Operation Streamline

Friday was a hard day, probably the hardest of the trip.  We started the day with a presentation by Isabel Garcia of Derechos Humanos, the organization that Patricia volunteers for.  Isabel spoke of how legislation has impacted immigration and how she felt politicians on both sides of the aisle had largely failed on this issue.

Following that, we spent the afternoon at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Tucson watching Operation Streamline proceedings.  Operation Streamline is a zero tolerance immigration program aimed at deporting 100 people per day in each border city in which it is implemented.  Entering the court room, we saw 63 defendants- 61 men and 2 women, each wearing the clothes they had on when they were apprehended, each with shackles around their wrists and ankles, with their wrists bound to their waists.  Each wore a pair of headphones, through which they would hear a Spanish interpretation of the court proceedings.  There was a federal judge, a federal prosecutor, and approximately 10 public defenders.  The judge addressed the court, stating that each of the 63 were charged with entering the United States illegally,  stating that they had the right to remain silent but by entering a plea arrangement, as each of them had, they had forfeited that right and would be forced to answer questions.  She asked the defendants to stand if they could not hear what she was saying, or if they did not understand English or Spanish. 

Then, in groups of five, the defendants were brought to the front of the court to stand in front of the judge and answer her questions.  One by one, she asked each of the five which country they were  residents of, if they had attempted to cross the US- Mexico border on the stated date, if they had done so at an official United States border inspection station, and how they plead.  One by one each stated their home country (55 of the 63 were from Mexico, the other 8 from Guatemala), and answered si, no, and culpable (yes, no, and guilty), respectively.  The judge then asked if the lawyers had anything to add.  Other than a few exceptions (two Guatemalans asked permission to speak to the Guatemalan consulate and a handful of other defendants asked permission to serve their sentence in a particular city or state), none spoke. 

The judge then asked the defendants if any of them wanted to speak.  All said no.  She then handed out the sentences, anywhere from 30 to 180 days, stating in each of the cases where she'd been asked that she would recommend the sentence be served in the city requested.  When each group of five was finished, the next 5 were called up and the process repeated. 

A few things about the process stood out.  First it was incredibly robotic.  With the monotony of the questions and answers repeating one after the next, with almost no variation, with nearly all the lawyers quiet, rendered almost unnecessary, the proceedings had the feel that everything was entirely determined far before what we were witnessing happened.  Because of the nature of the proceedings, the few outlying events stood out starkly for their uniqueness.  However, these outlying events were almost completely heartbreaking.  One defendant was forced to sit down when he nearly passed out as he stood before the judge.  When he couldn’t get back up the judge rescheduled his sentencing for two weeks later.  Another defendant whispered in his lawyer’s ear for a good minute, before his lawyer asked the judge of he could receive a medical checkup as soon after the hearing as possible, for he had been wandering in the desert for ten days before being captured and feared he had done severe damage to his body.   
 

I found myself searching for any small differences between defendants in order to humanize them, as the shackles they were held in robbed them of their humanity.  I watched a few of them consult with their lawyers between questions, their lawyers awkwardly tugging their earphones off their ear in order to speak directly to them.   I listened as several responded to the question “What is your home country?” by saying “Sonora,” which is a state in Mexico (the state where Nogales is located), indicating to me that they didn’t entirely understand the questions they were being asked. I wondered what else about their situation they didn't understand.  When one lawyer told the judge his Guatemalan client spoke the indigenous language Mam rather than Spanish, I wondered what, if anything, he understood about the process he was going through or the agreement he had made.   

After the final group concluded we exited the courtroom and took a few minutes to collect ourselves before heading across the plaza to another building where we would meet with a public defender who would explain exactly what we had just seen.   

Prior to Operation Streamline, crossing the border illegally or living in the United States without proper documentation was treated as a civil infraction.  Deportations were legally called voluntary returns. Operation Streamline changed this civil infraction to a criminal charge.  Crossing the first time became a misdemeanor and the second time a felony.  

The program originated in Texas in 2005 and first came to Arizona in 2007.  100 captured immigrants are deported daily, Monday through Friday, in each of five cities across Texas, two in New Mexico, and in Yuma, Az.  In Tucson, only 70 are deported per day, meaning the proceedings cannot be formally called Operation Streamline, though it follows the same legal process.  Instead it is formally referred to as the Arizona Admission Denial Initiative, though everyone involved will casually refer to as Operation Streamline.  Since it started in Tucson in January 2008, the program has focused on first time violators, those who have no record of previous border crossing attempts.  Under the terms of their plea agreements, defendants processed would be immediately returned to their home country with no jail time served with the understanding that if they were captured a second time, they would automatically be charged with a felony and prosecuted.  Within the past month, the focus of the program has shifted.  No longer is the program targeting first time crossers, instead they are targeting repeat offenders; not necessarily those who have been processed through Operation Streamline previously, but those who had a prior record of entering the United States without documentation.  Now, when these repeat offenders are processed under Operation Streamline, they are given a plea deal where they would serve up to 6 months in a border patrol detention facility or a private prison for the misdemeanor charge of entering the country illegally rather than being prosecuted for the felony charge of illegal re-entry, but would be charged with a felony if captured again. 

