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butterbean · Joined: 21 Jun 2006 Posts: 2271

(CBS 42) AUSTIN Operation Return To Sender led to the deportation of 44 illegal immigrants living in the Austin area, many of whom were violent criminals.

The fugitive team for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) started Return To Sender with a list of violent criminals who are in the U.S. illegally, but not all of the 44 people arrested are considered violent.

They are in the country illegally, but their families claim they were in the appeals process, or let down by ineffective immigration attorneys who took their money.

According to ICE, a house in North Austin was harboring a fugitive.

“Police came over here, and he was in the backyard. They told him, 'Are you Juan Mario Garza?' He said, 'Yeah’," said Allen Rodriguez, who’s stepfather was deported.

ICE says Juan Mario Garza-Medrano was a legal resident who served two years for domestic violence in 1998. In 2002 a judge ordered him deported, and Garza-Medrano appealed. The mug shot looks intimidating, but Allen Rodriguez paints a different picture.

“Out of the blues they came and picked him up,” Rodriguez said. “We were like, how you going to pick him up if he's a resident?."

Allen says his mom and step-dad got sober and started a successful painting business. Now Garza-Medrano sponsors a church soccer team, pays his taxes, and became an Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor after eight sober years.

“He really did make life 360 degrees,” Rodriguez said. “He changed. For that one simple thing that a judge said he needed to change to keep residency.”

ICE says the men on their wanted posters have exhausted the law. They've been afforded due process in a criminal court as well as any appropriate deportation or political asylum hearings .

“We don't go out here and do raids all over the neighborhood,” ICE officer Rudy Rodriguez said. “What we do is concentrate on people we've identified as criminal aliens."

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http://keyetv.com/topstories/local_story_289181339.html