The WaPo article on Obama’s expansion of Bush’s program checking immigration statuts of people in local jails.
Heather MacDonald at The Corner:
In theory, every jail inmate will have his name run through immigration databases. Computer data-matching will not catch those criminal illegal aliens who have not had encounters with the immigration authorities, however — surely the majority of criminal illegals, given the paucity of immigration agents. The executive director of Secure Communities acknowledged that defect, but told the Los Angeles Times that the additional layer of human screening in the program would mitigate that shortcoming. Maybe, or maybe not. As the Times notes, Pedro Espinoza, the illegal alien suspected of killing high school football player Jamiel Shaw II after being released from Los Angeles County Jail, had told authorities that he was U.S.-born. No one in the jail gainsaid him.
Next step: extending the checks to all person arrested, not just those convicted. It is already the case that when a person encounters law enforcement – that is, when police stop a person for legal cause – the police check whether there are arrest warrants pending for that person. We should work toward developing the technologies to ensure that a check for immigration status is part of that process. If the person is found to be present in the United States illegally, they would then be turned over to the immigration authorities for deportation.
Allah Pundit, who links to an old series of posts by Patterico
UPDATE: Mark Krikorian
UPDATE #2: Richard Nadler in The Corner.
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May 21, 2009 at 9:53 pm
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