Va. Jails to Report Foreign Inmates

Only 60 of the thousands of law enforcement agencies nationwide have joined the five-year-old ICE program. Many localities don't have the resources, Pendergraph said. Politics have also come into play: Some agencies got involved only after government leaders ordered them to do so.

Other local participants in the federal program are Herndon, Manassas, Manassas Park and, since early this month, Loudoun County. In Maryland, only Frederick County participates. The District has not signed on.

Fairfax County has applied to join the program, but Sheriff Stan Barry said last week that he might reconsider after he assesses the impact of the Virginia law.

"It may be that 287(g) is moot for us," he said. "One of the reasons we applied was to expedite identifying and processing illegal immigrants. But if we're going to end up with the very same results just by reporting [under the new law] and having ICE do the work, obviously there would be no reason to participate."

Under 287(g), a local officer is authorized to access an ICE database that contains fingerprints of known illegal immigrants. If the suspect is identified as undocumented, the officer is deputized to hold the inmate under a federal detainer.

In jails not in the federal program, officers typically have access to a separate ICE database that does not match fingerprints. These officers can follow up with ICE, which can investigate further. The most serious offenders are in jail anyway, so there is no rush to identify them. But many illegal immigrants charged with misdemeanors probably would be released on bond before being identified. ICE has not shown a willingness to deport many people charged with lesser crimes, experts said.

Prince William made national headlines last summer when it directed police officers to check the immigration status of all suspects, even before they were arrested. The policy left the county open to accusations of racial profiling, and many Hispanics, including legal residents, fled to jurisdictions they considered less hostile. In March, the Board of County Supervisors amended the policy to require immigration checks only after an arrest.

"Based on our interaction with ICE, I am pretty confident that our program is more intensive than what will evolve in those other jurisdictions," Prince William County Executive Craig S. Gerhart said.

Statistics the ICE provided to the Virginia State Crime Commission show that in fiscal 2007, law enforcement agencies in the state made 12,073 reports to the federal agency, which resulted in 694 detainers.

"I think that comes to about 5 percent," said the commission's executive director, James O. Towey. "Some of those people may not have been illegal aliens. But this stat shows you they do not have the resources" to detain many of the immigrants they identify.

The effectiveness of the Virginia law will depend largely on ICE, Towey said. "Whether ICE comes and gets them and ultimately deports them is a matter that is beyond our control," he said.

Prince William Police Chief Charlie T. Deane is frustrated that ICE cannot tell him what has happened to the 800 suspected illegal immigrants his county has identified to the agency.