Immigration officials detain 50 convicted sex offenders
Associated Press Writer
October 19, 2005, 5:41 PM EDT
NEW
YORK -- Immigration agents Wednesday rounded up 50 foreign-born New Yorkers who
had been convicted of sex offenses, including child molestation and rape, but
remained free after receiving relatively light punishments.
Twelve sex
offenders were paraded before journalists as they left a federal building in
Manhattan in chains, bound for detention centers where they will face
deportation proceedings.
The arrests came after the city's Department of
Probation shared information about convicts under its supervision with
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The offenders were arrested as they
showed up for scheduled visits with their probation officers.
Fourteen
of the people arrested were legal permanent residents of the U.S., but may be
deported under a law allowing the removal of anyone convicted of a crime of
"moral turpitude."
Most of the remaining sex offenders were in the
country illegally, officials said.
"The pedophiles and rapists arrested
in our offices today have abused the privilege of living in this country," said
Richard Levy, first deputy commissioner for the New York Department of
Probation. "It is our position that these dangerous sexual predators should
never have been placed on probation."
Among those arrested was a
36-year-old man from Honduras who was sentenced to 10 years of probation for
raping a 14-year-old, a 37-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic who
received a sentence of probation for sexually abusing a five-year-old and a man
from Mexico convicted of raping his 13-year-old daughter.
There is no
centralized system that alerts federal immigration officials whenever a visitor
to the United States is convicted of a crime. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agents instead rely on information provided, usually on a voluntary
basis, by police departments, court officials and corrections
agencies.