People with no records trapped in immigrant roundups

NEW YORK— A daughter who never returned home, a son gunned down point-blank, a mom who was brutally attacked — all deaths at the hands of immigrants in the country illegally, all gripping stories the White House has been eager to share.

But for all the talk of murderers, rapists and other “bad hombres,” those netted in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration are typically accused of lesser offenses, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are increasingly apprehending those with no criminal records at all.

“Unshackling ICE has really allowed it to go after more individuals,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute who calls the apprehension of noncriminal immigrants, in particular, “a defining characteristic of this administration’s approach to immigration.”

The case of Mollie Tibbetts — a 20-year-old Iowa college student authorities say was killed by a man living in the U.S. illegally — is among the latest used by Trump to advance his argument for stricter immigration controls. Yet the government’s own statistics show such cases are far more likely to be the exception than the rule.

ICE arrests of noncriminals increased 66 percent in the first nine months of the 2018 fiscal year over the same period a year earlier. Arrests of convicts, meantime, rose nearly 2 percent. More noncriminals have also been deported. Among those expelled from the U.S. interior in fiscal 2017, there was a 174 percent increase from the previous year of those with no criminal convictions. Deportations of those with convictions rose nearly 13 percent over the same period.

The result is immigration courts are filling with defendants like Ruben Moroyoqui, a 45-year-old mechanic in Tucson, Ariz., whose only run-in with police came last year, his attorney said, when he was pulled over while picking up auto parts.

First, the officer asked for his license. His second question, Moroyoqui said, was “Are you here legally?” He wasn’t cited for any driving violation; he was simply handed over to ICE, which began proceedings to deport him to Mexico. An appeal is pending.

Moroyoqui entered the country with authorization 16 years ago but then overstayed his visa, not wanting to return home because of the lack of opportunity there. He has four U.S. citizen children and said he has always paid his taxes. “I feel great respect and love for this country,” he said.

ICE has heralded its deportations of drug kingpins, violent gang members and others accused of serious offenses, and in the 2017 fiscal year, it reported that 56 percent of all deportees it processed — from the interior U.S. and border — had been convicted of crimes. But under Trump, as with prior administrations, when a deportee does have a criminal record, it’s generally for lesser infractions. Among more than 220,000 deportees in the 2017 fiscal year, 79,270 had no convictions, according to ICE data housed by the Transactional Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Of those with a record, according to the data, 1 in 4 had illegal entry or re-entry to the U.S. as their most serious offenses.

Those two counts represented the first- and third-most common charges among deportees. Driving under the influence was second, followed by assault convictions and traffic offenses. Drug trafficking, burglary, domestic violence, larceny and selling marijuana rounded out the top 10 offenses.

The rest of those with a record were convicted of a wide range of misdeeds, both grave crimes like kidnapping and minor offenses including taking a joy ride, gambling or violating a fish conservation statute.