Immigration Laws: February, 2002 - Number #2

Border. Apprehensions of unauthorized foreigners along the Mexico-US border fell in January 2002, normally the peak month for apprehensions as migrants return to the US after holiday celebrations in Mexico.

All those apprehended are photographed and fingerprinted with the INS's automated biometric fingerprint identification system (IDENT) system. IDENT was deployed in October 1994 to identify and track aliens who were repeatedly apprehended trying to enter the United States illegally.

The alien's right and left index fingers are placed on the IDENT fingerprint scanner, the alien's photograph taken, biographic data entered, so that the alien can be checked against three databases in about two minutes: (1) a lookout database that contains fingerprints and photographs of approximately 240,000 aliens who have been convicted of aggravated felonies; (2) an apprehension (recidivist) database that contains fingerprints and photographs of almost 300,000 aliens who have an administrative final order of removal; and (3) an apprehension database that contains fingerprints and photographs of over four million illegal aliens who have been apprehended by the INS, entered into IDENT and permitted to depart voluntarily from the United States.

US merchants along the Mexico-US border complained in January 2002 that tight border security was reducing sales to Mexicans who did not want to deal with "border hassles." Additional agents were assigned to speed up border entries in Fall 2001, but some are now being reassigned, for instance, to the Olympics, which may lengthen waits that are commonly one to two hours. Some business leaders argue that the extreme security measures adopted at border crossings are unnecessary, since there have been no indications that terrorist cells have attempted to enter the United States from Mexico.

State and local governments are telling the federal government that, if it wants local police to continue to bolster INS and Customs at ports of entry to keep traffic flowing, it will have to compensate them for their costs. Wayne County (Detroit, Michigan) requested $10 million to continue to provide police to check cars and trucks entering the US over the Ambassador and Blue Water bridges and Detroit-Windsor tunnel.

The White House Office of Homeland Security in January 2002 proposed an umbrella agency to consolidate border security efforts now spread across the federal government, including the Coast Guard, Customs Service, INS, and USDA. Asserting that "Our borders today are porous and highly vulnerable to penetration by foreign terrorists," the OHS proposal would put border protection into a "single accountable agency." Some 1.3 million people, 340,000 vehicles and 58,000 shipments are estimated to come into the United States each day.

At some ports of entry, the INS operates an Express Lane system, under which persons who submit information in advance, and pay $360 a year per individual or $500 per family, can enter the US through designated lanes that usually have no waits. Some 7,000 people and 4,500 vehicles were registered in the Express Lane program in January 2002. The INS system has allowed frequent travelers to enter the US at airports with identification cards linked to handprints since 1997. Some 45,000 people were enrolled in 2001; they typically used the cards four times a year.

Sanctions. Tyson Foods Inc., one of the world's largest poultry processors, was indicted December 19, 2001, charged with 36 counts of recruiting illegal workers from Mexico and transporting them to 15 of Tyson's 57 poultry processing plants in the Midwest and South. According to the indictment, developed over 2.5 years of undercover work, Tyson managers arranged with smugglers to pick up workers just inside the US border, and arranged transportation from the border to its plants. They then paid the smugglers $100 to $200 a worker in "recruitment fees." (The migrants also paid the smugglers a fee).

The assistant United States attorney in Chattanooga said, "It's much more productive, we think, to attack the source, the companies that recruit these illegals, than to pursue endless prosecutions of illegals at the border." Tyson issued a press release that asserted that the government brought the indictment only after it refused to pay a $100 million penalty for hiring illegal aliens. Tyson said it refused to pay because the previous highest payment to resolve an immigration violation was $1.9 million.

On January 7, 2002, a former Tyson Foods employee, Amador Anchondo-Rascon of Shelbyville, Tennessee, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to smuggling 2,000 illegal migrants into the country. Anchondao-Racon, a legal immigrant, could face a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and forfeiture of any gains from the alleged conspiracy, which began in 1994 , as well as deportation.

The FBI arrested and prosecuted two Czech nationals who recruited their countrymen to work as cleaners and in restaurants in Northeast Florida. The Czechs who were recruited obtained tourist visas and paid their way to the US, then went to work for Southern Moore, a US firm. They were paid $6 an hour for house cleaning and $3 an hour for restaurant work that brought tips. Southern Moore received $7.50 to $8 an hour for sending the Czechs out to jobs, and charged and paid nothing extra for overtime; some employees worked 80 to 90 hours a week.

The INS has fewer than 2,000 agents for interior enforcement, and 9,000 Border Patrol agents. During the summer of 2001, it was often asserted that the INS cannot prevent illegal immigration because there was no effective interior enforcement. In a new book, Ruben Martinez writes: "The United States pulls with its job magnets, its porous border, and its selective enforcement of the immigration code. Every migrant and practically every major employer of illegals in the country can tell you that the INS usually puts the heat on only after the crops are picked and on their way to market."

Martinez's book reviews the lives of three Chavez brothers, killed in April 1996 when the van in which they were riding turned over while trying to evade the Border Patrol in San Diego. He visited Cheran, the brothers' southwestern Mexico hometown, and wrote: "Like Indian Joads (Grapes of Wrath), they have fled the Mexican dustbowl…To cross over, to be a wetback, is . . . a baptism into a new life. The river anoints the pilgrim, and the pilgrim enters the Promised Land." Four other members of the Chavez family make it to the US to pick strawberries and tomatoes.

NACARA. The Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act of 1997 allowed Central Americans who arrived in the US before December 1995 to apply for legal immigrant status. Some 33,000 Central Americans have become legal immigrants under NACARA, including 6,000 in 2001, but 73,000 applications are pending, and the wait for processing is often one to two years.