Specter visits jail to talk immigration

Inmates wearing red suits with white block letters that read “Allegheny County Jail” ran to… Inmates wearing red suits with white block letters that read “Allegheny County Jail” ran to call loved ones when they saw Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., walk into Sentenced Housing Unit 1C yesterday morning.

Specter’s visit to the jail was just one in a series of jail visits that he hopes will allow him to learn more about the illegal aliens residing in U.S. jails.

Illegal aliens, Specter said, are expensive to house and can present threats to public safety.

He noted that the Chester County jail holds 63 illegal aliens who, together, cost the jail an estimated $1.7 million. The Allegheny County Jail, by comparison, holds 30 illegal immigrants.

But the “bigger problem,” Specter said, is keeping illegal aliens off the streets after they serve their sentences. Specter said he would like to see illegal immigrants who served sentences for minor offenses, such as drunk driving or burglaries, returned to their native countries.

“When you have people who have been convicted of crimes, there’s no reason why they ought not be deported,” Specter said. “We will use any means necessary to get their home countries to take them back.”

Specter said it is hard to deport illegal immigrants who served time in jail because countries are not required to take back their citizens.

Specter suggested that some countries have a large number of people interested in applying for visas to come to the United States. This, he said, is “a good pressure” the United States can use when negotiating with other countries.

The U.S. government, he suggested, can pressure poorer nations into reclaiming their citizens by denying the country aid. But until then, the government must hope that it can strike deals with the illegal aliens serving sentences in American jails.

One inmate from Mexico said that if the U.S. government dropped the charges against him, he would gladly return to his home south of the border. But, this isn’t the case with everyone.

“I asked [an inmate] from Syria if he’d be willing to go back to Syria if charges were dropped,” Specter said, and the Syrian man responded, “No, I’m not prepared to do that.”

The district attorney makes the decision to drop the charges against illegal immigrants.

Specter said that an immigrant’s hesitancy to return to his or her native country poses the most problems after they serve their sentences.

Illegal immigrants are released because officials can only hold them for 180 days and only after police press other charges against them. An illegal immigration charge alone is not enough to hold a person.

“If you’re puzzled by the way the system works, join the crowd,” Specter said.

One attorney added that this is just the beginning of the problems surrounding illegal immigration. Identifying illegal immigrants can be almost as difficult as keeping them off the streets.

“These individuals often don’t want law enforcement to know who they are,” U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan said. “They’re carrying documents, but they may not be real documents.”

The jail’s warden, Ramon Rustin, said one of the greatest obstacles is communicating with aliens going through the system. Rustin said that the jail just signed $1,000-per-month contract with a company that will interpret any language.

But this doesn’t have a large impact on daily life in the jail, where the illegal immigrants must communicate with their fellow inmates.

Several inmates said they did not mind sharing their living space with the illegal immigrants.

“They’ll give you anything they’ve got,” said inmate Allen Baker, who added that the inmates often swap things like soup. “One scratches the other.”

Specter said he has introduced immigration legislation into Congress multiple times, but has lacked the support needed to get it passed.

“There’s been an unwillingness to tackle it because it’s such a hot potato,” Specter said. “No one wants to talk about it, and that’s a blunt fact of life.”