Sheriff's immigration plan OKd

[lsmith1338]

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/ne ... 322886.php

Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Sheriff's immigration plan OKd
Supervisors vote to let deputies use federal databases to see whether people booked into jails are in the country illegally.
By PEGGY LOWE
The Orange County Register

SANTA ANA – Orange County jails will be staffed round-the-clock with local deputies making immigration checks in just a few months – a dramatic change from the part-time work done now by federal officials.

Sheriff Mike Carona's plan to train his deputies to use federal immigration databases in the local jails won approval Tuesday from the Orange County Board of Supervisors on a 3-1 vote, with the board's only Democrat voting against it and another supervisor absent.

Carona and federal officials applauded the plan as helping end the "revolving-door justice system" by creating a "force multiplier" of agents allowed to determine a suspect's immigration status. Currently, part-time federal agents screen about 20 percent of inmates in county jails for immigration status.

In Los Angeles County, the plan led to a 65 percent increase in identifying criminal foreign nationals in local jails in eight months, said Robert Schoch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Regardless of the vote, many opponents said the media attention to the sheriff's plan and a similar one in Costa Mesa has made minorities fear that they could be arrested based solely on race.

"The perception right now is that the police are immigration," said Allen Baldwin, executive director of Stepping Up, a Santa Ana housing group. "They think the broken taillight might lead them to deportation."

The plan, which was scaled back from Carona's original proposal, calls for training an initial 12 deputies to check the immigration status of those booked into the county jails. In a last-minute change before the meeting – and after the watered-down plan created controversy for Carona when it was revealed by The Orange County Register last week – the sheriff won approval from federal authorities to train up to 24 deputies.

That's decidedly different from his plan, first floated more than two years ago, that would have trained up to 500 deputies to make federal immigration checks in the jails, while on patrol and in doing investigations.

Carona said he wasn't disappointed that federal immigration officials scaled it back because he believes even the smaller plan will help decrease the number of crimes committed by illegal immigrants upon innocent undocumented workers.

Although the federal government will pay for most of the program, the county will have to pay about $218,000 for overtime for the deputies who will be filling in for those who undergo the four-week training.

Supervisor Lou Correa, who is in a tight state Senate race, voted against the plan.

Echoing many of the plan's opponents, Correa said illegal immigrants will be more afraid to report crimes under the plan. It will also break the trust local police officers have built with immigrant communities over the years, he said.

"Is this good policy?" he said. "Is this going to keep my street safe?"

Wayne Quint, president of the deputy sheriffs union, backed the sheriff, saying he took more than two years to fine-tune the plan and that it won't create panic in the community.

"We don't have some fly-by-night proposal in front of you," he said. "This program, frankly, is long overdue."

[DavidWidman]

It's about time! Good to hear there is a sheriff like this in the People's Republic of California.

D.W.