OC GRAND JURY WANTS IMMIGRATION STATUS CHECKED!
(You'll be reading about this in the mainstream press tomorrow)
MAY 21, 2007--In a report issued today, the OC Grand Jury has given a nod of approval to Sheriff Mike Carona's plan to check the immigration status of everyone who is booked into the Sheriff's Department jails.
In addition, the Grand Jury is recommending that cities with their own jails either train their own officers to check on immigration status or contract with ICE to do this at their jails. Below are excerpts from the Grand Jury's report. To read the full report go here: http://www.ocgrandjury.org/pdfs/ice_report_final.pdf 2006-2007 ORANGE COUNTY
----------Excerpts of Grand Jury report start below(The CM PRESS has separated longer paragraphs for readability and has added emphases)-----------------------------------
GRAND JURY
ICE IN ORANGE COUNTY
SUMMARY
On October 17, 2006, the Orange County (OC) Board of Supervisors (BOS) approved the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Department (OCSD).
(snip)
In December, 2006, 14 OCSD deputies became working partners with the Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, a division of the DHS.
These deputies were given four weeks of ICE training and sworn-in by ICE officials to assume many of the duties of the larger federal agency. Following the training, the OCSD deputies received an additional two weeks of hands-on training at an ICE facility. The cost of training was paid by DHS; however, OCSD was required to pay the overtime cost for replacing the OCSD deputies during the training.
(snip)
OC cities with a population of over 100,000 residents are considered large cities. According to ICE management, of these large cities there is currently one full time ICE agent assigned to the Costa Mesa City Jail and one part time ICE agent assigned to the Anaheim City Jail. All OC Large City Jails have access to ICE agents via telephone, e-mail and a future video conferencing system. It is at the discretion of the city and police management as to how often and when ICE agents are contacted.
(snip)
Costa Mesa ICE Agent
The Costa Mesa City Jail has one full time federal ICE agent. As at OC IRC, people who are booked at this police facility are asked where they were born. If they say they were born outside of the U.S.A., or if it is determined that they were born outside of the U.S.A., their file is given to an ICE agent.
If an ICE agent is required and not personally available, he is reachable by phone. In December, 2006 and January, 2007, the Costa Mesa Police Department (CMPD) booked 870 individuals in the jail of whom 107 individuals were detained for immigration violations. Of these 107 individuals there were 44 felony, 57 misdemeanor, and 3 infraction charges.
Also, a person’s ICE status is noted in a police record available to the general public at the front desk of the CMPD station. Presently, a determination of a person’s immigration status is only performed by ICE agents. CMPD management is making a concentrated effort to ensure that citizens do not feel they are being detained by police to check their immigration status. CMPD management believes this working arrangement with ICE is effective for the city.
When asked about the OCSD plan of training deputies to act as ICE agents, CMPD management noted that freeing time for this training in Costa Mesa would not be feasible because of cost and unavailability of personnel.
--------------End of excerpts from Grand Jury report--------------------------------
Some activists contacted by the CM PRESS do not agree with the CMPD position shown in blue above and believe that not only should the CMPD have an ICE agent in our jail as we have now, but that the CMPD should probably have at least two of of our regular police officers cross-trained by ICE as added insurance that dangerous illegal alien felons will be removed from our streets and be deported.
# # #
Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
