In an effort to send more of the criminal immigrants home, the Department of Homeland Security is starting "aggressive dialogues" with foreign governments that do not typically issue travel documents, said spokesman Jarrod Agen.
"We often find that people who are removable sit in our detention facilities -- simply because the foreign country has failed to give us a 'travel document' agreeing to take its citizen back," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month. "We must make this a top priority in our bilateral relationships around the world."
Attorneys for the immigrants say some are not released after six months as required, even if their deportation is unlikely.
The Catholic Legal Immigration Network, which provides legal services to immigrants, published a report in September concluding that there were inconsistencies in how immigration offices around the country handled such cases. The report attributed the problems in part to understaffed immigration offices and insufficient records.
As of March, there were 1,225 long-term detainees -- or "lifers" -- around the country, according to the organization, which used data received from Homeland Security. Many do not have attorneys and may not know the status of their cases, said Kathleen Sullivan, director of the organization's national detention representation project.
"It's incredibly frustrating for the detainees, because they feel that they are being held a long time without any information about when they might be released," she said.
Even when the immigrants are released, attorneys said, they never know when, or if, they will be rearrested and deported.
"They are in limbo status," said Jay Stansell, an assistant federal public defender in Seattle who specializes in Cambodian cases.
Sometimes, the immigrants have travel documents but the other country refuses to accept them. In other cases, deportees have been flown to their native countries, only to have their documents invalidated and the immigrants sent back to the U.S.
"If Moammar Kadafi won't take someone in Libya, we won't be able to do a flyover and drop them with a parachute," said Bill Odencrantz, ICE director of field legal operations.
If a judge rules that an immigrant cannot be repatriated to his or her native country for reasons of personal safety, immigration officials can look for a third country. In one well-publicized case, four Iranian brothers accused of supporting a terrorist group bent on overthrowing the regime in Iran were ordered deported.
