The two men are led out from cells deep inside the basement of “La Comandancia,” the city’s aging police headquarters.
They have shaven heads and a shaken look. Police officers order them to lift their shirts and show off their gang tattoos, which indicate they’re from San Jose, Calif. Both had just been deported from the United States, dropped off a few weeks earlier at the public gates of Tijuana.
On an old wooden table in front of them is a display of their loot, the result of a string of petty thefts victimizing Tijuana street vendors: a backpack, two makeshift knives, some coins along with a few packets of mints, gum and a bottle of perfume.
… Tijuana’s Mayor Kurt Honald, … has protested the dumping of criminals at the Tijuana gates. He says deportees have triggered a 300 percent rise in petty crime during the last year, as criminals raise money for a return to the U.S. Others join narcotics cartels and smuggling organizations to pay for their return.
Criminal deportees represent about one-third – 84,652 in the year ended Sept. 30 – of ICE formal deportations across the United States. And they are quickly becoming the leading category of deportee being processed by ICE. Under pressure from Congress to step up immigration enforcement, the Bush administration has expanded funding for a series of programs that seek to deport illegal immigrants out of a myriad of federal, state and local jails.
Torres Gallego heads a task force that raids neighborhoods where criminal deportees are involved in crime. She said because of their criminal records, these migrants now aren’t wanted by anyone. They have no ID in the United States. No ID in Mexico. So they get shuffled from one place to another.
“It’s very sad,” Torres said.
