County jail not housing federal inmates

YCSO: Contract not renewed at end of 2005, was ‘no longer cost-effective’

Other counties in Arizona might receive a boost in jail revenue for housing federal inmates, but not Yuma County.

Spokesman Alfonso Zavala said while the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office does not currently house any federal inmates, the jail district held a contract with the federal government from 1985 to 2005 to do so.

Under the terms of that contract, the federal government would pay the jail district its per diem costs — which is what it cost the jail to house the inmates each day.

However, toward the end of 2005, Zavala said the government required the jail district to go by federal prisoner housing guidelines as a way to reduce its jail bill.

“It was lower than our costs, so we terminated the contract, as it was no longer cost-effective,” Zavala said. “We currently don’t hold federal inmates at the Yuma County jail.”

According to an article in the Today’s News-Herald newspaper, La Paz County, which had been housing nearly 150 federal inmates as of June, received a $1.1 million payment from the federal government.

That payment provided La Paz County with a huge monetary increase over the $81,000 in jail revenue budgeted for the year.

The same article also quoted La Paz County

Sheriff Bill Risen explaining why federal authorities are choosing to house detained immigrants in Arizona instead of California.

Risen said that California laws limit and regulate how state and local law enforcement agencies cooperate with the federal government on immigration matters.

He also said that a federal judge has allowed California to enforce some state sanctuary laws, including one requiring inspections of detention facilities.

Zavala said that YCSO and the Yuma jail district do still assist the federal government in emergency or public safety situations by housing its inmates, but it’s rarely for more than a few inmates, and only for a short period of time. They are also not interested in contracting with the government again.

“The federal government now contracts with the private prison and still would not pay our per diem costs, so it would not be cost-effective,” Zavala said.

Locally, individuals arrested by Yuma Sector Border Patrol for being in the country illegally are temporarily housed at Border Patrol’s Centralized Processing Center, which is located inside the Yuma Station.

Agent Jose J. Garibay III of the Yuma Sector Public Affairs Office explained that illegal entrants are only held locally long enough to be processed.

Once they are processed, Garibay said they are transferred to the custody of another federal law enforcement agency, such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Garibay did not know where illegal entrants were housed after leaving the Yuma Sector, but added it is handled by another branch of the Department of Homeland Security known as the Joint Task Force-West (JTF-W).

The Yuma Sun sent an email to JTF-W for comment on the matter, but it went unanswered.