State Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth said today that most of his GOP colleagues oppose early release for illegal immigrant inmates or other state prisoners to help reduce the state's $24.3 billion deficit.
"We don't want to see early release. We don't want to see criminal aliens being released to the federal government and then deported and returning back to the streets and communities of California - for a very small amount of savings, by the way," Hollingsworth, the Senate Republican leader, told The Bee's Capitol Bureau in an interview. The GOP holds 15 out of 40 seats in the state Senate.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed saving up to $182 million of $10 billion in corrections spending by releasing up to 8,000 immigrant inmates. The Republican governor would commute their sentences, and the inmates would be deported, according to the plan.
About 19,000 inmates have already been identified in California state prisons as eligible for deportation - after they finish their sentences - by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The governor's plan would speed that process only for nonviolent, non-sex offenders.
Many of the foreign-born prisoners on "ICE holds" are illegal immigrants, although some may be legal immigrants whose green cards can be revoked if they were convicted of an "aggravated felony."
All these inmates have the right to an immigration hearing to try to appeal their deportation. But Schwarzenegger administration representatives said the governor would not commute the sentences of foreign prisoners unless a hearing was completed inside prison first and deportation was guaranteed.
The governor has the power to unilaterally commute sentences of only certain "low level" first-time felons, whose crimes were nonviolent and non-sexual in nature.
Only about 1,400 foreign inmates fit that profile, and their release would save an estimated $32 million, according to administration officials.
To add 4,000 prisoners who have more than one felony conviction, the governor would have to obtain approval from the California Supreme Court. To release the remainder of the 8,000 prisoners, the Legislature would have to change some of the nonviolent crimes the prisoners committed, such as property theft, to misdemeanors.
Hollingsworth said one of his colleagues is looking at cost-cutting alternatives to early release for prisoners.
He predicted problems if the governor tries proceed with his plan.
Some of the prisoners may be in state prison on one felony conviction, he said, but may have been accused of others in the past that were "pled down."
"We think there are practical legal and constitutional problems with it," Hollingsworth said. But most of all, "the policy of early release is one that we don't think is good for the state of California. And it saves a very minute amount of money in the overall picture of things."
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