Thread: L.A. County to Target Jailed Alien Gangsters

Do they expect the IA gangbangers to tell the truth??? Espinosa lied and that's why he was back on the streets to kill Jamiel Shaw.


County to target jailed alien gangsters
08/12/2008

LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles County is expanding its efforts to keep illegal immigrant gangsters off the street.
The county's Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved the hire of five more people who will interview jailed gang members about their immigration status.

The move follows the March killing of Jamiel Shaw, a high school football star who allegedly was gunned down by an illegal immigrant gangster who was released from jail one day earlier.

Officials say the new interviewers will ensure that every jailed gang member will be interviewed about their national origins. The information will be given to federal authorities.

Sheriff Lee Baca says the new hires will start immediately. The county now has 13 interviewers.






http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_10181071

Program to Find Illegal Immigrants in Jails Approved

Last Edited: Tuesday, 12 Aug 2008, 8:01 PM PDT
Created: Tuesday, 12 Aug 2008, 8:01 PM PDT

A program intended to root out illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County jails will start specifically targeting gang members, following a vote by the Board of Supervisors. SideBar

Los Angeles -- A program intended to root out illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County jails will start specifically targeting gang members, following a vote Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.

On a motion by Supervisor Michael Antonovich, the board voted to direct Sheriff Lee Baca to modify his department's agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to ensure that known gang members receive priority for interviews that would determine their immigration status before their release from jail.

"Every known gang member who is on the list for an interview should be interviewed prior to release back into our communities," Antonovich said.

Inmates are already subject to an immigration interview if they are self declared to be foreign born, have been convicted and will serve out their sentence in a county jail as opposed to a state prison, said Anna Pembedjian, justice deputy for Antonovich.

Of those inmates, known gang members will now be at the front of the line for interviews, she said.

The move follows public outcry after the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw Jr., allegedly by a reputed gang member, whom authorities believe was in the country illegally.

The shooting occurred the day after the suspect was released from a county jail.

Shaw's parents were among the dozens of members of the public who requested to speak on the subject before the board voted in what quickly became the most heated and drawn-out portion of the meeting.

"We tell our kids that nationality and colors don't make a difference, but when you have the illegal alien gangbanger come in and killing his brother, or doing all kinds of harm to American citizens, it brings back up the color issue," Anita Shaw, Jamiel's mother, told the board. "Something has to be done."

Other members of the public spoke out against the immigration interviews, saying that they resulted in law enforcement officials targeting and deporting illegal immigrants who had committed only minor offenses.

Roughly 4,000 gang members are currently in county jails, according to Baca.

www.myfoxla.com

"We tell our kids that nationality and colors don't make a difference, but when you have the illegal alien gangbanger come in and killing his brother, or doing all kinds of harm to American citizens, it brings back up the color issue," Anita Shaw, Jamiel's mother, told the board. "Something has to be done."

IT TRUE THAT COLOR MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. COUNTRY OF ORIGIN MAKES NO DIFFERENCE EITHER, IF THE PERSON IS HERE ILLEGALLY. BUT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION STATUS, CRIMIANL BEHAVIOR AND GANG INVOLVMENT DO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. SO IT IS NOT AN ISSUE OF COLOR AT ALL. AND RIGHT....SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.

It looks like it is going to be up to every city, county and state to do the feds job for them.

Added to Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/article-3445--0-0.html

Sheriff seeks illegal immigrant inmates
By Jennifer McLain, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 08/17/2008 09:32:31 PM PDT

LOS ANGELES - The county could be expanding a nationwide deportation program aimed at identifying illegal immigrant gang members serving time in jail.
Last week, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors requested that more officers zero in on gang members who are in the country illegally.

"No question about it in our county, gang members pose an ever-present problem that is yet to be resolved," said Sheriff Lee Baca. "And if there's undocumented gang members, what can we do to get ahead of that in any way that we think is appropriate?"

For nearly three years, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has participated in the 287(g) program, which is a partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The program trains deputies to interview inmates suspected of being illegal immigrants.

At the Board of Supervisors' direction Tuesday, Baca was told to explore whether more staffing is needed for the program, and to make interviewing gang members a top priority.

Civil rights groups opposing the program believe that focusing on gang members will further contribute to racial profiling, and that it gives deportation authority to officers who should be more focused on community safety.

"The American dream means as much for an innocent person wrongly accused of gang membership, or a lawfully present person wrongly deported, as it does for you and me," said Ahilan T. Arulanantham, director of immigrants' rights and national security at the ACLU of Southern California.

Officials said that inmates who are interviewed are primarily Spanish speakers from several different countries. Race is not a factor in interviews, said Lt. Kevin Kuykendall, who heads the classification unit at the Inmate Reception Center.

"If we have any indication that a person is not born in the United States, then that is who we're looking at," Kuykendall said. "That means England as much as it means Mexico."

Since it was implemented in Los Angeles County, 20,000 inmates have been interviewed and more than 11,000 have been recommended to ICE for possible deportation.

Officials said of that total, 90 percent have been deported.

Nationwide, more than 60,000 people suspected of being in the country illegally were identified through the program.

Nearly 760 officers have been trained and certified throughout the program, and 45 agencies across the country - including the Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino county sheriff's departments - participate.

"It has been a very valuable partnership for us in Southern California," said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for ICE. "The critical role of the sheriff's department is to identify individuals in jail who are potentially deportable."

The ICE-trained sheriff's deputies begin the paperwork to ensure that those inmates who entered the country illegal go into ICE custody.

On any given day, up to 40 Los Angeles County inmates are interviewed.

