FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE AG

THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1995 (202) 616-2777

TDD (202) 514-1888

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CONSOLIDATES AIR FLEETS TO TRANSPORT FEDERAL

PRISONERS AND CRIMINAL ALIENS

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- America's newest airline doesn't offer

vacation packages or rewards for frequent flyers. It's a Justice
Department airline that transports convicts to prisons and illegal
aliens back far across the border.
More that 60,000 criminal aliens and prisoners were flown last
year on 12 aircraft operated by the Immigration and Naturalization
Service and the Marshals Service, including two Boeing 727's, a
DC-9, a Convair, a Gulfstream G-1 and four Sabreliners, totaling
nearly 500 seats.
Now, the two systems have been merged into a single,
coordinated airline with regular routes, hubs and a feeder system,
just like other airlines. The main hub will be in Oklahoma City.
The consolidation was recommended by the Aviation Policy Working
Group, under the guidance of FBI Director Louis Freeh.
Freeh, as Director of Investigative Agency Policies, was asked by
Attorney General Janet Reno to find innovative ways to improve the
Justice Department's efficiency and effectiveness.
"Maximizing the use of the air fleet is a good example of
making government cost less and work better," said Reno. "This
sort of reinvention is exactly what Vice President Gore had in mind
when he launched the National Performance Review program."
Nearly 40 cities will be served under the system. A major
feature of the consolidation is a new 1,800 bed Bureau of Prisons
transfer facility adjacent to the U.S. Marshals air facility at
Will Rogers Airport. Many of the prisoners transitting through the
Oklahoma City hub will be housed at this new facility. Prisoners
will be transferred to and from the planes directly to the housing
facility under maximum security.
Criminal aliens will be shuttled to Oakdale, Louisiana, or
Eloy, Arizona, for processing by immigration judges. Aliens
ordered deported will be flown to their native countries either
directly or through gateway cites. Planes returning to Oklahoma
City after dropping off aliens will stop at various cities en route
to pick up and transport federal prisoners to the Oklahoma City
hub.
The Aviation Policy Working Group also recommended that
a 35-passenger FBI plane be used to feed passengers into the new
system from a special Northeast route. that plane has already begun
flying between New York City, Otisville, N.Y., Buffalo, Lewisburg,
Pa., and Salisbury, Md.
As an example of how the new arrangement works: Use of the
FBI plane in the Northeast corridor last month freed other aircraft
to transport 515 Mexicans to the Southwest border for deportation.
It also freed another aircraft to return four Cubans directly to
Havana.
 Federal prisoners transported by air include inmates moving to
their designated institutions, inmates moving from one institution
to another, and inmates being moved for medical treatment or as
witnesses or defendants in trials. On occasion, state, local an
and military prisoners are transported.
INS Commissioner Doris Meissner said, "For the first time,
this system will enable the INS to have regularly scheduled flights
throughout the continental U.S." She also noted the agency will
benefit from centralized maintenance, scheduling and other
administrative services, while maximizing the use of airline seats.
Marshals Service Director Eduardo Gonzalez said, " The
Marshals Service is proud of its proud air operations and and
stands ready to assist in the critical mission of deporting
criminal aliens."
The INS estimates there are about 57,000 aliens who face
deportation at the completion of their sentences, most of them in
state prisoner facilities in New York, Florida California, Texas
and Illinois. Lat year 21, 992 criminal aliens were deported, many
of them to nearby countries in the Caribbean and Central America
which can be reached easily by air.
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95-192