The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Eighteen law enforcement agencies in North Carolina, more than any other state, have asked to join a program that would allow them to check the immigration status of those they arrest and jail. Sheriff's offices in Wake, Durham and Johnston counties are among those that have applied.

Four more sheriff's offices are already enrolled in the program, and their efforts led to the deportation of thousands of immigrants in the past year.

The program allows law enforcement agencies to use a federal database to check the immigration status of every foreign person they arrest -- whether for reckless driving or selling drugs -- and start deportation of those in the United States illegally. Select officers from the agencies that enroll get about a month of training from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The program costs local agencies nothing but staff time, and the federal government pays for each night that immigration detainees spend in local jails.

"We've had tremendous interest," said Richard Rocha, a spokesman for the federal immigration agency, known as ICE. "North Carolina leads the country."

The interest has been so overwhelming that ICE created a task force this week to figure out how best to use North Carolina sheriffs and police departments in the fight against illegal immigration.

Mecklenburg Sheriff Jim Pendergraph, who in 2006 was the first in North Carolina to partner with ICE, has become a sort of folk hero to other sheriffs in the state. He says Mecklenburg County helped ICE deport more than 3,000 people last year.

"We're trying to rid the state of illegal alien criminals," Pendergraph said Wednesday. "The citizens, quite frankly, are demanding that we get involved because the federal government just can't handle it by themselves anymore."

Pendergraph became so well known for the effort that he landed a job with ICE. In December, he will leave his job as sheriff to begin helping ICE coordinate more extensively with local law enforcement agencies across the country.

Other sheriffs want to follow his lead, and the N.C. Sheriff's Association says it will spend a $1.5 million grant from the state to help offices sign up for the ICE program in the next two years. Two full-time staffers will help sheriff's offices fill out paperwork and craft agreements with ICE, and grant money will pay the local agencies for the time their officers spend in ICE training.

Prison system, too

The state prison system is also joining the effort. Prison officials have begun reporting all foreign-born prisoners to ICE officers, who check their immigration status. The officers now make weekly visits to state prisons, said Mary Lu Rogers, who oversees the ICE program for the state Division of Prisons.

Rogers said the division struck a deal with ICE because "we had concerns that we might have been releasing inmates to the community who should be deported." ICE has started deportation proceedings on about 57 prisoners a month since the program started, up from an average of 46 a month before ICE made regular visits, she said.

Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who has traveled across the state meeting with sheriffs, said North Carolina is on the path to creating a national model in which every illegal immigrant who commits a crime is deported.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/immigration/story/740803.html