United States, February 13: US authorities are using illegal immigrants to seek help in uncovering drug traffickers and agents. But this assistance to the police does not save the informants from deportation, it is being alleged.
There is a lot of risk to the lives of the informants in assisting police officials reach the narcotic drugs suppliers and agents. What drives them to perform such dare-devil acts? The answer is their belief that they will be rewarded with US residency in return for the assistance to the police officials.
But, even after doing so, what do such police informants, who are themselves undocumented immigrants, get?
Well, you will be astonished to know that the reward for so much risk involved to the lives of informants is deportation.
According to a latest inquiry by the Lost Angeles Times and Center for Investigative Reporting, many of such police informants, instead of receiving any accolades for their effort and the risk to their lives, are shunted out of the country to the regions which are under the control of those criminal gangsters whose rackets were brought to the notice of the police officials.
So, what lies in store for them is not any reward but imminent death or torture at the hands of such criminal gangsters.
And even if some relief is given to such police informants in the form of not being thrown out of the country, still, they continue to be tagged as undocumented immigrants with no facility to get a work permit and always on the risk of imminent deportation waiting in the future.
When many such cases of indifference towards police informants’ assistance to the US authorities is highlighted, the excuse by the US immigration officials is quite vague and smells bias towards such highly valuable informants.
To cite an example, head of operations for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Alonzo R. Pena stated during an interview that although the informants’ help is valued greatly by the agency, but the issue of deportation is beyond their jurisdiction because it’s up to the decision of immigration judges whether to deport such informants or let them stay.