Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to Check Immigration Status of Convicts
Monday, February 7, 2005 at 06:29AM
TheSpook
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.
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
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