Baca Backs Shift in Inmate Probes
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is seeking approval for a plan that would allow sheriff's deputies to interview foreign-born jail inmates to determine their immigration status.
Backers said the change would help identify more illegal immigrants who should be deported and generate millions of dollars in additional funding from the federal government, which reimburses local jails for holding undocumented residents.
Currently, two federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement interview foreign-born inmates before they are released from the Twin Towers Correctional Facility near downtown to determine whether their criminal convictions or immigration status warrant deportation. But because of the large number of foreign-born convicts in Los Angeles County, agents are able to screen just an estimated 12% of all immigrant inmates.
Last year, the agents interviewed 6,129 immigrants and began deportation proceedings for 4,646 of them.
Baca is asking the county Board of Supervisors to allow six deputies to conduct the interviews. He said the deputies could cover about half of the jail's population of immigrant inmates.
Immigration lawyers and advocates fear that the proposal could presage the wider use of deputies for immigration enforcement. Like the Los Angeles Police Department, the Sheriff's Department generally avoids enforcing immigration laws and limits its collaboration with federal officials. The agencies do so to create an atmosphere of trust among immigrants who might need to call on local authorities to report crimes.
Critics worry that the sheriff's collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement would send the wrong message to immigrant communities, making people here illegally less likely to cooperate with deputies in the field.
"In cases of domestic violence, for example," said Raquel Fonte, an immigration attorney with the nonprofit advocacy group Public Counsel, "they will find themselves trapped in abusive relationships and living in complete fear and not able to access services and protections that are available to them."
Supervisor Mike Antonovich, a proponent of the sheriff's plan, said he doubted that the effort would have such a chilling effect.
It's "a straw-man argument by those who want us to do nothing to enforce" immigration laws, he said.
Antonovich called the proposal a "win-win situation" that would ease the burden on county taxpayers and deport potentially dangerous criminals.
