By MIRTA OJITO

             In the two years since Congress passed tough laws to stem the flow of illegal immigration to the
             United States, Federal authorities have deported almost 300,000 immigrants to countries all over
          the world, more than twice the number who were sent back in the two years before.

          The unprecedented number of deportations has been possible because for the first time the
          Immigration and Naturalization Service has both the Congressional mandate and the money to
          investigate and prosecute violators of immigration law, arrest immigrants with criminal convictions
          and would-be immigrants at the border and swiftly deport them from the United States -- sometimes
          in less than 12 hours.

          Many of the immigrants who are deported are barred from returning to the country for five years or
          more. Some are barred for life.

          "The rules have changed," said Kerry Bretz, a Manhattan immigration lawyer and former I.N.S.
          prosecutor. "The agency has become completely enforcement-minded."

          Flush with almost a billion dollars earmarked for the detention and deportation of immigrants, the
          I.N.S. is now the largest Federal law enforcement agency, the Justice Department says. The
          immigration service has more than 15,000 officers authorized to carry weapons and make arrests,
          more than the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Prisons, the Customs Service or the
          Drug Enforcement Administration.

          "It is as if, suddenly, war had been declared on immigrants," said María Jiménez, director of the
          Immigration Law Enforcement Monitoring Project of the American Friends Service Committee, a
          nonprofit organization in Houston that documents abuses on the United States-Mexico border.
          "Stopping immigrants from entering the country has become more important than the war against
          drugs."

          Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Immigration
          Subcommittee and one of the architects of the law, said the number of deportations demonstrated
          that the law was working, though not yet to his satisfaction. The I.N.S., he said, is deporting only a
          small percentage of those who should be deported.

          "The goal is to make sure as many illegal aliens as possible return home," he said.

          Before the law was changed, most of those deported had been convicted of crimes. Now, the
          majority do not have criminal records but are caught at the southwest border trying to enter the
          country with no documents or with fake documents.

          But about 78,000 illegal immigrants who were already living in the country were also deported in the
          last two years. They were arrested during job raids, at routine traffic stops, at airports while returning
          from abroad and even at immigration offices, where immigrants often go to seek services and
          sometimes end up under arrest.

          Many had lived here for years, working, paying taxes, studying and establishing families. Their
          deportation often causes a great deal of emotional pain and financial distress to the families left
          behind.

          The family of Fernando Giraldo, one of the people deported last year, is still trying to get him back
          to New York City, where he lived and worked for almost a decade.

          Giraldo, a 36-year-old amateur poet from Colombia, sneaked into the United States through the
          southwest border a decade ago. The authorities detained him at the airport in El Paso, Tex., as he
          was about to board a plane. An immigration judge ordered him to leave the country in 30 days and
          released him on bond.

          But Giraldo ignored the judge's decision and flew to New York to join his family in Brooklyn. For
          nine years, he went undetected by the authorities. He worked as a maintenance supervisor in a
          Manhattan hotel and led what he calls "a normal, happy life."

          His luck ran out one morning in the summer of 1997. Giraldo had gone to the downtown Manhattan
          immigration office for a scheduled interview with an immigration officer, one of the steps in his quest
          for permanent residency. He said he was sure the meeting would conclude with a handshake and a
          stamp on his Colombian passport, making him a legal resident of the United States.

          Instead, Giraldo was arrested, handcuffed and sent to a detention center in Jamaica, Queens. Less
          than 48 hours later, he was on a plane to Bogotá. He is now barred from trying to enter the United
          States for 10 years and, even then, his return is not guaranteed.

          "I never even finished breakfast," Giraldo said from his home in Pereira, Colombia. "I had told my
          mother that we would have coffee when I returned from the interview and I just never did."

          With Giraldo's deportation, his mother, María Judith Valencia, 63, and his sister, Maritza Giraldo,
          22, both permanent residents of the United States, were left to fend for themselves. Valencia, who
          suffers from muscle spasms in her eyelids and cannot keep her eyes open without medication, started
          making pastries at home and selling them. Giraldo, a senior studying marketing at Baruch College,
          had to leave school to find a job.

          Goal for Deportations Is Set, and Exceeded

          Last year, the year Giraldo was deported, the immigration agency set a deportation goal for the first
          time -- and surpassed it: 114,285 people were deported in the Federal fiscal year ending Sept. 30,
          1997; the goal was 93,000. In fiscal 1998, when $748 million, a record, was budgeted solely for the
          detention and deportation of undesirable immigrants, 169,072 people were deported. The goal was
          127,300.

          The money has allowed the agency to triple the number of beds available in detention centers and
          local jails around the country and increase personnel by 80 percent. The added beds and staff are
          crucial because the agency must detain immigrants before deporting them.

          The increase in funds has also allowed immigration officials to conduct more investigations than it had
          in the past. Now, the agency can routinely conduct job raids and check on anonymous tips from,
          say, people who notice a sudden influx of immigrants in their neighborhood. They also have the
          resources to identify a particular problem in a specific state and try to combat it through deportation.

