New York Times
July 20, 2001
Ashcroft Seeks Return of Criminal Immigrants
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft has warned that a recent Supreme Court ruling could result in the release of thousands of immigrants with criminal records into American cities and said he was considering steps to force nations to take them back.
Mr. Ashcroft said he would explore asking the secretary of state to deny visas to travelers from countries like Cuba, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which refuse to accept deportation of their citizens after they are convicted of crimes in the United States.
"The Department of Justice believes these criminal aliens must be deported because their history of serious crime makes them a threat to our community," Mr. Ashcroft said in a statement on Thursday. "The court's decision, combined with the refusal of some countries to respect their responsibilities to accept the return of these dangerous criminals, clearly presents a great challenge to our responsibility to ensure safety for the American people."
The Supreme Court last month ruled that the federal government could not detain deportable immigrants indefinitely simply for lack of a country willing to accept them. The decision cleared the way for the release of about 3,400 foreign nationals who have served sentences for crimes including drug trafficking and murder and have been held by immigration authorities who consider them a danger to society.
In its 5-to-4 decision, the court said such convicts could not be held for more than six months if their deportation did not seem likely in the "reasonably foreseeable future" and the government failed to present compelling evidence for holding them.
Immigrant advocates said today that some criminals in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service had been in limbo for years, simply because their legal status did not offer them the same constitutional protections as American citizens.
"All of these people have finished serving their time," said Jay W. Stansell, who argued the Supreme Court case on behalf of a Cambodian refugee, Kim Ho Ma, who was convicted of a gang-related killing and then held indefinitely. "We should be celebrating the decision, saying we do not let law enforcement lock up people" when there are no pending charges, Mr. Stansell said.
About 1,100 of the criminal immigrants are from Vietnam, Cuba, Laos and Cambodia. Several hundred others are from Jamaica, where officials have long resisted the return of detainees on the ground that their lives in the United States made them hardened criminals.
Mr. Ashcroft has ordered the immigration service to begin preparing the release of the detainees over the next three months.
Civil liberty advocates expressed concern that the attorney general appeared to be seeking ways to avoid complying with the court ruling.
"We're very troubled by it," said Judy Rabinovitz, a senior staff counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York. "Basically, he's trying to find ways to get around the Supreme Court decision."
But Richard A. Samp, the chief counsel for the Washington Legal Foundation, a public interest group that emphasizes law enforcement, praised Mr. Ashcroft for trying to compel nations to accept deported criminals.
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