By Jim Kouri
Sunday, January 7, 2007
United States deportation officers on Wednesday night deported an Israeli citizen back to the Jewish State after he served a six-month prison term in New York for conspiracy to export military technology to the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah.
Tomer Grinberg, 33, was found guilty in US District Court, Southern District of New York last April of being a co-conspirator in attempting to ship night-vision goggles and infrared aiming scopes to Hezbollah, whose publicly stated goals include destruction of the state of Israel.
On May 19, 2004, Grinberg and a co-conspirator were arrested as they prepared to ship the restricted military equipment to Greece for recipients from Hezbollah.
Grinberg, of Na'Ria, Israel, was released into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers for deportation after completing his criminal sentence at the federal correctional institution in Allenwood, PA, on December 28. During his sentence, ICE put Grinberg into removal proceedings and an immigration judge ordered him removed last November.
In fiscal year 2006, 190,349 illegal aliens including 87,888 with criminal convictions were removed from the US.
"Identifying and removing criminal aliens is one of the keys to protecting national security and promoting public safety in Pennsylvania and throughout the country," said Thomas Decker, ICE Field Office Director in Philadelphia.
"Last year, of the 3,572 illegal aliens removed through the Philadelphia field office, nearly 70% had criminal convictions," he noted.
Grinberg was identified through an ICE Office of Detention and Removal's Criminal Alien Program or CAP. The program focuses on identifying criminal aliens who are incarcerated in federal, state and local facilities and ensuring that they are not released into the community by securing a final order of removal before the termination of their sentence. Since June, ICE has processed more than 4,337 inmates in federal prisons eligible for removal.
Grinberg was escorted by ICE deportation officers and arrived in Tel Aviv at 5:30 a.m. (local) Thursday where he was met by Israeli security agents.
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