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Sheriffs Want Federal Funds For Foreign Inmates
Local Taxpayers Footing Bill

By Hendrik Sybrandy, 7NEWS Reporter

POSTED: 5:15 pm MST February 20, 2007
UPDATED: 5:28 pm MST February 20, 2007

DENVER -- Several Denver metro area sheriffs are demanding that the federal government help them pay for jail inmates who are not U.S. citizens. They say the government is required by law to help defray those costs but that the payments to local counties have been withheld for the past few years.

"It's just ironic," Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said Tuesday during a press conference with other county sheriffs. "At a time when the federal government continues to push more responsibility for immigration and border security on to local government, at the same time, they're cutting the funding."

It costs roughly $70 a day to feed and care for jail inmates in Colorado. Adams County currently houses an average of 200 illegal aliens who've been arrested for various crimes. For several years, counties like Adams relied on the State Criminal Aliens Assistance Program (SCAAP), but Sheriff Doug Darr said the well has now run dry.

"The fact of the matter is then it falls upon the locals," Darr said. "Local taxpayers are paying the tab and they have been for some time."

"I think that is outrageous," Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said. "And I find that absolutely incredible that they will not return the funds to Arapahoe County, to Boulder County, to Adams County."

A State House resolution demands that the government release several million dollars, about the amount Colorado received in past years.

"We incur costs borne because the federal government is not doing its job of keeping the borders secure," Rep. Buffie McFadyen (D) said. "We want to be reimbursed for doing the federal government's job."

McFadyen plans to raise the issue with Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez Wednesday during a tour of the Supermax correctional facility in Florence.



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