katc.com
NASHVILLE, Tennessee -- Davidson County sheriff's officials say some 3,000 illegal immigrants have been processed in the past year for deportation at county jails as part of a federal program.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security approved the county to participate in the program that provides immigration law training to local deputies and access to DHS immigration databases.
Fifteen deputies in Davidson County were trained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to check the legal status of any foreign-born person booked into jail and detain illegal immigrants.
Those detainees are then sent to Memphis or Oakdale, La., for hearings, though Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall is trying to get an immigration judge in Nashville's federal court.
Hall requested the program in 2006 after his office came under fire when an illegal immigrant who had been arrested multiple times on misdemeanor drunk driving charges but never deported was charged with vehicular homicide in the death of a husband and wife.
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., and U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., joined Nashville officials on Monday to mark the one-year anniversary of the program.
"We need to regain the public's confidence when it comes to illegal immigration, and to do that we must secure our borders and enforce the laws we have now," Alexander said.
In the program's first year, Davidson County officials processed the largest numbers of cases for removal east of Arizona _ more than any other county in a non-border state _ according to a press release from Alexander's office.
Close to 700 of the illegal immigrants processed have been arrested for at least one serious crime such as homicide, robbery, aggravated assault and burglary, according to the release.
Posted by tyne at March 25, 2008