Arrest records elusive
In other words, those immigrants had a 98 percent chance of continuing to evade arrest and deportation.
Those statistics, however, can't be compared to previous years because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say they cannot find similar Utah data for years prior to 2005. They also said they could not find the repeated, written requests by the Deseret Morning News seeking the data.
Immigration officials also said that when they do locate the newspaper's requests, filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), any information would be slow in coming because "hundreds of requests" were in front of them in line waiting for action. By law, the agency is supposed to respond to FOIA requests within 10 days.
In response to Morning New inquiries, the regional office of ICE provided some Utah data for 2005 and the first half of fiscal 2006.
In fiscal 2005 (October 2004 through September 2005), ICE arrested 1,496 "non-criminal" illegal aliens in Utah and placed them into removal, or deportation, proceedings. Another 154 "criminal aliens" were arrested for committing crimes here and faced criminal prosecution.
ICE also said that during the first half of fiscal 2006 (October 2005 through March 2006), it arrested 750 "non-criminal" aliens and 71 "criminal aliens" for committing crimes here.
The monthly arrest rate for both years is nearly identical, about 137 a month.
When asked for similar data for previous years, which would allow calculation of the chance that illegal aliens have of being arrested here over time, ICE regional spokeswoman Virginia Kice said the data could not be located locally and noted the agency has undergone significant reorganization in recent years. She initially suggested the information be requested from ICE headquarters in Washington, D.C.
On April 12, the Morning News faxed a written Freedom of Information Act request to headquarters requesting such data. While federal law requires agencies to respond within 10 business days, ICE had not responded a month later.
So the Morning News faxed letters and copies of the request again on Monday, May 15. The communication asked for acknowledgement of receipt and for information from the agency about the request's status. The newspaper also called ICE's FOIA office several times over three days but reached only voice mail. Calls were not returned.
On Thursday morning, it finally reached a "Mr. Crowley," who said he had no idea if the agency had received the requests. He said that finding out would also be difficult, but he would try. However, by end of business on Friday he had not responded.
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