Deportees use "revolving door" to return to U.S.

By Tim Gaynor

PHOENIX (Reuters) - When a heavy knock came on the door of her Phoenix home, Mari knew that the immigration police had finally caught up with her. Arrested and held for a month in a U.S. jail, she was sent back to Guatemala on a prison flight.

But four weeks later, after raising a $5,000 smuggling fee, she was back with her family in Arizona.

As U.S. authorities step up deportations of illegal immigrants, a growing number of them, like Mari, are simply turning round and heading back stateside to rejoin families and resume their lives.

"Guatemala is no longer my home. All my roots are here in the country I have lived in since I was 15 years old ... I felt I had no option but to try to come back," said Mari, which is not her real name.

The little reported phenomenon of the repeat lawbreakers was highlighted by the high-profile case of Elvira Arellano, the Mexican illegal immigrant deported earlier this month for slipping back into the United States despite a previous removal in 1997.

"I know a lot of people in the same position as Elvira ... their whole life is here," said Mari's husband, Samuel, who is also an undocumented immigrant.

"If they throw them out of the country, sooner or later they will be back."

REVOLVING DOOR

Some 12 million illegal immigrants live in the shadows in the United States. Last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deported 183,431 people amid stepped up raids in workplaces and homes nationwide.

ICE said removing Arellano -- who sought sanctuary in a Chicago church and became a cause celebre for pro-immigration activists -- was necessary to enforce U.S. immigration laws, and ensure that they were applied fairly.

"Miss Arellano willfully violated those laws and must face the consequences of her illegal actions," Jim Hayes, ICE director in Los Angeles, told a news conference.

Although no records are kept of the numbers of deported immigrants sneaking back in to the country -- as Arellano did to join her 8-year-old U.S.-born son Saul -- anecdotal evidence suggests that it is widespread.

"Deportation is a revolving door," said Elias Bermudez, the founder of Immigrants Without Borders, an advocacy group which works with thousands of illegal immigrants in the border state of Arizona.

"People are picked up at their homes and deported, and some of them are back in three or four days, so it is not an effective policy," he added.

Among those who have made the trip back is Demetrio, a Mexican waiter arrested and removed from Los Angeles in 2006, leaving behind a Guatemalan wife and two young children. He declined to give his last name.