Hard Return: Rise in fast-track deportations raises concerns

From where Jose Guevara Rios sat in a Brooks County jail cell, it sounded like a pretty good deal.

Sign a piece of paper, get released from lockup and be deported back to his native El Salvador within days. The offer, made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, was certainly better than the conditions he had so far experienced in the United States.

Federal agents detained Guevara shortly after he illegally crossed the border near Laredo in 2004. Within days, he found himself in solitary confinement in Falfurrias. For 12 days, he ate, slept and bided his time in the cell with no explanation as to why he was separated from the other immigrants, according to a lawsuit he filed later that year.

So when ICE agents offered him a chance to get out and warned that fighting deportation could result in six months to a year of continued confinement, he took it.

But they failed to mention the other half of that deal, said Javier N. Maldonado, an attorney who would later go on to represent Guevara and several other immigrant detainees. By signing the document - known as a stipulated removal agreement - detainees like Guevara were also giving up their right to appear before a judge, consult with an immigration attorney and legally re-enter the United States for a decade.

As an illiterate adult who had not even finished first grade in his home country, Guevara was unequipped to understand the full implications of the paperwork he was signing, Maldonado said.

"It was coercion," said the attorney. "The threat was implicit that if they didn't sign the agreement, they would remain in detention."

Since Guevara's deportation in 2004, the use of stipulated removal agreements has increased fivefold, according to federal statistics obtained by the Stanford Law School's Immigrants' Rights Clinic through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Between 2004 and 2008, the nation's immigration courts approved more than 96,000 such requests by illegal immigrants. Only six were approved between 1999 and 2003

Three detention facilities - located in Lancaster, Calif., Eloy, Ariz., and Los Fresnos - account for half of the total agreements approved, the rights clinic said.

Federal officials say such stipulated removal agreements save the government money by avoiding drawn-out court proceedings for those who don't want them and prevent immigrants from having to stay in detention facilities when they would likely face deportation anyway.

But while the government has taken steps to better explain the implications of stipulated removal to detainees, immigrant rights attorneys and advocates still worry cases like Guevara's occur.

Immigrants detained in ICE facilities across the United States may be signing the agreements without fully realizing what they're agreeing to, Maldonado said.

"I think this is a conscious strategy on the part of ICE," he said. "It's a way of prosecuting people en masse."

FAST TRACK

Last year, the nation's 214 immigration courts processed more than 350,000 cases, according to the Executive Office of Immigration Review.

The stipulated removal program, at its most basic level, allows detained immigrants an opportunity to bypass that often backlogged system by agreeing to leave the country at their own expense.

A judge must still review the file and sign off on the agreement, but the immigrant never appears in court and rarely has the opportunity to consult with an immigration attorney.

Detainees at local ICE facilities such as those in Raymondville and Los Fresnos can spend weeks in lockup while their cases wend their way through the overwhelmed immigration courts. The option of a speedy release is an attractive one for many, said Nina Pruneda, a San Antonio-based ICE spokeswoman.

"This particular option is for people who have no legal right to remain in the United States," she said. "While striving to protect an illegal immigrant's due process rights, it streamlines the removal effort."

The program has been available since 1999 but was almost never used until 2004, when ICE began looking for new strategies to speed up deportations. Every year since, the numbers have increased dramatically.

The agency declined to provide the specific number of stipulated removal agreements approved at the Los Fresnos and Raymondville facilities without a formal public information request. A request sent late last week remains unanswered.

‘THEY DON'T HAVE TO SIGN THESE FORMS'

Many immigrants who have signed the stipulated removal agreements have later reported they were not sure what they were signing or even that the form - printed in both Spanish and English - was optional, said Celestino Gallegos, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, whose organization often provides free representation to immigrants.

Mistakenly agreeing to sign the deportation order can have dire consequences for immigrants with some legal recourse to remain in the country.

Those who have been in the country for long periods, have close family ties in the United States or are seeking political asylum here may have legitimate grounds to appeal a deportation decision.

While the detained illegal immigrants who fall in these categories are the minority, once a stipulated removal agreement is signed, their cases become much harder to argue, Gallegos said.

Immigrants deported under the agreements are barred from returning to the Unites States for 10 years. Further attempts to enter the country illegally could result in felony charges punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

"They arrive (at ICE detention facilities) oftentimes not even knowing where they are," Gallegos said. "It's hard for them to understand they don't have to sign these forms."

LEGAL ORIENTATION

Heriberto Ismael Altamirano came to that realization the hard way.

Federal authorities arrested him as he crossed the Rio Grande near Laredo in 2004. Within days, ICE officials offered him a stipulated removal agreement while he was being temporarily held at the Brooks County Jail.

But he realized soon after signing it that he had made a mistake. Afraid to return to his home country of Nicaragua, Altamirano could have pursued political asylum within the United States, said immigration attorney Maldonado, who filed a class-action lawsuit that year on behalf of Guevara, Altamirano and other immigrants seeking to undo their stipulated agreements.

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately sided against the immigrant plaintiffs in 2006, saying there was no evidence to suggest the agreement forms were not explained in English and in Spanish. All were eventually deported.

To this day, Maldonado still disputes the decision.

"Do you think people with a fifth-grade education can understand the highly technical legal language?" he said. "It's so ridiculous."

But since then, reports of questionable activity surrounding stipulated removals have abated, Maldonado said.

He rarely hears reports from clients of being approached with stipulated removal offers before they are transferred into federal detention facilities.

And many facilities now host legal orientation programs to explain options to immigrants unfamiliar with U.S. law.

Locally, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid and the Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project run orientation programs for immigrant detainees at the ICE detention facilities in Raymondville and Los Fresnos, respectively.

Still, a handful of immigrants show up to these classes having already signed their stipulated removal papers, Gallegos said.

"I'm not really sure what the benefit of it is at all," he said. "But legal orientation programs do help."

____

Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.