Arpaio lashes out at judges over immigration
JJ Hensley
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 14, 2008 09:16 PM

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday accused judges of allowing undocumented immigrants convicted of felonies and sentenced to probation to "roam the streets" - a charge that the courts and even federal immigration officials say is off based.

Arpaio leveled the charge during a news conference to hail the efforts of his own department, which in the past four months has used a 11-person unit to track down and arrest 110 of the convicted immigrants serving probation.

Court officials point out that judges don't have authority to deport defendants - only federal officials do - and that courts around the state have actually put into place new procedures that help identify defendants who are in the country illegally so that immigration authorities would be aware of the convicts before they're released on probation.

The proceduresrequire court workers to forward biographical information of defendants who are born outside of the United States to Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities, who would then determine those individuals' legal status and decide whether the ones who end up being convicted should be deported. That still leaves hundreds of potential illegal immigrants serving probation, said Arpaio, who has vowed to round them up in coming months.

"There's something wrong with the system when judges and probation officers give probation to serious criminals and let them roam the streets," Arpaio said. "They should be deported immediately."

ICE spokesman Vinne Picard said the Sheriff's efforts would not have been possible without the cooperation of the courts system. "We have a good relationship with the Sheriff's office and the courts. The operation with the Sheriff today was a good example of that," Picard said. "The information we had, we developed through the assistance of parole and probation."

Courts officials said the issue came to their attention in the last few years and the new system should prevent illegal immigrants who serve probation from being a problem going forward.

"It's something that's being addressed on a state-wide level," said Cari Gerchick, Communications Director with the Arizona Supreme Court. "We are addressing this, but this is a systemic problem. Every part of the criminal justice system has a role to play. We are certainly doing what we can, working with ICE and law enforcement and with public defenders and prosecutors."

The mission now, is to identify illegal immigrants who got through the system before the new procedures were put in place, Gerchick said.

"The cooperative effort between adult probation, ICE and the Sheriff's office is to clear the backlog if you will," she said.

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