By Jason McFarley, Truth Staff
jmcfarley@etruth.com
Moving illegal immigrants through Elkhart County's criminal justice system comes with a price that is difficult to tally, but law enforcement officials say it is the cost of doing business.
Calculating how much local governments here pay to prosecute, jail and rehabilitate undocumented immigrants who break the law is difficult for two main reasons.
First, local authorities view immigration law as a federal issue and do not inquire about offenders' legal residency status.
Second, long-clogged court dockets and a slew of outstanding warrants against U.S.-born criminals provide an endless stream of work for the justice system. So police agencies, prosecutors and corrections officers would still have their hands full -- even without the untold number of cases involving illegal residents.
Elkhart County Prosecutor Curtis Hill said he would rather see local authorities punish offenders for crimes they commit here rather than saving money by transferring to federal custody those individuals who are eventually determined to be undocumented immigrants.
"If someone commits a crime in Elkhart County, we will seek justice in Elkhart County," Hill said.
Allowing federal officials to deport the offenders does not satisfy the call for justice on the local level, Hill said, and "doesn't mean the person won't be back in town before nightfall."
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have said they deported about 95,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records last year.
They estimate that between 300,000 and 450,000 illegal immigrants are detained annually at federal, state and local corrections facilities.
Inmates booked into Elkhart County Jail are asked to provide their country of birth but nothing further that would help determine their legal residency status, said Trevor Wendzonka, spokesman for the county Sheriff's Department.
Under an arrangement in which the local government provides ICE with a list of the foreign-born inmates, immigration authorities have taken custody of about 15 people after they have served a sentence or posted bond, Wendzonka said. As of Friday, ICE had holds placed on about 40 inmates in the jail.
"It doesn't mean they are illegal, it doesn't mean they will be deported," Wendzonka said. "It just means that ICE wants to interview them."
Even if each of the detainees handed over to ICE is an illegal immigrant, it would not mean that the county would save money by not having to house, feed, supervise and transport that corresponding number of inmates. Rather, Wendzonka said, the county would fill the empty beds at the jail with people wanted on arrest warrants.
As of last November, there were some 11,000 outstanding warrants. The jail holds about 900 people.
"It's reasonable to think that if there weren't people with holds placed on them, there'd be other people taking their place" in jail, Wendzonka said. "Everything that costs us money as taxpayers, we would still be paying. But it's impossible to quantify the effect of illegal immigration because we don't enforce immigration law."
In recent years, the federal government has budgeted about $400 million annually for a grant program that reimburses local governments for expenses such as correctional officers' salaries and other costs associated with incarcerating illegal immigrants.
Under a previous law enforcement administration, Elkhart County received grants totaling nearly $90,000 at the beginning of the decade. The county has not applied for the grants in the past four years, as the program's guidelines and documenting procedures have changed.
The program, administered by the Justice Department, requires applicants to detail the costs they incurred for imprisoning illegal immigrants with at least one felony or two misdemeanor convictions for violating state or local laws.
Hill, the county prosecutor, pointed out that there are obvious costs the criminal justice system has taken on in response to number of Hispanic newcomers -- legal and otherwise -- who have arrived in Elkhart County.
One such expense has come from hiring translators and bilingual staff, particularly for the courts.
Language barriers, even when translators are involved, have the secondary effect of slowing down court proceedings.
"That's just that much more time it takes to prosecute a case," Hill said. "It increases the amount of time per case and decreases the amount of cases that move through the court."