Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Training begins
O.C. deputies learn to check immigration status at jails.
By KIMBERLY EDDS
The Orange County Register

ORANGE – In crisp dress shirts and with pens at the ready, a dozen handpicked Orange County sheriff's deputies and two sergeants began an intensive four-week federal immigration training course Tuesday to learn how to spot illegal immigrants among the county's jail population.

Working under the supervision of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a total of 24 sheriff's deputies and sergeants will go through the training, earning the authority to pick out inmates they suspect are foreign nationals and grill them on their immigration status during the booking process.

Deputies will begin doing immigration checks as soon as they finish training next month, sheriff's officials said. Another class, with 12 trainees, will immediately follow the first class.

"We are going to be able to identify more criminal aliens and get them off the streets and make Orange County safer," Kevin Jeffrey, deputy special agent in charge of ICE, told the first training class.

Sheriff Mike Carona's new program is dramatically different than the one he proposed about three years ago. The sheriff originally wanted up to 300 deputies trained to make federal immigration checks not only in the jails, but while on patrol and during investigations. Federal officials trimmed the plan last month, saying it would be too costly.

Carona also said he wanted the checks done only on those foreign nationals suspected or convicted of felonies – the serious criminals. But the program has expanded to include checks on anyone taken to the jail.

Cross-trained deputies, all volunteers, will staff booking stations at the Intake/Release Center in Santa Anaand the Theo Lacy jail in Orange. The plan could be expanded to train more deputies.

Speaking Spanish is not required. Preference is given to deputies with prior federal service. Out of 2,000 deputies, 34 applied for the voluntary duty, which doesn't come with a pay raise.

Immigration screening, done on a part-time basis by an ICE agent, will now be done on a full-time basis in the county's jails. The 10- to 15-minute immigration checks will become routine along with fingerprinting and photographing.

Anyone suspected of being a foreign national, regardless of the severity of the charge on which they are being held, will be interviewed, said Sheriff's Capt. Tim Boyd.

"If you're committing a crime, we don't want you on our streets," Carona said. "Using ICE is just one more tool to accomplish that."

Critics have said that the plan will increase racial profiling and cause a chilling effect among immigrants, making undocumented residents reluctant to report crimes for fear of being deported.

Carona should establish some community oversight so community policing efforts in ethnic neighborhoods aren't harmed, said Hector Villagra of the ACLU's Orange County office.

"I think the scope and breadth of the program underscores the need for the sheriff to reassure the community that immigration status is not going to be a matter for local police action outside the jails," Villagra said.

Running the nation's eighth-largest jail system and housing nearly 70,000 inmates each year, Orange County's is the fourth sheriff's department in California to have its deputies do immigration checks.

Deportations have jumped since San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles counties began their programs last year.

In a "boot camp" version of the schooling federal agents receive, deputies are drilled in interrogation techniques and instructed in complicated immigration law. Lectures will cover the social habits of various cultures as a way to root out potential undocumented inmates.

Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor has been pursuing an agreement with ICE for his city, but the government has been tepid on training the city's officers to do immigration checks.

Beginning next month a full-time federal immigration officer will be stationed at the Costa Mesa city jail to screen inmates, James T. Hayes Jr., a field office director with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Tuesday.

Federal immigration agents have staffed other city jails in the county.

National Immigration Agreements

•Four California law-enforcement agencies have agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

•Eight law-enforcement agencies nationally have agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

•Six thousand Los Angeles inmates were determined to be deportable since deputies there began doing immigration checks in December 2005.

•The Arizona Department of Corrections saved $2.98 million since it began processing immigrant inmates in November 2005.

CONTACT US: Register staff writer Peggy Lowe contributed to this report. 714-796-6743 or kedds@ocregister.com


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