Dan Genz, The Examiner
2008-04-18 07:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

Jail officials are not checking the legal status of all foreign-born inmates, including felons, in Prince William County’s highly publicized crackdown on illegal immigrants.

Officials say they are months away from the county’s goal of screening all immigrants because of space and personnel constraints.

Twenty-eight percent of the foreign-born suspects booked at the jail in March, or 88 inmates, did not receive checks that could lead to possible deportation by federal officials under the county’s much-publicized crackdown on illegal immigrants.

Of those, eight were charged with felonies.

Although screening of inmates increased considerably over February, officials say the nearly 10-month-old operation is not able to screen each of the more than 3,500 foreign-born inmates processed each year. About one-quarter of the overcrowded jail’s 1,200 inmates booked monthly are born outside the U.S.

Jail officials say the facility will not be able to monitor all incoming inmates until they can double the number of corrections officers trained to use a federal system for identifying illegal immigrants.

They credit a small crew of five  officers who have worked overtime to run the program.

“They got to 89 percent of the felons,” said Col. Peter Meletis, the jail superintendent. “They can’t get to all of them because we don’t have 24-7 capacity. We don’t have the trained staff.”

“Obviously, we would like it to be greater,” Jail Board Chairman Patrick Hurd told The Examiner. “We’re trying to get as much of them on the front end as we can, but we can’t always get to that 100 percent level.”

Scrutiny was at its lowest on Saturdays in March, the jail’s busiest day of the week. While 186 of 210 foreign-born inmates, or 89 percent, were reviewed Monday through Friday, only 21 of 62 were reviewed on Saturdays, or about one-third.

The jail recently rearranged the schedule to provide better coverage on weekend bookings, Meletis said.

The jail is training four more officers for the program, and its $33 million budget for the coming fiscal year will include more positions for screeners and more than $1.5 million for extra jail space to accommodate the inmates.

“We’re not 100 percent, but that’s clearly the direction we are going,” said Prince William County Chairman Corey Stewart, who has called the program a “stunning success.”

“They are working 50-60 hour weeks to get through the backlog and accomplish everything we’ve asked them to do, and that’s going to be rectified in next year’s budget.”

dgenz@dcexaminer.com