Annual number of illegal immigrants who could not be deported because home countries refused:
- 2008: 702
- 2009: 621
- 2010: 377
- 2011: 41
Source: U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement
Sunday, March 27, 2011
By Rich Cholodofsky
Pittsburgh TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Convicted killer Loeun Heng walked out of a Massachusetts detention center a free man last fall.
The illegal alien from Cambodia was supposed to be deported after serving almost a decade in prison for killing a 16-year-old boy in a Boston suburb.
But Cambodia is among several countries that won’t take their citizens back when the United States wants to jettison them.
Officials from Immigration and Custom Enforcement, or ICE, detained Heng for six months as they tried to ship him out.
They failed.
Since 2008, ICE has been forced to release 1,741 illegal immigrants because their home countries would not allow deportation, said Harold Ort, an ICE spokesman in Newark.
Heng, 26, and three other men in the Blood Red Dragons gang attacked, stabbed and beat 16-year-old Charles Ashton Cline-McMurray in Revere, Mass., on Oct 13, 2000. Prosecutors worry ICE won’t be able to deport the other killers when they get out of prison.
In the wake of Heng’s release, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the immigration issue.
Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank, said U.S. policy is being dictated by unfriendly, uncooperative foreign governments — such as Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos — that continuously refuse to allow their undesirable citizens to be deported.
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