The City Paper
NASHVILLE, Tennessee -- The Metro Council gave swift and overwhelming approval Tuesday night to a resolution allowing Sheriff Daron Hall’s Office to drastically change the way the local justice system handles illegal immigrants who are arrested in Nashville.
And beginning Tuesday – when 12 supervisors and officers, as well as four alternates from the Sheriff’s Office – begin their training from federal immigration officials, Nashville will become the latest in only a handful of counties nationwide to use federal resources to screen foreign-born arrestees for federal immigration violations.
The last jurisdiction to implement the 287(g) immigration screening program was Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), N.C.
Since the Mecklenburg Sheriff’s Department’s 287 (g) program became operational in May, it has identified 1,337 of the 2,557 – a sliver over 50 percent – of their foreign-born arrestees as having prior federal immigration violations.
Posted by tyne at February 21, 2007