Hundreds Caught In L.A. Immigration Raids

Hundreds of illegal immigrants arrested over the past week in one of the biggest U.S. immigration stings have already been deported, but some are being held for possible criminal prosecution.

Federal authorities announced Tuesday the results of a week-long series of raids in the Los Angeles metropolitan area that targeted illegal immigrants who had previously been deported for crimes or defied final deportation orders. The action is part of Operation Return to Sender.

Of the 761 people arrested in a five-county region since Jan. 17, more than 450 have already been removed from the country, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (or ICE).

More than half of those arrested in the sweeps were already in jail and are being turned over to federal authorities as their sentences expire, an ICE official said.

At least one person, however, was hit with a criminal case instead of being placed in civil deportation proceedings.

Erik Omar Galindo-Vazquez, a Mexican national taken in during the sweeps in Orange County, was charged with illegal re-entry to the United States after felony deportation — a federal crime than can carry up to 20 years in prison.

ICE officials said Galindo-Vazquez was deported in October 2005 after being detained in Arizona and was convicted six years earlier in Orange County for assault with a deadly weapon, a felony charge.

While federal law makes it a crime to enter the country illegally, only a fraction of the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants caught every year are ever prosecuted under criminal laws. There just aren't enough agents, prosecutors and prison space.

So authorities go after serious offenders such as Galindo-Vazquez, whose rap sheets combine past deportations with convictions for crimes such as assault, murder and drug trafficking.

"We have to focus on the worst of the worst," said Jim Hayes, director of the Los Angeles field office of ICE, whose agents are readying about 12 other cases for criminal prosecution stemming from the sweeps. "We can't prosecute every single individual we come across."

The raids made public Tuesday were a major push within Operation Return to Sender, a crackdown that has resulted in 13,192 arrests nationwide since late May. Immigration officials have also identified 3,000 inmates in state and local jails who will be deported.

An estimated 600,000 illegal immigrants who have ignored deportation orders are still at large, said Virginia Kice, an ICE spokeswoman.

Some swept up in Operation Return to Sender will be charged with illegal re-entry to the U.S. after deportation, a federal crime that carries up to 20 years in prison. Others — first-time illegal immigrants with no other criminal record — will be processed and deported within days.

Adan Garcia is a 29-year-old dishwasher who came to the U.S. to help make a better life for his family — a wife and two young boys in Honduras. He considered himself lucky to be deported and not charged with any crime.

"The truth is I feel bad," he said. "I came to this country to work, not harm anyone, and not expecting what happened this morning at 5 a.m. It wasn't supposed to be this way."

He says he won't be back to the United States, at least not illegally.

But parsing the criminal offender from the economically disadvantaged who enter the country illegally to find work strains the system, as was acknowledged by President Bush in his State of the Union address, when he called for a temporary worker program.

"As a result, they won't have to try to sneak in," Mr. Bush said. "And that will leave border agents free to chase down drug smugglers, and criminals, and terrorists."