Deported Criminals a New National Security Threat?
By Bill West
Increasingly, reports from Central and South America indicate that criminal gangs are beginning to align themselves with members of radical Islamic terror organizations. An article in the World Net Daily appearing January 17 goes further, and says such criminal gangs are even allying themselves with certain violent revolutionary movements in Latin America.
Since at least the mid-1980s, the identification, arrest and deportation of criminal aliens has been a high priority for US immigration authorities. It was one of the few interior law enforcement efforts of the old INS that actually realized some modicum of success.
Until about 1985, such efforts were mostly reactive in nature, targeting criminal aliens already in jail serving sentences after they were convicted of other charges. INS would lodge detainers on such suspects and, when they finished their sentences, take custody of the aliens and begin deportation proceedings.
With the advent of violent Jamaican gangs, known as "posses," mostly on the American East Coast in the mid-1980s, Special Agents of the INS Investigations Division began working with other law enforcement agencies, particularly the DEA, ATF and local cops, targeting these street gangsters in a proactive manner. Many of those Jamaican criminals were illegal aliens or had previous criminal histories that rendered them deportable, even if they had "green cards." INS Agents were able to arrest these violent crooks often when other law enforcement officers had nothing on them. Gang Task Forces, with INS Agents participating, focusing on criminal aliens soon became operational around the country, and soon began focusing on other gangs such as the notorious MS-13 in southern California.
By the mid to late-1990s, these criminal alien deportation efforts were beginning to have an effect on foreign policy. The receiving "home countries" of these criminals were reeling from substantially increased violent crime rates. Most of those countries could not afford the increase in law enforcement resources to deal with these issues. Those governments were complaining to the US about deporting so many of their own criminal citizens back home, and some countries such as Jamaica and Haiti even began to refuse to issue travel documents to such deportees so as to stymie the deportation process. Nevertheless, the deportation of many thousands of violent criminal aliens to Latin America and the Caribbean occurred over the past decade and a half.
Clearly, removing such thugs from the United States should be considered a good thing. However, the porous and easily penetrated borders of the US do not make it difficult for such criminal aliens to return to the US. Illegal reentry into the US of a deported criminal alien is a Federal felony and can and does carry a heavy prison term upon conviction. In fact, many such criminal alien reentrants have been captured, prosecuted, incarcerated and deported again...sometimes several times, but that does not seem to stop them from coming if they are so determined. At least the legal prosecution tools are readily available to pursue such suspects, and as with the proactive multi-agency Gang Task Forces of the 1980s and early 1990s, such a focused approach against these dangerous aliens may again be warranted, particularly if they truly are finding allies among terror and radical guerilla organizations.
The real answer, of course, will be to more fully integrate border security, aggressive and effective interior immigration law enforcement efforts and solid counter-terrorism intelligence. The devil is in the details and the resources, and while there have been notable improvements since the 9-11 attacks; we have a long way to go. As evidenced by these disturbing reports from Latin America, the nature of the enemy may be morphing into something completely unexpected. Our law enforcement, intelligence and security personnel, and institutions, must be flexible and open-minded enough to recognize such changes if they occur.
