sons, particularly the eldest, who suffers from a disease of the colon and depends on his father’s medical insurance.

The Desais’ attorney, Carl Shusterman, said immigration judges used to be more forgiving of people who had put down roots in the United States, paid their taxes and proved themselves to be model members of society.

In Shusterman’s experience, obtaining special consideration for immigrants like the Desais is harder now. “That sort of empathy that we have with would-be immigrants seems to have disappeared from the deportation process,” he said.

Q: Can legal immigrants -- those with green cards -- be deported?

A: Yes. A criminal conviction can be grounds for deportation. After an immigrant is convicted of a deportable offense, an immigration judge determines whether the immigrant’s permanent residency status should be revoked. If it is, the person can be removed.

Q: What kinds of crimes can render someone deportable?

A: A wide range of crimes could get an immigrant deported, including murder, rape, prostitution and arson.

Q: Under what circumstances can naturalized citizens be deported?

A: Naturalized citizens can be deported if a U.S. District Court establishes that they committed fraud as part of the naturalization process or were statutorily ineligible for the benefit when they became citizens, said Kice, the ICE official.

Q: How many people ordered deported actually leave?

A: Every year, thousands of people ordered to leave do not, and they presumably remain in the country, evading authorities. Many don’t even report for their deportation hearings.

According to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency that oversees the nation’s immigration courts, removal orders were issued to 163,857 immigrants in the last federal fiscal year. Of those, 47,405 did not show up for their deportation hearings.

For the first three quarters of the current fiscal year, 64,218 of the 155,043 immigrants who have been ordered deported failed to appear.

“You basically have an immigration system that adjudicates people’s cases, issues final deportation orders, and it’s meaningless,” said Steve Camarota, director of research at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors pumping more resources into the enforcement of immigration regulations.

He added that “there are laws on the books and policies that seem tough, but in the way that they’re implemented, they’re incredibly lax.”

Q: How long does it take for someone ordered deported to leave the country?

A: It can take days or years.

“It depends on whether they contest their removal, and how long they contest their removal,” said Kice. “They are entitled to due process.”

Once ordered removed by an immigration judge, immigrants can appeal their cases to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which can affirm or overrule the judge’s decision, or send it back for further consideration.

Asylum seekers can appeal their cases in the federal circuit courts if their petition to the appeals board fails.

That’s what Sazzad Ahmed Bipu did. It took almost 10 years to secure the removal of the former Bangladeshi army officer and Northridge restaurateur, who admitted to human rights violations in his home country. In August, Bipu, 35, was ordered to leave the country voluntarily or face an “order of departure.”

He and his family had come to the U.S. in 1996 on tourist visas. They overstayed, then applied for political asylum, which an immigration judge and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied.

The actual number of people deported each year varies. In the 2004 fiscal year, 161,676 people were physically removed from the country.

But as the Bipu case shows, some may have been ordered to depart years before they were finally deported.

Q: Are asylum seekers granted the equivalent of a public defender?

A: Since immigration court cases are classed as civil matters and not criminal proceedings, immigrants facing deportation are not entitled to government-appointed lawyers and must hire their own. And judges can allow whatever type of evidence they deem appropriate, including hearsay, attorney Shusterman said.

Q: How are deportees sent out of the country? And who pays the fare?

A: Deported immigrants are sent by bus, charter aircraft and commercial flights. In fiscal year 2004, ICE spent more than $94 million to remove illegal immigrants.

Q: Once deported, can immigrants ever return to America?

A: By law, deported immigrants are typically required to wait five or 10 years before they are permitted to reenter the United States. The bar rises to 20 years in the case of a second or subsequent removal, immigration officials said. A lifetime ban on returning is imposed in certain cases.

But every day, thousands of deported immigrants -- mostly from nearby nations -- try to sneak back across the border.

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Many affected

Some deportation statistics:

161,676 -- People deported in 2003-04 fiscal year.*

114,940 -- Number of those deportees from Mexico.

75,510 -- People deported in the first half of this fiscal year.

Source: Office of Immigration Statistics, Department of Homeland Security

Los Angeles Times

* Last full year for which statistics are available.