Thread: CA: $40 million tab for undocumented prisoners in Monterey C

January 16, 2010

$40 million tab for undocumented prisoners in Monterey County

Governor, local legislators want more federal funding

By MIKE HORNICK


It costs California taxpayers $40 million annually to house inmates in Monterey County prisons who are in the country illegally or whose immigration status is in question.

Getting more federal money to pay the cost of incarcerating such prisoners has been on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's agenda since he raised the issue with the Bush administration several years ago. Now he's turned up the volume a notch, asking this month for $880 million in federal money for undocumented inmates, part of his effort to bridge a $20 billion California budget deficit.

At the Salinas Valley State Prison and the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, 757 inmates are subject to existing or potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds, according to data from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

It costs $53,000 annually to incarcerate each one — $40 million altogether — said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the department. The same cost per head applies to citizen prisoners. Sixteen percent of prisoners here are subject to the holds, compared with 13.1 percent statewide.

Then there are inmates who were charged and convicted in Monterey County, but could be housed anywhere in the state. There were 1,787 in California prisons as of Dec. 31. Of those, 327 are subject to the holds.

Under an existing ICE hold, prisoners face immigration custody upon release. A potential hold means an inmate's immigration status is under investigation or yet to be determined.

There are more than 22,000 such inmates in California. Most — 68 percent — are from Mexico. The second largest population, at more than 1,000, is from El Salvador.

Cutting the cost burden is one issue that unites the county's Democratic legislators with the Republican governor.

"Why should California or any state shoulder 100 percent of the cost to house someone who's come in from another country and committed a crime?" said Assemblyman Bill Monning, D-Monterey.

As it stands, the state gets $112.5 million in federal aid annually through the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. If combined with the $880 million Schwarzenegger wants, it would come close to covering the state's $1.1 billion cost.

But California has other budgeting issues, whatever amount federal support reaches. The SCAAP money is an example.

"It goes into the state general fund," Thornton said. "It doesn't go to the Department of Corrections."

More money, though, may not be the only solution.

"I expect that it would be more cost effective for the state of California to send them to federal custody," said Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, D-Salinas. "It would keep our state prison beds available for citizens, and save us from the cost."

The debate over federal dollars comes at a time when the state is under a federal judicial order to reduce its prison population by 40,000.

"There's a link between satisfying the court order to reduce overcrowding and getting immigration holds to a federal facility," Monning said.

Is there overcrowding here?

"The answer isn't simple," said Lt. Eric Moore, public information officer at Salinas Valley State Prison. "When the prison was built, the idea was one inmate per cell, but each cell was built with two bunks. Both are typically filled. We're considered at over 180 percent capacity, but keeping the design in mind, we don't have overcrowding. We don't have housing in our gyms."

Moore said the prison has sufficient staffing for its roughly 3,600 inmates.

"Some people say, 'Just deport them,' " Monning said. "But they could be back on the streets the next day."

Ideally, Monning said, treaties would be reached to allow the U.S. and other nations to reciprocally honor trial and sentencing results.

"That would take a huge burden off California and the U.S. government," Monning said. "But it would require monitoring. You would have to have the confidence that the host country has the capacity. Given the level of instability with drug cartels and violence now in Mexico, I don't know whether the government there would have the capacity."

www.thecalifornian.com

This is just one county! Now you know why California is broke!

The twerps at my work keep trying to engage me in conversation about why Ca is broke. If I replied with the truth, they'd hang me because I work with a gaggle of mexican sympathyzers, mostly Catholic. The local yocal uses the Community Policing model, so mob rules where I live. Not many Constitutional rights are involved with it, just whatever the mob wants, no matter if they have a brain or not. Mob rules with Community Policing, As far as I was told, by a snitcharooski for the cops. His exact words were " Mob Rules, and I will/Can destroy you with the mob". And he did long ago.

"Why should California or any state shoulder 100 percent of the cost to house someone who's come in from another country and committed a crime?" said Assemblyman Bill Monning, D-Monterey.

News flash to Assemblyman Monning, ALL illegals are commiting a crime. If you would cut off the very generous benefits Cali gives them, perhaps it wouldn't have become such a problem. Cali has all but laid out the welcome mat.

This is unacceptable. It is unreasonable that any American taxpayer should have to pay one dime for these illegal criminals that shouldn't even be here in the first place. These scumbags are bankrupting the whole country.