Bill to check felons fails


By Chris Caesar

Updated: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 9:22 PM PDT

Assemblyman Van Tran’s attempt to have the state screen and verify the immigration status of prisoners, just as authorities do in Costa Mesa, failed to make it out of an Assembly committee Wednesday.

Tran hoped identifying and then deporting such prisoners would cut state costs to house them, as well as address the problem with overcrowding in California prisons.

While the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is required to report any undocumented immigrants to the federal government as part of an administrative agreement, this bill would have required such checks under law, Tran said.

“There are well over 172,000 prisoners in the state, and there are talks of releasing at least 30,000 of them early [because of the budget deficits],â€