Report faults INS on removal of criminal aliens

By from Terry Frieden
CNN Justice Department Producer

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Immigration and Naturalization Service has often failed to escort dangerous criminal aliens when they are removed from the United States aboard commercial airliners, the Justice Department said Thursday.

"We found that the INS is placing the traveling public at potential risk because it does not consistently follow its own escort policy," said Inspector General Glenn Fine.

Fine's office examined criminal aliens who were removed from the country for their involvement in violent acts, including homicide, kidnapping, sexual assaults, robbery, arson, extortion, sex and weapons offenses.

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The study focused on fiscal years 1999 and 2000, a period during which several thousand violent aliens were flown aboard commercial airlines to non-border countries from INS facilities.

The report examined the INS escort process in removal cases from Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta, and New York City.

"We examined 158 cases in which aliens who were being removed should have been escorted by INS officers," the report said.

The Inspector General said that amounts to about 5 percent of the 3,067 deportation cases from the four INS districts.

The escort standard adopted in 1998 says, "All detainees in INS custody shall be escorted in a manner that is safe, secure, humane, and professional."

"The four INS district we visited were not consisently adhering to the INS escort standard," the report concluded.

The report also found ineffective coordination among the INS, the State Department and the other nations involved in the deportations. That failure has caused problems for INS escort officers when they do accompany serious criminals.

"The most serious incidents reported to us by INS officials were the arrest of two INS officers escorting a [criminal] alien upon their arrival in Ghana, and the detention of two INS officers escorting a [criminal] alien by Brazilian federal police at the airport.

The standard for the most violent (Group 3) aliens requires INS to to have a ratio of two escorts for every alien. In some cases aliens were not escorted at all. in others aliens were escorted only on the first leg of their trip and in some cases there were not enough INS escorts.

The Inspector General said that following a draft report in late March, the INS sent a memo in May to all regional directors to conduct a review to ensure compliance with the INS escort standards and to implement corrective action in instances of non-compliance. The I.G. said the INS has also agreed with a series of other recommendations designed to end the problem