"People feel they can get away with running . . . because the immigration law isn't enforced anywhere else," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which seeks more limits on newcomers.
The solution goes beyond adding fugitive teams, officials say. Cerda, an intense young Mexican American lawyer who heads the detention program at ICE, said the government has to keep people from becoming absconders in the first place.
Deportation officer Jamie Colomb, left, goes over information with supervisory officer Raymond Smith before a predawn raid in Hyattsville.
(Photos Robert A. Reeder -- The Washington Post)
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Cerda is overseeing several pilot programs to better track immigrants through their court proceedings. Some immigrants are required to wear electronic ankle bracelets; others must call in periodically. Locking up everyone facing immigration charges isn't feasible because of a lack of detention beds, he said, but another solution must be found. "The honor system has failed," he said.
By 7:50 a.m., Smith's team had returned to Kabert's apartment building. As the agents went inside, Smith absentmindedly rapped his knuckles on the steering wheel of his Ford Expedition. Traffic whooshed by. Smith stared silently out the window. A radio deejay's voice filled the Expedition. "Angela, you just won $1,000!" "Ooooh!" exclaimed Angela.
Twenty minutes passed.
Suddenly, Smith's gaze focused on a slender man with a cocoa complexion alighting from a bus. The man spotted the agents emerging from the apartment building and abruptly started walking around it. But one of the officers was waiting.
"We got him!" yelled the officer.
It was Etienne Kabert. He meekly led the officers to his apartment, where he had ID cards with various names and birth dates, as well as a French passport he had acquired years ago.
Smith had gotten his man. One down, 8,500 absconders to go in Maryland.
