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Bid fails to deport immigrant prisoners
Bill to ease crowding seen as a victim of demonstrations
- James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, May 4, 2006


The state has struggled for years to reduce the soaring population in its overburdened prisons, but a proposal that could have forced as many as 20,000 inmates who are illegal immigrants to serve their sentences in their home countries has faltered over concerns it would be viewed as anti-immigrant.

The idea of having undocumented immigrants convicted of felonies in California serve their sentences in their home countries has been debated over the years, but it generally stalled based on two objections: concern that the prisoners would be treated differently at home, because they would probably serve shorter sentences; and concern that the inmates might be denied due process in being transferred.

This year, state Sen. Martha Escutia, D-Whittier, an Hispanic and a strong supporter of immigrant rights, said she believed that the overpopulation problems in the state prisons were too pressing to ignore the idea.

She reasoned, in effect, that since the undocumented inmates are generally deported after they have served their sentences, at the expense of California taxpayers, why wait? So she authored a bill that would hand over most of those inmates to the federal government, which has ultimate responsibility for undocumented immigrants.

Escutia said she pushed the bill because of a breakdown of services in the prison system, ranging from medical care and mental health care to drug rehabilitation, and because nothing else was being done to alleviate the problems. But, she said, the current political atmosphere, in which many people are resisting a potential crackdown on undocumented immigrants by Congress, made it hard to get support.

"This was almost adding wood to the fire," said Escutia. "We realized that first we needed to debate immigration reform and then later look at this bill."

The idea failed to reach the floor of the Senate, but Escutia, who will leave office this year because of term limits, said she hopes another legislator will reintroduce the bill later.

Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said that when the idea of removing the undocumented inmates from the prisons had been considered in the past, it usually received the support of one party, not both, and thus it died.

Leno, chairman of the Assembly's Public Safety Committee, said that perhaps only one thing could break the resistance once and for all.

"You know what could alter this?" he asked. "A crisis in the prisons. I'm afraid to say it, but with the situation in the prisons, it's not if, it's when."

What was striking about Escutia's proposal was that some groups that traditionally have fought such measures either supported it, declared their neutrality or at least backed away from actively trying to kill it.

"There are some positives with the idea," said Francisco Estrada, the director of public policy in the Sacramento office of the Mexican American Legal and Education Defense Fund, a civil rights group. "The bill was kind of interesting. It could have forced the federal government to play a more active role."

He added, "Some inmates would prefer serving their sentences at home to be near their families."

Under current law, Washington is supposed to reimburse the state for the costs of incarcerating undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes, but it has paid less than a quarter of the costs under the Bush administration.

In fiscal 2004, California received only $75 million for its $574 million in costs, and in the current fiscal year the state is receiving $107 million for its $734 million in costs.

The pool of inmates that might be included in the program is huge: Of the nearly 171,000 inmates crowding state prisons, 22,478, or about 13 percent as of March 31, are undocumented immigrants or are suspected of being undocumented.

The overwhelming majority of those, 15,396, are from Mexico.

Those convicted of the most serious crimes, such as murder, would not have been eligible for the program, and none would have been returned to countries that are not signatories to international treaties that govern the transfer of inmates.

Escutia's staff had estimated that the law would have saved as much as $1 billion, an extraordinary benefit for a corrections system that costs the state more than $8 billion a year.

Far more important, the program could have significantly reduced pressure on an array of prison programs that have been deemed grossly inadequate by federal courts. The nearly 171,000 inmates in the state's 33 prisons is nearly double the design capacity.

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came into office, he promised major prison reforms and a new parole program that, he said, would reduce the inmate population dramatically. But his corrections department never implemented the changes, and the population has risen from one record level to another.

Escutia and some supporters of her bill said that, in part, it was a victim of the recent demonstrations; no one wanted to be seen supporting a measure that might be perceived as harmful to immigrant rights.

"Once we explained it clearly to people, we were finding some support," said Matthew Gray, a lobbyist for Taxpayers for Improving Public Safety, a sponsor of the bill. "But as soon as you say 'undocumented immigrant' you get this knee-jerk reaction. No one wants to do anything that seems unfair to the (illegal immigrants) or that singles them out."

One of the toughest opponents of the idea has traditionally been the guards' union. The prison guards have long fought measures that would reduce jobs.

Also, Lance Corcoran, executive vice president of the union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, said if criminals break the law here, they should be punished here.

Even so, he agreed that the idea had some appeal because of the unsafe conditions the overcrowding has created in the prisons and the desperate need for some kind of action.

"Our membership at this point would welcome anything that reduces the population," said Corcoran. "But we don't want to do anything that compromises public safety."

He added, "It's premature to say we wouldn't fight it. We'd have to take a long look at it. But it makes sense to think about it."

The corrections department has also traditionally resisted the transfers.

"There need to be assurances that they will serve their whole sentences if they leave," said J.P. Tremblay, the corrections department's spokesman. "That's an issue we're adamant about. We're not going to transfer an inmate just to make room in the prisons."



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Inmates by country
The countries of origin for the largest groups of inmates in California prisons who are in the country illegally or suspected of being in the country illegally:

Mexico: 15,396 inmates

El Salvador: 1,075 inmates

Vietnam: 743 inmates

Guatemala: 464 inmates

Cuba: 361 inmates

Honduras: 276 inmates

Russia: 136 inmates

Source: Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com.