From the Washington Post, via Vivirlatino.
The Obama administration is expanding a program initiated by President George W. Bush aimed at checking the immigration status of virtually every person booked into local jails. In four years, the measure could result in a tenfold increase in illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and identified for deportation, current and former U.S. officials said.
This is bad news. The Travis County Sheriff’s office joined this program here in Austin not long ago. The vast majority of immigrants caught by ICE here had been charged with misdemeanors. The Post implies that only immigrants convicted of crimes will be deported by this program, but some individuals here have been deported simply because they were arrested and then discovered by ICE agents, two of whom I saw freely walking around at the local jail last year.
I’m printing below the original version of an op-ed piece I wrote for the Daily Texan last summer, entitled “ICE does not belong in Austin’s jail.”
The Travis County Jail looks like an office building. Its clean white walls, dotted with windows, rise five stories high next to a courthouse in Austin’s downtown. Many students know it as the place they might end up if they drink too much during a night out on Sixth Street.
For Austin’s immigrant community, particularly those who are undocumented, the prospect of landing in the jail recently became far more frightening. (more…)
