Serial returnees a costly subset of migrants
DALLAS Diones Graciano-Navarro has been arrested at least 40 times in four states.
His rap sheet began with charges of loitering in New York City in 1975. In New Jersey, he graduated to fraud. By 1988, he was in California. He was charged with obtaining money by fraud or trickery. Later came cocaine possession.
The Dominican Republic native was deported twice. But he slipped back into the U.S., settling in North Texas, where in 2004 he started collecting DWI and marijuana charges.
Almost half of the nearly 393,000 immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement who were deported last fiscal year had criminal records.
But Graciano-Navarro, 63, is not the best poster child for the Obama administrations recent victory laps over increased deportation of criminal aliens who shouldnt have been in the U.S. in the first place.
Instead, the Graciano-Navarro case highlights the difficulty of keeping crimmigrants out of the country. It took decades for the system to evolve, and Graciano-Navarro ran free in post-9/11 America for most of 10 years before the system caught up with him.
In March, he began serving a sentence at the Tarrant County jail for DWI. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security flagged him for special attention: Graciano-Navarro pleaded guilty to illegal re-entry after deportation, a federal charge sought against aliens who have re-entered the country illegally after previously being deported.
This guy was arrested over and over and over again, said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. Those are victims who shouldnt have been victims. ... Having these different penalties is one way to make it less attractive for people to come back.
Graciano-Navarro is a career criminal, but also a petty criminal. His only felony arrest, for armed robbery, appears to have never resulted in charges.
Some say the tens of thousands of dollars or more and the time it takes for law enforcement officers to imprison criminals such as Graciano-Navarro may not be worth it.
Hes now being held at a federal prison in Fort Worth pending sentencing. He and his lawyer declined comment.
Illegal re-entry after deportation is the second most common charge in federal prosecutions thus far this fiscal year, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization based at Syracuse University.
There were about 20,000 prosecutions in 2008, during the Bush administration. Through May of this fiscal year, there already had been 24,577 prosecutions.
Before the federal prosecutors take an illegal re-entry case, ICE checks an illegal immigrants deportation and criminal history, and whether that person already has been ordered deported.
Before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said Paul Zoltan, a Dallas-based immigration lawyer, the link between the jails and DHS was pretty sloppy.
It was far more frequent that someone might finish a criminal sentence or pay off a ticket ... and go unnoticed by immigration officials, he said.
After the terrorist attacks, immigration and law enforcement grew more aggressive about working together. Law enforcement agencies began to welcome more immigration officials inside jails.
In his major speech about comprehensive immigration reform in El Paso, President Obama said the government is focusing on violent offenders and people convicted of crimes and not folks who are just looking to scrape together an income.
And Rusnok said in an email that ICE prioritizes efforts first on those serious criminal aliens.
Where a criminal immigrant such as Graciano-Navarro falls on that scale may be open for debate.
At $87 a day, Graciano-Navarro has cost the system more than $8,100 since he went to a federal detention center. Thats a drop in the bucket compared with untold dollars spent on past prosecution efforts and jail time from his decades of crime.
He now faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for illegal re-entry at his sentencing scheduled for Oct. 28.
Some "crimmigrants" pose difficult questions
DALLAS Diones Graciano-Navarro has been arrested at least 40 times in four states.
His rap sheet began with charges of loitering in New York City in 1975. In New Jersey, he graduated to fraud. By 1988, he was in California. He was charged with obtaining money by fraud or trickery. Later came cocaine possession.
The Dominican Republic native was deported twice. But he slipped back into the U.S., settling in North Texas, where in 2004 he started collecting DWI and marijuana charges.
Almost half of the nearly 393,000 immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement who were deported last fiscal year had criminal records.
But Graciano-Navarro, 63, is not the best poster child for the Obama administrations recent victory laps over increased deportation of criminal aliens who shouldnt have been in the U.S. in the first place.
Instead, the Graciano-Navarro case highlights the difficulty of keeping crimmigrants out of the country. It took decades for the system to evolve, and Graciano-Navarro ran free in post-9/11 America for most of 10 years before the system caught up with him.
In March, he began serving a sentence at the Tarrant County jail for DWI. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security flagged him for special attention: Graciano-Navarro pleaded guilty to illegal re-entry after deportation, a federal charge sought against aliens who have re-entered the country illegally after previously being deported.
This guy was arrested over and over and over again, said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. Those are victims who shouldnt have been victims. ... Having these different penalties is one way to make it less attractive for people to come back.
Graciano-Navarro is a career criminal, but also a petty criminal. His only felony arrest, for armed robbery, appears to have never resulted in charges.
Some say the tens of thousands of dollars or more and the time it takes for law enforcement officers to imprison criminals such as Graciano-Navarro may not be worth it.
Hes now being held at a federal prison in Fort Worth pending sentencing. He and his lawyer declined comment.
Illegal re-entry after deportation is the second most common charge in federal prosecutions thus far this fiscal year, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization based at Syracuse University.
There were about 20,000 prosecutions in 2008, during the Bush administration. Through May of this fiscal year, there already had been 24,577 prosecutions.
Before the federal prosecutors take an illegal re-entry case, ICE checks an illegal immigrants deportation and criminal history, and whether that person already has been ordered deported.
Before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said Paul Zoltan, a Dallas-based immigration lawyer, the link between the jails and DHS was pretty sloppy.
It was far more frequent that someone might finish a criminal sentence or pay off a ticket ... and go unnoticed by immigration officials, he said.
After the terrorist attacks, immigration and law enforcement grew more aggressive about working together. Law enforcement agencies began to welcome more immigration officials inside jails.
In his major speech about comprehensive immigration reform in El Paso, President Obama said the government is focusing on violent offenders and people convicted of crimes and not folks who are just looking to scrape together an income.
And Rusnok said in an email that ICE prioritizes efforts first on those serious criminal aliens.
Where a criminal immigrant such as Graciano-Navarro falls on that scale may be open for debate.
At $87 a day, Graciano-Navarro has cost the system more than $8,100 since he went to a federal detention center. Thats a drop in the bucket compared with untold dollars spent on past prosecution efforts and jail time from his decades of crime.
He now faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for illegal re-entry at his sentencing scheduled for Oct. 28.
Some "crimmigrants" pose difficult questions
