Although Jose Ramirez completed his sentence two months ago for re-entering the country illegally, he wasn’t deported back to Guatemala until late this week.
“I don’t think it’s fair,” said his wife, Felicita Bautista, who still is living in Chattanooga and hasn’t seen her husband in eight months. “Why did they keep him for so long if he had already served his sentence?”
Mr. Ramirez was among 100 workers arrested at Pilgrim’s Pride on April 16 for being in the country illegally. On Oct. 9, he was sentenced to six months in prison for re-entering the country after a previous deportation. He served the sentence between April and October in the Bradley County Jail.
But even after being released from jail, he wasn’t deported back to his home in Guatemala for about two months. Instead, he bounced around to three detention locations — two in Alabama and one in Louisiana, Mrs. Bautista said in Spanish.
“Every time he was moved, it would be days before I knew about him,” she added.
Most detainees are deported within about a month, but Mr. Ramirez’s case is not that unusual, said U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement spokesperson Temple Black. The time a person remains in detention depends on “whether a detainee appeals his/her case; the ability of the foreign government to issue a travel document; and the availability of flights to that country,” he said in an e-mail.
In fiscal year 2008, the average length of stay for a detainee before being deported was 30.49 days, compared with an average time of 36.9 days in fiscal year 2007, according to the ICE’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations.
Slicing six days off the average stay is attributed to effective detention management, the increased use of electronic travel documents and streamlining flight operations into high-deportation countries, ICE officials said.
But Robert Divine, Chattanooga-based chairman of the immigration group for the Baker Donelson law firm, said the removal system should be as efficient as possible.
“We all have an interest in that being as efficient as possible for the humanity of the person involved, who has already served his criminal time and for our pocketbook as taxpayers,” he said.
For Mrs. Bautista, the longer her husband spent in custody, the more money she spent in telephone calls and money transfers. She said she spent about $1,000 in telephone calls from the jail — inmates can make only collect calls from the jail — plus a couple of hundred dollars she sent him for food and personal care items.
On one occasion, she sent $150 to Alabama, but he never received it because he was moved to Louisiana before the money arrived, she said.
“I called the jail and they said someone had signed off for that money. I don’t know who received the money because my husband says he wasn’t there anymore,” Mrs. Bautista said.
Overall, she said she’s just happy her husband will be back in Guatemala before the holidays and that she won’t have to keep spending money on phone calls.
Instead, she will start saving for her return to Guatemala to reunite with her husband, she said.
