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MercedSunStar.com
Program educates immigrant inmates

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By Adam Ashton
THE MODESTO BEE

ATWATER -- Jose Sanchez didn't finish primary school in his Mexican hometown.

Now 41, he studies basic reading and math in early-morning classes with eight other khaki-clad men here at the United States Penitentiary.

The goal of their program is not to better the men for life in California after their sentences; it's to prepare them for work in Mexico following their deportations.

Sanchez knows the odds are long that he'll ever use his newfound love of learning in Mexico because he's serving a life sentence for a racketeering and conspiracy offense.

Still, he's an eager student, often one of the first with an answer in group assignments. He says he wants to mentor other immigrant inmates to prepare them for their return trips home.

"At least I'll have the opportunity to tell other inmates they should study," he said through a prison-provided interpreter after a recent class.

Sanchez and his classmates are among some 49,000 foreign-born inmates in federal prisons, according to a 2005 report from Congress' General Accountability Office. A majority of the immigrants come from Mexico.

The report pegged the total cost to the federal government of incarcerating them at $5.8 billion from 2001 to 2004, of which $1.2 billion went to states and counties that housed illegal immigrants in local jails.

Sanchez's class does not cost taxpayers anything beyond the salary of an instructor who was hired to teach Spanish-speakers English. The program, which allows inmates to earn certificates through Mexico's National Institute of Adult Education, dovetails with other prison learning programs, such as a Spanish-language course that helps inmates obtain American diplomas.

The Mexican Consulate in Fresno pays for the program's materials, and trained the instructor, Jose Bautista. The consulate also oversees a similar program at California City Prison, a privately operated facility in Kern County.

Part of the program's goal is to persuade deported immigrants to stay in Mexico by giving them skills for a job there, said Erika Martinez, the consulate's health and education program coordinator.

Mexican inmates from prisons in California are dropped off at border towns when they're deported by U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement, ICE spokeswoman Lori Haley said.

Leaving ties behind

Jesse Gonzalez, executive assistant to the Atwater prison warden, said immigration agents from Fresno monitor Mexican inmates in his prison, contacting them a year before their release to prepare them for deportation.

On the last day of custody in America, an agent picks up the inmate and takes him to a detention center to await deportation.

The same rules apply to county jails, which notify Immigration Customs Enforcement agents when they book someone with questionable citizenship. Immigration agents then visit the jails to determine whether the inmate is eligible for deportation after serving a sentence for a crime in America, Stanislaus and Merced County jail officials said.

Some of the inmates scheduled for deportation have not seen their native countries in decades.

Atwater prison inmate Laurencio Gonzalez, 38, said he illegally crossed the border from Mexico looking for work in Los Angeles as a young man.

Now, his ties are almost completely to Southern California, where his teenage children live. He had legal U.S. residence before he was arrested for a crime he didn't want to identify.

Laurencio Gonzalez's conviction put that status in jeopardy. He is appealing a decision to deport him after his sentence through an immigration judge.

Haley said immigrants with legal residence such as Laurencio Gonzalez can be deported for committing aggravated felonies in the United States, or for committing a series of lesser crimes that could persuade an immigration judge that the immigrant should be deported.

Her agency carries out the judge's order.

"Very much of it is a case by case and judges take into consideration the individual's history, their criminal history," she said.

On the assumption the roughly 200 Mexican inmates at the Atwater prison will be deported one day, officials do what they can to keep classes full in the consulate's education program.

That can be difficult because noncitizens who have not finished high school are not required to take education classes in federal prisons, something Americans in the prison must do to until they earn a general educational development certificate, prison Education Supervisor Miguel Chavez said.

The penitentiary wants inmates in classes because those prisoners tend to have fewer behavior problems than the ones who avoid educational programs, Chavez said.

"Because they're constructively occupied, they tend to get into fewer problems, and of course we always notice that their self-esteem is substantially improved," he said.

In the classroom, Bautista often sets up competitive games to keep the inmates involved. He recently separated the students into two groups and gave them points for correcting mistakes in basic Spanish sentences written on a white board.

They teased him when he adjusted his projector to reduce the glare on the board.

"That's a point for you," Gonzalez said in Spanish.

Bautista, who worked for four years as a correctional officer at a Louisiana prison before coming to Atwater in 2004, said their enthusiasm energizes him.

"You don't only help people with their educational needs," he said. "You help them become a better person when they get out."

In two years, the prison's Mexican education program has distributed 20 certificates for completing the equivalent of that country's elementary and middle school grades. The prison does not have a program to help inmates finish Mexican high school because offering one would oblige the penitentiary to relax its rules against Internet use, Chavez said.

He said none of the inmates who have finished the program have been released from custody, making it difficult to determine whether it succeeds in keeping the deported immigrants in Mexico.

Hopes for rehabiliation

Arturo Gonzalez, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, said tracking released inmates to see if they can get jobs in Mexico would be a key to determining the program's success.

He said the program showed the consulate's concerns for its citizens in America. He said it likely would help the inmates when they're deported.

"In some way it's the Mexican government acknowledging responsibility toward their citizens in this country," he said.

Keeping a deported criminal illegal immigrant in Mexico after decades of life in America might be an unrealistic objective even in the best of circumstances, said Dan Macallair, a criminal justice professor at San Francisco State University.



Posted on 07/31/06 00:30:00
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