Non-U.S. citizens run up a big bill at Utah's prisons
$6.7 million this year: State taxpayers foot most of the cost as the federal aid dwindles
By Lisa Rosetta
The Salt Lake Tribune



Utah taxpayers will spend about $6.7 million this year to lock up criminals - many of whom have first-degree felony and capital convictions - who are not U.S. citizens, a Utah Department of Corrections official told state lawmakers Wednesday.
Federal funding to cover the cost of imprisoning the immigrants is dwindling, and may dry up altogether, said Deputy Director Christine Mitchell.
In 1996, Utah received $442,318 from the federal State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. Established in 1994, the program defrays state and local costs to incarcerate immigrants doing time for a felony conviction or at least two misdemeanors.
A year later, the state's share from the feds surged to $1.8 million and eventually peaked at $2.3 million in 1999. It has since shriveled up.
The federal funding has been declining in both total distributions and even more as a share of the state's expenses, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a private nonprofit organization that tracks immigration trends.
In 1999, federal money covered 39 percent of the state's costs to house non-citizen inmates. This year, Utah received $368,307, which covers just 5 percent of the $7.1 million the state will spend housing non-citizens, Mitchell said.
When Corrections began receiving the federal awards in 1996, it believed the money would flow every year, she said. Now Corrections is operating on the assumption it will soon vanish.
"Right now we don't budget for those funds," she said.
There are 322 offenders in Utah's prisons who are not U.S. citizens, and of those, 260 have been identified by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as undocumented immigrants, Mitchell said. The offenders represent 32 countries, the top five being Mexico, Vietnam, Tonga, El Salvador and Guatemala.
About half of the 322 offenders have been convicted of serious crimes, such as murder, rape, sexual assault and robbery. Nearly a third are behind bars for child sex offenses, mirroring the percentage of the general prison population incarcerated for the same crimes.
Mitchell said most undocumented immigrants who commit less serious crimes are deported rather than imprisoned.
While the number of undocumented immigrants has steadily increased, it continues to make up about only 5 percent of the total prison population.
lrosetta@sltrib.com

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3965723