Due to the stigma that comes with deportation in immigrant communities, this newspaper is using assumed names for all immigrants in the story.
They came for Idoma Otudor in the dead of night. Otudor, an undocumented immigrant from Nigeria, had immigration troubles with the law in Atlanta, Georgia, where he used to live. Otudor's troubles, which made agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) come knocking like thieves in the night to his Brooklyn, NY home, date back to his separation from his wife, with whom we had two children. Even though Otudor remarried and had children in New York, his Nigerian-born, estranged wife petitioned the immigration authorities out of anger that she had not been getting the needed child support. In the petition, the Atlanta wife also spilled the beans that Otudor was an undocumented immigrant. Tired of running from the law, Otudor agreed to be deported back to Nigeria without fighting the charges in court.
In the case of Zuma Mbo, an undocumented South African immigrant, a burned out tail light on his S550 late model Mercedes Benz brought trouble to him in the early hours of a January 2008 morning, in the Bronx, NY. Having run the plate numbers, the New York Police Department (NYPD) officers quickly discovered that Mbo had an outstanding warrant for a slew of felony offences. Within three weeks, Mbo was deported back to Durban, South Africa.
Since the comprehensive immigration reform bill to help the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants to have a pathway to citizenship failed in Congress, undocumented immigrants are now been hounded by ICE agents. Initially, ICE’s mission was to capture immigrants convicted of a crime for deportation. It has since graduated to hounding all immigrants, documented, undocumented, and even citizens, in its seal to satisfy nativist-minded Americans and anti-immigration groups like the Minutemen vigilante group.
According to published reports, ICE has stepped up its deportation process by 150 percent since 2007. In fact, ICE reports that as of September 30 last year, 164,000 immigrants who committed a crime were placed under deportation proceedings and it estimated that the agency intends to deport 200,000.
Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, told the Washington Post that when she was appointed in January 2006, ICE had built federal detention facilities for immigration offenders. Close to 30,000 criminal undocumented African immigrants are said to have been sent to these facilities this year. More worrisome to immigrants is the fact that documented immigrants with permanent residency papers, Green Cards, can also be deported if they have been found to commit felony offences. To show the risk that many documented immigrants face today, felonies such as drunk driving and a spousal assault conviction are now grounds for deportation of Green Card holders as well as the undocumented immigrants.
Immigrant advocates are now advising documented immigrants to make the effort to become U.S. citizens to insulate themselves from the harsh anti-immigrant climate fostered by zealous ICE agents.
Immigration attorney Wilfredo Allen told reporters that as ICE’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants intensifies, it will become more difficult for detained foreign nationals to convince judges to release them.
Under a new Homeland Security Program called Operation Return to Sender, launched in May 2007, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that in August last year the operation netted 8,400 arrests. That number now exceeds 18,000, with 1,700 in Florida alone.
Immigrant advocates in New York, Chicago, Maryland, Michigan and New Jersey, all places with a heavy immigrant presence, have criticized the ICE crackdown as unjustified and playing to the extreme right wing of the Republican Party. According to immigration lawyers, a country that prides its family values should not be separating families through large scale deportation of immigrants. Many American-born children have been left stranded in the United States with little help, their parents having been deported for falling foul of the new xenophobia gripping the country.
