Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to Check Immigration Status of Convicts

Over protests from immigrant rights groups, Los Angeles County sheriff's personnel will be trained by federal authorities to conduct jailhouse interviews to report on convicted inmates' immigration status. The Los Angeles Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 last week to approve the proposal, which Sheriff Leroy Baca had been attempting for several weeks to put on the Supervisor’s agenda.  The new policy, being implemented on a six-month trial basis, allows county employees to be trained and cleared for access to the Deportable Alien Control System (DACS), a federal database. The policy will also allow county employees “to perform standard interviews of self-declared foreign-born inmates to determine whether an inmate is a convicted criminal alien or a previously deported criminal alien to be remanded to federal custody at the completion of their county sentence.” Federal officials are currently allowed inside county jails to perform such interviews. Only two officials represent the entire county system, however, limiting how many interviews they can do. The agreement approved this week would free up six sheriff's personnel for that work.