Pittman defends immigration decision
First of 2 town hall meetings being held this week
Citing a chilling effect on crime reporting and redundancy in other federal programs, County Executive Steuart Pittman defended his decision to stop participating in a controversial immigration program Monday evening at the first of two town halls on the subject.
Comments were not solely focused on the 287(g) program in question, but generally on immigration — “illegal” was the word used most often by the audience at the Pascal Senior Activity Center in Glen Burnie.
Services like English classes for non-native speakers in county schools cost taxpayers, one woman argued. Another woman said she used to teach those children — most are citizens or documented, and education is a public good, she said.
“We need to teach them English in the schools so they can function here,” Pittman said later in the meeting.
Douglas Ashton of Orchard Beach was one of the first people to speak.
“Overwhelmingly we don’t want illegals
here,” he said. “We're tired of all these people stealing our jobs, they don't belong in this country.”
Former District 31B candidate Harry Freeman stood up soon after and challenged that assertion, asking for data to back up the claim.
“The things they say matter. The things they say have consequences,” he said.
Freeman is a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from Mexico. He started to cite IRS figures showing the contributions undocumented immigrants make to the tax base. Someone in the audience questioned his citizenship.
The town hall was scheduled a few weeks after Pittman announced an end to the county's participation in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 287(g) program, which trained corrections officials to screen county jail inmates for immigration violations and send immigration status information to federal authorities.
Pittman said other programs already do the job of 287(g), but have federal employees doing the work.
He argues that ICE already knows who is in custody within an hour of a person being arrested. According to ICE's website, jurisdictions already send fingerprints of arrested individuals to the FBI. Through the Secure Communities program, which was reinstituted in January of 2017 through an executive order by President Donald Trump, the FBI automatically sends those fingerprints to the Department of Homeland Security to check against immigration databases.
Through the Criminal Alien Program, ICE officials are able to come to county jails to interview people, according to a report distributed by Pittman.
Then ICE makes decisions on enforcement based on the nature of the crime, risk to public safety and whether the person has violated the nation's immigration laws, the agency said online.
People in immigrant communities fear ICE, and knew that county detention workers were “deputized” by ICE, Pittman's administration said in the report. The gang MS-13 extorts people who are afraid of being deported, and those same people avoid police for fear of deportation.
Pittman will keep a program through which ICE pays the county $118 per day per detainee to house people awaiting immigration hearings, but will use some of that money to pay for legal help for the detainees. They are often unrepresented in immigration court, he said.
Earlier in the evening, officials mentioned a shortfall of 45 detention officers. One man proposed using the money from the detainee program to make a hire instead of paying for legal help for immigrants.
County Councilman Nathan Volke, R-Pasadena, introduced resolutions last Monday that call on Pittman to reinstate the 287(g) program and reverse his decision about paying for legal help for detainees.
He said he is concerned that without 287(g), undocumented immigrants who haven't been fingerprinted before, or who lie about the country they're from could, not be flagged.
And he has concerns about using the money from the detainee program to pay for legal help in immigration court — something which at least violates the intent of the county's agreement with the federal government, he said.
The public can comment on Volke's resolutions at the next council meeting, Jan. 22. A second town hall on immigration has been scheduled for Wednesday at 6 p.m. at Southern High School.