Harris County sheriff cuts ties with ICE program over immigration detentions
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez has ended a controversial partnership with federal immigration authorities that trained a team of county deputies to determine the immigration status of jailed suspects and hold those selected for deportation.
Gonzalez, a Democrat who took office in January, said he will re-assign 10 county deputies trained under a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement program known as 287(g) that cost at least $675,000 in salaries and deploy them to other law enforcement duties.
The withdrawal of the sheriff's deputies will still allow ICE officials to come to the jail and screen jail inmates to determine their immigration status and the county will hold them for deportation if requested, Gonzalez said.
The sheriff said serious overcrowding in the county jail complex, where staff shortages have hiked overtime costs to $1 million every two weeks, has forced him to deploy his ICE-trained deputies elsewhere. He said his decision was not political "but an issue of resources," explaining the deputies may also be assigned to help improve clearance rates of major crimes or ad to the patrol division.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Sheriff-cuts-ties-with-ICE-program-over-10949264.php
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