Deportee Airline

by Jill R. Yesko

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adio, mi amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
And all they will call you will be "deportees"

-- Woody Guthrie, Song of the Deportees

Halting at the edge of the runway, armed prison guards position themselves around the perimeter of the jet as a green Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) bus pulls up and unloads its passengers: illegal aliens transported from an INS detention center in New York City.

Squinting into the midday sun, their feet shackled, hands cuffed and wearing prison-issue slippers, the group hobbles aboard the plane.

"This is a much safer way of handing bad guys. They don't spit, they don't kick, they don't hurt any people," says Kristine Marcy, INS senior counsel for detention and deportation in Washington D.C. and the woman in charge of the agency's portion of the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System (JPATS), a fleet three government-operated jets used to deport unwanted aliens from Colombia to Nigeria.

JPATS is not to be confused with far larger efforts to stop immigrants along the U.S. - Mexico border, where each year up to a half million illegals are stopped along the California border alone. Those efforts present different controversies, such as the Border Patrol's Mexican Interior Repatriation Program (MIRP), which maintains an extensive computer database of biographical data, photographs, and fingerprints of each individual.

Running JPATS -- the government's only operated, scheduled passenger airline -- is a cheap and humane way of getting aliens out of the country, INS officials say.

But what started out in 1995 as a way of deporting dangerous criminal aliens has broadened into a multi-million dollar shuttle that has drawn criticism from immigration lawyers and aviation analysts who say the repatriation flights are a waste of taxpayer money by providing a free ride home for aliens who promptly end up back in the United States.

"The INS is basically an agency that is frightened to death of Congress. Congress has complained that the INS is not deporting criminal aliens," says Roy Petty, executive director of the American Immigration Law Foundation in Washington D.C.

Other critics question the logic of deporting aliens on a fleet of government-operated planes that includes a Lear Jet that was once employed to fly a single alien back to Albania. (Their small jets were acquired through the surplus property and asset forfeiture program.)

Critics also say the INS is using its deportation figures and touting its deportation flights as a public relations campaign to help bolster its image of an agency beleaguered by allegations of administrative mismanagement.

"JPATS is a dream come true for Joe Taxpayer who believes in the least due process for individuals. People have given up rights to appeal for permanent residence in the U.S. because they can't bear another day in INS custody," says Antoinette Rizzi, an immigration attorney in Falls Church, Va. who specializes in deportation cases.

Since 1995, 130,000 aliens have been "removed" via JPATS (the INS doesn't use the term deportation). "We're doing well on our removals. Nationwide, our removals have increased 62 percent," says INS spokeswoman Elaine Kemis, referring to the record-breaking 80 thousand immigrants deported in just the first six months of fiscal year 1998.

INS officials say JPATS flights are needed so that criminal aliens -- those convicted of crimes like murder and rape -- are not put on commercial airliners where they are a risk to civilian passengers and airline crews. But an additional 10 thousand aliens are removed annually via commercial airlines because JPATS doesn't have enough planes.

INS officials say the agency must have its own airline to defray the cost of deporting aliens on commercial airliners. It costs an average of $448 to deport an illegal alien on government-funded planes, half the cost of what the INS pays to deport aliens on commercial airlines, according to Neil Gauthier, an INS analyst.

Flying aliens out of the country at government expense is a cheap alternative to housing them in state detention centers where the INS pays municipalities up to $150 a day to house aliens -- sometimes for years -- while their cases wend their way through immigration courts, Rizzi says.

Immigration attorneys say that giving the INS the power to deport people who may have lived in the United States for decades without committing a crime violates the tenets of the Geneva Convention which governs the humane treatment of prisoners.

"Congress has over-reacted to what it perceives as problems with too many immigrants,"says Roy Petty.

The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act, which gave the INS unprecedented powers to deport aliens convicted of even minor crimes such as shoplifting, is an example of the INS abusing its power by making it nearly impossible for aliens to legally stay in the United States, Petty adds.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves

-- Woody Guthrie, Song of the Deportees

Six members of a Mexican human rights group toured the INS facilities and found a pattern of discrimination," according to Marieclaire Acosta, chairwoman of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights.

Acosta told the Sun-Times that the group was "shocked" when it found that under the 1996 rules, Mexican nationals who are longtime legal U.S. residents can lose their homes and resident status and be deported without any legal recourse once they have been convicted of any of "an ever-expanding list of crimes."

"There is no due process in deportation," she told the Sun-Times. "A Mexican immigrant without U.S. citizenship can live legally in the Chicago area for 15 or 20 years and still be deported. When that happens, it ruptures family life. And the immigrant has no home waiting back in Mexico."

In place of stewardesses, in-flight meals are served by U.S. Marshals and typically include a sandwich, drink and cookie. Deportees -- who remain in handcuffs and shackles for the duration of the flight -- must eat their food with their hands in cuffs. No utensils or condiments are provided because "otherwise they [deportees] might be squirting them all over the place," explains the INS Kristine Marcy. Overhead luggage compartments are locked and movies are not shown.

"I'd be very surprised if any aliens transported on JPATS are frequent fliers. This is not a luxurious form of transportation," Marcy adds.

On a recent JPATS flight, a trio of women being deported to the Dominican Republic asked a burly U.S. Marshal to help them open a plastic container of orange juice.

When asked if they would ever return to the U.S., the women shook their heads and replied nunca -- never.

Still, even some INS officials admit that JPATS is far from a fail-safe way of ensuring that illegal aliens permanently stay out of the U.S.

"Some of them say,'we'll see you next week,'" adds JPATS' Craig Charles. "They're going to come back. This is America."

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps
You're flying them back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

-- Woody Guthrie, Song of the Deportees