Corrections officials know that crowded prisons are a top concern - and officials in Arizona were facing quite a problem when they realized they were running out of beds for inmates. But unlike other facilities, many of Arizona's beds were being used by illegal immigrants that could be deported.

“Like many other agencies, the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) has been dealing with a bed crunch,” says Wade Woolsey, the Warden of the Arizona State Prison Complex in Phoenix. “Given our situation with the beds and overcrowding, our governor asked how we could use tax dollars and our resources more efficiently. We realized that by identifying, documenting and processing those inmates identified as foreign-born nationals that could technically be deported, we can release some of these prisoners to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.”

Under Arizona state statute incarcerated foreign-born nationals, also known as criminal aliens, are eligible for deportation after they have served half of their sentence terms. But the deportation process is often very slow, forcing corrections facilities to hold prisoners beyond their sentences – and their deportation dates.

In order to speed up the process, the ADC recently trained 12 of their corrections officers to interview foreign national inmates, and determine whether they are eligible for deportation. While those convicted of serious crimes, such as murder, are not eligible for deportation, many others are. And now that Arizona staff has been trained to help identify these inmates, the process has sped up significantly – which will create more space for inmates, and save taxpayer dollars.

“We have a long backlog of foreign-born inmates who are eligible for deportation,” says Woolsey. “By our count, there were 461 inmates in Arizona being held past their half-release dates. It costs us about $56 a day to provide a bed for one inmate. Once you do the math, you can see how much that adds up to.”

Corrections Officers: Expanding Knowledge

In order to help cut costs and increase the pace of deportation, the twelve officers trained by the ADC and ICE spent twelve weeks learning the proper federal procedures to interview, identify, and fingerprint foreign national inmates, although the training classes usually last up to four months. Since the ADC was concerned with an even further delay of action, the classes were condensed.

Once the officers completed the training program, they were sworn in as ICE agents, with full arresting powers, so the ADC made sure to pick the trainees from a list of their top corrections officers.

“We chose these particular officers from names that wardens sent to us,” Woolsey explains. “And it really gives them an insight into something that most of us do not know a whole lot about. What is the process of deporting a foreign-born inmate? Well, there's a lot to it.”

During the training sessions, officers learned the intricacies of federal law, what questions to ask potential criminal aliens, and how to correctly fill out forms in order to keep the process running smoothly. The officers were trained by federal ICE agents who were flown up from Georgia.

“We built the work station for the ICE agents, and the ICE agents created the software we needed in order to do all of this,” Woolsey says. “They provided cameras, fingerprint kits and many other things. It was a great joint effort by both of these agencies.”

Now, the trained officers have a foreign-born national caseload at the correctional facilities where they work, and when they aren't on the job, another trained officer can pick up their caseload to keep the work moving along. However, since the state has accumulated a large backlog in potential deportees, the trained officers are working intense schedules in order to catch up. Once the backlog has been updated, Woolsey says, the trained officers will go into a more traditional schedule.

“In the very near future, hopefully by January, we will set up teams of rotation because obviously we don't need all 10 people at once,” Woolsey says. “We're hoping to have our backlog caught up in the next 90 to 180 days.”

Training on a Budget

The ICE-trained officers will at first be working to address a backlog that, according to recent estimates by the ADC, shows that foreign-born inmates spent nearly 90,000 more days in prison to date than is required by Arizona law.

And although addressing this problem required new training for the officers, it didn't require a new training budget.

“Our budget was not expanded very much – we kept those being trained on the same salary,” Woolsey says. “They used the same time cards, whether they worked at the corrections facility, or at the training center. It didn't cost us anything additional.”

Woolsey says this program is important because it addresses an issue that affects many corrections facilities, especially those on the borders of the United States.

“Until we find a way to slow down the increase of foreign-born inmates coming into the country and being incarcerated, we still have an obligation to process them and we have a duty to make sure they are going through the court – but we can make that process much more effective and much faster than it was before,” Woolsey says. “And I know the officials from ICE would hope other states would look at our results and establish a similar program. When you start looking at taxpayer dollars building more prisons, rather than effectively speeding up this process, it's obvious this program is worth a shot. Our door is open – come on in and take a look at how it's working for us.”