By Susan Carroll
By The Houston Chronicle (Texas)
HOUSTON , Texas — Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia said he plans to continue a controversial federal program that allows jailers with specialized training to assist federal immigration agents in screening inmates at local jails.
Before taking office this month, Garcia said he planned to evaluate the department’s participation in the 287 (g) program embraced by his predecessor, former Sheriff Tommy Thomas. Thomas sent nine deputies to a federal law enforcement academy in South Carolina in August for specialized immigration training that allows them to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents identify and detain suspected illegal immigrants in the county’s jails.
The decision to keep 287 (g) marks one of the first significant moves by the new sheriff. Garcia said he met with ICE officials in Houston and ultimately determined that the program “does have a purpose in a contained environment.”
“My concern was whether we were screening all people who come into the jail or just those people who look like foreigners,” he said.
Garcia said he was reassured by ICE officials in Houston that since October all inmates have been screened through an automated fingerprint database that checks their immigration history.
Garcia said he plans to continue participation in federal task forces that combat organized crime, such as human trafficking and gang activity, but has limits to how involved his pool of deputies become in immigration enforcement .
“I have not authorized programs, nor will we look to implement any programs like they do in other places where, during a traffic stop, you can start asking people for their documentation,” Garcia said.
Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia, who voiced opposition to the program in October, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. She said last year that she believed it was inappropriate for local detention officers to spend time doing the federal government’s job, while local jails struggle with overcrowding and other problems .
Since the nine sheriff’s deputies were trained in August, one has left the department, Garcia said. The sheriff said he would like to have an additional deputy trained as a replacement but has no immediate plans to expand the office’s participation in the program beyond the original commitment of nine jailers.
A Houston Chronicle investigation published in November documented gaps in immigration screening in the local jails that allowed scores of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes to avoid deportation. The newspaper examined arrest and immigration records for 3,500 inmates who told Harris County jailers that they were in the country illegally during a span of eight months starting in June 2007, the earliest immigration records available.
In 177 cases reviewed by the newspaper, inmates who were released from jail after admitting to being in the country illegally later were charged with additional crimes .
Ken Landgrebe, ICE’s field office director for Detention and Removal Operations in Houston, said ICE agents and sheriff’s officials “have improved information-sharing” in Harris County’s jails during the past few months.
The Houston ICE office set a record by removing 8,226 illegal immigrants with criminal records from southeast Texas last fiscal year, an increase of about 7.5 percent from fiscal 2007. During the same time, ICE removed 107,000 convicted criminals nationally.
Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle