BooneCountyGirl
skyler the weird
Rick Barton
Joe
Wiley Coyote
Meck Sheriff’s Immigration Enforcement Program On The Chopping Block
A decision by the Obama Administration to eliminate funding for programs that train and authorize local law enforcement officers to act as immigration agents could jeopardize the status of the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office 287(g) program.
Under the program, which Mecklenburg has had in place since 2006, the federal Immigration Customs Enforcement agency provides local law officers with the training and authorization to identify, process and detain illegal immigrant offenders who are encountered during regular law-enforcement activity. If inmates are illegal immigrants, after they have served time for the local offense they committed, they are turned over to ICE for deportation.
“We’re not out looking for anybody, but if you commit a crime in Mecklenburg County we’re going to know who you are when you come into our jail,” said Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Julia Rush
How much longer the Sheriff’s Office will have that ability, however, is uncertain. As part of the Obama Administration’s proposed budget, the Department of Homeland Security won’t authorize new contracts with local law enforcement agencies to cover 287(g) officers and will begin terminating existing contracts set to expire. Mecklenburg’s contract, Rush said, is up for renewal in October.
While the Sheriff’s Office hasn’t received confirmation that its program would be shuttered, officials are aware of the DHS budget plan and are preparing for the possibility of a 287(g) shutdown.
Losing the immigration enforcement program, Rush said, “would be a detriment to the community.”
Since the program’s launch in 2006, the Sheriff’s Office has used it to identify 18,572 individuals not born in the US or in the country illegally. Of that number, 11,494 were placed in removal proceedings. Nationwide 287(g) programs have helped local law enforcement authorities identify nearly 300,000 undocumented immigrants in their custody.
Mecklenburg Commissioners Vice Chairman Jim Pendergraph was sheriff when the county implemented its 287(g) program, one of the first of its kind in the nation and which grew to be a model for others implemented across the country.
“Everyone is concerned and rightfully so,” Pendergraph said of the looming shutdown of the program. “This has been a highly successful and effective initiative since its implementation, but the Obama Administration doesn’t like any kind of effective immigration enforcement.”
Pendergraph, who is running for the 9th Congressional District seat being vacated by Republican Sue Myrick, spent a stint with ICE in 2007 as the agency’s executive director of state and local operations, where he helped grow the 287(g) program to include 80 sheriff’s offices across the country. The program, he says, became a victim of its own success.
“Democrats and liberals didn’t like the results the program was producing and wanted to gut its funding,” Pendergraph said. He balked at that strategy and left his federal post after a year at the helm.
“The money was available to continue funding at appropriate levels, and to tell local law enforcement otherwise was plain wrong,” Pendergraph said. “I wasn’t willing to go along with that.”
The DHS budget proposal claims to save $17 million by eliminating 287(g) programs, part of a push to phase out the initiative in favor of a nationwide expansion of the Secure Communities program, which administration officials say is more cost efficient but critics contend isn’t nearly as operationally effective.
Secure Communities can be used to identify illegal immigrants, but it only flags fingerprint matches for those who are already in the federal immigration database or who have had previous contact with ICE. Follow-up work on those cases is handled by ICE agents, not local law enforcement. Critics of the program contend scores of illegal immigrants could continue to game the system if local law enforcement authorities are required to rely solely on the Secure Communities database and aren’t permitted to ask questions and perform interviews allowed under the 287(g) program.
The Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office currently has a Secure Communities program, but Rush said it doesn’t get a lot of use.
“The 287(g) program gives us a much better picture of who is entering our jail than the Secure Communities program,” Rush said.
Congressional committees are currently ramping up the process of holding hearings on the Obama Administration’s budget proposal, and over the next few months will decide which portions and programs – including 287(g) – to adopt or reject through the passage of appropriations bills.
“We’re keeping an eye on the process,” Rush said, “and making preparations to deal with whatever outcome it produces.”
We need your help! If you like PunditHouse, please consider donating to us. Even $5 a month can make a difference!
Short URL: http://pundithouse.com/?p=8882
All I have to say about this mess is one thing.
If you are in a car accident involving a illegal you had better get what you want before they leave because once they drive off you will get no justice or money.
The police will do nothing on your behalf and neither will the court system.
Obama is a depraved liberal who does not give one damn about any working…. taxpaying…. law abiding citizen.
However if you will not work , are a burden to society or a leach you can do no wrong.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
28 
4
Simple, yet complicated, solution; when a person is arrested, who is believed to be in the country by illegal means, the deputy will notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and have a ICE agent respond to the jail. By law, the sheriff can detain the individual pending the ICE invetsigation. If the person is declared illegal, then the ICE agent can complete the proper paperwork and place a detainer on this person. In short, what the Sheriff was paying his folks to do, will now be done by an ICE agent, who are available 24 hours a day. In the end, the ICE organization will now face an increased work load, but then again it is what they are paid to do.
Like or Dislike:
2 
1
I’m guessing this would be the same federal government that has sued states for trying to enforce immigration laws that the feds won’t? mmm‘k
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
14 
0
Having worked in law enforcment for two decades I can tell you, without a doubt, that is not the way it works. The only chance of getting immigration to come put a detainer on a known illegal alien is if he is convicted of a SERIOUS crime….not just simply charged with a crime….the feds are spread way to thin to come deal with every illegal that is placed in jail.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
8 
1
We’ll deport hard working Coyotes and Beavers though.
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
i should be illegal to not enforce all laws. wait a minute…maybe it is?
Like or Dislike:
4 
0
(ICE) and $3.00 will get you two McDoubles and a Large Sweet Tea at McDonalds. That is ALL it will get you as long as we have a White House, Congress and justice system that gives them higher priority that it’s own citizens.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
7 
0
Obama the sheyster
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
6 
0
Obama is not the only sheyster (sp). Political opportunists are also sheysters (sp). I know one who was a Democrat for a long time, then saw opportunity to run for BOCC as a Republican, and is once again taking advantage of political opportunity to run for Congress. Oh wait, but he’s a “good guy” and he’s a “republican” so that must make it ok right?
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
6 
1
what is to stop him for turning democrat if he got back to washington? Not trustworhty, former democrat, surely we can do better.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
You mean “better” as in Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond…
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
good point Joe- Reagan, Helms and Thromond left the democrat party in the 60s or before. JP was AWOL in his elected job, and for all he cared left the county in the hands of Nick Mackey, his fellow democrat. Did JP campaign for democrat Chip Bailey in the 2010 election?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
What do these comments have to do with the subject of the article? Your posts belong on the Observer website not on Pundit house.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Rick- Jim, is that you? LOL I was simply replying to the post Sham made last night.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Help fight against illegal immigration. Join NC Listen today! http://www.nclisten.com
Sign up on our mailing list.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
Those wishing to cut funding or become more wildly PC need to go to Snopes.com and search for Sheriff Grady Judd for a good reason not to cut this program. It screams for better enforcement….as do the people. Too many people with less on their minds than a job and a decent life coming here are committing felonies on folk who do search for a job and a decent life.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
sctt5 is right. Having worked in Charlotte as an ICE agent, only way we’d respond with a detainer is if the alien was charged with a felony or if he had prior removals. Misdemeanors…forget it. Way too may felons out there. ICE, when I was there, only had about 30 agents to cover the middle and western part of NC. We also worked all kinds of other crimes, so we only dealt with felons. Sorry state, but just the way it was. We removed plenty of illegals, but problem is there are too many in the state. Mexicans knew to come to NC for years for DLs, benefits, etc. It was one of the top 3-5 states. Had a flyer in Spanish on my desk that was taken off an illegal. Said to go to NC for an easy DL. I miss NC and my fellow agents but not ICE. Agency was and is a train wreck.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
8 
0
[...] you becomes difficult. That apparently is the goal of the Obama administration, which is seeking to defund 287g, despite the success of the program (18,572 illegal immigrants have been identified since 2006, [...]
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
[...] you becomes difficult. That apparently is the goal of the Obama administration, which is seeking to defund 287g, despite the success of the program (18,572 illegal immigrants have been identified since 2006, [...]
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
free emoticons…
Emoticons are becoming a cultural icon of their own kind. With this fun, and often corky graphics recipients possess the ability to comprehend the sender’s mental states thoroughly via chat and instant messenger services literally at any given time. Th…
Like or Dislike:
0 
0