Thread: Jail program targets illegals

Plan draws some critics
Jail program targets illegals
By Blair Goldstein
JOURNAL REPORTER
Sunday, September 23, 2007


Last weekend, almost 20,000 people gathered at the Dixie Classic Fairgrounds for Festival de Verano, a celebration of Hispanic culture.

A similar crowd is expected on the streets of downtown Winston-Salem next weekend for Fiesta 2007, another daylong festival highlighting Hispanic food and culture.

Even as the local Hispanic population is growing and gaining visibility, however, local political leaders are targeting a portion of that population.

The Republican-led Forsyth County Board of Commissioners and the Forsyth County Republican Party’s Executive Committee are again pressuring Sheriff Bill Schatzman, also a Republican, to start an illegal-immigration program at the county jail.

Schatzman has for months expressed skepticism about the benefits of the program

compared with its cost and the strain it would put on his department.

The federal program trains local law-enforcement officials to screen people’s immigration status when they are booked into the jail, eventually turning over those who are in the country

illegally to the federal government.

The continued push by local political leaders has some people in the Hispanic community concerned.

“This whole discussion and the way that it’s been talked about at the county level, it’s dehumanizing the Hispanic population,â€

I really feel sorry for the people in N.C. I have relatives there and they say it is awful. You can't go anywhere without running into ILLEGALS. Areas are being trashed, housing values are going down in areas where they live, the kids are not doing as well in school because the teachers are too pushed to take care of ILLEGALS.

It's a disgrace and a shame the way the U.S. has been taken over and is being ruined by these third word type inhabitants.

Jorge Boosh has truly been the anti-christ for this country.

Sounds like the third world communities of the California Central Valley. The ones that are reported on a daily basis in the FresnoMexicanBee.