Sunday - May 09, 2010

Bad Idea, Wrong Taxpayers

An illegal immigrant with a long rap sheet got a $145,000 parting gift from New York City taxpayers before he was deported, after a federal judge ruled his civil rights had been violated when he was held too long on Rikers Island.

Federal rules allow local law enforcement to detain suspected illegal immigrants for 48 hours after their criminal cases are resolved, to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement a chance to pick them up and move them to federal facilities.

Former Brooklyn resident Cecil Harvey, 55—backed by an immigration-rights advocacy group—argued that his rights were violated when he spent more than a month in a Rikers holding pen before being transferred to ICE.

Harvey was shipped to his native Barbados in October 2007; the city settled his civil suit late last year.

The landmark settlement has prompted the Correction Department to dump scores of illegal immigrants on the streets, since federal officials often fail to pick them up within the required two-day window.

Federal immigration agents have office space on Rikers Island, and the city allows them to interview roughly 4,000 inmates each year. They put a hold, or “detainer,” on 3,200 of those inmates who they discover are illegals.

But ICE often fails to transfer those detainees within the required 48 hours of their criminal cases being resolved, multiple jail sources said.

“We just release them now,” one high-ranking jail supervisor said. “It’s ICE’s problem to go find these guys.”

[ read the article: the guy was held in jail because he was FTA on his court hearing. In other words, he skipped. So when they busted him for that, they kept him in jail. Crazy, right? ]


So now we know: the civil rights of an illegal alien felon are worth roughly $5,000 a day. Hell, I’m a citizen, so my civil rights ought to worth more than that, right? Where do I sign up? I’ll do a month at Rikers for that kind of money. Solitary please though.

But seriously ... the feds are right next door to the prison there. They can’t walk across the friggin’ street? The prison can’t make a phone call and say “got another one, come get him”? They can’t follow up on the cases and call the prison and say “this guy might be ours now”? I’d call this the federal’s fault, for not doing their job in a timely manner. Make Obama pay, not New York “Sanctuary” City.

And I wouldn’t pay the guy any damned $200 an hour for being in jail for this “civil rights” infringement. Minimum wage, at most. Got an existing record, like this guy? Half minimum wage at most then. Which means he would have got $3000 instead.

Yeah, I’d like to say that he shouldn’t have any civil rights at all, but that’s not how America works. But we don’t have to laud this guy with the equivalent of the 10-15 years income he’d make back on his home island. If he had a legal job.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/09/2010 at 11:38 AM   
Filed Under: • Illegal-Aliens and Immigration •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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