Feds: Five deported from Santa Cruz County Jail in August
By Jennifer Squires - Santa Cruz Sentinel
Posted: 09/20/2010 07:10:47 PM PDT


SANTA CRUZ - Five County Jail inmates identified as illegal immigrants or foreign nationals convicted of serious crimes have been deported since a new immigration status-check program launched in Santa Cruz County last month, according to federal statistics released this month.

Figures from the first month of Secure Communities, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement program, showed one convicted felon and four others were deported after being arrested and booked into County Jail, ICE officials reported.

The statistics were from Aug. 10-31. Secure Communities began in Santa Cruz County on Aug. 10. The program instantly checks all people booked into County Jail for ICE holds.

However, it's difficult to determine if the number of immigration holds placed on local inmates constitutes an increase because no one kept those statistics in the past, according to sheriff's Chief Deputy Jeff Marsh, who oversees the county's jail facilities.

Inmates regularly are turned over to federal officials for possible immigration violations but local law enforcement doesn't receive reports about the outcome of those proceedings, according to Marsh.

"We have no track-ability on them at that point," Marsh said. "We only track them when they're in our custody."

Secure Communities didn't change that process, it simply streamlined procedures to prevent people from slipping through the cracks.

In August, the new program flagged 90 foreign nationals with criminal records. Of those, three were taken into federal custody by ICE. Another 15 people with no prior criminal convictions but who are not in the United States legally also were taken into ICE custody, according to ICE spokeswoman Virgina Kice.

Five of those people have been deported, she said.

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