          Just two months ago, I.N.S. agents rounded up more than 500 legal immigrants in Texas who had at
          least three drunken-driving convictions. Their detention is the first step in a process that could
          culminate in their deportation. Immigration officials in Washington said no other state had followed
          Texas' lead, but, by law, they could.

          "We apprehend and take into custody more people than any other agency in the world," said Russell
          A. Bergeron Jr., an I.N.S. spokesman in Washington.

          The law got tougher for immigrants who had not yet become citizens in 1996, when Congress
          passed the Illegal Immigration and Reform Responsibility Act.

          Proponents of the measure argued that illegal immigration was overtaxing public services and
          potentially taking jobs away from citizens. The act granted the agency wide powers previously
          afforded only to the courts.

          Through a process called expedited removal, for example, the law now allows immigration officials
          to quickly deport illegal immigrants who show up at airports and at the border. Immigration officials,
          not judges, determine which of them can be deported and, therefore, barred from the United States
          for at least five years. The decision can be made in a matter of hours and without a lawyer
          representing the immigrant.

          Before the law changed, immigration officials at the border used to simply send illegal immigrants
          back without formally deporting them. Undaunted, immigrants tried again and many eventually
          succeeded at entering the country undetected. Now, any immigrant caught trying to enter the country
          after having been formally deported can be prosecuted and sentenced to prison.

          Making More Crimes Grounds to Deport

          The law also expanded the definition of a deportable crime and directed the immigration agency to
          deport immigrants convicted of crimes even if they were legal residents of the United States. While
          the agency has always been required to deport murderers and rapists, now people who have forged
          checks or committed minor sex offenses, like touching a woman inappropriately, are also being
          deported. In addition, the law took away the power of judges to consider mitigating factors.

          In the past, many immigrants who had committed crimes were freed after completing their sentences
          because there was no place to detain them pending deportation. Now, the law requires -- and the
          increase in detention beds allows -- such immigrants to remain behind bars while awaiting
          deportation. More than 106,000 immigrants with criminal convictions were deported in 1998, a 52
          percent increase over the previous two years.

          Immigration officials say it is too early to know if the high number of deportations is having the
          intended effect: to send a clear message to would-be immigrants that coming to the country illegally is
          punishable.

          "After so many years of the laws being ineffectual, it is going to take a long time to restore the
          credibility of the immigration laws," Bergeron said. "You are not going to have an overnight shift on
          the way people think."

          Lawyers and advocates for immigrants, though, say the laws have begun to affect the lives of their
          clients. Detention and deportation of people already living in the United States legally or illegally has
          become so pervasive that many of these immigrants -- who, unlike those caught at airports or at the
          border, have the right to hearings and appeals -- are giving up on the legal process and leaving the
          country on their own.

          By doing that -- in essence, deporting themselves -- they may avoid both a formal Federal
          deportation order and a long stay at a detention center while their cases wind through the courts.
          Those who are not criminals can also avoid being barred from re-entering the country.

          "The law, in practical terms, deprives them of due process," said Nancy Morawetz, a professor at
          New York University School of Law. "Congress passed these laws without paying really close
          attention to them. And the results are just awful."

          A Law So Broad, Even The I.N.S. Has Doubts

          Even immigration officials say the law is too broad. To detain all the convicted criminals who should,
          under the law, be behind bars, the I.N.S. will have to receive even more funds from Congress,
          Bergeron said. Immigration officials have calculated that the agency would need up to 21,000
          additional beds and as many as 1,500 additional employees. To cover those costs, the current
          budget of about $700 million will have to increase by $652 million.

          "We've always said the law went too far," Bergeron said.

          Already, some detention centers are dangerously overcrowded, lawyers for immigrants say. Last
          month, about 80 detainees at the center on Varick Street in Manhattan protested because they were
          sleeping on mattresses on the floor in a dormitory meant to house only 42.

          To avoid such disturbances, Bergeron said, the agency will have to continue choosing whom to
          detain and whom to let go. But just how those choices are made is not always obvious to immigrants'
          relatives.

          Pam Gaul, whose adopted son, John Gaul, awaits deportation at a jail in north Florida, said she
          could not understand why the authorities considered him a dangerous criminal worthy of deportation.
          Gaul, 25, was convicted of check fraud and of stealing a car four years ago. Because he was born in
          Thailand and never became a United States citizen, he is what the law calls a "criminal alien," and,
          thus, deportable.

          Gaul, 52, and her former husband adopted John when he was 4 and always thought that, because
          they were citizens, he would be protected by United States law. He is not, the authorities said.

          "He made a mistake, but do we punish him for life?" asked Gaul, a respiratory therapist at a Tampa
          hospital. "Essentially, for me, they are trying to take away his life and they are ripping our family
          apart."