WEEKLY EDITORIAL RECAP

Deporting illegals

Friday

Immigration officials deported 28 foreign-born Clark County jail inmates during the first month of a new partnership with the Metropolitan Police Department.

The partnership, officially launched Nov. 15, allows specially trained corrections officers at the Clark County Detention Center to identify immigration violators and start deportation proceedings against them.

Through mid-December, 882 people booked into the jail were identified as foreign-born and screened for their immigration status. Of those, 114 were identified as being in the United States illegally. Their names were forwarded to the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Twenty-eight either have been removed from the United States or are in holding stations awaiting removal, police said.

Believe it or not, some are objecting to even this minimal effort to transfer criminals -- after their local cases have been resolved -- back to their appropriate, foreign jurisdictions.

"They've created a deportation machine," says Judy Cox, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. "It's going to create a huge rift in the community. ...

"This isn't just about getting violent criminals off the street," Ms. Cox complains. "Anybody who comes in contact with the police, and is unfortunate enough to be arrested and charged with anything from a DUI to a felony, can be deported."

Well ... yes. And this is somehow bad? Someone who enters this country illegally is a criminal. By and large, such trespassing aliens have little fear of being apprehended or deported, unless they have what Ms. Cox calls "the misfortune" to be arrested and charged with another, entirely separate crime.

Slipping on a patch of ice and twisting one's ankle is "a misfortune." Is it merely "bad luck" to commit so many crimes that one eventually gets arrested for one of them?

Police spokesman Jacinto Rivera says 75 of the 114 jail inmates identified as being in the country illegally had been charged with felonies from murder to drug trafficking.

If there's a cause for worry here, we hope some follow-ups will be conducted to make sure convicts shipped south of the border aren't promptly released to head north and "try again." Other than that, the more appropriate question is why we haven't seen deportation proceedings opened for at least those 75 -- if not the entire 114.