It sounds too good to be true:

The Obama administration is expanding a program initiated by President George W. Bush aimed at checking the immigration status of virtually every person booked into local jails. In four years, the measure could result in a tenfold increase in illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and identified for deportation, current and former U.S. officials said.

By matching inmates’ fingerprints to federal immigration databases, authorities hope to pinpoint deportable illegal immigrants before they are released from custody.

Allahpundit is suspicious, and I have to admit it, so am I. But you never know. Maybe he’s actually doing the right thing. Time will tell.

[Guest post by Jack Dunphy]

My latest column for National Review Online is up today. I discuss the effort by some in the LAPD to skirt the state and federal laws regarding the reporting of illegal immigrants arrested for other crimes. Read it here.

–Jack Dunphy

Regular readers know that it’s been a pet issue of Patterico for quite some time to Deport the Criminals First. His point is simple: regardless of how you feel about illegal immigration, everyone can agree that the least desirable illegals — and thus the ones we should be deporting first — are the criminals. So once a criminal has served his time, he should be deported.

Most of the stories Patterico has covered on this beat are tragic — cases where an illegal immigrant has killed multiple victims, or a child.

This is not one of those stories:

As it turns out, Kenosha Sheriff’s deputy Russ Preston wasn’t wearing Batman briefs. 

But that didn’t stop the crime-fighting crusader, who was only wearing boxer-brief underwear at the time, from nabbing a drunken driver in his Racine neighborhood Thursday night.

***

“When I told him what he did, he just said, ‘Oh, sorry,’” Preston said. “I don’t think this was his first time. He already told me he had been deported once and he had a fake ID.”

You will want to RTWT, if only for some of the choice details provided by a local bank president.  As funny as this story is, it is also a reminder that there are plenty of cases of illegal immigrants committing crimes, causing property damage, raising insurance rates, etc., that will escape public notice precisely because they are not tragic or shocking.

–Karl

Regular readers know that it’s been a pet issue of mine for quite some time to Deport the Criminals First. My point is simple: regardless of how you feel about illegal immigration, everyone can agree that the least desirable illegals — and thus the ones we should be deporting first — are the criminals. So once a criminal has served his time, he should be deported. Other than securing the border, ICE should make this its absolute highest priority — lack of resources is not an excuse unless 100% of ICE’s non-border-enforcement resources are already committed to this task.

I’m pleased to see that Obama’s new Homeland Security Secretary says she agrees:

If you’re a criminal and you’re not entitled to be in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants you out of the country. Napolitano wants what she calls “criminal aliens” off American streets. She is looking at existing immigration enforcement programs to see if taxpayers are getting the most bang for their buck.

“That sounds very simple, but it’s historically not been done,” Napolitano said, speaking to reporters and senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials Thursday.

About 113,000 criminals who were in the U.S. illegally were deported last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. The agency estimates there are now as many as 450,000 criminals in federal, state and local detention centers who are in the country illegally.

Napolitano said she wants to improve data-sharing among local, state and federal facilities. So far, there are jails in 26 counties across the country with computer systems that can talk instantly with immigration systems.

The goal, Napolitano said, is for federal immigration officials to know whether an inmate is in the country illegally immediately after he is processed into a detention facility. After the criminal serves his or her sentence, immigration officials can be ready to deport that person right away.

This is a no-brainer — yet as Ms. Napolitano says, it hasn’t happened . . . with tragic results, as I have documented here again and again.

Let’s be clear: talk is not action. But this is good talk.

So make it happen.

Thanks to Chuck P.

[Guest post by DRJ]

The Houston Chronicle reported today on its comprehensive 8-month study of Houston criminal and immigration records that show federal immigration officials allowed up to 75% of the 3,500 Harris County Jail inmates who admitted they were in the country illegally to remain in the US instead of facing deportation. The released inmates include child molesters, rapists and drug dealers.

From the report:

• In 177 cases reviewed by the Chronicle, inmates who were released from jail after admitting to being in the country illegally later were charged with additional crimes. More than half of those charges were felonies, including aggravated sexual assault of a child and capital murder.

• About 11 percent of the 3,500 inmates in the review had three or more prior convictions in Harris County. Many had repeatedly cycled through the system despite a history of violence and, in some cases, outstanding deportation orders.

Immigration officials claim their officers are overworked, underpaid, and note they successfully deported 107,000 criminal aliens nationwide in FY 2008, including 8,226 from Houston. They estimate “between 300,000 and 450,000 inmates incarcerated in the U.S. are eligible for deportation each year” but only about 10% are screened.

And these numbers may be low given that the Houston Chronicle states the criminal alien screening process is based on previously deported suspects or a suspect’s voluntary admission that s/he is in the country illegally:

“The Houston Police Department, which runs the city’s jails, notifies ICE only about suspects with immigration warrants and previously deported felons.

Of the more than 80,000 bookings into Harris County Jail during the review period, about 3,500 — less than 5 percent — admitted to being in the country illegally. ICE filed paperwork to detain roughly 900 of the 3,500. During the review period, the agency also filed paperwork to detain 2,500 suspects not included in the database, indicating that many immigrants who are eligible for deportation do not disclose that they are here illegally.

