Thread: Feds training Arizona prison workers to speed deportations

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Article published Sep 20, 2005
Feds training Arizona prison workers to speed deportations

By PAUL DAVENPORT
Associated Press Writer

A federal agency began training state prison personnel Tuesday to perform some immigration enforcement work to help speed up the deportations of foreign nationals convicted of committing crimes in Arizona.

Under an agreement with the state Department of Corrections, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will train two supervisors and 10 other corrections workers at intake facilities on how to interview inmates who are foreign nationals to determine their immigration status and how to prepare deportation documents.

That means paperwork will be completed and ready for processing as soon as inmates become eligible for deportation upon completion of all or part of their criminal sentences, depending on what crimes they committed, officials said.

Arizona has been flooded with illegal immigrant traffic in recent years since the government tightened enforcement in El Paso, Texas, and San Diego during the mid-1990s.

State officials have complained that federal officials have increased the state's costs by failing to promptly deport illegal immigrants once they are eligible for deportation.

Corrections Director Dora Schriro called the agreement "an excellent opportunity" for Arizona to expedite the deportation of illegal immigrants, "providing Arizona taxpayers with welcome relief."

The state spends approximately $250,000 a day to incarcerate prisoners who are foreign nationals, Schriro said.

Schriro and Roberto Medina, ICE's top official in Arizona, said the agreement was an outgrowth of a July 12 closed-door summit which Gov. Janet Napolitano had the state Department of Public Safety convene with other law enforcement agencies to explore ways to lessen immigration problems in Arizona.

"Everyone recognized that the federal government within Arizona was not staffed to handle the huge number of illegal aliens that were coming into the state," Medina said.

ICE already has limited immigration-enforcement partnerships with police and jail agencies in Florida and Alabama, but the Arizona agreement is the first with a state prison system and could become a template for ICE to implement in other states, Medina said.

"In a matter of couple of months just worth of talking, really among friends more than anything else, we've been able to accomplish something and major," he said.

Arizona's prison population totaled 32,710 as of June 30, including 4,179 foreign nationals - 3,789 of whom were Mexican citizens, according to the Corrections Department's Web site.

Schriro said approximately 500 foreign nationals are now eligible for deportation.

Medina said all the imprisoned foreign nationals are believed to be illegally in this country and eventually eligible for deportation. He said he could not specify how many entered the country illegally in the first place.

The agreement announced Tuesday is the latest of several recent federal initiatives responding to Arizona's immigration-related problems.

Last month, the federal Department of Homeland Security - ICE's parent agency - agreed to help the state crack down on human smuggling and increase immigration training for state Highway Patrol officers.

Napolitano has previously criticized the federal government's handling of illegal immigration problems. She sent invoices totaling more than $117 million to the federal government for the costs of incarcerating foreign nationals and declared an emergency in four counties because of border-related problems. New Mexico's governor made a similar declaration in his state.

Last week, Napolitano asked the federal government for a time extension to apply for federal reimbursement of state and local costs related to the border emergency she declared.

The state's efforts to help Hurricane Katrina evacuees have delayed compilation of the information needed to make the request, she said in a letter to a Department of Homeland Security official.

Napolitano earlier this year vetoed a bill passed by the Republican-led Legislature to have the state contract to have a private prison built in Mexico to house illegal immigrants convicted of Arizona crimes.

Supporters of the bill said construction of the proposed private prison would help reduce the state's costs for housing the prisoners. Napolitano questioned that, citing expected costs for transportation and legal expenses. She also said it would require an international treaty with Mexico.

They should have American families hand deliver these debts to the fed gov, all expenses paid.