NC: Mecklenburg County Sheriff Upset About Immigration Bill
Mecklenburg County Sheriff Upset About Immigration Bill Failure
POSTED: 5:47 pm EDT June 29, 2007
UPDATED: 6:34 pm EDT June 29, 2007
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph is frustrated after the Senate essentially killed an immigration overhaul bill. It would have offered citizenship to millions of immigrants and beefed up border security.
Pendergraph said he’s disappointed the federal government still can't agree on how to solve the country's immigration problem. But he said he'll continue to do his part by enforcing the law at the county jail. That's where a handful of Pendergraph's deputies get to act as immigration agents. They get to ask inmates what country they're from and check their nationality.
"If they're illegal aliens and have violated certain laws, those are going to be marked for deportation. I'll continue that, and I'm talking to every sheriff I can to get involved in this program and many are. So, we'll keep doing our job enforcing the laws that we already have in the books, and hopefully at some point, congress can come to some agreement on what needs to be done in this country," he said.
We checked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officials in Washington, D.C. They said since October of last year, about 1,500 illegal immigrants have been identified across North Carolina jails. They’ve either been deported or are set to go before an immigration judge.
Mecklenburg, Gaston and Alamance are the only North Carolina counties that have the ICE program. Many more, including Cabarrus, Iredell, York, and Union, could soon join in.
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Quote:
If they're illegal aliens and have violated certain laws, those are going to be marked for deportation
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Say, what??? If they are illegal aliens and they're in North Carolina they have broken the law. Do they have to commit a second offense before they are eligible for deportation?