ICE, however, could not confirm whether the inmates marked for ”holds” actually were deported.”

Harris County Sheriff-elect Adrian Garcia hasn’t decided whether he will continue to allow federal immigration officials to screen inmates at the Jail. His predecessor, the current Sheriff, authorized the screenings in late 2006 after the execution-style murder of Houston police officer Rodney Johnson by an illegal immigrant, a murder that outraged the police and the community.

Sheriff-elect Garcia’s election was one of a near sweep by Democrats of Harris County offices attributed to Obama’s win. If the Sheriff-elect ends the screening program, efforts to deport criminal aliens may be a rare and short-lived experiment in Houston.

– DRJ

[Posted by WLS Shipwrecked]

Word out today from the SF Chronicle is that one of the suspects in the July 31 murder of a 14 year old boy in San Francisco was shielded by the City of San Francisco’s “sanctuary” law from potential deportation after he was incarcerated in 2007 for an earlier gang-related assault.

The suspect, 17 year old Rony Aguilera, a self-identified member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, was released on probation in that case by a juvenile court judge who allowed him to reside in Houston with his parents, while being informally monitored from San Franciso by juvenile authorities. Pursuant to the policy then in force by the City of San Francisco, Aguilera was not reported to federal immigration authorities even though was subject to deportation.

In December 2007 his probation was ended, and he returned to San Francisco. Here’s the Chron’s description of the final moments of 14 year old Ivan Miranda’s life:

According to police accounts, Ivan was stabbed on a street in the Excelsior neighborhood a few hours after the relative of an MS-13 member was wounded in a shooting. Gang members blamed the rival Norteño group, and several went looking for Norteños to attack, investigators said.

Ivan had no connection to the Norteños, police said, but the gang members attacked him anyway as he talked with two friends at the corner of Madrid and Persia streets.

The boy was stabbed with what police described as a Japanese-style sword and was robbed of the iPod he was returning to his friend. When he tried to run, two assailants chased him down and stabbed him through the neck, nearly decapitating him, police said.

….

Hours after Ivan was killed, suspects in the case met up with a federal informant who secretly taped the meeting. Aguilera told the informant, “We stabbed the son of a bitch,” according to a transcript of the conversation. “There is no problem with this homeboy anymore,” he said later.

Another proud moment for the Sanctuary City movement.

Jaw dropping.

- Justin Levine

Heartbreaking:

About 150 people packed the Fairmount Cemetery Chapel this morning to pay respects to 3-year-old Marten Kudlis, who died tragically last week while at an ice-cream store in Aurora.

“Oh, my God, Marten, this is the last thing I ever wanted to do with you,” shouted his father, Marat, as the tiny wooden casket was lowered into the ground. “I love you so much.”

Marten had gone with a 10-year-old friend and his mother to play at Lowry Park on Thursday evening. Then the group stopped at the Baskin-Robbins store at South Havana Street and East Mississippi Avenue for a treat.

A high-speed collision in the intersection sent a vehicle crashing into a transformer. A jagged piece of metal flew through the ice-cream shop, killing Marten.

Two women in one of the vehicles also died in the accident. The driver, Francis Hernandez, is believed to be an illegal immigrant with a lengthy criminal record involving mostly traffic offenses. He has been charged with three counts of vehicular homicide.

Note that illegal immigration isn’t even an issue in this presidential campaign. That’s because neither candidate plans to do a damned thing about it.

Previous posts here, here, and here.

The Rocky Mountain News reports:

Aurora authorities alerted U.S. immigration officials in April that Francis Hernandez might be an illegal immigrant, Aurora police spokesman Bob Friel said Monday.

But the feds didn’t detain Hernandez. He remained free, despite 16 prior brushes with the law. And on Thursday, Hernandez, 23, allegedly broadsided a truck in Aurora, killing three people, including a toddler.

That’s pretty straightforward. Feds fail to do job on immigration; three people die.

Heads should roll.

Previous posts here and here.

Yesterday I reported that we might have another case of an illegal who killed multiple people, after authorities blew multiple chances to deport him. At the time, we didn’t have any official confirmation that authorities believe he was illegal.

Now we do:

U.S. immigration officials believe that the man accused of killing three people in an auto accident last week was born in Guatemala and is in this country illegally.

Francis Hernandez, 23, “may have entered the country in 1991,” said U.S. Immigration Control and Enforcement spokesman Carl Rusnok today.

On Thursday, police say, Hernandez drove a sport-utility vehicle into a pickup truck, sending it careening into a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream shop in Aurora. Two women in the truck were killed, and a 3-year-old boy who was waiting for ice cream inside the shop also died.

Hernandez has a lengthy arrest record and has used 11 aliases, police and court records show. ICE officials only heard about him after he was arrested trying to flee the scene of last week’s accident.

There are three people dead because authorities couldn’t get this man out of the country — even though he was in their clutches time and time and time and time again.

Deport the Criminals First.