Tightened law greatly expanded list of crimes triggering deportation

Tightened law greatly expanded list of crimes triggering deportation

Sunday, February 4, 2007
By Kristi Heim
Seattle Times staff reporter

More than 160 Cambodians, including a dozen from the Seattle area, have been sent back to their native land in recent years.

Some are gang members involved in killings. Others were found guilty of nothing worse than public urination.

Their deportation followed a 1996 law requiring immigration officials to deport green-card holders convicted of at least one "aggravated felony." It didn't matter how long ago the crime was committed or whether the sentence had been served.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act also expanded the list of crimes triggering deportation.

Aggravated felonies were previously defined as crimes such as murder, drug trafficking and firearms trafficking.

The new law included a much broader range of offenses such as illegal gambling, receiving stolen property, possession of marijuana and lying to immigration authorities.

The requirements were changed so that any noncitizen receiving sentences of at least one year would be deported, instead of sentences of five years or more.

That meant some immigrants only convicted of misdemeanors could be deported, since some relatively minor crimes carry suspended sentences of one year.

After the definition was expanded, the number of people ordered deported rose from about 10,000 in 1992 to more than 26,000 in 2005.

Most were from Mexico, followed by the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Vietnam and El Salvador.

Lacking extradition agreements with Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and other countries, the U.S. could not send refugees from those countries back immediately.

Some refugees remained in federal detention for years. That changed in 2001, when the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling in favor of a Seattle man, said immigration officials could not indefinitely hold detainees whose countries wouldn't accept them.

The U.S. signed an extradition agreement with Cambodia in 2002.

More than 1,500 Cambodian refugees await deportation. Many of them are in Washington, which has the third-largest Cambodian community in the U.S. Most have lived in the U.S. since childhood.

Before 1996, judges could grant waivers to offenders who could show they had been rehabilitated or that deportation would hurt family members who were U.S. citizens. The new law removed most of that discretion.

Deportees like Ho Beua have virtually no chance of returning. They're barred from applying for 10 years. Many crime convictions, including those involving violence and drugs, bar them permanently.

Backers of the tightened law argue that even tougher measures, such as an even longer list of deportable offenses, are needed because immigrants or refugees who commit crimes pose a threat to society.

Critics say the law's broad brush is bad policy that is destroying many families. They want to exclude misdemeanors from the list of deportable offenses and restore the ability of judges to weigh other factors.

Jay Stansell, a federal public defender in Seattle who has represented many of the Cambodians, argues the laws should at least reconsider the case of refugees, who fled war-torn countries against their will.

"It's a particularly bad thing to do to retraumatize the families we supposedly have given refuge to," he said.

"None of these people have done anything to deserve the loss of their husbands or sons."