Thread: PA: Deporting nonviolent illegal immigrants could save $1.5 million

Taxpayers can save $1.5 million if lawmakers would allow state prisons simply to deport their nonviolent illegal immigrant inmates

PennLive
February 29, 2012
By Donald Gilliland



JOHN C. WHITEHEAD,The Patriot-News, 2011 John Wetzel


Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Monday that approach could help deal with the challenging costs of the state prison system.


“There’s no one magic solution” to reducing prison costs, Wetzel said. “It’s a series of small solutions that will greatly help.”


One of them would be changing the requirement that illegal immigrants convicted of nonviolent offenses serve their time in state prison before being deported, he said.


There are 265 such inmates in state prison, he said.


“That’s a housing unit,” Wetzel said.


What’s more, an average of 65 such inmates enter the prison system each year.


Their median minimum sentence is 3.7 years.


Currently, such inmates must serve at least their minimum sentence — at a cost to taxpayers of approximately $34,400 a year. Only when they are paroled are they sent to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement hearing for deportation.


Wetzel told the senators he’d like to send illegal immigrant inmates directly to the ICE hearing right up front.


“We could give them conditional parole as soon as they hit our doors and put them on a fast track to being deported,” he said.


It’s a strategy New York has implemented successfully, he said.


The proposal was one of several Wetzel offered as “improvements” to a prison reform bill — SB100 — that unanimously passed the Senate last fall and is awaiting action in the House.


Wetzel told senators the projections in his budget are predicated on that bill “not getting watered down,” but he said it could also be improved.


Gov. Tom Corbett has launched a bipartisan Justice Reinvestment initiative similar to one that transformed the prison system in Texas. Wetzel co-chairs that group and said he expects it to offer other policy recommendations as early as May.


The House could incorporate those recommendations into the prison reform bill and pass it back to the Senate, he said.


Prison reform in Pennsylvania may be closer than many thought.


Regardless, Wetzel faces a difficult year.


The prison budget is level-funded for the first time in more than a decade, and those cost projections are based largely on Wetzel making the system more efficient.


That’s a system with an all-time high of over 51,600 inmates.


Contrary to senators’ comments Monday about the population “stabilizing,” the population has in fact risen since last fall when the
Senate delayed action on confirming Corbett’s appointments to the Parole Board by five months.


With fewer members of the Parole Board to do interviews, fewer eligible inmates were paroled and the prison population again began to rise.


Corrections spokeswoman Sue Bensinger said the Board of Parole “did a great job of mitigating the impact while waiting for the confirmations.”


Nevertheless, the inmate population increased by more than 300, all attributable to the Senate-induced slowdown.

Deporting nonviolent illegal immigrants could save $1.5 million | PennLive.com

Currently, such inmates must serve at least their minimum sentence — at a cost to taxpayers of approximately $34,400 a year. Only when they are paroled are they sent to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement hearing for deportation.

Send them back where they came from and close the border so that they can't come back.

Originally Posted by Newmexican

Send them back where they came from and close the border so that they can't come back.

If they would do their job,and enforce the law.We the tax paying citizen's have to obey the law,why are they so afraid of making these illegals? I'm so tired of watching them slowly turn our country in to a slum.Round them up.implant tracking chips in them.That way they can be kept up with.They want to live and act like animals,treat them like animals.

This is an AWESOME idea, the costs of these Illegals is Absolutely DRAINING on American pockets...We have Enough living expenses of Our own, for OUR families!Goodness Gracious, Get them OUT already!