House Supports More INS Agents at Jails

An innovative program that stationed INS agents in the Ventura County Jail for the past year will be expanded to jails across the nation, under a congressional vote Tuesday.

Passing 410 to 2, with overwhelming bipartisan support in the House, the bill would place INS agents in at least 10 jails around the country next year, based on the success of a pilot program in Ventura County and Anaheim jails that found more than 2,600 illegal immigrants accused of crimes during the last year.

The new program aims to have agents in 100 local jails by the year 2002 and would cost about $84 million over four years, officials said. It is part of the federal government’s ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration, particularly the deportation of convicted criminals.

Under the pilot program, some illegal immigrants are deported upon their arrest, while others are monitored as their cases proceed through the courts. Those convicted of serious crimes serve their sentences before being deported.

However, similar legislation has not yet been introduced in the Senate, so the proposed expansion of the program may not be finalized until early next year.

Proponents, led by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) and several other California conservatives, said that in many cases, identifying suspects as illegal immigrants before they are arraigned and then deporting them has the triple benefit of ousting illegal immigrants, removing criminals from local communities and saving taxpayers the cost of incarceration.

“It does not surprise me that those who would not respect our immigration laws will disregard the civil and criminal laws of our country as well,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) said during the House debate.

*

On the floor, Gallegly told of the 1996 slaying of Isabela Guzman, the owner of La Playita restaurant in Santa Paula, by an illegal immigrant who had been arrested three times before. He argued that the woman would still be alive had there been an INS agent in the Ventura County Jail to snare the man during his previous arrests.

“How do you oppose deporting people who are committing crimes, from burglary to rape and robbery and murder?” he asked in an interview. “If there was ever a no-brainer, this one’s got to be it.”

Launched after the 1995 shooting of a police officer by an illegal immigrant, the program led to INS agents in Ventura County identifying 847 illegal immigrants booked on charges ranging from shoplifting to murder over a period of 11 months--about 10% of those arrested and brought to the local jail.

In Anaheim, the program netted about 1,800 undocumented immigrants--18% of all suspects arrested by the city’s police department--between Jan. 1 and Oct. 1 of this year, authorities said. Illegal immigrants were suspects in 62% of Anaheim’s hit-and-run traffic violations, 53% of its rapes, 32% of sexual abuse crimes and 22% of the city’s murders, the authorities said.

*

During previous study periods of the program, illegal immigrants were as much as 24% and 35% of those arrested at the Anaheim jail.

A separate Immigration and Naturalization Service program in which those convicted of crimes are identified while in county jails and deported once their sentences are complete helped oust more than 50,000 criminal immigrants over the past year, according to INS statistics released last week.

But supporters of the Gallegly legislation said it is crucial because it is the only way that officials can target illegal immigrants for possible deportation when they are first arrested.

The bill could place agents in up to 25 counties that want them next year, then add 25 more each subsequent year until 2002. One-fifth of the counties must be in non-border states.

INS spokesman Russ Bergeron said his agency supports the program as long as Congress provides funding for the additional agents.

Elliott Zaret of States News Service contributed to this story.