Community News: Gwinnett to join feds on deportation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mary Lou Pickel
2008-12-02

For about eight months, Gwinnett County has been waiting for the federal government to forge a partnership to deport illegal immigrants from the county jail.

Sheriff Butch Conway applied in March to join a program with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But even if ICE were to approve the program before the end of the year, Gwinnett would not be able to train its deputies in immigration procedures until March at the earliest, said Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Stacey Bourbonnais. That’s when a training session for the program is available.

Such partnerships with ICE have become increasingly popular in the past two years, and now 63 law enforcement agencies nationwide have them.

The training prepares deputies to screen foreign-born inmates, determine who is in the country illegally and start deportation paperwork. Cobb County currently runs such a program and this year has transferred 2,746 inmates to federal agents for deportation. Cobb County has one ICE agent assigned to its jail to oversee the work of nine sheriff’s deputies, a Cobb County sheriff’s spokesman said.

The Gwinnett jail is expected to book a total of 13,081 foreign-born inmates in 2008, according to Bourbonnais. If Gwinnett joins the program, its number of deportations could be 4,000 to 6,000 a year —- double that of Cobb County.

The wait time for ICE to approve a program varies, although a year is not uncommon, said Jessica Vaughan, a senior policy analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors controls on immigration. “It’s very frustrating for those jurisdictions that have applied,” she said.

It takes time to determine where to initiate such local agreements, said Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for ICE.

“We have to determine if the resources are enough to create a sustainable program,” she said.

Those resources include ICE personnel, facilities and bed space, she said.

At present, one ICE agent works in the Gwinnett jail, checking the inmate population for illegal immigrants, Bourbonnais said.

ICE will need additional federal agents in order to start the program there, Conway said in a letter. The sheriff will devote 18 of his deputies to the program. Once the program is under way, ICE agents will train the deputies and continue to work with them to ensure the program’s success.

ICE’s manpower already is strained, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at the New York University School of Law. The institute is a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington.

In addition to their many duties, ICE agents recently have been asked to focus on finding illegal immigrants that were processed for deportation and failed to leave —- known as fugitive aliens —- he said. Also, agents have been used for a number of high-profile workplace raids.

“There’s a competing demand for scarce law enforcement officers,” Chishti said.

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