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Saturday, April 7, 2007

Sheriff asks for federal training
Surry jail staff would identify illegal aliens

By Sherry Youngquist
JOURNAL REPORTER

The Surry County Sheriff’s Office is asking for federal training, similar to what several counties in North Carolina are considering, to help deputies deport inmates they find to be illegal.

“The training would be for detention staff so that when people come in they can interview people they believe to be illegal aliens, people previously deported, people using false identifications, illegal aliens who have been convicted before,” Sheriff Graham Atkinson said this week.

Surry has submitted an application to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but it has not been approved.

In North Carolina, the sheriff’s offices in Alamance, Cabarrus, Gaston and Mecklenburg counties have received such training and are working with federal agents to deport illegal immigrants.

Training is provided at no cost to local law enforcement, said Jeff Jordan, an assistant special agent in charge at the Charlotte office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

There are some qualifying factors, such as having space in local jails to hold illegal immigrants for a several days until immigration officials can pick them up.

“The program has been available since the mid-1990s.… There’s a need, and it just became … it was effective, and others have seen the effectiveness. It’s one way the local government can assist in the immigration-enforcement area,” Jordan said.

Mecklenburg County deputies were trained in March 2006 and began processing individuals believed to be illegal immigrants in May 2006.

Deputies say that since then, they have processed 3,187 people who were thought to be in the country illegally. Of those, 1,736 were placed in removal proceedings.

“That takes them out of our jail and gives them to the custody of ICE,” said Julia Rush, a spokeswoman for the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office.

Atkinson is hopeful that Surry will get to use the program to help reduce the local jail population.

“It’s not about trying to round up every illegal alien in the county because that’s not the purpose,” he said. “What it does, it picks out the worst of them.”