Friday, January 27, 2006
What our porous border costs you
Feds loath to repay front-line states
GARRY DUFFY
gduffy@tucsoncitizen.com


One cost of illegal immigration is showing up in your house payment or property tax bill - about $30 a year for the owner of a typical home.

Autopsies for illegal immigrants, extra jail room for those who commit crimes and other border-related expenses have put the county's six-year tab for border-related spending at $62.5 million.

"This amount equals 153 fully equipped sheriff's deputies that Pima County had to forgo during that period," County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said recently. During that period, the county's force of deputies was well below the per-person average of comparable jurisdictions, he said.

But while covering essential border-related services is stretching the county thin, federal reimbursement for costs related to inadequate border security amounts to pennies on the dollar, local officials say.

The largest share of such costs is borne by the Sheriff's Department, including the Pima County Jail. The county expects to spend $2.9 million to feed and clothe illegal immigrants at the jail and $4.6 million to cover extra deputies and administrators.

Though protecting the border is generally regarded as the federal government's responsibility, its wallet is virtually slammed shut when it comes to reimbursing communities for costs incurred because the border is not secure.

That means local tax bills are higher and county services are stretched thin.

Calculations such as the county's do not address the economic contributions of illegal immigrants, many of whom are picking crops or building houses for less money than American citizens would and paying money into Social Security they will never collect.

But the county's costs also do not include those incurred by other institutions, such as school districts and incorporated cities. Making a case for reimbursement will be critical to any agency seeking to shift some of the burden back to the federal government.

Stingy feds

Huckelberry last year had county department heads and elected officers, such as the sheriff, go back through records and calculate the approximate costs in services and work hours stemming from illegal immigration. The bottom line: Federal stinginess costs us money and saps services and programs essential to the quality of life here.

"The costs exist for us," Huckelberry said last week. "We should get some help with this."

Of the $62.5 million in costs identified by county bookkeepers, combined federal and state assistance has amounted to just over 5.4 percent of the total costs to the county, Huckelberry said.

Pleas for federal help fall mostly on deaf ears, a condition that appears to become more prevalent in proportion to the distance members of Congress live from the border.

"The reimbursement is insufficient; we all know that," U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., said this week.

"It's about one-fifth to one-tenth on the return," Grijalva said.

The two-term congressman said he is working with other members of Congress on a measure that would substantially increase federal reimbursements to local jurisdictions. It is unlikely to pass, he said.

Especially because the border area is losing its most powerful congressional advocate with the retirement of longtime U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., at the end of the year.

Wanted: views on border reform

"That is going to be a big voice to lose," said Martin Willett, deputy county administrator.

Willett doubles as the county's policy point man with the Legislature, where the county also is applying pressure for additional reimbursement for services rendered to illegal immigrants.

Gov. Janet Napolitano last year set aside $1.5 million in state funds for distribution to the four border counties. Pima County's share was about $415,000, most of which went to the Sheriff's Department.

The governor has pledged an additional $100 million in state funds this year for border security, most of which would go to the four border counties.

Specifics are lacking.

"At this point, nobody knows how that is going to work," Willett said. "We don't know for sure what that means for Pima County."

Jail a big expense

Illegal immigrants arrested on suspicion of committing crimes here go through the local justice system and contribute to jail crowding.

Of the 1,814 inmates in the county's adult corrections system earlier this week, about 200 were illegal immigrants, sheriff's Lt. Mike Schlueter said.

"That's 200 more people that we've got to feed, clothe and provide medical care for," Schlueter said.

Being in the country illegally is treated as a civil, rather than a criminal, offense. The Sheriff's Department does not lock up people for being in the country illegally. Those apprehended who have not been arrested on suspicion of local criminal violations are turned over to federal officials for processing and repatriation.

Over six years, the costs of illegal immigrants to the criminal justice system exceed $50 million, Huckelberry's report states.

And every deputy busy with crimes committed by an illegal immigrant means one fewer deputy protecting residents.

"It becomes a stressor on the system," Willett said. "When we have to shift resources like that, how many more burglaries occur?"

