Cost of Illegal Crossings Strains Small Border Towns : Immigration: Expenses range from jails to burials. ‘We’re poor communities, getting poorer,’ an official says.

SAN DIEGO —  The rising number of illegal immigrants crossing the border in isolated areas is severely straining the finances of impoverished rural communities on the U.S. side that must foot the bill for extra jail space, emergency medical care and even burials for migrants who succumb to the harsh conditions of the journey.

Southwest border counties have been driven to raise taxes or seek emergency aid in an effort to recover millions of dollars spent on jail and court expenses for immigrants entering illegally from Mexico. Many rural counties are only beginning to calculate the worrisome burden on hospitals for uncompensated care.

“For years that this has been going on; we kind of accepted it as life on the border,” said Imperial County Supervisor Tom Veysey. “But in the past couple of years, it’s increased so much that it’s affecting our budget, our expenditures. We’re not very well off to begin with.”

Citing a $1-million tab from illegal immigration, Imperial County’s Board of Supervisors last fall declared a local emergency in seeking help to cover costs that include hospital bills for migrants, autopsies and sheriff’s investigations of roughly 100 deaths in 1998. Officials attribute those costs largely to a U.S. border crackdown to the west in San Diego that has shifted migrant traffic to less populated areas.

The expense of burying migrants who died trying to cross Imperial County’s perilous expanse of deserts and irrigation canals rose so rapidly that officials considered cremating the deceased as a way to save half of the $927 expense of each burial.

In Pima County, Ariz., which includes Tucson and spans 130 miles of the international border, officials say a tripling in the number of undocumented immigrants arrested for felonies and misdemeanors in four years was a big reason for a rise in property taxes this year.

A year-old coalition of border county officials, gathering in San Diego today, is calling attention to the strain on local governments amid concerns of a cutback in federal reimbursement that communities receive for detaining illegal immigrants who commit crimes in the United States.

The officials warn that some of the 24 border counties from California to Texas could face fiscal catastrophe unless the aid, provided through the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, is maintained at $585 million or expanded to provide full reimbursement of incarceration costs.

The U.S. Senate has slashed to $100 million the proposed funding for the program, which compensates state and local governments for incarcerating adult undocumented immigrants. That bill must be reconciled with a version in the House that keeps last year’s funding of $585 million.

Elected leaders and administrators say that even at current levels, the reimbursement covers only a fraction of the more than $1.4 billion spent on eligible detention costs nationwide and does not address other spending related to the influx of migrants crossing without papers, such as ambulance services and coroner investigations. The local leaders are calling on the federal government to reimburse their governments and hospitals for those other expenses, which they say result from federal immigration policies.

But the federal government historically has been reluctant to help out more.

U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) are pushing for restoration of the incarceration aid. Feinstein said the funds are critical in California, where as of early this year, state prisons alone held 21,792 inmates who were in the country illegally.

Kyl plans to introduce a bill that would provide $200 million to help border communities defray currently ineligible criminal justice costs, such as court expenses, juvenile detention and indigent defense. The bill would seek an additional $200 million yearly to help state and local governments cope with the costs of providing emergency medical care.

County leaders lack a reliable accounting of spending linked to undocumented immigrants. They have sought a $300,000 federal grant to develop a standardized tally across border counties.

Laments over the costs of coping with illegal immigration are long familiar in places like San Diego, where a huge influx of the undocumented in years past strained police budgets and forced hospitals to divert resources in order to keep up with demands placed on emergency rooms.

But officials in smaller, primarily rural counties contend that the problems they face may be even more vexing because their communities already struggle to provide basic services to residents.

“We’re poor communities, getting poorer,” said Sharon Bronson, who heads the Pima County Board of Supervisors and is one of the leaders of the U.S.-Mexico Border Counties Coalition. “It’s not getting any better. We’re wondering what the heck we’re going to do.”

Taxes Raised to Cover Burden

The federal government pays for detention and adjudication when it comes to arrests of migrants under U.S. immigration law. But often, those who cross illegally are arrested for petty crimes once inside the country. Some counties estimate that more than a fourth of their criminal justice budgets are devoted to processing illegal immigrants.

Officials in Pima County increased property taxes by 6% to cover the growing burden.

“It’s a big deal we had to raise it that much and we think two-thirds of that amount is associated with costs of dealing with illegal immigration,” Bronson said. “We think the impact will be even greater next year.”

County officials say the problems stem in large part from heightened U.S. patrols to prevent illegal entries in urban border zones, such as San Diego and El Paso. Adding to the problem, some say, are free-trade policies that have drawn workers from impoverished southern Mexico to factory jobs along the U.S. border. Many workers enter the United States for better paying jobs or to seek emergency medical care, officials say.

Other county leaders complain that their jails are overwhelmed with undocumented immigrants who are arrested at the border with small quantities of drugs. In tiny Luna County, N.M., roughly half of the local inmates were arrested at the port of entry in Columbus, carrying drugs in quantities below the 50-kilogram threshold required for federal prosecution, said county manager Scott Vinson.

Those suspects are tried under state law, leaving the county to pay the tab for local court costs, indigent defense and incarceration. The county gets $32,000 from the federal government to offset jail expenses, but Vinson said that falls far short of the $375,000 the county spends detaining immigrants.

Imperial County’s request for emergency state and federal aid was shelved earlier this year by the governor’s Office of Emergency Services, but local officials are taking their case to Washington. A recently approved resolution, sponsored by state Sen. David G. Kelley (R-Idyllwild), asks the federal government to reimburse costs that add up to $2 million in Imperial County.

The county cites unpaid fees for injured undocumented immigrants taken to El Centro Regional Medical Center and to Pioneers Memorial Hospital in Brawley, plus county-paid autopsies and burials of deceased immigrants. The hospitals report receiving fewer undocumented migrants this summer, perhaps a sign that efforts to warn immigrants away from risky routes are working.

Federal immigration officials acknowledge the problem is serious for impoverished rural counties. The U.S. government pays for emergency room visits by migrants detained by the Border Patrol, a federal agency. But many injured immigrants located by agents are rushed to the hospital before they are arrested.

“When we encounter somebody in a life-threatening situation, our first concern is their medical condition,” said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Kice said expenses to communities should fall as enforcement efforts are gradually expanded along the border.

“The real answer here is not to hand them the Border Patrol checkbook. It’s to seek ways to become more effective in our job and to deter illegal crossings,” Kice said. “By doing that we can help reduce the number of people stranded in the desert who become a potential liability.”