Report suggests California lags on deporting illegal immigrant criminals

5:51 p.m. | Susan Valot | KPCC
Homeland Security Inspector General's Report

A new report by the federal government suggests California isn’t doing as good of a job deporting criminals who are illegal immigrants, compared to several other states.

Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General took a sampling of foreign-born inmates in state and federal custody. It found that its Criminal Alien Program identified 99 percent of criminal illegal immigrants who should be deported.

But in California, that number was only 96 percent. That translates to about four in every 100 criminal illegal immigrants in California stay in the country, when they should be deported.

That’s the lowest rate of the states that were reviewed: California, New York, Florida and Texas.

The report blames staffing levels combined with an increased workload.

The Inspector General also points out that the program didn’t always record critical information into the program’s database during the screening process, which means some foreign-born criminals fell through the cracks.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say they’re already working to put the report’s recommendations into practice – and fix the problem.


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