Jail Director: "Secure Communities Program is Working"

By Ian Cull. Published Thursday, August 18th, 2011

It's been almost two months since the Yakima County Jail joined a federal program to identify illegal immigrants, and the jail's director says it's working. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has released statistics of illegal aliens identified by its secure communities program. People booked into jail now have their fingerprints sent to ICE, to see if they are wanted.

In the first nine days the county had the program, two level one offenders were identified. That means after the two are done serving their sentence in Yakima, they will likely be deported.

"Murder convictions, rape convictions and so forth are the kind of people that should lose their rights to be here in the country and I would be looking at those individuals to deport," Yakima County Jail Director Ed Campbell said.

The program also identified 15 level two and three offenders. The report for this year only includes data through June 30th. Since the Jail started the program June 21st, there is only nine days of data.

http://www.kapptv.com/article/2011/aug/ ... m-working/