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ICE can't keep up
Immigration agency, jails lack resources to track all illegals

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain News
May 23, 2005

Illegal immigrants who land in Colorado's jails face a variety of consequences, ranging from nothing at all to almost certain scrutiny from federal authorities.

The system, hampered by limited resources and manpower, can be summed up in one word: inconsistent.

In the city of Denver, for example, jail officials do not routinely send federal authorities lists of foreign nationals.

In Arapahoe County, Sheriff Grayson Robinson has ordered jail officials to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of every inmate who was born in another country.

Other counties notify ICE only after discovering a previous federal hold on an inmate, or they report encountering so few suspected illegal immigrants that they rarely deal with ICE.

The varying practices mean that some criminals will be flagged and end up being deported, while others will be released from jail once they've served their time here.

ICE doesn't have enough staff to investigate every suspected illegal immigrant in every jail, officials said.

"As much as we would love to try to get everybody . . . we don't have the resources to do that, or the manpower to cover any number of areas. It comes down to the priorities," said Doug Maurer, who runs ICE's detention and removal operations in a four-state district centered in Denver.

"Decisions have to be made, and some very tough decisions, on which person do you pick up? The person who just did a petty crime who three, four years down the road commits a heinous act that no one has any idea might occur? Or the person that's sitting right then and there who has a high distribution of cocaine to kids and somebody who has committed homicide?"

At one point in the past few years, ICE officials were so overburdened they asked Arapahoe County to notify them only of people accused of serious crimes.

"We were once told - ICE would never put it in writing - that they really only wanted to know about felons or people with assaultive behavior," Robinson said. "I chose to report everybody and leave it to ICE to put a hold on these people.

"The difficult thing is that it's in the hands of ICE. It's pretty much out of our hands in terms of these immigration issues."

ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said he could not comment specifically on how well ICE is able to cooperate with all the different metro-area jails.

The agency has four agents assigned full-time to find criminal illegals in 19 metro-area jails after they have been arrested for other crimes.

The agents pore over jail rosters, starting with the most dangerous criminals, and work down the list looking for illegal immigrants, said Tony Rouco, supervisory agent of the Denver ICE office.

They check inmates' documents for fraud and interview them, and if they're likely candidates for deportation, they slap immigration detainers on their records.

But if an illegal immigrant is in jail for petty theft, the ICE agents might not get to them, Rouco said.

"We're focusing on the worst of the worst - the aggravated felon," he said.

Arapahoe County's reporting measures may explain why the county netted more holds on inmates than other metro-area counties last year.

ICE officials placed holds on 247 of the 683 inmates Arapahoe County had identified as possible illegal immigrants. In Denver during the same year, ICE ordered holds on 175 inmates out of 1,937 inmates with questionable immigration status.

Robinson said neither the federal government nor local officials have adequate resources to handle all the cases involving suspected illegals.

"The real difficulty is that the system is overloaded, particularly when it comes to minor offenses," he said.

There were 1,300 inmates in the Arapahoe County jail Friday morning, Robinson said. That's about 200 over capacity.

"There's a huge demand on staff," Robinson said. "If there's anybody who has to be booked, I'll find room for them.

"But, if we were to take every illegal immigrant and put them in a facility simply because they were an illegal immigrant, I think the system would collapse."

In other large counties, the number of suspected illegal immigrants is lower. In Jefferson County, for example, only one of 1,200 inmates was being held for possible deportation last week.

When inmates are about to be released, the county notifies ICE if someone is foreign-born. ICE officials then come to the facility and interview the inmate.

"They determine whether the person is deportable or not," said Jefferson County spokesman Jim Shires. "We only get one or so a month and have never had more than 10 at one time."

Broomfield County, which has 81 beds in its jail, also rarely deals with ICE. They run inmates' fingerprints through various databases. If a person comes up as someone ICE wants held, then Broomfield officials send a fax to the agency.

"It's not that common, and then it's ICE's discretion," said Sgt. Rick Kempsell, spokesman for Broomfield. "When they pick them up, they usually come within 24 hours."

In Adams County, if officials suspect they are holding an illegal immigrant, they either send a Teletype or call ICE.

Capt. Craig Coleman said the issue surfaces only a couple of times a month. "We don't go out and actively seek immigrants," he said.

Law enforcement agencies in Weld and El Paso counties pursue similar policies.

"If we have someone whom we believe to be here not legally, we contact ICE and do whatever they choose to do," said Weld County sheriff's spokeswoman Margie Martinez.

El Paso County Sheriff's Lt. Clif Northam said his department notifies ICE when jail officials have someone whom they cannot identify or whom they suspect may be an illegal immigrant.

"In most cases, immigration (officials) will place a hold on the person when they are to be released . . . then we leave it up to immigration as to how they want it to be handled from there."

Lt. Bruce Haas, of the Boulder County Sheriff's Office, said immigration officials used to be more responsive.

"Our system that we had in place two or three years ago was very effective," Haas said. "We would provide a list for them, and they would let us know if they had an interest in them."

But Haas said the responsiveness faltered after the immigration official assigned to Boulder was promoted.

ICE managers told Boulder officials they were spread too thin to scrutinize all foreign-born inmates, Haas said. Under the current system, Boulder provides names of those in custody who are foreign- born, and ICE agents set more rigorous priorities.

"They do not place holds on everybody. They look at people of interest to them," Haas said.

Jail officials in several counties said day-to-day management of detention facilities is challenging enough without worrying about inmates' immigration status.

"Personally, as we're managing the jail, we're dealing with the people we have to," Haas said. "We're not trying to generate more business by trying to go after everybody who might be here illegally. We deal with the criminal element, rather than the illegal element."

Counties' policies vary widely

Jails in Colorado handle suspected illegal immigrants in a variety of ways. Here's a sample of approaches used in several counties along the Front Range:

• Adams: Calls Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials if it suspects an inmate may be an illegal immigrant.

• Arapahoe: Notifies ICE by computer whenever an inmate born in another country is booked into the county's detention facility.

• Broomfield: Runs inmates' fingerprints through databases and faxes information to ICE if the county discovers the agency has placed a hold on an individual.

• Denver: Notifies ICE of inmates that are the subject of hold requests; does not routinely send the federal government lists of jailed foreign nationals.

• El Paso: Contacts ICE if it has an inmate whom it is unable to identify or if it suspects the person is in the country illegally.

• Jefferson: Calls ICE before an inmate is released if there's evidence the inmate was born outside the U.S., but sheriff's officials say interaction with ICE is rare because the number of suspected illegal immigrants is low.

mccrimmonk@RockyMountainnews.com or 303-892-2502