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Metro may get hefty reimbursements from immigration program
By Jared Allen, jallen@nashvillecitypaper.com
September 25, 2006

Nashville could collect more than $1 million a year from the federal government for housing its federal immigration violators if Sheriff Daron Hall’s office is enrolled in a program allowing Hall to have instant access to the immigration status of every person coming through his jail.

Based largely on figures provided by the last county to implement the federal Delegation of Authority Program in its jail system – Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), N.C. – Hall has estimated that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would have to reimburse Nashville roughly $1.2 million in prisoner housing expenses each year.

Those funds would come from a pot of federal money that is allocated exclusively for reimbursing local law enforcement agencies for the cost of housing federal prisoners, such as immigration violators, ICE spokesman Mike Gilhooley said Friday.

But because the number of immigration violators found in Metro Davidson County could rise from hundreds to thousands each year if Nashville is given the authority and resources to conduct its own immigration investigations on criminal offenders, the amount of money coming back Nashville’s way could likewise increase dramatically.

Whether or not Metro Government would actually profit from the arrangement remains to be seen.

“We’re certainly not in the making money business,” Hall said last week. “But the point is that we wouldn’t be spending local money on housing these inmates if they were properly deported for being here illegally.”

The fact that every month Hall releases hundreds of foreign-born arrestees onto the street before learning their immigration status, though, is what is driving his desire to get the Delegation of Authority Program running in Nashville.

Before that can happen, Hall will have to stand back and wait for the Department of Homeland Security to sign off on Nashville’s application to become one of only a handful of American cities to utilize the Delegation of Authority Program.

And, as Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Nashville) has said, “The Department of Homeland Security is not known for its efficiency.”

Nashville’s mandatory 30-day assessment period concludes at the end of next week, at which time DHS could at any day sign off and begin writing the “Memorandum of Understanding” with Davidson County – the document which would grant the Sheriff’s Office the legal authority to conduct immigration background checks on its own.

But finding the funding necessary to facilitate that arrangement is a concern to many involved in the waiting game, including Cooper.

In addition to the millions that would have to be handed out to Nashville each year for inmate housing reimbursements, there is the cost of training Davidson County sheriff’s deputies and equipping the jail with the computers necessary to conduct immigration checks.

Congress allocated $5 million – out of a $40 billion budget for DHS – to the Delegation of Authority Program for the fiscal year 2006.

As of Friday, Gilhooley said he was unable to calculate how much of that $5 million is still available for future training of local law enforcement officers and facilitating the equipping of additional agencies, including the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office.