Arizona sheriffs have begun a lobbying effort to preserve a federal grant that pays some of the cost of housing undocumented inmates. KAWC's Kim Johnson spoke to Yuma County's Sheriff about the grant.........................
The grant is known as SCAPP, standing for State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. Since 1994 SCAAP has helped to pay costs for counties to house undocumented inmates. Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot says the grant has been eliminated from the recently released budget plan proposed by Donald Trump. Sheriff Wilmot explains why SCAAP is important.
"Sheriffs throughout the U.S. were ending up with a number of illegal aliens that had committed state crimes in our jails. And it was a way for us to get reimbursed for those costs because the federal government wasn't doing their part in regards to prosecuting these individuals for either human smuggling, or smuggling dope or committing other crimes while they were here.
Through the years it has been diluted significantly, and the problem is that those costs have not been declined at all for the sheriffs, to that fact that the last two years just the Arizona Sheriffs have ended up being ah, reimbursed only five cents on the dollar. And when you are talking, for instance just Yuma County alone, it's being on average about one point two, one point three million dollars a year that we've had to encumber in our budget that wasn't anticipated to house illegals that the federal government didn't charge."
Sheriff Wilmot says the cost of housing undocumented inmates has caused money planned for jail maintenance to be shifted to pay for holding these prisoners. And the Sheriff says that is not something limited to Yuma County.
"Since 2009, Arizona Sheriffs all 15 counties, ended up absorbing three hundred and ten million dollars. SCAAP has only funded about two hundred ninety million throughout the whole U.S. And it's something that every year the Office of Management and Budget, back in Washington, DC, continuously looks at cutting which we fight for every year."
Wilmot says the average cost of housing an inmate in the Yuma County Jail is just short of eighty dollars a day. Costs for undocumented inmates are much higher, especially if medical costs are involved.
"When you have an individual, like we have had on two separate occasions, where, ah, they needed dialysis three times a week, those two individuals costs us over a hundred thousand apiece each on top of the normal everyday administrative costs for housing, ah, a inmate."
The Sheriff adds that the true cost for the county for undocumented inmates include more more than just how much is spent to keep them in jail.
"If you think about it the courts, county attorney, public defender because now the County has to provide them a public defender to defend the case. So there's even more costs to counties getting burdened with when you look at the totality of the situation. So that's why we've been pushing on the U.S. Attorney's Office to start picking up more of the cases and the Federal Government to do what they're supposed to do, apprehend em charge em and then deport em. I think this last year we put in for one point three million dollars and we got a reimbursement of about seventy three thousand."
Sheriff Wilmot says the Arizona Sheriff's Association wrote to Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona to help save the grant. Tuesday Senator Flake and Senator John McCain co-sponsored legislation to reauthorize the SCAAP Grant through fiscal 2021. Wilmot says he is hopeful. But he says to what extent the grant program might be funded, even if it's reauthorized, "remains to be seen."