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	From the December 14, 2001 print edition

INS cracks down: Non-immigrants await deportation

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has doubled its activity from last year, putting particular focus on non-immigrants such as those on work and student visas.

Locally, that means seemingly benign offenses such as dropping a class or picking up part-time work can send foreign students to the Mason, Tenn., federal penitentiary where they await deportation.

"The best evidence that the INS is more rigorous is that they've started actively following the status of all international students," says University of Memphis immigration specialist Arda Beskardes. "There are thousands and thousands of foreign students in the Mid-South and it used to be huge hardship for the INS to follow them all. Now they're asking for lists of them and following through. That by itself is a huge undertaking on part of the INS."

The New Orleans district of the INS, which includes Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky, launched a special project last month to review the visa status of about 30,000 foreign students in those states.

Leslie Klinefelter, the officer in charge of the Memphis office of INS, says his office has identified at least eight students in Tennessee that have been "out of status," meaning that they have violated or overstayed their visas.

"As part of the project, we're also looking at individuals who are employed at the airport and also individuals who in the past have been ordered removed by immigration judge who have never left," says Klinefelter, whose 21-agent office has jurisdiction over eastern Arkansas, northern Mississippi and Tennessee. "This is in addition to our other duties which have certainly increased since Sept. 11."

The added workload for the INS has meant more work for lawyers such as Beskardes and Greg Siskind and Lynne Susser, partners with local immigration law firm Siskind, Susser, Haas & Devine.

"The INS is acting pretty vicious right now," Susser says. "Right after 9/11, the immigration service took serious heat over how those people got into the country. Now the pendulum has swung."

Under pre-Sept. 11 INS regulations, the agency could request schools to provide annual reports that listed foreign students' current enrollment status and directory information. It could also ask for more up-to-date information on students and have that information broken out by nationality.

But before Sept. 11, the INS rarely sought such information, says Cal Allen, the University of Memphis' executive director of international programs and services.

"There's always been the regulation that the INS could request a list of specific information," he says. "But this is the first time in any of our memories that they've asked for information under any of those guidelines."

Since recent anti-terrorist legislation has stripped away the protections of the Buckley Amendment, the INS can ask for student academic records without needing subpoenas.

Susser says she has represented between six and 10 students since the sweep began and that two of her clients have gotten voluntary departures, which allows the students to leave without the black mark of deportation but forces them to leave on their family's expense.

But Susser and Siskind complain over the treatment they say their clients have received at the hands of INS officers, who they say have often shipped their clients to Immigration Court in leg irons.

"Immigration violations are not criminal violations, they're civil violations," Siskind says. "But they're being treated by the INS as criminals."

Beskardes and others say some of the problems could have been avoided prior to Sept. 11 if the students sought reinstatement once they fell below their visa courseload requirements.

"If the student came and saw me before this happened, maybe there was something I could have done," he says. "If a student was employed illegally, there's no way I can get reinstatement. But if he fell below the courseload requirements for good reasons, I can at least recommend a student for reinstatement to the Immigration Service."

Between Oct. 1, 2000, and Sept. 30, 2001, Klinefelter says his office completed 923 total cases in Tennessee, about 95% of which were criminal alien cases. The caseload represented a 113% increase over the same period for 1999 and 2000.

Between October and November 2001, the local INS office has already recommended 270 cases to the U.S. Immigration Court for 2002. That's double the figure for the same two months last year, Klinefelter says.

In projecting a similar percentage increase in the coming year, Klinefelter says the heightened activity has as much to post-Sept. 11 vigilance as it reflects the recent openings of offices in Chattanooga, Knoxville and Nashville.

"All of our enforcement personnel are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he says. "We're working a lot more hours and the number of people that we're reviewing and arresting has increased."

CONTACT staff writer Tommy Perkins at 259-1727 or at tperkins@bizjournals.com

Copyright 2001 American City Business Journals Inc. Click for permission to reprint (PRC# 1.1653.521765)

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