Inmate screening put to test Federal effort targets convicted immigrants

The Houston Chronicle
May 26, 2009 Tuesday
By STEWART M. POWELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - Texas prisons are test driving the Obama administration's planned nationwide immigration screening and are relaying for the first time the digital fingerprints of roughly 1,500 arriving inmates each week to the Department of Homeland Security.

The statewide screening at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's 24 facilities will likely extend to the nation's 1,200 state and federal prisons and 3,100 local jails during President Barack Obama's first term - all part of a high profile crackdown on criminal aliens who have committed serious crimes such as major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping while living illegally inside the United States.

The cost to federal taxpayers is about $200 million this year and could grow to $1.1 billion by 2013, a fivefold increase in barely four years.

California is expected to be the next state to participate.

"We're accelerating (screening) because it works," says Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a former federal prosecutor and two-term governor of Arizona. "Our goal is looking at the public-safety aspects of illegal immigration."

Targeting thousands

The program potentially targets tens of thousands of criminals who happen to be immigrants rather than the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who have entered the United States illegally but often remain law abiding after their arrival.

That focus on criminal aliens rather than undocumented immigrants "will be part of our enforcement strategy moving forward," Napolitano says.

Texas authorities eventually plan to check the immigration status of the remaining 155,000 inmates in the state prison system, as well, says Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The statewide program builds upon a pilot program that has been providing immigration screening since last fall to jails in 48 counties nationwide including 17 in Texas, one of which is Harris County.

"We pride ourselves on being at the forefront of corrections and new technology," Lyons said. "We were certainly glad to have the opportunity to use this new technology to improve upon our exchange of information with ICE."

‘Positive development'

Sen. John Cornyn, R-San Antonio, an architect of earlier attempts by Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform, applauded the Obama administration's bid to identify criminal aliens inside prisons.

"It's a very positive development," Cornyn said in a Senate hearing.

Greg Palmore, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent based in Houston, said Texas' prison officials are learning the immigration status and criminal profile of incoming inmates within minutes because of the federal-state partnership.

"This is an additional tool in our arsenal," Palmore said. "State officials now know exactly where that individual inmate stands."

Imprisoned criminal aliens who entered the country illegally or have disobeyed a deportation order can be processed for deportation during their prison terms to get them out of the country faster once their sentence is complete.

As many as 450,000 criminal aliens are imprisoned in federal, state and local facilities across the nation.

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