Criminal Immigrants Strain Judicial System

State, Local Governments Forced to Foot The Costs

http://www.sgvtribune.com/Stories/0%2C1413%2C205~12220~2920917%2C00.html

Article Published: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - 8:00:38 PM PST
By Troy Anderson , Staff Writer

Despite the soaring cost of incarcerating criminal immigrants nationwide, the federal government has reduced its reimbursements to state and local governments, two new reports by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found.

California spent $635 million in 2003 to incarcerate criminal immigrants in state prisons, but received only $77 million in reimbursements from the federal government, the reports show. The Los Angeles County jail system spent $55 million housing undocumented immigrants in 2003, but received only $14 million in reimbursements.

"It's a tremendous burden for the taxpayers of Los Angeles County and we would put the figure more at about $80 million (a year),' Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said Tuesday. "It is a federal problem that is not funded federally. It is funded by the taxpayers of Los Angeles County.'

The issue has gained the attention of U.S. senators from California, Arizona and Texas, who are demanding that Washington chip in $6.4 billion to cover the costs of jailing undocumented criminals.

The GAO report estimated the U.S. Bureau of Prison's costs to incarcerate criminal immigrants and reimburse state and local governments rose from $950 million in 2001 to $1.2 billion in 2004, a 14 percent increase. But during that time, federal reimbursements for incarcerating criminal immigrants in state prisons and local jails dropped from $550 million to $280 million.

Those funds were paid to reimburse 700 local governments for incarcerating about 147,000 criminal immigrants nationwide, with five jail systems accounting for 30 percent of the criminal immigrants. These include jails in Los Angeles County, Orange County, Maricopa County, Ariz., New York City and Harris County, Texas.

About 65 percent of those inmates were from Mexico.

"It places a heavy burden on taxpayers to provide a cost-effective jail system,' county Supervisor Michael Antonovich said. "Los Angeles County has about 25 percent of its inmates who are illegal aliens. The federal government must assume the responsibility for providing those costs to keep them in jail and also to develop a system that will deport these individuals and ensure they don't come back into our country and once again commit crimes.

"The federal government has not done a good job in policing our borders or deporting criminal aliens and the local taxpayers have been victimized by this failure of the federal government.'

A second GAO study analyzing 55,322 undocumented immigrants incarcerated in the United States in 2003 found they averaged about eight arrests each.

Nearly half of the arrests were for drug or immigration offenses, but 15 percent were property-related crimes and 12 percent were for murder, robbery, assault and sex-related crimes. Nearly 60 percent of the arrests occurred in California.

-- Troy Anderson can be reached at (213) 974-8985, or by e-mail at troy.anderson@dailynews.com.