Deportation program to get more oversight
Deportation program to get more oversight
Cobb certified: The feds plan to tighten up a program that lets local law enforcement work with them on illegal immigration.
By Rhonda Cook
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, March 16, 2009
For more than a decade, Cobb County has quietly been part of a program that adds another category to the job description of law enforcement officers —- that of immigration agent.
The program is called 287(g), named for a section of the federal immigration law. It provides authority for state and local enforcement to investigate, detain and arrest illegal immigrants on civil and criminal grounds.
Cobb was the first county in Georgia to be certified for 287(g). Here authorities say the program works. But this month the nationwide program, also operating in Hall and Whitfield counties, and soon Gwinnett County, has come under scrutiny and will soon face more supervision at the local level.
A recent Government Accountability Office report questioned its effectiveness. GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, reported that authorities failed to determine how many of the thousands of people deported under the program were the kind of violent felons it was devised to root out.
Under the program, local authorities have access to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s data base, at least one immigration agent is assigned to each agency and usually works out of their jails several days a week, and ICE routinely sends a bus to participating local jails to pick up people to be deported.
ICE has agreements with 67 agencies in 23 states, including Georgia.
Nationwide, more than 90,000 people have been deported, mostly from local jails. In Georgia, authorities with the Department of Public Safety, and Cobb, Hall and Whitfield counties have identified 1,533 illegal immigrants since Oct. 1.
Cobb was one of the federal pilot programs starting in 1994. The county was accepted to the program in November 2006, when training began.
Between July 1, 2007, when Cobb’s officers completed training, and the end of last year ICE took 3,180 people into custody who entered the country illegally and were to be deported.
“They know they’ll be prosecuted [and deported again],â€