The deputies ask inmates where they were born, what their parents' names are and if they have legal residence documents.

These interviews are performed the day of the inmates' release. Once it is determined that an inmate entered the country illegally, the inmate is then taken in waist shackles to the Federal Building.

ICE will then give the inmate two options: voluntary deportation, or a federal trial.

Most inmates chose voluntary deportation, although many come back illegally to the United States and end up back in the county's jails, officials said.

Kuykendall said this program has been invaluable - especially in opening up more beds for inmates.

The average housing cost per inmate is $53.45 per day.

"We have more inmates than jail beds," Kuykendall said. "Any time we can clear jail beds, and possibly deport someone and not have them back in the jail bed, that keeps it open for a local criminal."

But more work needs to be done, officials said.

Last month Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who represents portions of the San Gabriel Valley, urged the training of five additional deputies to exclusively conduct immigration interviews in the jail.

The board approved the plan so that by Sept. 1, there will be 12 interviewers.

The decision came after a trip to Washington, D.C., where Antonovich discovered that only 35 percent of county jail inmates with questionable immigration status were interviewed.

"He wants to see the program expand so that every single person is interviewed," said Anna Pembedjian, justice deputy to Antonovich.

http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_10233118

Going global to fight gangs

L.A.'s biggest gangs have gone international; our law enforcement must do the same.

By Rocky Delgadillo
August 18, 2008

The two fastest-growing and most powerful gangs in the world are homegrown products of Los Angeles. The Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, and the 18th Street gang, known in Central America as Mara 18, sprang up in Pico-Union and the densely populated neighborhoods around MacArthur Park. But unlike many local street gangs, these two were entrepreneurial: They recruited Central American immigrants across the city and then expanded farther -- throughout Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Conservative estimates put MS-13's ranks at 20,000 and 18th Street's at 30,000 worldwide.

Stopping street gangs is no longer a local matter -- a point driven home to me during a symposium in El Salvador. During the conference, two points of consensus emerged. First, MS-13 and 18th Street have become an international concern -- indeed, even Interpol is now involved in the fight. Second, past strategies to handle these gangs have failed.

In the 1990s, the U.S. strategy centered on deportation: Undocumented gang members convicted of crimes were sent back to their country of origin after their prison sentences. But this only exacerbated the problem, spreading both gangs like a virus until they grew into transnational "super-gangs" with countless cliques in southern Mexico and Central America in addition to their presence in California, Nebraska, New York, Texas, Virginia, Oregon and even Canada.

The FBI now acknowledges that the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs have become America's new organized crime, using their numerical superiority and sheer muscle to extort "rent" or "taxes" from local businesses, including legal and illegal vendors. These "protection" rackets are an insidious form of crime, often going undetected because the victims are unwilling to come forward lest they incur the gangs' wrath; they also supply the gangs with steady profits and fuel their growth.

Much of what I learned in El Salvador was cause for alarm, but there was also reason for hope.

First, the good news. El Salvador's partnerships with U.S. law enforcement agencies are producing results. Intelligence on the super-gangs now flows between the U.S. and El Salvador. U.S.-sponsored initiatives on fingerprinting, police training and the handling of criminal deportees are working, and they provide a model for other countries.

El Salvador's political leadership appears committed to expanding the country's gang prevention and intervention programs. This is crucial, because effective gang reduction requires more than just arrests and gang sweeps. We must be tough on gangs but equally tough on the social conditions that breed them.

Now, the bad news. Despite progress, both super-gangs are still growing in influence across the hemisphere. Five years ago, Mexico reported little MS-13 presence; today, MS-13 is the dominant gang in Mexico's southern states. In Central America, the super-gangs are branching out beyond extortion into drug trafficking, human trafficking, identity theft and fraud. Sadly, we can expect to see similar expansion in the United States.

Nevertheless, U.S. law enforcement officials can succeed if we build on the following principles.

First, gangs fight over turf. Those of us battling them must not. Whether it is politicians arguing over control or bureaucrats wrestling over resources, infighting does not serve the public interest. Federal, state and local authorities must coordinate their efforts. This year, prosecutors in my office and the U.S. attorney's office, working together for the first time, coordinated efforts to good effect. Federal prosecutors filed criminal indictments against gang members in South Los Angeles and Glassell Park, while city prosecutors filed nuisance-abatement lawsuits to shut down the gangs' headquarters and hangouts.

Second, super-gangs observe no jurisdictional boundaries, so law enforcement officials in the U.S. need to expand international partnerships to stop the gangs' growth. The Los Angeles Police Department's new officer-exchange program with the El Salvador police is a good start, but there's still a long way to go in developing genuine working relationships with the rest of Central America.

Finally, gangs evolve. So must our methods and our laws. This year, for instance, I sponsored statewide legislation, which the governor recently signed into law, to allow prosecutors to sue gang members in civil court for damages. Now gang leaders, or "shot callers," can be held accountable for the full spectrum of damage their foot soldiers cause -- from graffiti vandalism to the costs associated with violent crime. This tool should prove particularly effective against gang leaders who direct criminal activities from behind bars, a problem Sheriff Lee Baca and Police Chief William J. Bratton have discussed in recent months.

For too long, Los Angeles has thought of street gangs as a local crisis. But the problems they present are bigger than that, and if the city wants to save countless young men and women from gang life, the solutions will have to be bigger too.

Rocky Delgadillo, the Los Angeles city attorney, oversees the enforcement of 57 gang injunctions, including ones against the MS-13 and 18th Street

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/com ... 6181.story

Are you going to deport gang bangers who are in this country illegally, or are you going to keep them here out of concern for the "global welfare?"