Immigration agency scraps self-deport program

SANTA ANA, Calif. -- The federal government will scrap a program for illegal immigrants to turn themselves in for deportation after only eight people volunteered during a nearly three-week trial, an official said Thursday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offered the pilot program in five cities, giving illegal immigrants facing court orders to leave the country 90 days to plan their departure and coordinate travel with relatives instead of facing the prospect of being arrested, detained and deported.

ICE will end its "Scheduled Departure" program when the trial period concludes today, said Jim Hayes, acting director of ICE's detention and removal operations.

"The bottom line is it is not effective," Hayes said. "Quite frankly, I think this proves the only method that works is enforcement."

Hayes said other tactics have proven more effective. ICE has been tracking down so-called immigration "fugitives" by knocking on their doors at home, often during pre-dawn hours.

ICE offered the program to 457,000 illegal immigrants nationwide who have ignored judicial orders to leave the country but have no criminal record. Applicants could sign up at ICE offices in Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Phoenix, San Diego and Santa Ana.

Immigrant advocates said the program had few incentives and failed to consider undocumented immigrants' ties to family in the U.S. They said they worry that ICE will cite the weak turnout as a reason to step up the raids, since it now can say that it made an effort to enforce the law in a way that was less disruptive to illegal immigrants and their families.

"My hope is it isn't going to empower them or fuel their enforcement even further," immigration lawyer Lisa Ramirez said Thursday.

ICE said it hatched the plan to quell criticism of the surge in immigration raids. One supporter of tougher enforcement said the low turnout will help insulate the agency from some of that criticism.

"It was calling their bluff," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

The program was criticized for offering little incentive for illegal immigrants to step forward since they would be barred from returning to the United States for as long as a decade.

And while ICE has increased arrests of illegal immigrants who fail to heed court orders to depart, several immigrants said many people feel they have a decent chance of sticking it out here longer than the government would give them if they came forward.

"Why are they going to go back to their country and pay someone to bring them over here again?" asked Rigoberto Moreno, 46, who entered the country illegally from Mexico as a teenager in the 1970s and has since become a U.S. citizen.