Thread: Santa Barbara Sheriff's Blog

6/22/09
Crime, Jail & I.C.E.
This article from the SM Times has dealing with immigration status of arrestee's has generated a lot of discussion on the blog. I thought it best to take this off of my Have You Counted the Cars Yet? Part 2 and give it it's own space for discussion.

Tool to help in immigration checks

"...Lt. Lisa Bondietti, who works in jail operations at the Santa Barbara County Jail’s main facility in Santa Barbara, said that when someone is booked into jail, his or her name and other general information is recorded. The inmate is fingerprinted, and the fingerprints are sent to the Department of Justice, where the person’s identity is verified using any other records.

Jail staff do not check the immigration status of inmates at booking, Bondietti said.

If an inmate stays at the jail, he or she goes through a classification process, during which a criminal history is run, and jail staff will sometimes be notified that an inmate has been previously deported and to notify ICE, she said.

ICE is at the main jail at least three times a week screening inmates for being in the country illegally, Bondietti said.

The booking system is similar at the other, smaller jails in the county, she said.

Bondietti said she does not know enough about Secure Communities to have an opinion on how it would work in the county.

Officer Brady Doyle, a custody deputy with the Sheriff’s Department who works at the county jail in Santa Maria, said that ICE comes occasionally to the facility, but that jail staff don’t deal at all with whether inmates are illegal aliens.

“We don’t even step into those boundaries,â€

There should be a state level immigration enforcement effort to get the benefit of specialization and economies of scale.

Thanks for the link, there are several story links included in the source article that are very interesting and allow reader comments.