Jailers decry cuts in program to reimburse them for holding immigrants

Bill for immigrant prisoners shifts to state, local taxpayers

Sixteen years ago, the Justice Department doled out $563 million to lockups such as Harris County's to oversee immigrants who were in the country illegally and had committed crimes.

It was the most ever paid out by the department's State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. It was also the first and only time that local jurisdictions received 100 percent reimbursement for the cost of their jailers' salaries detaining these immigrants.

Since then, the payback has been on a downward slide. The reimbursement rate for fiscal year 2015 was set at 15 percent, which provides just $165.3 million nationwide to defray the cost of incarcerating 189,020 immigrants in the U.S. without legal permission. Full compensation would have meant a payout of $1.08 billion, nearly double what was paid out nationally in fiscal 2000, federal records show.

Texas is particularly feeling the pinch. It ranks second only to California in the number of prisoners qualifying for SCAAP funding - with the largest payouts going to the Texas Department of Corrections and Harris County, federal records show.

"More and more of the expense of housing these prisoners in our jails is being shifted back to the local taxpayer," lamented Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman, who oversees the state's largest jail.

Jackson County Sheriff A.J. Louderback, the legislative chairman for the Sheriffs' Association of Texas, agreed.

"We on the local level are being forced to deal with a federal problem," he said. "We're sick of it."

Worse for the sheriffs, President Barack Obama has proposed scrapping the whole program in his budget proposal for 2017.

Magnet for immigrants

Both sheriffs complain that the existing program already repays only a fraction of the real cost of incarcerating inmates living in the country illegally. It doesn't cover expenses for everything from food and medical treatment to housing and legal assistance, and provides nothing for the police departments or courts that prosecute the criminal cases.

Also, Hickman noted, a large number of such inmates in county and state lockups aren't even being counted for reimbursement purposes.

Only half the counties in Texas apply for SCAAP funding, mostly because of the cumbersome paperwork and shrinking paybacks, the sheriffs say. Harris County itself didn't even bother filing in 2008 or 2009, records show.

Under the program, local jurisdictions can only recoup expenses for undocumented immigrants who were convicted of at least one felony or two misdemeanors and kept for at least four consecutive days.

"So nobody is reimbursed for those convicted of their first misdemeanor, which can be anything from drug possession and drunk driving to assault and burglary," Louderback said.

While the number of immigrants in the country illegally who were incarcerated began to dip after peaking in 2010, these numbers are starting to rise again.

The Texas prison system has experienced a 5.4 percent jump in immigrants eligible for SCAAP funding. Between fiscal years 2014 and 2015, the number surged from 10,473 to 11,046 - or 7 percent of the prison population that year, authorities there said. That includes 12 who are on death row.

With its dynamic economy and warm acceptance of diversity, Harris County is also serving as a magnet for immigrants, officials say.

"We're not that far from the border. Most come here with good intentions of nothing more than making a better life. But if they can't get a job and are still hungry, some can go other directions," said Ryan Sullivan, spokesman for the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

In the Harris County jail, the number of prisoners qualifying for SCAAP reimbursement has climbed nearly 2 percent over the last two fiscal years, reaching 3,936 in fiscal 2015, records show.

Human cost

And Harris County is not alone. Five of its seven bordering counties are also experiencing upticks.

For instance, Fort Bend County now ranks sixth among all the counties statewide in SCAAP funding - as its 2015 federal reimbursement doubled to $280,582 from fiscal 2014 to fiscal 2015. Full compensation would have meant a $1.55 million payout.

Concerns about the costs of jailing immigrants in the country illegally come against the backdrop of a broader immigration debate, which intensified with Donald Trump's controversial statements connecting Mexican immigrants to crime.

Marc Rosenblum, a spokesman for the Migration Policy Institute, stressed that these incarceration numbers are not reflective of an immigrant crime wave. He pointed to a 2010 research report that found native-born citizens were being imprisoned at twice the rate of immigrants.

"Immigrants have a stronger incentive than native-born Americans to stay out of trouble, especially those who are undocumented and risk deportation," he said. "They're sensitive to the fact that they are vulnerable,"

But Maria Espinoza of Houston, who founded "The Remembrance Project" six years ago to honor U.S. residents murdered by those here illegally, said the human cost is what's being forgotten.

"It's not about race," said Espinoza, whose father became a U.S. citizen after immigrating from Mexico in 1950.

Her group now has more than two dozen state chapters that are uniting families of murder victims such as Houston police officer Rodney Johnson, Pearland student Josh Wilkerson and guitarist Spencer Golvach.

The 'boomerang'

Many of these victims' families are tired of what Golvach's father, Dan, of Houston calls the "boomerang of deportation and re-entry" by immigrants who are in the county illegally and committing crimes.

Golvach's son was one of four unsuspecting motorists randomly targeted Jan. 31, 2015, in northwest Harris County by Victor Rodriquez Reyes, who killed two and seriously wounded two others. But Golvach's father noted that before Reyes went on his rampage for no apparent reason, he had been jailed for two felony assaults and deported four times.

A Texas Department of Public Safety report found there were 217,000 convictions statewide of inmates without legal permission to be in the U.S. in the last five years, ranging from 397 homicides to 28,347 drug cases.

Bipartisan support

Meanwhile, Obama's call to cancel the SCAAP program is sure to face a backlash, as Congress has repeatedly found ways to reinstate funding.

In a written statement, the Justice Department contends that the SCAAP money could be better spent. It wants to redirect the funds to programs such as community policing and juvenile assistance, which the agency said would better address "the underlying issues surrounding criminal aliens and the correction costs they generate."

However, the National Association of Counties stresses that the costs of incarcerating immigrants here illegally won't disappear just because the program does.

"The president's budget proposal is just that - a proposal," said Brian Namey, spokesman for the association.

And the SCAAP program continues to have bipartisan support.

"Texas taxpayers deserve better than having to foot the bill for an unsecured border," said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican.

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, noted that presidents from both parties, including former President George W. Bush, have tried to cut the program.

"But I am confident we will put at least $210 million back into it again as we did last year," he said. "I will be working with all the lawmakers from Houston to do this."