IDENT/IAFIS: The Batres Case and the Status of the Integration Project (Cont)
IV. THE RESENDEZ CASE
In 1999, the consequences of INS's inability to identify criminal aliens without integrated IAFIS and IDENT databases were illustrated tragically by the case of Rafael Resendez-Ramirez (Resendez). In 1998, Resendez, a Mexican citizen with an extensive criminal record, was apprehended by the Border Patrol in Texas and New Mexico seven times while crossing the border illegally. Each time he was voluntarily returned to Mexico.
Unbeknownst to the agents who apprehended and voluntarily returned Resendez in accord with normal Border Patrol policy, Resendez had an extensive criminal history in the United States. He had been convicted previously on at least eight separate occasions for crimes such as: (1) destroying private property and leaving the scene of a crime; (2) burglary, aggravated battery, and grand theft auto; (3) making a false representation of U.S. citizenship; (4) making false statements to federal officials, falsely representing to be a U.S. citizen, being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, and Reentry After Deportation; (5) burglary; (6) evading arrest; (7) trespassing, carrying a loaded firearm, and receiving stolen property; and (8) a separate conviction for trespass. Resendez also had been previously deported to Mexico at least three times and voluntarily returned to Mexico by the INS at least four times.
During each of the seven apprehensions in 1998, the Border Patrol agents who processed Resendez through IDENT did not learn of his criminal record or past deportations. Because IDENT was not integrated with IAFIS, and because IDENT only included information about apprehended aliens on a day-forward basis, IDENT did not contain any information about Resendez's past convictions and deportations. Also, because Resendez had been apprehended less than the threshold number of times for prosecution for Entry Without Inspection, the Border Patrol agents simply enrolled Resendez in IDENT on each of these encounters and voluntarily returned him to Mexico. They were not required to check, and did not check, FBI databases for criminal history information and outstanding warrants on him.
In early 1999, evidence linked Resendez to several brutal murders in Texas and Kentucky, and warrants were issued for his arrest. At least four times, other federal and local law enforcement authorities contacted INS personnel to discuss the warrants and the evidence against Resendez, and to ensure that the INS placed a lookout for Resendez in the event that he was apprehended again while illegally entering the country. Yet, none of the INS investigators who were contacted by the law enforcement officers thought to have a lookout placed for Resendez in IDENT based on the warrants, either because the INS investigators were unfamiliar with IDENT or because they thought it was the job of others to enter the warrants. Two INS investigators even referred the law enforcement officers to Customs Service employees to place a lookout for Resendez in the Customs Service's TECS database, which is typically used by inspectors to check incoming travelers at ports of entry. While TECS was useful for aliens attempting to enter the United States at a port of entry, it was not useful for lookouts on aliens like Resendez who had a pattern of crossing the border illegally in remote areas between ports of entry.
On June 1, 1999 - at the same time that state and federal warrants for Resendez were outstanding and law enforcement officers were searching for Resendez in connection with several murders - Border Patrol agents in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, apprehended Resendez again crossing the border illegally. They processed him in IDENT according to their standard practice. IDENT identified Resendez as a recidivist border crosser, but nothing in IDENT alerted the Border Patrol agents that he was wanted for murder by the FBI and local law enforcement authorities. Nor did IDENT disclose Resendez's extensive criminal history. Therefore, the Border Patrol did not detain Resendez and, following its standard policy, voluntarily returned him to Mexico. Within days, Resendez illegally returned to the United States and committed four more murders.
In mid-June 1999, a Border Patrol Intelligence Officer in Texas enrolled Resendez into the IDENT lookout database to ensure that he would be detained if encountered again by the INS. At that time, the Border Patrol discovered that its agents had recently released Resendez despite the outstanding warrant for his arrest for murder.
Finally, On July 13, 1999, Resendez surrendered to U.S. law enforcement authorities. On May 18, 2000, he was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. The verdict was affirmed by a state appellate court on May 21, 2003.
V. RENEWED EMPHASIS ON INTEGRATION OF IDENT AND IAFIS
In July 1999, a House Committee on Appropriations report, with the Resendez incident clearly in mind, stated:
[T]he Committee continues to be concerned about the inadequacies of this system [IDENT], specifically with regard to its ability to identify wanted criminals who may be apprehended by INS Border Patrol agents and inspectors along the border…the Committee repeatedly raised concerns that the IDENT database was not integrated with FBI's IAFIS database.
The House Report expressed the belief that federal, state, and local law enforcement should have access to INS fingerprint information and that the INS should have the full benefit of FBI criminal history records. The House report directed the INS to suspend further deployment of IDENT until DOJ submitted to the House Appropriations committee a plan for integration of IDENT and IAFIS. The Conference Report for the DOJ FY 2000 appropriations included this provision.
In response to the Congressional directive, DOJ assigned JMD to coordinate the efforts to develop an integration plan. On August 12, 1999, JMD convened a "Fingerprint Summit" meeting, attended by representatives of the FBI and INS, to discuss a plan for integrating IDENT and IAFIS. The conceptual model agreed to at that meeting required that federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies be able to access the INS's fingerprint records through IAFIS, and that the INS be able to check fingerprints of apprehended aliens against all fingerprint records in IAFIS.
On March 1, 2000, JMD's Management Planning Staff issued a report entitled "Implementation Plan for Integrating the INS' IDENT and the FBI's IAFIS Fingerprint Data." The report stated that "The INS and FBI have acknowledged that integrating IDENT with IAFIS would greatly benefit both agencies, as well as federal, state, and local law enforcement." The report further stated that such integration:
has the potential to: reduce the likelihood that a wanted individual would be released from the INS' custody; provide federal, state, and local law enforcement an integrated picture of the criminal activity known by agencies in DOJ, including the INS histories of illegal border crossers; and enable federal, state, and local law enforcement to search latent prints against additional illegal border crossers, especially if ten-prints are taken.
The report discussed various options for integration, but directed that before any recommendation would be finalized, the INS, FBI, and JMD would conduct three studies:
a criminality study that would estimate the percentage of apprehended illegal aliens who had been charged with more serious crimes;
an engineering study that would produce a cost analysis for the integration, including alternative query response times; and
an operational impact study that would assess the effect that such changes as taking ten prints would have on operations and procedures at the border.
Also in March 2000, the OIG issued its report on the Resendez case.11 The OIG report noted that integration of IDENT and IAFIS would provide what the IDENT lookout database did not - a check of all apprehended aliens to determine whether they have serious criminal records, prior orders of deportation, or any outstanding arrest warrants. The report recommended that DOJ and its components should aggressively and expeditiously link the FBI and INS automated fingerprint systems.
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