A couple questions arise.  Why 100 deportations per day (or 70 in the case of Tucson)?  Cities like Tucson regularly saw 1000 immigrants captured attempting to cross the border illegally in the mid 2000’s, though that number sits at about 300 per day now.  So why would this program run for only 100 of those captures?  What happens to the others and who decides whether a particular capture is processed through Operation Streamline or some other means?  While only the border patrol knows the answer to these questions, the presumption is that the border patrol agents have a lot of personal autonomy in deciding how a particular capture is treated.  Someone who is old, weak, or female is more likely to be simply returned to their home country- essentially treated as a voluntary return.  Those who are younger and male may be treated as voluntary returns, may be forced to sign a deportation document by the border patrol agent who captured them, or will be processed through Operation Streamline and this appears to be almost entirely up to the discretion of the capturing agent.  Obviously Operation Streamline is the least desirable of these options as it attaches a criminal record to those processed this way, while others are still treated as having committed a civil infraction. 

What determines the length of each person’s sentence?  We saw defendants sentenced to anywhere between 30 and 180 days.  The public defender explained that those who were sentenced to 30 days had no other violations except for their one previous re-entry attempt.  Anyone sentenced to longer terms either had multiple previous illegal entries or had other civil infractions such as driving without a license.  None of those processed through Operation Streamline have serious criminal charges on their record such as violent crime or drug trafficking, as those offenses would send them into an entirely different court proceeding. 

We asked about the relative monotony of the process and the lack of defense offered by the lawyers.  She said that for the lawyers it is the worst type of trial to take part in.  Each defender has to serve one day in Operation Streamline every 6 weeks.  They have three hours to meet with their clients and each lawyer is usually assigned 5 or 6 clients.  The defender meets with all of his or her clients at once.  In that time, the lawyers have to determine what, if any, English their client speaks, explain to them what they are being charged with, give them their options, and figure out whether or not they want to accept the plea deal.  Sentencing occurs later that day.   

Public defenders are generally very uncomfortable with this arrangement because for any other criminal trial, the defendant would have an arraignment, a bond hearing, several pre-trial hearings, the formal trial, and the sentencing hearing, all of which would happen over the process of several months, during which the lawyer and defendant would meet several times.  In all but rare cases, the lawyers represent a single client in each case. In Operation Streamline, each lawyer has multiple clients, there is no bond, there is limited time for consultation, and the arraignment, trial, and sentencing are all held in one mass proceeding held on the day following their capture (in the court room, the judge asked each defendant when they crossed and we heard answers ranging from March 26th to April 4th, however this was simply the date they crossed the physical border, not the date they were actually captured, which would have been April 4th in all cases).  

Public defenders have some constitutional objections to the nature of these proceedings, but found when Operation Streamline was targeting first time offenders, the defendants all refused to go to trial.  When faced with the option of going home that very day, albeit with the guarantee of felony charges should they later be caught returning, or sitting in jail indefinitely while facing misdemeanor charges and a likely punishment followed by deportation, and still the guarantee of felony charges if caught returning, the defenders quickly found there really was no option.  Every single defendant accepted the deal.  Even when the focus shifted to repeat offenders and sentences up to 6 months were levied, the deal was preferable to the certainty of a felony conviction.  The defender spoke of the fighting spirit that lawyers have, saying that we’d all seen that on display in court proceedings depicted in movie and television, but this system handcuffed all involved, leaving the cold, robotic proceeding we witnessed. 

We couldn't help but laugh at a few of the details of the proceedings as the public defender explained them to us.  "Please stand if you cannot hear me," the judge says during the proceedings.  "Please stand if you do not understand English or Spanish," she says later.  The question of how anyone would know to stand if they could not hear or understand the judge's instructions to do so was unanswerable. Learning the fact that the room we watched Operation Streamline from, the Special Proceedings Room, was previously used to perform naturalization ceremonies recognizing immigrants who were becoming legal United States citizens, and was now used solely to criminalize and deport people who wanted to live here was a laugh so that you don't cry moment. 

Our group all left the courthouse that day with mixed emotions from confusion to sadness to anger.  We wondered how 30 or even 180 days would deter someone who was willing to make what is often a deadly journey through the desert in search of a better life for their family.  Unfortunately, that was one of many unanswered questions.  We cleared our heads with dinner and drinks at a local Mexican restaurant and prepared for a lighter day with a return to Pima County Cooperative Extension on Saturday.