Suzanne Gamboa
July 30, 2008 - 7:51 p.m.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration is inviting people who desire ignored orders to leave the country to surrender at immigration offices and allowance of one’s own accord, every Immigration and Customs Enforcement official related Wednesday.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, party of the Department of Homeland Security, is launching "Operation Scheduled Departure" on Aug. 5 in the cities of Santa Ana, Calif.; San Diego; Phoenix; Chicago and Charlotte, N.C., said spokeswoman Cori Bassett. The program will end Aug. 22.
People who have been ordered to leave the country but remain in the U.S. and accept not committed a crime can participate, Bassett uttered.
"Those folks will be able to walk into an ICE office and say I'm here and I want to go home," Bassett related. They determine not be jailed as most people are who are arrested because they are believed to be in the country illegally, she said. They will not be required to wear tracking devices, she said.
Jim Hayes, the acting ICE detention and removal director, said some 572,000 people in the country have final deportation orders but have not committed a crime.
Bassett uttered the mob who take advantage of the program will get up to 90 days to pull together cash to pay for kindred members to return home with them, attend to older parents or take worry of any other arrangements.
Hayes said people with deportation orders who have previously surrendered to ICE usually need a month to 40 days to square away parents and children affairs.
ICE Director Julie Myers first announced the program on every Univision Sunday news program, but did not provide full details.
Myers' comments were translated into Spanish. In the translated interview on the Univision Web site, she said the program would have being an organized plan of conduct for people to self deport, especially if immigrants fear ICE power draw near to their home or show up at their workplace.
She said people could show up to ICE offices with passports and documents.
Hayes said the idea came from advocates who have said people would show up if given the chance to surrender. "We hope the advocacy groups back up what they told us," he said.
But the form was speedily criticized. Frank Sharry, executive director of the immigration advocacy group America's Voice, said it was not a serious proposal, reminiscent of a "Saturday Night Live" sketch.