> It's finally happening - proof that a county really can scare
> illegal aliens away - and it's happening right here in Alamance
> County, North Carolina. Weeks before a new rent-a-jail is to even
> open as a proposed "deportation hub" run by the local sheriff's
> department on a contract basis for INS, illegals throughout the county
> are scared - and their very-efficient grapevine is fast getting word
> around: don't get arrested or stopped, for anything, in Alamance
> County.
> A variety of all-Spanish papers and radio stations around here
> catering to the large illegal-alien community in this and surrounding
> counties has been flooded with calls recently. Illegals here now
> panic every time they see a marked squad car near them - as they think
> it's part of some roundup of illegal aliens in this county.
> Will it scare them into going home to Mexico? Almost certainly
> not. But it likely will scare the illegals into leaving for
> neighboring very-liberal Orange County - a "college town" area whose
> police agencies all have said they won't touch illegal immigration,
> and whose residents are overpaid and generous to anyone they see as a
> "victim" of America.
> Credit for this must go to county commissioner Tim Sutton - who has
> pushed this project for many years - and sheriff Terry Johnson.
> From today's Greensboro News & Record, below:
> ================================================
> The phone started ringing Thursday morning at Que Pasa, the Hispanic
> radio station in Winston-Salem, and immigrant advocates in Greensboro
> meanwhile fielded a dozen or more calls echoing the same question:
> What's up in Alamance County?
> About 25 police officers from several surrounding jurisdictions had
> set up a staging point in Burlington. Was it a dragnet? A sweep? A
> license check for undocumented immigrants?
> Well, it was none of the above, but instead, routine certification in
> the use of radar guns. And though a false alarm, the incident
> demonstrated how wary many Latinos are becoming in Alamance County.
> The reason? On April 1, Alamance opens its new 240-bed jail, which
> will double the county's prisoner capacity to a total of 486 beds.
> More significant, perhaps, is a new 10-officer unit, giving the
> Alamance Sheriff's Department the cross-sworn authority of
> Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
> That means the department can initiate deportation proceedings against
> illegal immigrants and even put them on a plane at the airport on N.C.
> 62, a federal power local police agencies don't ordinarily possess.
> Together with the new jail space, some of it to be leased to federal
> authorities, the in-house ICE unit will make the centrally located
> county what Sheriff Terry Johnson calls a "deportation hub" for the
> region.
> For jail planners, this merely represents good fiscal sense, and for
> law enforcement, the sharing of fingerprint databases with overworked
> customs agents. But to Hispanic immigrants, who now make up about
> 15 percent of the county's 150,000 residents, it sends a different
> message : Go home.
> "This is planting fear in our community," said Burlington resident
> Jose Luis Arzola, a volunteer counselor for the Institute for Mexican
> Foreign Nationals. "Not a day goes by that I don't get a call, 'The
> police are here checking people,' or, 'The police are there checking
> people.'"
> Adolfo Briceno, who covers the region for Que Pasa, agreed: "This is
> all over the Hispanic community, but in Alamance, the level of
> awareness is a bit higher. The fact that you have a sheriff's
> department where, if you ever go into jail they might deport you -
> well, people are going to stay home. And that's bad for business."
> At the sheriff's department, information director Randy Jones argues
> that such fears are exaggerated. He emphasized that the 10-officer ICE
> unit will not be "rounding up" Hispanics or any other group, but that
> its authority will begin with people already in the jail in Graham.
> If a suspect is arrested on some other charge, the routine booking
> includes two questions that could raise a flag for the ICE unit: place
> of birth and country of citizenship. A non-U.S. citizen's fingerprints
> would then be entered into the ICE database, and within five minutes,
> the jailers would know whether the suspect had given authentic ID and
> whether he had been deported in the past.
> Said Alamance Lt. Robert Wilborn, a former vice officer who will lead
> the unit: "Before they hit our radar, they would have to have
> committed two crimes: One is being in the country illegally, two is
> whatever offense they've been picked up for. We're not going out
> targeting illegal aliens. We're only targeting criminal aliens."
> In Mecklenburg County, the first of three North Carolina counties
> where deputies received the ICE training, the program in its first 10
> months screened about 3,000 foreign nationals booked at the jail and
> started deportation proceedings against 1,530. Of those, information
> officer Julia Rush said, more than 100 had previously been deported
> and come back.
> Community advocates say they are all in favor of removing criminals.
> The fear, however, is that infractions that would be relatively minor
> for most people - failure to appear in court on a speeding ticket, for
> example, or neglecting to renew a driver's license - would be enough
> to start the machinery of deportation.
> And with the announcement Friday that Charlotte will be home to the
> state's first immigration court by late this year, those wheels could
> turn faster than ever before.
> "These people have homes here, they pay taxes," said Arzola, who used
> to run a money-transfer business but now prepares tax returns. "They
> came here for the opportunity to work. Now, they don't know who to
> trust. They're afraid of the system."
> Jones, before becoming the sheriff's information and grants director,
> was a veteran major with the Burlington police. He said he is well
> familiar with the fear many newly arrived immigrants have of police.
> He recalled a case in which an immigrant driver ran from the scene of
> a wreck that was not his fault - fearing that he would be arrested
> anyway. In a far more serious case, a family victimized in a home
> invasion in which a daughter was gang-raped declined to cooperate.
> They later moved away, Jones said.
> "We have never asked a rape victim or the victim of any crime what her
> citizenship status is. It's not relevant," Jones insisted. "But if, on
> the other hand, you've arrested someone like we did the other day,
> with six Social Security cards all in his name ... well, that probably
> is somebody to look at."
> One thing both sides agree on is that the deportation hub - giving
> Alamance's ICE unit the added authority of transporting deportees -
> could be big business, or, as the sheriff's spokesman puts it, "a
> steady revenue stream."
> Currently, the old jail charges an even $50 a bed per day to hold
> overflow prisoners from neighboring facilities, such as Guilford
> County's crowded detention center.
> But with the opening of the new jail and the leasing of added space to
> the federal government, the reimbursement will go up to an expected
> $90 and $100 per day for each prisoner.
> ================================================
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