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HOUSTON -- Federal lawmakers are calling for more reform by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials after an investigation by a newspaper found that thousands of inmates in the nation's third-largest county had walked out of jail after admitting that they were in the U.S. illegally.
The area congressional delegation met with top ICE officials in Houston on Friday to discuss problems highlighted by a Houston Chronicle investigation last month that exposed a breakdown at the Harris County Jail that allowed illegal immigrants with criminal records to avoid deportation.
The Chronicle investigation found that scores of violent criminals, including some ordered deported decades ago, had walked away from the Harris County Jail despite the inmates' admission to jailers that they were in the country illegally. ICE officials have said Harris County jailers did not share with them lists of detainees who had reported that they were foreign-born.
The newspaper examined arrest and immigration records for 3,500 inmates who had told Harris County jailers that they were in the country illegally during a span of eight months, starting in June 2007. Though most of the inmates released from custody were accused of minor crimes, hundreds were convicted felons, the newspaper found.
U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, said after the Friday meeting that the delegation wanted ICE to provide information by January on measures to ensure that illegal immigrants charged with serious crimes were not making bail.
Lawmakers want to make sure that illegal immigrants convicted of crimes -- and eligible for deportation -- are removed from the country and that a timeline from ICE officials on when an automated fingerprint check system that the agency implemented in Harris County Jail in October will be available in the rest of the state.
Besides Brady, U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul, R-Austin; Gene Green, D-Houston; and Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston; and Congressman-elect Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, attended the meeting. U.S. Reps. John Culberson, R-Houston; Al Green, D-Houston; and Ted Poe, R-Humble; and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison sent staff members to the meeting.
"I am pleased that ICE and Harris County officials are moving quickly to address my concerns," said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who was briefed about the meeting.
ICE officials have said the agency has made significant improvements in recent months, including giving Harris County jailers access to the fingerprint database and training jailers in August to help identify illegal immigrants and file paperwork to detain them. Jailers in Dallas County also are able to check inmates' criminal and immigration histories simultaneously as part of a growing new nationwide program.
