ICE To Expand Jail Checks: Report
The Obama administration is expanding immigration checks to nearly all local jails, which could sharply increase U.S. deportation cases, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
By matching inmates’ fingerprints to federal immigration databases, authorities hope to pinpoint deportable illegal immigrants before they are released from custody. Inmates in federal and state prisons already are screened. But authorities generally lack the time and staff to do the same at local jails, which house up to twice as many illegal immigrants at any time and where inmates come and go more quickly. The effort is likely to significantly reshape immigration enforcement, current and former executive branch officials said …
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has made it “very clear” that her top priority is deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, said David J. Venturella, program director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We mean this, we’re serious about it, and we believe we need to put in an all-out effort to get this done,” said Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee for homeland security …
The program began as a pilot effort in October and operates in 48 counties across the country, including Fairfax County. This year, fingerprints from 1 million local jail bookings will be screened under the program. It also operates Dallas, Houston, Miami, Boston and Phoenix, according to ICE, and will expand to Los Angeles this year and nearly all local jails by the end of 2012. The effort differs from programs in several Northern Virginia counties where local law enforcement officers have been deputized to question suspects about whether they are in the country legally.
Under the new program, the immigration checks will be automatic: Fingerprints currently being run through the FBI’s criminal history database also will be matched against immigration databases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security … Based on the pilot program, the agency estimates that if fingerprints from all 14 million bookings in local jails each year were screened, about 1.4 million “criminal aliens” would be found, Venturella said. That would be about 10 times the 117,000 criminal illegal immigrants ICE deported last year …
Venturella said ICE will give priority to deporting the most dangerous offenders: national security risks or those convicted of violent crimes. Based on initial projections, the agency estimates that 100,000 of these are “Level 1 offenders” and that deporting them would cost $1.1 billion over four years. Removing all criminal illegal immigrants would cost $3 billion, ICE estimated last year.
The long article in The Washington Post has more detail and background.
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