PRESIDENT'S BUDGET WILL STRAIN CALIFORNIA COST OF JAILING UNDOCUMENTED FELONS SHIFTS.

Byline: Bill Hillburg Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - If President George W. Bush has his way, undocumented immigrants who are convicted of crimes will do their time entirely on Californians' dime.

Bush's fiscal 2002-03 budget calls for eliminating the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which this year is paying $217 million to California law enforcement agencies - including more than $50 million to Southern California counties - to help offset the cost of incarcerating 14,492 undocumented felons.

``The president has turned his back on California,'' said Rep. Howard Berman, D-Mission Hills. ``He has also ignored the federal government's responsibility for border enforcement. I think Bush saw SCAAP as an easy place to save some money and leave local taxpayers to foot the bill.''

Berman and the rest of California's congressional delegation are working to restore SCAAP funding. They have co-signed a letter urging Bush to retain and increase total SCAAP support to states from the current $545 million to $750 million.

SCAAP was enacted by Congress in 1994 amid growing protests from state leaders, including former Gov. Pete Wilson. They argued that compensation was needed because the feds had failed in their sworn duties to seal the borders against undocumented immigrants and to deport those who were convicted of committing crimes in the U.S.

The problem has been especially acute in California, home to an estimated 2.25 million of the nation's 5.75 million undocumented immigrants, including 1 million in Los Angeles County. The state receives 40 percent of all SCAAP dollars.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, argued that SCAAP support is an absolute necessity.

``A state can decide whether to provide education or health care, but it cannot decide whether someone is a criminal or not,'' he said.

A 2000 study by Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca estimated that 38,748 county inmates - 23 percent of the jail population - were undocumented immigrants. The county's annual total cost of dealing with ``deportable criminal aliens'' was estimated at $150 million.

This year, Los Angeles County will receive $34 million in SCAAP funds. Other local totals include Orange County, $10.5 million; Riverside, $3.7 million; Ventura, $1.8 million; and San Bernardino, $804,000.

Baca's report, which noted that the number of deportable aliens in the county's jail system doubled in the 1990s, pinned much of the blame on the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Under federal law, INS is charged with deporting all undocumented criminal immigrants.

Despite a 300 percent increase in the agency's budget during that span, including a huge increase in the Border Patrol force along the Mexican border, Baca said that INS ``has been unable to identify and remove most of the illegal aliens who are convicted of serious crimes each year in Los Angeles County.''

Baca also criticized INS' border security efforts. His study found that, of the 1,500 undocumented alien felons deported from Los Angeles County by INS in 1995, 40 percent were rearrested in the county within one year.

With California facing a $17 billion budget deficit, state officials said the reimbursement is taking on added importance.

Elizabeth Howard, legislative analyst for the California Association of Counties, said the impact will be enormous.

``I can't emphasize enough how devastating this could be, given what we're already facing in our state budget,'' she said.

Gov. Gray Davis, in his 2002-03 state budget message, estimated that California's state prison system will spend $572 million in the coming year to incarcerate deportable criminal aliens, who make up 12.4 percent of the inmates in state-run lockups.

Baca and other county sheriffs have warned that a cutoff of SCAAP funds may force them to cut other operations, including patrols.

Bush, in his January budget message, argued that SCAAP was among a number of Justice Department programs established during President Clinton's administration ``that have completed their mission or failed to demonstrate a clear impact on crime. SCAAP is not even intended to reduce crime, but merely to reimburse state and local governments.''

The president has proposed instead a shift of Justice Department resources to anti-terrorism efforts and border security.

Berman and other critics find the president's stance puzzling. They note that, as governor of Texas, Bush lobbied hard for SCAAP funding for his state, which has the nation's second-largest population of undocumented immigrant convicts.