John_Schwada's Blog

It slipped by all the media (except Fox 11 News) that the LA County Board of Supervisors quietly signaled on Monday that it would sharply beef up its little-known jailhouse immigration watchdog program that identifies inmates who are illegally in the U.S. and hands them over to federal agents for deportation.

The move was pushed by Mike Antonovich - who, in keeping with the board's unwritten rule to govern in starchy and sublime obscurity (if not secrecy), refused to comment on the matter before it was formally approved by the board on Tuesday (what is it with these guys?). We ran a story Monday night on the proposal anyway...here's the link to the video.

The measure is intended to increase from 8 to 13 the number of "custody assistants" (CA's) in the Sheriff's Dept. who are trained and deputized by U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) to conduct immigration investigations of inmates.

The Sheriff's Dept. tells us about 54.5 percent of the inmates investigated by its CA's are found to be in the U.S. illegally.

Still, it appears that many, many illegals will slip by the Sheriff's Dept. immigration watchdogs whether there are 8 or 13 of them - because these watchdogs are kept on a short leash.

Under a Board of Supervisors policy the sheriff's CA's are only allowed to investigate the immigration status of inmates who admit they are "foreign-born."

Perhaps this helps explains the controversial case of Pedro Espinosa, the illegal alien 18th St. gang member charged with killing high school football star Jamiel Shaw one day after Espinoza was released from county jail after serving time for his conviction on an assault-related charge out of Culver City. According to ICE, Espinosa claimed - after being arrested for the Shaw murder - that he was a U.S. citizen; it is presumed that in Espinosa's several previous brushes with the law, he also claimed he was a U.S. citizen.

In other words, the Board of Supervisors MAY have been responsible for the fact that the 19-year-old Espinoza was able to avoid detection, for so long, as an illegal alien even though he was almost continuously in jail or in county juvenile detention facilities from age 14....All Espinoza had to do to avoid any scrutiny by the county's jailhouse immigration watchdogs was lie and say he was born in the U.S.

The parents of Jamiel Shaw and others believe Shaw would be alive today if the authorities had done their job by identifying Espinosa as an illegal alien and deporting him. These folks are now focused on overturning limits on the LAPD's cooperation with ICE, imposed under the LAPD's Special Order 40.

Perhaps these critics should also be looking at the Board of Supervisors.

So, how come Espinosa - after being busted for the Shaw killing and claiming he was a U.S. citizen - was finally discovered to be in the U.S. illegally?

Because ICE agents are also embedded, sort of, in the LA county jail system - and there are no restrictions (that we know of) on which inmates they can screen, interview and investigate about their immigration status. In other words, just claiming you're a U.S. citizen does not give you a free pass with ICE....

In fact, it was ICE agents who identified Espinosa as an illegal alien. And here's my suspicion: that ICE screened Espinoza because he had been busted for the highly-publicized Shaw murder. (Likewise, it was ICE agents who last week identified Enedina Cardona-Rodriguez as an illegal alien only days after her highly-publicized arrest; the Long Beach mother of eight, who was on welfare, was arrested for dealing drugs out of her car while some of her kids were in the backseat).

But ICE is not always available to plug the gaps in the county's CA coverage.

ICE's presence in LA county jails is spotty. Sheriff' department officials say sometimes ICE has an agent or two conducting screenings - and sometimes it doesn't have any. ICE refuses to say what its staffing situation at LA County jail. "We do not talk about our allocation of agents," Virginia Kice of ICE public affairs told me.

Another loophole: the Board of Supervisors also prohibits its jailhouse immigration watchdogs from interviewing anyone until they have been convicted (again, ICE is not restricted in this regard).

In other words, if you're not found guilty of the crime for which you were arrested (murder, robbery, burglary etc.) or the charges are dropped by the District Attorney, then the LA County Board of Supervisors does NOT believe you should be questioned about your immigration status. Period.

Finally, even with the aforementioned restrictions on the CA's program, there's one more handicap: manpower.

According to the Sheriff department its current contingent of CA's only gets around to interviewing about 30 percent of the eligible inmates (those who are convicted and have identified themselves as foreign-born)....So adding 5 more CA's may reach about 50 percent of the eligible inmates (To put numbers on some of this: between Jan. 30, 2006 and Sept. 28, 2007, the county's CA's interviewed 14,880 inmates and began deportation proceedings against 8,114 of these - or 54.5 percent).

With LA county's jailhouse immigration watchdogs finding that more than 1/2 of the inmates they interview are in the U.S. illegally, it makes you wonder what more could be done if the Board of Supervisors took the gloves off this program.....

There's plenty of food for debate on this issue. For example, some would find it morally offensive if the county were to interview self-described foreign born inmates before they were convicted of a crime. "You talk funny and were born overseas? Let's see your papers buddy." Sound like racial profiling? Or bullying people who are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. (After someone is convicted of a separate crime the obnoxiousness of such an approach probably diminishes in many people's minds). What about a requirement that everyone convicted of a crime be interviewed about their immigration status - no matter where they say they were born? There are lots of permutations on this theme, and maybe it's time to air out this issue. In a public debate.