Those charged with a crime in the county go through the usual criminal justice process - arraignment, jail, the courts and incarceration, if convicted.

The Pima County Attorney's Office spent almost $340,000 last fiscal year prosecuting cases involving illegal immigrants. Of that, almost $267,000 was spent on cases involving adults charged with felonies.

Defendants with no money are provided with taxpayer-paid attorneys. Last year, county Indigent Defense services for illegal immigrants totaled over $580,000 - with over $455,000 going for felony cases. A preliminary budget figure for the coming fiscal year of $771,000 for indigent defense for illegal immigrants indicates that county officials expect such prosecutions to continue to increase.

"It exacerbates our already strained caseload," said David Smutzer of the County Attorney's Office.

Smutzer said the office already is short "at least a dozen" full-time prosecutors for felony cases.

"I'd rather have that money to increase our staff size," Smutzer said.

County's health tab falling

Health care for illegal immigrants is another service that county taxpayers end up paying for. In six years, the cost has been about $11.8 million, with much of that for emergency care and hospitalization of people suffering from the effects of their trek here. That may include extreme dehydration from walking through the desert or injuries suffered when smugglers' vans packed with people blow a tire and roll over - a common occurrence.

The county's proximity to the border ensures that local hospitals care for far more such patients than hospitals far from the border.

"We have a disproportionate burden in providing health care to undocumented persons that people in Nebraska do not," Garrett Hancock, of the county's Institutional Health Division, said yesterday.

The county's costs for health care have declined in the past two years, since Kino Community Hospital was privatized and became University Physicians Hospital at Kino. Two years ago, the county's cost for illegal immigrant health care was over $3 million. For fiscal 2006-07, which starts July 1, Huckelberry is estimating that cost at $1.7 million.

100 bodies at morgue

Even the dead cost money.

The Pima County Medical Examiner's Office conducts autopsies on deceased illegal immigrants and stores the bodies until they can be turned over to the Mexican Consulate in Tucson for return home. Those services will cost more than $400,000 in the coming fiscal year, with taxpayers picking up about $140,000.

Business at the morgue from illegal immigrants is booming. Last year, the bodies of 158 suspected illegal immigrants were autopsied and stored there. For several years, the medical examiner has had to rent a refrigerated trailer at $1,000 a month to store bodies because permanent cadaver areas are above capacity.

Illegal border crossers who die in the desert often take a long time to identify. The county holds bodies of unidentified suspected illegal immigrants until they can be returned to relatives through the Mexican Consulate in Tucson. But not all bodies are identified.

"We still have over 100 border crossers still here," said Dr. Bruce Parks, Pima County's medical examiner. "We can't release a body without going through protocol."

Some bodies of suspected illegal immigrants have remained at the Medical Examiner's Office for over two years.

Parks has five forensic pathologists on staff.

"I've been, maybe naively, hopeful that the numbers would decline," Parks said.

Instead, he probably will need to hire another pathologist in the coming fiscal year to handle what he expects to be an increasing workload.

Grijalva said he and other representatives of border states will continue to try to educate lawmakers with constituencies far from the border.

Discussions about reimbursing local governments are often lost amid proposed remedies that don't address the problem.

"There is still a lot of posturing about fences, troops at the border, things like that," Grijalva said. "But we're not dealing with the costs to the local communities."

Pima County Net Costs Related to Illegal Immigrants

Department
FY 00/01
FY 01/02
FY 02/03
FY 03/04
FY 04/05
FY 05/06 *
Total

Criminal Justice
$6.7M
$7.3M
$7.6M
$8.6M
$9.6M
$10.4M
$50.3 M

Health Services
$1.6M
$1.8M
$2M
$3.1M
$1.7M
$1.7M
$11.9M

Environmental Services
$16,260
$18,702
$28,795
$40,969
$82,311
$86,705
$273,742

Proposition 200**
0
0
0
0
$2,746
$87,104
$89,850

Total
$8.3M
$9.2M
$9.5M
$11.7M
$11.4M
$12.3M
$62.5M

* budgeted ** Proposition 200, passed by voters in 2004, requires the county to get proof of citizenship for some services
Source: Pima County

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