Thread: N.C.: Sheriff's Office teams with feds to deport illegal imm

Sheriff's Office teams with feds to deport illegal immigrants
By Richelle Bailey | The McDowell News
January 25, 2009

The McDowell County Sheriff's Office is onboard with a federal program that pinpoints illegal immigrants and earmarks them for deportation.
The 287(g) Program, which takes its name from Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996, is designed to authorize state and local law enforcement officers to act as immigration agents.
Eight county agencies in North Carolina serve as "hubs" for all the other local departments across the state. Those eight have entered into Memorandums of Understanding with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, and authorities with those agencies have received specialized federal ICE training that allows them to investigate whether or not an individual is an illegal alien and can be removed from the U.S.
The Henderson County Sheriff's Office serves as the "hub" for McDowell and all of western North Carolina.
McDowell's county jailers, as well as other Sheriff's Office officials, have been trained in new technology developed to aid 287(g).
"We've been involved since I was sworn in (in May), but we've been moving in this direction for some time," said McDowell County Sheriff Dudley Greene. "We've been getting everyone trained on the computer system, so it has taken a while."
He added that the program doesn't dictate that deputies go out looking for illegals, only to check foreign-born suspects when they've been arrested.
"This program is designed as a catch measure if someone has committed a crime," Greene stated. "It gives us a venue to determine someone's status."
When local authorities from any agency arrest foreign-born suspects, they are encouraged to obtain as much information from those individuals as possible. That data, along with the suspects' fingerprints, are entered into the system.
If the person is wanted for a crime in another county or state or if the person is in the U.S. illegally, the computer will alert jail staff.
The jailer then contacts one of the nine trained ICE 287(g) agents employed by the Henderson County Sheriff's Office, who then interviews the suspect. Further investigation is conducted and, if warranted, the deportation process begins.
In a two-week period of time shortly after the program went into effect here, the Sheriff's Office got "hits" on at least four suspects, according to Jail Sgt. April Poteat, meaning those people have been flagged for deportation once their cases are disposed of in McDowell.
They continue to get those hits on a weekly basis.
"This is a great service to the community and the state," said Capt. Asa McNeely, the administrator of the county jail. "We're not just looking for illegals but for wanted suspects as well."
As quoted by the N.C. Sheriff's Association in a November article from The News & Observer of Raleigh, between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2007, authorities in the eight "hub" counties interviewed 4,511 people about their residency status. Of those, 3,182 were placed in deportation proceedings and another 177 had immigration detainers against them and were likely headed toward deportation.
Those facing deportation were charged with 3,654 offenses. Of those, 1,600 (44 percent) were criminal violations ranging from murder to trespassing, 849 (23 percent) were impaired driving and 1,215 (33 percent) were traffic violations.

www2.mcdowellnews.com

More good news , but as usual not on tv .