FEDS PROBE S.F.'S MIGRANT-OFFENDER SHIELD

San Francisco juvenile probation officials - citing the city's
immigrant sanctuary status - are protecting Honduran youths caught
dealing crack cocaine from possible federal deportation and have given
some offenders a city-paid flight home with carte blanche to return.

The city's practices recently prompted a federal criminal
investigation into whether San Francisco has been systematically
circumventing U.S. immigration law, according to officials with
knowledge of the matter.

City officials say they are trying to balance their obligations under
federal and state law with local court orders and San Francisco's
policies aimed at protecting the rights of the young immigrants, who
they say are often victims of exploitation.

Federal authorities counter that drug kingpins are indeed exploiting
the immigrants, but that the city's stance allows them to get away
with "gaming the system."

San Francisco juvenile authorities have been grappling for several
years with an influx of young Honduran immigrants dealing crack in the
Mission District and Tenderloin.

Those who are arrested routinely say they are minors, but police
suspect that many are actually adults, living communally in Oakland
and other cities at the behest of drug traffickers who claim to be
their relatives.

Nonetheless, city authorities have typically accepted the suspects'
stories and handled the cases in Juvenile Court, where proceedings are
often shielded from public scrutiny.

Unorthodox Strategy

Barred by state law from sending drug offenders to the California
Youth Authority and bound by a 1989 city law defining San Francisco as
a sanctuary city for immigrants - meaning officials do not cooperate
with federal immigration investigations - juvenile officials settled
on an unorthodox strategy.

Rather than have the drug offenders deported, they have recommended
that Juvenile Court judges and commissioners approve city-paid flights
home to Honduras for the offenders with the aim of reuniting them with
their families.

The practice, federal authorities say, does nothing to prevent
offenders from coming back, while federal deportation legally bars
them from ever returning. Federal officials also say U.S. law
prohibits helping an illegal immigrant to cross the border, even if it
is to return home.

Federal officials recently detained a San Francisco juvenile probation
officer at the Houston airport, where he was accompanying two Honduran
juvenile drug offenders about to board a flight to
Tegucigalpa.

They questioned him for several hours before letting him go, and
seized the youths and deported them.

"Our job is to uphold the nation's immigration laws," said Greg
Palmore, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
"Although San Francisco is a sanctuary city, it's a problem whenever
someone attempts to evade the law. ... Our law does not allow us to
turn a blind eye to any individual who has come into this country illegally."

Feds 'Flabbergasted'

Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. attorney in charge of the San Francisco
area, said he was "flabbergasted that the taxpayers' money was being
spent for the purpose of ferrying detainees home. You have to have a
perfect storm of dumb moves to have it happen."

William Siffermann, chief of San Francisco's Juvenile Probation
Department, said federal agents have never specifically told his
office not to send immigrants back to their home countries, but that
he has stopped the practice until differences between the city and
immigration authorities are resolved.

He said the city's stance is that it does not have to report illegal
immigrant minors to the federal government, even if they are found in
Juvenile Court to have committed a crime.

"We are not obligated to," he said. "We are abiding by the sanctuary
city ordinance."

Siffermann added, "I don't believe we've done anything wrong." But he
stressed that his office wants to make sure it is fulfilling its
duties "in all arenas, with federal statutes, state statutes and the
sanctuary city law."

Juveniles With Beards

San Francisco police doubt that many of the young Hondurans they
arrest on drug charges are even juveniles.

Police can report suspected adult illegal immigrants to federal
authorities if they commit a crime, said Capt. Tim Hettrich, until
recently the head of the narcotics unit.

So immigrant drug dealers "pass themselves off as juveniles, with a
three-day growth of beard and everything else. It's frustrating," he
said.

"Some of them have been arrested four or five times," Hettrich said.
"That is one of the big problems with being a city of sanctuary."

He scoffed at San Francisco's strategy of returning the offenders to
their home country. "They probably get the round trip and the next
day, they will be right back here," Hettrich said.

Patricia Lee, head of the San Francisco public defender's juvenile
branch, would not comment on pending cases. But, she said, "a lot of
the young people have suffered a lot of abuse, abandonment and neglect
in their native country and have been used as (drug-running) mules.
There is lot of victimization and trafficking of these young people."

'Gaming the System'

Russoniello said the drug dealers are being sent here as part of an
effort that takes advantage of San Francisco's leniency.

"What we're facing is a number of people gaming the system," he said.
"Sooner or later the city will realize the advantage to cooperating
(with federal authorities), whether it's the threat of criminal
prosecution ... or some other method."

Russoniello would not confirm or deny the existence of a federal
investigation, but juvenile probation officers connected to the case
have been interviewed by federal agents about the flights.

City officials will not say how many juvenile drug offenders have been
flown out of the country in recent years or how much the city has
spent on the effort.

Federal immigration authorities stumbled on to the effort when they
caught several illegal immigrants in December at the airport in
Houston, along with a San Francisco juvenile probation officer.

The officer was on hand to make sure the immigrants boarded a plane to
Tegucigalpa.

Federal authorities say they met with Siffermann and told him that any
juvenile offender had to be handed over to immigration officials after
completing his sentence.

The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency sent a letter to
Siffermann on Dec. 17 stressing that it would soon "like to begin
receiving referrals" about immigrant juveniles in custody in the city.

"The red flag was flown," Russoniello said.

City Saw It Differently

Siffermann, however, said federal authorities were not exactly clear
about what the city could and could not do related to the flights or
the status of immigrants held in juvenile cases.

"They did a little friendly stop-by," Siffermann said. "They said,
'This is something we would like you to cooperate on.' ... They said,
'Hey, look, this could be contrary to federal law, you might be in
violation.' "

Meanwhile, the flights continued.

On May 15, two more illegal immigrants from Honduras were arrested in
Houston, again accompanied by a San Francisco juvenile probation
officer. Federal immigration authorities held the officer for more
than three hours before releasing him.

Six days later, there was another meeting, Siffermann said. This time
it was with a representative of Russoniello's office.

After that, Siffermann put the flights on hold. "We will look for
other (approaches) for them," he said.

Siffermann stressed that the city ships out juvenile offenders to
their home countries only after all other rehabilitative efforts have
failed, including probation, foster care and juvenile detention.

The strategy is appropriate, Siffermann said, because deporting young
offenders would doom them from ever becoming productive residents of
the United States.

"It might prevent them from obtaining citizenship," he said, denying
them a chance to "take a different course."

In a statement released by the city attorney's office, which is
advising the city on the issue, spokesman Matt Dorsey said, "We've
been in ongoing contact with the U.S. attorney's office on this, and
we've informed them of our intention to address these issues in court
proceedings.

"We're looking at the legal issues carefully and methodically,"
Dorsey's statement said, "and we're in the process of advising our
client, the Juvenile Probation Department."

He said his office was not aware of the practice of flying juveniles
back to Honduras.

Stranded Juveniles

A recent count showed 22 of the 125 minors in custody at juvenile hall
were immigrants and had no legal guardians in the United States,
Siffermann said. He said his office is trying to figure out what to do
with them now that flights are no longer an option.

Russoniello said the city has no choice but to comply with U.S. law
and turn the youths over to federal authorities. "The alternative, now
that they are all on notice, is a period of prolonged darkness," he
said.

Judge Donna Hitchens, who oversees the city's Juvenile Court, said the
original idea for flying youths home came from juvenile probation
officials, and that it is up to them, not judges, to work out their
differences with the federal government.

"We are only the judicial branch," she said. "The issue is between the
city and ICE."