Keep Bailing

A new policy, set to start on June 1, will no longer require the San Francisco County Jail to detain illegal immigrants who have been arrested for petty crimes (i.e. shoplifting, disorderly conduct, drunk in public) until U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials come to take custody of them.

San Francisco will be the first county in California to implement this type of policy.

No laws are being broken with this policy as there are no requirements for local jails to hold illegal immigrants. Rather, it will be reinforcing San Francisco’s sanctuary ordinance, which does not allow local officials to assist ICE unless Read more »

In addition to the regular jail booking process, Anyone who is arrested in the state of California can now be scanned throughout the fedeal system of immigration status information by authorities, according to reports. On Friday, ICE, an acronym for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement revealed that the six remaining counties had now been added to the Secure Communities program this past week.

ICE also revealed that since May 2009, they have taken approximately 48,000 convicted illegal alien criminals into custody as a result of the identification process resulting from the program. Furthermore, of that 48,000 arrestees – 23,712 of the defendants have been deported from the United States. Apparently, more than 10,000 undocumented immigrants have been deported just from the Secure Communities Program alone.

Not only is the program being instilled across the state of California, but National Security is also implementing the program. Homeland Security records Read more »

As of this Tuesday, all inmates who are now booked into Orange County jails will have their immigration status checked via fingerprint identification. Prior to this, the inmates were screened by specially trained deputies upon arrival and those who were found to be foreign born had their immigration status checked even further.

Orange County jail officials will join 11 other California county jails such as Los Angeles, San Diego and Ventura which have already implemented procedures for checking the identification of inmates using a federal database to identify immigrants who land in their jails.

A national database, which Read more »

Makes For Longer Jail Time…

To halt the potential spread of Swine Flu at an Otay Mesa Jail in San Diego, immigrant inmates are being quarantined. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials report that while these inmates wait for their day in court, two more cases of the Swine Flu were confirmed.  Those two cases have since recovered and have been returned to the general population.

The quarantine is for observation. Those scheduled for an upcoming court hearing have to wait. “Detainees under quarantine are removed from the active calendar,” states Elaine Komis, spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

This subject sparks heated discussion Read more »