Posted Monday, February 25 --- 10:00pm

A public hearing Monday has authorities practices on how closely they work along with Immigrant Customs Enforcement, or ICE, in question.

"I believe that all law enforcement agencies and partners in the criminal justice system have an obligation to work together," says Dane County Sheriff, Dave Mahoney, when asked why he reports jailed illegal immigrants to ICE. Mahoney appeared before Dane County's Public Protection and Judiciary Committee.

In 2007, there were 15 hundred bookings per month in Dane County. 286 of those were illegal immigrants and of those, 61 were held by ICE. This has raised several concerns from the public.

"I think that this relationship between the local government and ICE needs to stop because it's creating racial profiling in our communities."

"I'm here to say good work sheriff. Keep it up. I'm proud of what he's doing. There's no reason to let law violators to get away with it."

Illegals fear that any encounter they have with law enforcement could lead to deportation. An ordinance for Dane County created in 2002 prevents law enforcement from asking residents about their immigration status thus putting last years increase in ICE holds under the microscope.

____________________________________________________

Original Story Posted January 25, 2008

Madison: Dane County Jail officials are thinking about not telling Immigration and Customs officials when they arrest certain illegal immigrants.

That's because officials are worried about a severe backlog in the court system; if every illegal immigrant is worried jail time will lead to automatic deportation.

Anthony Delyea is a public defender. The court pays him to represent the poorest defendants. By his count he handles nearly 250 cases a year, and more than a 100 involve illegal immigrants.

Delyea says 98% of his cases never see a courtroom, as his clients take plea deals for reduced sentences. That is changing. "I have three cases that are going to go to trial that would have settled before."

The change occurred at the federal level. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, is now working to deport illegals convicted of even the smallest crime. "If you enter a plea to something as relatively minor as operating after revocation and you have to serve any jail time you might be deported," says Delyea.

Now the only way to avoid jail time and possible deportation is to go to trial, even with a longshot case. Delyea says trials take time, and they are expensive- both for him and the court system. "When you start thinking about how much that's going to cost it's almost terrifying to me."

"It really surfaced about a couple months ago," says Peter Munoz, the Director of Centro Hispano. He says members of the illegal immigrant community are scared, and they may stop reporting crimes or skip court dates to avoid deportation. "It's creating this tremendous problem, where ICE is actually acting immediately, placing those holds and deporting people."

The topic came up at a meeting of the Dane County Criminal Justice Group. Sheriff Dave Mahoney says for more than three decades they have notified ICE when an illegal immigrant is booked in the jail-usually about 20 times a month.

Most of the time ICE would only put holds on a few. But last fall ICE put detainers on 60% of illegal immigrants in the jail. "When we inquired as to October and November why there was this spike, their response was, we had a significant increase in staff, which resulted in our ability to respond," says Mahoney.

The Sheriff and the District Attorney have agreed to examine the policy to notify ICE about illegal immigrants in the jail.

They say one possibility is to only notifiy ICE about those charged with the most serious offenses.