PHOENIX (By Michael Kiefer, Arizona Republic) February 25, 2008 — Despite public perception and stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws in recent months in Maricopa County, undocumented immigrants are not charged with a disproportionate number of crimes in Maricopa County.

According to the Sheriff's Office, only 10 percent of the people booked into county jails are subject to ICE holds, meaning that they will be turned over to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency when their cases are resolved.

The number corresponds closely to the estimated percentage of undocumented immigrants thought to live in Maricopa County.

 

That suggests that undocumented immigrants are not charged with crimes any more or less than any other segment of the population. The latest jail figures, which were released after a public-records request, come as the Sheriff's Office has intensified its efforts to enforce immigration laws.

 

The Sheriff's Office made an agreement with ICE last spring that allows specially trained sheriff's deputies and detention officers to evaluate the immigration status of people they arrest. From that time to the end of 2007, 7,700 out of 76,000 people booked into Maricopa County jails, or just over 10 percent, had ICE holds.

A November 2007 report by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that favors immigration control, estimated there are 579,000 undocumented immigrants in Arizona, or 9 percent of the state's population. The concentration of undocumented immigrants is thought to be higher in metropolitan Phoenix.

Politicians, including Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, have tried to make a connection between crime and undocumented immigration.

At a November news conference, Thomas said, "We continue to see the link between our crime rate in the Valley and undocumented immigrants. We continue to have a serious violent-crime problem in Arizona, which is directly related to our border situation."

On Friday, Thomas informed The Republic that he had discussed the question sufficiently in the past and then grudgingly issued a statement.

"The link between crime and undocumented immigration is well known and was recognized by the 78 percent of Arizonans who voted for Proposition 100 in 2006," it read.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who says he is the only one who enforces immigration laws, did not respond. His public-information officers said late Friday that the office had not reviewed the statistics provided by a chief deputy, who helps oversee the jails.

'Inconvenient truth'

But the statistics do not bear out that "well-known link."

Mesa Police Chief George Gascon has been criticized for publicly saying that immigrants do not commit a disproportionate number of crimes.

"Unfortunately, it seems to be an inconvenient truth, because there are so many people making this the central point of a political campaign and a central point of their own political agendas," he said. "The fact continues to remain that undocumented people here in this country do not commit crimes at any greater rate than any other segment of the population."

Gascon was quick to add that undocumented immigration is indeed a major issue for Arizona and the U.S., but that it does not overlap with the state's crime problems as neatly as some would like to think.

"Unquestionably we have an undocumented immigration problem, and unquestionably it needs to be fixed," Gascon said. "The problem is when you try to apply the wrong fix. When you start using your resources and applying them based on faulty assumptions or misinformation, then you're going to be wasting resources and you're also going to lead people to believe that you're fixing something when the reality is that you're not fixing anything."

Numbers unchanged

Last April, The Republic analyzed available data from the Arizona Department of Corrections and Maricopa County jails and determined that 10 percent to 11 percent of the inmates were undocumented immigrants. But the information available from the jail was not based on federal immigration databases.

At the time, Arpaio was just entering his agreement with ICE, which gave his deputies access to those databases, and he vowed to keep accurate numbers for the future.

According to sheriff's Deputy Chief Jack MacIntyre, who provided the 2007 numbers, the program was up and running by late May, and by year's end had identified 7,762 ICE holds. From June 1 to Dec. 31, there were a total of 76,203 people booked into the jails.

"There would probably be fewer ICE holds if it weren't for laws tailor-made for the undocumented," said defense attorney Antonio Bustamante, referring to the state's recently passed human-smuggling laws and laws making it a felony to possess counterfeit or forged identification cards. There are hundreds of undocumented immigrants held in jail without bond as they await trial on those charges.

The Sheriff's Office also keeps track of the average daily population for ICE holds, which for 2007 was 17 percent of the jail population. The higher number can be largely attributed to Proposition 100, the law that denies bond to undocumented immigrants who are charged with Class 4 or lower felonies. Although U.S. citizens and foreigners who are in the country legally are released on bail, the undocumented immigrants aren't, and their numbers accrue.

On Feb. 12, the Sheriff's Office also released statistics regarding the number of people it said it interviewed - 40,000 - and ascertained that 25 percent were here illegally.

On further inquiry, The Republic learned that the sheriff's specialized immigration control unit interviewed 43,895 people over the past 10 months; 9,556, or 21.8 percent, were deemed undocumented, according to spokeswoman Lisa Allen.