Sheriffs propose jails for illegals
By Noah Haglund
The Post and Courier
Monday, March 17, 2008


South Carolina's sheriffs want to do their part to stem illegal immigration by flagging local inmates for deportation.

But they can't, largely because the federal government doesn't have the resources.

Some sheriffs feel the only way around this is to build special jails just for immigrants. A recent proposal calls for three regional facilities to warehouse the state's convicted criminals awaiting a one-way trip home.

"We're between a rock and a hard place," said Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner, who drafted the proposal for the South Carolina Sheriff's Association. "This is the only thing that we can do."

If successful, the arrangement would be the first of its kind in the country. But it would cost an estimated $12 million to $15 million and take several years to complete. State officials hope to secure federal money to pay for it.

The proposed jails would be minimum security and would house nonviolent offenders. Each would have about 400 beds. In theory, they would free up space at county jails and state prisons.

The Sheriff's Association has forwarded the plan to Gov. Mark Sanford's office. The governor's staff, in turn, plans to send it to the state's congressional delegation in the coming weeks, press secretary Joel Sawyer confirmed. The proposal is not linked to immigration bills under discussion in the Statehouse.

Sheriff's Association Executive Director Jeff Moore said the process would take a while. He also doubted whether anybody but the federal government would foot the bill.

"The state doesn't have the money and I'm not sure local governments are going to come up with the money," Moore said.

The regional jails would operate under a partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement that allows locals to enforce immigration law. It's called 287(g) after the relevant section of federal law. It currently includes more than 36 local and state agencies around the country, though the only participating agency in South Carolina is the York County Sheriff's Office.

York County has five employees trained for the program and has been checking jail inmates since October. Of the 212 inmates screened so far, 145 have been deported or are scheduled to be deported, York County Sheriff's Maj. Robbie Hudgins said.

The deported included a person from the Czech Republic, as well as nationals of Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana and Mexico.

"This is not the kind of program where we go out and look for illegal nationals," Hudgins said. "This program is only for people who are arrested and processed through the detention center."

Other sheriffs in South Carolina wanted to do the same thing. But in December, ICE informed them that York County would be the last individual agency to get the certification. Instead, they would focus on regional partnerships.

"Basically, what ICE told us in these meetings is that they were underfunded and understaffed," Tanner said.

In the current budget year, ICE has $26 million for all its 287(g) partnerships in the entire country, said Richard Rocha, an ICE spokesman in Washington. That's more than the $15 million available the previous fiscal year.

But the Sheriff's Association said ICE quoted them an average cost of $1.4 million for setting up the program at local jails. And that would mean this year's budget wouldn't even cover half the jails in South Carolina, let alone the other 49 states.

ICE officials met with Berkeley County Sheriff Wayne DeWitt and his command staff Friday. Robert Rodriguez, special agent in charge of investigations for Georgia and the Carolinas, said ICE has been encouraging regional cooperation, such as jails serving multiple agencies. He added that there are some concerns about overlapping jurisdictions between counties.

Local officials say the success or failure of regional jails ultimately rests with the federal government. Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon said the proposal is practical but that it also is a way to signal impatience with Congress. He didn't think any local or state effort would do much good without drastically improved border security.

"If we had a regional jail of some kind, then everybody would be able to use it," Cannon said. "It's also an expression of law enforcement's frustration about this issue not being addressed and leaving it up to us to deal with it on a daily basis."

Immigrant-only jails could free some space in the overcrowded Department of Corrections. Josh Gelinas, the department's communications director, called the idea "feasible."

During a recent count, the agency had 349 prisoners with detainers, or holds, from ICE out of a total population of about 23,900.

"In the end, the federal government should have to step up and pay to construct these facilities for this proposal to work," Gelinas wrote in an e-mail. "Likewise, for this plan to work, the feds would have to reimburse our operational costs."

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