DEPORTATIONS CUTTING CRIME, AUTHORITIES SAY.

Byline: Rick Orlov Daily News Staff Writer

The Immigration and Naturalization Service deported 111,793 illegal immigrants last year, nearly half of them from California, in a move federal officials credited with cutting crime across the nation.

The announcement by Attorney General Janet Reno and INS Commissioner Doris Meissner that deportations were up 62 percent drew a skeptical response from Gov. Pete Wilson and others who have long advocated a more aggressive effort by the agency.

``Of course the crime rate goes down,'' said Wilson spokesman Sean Walsh. ``Before, we used to call the INS up and say, `Please pick these people up.' We had to shame them into acting. They should be embarrassed it took so long to do this.

``What they have to do now is enforce their own laws that the second time someone attempts to enter the country illegally, they go to prison for 10 years. Instead, they just turn them away at the border and give them another chance to come over and create a crime wave.''

Harold Ezell, former Western regional director of the INS, said the agency should be able to deport even more illegal immigrants.

``It's a drop in the bucket to what they should and could do,'' said Ezell, one of the prime sponsors of Proposition 187, which sought to deny benefits to illegal immigrants. ``We still need to confront the INS and Reno on the fact there are tens of thousands of outstanding orders of deportation that still haven't been carried out. They could easily double the number of deportations.''

Reno said the program has made a difference.

``We are making U.S. streets and communities safer by deporting increasing numbers of criminal aliens,'' she said in a statement. ``Removing more than 110,000 illegal aliens from the United States is a significant milestone in improving enforcement of our immigration laws.''

Meissner said the program has been effective because of the additional funds provided by Congress and that the agency is now deporting about 1,000 illegal immigrants a week.

Of those deported, 46,000 came from California, with 8,300 from Los Angeles. Officials said about half of the deportees had criminal records and were identified through a program operating in local jails.

``Once they are released, anyone who is foreign-born is checked about their residency status,'' said Richard Rogers, regional director of the INS. ``This is our No. 1 priority, with about half of all our resources going into this. We have offices in six of the seven counties we cover and we are going to work out a program for the last one, San Luis Obispo.''

Rogers said he wouldn't speculate on the impact the program has on local crime rates, other than that it would be expected to reduce crime by eliminating career criminals.

While immigrant rights groups said they are not concerned about the deportation of serious career criminals, they have other concerns about how the program is operating.

``You might have someone arrested for driving without a license and all of a sudden they become part of this,'' said Susan Alva of the Committee for Humane Immigration Rights in Los Angeles.