ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : INS’ Prime Duty Is at Border

A bill making its way through Congress would permanently station Immigration and Naturalization Service agents at the Anaheim City Jail. That’s not a bad idea, but Congress and the INS should be sure it would be cost-effective before it becomes law.

Last year the INS assigned two agents to the jail during a two-month pilot program. City officials were so enthusiastic about the results that they successfully pressured the agency to resume the program afterward. Now one agent is assigned to the jail, spending about two or three hours a day interviewing inmates there.

The Anaheim police and city officials have emphasized different aspects of the statistics than has the INS. Anaheim has pointed out that about 1,800 people arrested this year were undocumented immigrants. That’s about 18% of the arrest total in the city.

The INS says most of those arrested have been charged with relatively minor crimes. It says that undocumented suspects accused of major crimes wind up being sent to Orange County Jail, where INS agents are stationed around-the-clock to determine who may be in the country illegally or, though a legal resident, be liable for deportation because of a past felony conviction.

Anaheim officials argue that undocumented immigrants not sent to the county jail may not be deported if no one knows their immigration status and if they are freed after a Municipal Court appearance. The city is right to insist that those in the country illegally be deported. But the INS is understandably hard-pressed to justify the expenditure for putting agents full-time at city jails. Nor would it do much good to spend money on agents at jails to start deportation proceedings against people convicted of crimes like shoplifting or trespassing, only to see those same people come back across a border because there were too few agents to stop them.

The results of the Anaheim experiment are promising. If resources were available, it would be desirable to make the program permanent. However, if Congress has to choose where to spend, its funding priority must be INS border enforcement.