Illegal immigrants & crime

By Kara Kenney on November 5th, 2007 at 6:39 am

http://www.nbc2investigators.com/blog/main.shtml
http://www.nbc-2.com/index.shtml

Many of you have asked - what happens when an illegal gets arrested? Do they go to jail? Do they get deported?The short answer is, it depends on the offense and whether the responding officer chooses to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement

The long explanation is this…

When a sheriff’s deputy encounters someone he believes is illegal, the deputy can do one of several things.

They can call the Immigration and Customs Support Center in Burlington Vermont and have ICE do the necessary checks to see if that person is here legally or illegally.

Or, the officer can call a local ICE agent who will determine if the person is legal or illegal.

ONLY ICE agents can determine someone’s legal status. [NOTE: Collier County is an exception, because they recently trained 27deputies and corrections officers to work as ICE agents.] But in most counties, deputies have to call ICE to truly know if a suspect is an illegal immigrant.

Sometimes it can take four hours of research just to determine someone’s legal status. The good news is, it used to take days!

The next step would be to take the suspect into custody and either put him/her into removal proceedings or put the inmate in jail with an “ICE detainer.â€