Davidson County Sherriff Darron Hall faced a series of questions from Metro Council members last week, about the department’s deportation program for illegal immigrants.
The 287(g) program allows the sheriff’s office to check the immigration status of individuals once they’ve been arrested.
Several council members asked about the financial impact of the program, since Metro jails have to house illegal immigrants until deportation proceedings can begin. Council lady Megan Barry asked if it’s worth the cost to arrest someone for a misdemeanor crime like driving without a license.
Sherriff Hall responded by saying there are 20-thousand people who are issued citations every year and never enter the criminal justice system. Hall says the arrest has to be approved by a judge and the person has to be put in jail before his or her immigration status can be checked.
“One of the misconceptions, and I think this is a difficult thing to explain, is that the arresting officers have no contact with the immigration system. You cannot pull someone over, you cannot call from the arrest scene, and ask, ‘can you check XYZ, can you run these fingerprints.’ None of those systems are connected at all.”
287g has been in effect for a little more than a year and has resulted in the deportations of more than 3-thousand illegal immigrants. The percentage of those arrested who are illegal has dropped from about 7 to 5 percent in the last year.
The Federal Government started reimbursing Metro for the cost of housing illegal immigrants in October. That amount is now running at about 140-thousand dollars a month.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM