MIRA LOMA JAIL TO HOUSE ILLEGAL ALIENS : COUNTY AGREES TO PLACE 500 DETAINEES IN NOW-CLOSED FACILITY.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Five hundred illegal immigrants awaiting hearings to determine if they may stay in the United States will be housed at the now-closed Mira Loma jail, under an agreement approved Thursday by the county Board of Supervisors.

The federal government will pay the county $52.69 per inmate per day to house the INS detainees at Mira Loma in Lancaster, said Lori Howard, an aide to county Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich.

In a separate action, the state Department of Corrections will pay Los Angeles County $51.62 per inmate per day to house prisoners at the Pitchess Detention Center, Howard said. Space will be available at the Saugus complex when county inmates are transported in coming weeks to the Twin Towers jail.

Construction on Twin Towers wrapped in October 1995, but the high-rise Los Angeles jail has been empty ever since. On Thursday, the Board of Supervisors approved a plan by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to lease space in the Antelope Valley jail, closed in 1993 because of budget cuts. A second agreement allows the state Department of Corrections to send 1,400 state prisoners to Pitchess.

Earlier this month, workers began cleaning up Mira Loma in anticipation of the new inmates. Plans call for as many as 1,000 men to eventually be housed at the Lancaster jail.

The first immigrants are expected to be transported to Mira Loma on Feb. 3, Howard said. The agreement can be terminated by either the county or the federal government with 90 days notice.

The detainees will be housed in the former Women's Honor Rancho, the newer of two facilities on the Mira Loma jail site at 60th Street West and Avenue I.

Closed for more than three years, Mira Loma's air conditioners and heaters needed service, phones had to be activated and cosmetic work was necessary, said Sheriff's Lt. Errol Van Horn, who will serve as commander of the facility.

Mira Loma opened as a state prison in 1945 and was turned over to the county in 1953. The jail complex was closed in 1979 after the passage of the property-tax-slashing Proposition 13 but was reopened in 1983. The women's facility was built in 1986. Operations at Mira Loma ceased in 1993.

In Saugus, many of the state prisoners expected to be sent to Pitchess will be parole violators, said Undersheriff Jerry Harper, who oversaw the exchange plan for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Pitchess, in turn, will shuttle some of its most troublesome inmates to Twin Towers, where authorities hope the two-man cells will keep them from fighting with each other - a frequent problem in the barracks-style dormitories at Pitchess.

State corrections officials want to send low-risk prisoners, such as those sentenced to less than a year, to Pitchess. The state will lease jail beds from Pitchess as part of a plan to generate millions of dollars for the county.

Corrections officials want to lease the county jail space because it would save the state the cost of transporting convicts hundreds of miles from where they were arrested, tried and sentenced to the prison where they'll serve their term.

Riots and violent clashes between inmates, usually pitting Latinos against African-Americans, have been frequent in recent years at Pitchess. Sheriff's Department officials, who run the county jail system, plan to transfer ``shot callers'' - problem inmates known to be instigators of unrest - out of the 125-man open barracks at Pitchess.