ICE's Julie Myers at work. 200k deporting inmates a year.............?

ICE's Julie Myers at work, deporting 200k inmates a year.............?




The object is to deport illegals directly from the hundreds
of state and federal jail facilities after they serve their prison sentence


DOBBS: Among the top issues for voters in Michigan as throughout the nation,
illegal immigration. Immigrations and custom enforcement today, taking steps
to empty our jails of some 200,000 illegal alien convicts and to send
them home. But as Kitty Pilgrim now reports, this may be only a
fraction of the illegal aliens in this country's prisons.



KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A typical prison population. Which ones are illegal aliens? The answer is, federal officials don't know how many illegal aliens are in U.S. prisons. But now I.C.E. is boosting efforts to try to find out and is in process of identifying and start deportation proceedings on 200,000 inmates, both illegal aliens and immigrants who lost their legal status because they committed a crime.

JULIE MYERS, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT: Well, we're expanding our program. We're prioritizing the high-risk institutions and Congress gave us $200 million to make sure that we're identifying aliens in all facilities.

PILGRIM: The object is to deport illegals directly from the hundreds
of state and federal facilities after they serve their prison sentence
rather than the old way of releasing them onto the streets and then starting deportation hearings. The so-called criminal alien program is gaining ground.

In fiscal 2006, I.C.E. filed charges against 57,000 illegals to start the deportation process. That climbed to 164,000 in 2007 and an estimated 200,000 in fiscal 2008.

Some say more resources are needed to undertake this properly.

MICHAEL CUTLER, CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES: We don't have the tools
to properly identify many of these criminal aliens, I suspect.
Not all of them are going to jump up and be honest with you and
tell you that they're here illegal or deportable aliens.

PILGRIM: Once the removable process is started, many won't be deported for years, but at least prison authorities will know not to release them back into society.


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