Senior Leadership Northeast Minutes from January 19, 2010

The January 19, 2010 meeting of Senior Leadership Northeast was convened at the Colleyville Chamber of Commerce building at 9:05 AM by Chairman Ed Havran.

 There were twelve (12) individuals present representing four (4) Northeast Tarrant County cities. Minutes were approved as reported on the website.

 Sunny Meeks with the Colleyville Chamber of Commerce welcomed us and announced the upcoming chamber awards banquet on February 5^th at the Southlake Hilton.

 Rebecca Barksdale from Commissioner Fickes’ office reminded everyone about the upcoming Northeast Tarrant Transportation Summit on February 17 at the Grapevine Convention Center.   

The Southlake Senior Center opening was discussed.  It was a great job by everyone involved and they had a fantastic attendance!

 Gary Gilbert with the Homeland Security office and Muriel Prendice with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Dallas discussed their organizational structure.  They discussed these agencies:

 Detention and Removal Operations-Deportation.  The Dallas office is the largest geographically in the nation (24 field offices covering 129 counties in Texas and all of Oklahoma).   San Antonio is the largest nationally by numbers held for deportation (8,000 vs. 32,000 nationally).  Buses travel daily to the border.  They use several local jails to hold immigrants for deportation.  They can hold an immigrant for 72 hours and then they are sent to a long-term facility (county jail in Haskell, TX for this area).  Travel documents can take three weeks for Central America and one year for China.  To remove a detainee, their country must authorize their return.  The burden of cost is on the US government.  If a detainee is removed and they re-enters, the person has committed a felony (5-12 years in prison).  If the Government is out of jail space, they use ankle monitors with GPS. ($55/day to detain in jail vs $13/day for ankle monitors)

Fugitive Operations Groups- There is six teams.  If a person has been identified as an alien, and they don’t show up for their court date, the alien is found guilty.  These teams go into a city and work with local police to locate aliens.

 Secure Communities-This is a computer database started last year for fingerprinting to work with local police to identify aliens.  Using two index fingers, within five minutes the Government can tell if the person has been arrested (in FBI database).

 In 2009 they removed 11,000 aliens, and returned them to their country of origin.  They arrest everyone, but prosecute only the worst of the worst.  They referred 597 violent criminal cases to the U.S. Attorney, but only 122 were accepted for prosecution due to lack of attorney resources.  Dallas is the leader in enforcement.

            They advised that we could get a great view of US Immigration, by Goggling “Immigration Gumballs”.

 Remember February 16 is the start of early voting.

 Meeting was adjourned at 10:30 AM.  Next meeting will be February 16.

 Respectfully submitted, Rebecca Barksdale