Forsyth County's newly passed budget includes more than $76,000 for a position at the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office to oversee screening of detainee immigration status.
But Sheriff Bill Schatzman says he's confused about why commissioners gave him the money for the job, considering that he didn't ask for it and he's not sure that the job can be filled this year.
The new staff position is designed to coordinate the 287(g) program, which is named after the section of federal immigration law that established it. The county has applied to join the program, but it's not certain if the application will be approved.
"It will be a long time I think, from what I've been told, for that to occur -- if it ever occurs in Forsyth County," Schatzman said.
Richard Rocha, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, said that federal officials worked with the N.C. Sheriff's Association to assess the needs of the state and chose three counties -- Wake, Cumberland and Henderson -- to join the 287(g) program.
The program currently operates in Mecklenburg, Gaston, Cabarrus and Alamance counties and the City of Durham.
All other applications are still pending on a case-by-case basis, Rocha said. He could not give a timeline for when any of the applications might be approved.
Currently, Forsyth County participates in the Criminal Alien Program, which allows local officials to contact federal immigration authorities whenever detainees are suspected of immigration violations. Federal officers then investigate and proceed with deportation procedures if necessary.
Those functions could be performed in-house under the 287(g) program, which trains local officials to act as immigration authorities.
Schatzman said that the county also expects to get funding and equipment within the next year that would allow local officials to digitally transmit fingerprints of suspect detainees to federal immigration headquarters in New York.
Fighting illegal immigration is important, Schatzman said, but he said that financing for a 287(g) program that is facing a long road to approval wasn't a priority in a year in which he faced $1.7 million in cuts.
"We articulated and documented a whole lot of priorities, and that wasn't one of them," he said. "It is curious. We didn't ask for it and didn't know it was in the budget."
Commissioner Ted Kaplan said that the county has been discussing joining 287(g) for almost two years, and that the financing was not included before because the sheriff only agreed to apply for the program late last year.
"I don't know that it had any more priority than anything else; it just got started," Kaplan said. "We would have funded it last year had the sheriff made the application."
Commissioner Debra Conrad said that the county needs to be prepared to implement the program should approval come through in the next 12 months. The money for the staff position will go back into the general fund if not spent, she said.
"The citizens I believe are counting on us starting that program," she said.
Before gas prices took the focus, fighting illegal immigration was one of the concerns most often raised by Forsyth County residents, Conrad said.
But not everyone thinks that putting the 287(g) program in place is a good idea.
The Rev. Fermin Bocanegra, a pastor at Kernersville's Iglesia Cristiana Wesleyana, said he has been in the area for 40 years and has seen families ripped apart by deportations.
"It's more a political statement than a fix," Bocanegra said of the 287(g) program. "I think our politicians, they want to make a statement or a political gesture that they are controlling immigration when in reality they know they cannot control it."
■ Elizabeth DeOrnellas can be reached at 727-7279 or at edeornellas@wsjournal.com.
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