Texas spent more than $156.6 million holding over 131,000 undocumented immigrants in local jails for federal authorities for the past two years.
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This post originally appeared at ThinkProgress
By Aviva Shen
Texas jails spent more than $156.6 million holding undocumented immigrants for federal authorities for the past two years, the Texas Tribune reported Tuesday. The exorbitant amount went to housing more than 131,000 immigrants without legal status who are kept in county jails while awaiting deportation proceedings.
Republican legislation passed in 2011 requires counties to report each month how many undocumented immigrants they are holding and at what cost. The goal was to show the burden the federal immigration system places on local communities and pressure immigration officials to take on the cost.
Through the federal program Secure Communities, county jails are frequently asked to hold people with minor criminal histories for federal immigration proceedings, legally for a maximum of 48 hours. Texas eagerly embraced the program in 2008 and expanded its reach even as other states opted out due to racial profiling concerns.
In California, another immigrant-heavy state, the cost of jailing an individual on immigration charges for two days is about $114 per person, which adds up quickly to an estimated $65 million a year. Often, law enforcement keep immigrants locked up for much longer than the maximum 48 hours, further escalating costs. In Los Angeles County, where immigrants were reportedly detained for several weeks longer than the legal limit, taxpayers spent over $26 million per year on these holds.
Collaborating with federal immigration authorities has non-financial costs for local law enforcement as well, as immigrant communities become much more reluctant to report crimes or cooperate with ongoing criminal investigations.
Santa Clara County refused to honor immigration holds unless the federal government footed the bill for bed space and staff time in these jails. This funding never came, but California recently addressed the problem by banning local law enforcement throughout the state from detaining immigrants without serious criminal records on behalf of federal authorities.
Though Secure Communities is intended to catch dangerous immigrants with violent criminal records, nearly 40 percent of “criminal” deportees picked up in local jails were charged with the lowest level crimes like traffic violations. Traffic offenses and small amounts of marijuana possession are more likely to get an undocumented immigrant detained than violent crimes.
Photo: AP/File
I can pretty much guarantee that these states spend just as much or more on men who have fallen behind on their child support. Most are not criminals and most are men who are simply struggling financially. Courts don’t give a hoot, throw them in jail.
In so far as illegal immigrants, My mom-in-law was a “legal” immigrant and she came to this country legally and worked her as off. KInda sad she did it the right way and got the same benefits then the ones who don’t do it legally. Doesn’t seem fair does it?
That’s not money thrown down the drain, though. There are people out there making some good money off the prison system. The people making money from incarceration are very good donors to the politicians supporting these policies. Whatever’s going on isn’t just xenophobia. It’s also about cold, hard cash.
Just curious about a practical, on-the-ground issue: How do officials actually know someone is an immigrant? How do we know that all those people are in fact immigrants? We just take the INS’ word for it? That seems horribly imprecise to me. Think about it. If a person has no ID papers, that doesn’t make that person an illegal immigrant. I’d hate to be rounded up and put in jail because I left my wallet at home one day and I “sounded Canadian.” Seems like this is guilty until proven innocent. A Spanish-speaking person without papers is not automatically an… Read more »
But they’ve broken the law. You like law don’t’cha?
What laws do you enforce and what laws don’t you enforce? When should you consider the financial cost? If one of these individuals had been released and committed a murder or rape, what would people be saying?