News-Record.com

"Is the state telling us that someone can be charged with a crime...convicted without the state determining whether that person might be an illegal immigrant?"

No. The state is telling us
a) that it has its own procedures that it applies when convicts are transferred into the state prison system, and
b) that the ICE procedures, which would only provide training and finger print checks, would not add much to the process.

The state already trains a set of intake officials in this responsibility. And standard arrest procedures call for fingerprinting, with the results first sent to the SBI and then to the FBI to be checked against previous arrest records. What would the additional fingerprint checks at the time of intake catch?

Before calling for new and costly procedures, there should be some reasonable demonstration that they would accomplish something. The state says that they wouldn't. What's the board's evidence that they would?

Dave, I think we've had this discussion before in regard to the tragic triple homicide case in New Jersey. That state's attorney general concluded it was unacceptable not to ascertain immigrant status of criminal suspects. That's vital information to have, she said, in the matter of setting bonds. An illegal immigrant presents a higher flight risk. If that information is vital in New Jersey, it should be considered vital in North Carolina. We can point to reasons why it's too much bother to seek that information, or we can find ways to get it done.

Doug:

This is a very different population at a different point in the legal process than we discussed a couple of weeks ago. The New Jersey program concerned people arrested for particular crimes. Like most counties in NC, NJ lacked standard procedures for checking the status of arrestees.

The N&O article and Rep. Myrick's criticism has to do with convicts going through the intake process at state prisons. NC has recently instituted a procedure, in which it checks convicts' residency status and refers suspected undocumented residents to the ICE. Rep. Myrick is questioning the effectiveness of the NC procedure and recommending that NC more closely align its procedures with a program from the IRCA legislation. Lacking from her criticism is any evidence regarding the effectiveness of the new NC procedure or of the increased effectiveness of her proposed procedure.

Dave, we may just have a communication problem, for which I apologize.

As I see it, we are talking about the same issue because every inmate entering the state prison system was first arrested. That's when we should begin the process of determining the individual's status. By all means, let's choose the most efficient means of doing that. But if an illegal immigrant arrested on suspicion of committing a crime is deportable, we might want the option of turning him over the ICE for deportation before we undertake the lengthy and expensive process of putting him through the criminal-justice system.

Doug:

I also apologize if I jumped on a miscommunication.

There's a big dividing line between arrested and convicted. The beginning of the orginal post spoke about a post-conviction program, while the post eventually turned to checking arrestees.

The question posed to the "state" still seems unfair because it is taking the state's (Beck's) response regarding the new post-conviction program and asking about something else. A fairer way to treat this would be to point out that a post-conviction program wouldn't be necessary if people were checked earlier. Or an editorial could say that the program "begs the question" about earlier checks.

Thanks, Dave. That was really Ken's point in our discussion. It shouldn't be up to the dept. of correction to check on this. It should be law enforcement, or the court system.