Fed up, Congress tightened the law in 1996 and doubled the INS's deportation budget. That's more than three times the number in 1995. Just last week, the INS put 35 people on a plane to the Dominican Republic for crimes including murder, sexual abuse of a minor, and drug dealing. But in addition to hard-core criminals, the INS is also obliged to detain and deport legal immigrants convicted of relatively minor offenses. The INS says detainees could double to 300,000 in 1999.
Critics call it legislative overkill.
Just before Labor Day, the INS district office and Texas state officials launched Operation Last Call, a crackdown on immigrants with three or more drunken driving convictions. More than 530 were apprehended, including longtime legal residents whose offenses date back more than a decade. That's not quite what backers of the new law had in mind. The goal of the legislation was for them to start deporting people already in jail and to go after serious offenders and violent criminals. For 22 years, Sandoval shared beers with his co-workers after a day in the fruit orchards.