Inmate Screening to Focus on Legal Status

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to crack down on illegal immigrants by allowing sheriff’s deputies to screen jail inmates to determine their immigration status, a policy already in place in two neighboring counties.

Under the new program, specially trained deputies will identify illegal immigrants when they are booked in county jail and release them to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation when their sentences are complete.

Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties have similar measures in place, as do authorities in Arizona, Alabama, Florida and North Carolina.

“I think that’ll send a deterrent effect to all the community in Riverside,” said board Chairman Bob Buster on Tuesday. “Public safety in the county, I think, will be enhanced. People will think twice about committing these offenses.”

The policy will initially be put into effect at Robert Presley Detention Center in downtown Riverside.

Between 12% and 25% of the county’s 3,300 inmates are illegal immigrants, said Riverside County Undersheriff Neil Lingle. An estimated 215,000 undocumented people live in Riverside and San Bernardino counties -- home to more than 3.8 million people -- according to Jeff Passell, a demographer with the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C.

“Either we do it or it doesn’t get done,” Lingle said of the county assuming federal immigration enforcement responsibility.

Federal immigration officials will instruct 10 Riverside County deputies for four weeks in May in immigration law, civil rights and intercultural relations. County jail officials will have access to federal immigration status databases and will flag undocumented inmates during booking. After their sentences, they will be transferred to federal custody for deportation.

All inmates booked into jail will be screened. The Sheriff’s Department will focus on handing over felons for deportation, Lingle said.

Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle asked the board for $465,000 next fiscal year for seven new correctional deputies plus computer equipment to implement the program; less than $10,000 in federal funds will cover training, according to a federal immigration official.

San Bernardino County launched its program in January and has nine immigration screeners at West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, said Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Cindy Beavers.

Los Angeles County’s nearly 3-month-old program has eight officials interviewing convicted inmates, said Lt. Margarito Robles of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The screeners have conducted 1,551 interviews and placed 849 immigration holds since Jan. 30, roughly double the number of consultations performed by federal agents last year, Robles said.

The Riverside County department hopes to start screening this summer, Lingle said.

The tougher stance on undocumented inmates comes amid widespread demonstrations and controversy over stricter proposed immigration laws.

Fontana resident Esther Portillo, 28, complained to board members that the new Riverside County program was “violating civil rights.”

“Until there’s fair immigration reform, those type of actions should be held off from being approved,” Portillo said.

The practice will “have a huge chilling effect” on immigrants reporting crime to law enforcement, said Linton Joaquin, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles.