This is good news for this county but there should be more.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/ho ... 315083.php


Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Supervisors approve Carona's immigration plan
In a last-minute change, Carona doubled the number of deputies to make federal immigration checks to 24.
By PEGGY LOWE
The Orange County Register
SANTA ANA Sheriff Mike Carona's plan to train local deputies to make federal immigration checks in local jails won approval from the Orange County Board of Supervisors today.

Despite several speakers who warned that the plan will lead to racial profiling, the board voted 3-1 in favor of the plan.

Lou Correa, the lone Democrat on the board who represents many minority communities in Santa Ana, Anaheim and Garden Grove, voted against the plan.

Correa, who is locked in a tight race for a state Senate seat, echoed many of the plan's opponents, saying he feared the plan would dissolve the trust between minority communities and the local police who have spent years working together.

"My question is, how will this make our communities safer?" Correa said.

The plan, which was scaled back from Carona's original proposal, calls for training an initial 12 deputies to check the immigration status of those booked into the county jails. In a last-minute change before the meeting – and after the watered-down plan created controversy for Carona when it was revealed by The Orange County Register last week – the sheriff won approval from federal immigration authorities to train up to 24 deputies.

That's decidedly different than his plan, first floated more than two years ago, that would have trained up to 500 deputies to make federal immigration checks in the jails, while on patrol and in doing investigations.

Carona said the plan won't lead to racial profiling but instead take care of the "revolving door justice system" that allows many criminal foreign nationals to be released without getting their immigration status questioned. He said his proposal will help stem the number of crimes committed by illegal immigrant criminals upon innocent undocumented workers.

"Those individuals who are undocumented and are fearful of law enforcement don't report crimes," he said. "We're not going to create victims out of victims."