Release of 510 immigrant detainees in Louisiana expected in weeks
By Associated Press
For U.S. prison inmates from countries that don’t want them, time served stretches far beyond their sentences. Some spend months and years behind bars, trapped in immigration limbo. That situation is about to change, however.
The federal government expects to release about 1,200 immigrant former convicts nationwide within the next few weeks, with as many as 510 leaving Louisiana jails, immigration officials said.
The release comes in response to a late-June U.S. Supreme Court ruling that immigrants convicted of crimes could not be held longer than their sentences for those crimes.
The ruling overturned an Immigration and Naturalization Service policy of detaining immigrant criminals until they could be deported, no matter how long that process takes. Since some countries, such as Vietnam, often refuse to take back crimminals from the United States, that process, for some detainees, went on indefinitely.
Currently, there are about 3,400 immigrant detainees nationwide. The Supreme Court ruling applies only to those whose criminal sentences have been served.
More detainees are held in Louisiana than in any other state. INS spokeswoman Paige Rockett has estimated the number at about 2,000.
INS has begun a case-by-case review, and plans to first release those who have been held the longest, as well as those with families and sponsors ready to take them in, agency spokeswoman Karen Kraushaar said. The agency will seek to keep in custody the detainees considered most dangerous, such as potential terrorists, she added.
U.S. Rep. David Vitter, R-Metairie, objects to the releases.
On July 24, Vitter wrote to Secretary of State Colin Powell, saying the mass release of convicted criminals, even if they have completed their sentences, poses a serious safety threat.
“As you know, nearly one third of these 3,400 were convicted of violent crimes including rape, murder and child molestation,” Vitter said in his letter. “Another large portion are guilty of drug offenses. While these aliens have properly served out their sentences, recidivism rates indicate that many will commit other crimes.”
But Attorney General John Ashcroft, who also opposes the release, has nonetheless ordered the INS to obey the Supreme Court ruling.
The Louisiana detainees are held in federal facilities in Oakdale, some parish jails, as well as private prisons operated by Louisiana Corrections Services. The parish and private facilities get as much as $46 a day for each detainee they hold, in contrast to the $23 that jails receive for holding state inmates.
Several parish sheriffs say they have solicited INS detainees to supplement their budgets, and that losing them could put them in a financial squeeze.
The plight of detainees facing indefinite jail sentences received increasing national attention in December 1999, when half a dozen Cuban inmates at the St. Martin Parish jail took the warden and several guards hostage, demanding deportation to Cuba or some other country.
The six-day standoff ended without serious injury when, in a rare deal with the U.S. State Department, the Cuban government agreed to accept the hostage takers. Many more similarly situated INS detainees were left behind, however. |
