Stewart claims $3 million in an $850 million budget is not significant. Excuse me, wasn’t that the initial costs that the County identified as being attributable to illegal aliens? How could it be significant in one instance but insignificant in the other?
And what is it with Stirrup and this point of order?
Just finished watching the board meeting and there was some confusion about whether the ICE reimbursement budget item required a public hearing or not. Caddigan didn’t believe this was a hearing item but according to Craig Gerhart it exceeded a budgetary threshold and therefore it was required. Then on the tail of this confusion, Supervisor Jenkins commented about the lack of public participation in the process which he believes demonstrates a general lack of interest.
This money is a reimbursement from the federal government that goes back into the jail fund to support any additional expenses that they might have. This is not the total cost of the program 287(g). My question is what additional costs have we outlayed that are non-refundable? My presumption is that this would be better use of our tax money than restricting services.
Secondly, according to Pete there have been 860 detainers issued by ICE and 747 transfers with 154 currently doing time. Anybody else have questions about the math?
Additionally, it sounds as if they are still not at 100% for checking the status of foreign born inmates dispite being mandated to do so? Or is the proclaimation that they are checking 99% of the time just a CYA in case something goes wrong later on?
Also, Maureen asked long ago what this was going to cost and Corey bashed her over the head for asking. Is that on video somewhere? Today she commented that ‘we’ knew this was going to be expensive. I distinctly recall some Supervisors suggesting it would not be costly.
Lastly, what has been the true cost of this initiative, not the reimbursed portion but what is the County taxpayer responsible for?
Great article in the Washington Post concerning the new Virginia requirement and its comparison to Prince William.
Under the state law, local jails probably will spend a fraction of the $10.5 million Prince Willliam has budgeted over the next five years for the ICE partnership.
ICE cannot say how many illegal immigrants from a particular jurisdiction are being deported, only that it cannot remove as many as it would like because of budget limitations. So there are no statistics about what ultimately happens to the illegal immigrants who are reported to ICE — either by way of the new state law or through the federal program, which trains local officers to identify and detain undocumented suspects charged with crimes.
Three West Coast mayors are asking the leaders of other cities to take a stand against workplace immigration raids that they say hurt local economies and may force companies to relocate.
At the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors this week in Miami, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels will ask their colleagues to challenge how the government raids businesses in search of illegal workers.
They want Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to focus on businesses that exploit workers, such as those that violate wage and safety laws, not “responsible employers” that contribute to economies, their resolution says.
“We’ve never taken the position that you shouldn’t enforce the law,” Villaraigosa says. “What we’ve said is, in a time of limited resources, we should prioritize our enforcement. At a time when we don’t have the resources to go after criminals, we’re going after legitimate businesses and workers instead. That doesn’t make sense.”
The resolution will be discussed by a committee Saturday and, if approved, will go to all the mayors for a vote Monday.
According to the DC Examiner, Supervisors are reconsidering funding the part of the resolution due to its ever increasing costs. In the article, Principi states -
The illegal-immigration policy is an 800-pound gorilla that is following us around in everything we do. It’s time to put the gorilla back in the cage.
Meanwhile Corey believes its a ‘good gorilla’. Unbelievable. Since the Tuesday evening vote on Silver Lake, it’s becoming apparent the only true conservatives on the board are Nohe & May. Simply, there’s no money for this and the money that is being spent is a waste. We have heard Chief Deane say the majority of those arrested would have been arrested anyways. The costs are growing at every turn. We are now incurring an extra cost of $220,000 per month, per month (I reapeated that puposely for emphasis) on top of the ever skyrocketing costs. We simply can’t afford it. It is time - Put the gorilla back in the cage.
Non-enforcement coupled with sky-rocketing job creation and an ineffective and often contradictory immigration policy has in my opinion created our current situation. At this point, enforcement beyond the 287g program(ie the Resolution) appears to be a waste of money. What we will happen as Manassas City and surrounding jurisdictions take part in the 287g program is that there will be less available bed space . According to the article, ICE currently has 31,000 beds nationwide. Some may suggest simply adding more beds, but realize, even if ICE quadrupled the number of beds nationally to 124,000, that number would still be minuscule in comparison to the suspected number of undocumented individuals. If we now have the resolve to enforce the laws that have existed for close to a quarter century then that’s our prerogative. However, to do so retroactively, is not necessarily going to be worthwhile.
According to the Post, we have suffered a self-inflicted wound:
Folly in Prince William
By whacking illegal immigrants, the county wounds itself.LAST SUMMER, as Prince William County prepared its half-baked, ill-tempered and predictably unworkable crackdown on illegal immigrants, we called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with a straightforward question: If the county began detaining hundreds of illegal immigrants after routine traffic violations and other minor infractions, would ICE be able to retrieve and deport them promptly?
The answer was direct: not likely. The federal agency has a finite number of beds (31,000) for detainees nationwide, and those must accommodate a crushing caseload of would-be deportees: asylum seekers; fugitives awaiting removal; border crossers; ex-cons; those who have committed violent crimes; and others. The federal priority, ICE officials explained, is people who are threats to national security and public safety, not the undocumented landscapers, construction workers and restaurant dishwashers whose presence so irks some Prince William politicians.
How surprising, then, to see Prince William officials moaning this week that county jails are overflowing with illegal immigrant detainees whom ICE has not been able to pick up promptly. The superintendent of the county jails, Col. Peter A. Meletis, complained to The Post’s Nick Miroff that ICE told him “they lack bed space to put people in.” The result is a three-ring circus of utterly foreseeable but unfortunate consequences and costs that county officials had every opportunity to avoid but chose not to.
As a result of the stepped-up detentions, county jails that were already badly crowded are now bursting at the seams. In February, the county’s two main jails, whose capacity is 402 inmates, held an average of 664 a day; an additional 275 inmates were sent to facilities elsewhere in Virginia at a monthly cost to the county of some $220,000. To compound the irrationality, it is native-born inmates, often with roots in the community, who are being shipped to far corners of the state, while the immigrants are kept at Prince William’s jails, waiting up to four weeks for ICE to get around to retrieving them.
At a time of intense budgetary pressure in Prince William, the crackdown on illegal immigrants may force the county to spend some $3 million a year on transportation, processing and other expenses to deal with jail overcrowding. And that doesn’t include the millions of dollars in new costs that county police would incur to enforce the crackdown. That would be a painful financial wound for the county — and one that would be entirely self-inflicted.
According to the Washington Post, there was an immigration raid yesterday morning at a local concrete company with 34 people arrested. The article stated that workplace raids are rare but this one appears to be one of the largest performed in the last two years. In terms of satisfying our labor demands, there has been a discrepancy between the number of jobs that we have created and the number of immigrants admitted annually. If the labor force hadn’t come then businesses would have petitioned the government for more workers which is what we are actually witnessing now. Of course, the bureaucracy that accompanies it is the hindrance. And, unfortunately, it has the potential to further stagnate the economy. For proof of this, here are two other interesting articles about changing the system because of the lack of workers to fill positions:
1. Businesses Say New York’s Clout Is Emigrating, With Visa Policies to Blame
2. Major Grower Ends Crop, Lacking Workers
