County jail has its share of foreign inmates

By GARY PINNELL

Highlands Today

Published: November 6, 2010

SEBRING - The dictionary defines "pan American" as representing all the countries or people of North and South America continents.

That also describes the Highlands County jail, which incarcerates undocumented aliens until Immigration and Customs Enforcement comes for them.

"ICE is here several times a week," said Major David Paeplow, who is in charge of the jail. "They come and interview inmates, and they pick up inmates about twice a month. It's been that way for quite a while."

It's a reminder of just how difficult the federal government finds it to secure the national borders.

Between July 2008 and June 2009, more than 200 foreign nationals were arrested and booked into the 524-bed jail, according to a report generated by Lisa Burley, chief of staff. For that period, the county was reimbursed about $30 a day.

"The amount varies by year," she said. The State Criminal Alien Assistance Program granted $189,000 to Highlands County in the past five years, $86,000 in the last year alone. The grant reimburses correctional officer salary costs for incarcerating undocumented criminal aliens who have at least one felony or two misdemeanor convictions and are incarcerated at least four days.

About half of the foreigners are from Mexico, the rest are spread among a variety of Caribbean, Central and South American countries. Only a few were from Canada or the United Kingdom. One was from Japan, one from Venezuela and one from Germany. One was listed from Puerto Rico, so the inmate was a U.S. citizen.

Some treaties demand that when a foreign national arrives in jail, their consulate be notified, Paeplow said.

"Most of the inmates speak some English," Paeplow said. "And we have translators when we want to talk to the rest of them. Once in a great while, we'll have someone who speaks Creole."

The number of foreign nationals is small compared with the rest of the jail population, Burley said. The jail gets in about 400 new inmates a month.

"But it's certainly a bigger problem that we'd like to be dealing with," Burley said.

The jail has 76 correctional officers. This year, the reimbursement was large enough that the sheriff was able to pay the salary of a full-time detention deputy for the coming year. "It is a financial drain, and it's good to be able to recoup those funds," Burley said

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