City Council Presentation

Transcript of Police Chief Lisa Womack presentation on illegal alien initiatives
December 17, 2008, Elgin City Council 6:30 pm

Womack: We’ve always had a system in place that would allow for us to work closely with ICE on certain illegal aliens that met certain criteria. That criteria is any illegal aliens, criminal aliens who were arrested for felonies, drug-related, gang-related, or sex-related crimes.

Then the process that we have been engaged with ICE in for a good number of years is approaching 20 years. That process is still in place.

So I’m going to discuss what we’ve done since January. In March we met with representatives of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from the Chicago office to discuss reporting criteria as it related to the IAQ, the Immigration Alien Query system that we would begin doing as of March 1st.

Effective March 1st all foreign-born arrestees booked by members of our agency are screened through the IAQ system. In a nutshell the arresting officers ask for a query on our arrestees through our communications division and as the information is returned it is relayed to our jail commanders.

As we were discussing this with ICE the reporting criteria was established as follows:
All arrestees that met the already established criteria of felonies, sex-crimes, gang-related, drug-related crimes…would be immediately forwarded and ICE would be notified at that time.

Any additional arrestees that did not fall in that criteria but through the IAQ query had such things as a deportation warrant or hold already placed in the system would also be immediately notified.

All other arrestees would be forwarded to ICE through the CAP Officer assigned to the Kane County Jail on a monthly basis.

There was conversation on the frequency of the reports. It was at the request on ICE that they be reported on a monthly basis unless they met the immediate reporting criteria.

Since January that’s exactly what we do. While we continue the immediate reporting criteria which we have always done, since March 1st we have made queries on 1,259 foreign-born arrestees; 253 of those individuals that have been screened have been identified in our country illegally; 20 of that 253 met the criteria for immediate reporting and we are currently actively involved with ICE on the court process, the adjudication process, or are actively involved in the deportation proceedings.

The other 233 met the criteria for the monthly reporting, have been reported to ICE, and they have followed the appropriate legal processes here in our city.

ICE ACCESS. We made application as you said, as Mr. Cogley said, in January for ICE ACCESS. We had that same discussion during our March meeting with regard to ICE ACCESS.

If you look at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, ICE website it describes all the various program that are available under ICE ACCESS. All of those programs are not available to every law enforcement agency across the nation. At the March meeting there was a request from me to ICE to provide us with a summary of those available programs under the ACCESS umbrella to the Elgin Police Department. To date I have not received that information.

We have followed up on our application with ICE on the ACCESS program. We have been told that the request for a Memorandum of Understanding and the report that I requested and the information requested, has been forwarded to their Washington office.

All information and authorizations for that must come through their Washington office.
And we have since been informed that the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement has resigned as of a month ago. There is an acting Director and no further decisions will be made until the new administration takes office after the first of the year.

That is the current status of the ICE ACCESS program.

We continue to do what we have been doing for a very long time. We have a very good working relationship with local ICE on the specific criteria as they have outlined. We do participate in several task forces that have an ICE component.

As of yesterday we made several arrests that you may have read about in the paper that also had an ICE component attached to that. So we continue our task force involvement with our federal partners, FBI and ICE as well as continue to forward the information, actively pursue the situations as we can.

Questions from the City Council
(Inaudible.
Something about the ICE staffing level and their ability to respond to the need. Some discussion about the ICE reporting criteria.
Cogley talks about criteria for ICE involvement. Inaudible.
About holding for 24 hours and bonding out. Cap officers at county)

Womack: Our authority to hold is exactly the same as any other arrested person. We can hold them under the laws that they were arrested for here. To answer your question very simply, someone who is arrested for the reporting criteria we immediately notify ICE. We notify an existing agent that we work with as well as the CAP officer at the Kane County Jail.

At that point it is the responsibility of ICE to put a further hold. If there is a bonding process available for this arrestee without the hold, then it is ICE responsibility to put the hold so that they will not be able to bond out. So our responsibility ends at the point where we make the notification, make sure they have the information, and it becomes the responsibility of ICE to place the hold so that they cannot bond out of jail.

Council: (Inaudible Cook County question)

Womack: Cook County also has a CAP officer. We do the same. We don’t have as many reportings that we report to as many arrestees on the Cook County side. But Cook County obviously with the size of the jail that it is, yes, they have several CAP officers that are assigned there with the same processing system.

(Sorry for the problem picking up questions from the city council. They weren't using the microphones. Same for Mr. Cogley (City Attorney) comments made and answers given at the end of Womack's presentation.)