Gov. Perry chastises Feds for releasing criminal aliens

Houston Chronicle:

Gov. Rick Perry and members of the state's congressional delegation called on the federal government Tuesday to take steps to help state and local officials ensure that illegal immigrants who commit crimes in Texas remain in custody until they are deported.

In a strongly worded letter to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, Perry said he was outraged to learn that many convicted illegal immigrants in Texas jails were released after they completed their jail sentences instead of being deported.

In a series of stories this week, the Houston Chronicle outlined gaps in the screening of inmates in local jails that allowed scores of violent criminals, including some ordered deported decades ago, to walk away from Harris County Jail despite the inmates' admission to Harris County jailers that they were in the country illegally.

"Texas has spent the last four years investing unprecedented amounts of state resources to secure our border with Mexico," Perry said in his letter to Chertoff. "To now learn that criminal aliens who have been jailed are being released back into our communities by federal authorities who have neglected to secure our border is infuriating and unconscionable."

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and U.S. Reps. John Culberson, R-Houston, Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, and Michael McCaul, R-Austin, called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement to improve screening in the nation's jails and better coordinate efforts to identify illegal immigrants convicted of crimes while they are incarcerated. Brady asked for a meeting of the Houston-area congressional delegation to help ICE determine what resources are needed to "close the terrible gaps in detaining and deporting" illegal immigrants convicted of crimes.

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This spring, ICE officials announced a plan to identify and deport the most serious offenders in the nation's prisons and jails, estimating it would cost roughly $930 million.

ICE officials said they have made improvements in recent months, including providing the Harris County Sheriff's Office and six other law enforcement agencies in the U.S. access to a database that allows jailers to automatically check defendants' immigration history.

The agency also trained nine Harris County jailers in August to help file paperwork to detain illegal immigrants through its 287 g program, which allows local law enforcement to help ICE screen inmates in the nation's 3,100 jails. ICE also removed a record 107,000 convicted criminals from the U.S. in the 2008 fiscal year, which ended in September, officials said.

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U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, said the system "is breaking down in several places." Poe said he sent a letter on Tuesday to Adrian Garcia, Harris County's sheriff-elect, requesting that he "ratchet up" participation in the 287 g program. He said when illegal immigrants post bond, ICE should file a detainer and pick them up for possible deportation.

"I don't think ICE is trying to solve the problem," he added. "But if they need more money, Congress should certainly be helping to bail out ICE instead of people like General Motors."

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In fairness to ICE, local officials have not always been as eager to work with the agency on deportation issues, but the politics has moved from when they perceived the Houston area as a sanctuary for illegals.

Poe, as usual, is astute in his observations. When he was a judge in Harris County, he was known for his tough innovative sentencing.

What the reaction to these stories demonstrate is that the immigration issue is still important to voters despite suggestions after the Nov. 4 election that it had lost its potency. I suspect that Texas officials will be keeping a watch on the Obama appointees to Homeland Security to see if they slack off in enforcement. It would not surprise me to see a return to a lack of serious enforcement of immigration laws under the Democrats.