Virginia wants help with deportations

Washington Times:

Federal immigration officials say they lack the resources to fulfill a proposed mandate by Virginia lawmakers to train staff at every state jail to start deportation procedures for illegal aliens.

"I cannot make that commitment to Virginia," said William F. Reid, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Washington field office.

Mr. Reid told members of the State Crime Commission's illegal-immigration task force at a meeting Tuesday in Richmond that the state's request would be evaluated against nationwide requests.

Twenty-two law-enforcement agencies nationwide have entered formal agreements with ICE to complete the training, authorized under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, agency spokesman Richard Rocha said.

More than 65 other agencies have requested 287(g) training, he said.

ICE requested $26.4 million for 287(g) training from Congress for its fiscal 2008 budget, which would fund the training of 250 state and local law-enforcement officers, 350 jail beds and enforcement-related technology.

On Thursday, the Senate passed its version of the homeland security spending bill for 2008, which includes an additional $5.4 million for the 287(g) program. The bill also allows money left over from $3 billion in emergency border- and interior-enforcement funding to go to the training program.

...
It is not clear from the story what the problem is in providing the training. It seems to me that they could probably provide a course in Washington that would be easy for people from Virginia to attend and supplement the training with a phone support for questions that arise in the process. How hard can this be?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains