Thread: TX: Valley jails to screen all inmates for immigration viola

Valley jails to screen all inmates for immigration violations
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June 9, 2009 - 9:08 PM
By JEREMY ROEBUCK, The Monitor

RIO GRANDE CITY - The Starr County Detention Center on Tuesday became the latest border jail to implement a federal program aimed at screening the immigration status of all of its inmates.

By matching the fingerprints of all people booked into the local lockup against federal immigration databases, authorities hope to better identify those criminal aliens eligible for deportation after their release.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials estimate the "Secure Communities" initiative could lead to a 15 to 25 percent increase in the number of illegal immigrants deported from the county jail each year.

"It provides ICE with a virtual presence to look at all of these counties along the border and provide 100 percent enforcement," said Michael Pitts, director for detention and removal for the agency's San Antonio Field Office, whose jurisdiction includes the Rio Grande Valley.

While computerized immigration checks are already run in federal and state prisons, local jails have until now lacked the resources to screen all inmates.

Previously, U.S. Border Patrol agents would visit jails like those in Hidalgo and Starr counties every day to interview those detainees suspected of being in the country illegally.

But because such a screening process relies on physical documents and biographical information provided by suspects, several criminal aliens likely slipped through the cracks, Starr County Sheriff's Capt. Romeo Ramirez Jr. said.

Under the new program, computerized checks would occur automatically as part of the standard booking process. Fingerprints currently run through the U.S. Department of Justice's criminal history database will now also be matched against records the U.S. Department of Homeland Security keeps on civil immigration violations.

When a hit occurs, the inmate's name will be sent to federal and local authorities and flagged for potential deportation. Those immigrants charged with violent crimes such as murder, kidnapping, assault or rape will move to the front of the line for eventual removal from the country, Pitts said.

The process also removes the need for local agents to target inmates based on traditional red flags that suggest he or she may be an illegal immigrant, he said.

"It doesn't put them in the position of profiling," said Pitts. "We're checking each and every person coming into the jail."

President Barack Obama's administration has vowed to shift its heaviest immigration enforcement efforts to those who commit crimes after entering the country illegally rather than those migrants who come solely to look for work but are otherwise law abiding.

ICE identified 221,000 deportable inmates nationwide during the 2008 fiscal year, but officials estimate that number could reach 1.4 million once Secure Communities is launched in every local lockup nationwide - a goal currently set for 2012.

Four border counties in Texas have already launched the program in their jails, and officials hope to have the initiative up and running in Cameron, Willacy and Hidalgo counties by the end of the month.

But Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño - who estimates he has more than 300 identified criminal aliens in his jail every day - already sees other ways the technology could aid law enforcement.

He has suggested ICE officials develop a mobile fingerprint reader that could be used to compare unidentified bodies against immigration records.

"If they still have fingers, we can scan them and possibly identify them that way," he said.

Ramirez, the captain at the Starr County Jail, just hopes he will see signs soon that the system is working the way it should be. After launching the program at his booking office Tuesday morning, jailers had yet to find their first hit by the end of the day.

"We're still waiting for the first one," he said. "But I think it's just a matter of time."

www.brownsvilleherald.com

Why did this take so long? Fingerprints have been taken of arrested people for decades. Why didn't our government require immigration checks all along?

A step in the right direction. Now we need to make e-verify a requirement for all employers. Proof of citizenship for all taxpayer funded benefits, and felony charges for using a false social security number for any purpose.
We don't need immigration reform. We need enforcement that discourages illegal immigrants from coming in the first place.