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GREENSBORO — A Homeland Security ban against using Tasers on immigration detainees could get in the way of a 287(g) compact between federal authorities and the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff BJ Barnes said last week.

Barnes, who was set to sign an agreement granting specific deputies in his department access to Immigration and Customs Enforcement databases, said the Homeland Security policy runs counter to security rules in place at the Greensboro and High Point jails.

“What it comes down to is, they don’t want you to use a Taser,” Barnes said. “That may be a deal-breaker. I’m not going to say one way or another.”

ICE spokesman Richard Rocha said the agency’s use of force policy does not allow for an EMDD — electro-muscular disruption device — to be used on immigration detainees.

“They could have EMDDs at the jail,” Rocha said, “but we would not allow the use of those on our detainees.”

Barnes said it would be hard to draw that line in a jail. If detention officers had to respond to a fight in a crowded day room, for example, Barnes said there would be no time to check the nationalities of those involved before deciding on what action to take.

According to the most recent inmate breakdowns by the sheriff’s office, there were 64 inmates who were non-U.S. citizens awaiting trial in the Greensboro and High Point jails. Of those 64, 48 were here illegally.

Stun guns and Tasers are neither a new nor uncommon tool for quelling disturbances in jails nationwide, though their use continues to generate controversy both in the U.S. and on the part of the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

Tasers, first introduced 25 years ago, temporarily immobilize a person with a 50,000-volt shock. The weapons are alternately described as “non-lethal” or “less-lethal” because suspects and inmates have been known to die immediately after being shocked, although a definite link has not been proven.

When inmates are shot with a Taser, Guilford jail rules dictate that they be examined immediately by medical staff.

Col. Randy Powers, chief deputy for the sheriff’s office, said neither the jails nor field division have ever had a fatality associated with Taser use.

In breaking up melees or subduing violent suspects, Powers said Tasers are preferable to pepper spray because Tasers can be aimed at one person; pepper spray can accidentally hit several people.

Barnes said the mere appearance of a Taser is a deterrent.

“There’s something enlightening about that little red dot on your chest,” Barnes said. “But for us, it’s a use of force. It generates a report, and a file is generated. You’d be surprised at how little we actually use it.”

Between January and June of 2009, 11 of 114 reported uses of force by detention officers at the Greensboro and High Point jails involved the use of Tasers, according to Maj. Debbie Montgomery, who oversees the jails division .

The issue of Tasers at the Alamance County Detention Center came up in a 2008 ICE inspection that resulted in an overall “deficient” rating, according to documents obtained in July by the public interest group Fairness Alamance, via a Freedom of Information request.

Unlike the Alamance jail, which serves as a regional hub for federal detainees, Barnes’ office would play a lesser role in 287(g). Barnes’ plan is for two sheriff’s deputies, both fluent in Spanish, to have cross-sworn authority and access to ICE records.

The goal?

Currently, when a person from another country who has no ID is arrested and charged with a crime, it can take days or weeks to find out who they are and what other warrants they may have outstanding. Under a 287(g), that lag time drops to minutes, Barnes observed.

As part of a top-to-bottom overhaul of the policy for detaining immigrants, President Barack Obama’s secretary for Homeland Security, the Cabinet position responsible for ICE, issued a memo last month for new 287(g) partners to sign. One purpose was uniform treatment of prisoners from one jurisdiction to the next.

Although sheriffs support a consistent approach, Barnes said, there are details to be negotiated, chiefly the Taser issue.

In Alamance County, sheriff’s office spokesman Randy Jones said the detention center used Tasers before the 287(g) program and continues to use them. Jones said the 287(g) agreements under which Alamance County was operating made no mention of Tasers being prohibited, and he could not account for the 2008 inspection by ICE.

“They considered it a 'deficiency’ if you have Tasers. Just the possession of them,” Jones said. “But we’re not changing our use of Tasers.”

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano’s thrust in the memo, which law enforcement agencies have until October to sign, is that 287(g) target dangerous criminals: drug dealers, murderers, kidnappers.

Napolitano’s July announcement also sought to “address concerns that individuals may be arrested for minor offenses as a guise to initiate removal proceedings,” a key criticism Alamance Sheriff Terry Johnson has encountered.

Hannah Gill, a Graham resident who founded Fairness Alamance, said the new 287(g) approach is a response to similar situations across the country.

“Obviously, the lack of immigration reform has created a lot of challenges and problems for communities,” said Gill, an anthropologist. “We’re now going through a period where there’s really extreme anti-immigrant sentiment.”

In Gill’s view, the memorandum seeks to underscore serious, violent offenders. It meanwhile discourages 287(g) partners from wasting resources on minor traffic offenders, a focus she said built a climate of fear of police on the part of the Latino community.

Last week, the top news items on ICE’s Web site were that agents had deported “the second man this week wanted for murder in Mexico,” along with 53 gang arrests in Florida, assorted child pornographers, and a tractor-trailer in Nogales, Ariz., smuggling 97 immigrants “including children.”

It is in contrast to the major criticism of 287(g) programs around the country, one of which reached a boiling point in July 2008 in Alamance County. That was when a young library clerk was arrested at her job after it was discovered that she sought pre-natal care at the county Health Department. Marxavi Angel Martinez , then 23, had been brought here illegally at age 3 from Mexico .

Barnes says he has no such vision for Guilford’s 287(g) program. Initially, the plan would be for one cross-sworn field deputy from Special Operations to come to the jail and interview inmates suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.

Once these were established as ICE cases, Powers said, the inmates likely would be transferred to Alamance, which is the regional facility, and does not have Guilford’s overcrowding.

As to the concerns about possible racial profiling of Latinos raised in recent community forums on the 287(g) issue, Barnes describes the program he envisions as “self-initiated” by people who commit crimes.

“If I have no reason to be dealing with you, if you have not broken the law in some way, then you’re not going to have any problems out of this,” Barnes said.

“If (racial profiling) has been done in other counties, that’s just sorry, and woe be unto them. We’re not going to do that here. We’re not looking for folks we can put into the system or break up families.”

As part of the U.S. government’s unfolding effort to remake the deportation process into what a newly appointed ICE official called “a truly civil detention system,” the agency will stop imprisoning families at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Austin, Texas.

The notorious for-profit facility, the subject of prayer vigils, ACLU lawsuits, and searing footage of children behind razor wire and families imprisoned in cells with open toilets, will be converted into an immigration prison for women, the New York Times reported Thursday in an interview with John Morton, the new chief of ICE.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com