Burning Atlanta

DALTON, Ga. — Whitfield County jailers using federal records have since Aug. 1 found 34 possibly illegal immigrants who may be subject to deportation.

“Our officers now have the ability to hold someone at the jail and basically start the deportation process,” Whitfield County Sheriff Scott Chitwood said.

Sheriff Chitwood calls the 287(g) program a “win-win” tool that helps his deputies check the immigration status of those arrested without bogging down the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Atlanta office. The sheriff’s department began training on the program in February and received equipment in late May, he said.

The jail started tracking illegal immigrants identified through the program at the beginning of this month.

“Beforehand, if we had someone who could not produce documents we had to call Atlanta,” Sheriff Chitwood said. “They’d sometimes need us to hold someone for a couple of days, which we couldn’t always do.”

He said the 34 inmates put into the deportation process by 287(g) since Aug. 1 had been arrested an average of 2.7 times in Whitfield County alone over the last five years. Charges include forgery, hit-and-run, failure to appear, driving under the influence, aggravated assault, drug possession and drug trafficking, Lt. Lynch said.

The same 34 inmates had spent a total of 995 days in the jail over the last five years at an estimated cost of $36,815 to the county, he said.