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By Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Santa Ana and San Diego are among five cities where people who have been ordered deported can surrender from Aug. 5 to Aug. 22 to avoid being arrested and detained.
Federal authorities are launching a pilot program next month to allow noncriminal illegal immigrants with final deportation orders to surrender rather than face possible arrest and detention.
Two Southern California cities -- Santa Ana and San Diego -- are among five cities nationwide where immigrants can turn themselves in from Aug. 5 to Aug. 22.
Certain immigrants who do so will be given up to 90 days before being required to leave the United States. And in some cases, the agency will pay for the flight for the illegal immigrants and their relatives.
Activists on both sides of the immigration debate expressed skepticism.
"I wouldn't expect them to have to turn people away at the doors," said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Immigration officials said the program is in response to criticism from advocacy groups, who have said that early-morning raids by armed agents disrupt families and communities.
"We want to show advocacy groups and community-based organizations that we're open to suggestions and we are open to different approaches," said Jim Hayes, acting director of detention and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Hayes said the program could also cut the agency's detention costs, because the immigrants would otherwise be detained if arrested. It could also help reduce the number of immigrant fugitives on the government's list.
Hayes said more than 500,000 people are eligible to participate. The other three cities in the pilot program are Chicago, Phoenix and Charlotte, N.C. He said the agency is reaching out to immigrant-rights and faith-based groups for publicity.
"From our perspective, this is a realistic opportunity for noncriminal aliens," Hayes said.
Angelica Salas, executive director of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said despite people's fear of being arrested, she doesn't expect immigrants to come forward because they have families, jobs, homes and lives in the U.S.
"It's more of public relations for the agency that has come under severe attack for the tactics that they have used, the violations for human rights and the denials of due process," she said.
Salas added that immigrants who want to leave could leave whenever they want without first turning themselves into federal authorities. She warned immigrants to be cautious about blindly signing paperwork.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it will continue to track down fugitives in Southern California and throughout the nation, arresting and removing immigrants who have criminal records or who have failed to abide by deportation orders. Last fiscal year, fugitive operations teams arrested more than 19,000 immigrants nationwide, including more than 15,600 who did not have criminal records.
Mehlman said the program is intended to save the government the trouble of going out and finding the illegal immigrants.
"It should not in any way deter ICE from enforcing the law against those people who are not anxious to depart on their own," he said.
anna.gorman@latimes.com
