New office to target fugitive foreigners
BOISE – Federal immigration enforcers are opening a new office in Boise to help track down any fugitive foreign criminals and suspected terrorists living in Idaho and kick them out of the country.
The seven-employee “fugitive operations unit,” to be overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is slated to be fully staffed by next spring. It’s one of 18 such offices being opened across the U.S. in fiscal year 2007, bringing the total to 70.
U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, a proponent of immigration reform and an advocate of a guest worker program that so far has failed to win congressional approval, announced the office’s creation Monday as part of a plan to crack down on so-called absconders, or criminal foreign nationals who’ve ignored immigration judges’ orders to leave.
Steve Branch, who heads up Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities in Idaho, Utah, Montana and Nevada from his base in Salt Lake City, said the Boise office will dedicate resources to finding suspected terrorists, violent criminals, petty criminals and immigration-law violators, in that order.
“A number of these people have taken extensive steps to conceal themselves in the interior of the United States,” he said. “As we’ve been able to receive more resources from Congress, we’ve been able to deploy more teams in more areas.”
Before the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., immigration agents were seen as bit players in America’s fight against terror. That changed with Sept. 11.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, was created in 2003, and new fugitive operations units such as the one being opened in Boise are seen as elements of the U.S. government’s broader plan to guard against new attacks. They’re also meant to boost confidence that federal officials are serious about cracking down on illegal immigration.
Last year, 186,000 people were deported from the United States, some of them “absconders.” The year before, ICE agents removed just over 157,000 illegal immigrants, about half of whom had criminal convictions.
There are now between 600,000 and 700,000 such fugitive aliens in the country, Branch said, adding he was uncertain just how many were in Idaho.
He declined to say if ICE officials knew of any suspected terrorists now residing in the state, saying his agency doesn’t release such information.
Fugitive operations unit officers use techniques such as early-morning raids to root out criminals targeted for deportation, he said.
ICE’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations already has employees in Boise working to identify foreigners who have outstayed their legal welcome. But those staffers have other duties, too, Branch said, so having the new unit here to target fugitives will help fill the gap.
“The main difference with the new fugitive operations unit, they’ll be able to devote 100 percent of their time strictly to locating the fugitives,” he said.
Currently, the nearest such unit is in Salt Lake City.