ICE nabbing legal residents with criminals during sweeps

LOS ANGELES — In 2001, Jose Luis Garcia was convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence charge. Whatever tumult it caused within his family, the event seemed to fade with every passing year as Garcia became a grandfather and inched closer toward retirement.

In June, the nearly 20-yearold conviction came roaring back when immigration agents arrested the 62-year-old as he drank coffee and watered the lawn of his San Fernando Valley home.

His daughter, Natalie Garcia, thought there must be a mistake. Her father has been a lawful permanent resident since 1988. He carries his green card in his wallet.

“We thought this was happening to people like they said — criminals, the gang members,” she said in an interview between sobs.

Legal immigrants in the U.S. have never been completely protected from possible deportation. But in its war against illegal immigration, the Trump administration has lowered the bar for whom immigration agents can go after, experts say.

President Trump has vowed to crack down on immigrants with criminal records, saying they should be deported to their home countries. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have carried out a series of sweeps in California this year, detaining hundreds of people. While there has been much emphasis on the arrest of people who don’t have criminal records but are here illegally, the arrest of legal immigrants who have convictions deep in their pasts has received less attention.

Trump’s supporters see this as an important part of his get-tough approach. But others question the fairness of deporting people with legal status who committed relatively minor crimes long ago.

“They are going to go after anybody they can get their hands on who may be deportable,” said Michael Kaufman, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. “That leads to cases like Mr. Garcia’s, where you have somebody who has lived in the country for decades. He may have committed a crime a long time ago, but he has rehabilitated himself and he’s fully an upstanding member of his community and key support for his family.”

Because their information is logged into government systems, permanent legal residents can be an easier quarry for enforcement — though the overwhelming majority of people detained for deportation are in the country illegally.

Garcia was picked up during a three-day operation in the Los Angeles area that began on June 10 and netted 162 arrests. Of those, 15 were of lawful permanent residents.

ICE does not track statistics on arrests of immigrants in the U.S. legally, according to the agency. On Jan.1, 2014, an estimated 13.2 million lawful permanent residents lived in the United States, according to a report last year from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics.

Databases revealed that Garcia “has past criminal convictions that make him amenable to removal from the United States,” according to ICE. The agency did not specify the convictions, but a search of court records pulled up the 2001 conviction, as well as a 1987 conviction for violating a protective order. In the domestic violence case, Garcia was sentenced to 25 days in jail and three years’ probation.

Lawful permanent residents must meet specific criteria to be subject to removal proceedings under the Immigration and Nationality Act, according to ICE. For example, those convicted of an aggravated felony are removable, and lawful permanent residents with certain drug convictions can be deported, according to ICE.

When someone is applying for naturalization, they must show good moral character for a five-year period preceding the application. In the case of an aggravated felony, one can never meet this standard, which typically bars an applicant from being able to naturalize.

Domestic violence is not considered an aggravated felony, but is “always a deportable crime,” regardless of whether it is a misdemeanor or felony or of how many years have passed, according to Carl Shusterman, a Los Angeles immigration attorney who used to work for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“Pretty much everybody I’ve seen, if immigration finds out about the domestic violence conviction, they put them right away into deportation proceedings,” he said.

Garcia’s immigration lawyer, Mackenzie Mackins, said that conduct prior to the five-year period can affect whether Garcia meets the requirements for naturalization, but the consideration of such conduct is discretionary.

Along with other factors, the number of years without any trouble with the law could be taken into account, she said.

Immigration agents picked up Garcia as he was about to head out to drive for Uber. His daughter woke to the sound of her father shouting her name as agents wearing vests that read “Police” placed him in a black SUV.

It wasn’t until after the agents left that the family looked at the card they had presented and realized the agents were with ICE. When Natalie visited her father in the processing center, she said, he didn’t understand why he was there.

Garcia came from the Mexican state of Michoacan when he was 13 and worked in the fields in Northern California. He later bought the San Fernando Valley home, where he lived with his wife, their two kids and a granddaughter.

Natalie sobbed as she talked about her father’s constant presence — in her life as well as that of her 6-year-old daughter, Marley, whom he was helping raise. When she spoke of him, Marley referred to him as “mi papa” — her father. Since the arrest, Marley has slept in her grandfather’s bed.

Garcia’s wife told agents she did not even remember the domestic violence incident, which she later characterized as a minor dispute.

Garcia is in ICE custody pending a determination from an immigration judge on whether he has a lawful basis to remain in the U.S.

In the wake of Garcia’s arrest, his wife, who is also a lawful permanent resident, worries about her own status.

“It’s happening to people who have papers,” said Maria Dolores Garcia. “Don’t just trust, check your record, become a citizen, stay alert to the changes. … I don’t want this to happen to someone else.”