278 (g) net 81 in first week
By Jared Allen,
jallen@nashvillecitypaper.com
April 24, 2007
If the first week’s worth of figures hold up, the number of illegal immigrants deported in the first year of the city’s 287(g) program would be more than 4,200 — or equal to 11 percent of Nashville’s total — legal and illegal — Hispanic population, according to a City Paper analysis of the first batch of 287(g) immigration enforcement data.
A week ago Monday, the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office began running instant immigration checks on all foreign-born persons arrested and booked into the Nashville jail.
From 7 a.m. Monday, April 16 to 7 a.m. Monday, April 23, a total of 920 persons were booked into the jail facility on a variety of criminal charges.
Ninety-seven — or 10.5 percent — of those 920 individuals self-reported as having birthplaces outside of the United States.
After 287(g) immigration checks were run on all 97 of those individuals, newly trained Sheriff’s Office immigration officers identified 81 of those 97 persons as being in the United States illegally.
All 81 persons who were identified as likely illegal aliens were placed in removal proceedings, Sheriff’s Office officials said.
Numbers showing how many of those 81 individuals were detained in the Metro jail versus how many were released with notices to appear before a federal immigration judge in Memphis to prove their residency were unavailable Monday, Sheriff’s Office personnel said.
The exact birthplaces of those 81 individuals were also not available, although the Sheriff’s Office estimates that between 90-95 percent were from either Mexico or a Central or South American country.
The fact that a full 84 percent of the foreign-born persons arrested — and 9 percent of all persons arrested — last week were identified as illegal aliens and set for removal came as welcome news to Sheriff Daron Hall, the chief proponent of the 287(g) program.
“In two weeks, we will have set for removal a higher number of persons than we had set for removal in an entire year under the old system,” Hall said.
In all of 2006, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents working in Vermont identified 151 Nashville arrestees as illegal aliens.
“If we keep on this track, in another week we will have processed 160 for removal,” Hall said. “So we will have done in two weeks what would have taken a year.”
And at a rate of 80 persons a week, in the next year Nashville will set for deportation some 4,160 persons — mostly Hispanic — or roughly 11 percent of the entire estimated population of Hispanic individuals living in Davidson County.
The U.S. Census Department estimated Davidson County’s 2005 Hispanic population to be 37,967 or 6.6 percent of the county’s 575,261 persons.
Regardless, “81 in a week is a lot,” said Stephen Fotopulos, the policy director for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and one of the leading opponents to 287(g).
But before offering an opinion on whether or not additional deportations of illegal immigrants will be beneficial in any way, Fotopulos said he would need to learn “who these 81 people are.”
“If all these people are dangerous, then it’s a good thing,” he said. “But it could be that we’re removing a breadwinner away from a family, which would be devastating.”
As Hall and others have said time and again, 287(g) was sought to identify illegal immigrants who are arrested before the criminal justice system releases them back into the community.
After an illegal immigrant was arrested in June and charged with two counts of vehicular homicide, officials reacted with horror upon learning of his lengthy criminal history in Nashville, which, despite multiple DUI charges, never led to his identification as an illegal entrant.
“What we’re trying to do by removing some of these folks is prevent some of these high-profile crimes from occurring,” Hall said.
The majority of the foreign-born arrestees — and a subsequent majority of those persons being flagged under 287(g) — though, has been charged with misdemeanor offenses, according to Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Karla Crocker.
Fotopulos said that is one of the program’s biggest flaws, and said it contradicts the Sheriff’s assertion that the program was implemented to keep violent offenders who also happen to be illegal immigrants off the streets.
“They’ve created the parameters of this program in such a way where they’re rounding up people that, by their original standards, they’re not interested in,” Fotopulos said.
Under 287(g) guidelines, however, Hall’s personnel cannot select which foreign-born individuals are screened, nor can they dictate which criminal offenses result in immigration screens.
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