Immigration Authorities’ No-Jail Offer Is Withdrawn -- Only 8 accepted of 457,000 “fugitive aliens” who would have been eligible for the program.

Immigration authorities on Friday ended a trial offer not to jail illegal immigrants who had been ordered to leave the country if they surrendered at government offices. In the three weeks that the federal immigration agency tested the program in a handful of cities, only eight people came forward.

[A]dvocates for immigrants . . . called the program a publicity stunt and predicted that the agency would now stage more of the raids that have forcibly removed record numbers of illegal immigrants over the last few years.

Jim Hayes, who supervises deportation for the agency, said advocacy groups had undermined the program by counseling immigrants not to take part as a protest against immigration laws.

“What the advocates state is that what we don’t like is enforcement of the law itself,” Mr. Hayes said in a telephone news conference. “Congress has mandated enforcement of the law, and that is what we are going to continue to do.”

There are 457,000 “fugitive aliens” who would have been eligible for the program, he said, and about 30,000 in or near the cities in the program, which was promoted largely in the Spanish-language news media.