ENFORCER COMES TO NEWTOWN

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent addressed members of the Newtown Civic Association at its Nov. 17 meeting at Elmhurst Memorial Hall.

Civic president Thomas McKenzie, in introducing the agent, noted that immigration was one of the driving interests in the NCA's founding 39 years ago.

"We have the most diverse school population of any school board in the city," he said, referring to School District 24. "We have 52 distinct languages or dialects spoken by the students."

The agent, who asked that her name and photo be omitted from this paper, introduced herself as a veteran of over 20 years, beginning in the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, which did all immigration-related work. Her current organization was formed as a part of a post-Sept. 11 realignment which led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

The INS, she explained, was split into three parts: the ICE, which covers investigations and enforcement; Citizenship and Immigration Services, which covers benefits such as green cards; and the Customs and Border Protection, which police our nation's airports, seaports and borders.

The ICE is considered the investigative branch of the DHS, she noted.

The agent stated that her Manhattan office, employing 400 agents, covers the 14 southernmost counties of New York State, including the five boroughs, Long Island and Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Ulster and Duchess counties.

"You can see from that we're already working at a disadvantage," she stated.

The remainder of the state's counties is covered by ICE's Buffalo office.

"Our main focus in New York is a little bit of everything," she said.

Illegal immigration is "just a portion of what we deal with," the agent noted; among the other crimes the ICE combats are human trafficking, drug smuggling, child pornography, sexual predators, cyber crimes, and shady financial dealings.

The ICE also has a national security function, checking up on immigrants from "countries of interest" and double-checking school visas to ensure that their recipients are still attending classes.

Often, students from countries of interest are put into "mandatory detention" until they have a hearing to determine their status.

To demonstrate the agency's reach, the agent noted that in the recent case of disgraced Olympic track star Marion Jones, it was ICE agents who conducted the money laundering investigation and made the arrest of Jones. "We do arrest American citizens who are getting involved with [illegal] things," she noted.

The agent elaborated on the agency's policy against document fraud, such as the illegal manufacture of immigration documents. She noted that the ICE focuses on mass producers who own their own equipment, as opposed to smaller individual crimes.

"We will not go after that single case. What we will go after are the facilitators, the people who are setting this up on a larger scale," she said. "That's the threshold that we have to make in order to get the U.S. attorney to take our investigations."

She added that single cases are usually enforced by the NYPD.

A resident asked a follow-up question, noting that even after the recent bust of a large document facilitator, "you could go up Roosevelt Avenue on several streets corners and there are guys yelling 'Social, Social.'"

She responded that it is difficult to curb the practice of forging immigration documents due to the vast amount of shops. "If you have a color printer [and] the paper, you're now open for shop."

The federal government has introduced new security features to the documents which make forging them a much more expensive proposition, she noted.

The ICE agent was asked by a resident if the agency can do anything about over a dozen homeless immigrants sleeping in a nearby park. "They've been living there for three or four years," he said.

She explained that the old INS used to do what were called "area control operations," where agents would be authorized to ask anyone on the street if they are a citizen or if they have a green card. However, this practice was ended in the mid- 1980s.

"Just keep going after the NYPD to get them off the street," she told the resident.

Work-site enforcement is up to the businesses themselves, she noted. Employees are required to have their immigrant workers sign I-9 forms as part of a compliance program to ensure that the company's employees are legal residents.

"Over the years, they kind of did away with that, but work-site enforcement is coming back," she warned the crowd.

Other news

McKenzie announced that P.S. 7 in Elmhurst is undergoing repairs at a cost of $17 million. The building was constructed only 11 years ago, he noted.

"How could it have been designed so poorly?" he asked aloud.

NCA Treasurer Robert Valdes- Clausell told the crowd about an ongoing controversy regarding a parking lot adjacent to the Queens Center Mall.

The city Economic Development Corporation entered into a deal with a developer for the parcel, originally to construct a multiplex, he said, but the theatre company went bankrupt.

The developer has, according to Valdes-Clausell, missed several deadlines, but although "at this point [the developer] has done nothing with it," the city has repeatedly extended the deadlines.

"It's time that the favoritism end," he stated.

The civic group has reached out to City Council Member Helen Sears in hopes that the site could be used for a new home of the 110th Precinct.

This was the Newtown Civic Association's final meeting of 2008. Most meetings of the civic group are held at Elmhurst Memorial Hall, located at 88-24 43rd Ave.