U.S. authorities defend deportation of man adopted decades ago from South Korea
SALEM, Ore. -- A man who wasadopted as a 3-year-old from South Korea almost four decades ago and flown to America is in detention awaiting deportation because of “the severity of his criminal history,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said on Monday.
Adam Crapser was ordered deported last week back to a country that is completely alien to him. No one sought U.S. citizenship for him as he grew up in America, abandoned by one adoptive family, thrown into the foster care system and winding up with abusive parents. The lack of citizenship made him liable for deportation, especially after he built a criminal record.
ICE prioritizes immigration enforcement resources “on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security,” Rose M. Richeson, spokeswoman for ICE’s Seattle field office, said in a statement.
Richeson cited Adam Crapser’s criminal history, including convictions for assault and being a felon in possession of a weapon.
Oregon court records reviewed by The Associated Press list charges all the way back to the early 1990s.
Crapser’s immigration attorney in Seattle, Lori Walls, said last week that “this history is wrong/incomplete and doesn’t seem to show dismissed charges.”
“Keep in mind that prosecutors typically lodge a handful of awful charges to force a guilty plea to lesser offenses, but yes - Adam has a substantial criminal history,” Walls wrote AP in an email. But she said some charges are duplicates, with three stemming from when he tried to recover two things that belonged to him from the abusive second set of parents.
The decision by a federal immigration judge last week not to give Crapser a reprieve for deportation was a big blow to his supporters, including some Korean Americans, several of whom were also adopted as babies or children.
Crapser decided not to appeal because the conditions in the immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington, where is has been locked up since February, are so bad, his supporters say.
Richeson said Crapser was arrested by ICE on Feb. 8 after serving a 60-day sentence for menacing and attempted coercion.
Crapser’s plight mirrors those of thousands of others. The National Korean American Service & Education Consortium says an estimated 35,000 intercountry adoptees lack U. S. citizenship. It is backing legislation in Congress to address that issue.
Seven years after Crapser and his older sister were adopted, their parents abandoned them. The foster care system separated Crapser when he was 10 from his sister. He was housed at several foster and group homes. When Crapser was 12, he moved in with Thomas and Dolly Crapser, their biological son, two other adoptees and several foster children.
There, he was physically abused, Crapser has said. In 1991, the couple was arrested on charges including physical child abuse.
Federal immigration officials say they became aware of Crapser after he applied for a green card for permanent residency.