Thread: FL-Sheriff lobbies for ICE detainees' return

Sheriff lobbies for ICE detainees' return

By RYAN McCARTHY
rmccarthy@keynoter.com
Posted - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 06:17 AM EDT



The Monroe County Sheriff's Office is calling in the big guns in the fight to bring federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees back to Stock Island.

U.S. senators Bill Nelson and George LeMieux, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and other Florida politicians wrote letters in support of the Sheriff's Office to ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton last week. Sheriff Bob Peryam says he's had no response but hopes the support convinces ICE officials the service provided in the Keys is valuable.

"If Cuba ever opens up, it's in their best interest to keep us in a ready position. If any Caribbean issues arise, some inland counties aren't going to be able to do anything for them," he said.

In October, ICE informed the county it would no longer house inmates at the Monroe County Detention Center on Stock Island. That means a loss of roughly $1.3 million in expected annual revenue, Peryam says.

The Sheriff's Office receives $82 daily for each federal inmate it houses.

"That's a lot of money every year the jail made in housing the ICE inmates, and all of a sudden it dried up for no apparent reason. We passed every inspection with flying colors," Peryam said.

Actually, there are several reasons, ICE spokeswoman Nicole Navas said Tuesday.

She said the Keys detainees were moved to Miami to be closer to the agency's Miami field office. Key West, she said, was just too far.

She also said the Keys jail wasn't singled out. Detainees that were at the Hernando County jail were moved to the Baker County jail because the latter is new with "state-of-the-art medical facilities and programs."

For ICE's most recent fiscal year, the agency had budgeted for 50 beds in the Keys. The average daily occupancy was 40, Navas said.

Despite that, Peryam took his fight to Washington, D.C., lobbying political representatives and ICE officials. He estimates hundreds of phone calls were made and letters written in an attempt to bring the inmates back to the Keys.

"My selling point to our elected officials was the Monroe County correctional facility needs to be in a ready position to assist with their problem of housing inmates," he said. "If they don't [keep inmates here], we may not be able to maintain the facility at a ready position."

For instance, ICE emptied Miami's Krome Service Processing Center in the wake of the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti. ICE anticipated a mass migration and the Stock Island jail took in 100 Krome immigration detainees. The letters emphasize Monroe's close proximity to Caribbean countries: 750 miles from Haiti, 120 miles from Jamaica, 90 miles from Cuba and just 60 miles from the Bahamas.

"As elected public officials, we recognize that the contingency mass migration mission provided by the Monroe County's Sheriff's Office to support ICE's emergency needs is of vital concern," LeMieux and Ros-Lehtinen's letter reads.

The roughly 600-bed jail cost $40 million to build in 1994. According to Nelson's letter to Morton, the loss of ICE inmates will lead to layoffs.

"We have raised over the years enough money to almost pay for the correctional facility from when it was built. And we had this partnership with ICE since the facility opened, and that's 15 years ago. They really didn't give us any reason. They eventually cited they can get it done elsewhere less expensive. They also talked about transportation was an issue. I said, 'Give me 100 prisoners and we'll do the transportation.' No matter what I said, they came up with another excuse," Peryam said.

The letter from Nelson was copied to the sheriffs of Baker, Glades, Hernando and Wakulla counties.

As of Tuesday, ICE had 1,976 detainees under its Miami office, using facilities in Florida and Puerto Rico.


http://www.keysnet.com/2010/03/24/20213 ... inees.html

The Krome detention center has been overflowing for years even with the facility in the Keys. They only reason they are doing this is that they are giving those who used to be detained ankle bracelets and treat them like people on probation or parole which I think is a joke. Many of those end up disappearing to other states like the Argentinians that had a unit in my condo building. ICE caught them in Texas but many others are not caught. Ankle bracelets can be removed or tampered with very easily.