ICE traces illegal immigrants

COSTA MESA — A pleasantly cool breeze and chirping birds on otherwise quiet streets gave no indication Thursday was about to become a bad day for at least two people in this city.

For both of them, it started the same way. A knock at the door, and half a dozen federal officers waiting outside, seeking each of them for the same reason: They were allegedly in the U.S. illegally and had ignored court orders of deportation.

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement made two arrests in Costa Mesa Thursday as part of ongoing efforts to track down and deport illegal immigrants who have already been told to leave, particularly those who have criminal records or are suspected of recent crimes.

An Orange County team of officers, formed earlier this year, brings the number of teams in the Los Angeles area to five. Recent statistics from immigration officials show they arrested 3,031 fugitive immigrants between Oct. 1, 2006, and Aug. 18.

Thursday’s operations — and, officials said, most others — didn’t disturb the early morning calm of the Costa Mesa streets they visited. No one kicked down doors, pulled guns or shouted, though they did draw the attention of neighbors, who rubber-necked as they drove by or walked their dogs. One man came out and stood shirtless on his lawn to watch.

“Very low-key, that’s exactly how we want it to occur,” Eric Saldana, assistant field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Los Angeles office, said after the first stop ended in a peaceful arrest. “I’ve actually chased people in their underwear out the back door and through apartment complexes.”

With Latino residents estimated to make up about 30% of Costa Mesa’s population, concerns about immigration reform have been inflaming passions in the Latino community here for years. The issue has been on the front burner since Mayor Allan Mansoor proposed in December 2005 the city take a greater role in immigration enforcement.

Now an immigration agent works in the city jail, checking the status of people booked by police on suspicion of other crimes. While the city jail checks sometimes find people with outstanding deportation orders, they’re the sole target of the federal team.

“The ICE fugitives that we look for have had their day in court. They’ve had the opportunity to file applications,” Saldana said. “We’re not the people making the decision.”

In order to catch people before they leave for work, the operations often begin early. After meeting in a restaurant parking lot Thursday before dawn, the team headed to the first address on their list: Miner Street, off West Wilson Street.

They’ve already done some background work to get addresses and check the criminal history of their targets. The Orange County team’s first operation in June netted 175 people around the county in a week, but Saldana said officers are out every day, usually looking for three to seven people.

Of the two men who were arrested Thursday, one was a Mexican who had no criminal history but had allegedly ignored a 2002 deportation order, and the other was from Latvia, in Northern Europe, was twice convicted of DUI, and allegedly disregarded a voluntary deportation order from 1996, according to federal officials.

They were the first two stops. At three subsequent homes — two in Costa Mesa and one in Anaheim — the subjects of the deportation orders weren’t home. Their criminal records included convictions for domestic violence, assault and felony burglary.

Saldana estimated the team has a 60 to 70% success rate with arrests, but sometimes it takes more than one visit because someone’s at work or out of town.

Some arrest situations are sad, he said — maybe someone has to leave family behind. But people with criminal histories are a high priority, and those cases bring satisfaction.

“We all have families and we can all sympathize, but we’re enforcing the law,” he said. “There are some days where we get someone who is very dangerous

someone who is a pedophile, a gang member, someone with multiple DUIs. Those type of people may affect my family.”

After their arrest, suspected fugitives are taken to federal offices in Santa Ana to be photographed, fingerprinted, and in some cases, immediately put on a bus or plane to their home country.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been stepping up efforts to find and deport fugitive and criminal illegal immigrants since the agency was created in 2003, officials said. But they contend their activities aren’t motivated by political criticisms that elected officials have failed to resolve the issue.

As for results, the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office Director Jim Hayes said this year the number of fugitive illegal immigrants in the country dropped for the first time.

For any immigrants with outstanding deportation orders, Saldana said, this all means they should expect a knock on their doors someday. For the two men arrested Thursday, it means they’ll be sent back to the country they came from.

And it means the friends and families of the people arrested by federal officers will have to live without their loved ones, like a woman at the Miner Street house who stood at her back fence, crying, before banging the gate shut.