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Section 287(g) Update
By Greg L | 16 May 2007 | Illegal Aliens, Manassas City, Prince William County | 2 Comments
This week officers from the Shenandoah County Sheriff’s Department, the Prince William County Regional Detention Center, and the Herndon Police Department started their training under the Section 287(g) Program. In five weeks, these law enforcement officers will be able to act as ICE agents and process for deportation any illegal aliens they encounter during the course of their normal duties who have committed any number of specified crimes, as defined in their department’s agreements with the Department of Homeland Security. By early summer, according to Manassas Police Chief Skinner, we should be seeing some results. They cannot come too quickly.
What can we expect to see happen? CNS News has an article today that talks a little about what this program has done in other jurisdictions. The results so far look rather promising:
Since Mecklenburg [County, North Carolina] started the program, 3,490 foreign-born individuals have been checked against the federal identification system, according to county records. Of these, 1,898 have been moved to removal proceedings…
Rush said the removal process is initiated in the jail system, although the actual deportation phase falls under ICE, which “buses out” anywhere from 40 to 130 people each week from the country to federal holding facilities.
In Arizona, the removal of criminal aliens into federal custody has been streamlined to the point where the state has saved $10.2 million in incarceration costs since 2005, Katie Decker, a spokeswoman with the state’s department of corrections, said in an interview.
Before the program was initiated, ICE agents would sometimes take up to three months to determine whether a criminal should be taken into federal custody for immigration violations, she said. Now, the prison system’s intake facilities have a separate section exclusively devoted to ICE operations, expediting the process considerably…
“It’s ironic — if we could just put the criminal aliens into the federal system where they belong, we would no longer have such an issue with funding,” she said.
The City of Manassas is currently negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding with ICE which should be completed within the next sixty days. The Prince William County Police Department is not pursuing an MOU, and the Board of Supervisors has only directed that the Adult Detention Center participate in the program. Perhaps with some experience from the ADC, the county police department will be more eager to take advantage of this program. I expect that if we see these kinds of results, they will.
Manassas Park refuses to discuss the program. That might have to change, soon.
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This seems to be a potentially important political/law enforcement related issue that has the ability to directly affect the lives, safety and quality of life of many of the residents (voters) in Prince William County (as well as those in the smaller ’sub’ jurisdictions: Manassas, Manassas Park, Haymarket, etc.)
This is clearly a hot-button politically influenced law and order issue. Prince William County has an elected Sheriff, who has influence and/or sway over the entire county and all the smaller law enforcement entities within the County.
The current Sheriff he has been in office for nearly four years, he is in a position such that he could have weighed in with considerable (perhaps unmatched) strength on this issue… BUT from all I can tell he has chosen to not get involved.
The Sheriff is elected to represent those that voted for him. He and he alone in that elected political office can stand up to the other elected political leaders and lend a voice of reason — the voice of those that elected him — to this important debate. Why has the current Sheriff apparently chosen not to lead boldly on this issue?
This is one very good reason why voters should demand change from the old ‘politics as usual’ approach. There is a County wide Republican Primary coming up on June 12th and this incumbent Sheriff has asked voters for re-election so he can serve as the Republican ‘flag bearer’ without having taken a leadership position on this issue. All politicians will be watching the results — lets send our political leaders a clear message if they don’t represent what the voters want on this issue then don’t expect conservatives to support you in the Republican Primary!
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