By Staff
on immigrants
Gaston County wants a new jail. Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials want a place to house illegal aliens who are being deported.
What on the surface could be a win-win situation is turning out to be anything but that. The reason is the indecision on the part of the federal government to deal with the illegal-immigration issue.
Gaston County considered building a 1,500-bed detention facility that ICE has been seeking in the Charlotte region, but it won’t do it because ICE can’t provide a guarantee that the feds will help pay for it.
After a meeting with ICE officials in Washington, D.C., last week, the Gaston County manager and three commissioners decided it would be too risky to raise the money for the estimated $150 million project, The Charlotte Observer reported. Federal officials couldn’t guarantee that they would recover that expenditure in reimbursements for housing federal inmates.
The current Gaston County jail has about 520 cells. County Manager Jan Winters said the county could need up to 500 more to handle inmate growth over the next five years. The county could also build 1,500-bed jail to meet its long-term needs and provide relief for ICE.
ICE could fill those extra cells at first, Winters told the Charlotte Observer, and the county would get help paying for the building.
That’s the problem. We’re sure Beaufort County officials might be agreeable to considering building a bigger jail to house ICE prisoners when the county designs its new facility. But we don’t believe that Beaufort County taxpayers should have to shoulder the bill for the extra space that ICE requires. Gaston County taxpayers shouldn’t have to do it either.
U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, a Republican from Charlotte, brought up Gaston County as a possible detention site early this year during the controversy over the sheriff’s election in Mecklenburg County. In North Carolina, local sheriffs must run local jails, the pretrial facilities that ICE requires.
ICE spokesman Richard Rocha said the agency is always looking for ways to expand and has not “ruled out any detention center facilities.”
On paper, a 1,500-bed center would create 300 jobs and ICE would pay enough per bed to eventually cover the cost of construction. But the county would have to come up with that money first, the Charlotte Observer reported.
Gaston County Commissioner Joe Carpenter said ICE told county officials it could fill the space now and would work hard to make sure it filled up. But without guaranteed revenue, he said, “We don’t feel good obligating the county.”
Winters said he understood why ICE couldn’t promise anything. It doesn’t have a multi-year budget and its needs could be affected by changes in policy. What if Congress decides to grant amnesty to illegal aliens? Gaston County officials would be left holding the bag and paying for a jail they don’t need.
A decision by Congress on how to handle illegal immigrants is needed, and it’s needed now. The existing situation places an unfair burden on local governments who must deal with the problem but have no part in the ultimate solution.