U.S. Targeting Immigrant 'Absconders'

Those factors, combined with a lack of resources for ICE's fugitive enforcement, "contributed to the inability of . . . apprehensions to keep pace with the increase in the backlog of fugitive aliens, not to mention reduce it," Homeland Security Inspector General Richard L. Skinner reported in March.

Skinner concluded, "It is highly improbable that it will be eliminated in the near future."

However, John P. Torres, ICE's director of detention and removal operations, said the agency has made major improvements in recent months.

"Within a year, we'll see a big drop. . . . We're attacking on all fronts," Torres said, stopping short of a promise to eliminate the backlog.

The catch-and-release practice was terminated in September, he noted, and under a new initiative, ICE since July has purged its fugitive rolls of 27,000 people who died, left the country or obtained legal status.

Finally, ICE has boosted the number of fugitive teams from 18 in 2005 to a projected 75 this year, each with a goal of 1,000 arrests a year.

The challenge facing those agents was apparent during the early morning raids by the Fairfax team, which goes out three or four times a week.

The morning's first target was a middle-age Pakistani man who agents said was wanted in connection with a slaying and bank robbery in his home country. Through surveillance, team members had determined that he would probably be working at a Shell gas station on Lee Highway in Arlington County.

As the motorcade approached the gas station, the team leader, a tall man with a linebacker's physique, got on the radio and ordered all vehicles to stop a short distance away so that an agent in plainclothes could drive up and determine whether the target was there.

A few minutes later, the team leader's voice came back on the radio. "Okay, he's not working there now. All units to the apartment."

The team converged on a three-story brick building a few blocks away. But once again, it came up empty: Only the man's roommates were home.

"All units, the target is at work, apparently at a different Shell station," an agent announced over the radio. "We're trying to determine where now."