Congressman David Dreier

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Congressman David Dreier, Chairman of the House Rules Committee, praised a decision to create a San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department identification processing unit in Rancho Cucamonga last Thursday. The unit will be trained by the Department of Homeland Security to identify and process criminal illegal aliens. The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors voted to approve the creation of the program, proposed by San Bernardino County Sheriff Gary Penrod, earlier this week.

"Effective cooperation between federal and local authorities is critical to successful interior enforcement," Dreier said. "This new Rancho Cucamonga unit, when coupled with the work being done by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, will improve criminal illegal alien removal efforts. I applaud Sheriff Penrod for his hard work and appreciate the cooperation of the Department of Homeland Security as this program gets underway."

Under the program, San Bernardino County will create an identification processing unit at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials will train San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department personnel to perform certain functions of a federal immigration officer. Dreier also noted that the program will help San Bernardino County recoup more money from the federal government's State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), which reimburses states and localities for the cost of incarcerating undocumented criminal aliens.

"The new immigration detention unit will help San Bernardino County to more accurately identity the number of criminal aliens they are jailing, allowing the count to receive more SCAAP reimbursement funds,"Dreier said.

Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives adopted a Dreier-sponsored amendment that increased SCAAP funding by $50 million to $405 million for Fiscal Year 2006.